Twyst

Ad Hoc and Bouchon are both very accesible to the home cook. The French Laundry cookbook is very doable but will be very challenging (which I consider a good thing for me). His other book, "under pressure" is a little too much for me. I wouldnt recommend that one for anything other than a coffee table book. Even though I have a sous vide setup I dont much like the book.If you are considering doing the french laundry (which would be my recommendation if you want to challenge yourself) take a look at this blog if you haven't seen it. http://carolcookskeller.blogspot.com/ She's just an ambitious home cook who managed to cook everything in the book and blog about it over the course of a few years. It was a fantastic project. She's doing the Alinea book now as well http://alineaathome.com/, but its not going quite as well as TFL did.

Hmmmm. I just looked on B&N and it says in stock ships within 24 hours. I placed an order and if it ships out in the next couple of days Im just going to cancel my amazon order. Thanks for the heads up!

Agreed. I can't imagine anything more out of line a customer would do. I can also only imagine the things that might accidentally find there way onto the diners plate once the diner leaves the kitchen while they are recooking the dish.

Kitchen Bouquet is definitely the secret to getting jambalaya to come out looking right...... (Im from the school of thought that tomatoes have no place in a proper jambalaya)

Peeps. *ducks for cover*

The situation in the OP's post is ludicrous! while in college I used to work the bar in a rather famous New Orleans restaurant that prides itself on service. Even if it was OBVIOUSLY the guests fault when something went wrong, if we had acted in any manner that reflected we felt that way we would have been shown the door. Im sure that the attitude that the customer is ALWAYS right led us to have a lot more substitutions and recooks than many places, but we did everything in our power to make sure that the guest left happy. It led to great word of mouth advertising and this restaurant has stayed packed for decades. Now I see a lot of kitchens saying no substitutions or complaining about recooks, then wondering why they are hot for a year or two then don't have any business. I'm honestly curious to see how long someone like David Chang is going to be at the top of the new york restaurant scene. He's an amazing chef with fantastic food, but Im not sure how long you can continue to be at the top of the restaurant scene while openly treating so many customers with contempt. The people he talks about being idiots are probably idiots, but Im not sure how good of a long term business plan its going to be to tell them how stupid they are. I love eating in his restaurants, but I think its going to be interesting to watch how it all unfolds.

I'm still on the wait list and its a mixed bag for me. I really want to get my hands on it now, but Im also very happy that I will get a copy with many fewer errors since this is quite an investment for a set of cookbooks.

I tried to search for these here, but was unable to find a previous mention of them so I apologize if this is a repost. Itunes has videos of all of the lectures from Harvard's Food and Science course up for free download here http://itunes.apple.com/itunes-u/science-and-cooking/id399227991 Enjoy!

Id like to see more options for home chamber sealers. Most seem to be designed with the professional kitchen in mind and the price tag to match.

I just wish I could get mine already! I was late to the party and ordered in early April so I imagine it will be at least late July before I ever see my copies

The only experiences I've had with them are at various high end safari resorts and "camps" in Africa. Felt a little strange at first but ended up enjoying them immensely.

Houston Texas architect by day, aspiring chef by night

Do you guys think it's ever too late to start? I'm a 33 year old reasonably successful but unhappy architect and am considering a career change. Ive always had a passion for food but was pressured to go another route out of high school and Ive always regretted it. I'm not afraid of hard work, I worked backbreaking summer jobs in a shipyard growing up and then spent most of my college years working various front of the house restaurant jobs in college, and I really miss the restaurant life. I'm to the point of really being ready to pull the trigger and chase my dream, but I fear it may be too late. I'm also unsure of exactly how I would go about making the change, I'm guessing going to culinary school would make it easier to get hired on at a starting position at a decent place.

As many others have said the biggest problem with Ruth's Chris is that different locations often offer very different experiences. Im originally from New Orleans, and the food at the original Ruth's Chris was always fantastic when Ms. Ruth was alive, and I still hear pretty good things about it. It was as good as any steakhouse in town. Ive also had Ruth's Chris in other locations with mixed results, some were good and some were barely better than eating at an outback. The one thing I have never gotten at any Ruth's Chris that I have eaten at is service equal to what I believe should be had at the prices you are paying. My mother LOVES ruths chris, so I venture to say Ive had at least 50 meals at various locations over the last 20 years and don't think Ive ever had particuarly good service.

And cherry jolly ranchers! I also like fake banana like is found in now & laters and laffy taffy, so bad, yet so good.