Wilfrid

I don't know anything that really works for adults, so I'm sure all the mints and breath fresheners I used as a kid were a waste of time too.

Very pleased to see the heavy cream come into play there. Nothing like it for finishing a pan sauce. Sounds excellent. One of the quickest ways I know to make a supper dish which tastes like it was made in a restaurant is take any type of thin escalope of meat, season and sear, set aside to rest, the pan juices deglazed with something alcoholic, heavy cream, reduce, reduce, reduce and sprinkle on some chopped herbs or pink peppercorns or something for decoration. About ten minutes, and this is the kind of thing Italian restaurants have been charging $20 a plate for for years.

Well, yum, yum. Tommy, did you sprinkle sugar on it, as Varmint suggested? On a more serious note, is this Manwich stuff getting mixed with ground meat, or are you using just the stuff out of the can?

A positive note: I did enjoy reading the "100 Great Things About Restaurants". Essentially, a hundred little snippets on interesting dishes or other aspects of restaurants around the world. Just light reading, but it made me want to get my passport out. Also, it gave some indication of the depth of resources a magazine like Gourmet can command. There would be a year of issues just developing these brief items into articles.

Just to be clear Joe-Greg, is that just the flour without the oil? Thanks.

Yeah, but it's when you ask to see the label on the Bud Lite that it gets really embarrassing.

What a shame. We haven't been back since Rodriguez left (ages ago), but had heard good things. Is it still all prix fixe, though? - I noticed you mentioned the price of starters.

Steve Klc mentioned the above about a year ago as possibly the best dining experience to be had in the Toronto area. I wonder if anyone has heard about it recently or has any recent experiences? Otherwise, my understanding from reading this board and looking elsewhere is that Susur is the top pick for dinner in Toronto. Thanks as always for any help.

allow me: gourmet and its ilk are generally big-city-centric. hell, they're NYC-centric for the most part. people know what they're getting when the read the cover and buy the thing. if they don't, well then they're stupid and the publisher deserves to take their money. Yes, we all know that. We were just trying to work out if Rachel was hallucinatin'. Apparently so.

Unreliable and inaccurate reporting by recent James Beard winner. In future, Thomas, I shall listen only to you.

No, if they think the restaurants inside are the best, the cover's not misleading. They just don't put them in any order inside. I would agree that the selection implies they have been looking at factors other than which are the best - namely, they've been making sure they choose at least one for each city for each category. But that's only my surmise - maybe they really do think that The Four Seasons, Pearl Oyster Bar and Washington Park are three of New York's seven best restaurants. Misguided loons.

Responding to Awbrig, the presentation by Gourmet is ambiguous. The guide is entitled "America's Best Restaurants", but then, for each city, they name - as I originally said - restaurants in the categories business/buzz/favorite/neighborhood, with no ranking between them. So while one cannot infer that Gourmet thinks the Four Seasons is the single best restaurant in New York, one can only suppose that the half dozen or so restaurants listed in the various categories for New York are together the best. Which is why I'm surprised The French Laundry isn't anywhere - as the guide isn't entitled "Best Restaurants in Big American Cities". Rachel???

Yeah, come on Rachel, what are you doing?

Thus, Fat Geezer. I don't know if he's right or wrong, but thus.

Oh, it's a well known side dish. Canned peas mixed with Heinz baked beans. Surely you were raised on it?

That's why I'm here for you.

Fair enough. I assumed that the Wetherspoons of this world would require some sort of basic catering qualification from their cooks, but perhaps I am a hopelessly starry-eyed naif.

Fresh indeed, Toby, and I think that's why I happened to come across them. Meaty. I made several helpings of pinto beans with bacon and onions recently, and froze them. I wish I'd used these cranberry beans instead.

It's not a competition. I am all in favor of po' boys, and tommy's "loose meat" -type sandwiches, and beef with debris, and all kinds of Amercian butties. This one happens to remind me of the minced beef sandwiches I used to think were excellent when I was about seven years old. But I should shut up and try one, of course. Are there commercial outlets for these things, or are they strictly home-made?

Not live, I'm afraid. They seem to turn up in large quantities around this time of year, and I've bought them at Gramercy Fish the last few seasons (2nd Ave between 22 and 23).

Where, Rachel? I'm sure it's my fault, but I just can't see it.

You know what puzzles me? Two things. First, although I am somewhat out of touch with the generality of British pubs, I recall typical pub food being along the lines of bangers and mash, steak pie with chips and peans, shepherd's pie, spag bol, and the like. And while that kind of repertoire is limited, many pubs seemed to execute it competently. Plain home cooking, really. What I infer both from Simon's post and my own occasional observations is that pubs today attempt to put a gastronomic flourish on the menus. Thai fishcakes, indeed. Let alone Thai schnitzel (what's the equivalent, Viennese pad thai?). Not to mention, I suspect, all manner of burritos, kebabs, shrimps a la provencale, Peruvian chicken, and of course "curry". What a bunch of nonsense. And indeed there may be a connection there between a half-hearted, TV-based education in "gourmet" food and the expectations of the customers when eating out. Ten years ago, pork sausages would have comfortably outsold Thai red curry on any pub menu, but I wonder if that is any longer true. The second thing that puzzles me is that it's surely as easy to prepare simple food well as badly. It's not like it's a big money-saver to screw it up. I mean, a decent fishcake is not an impossibly complex dish to prepare. Is it that the pubs can't be bothered to employ people with competence in catering, or is that competence now extremely rare? Personally, I like to see a home-made Scotch egg, a pork pie of a good brand, and a jar of pickled eggs. Then I'm happy.

(Thinks: He must mean me.) Seriously, not that there's any precise system to the use of this kind of terminology, I recall the phrase cuisine classique being much used to describe relatively straightforward preparations of exceptionally fine ingredients. Roast chicken with a little tarragon and a few asparagus spears. Lamb chops with a gratin. Trout au bleu. Those are a few dishes which spring to mind as examples of cuisine classique. Although the term haute cuisine is used very widely indeed today, I often think it's most appropriately applied to dishes requiring very elaborate preparation, and often accompanied by luxury garnishes (foie gras, caviar, ecrevisses and so on). The lobster sausafe and avocado and caviar mousse sound like good examples. An old fashioned example might be poulet a la financiere. Do I get a tick?

You are both trying to make me hungry. I ate at Prudhommes K-Paul place in New Orelans once, and inevitably ordered the gumbo. It was very good gumbo. Thanks, Priscilla, for being specific, specifically about the color of the roux. Hershey bar brown seems to be the consensus. Personally, I am less worried about what goes into the gumbo - that seems to me to be the easy part. Hmmm, isn't crawfish season due?

Thank you, Steven. I meant "prize" as in prize something open with a lever. Symptom of being trapped between UK and US spelling (of words like "realise"/ "realize", etc).