tan319

Hi Pichet. A couple of things for you.... You've moved on from Spice Market? Are you thinking of opening a dessert restaurant or bar? Also, something I've always wondered about is how production is handled when an upscale-ish restaurant is doing 400 to 700 covers a day, which is a number I think I've read for Spice Market. How did you approach that?

I probably first heard of Pastry Chef Pichet Ong's work through a New York Times review that mentioned his desserts at 'rm', Rick Moonens seafood-focused restaurant. It was 2002, and the idea of a "pleasant baked doughnut, glistening with sugar, its hole filled with concord grape jelly," coming with "several slices of intense aged Gouda," not only intrigued me, it made my mouth water! But it was two years later when Pichet, formerly an architect as well as a savory chef, joined Jean George Vongerichten s restaurant group, that he exploded onto the scene, conceiving and executing the dessert menus for both for the Chinese influenced '66' and the Thai street food with a flair concept 'Spice Market'. A four-week stint in the prestigious New York Times series "The Chef" followed and there were no doubts. Pichet Ong had arrived. Some links for your perusal... Pichet Ong Website Pichet Ong Asian Puff Pastry Demo Thread The ChefNYTimes/Melissa Clark article The ChefNYTimes/Melissa Clark article The ChefNYTimes/Melissa Clark article The ChefNYTimes/Melissa Clark article StarchefsRising Star article/recipe Art Culinaire article Having added a 'Starchefs Rising Star' award along with a 2005 Pastry Art & Design Magazines '10 Best' award this year, it's with GREAT pleasure we introduce Chef Pichet Ong in the inaugural Pastry & Baking Forum 'FOCUS'!!! Welcome, Pichet!

I think the answer could be obvious. I don't think there's anyway he couldn't have this mess on his mind a bit, and that's a shame. Not having an "on" night could happen to almost anyone but when the room is full of people who literally have their "knifes out for you" I could see it being daunting. Not to mention opening a new restaurant while you're being bled out on the internet. Maybe I'm wrong and he could give a toss.

Kind of surprised they're not coming out of the gate in French/English like the former book ended up.

Another must have! 120 euros, ekkk!!!!!!!!! Thanks for posting

Theres been at least three chefs who have used them recently. In the wd-50 thread here in the NY forum, people even talk about the dish.

Why is it so hard for you to accept that "the tale" is close to true? As close as these things get? For sure, Psaltis makes it read like he's Dudley Do-right but what else seems false to you? That Barber would never use someone elses shortribs recipe? That he wouldn't have had cookbooks out in the kitchen? That he wouldn't put "the squeeze" on a cook he didn't care for, that didn't care for him? What I can't figure out is how come this is still vexing you. Jeez, it's a damned book about cooks...

In a big way.

Can't believe Michel Richard is doing almost all of his entree's sous vide!!! That's pretty intense.

How about getting publicity and making a buck off the ensuing controversy? ← I'm not sure if "the twins" love this kind of publicity. If Kitchen Confidential came out today, in the kind of atmosphere that prevails on these various kinds of internet sites, I think it would be a whole different story. Self deprecating or not, I'm not sure legions of Emeril fans, maybe even Bobby Flay fans( maybe not) wouldn't have their butts in an uproar. Re: Making a buck: what about it? Books, reality TV shows, all help people from the likes of Michael Ruhlman to Gordon Ramsey keep the lights on. Just because this is "on fire" in here and the NYTimes wrote about the melee going on, I'm not sure if I would delude myself into thinking this is going to be a bestseller, replete with Letterman & Leno appearences. It's way too specialized, not especially charming or well written, like a Bourdain book (sorry). And if it doesn't sell like hotcakes and bring all of that other juice that goes with bestselling, no ones going to be retiring soon. Now selling the screen rights to it...

I walked into work yesterday only to have my chef tell me that a few of our major purveyors has alerted him that sugar stocks will (and are) going down. The hurricanes have apparently ruined a lot of properties and displaced up to 126,000 employees of the sugar producers. 10x is very hard to get at the moment. Brown sugar in 3# bags is out, 25# bags only. The implications are grim if this isn't bull. Anybody else out there heard anything along these lines???

Perhaps an insult is not the greatest harm that can be done via a book. Perhaps someday you'll have the experience of needing to staff a kitchen on a budget as does Peter who has only to turn to the CIA to see prospective employees reading that he has nothing to teach them. That's the way a hit man works. A few words of praise and a couple of kisses on the cheek before you put the knife in someone's back. The naiveté on this board about how the restaurant world works, just stuns me, especially when it comes from so called professional chefs. I wonder about the ivory tower in which they work and in what parallel universe that must exist. The twins know how to hit low and no one here gets it. It's like using a rubber hose. It leaves no visible mark. I truly believe neither the supporters nor detractors of the book have a really good sense of what's going on and just how calculating this whole book was. ← Sir, I've worked in a fair amount of kitchens , big and small, infamous, not so famous, and so on. I've been lied to by famous chefs and not so famous chefs about money/positions/etc. So have my friends. With all due respect, and I mean all due respect, I can't believe how naive YOU are about how the restaurant world works! "The Twins" if they're hitting low, will be found to be full of shit. If there's a bit of truth to what they say, that will be what everyone expects anyways. That's what I believe Lesley C. has been trying to get thru certain peoples heads here. Chefs talk shit, especially up and coming ones. And it isn't particularly meanspirited shit, it's just " I would do this differently shit." If it was calculated to do anything other then tell a story, I'll eat the book, ok? No matter how low the "twins" could be, do you think they calculated that a thread with close to or over 75K views, over 200 posts, at least 50 % of them demanding Psaltis' blood,and that's just here on eG, would be a fantastic thing for them??? If Dan Barber & Blue Hill lose any business or great hires, I would be amazed. Ditto Thomas Keller. BTW, if this thread doesn't get past this junk soon, why not bin it?

AMEN!!! Why don't we declare anymore mentions of "THE WALK IN" as unimaginative? The guy said himself that it's been overblown, read Psaltis's last post and digest what he said. Comparing it to the showroom that is probably most of Ducasses walk ins, kept that way under the threat of death by peeling almonds by beserk French Chefs and sous chefs, Kellers MAY have been a little tatty but so what???

Thanks for that report and pix, Ellen and Fat Guy!!! PJ sure is handsome but damn!. Maybe a few more years before the wine tastings??? Seriously though, everything looked great and sounded wonderful. BTW, those last desserts looked a bit like those Spoon-ish/Frederic Roberts fruit gelee topped panna cottas served in a glass,no?

Nice to see Zakarian (so far) hasn't packed up his wagons just because his chef has a temper. Love the quotes from Chodorows managers, I'm sure they're really fair & balanced. "" Gee, that guy SURE was MEAN!!!"" In my experience, chefs just love managers who overbook a room, x2 or 3. All in all, I'm disgusted with all of these jerks, Pepin, Batali, the whole bunch. Read the book you're blurbing next time. Or grow some cojones.

He probably shot himself in the foot but more because of the lynching going on on the internet. I read the book more as a tale of a journey made by a guy who wanted to learn as much as he could about cooking and who wanted to cook and be trained by the best chefs he could work for. Still don't feel there was anything overly insulting to anyone, especially 'You-Know-Who'

Jesus, this just gets worse and worse. A little fucking chef writes his little fucking book about some other chefs, some were good, some were bad, some had some problems when they branded out, according to him, and everybody get's their ass in an uproar like Psaltis called their mom some old slag! Oh, that's right, he mistakenly slapped a waiter instead of knocking them out, ala Ramsey or just burning their hand, ala Keller, with a soup bowl, and forgot to write about it. The Ducasse thing HAS to be a lie because HE would NEVER get mad enough to throw a chair, RIGHT? This thread and all of you backpedalers have really blown it. Last time I looked free expression wasn't defined as public lynching, stoning, etc., physically or by computer keyboard. Edited to add: What is also REALLY confusing is wayyyyyyyyy back there one would have had the feeling Bourdain had actually read the book, when he was saying "oh, it's just a memoir, etc., etc., take it for what it is" but now it's all a schocking diss on all of the chefs of the world and was the book ever read by Bourdain or any of these chef authors before the shit hit the fan?

Thanks for that post on Tony Esnault! Where was he before?

The difference, to my mind, is that the chapter in KC is really praising the Latin American cooks as being the oil that makes most restaurant kitchens in NYC run - he is putting them forward as being great cooks. Whereas, to Psaltis, they are not cooks at all, simply "workers" who are "happy just to have a job". When I read Psaltis' book last week, that part really did stand out to me as being a bit iffy.... ← It didn't hit me either way, as a slur it certainly didn't. Anyways, I'm out. RE: the topic. How about Jose Garcas, formerly of Alma de Cuba, I think???

Cacao Berry Extra Brut is my fave cocoa powder The Berry Plein Arome is nice too but the former is the bizness, imo. Beautiful color, aroma, taste. Can't go wrong with it. The Valrhona cocoa always has seemed a bit one dimensional to me, which is strange, since I'm a big fan of Valrhona chocolate.

This is from The Seasoning of a Chef by Doug Psaltis with Michael Psaltis. This came to my attention because I thought it was an unfair put down of a restaurant started on a small budget by a chef with big ideas who was willing to start small, work in the kitchen and train an inexperienced staff. It was only after the second reading that I realized how gratuitous the mention of the ethnicity of the workers was. It's unnecessary, it doesn't add a thing, except to show the prejudices of a young white kid working in a New York restaurant kitchen. Worse yet, Doug Psaltis was working directly under executive chef Alex Urena, whose father was a reknowned butcher working with a number of New York's best restaurants and who himself was a second generation resdident. ← Don't mean to be contrary but I didn't find the mentioning of ethnicity in SOAC anymore of a slur on the cooks then I found almost a whole chapter about the merits of Latin American cooks in either Kitchen Confidential or ACT.

I have read Ruhlman, I reread his TFL chapters in 'The Soul of a Chef' about 3 times a year and I'll be reading various chapters of 'The Seasoning of a Chef' around the same. Ditto K.C. and A.C.T.

Sorry, if you haven't read the book, and that means the whole thing, not just the TFL chapter at B&N, then no one really knows what they're talking about. I thought it was good, inspirational at times (talking about the Ducasse chapters especially) and if you're a cook or chef, you've seen this movie a million times. That makes me feel good. I wonder why no one is talking about how screwed up the Chodorow/Ducasse relationship was, why no one else except Bux is questioning or going along with the relatively undisguised jibes at Dan Barber? BTW, I've never met a chef or worked with a chef who isn't obsessed with their walk ins, unless they were too busy to even walk in theirs and in that case, they had an walk in obsessed sous chef or chef de cuisine.

FINALLY!!! Thank you Doug, for coming in here. Thank YOU, Mr. Bourdain, for putting it into perspective. Sometimes, the dream gig isn't the dream gig.

Just thought I would post this link to the thread for the REAL Nutella fans!!! http://www.amazon.fr/exec/obidos/ASIN/2914...7872075-7067324 Yes it's a French book but cooking translations aren't that hard.