Vadouvan
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Posts posted by Vadouvan
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At the end of the day, too many people are just cheap hypocrites who set a different standard of consumer expectations for restaurants than they do for other industries. Restaurants operate on slim margins but everyone wants something free for every percieved slight even when it isnt the restaurant's fault. People complain about dishes being "fairly" priced like dining out is a forced endeavor.
let table + free drinks or apps.
You go to a Dr's office with an appointment and still wait 45 mins, the same jackass Dr comes to a restaurant and complains like he is moses when his table is 5 minutes late.
NO AMOUNT of soundproofing is going to make any restaurant quiet unless the patrons are quiet.
RESTAURANTS ARE LOUD BECAUSE THE PEOPLE WHO EAT THERE ARE LOUD.
EVEN SK is loud when capeneus is there...hee he.
I am not sure there is any crisis in the food scene in philly other than a trendy lack of imagination............thus every cuisine or style results in several similar places opening at the same time, currently we are shooting our small plate load.
NEXT.......Bistro.
Yo SG...how's it going in San Fran ?
PM me....lets meet up in Ny.
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WKL.............yes we do have a reputation of a civilian population that predominantly want BYo's.
That does keep people from setting up shop here plus the liquor laws and Philadelphia's idiotic BPT make people say thanks but no thanks.
JeffL ..I dont underestimate Amada, its a good restaurant but Frankly Tia Pol serves better food. Amada is defnitely the best Tapas place in Philly but it's a big fish -small pond issue.
Amada is comparable to Ripert's Barca18, no better.
Soon we weill be having discussions on the finer points of whether Basque restaurants should be serving duck confit or Foie gras in any shape or form when Tinto opens.
the issue is a lot of restaurants will create thier own version of what is "authentic" clearly based on the fact that the dining audience isnt better educated on the subject.
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I am coming out of retirement for this one....
To address a few comments in the thread, to those with whom I disagree, please understand it is simply a difference in opnion.
JeffL, I love you and you rock unfortunately on two points....
The french Laundry and perse are not cutting edge restaurants, they are good restaurants. What they do is certainly in no way shape or form on par with Alinea.
They are excellent restaurants and Keller is a good chef but cutting edge would be reserved for those challenging convention.
Keller's restaurants "refine" convention but do not "challenge" it.
Alinea "challenges" convention as doe WD-50, Snackbar, Moto, Gagnaire ect ect.
In archtectural terms......French Laundry and PerSe are like Helmut Jahn (#1 and #2 liberty place in philadelphia), Alinea is like Frank Gehry or Rem Koolhass (Gugenheim Museum Bilbao and Seattle Public library Respectively).
Amada is a good restaurant but it is in no way the "unparralelled" spanish tapas place on the east coast. First of all they have 90% table service and they do not serve better food than Casa Mono, Boqueria and nowhere near as good as Tia Pol.
It is a GOOD place but it gets hype because it was the first to do what it does in Philadelphia much like Le Bec Fin, Buddakan, Continental, Striped Bass.
Purely the same reason people who had never set foot in Paris used to say LBF was the best french restaurant in the world back in the roaring 80's.
April White's conclusions were sublimated into the wrong statement, "we need better Italian restaurants", what she was saying in a broader context is we need more mid priced places with liquor licenses that serve better food than BYOB's which are able to effortlessly sell mediocre food to the masses purely on the value of savings on alchohol prices...........and that means virtually every italian BYOB in center city except perhaps melograno.
The bar of mediocrity is much lower for italian cuisine because it inherently depends on a few basic flavors to communicate it's intergrity.
THUS, cutting any corners like using cheap Olio, serving pregrated cheeses, American proscuitto and all that other garbage shows.
If Liquor licences in Philly became less than 10 grand like they are in Manhattan, the BYOboom in Philly will vaporize within 6 months.
The kind of food that elevates young chef's to the national stage requires the food cost percentage generated by liquor revenues and that is straight from our freinds at Microsoft excell.
Food and wine's ten best new chefs philadelphia
Pernot, Martorella, Vetri, Lee, Filoni................no BYO's
Despite all Django's hoopla, it was just a local phenom based on BYO "methodology".
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So if molecular gastronomy goes out of fashion - hardly difficult to conceive - it will simply shrivel up and disappear; to put it crudely, because there's no longer money in it. The main thing going for it at the moment, speaking from the customer's end of things, is image. At a guess, I'd say it will not be terribly long before the phrase "molecular gastronomy" becomes commercial poison, and it will be interesting then to see how many chefs still want to be associated with the name.
You mean like "Nouvelle Cuisine" ?
It started already, even Adria has said there is no such thing as molecular gastronomy.
Interestingly, all the hype with MG is epicentered in the USA.
While boundary pushing should not be discouraged, the europeans still understand that good chorizo tastes a hell of a lot better than chorizo emulsions and what not.
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For the moment, and assuming LaBan isn't just flat off the mark, I think I'm just glad to have the experience to look forward to. Though I'd rather the promotion didn't come across as such a slight to Jean-Marie Lacroix.
I dont think it should be taken as a slight to Lacroix but interestingly, he praises his legacy and then caps it off with......"The arrival of new chef Matthew Levin, however, is proving to be just the energy jolt that Lacroix the restaurant needed."...............which makes it sound like one of these "We have come to bury Ceasar not to praise him" speeches but I dont think that is Laban's intent.
Regardless he is the critic and he can write as he sees fit.
What is curiously interesting though is that the food as described doesnt seem to be breaking any new ground per-se but merely being served with interesting accompaniments.
I mean really...a lobster tempura, butter poaching another shellfish and seafood cappucinos and lattes. It also seems gratuitous inaccuracies (not lies) are increasingly used to impress the public without really contributing anything to flavor.......such as....
"The multicourse tasting meals, meanwhile, are a showcase for sharp concepts and prized ingredients - like the season's first Nantucket Bay scallops (a tiny harvest Lacroix divvied up with Thomas Keller at Per Se and Alex Stratta in Vegas.) Levin served them pristinely, but with a tweak, the sweet raw scallops shined in prime olive oil and citrus vodka, then scattered with the tart crunch of tiny diced apples and the salty pop of caviar"
Since when did serving raw scallops with olive oil, apple and caviar become a tweak ????
Now that is just totally bullshit, all the scallops in Nantucket bay did not go to 3 restaurants in America and prime seafood restaurants like le bernadin and oceana were not interested.
But it makes for impressive cache and great company.....Stratta's Vegas place may be the best seafood restaurant in America.
But really, at least 30 different people harvest scallops in Nantucket and for any 3 restaurants to *exclusively* share the first harvest requires a lee harvey oswaldian-jack rub-ish conspiracy....
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85C-ish on the bath?
Zchef, today I tried it at 90C for two hours, perfectly soft and smooth results, I am sure you could go lower temp wise but I wasnt in the mood for experimentation since it was being cooked to break down cellulose....like mushy soft.
Although I did *not* do the spices in the bag like Johnny said......I added them in the food processor during the puree phase. I feel this gives better control of the spice profile and seasoning just as s_sevilla suggested.
Looking forward to making some pasta tommorow.
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In addition to cleaning the blood out, blanch the bones with boiling water for 30 seconds and rinse off before making the stock.
Removes all those "murky" fishy flavors.
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I know that "more perfect is not grammatically correct, but if it is in the preamble of the constitution, I am going to write it too
More perfect is acceptable Matt...
George Orwell said "All animals are equal but some are *more equal* than others"
I suppose those would be the ones that havent been pumped up with antibiotics, hormones and tryptophan..................
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we are all in for a BIG surprise
Well the restaurant always had 3 bells and with Jean Marie Lacroix no longer affiliated with it, conventional wisdom would be that it would maintain the status quo or lose 1 bell.
Though i am not one to speculate about these things, I am interpreting the word "surprise" to mean 4 bells ?
Ultimately while I consider Inquirer reviews to be entirely subjective, it would be *completely* insulting to JML to give the restaurant 4 bells after he left and I frankly would be interested in what that last intangible aspect of the place was..........but as you say, its all speculation until noon saturday
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Ouch....Bigboss.
Clearly you know more than I do.
It certainly will be a barometer of if the dining public at large has any interest in (pardon the use or should I say misuse of the term) "molecular gastronomy".
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Big boss, Murcury,
Young MathewJ the king of bees, thanks for the honey, it rocks.
Guess who Laban's reviewing next week...?
I bet you cant wait......
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So the Rav smells like ass, then?
Haha....if you truly despise someone, leave a well packaged Vacherin under the drivers seat in july.
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Langoustines are also called Dublin-Bay prawns.
Dont forget those Crazeeee Austrailians.
"Yabbies"
"Moreton Bay Bugs"
Say what .....
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I miss Verge, formerly of East Falls. I went when they first opened, they were closed within a couple of months. They must've incurred too much debt refurbishing the space,
Verge didnt close because of debt service, nobody went there.
I mean not enough people, the food was actually quite interesting but opening a restaurant anywhere between center city and 34th street OR center city and Manayunk is a big risk because you are just out of the mix, they become too much of a destination.
The above theory may be very wrong but it's certainly being tested currently by The waterworks and RAE at Cira.
Though Craig Laban practically said "speak hands for me" and gave the death stab to the waterworks with that Rat story in his review.
The owner of Verge was Mark Sherman who is spending tens of millions developing housing and work space in east falls.
http://www.themillsateastfalls.com/
Money wasnt the issue, it just didnt do *any* business plus it had an extremely bad location. It was around a dangerous curve on Kelly drive where no one driving likes to stop and is also prone to flooding from overflow of the river which actually happened a few times.
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Hearty winter soups, whe bean, chick pea, escarole ect ect
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New york times today......
http://travel2.nytimes.com/2006/11/26/trav...html?ref=travel
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Lots of photos, no leftovers.
Thoughts.............ultimately ended up making a ballotine CSV/Activa which was quite good.
Will post pictures at some point, getting usd to the new camera.
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nyone know anything about it?
Something about soft tofu to die for?
Hubby doesn't like tofu much, but our friend insists we'll love it.
To answer your original question......The place rocks, its the Sagami of Korean food.
They have lots besides soft tofu, short ribs rice bowls ect ect.......and dirt cheap.
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Had a drink there last week decor is still the same otherwise new menu and new chef sadly to the detriment of the cuisine. Similar food as Striped bass and frankly not that exciting.
Previous chef's food (Leibrandt) was way better.
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The end result is a foie that's rather mangled and now resting in the shape of a torchon rather than a whole liver
Bryan, for some reason people seem to think deveining is critical to whole roasted foie preparations.........It isnt, its a torchon/terrine requirement.
Breaking it up into anything other than the two lobe seperation and removing the attached main veins ruins the liver.
You absolutely just want to buy a great grade A foie gras.
I have typically found the PALMEX and Sonoma types to be more evenly shaped, vein free and suited to whole foie preparation.
I know. I've done it half a dozen times or so. The question is how do you remold it in a way that when faced with high heat - direct or unbound in poaching - it won't begin to fall apart along the seems of where you broke it up.Answer above.
This method comes from a Spanish chef's kitchen, but I won't say which since I haven't been able to confirm it yet.Similar to Aduriz's method at Mugaritz and sometimes he finishes it on a charcoal grill behind the restaurant.
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We did not receive the same number of extra courses (only the duo of canape spreads and an amuse of white bean soup) as Vadouvan, but then again we're nowhere near as cool.
Zupon.........To add to your answer regarding how it will be percieved by NY'ers......I agree that while it doesnt have the ultimate modern refinement and creativity of Perse, it still handily trumps places like Delposto and Cru.
The bread, dessert and butter service arent nearly as good as Per se's, I thought Gilt had the best actual bread, Per se had more variety, but Ramsay's is just lame. At least they do use la colombe coffee.
It will be interesting how bruni sees it because while they srtive for the same level of service and refinement as Perse and the other high end places, Ramsay is 40% less expensive.
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I wouldnt take the jacket thing too seriously, strangely more than half of the gents took off thier jackets after a course or two and hung it right behind thier chairs and that was just fine with the restaurant. They are far more interested in you being comfortable than any silly dress codes.
Servers actually said "can we hang it up for you or do you just want it behind your chair"
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You could make a forcemeat out of either breast or dark meat however from a technical perspective, I would stuff the breast as opposed to boning out and stuffing both thighs, at best there will be tons of forcemeat left over.
It is preferable to grind and not puree the meat, grinding gives you a mousse-sy texture which I find horrible unless it is actual german frankfurters in germany.
For whatever reason you do decide to puree the meat, make sure it is nearly frozen before you do so. The chill protects texture and prevents the fat from seperating which dries it out during cooking.
EVEN if you are adding fatback, chill it well.
Eggs are fine as a binder, cream will heavily dilute the flavor and texture, breadcrumbs make it too dense.
Cream Or Fatback ?
Cream and fatback add different qualities.
Fatback adjusts the lean to fat ratio which affects the delicious mouthfeel of the stuffing.
Think of it as a ground beef ratio for hamburger, a 70/30 (lean to fat) ratio burger will be more tasty than a 90/10 assuming similar cooking.
Bread soaked in milk (panade) make the forcemeat moister and softer post cooking, a definite plus. You basically want to get cheap white supermarket bread, cut off the edges, soak it in milk, squeeze all the milk out and add that paste.
Dont be tempted to use any fancy silly breads........cheap sliced whitebread like kids use for sandwiches.
I would use Fatback
Skip the cream
Panade for sure
Slightly undercaramelized onions are good.
Picked fresh herbs like thyme or/and sage.
Season with salt/pep/spices.
Before you stuff your birdie, it is advised to saute a tiny bit of that forcemeat to check it's flavor so you can adjust seasoning.
As for liquor...............Reduced Madiera is best, something like a Paul Masson which cost $6 or if you want to splurge, an inexpensive rainwater madiera.
Put booze in pan, gently bring to a boil, flame it till alchohol burns off, reduce by half, cool completely before using......
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Lunch #2 at GR today.
We decided to do the $45 Lunch menu.
A $80 3 course a la carte and a $110 7 Course menu prestige is also offered at lunchtime.
Comlimentary Tastes
2 little ramekins with toasts.
Truffle Goat cheese mousse
Foie gras and Chicken liver parfait
Standard but delicious.
Goat cheese mousse was excellent earthy truffle flavor without overuse or any use at all of truffle oil.
Amuse Bouche
Marinated Beetroots, toasted pinenuts, whipped ricotta cheese.
Nice lite starter, tasty vinaigrette.
1st courses
Ballotine of Foie Gras, Pickled Vegetables,Cauliflower Puree, Toasted Brioche.
The Ballotine/Torchon was excellent and perfectly seasoned, as good or better than any I have had in NY including PerSe, much more of a Foie centric dish than say the more intellectual approach at wd 50 for example.
Brioche was luxurious.
Pickled Vegetables on the other hand lacked enough acid and sweetness to offer any compatibility with the Foie, Idea was great but pickling solution for my tastes could be stronger.
As a whole, the Foie and Brioche were so good it was still excellent.
Veloute of Globe Artichoke, Chicken , Mushroom and Herb Tortellini.
Soup Broth was perfect, not too creamy, great artichoke flavor.
Overall a tasty dish.
Tortellini wrapper could be a touch more delicate but filling was otherwise well seasoned.
The gigantic tortellini which I suppose gramatically becomes a tortelloni looked beautiful sitting on top of some braised cabbage.
Second Courses
Pot Roasted Leg of Rabbit Confit Garlic, Oyster Mushrooms, Roasted Celeriac, Anchovy Jus.
The portion was rather large, if not the most exciting rabbit dish, one has to keep in mind that it is a $45 menu. The leg was wrapped in cured ham either serrano or parma.
This also seemed like the farmed milder flavoured rabbit thus the anchovy sauce and ham handily overwhelmed any rabbit flavor.
Roast Leg of Lamb,Caramelized Chicory,Golden Raisins, Tomato Molasses
Again, a standard tasty preparation, the star of the plate was the unadvertised Lamb Rillette.
I have had more tender and more sweet sour caramelized endive.
I almost feel one needs to capitalise on the bitterness of endive by foiling it with sweetness and acid.
ooops..
Mid course of
Oven Roasted Foie Gras, caramelized Williams Pear, Date Millefuille
A milder sear than I like for Foie, looks like it was seared lightly with a nut crust and finished in the oven. A little underseasoned but easily corrected with some table salt.
The fried sage and poire william made a great combination.
Desserts
Coconut Tangerine Sorbet, Licorice Root, Date puree, Crisp Pound Cake.
Vanilla Poached Pear, Chestnuts, milk Gelee, Casta Diva Cosecha and Chocolate Madeleines.
Both desserts were OK, in fact the dessert amuse bouche was by far more interesting.
Retired to R4D and chatted with Goldfarb.
Closing thoughts....
Certainly not the most creative or most delicious meal I have had but guess what..
Its been open 3 days
it's $45 per person which is an excellent value, however you could rack up your bill in wine.
The staff is extremely professional and behave as if you are spending significantly more $$$ with the same enthusiasm.
Gordon Ramsay walked by, stopped at the table and thanked us for our support in a really gracious tone inconsistent with his TV escapades, even his body language was wierdly contrite.
Came off as a really nice guy.
Stars of the Meal were the Soup and Foie Ballotine.
Wine matches were excellent and we reluctantly asked for half glasses paired with the dishes which they accomodated.
Would I go back ?
Yes, there are tons of more interesting sounding dishes on the menu prestige.
It seems to be priced at about $115 less than the same number of courses at Per Se.
April Whites article in Philly Mag-
in Pennsylvania: Dining
Posted
Matt, the reason i dont think BYOB's are a goodstarting point is that once you open a BYO for at least 3 months, you can never get a liquor license and keep more than 20% of your previous customers.