patrickamory

Has anyone posted about waiters regularly filling and overfilling your wine glass in a transparent attempt to empty the bottle and get you to buy another one?

Leftover jungle curry with a steamed egg on top, prik nam pla on the side.

The various Turkish, Lebanese, Indian and Greek yogurts available at ethnic groceries are so much better than what you find at the supermarket. Kalustyan's in NYC has a huge selection.

Like santo_grace, I'm looking for a 30" gas range on the cheaper side - no more than $1500. Any opinions on the Kenmore Elite gas? The two ovens look useful... how are the burners? Gets Consumer Reports' vote, for what that's worth

This comment opens a big can of worms. There are plenty of people who when dining alone, like to dine at the bar. The bar is for drinking, I agree, but when it's in a restaurant, it's for eating too. A fairly recent development though, wouldn't you agree? For solo diners, I guess I see the point. Filling up the whole bar with eaters, as if it were an extension of the restaurant, really kills the vibe in most instances. A truly great restaurant would make a solo diner at a two-top feel at home. In France, it's never been a problem... and frequently been the rule.

Peeves with both the restaurant staff and my fellow diners: 1. I want - no, need - to order a drink as soon as I am seated. ESPECIALLY if the rest of the party is not there yet. 2. Like Mike, I want time to drink that cocktail before ordering food. 3. I'd like to have the wine list from the get-go. 4. I'd like the wine to arrive before the appetizer - it's a disaster when you've just finished your apps and the wine arrives only then. 5. I'm not interested in learning the waiter's name. 6. I can't stand it when someone at my table asks the waiter, "Would you recommend this, or this?" How on earth is the waiter going to know what a total stranger will enjoy? also, hasn't everyone read Anthony Bourdain? haven't they heard of "merchandising"? 7. Endless wait for the check... followed by endless wait for the check to be picked up with credit card. Man this makes me come off like a total misanthrope. (edit): P.S. Restaurants that allow - and in fact encourage - patrons to eat dinner at the bar. The bar is for drinking, and ideally for having a drink while you're waiting to be seated. It's often not appetizing to be having a cocktail while two people are chowing down next to you, and it seems to force the bartenders to play dual roles that don't go well together.

Went to the superb Purple Yam in Ditmas Park for the first time last night... it's been years, but Romy remembered me from Cendrillon, which was certainly my favorite restaurant in Soho. Ditmas Park is a trek but the food was wonderful... goat roti with rice pancakes and mango chutney, excellent roast pork buns (featuring nice charred bits unlike Momofuku's - which I also love), chicken adobo, a lamb curry with okra, cherry sambal and pickled radish that was off the hook, nice whole fish & more. It's a trek but definitely worth it.

The pure pleasure in eating and his wonderfully evocative prose style... both have had an impact on my appreciation of food. Also who could resist some of his phrasemaking? "Nothing better than saddle of bear!!" from the Outdoor Cooking book.

For a long time I was a regular at Gino Italian Cuisine on Lexington. Ithaka on Barrow St. Also Joe Jr.'s on 6th Ave. Sadly they are all no more There aren't so many places I'm recognized these days. They would include: - Gene's on 11th St. (by the bartender at any rate) - El Parador on 34th St. (Alex is a true gentleman) - The Palm (the original on the West side of Second Ave.) - Tommaso's in Bensonhurst (not as often now that I don't make the trek out there so often) - Kanoyama on Second Ave., at the sushi bar (the chef's name is Nobu, no relation) - Taro Sushi on Dean St. in Park Slope (the chef's name is Yugi, formerly of Ise next to the Twin Towers, one of the sweetest & best sushi chefs in the city) - Giorgione on Spring St. (right next to my office - so it's a regular place for lunch) - Le Veau d'Or on 60th St. (love Robert) No matter how many times I dine at the Four Seasons, they never seem to remember me. I guess once a year isn't enough!

A good selection of interesting sherries - manzanillas, finos, old olorosos, palo cortados and not just the ones from the huge makers, sitting there gathering dust among the creams and pedro ximenez. It's embarrassing what a tiny selection of sherries is available in this country compared to Europe.

Superdawg isn't TERRIBLY far. And well worth a visit.

Wow, I wasn't aware of him. But I definitely support Essex Market and have signed the petition to stop the city from moving it. I intend to stop by Jeffrey's tomorrow.

I'm surprised nobody's mentioned Sam's Grill. Classic old-school San Francisco, extremely fresh simply prepared local fish, great martinis and old waiters. Crab louie and sand dabs. Be aware that it closes early.

I get Costa Rica La Minita at Oren's in NYC. When I started buying it I think it was $11.49 a pound... now it's up to about $14.99. Expensive, but over the course of 10 years, that's really not that much of an increase. Maybe I'll have sticker shock the next time I go to refill...

Yes!!! It's incredible. I've cooked on a classic Vermont cast-iron stove - mainly roasting. Took forever to get hot and very complicated to modulate temperature... but boy it turned out an incredible leg of lamb.

Florence and Ottomanelli (on Bleecker St. - no relation to the uptown branches) are both excellent. Superb in fact. I find myself at Ottomanelli more frequently - they're bigger and the guys are just about the sweetest, most knowledgeable butchers in the city. I only went to Lobel's once and got a very unremarkable ribeye for about three times the price of the downtown butchers. I'd have no problem paying that much if it were even twice as good - but it had little marbling, mustiness or character - a completely ordinary piece of meat. Ottomanelli for the win!

One thing worth noting: McDonald's hamburgers in New York don't come with mustard on them, only ketchup, because, according to a McDonald's spokesperson, "New Yorkers don't like mustard on their burgers." Many local branches don't even have packets of mustard so that you can add it on yourself. This detracts immensely from the depth & flavor balance of the hamburger.

Ah, air-drying in the fridge. I've done this with ducks, using the instructions in the Four Seasons Cookbook (Paul Kovi and Tom Margittai - the late '70s one), with good results.

To clarify: I absolutely agree that there are more ingredients available now than ever, and way way way more availability of ethnic ingredients across the country. But I bet if you could travel back in time you'd find that the average supermarket apple, orange, plum or peach tasted far better than what you'd get in a supermarket today. And as a child visiting Maine in the summers, the quantity, variety and quality of fresh fish was stupendous. As you are probably all aware, groundfish stocks in the Gulf of Maine have been decimated. You can get lobster, clams and mussels now - the occasional piece of haddock. That's IT. Everything else is flown in, and there isn't very much of it. The walk-in at the general store carried sides of prime beef - the butcher cut your steaks to order. That store is now a community center, and the new store carries the same bland, fatless chops wrapped in cellophane that you get at the Shaw's on the mainland. Can you get pre-bottled Curry Simple brand Thai food sauces at the new chain-like store? Sure, you probably can - but is this really an improvement? Ersatz variety over true local and seasonal quality that everyone took for granted because it was part of the natural cycle? I think the variety of ingredients available today is the result of more open minds, better transportation networks and logistics, and advances in breeding and freezing. Whether this has led to an improvement in the TASTE of foods is another matter entirely.

I absolutely adore Marmite. I spread it thickly on toast, bread, anything - no butter. I'll also eat it straight from the jar. Incredible secret ingredient in chili by the way - adds a major umami component.

Nobody?

Just focusing in on the ingredients issue for the moment (I miss the fast food and Continental dishes as much as anybody): Is it possible that the explosion of interest in cooking and preparation - of which this entire website is an example - is a result of the fact that we don't have easy, cheap access to a huge variety of wild fish and seafood, seasonal produce that actually had flavor, real baked goods and pastries with ethnic traditions, professional butchers cutting well-marbled prime meats, and the rest? Maybe the reason that all of us care so much about cooking and food is because it's so much HARDER to get what we all took for granted in those days? I remember my mother introducing me to a real French peach in France in the summer of 1976 when I was 11. The flavor EXPLODED in my mouth, and the juice, of course, dribbled all over my chin. I don't think it's only nostalgia that I haven't had a peach close to that - bought locally, in season, at a farmer's market, or whatever - in recent years, including in France. I will also echo this from abooja: "A predominance of real deal bakeries, and not the par-baked, made-from-a-mix crud that passes for baked goods these days, and is available in most supermarkets. I particularly miss Jewish bakeries. Even if I still lived in New York, I'd be hard pressed to find a decent slice of seven layer cake or, God forbid, an individual Charlotte Russe baked in a small paper cup. People don't value great bakery items like they did in the 70s. This saddens me." YES. And especially an ultra-dense, nearly spherical rye loaf available from Jewish bakers in NYC (such as the Cakemasters chain) known as "corn bread." The crust was so chewy it nearly pulled your teeth out. One of the best breads I've ever had in my life. Impossible to find now. It's been renamed "corn rye" so that people don't confuse it with southern cornbread, but the places that make it, such as Moishe's on Second Avenue, turn out a pale imitation of what they used to make. In many ways we have it better eating in 2011... but the vast majority have it much, much worse. And so much of our effort is focused on trying to recapture what was available so easily back then - at every Stop'n'Shop and Star Market.

HUGE fan of the Good Cook. The photos alone in the meat and poultry books are a guide that few other reference works match...

OK I'm going to try true dry-brining next... I was using Bud's method. What Tim describes is what I used on our turkey at Thanksgiving, which seemed to have good results. With all this said... I'm pretty happy with my chicken, so it will be interesting to see what kind of improvement this makes, if any.

OK, please school me on strops. What would be appropriate for my Togiharu? It _is_ soft steel. That said, it hones up really nicely on the Wusthof. Which is that cylindrical, grooved steel to which you refer. Just a few strokes on either side and it can slice paper again.