Eric_Malson

Sorry, but I've got to disagree with this. I suppose it's acceptable if you can overlook the fact they have slighted the most important ingredient in paella--the rice. The paella I was served there was made with Uncle Ben's or something similar.....certainly not good quality short-grained rice as is absolutely required. There was also nary a hint of saffron (essential for a good paella). Naturally, I finished mine anyway! I really wanted to like it (it's a nice, comfy place)....my companion did, but he'd never been to Spain. As for restaurants in other parts of town, let me toss La Rosita into the mix. It's a Cuban/Dominican coffee shop with a large, varied menu and has the best cafe con leche I've tried in NYC. Great cubano sandwiches, breakfast specials (for under 5 bucks, including cafe con leche) that feature rice and beans, delicious pots of soupy rice stews, and pernil on the weekends. I keep hearing it's gone downhill....I dunno. I've been going there for almost 10 years and it's the same as it's always been. It's the best option anywhere near me (I live in Morningside Heights) and you really have to work to spend more than 15 dollars here. (Broadway, between 108th and 109th St.) And BTW Pan, I'm with you on Max's "SoHa" (gag me....). No-better-than-decent food, but always too crowded. And the last time I was there the service was so bad I won't even consider going there any more....a pity since I live literally two doors away.

What a fun site! Unfortunately, it makes me want to go to Spain more than ever (come to think of it, everything makes me want to go to Spain....) Based on my somewhat limited experience I would say pedro is abolutely right. Lavapiés is an energetic and varied neighborhood....it also has the advantage of being within walking distance of the area south and east of the Plaza Mayor and Cava Baja area, which, to my mind, is where you as a foodie would want to be. As I recall, a few years ago there were some interesting places popping up near Atocha, which is also the same general end of town.

Funny, I had that exact experience at Compass last year! And the same reaction, although intensified a bit because, as I recall, the appetizer was not just in the $10-15 range, but in excess of it (could be wrong, but it was damned expensive for two scallops!). This was followed by an incompetently cooked veal chop. Add sub-standard service (particularly for a restaurant this expensive) to the mix and I was longing for SQC. My one meal at Ouest had similar "issues"--miniscule portions, food of no particularly outstanding quality (at least the dishes here were competently executed), and somewhat less-than-attentive service. Yes, I have a somewhat larger-than-normal appetite (no comments from the peanut gallery!), but there was nothing about either of the above meals that imparted to me any desire whatsoever to return.

My god.....what a wealth of information! And about a part of India that I happen to have the most interest (and next to no concrete information about). So, any eGulleteers up for an expedition to Uttaranchal? Thank you so very much, Rushina!

Mr. Kinsey was behind the camera, and I was off to the left, just outside the photograph. They also possess some of the most beautiful cocktailware (is that a word?) I have ever seen. They have an amethyst glass shaker (from the '30's, is it?) and matching drink glasses that are just gorgeous. I agree with everything Sam said.....I lack the descriptive vocabulary to add much more of significance. As wonderful as Hendrick's is (it really is extraordinary), I might actually prefer Citadelle for martinis in the summer. Hendrick's silkiness and "full-bodied" effect from the expert balance of herbals are ideal for colder weather, while I suspect Citadelle's "spikiness" may end up, in the end, being more refreshing when the weather is hotter. Just a guess.

I was thinking only Manhattan, actually (Flushing is just too damn far for me to go to dinner under normal circumstances). Perhaps my expectations are a bit skewed, but with all the Chinese restaurants in Chinatown (not to mention the rest of Manhattan), I don't find four to be exactly a superfluity. Maybe my real complaint is, having been to all the restaurants you mentioned except Moon House, I don't find any of them (and I could be romanticizing its memory, I suppose) to be as wonderfully satisfying as Say Eng Look used to be. After all, for me the mere existence of GSI makes up completely for the almost utter lack any acceptable alternative for Szechwan food in Manhattan!

And one of the best spots for a choice martini I know of. I noticed on the other gin thread active right now a couple of fans of Citadelle and remembered how much I liked it in tasting offered in a liquor store a couple of years ago. Never had it in a martini, though.....Sam, if I bring over a bottle of Citadelle, can we do side-by-side- martini tastings? How about tonight?

Spatchcocked.....I love that word! My favorite comes from Elizabeth David. Chop some fresh tarragon leaves and knead them, along with a clove of garlic, some salt and pepper, into a couple of tablespoons of butter and put into the cavity. Coat the bird with olive and oil and roast on it's side (in a rack), turning it over at half-time. When it's done, heat some brandy (a quarter-to-half cup should do), light it and pour it over the chicken. Return it to the oven for another 5 minutes. Add a couple of tbsps. of heavy cream to the sauce and it's ready.

I'm particularly sorry to hear about this one. It must have been an off night. I was at that GS this past Monday night and had the ma po tofu, and I must say it was stupendous. I'm increasingly convinced GS has a regular rotation of cooks, and whoever cooks on Mondays is totally kick-ass. This dish does tend to be oily (and salty--hooray for fermented bean paste!), but when that oil is infused with pork product, ginger, garlic and incendiary red pepper, I, for one, am in heaven. For some reason, New York has never had a lot of restaurants that specialize in Shanghai cooking. (Anyone remember Say Eng Look? I used to go there a lot, and it was practically the only Shanghai-ese restaurant I knew about. Great food--I still remember it vividly, and miss it.) And from my limited contact with Shanghai cooking, I would venture to say that Szechwan cooking is nothing like it. In fact, it seems to me to be about as far away from it as it could be with both cuisines still being recognizable as Chinese food.

Aren't we all....

I'm a big fan of Cape Cod--not so much the flavored ones, just regular (WITH salt, thank you very much!). Almost amazingly, my real favorites are from Dayton, Ohio (I'm from there, and god knows it's a wasteland in almost every other respect)--a brand called Mike-sells. Their Old Fashioned kettle-style chips are absolutely fantastic. Their website claims they are the oldest potato chip company in the U.S.

You know the Virginia Bakery has been closed for a few years now, don't you? I still have dreams about their old-fashioned schnecken......

The obvious solution is to plan a trip to Córdoba immediately. And take me with you.

With ice cream....with whipped cream....unadorned.... The only appropriate response-- Um, yes, please!

It took a bit of looking (hey, my curiosity was piqued), but I finally found it. The name of the type of cheese is "Los Balanchares". There's not much info about this cheese on the web (even though one Spanish site proclaims it "the most famous and celebrated cheese of Andalucía"!). It's made in or near the town of Doña Mencía, about 30 miles SE of the city of Córdoba, on the NNW border of the Parque Natural Sierras Subbéticas, in the province of Córdoba. It is indeed a goat's milk cheese, aged in ashes. The only web pages Google turned up with any background info at all were here and here (both in Spanish). Edit: A second Google search (leaving out "queso"--the Spanish word for cheese--silly me) produced quite a few more hits, including a site devoted exclusively to Los Balanchares. This shows several types of this cheese, including a more traditional "cake" shape coated in ashes, a kind cured in olive oil, and the ash-coated "log" shape you described. Very strange site. It also apears that Tienda.com may have, at one time, carried this cheese, but they don't seem to currently.

Try Uncle George's in Astoria, Queens (it's on Broadway, three of four blocks east of the train--what's the line that goes to Ditmars Blvd. called these days? W?). I keep hearing Uncle George's has gone down in quality the last few years, and perhaps it has--I only started going there a couple of years ago--but most everything I've tried has been pretty wonderful. I have noticed it is a bit variable, though. I'm 95% sure I've had the kokoretsi--we were ordering a bunch of rotisseried meats (this is the kind of place that has a dozen rotisseries going behind the counter as you walk in) and asked for this one that looked great but we weren't sure exactly what it was (I'm not sure what the waiter told us, but it definitely wasn't the whole truth!). It sure was rich.... If you go, be sure to get the barbecued pork....it's sensational.

I think it's excellent--by a lot, my favorite of the ones I've tried in this country. Sam, back me up here....

Spanish Valdeon is really excellent....I'd forgotten about that one. It sure is intense. Monje is also imported into the U.S., which is made just up the road from Cabrales. In fact, Monje, in my experience always has the same quality of flavor I love in a good Cabrales but is often lacking in a Cabrales that is not top-notch (I couldn't describe exactly what that flavor is--I just know it when I taste it). Interesting (to me, anyway), considering they're not really the same cheese--not even made with the same milk--just made very close to one another geographically. (Edit: I started to doubt my memory, so I went checking and discovered this site agrees with me!) And I second Sam Kinsey about the Shropshire blue--it's pretty kick-ass!

OK, Sam, I can't believe you didn't mention this, because we traditionally share one when we go there.... The mixed grill at Pampa. In addition to grilled short ribs, skirt steak, a chorizo and a blood sausage, it includes sweetbreads, kidneys and small intestines. All right, technically they're not all "in the same dish", but they're all on the same platter.....that counts, doesn't it?

Funny....I always hate finding the toilet seat down!

Have you ever eaten a cake made with salted butter? There's a helluva lot of salt in a stick of salted butter.

There's an Ohio-based chain of bar/restaruants called Max and Erma's that catered to a singles-that-would-like-to-meet-other-singles clientele. One of these opened in my hometown when I was in high school (you could go if you were under 21 until the early evening). High-school kids thought it was great (and it was fun at the time) with its old-fashioned telephones at each table so you could ring other tables in the restaurant (there were glowing globes with numbers over each table so you knew what to dial) and the carved wooden bust behind the bar of an extremely buxom woman, replete with strategically placed beer taps. Anyhow, more on topic, the restroom doors had very large, highly-stylized cartoon drawings of a man and a woman (presumably one of "Max" and one of "Erma"--the way they were drawn sort of remind me of Andy Capp characters). The thing was that the women's room had the drawing of Max on the door, pointing to where the actual men's room was to the left, and the men's room had the drawing of Erma pointing to the right (somewhere on each door was a completely unobtrusive little placard with the correct name for the room's intended user). It WAS rather funny watching first-timers burst, full of confidence, into the wrong restroom....

I read this and instantly realized it describes ME! There would be occasional side-trips to colby, muenster (I still find it hard to believe those are actually cheeses....they taste more like some factory experiment in synthetic "cheese food" to me) and even cheddar. Of course I realize now there's a good reason I hated that stuff and would stick to American cheese--it was that pre-packaged supermarket crap that I won't eat even now. Oh, Soba--no cabrales??? For me, that's one of the kinds that makes loving cheese really worthwhile. I did have one friend who really didn't like cheese, a Japanese-American girl I knew back in college. She didn't grow up eating it, and just never acquired the taste. She was also not what I would call thin....not fat, certainly, but thin was not the first adjective that came to mind.

Those garlic chicken wings at Mediterranean Kitchen.

About 15 years I had one of this same type of machine and it worked just fine. I was on this whole-grain, no-meat (horrors!), no-caffeine (double horrors! ), no-cow's-milk kick and wanted a supply of goat's milk yogurt, and the only feasible option was to make it. It turned out well....I liked it better than any store-bought brand available at the time, although that may have been the goat's milk factor. Somehow the machine didn't survive a move, and I started eating all the shit I normally eat again and I never got around to replacing the machine.