Wilfrid

I had not noticed the low alcohol aspect of the pear cider. Thanks for the warning. I like the Granny Smith, but I also like the Colonial Aged. In fact, I like all their ciders. I find that any effervescent cider gives me heartburn when taken to excess. So does champagne. I once drank six bottles of champagne over a two day period and felt someone was twisting a screwdriver in my oesophagus for the following twenty four hours.

Oh god, no photos. For goodness sake. Be warned, I have absolutely no sense of humor in person. And no conversation. I shall spend the evening staring mutely into my beer. I am glad I re-joined this thread though, as there is an otherwise bewildering and disturbing exchange between Liza and Tommy on her bio-thread about whether she will be wearing pants or not. Now I understand. I should say that the chances of this crowd of oddballs (and I include myself) fading quietly into the background and not spotting each other in a space as small as the Kettle of Fish, can be safely discounted. I have deciphered my list of other nearby venues. Chumley's, which Tommy recommended way back, is nearby, as are the pair of bars facing each other across Hudson - the White Horse, which everyone knows, and the Blind Tiger, which is quite okay. We could also wander up a few blocks to the Tavern on Jane. I am concentrating on pub-like options - obviously there are different kinds of bars in the neighborhood too. I got a critical review of my new beret from the missus last night. It's hard to reproduce typographically, but if you try saying "Jesus" and retching at the same time, you'll get some idea.

You're right, Cabrales. When I lived in London, a weekend in Barcelona was very feasible. By the way, next door to the Casa Batlo, the Casa Amatler is now open to visitors. It had always been private on my previous visits.

I have lived in the Gramercy/Flatiron neighborhood for a couple of years and am about to move. Leaving these restaurants is a wrench. Not only a great dining area, but look at the food shopping too: Union Square Greenmarket, the French Butcher, Gramercy Fish, Catch 22 (or is it 21?), cheeses from Artisanal and Lavandou. Dammit, cancel that move.

I did find my piece of paper and will attempt to transcribe it when I get a moment later. The East Village would be a long walk from Christopher Street; it would make more sense to drink around the Village/West Village. 7pm sounds like a sensible compromise on the time.

I am watching it, believe me.

I thought there used to be a cider thread, but I can't find it. Anyway, for casual, everyday cider drinking, I think the range of bottled ciders from Woodchuck in Vermont is just fine. I have just found, for the first time, a pear cider produced by Woodchuck - maybe a new product? Tried it, of course. In my youth, in England, pear drops were popular boiled sweets. They sometimes tasted a little like medicine, but most of the time tasted like pears. Same thing here. You think, I dunno this is a bit like medicine; then you think, no it's fine. Serve chilled of course. I can't imagine drinking it more often than the apple ciders, but it's worth a try.

I am still on for wearing my new beret, just as long the missus doesn't confiscate it first. If we are going to go for the glass smashing, we'd probably better figure out where we're drinking after the Kettle of Fish. I did come up with some ideas last week, in fact, in my eagerness, but now I've lost the scrap of paper.

Yes it is, thanks for asking. It's main attraction is that it contains the overspill of my library from my main "seat". I may have the finest collection of cricket books in the South Bronx.

Sorry, Steven, but we are going back seven or eight years. I haven't a clue.

I suspect we all agree that it is a good thing that Harlem and other areas are opening up. I had been looking for an opportunity to make this announcement, and now I have it: I am moving to Avenue D next week. Now you'll see some gentrification. I estimate our new abode is approximately ten to twelve minutes walk from Katz's. I need to time it exactly. I also have a holiday home in the South Bronx.

Crummy durian, brittle kitchen knives. My luck, eh? It was certainly in season, as I was in a market in Singapore where you couldn't move for the things. Maybe I didn't get the best though. Happily, I can spend the rest of the afternoon allocating things to the "like caviar" catgeory and the "like sex/bacon" category. I think poems come under "like caviar". Beer, however, comes under "like sex/bacon".

No question. I shrink from racial profiling, but it is clear at a glance that most of the hookers working on the street in Barcelona are actually from Latin America, while the gangs of pickpockets are from somewhere in the Eastern European direction. They ain't Catalans. I made similar observations in London last year. The guys trying to lure me - unsuccessfully - into an obvious and clumsy credit card snatch did not have English as their first language.

Thanks for wading through the post everyone. I found the missing info for the charcuterie, so I will go back in and correct it. Jinmyo: I am with you on Hughes. Every great city desrves a fabulous book like that. Adam: I think your spelling of "Hydromel" is correct - I had been thinking of the Spanish word for honey, miel, and doubtless there's some link. This was not a noticeably spicy wine, although I am prepared to believe it had been laying sediment for five or six hundred years. How about a kind of mead-flavoured grappa? Maybe not quite that harsh, though. I am afraid I can't figure out the tomato marmalade, except that I wonder if there was some addition of bitter orange or orange zest, because a mainstream marmalade flavor was in there along with the fresh tomato flavor. It was bright red in colour, and distinctly sweet. Sadly, I have seen the petty crime (summer before last, not on this trip) - a purse snatching and some blatant attempts at pick-pocketing. With the money tourism brings in, they should not let this get out of hand.

Oh, I'm here. I was just getting measured for my new toga and practising speaking with a pebble in my mouth. I think I must be scarred from my experiences on certain other threads, but I just couldn't face a potentially endless debate about North American v. European cities. I have family in Vancouver, and it's very pretty and friendly. I believe there is also a bar there. And some shops. I agree with Tommy and others that the secret to France is to learn a little of the language and manners. My French is rough, but it's enough for people to treat me like a normal customer (which is essentially the role we're playing as tourists) rather than as a potential headache. And before we get all het up about having to do this for the French, reflect on just how tolerant anglophone Americans are of people who can speak no English. Finally, I am glad the rudeness of the English is finally being recognised. We have never had enough credit for it. I think London is an infinitely ruder city than New York, for example (although I am ruder in New York than I used to be back "home" - less inhibited, you see).

Just because a bottle has the word "absinthe" on the label, doesn't mean it really does contain thujone/wormwood. It's illegal in a lot of countries - not sure about Spain. Listen, you can have mental changes and vomit with regular everyday Pernod. Why go the extra mile?

I have to say Durian left me disappointed. I got past the smell okay, but I found the pulp soapy and disagreeable. I have also eaten Durian puree from a hotel buffet in Malaysia. Not much better. It's not inedible - I just can't really see the point to it.

Admin: Pico changed names to Dominic. Pico had been on my to-do list for a while. An article in Time Out a couple of week back (in retrospect, a pretty odd article) said that the place had been found languishing half full on a Friday night, so I thought I'd better check it out. I went on Saturday and it was absolutely heaving, with people backed up at the bar waiting for tables. Aside from the wine list, I found it to be about as Portuguese as Danube is Austrian. Yes, they had grilled sardines, but salt cod made only a timid appearance among the appetizers in the guise of a fish cake. Otherwise, it was a fairly mainstream selection of dishes, with the odd Mediterranean inflection here and there. You could wear out a lot of shoe leather looking for a menu like this in Lisbon. Steamed cockles with chorizo first. In my homeland, cockles are about the cheapest shellfish going, and we eat them by the pint. They aren't that expensive here either, so I was disappointed with the scant few floating in broth. Worse was the powerful smell of burning rubber when the waiter lifted the lid to present the dish. I eventually traced it to the chorizo skin. At first, I thought this was one of those rare dishes which was actually going to be too nasty to eat, but once the steam dissipated, the odour problem became tolerable. The suckling pig - a signature dish I believe - was very good. Skin like brittle toffee, delicate flesh, and served over slightly sweet but pleasant spinach. Good stuff, and needed to be at $29. A few cheeses followed, some Portuguese and some French. The servers were rushed and preoccupied. I was drinking wines by the glass - vino verdhe and a Douro Reserva (they had run out of the Dao) - and they were presenting the bottle, then pouring to the brim. Generous indeed, although it might annoy people who want to swirl and sniff. The food bill alone came to $60 before tax, so you can easily reach three figures here. For me, Pico fell mysteriously between two stools. If I really wanted a Portuguese meal, I'd go elsewhere (for example the smaller and less expensive Pao a few blocks up Greenwich, which has a distinctly Portuguese menu) - and the chef isn't Portuguese, so...why? Similarly, if I wanted good, mainstream restaurant cooking, Pico would be way down my list. But I am aware this is just a snapshot. Maybe some people have had much better experiences there?

I think anything is now okay. I shall just shuffle embarrassedly into the background and leave it up to everyone else. Yeah, next Friday - 22, right? - 6.30, 7, 8, whatever. Sorry again.

I thought I posted this mea culpa earlier, but I can't see it now. Anyway, I meant to confess that the reason I was trying to organise everyone was that I spent quite some time yesterday thinking that today was the 22nd and we were meeting tonight. I think that explains some of my posts. Total idiocy. And if I have now posted this message twice, sorry again.

I sometimes wonder. There are so many completely bewildering opinions on this thread (Paris "unpleasant"; less interesting than Vancouver; etc) that I will pass on silence. Except to observe that Barcelona is heaven on earth, and there's an excellent new post about it on the Elsewhere in Europe board. Shamelessly drumming up business.

I agree with the mood of the thread. I use diners occasionally for convenience, but if I venture further than some eggs and toast I usually come out thinking, "Well, that was lousy." The Moonrock on 57th between 8th and 9th used to be a local, and it was competent - but I wouldn't recommend it as a destination. Further east on 57th, there is a completely ersatz mock dining car called itself The Brooklyn Diner ("the finer diner"). It is decorated with murals of Ebbett's Field, and runs old baseball tapes on the TVs. The menu is a kind of post-modern interpretation of what diner food might have been. But some of the cooking is pretty good, and portions are huge. I recall a very nice chicken soup with tarragon. As Steven Shaw says, I would definitely visit local diners if they could just make a decent burger and fries. They can't. Many bars seem to be able to, so I don't know why that is.

Protracted armchair ratiocination has suggested a solution to this puzzle which is consistent with all the known facts, leaves both my judgment and the restaurant's integrity unimpugned, and - above all - explains the mysterious bullet. If you recall, there were good reasons to think that this bird was not grouse - both the evidence of my palate (freely dismissed by certain bulldog-fanciers, of course) and the fact that the grouse season had ended more than two months previously. Assume it wasn't grouse. But assume also that the chef was an honest fellow. The deductive leap is obvious. He said it was grouse, because that's what he thought it was. This is a young, but experienced and able chef. He is American, and has not, I believe, worked in the British Isles. His judgment would have told him the bird was fresh, not frozen. He would have seen at a glance that it was shot wild game (and I think we agreed that bird with a bullet is unlikely to have been sourced in the U.S.). He probably had no reason to doubt that the bird had been flown in from Scotland. It is quite possible, however, that our chef is unfamiliar with the precise details of the game seasons of specific, rare British game birds - and maybe doesn't cook grouse that often either. He sent the bird out as grouse in all good faith, because that's what he had been told it was. But who by? I said above that exporting illegally poached grouse to the United States would be a high risk, low profit enterprise. On the other hand, there would be very significant profit in shipping a crate of shot pigeon at grouse prices - and although you might lose a customer if a restaurant spotted the trick, you'd be most unlikely to face a criminal prosecution. My work is done, Inspector. I offer no proof, but perhaps an interview with the so-called "grouse dealer" might be in order. (Theme music. Roll credits.)

Yes, Bid sounds like a great idea. We should be able to get some nice treatment there, if Mr Shaw doesn't fall out with Mr Seeber in the meantime.

Thank you, team. My only remaining question is this: If Tommy is definitely not coming, can we make it a bit later than 6.30? I mean, 8 o'clock was just a random choice. Or by all means stick to 6.30, but without the Tommy-incentive, I'll probably get there around 7.00. By the way, what does it mean that around eighty per cent of the people coming are Brits? Are we just better organised, or are the Americans avoiding us?