melkor

I'm a big fan of the food at Incanto, Perbacco is also reasonably good but I only really eat there for lunch since it's a convenient place to have a work lunch. I haven't been to Ducca yet, but they use great ingredients so they've got a leg up on a number of restaurants at that price point around the city. Yamo is the place to go for Burmese food, Larkin Express Deli is also good. I'm not a Burma Superstar fan.

I'll be the first to welcome you both to club emeritus!

Not even close. Collections come up for sale all the time. Wine shops continue to sell wine. The buyers set the price rather than the "flippers" you describe. I've yet to see any softening in wine prices... edit: You apparently posted the exact same post about this non-story on the squires forum where the story is getting much the same reaction.

Render some of the fat from the corned beef and cook in that, add some paprika and garlic - otherwise your plan sounds fine.

:blink: How do flippers disrupt the market?

Gotcha.

the "California Cuisine/Chez Panisse" influence on Passard?

If you're not on the mailing list, yeah.

There's no single litmus test - for me, there are good restaurants, restaurants with good dishes, and bad restaurants. Good restaurants are places where you'll have a good meal more or less no matter what you order. Restaurants with good dishes are places where they've got a single or a handful of great dishes buried between a bunch of horrible things. We all already know what bad restaurants are. One restaurant making a particular dish better than another doesn't make that restaurant better - it simply means that dish is better there. Bartenders are working with similar ingredients at all bars, it's their skill that shows through in the finished drink. Restaurants start with different ingredients, recipes, techniques, etc. It can't be distilled to a single dish unless what you're looking for is your favorite pho shop, rather than the best Vietnamese restaurant.

I think you'll find that there are countless variations on each cuisine. Italian food is more than the upstate red sauce joints represent. I don't think even half the Vietnamese restaurants I frequent serve Pho. Creme brulee isn't on most restaurant menus. I think it's completely off the mark to try and compare a broad set of restaurants by a single dish.

What are you doing back in TN? You need to move back to the bay area so you can get more wine.

That depends. In NYC and in my experience, "gyros" are the name generally used for what is described by Elie as "shawarma." In fact, the only "gyros" that I have ever had had the stacked meat. Of course, that may be a function of misnaming in the US and in Greece it may very well be as you describe. ← The ground meat shawarma is usually served in lazy shops that order a frozen gyrokones, it's not the sort of thing made on site. Ground meat shawarma shops are the shawarma equivalent of the Sysco brown-sauce Chinese restaurants. Greek gyros as far as I know are supposed to made from formed ground meat - but I'm mostly clueless on Greek food.

Gyros are also made with ground meat rather than the traditional stacked slices of meat shawarma uses. Elie, I'd love to visit Lebanon at some point - it looks fantastic... Unfortunately it doesn't look like a visit is in the cards any time soon...

Pinot prices are getting up there - you can spend a few hundred dollars a bottle on the Kosta Browne single vineyard wines. Sure that isn't Screaming Eagle or Harlan expensive, but it's not too far off.

I'm not buying a gastrovac for $3800, but then again I don't think I'd spend $300 on one either. It's just not the sort of thing that appeals to me. The build it yourself thing really appeals to me, but this particular problem isn't one I've got any need to solve. I used to drive a triumph spitfire until two of the wheels nearly came off. Now I've got an Elise - it's a much more livable British car, assuming you don't try and parallel park (no bumpers).

Hey, you're preaching to the choir. I drive a British car, I built my own coffee roaster, cold smoker, greenhouse, etc... I'm with you on the ridiculous project thing, but where you lost me is bitching about the price for an NSF certified product that is designed for restaurant kitchens.

Right, so doesn't that just mean what everyone already knows? If your time has no value then it's almost always cheaper to design and build your own solution. This guy keeps trying to build a nuclear reactor in his back yard...

You can build yourself an immersion circulator for a couple of bucks also when the real thing is a grand or more. It's a tiny market, the product works, and the product is targeted at restaurant kitchens where building and maintaining some hacked together solution isn't worth the effort.

The cast iron pan works reasonably well but will fill your house with smoke. When my grill runs out of gas in the middle of a roast I finish it on a perforated sheet pan in a hot oven.

I would add that Zinfandel has never gotten much respect, I wouldn't expect that to change any time soon.

They're seriously good. You missed the dee vine sale a few months ago where they were selling the 03 Keller Westhofener Kirchspiel Kabinett for nine bucks. It's worth seeking them out.

In general, I think it's hard for a pot to be notorious for overcooking things.

The thing you're looking for is a gastrovac. You can buy one at Le Sanctuaire. Edit: Here is a link to it.

Just buy your dishes at a restaurant supply place. Most of them know their products and can give you good advice.

With the Euro at $1.39 you might as well go to both.