Wilfrid

Similar approach: smear just a little oyster sauce on it before searing. But yes, yes, bearnaise and fries too. French fries.

Cheddar (from England at least) is a west country cheese, and that's the region where the best cider is found. So Mamster's correct to identify a traditional pairing there. You'll also find a lot of English people who will enjoy a slice of cheddar with an apple. So that all makes sense. Another English tradition is to eat the kinds of hard cheeses discussed here with bread and pickle for lunch. This is English pickle, so don't think about those long green things Americans slice over sandwiches. I am speaking of finely chopped vegetables in a thick, brown, piquant but slightly sweet goo. A traditional accompaniment to this is a pint of bitter (or a pale ale; brown ale if you can get it). However, I firmly believe red wine can be successfully paired with such cheeses, so long as they aren't too old and mouldy. Syrah, certainly, but a good Burgundy will match all but the sharper cheddars. Try a pinot noir with Single or Double Gloucester, Lancashire or Cheshire. I expect a Merlot or Zinfandel will do too. Syrah/Shiraz or a full-blooded Italian or Spanish option with your Cheddar. By all means, drink a good claret with any of them, but I'll concede that more expensive Cabernets might be better paired with something else. Please understand that English blue cheeses - Stilton, Cheshire and Shropshire Blue, for example - are another story. They can murder a red wine. Serve them cool and drink a chilled white, or serve them at room temperature with a port or a sweet wine. The sinister Blue Vinny demands nothing less than a pint of scrumpy (strong, rough cider) or perhaps a schooner of meths.

Edit; yes, I agree.

That looks pretty good. I am hampered by the fact that I don't pay much attention to the beers I don't order, but my local (for beer anyway) usually offers the following on tap: Beamish, Boddington's, Sierra Nevada (IPA and Celebration), Magic Hat, Brooklyn Lager (I think it's called) and sometimes Sam Adams. sometimes Stella Artois. In bottle, the red and blue Chimays, a nice French beer in a large bottle with a picture of a gnome on the front (name?), among others. They will also pass you a can of Pabst. Not bad for an American pub, I contend.

Mogsob, I don't think anyone believes that someone blowing a puff of smoke over you will cause you any physical harm. I am guessing that's why it isn't actionable. It's more like someone playing you a Phil Collins record. I'd like that to be illegal in public, but I suppose some people may raise the banner of freedom over the issue. GJ: I suspect it's not on their web-site because - last I heard - its conclusions had been vacated by a federal court. Not sure what it's current status is. It was a good reference guide.

We can't really debate this on a handful of abstracts. There are about fifty published studies of second hand smoke and lung cancer, and a lot more on second hand smoke and other pulmonary conditions. There are very few on second hand smoke and heart disease - heart disease has so many risk factors, that it's hard to isolate an effect of second hand smoke (as opposed to diet, lack of exercise, high blood pressure, etc). You need to look at the overall data. The EPA report on the subject is the best place to start.

The second of those studies looks like a review from the quote. Did the first study report a relative risk? That would be the easiest way to see whether it is in line with the other studies or an outlier. Tobacco Control is an advocacy journal rather than a scientific journal, but it would be an ad hominem argument - in a rarely seen correct use of the term - to infer from that that the study is invalid.

Yes, the one near Bloomingdale's would be the Subway Inn. Step back forty years. I found the locals in Joe's Bar to be fairly unpleasantly aggressive, but maybe I caught them on a bad night. Or maybe it was my perfume. Ooh, I just realized you mentioned Li Po. I referred to that in the vaguest terms earlier in the thread, but couldn't think of the name. This is where you step through a gaudy Chinatown doorway into a large, high-ceiling room, with a sort of curvy bar. Everyone is gambling and drinking brandy (but not smoking, of course), and there are all kinds of tacky Buddahs interspersed among the bottles on the shelves. Downstairs are the toilets from hell. Great place. The Tenderloin, on the other hand, had bars even I wouldn't use. I thought I could see too many amputees and lepers among the clientele; doubtless my imagination, but it was all too much like a Burroughs novel.

"Impossible" is an exaggeration of course, but I'm very surprised.

Exactly - I associate it with Morocco and Turkey, and I thought I'd seen it spelt "brique" too. New Yorkers with money to burn will be interested in the version served at Atelier, where slices of squab breast and foie gras are wrapped in cabbage and then encased in sheets of brique. Sort of upmarket pigeon pie.

The next day? Scientifically impossible. Where's Dr Death when you need him?

Gentlemen, the chemicals in tobacco smoke responsible for the odor are fairly volatile at room temperature. If you come home in a coat or suit smelling of smoke, don't hang it in a closet. Hang it in some open space (I use the bathroom), and if it still has any smell in the morning, I will pay your dry cleaning bills for a year. Note: you can confidently rely on everything in the above paragraph except the last ten words.

Mark's analysis is right. It was easier to push this regulation through on health grounds, because if it's just a debate about personal preference, then in bars, at least, the majority might well have preferred smoking.

This fresh ham of which you speak; isn't that just the same thing as a leg of pork where I come from? Which you then roast? My answer is probably the tail, unless offal's not allowed. If it's not an ox, or Salma Hayek, I guess I have to choose something different. Let's see if that comment survives longer than Awbrig's picture.

Ah, Lissome, questions I can answer at last. If Rudy's is the place where free hot dogs glow perpetually under a cruel light, then a dive bar it is, and those dogs give it a distinctive smell all its own. The cowboy bar would be Doc Holliday's, correct? Do you know, I've never ventured in, but it does look pretty gruesome. I noticed recently that Coyote Ugly has brushed up its facade a little. Wonder if they've bought some air freshener too?

This must be the thread for Borscht 'n' Wotsit anecdotes. I was somewhat older than seventeen when, seeking to impress a first date, I took her first to the Tatty Bogle (extra points anyone who knows where that is), then offered - doubtless with a grand sweep of my arm - any cuisine she could name for dinner. "Russian" she said. Unexpectedly. And that is where we ended up.

I agree, but that wasn't the basis for the regulation. It was a health regulation. Hey, I don't know what the rule is for cigar bars. Are they unaffected by this?

Let me just say that I don't think there will be a measurable change in the incidence of pulmonary disease among those bar workers (if any) who don't in any case smoke. My prediction.

As a non-smoker, it will improve my quality of life. I have a standing intellectual objection to the regulation's basis. Any health benefit to those who work in bars will be so small as to be unmeasurable. If the regulation had been introduced purely on the basis of catering to the comfort non-smokers, it would have been unobjectionable, but would also have been harder for Bloomberg to push with comparable political zeal.

Not much overlap in the restaurants eGulleters have visited in Rio over the past few months. I found Troisgros a bit of a let down, as I said on a nearby thread. Thanks for these new reports.

Excellent, I must go tomorrow. Orejas d'Oro is a fantastic name for a bar. Is it the Euro which has made things expensive? I think I was last in Spain when pesetas were still permitted, and it was cheap enough then (er, I think there's a thread about it here somewhere). I was begining to worry about your aesthetic judgment, what with Robertson Davies and Gilbert and George, but you're right about Velasquez. We've 'ad a few of 'is daubs through New York over the last couple of years, and 'e's the guv'nor.

Hope it wasn't 'Death in Venice'. Quite a change to the image.

Mr Brown, I hope you're busy with your Atelier report, sir. As for bone marrow, we discussed on another thread the perils of undercooking, and I have had it undercooked several times in NYC - never tried Prune's. Much as I admire Fergus Henderson, I can't see that we should regard other roast bone marrows as "reproductions" of his dish. My recollection is that they serve it at St John with some toast and some rock salt; just like they do at restaurants all over France. If I am missing a particular Henderson refinement, I apologize. Now, fried breadcrumbed pig tails I do associate with him.

Trojan shill.

I look forward to Fat Bloke's article on the virtues of Dairylea cheese triangles.