gfweb
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Posts posted by gfweb
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I never liked that place anyway. I don't think that you missed much.
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James Villas' memoir, In Search of the Green Fairy. Entertaining, well written recollections of one of the last of the bon vivant of the old school.
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can you post the tape so we can see it?
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I was giving my opinion that he deserves a break on this one. I was not saying that you have no right to yours.
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"I think it's just that I HOPED he had the same feelings and values as me.
I happen to find ANYONE paying thousands of dollars for a Hawaiian shirt disturbing. But that's just me.... "
Time for a reality check. Tony told us a lot about himself and his values in Kitchen Confidential. Even if it was part Hunter Thompsonesque gonzo semi-fiction, TB still put his name to it and named those feelings and events as happening to him.
So how many of us are attracted by the idea of shooting smack or getting laid in a dumpster (or wherever it was he was peeping at as a young cook). A minority, I'd bet. No shared values there.
We might be attracted by the lifestyle that he has on TV. But that's no more his real life than it is ours.
From what I've read young cooks idolize him and see the myth as being a real person. They are in their teens and naive.
I'm sure TB has his edgy moments. No doubt he has better food more often than most of us and more travel too. But still he must take out the garbage and wonder about his next check as much as the rest of us...maybe more.
So is it reasonable to excoriate the guy for a show that sucked...that he probably was talked into by his paymasters...that might not have sounded too bad initially?
Give him a break. If he does it again and it sucks, then take the swords out. Don't expect him to stand for everything rebel either. 50 year olds who don't want to go back in the kitchen have to make concessions.
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"A culinary Chuck Shumer" simile, irony, and hyperbole all in 4 words.
Poetry, dude.
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I think that it is a cultural thing. Savory cooks hate pastry cooking/baking because it is so much like a chem lab...weigh this weigh that..."no artistry/finesse".
If restaurants employed quality control programs like other industries do, there would be a quickly mandated conversion to careful measurement and outcomes monitoring and a lot of the status quo would change, I think.
Having said this, I hate to measure anything... :-)
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Probably right. But he was a bit unrealistic in the beginning too. He's growing up a bit, I think.
The show wasn't too bad if seen as a first effort by a guy who's never done this sort of thing before. The questions were a bit dorky and to me the cause of the show falling flat. The concept wasnt bad to me
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What twaddle! Cockeyed philosophy applied to cooking. Folk medicine is full of this kind of pseudowisdom.
So you're a no then?
Sometimes folk medicine will pass Randomized Double-Blind Studies and actually work. Making food tasty is different, one person's yummy is another person gag reflex.
I want a respected and licensed flavorist to explain why this topic title could be true. If there is such a person, I may have made it up.
Eh. Not often will folk medicine stand the test of rigorous study. Even when it does reach significance it is still not typically a big benefit.
But anyway, I don't think that even a flavorist's explanation, pro or con, would be worth diddly until it is tested. All of us here could make up some high-sounding jive about the terroir causing foods to compliment one another better than food from unlike soils etc.
I'd like to see a blind testing of similarly prepared and grown cauliflower (or whatever) from different soils to see if taste differences could even be detected. If there was a difference one might then try pairing the veg with local and foreign meats etc.
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What twaddle! Cockeyed philosophy applied to cooking. Folk medicine is full of this kind of pseudowisdom.
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In a recent episode there are only pix of Flay, Cora and Morimoto in the "pantheon" although they do show a shot of Batali later. Foreshadowing perhaps?
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Sounds like we got luckier with our meals than you did.
You are right about not being up to Philly standards. In fact it isn't even up to local standards (Farmhouse, Katherine's, Fair Hill Inn (very very good BTW)).
But, it is better than the Perkins in Avondale (which I'm told is the busiest Perkin's in the world...go figure) :-)
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A new BYOB "Twelves" just opened in an old bank building in West Grove of all places. We've been turned away for lack of reservations a couple times, but made it in last Thurs night when it was half empty.
The menu is bistro-oid... crab mac and cheese...steak frites... seared scallops all well executed and presented nicey.
Chef previously was at the Back Burner in Hockessin, Farmhouse in Avondale ( a favorite of mine), and Dilworthtown Inn.
Service was a little slow and the plates had odd design that made it hard to cut meat without tipping the plate. Three dined for about $100 without dessert.
All-in-all a good new place worthy of a visit.
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The "fun facts" about each were incredibly stupid/lame. Too lame to have been a joke. A PR moron with no supervision at work here.
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Mario on the show in the 9/21 NY Magazine:
"The central implicit conceit of the program, in a way, is that the idea of Batali and Gwyneth’s touring the Prado with Ferran Adrià isn’t a trumped-up, made-for-TV fiction: It’s a kind of a vérité window into how he really lives.
Batali knows that the show, for this reason and others, isn’t going to be everyone’s cup of tea. That his critics will find it infuriating, and that others may see the spectacle as meandering, pointless, painfully self-indulgent. “My worry is, how many times can you watch me eating something and saying, ‘Boy, that’s good,’ before you say, ‘Fuck you! I’m not tasting the shit!,’ ” he frets. “That there’s no real payoff for the customer other than saying, ‘Hey, they’re having a great time, this is a great show.’ The blogs that hate it are gonna be like, ‘Who the fuck cares that he’s eating with Gwyneth Paltrow, she’s a vegan anyway,’ or whatever.”"
So Mario gets it. It'd be better with him and Bourdain.
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Good points, doc.
I'd add that losing some of the nutrition in a food is not the biggest crime in the world. And side dishes, which presumably wouldn't be slow-cooked too would compensate.
Most of us are overnourished anyway.
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Woof!
I think I'd smoke a tenderloin. Slice it thin and serve it as a cold app with a rosemary port reduction and fresh basil garnish and a few sliced cherry tomatoes.
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where does one get pork tenderloins 4 for $2?
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What stupidity! A lawsuit waiting to happen. A public health menace. It would never pass muster with the FDA. Probably a law that covers it already.
Oy!
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OK, I just learned what bibimbop is and I find it even more amazing that it would be the customer's choice over more usual stuff. I'm sure that yours is delicious, even transporting in its wonderfulness, but the description at various websites is not very impressive and this adventurous eater would choose a reubin over bibimbob every time.
So why was it the leader? Maybe it looked really pretty on the table. Perhaps the prettiest people had ordered it and looked great eating it.
Or maybe there was a Korean convention in town.
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but .pdf doesn't work on all handhelds.
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I intellectually understand the motivations for using pdfs for menus, but like Holly, I just have a visceral aversion to them. It does indeed interrupt the flow of the web browsing experience, and the pdfs very often don't display as well as a web page does. When I'm clicking through a restaurant's website, I want information to come up quickly and smoothly. If I just want to take a quick look at a menu and my browser starts opening Acrobat, I tend to close the window and move on, and the odds of my going to that restaurant just went down.
T
I agree with you. What a pain it is to have an acrobat attack. I blow it away most of the time.
This is another version of the Open Table debate. Will a restaurant lose business if it doesn't cater to the convenience of prospective diners?
Yes it will.
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I'm not sure I could handle anything more fabulous.
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I tried to read it today and was given a log-in request as though it is now a limited access site.
That would be a sad thing. Shola's site was fabulous.
What food-related books are you reading? (2004 - 2015)
in Food Media & Arts
Posted
His other one, Between Bites, is as good.