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Ron Johnson

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Posts posted by Ron Johnson

  1. So there are none and they're helping. That's amazing! But let me get this straight: are you arguing for or against these lawsuits?

    I, personally, would not take one of these lawsuits. I do believe that the fast food industry manufactures a product that, when used as intended, causes harm. However, in Kentucky we have comparative fault, and because it is foreseeable to the consumer that the product will cause said harm (obesity, heart disease, diabetes, etc) the consumer would bear a large portion, if not all, of the fault. The only way I would consider taking one of these cases, is if I could prove that a fast food corporation was advertizing its food as healthy and lowfat (think Subway) but actually knew that its products were laden with fat and calories and were likely to cause consumers to be at risk for obesity, heart disease, diabetes, etc. Then, because it would not be foreseeable to the consumer to cause said harm, the consumer would most likely not be apoortioned a large percentage, if any, of the fault. As it stands, no one thinks a Big Mac and fries is healthy and certainly would most likely not be successful in a lawsuit alleging that they harmed their health by eating them. I suspect that most other plaintiff's lawyers are thinking along the same lines as I am, and that is why these lawsuits are NOT being filed.

    What bothers me is that, even though they have yet to materialize as any actual "frivolous litigation", they already have everyone jumping on the anti-plaintiff lawyer/personal responsibility bandwagon. Its not surprising to me that it is the champions of tort reform that are making sure that this story stays in the news cycle. People keep hearing about and actually believe such lawsuits are being filed in every courthouse in the country. Wag the dog.

  2. Is there any evidence whatsoever that people are more aware, on account of frivolous litigation, that junk food is bad for you if you eat too much of it? Is that even the message this litigation sends, or is the message, rather, "It's not your fault. Don't worry, we'll use the courts as a surrogate for personal responsibility"?

    What frivolous litigation? How many of these lawsuits have been filed? Has even a single one of them resulted in a jury verdict?

    And in response to what message is being sent, Kraft Foods announced that it is going to make changes in order to address the issue. Click

  3. Cobbler has come to mean any sweetened fruit dessert in which the fruit mixture is poured into a ceramic or pyrex baking vessel and the crust unceremoniously draped over the top versus a pie in which the fruit filling is poured into a crust that has been blind baked in a pan.

    However, a TRADITIONAL cobbler is, in fact, supposed to be topped with biscuit dough. Pie dough, is for, well, pies.

  4. The glasses are only able to hide structural flaws; there isn’t anything anyone can do about the vegetal nature of Mondavi Cabernet.

    Or, as the Mondavi's prefer to characterize it, not another California fruit bomb.

  5. So, trocken means dry?  :blink:  :unsure:  :wacko:

    Umm, that was a joke. I think everyone must have overlooked this part of my original question:

    "I know that "trocken" denotes "dry" for German rieslings, and that "halbtrocken" is "off-dry" or literally half-dry. The problem is that I almost never see the term "trocken" on any German rieslings and I only rarely see halbtrocken."

  6. I'm curious how you "know from the label and producer"  about the sweetness or dryness of Alsatian rieslings.

    Because I drink a lot of it, have been for a long time, follow each vintage closely, talk with distributors, importers and a few of the winemakers about their product each year, and know to expect a very different wine from Zind-Humbrecht than I do from, say, Trimbach. Also Alsatian lables will denote SGN and VT, which are further indication of what you are about to drink.

    I'd prefer to keep this thread on german rieslings.

  7. I drink a lot of Alsatian Riesling because I know from the label and the producer how sweet or dry of a wine I am buying. I rarely buy German rieslings because making the same determination is so much more difficult. I, for one, enjoy a wine with some sweetness or residual sugar provided that it has the acidity to balance, as is the case with good German rieslings. However, most of my non-wine-geek friends will not touch a wine that is sweet.

    I know that "trocken" denotes "dry" for German rieslings, and that "halbtrocken" is "off-dry" or literally half-dry. The problem is that I almost never see the term "trocken" on any German rieslings and I only rarely see halbtrocken. Instead I always see kabinett, spatelese, and auslese. While these terms have more to do with level of quality and point of harvest of the grapes and therefore are somewhat of an indication of the sweetness of the wine, I often end up with a wine that is either sweeter or drier than I wanted. I have been told that Kabinetts are often drier than spatlese or auslese, but that has not been my experience.

    So whats the secret to knowing how dry or sweet of a wine you are buying when purchasing German riesling?

  8. That bottle is not good to serve the next evening.

    Actually, its probably better.

    I do expect a higher mark-up from a restaurant in NYC than I do in my hometown or the "burbs" as you refer to it. Fortunately, I have found just the opposite is true in many of the restaurants in which I have dined in Manhattan, including Gramercy Tavern, Babbo, and Blue Hill. At Atelier, the champagne was very reasonably priced by the glass . . . it was free.

    My purpose was not to single out Blue Hill, but to find fault with any restaurant that would mark-up wine in this manner.

  9. Jim - you say the Jamet was full of Brett but was 'better made' than the Australian. Can you elaborate a bit on that.

    I do not always equate the presence of brett with a defect, especially in the Rhone where a little merde is expected. However, I often find that it is due to other factors than actual Brett. Mourvedre, which of course would not be in the Jamet, often gives a brett-like aroma to wine. I had an Alain Graillot St. Joseph that was fairly funkadelic, to the point where I also assumed some brett had got in. It was not a bad wine, and actually paired well with our food the evening.

  10. If you are going to compare the price of wine you purchase in a liquor store and what you pay in a restaurant, take in consideration the million of other costs that restaurant have

    I have. Its what I used to do for a living. Depending on their pour, there is between 4 to 5 glasses of wine per bottle, so lets say 4.5 in this case. If the wine retails for $12.99, that means Blue Hill probably got it for about 8 or 9 bucks, I will be generous and say $9. At $8.50 per glass they are earning $38.25 per bottle, which represents over a 400% mark up on the price of the wine.

    I do not, have never, and will never expect a restaurant to charge retail for their wine. I understand the cost of stemware, storage, insurance, licensing, and all the rest, but I cannot approve of this level of mark-up. They are simply taking advantage of the fact that most people will be unfamiliar with this wine and not know its retail price.

  11. I got a FrancisFrancis X5 at a discount through an Illy promotion. I also had to buy a year's supply of Illy pods.

    The machine is awesome and works so well. I love it. The surprise for me is the quality of the pods. My espressi made from the pods are as good as any I have had in the US. The crema is picture perfect everytime.

    FrancisFrancis also has great customer service. When I had a question about the machine, I emailed the company. A very nice person called me at my office ten minutes after I sent the email. She explained everything to me and apologized that it wasn't better covered in the instruction manual.

  12. I am not so sure that the South is about haute cuisine in the sense that we think of French food or "new American". I mean you can dress up anything, but that doesn't make it haute per se. I think that the best expression of southern cuisine is using the very best and ripest ingredients and letting them improve the dish. In that way I think southern cuisine has much more in common with regional foods of Italy.

    A terrific southern meal could be slices of artisinal country ham, ripe tomatoes from the garden with salt, pole beans cooked with a hock, fried catfish with homemade tartar sauce, biscuits, and a made from scratch peach pie. Its not haute, but if the peaches were hanging on the tree that morning, the fish was line caught from the pond on the neighbor's farm, the tomatoes are from your own garden, and the beans are too then its going to be as good of a meal as one can have. Which is not to say that technique is not important or that sophisticated methods of cookery do not exist in southern cuisine (just ask anyone who has tried to make buttermilk biscuits that tasted like cardboard).

  13. 20-year "Lou-a-vull" resident here.  I'm the chef/innkeeper at a B&B in the historic homes part of town, near the university.

    I agree with most of Ron's suggestions, although it should probably be pointed out that Le Beaujolais recently closed.

    One restaurant i would add would be Winston's at the culinary school at Sullivan University.  I send my guests there pretty often for dinner, and get consistently positive comments about it.  Actually, i suspect nerissa might have been a recent guest of mine, since she put me onto this site in the first place.  If so...thanks, nerissa!

    ~zilla

    Hey Zilla,

    We are neighbors as I live over on that court where they have that little art show every October. :wink:

    Yeah, I found out about Le Beaujolais right after I posted that. Its a shame because I really liked that place. Great country French. Oddly, even though I have eaten at every good restaurant in Louisville, I have never eaten at Winstons because of a few bad reports. I will give it try now.

    Have you heard anything about the new Central Park Cafe that is opening over on Ormsby? Its supposed to open soon.

    Which B&B is yours? My office is also in the neighborhood over on 4th street.

  14. I never get tired of that question. I don't think that barbeque is uniquely southern. There is excellent barbeque in Kansas City (midwest) and Texas (the west). I think southern food is simply very good food utilizing the many foods that are produced in this region. Because the south was historically agricultural rather than industrial and had lesser population density, more people cultivated their own food. Not only did they grow crops, including vegetables, which they canned for winter, but they slaughtered their own meat and cured it for preservation. This closeness with the source of the food is the primary force behind what is considered "southern food or cookery".

    Even though my grandparents were the first generation in their family to move from the farm to the city and took up white collar jobs, they still planted a huge vegetable garden in their suburban backyard. My grandmother "put up" all her own canned vegetables from that garden. She also made several different kinds of preserves from the fruit that she grew in the yard, including a trellis of grapes.

    It is only natural that she was also a great cook. A Sunday dinner at her house would include fried chicken, mashed potatoes, green beans, sliced tomatoes with salt, fried corn, fried apples, squash, pork chops, slaw, biscuits, and custard and pie for dessert. This was every sunday, not just special occassions. Breakfast was grits, eggs, country ham in red eye gravy, biscuits, and fried apples. My mother has carried on this tradition.

    I have not met many people from the industrialized areas of the north who grew up with food like that, and I attribute it to the fact that they did not have the same relationship with the source and cultivation of the food as many in the south.

    I love being a southerner and wouldn't trade it for anything.

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