Kent Wang

I'm not seeing a lot of offal. Are they not common or did you just not order them? I've always found it odd that all the Vietnamese and Thai restaurants I've been to in the US have hardly any offal other than the occasional tripe at a pho place. Compare with Chinese restaurants which typically have a dozen dishes.

Wondrich mentions the Royal Fizz as a whole egg cocktail. Cocktail DB has it as just an egg yolk though.

Why is Chinese bbq pork red? Is it an artificial color?

Does the Long Bar Singapore Sling even use the actual ingredients like Benedictine? I think I had read somewhere that it isn't. Have you been to Fatty Crab in New York? How different is their chili crab sauce from the Singaporean version?

That's interesting that you mention that because I've always thought that Ruby Red grapefruit (proud export of Texas) tasted salty to me. I couldn't find anything on Google to corroborate this, but a search for grapefruit and glutamate yields one guy that says:

Wikipedia says that little cats (like house cats) taste almost exactly like rabbits.

In a few excellent salumi that I've had, I've noticed that the fat takes on a strange flavor and mouthfeel. It is most evident in Fermin jamon iberico, less so in Salumeria Biellese gunciale, and just a little bit in some dry salamis that I can't remember precisely. The best way to experience it is to get some jamon iberico and take a big bite of just the fat, none of the meat. With the Biellese gunciale you can do the same, or render out the fat in a pan first and have a sip of just the fat. The taste is of course rich and complex, nutty, a little sweet, but the remarkable thing is that the fat seems to coat your entire mouth and lingers for several minutes. It is perhaps astringent as it makes the mouth feel dry. Certainly in large quantities it can be unpleasant. There was a Fermin sausage (perhaps it was the longaniza) that I had once that you could only eat a few slices at a time before the cured fat taste overwhelmed your mouth and you have to take a break. All of these products have been cured for a long time. Fermin says that their jamon iberico is cured for much longer than jamon serrano or prosciutto. In addition to the amount of time is also how dry the end product is. Even Tanara secola blue label prosciutto which is cured for 18 months does not have this character, while jamon iberico does, perhaps because jamon tends to be so much drier than prosciutto. Have you also experienced this? Is there a name for the taste and mouthfeel? What is the science behind it?

I have some photos of the show on my Flickr. It was good, but not great. Many of the exhibitors are producers of very low-end, processed products, like Hormel. The highlights were charcuterie like Fra'Mani, Creminelli, Fermin, D'Artagnan but I've had all their products before. I would go again if I was in town, but wouldn't come to the city just for the show.

All the staff at Ippudo New York seemed to be Japanese, so that's an example of it happening at the lower end of restaurants. I'm pretty sure they were Japanese and not Korean or Chinese as the Japanese accent is fairly distinguishable from the others -- for me at least. Do you think restaurants engage in discriminatory hiring practices to hire ethnic locals? I suppose they can get away with it by advertising that the applicants need to speak the respective language, even though at a fancy French or Italian place, the customers will always use English.

What is the etymology of grenadine? I found this bit of research on Mark Sexauer's blog. I recall reading a similar explanation either here on eGullet or on some other blog that was more elegantly worded and had an illustration or two. Does anyone know what I'm referring to?

My favorite part (in the Wii version) is when you're making squid ink pasta and have to jack off a squid to get the ink.

Great stuff, Brian. How did you find where to eat? You mentioned you looked at some blogs?

I was at Benoit in New York recently and all three staff that I interacted with, waitress, sommelier, and host, had thick French accents. Where do they come from? Were they hired locally, or were they hired in France and transferred over here? Since Benoit is part of Alain Ducasse's empire, and there is a Benoit in Paris, the latter seems rather likely. In order to lure them to go overseas, were they offered a higher wage than what they have been paid in French restaurants? If so, would the wage be higher than if they were to have simply hired New York locals? Certainly it helps an ethnic (including European) restaurant's image to have staff that look, act, and speak like they're from the country that the restaurant is. But to what degree do restaurants take to hiring this kind of staff?

It's been a few weeks since I got back from my trip and I've finally gotten through my Philly photos. You can see them in my Flickr collection. Summary: Cochon: The best restaurant I've been to in town. Cheap and BYOB. Intimate, only about 25 seats. Not as good as Cochon in New Orleans, though they're quite different. Carman's Country Kitchen: Good, not great. The menu that was available to us at the time didn't seem as interesting as some of the ones I've read about here. Chifa: Interesting. Cheap lunch special. Chinese-style dishes too salty. Rangoon: Good, but not as good as a good Thai, Vietnamese or even Chinese restaurant. I've only been to one Burmese restaurant before so I don't know if this is true of all Burmese cuisine or this restaurant in particular. Nanzhou Handdrawn Noodle House: I got the tripe noodle soup. Tough, flavorless tripe. Noodles don't taste much different than dried noodles. I know they have a noodle machine and people love this place, but I'm not impressed. Maybe I should have gotten the thicker noodles? Fork: Pretty good charcuterie plate.

Beef rib from Louie Mueller?

Tomatoes are at their peak at the farmers market here. What should I do with them? Of course I ate a few raw. Then I made a tomato pie (pizza). I really liked that and am hard-pressed to think of anything that would be better. Even a salad seems likes like it would fail to put the tomato front and center, and I'm just not a big fan of salads. Suggestions?

Some photos on my Flickr. The Royal Miyagi oysters really blew my mind. They taste like cucumber at first and then it changes to melon. The flavor lingers for a very long time.

This I'm willing to believe (and true of the world, not just Italy). But what I am curious is if there is VPN-certified restaurant that actually is not good. If that isn't true, then at least VPN can be a pretty useful baseline indicator of quality.

It's been more than five years since this post. Where are we now with VPN? I've been to 2 Amys in DC and thought it was excellent, but I'm still no expert. The members list now shows four certified pizzerias in Texas, two in Dallas, two in San Antonio. I raise my eyebrow at this.

At the sins party, how did they do sloth (my favorite sin)?

What is the difference between egg and eggless pasta? I recently bought some dried egg pasta by De Cecco and thought that the texture was a bit more crisp, but not as chewy as I usually expect from al dente eggless pasta.

What do they say about it? Sorry, I don't have the book. Everything I've read, and confirming with Italians, that pepperoni is not an Italian term for sausasge. Do they say that this particular sausage has Roman origins under a different name, or specifically as peperone?

I'm also curious if it's really an Americanism or accepted throughout the Anglophone world. Tell our children about what pepperoni really is. Let them know that this is a strange American term that refers primarily to crappy salami, and that there's an entire world of fine salamis out there waiting to top their pizzas. And not just children, everyone. That's quite an unusual. Most commercial pepperoni aren't even all beef. I think they need another name.

Not often, true. But that Ruhlman & Polcyn recipe is an example.

What exactly about this particular Wikipedia article do you find incorrect?