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It has nothing to do with blaming the media. Clearly you think an admission that at some time in her life she used a horrid word combined with the unproven allegations of a plaintiff in a civil lawsuit amounts to a firing offense. I cannot figure out whether you overstated the known facts about her "fluid" use of the word because you wanted to or because it fit in so well with the overly florid writing of your post. Can you explain? Also, you call civil rights the most "decisive" issue in American history. I don't know whether you meant "divisive" or whether you have an odd view of history. Basically, the writing of your original post makes it impossible to know what you mean to say at all.

In other words, the outrage industrial complex strikes again.

Yeah, Cheese Board is phenomenal. Probably the best cheese selection I've ever seen. Often in pretty good shape, too.

I really like Gourmet and More. Terrible name, but great shop. They know their cheeses and they are always aged very nicely and ready to go. The shop is up near French American School. Lots of interesting things in there. Nice people. You can bring a bottle of wine and sit out on the patio and eat cheese on weekends. The selection is actually surprisingly non-extensive. What I mean by that is that while they have a lot of different cheeses, they really have a lot of the same cheese by many different producers. The diversity is in makers, not in flavors. And they generally aren't in great shape. Their own Cowgirl cheeses are woefully underaged and the cheeses they bring in from other makers are pretty ragged a lot fo the time. I don't know Cahors well, but I can heartily recommend the cheese shop in the covered market in Perigueux. It is run by a young woman who is quite out of place there. She looks more San Franciscan in dark makeup and piercings, but she is very sweet and knowledgeable about cheese and does have a good selection of cheeses from other parts of Europe. There is another really good cheese shop on the walk into the central market, but I forget the name and it is typically French. Personally, and I know this is probably a very conservative, old line thought, I am pretty happy to take my chances with French cheese and mix in other old world cheeses when appropriate. I don't find much American cheese to be that good. Of course some is OK, but it tends to be overt and slutty to me, much like our wine, and that is a bit unappealing. I don't blame the cheesemakers. I blame the first generation eaters who consume most of the artisanal cheese around here. They don't have a lot of taste for nuance.

Now that's what I call a cheese shop. It could hold its head up high in France. Lots of hard cheeses. I'd like to see their soft cheese section. Any hope? With all due respect, as somebody who lives both in SF and quite near to you in France, Cowgirl can't stand up to a traveling cheese cart at the Le Bugue market, much less a real fromagerie. Oh but the attitude. Why exactly am I treated respectfully and well at Quatrehomme, like somebody with knowledge and a reasonable palate while I have to deal with the fart smelling preening that goes on at Cowgirl? The only place worse at the Ferry Building is the awful Boccalone, which combines extremely mediocre charcuterie with vile presentations like the meat cone and preening help dressed as grease monkeys waiting for bloggers to take another picture.

As another native who remembers the Ferry Building in its earlier incarnation, I would have to say that the Cheese "scene" in San Francisco is almost definitive of how the food "scene" in the city has become like dinner at Trimalchio's.

Ed, are you certified to talk about economics?

Say what bro?

That article is hilarious. It posits that it is somehow negative that a woman had no interest in a man who undertipped, showing himself as stingy and happy to treat the server as a low person, then bemoaned the "fact" that we only tip to grind people into pseudo democratic dirt and yearned for the equal treatment people got in the USSR and China. Yay BBC.

Seems to me perfectly legit to call an omelette French or Parisian, since that's where the word comes from. Of course it is legit. It is a French word. If we were talking about oh chien, it would be a different story. Perhaps so. Still, one needs to consider that the meanings of words change over time - and what one calls "an omelette" nowadays does not mean what was called such a thing back in the days when French cuisine and French vocabulary dictated what was acceptable in the culinary world and when only the Western/French world-view was the only game in town. Do you truly believe that the word omelette has changed in definition at all when unmodified? I would imagine that it hasn't, and that common usage and understanding of the unmodified word is pretty clear outside a small circle of oppressed egg activists.

Seems to me perfectly legit to call an omelette French or Parisian, since that's where the word comes from. Of course it is legit. It is a French word. If we were talking about oh chien, it would be a different story.

huiray, it seems that you are feeling very oppressed by colorless omelettes.

Beat your damn eggs. Some people might like brown, but white???

Your point was clear, but it goes back to why my question was relevant. People do their jobs, but their jobs are piecemeal and their methods are given. It is very difficult to judge the guy roasting the chicken by the chicken you get. That is all. That is why it was a reasonable question and not an argument from authority, or whatever pedantic garbage you guys throw around in here.

Well, I'm not a chef, so you don't need to judge me, but IT is relevant to this thread because your opinion seems to rest on the idea that kitchen work is something other than an assembly line. People need to know how to do their jobs. That is all.

Soba, have you ever worked in a professional kitchen?

Look, I don't disagree with you guys about the problems with current restaurant practices. I'm just saying they exist.

I first saw that when it aired on TV the first time. I like Jacques Pepin very much. I remember back in the early '90s when he came in to spend a little time watching a kitchen in which I was working. Nice man. Not sure why it is "hard to doubt him" about hiring practices in restaurants since he hasn't worked in one since at least the early '70s, never worked in a restaurant in either the Nouvelle or post-Nouvelle style and cooks a style of food completely divorced from what restaurants, other than retro bistros, do nowadays. It's a nice skill, and at some point it was probably a reasonable test, but now it isn't and people continue to think it is because of videos like this.

I don't know whether to hate on the awful looking modernist omelette, the painfully navel gazing one egg omelette or the cliched idea that chef's really ask anybody to make them an omelette to work in their kitchen. It's close. I am going to have to get back to you guys on this one.

So you prefer the lack of "dairy blur" that you get from a tablespoon or two of cream but you cook the eggs in butter? It's pretty perceptive to be able to taste that little cream in an omelette, but almost superhuman to be able to distinguish it from the "dairy blur" coming from the butter.

They are so much better with photographs than flavors that I see this as playing to their core competencies.

It's David Simon's not very good follow up to The Wire. Not related, just chronologically a follow up in his career. It screams out "trying to be cool by doing wild things like playing in a cover band and swearing in public," so Bourdain is a natural fit.

Food intellectuals are not an economically literate lot.

Err on the side of thicker. Since it is just almonds and water, you an always thin it.

Just my very silly idea "Butterflied" Chicken representation. My guess is that butterflying provides a more even thickness meaning all parts get cooked at the same pace. Besides, knowing how to spatchcock a chicken ups your "cool" factor. In addition to even thickness, you can brown most of the skin better. You can also apply dry rub better. dcarch Are you sure about that? The skin looks flabby in parts and burnt in others, but brown nowhere.