Suzi Edwards

i'm hoping it's going to be very classical. that's my aim for the rest of this year...to really explore the classical french cuisine to better understand what these avantgarde chefs are doing. i was very impressed that moby could point to a dish being placed at the table next to us at the fat duck and explain that it looked like a perfectly classical presentation but the menu description was very innovative. there's something about understanding what's being challenged. i think it'll change the way i approch my eating.

i wish...

I've been here, went on Friday night...I want to try some more Vietnamese before I comment though. Thanks for the ethnic selections. I'm getting a bit tired of fancy high end food...some diversity will be great.

I feel like I have been neglecting you all...as you probably realised from my non attendance at the gathering, work has rather got on top of me.... But thank you for the new recommendations, I have a lot of places to get round. I'm back in the UK this weekend but then I am coming back. Until the end of July... I have lots and lots to tell you about. I've been gtting round some markets and stores so hopefully will be able to write about some non-restaurant related stuff later this week. But before I do anything I have to say a HUGE thank you for the Hema's suggestion. I was totally miserable to miss Sunday, so I took myself off there late on Sunday night (isn't it a long way from downtown???) and had such a fantastic meal all my miserableness disappeared. In terms of homestyle cooking it's the nicest I've had outside of India. Maybe it was the warmth of the welcome or the spiciness of the food, but it was just what I needed. That said, I think the American palate might be less tolerant to spicy food than the English one...the very spicy prawn vindaloo was, to me, more fragrant and hot, than really, really spicy. Which is possibly a good thing. And isn't their bread great? I left with my tummy sizzling. *sighs* I can't wait to go back there....I thought I might try Monsoon and then maybe we can chat about high end Indian fusion vs homestyle cooking...

sadly not staying over...have left those arrangements in the hands on my best friend (whose 30th we are celebrating) i guess i should check up on that. i'm sure i could just check this on their website, but is it easily cabbable from oxford? *crossed fingers cos there's not other way i'm getting there*

i had some really, really great sweetbreads at casa mono in march. they are currently number two in my sweetbread 2004 hit parade!

no, not yet. but maybe i should. btw, i'd love some really spicy indian food. any recommendation for home-style indian cooking?

Am I alone in finding this a bit odd in terms of being an overview of London's dining scene? Best Pub Best Bar Best Gastropub Best Family Restaurant Best Chinese Best Local Restaurant Best Cheap Eats Best Design Best New Restaurant Best Vegetarian I compare it to Time Out NYs latest food issue that thrilled me and meant I ate 4 meals a day for the duration of my stay. I mean, Wagamama is in the top 50 here... I always disagree with Time Out's food coverage (I was very surprised to see they hadn't managed to squeeze a prize for Song Que in, but then I noticed they'd popped an advert for them on the Chinese nominations page) but this spread has really perplexed me. I find it almost completely useless and really random. Why Chinese and not Italian? Why not do local by area? Why not devote more than 9 pages to it? (when you take away one page that is a horrible montage and three pages of advertising)

thank you! i'm going next weekend and was wondering what to expect. and of course i *only* trust an egullet opinion these days.

And so on to Blackbird.... Which disappointed and thrilled in pretty much equal measures. It's round the corner from where I work and have loved my visits to Avec, so I was expecting to really enjoy it. Especially the signature sturgeon dish, a fish that I had never tried before because of some wacky royal laws My amuse, pike with anchovy and some fava puree was great. The teeny amount of anchovy was just right to cut the barely cooked pike. A lovely amuse. And my appetizer just got better; a confit of pork with cherries. I loved the way the pork was the sweetest thing on the plate, the poached cherries and the cheery gastrique acting as a sweet sour counterpoint. And the cracking. It was almost good as the cracking from Varmint's pig pickin last year. But not quite :-) My appetizer was so good that halfway through I started wondering what my last bite was going to be and trying to work out what I wanted my last memory of the dish to be. Highly recommended. But then the sturgeon came and ruined it all. It was served with tiny fried Yukon Gold potatoes and served with a slightly fatty oxtail jus. The sturgeon had been grilled over wood and just tasted burnt. They did offer to replace the dish, but I figured not eating most of a dish would probably do me some good.... I followed with a small piece of blue cheese and wished I'd ordered the epoisses instead. All of the appetizers here looked great...maybe I just hit a bum dish, but I'll stick with the small plates in the future. Am taking Lady T's advice tonight and am going to NoMi...

has anyone been here recently?

*checks menu* Assortment Of Cheeses A Selection of Cheeses from Maison Anthony & Neal's Yard, Served with Blackberry Jam, Creamed Muesli and Crackers 30GBP ...just in case anyone was wondering where they might score themselves some. *wonders how much cheese you can buy for 30GBP in Neal's Yard. And then wonders how to cream muesli* I'm glad you enjoyed it...maybe lunch makes you feel less like someone's been ilegally withdrawing money from your bank account :-)

ah, sweet, sweet valvona & crolla. i can't wait to go back there. i've been trying ot order stuff off their website but the e-commerce doesn't seem to be working for me.

i thoought i'd bump this up....i ate at ambria recently and posted it in my chicago food diary.... While I'm talking about French restaurants, I'll play catch up and tell you about my meal at Ambria last Friday. At least, I think it was a meal. I was in and out in 35 minutes so longevity wise it feels more like a snack. This is the first place I’d been to in Chicago that made me feel like a leper for eating alone. I was stuck in a small corner of the room, next to a table so noisy and nauseating I assumed my complimentary glass of wine was to make up for them. One female will remain in my mind forever, her voice the aural equivalent of licking a battery. Foodwise it was fine and the “mescaline salad” I was offered as a special very tempting, but the 3 minute wait between my appetizer and main meant that I never really got to appreciate what I was eating. The softshell crab with jamon vinaigrette that I had to start was pretty good; the ham in the dressing complimenting the sweetness of the crab really well. I followed with sweetbreads with judion beans and chorizo. This is a real “Year of the Sweetbread” for me and I’m having them wherever I can. These rate just above Sketch review of sketch but below Casa Mono in New York and The Fat Duck in Bray. They were served with a sauce that was just too reduced, the sweetness over-powered the rest of the dish and rendered the seasoning on the sweetbreads redundant. Luckily the flavour didn’t linger as they quickly cleared my plate as soon as my knife had hit the porcelain and served me a complimentary amuse to go with my green tea(bag). Is this a new record? 35 minutes for 2 courses, an amuse, a predesert and a cup of green tea? If you want to find out more about where I am eating, or make suggestions the topic is pinned at the top of this forum!

Apart from my thighs? Not much. I really haven't been eating any red meat at all while I've been here. In fact, my ribs at Uncle Julio's last night (a last minute change of plan from greektown (rah)) we're the first red meat I've had since I got here. And as you once said Moby " i find pork very open to suggestion..." when it comes to the red meat/white meat divide. What I did have the other night (Tuesday) was some absolutly superb sushi at Mirai Sushi on West Division. I do have some nice photos to post, so I'll come back and edit this once I've purchased a lead... I can now see why people who have lived in the US complain they can't find good sushi in London. I'm not a connesseur by any stretch (terrible admission coming up here, but I have been know to enjoy a spicy tuna roll from Yo! Sushi! and will probably be banished from this board for that) but this was amazing. I ate a huge amount, but sushi is like, *totally* slimming and all the supermodels eat it so I refuse to feel guilty. We'll quickly gloss over the deep fried "softshell crab-tini and those fried oysters as they weren't highlights and I doubt that Kate Moss would eat a lot of these) Started with one of the Chef's special rolls, the "Spicy Mono" made with octopus and tuna and served with a ponzu dressing. Lorks. This was such a fantastic start, really sweet with a good spicy kick to it. It was so good I had it again to finish. I also tried two new fishes in sashimi form, top grade otoro and amber jack. I can't say they're really to my taste, I don't really like that big fat mouthfeel, and the otoro really reminded me of foie gras (which I can only eat in a parfait, never fried and sliced) Still, I was glad I'd tried these and the quality of the fish seemed really high, it just wasn't for me. My highlight was the wasabi tokibo (and the spicy tobiko to a lesser extent) The wasabi one had such a wasabi hit it really filled my nose and made me sit up straight. Coupled with the noise it makes when you crunch it - i thought it was like fireworks going off in your mouth, imagine really tiny caviar and the pop that makes- it was like the 4th of July in your mouth. The spicy was *slightly* less sucessful, but I think that was because the wasabi was so good. This dish made me realise that something like Feran Adria's apple caviar is kind of redundant if you can do this with the actual eggs. I also had some monkfish foie wrapped with North Carolina fluke (Hirame Kimo) that came with a really spicy/sour dressing. This was a great dish for reminding yourself where you taste flavour as the dressing was all tingly top notes and the fish and foie came afterwards with a sweetness and richness. This was a great dish. I seem to have a photo of another dish, a maki roll with, I think, prawns which I remember being great but I was on my second cocktail by then so I am little hazy. I sat at the bar upstairs and was served by Jennifer. Why are all Chicago waiting staff (apart from the ones at Ambria) so great???? I'd really, really, really recommend this place. It's quite noisy and probably quite hip, but the sushi is really something.

here's the article, it's quite interesting and is free for the next seven days (today is thursday) become a wild salmon expert warning - you do have to register for the site. thanks for the suggestion robyn and i promise i will see some architecture while i am here! (and buy some more shoes which is strickly off topic so we'll move on!!!!)

looks like i'll be going back to the fringe this year....anything new up in edinburgh that might be worth a look?

i always think the problem with the site is that lots of people post really negative things about the service and say nothing about the food...it seems to be people ranting rather than debating. it's still an occaisonal useful source for me though. maybe we can convert you to egullet :-) come on andy, start the flirty fishing.

i had a label anglais from borough once. it was fab. i did my usual herbs and lemon up the bum thing and thought afterwards that it didn't really need it, the flavour was really pronounced. the butcher told me that the chickens are like the women of the countries they come from...there was very little breast meat on this chicken, but it had great legs!!!! this was about 12 months ago and that joke still makes me laugh.

Interestingly my waiter at Spring (Jeff, a superstar of the waiting profession) although not a Barry Manilow fan, was able to share the news that it was his birthday the day I ate there. I was able to have a private toast to one of my favourite artists. And also to one of the best meals I've had in Chicago. It was nice to get out of downtown (isn't Chicago big????) and to see that whatever the US equivalent of a town council is, also loves digging up miles and miles of roads, seemingly for no purpose. I was kind of surprised to get a table at Spring at such short notice, I was also surprised, once I'd eaten, that this place isn't packed every night of the week. My amuse was a small wrap of spicy tuna. Simple and sweet it was a great preparation for what was to come. Having read the reports on here about the Heart of Palm slaw I had to have that, followed by the Copper River red salmon. The appetiser was a textbook texture dish for me. Except I find people say something was a texture dish if it didn't taste of anything...and this did. The mandolined heart of palm slithering and crunching, backed up with a couple of sweet griddled prawns for more texture and flavour and some macadamia nuts adding more sweet crunchiness. Am expressing how sweet and crunchy this was? It was like the chef had created a culinary tone poem entitled "Sweet and Crunchy" It was one of the nicest appetisers I've had all year. I followed with the salmon as I'd missed out on it at Naha a couple of nights earlier and the waiter had done such a good job of describing the Copper River I wanted to taste the fish. Here a good sized piece was griddled and served with a teency Peeky Toe Crab (I *love* these) I'm not usually a huge salmon fan, finding it a bit flabby and fat textured for my liking, but this was a robust piece of fish with a really wild flavour. I was really enjoying myself, people watching, reading (96 pages!!!!! A record so far this vacation) so I decided to treat myself to desert. I asked for a half portion and as soon as I took my first bite I not only thanked God that I had ordered this dessert, but I started plotting an overthrow of the kitchen to get me some more. It was a yuzu custard beignet served with strawberry and basil icecream. Every single component of the desert was amazing. The beignet was so light and the oozing custard warm. It was slicked with a citrus flavoured syrup (was that the yuzu?) that zinged on the tongue and paired with a really beautifully strawberry flavoured, but gently herbal, ice cream. I left the restaurant happy that night....

well....i guess i'll have to accept that challenge. is the first night a good night to go? you realise i'm expecting something like spring break but with food, yeah? am annoyed, was supposed to be going to nuevo leon tonight and am now going to greektown. i am starting to get protective of where I eat, not wanting to miss out on anything that I had planned to do. hopefully i'll get back early and will be able to catch up with my sushi news from last night!!! (btw, if anyone can pm the address of a camera shop that sells accessories for digital cameras, i can share some photos with you all. as it's off topic, best keep it to pm though)

*grabs coat, runs to cafe bolero*

I guess it comes down to personal taste. I could go and eat at a thousand places where the chefs are on the ascendancy. I feel that Trotters isn't that place...to me going there would be a bit like going to see "Hair"; once iconic, but now starting to look stale. Besides, I'd rather given Moto the best part of $200.... Thank you all for the extra suggestions. I'm really looking forward to exploring more food related stores over the weekend. I'm also meeting up with this very strange group of food obessives on Sunday. If I don't post on Monday please send out a search party! I am having so many problems tracking down the Marilyn Pocius book. I am really annoyed, I was in the Spice House on Sunday and was too busy sticking my nose in the paprika to notice a copy. I am having a very busy morning but I cannot wait to tell you all about the sushi i had last night. OHMIGOD.

keep up moby ;-) that list is of where i've been not where i am planning to go.... i've heard such bad things about trotters i don't think i can bring myself to go. my planned fine dining at the moment is... a revist to moto tru everest green zebra but i would be keen to hear what people think. have i missed anywhere? i have a copy of food politics...i will read it as soon as it arrives in my care parcel. thanks for the suggestion ronnie.

this is why i love moby. so frugal even when faced with a bill of monumental proportions. do you think i'd like it mobes?