Kent Wang

Los Angeles Times article about French Laundry's Timothy Hollingsworth preparations for this year's competition. I'm also surprised at the lack of coverage of this competition on the forums. I'd like to how widely respected the competition is world-wide.

We only had four people this time: franktex, future eGullet member Anthony, my girlfriend, and me. We still managed to order nearly everything we've gotten in the past. Pork intestine. Proper high-heat stir-fry with a bit of a crispy crust on the intestines and rich, smoky flavor from the peppers. This treatment of intestines doesn't leave them as chewy, which is more palatable for Westerners. Overall, one of the best intestine dishes I've ever had. Seafood dumplings. OK. Filling overcooked, packed too tightly. Not as good as Zhong dumplings at Asia Cafe. Pork stomach and pickled vegetable soup. Very simple. The pickled vegetable was quite sour and an interesting thing to have in a soup. Lion's head. Very soft, with a few very small pieces of water chestnut. Whole sea cucumber. Very tender. Best sea cucumber I've had in America. Quail. We forgot to take a picture, so this photo is from last year. This year it was only four pieces, but there was a nice tray of sea salt for dipping the quail into. Braised ham hock. Sauce with rock candy. Appeals to my Shanghai tastes. Better than last year. Eight treasure rice cake. Very wet, even more so than previous years. Otherwise, pretty good. Overall, the food is the best I've ever had from Pao's and one of the best Chinese meals I've had in America, and not far at all from what you can get in China. I hope to organize more events this year, the next one in March. Higher res photos in my Flickr. Pao's Mandarin House review on Fearless Critic partially written by me. Reports from 2008, 2007.

The dessert menu I saw at Uchi last week looked very plain, just some sorbets, nothing fancy. When was this, and what kind of dishes?

Just tried the sherry cobbler with raspberry syrup (Stonewall Kitchen) and Lustau amontillado. The low alcohol content of the sherry goes much better than say, gin. I could drink a gallon of this stuff. I'm definitely serving it at my next cocktail party. It also goes well various fruit liqueurs like creme de cassis and Clear Creek loganberry.

Will do. I have reservations this Friday. Will report back soon. ← Sorry about the delay, I had a huge backlog of photos to work through. You can see photos and commentary on my Flickr set. Overall, I thought it was great. Some of the dishes aren't very molecular like the cobia, crab tail, and beef tongue but they're good dishes regardless. At $75 for 7 courses, this is a great deal.

Me +3, possibly a few more.

Conversely, isn't the US ban on raw milk cheeses not based on science, and therefore an unfair trade barrier?

So, you young bartenders, did you get a chance to taste your handiwork too? How else would you know if it was good or not?

I got the Lustau Amontillado and tried the Bamboo and thought it tasted rather watery. You have two low alcohol fortified wines (sherry and vermouth) that are both light-bodied (e.g. dry sherry, dry vermouth) -- as opposed to a richer sherry or sweet vermouth -- I just don't see myself growing to like this drink. I think I'd like to try a richer sherry, sounds like Sandeman's Character or Lustau East India? Also picked up the Six Grapes port. Any port cocktails out there? I think I recall seeing a few in the Savoy Cocktail Book.

This is the case in point that made start this topic. I just tried cooking some fresh green beans (actually haricots verts), braised for 20 minutes and they were very soft, no squeaking, and best of all, no nasty canned taste. If you really wanted them softer, I'm sure another 10 or 20 minutes would've done the trick. Bingo. Now that we're living in the 21st Century, let's give up the outdated relic of canned green beans.

Best sushi: Mori, Urasawa, any other contenders? Urasawa is out of my price range but Mori seems like it can be about $100 a head? Is this kind of like New York where there's Masa for $400 and Sushi Yasuda for $100, with Masa/Urasawa being more contemporary and Mori/Yasuda being more traditional?

I meant 'hot', but we could also discuss spicy. My question is: which is the hottest or spiciest cuisine?

In the West, many cuisines are spiced down to suit local tastes. But in their native lands, I would venture that Sichuan and Thai are the spiciest. I haven't actually been to Sichuan, just neighboring Yunnan and Shaanxi, and find the local food so spicy that it's nearly impossible for a foreigner to tolerate without asking the restaurant to turn down the heat -- and then it's still really spicy! I haven't been to Thailand, so that's just a guess based on what I've eaten in the US.

I went with my girlfriend and two friends for four days in January. Restaurant photos and commentary in my Flickr set. Non-food photos in my girlfriend's Flickr. Summary: Cochon - Amazing. Truly a temple to pork. Quite affordable. Cochon Butcher looks very impressive. If this were in Austin, it'd easily be in the top 2 restaurants, maybe the best (i.e., better than Uchi). Herbsaint - Stopped in for drinks. The menu didn't look anywhere as interesting as Cochon, and was pretty pricey. Casamento's - Everything well-executed. Kinda like Quality Seafood in Austin. Willie Mae's Scotch House - Great fried chicken. Other dishes so-so. Parasol's - Good po' boys with superb, crisp, airy bread. Shrimp was a little small. Parkway - Better shrimp po' boys. Bread not as good. Elizabeth's - Lots of exotic dishes like headcheese, but execution is uneven. But really it's not much cheaper than Cochon, and definitely not as good. Café du Monde - Very touristy, like a theme park food court. Beignets are good, but even the best beignet in the world isn't that high up on my to do list. Fine if you're in the area, but wouldn't go out of my way. Dooky Chase - Overpriced, boring, poorly-executed food. Nice interior and staff. Specific comments and photos in Flickr set. Food-wise overall, aside from Cochon and Elizabeth's, I was a bit disappointed. I was expecting more, but as it turns out the Cajun and Southern cuisine we have in Austin is already very good, I would say on par with New Orleans. Quality Seafood actually makes a better gumbo and Nubian Queen Lola's a better shrimp po' boy. And Lola's fried chicken is better (though in a different style) than Willie Mae's. Bars: Renaissance Pere Marquette - Chris is awesome, great guy to talk to. Makes mostly very classic drinks with no menu. Ingredients a little limited, no maraschino, St. Germain. We went there first and then got recommendations for Swizzle Stick and Iris. Iris - Is this what you would call a West Coast-style menu? Lots of fresh ingredients, and recipes with lots of ingredients. A little overwrought, but still nice. Punch was great and a steal at $36 for around 15 glasses of punch. Swizzle Stick Bar - New York-style menu. Perhaps most similar to Pegu Club, with lots of classics like Aviation, Pegu Club, and even a bunch of drinks cribbed (and properly attributed) from New York bars like Audrey's Gin-Gin Mule, but plenty of unique drinks. Swizzle Stick is best, Renaissance (only if Chris is working), then Iris. Very good bars, better than anything we have in Texas, and about a dollar or two cheaper than New York. Thanks everyone for your suggestions. Overall, I enjoyed the trip to New Orleans very much, and it was one of the cheapest trips I've ever taken, excellent value. Queen of the Ball on Oak Street is probably open. Tee-Eva's, a little stand on Magazine Street, sells snoballs, although I always opt for the pralines or mini-pies. ← I tried calling Queen of the Ball but no answer.

I go to New York at least once a year so I prefer to have my fancy meals there. Certainly in Austin, there are no fine dining restaurants there are as good of a value as New York. I have the feeling that this is true, though certainly to a lesser extent, for Houston and Dallas as well, though can't say for certain due to lack of trying. Best: Austin: Nubian Queen Lola's Houston: Fuzhou (more on this soon) Houston: Da Marco (business lunch, 3 courses for $28 or so) Not quite trends, but some things I only recently came to appreciate: Having just returned from New Orleans, I am proud to say that Austin has some really great Cajun and Southern cuisine, on par with New Orleans. So I'm happy to report on that. And having returned from a month in Europe (mostly Germany), I am also proud to say that we have some very excellent Chinese food in Texas.

Steven, so you're saying this place lives up to the hype of being the best Thai out of Thailand? All this amazing Asian food in Las Vegas is blowing my mind. I thought it was a rather white bread kind of town outside of the casinos.

Chinese New Year is 26 January, so we will have a New Years Eve dinner at Pao's Mandarin House on the 25th. 2009 will be the year of the ox. Fearless Critic review of Pao's Mandarin House partially written by me. Pao's Mandarin House 2300 Lohman's Spur Lakeway, TX 78734 (20 miles from downtown Austin) (512) 263-8869 Sunday 25 January 7:00 pm This will be the fourth year we've been doing this. See 2008, 2007. 2006 thread seems to be missing. This will also be a eGullet fundraising event. Last year we raised $32 for the Society from eight people. $0, $5, $10, whatever you can afford would be appreciated. If you're interested in attending, please rsvp below along with the number of guests you would like to bring. Let's aim for 8-10 people so we can all still sit at one table.

Crazy thought: can you freeze wine and put it into some containers, maybe even into a ice tray, like you can do with stock?

Then there are the veggies that you can't really get otherwise like baby corn (seems to be popular in Chinese dishes, though I guess it's a recent development) and bamboo. I know someone (yimay) that doesn't eat the baby corn because of the tinny taste. Fresh bamboo is one of the things I miss most about China. But I'm willing to make do with canned.

I agree, canned tomatoes are fine. Oops, I was thinking of something like Betty Crocker or the Time-Life cook books.

Aside from the obvious advantages of cost and ease, is it possible that some people actually prefer to use canned vegetables over fresh ones? I find canned vegetables vastly inferior to fresh, especially for green beans. Yet, there are tons of otherwise good restaurants that serve canned green beans as a side. Even at potlucks, there's usually a canned green bean casserole, sometimes from good cooks that I would expect otherwise. I've gotten to the point that I can't eat more than a bite or two of the stuff. Maybe people are just used to it and have recipes (from their mom, Cook's Illustrated, etc.) that call for canned green beans and have come to actually like the taste?

A friend of mine also recommended Pat's Fisherman's Wharf in Henderson: Unfortunately I didn't have a chance to check out any of those as the timing didn't work out. We instead worked it so that we ate in Houston, which was awesome. Thanks for the tips anyway; maybe they'll be useful to somebody else in the future.

I was in Berlin for about two weeks over the summer and was on a budget. Mostly I went to KaDeWe and made my own sandwich (I went about every other day). I had a few meals at mid-level restaurants, but all were so-so. You can see photos and commentary in my Flickr set. Lutter & Wegner was the best. They had a three-course weekday business lunch for around 20 euro (can't remember exactly). Strichmann had good wienerschnitzel and other classic German dishes. Schneeweiss was similar, not as good, more expensive, harder to get to by public transit. Hasir was expensive, overwrought, and not very Turkish. I've been to mediocre Turkish restaurants in the US that had more traditional Turkish dishes. Overall, I'm pretty disappointed with the food in Berlin. Perhaps at the very high-end there is good food to be had, but the low- to mid-level are very poor even comparing to Austin or Houston, much less New York.

I was in Berlin for a few weeks this summer. I was on a budget and found that the most delicious cheap meal was to go to KaDeWe and buy bread, charcuterie, and cheese and make my own sandwich. See: obscene sandwich thread. I didn't know there was a Bocuse restaurant. Darn. Overall, KaDeWe is amazing. Many of their sections, especially charcuterie and cheese, are vastly superior to anything I've seen in the US. If I lived in Berlin, I would try to live as close as possible to KaDeWe.

Earl Grey MarTEAni, one of my absolute favorite cocktails.