Wilfrid

Thanks for that. As far as New York goes, I have certainly seen fresh cider at various green markets.

When I do the fancy fast chopping of vegetables, I regularly catch my fingernails. I don't cut right through them, happily, but it ruins the polish! Adam, I remember one of my friends, rustling up a snack after a night in the pub, managed to stick her hand in the food mixer while it was mixing. Ouch. I have to say, jicama is not that exciting a thing to be cooking at 2am!

Good idea, but just for clarification: do you mean hard cider or the non-alcoholic kind? Or doesn't it matter?

Lighten up guys. Boatman, any question beginning "Who made you the reigning deity..." can hardly be described as "merely a question." Tommy thinks the thread is uninteresting. On this occasion I agree. If you read other threads, you'll find I don't always agree with Tommy. Sometimes I call him a bowl of porridge. Incidentally, I think the States should forget the whole tipping thing. Other countries do without it. But that's a whole other thread, probably for the General board.

When I started reading this thread, I was in the "people are entitled to discuss whatever they like" corner. Tony and Tommy have persuaded me otherwise. I can think of a number of conversational gambits which would prompt me to complain to an adjoining table. For example, if I was overhearing racist remarks, I wouldn't think it was up to me to ask to be re-seated.

Yes, abebooks. I buy through them regularly, and often find better prices than at actual second-hand stores in Manhattan.

Thanks for filling in the details, Yvonne. Very good poetry selection there too.

All very sensible, and I just thought I'd add that a good way to add the historical and geographical detail to what Steve has said is to read Waverley Root's The Food of France. It's an old book now, and many of the dishes described seem to have vanished, but his conceptual structure for explaining French cuisine still seems sound.

SobaAddict's penne with sprouts worked out fine on Saturday night. Only question was about the leaves. I did find them a little al dente, but clearly I shouldn't be blanching them first. Maybe next time I'll take a few minutes to remove the main veins. Or should I have sauteed them for longer? Anyway, interesting flavors, and a nice change for someone who tends to cook a lump of protein with a nice sauce. Last night, I cooked a lump of protein with a nice sauce. Filet mignon simply seared with a butter and salt crust. A few morels, cooked with chopped shallot and garlic; poured in some tawny port, reduced and finished with a knob of butter. The morels drank up plenty of port and were sweet and delicious.

This thread is increasingly mysterious. By far the majority of restaurants, in my experience in the States, do not add service, except for large parties. Therefore, they need to have space for a tip on the credit card slip. Many posts above, I thought there was a consensus that a restaurant shouldn't be expected to provide differently designed credit card slips for different tables. So what do you want them to do? Scratch a line through the space for the tip if it's already included? Fine. I manage to do that myself, without any great difficulty. But sure, let's lobby for restaurants to do that. If it really matters.

There's an extensive second-hand bookstore on 12th Street, which I discovered has a pretty large selection of well-priced, good quality food books. I picked up a hardback MJK Fisher collection there for about $10. And it's well-stocked all round. Can I remember the name? Of course not. But it's almost opposite Gotham Bar & Grill, and therefore a few steps from that new-ish steak house, the Strip House. Down some steps into a basement. Can't miss it, and if you do I owe you a pint of shandy.

Thank you Miss J, how sweet of you. Andy Lynes, of course, is just messing with my mind. :wow:

I am relieved, for your sake, that that's all it means! More seriously - I think - can you enlarge on the "facing heaven" chilis? Or is that a sort of poetic description of just reglar old chilis. Anyway - enjoy. I may be dining on small pretzels at a Manhattan gin palace known as "Jimmy's".

hhrmrrmphh. (No, just clearing my throat)

So, have the last word.

Unless there's some clear law to the contrary, a hopeless case. Someone sits down with a menu in the restaurant, they're relying on the menu to tell them the price of the dishes. Someone consults a menu on a web-site, all they're relying on is the menu published there, along with a bunch of other information, in order to decide whether to go to the restaurant in the first place. Can't see any contract being entered into at that stage, and it's hard to see that they are going to be able to demonstrate any worthwhile damages arising from their reliance on those specific prices when deciding what to do for dinner. (Like: if I'd known the steak was going to cost $5 more, I'd have gone somewhere else, so that's the damage Your Honor). No. But remember, I am not an attorney.

Oh, now that Miss J's been, I mean don't take my word for it. Seriously, I'm glad to hear some confirmatory reports. As I said, I went a second time because I couldn't quite believe it. Hope it holds up to protracted inspection. Perhaps it could open a branch on Avenue C in New York?

Is it a sign of the zeitgeist that we speak so much about entitlement, obligation and liability? I assume these terms aren't being used in this thread in a legal sense. I am not sure about New Jersey, but in New York restaurants aren't legally obliged to display menus in their windows (unlike in the UK). The menu they place in the customer's hands obviously has to have the correct prices - although not necessarily the correct dishes. Clearly no restaurant is legally obliged to host a web-site, and I doubt if liability arises should something on the web-site be inaccurate or out-of-date - I stand open to correction by the attorneys out there, of course. So, are we talking about obligations arising out of ethics or courtesy? Seems to me a restaurant is doing more than we are entitled to expect or demand by putting up a web-site at all. Glenn argues that once a restauarnt chooses to do so, some obligations kick in. I think the easiest way for any restaurant to deal with these concerns is to clearly display terms like "sample" and "example" and "subject to change" on their web pages. But even if they don't, I think its reasonable to expect people to read the web-site information that way. I would have a grouch if a restaurant changed from serving haute cuisine to pizzas without changing their web-site, but I don't expect minor changes in the menu to be reflected on a daily basis - and if you want to hold restaurants to that standard, guess what? Goodbye web-sites.

Memory suggests I have also had some fresh coconut in that drink, but I am struggling to recall how it was introduced - as coconut milk, or some ground flesh? I don't know if anyone can confirm that? About my favorite of the sorts of drinks you can stick umbrellas in.

Someone once showed me around their collection and produced some 19th century clarets for my inspection - pre-phylloxera, I think. I got quite excited when he said, "Shall we open something?", but of course he then reached for a modest recent vintage. Going back that far, I wonder if the wines would be potable in any case?

Let me say, I don't know anything about the Bernards Inn. What I do know is that there are many restaurants who fit exactly your description: they really are not soliciting custom from people who cannot easily afford their prices. There are many such restaurants in Manhattan and other major US cities, and there are bound to be some outside the cities too. However, exactly the same would go for quite a few clothes shops, car shops, wine merchants...and the list goes on. I am unclear as to whether you are suggesting that this is objectionable. Certainly, I can't see any way to avoid it in an economy organized very broadly along market lines. Or, in other words, what's your beef?

Can I just say that I love innards. I also enjoy shocking people, but the two are only contingently connected. As for innards and cheap eats being associated, can I yet again recommend tripes a la armagnac at Le Cirque?

Soba, I am determined to try the dish you described a while back, invlolving brussel sprouts, red pepper flakes and penne. Just a question about the sprouts. Being English, my instinct is to boil sprouts into a state of non-being, making the entire apartment smell like a hospital ward. I understand that this time I am sauteeing them. That's it, no parboiling/blanching, right? And when you say the sprouts are chopped, do you mean just quartered, or finely chopped? Many thanks in advance.

Tony, I too have happy memoriees of that Port institute. I thought it was worth adding that, contrary to what you might expect, even the very old vintages are very affordable.

I said Water Club, because that's the only restaurant I could think of that fitted your description. There's a nice spacious bar inside, and you can dine overlooking the river. I haven't noticed the deck - but that doesn't mean there isn't one. From memory, I've only been there at night and in winter. Maybe give them a call to see if they serve drinks outside? I should think the view would be fine if they do.