H. du Bois

I love that quote so much, I had to see it again. I agree with your points - it's strange seeing things come and go and rise and fall in popularity. I'm feeling old, though, thinking of how quiches and crepes were such a huge deal, and making them was an emblem of our "foodiness," for want of a better word. Maybe if I live long enough, I'll see them come round again (not that the French ever stopped making them). BTW, I still do use a recipe or two from the Silver Palate.

Convert back & forth? Why not just keep a set of each - standard and metric - and use whichever one the recipe is written for? I'd be delighted to send you a set of metric measures if you are unable to obtain them in the US. Badiane, thanks for the offer. Where I ran into problems was when I was in the UK and doing some baking. Nearly screwed up a recipe when I put 8 oz. of milk into something that called for "a half pint of milk." I forget the difference, but the imperial pint is bigger than the US pint. Ooops. (Two nations divided by the same language, indeed!). I also was given a recipe for lemon tart by a Frenchman who works as a pastry chef, which was by metric weight. When I got back home, I tried converting it to volume, but it seemed so out of whack that I just went out and bought myself a scale (it didn't convert cleanly into thirds, halves or quarters of cups - that's what I meant above). I do use whichever measures the recipe is printed in.

Do they deliver?

Il Buco has that nice room in the back, though - very good for a group. ← Ooops, forgot about the back room!

Agree absolutely with Asia de Cuba - I've been there several times for similar events, and the vibe is perfect for that. (The food is fun, and the cocktails, are, too!). Il Buco, one of my all-time favorite restaurants in this town, is IMHO, not the right place to take a larger or noisy group. It's a more intimate place.

Perhaps it's anything our grandparents used to make. A lot of the things I see on this thread are exactly what I'd have suggested, and they all seem to be the ingredients for fancy sit-down dinners when I was young. Cocktails with canapes on trays, beef wellington, potatoes anna, french green beans with mushrooms, baked Alaska. The cocktails had to be whiskey based with a cherry (was it whiskey sours I used to steal the liquor soaked cherry from?), and everyone smoking, too.

Ah, but you have the power of the pen - this incident may have larger repercussions. If the powers that be at Gallaghers were to read this thread, there very well may be hell to pay among the staff, presuming that what the maitre d' did wasn't behavior sanctioned by the upper management. Perhaps venting here is a more effective means of dealing with your anger than what occurred face-to-face.

After just having steered a visitor to NY away from Times Square in another thread, I dined here tonight, and changed my mind. Tintol is wonderful. Everything I ordered was terrific. The lamb loin is to die for, the fried deviled eggs (which I couldn't quite imagine from the description) are the devil's candy, and the flaming chorizo was a festive and delicious beginning to the meal. I was particularly impressed with the stuffed squid, which was delicate in texture and smoky in flavor. Everything else was wonderful, too (loved the quail & mushrooms!), though I wasn't that impressed with my tasting dessert, especially after having sampled my friend's creme brulee (which was called something else - creme catalan?). Whatever the name, that was the dessert of the evening. Had planned on sampling their wonderful red wines, but we somehow got started on caipirinhas, and never looked back.

I didn't realize that was the old New Yorker, either! You'll be within walking distance of a very good area to eat - 8th Avenue between 14th street and 23rd street (Chelsea) is a minefield of good food. Just walk up and down that stretch and enter whichever place catches your fancy - they're all a pretty high standard. If you need to go north, you're within walking distance of Hell's Kitchen, an area that's up and coming. I've eaten lunch at HK, which is at 39th & 9th - very good, very New Yorky. Just avoid Times Square like the plague - it's a tourist ghetto, really (food scaled down accordingly).

I wish we'd switch to weights, and I wish we'd go metric - it's a pain in the ass trying to convert back & forth. I've found that weights are more accurate and faster (though I use volume here at home). Good for Gourmet!

Someone gave me, as a gift, Jacques Torres's Dessert Circus (I like making desserts, though I don't do it as often as I ought). I've yet to make a recipe from it, though it pleases me to look at the photos. It even survived my great cookbook purge, despite its lack of use. There are some cookbooks out there I'd never use, even though I'd considered buying them before I actually picked them up and perused them. Alice Water's Chez Panisse cookbook, because the ingredients she uses so brilliantly weren't available to me then. Thomas Keller's French Laundry cookbook, because it's the kind of food I'd rather eat at a restaurant than produce at home. I do use the Green's cookbook. I have a lot of vegetarians in my life, and it's a resource good enough that carnivores would not turn up their noses at the dishes.

I'm comfortable with both smokers and doggies in restaurants in Paris, so it would follow that I could deal with either here. But, as with the obnoxious children in restaurants issue, it depends on who brings 'em. A quiet pekingese sitting on the lap of a lady of a certain age, no problem. An ill-behaved big dog running rampant through that same restaurant? Problem. PS: Just remembered that people bring their dogs to pubs in England, but I've never seen a badly behaved one.

Two Fat Ladies - What's not to love? Jamie Oliver - I thought, right from the get-go as The Naked Chef, that this guy had important things to say, but that the production did not serve him well. They were so busy trying to paint him as a hip, happening young lad that you couldn't appreciate everything he was trying to say and do, what with all the MTVesque quick-cutting and shaky-cam camerawork. Watched his School Lunches when I was in Britain - riveting television. Wish I'd caught more than one episode of his Jamie's Kitchen series. Jacques Pepin - Love everything he has to say, wish he were on the Food Network all the time instead of that annoying Emeril guy. They need better production values, though (see below). Giada de Laurentiis - Not particularly enamored of her show, but the producers of all cooking shows should pay attention to the first-rate lighting, cutting and use of close-ups that they do on this one - a very, very professional production. Grandpa's film experience left a mark, evidently. Sara Moulton - Her Cooking Live show reminded me of what most women who really cook dinner have to deal with - successfully putting together a meal despite a zillion interruptions. It endeared her to me. Julia Child - My experience of Julia on television has more to do with Dan Aykroyd's parody rather than the lady upon whom it was based. Loved both, though.

Pepperidge Farm Brussels Jules Destrooper (thin crispy almond cookies) Walkers stem ginger biscuits (shortbread with candied ginger) Duchy Originals ginger biscuits

I have never even thought to look up a menu online! I just always went by word of mouth or Zagat's (don't throw stones - it's a busy person's best way of getting general where/what info), and went in, waiting to be surprised, hoping to be amazed.

Just saw one of their commercials and got queasy. We grow ever closer to the trough, don't we?

Jason, thanks for the photos & reportage! Definitely on my check it out list.

I grew fresh herbs in pots on my windowsills one year, and a big planter with tomato plants on my fire escape. All went well until I had an infestation of whitefly, which completely wiped them out (so much for organic window gardening in New York City). Had I stooped to antipest spray earlier, they'd have survived. The only advice I'd give you is, know your tomato plant - I ignorantly planted beefsteak tomato seeds in a pot, and the plants that came up were bigger than I am. Go for cherry tomatoes.

Full of baloney! I can't speak for Iceland or Lithuania (though a Lithuanian-born friend of my parents' made potato dishes to die for), but I've eaten incredibly well in Prague and Amsterdam. Why wasn't he talking about the wonderful venison and boar of the Czech Republic? As for England, yeah, the land of Marmite has had a reputation for some pretty awful food, but anyone who's ever eaten a roast dinner made in an Aga would beg to differ. I could go back to the UK and live quite happily and well on good English cookery. I loathed the "cuttlefish cooked in its own ink" I once ate at a splendid restaurant in Venice, but I'd hardly hang the cuisine of the entire nation of Italy for my personal dislike of that one dish.

Let us not forget my personal favorite, "frigidator."

Funny, the table wobble issue (good one!) made me think of the first time I went to Union Sqare Cafe in NYC. The first table we were placed at wobbled precariously, and with one word to our waiter, we were moved to a rock-solid (and far better) table elsewhere. No fuss, no muss, problem resolved so quickly and gracefully that it ceased to exist. Every little detail was dealt with so well that we had a very, very good time. (Food wasn't bad, either!) I think all restaurants have things go wrong from time to time, but for me, it's how they deal with the things that go wrong that distinguishes them.

I only saw the last episode and the Napa episode where Lee Anne was kicked off, so maybe I shouldn't comment on this - and as with Kim Shook, I hate reality shows, too. It will completely bias what I'm about to say. I hated the two cookie cutter brunettes who flanked Colicchio as judges. I could only differentiate them by their petulance and charmlessness. (Charmless was Billie Joel's current wife - Petulant was the one who sat on the other side). What kind of street creds do they have that would earn them those seats? Colicchio had genuine screen presence as well as mastery in his field, and everything he had to say carried weight. They had neither. I hated it that the really interesting stuff - e.g., the conversations of the luminaries who were actually eating the food - was given such short shrift, and that instead, we had to watch endless, repeated close-ups of the contestants' strained faces during the judging sessions. Crap TV. I didn't see the earlier episodes, so I don't know anything about the personality problems that Tiffani and Stephen seemed to possess (and which must have been the highlights of the shows, judging from the feedback). For me, what set Harold apart during the final episode was seeing him ask the wait staff how each course was being received - he was paying attention to that, rather than to besting anyone, and it was that focus which will get him someplace. It was interesting to see that he had genuinely earned the privilege of being called "chef" by Lee Anne, and that he was graceful enough to ask her to still call him Harold. Tiffani was so focussed on winning, she forgot what the bigger picture was all about.

I'm with Pan on this one. Otherwise, the fact that I grew up saying "karmel" would have been cause for insult. Even within New York State alone, there are vast regional differences in pronunciation. I grew up with a Great Lakes accent, complete with flat As and Os, but went to college with a bunch of downstaters, who took merciless potshots at the upstaters' speech. Me, I couldn't figure out why anyone who pronounced "coffee" or "water" so very oddly had a right to make fun. They couldn't mock mine, because I'd beaten my regional dialect into submission a few years earlier, after a friend who'd grown up in the south quite literally wept with laughter at the way I said "pecan" (pee-can, as opposed to her pe-cahn). Had she not mortified me, I'd probably still have my twang. Regionalisms are not mispronunciations. Odd as they may sound, they are correct, and you may sound equally as "incorrect" to them.

It's a Great Lakes thing - New York City/Boston coastal accents are very different. Sorry, should have specified - I'm talking very north, here - New York City was south, where I came from!

Poor, dear Toasted! I shouldn't laugh, but I just can't stop laughing. If you're lucky, maybe they just thought you spilled your water. And srhcb, you are naughty. Naughty!