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For the record (since you asked): my avatar is an image created by morphing my face with my puppy's face. The "ethnic" village is kind of a fraud. It's composed of pasty-faced white folks selling facsimiles of "ethnic" foods. Last year I sampled the Indian and the Greek stalls. The lamb curry was nondescript, except they used a cheap supermarket brand of curry powder for the sauce. The souvlaki tasted good - it was composed of well-marinated lamb chunks that were charcoal grilled - but I was a little disturbed that it was served with a cup of ketchup. My original question was a serious one: you rarely see any of these queer foods outside of a venue like the state fair. So culinarily, walking into the fair feels like you've gone through the looking glass. Does anyone have any historical context for fair foods they'd like to share?

Here's a link describing all the scrumptious offerings at this year's Illinois State Fair. click me Reading this story leads me to ask why is the food at statewide get-togethers like this so, umm...otherworldly?

Shrimp! I am HOPELESS with Shrimp. They are either half raw or eraser-like.

I must be the only (former) western New Yorker here. I reiterate my vote for Teds Charcoal Broiled in Tonawanda, NY.

My fave basic salad: I use a mix of curly endive and romaine as the base. I chop up a few scallions and toss them in. I then peel and chunk up a tart apple - Granny Smiths can't be beat. The vinaigrette is good olive oil and cider vinegar, salt and pepper. I too like my vinaigrettes to be on the vinegary side, contrary to what the textbooks say.

IMHO: Think Babette's Feast and knock their socks off.

Maybe it's a little off-topic, but I recently had the pleasure of guiding a young Indian man around town (Springfield, IL) who is doing some computer programming for my agency. It was his first time in the States, and he'd been in-country for only 3 days. He is a vegetarian, and over the course of a week we ate at our one and only Indian place (twice), a Thai place, a Chinese place, Pizza Hut (at his request - seems that there's a Pizza Hut near where he lives in India that he really likes), a Panini shop and, on his last day, a place called Cafe Brio, which is a Mexican/Spanish/Mediterranean-type place. He ordered the grilled portobello sandwich (with mesclun, pesto and cascabal aioli). When it was served, he looked at it and asked me what the mushroom was, thinking he'd been duped into ordering a meat dish. I explained that it was the mushroom, and he said it was the biggest mushroom he'd ever seen. He said he was familiar with the, presumably, button mushrooms that people put on pizza, but he was astounded that mushrooms could grow so big.

I too would like to know if/where one can buy a tandor in the US.

Yikes! What a dreadful mistake. What was I thinking? I must be a little dyslexic. Sorry about that. I guy named "Holly". eh? Is there a story here?

Helen: Clearly we had different experiences at Cozy Dog. And while I can sort of understand what you mean when you talk about the, ahem, "atmosphere" of a place contributing to the flavor of the food, filth is still filth in my book and I take points off for that. I guess I was just astounded that a place like this could be listed on a "best of" list for hotdogs. I greatly disagree with this assessment. BTW: the limp grease bombs I made mention of referred to the bad fries, but now that you mention it, it's also an apt description of what is the essential Cozy Dog. So did you eat anywhere else in Springfield? Aside from the Cozy Dog, there appear to be two other local culinary treasures...the horse/pony shoe and the MadeRite sandwich. Did you sample either of these? If you did, do you have comments on them?

Holly: I can't believe you'd list the Cozy Dog place in Springfield on your top 25 list of best hotdogs! The place is filthy and the corn dogs are typically overdone on the outside and underdone on the inside. Other things on the menu are also very poor, like the fries -- worst fries in the midwest if you ask me. Nothing but limp grease bombs. Yuck.

Spoken like a true primadonna. The arrogance here is the cook demanding 1) to know better and 2) demanding that all his paying customers tow the cook's line. True, all of us are free to patronize establishments that give us good service and free also not to patronize a second time establishments that give you nothing but attitude. But this is beside the point. So is the accusation that people like my aunt make rude and unreasonable demands of cooks in restaurants. Perhaps there are people who do this, but my aunt, and I too for that matter, are not like that. The discussion was about ordering a steak cooked to the patron's preference and how "right" or "wrong" this is if the personal preference is other than the textbook "correct" way to cook a piece of steak. I simply maintain that it should be no big deal for any but the haughtiest, full-of-himself cook to provide what is requested. As for myself, I don't go to restaurants to worship the food or the cook. I go to have a pleasant meal, sometimes if I'm lucky an astounding meal, and to sample foods that I wouldn't or couldn't cook for myself. All the rest is basically nonsense.

Steve: My point was that "taste" i s subjective. My aunt does not require a reason, "rational" or other wise to prefer her steak cooked to death. She does not care what you or I think about her preference. When she goes to a restaurant I believe she is entitled to have the food she orders cooked as she likes it. The cook's (okay, the chef's) job is to cook the damn food and shut up about aesthetics. He can write what he thinks about how food should be cooked in his cookbook. IMHO This raises another, broader issue that bugs me: restaurants as temples and chefs as priests of cuisine. While dining at a posh place is always a treat I never lose sight of the fact that I'm the paying customer and the restaurant exists to serve me, not the other way around. Life is much simpler (and better) this way.

For the record, Ted's Hotdogs in the Buffalo, NY area are the best in the universe. They use a very high quality dog made by the local western NY Sahlen's company, dogs with natural casings by the way, they charcoal grill them, and they top them with your choice of a variety of different ingredients (but the hot pickle relish is the best). I think the big factor that explains how good the dogs are is that at the cooking line the dog cook will move the dogs over the licking flames of the charcoal fire and then, with his long handled fork, slit the dog open - all these cuts then curl and char nicely, giving the dog an incredibly unique look and taste. The place on Niagara Falls Blvd in the Town of Tonawanda excels.

Personally, I prefer my beefsteak cooked rare to medium rare. My aunt, however, makes a fetish of ordering her steak burnt to a crisp. I have seen her send things back two or three times because it wasn't cooked enough for her. Her fetish applies also to pork, and I think it derives from an "old days" fear of germs and illness, but I also believe she truly LIKES IT THAT WAY. There couldn't possibly be anything worng with this. Therefore I conclude that primadonna chefs ought to realize that they are not the center of the universe, the arbiters of all taste, and that their basic job is to cook food for their patrons. They're COOKS, for God's sake, not gods.

Am I the only one who is disappointed with the direction that Food TV has taken? To a TV cooking show junkie like myself, the trend toward “lifestyle” shows, and undisguised “commerce” shows reveals just how low they’ve sunk. All of a sudden, it seems, it’s not about cooking anymore. It’s about admiring someone else’s fab kitchen, it’s about their fab life, or it’s about where you can go to buy this or that “regional specialty”. (Is it true that the various places that are featured on shows like Food Finds pay to be featured?) The best shows still playing (IMHO) are Mario (kill the stupid sidekick Roonie), Wolfy, Jay-mee, Flay (even though I hate the format), Alton Brown’s Good Eats (great show!), and Gale Gand’s show. Emeril – well, he claims to “really cook” on his show but he doesn’t. He throws things into a pot or pan or bowl and magically a finished dish appears. His food is mostly vulgar, and his shtick is way tired. Total fraud. Why aren’t the Two Hot Tamales doing a show? They were great, particularly Susan Feniger, and I miss them. Why did they stop running Julia Child’s shows? All that we have left to watch, in terms of Classic Cooking shows, is Galloping Gourmet, who hasn’t aged well. Where did Ready Set Cook go? That was a really good show, except for the too-perky female hosts and, later, that awful Brit guy. I really hated him. Why don’t Rocco DiSpirito and Tyler Florence have cooking shows of their own, as opposed to contrived, glad-handling, meet-the-real-people, or shared meet-the-real-cuisine shows? Rocco and Tyler are, hands down, the sexiest two males available and their screen presence is about perfect. Why is Bibba Gaggiano not on Food TV? She’s a great teacher and I love to watch her cook. She would be a perfect foil to Mario, who can be frustratingly pompous and all-knowing about Italian cuisine. Here’s what I want: I want Food TV to get rid of their shameless commerce shows and their lifestyle shows (Keith Famie???) and go back to the classic format of a talented cook who demonstrates cooking this or that dish. The way it’s going, however, I will be unsubscribed to Food TV in maybe a couple of months.

Julia and Jacques Pepin demonstrated a dish of salmon in a potato crust in the original Cooking In Concert show for PBS. They recommended a thin fillet, so the fish would cook in the same time it took to brown the potatoes, and they served it with a quick saute of chopped tomatoe and shallots.

Julia and Jacques Pepin demonstrated a dish of salmon in a potato crust in the original Cooking In Concert show for PBS. They recommended a thin fillet, so the fish would cook in the same time it took to brown the potatoes, and they served it with a quick saute of chopped tomatoe and shallots.

I eat them like candy.But here in the rural midwest it's impossible to find any variety or even a secure supply (except for the awful California varieties, but as someone in this thread said, they don't count). I'm reading Margaret Visser's Much Depends on Dinner, and I found the following great quote there: "Lawrence Durrell writes in Prospero's Cell that olives have "A taste older than meat, older than wine. A taste as old as cold water.""

Unlike past "Best Chefs" groups, this year's crowd is almost all male and all the males are incredibly good looking. If only they'd show more (human) flesh in the photos. Oddly, however, the dishes listed for these chefs are not very appatizing. I guess the proper descriptor might be "ethereal"? For the record, I learned of egullet.com by reading Michael Anthony's little blurb. Thanks much!.

At a recent excavation at the site of the New Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Il, a deposit dating to the 1840s - 1850s revealed that the landowner and resident was importing French champaign and French olive oil. As the date of the assemblage is only a decade or two after Illinois was Indian country frontier, this find is very interesting from an historical/anthropological perspective. For those accustomed to think of olive oil and other Mediterranean products to be a fairly recent fad in American cuisine, archaeological research provides the data that shows what the reality is (was). If for nothing else, the archaeological and anthropological study of foodways is justified. As it happens, I am current reading the reissue of Margaret Vissar's Much Depends on Dinner. If anyone seriously believes that multidisciplinary studies inevitably lead to poor scholarship I recommend they pic up a copy of this book. Peace, y'all.