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hughw

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Everything posted by hughw

  1. Miele definitely makes fully integrated models with completely hidden controls. Look for "SF" in the model number. Here's one example. http://www.miele.com/usa/dishwashers/produ...77&cat=2&nav=21 We have a 45cm model in our apartment in New York and a 60cm model in our country house. They're exceptionaly quite. I love the cutlery tray above the two other trays as mentioned by two other posters. It does have one great disadvantage. It can lead to marital discord. I like to put everything in lined up perfectly, spoons with spoons, forks with forks, etc. More stuff fits in and it's very easy to grap a group of like items to put in the drawer. My wife puts then in the tray willy nilly and we're forever battling.
  2. I receieved the following reply to my email to Michelin. It seems like a boilerplate reply that means nothing" Dear Mr Weisman, Thank you for your interest in ViaMichelin's Internet site and products. We have passed on your feedback to the department concerned to ensure that the necessary attention is given to your requested corrections during the next update of ViaMichelin's website. Your feedback is extremely beneficial for our website and mapping update process and we thank you, in advance, for all the suggestions you are able to send us. However, although our site is updated frequently, it is difficult to define a minimum period between a change being brought to our notice and the subsequent updating of the data. Please note that ViaMichelin works continually to improve its services. We recommend that you visit our website regularly in order to ensure that you remain updated on new releases. In addition, we recommend that you visit the "Help - FAQ" section accessible via the link situated at the bottom of the Home Page on the ViaMichelin website. Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any other questions or suggestions. Kind regards, - The ViaMichelin Customer Service Team -
  3. I just sent an email to Michelin complaining and asking them to restore. Will anyone take bets whether I'll get an answer from them?
  4. I have used www.viamichelin quite a bit but haven't for about 6 months to search for restaurants and hotels as well as plotting routes. It had a nice search feature where you could filter your results for things like type of hotel, "stars" and "good meals at moderate prices." When I went to use it today, I could find any way to do this. Have I forgotten how to navigate to wherever I need to be, or have they eliminated those functions? Too bad if they have.
  5. We've enjoyed wonderful meals last winter at Chez l'Ami Jean, Le Cerisaie. and le Timbre. Are they all still going strong?
  6. Georges at the Pompidou Centre and Jule Verne at the Eiffel Tower both offer fine food and wonderful views of Paris from on high. Benoit can be delightful for a bistro lunch with the sun streaming through the windows.
  7. When we were in Paris in February, we ate at several non-smoking places. What suprised me was that even in the Smoking restos, the number of smokers and the amount of smoke seemed significantly less (and in some case close to non-existent) compared with a year or two ago, Could the French be cutting back on their smoking too?
  8. hughw

    'Cesca

    Well we went to 'Cesca arriving at 9:00am on Tuesday. We had two terrific salads: one was Escarole with hazelnuts, mint, red onions, fava, pecorino, and sherry vinegrette; the other Arugula, pickled shallots, goat cheese, foccacia croutons, and lemon vinegrette. Then two wonderful pastas: Orecchietti with homemade pork sauage and rapina: and Garganelli alla Butera with chicken sausage, asparagus, and preserved tomatoes. For what we were looking for which was a relatively quick and tasty meal it ws just right. However, I don't hink I would want to go there for a relaxed fine dinner. The prices (especially for Secondi main courses) are relatively high for the type of place it is; no table cloths, pleasant enough but bruque service. An undistinguished amuse was brought to our table on a butter plate and dropped in front of my wife who's first reaction was "is this for me? or to share."
  9. hughw

    'Cesca

    Does anyone have anything new to report about Cesca? We're thinking of going tonight and somewhat amazingly since we live on the UWS and frequent Ouest and Nice Matin, I have no idea what to expect. Comments (most of them no later than January) on Menu Pages and City Search are quite mixed with quite a few panning the food and the service. We're just looking for a light dinner late, probably an appetizer and pasta, but we love friendly service (like any of Danny Meyer's restaurant) and good but not necesailly fantastic food.
  10. Here's the link to page 1 of MarK Bittman's article. http://travel.nytimes.com/2007/04/29/trave...html?ref=travel
  11. I received this link today from Slowfood USA. http://associazione.slowfood.it/associazio...i/osterie.lasso The reveiws are only in Italian but you can get a usable (if sometiime unintentionally humerous) translation at http://babelfish.altavista.com/
  12. Yes. the Osteria Guide was online, also guides to cheese shops, wineries, etc. I think that you had to register and then login to view and I actually found an old email from 2002 where they sent me confirmation of my user name and password and said I had access to "Our PicK" section. Now, I don't even see a place to login on their site.
  13. Forgive me if this has already been answered. Several years ago I found restaurant reviews of slowfood restaurants in Italy on slowfood.com. They were in Italian but I managed to get enough info out of them using alta vista web translaor. Today I looked at the slowfood..com website, both the US and Italian version, and couldn't find any listings. Did they remove them (perhaps to sell more books) or was I looking in the wrong place? Thanks.
  14. Most importantly. Don't sweat the perfect place too much. If you need to do stuff serendipitiously, do it! Just relax and enjoy Paris. Bon Voyage.
  15. If the weather is good, there's nothing better than going to some great charcuterie, a boulangerie, and a wine store, and buying a gourmet lunch to eat sitting on chairs in the Tuleries Garden in front of the Louvre while the kids grab a bite, run around, and maybe sail a rented boat.
  16. Mon Vieil Ami is quite a nice restaurant, and although there will be other Americans there, I would not call it touristy. It's more a casual fine dining place. I suspect they'll welcome your kids. Le Timbre is tiny tiny tiny. A kid couldn't get up from their seat on the banquette unless someone pulled the table out as there's at most an inch between small tables. Cafe du Marche on Le Cler is a typical casual cafe with a menu ranging from salads to risotto and great sandwiches. It might be a great place for kids especially if the weather is good because you can eat outside and sonce Rue Cler is a pedestrian street, the kids can wander around a bit near your table without worry. The food is good but definitely not on the fine dining side.
  17. We stayed at the Hotel Abbaye in the 6th for the third time. Lovely little 25 room hotel on a very quite street 2 blocks from St. Sulpice and the Luxembourg Gardens and less than a 10 minute walk to Blvd. St. Germain near Deux Maggots. The rooms start at 205 euro (internet price) for a standard double, taxes, and a very nice breakfast included. The rooms are fairly small but have good beds and linens, a nice marble bathroom, and flat screen TVs. A card for wireless internet access can be purchased for 4 euro per hour. They have a nice lounge and small bar on the ground floor with a drinks available all day and evening. Their breakfast area opens to a pretty rear garden where in June you probably can eat outdoors. Here's their website: http://www.hotelabbayeparis.com/
  18. We really enjoyed our trip to Paris from Sunday, Feb 18th, until Saturday, Feb. 24th. We enjoyed wonderful weather, met a lot of nice people, and had hardly a single bum restaurant experience. My wife and I have been to Paris a half dozen times and decided that this time would be relaxed and low key. That didn’t keep us from searching out some smaller museums that we had never been to: Jacquemart-Andre, Gustav Moreau, The Guimet, and the Musee Maurice Denis - Le Prieure in St. Germaine-en-Laye.We also decided to concentrate on smaller, modest restaurants, as our experiences the last several trips visiting some of the hot new restaurants like Gaya Rive Gauche didn’t measure up on a quality/value/enjoyment scale to where we often eat at home in New York City, We certainly didn’t write down the menus and don’t remember everything that we ate, but I thought it worthwhile to at least give you our a sense of our visit. After our arrival on Sunday, we grabbed a simple lunch at a neighborhood cafe then lay in the Sun on the grass in the park between the Louvre and the Tulerie Gardens. For dinner we went to Mon Vieil Ami on Isle St. Louis. We were offered sometype of sparking wind similar to a Proseco on the house, a nice touch. Then, I had probably the best Pate en Croute that I’ve ever had for a starter and my wife some kind of warm vegetable salad which was light and tasty. The main for me was roasted lamb and for my wife dorade, both done to perfection with terrific potatoes and vegetable accompanying them. Desert for me was a chocolate tarte, good but not great, and a nice fruit something for her. All-in-all a very nice first evening with good service and good food. The total bill came to about 105 euros with a bottle of cote-de-rhone. Monday, we had what my wife claimed was the best meal of our trip. We bought sandwiches from a little boulangerie on the Rue St. Honore an ate them as we walked from Parc Monceau to the Louvre. For dinner we went to La Cerisaie in the 14th. The reviews on this site accurately describe it as a small (22 seat) husband-and-wife run place with diner-like décor in a storefront. Walking by, one would not be tempted to go in, but we were there, we had reservations, and we took the plunge. The wife part of the team gave us a warm greeting, squeezed us into our seats, and explained the menu to us in very good English. I had a nice country pate and my wife had a very unusual and delicious wild mushroom soup with an egg on the bottom for starters. We both ordered the spring lamb main course after wife explained how it had been marinated for seven hours, a good choice as it was the tastiest and most tender lamb we ever had. While we ate, people were constantly coming in and being turned away with no reservations or greeted as the old friends they probably were after becoming regulars here. Again, the bill was about 105 euros with a simple wine. Tuesday, we worked up and appetite by walking from our hotel near St. Sulpice in the 6th all the way down to the new La Bibliothèque nationale south of the Gare de Austerlitz and across the new footbridge over the Seine, the Passerelle Dauphine de Maurier. We were going to the opera that evening and expected to be in our seats from 7:00pm to after 11:00 so we decided to make lunch special. We went to Benoit which is a one star bistro with somewhat mixed reviews. We thoroughly enjoyed it. The food was quite good although not memorable. We had the 39 euro (I think it was that amount) lunch menu. Staff was warm and service was good. My only negative is that the handed us the carte and didn't give us the set menu until I asked for it. We planned to go to Bofinger after the opera but bagged it and went home at close to midnight on still full stomachs from our lunch at Benoit. On Wednesday another simple lunch at a neighborhood cafe. Then dinner at Aux Lyonnaise and found it very disappointing, not nearly as good as a visit a year ago. The firsts were pretty good but my lamb main plate was inedible, all gristle and fat. My wife and her friend had dorade which was OK, and my friend had calves liver which he liked, but generally the food was lackluster, heavy, and uninteresting. On Thursday, we again had a simple lunch at a cafe, this time the Café du Marche on Rue Cler in the 7th, a pedestrian only street that’s a food lovers paradise. Dinner was at l’Ami Jean, a very undistinguished looking place with bare tables also in the 7th with what is described as Basque food. Be that as it may, each dish was lovingly prepared and creatively presented. My wife had escargots that had been wrapped with pancetta and grilled on skewers which we stuck upright in a marrow bone. I had a wonderful lamb dish after an onion soup that was like no onion soup that I’ve ever seen before. They brought in a large shallow bowl, like a modest size fruit bowl, which had mound of foie gras on the bottom. This was accompanied by the soup which came in what looked like a ceramic vase which they poured into the bowl at the table. We ended with a huge bowl of the best rice pudding ever. This was two star food and two star presentation in a local bar type surroundings. Great. Great. About 110 euros with wine. Friday, another simple lunch, then dinner at Le Timbre, a tiny 22 seat restaurant off of Blvd. Raspiel in the 6th. The owner, Chris Wright, is really the chief cook and bottle washer. He greets you, pulls out the table to let you get to the banquette, retreats to the open kitchen to cook your dinner, washes the cookware and dinnerware, and is assisted only by a young women who takes your order and serves. Tables are jammed together, elbow to elbow, making you an instant friend of your neighbors. Simple good cooking, period, again at about 100 euro with a 30 euro wine. To wrap up, these were the kind of places we don’t have in New York. Simple places with good food, no attitude, and for Paris reasonable. Surprisingly. Although we knew La Cerisaie was no smoking but we didn’t see anyone smoking at any of the places we went with the exception of one of the cafes. Thanks to everyone that answered my questions and especially John Talbott. P.S. Our meal several weeks ago at Eleven Madison Park in New York is probably the best meal that I’ve eaten in the United States with the exception of the French Laundry in the Napa Valley.
  19. Here a new comment from out friend in Villefranche who visited this restaurant a couple of days ago. "Ate at a brand new restaurant a few blocks up from the water called Extravaganza. Very sexy decor, and lovely outdoor terasse with great water views. Adorable staff and really good Provencal/Liburian food (fish, olive oil, saffron sauces, etcetera). The best dessert was a carpaccio of pineapple (extraordinarily thin beautiful slices), gorgeously arranged on the plate, dusted with powdered sugar and balsamico, around an extraordinary home-made citron sorbet."
  20. For anyone really interested in the Security questions of boarding aircraft, there's a whole forum at FLyerTalk.com dedicated just to this at http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=222 For the record, I brought a tangerine aboard a CDG-EWR flight on Saturday.
  21. We're just back from a weeks trip tp Paris this evening. We ate at Aux Lyonnaise on Wednesday night and found it very dissapointing, not nearly as good as a visit a year ago. The firsts were pretty good but my lamb main plate was inedible, all gristle and fat. My wife and her friend had dorade which was OK, and my friend calves liver which he liked. We had lunch at Benoit on Tueday afternoon and throughly enjoyed it. The food was quite good although not memorable. We had the 39 euro (I think it was that amount) lunch menu. Staff were warm and service was good. My only negative is that the handed us the carte and didn't give us the set menu until I asked for it. A full trip report will follow. Hint: the best meal of our trip was at L'Ami Jean.
  22. We have very good friends AGM Cape Cod who spend their summer at their house on Martha's Vineyard and most of the winter in their apartment in Villefranche-sur-mer. (Nice life, huh?) Naturally, I passed on your request for information to them and here's their answer. I can personally vouch for Travestere and for Chibois's two star restauenat in Grasse, Bastide St-Antoine, having eaten at both with our friends last winter. There are a number of Michelin one and two star restaurants in the general area, including Ducasse's Louis XV in Monaco (twenty minutes away by car). A very good new one (one star, but now going for two) is JOUNI, started a few years ago in Old Nice by a Finnish father and son; it is now moving to a much fancier location on the water, closer to Villefranche, but it may still be open at its old location in March (the food is extraordinary and the prix fixe lunch and dinners are both very good value)--ten minutes from VF. Another two-star people love is located in La Turbie, on the Grande Corniche: Jerome (less over the top than Ducasse, and in a very charming little town, so lovely to go for lunch--maybe twenty minutes by car). In Villefranche itself, we think the best thin-crust pizza in the world is available at Trastevere, right on the water front. Totally unpretentious, but wonderful. Ask for the sauce piquante (spicy olive oil) to drizzle over it. Also, the locals regard La Fille de Pecheur (again right on the waterfront) as the best restaurant in town (especially until Lounge Beach--located directly on the beach, at the far end of restaurant row--opens some time around Easter). La Fille uses local fisherman (you can see them fishing in town, by the Cocteau statue) every morning, and the tapas-like dishes are especially wonderful. Lounge Beach features extraordinary provencal/ligurian cooking--the best olive oils, olives, tomatoes, shellfish; everything skilfully prepared, and the setting for lunch on a beautiful warm day (there are many in March) is unforgettable: outdoors and right on the water. Farther afield, there are two wonderful two-stars: Chibois' restaurant in Grasse (very good value lunch prix fixe--lovely setting--excellent chef); and L'Oasis in La Napoule (again very good value lunch and wonderful food). Each of these is about forty minutes by car. There are also two Michelin rated hotel restaurants in nearby Beaulieu (one can walk there from Villefranche): La Reserve and La Metropole. Haven't been to either one, but each has been recently re-done, and people love them.
  23. Maybe not a 5th meal, but for a great snack go to La Poilane bakery at 8 Rue Cherche Midi in the 6th and buy an apple turnover to eat on the street.
  24. John, I think of coordinates as map coordinates by latitude and longitude . I assume you mean something else. You certainly weren't thinking we would import coordinates into our portable GPS devices and use that to navigate Paris. Or were you?
  25. I think it is definitely worth visiting La Grand Epicerie at Bon Marche, 38 Rue de Sevres. Probably close to an acre in size, you'll find under one roof, wine, meats, fish, prepared foods, oils, cheeses, etc. etc. This is Whole Foods gone French, or maybe Whole Food is La Grand Epicurie gone American. And also go to the street market in the Rue de Buci. I think it's open mornings Tuesday through Sunday although someone may be able to give you better info. Keep in mind that all restaurant prices include tax and tip (although many people leave a few extra euros but no more than 5%). One very nice small hotel in the 6th right off the rue St. Germain is the Hotel des Fleurie with rooms available for a single traveler at 100 euro.
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