Suzi Edwards

off topic i know, but if anyone can tell me where to get cat litter that's as good as sainsburies ultra clumping i will be *eternally* grateful. mine are not happy with the non-supermarket stuff. pm me if you have any ideas. so, back to our usual topic... you'll be pleased to hear that i still haven't broken my boycott. although it's fair to say that eating out seven nights a week is a fairly full on way to do it...

i detoxed earlier this year. i think it was the lack of sugar that made me want to lose my mind. try sniffing vanilla when the cravings get really bad. it'll never replace the sugar hit, but it does make a craving pass. i also find tazo wild sweet orange tea very helpful. it's really zingy and orangy...

Good point. These things are always relative though, aren't they? When you get to that 250gbp per head level I think I think value for money goes out of the window. Does that sound completely terrible?

you know, i haven't. it has been lost and i cannot find a store in chicago that has what i need. someone has suggested radioshack. i will try there.

He also wrote, "She sits there so refined, and drinks herself half-blind." Hmmm... have you been stalking me?

maggie's right, it's barley couscous and it's from belazu, you can get it in satanburies special selection. not sure if it's israeli though.

No, he said "I made it through the rain" which suggests to me he's spent far too long in London and not enough time in Chicago :-)

I've also posted this in my diary but given that it's a new restaurant and I couldn't find a thread about it, I thought I'd start one. So last night I went to Le Lan. And I had a completly lovely and glorious meal. The serivce is absolutly superb and I cannot make any complaint at all. Which as those of you who have been reading this thread know says a lot. They welcomed me like an old friend, gave me a lovely table on the side of the room towards the back so I could watch the comings and goings and just really made me really special. Which was nice as I'd had a terrible day and had ended up being 90 minutes late for my reservation with a pile of work still to do. The menu doesn't cater hugely well to non-meat eaters and it was one of the few times this trip that I ended up eating red meat. But I figure you can only test the mettle of a Vietnamese restaurant by trying the Pho, so pho I ordered. I decided to go for three courses from the "Soup, Salad and Appetiser" page of the menu. The entrees looked tempting, but when there's so many good looking smaller dishes on offer I wanted some variety. My lovely waitress suggested we play around with the order of my food a little as I'd asked her to match two glasses of wine for me. So I started with Roquefort Sorbet and a nice Viognier, followed by "Chef Roland's Garden" and then had a Pinot Noir with my Pho. The Roqufort Sorbet will be a contender for my dish of the trip. A small scoop of sorbet was served over crushed pistachios and alongside a salad of mache with a sherry-basil dressing. Strips of julienned apple added texture. The depth of flavour in the sorbet was amazing and the textures of the soft mache, nuts and crisp apple really complimented it. This was the sort of dish that I would expect to find at somewhere like Moto or Trio. A real study of apple and blue cheese. So I was pleasantly surprised at this point and started really looking forward to my next dish. And what a dish it was. There was a crispy shrimp wonton, peeky toe crab salad and zuchinni flowers stuffed with truffled scallops. It was served with a mussel and scallop reduction. This was a totally burlesque dish, with the pink of the scallop mousse straining against the yellow flowers like a thigh encased in a silk stocking. The texture of the mousse was spot on, none of the soggyness you can get from a mousse, it was simply scallop and truffle. The sauce was a pungently fishy extra that worked especially well with the wonton. And the cold crab salad just rounded everything off. There were maybe 15 bites in the dish. Probably less but I started rationing myself towards the end to make it last longer. And there were so many flavours and textures in it...I might go back tonight to have it again. My Pho had a really tough act to follow, and it didn't quite manage it. But I think this is more because I'm not really into red meat at the moment. It's a really fortified broth, rich and dark with beef and noodles. It was a bit too rich and dark for me, I like my pho to be steaming hot and thin, but I could see what they were doing. It was certainly a very French preparation, more like a gutsy consomme than a broth. I certainly didn't leave disappointed. The meal had a good progression from light to more filling. And I will definitly go back. Possibly tonight.

I think I'd put Chicago above...wait for it....London at the moment. But then you know what they say; "if you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with" So last night I went to Le Lan. And I had a completly lovely and glorious meal. The serivce is absolutly superb and I cannot make any complaint at all. Which as those of you who have been reading this thread know says a lot. They welcomed me like an old friend, gave me a lovely table on the side of the room towards the back so I could watch the comings and goings and just really made me really special. Which was nice as I'd had a terrible day and had ended up being 90 minutes late for my reservation with a pile of work still to do. The menu doesn't cater hugely well to non-meat eaters and it was one of the few times this trip that I ended up eating red meat. But I figure you can only test the mettle of a Vietnamese restaurant by trying the Pho, so pho I ordered. I decided to go for three courses from the "Soup, Salad and Appetiser" page of the menu. The entrees looked tempting, but when there's so many good looking smaller dishes on offer I wanted some variety. My lovely waitress suggested we play around with the order of my food a little as I'd asked her to match two glasses of wine for me. So I started with Roquefort Sorbet and a nice Viognier, followed by "Chef Roland's Garden" and then had a Pinot Noir with my Pho. The Roqufort Sorbet will be a contender for my dish of the trip. A small scoop of sorbet was served over crushed pistachios and alongside a salad of mache with a sherry-basil dressing. Strips of julienned apple added texture. The depth of flavour in the sorbet was amazing and the textures of the soft mache, nuts and crisp apple really complimented it. This was the sort of dish that I would expect to find at somewhere like Moto or Trio. A real study apple and blue cheese. So I was pleasantly surprised at this point and started really looking forward to my next dish. And what a dish it was. There was a crispy shrimp wonton, peeky toe crab salad and zuchinni flowers stuffed with truffled scallops. It was served with a mussel and scallop reduction. This was a totally burlesque dish, with the pink of the scallop mousse straining against the yellow flowers like a thigh encased in a silk stocking. The texture of the mousse was spot on, none of the soggyness you can get from a mousse, it was simply scallop and truffle. The sauce was a pungently fishy extra that worked especially well with the wonton. And the cold crab salad just rounded everything off. There were maybe 15 bites in the dish. Probably less but I started rationing myself towards the end to make it last longer. And there were so many flavours and textures in it...I might go back tonight to have it again. My Pho had a really tough act to follow, and it didn't quite manage it. But I think this is more because I'm not really into red meat at the moment. It's a really fortified broth, rich and dark with beef and noodles. It was a bit too rich and dark for me, I like my pho to be steaming hot and thin, but I could see what they were doing. It was certainly a very French preparation, more like a gutsy consomme than a broth. I certainly didn't leave disappointed. The meal had a good progression from light to more filling. And I will definitly go back. Possibly tonight.

even though it was expensive and there was one sauce that was well below par for me, i still loved it. but i think the beautiful weather and charming service really pushed it over the edge. also, i know even less than moby about wine, so i didn't even look at the list. compared to, say, sketch, where i just felt like i had hemmorhaged cash, it was a relative bargain.

i want to make it clear that i recycled the whole thing!!!!!

Grant Achatz said something on here about when you move out of a box the frame of reference becomes smaller...and i think i agree with him that it's more that the frame of reference is different, so people might think it's derivative. I think understand the parts of the menu that are Veyrat-esque. Could you explain the other references to me? I'd be keen to understand where you think the "inspiration" (I prefer that to "rip off") for the dishes is coming from. Especially the Robouchon and MPW stuff.

I think I might just associate delicious cheesy baked goods with the French. I have not had great pastries while I have been here. This was a good one. I am so not happy with you finding amusement in my Saturday night predicamant Mr Truffle.

i really enjoyed this post corpaga. thank you.

It's my understanding that "these restaurants" come out of an evolving movement called gastronomy. There would be no Fat Duck without Escoffier and I am currently exploring more about traditional French cooking so I can talk informatively and passionatley about where food has come from and where it is going now Rather than calling into question my knowledge Opson let's concentrate on the issue at hand. The Count accuses Rogan/Bradshaw of plaigiarising Adria. I haven't eaten at L'Enclume yet...but a quick look at the menu makes me think that there's really only one thing that would make you shout "Ell Bulli" and that's the foam. And i've been served foams in many more restaurants than just those in Roses. I was served one at Ambria, in Chicago, a very French restaurant just a week or two ago. When I read the menu I think much more "that sounds a bit Veyrat" but I haven't eaten there yet so I can only make the connection and not a comparison. I think that plaigiarism is cited about these restaurants because there are so few places cooking like this that people want to bundle them all up and pidgeonhole them. I think people also use "El Bulli" as shorthand for "different" My point, which I think was quite well made, is that we don't accuse people who roast, fry and boil of copying each other. I'm sure if I knew (and I don't) who made the first cappuchino sauce I'd be evoking their name every time I saw one. And I've seen a few.

how many chefs roast, pan fry, boil and saute? why are they not accused of plagiarism? Every single one of them, even in El Bulli, use traditional cooking methods that's not the point. So what is the point? You specifically site plaigiarism of Adria's gastronomy via the terminology as your reason for, as far as I can see, not buying into it. Perhaps you can tell us what it was specifically about your meal here that you didn't like and what the other diners were doing to make it look like they were just pretending they liked it?

And so on to Fuse. I believe this is Eric Aubriot's new place and I was excited to be eating here as the Fish Stew dish was named dish of the year in the issue of Chicago that I was lucky to find in the hairdressers on Friday. The did sort of break rule number 9 of the sole diner's manifesto but I was next to a couple of tables having very amusing conversations so I didn't really mind. They also made me create a rule number 11 which runs along the lines of 11. If your restaurant has a bar attached and it is a Saturday night, the bar is heaving and full of groups of men and your single female diner is early for her table, it might be nice to seat her straight away rather than making her loiter alone for a while. Ahem. The food was good. It was nice to be served a flaky parmesan puff with garlic aoili as an amuse as most Chicago places seem to be doing fish based ones at the moment. The parmesan puff felt quite European, which was nice. It was a hard menu to chose from and it took me quite a while (and a glass of Louis Roderer) to decide. I went for gazpacho with crab salad and brioche for my appetizer and the famous fish stew for my entree. The crab in the gazpatcho was nicely set off by a really quite pungently garliky/spicy soup that set the tastebuds tingling and that showed a dab hand with strong flavours.. I had high hopes for what he was going to do with bouillabaise at this point. And I was a bit dissappointed. It was too thin for me, no depth of flavour to the broth although the shell fish was good and fresh. The clams were especially juicy. So I felt a bit let down and have eaten many significantly better dishes while I have been here...The waiter kindly comped me a glass of sauternes to make up for the disapointment of the stew, which I managed to ruin by ordering a lemon meringue tarte to go with it. That said, the tarte was good (although the stewed blueberries that came with it where redundant) with a really tart fresh lemon curd topped with a french style meringue. The place was busy and quite full of people on dates/groups of friends. It's not a place to go for a romatic meal a deux but it would be great first date territory.

So saturday turned into a hot chocolate taste comparitor day while i tried to find a new charger for my cellphone. Luckily I managed to taste some hot chocolate as the search for a charger was fruitless. I tried Ghiardelli, Vosges and Moonstruck Cafe. In last place....Ghiardelli. This was the cheapest of the three hot chocolates and the only one to be served to me by a spotty teenager. I was expecting this to be exceptional, as Lady T has only pointed me towards the best so far, but it didn't taste of chocolate at all. In fact, the closest it came to hot chocolate was that it was hot. It was characterised mainly by a complete lack of chocolate flavour. It went straight in the bin outside. I haven't had a huge amount of sucess in this part of town as I noticed I was right next to Bistro 110 where I had brunched a week or so ago and that hadn't set me on fire either. I do hate restaurants that have one menu outside but when you sit down you're presented with the "lunch" menu which is really just a shadow of the real thing. In second place....Vosges. I had a choice of three here. Mexican, Le Parisienne and a white chocolate one that I can't remember the name of. I went for Le Parisienne, being of European extraction. And you know, it wasn't bad. It wasn't good either and at $5 I was expecting it to be. But I got past the first few sips before relegating this one. There was a sort of slightly metallic flavour to it, a really sort of harsh top note which I put down to a low quality chocolate. And the winner? Moonstruck Cafe almost opposite my appartment on North Michigan. I drank exactly half of this. With hindsight I should have gone for their "Chocolate Truffle" which had been described as "a short intense shot of pure chocolate, kind of like an espresso" The one I has was this watered down (or should that be milked down?) Anyway, the flavour was well rounded and it really improved as the drink cooled down. There was a definite creamyness coming through from the chocolate and not from the milk. So I'll be going back there. Any more suggestions for places I can try? Although maybe July isn't the best month for a project like this.... OOOOH. While I think. Do go to the Seurat exhibition if you get the chance. It's really well curated and a great way to while away a couple of hours. And if you decide to have a drink while at the Art Institute, do not go to the cafe. Make sure you go to the Garden Restaurant. You cannot take beverages purchased in the cafe outside and are forced to watch others merrily frolicking in the garden with glassware while you sit inside on a formica bench sipping from a polystyrene cup.

how many chefs roast, pan fry, boil and saute? why are they not accused of plagiarism?

It was a five part process: 1. Conversation with one who knows about these things Suzi "I'm going to Trotters on Thursday" Suzi's friend "I'm really sorry for you" Suzi "Erm...." Suzi's Friend "You constantly bitch about service of single diners to me. I can guarentee you will leave there feeling like you've been on a conveyor belt" 2. Reading the entire thread over dinner on Friday night (which took A WHOLE REAM OF PAPER...we need to sort out the font size for printing things out) Suzi thinks to herself "So there are really just two indepth reports on Trotters. One involves an inexperienced diner feeling they weren't treated very well and the other is the partner of an industry professional being treated incredibly well....Hummmm. I'm an egalitarian type of person, something here isn't sitting right with me" 3. And then my own words came back to me, something about preferring to spend money with an up and coming chef (like our own Inventolux) than with someone on the wane....I am hearing such good things about Sarah's cooking that I don't want to miss out on that. But I am also slightly torn about eating there as she is about to leave and she's going to stop doing the fine dining thing...so I will probably end up not going their either....Pluton is very appealing to me at the moment...(I'm going to start discussion about this as a separate thread where's hot in chicago at the moment ) 4. I felt really constrained by the second seating issue at Trotters. I would, ideally, not start a three hour meal at 9.00pm. But work means I cannot go eat at 6.00pm as contrary to what my involvement with egullet may suggest, I do have a job to do. and finally 5. As much as I wish it were, I don't have an unlimited budget for eating. And I am starting to get slightly nervous about spending $200 on a dinner that I am not desparate to eat. As much as I take what's written on here with a pinch of salt it's going to be hard to sit at that table and be really open hearted about it.

i've just cancelled my table. am going to the ritz carlton instead.

Forgive me, my geography is completely terrible. As the woman at the trainline has just pointed out to me.

Ah, le Manoir. I've finally found a reason for sunny Sunday afternoons. It was a beautiful day when Emu (best friend of Tarka) (we also have a friend called Frog. It's like Wind in the Willows when I cook supper) and I set off for the dreaming spires of Oxford and a date with Barry Manilow. The train part of the journey to Oxford isn't that bad to be honest. Admittedly it's further than Bray...but I was pleasently surprised. I was having a bit of an "oh isn't the British countryside so lovely" time, what with not getting to be here so much at the moment, so the journey was really quite lovely. We'll gloss over the cab ride to Le Manoir as it was hot, sticky, bumpy and expensive. But future travellers might want to think about organising a private hire car from Oxford... A couple of glasses of champagne later we didn't really care about the taxi ride and we were munching on some lovely olives and bartering over the menu. Emu "Well if you have the langoustine canelloni, I'll have the foie but then what can we do about the spring vegetable risotto appetiser? (for I had made her read this thread and the exhortations of my wiser collegues to eat my veg when dining here) Suzi "We could have the tasting menu. They're on there" Emu "But the roast suckling pig isn't" Suzi "Hummm. Nor are the veal sweetbreads" Both sip champagne contemplatively and eat another olive. Suzi (filled with the spirit of Moby) "I know. We'll add the risotto as an extra course." Emu "Are you allowed to do that?" Suzi *nods* And you know, we made the right choice. Our amuse was a salmon jelly of such surprising sweet fishiness as it melted on the tongue that Emu and I looked at each other and grinned. Huge grins of the sort that we hadn't really done since we were undergraduates dancing and watching the sun rise listening to "Chime" by Orbital at a Downing College event. Starters were even better. Emu's foit gras parfait with rhubarb compote and ginger brioche smelled so divine that my mouth was watering as Aurelian, our waiter, was serving her bread. My langoustine canelloni was beautifully poached and wrapped with an-if-i-was-being-critical-maybe-slightly-too-thick-fresh pasta but the roasted langoustine and pan fried scallop of almost Gagnaire-esque sweetness more than made up for it. And then we had the risotto. I don't think I've eaten such fresh vegetables. There were peas, tiny baby courgettes, spring cabbage, onions and a selection of fresh herbs. It sparkled on the tongue it was so fresh. I've never had such a perfect risotto. It managed to be slightly cheesy and creamily unctuous while simultaniously being the freshed tasting thing I have ever eaten. If I were Michael Winner I'd call it historic. This was always going to be a hard act to follow, and my veal sweetbreads didn't do that well. The sauce was over reduced and the sweetbreads were just fried, rather than being slightly coated and then fried. Am sure this is the working class girl in me coming out, but I really like them when they look like something you'd get from a very high class KFC. Ahem. However my dish was redeemed by yet more of the beautiful vegetables, this time some courgette flowers, more spring cabbage and a puree of cauliflower with hazelnuts. Emu's suckling pig was better than the sweetbreads. I'd love to be able to tell you what it tasted like. But I got to taste such a tiny, tiny piece of it I can't rightfully comment. Feeling buoyed up we went for the cheese cart. And it was at this point I realised I've been in the US for too long. I tried to order "off cart" basically begging poor Aurelian to go and have a ferret around the kitchen for some Epoisses for me. AND HE WENT. I love this man. He came back empty handed, so I had to make do with some exceptional Brillat-Saverin, Tete de Moins, Bresse Bleu and Roquefort. There was one other, but I was deep in fromage-ecstacy by this point.... We really couldn't manage desert. But the migardises (a nut tuile, a tiny orange scented chocolate flan, some nougat and a truffle) more than made up. We literally collapsed on the sofas and begged them to call us a cab. And we rounded the evening off with pimms and dancing while watching the sunset over Barry Manilow. I guess that's what you call growing up :-)

there was an article in the local (at least to me at the moment) chicago paper about pubs losing business in dublin because of the smoking ban. it centered on one pub that had defied the ban what with takings being down by two thirds, and they were consequently doing a roaring business again. they now risk a huge fine and being closed down. i loved that the article made reference to an underground smokers caucus that started texting and calling each other as soon as the ashtrays were out.

wow. my phone camera sucks.