tan319

Excuse the language but, if Cathar 's purpose of posting is just to rag on people who like the idea of El Bulli, maybe he(or she) should be directed elsewhere...?

My wife couldn't stop talking about it...

I think it is the opposite case. I think the customer was still very hungry. It's almost impossible to get full on the abstract. My experience is that if you eat something abstract , 2 hours later, you're hungry again. While the lemon napoleon sounds absolutely delicious to me, your customer would have been happier with one of those Pennsylvania Dutch apple dumplings, they're the size of a cannon ball, and after eating one, he would've been full for at least the next two weeks. That wouldn't be the case, I assure you. The customers didn't complain about the size of it, it was the look. I try to keep my desserts sized so that people won't be totally engorged with food and it's a pleasent experience, a nice ending to a meal. That's an increasingly hard thing to do with all the overportioning that goes on in our biz, and it's a tough thing to fight. For instance, my wife, daughter and I had dinner there two weeks ago or so, the guys threw a b-day celebration for me ( they gave me the El Bulii 98/02 book, gracious bastards!!!) We has a small app, no bread, my wife had a elk rack, I had a lamb shank, my daughter had a kids plate of a small chicken breast,etc. My daughter was jonesing for "some of my wonderful desserts" ( her words) and by the time we finished, it was no contest, no room for it. I half jokingly mentioned it to my chef the next week, my concern about portions and he said he would get strung up, customers would go ballistic, and the GM and manager of the servers agreed. So there you go, people want to be stuffed, I've had maybe one complaint about the size of my stuff, and unless we turn into a steakhouse ( something the chef and I have been discussing, believe it or not) you won't see me serving up any gigantic piles of crap to anyone, no matter how good it tastes. I know you were joking, just had to throw my 2 cents back in.

Yes, love the 'brulees to go. File that alongside an order for some milk chocolate/hazelnut ice cream w/o the hazelnuts, please

I like that response to customers. "Excuse me , I heard that you consider my dessert too abstract to consume, am I right, Sir, Madame?" " Why yes..." "The cracking sound of a bitchslap, plate smashing over head, the whooosh of a blowtorch turning on" I'll think about that.

nahhh, no photo. the waiter was frustrated with the table. to be fair, there were a lot of idiots out tonight. sorry to seem disdainful but, 'tis true...

it looked too abstract!!! Nothing to do with taste Someone ordered my lemon napoleon tonight, I brought it up, went back down to my dungeon lab, brought something else up, to have the waiter tell me that the table that ordered the napoleon didn't like it because it was "too abstract". Me: "WTF doe's that mean? The Plating?" Waiter: "Yes" It was plated on a large square plate, typical kind of nap assembly, lemon creme bottom, filo crisp, repeated twice, crisp on top, the nap is slightly offset. In front, or to the right, a very thin ribbon of Italian meringue, bruleed. In back of that, three strawberries, graduated in size. A small ribbon of blackberry coulis behind the far left one, a ribbon of raspberry behind the other, far right one, kind of encasing the nap. It was kind of striking but, I didn't think it would make one lose their appetite! They didn't take a bite, jesus, what the hell... Lame. 'Oh God, please deliver me from this purgatory on Earth ( and I hope I spelled the 'P' word correctly.Please forgive me if I didn't)'. edited to correct my spelling of the place between heaven and HELL!!!

No matter how you cut it, he's smarmy...

I don't know too much about Lindt but would think it's more of an eating chocolate then a cooking one. I'll check my notes and see if I adjusted choc quanity. I thought you were using sheet gel. Did you weigh your powder and bloom it well? Didn't leave it in the melting pan? Powders tricky.

zachy, you're right. Being an ex con has nothing to do with nothing. I work with some, no big deal. My apologies. I don't notget what chowder is on about, losing money is a drag, etc. I understand the art of editing, all i'm saying is that it has to be there to begin with to do this to individuals.

Thank you. Dittos from me too, Katie! You handled it well. All the best to you! edit: Also, if I may add re: the show... I saw the Apprentice crew on Larry King last night and Omorosa (sp?) was intimating the scripting thing and everyone involved, including Trump, denied any scripting. All attested to two things. Burnetts brilliance in casting and the fact that you can't edit something into an image w/o the raw materials. Before I get incinerated, I have to say that I don't find the gossiping by the servers unrealistic. Chowder and crew were having a meeting in front of everyone, with no discretion at all, and that doesn't surprise me in the least with Mr. Ex-con. News travels fast in a restaurant anyways, they're always swirling with gossip, and these folks have the advantage of Page 6 to learn from. Perhaps the situation is so cruddy we just don't want to admit it could really be unraveling this way?

If I have to refrigerate something like a chocolate glazed mousse, etc, I hit the surface very lightly with a blowtorch to reshine it. Works for me.

Your blog is out of sight! I hope you knock Portland on it's ass!! YAY for you!!! Keep it coming!!!!

Jinmyo, you crack me up!!! To clarify my question about say, Sysco peanut butter( ), what I meant was if a guy like chowderboy wants all of his restaurants to use his vendors, would it not follow that he is going to be using those huge companies like the above? Who, incidentally, are very,very "nice" to clients who spend huge amount's of money with them. It makes it a lot easier for the organization too, correct? Maybe people will see that dew wrapped fool of a corporate chef manning the store too. He should be pretty good with peanut butter & jelly...

Like Neil said, I think it's the surface you use to temper on. PVC, those shiny sheets they sell at JBPrince, etc. Temperatures to follow are those that the brand specifies as the best to follow, correct? I would also keep in mind that, as has been mentioned in here before, that a lot of chocolate one buys is already in temper. If it looks shiny, as if it's already been tempered, it's probably in temper. The paper strip test is for testing setting though, yes? Any good coverture is going to look glossy when it's melted, you're looking for the snap?

given, Thank you for your post and sorry, very sorry, that you guys got screwed like this. Mix was very much on my mind while watching Chodorow and his group of asses on 'The Restaurant'. Question for you. Why would Ducasse involve himself with a guy like this? Is the new crew going to be using Sysco peanut butter? All the best to you!

Just wondering whatever happened to Albertos plated dessert book? The English one. I remember seeing something about this on the FPS site the 1st time he guested there. BTW, the '98/02 book rocks, the CD-rom is the most incredible thing I've ever seen!

There's a recipe for chocolate panna cotta at Partistry.com, Jehengir Metha's site, that's pretty good, I adapted it a bit and used milk chocolate for a panna cotta I put on a chocolate tasting plate I was doing. I played around with the amount of gelatine I used too. I wouldn't use cocoa for it. I infused mine with lemon zest also,it's a surprisingly good combo, IMO. Orange would go good with milk chocolate also. Good luck! P.S.: word of advice. Let your mix cool down in an ice water bath just until room temp before pouring into molds, giving it a stir every once in awhile. And make sure you cover well, you'll get a skin, otherwise.

I just received my CDROM that works in Mac and my mind is blown!!! All of the detail and work that went into this is so admirable... My only disappointment was seeing that the recipes on the 'English/USA' track were given in volume, not metric. Thankfully, the English/UK trak is all metric.

Same here. Kinda sad isn't it. Its sad, if you consider how a truly talented and hard worklng chef like Doug Psaltis at Mix serving high end, high quality and technically complicated food got totally and undeservedly and prematurely shafted by Chodorow while Rocco was permitted for months upon months to be completely incompentent, a non participant at his own restaurant and lose mountains of money with a far more touristy place serving glorified pizza parlor food that was expected to be a huge profit center, yes. Roccos should have been closed/repurposed and Dispirito should have been thrown out on his ass after the first 3 months. With Mix and Psaltis, Chodorow erroneously committed infanticide on a restaurant that was arguably just starting to be one of the most innovative and best new high-end restaurants in the entire city, if not the whole country. Now we will never know what potential that could have been reached. I totally agree with you on the MIX matter. It's hard to swallow that Ducasse would let this guy screw up his concept so early, makes me wonder how much money Mix was losing a month. And can't you see Chodorow just not understanding how this red sauce joint could be losing when supposedly China Grill grossed 7 mil it's first year?

It may not be all of it, but go to the bottom of the page linked here (click me). Of course Rocco isn't much liked here either, I think, and that article dares to call him "likable", which seems like bullcrap to me. Chodorow has 20 filings in Dade county? Rocco may be an ass, but this guy is, crap...

I don't know him but, I thought it was really distasteful to be looking at the P&L sheets in the restaurant itself, not to mention having this corporate chef guy in there too. The whole lot of them were so, Rumsfeld like in their cynicism. The only person in that crew that seemed to be decent was the woman who was trying to tame intern boy. We all know this has been edited to highlight conflict and drama but that scene happened. It seems that these guys ( Rocco and Jeffery) should have been discussing how to make this place stop losing so much money earlier then six months into it. When I was involved in a New York Opening, within two months the chef was getting heavily pressured on food and labor cost's, and in month three it had been for the most part corrected. I suppose the change's going on at Ducasse's 'MIX', another Chodorow joint venture, lead me to distrust him.

Sorry 'bout that, rancho, was reading a bit fast.

It's not that Rocco is so nice, in fact, he seems kind of oblivious early in the episode, which isn't super encouraging. I've worked for some big chefs, and they aren't always there, that's cool. But the 'Rock comes off as "not involved" to the nth degree. Of course, editing probably amplifies whatever the real story is, I hope it's not as bad as it seems. I can see Chowder's side, a pasta joint should be a bit more profitable then a place like Union Pacific, a lot profitable, it will be interesting to see where they are losing their ass. The intern seemed like he was spoiling for a fight, the corporate chef, besides looking like an idiot with that dew wrap, was so smirky, he should have some respect for a (formerly) 3 star chef who is the real deal.

Tonight was what I wanted to see out of this, even if it was making me want to hop a plane back to NYC and : #1- Seek out that little intern bitch of Chowderheads, drag him over to a 20,000 BTU burner and heat up one of his hands. And #2- Find that dew wrapped corporate chef of chowderboyeeee, rip that thing of his sillyassed looking head, and get medieval on him. Even if Dispirito has probably ruined his "brand", that smug crap coming out of that CC's mouth about him was impossibly hard to take. This place will go up in smoke, nothing has ever worked at that location for very long.