H. du Bois
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Posts posted by H. du Bois
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I am in awe. I'd faint with pleasure if someone cooked me an amazing meal like that, too!
You're not just doing Brooklyn proud, you're doing our neighborhood proud, too. So nice to see Park Slope represented so well.
Thanks for the compliment! I am flattered. Who knows, maybe when I recover from this dinner we can have a Brooklynite dinner. (Doc, we will have to bring you back down one day!)
Doing a Brooklynite gathering some time would be fun - and it wouldn't be complete without Doc.
Thanks again for a truly fascinating week.
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I am in awe. I'd faint with pleasure if someone cooked me an amazing meal like that, too!
You're not just doing Brooklyn proud, you're doing our neighborhood proud, too. So nice to see Park Slope represented so well.
Er, what's SK?
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Good luck with tonight - should be one stellar occasion!
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Well, clearly you haven't met enough Rochester foodies yet - we're all nice. Heck, even the tranny hookers in Nick Tahou's parking lot are nice, as long as you don't piss 'em off.
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John, I was wondering if you'd give us a little history on how it was that you got so interested in both food and drink. Were you a child prodigy in the kitchen, or did you come to it later? Who were your influences? What was it that made you what you are where cuisine and cocktails are concerned?
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So... I just got back from dropping a cool buck twenty at Kalustyan's (pomegranate molasses, quince lemon syrup, tamarind syrup, 3 different kinds of bitters, black vinegar, rice wine vinegar, dashi ingredients, dried giant pozole, Mexican oregano, tumeric, etc.).
Anyone else inspired by this blog to visit Kalustyan's? Am I the first?
You're not alone! I'd never been there before, but I'm definitely going now.
(Thanks, John).
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I've always joked that the garbage plate was designed to be eaten by someone with a blood alcohol level of .10 or above, but on this particular occasion, I discovered that the food sparked the alcohol consumption, not the other way around. It would seem that drunkenness remains a vital component of the garbage plate phenomenon.
Yep, there was a garbage plate, in all its deconstructed glory. A good one looks like slung hash sounds, and this one measured up visually. Now, I never ate at the shrine to the garbage plate, the infamous Nick Tahou's, but I shall try my best to compare this experience to my own.
The one I consumed in Rochester during my errant youth was a big mass of fried potatoes and macaroni salad covered by two hamburgers and a sprawl of chili and cheese. The mustard was French's. I think there were chopped onions, and the burgers and chili were, uh, as good as you'd expect them to be under the circumstances.
Trout provided all the essential elements (sans the traditional overkill gesture of a plate of bread and butter on the side), but in a more refined manner. Their potatoes were hand cut french fries, the hamburgers were very good, and the chili sauce was well seasoned (I could taste cinnamon in there, among other things). The mustard was definitely upscale - brown mustard, which is a definite improvement. Sneakeater noticed that there were crispy bits beneath the burgers which I think may have been crunchy pieces of beef. Unidentifiable, but really good.
And that last sentence would categorize the errant charm of the garbage plate. A whole mess o' stuff that you wouldn't think would taste well together, but which somehow still seems like a really good idea. And damned if it isn't.
Everyone should get totally trashed and eat a garbage plate at least once in their lifetime. And now New Yorkers can!
Do it. Really.
* I should add that I'm not using "deconstructed" in the Jacques Derrida sense of the word, but rather in the "it looks like a bomb went off on your plate" sense of the word.
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Oh. My. God.
Thanks for taking one for the team, John.
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Hi H, we sure are neighbors! You definately have a large selection of resturants go to aound you, and probably all the Pabst Blue Ribbon you can drink given the number of bars around you too.
Yes, I can almost see Jaques Torres from my window. I try to have self control and not go crazy and spend all my money there.
John
I've never had a PBR in my life - but I think I need to rectify that, or move.
Are they still selling those chickens in the Grand Army Plaza greenmarket? If so, I know where I'll be going this weekend.
You have to get a double chocolate eclair at Torres, and document the experience. You simply cannot taunt us by mentioning them and not eat one.
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Well whatever Therese decides to do with her business clients, when I'm next up there, it's Sienna Grill and Max of Eastman Place for me.
Lots of old money in town - enough to support 7-8 private country club dining rooms.Now see, that's one of the biggest problems right there - one that I was trying to bend my brain around. An awful lot of high end entertainment happens in the country clubs. Want to impress your business associate who is visiting Rochester? Take 'em out to the country club and feed them a nice piece of beef tenderloin. Those rooms are really pretty, and there's nothing quite comparable in the restaurants.
I'm so glad that you guys are pushing the envelope. And I wish I knew about all this when I was up there last year.
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??? I hope you weren't asking this of me, because I wasn't meaning to imply that Rochester hasn't got any top notch restaurants (all teasing aside about the prime ribs).
I've just been trying to think of restaurants up there that would fit Therese's criteria of: a) nosebleedingly impressive; and b) so expensive it hurts. And there's the rub. Food that's very, very good? Not a problem. Atmosphere that's very, very good? Not a problem. But a restaurant so expensive and impressive that it would register on the Richter scale? Problem.
Down here, there are restaurants that fit that bill, but I just don't see anything like that up there that would fit her criteria. I'm presuming (maybe wrongly), that she's trying to arrange something expensive enough that it would impress, which is why I suggested adding something else to the mix.
My initial inclination would be to suggest that she piggyback Max of Eastman Place and the Philharmonic (which sounds like something I'd love to do!), but if her clients have season tickets anyway, then it wouldn't be as special an experience.
So, in thinking out of the box, are there any special, one-off experiences that can be arranged? Could a dinner be catered in the George Eastman house or the planetarium by some stellar cook? Could the really wonderful first violinist of the philharmonic be hired to play exquisite music while they dine?
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Thank you, Kerry, for that fascinating glimpse into your world.
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Hey - we're neighbors! I'm 5th Avenue between Garfield and First, which puts me right smack in the middle of what Doc calls restaurantville.
It's funny seeing all the changes in the 20+ years that I've been here. I've seen some of what Doc has, in the sense of the neighborhood being an old Italian neighborhood before it went downhill. The place that is now Tempo was a really cool old Italian bakery with a wood fired oven that looked like it had been there since the Victorian era. And if the fish store I knew is the same one Doc's talking about (5th Avenue further down toward Flatbush, east side?), I loved it and I really, really miss it. It had been there since the 20s, and they would cut your fish for you exactly to order.
Nice view from your office window! And right near Jacques Torres, too.
Well, I'm thrilled that you're blogging, and I'm curdled with envy of your beautiful kitchen and stove. I look forward to great things this week!
* The best fish store I've found in the neighborhood is on 7th Ave, east side of the street, between 3rd & 4th streets, I think. The Japanese owned one. (It's a couple of doors down from another one that doesn't smell so good).
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When a fellow eGulleteer (Kouign Aman)
points out to you that your entry in Kerry Beal's foodblog ...I've only just come to this blog, and was just going to take a quick peek at it before I went up to the park for a walk. And here I sit, a couple of hours later, still in my running shoes (so much for good intentions!).... more appropriately belongs in this thread!
I never did make it up to the park. I blame Kerry.
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Nick Tahou's? Well, I'm sure if Therese took her clients to the home of the garbage plate (much beloved by Rochester's tranny hooker populace) she'd impress them. Just maybe not in the way she'd intended to.
Still awaiting word on the Rio Bamba of lore.
2 Vine's website couldn't possibly be crappier - aren't you supposed to include photographs of "after" when you've transformed an old auto transmission shop into a restaurant? There is a nice room in there, really. But it's strictly a new-American-food-with-a-touch-of-French-influence type of place. Very likeable, but not awe inspiring.
From everything I've heard of Sienna Grill, the food is good, but I think it's too casual for your purposes.
You need knock-your-socks-off impressive? Honestly, I'm not sure that really exists for a dinner-only scenario up in Rochester - it just isn't that kind of town.
So here's a suggestion (presuming, as you stated, that money is no object whatsoever). The Erie Grill is located within the DelMonte Lodge, which is Rochester's closest thing to high-end accommodation. Also within the DelMonte lodge is a very beautiful spa. Treat your clients and/or their spouses to a luxurious session at the spa, to be followed by dinner at the Erie Grill. I think they'd be blissful. And impressed.
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Therese, I'll answer in this thread rather than the other one. Have checked with one Rochester foodie who has weighed in with her suggestions, and she has a call out to a foodie friend who has her finger on the pulse of the restaurant scene, who'd probably be the best resource for you.
Resource #1 has suggested 2 Vine (as mentioned above), Max of Eastman Place (also mentioned above), and The Erie Grill (in Pittsford, affiliated with the DelMonte Lodge). She's going to ask her friend about the Rio Bamba*, and I'll let you know if Resource #2 has information on that, as well as other suggestions.
It's entirely possible that what you're looking for might not exist, in the sense that, at least when I was living up there, it was the setting that really mattered (e.g., you ate your prime rib in a revolving restaurant atop a tall building, or you ate your prime rib in a restaurant overlooking the Genesee River). Hopefully, with those restaurants mentioned above, things have changed.
I'll let you know what I hear from the other source.
* The Rio Bamba is a restaurant on Alexander Street of which, since the time I was young (which is a scarily long time ago), people would always say as they drove past, "that's supposedly Rochester's best restaurant." Nobody I know actually ever ate there, because the second line of the mantra is, "it's supposed to be very expensive." Resource #1 had heard that the Rio Bamba is supposed to be good, but she's never eaten there, either. I don't know whether this is a Rochesterian urban myth or not. Hopefully Resource #2 will have the scoop on that.
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Retro desserts work for me. (I'm thinking of doing that lemon pudding soon. Real soon).
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Doc, you're living my dream vacation.
Thank you so much for the photos and reportage - I feel like I'm there (and as there's where I'd like to be, there's a very nice place indeed).
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I'll let current Rochesterians weigh in with their opinions, but when I was up there last year, there was only once place I went to that actually impressed me as a very good place to eat out. It was Restaurant 2 Vine, on Winthrop Street near the Little Theater (tucked in between Main Street and East Avenue). I went there for a snack before a film, and had country pate on crusty bread with a glass of red wine. Really good, and I was impressed with both the full menu and the wine list. Unfortunately, I didn't get back there to have a full meal. Prices were high for Rochester, I think, but not necessarily out of keeping with the rest of the country. Anyway, in my own personal experience, this place was a big step above other restaurants up there. Nice room, too.
In the Rochester thread http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=20115, the only other place recommended by others that jumped out at me was Max of Eastman Place, but I've never been there myself, so I can't say.
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My sister's sister-in-law tried smuggling 6 jars of beluga caviar out of the old Soviet Union. The customs official (Russian) who rifled her bag said, "three for you, three for me," and openly kept half the loot. She then proceeded to France, where she loaded up her bag with stinky cheeses, a beautiful lump of foie gras, the beluga, some sausages made of god knows what, and then came to visit us. Got through US customs just fine. We were kind of torn by regret, thinking that there could have been more of that heavenly caviar, and gratitude that he'd left some for us. As she said, "if I knew he was going to take half, I'd have bought more."
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You will post that recipe for the lemon pudding, won't you?
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Well, I'll be damned. Clearly, I need geology lessons (never knew it was so big!).
I don't know why I eat my own chocolate bunnies in that manner, but last year at Easter time, when I was staying with a friend in England, we had an ears vs. tails debate. It wasn't resolved by bedtime, and the next morning when we got up, we opened the back door to find a gift from one of the cats: two dead baby bunnies neatly laid out on the doorstep, minus their ears. Maybe it was unfair of me, but I took it as biological proof positive that one should eat one's Easter bunnies from the top down.
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Wow.
I've only just come to this blog, and was just going to take a quick peek at it before I went up to the park for a walk. And here I sit, a couple of hours later, still in my running shoes (so much for good intentions!).
Wonderful, fascinating peek into your world. All I love best about these foodblogs.
Now, how does the Niagara escarpment go so far up? (My family lives fairly close to Niagara Falls, so I know that other end!). How is an island part of the escarpment? You live in Toronto the rest of the year?
I loved your "The Old Broad and The Lake" title - laughed my ass off.
PS: I always eat the ears first.
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WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Eagerly awaiting the next installment!
eG Foodblog: hathor - Carpe Diem
in Food Traditions & Culture
Posted
Oh, my! Hooked from photograph number one.