Mao

I have eaten at Babbo a decent amount in the last year (at least ten times) and agree generally with Vivin that the pasta is their forte, or certainly the area where the kitchen performs with the most consistent excellence. Their meat dishes can be much more of a lottery (albeit with a higher probability of pay out), BUT you can lose. And I have never been moved by the fish preparations. When I go there I almost always order the specials, in large part because I have tried most of the items from the regular menu at this point, and also because Batali is a spontaneous whacko I have learnt from someone who used to be in his kitchen, and the most interesting dishes tend to be the specials that he dreamt up/created in a fit from a recent trip to market. I am not a VIP there, though the bartenders know me at this point, but I have never gotten anything but first rate service there when I have eaten in the main dining area (obviously I haunt the bar). That said, I have heard enough stories from people I know to believe the nightmare service stories (same with Bouley). And I concur that my last two trips to the place have been subpar. In both trips, I recommended some of the standard menu items--mint love letters and goose liver ravioli--to my novice to Babbo dining guest and found them lacking versus my memory of the same dishes at the restaurant in meals past. But the one area that I have found the place always impresses is in the wine dept. The quarter litres (?) are always interesting and great. But I guess its possible the place is indeed slipping.

I dined at Saka Gura last Sunday with my girlfriend and a friend of hers. I have eaten there a fair amount over the last 12 months (perhaps 7-10 times), and find both that the place can be expensive or reasonable really depending how much you wish to drink and that the food is not always consistent, but can be excellent. Certainly in this price range I think the only Japanese restuarant that may be as good in the city is Aki in the Village. Saka gura is NOT Jewel Bako, Sushi of Gari or Kuruma, but at its price range one doesn't expect a lot of stuff flown in from JFK from Tokyo mkts . Anyway, a couple of random things. First, as a general rule, unless you go there a lot and know what you are doing, its almost always best to order sake from the smaller menu that features the sakes that they have gotten in most recently. Typically they will give you two menus for sake, one of which is much larger, more comprehensive and breaks sakes down by region. Really, unless you know the deal avoid this list, because sake is like wine or beer--once the bottle is open--its probably only good for a few days max, before it should be used for cooking. The smaller menu is what is fresh and hasn't been open for weeks, and is what they just got in. Second, the menu seems to have changed a bit from the last time I was there. There are the usual interesting combos on the back but the main menu items are both more unsual and seem to feature some of things you used to see on the back like the mille feuile. I will second or treble the opinion of the 3 miso eggplant as being superb. Its not subtle--its rather sweet--but I thought it was a knock out in textural softness and sweetness. I also tried the egg concoction that Cabrales did and thought it rather mediocre. As a rule, I avoid eating Uni now except at the best sushi places because too often it is not super fresh and to my palate comes across as excessively briney, whereas really fresh Uni can be buttery and very sensual, almost teasing. Ducasse does not get fresh Uni. I also ordered the pork discussed above and agree that it was mind boggling--sweet but very brothy in my tender version. A few months ago I went for a meal there and was disappointed with the exception of some softshell crabs that were out of this world. I believe the place employs 3 chefs by the way. I have never had a bad meal there, but have certainly experienced mediocrity. Seems to depend on the night. I have had the fluke several times--somtimes good, sometimes bad, depending it often seems to me on fresh the seaweed is.

Also, Wilfred its been my recent experience that while it is hard to come by more unconventional cuts of food and meat (offal, feet etc.) at high end dining establishments, its not as if these "odd" dishes cannot be had in the city. In fact, they are quite common at most of the Asian restaurants in Queens (Iwahan in a recent meal) and a hotpot get together in Queens among a lot of Mandarin speaking people presented me with tastes of duck's blood, chicken feet, pig's feet and pig's intestine. The last being the most impressively yummy.

JG=Britney Spears Daniel Boulud=Justin Timberlake Alain Ducasse=Christina Aguilera David Bouley –10 years= Madonna 5-7 years ago Dinner at Lespinasse=Listening to Crosby, Still, Nash (and optionally Young) Let me just say that after two recent meals (in the last 2 weeks) at ADNY and Daniel, both of which had memorable moments but were essentially ploddingly boring, have convinced me that eating out at the high end in NYC is indeed damn dull at this moment in time. Atlas is closed. And Town deserves one more shot. And while I love eating once a month at Jewel Bako and Babbo is addictive, it has been a long time since I have walked away from a meal in NYC genuinely excited or moved by the total experience. This may or may not be function of my own jaded experiences, but everytime I eat at Daniel, JB and their ilk, I keep thinking that the scale of restaurants is a critical element in making a meal interesting. I am not saying that this is cause, but it is a factor. What if Daniel had a fourth restaurant where he charged 2x and served 40 people a night and one had the table for the entire night, instead of 200+. In the post bubble NY environs (the residential real estate bubble seems to be deflating as we speak), this is probably not economically viable, but it is something I would like to see.

I have eaten there twice in the past year. I had not eaten there prior to this year, however. Both trips I walked away wondering what all the hype was about, and both times I did tasting menus. The first trip was a vegetarian tasting menu that was utterly bland and uninteresteding and actually bad at times. Second and more recent trip was the regular tasting menu which I sampled in October, but was still from the Summer, never a good sign that things are so out of season. I picked a great Pinot Noir the second meal that saved it from being a total disaster. For refrence I have been on a bender recently with a meal at Daniel on Friday, and I got to sample the white truflle tasting menu at Ducasse last night, which was 80% great-2 of the 5 dishes sampled were among the best dishes I have sampled in the last 6 months. The food at Daniel was also excellent, thoiugh not in the same league as the peaks of my trip last night at Ducasse. I don't even think my two meals Lespinasse belongs on the same page as the two other restuarants just mentined.

I sense, how perceptive of me, that the post was made in joke. Bakka Iro sounds a lot like idiot in Japanese.

I am planning to make a week and half trip to Paris next Spring/late winter with Vivin and his wife. This will be our second trip to France for eating purposes. While perhaps we are going about this trip the wrong way--choosing to eat at 3 star establishments, as opposed to travelling regionally to fully appreciate the regional distinctions and techniques within French cuisine, this is the way we are choosing to do the trip, and I would be interested in feedback as to places to visit. We/I visited the following on our last trip (Places with an asterix may be repeated this trip): Lucas Carton L'Arpege* Taillevent ADPA* Le Grand Vefour** (we have to go again) Guy Savoy Boyer Places we are considering this trip are: (Paris) L'Ambroisie (from the sound of it there is no way to get in) L'Astrance (same problem) Pierre Gagniere Outside: Recommendations?????

What's the name of that old light green painted aging Italian bread bakery that never seems to be open between W Bwy and Sullivan (Vesuvio's?), I think on Spring? Are they run by the mob, or do they actually serve bread?

I made trip to a local Amy's today and think that their quality control is a bit more erratic than it used to be. Some products are superlative, but some are weak. I still adore their almond croissants. Actually, where can one get good Challah? Its always been hard to get in NYC, but seems even harder now.

My father managed to overcook the meaty mansize frozen dinners he prepared for me and my sister on divorce weekends in the 70s. Boy were those inedible. I lived during the week with my mother, who was a brilliant cook, so I guess I do consider it someone's else's home. Which raises an interesting question: was the increasing use of frozen and canned foods a good or bad thing for American cuisine? On the one hand, I imagine nutrition improved over the 50s and 60s, but did people eat any better prior to this or was the food equally horrible? I guess if your Mom or grandmother was fresh off the boat, or you grew up with servants and a cook there was some probability pre 1940 that you could concieve of food as potentially sensual. Also, I will chock up my worst meals at another's home to a few summers spent in the Isle of Wight with my best friend's family. But there was not just one bad meal but multiple ones. Cadbury's dairy milk choclate was my savior in a world of overcooked "homemade" kidney pies, and brussel sprouts boiled for several hours and served saltless.

Since I moaned about my first and only meal at Blue Hill in my prior post, I thought it was time to offset that post with brief impressions from a meal this weekend. I went with a date, and while the tomato like tasting menu was not on offer (I enquired) plenty of tomato based dishes were. I stuck to this route with the exception of a corn soup. The cucumber soup amuse was extremely delicate and complex with hints of other textures which I cannot recall since I was gazing into my date's eyes. Tomato Terrine, with a Confit of Heirlooms and Tomato Sorbet was superb. The ability of the kitchen to tease enormous amounts of texture and flavor without resorting to the use of a lot of oil or fat of any kind was extremely impressive to me this time. My date ordered skate and I ordered the salmon in a tomato reduction. The salmon was perfectly cooked as close to rare as I have ever seen with the tomato puree adding a citrusy and sweet layer to the give of the salmon's flesh. This preparation was rivaled only by a more complex and richer preparation of salmon enjoyed at Le Bernadin a few months ago. We finished with a split dessert of peaches in some kind of cream and peach sorbet, which was lovely. It was funny because I had hit a farm stand in central NJ literally the day before and purchased and purchased and then enjoyed locally grown corn, tomatoes and peaches the night before at my less able hands. The freshness of the ingredients at Blue Hill was (the peaches excepted) as good as what I had bought on a country road. Overall, a great meal that allowed me to appreciate the kitchen's virtues. I intend to go back more often as the season’s change I am in the midst of a deeply amorous process, which is wonderful, but my usually bright and clear food memory seems to be temporarily dulled.

Cabrales. Apologies for asking you to repeat yourself, but in what way are your standards between France and NYC meals different?

Akiko- It was part of the omakase. But I am sure that you could request certain things. Jack Lamb seems willing to bend over backwards to please. It was you who turned on to this place, BTW. So Thanks.

Yes, eating it required a lot of chewing, and I mean a lot.

My one decadent meal this weekend was at Jewel Bako, and I will confess its becoming one of my favorite places to eat in the city. The sushi is stupendous. I had one piece of parrot fish that was outstanding, and unlike Saka Gura, where you really have to ask for the freshest stuff, almost all the sake they have there is rather fresh. The otoro with caviar and avacado is also becoming one of my favorite new dishes. Yum.

Ditto me on Vivin and Cabrales opinion.

Cabrales- I agree with you that the presence of one or two dominant flavors can be wonderful, and have no objections to the idea. For me it was a matter of degree on that evening and that meal. In the case of one dish, I believe there was one flavor that dominated the fish to the extent that I was no longer aware I was eating fish and all the other ingrediants, which I assumed were intended to add up to something more, seemed to have no purpose, and got lost. Maybe that was the intention. Let me be clear that a) I do not intend this as a critique of Blue Hill (one meal does not a proper judgement make), b) that my comments pertain only to my one dining experience there, c) my personal preferences for fine dining vary a great deal. There are times when I want something that is strong and in your face like a meal at Babbo. There are times I want a meal where the focus is largely textural or simple and there are very few ingredients modestly prepared--whether that means a trip to Kuruma sushi or home grown sweet summer tomatoes with nothing but a bit of sea salt. And there are also times that I yearn for something a bit more symphonic. And I will confess that the best dishes and meals that I have enjoyed have what I would call a symphonic quality to them. The meal I had at Le Grand Vefour, one meal at Bouley this spring and one rabbit dish that came out of Gramercy Tavern. These meals worked on multiple subtle levels--tastes, juxtapositions, textures were both pleasurably identifiable and balanced together so as to create something richer than any one piece and produce something that for me was simultansously sensual and intellectually intriguing. I could not eat this way all the time, for among other budgetary reasons, but I guess this is the way I would aspire to eat with some regularity, probably because it so rarely happens for me. Maybe I don't yet appreciate the style of food work that Blue Hill does. I guess I consider eating an educational process, but on this particular night and meal--unintended imbalance was the impression of the meal.

My main impression from walking out of that meal was largely of gross imbalances and dissonance in most of the dishes actually. I remember very distinctly that the first two things we ate were overpowered by one flavor that actually drowned and crowded out all other sensations. I did not take notes on this particular occasion, but I think part of this impression was the decision to let sommolier choose accompanying wines with the tasting menu, which was a very bad idea. As I recall with one red meat dish they paired a very sweet white Spanish wine that tasted as if it had gone bad. I could not finish this dish as a consequence. We eat on a Sunday night, which may be the reason that meal was off (the ingredients were perhaps not at their best?). I am not condemning the place. I intend to go back, perhaps alone to try the bar. I do not think that I have a strong preference for quieter & subtler versus "in your face" preparation.

Are they still not using any butter or cream? I have only eaten at Blue Hill once, and when I sat down to do the tasting menu with my sister, one of the first things I was informed of was that no butter or cream was to be employed. I was wondering at the time if this was a temporary and experimental gesture or part of some larger mission of theirs. I will confess that my one meal there was so bad as to not make me want to go back--every dish seemed either overly powered by one or two flavors, or utterly bland and flat. There is enough high praise on this bopard that I suppose it is worth another trip.

Does anyone think that there are actually any places that combine different cuisines for non-marketing reasons? That's perhaps poorly worded, but what I am getting at is the following distinction. 98% of the "Japanese" and sushi restuarants in suburbia are actually Chinese (usually Cantonese) own and run. They were set up because critical density has already been reached in many markets for Chinese places, so opening up a "Japanese" restuarant gives them a unique niche. By contrast, it is my sense that a lot of Korean places in midtown offer sushi as part of a broader constellation of Korean dishes that its Korean and American customers have requested. Korea, being an ex colony of Japan, had exposure to the cuisine of Japan, and perhaps the restaraurant owners do not think of sushi as being necessarily uniquely Japanese, and they serve a distinct Korean version.

I went along with Vivin to JG last Friday, and have had similar rather mixed experiences on trips there, that this trip was a very pleasant surprise. I disagree about the Chardonnay though, since I think by the end it had become spectacular, but it was a speciman that needed to be decanted and sit open for a very long time. It was young and simply too tight for a long time though. But about the food, I will confess to being very pleasantly surprized at its complexity. I found it rather intellectual. Several bites made me stop and ponder their rather brilliant juxtaposition of flavors and elements, ones that I had not encountered before, even on previous visits--the Foie Gras, in particular. It was by far the best of the 4-5 meals I have had there. I must say that I found that his whole style of cuisine is very clever, but also does not touch me on a deeper textual and sensual level. Its hard to put my finger on it, but something about the preparation is slightly emotionally cool. Still, I was able to appreciate the meal, and what he accomplishes a great deal more. I came away thinking of it as an educational meal somehow.

I went back to Bouley last night, and well it was one of those nights the kitchen was just on, probably because the place was relatively quiet and overstaffed, underguested. Items on the tasting menu that had been there the last few times I have been over 3-4 months were still present--the Chiang Mai lobster preparation, the phyllo crusted shrimp, and the to be avoided kobe beef. Frankly, I have given up expecting consistency from the kitchen. My last two meals there were dull and flat, and the prior one to those two was brilliant. This one left me speechless. I went on a bender this week with consequtive meals at Babbo, 11 Madison, ADNY and Bouley. Babbo was superb and ADNY was excellent, but Bouley floored. When the random function that turns the kicthen into "on" mode is "on" the place has perhaps no rival in NY. I had Atlantic Halibut Rouget and Squab But perhaps should have ordered the Maine Lobster Prepared in an Exotic Manner, Sauteed Baby Bok Choy, Mango and Papaya Cooked with Tahitian Vanilla, since I don't think lobster has been ever been better accompanied. One of my two dinner companions ordered this, and oowed for a good 20 minutes. The choc souffle was also superb, but they also brought one complimentary dish of rice pudding and fresh fruit sorbet that was not on the menu that was texturally brilliant--warm, cold, sweet and soft, crunchy and yielding all at once. All right I wil stop fawning, but on a good night, I think there is no other place I would rather eat in the city.

Fat Guy- As a food critic, how do you actually go about discerning the different qualities/capability of preparation and execution for those food items which you genuinely dislike? I am asking the question, because while I will eat almost anything, certain things in a dish would preclude me from objectively assessing it or making comparisons. The presence of blue cheese or Chinese sea cucumber, the only two food items I can actually say will render a dish inedible to me, would make it impossible for me to form an opinion.

I am actually considering taking a date to Ouest next weekend, though rereading this thread I am having second thoughts. Are there certain things that one should order? Felonius-amazing that in our 5.5 hour dinner at ADNY last night this topic never came up.

I went to Jewel Bako for the first time last night and must say I had a very impressive meal ordering the $100 omakase at the sushi bar. I had a superb glass of Pinos Gris and Montrachet as well. There were far too many dishes for me to recollect everything I ate, though the o-toro with caviar was out of this world. The strengths of the restuarant based on one sole meal are clearly in the creative combinations of traditional Japanese ingredients and very fresh fish, which were works of fine textural and taste craftsmanship, as you would expect from great Japanese cuisine. On the flip side, I thought the sashimi dish was the least impressive plate I was served, perhaps because it was not subject to the same degree of creative tweaking. The raw scallop to me was the give away. Once you have had an ur-sample of fresh scallop, not unlike uni, its hard to endure a piece that isn't at its absolute freshest. But most of the other pieces of fish were excellent, and the sushi that came later in the meal was almost good as any I have eaten in the city, including kuruma or yasuda or gari. The sake they have on offer is very good, though there were a few miscues, there were also a few homeruns (I got to sample a lot of the sake for free in tiny tastes for some reason). The wine list is also very limited, but also brilliantly chosen, so everything was well paired with what we ate. I actually spent a decent amount of time being served with and conversing with Jack Lamb, the owner, who said he wanted to very consciously create a small place where the quality control and service was first rate. I have been increasingly been coming to the belief that the reason that ADNY and Jewel Bako work is their smaller scale/ fewer sittings. They really care about the quality of food and service and it shows. This was the best Japanese meal I have eaten this year, and one of the best dining experiences I have had outside of France. It will be interesting to see if they replicate the experience on my next trip. On first meal I would definitely give the place an A-. I give an A- because something deeper and passionate was missing in the food that I find at the best meals I have had at Gari, which seems the most comparable restauarant for some reason. Can't fully explain this yet.