Sneakeater

That is actually what has happened to me EVERY SINGLE TIME I have visited the Russian Samovar.

Big major DITTO to that.

Those guys get around.

Definitely Tequila Sunrise for the 70s at least in the suburbs of New York.

Back to THOR, it's interesting that Oakapple compared it to WD-50. I never really thought of THOR as "Gutenbruner goes experimental" as much as "Gutenbruner goes fun." The aptest comparison I could come up with for the way I saw it was David Burke -- food that is obviously well-thought-out and well-prepared, but kind of, you know, antic. The dessert menu at THOR certainly is like that. Such as my (now departed) favorite, the concord grape/ginger float. (Not to mention those little squeeze tubes of chocolate.) Anyway, however you look at it, THOR's a REALLY ENJOYABLE place, IMO.

I think that might be what I meant by "zeitgeist".

I recently stumbled upon the Darbar's lunch buffet and was shocked at how much better it seemed than most of the rest (even the celebrated Utsav Festive, or whatever that one is called).

The dill-infused vodka is also quite an experience. I know someone who claims to have run into Philip Roth at the Samovar. They chatted for a while. This person asked Roth to autograph his dinner check for him. He claims Roth wrote the following note above his signature: "Never marry." Could this be true?

For whatever reason, I eat at THOR A LOT, and I completely agree with everything you say. But the reason I'm writing this post is to note that I ate at Hearth Friday night, and the sommelier recommended the exact same wine (we needed something that would go with both a fish course and a beef course). Given its relative obscurity, that seems like a fairly odd coincidence. Do you think it's part of the sommelier zeitgeist or something?

Boy, raji, I've really got to thank you for those great, informative posts.

I know. That was a lame attempt at a joke.

Speaking of omakase, getting omakase at a sushi bar makes you realize what bullshit the "omakase" meals at Nobu are. How can a chef take you on a journey into his cuisine if he isn't right there with you to monitor your responses? Nobu's "omakase" meals are really just glorified tasting menus.

Just to be clear -- and not that I expect anyone to care particularly -- I was absolutely NOT trying to imply in ANY way that I, personally, would consider Blue Hill or WD-50 overpraised or that I don't think they deserve the attention they get. I only meant to try to show that a restaurant can get considerable attention from serious eaters without necessarily having rapturous newspaper or magazine reviews or massive numbers of stars. I.e., that the published reviews aren't necessarily the point here, in that a restaurant can be at an appropriate "praise level" (OMIGOD this is getting pretentious) without them.

Well, congratulations on getting and remaining married, and congratulations or condolences on leaving New York, whichever you feel is appropriate.

I'm about as far from an expert on sushi as you could be, so these impressionistic remarks should probably be taken more for their news value -- as a report on current events at Yasuda -- than anything else. I had reserved two seats at the counter in Mr. Yasuda's section for dinner. When we arrived, the only available seats were in front of one of the other chefs. I told the host that we had hoped to be with Mr. Yasuda, and he checked and said we could do so if we were willing to wait 15 minutes or so. We sat at a table and had a drink; the wait was more like 10 minutes. While the excellence of the food at Sushi Yasuda cannot be gainsaid, I think that much of the restaurant's appeal can be attributed to Mr. Yasuda himself. He is talkative and interesting (and, of course, completely full of himself in the most positive way possible). I know that my dining companion left with a tremendous crush on him. At one point, as he was preparing a round of eel sushi for me, I remarked that the best eel I had theretofore eaten was in Hamburg, Germany, and asked if he'd ever been. "Do you ask a kick-boxer about baseball?" he responded. It's hard not to love the guy. Mr. Yasuda clearly tailors the meal to each individual diner. My companion, for example, had had extensive dental work done that morning, and could only eat small morsels, so he gave her only finely-cut sashimi. Her palate is unadventurous, so he pretty much limited her to his extensive range of tuna and some salmon, as well as a heavenly fresh shrimp. With me, on the other hand, he went whole hog (pun very much intended). I am incapable of speaking knowledgeably about sushi -- and no one here needs to hear anymore about how great the rice at Yasuda is (although I myself have never had anything like it -- nor like the nori, for that matter) -- so I'll just talk about a few things that I particularly loved. The three kinds of eel were BY FAR the best I've ever had (wiping out all memories of Hamburg). They were at the level where you find it hard to believe that food can be that good. The vinegary oysters were just delicious; it's easy to imagine Mr. Yasuda experimenting until he determined just the right amounts of vinegar and salt to put in. And the whole omakase experience -- putting yourself in the hands of the chef and together exploring possible preferences, finally asking for more of what you particularly liked -- is enormously interesting and satisfying. (There was no problem, BTW, with ordering omakase as first-time patrons.*) Since cost seems to be an issue -- and a variable -- here, I'll say that it was about $250 pre-tax-and-tip for the two of us, including two servings each of sake. It would have been more if my companion were up to eating more; she had maybe a third as much food as I did. I opted not to have a discussion of any price limits beforehand, but just to let things take their course. As I was perusing the check, Mr. Yasuda grinned broadly and said, "Not bad, right?" I told him that's what I say to my clients, too, at bill time. I didn't try to give a separate tip to Mr. Yasuda. It would have seemed as strange to me as sauntering into the kitchen at Lutece and dropping a few Jacksons on Andre Soltner. ______________________________________________ * Of course, nobody actually used the word "omakase".

Last night I went out to dinner with an expatriate Swede. I thought she'd enjoy visiting Ulrika's, where I'd eaten several times before. I was unprepared for the waves of nostalgic rapture that radiated out from her from the moment she walked in until the time she cleaned out their take-out candy counter on the way out. So I guess any questions about whether Ulrike's is authentic must be answered in the affirmative. As the thread subtitle here says, Ulrike's is unfused and unreconstructed Swedish food. My dining companion disliked Aquavit: she said she found the food there overly elaborated and (she said the following with a look of utter contempt) "not even Swedish, but rather some pan-Scandanavian fusion." But she loved Ulrika's, because it was what she'd eaten all of her pre-moving-to-the-U.S. life. This non-Swedish New York Jew will note that the quality of ingredients and preparation at Ulrika's can't touch Aquavit. BUT I prefer Ulrika's anyway. I, too, find the food at Aquavit over-elaborated and fussy. While Ulrika's isn't a patch on Lupa, the food has the same deep, soulful quality (although the food at Ulrika's isn't of the same quality as the food at Lupa in any other way). It's very satisfying. I had a hot glogg at the bar, which sort of horrified my dining companion since it's after Christmas. She had that beautiful white wine drink that people have already remarked upon in this thread. I think it was called something like bai (with an umlaut somewhere). I ended up having one, too, and while it didn't taste quite as good as it looked, I'll certainly want another when the weather warms up. For my appetizer, I had a traditional dish called raraka. It consists of a bunch of not-assertively-flavored fish roe and chopped raw onions heaped on top of a potato pancake (I believe the Swedish word for that is latke) with sour cream. This non-Swedish barbarian would have preferred this dish if the roe were more sharply flavored. But it was hard not to like. For my main dish, I had a venison chop. It wasn't the best venison I've ever had in my life, but it was fine. It had some kind of fruit or berry sauce that tasted very good on it. It was accompanied by another potato pancake (this time they called it rosti), some parsnip (I think it was) puree, and -- oddly -- a piece of smoked fish. Even more oddly, the fish went very well with the venison. As they say in Sweden, go know. Dessert was funny. (Funny peculiar, not funny ha-ha.) It was billed as cheesecake with cloudberry sauce. But what it was, under the cloudberry sauce, was these dry strips of sweetened cheese food. I thought they were too dry, and insufficiently flavored. I was about to dismiss it as failed attempt at cheesecake when my dining companion exclaimed that it was a traditional Swedish dessert that everyone in her family loves. I guess that's what comes of living thousands of miles from Junior's. No one is going to claim that Ulrika's is one of the best restaurants in New York. But it's a very pleasant place to eat very solid, pleasing food. And people are always asking about romantic restaurants. Well, let me say this: if you're taking out a homesick Swede, Ulrika's is as much a "sure thing" as Trader Vic's used to be.

"Essentially unrelated" seems to be a funny phrase to use in this case.

That was gonna be my recommedation. Do you remember that the counterculture, aside from promoting hallucinagens, toward the beginning actually engaged in anti-alcohol rhetoric? This whole acid/pot-good-booze-bad thing? THAT didn't last very long.

I think you'd be surprised -- especially when the star ratings are then repeated, without full reviews, in list form (as on the Times website and presumably, in the future, on New York Magazine's website and in its print restaurant listings).

I agree with that totally. I haven't deluded myself into thinking the star system will ever disappear, but it's fun to rail against the system every once in a while. I agree totally, too. This just seemed a particularly appropriate time to rail, since a publication that had previously abjured stars decided to up and adopt them. BTW, nobody's answered my question why the Times and now New York use stars to rank restaurants but not movies.

I like the Biltmore Room, but I'm not sure it's what you want. It's more fusion than Southeast Asian. By which I mean, it's more like American-European food with Asian accents than like Asian food itself. Kittichai, a restaurant I thoroughly enjoy but wouldn't rate as highly as the Biltmore Room, may be closer to what you want: it's more Thai food with European accents than American-European food with Thai accents. Haven't been to Cendrillon.

One thing I have to say in Adam Platt's and New York Magazine's favor is that at least he (unlike the Times) came out and explained in detail what the stars mean, and in some of his blurbs even explained why a certain number of stars was awarded. But I think the real problem is one that Fat Guy noted, which is that as soon as you start using stars, they sort of eclipse the text of the review. People remember the number of stars awarded, but not what the reviewer said.

Also, I think this sort of misses my concern. My point isn't about "voicing an opinion". OBVIOUSLY I think you should read and think before voicing an opinion (I lurked on this board for two years before posting). But I'm not talking about knowledgeable discussion. I'm talking about using newspaper reviews as a consumer. I think it's ridiculous to say that you should only be able to understand what's printed in a newspaper if you read a lot, think a lot about it, and analyze what they're actually doing rather than what they say they're doing.* Times reviews aren't just for the obsessed. They're for the general public. So it doesn't do any good to say I'll "get it eventually." In fact, I get it NOW. But I DIDN'T get it until I started lurking on this board two years ago and read the discussions. And, to be blunt, I think it's nuts to have a rating system in a mass-market newspaper that you have to read special interest internet message boards to understand. __________________________________________________ * Obviously, I'm not opposing critical thought here. I understand that there are layers and levels of communications, and you can only understand what's really going on if you go behind what is said. What I'm talking about here, though, is obviously different. I'm not talking about some Marcusian analysis of what the Times prints. I'm talking here about understanding the communications on the most superficial level.

I think there's a difference between (a) a language and (b) dining preferences on the one hand and © shorthand communications aids on the other. If you wanted to draw analogies, reading the review is like learning English. The stars are this accoutrement that's supposed to make reading the review EASIER, like a study aid. What good is a study aid, though, if it's harder to understand than the subject it's supposed to be aiding? (Also, what good is a study aid if its proponent's own explanatory materials say it means something other than it means?) Similarly, I think the problem with the "star system" have nothing to do with the problems that unreflective undereducated people have dealing with reviews in general. You're going to have a problem with reviews if you fail to respect the reviewer's expertise and think your standard should be the reviewer's standard irrespective of any "star system". My criticisms of the "star system" have nothing to do with that. In other words, I have a problem with shorthand communications aids if, instead of aiding communication, they obscure it. If, in fact, they distract from the communication they're supposedly aiding. I don't think shorthand communications aids should require special education to understand -- especially if they're used in mass media like the Times.

Thanks.