huiray

Does the sale include the "Name" and "Past Reputation" of the business? I ask because from my (limited) experience "change of ownership" of a dining establishment where the NAME of the restaurant remains the same has often tended to be for the worse, and has impacted to greater or lesser degree (i.e. varies) the "association", so to speak, of the former owner (or owner-chef) of a place with the quality of the place after he/she had left – especially in the context of future diners who may not know (or care) that ownership of a place had changed and that the former chef was no longer associated with the place they were now dining at.

I think regardless of type of "meat" (chicken, veal, beef, pork, whathaveyou) bones one uses for stock – if there isn't at least some meat present there will be relatively little "taste". Mouthfeel/texture will be present (especially where it relates to gelatin and whatnot), but the meat-taste aspect benefits a lot from putting in either meaty bones or actual hunks/pieces of meat into the simmering stock.

gdenby, I forgot to mention – 4 Indy and 1 Bloomington chefs recently had a "Chef's Night Off" at the James Beard Foundation in NYC. http://www.jamesbeard.org/events/chefs-night-indy

I take it you mean the G.T. South's on 71st Street, and you must have broken down on Binford Blvd. That's not the "outskirts" of Indy, BTW. You were actually SE of the Castleton area (on E 86th St) and south of the E 96th St food and commercial area.. (I believe caroled also lives in the area) Fishers and Noblesville, still to come northwards of you, are considered to be in the "Indy metro area". (Indy follows the "grid" layout of streets northwards from the center, where streets/blocks are numbered by 1/10 mile increments from the central origin, which is held to be Meridian & Washington, I believe. So 71st Street is technically 7.1 miles from the central point at its intersection with Meridian, the main central North-South street, and so on.) G.T. South is considered one of the decent/good rib places in town, yes. Next door to G.T. South is a decent though not exceptional Vietnamese place (Long Thanh). I have not eaten at G.G.'s Bar & Grill (at the other end from G.T.South). Diagonally across from G.T. South on the north side of 71st will be an opening-any-day-now ramen place (Ramen Ray) which the owners say will concentrate on Sapporo-style ramen. The Krogers supermarket you must have also seen is one of the better western-type supermarkets around. On the other side of Binford in the immediate area are several eateries and what-not too, including George's Neighborhood Grill which gets a fair bit of love locally but which I find (personally speaking) to be just a reasonable pub-food type place. (The #1 China Buffet is definitely not a "good Chinese food" place :-) ) Nearby too, if you swing by next time, is a decent Mexican place, La Hacienda (one of the several locations of this restaurant) The reason why there is a fair build-up of eating & shopping places/strip malls and banks, pharmacies, laundries, service shops etc in that immediate area (71st & Binford) is because the surrounding area has a lot of apartment complexes as well as the usual houses. In addition, the corporate headquarters of Mays Chemical is also just down a bit off of 71st St from where you were at G.T. South.

Lotus root soup. Oil, garlic, pork ribs, sea salt, water, raw peanuts, dried Chinese jujubes ("hak jou" (black jujubes) variety), honey jujubes, sliced dried Solomon's Seal rhizomes, dried cuttlefish, sliced lotus roots, dried wolfberry fruits (goji berries).

Yes. For the last 10 years or so, IMO. I swing by GtM fairly regularly. I've posted many times on another thread about stuff I get there. Indy and the surrounding area has also developed a wide-ranging and fairly extensive gathering of "ethnic" food and restaurants in the Mid-West. Here's a website that contains a listing (probably incomplete) of types of restaurants and where "ethnic" has the broad meaning that the word should properly have.

Kangkong belacan. Hot peanut oil, garlic, "extra hot" sambal terasi [Cap Ibu], trimmed kangkong (ong choy; water morning glory; Ipomoea aquatica; etc], rock sugar, sliced de-seeded hot red chilli. A stir-fried concoction of shrimp, ripening poblano, Thai eggplants, shallots (as a vegetable), garlic, chili paste with holy basil leaves [JHC], orange mini sweet peppers. White rice. Shrimp de-shelled, de-veined, soaked in cool running water. Barely sautéed in peanut oil w/ a little garlic then removed & reserved. Then in sequence, to the hot un-deglazed pan: more garlic, the chili paste w/ holy basil, sliced de-seeded poblano, quartered Thai eggplants, halved shallots, sliced de-seeded sweet peppers, stir around, then the reserved shrimp, stir, serve. Oh, a good splash of ryori-shu [Morita] went in there somewhere too.

Thanks, patrickamory. That spag & meat sauce looks very good! I confess I would not have the courage to use that tomato paste from the fridge. :-)

Hmm. Let's see... In Atlantic City I largely ate at places in-and-around the casinos (haha) and can't really say I remember any of them with clarity, but grazing while walking along the Boardwalk was nice. Some of the heros were really good! Nearby, I enjoyed Luke Palladino's in Linwood; while that silly place Giovanni's Best of Italy (a "family-style" almost-diner-type place, really) in Northfield is definitely NOT fine dining but had a cozy spot in my heart for a gooey (almost-from-the-can) white clams on spaghetti that somehow appealed to the comfort-food corner in me. :-) Cape May has lots of nice restaurants. Some I've gone to, but many are there that I have yet to visit. I've had very good meals at The Ebbitt Room inside The Virginia Hotel on Jackson. The Mad Batter just down from this is decent, although I once had an odd Eggs Benedict there. I've had one or two decent but unexceptional meals at Aleathea's Restaurant, the restaurant for Inn of Cape May. Good meals were had at Peter Shields Inn & Restaurant; The Pier House; and also at another Cape May fixture, the Washington Inn. There are other odds-and-ends, such as Martini Beach where it was fun to sit on the upstairs deck to eat/drink and watch people on the street below - but that place is now closed. Still in Cape May, I also enjoyed The Lobster House – tourist trap though it may be :-) I had fun (on several occasions) wandering between the various "dining areas" at the place, from the restaurant to the on-the-dockside-schooner (where I've listened in on and got drawn into at least one outrageous but entertaining conversation and "encounter", with the subject of observation being a party of folks who could have been straight out of Jersey Shore the TV series. :-) It was the place where I discovered those wonderful oysters called Cape May Salts and have stood at the tiny inside stand-alone oyster bar plonked between the dining rooms and the sort-of lobby holding the main bar (i.e. NOT at "The Raw Bar" outside**), and eaten dozens (plural) of Cape May Salts (plus fat juicy clams too) while chit-chatting with the oyster bar feller, who also turned out to be my namesake :-) while drinking Manhattans or G&Ts from the bar just across the way. ** Which had a different selection of oysters IIRC when I have been there. The Cape May Salts were available only from the tiny oyster bar inside - and from which the inside dining rooms were supplied. My recollection was that The Lobster House had their own oyster beds which provided their Cape May Salts oysters.

Linguine alle vongole. Sautéed Costata Romanesco.

Most of the produce vendors at the farmers' markets I regularly go to are professional farmers doing it on a full-time basis. I would also consider the Amish farmers to do it as a full-time calling. The meat vendors are also doing their stuff full-time. With a few exceptions they are well below retirement age, while some who are older folks have younger family members or hired hands doing the heavy-duty stuff on the farms. Some of the other craft people and prepared food vendors may be doing it part-time or be doing it "on the side". Many of the vendors have full-scale websites and/or Facebook pages too.

Thanks. I was just wondering. p.s. Have you seen this? http://www.seriouseats.com/2014/12/best-philly-cheesesteaks.html

Hmm. Will there be any chit-chat about less rarefied places? (roaches notwithstanding) What about your opinions on which place serves the best Philly Cheesesteak? Or that broccoli rabe and pork sandwich? I for one would be just as interested in the latter two (if not more) than any of those "high-end dining" places that, really, would not be that substantially different than others of a similar nature anywhere else in the country.

KennethT, have a look at the photo of baby kai-lan (芥蘭苗) I posted on another thread. I somewhat suspect that what you had in Singapore would be young (baby) plants of kai-lan like these? See here too for the Google image set... This is available in my local Chinese/SE Asian/Vietnamese stores from time to time, in addition to the more "mature" plants which are always available. I might imagine this ought to be available in NYC Chinatowns (both Manhattan and Flushing) at least on occasion, but it's just that they may not have been around when you happened to be there? {BTW kai-lan and (Western) broccoli are actually the same species, Brassica oleracea. They are just different cultivars, developed in different places over many years long ago. Kai-lan is in the alboglabra group; (Western) broccoli is in the Italica group.}

Fresh shrimp marinated with good Shaohsing wine, ginger, sea salt, rice bran oil; then simply steamed for maybe around 4 minutes or so. Trimmed scallions scattered over the plate just before the end of cooking. Baby kai-lan (see here also) stir-fried w/ garlic then quenched with a mixture of oyster sauce, Bulldog sauce, un-toasted sesame oil, ground white pepper, diluted with some water. White rice. Afterwards, some small "Wife Cakes" (老婆餅) [Lucky King Bakery Inc, NYC, NY].

Yesterday at BRFM and CFM: Tomatoes, hot red chillies, poblanos, broccoli, epi bread, green cabbage, muscadine grapes, Romanesco zucchini, turnip greens, cantaloupe, green lettuce, beef short ribs. Details here.

Do you do stove-top braises?

Saturday 2015-0919. Broad Ripple Farmers' Market: Tomatoes, hot red chubby chillies (Banana type), ripening poblano peppers, small sprouting-type broccoli heads, a loaf of epi bread (pain d'epi), an enormous head of green cabbage (almost a foot across and about 11 lbs by weight), red and green muscadine grapes. Carmel Farmers' Market: Costata Romanesco squash/zucchini, beautiful bushy turnip greens with small turnips attached :-), a small cantaloupe, nice head of green lettuce, a pack of beef short ribs. Viet Hua Food Market: Big live shrimp, Manila clams, smaller (dead) head-on shrimp, baby kai-lan (芥蘭苗), baby pak choy (bok choy), couple of "cebollita"/negi-type green onion stalks, bunch of ong choy (kangkong; water spinach; water morning glory; Ipomoea aquatica), fresh lotus root segments, Thai eggplants, a nice (US-grown) pomelo, a pack of small "wife cakes"** (老婆餅) (a.k.a. Sweetheart cake; winter melon puff; &etc – see here for just one link with some chit-chat) Pic of some of the baby kai-lan from the big bag of it that I got. ** See here (scroll down) for a pic of what I got.

Of late I've also been getting beef short ribs from local livestock farmers from the Farmers' Markets. One, in particular (Carmel Farmers' Market) has decent stuff (with membranes present - but I don't mind) which are quite flavorful (pastured beef) at just $3/lb. In fact, I picked up another pack today. The "winter melon soup" dishes I've posted in the last few days on the dinner thread used this stuff from this farmer.

Oh, and Korean & "International" places will have the "flatter, less-meaty-type" of, umm, "Korean-style" short ribs if one wanted to play with that (and not for Bulgogi). Cheap.

Have you looked at your local Mexican or Hispanic market? The short ribs in these places (in my area) are both good and reasonably priced. I stopped buying beef short ribs from "Normal Western" supermarkets and butchers a while ago precisely because they were so unreasonably priced – and, as you said, somehow they were often not really that good anyway. A particular high-end place (GtM) in my area does have consistently good short ribs but --- you pay the accordingly high price.

Part of dinner tonight – More of the winter melon soup from here, with slippery-smooth (after cooking) slim-width Fawm Xiengkhuang Bánh Phở [Dragonfly].

OK, in view of the ongoing stuff about re-energizing the regional boards let's put up a new post here on dining in Indy. I'd like to think we can post about food from every level from high to low. A burger lunch at Boogie Burger for me today. I drop by here from time to time. I had a 'Shroom plus Garlic Fries. It was pretty decent and tasty enough. I liked their burgers quite a bit more when they first started out in the tiny shack they occupied on East Westfield, from which they moved some years ago (and now occupied by La Chinita Poblana; 927 E Westfield Blvd) – but maybe it's just "nostalgic reminiscences". Curious that their website does not mention this at all, unless I missed it. I believe the owners themselves cooked the burgers back then at the shack; but I think they now just have "staff" do the cooking. Besides franchising the business out (not sure if there are actually any active franchisees as of now, though).

Couple of meals. Yu choy sum (blanched) w/ oyster sauce & white pepper. Fedelini w/ tomato sauce (Hazan) & Parm Reg. Winter melon soup. Had two helpings. Oil, garlic (Music), beef short ribs, salt, water, beef stock, pre-soaked dried Chinese mushrooms, winter melon.

What a waste of dark meat!!! I value dark meat far more than breast meat...