Sneakeater

It's hard to think of any wines that really compare to those two.

Thanks. That was the answer I was looking for.

Although you have to wonder, when do dishes pass into the "public domain"? Like, when the first person copied Vongerichten's molten chocolate cake, was he plagiarizing? Was it wrong at first to serve that dish without attribution, but became OK later? And how about Nobu's sable? Was the first Japanese fusion place to copy it wrong, but now it's OK? (Or does someone with more functioning brain cells than me recall that, at first, these dishes were attributed on other menus? -- Not my recollection, I think.) Again, these aren't rhetorical questions. I really want to know people's answers.

FWIW, I think this is the answer.

Are you saying that all new dishes should be protected? Only the most "original"? How do you define "original"? And who would decide? Is the point that some dishes aren't just new dishes but use a new technique? So does that mean that the technique should be protected? So no one else could use it without paying a fee? Is that desirable? Is there something different about "molecular" cuisine that makes it appropriate to protect that kind of recipe when no one is arguing for the protection of the miso black cod/molten chocolate cake types of recipes?

This is way way off-topic, but the difference between sampling and this is that sampling is more like if I bought some food at Alinea and then took it to my own restaurant, reheated it, and sold it as part of one of my dishes. What's happening here is more like George Harrison rewriting "He's So Fine" as "My Sweet Lord" without licensing (which he somehow mostly got away with). Anyway, the whole analogy is of limited value because musical compositions are copyrighted and recipes aren't. As FG said above, it's a moral issue, not a legal one. What I think is interesting is that people are saying that it's OK for everybody in town to have a single copied recipe on their menu (molten chocolate cake or miso black cod), but that it's wrong for a menu to be comprised mainly of "stolen" recipes. So the concern doesn't seem to be commercial misappropriation so much as misrepresentation. Is that accurate?

And it's called . . . dzik. (Thanks, theabroma!)

It may seem too commonplace to say it, but Cochinita Pibil -- the all-time classic -- deserves its repute. There's a similar dish (with a completely different name) made with cold shredded venison that's also great. I had a dish of wild turkey in black sauce with eggs that I liked very much.

That cold spicy rabbit dish is FANTASTIC. (FWIW.)

1. Although this isn't really on-topic, it's hard for me to understand why sizzleteeth or anyone else would be shocked by the notion that someone can't sample someone else's record without paying a licensing fee. (This isn't some judge going off on some crazy legal tangent; it's well-accepted law -- and it seems hard to argue with.) 2. The following is a non-rhetorical question (meaning that I don't have an anwser in mind and am not trying to make a point, but rather am curious about what people think): why are we so bothered about what this restaurant did, but accept the fact that certain successful dishes (like, say, Nobu's miso black cod) soon end up on virtually every comparable menu?

Would you complain that Bouley "isn't French" because it serves dishes you wouldn't see in France but that grow out of the tradition? Do you think Italian cuisine is different from French in this respect? Is it because there really is no "Italian cuisine", but rather a bunch of regional cuisines? Do you think that American cooks working in an Italian idiom must be straightjacketed like that? Do you think that part of this is that if you grow up with a certain cuisine you might have problems with variations and elaborations on it? (Note how similar Rich's response to A Voce is to Soba Addict's response to Cendrillon.)

But I find the quality of the various "Grand Sichuans" to be wildly variable. Although I've never eaten in the one being asked about, I've eaten in the ones in Chinatown, near 34th St. on the East Side, on 25th St., and in Hell's Kitchen. I think the latter two are miles better than the former two. In fact, as much as I like the Hell's Kitchen and 25th St. locations, I would recommend avoiding the Chinatown and near-34th St. ones. They're not just "second best" -- they're not very good. So I wouldn't take praise for the Hell's Kitchen location (the best of the group) or the 25th St. location to be applicable to the rest of the group. Of course, if Daniel says this location is good, then it must be good. I'm just cautioning against taking the commentary in the "Grand Sichuan International" thread to apply to all the "Grand Sichuan" restaurants.

Hey this stuff is DELICIOUS!!!!!!! Tonight I'm just drinking it straight. But I can't wait to concoct a gin-maple syrup cocktail.

FWIW, I'll bet the tortellini weren't intended to be a main course but rather a pasta course that would precede a main course, and that the serving was sized accordingly.

Speaking for myself, they don't make cocktails out of that.

FWIW, Ted Breaux and his products have been heavily discussed on eGullet: http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showto...295&hl=absinthe

Really, when faced with that (and it's like that across the board), all you can do is throw up your hands, bite your lip, and order something you like.

Then I probably would have had to pay $30 to park it.

Did you have wine or was it so overpriced that you opted to pass? I know you were snookered but do you remember an example of wine rape? ← OF COURSE I had wine. As I recall through the hazy cocktail mist, it was about $145 for a Marcel Deiss Alsatian riesling.

Having said all that, my visit to Gilt confirmed my pre-supposition that it's a mistake for Liebrandt to operate in a very expensive Midtown hotel. You could have an equally expensive restaurant in Tribeca, but I think that there you'd attract more of the kind of crowd who are open to this much experimentation. If Gilt fails, I think it's going to be because it's not placed to attract an appropriate clientele.

This is REALLY embarassing. I was excited about eating at Gilt last night. And I was looking forward to posting a detailed report about it. But my dining companion was 45 minutes late. So I sat at the bar and waited for her. They have a very good cocktail there called a Quince Rose. It's made from Hendricks gin, quince nectar, and lemon juice, topped with champagne rose. It's very drinkable. Too drinkable, as it turned out. So my memories of this meal are muddled. Moreover, since nothing I ate remotely resembled any dish I've had before, it's not like I can just recall I had a squab ballotin or some such. So this report is not going to be very detail-oriented. There's no question that Gilt is a very good restaurant. Is it one of the four or five best in New York? No, I don' t think so. Is it worth going to? Absolutely. If you're interested in cuisine and its development, I don't see how you can miss it. The only thing I can compare Gilt to is WD-50 (I really didn't think it was much like Arzak). Interestingly, I think I prefer the food at WD-50. Gilt is obviously more lux, with expensive ingredients and lots of them. But (this is going to sound patronizing to Wylie DuFresne, but I don't mean it to) the cooking at WD-50 has sort of this home-spun mad scientist aspect that's very appealing. Whereas Gilt is more like fairly weird ultra-haute food. Also, this wasn't the case when WD-50 first opened, but at this point I think Wylie hits more frequently (and misses less frequently) then Paul Liebrandt does. I didn't have any dishes at Gilt that I thought were failures, but there were some things that seemed more like good tries than total successes. As has been noted by others, each dish at Gilt is really a bunch of dishes: you get all these accompanying plates containing side-dishes that are as complicated as the main dish. I wouldn't say that I thought anything was too complicated as much as I'd say that in some dishes it didn't seem like all the elaboration really added much. Of course, other things were both delicious and unlike anything else I've ever had. We had the three-course dinner, which cost $92 apiece. I don't remember there having been a lot of supplements. The wine list remains ridiculously overpriced. I seem to recall some people having had problems with the service when Gilt first opened, but last night, at least, it was excellent. See, this sounds like a lot of niggling. And maybe some people will read this as saying that I think it's stupid to go to Gilt when WD-50 is so much cheaper. But I don't think that at all: the two restuarants are comparable, not interchangeable. Liebrandt's cooking doesn't really resemble DuFresne's except insofar as they're both off-beat. The food that is served at Gilt is stuff you can't get anywhere else. Not all of it is great, but all of it is unique (you literally don't know what you're going to taste next). And that's so interesting (this will show you how how inexperienced I am) when such food is at this high level of luxury.

They don't take reservations. My experiences with wait times there have been wildly unpredictable. Sometimes I've had short waits, sometimes I've had long waits, a few times I've even had no wait -- all at similar (fairly prime) times.

At least one member is going to be very disappointed when he reads the text of that post.

I think the problem people are having with this inquiry is that the range of Italian restaurants in New York is so wide that it's hard to answer without knowing more about what the person is looking for. It's not like asking for a good deli. It would be like if someone asked for a good French restaurant in New York. How would you begin to know how to answer?

Only if you don't order the entrees, apparently.