Leonard Kim
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Posts posted by Leonard Kim
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I enjoyed the episode. It's airing again this weekend.
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I've only been to Elie's once, but I found the staff friendly and helpful, and I see no reason I wouldn't go back. Note they only offer French wines. http://www.eliewine.com/
Simply Wine in Birmingham specializes in inexpensive wines (though they do offer a few higher priced items) -- their tag line is actually, "100 best wines under $15." Every one of their staff I've interacted with has been very friendly and helpful. Warning: it's not the most efficiently-run business I've ever seen (for example, I've come not to trust their delivery service), and I think the prices may be relatively high (meaning, in this price range, say $10 for something you could get for $8 on-line or in another store, if you can find it.) So my wife and I do sometimes wonder why we come here. I guess it's because it's easy and enjoyable to put together a case with the staff's help that lets us explore a lot of different inexpensive but mostly decent wines. I guess that's good for novices, which is what we are.
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Cora keeps losing despite the endless lowering of her competition: it's embarrassing for all of us, and screams tokenism.
Cat Cora has a better won/lost record on ICA than Morimoto:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_resul...on_Chef_America
shel
Based on the figures listed on the wiki link, Kat Cora's loss percentage is at 33.33%, while Morimoto's loss is at 29.16%. And the quality of opponents Morimoto had to do battle are more skilled. Kat Cora's skills, as Iron Chef, is a joke.
Wikipedia is wrong as of 11/26/07 at 10:20 EST. The record shown in the table is Morimoto's record from the Japanese version of the show. (Actually, to my count, Cora's record is the only one shown correctly on that table.) On the American show Morimoto is at exactly 0.500.
It is not obvious to me that their quality of competition has been very different, though that is subjective, and I defer to more knowledgeable people in that regard:
(Wins by the Iron Chef are bold)
Cora: Alex Lee, Neal Fraser, Sam Choy, Kerry Simon, Dotolo & Shook, Walter Scheib, Michael Psilakis, Joey Campanaro, Elizabeth Falkner, Walter Royal, David Myers, Mary Dumont, Alexandra Guarnaschelli, Mark Tarbell, Irvine/Florence.
Morimoto: Rob Feenie, Roberto Donna (x2), Aaron Sanchez, Tom Douglas, Michael Symon, Christophe Eme, Patricia Yeo, Homaro Cantu, Linton Hopkins, Tim Love.
Notes: Morimoto went 1-1 against Donna, and his win was guaranteed by Donna essentially forfeiting by not completing his dishes. The battle against Eme was arguably uneven as Eme was short-staffed. Morimoto-Sanchez was a tie.
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While the IC Japanese chefs had NO inkling whatsoever about the secret ingredient, I've known for a while that the IC Americzan chefs are given a short list ahead of time of what the secret ingredient might be - which always annoyed me thoroughly. Then, too, in the beginning, the challengers always had the ICA chef they'd be going up against (I guess so the IC could fit all the tapings into his busy schedule), which REALLY ticked me off so much, I've refused to watch it until the TNIC competition. (In Japan, all the chefs were brought in on a Sunday morning, and they taped several episodes back to back. Even if only, say, two IC Japan chefs were selected for battle, all four came in and were prepared to tape. All day.)
I'm sorry, but I'm not sure where you are getting all of your information. According to the Iron Chef book, the IC Japanese chefs were given a secret ingredient list as in the American show. This was not true at the very beginning of the run (when Ishinabe was IC French, and that information is courtesy of him, from that same book), and that may be what you're thinking of. There are multiple references in that book as well as on the show itself to the planning meetings that would take place on both the ICs and challengers' part once they had their secret ingredient clues.
It's been widely reported (though I suppose I don't have a primary source for this) that the Iron Chefs on the Japanese show were pre-selected for the challenger, just as in the American show. I suppose this should be obvious from the practical standpoint (Morimoto had to fly from New York to Japan for taping, and it seems implausible that he'd do so for nothing.) It is often cited that the footage of the Iron Chefs rising into the stadium is "stock" footage and that the selection of the Iron Chef is always shot so that only that chef is seen (because the others aren't there.)
None of this ought to be surprising. Iron Chef America didn't spring out of a vacuum. The New York Times reported that the producers, first thing, were flown to Japan for an "indoctrination session" with Fuji during which they watched hundreds of episodes of Iron Chef Japan. The MSNBC story reports that the "rule book" is based on the one used in Japan.
The secret ingredient list -- the evidence here is what's reported in the media as well as testimony from the challengers. From this, we can say that the number of items on the list is not fixed. It's been reported as two (Grimes' New York Times story on Flay vs. Bayless), three (multiple times, including firsthand testimony from challengers), five (the "official" number derived from the Japanese show, according to MSNBC), and six (Chicago Tribune story that closely follows challenger Graham Elliott Bowles from the initial phone call to final judging controversy).
Two final comments:
First, I have always hated the widespread analogy linking Iron Chef to professional wrestling. The participants of professional wrestling -- that's their job -- they make their living as actors in a fake, scripted competition. With Iron Chef, the participants take a modest amount of time out of their real professional lives to do the show. The chefs and judges are real people; some are egullet members. We're talking scores and scores of people who do not depend on the Food Network or Iron Chef for their livelihood. Every participant who has ever commented on the show has said it's real. Most have been enthusiastic about the experience and have said they would do it again. The very existence of this show is dependent on the goodwill of an external, well-connected professional community to provide participants. It defies plausibility that this would be the case if the show were largely scripted by the network as far as the battle, the outcome, etc. Nobody to my knowledge has ever come close to demonstrating that the show is not essentially what it claims to be. At worst there is the possibility of individual judges, for whatever reason, being less than honorable. But that's an unfortunate danger with any such event (Olympic boxing, skating, gymnastics, etc.)
Second, as I said on the Next Iron Chef thread, we're all working off the same sources here -- books, TV, news. Sure, I'm always interested if somebody says something about the show that I didn't know, based on a source that isn't widely accessible. But there seems to be a lot of "knowledge" out there that isn't supported.
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if you read the blogs, its revealed that besh won the paris challenge even though they never announced it
I don't think it's correct to infer that a winner was chosen in the Paris challenge but was not announced. I believe it's more likely that no vote was ever made. Ruhlman did write, "I think over all [sic] even Symon would agree that if there had to be a choice of a winner, it would have gone to Besh." Symon (on money.cnn.com) wrote, "The judges didn't declare a winner this time around, though I think Besh would have won if they had." But Knowlton, on his blog, wrote, "If I had to pick a winner last night, it was Symon." On air, Arpaia said that Symon won 4 challenges. It's possible she misspoke, but if she's correct, it only adds up if she personally or the judges informally and collectively felt Symon won Paris. On his blog, Knowlton repeats the winning 4 challenges bit, but bear in mind he presumably wrote that some months after taping, just after having watched the episode in question, so he may have been merely parroting the comment Donatella made on air.
I've refrained from commenting on the NIC finale anywhere before now because everybody is working from the same sources: the episode and the blogs of Ruhlman, Knowlton, and Symon (his own, on the cleveland.com forums, and on money.cnn.com), and these sources have been dissected endlessly even though the blogs were all likely written in haste months after the event in question and the episode obviously presents judiciously incomplete information.
All I can say is that what we can actually claim to know from these sources is, imo, less than what people seem to be taking away.
One specific: I don't think it's given the 6 judges were all considering cumulative performance. Yes, Ruhlman and Knowlton both wrote that it informed their own judging. Yes, Alton, in addressing the three series judges (not the ICs) on-air mentions this factor. But Morimoto, on-air, said that though he listened to the overview given by the series judges, he himself only knew what he saw today and went on to explain his own method of judging. And Ruhlman said at least three times (though not specific to this episode): "i was never instructed how to judge and in each case made my own decision and voted that way," "Steve and Eytan, two of the producers from Triage, always instructed us to judge it as we saw it. I was not surprised by this, but Andrew, cynical jaded New York journalist that he is, professed to be surprised by the amount of freedom we were given to make our choices," "I don't know who said it, but no winner was pre-selected. We were told repeatedly by the producers to vote from our gut. And if they had told me anything else, I would have said, f.u."
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I love Nippon Grille in Berkley for the area's BEST sushi at some of the lowest prices I've seen anywhere;
Finally found a Tuesday slow enough at work that I could try this. (They are only open for lunch on Tuesdays.)
The owner-chef, Tot, was so friendly that I came away feeling this restaurant should be supported and I should do my part by seconding jende's recommendation here. (Reading the article clippings posted around the back entrance, I get the sense that our local critics got the same impulse.)
The food was good and tasty. I wouldn't go so far as jende above, which seems to suggest you're getting some ridiculous bargain on high-end food. The food is modestly priced, and that's where you should set your expectation level. That said, I pay those prices for all kinds of crap meals, when I'd much rather have food like this. And it's warming to get the sense that, when you come back, you'll be remembered and treated as a regular.
They have a website: www.nippongrille.com
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One thing that Top Chef did, that TNIC could learn, is to provide more information via blogging.
It was incredibly helpful, for example, to find out that Casey failed the prep challenge because she hadn't sharpened her knives, and not because she didn't know what she was doing. It would be great to get a better breakdown on the details that they can't squeeze into a 1-hour show.
There's a little of this on Andrew Knowlton's weekly TNIC blog posts on Epicurious:
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Terrible day at work, so I'm quite behind here, but I suppose it's my assumed duty to point out Nobu 57 has *** from Bruni. Even including Masa, he doesn't reach 15% of *** and **** being Asian restaurants.
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Since this is being discussed on three different threads, with some lagging others, I thought it might be worth starting a dedicated topic to summarize what's been reported.
The original NY Post article -- the gist is that, on being told his other shows would not be renewed, Batali said he'd stop doing Iron Chef, and the network calls him on it.
http://www.nypost.com/seven/09052007/news/..._flames_out.htm
Ed Levine asks Batali who denies story, citing his taping of two ICA episodes this week:
http://www.seriouseats.com/required_eating...-next-week.html
New York Post runs second article, insisting that Batali and another chef will, nevertheless be replaced after November (i.e., after current tapings of Iron Chef are complete.)
http://www.nypost.com/seven/09062007/news/..._fork_in_me.htm
non-Post media start reporting this story. General denials all around. Shows like Molto Mario may no longer be re-run, but Batali is still apparently IC.
http://www.abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/St...=3568545&page=1
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/entertainment/...0,4950082.story
http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Entertainment...or_batali/9966/
http://community.tvguide.com/blog-entry/TV...k-Hot/800021719
So is that it? Perhaps not. I don't read anything in the denials that rules out that Batali is taping his last episodes of Iron Chef. Unless "The Next Iron Chef" actually shows an Iron Chef retiring (though press releases for that show claim the Next Iron Chef is in addition to, not a replacement), I'm sure everybody will act as if there are 5 current Iron Chefs until 2009, even though the TV evidence for that will be based on episodes being taped right now (if history is a guide, the current tapings will be aired starting and throughout 2008.) As far as the viewing public is concerned, Batali is still an Iron Chef for another year-plus, by which time the current flap may be forgotten. At that point, somebody could be "officially" and gracefully retired, whether that's Batali, somebody else, or both.
I put credence to the news that somebody, maybe not Batali, is leaving Iron Chef, because Bobby Flay says so in the "Ask Bobby" portion of his website. (Mouse over "Bobby" then click "Ask Bobby")
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To partly answer your questions (although the only really correct answer is to record the episodes):
www.gameshownewsnet.com/prime lists names of dishes and summarizes the action for episodes up to April 2007. Follow the links from the "archives" section. (There's no link for season 4, so you have to type in that address, i.e., the above followed by /icaseries4)
If you need a more recent episode and just the names of the dishes, somebody on the forum: www.thepaperpusher.net (in the "Weapons of Mass Distraction" forum) always seems to post this information. Look for posts titled "New Iron Chef America ep for [date of episode]"
My question is, if Carmellini couldn't do it, who's ever going to beat Batali on this show? He's won 9 in a row. If Fortunato Nicotra gets matched up against him, he'd have a shot, I guess.
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http://www.nypost.com/seven/09062007/news/..._fork_in_me.htm
The Post reports that despite Batali's contention, he is, in fact, out (along with "another" Iron Chef.)
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I wonder whether it has anything to do with this:
http://www.nypost.com/seven/09052007/news/..._flames_out.htm
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Freep article on the new exec chef of Tribute
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article...2/70821058/1027
and the News has this bit about the chef change at the Whitney:
http://detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?A.../708160438/1042
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http://www.nyrestaurantinsider.com/oct2005_ducasse.asp
We're talking a half year -- I agree that's enough time for Bruni to have started revisiting. And Bruni's initial review explicitly says they recognize him.
Sorry to quibble about the precedents issue, but the distinction I laid out in the previous post is supported by Bruni in his Diner's Journal entry about re-reviewing, namely:
Given the number and pace of new openings, there simply aren’t enough days in a year to circle back and re-try all the existing restaurants that were rated the previous year or the year before that.Among the restaurants I’ve reviewed and rated since June 2004, when I began, there are some that, more than others, struck me as places with the potential to be better a year or two down the road than they were a few months after they opened. I’ll indeed make a special effort to return to these restaurants, but I’ll probably only re-review them if I feel strongly that they need a different rating.
As I said in the previous post, this covers virtually all the rapid re-reviews, but Ducasse and other established restaurants fall under a different category:
I do think it’s important, especially in the cases of prominent restaurants, to make an effort, no matter how random and flawed, to go back periodically to determine whether the initial published appraisals and existing star ratings seem to hold true.I make more of these return visits than the review space reflects.
. . . select club of restaurants with four stars from The Times. To my mind, that superior rating demands periodic re-examination and re-justification in a way that a lesser rating doesn’t.
One of the comments to Bruni's piece (I know, commenters are idiots) wrote in March 2006:
Is it relevant? It has been about 6.5 years since Daniel was last reviewed.Jean François Bruel took over the Daniel kitchen a few years ago now, yet there was never a fresh review of the restaurant from the Times.I agree that a timely Diner's Journal piece would have been warranted in any case. As for never visiting (I admit the following is very shaky evidence), Bruni mentions Ducasse in his "cult of the chef" blog post, dated 1/24/07. I think it'd be slightly odd (or rather, poorly and misleadingly written, which is surely possible) if he were personally referring to visits from 2004-05. One could infer (perhaps incorrectly) from the language that he'd been more recently.
In August 2006, another post has him talking to the manager of Ducasse about price-less menus. So it's not like he's had no contact with the restaurant whatsoever and it'd be a little perverse if this were the only contact ("Hi, it's Frank, I'm not ever showing up, and you're not getting re-reviewed, but do you mind giving me your 2 cents on this fluff piece I'm writing?") Heck, one could completely and unjustifiably speculate in a manner unworthy of the serious e-gulleteer that in fact Bruni and Ducasse's staff do periodically communicate with each other and perhaps Bruni was asked/told not to bother re-reviewing because the new restaurant was in the works.The restaurant Alain Ducasse at the Essex House isn’t around anymore, but if you went before it closed at the turn of the year, you may remember the following details:I'm not going to argue this next point at any length, but it's possible to view a reporter's and a critic's responsibilities as being different. The chef change was duly and unusually extensively reported as news by Fabricant. I'm not sure the same standards apply to reviews.
Ten years from now, would something like this read strangely to anyone? "There are and were very few restaurants in NYC with the pedigree and potential importance of ADNY [stolen from John's post]. In 2001, it received **** from the New York Times. In the following years, the restaurant failed to maintain consistency in both food and service and, two years ago, was demoted to ***. Changes have been made, including a new executive chef, and the results are. . ."
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All right, to put it simply, what is unprecedented is that the chef change came about immediately and as a direct result of the demotion with the explicit expectation that the change was to bring a return to ****.
Should that machination by the restaurant accelerate the critic's normal schedule of re-appraising certain restaurants (and I fully agree ADNY would be one) at a frequency of, at best, every two years, but more practically five or more? I think there's a strong argument, for various reasons, for no.
The point of my previous post is that I think certain precedents are more relevant than others. To me, the best two are Le Cirque and EMP.
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Here is why, in my mind, it's not so clear cut. I sort of follow Nathan in sensing an arguable difference between a 1st and 2nd review vs. later ones.
the first review -- many new restaurants have lofty ambitions which are not fully realized within the currently typical timeframe of a first review. The review can be stereotypically expected to note the restaurant's promise, ambition, and inconsistency.
the second review -- some of these restaurants shake off the perceived flaws and develop, without substantially changing themselves, to positions of particular relevance and prominence. On occasion, this merits an "X has arrived" type review involving a promotion to *** or ****. Typically this does happen quickly. I count seven recent-ish examples of restaurants that got **** on their second try: Ducasse, old Daniel, new Daniel, Bouley & Bouley Bakery, Lafayette, and Lespinasse. Five of these second reviews came in under 2 years, the other two within 3. I would put Union Pacific, Nobu, Picholine (2.2 years), Gramercy Tavern (1.3 years) and Modern as examples of this phenomenon at the *** level.
In the past, some established restaurants did get regular reviews past their second -- examples are places like Chanterelle, Coach House, Felidia, Four Seasons, Le Perigord, and River Cafe. Up through Reichl, such restaurants would get reviewed approximately every three years. But starting with Grimes and continuing with Bruni, 5, 10, 15, or even more years pass before an "established" place gets another look.
So why did Ducasse get a third review when it did? When Bruni started, he said part of his agenda was to revisit all the ****. At the time, LB had gone the longest without re-review, followed by J-G, Bouley, Daniel, and ADNY. You'd expect him to follow that order. However, Bruni started with Bouley. Why? Well, my guess is it's because the **** Bouley Bakery closed after 9/11, re-opening as Bouley in Feb. 2002. According to Fabricant's "Off the Menu" piece, "it's more than just a name change." I don't know what Grimes thought about thee need for a fresh review, but Bruni apparently thought this incarnation priority enough to be his third review ever.
For his second **** re-visit, Bruni again bucked the sensible order and reviewed ADNY, just three years after its last review. Why? Well, again, my guess is the "most significant tweak" of bringing in Delouvrier. Whether Ducasse actually believed it or not, his statements in Fabricant's article about the chef change are something of an admission that Bruni's rating wasn't wrong, saying "I knew we could not regain four stars with Christian Delouvrier at the helm, and I had to make important changes in the dynamic of the kitchen."
The problem is there is no precedent for a **** restaurant to lose a star and get "fast-tracked" for a review to win it back. The closest example is Le Cirque which, after Reichl's famous demotion, closed and moved and re-incarnated with a new chef as Le Cirque 2000 before getting back **** (hmm, maybe this is all part of Ducasse's master plan.) Nearly 4 years passed between those reviews.
There are almost no examples of a *** restaurant going to ** and getting it back fairly quickly either. And those examples are of the kind I mentioned above -- Miller and Reichl were reviewing places like La Caravelle every 2-3 years anyway, so it could ping-pong back and forth between ** and ***.
So one way of looking things is ADNY got a third review because Bruni was doing all the **** anyway. It got reviewed so quickly (3 years since the last) because the chef change provided a good rationale. However, as an established restaurant, Bruni's norm for yet another review would be to wait at least 5 years (barring a closing and re-opening) before coming back to it. Even if he adopted Reichl or Miller's practice, he'd have waited 2 or 3 years. Given FG's arguments about the importance of this restaurant and the rating, he might have been persuaded to do it sooner than later, but even so, as I said in a previous post, I think Bruni might arguably have been given two years before clearly justified irateness set in.
As for Craftsteak and Compass -- well, I'd say in some cases exceptions should stay exceptions, not become precedents. Also, there's the point that Bruni's self-revisions, even fairly important promotions like EMP and Bar Room at the Modern, have thus far occurred within double reviews. That would hardly be possible for a **** review.
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to me the key part is that it would have been 4 reviews in 5 years for ADNY...which I think other restauranteurs could rightfully be irked about.
I'm just being perverse and this is nothing you don't already know -- so think nothing of it. If you count Marika (other than the name, the only difference was dropping an owner -- the basic look and the exec chef remained the same), Compass was reviewed four times in less than five years.
edited to add Grimes Diner's Journal quote:
Compass, formerly Marika, is a restaurant looking for a new direction. Physically, it looks much the same, although a new abstract painting has been installed on the back wall. The executive chef, Neil Annis, who was called in to shore up Marika's kitchen, remains in place. . . With a new name and without one of its original partners, Marika has wiped the slate clean and started afresh. -
After looking at it from a number of angles, I can't decide whether Bruni was derelict wrt re-reviewing Ducasse or not.
The time between EMP reviews was just under two years. Bruni explicitly writes, "I normally wouldn't review a restaurant again so soon" but, "Humm's food. . . made me do it." Humm had been at EMP for about a year by the time the review came out. And even then, the revision came as part of a double review.
Bruni's first Ducasse review came out after Delouvrier had been there a half year. It had been three years since Grimes last review. Bruni's review came out in February '05. Esnault started in April. The Times announced the closing, I think, in September 2006. So Esnault had been there long enough to review, but the time elapsed since the initial review is short (less than 1.5 years). That's because, as Ducasse himself said, the chef change came about explicitly and immediately as a result of the *** review. Under the circumstances, I might have given Bruni about two years. I wonder if he'd have tried to make it part of a double review, as all of his revisions have been to date.
In her memoirs, Reichl writes numerous people told her she was wrong about Union Pacific, and that example is the fastest post-Sheraton turnaround on record. Grimes promoted Ducasse after a little more than a year and Daniel in a little under two. Maybe you can get faster re-reviews by changing nothing but the critic's mind (since changes justify waiting longer to let them get their groove.) All Bruni said about the rationale for promoting the Bar Room at the Modern was that after the first review, he'd "repeatedly found myself drawn back to the Bar Room, at first just worried, then persuaded, that I’d shortchanged it." The new half-review came out 1 year 8 months after the original.
The stupid exception is Craftsteak which was promoted in less than a year because it had "undergone so many targeted and consequential changes [including chef de cuisine] that I feel compelled to update my initial review." The only (though real) mitigating consideration is the double review format.
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My guess is that, by historical standards, that's a fairly long time to go without a new four-star restaurant (or a promotion) being crowned.
It's long but not unusually so. As of today, it's been 2 years and 7.5 months since Bruni gave Masa ****. In the last 30 years, that puts him in 4th place in dryspells without new or promoted ****. He needs five more reviews to take 3rd place, 27 to take 2nd (late February), and 38 to take the crown in May.
That record is 3 years and 4 months, which occurred from August 1990 to December 1993. It began with Miller's promotion of Bouley, which he had initially given ** in 1987, and ended with Reichl's re-promotion of Chanterelle, which had been demoted by Miller from **** to ** in 1989. Also in that time period, Miller re-affirmed **** for Le Cirque and Lutece.
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So, an entire year has gone by with only one new three-star restaurant, and no new four-star restaurants. That must be a new record for futility. Perhaps Leonard Kim can search his database. Has there ever been a year with so few new restaurants at the top two levels?
It hasn't happened in over ten years. It last happened between 9/95 - 8/96. Reichl handed out 11 *** and 0 ****, but only one of the *** reviews was new: Fifty-seven Fifty-seven (at the Four Seasons Hotel, where L'Atelier also is), though I gather it had been open a couple of years before the review.
For some reason, giving only one new restaurant a year a *** or **** rating is actually very common in the 80s. I don't know whether it was different reviewing practices (with frequent re-reviews, it's more feasible to rate conservatively at first and promote restaurants in re-review) or something real about that decade.
Keep in mind that there are almost no new **** restaurants anyway. Almost all of them start at a lower rating and get promoted. That's why you see people pointing to Le Bernardin as an odd example of a restaurant starting at **** and never giving them up (it's been reviewed 4 times in all.) Jean-Georges can now say the same thing, with Bruni's re-review. Masa is arguable, since Hesser declined to rate it on a first go. There's Per Se, and that's it for the last 30 years or so. Grimes and Sheraton never gave a new **** review.
My nomination for all-time futility year is 9/83 - 8/84. Mimi Sheraton did September and Marian Burros did the rest (Brian Miller didn't take over till October '84). In that time the Quilted Giraffe was promoted to ****. There was one *** review, a re-review of Parioli Romanissimo. And that's it.
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I don't have any inside information, and you've probably seen these, but the MGM website offers "sketches" of these restaurants:
http://www.mgmgranddetroit.com/pressroom/press_061107.aspx
Also, I linked to the following in another thread. The analogous article in the Free Press mentioned that David Viviano of the Grill at the Ritz-Carlton is also going to the MGM.
http://detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?A.../707210383/1042
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I think somebody else commented on the service here, and I guess the hostess and other service were "young," but it isn't a big deal to me, so perhaps keep that in mind. No mistakes were made on the order, questions were answered satisfactorily, and nothing was spilled on me. Maybe I don't know enough not to have higher standards. As I said, I had an expectation going in, and they turned out to be accurate.
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Anniversary dinner at Five Lakes Grill this weekend. Approached it with a little trepidation because of a couple of negative reviews (tammylc and ulterior epicure's), but came away neither pleasantly or unpleasantly surprised, meaning we were happy.
Sure there were some flaws, but it's not like we demand Nirvana-in-a-restaurant as a prerequisite for having a positive experience. Looking at the website (www.fivelakesgrill.com), the menu, and the prices, I had an expectation going in which turned out pretty much dead on. Please understand I'm not saying the other negative reviews were unfair -- reading those, they did have genuine problems there that we did not: dishes served cold etc.
Our dinner was:
Michigan white bean soup with duck confit, farmer's plate of charcuterie selections. Entrees were chicken jambalaya and fennel-brined organic Berkshire hog chop. Peach/blackberry cobbler for dessert (they wrote "happy anniversary" in chocolate sauce on the plate -- we hadn't told them, so they must've overheard us -- we appreciated it.)
I enjoyed everything. We agreed the highlight was definitely the hog chop. My wife's quibble was that some of the dishes (soup, jambalaya) were a little underseasoned to her taste. Though the charcuterie is a claim-to-fame and was enjoyable, it didn't strike either of us as a must-order.
I guess the drive remains a problem for most. I'd say our route, driving more or less west on that daffy Commerce Rd. (how can three of four roads at an intersection all be Commerce?) was picturesque, and the parts of Milford we drove through were charming as well. It's not like we felt, "we have to do this meal again, drive be damned." But as has been said several times on this website, there really aren't restaurants like that in the area anyway. And yet there aren't a lot of restaurants in the area at the level of the Five Lakes Grill. So it's a question of, do you pick the one that's closest and always go there, or do you nevertheless try to hit them all, driving all over metro Detroit + Ann Arbor, Windsor, etc. including, yes, Milford?
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From the Tennessean:
"Paula Deen Fills Time in the Kitchen with Laughs"
http://www.rctimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/artic...7/1004/MTCN0303
Your colleagues Rachael Ray and Giada De Laurentiis took on the Food Network's most famous battle, Iron Chef America, fairly recently. Is that one you'd take on?"I was asked, and I said no. But then they came back, and they asked me again. So I am going on the Iron Chef, but it's going to be a much lighter version. Tyler (Florence, fellow Food Network personality) and I are going up against Cat (Cora, Iron Chef). We're gonna be doing a cookie battle. But I tell you what, when it was me, myself and I (starting and running restaurants), I lived that Iron Chef life for real in a kitchen, trying to survive when it was only me in there cooking. And I don't care to go back there."
Iron Chef America (Part 2)
in Food Media & Arts
Posted
This is true.
This is not true. She is better than both the average Iron Chef challenger as well as the average challenger she's specifically battled (albeit barely.) It is true that she is comparatively weak on "taste" scores, where she is, in fact, outscored on average.
Cora's average scores are:
Taste: 22.7
Plating: 12.3
Originality: 12.4
Total: 47.3
The average scores of all Iron Chef challengers are:
Taste: 22.8
Plating: 11.8
Originality: 12.0
Total: 46.6
The average Cora challenger scores are:
Taste: 23.4
Plating: 11.8
Originality: 12.0
Total: 47.2
(which means that, going by score, the previous contention that Cora has drawn the "weakest" challengers is wrong. Cora has actually drawn the toughest challengers, by this measure.)