H. du Bois

This thread cracks me up.

Just ate lunch at HK today (NW corner of 9th Ave at 39th St). Food was good, price was decent.

I always feel better after reading MFK Fisher, too. I feel she's letting me in on a delicious secret of how to eat (and live) well, without one smidgen of arrogance or "I shall show thee the way" about her - unlike the doyennes of domesticity who came behind her. As for Cunningham, I don't own any of her books, but I have a great deal of respect for her philosophy of encouraging American families to cook and eat together, simply and well.

Appropos of this ... I read somewhere once that in my neighborhood (Park Slope), the leading cause of divorce was kitchen renovation.

Probably best not to go till they iron the kinks out. I've never been able to pass judgement on any restaurant's merits based on their first couple of weeks. It will take its form soon.

Agree wholeheartedly. It may be the "make your own" deal that pulls them in, but the standards are something special.

Thanks for the Lao lessons! I learned the "loy nam" phrase from a Lao 4-year old, so clearly, my linguistic sources weren't very sophisticated. I loved the Jaew, whatever its contents - so deliciously hot, sour and savory all in the same bite. Wish I could remember the names of all the other wonderful dishes I've eaten.

I've never seen a pork store where they make their own pasta. Mozzarella sometimes, but not pasta. Don't know if it still holds true, but the A&S pork store in Park Slope (5th Ave. between Garfield and 1st St.) used to be good. I'd think the outer boroughs, particularly Bronx & Brooklyn, would be good sources for them.

Ate one of their "fish and chips" sandwiches today - a standard, not a make your own. Delicious! Did a make your own a week or two ago, but I think I should have chosen arugula instead of artichokes with my roast beef. Live and learn (but it was fun trying!).

Thanks, Matthew!

Wow! Well, the Jao (jau?) I had definitely had no buffalo in it - it was made before my very eyes on a number of occasions in the U.S., and that wasn't even available as an ingredient. I do wonder, based on what little I know of the language, if the word jau refers to the chili, and bong to the buffalo. E.g., nam sa is Lao for tea, loy nam means to swim - nam is the root word for water. I'd guess that Jao is a generic word for chili sauce. But I'm no linguist! Your trip sounds fascinating. Hope I get over there someday.

EmergenC is pretty sour, and I just drink it medicinally for colds, although some of my dancer friends used to quaff it before performances - there's lots of potassium in it. Not much fizz. Hmmm, well, what I'd been served as a lemon phosphate was essentially lemon syrup with seltzer over ice. Maybe thaw some lemonade concentrate, and try a good hit of that in a tall glass filled with ice, and then straight seltzer to fill it?

I had lemon phosphates at a soda fountain my grandmother took me to when I was little. They must have vanished when the soda fountains did. I remember it being intensely lemony as well as sweet - nothing like an insipid 7-Up. Er, edited to add - wasn't meaning to demean your taste in soda if you like 7-Up - just saying that to me, the taste of it is insipid compared to my memory of the flavor of the phosphate.

Wonderful! The view there is to die for. Do tell us about Pegu - I want to have a great place to squire an out of towner or two of my own, and it sounds impressive.

I've eaten (and seen prepared) a lot of Lao food, and they do use fish sauce (Tiparos) in lots of things. They will use MSG in soups, but as they are assembled dish by dish with broth poured on top, you can ask for it without. I find that the food the Lao people prepare for themselves is far spicier than Thai food - and I love that spicy kick. They make a hot sauce for dipping things in, called Jao (I have no idea how it's spelled!), which has, as I vaguely recall, lots of fresh red pepper (ground by mortar and pestle), lime juice, Tiparos, and ground peanuts. They accompany all their meals with sticky rice which is cooked in a bamboo basket and steamed on top of the stove, then put in a two piece woven basket for cooling and serving. Wonderful regional cuisine.

This post came in the beginning of the thread. In my opinion, Goldie got it right, right away. ← I agree with Goldie, too. I always take everyone at their word when they say that they can not, do not, or would not eat or drink something - be it for reasons of health, religion, culture or just plain personal preference. Goldie's use of the word gracious is most fitting here, and no one who is a gracious host or hostess would EVER trick someone into eating something they avoid, for whatever reason. My point above is simply that I have recently witnessed people claiming allergies to foods which have little or no basis in reality. It isn't very nice to have gone to a great deal of trouble preparing special meals for someone who claims they are physically sickened by a food, to then later witness them consume that same food with no ill effect.

Steven, I'm glad you went to the source and pointed out the truth in this matter. As I'd said upthread, I think there's a modern neurosis hiding behind the guise of food allergies, with many people self-diagnosing various foodstuffs as the culprit behind their feelings of general malaise. I have a very dear friend who grandly proclaims herself to be allergic to wheat and dairy, and who must be accommodated by one and all who host her. And yet I once witnessed her, after showing up unexpectdly at a mealtime, eat a plate of pasta with cheese sauce. When I quietly said, afterwards, "I thought you were allergic to wheat and dairy," she said, "Oh, darling I am - I just can't eat very much of them." I, who have experienced the misfortune of projectile vomiting, hives and wheezing before a trip to the emergency room after ingesting an allergen, was floored. I know for a fact that there are rare few of us with nut and shellfish allergies about. And yet, of late, every other person I encounter seems to have a "food allergy." I once met a woman at a party who informed me that she was eating rice crackers instead of wheat crackers because her baby was "allergic" to wheat. Said infant was only 6 months old, and was breast fed. Never had a piece of toast so much as passed her lips, and yet she was diagnosed by her mother as an allergy sufferer. Why? Because mom believed that the baby's stools were somewhat looser after mom ate bread. Aside from the fact that I found this to be wildly inappropriate party talk from a stranger, it struck me as less an issue of food or the child's health but rather of the mother's own neuroses. I'm more than happy to accommodate any of my dinner guests' needs, be they health or preference issues (I have spent half a lifetime feeding vegetarians). But over the last 15 years, the degree of accommodation I've had to do has vaulted into the stratosphere. I don't like having to jump through hoops for the super picky, and I've begun to classify vegans and certain "allergy sufferers" as such. Something is wrong with our relationship to food, and I don't always think it's the food that's the culprit here. Forgive me for sounding cranky, but sometimes I think we need a good famine to right ourselves again. And I'd be very curious to see, when food became once again our only salvation against death, how many of us would reach for that which we now decline?

A really good ginger ice cream, and a really good cinnamon ice cream, each very rich with some serious bite to them. They'd be superb accompaniments to fruit crisps and cobblers. Soup, I once ate ice cream made with red hots at a restaurant in Williamsburg. Awesome. Cold, sweet and made my mouth burn all at the same time. Would kill to eat it again.

Have eaten all manner of weird things wherever I've roamed. The Japanese giggled to see me eat eel - they believe it to be the thing Americans are most squeamish about consuming. I didn't know that uni was supposed to be gross - I thought it was superb. Ate some seafood and vegetables so local that they don't even have English translations for what they are. Have eaten Marmite in England (sorry, Brits - you have to have been brought up on it to appreciate it), blood pudding and haggis (shock of all shocks, delicious!). Due to a French friend (with whom I've learned I should eat first and ask what it was later), I've consumed sausage made of donkey meat (yum), beef tongue (texture issues), and pig's head (didn't care for it, just as well I didn't know what it was). But it was in Venice, at a very elegant restaurant, that I ate the one thing which I found truly disgusting - squid cooked in its own ink. Don't know how I've managed to find squid prepared every other way delectable and this revolting, but there you go.

I'm a well-travelled New Yorker, who tips, as we are accustomed to do in American society. I try very hard to correctly follow tipping practices in other countries (was very charmed to find, in Japan, that perfect service is customary, and they do not accept tips). In US restaurants, I tip wait staff 20%. If they've blown me away with superior service, I'll tip more. If service is poor, I'll still tip, knowing that wait staff are ill-paid. I will not, however, return there. My few truly rotten restaurant experiences were due to service-related horrors, and I wasn't the least bit sorry to see those restaurants fold. I would never dream of bribing anyone for good service, and I would be appalled to accompany anyone who tried to do so. Implicit within the bribery system to me, is the understanding that my rights as a paying customer (e.g., the right to be seated at a table I had legitimately reserved or had waited for) are up for grabs to the highest bidder. And that is not acceptable to me at all. If I ever witnessed such an event, I wouldn't return to that restaurant either, regardless of what I thought of the cuisine. One can call the maitre d's of fine restaurants in advance and request certain tables or special services for a select occasion, and then one can pay the staff handsomely in return for a lovely evening, which is as it should be. But a shadow system of greasing palms in hope of better service? No, no, no, no, no.

I've never had a problem getting into BR sushi, though I tend to go earlier rather than later - maybe it makes a difference. The staff there are very nice. Love everything I've ordered there. I do enjoy Chip Shop too. Satisfying Brit comfort food.

Agreed! Let's hope it becomes just another place for New Yorkers to shop. Sooner rather than later would work for me ...

Thanks for the info!

For Rochester, the "white hot," which is slang for a white hot dog. Descended from bratwurst, which was popularized by German immigrants in the 19th c. Cooked and served like a regular hot dog* (but much more delicious!), preferably washed down with Genesee beer and consumed while watching the local baseball team lose. Regional enough that if you haven't lived there, you have no idea what they are. * Best are Zweigles with the skin.

dockhl, I have to agree with JohnL about this. It's been superhyped, and there are, quite literally, lines around the block of people waiting to get in to see what that hype is all about. Store employees announce to the crowds waiting outside that the line for the cash registers inside is only 20 minutes long. You've got to wonder if it's worth it - in this town, time is money, and to most of us, this had better be REALLY good to be worth the bother of waiting in queues for 40 minutes. It's a wildly different shopping experience than yours, I'm sure, for that reason alone. I'd happily check TJ's out if I could ever get in there, but I'm damned if I'll wait on line to use a grocery store unless they bring back wartime rationing.