Bond Girl

Generally, if you order chicken or stuff like Gato Gato you should be okay. I heard the meat dishes isn't bad either.

I guess you mean items in the sauce. The fish wasn't canned or dried, and neither were the vegetables. Krista, I'd love to have a location for Upi Jaya. I would go to Woodside for good Indonesian food. What have you eaten there? ← Actually the squid and the scallops were dried. I can tasted the slight edge in it. Lots of vegetables used there were frozened. With all sorts of purveyors around, this is the kind of thing about a restaurant that pisses me off!

Franco-philes listen up! I just got word that you can get the Galette de Rois at Gavroche during the week of the Epiphany (1/3-1/9), you can get the cake by the slice or buy a whole one that feeds 6.

I've been there and used to get take outs as well. It's okay. It would be great if they actually used fresh ingredients rather than dried or canned.

Ahh, that you will have to ask Mr and Mrs. Bux. They came up with the reservation but the last tiime I asked they were booked a month ahead.

Does that make you a lacto-ovo-liver-vegetarian? ← Never said I was a Vegetarian....I just don't like the taste of meat.

Sunday night dinner at Blue Hill with Bux, Mrs. B and their friends. We were first taken on a tour of the grounds and dazzled by the sunset over the Hudson, which really sets the mood for the food to come. As I am not a wine drinker, I will leave Bux to fill in the holes. The table sat down to a pleasing amuse of broccoli soup served in skinny flutes. Then two set of delightful amuse arrived, the meat eaters at the table each got a croquette of head cheese while I had a cauliflower and broccoli on a skewer lightly dressed with balsamic vinegar. There was also a set of mussels with razor clams on another skewer. Of course, early winter would not be the same without Nantucket bay scallop and it arrived here glazed and served in a bed of rutabega and soy bean sauce with chopped squid. Next up was a dish of fresh winter vegetables served in a chestnut puree. I don't know about others at the table but this dish can turn me into a full time vegetarian. The cauliflowers and broccoli florets was done to perfection. There were also peas and beans in there that gave the dish a good textures, and the grapes provided a good counterpoint with a nice dose of sweet acidity. A fried farm egg coated with panko and nuts on a bed of micro greem salad followed. Bux would like the egg to be more flavorful, while I thought the egg was perfectly fine for a non-meat eatign palate. The apricot in the salad gave the dish an unusual shine in flavor. The meat eaters at the table then got a dish of chicken soup with rosemary dumpling, turkey breast and garden vegetables, which some thought was on the salty side. And, I got a piece of seared foie gras with squash puree and pumpkin seeds that made everyone jealous. The squash gave the foie gras a really good balance, and the pumpkin seed made the texture interesting. Then there was a trio of pork for everyone at the table, and I had a smoked lobster with shelled bean stew with oyster mushrooms. The dish was definitely inventive in the quiet way and the stew was cooked bouillabase style with made it flavorful without the heavy taste. Although, I would have preferred a less salty combination. A yogurt sorbet floating on a soup of apple and rosemary cleansed our palates. This was a wonderful conbination, but the rosemary was a bit jarring for the apple soup. Then, we all had a pumpkin souffle with cinnamon ice cream. Mrs. B thought the cinnamon was too strong, but I enjoyed it just fine. The restaurant had a beautiful rustic decor and the service is excellent. The only complaints from the whole group was on the lighting. While many people would have loved the ambience and categorize it as "romantic", others would probably have preferred to see the food they were eating. All around it was a wonderful experience and I would definitely go back again when the opportunity arises.

Yes, it was a lovely experience. Too often we dine in restaurants that treats their diners like children. We sit in dining rooms where the decor is either uptight and stuffy or sleek, modern but cold. In New York there is always the dress code that makes me crazy. All that for food that is quite often very mediocre. Manresa is everything that these places are not. The atomosphere is warm and friendly and the food excellent. I'm still thinking about the Foie Gras Cream which was like Foie Gras in a flan. That is all one can expect from a great restaurant.

I would score them and throw them in the oven until the skin starts to peel back. Shelling them is a pain in the ass, but they tasted good purred in a soup with tuffle butter.

It does look like a ping pong ball wioth very smopoth skin. I was decidiing on whether to use it for savoury or sweet, I guess you just made up my mind.

Took my best friend to Manresa last friday. While I had heard many good things about the food there, I did not expected to be so wonderfully impressed by both the food and the service. David Kinch's tasting menu combined solid culinary technique with a dash of fun that seemed to play on contrast of taste and texture. We started with a flavorful black olive madeleines with red pepper pate de fruit and moved into a surprisingly light parmesan churros. This was followed by a refreshing grapefruit and fennel sorbet for me and citrus and jasmin tea gelee for my friend. The server then handed us each a crunchy chestnut croquette that seemed to melt in your mouth once bitten into, which caused my friend to comment that sex should only be so good. The heavenly foie gras with cumin caramel somehow managed to combine the richness of foie gras with the smooth creaminess of a creme brulee. Just as we were savoring the heady richness of the foie gras, we were served a spritely tuna belly with hint of meyers lemon on a bed of cucumber gelee. The lovely Japanese butterfish with white soy provided a nice change of pace and took our palates in a different direction while steamed black cod with warm steelhead roe that followed once again played the sweetness of the fish against the briney taste of the roe beautifully. There was also a delightfully glazed Nantucket bay scallop with cabbages and a warm sea bream with winter vegetables that makes you feel nice and cozy. The desserts were an unusual combination of parsnip cake with cream cheese. While the date milkshhake seemed a bit west coast for this east coast palate, the chocolate souffle with pear ice cream was a good finish to a wonderful meal. Service was impeccable with a very knowledgeable waitstaff and my server even reommended a deep rich red wine that somehow complimented all the seafood I had. Manresa is the kind of restaurant I love, it has a cozy relaxing atomosphere with excellent service and wonderful food. While David Kinch may not admit to being a culinary genius, but he certainly cooks like one.

Next time Squeat, you and I must do sme lunch. Yes, I did buy them from a really cute place called Boulette's Larder at the Ferry Plaza market. It smelled like dried lime and looked like walnuts. I am trying to figure out how to use them...

I found two at a food shop in San Francisco? They look like light colored nutmegs, but what are they? How are they used in cooking?

Great recipe. Here is a really stupid question for those more knowledgeable, what is the difference between, marmalade, preserve and jam? Why does some called for pectin to be made first?

Being that it's meyers lemon season, I am thinking of making some Meyer's lemon preserve or marmalade. Do anyone here have any advice on it?

Good advice, as of now I will be grabbing sushi at Kiss

Squeat, you aprty animal! On a different note anyone's been to Pilar Sanchez?

Thanks! Sushi is a great suggestion!

I will be in alone in SF next saturday night and would like to explore one of the more local haunts of the city. Any recommendations for places where I can dine alone? Any eGulleters in the SF area who would like to join me, please feel free to PM me.

I like it paired with orange sections and a bit of red onions.

Not sure if this is still true but if you want a genuine English afternoon tea experience and don't mind the wait, Tea and Sympathy on Greenwich is the place. A little more upscale used to be the tea at the Mark hotel on the upper east side.

The last time I was at Cafe des Artistes was several years ago when Kurt Masur was still the conductor at the New York Philharmonic and we used to go post performance. I did not remember being terribly impressed by the food at that time, (there was a seafood stew that was terribly salty and the consistency of it ranged from bearable to terribly throughout the philharmonic season) but things may have changed. I think it doesn't get much attention here because there are so many other restaurants to talk about in the area.

Not a bad thing, but to illustraten that yes critics, if recognized, do get better treatment than the average diner. A critic's job is to inform his/her public about the type of experience they are likely to get at a restaurant. In an ideal world, we would all like to think that we can be unaffected by that "special" treatment, but that's hardly realistic. Take my recent experience at Per Se, many of my dishes are flawed, so if I were the critic, I'd probably wouldn't have given it four stars. But, in tallking to a food critic I knoow, he said he had a wonderful meal there, adding that they do know him. So, I may be wrong here, but I would see no point of reading a review, just so I can get the view of a critic who's food has been tripled checked for correctness, if I, as the average diner, would not have gotten the same treatment.

I once went to a very exclusive resort in Boca Raton and saw some of the most frightening pilferings there. The most surprising thingg is that the average age of this resort was about 65 and over, and most people swank around in expensive labels, but there they are trying to walk out with plates, cocktail shakers and things (caviar sppons were all the rage). One grandma even tried to put the center peice vase (flowers and all) into her purse.

If you have the Times magazine from this past sunday, there is a basic gnocchi recipe there.