Busboy

"Craft sausages?" Sounds a little too earthy-crunchy for the links o' chaos that come out of our kitchen, but I'll keep the term in mind for next time I want to sound like a better cook than I really am. Aidells books are pretty good but the truth is, after you have a batch or two under your belt, you can pretty much use his recipes as a shopping list and ad-lib quantities and additional ingredients to your heart's content. I just made a big batch of lamb sausages flavored with cumin and coriander that had been roasted and ground, and a reasonable shot of cinnamon. I double ground it for a finer texture than usual. I can't find the lamb casings I need to make them look like the stuff I had in Greece, but they certainly have the Mediterranean taste I needed. I looked at Aidell's turkey (yuck) merguez recipe for hints, and added roasted pine nuts and sun-dried tomatoes to half the batch just for fun. I also chopped up some fennel for some pork sausages, otherwise following the Italian Sausage recipe our family has settled upon. The next batch, I'll probably do that fall favorite, apple-sage sausage. I just kid of wing it. For what it's worth, sausage making has become a major family activity at the Busboy household, with the kids -- 11 and 15 -- making their own, custom batches and bragging about whose is better over dinner. PS, watch the salt if you're adding fatback and, you do know the trick of frying up a spoonful after you've mixed but before you stuff, don't you?

Based on your discussions of the New York Times star system, your judgment of what constitutes a 4-star restaurant or 4-star meal clearly seems to be at variance with the judgments of most if not all other participants in such discussions, and I think it's fair to say that if it were up to you, many more restaurants would be awarded 4 stars (though your ultimate preference is for stars to be eliminated). So as this thread continues, it might be expected that you would consider it more likely for home cooks to be able to achieve a 4-star level than other participants would. It's very possible that in this discussion, though everyone is agreeing on using the term "four-star," the term doesn't mean the same thing to you as it does to most of the rest of the participants, thereby making this thread somewhat of an apples vs. oranges argument, though an interesting one, nevertheless. ← Oh, c'mon. This is a cheap shot (he said, rolling his eyes).

Having played baseball professionally, the difference between cooking and sports (professionally) is a chasm as wide as the Grand Canyon because there are just some things you can't teach - like hitting or throwing a 95mph fastball. In cooking, techniques can be taught, and creativity comes with time, talent and a keen mind. And these can improve over time. Maybe the difference over "better" and "creative" is just semantics. I've had meals cooked by home chefs that I would consider 4-star and also had meals that I would give a zero. If you're willing to put in the time, effort, creativity and money, I believe it can be done. Having a few connections in the food business wouldn't hurt either. You don't think that great chefs have any innate talent that we don't? I don't want to go too far out on a limb, but the closer analogy would be an artist, rather than a baseball player (I chose coach as the comparison earlier, to avoid the physical considerations, btw). Two artists can have the same technical skills and same training, and yet one be much better than the other, because they have a greater innate talent. Same with chefs. Hundreds of people graduate from excellent cooking schools every years and the world's best kitchens are full of eager stagiers, learning from the masters. But some are just better than the others -- some are 4-star and some aren't -- because they have a talent that most people, even those who have already shown superior skill in their chosen profession, do not. Add to that what gets learned from spending 10 hours a day, six days a week, for a period of years perfecting your craft, and home cooks just aren't in the same league. Not, mind you, that we can't come close.

It's not the produce. These guys are just better cooks than we are. A reasonable facsimile of 4-star cooking is not 4-star cooking. It may be great stuff, but it's not 4-star. ← I'm not sure I would use the term "better," especially if someone cooks at home extensively. I think the biggest difference and the one area that separates the pro from the rest of us is creativity. If you're a professional chef it's an everyday thing and you have the time to experiment that the amateur doesn't. ← Oh, c'mon. I have as big an ego as any home cook, anywhere, but to pretend that I can pull off a full meal -- not one course and some cheese, but a full meal -- as well as the handful of humans of the hundreds of thousands who devote their professional lives to cooking that earn 4 stars (3 in France) is beyond me even after a couple of glasses of wine and a good meal. This is like all the people who call into sports radio claiming to be better than the coach of their home team. They're not, we're not.

Wait until Sunday, drink nine beers, put the game on and attack the stuff with a bag of "dip-size" Fritos. Edited to add: What were you thinking, an easy gourmet snack? It's sour cream and dehydrated mass-produced chemical infused onion soup, f'r chrissakes.

It's not the produce. These guys are just better cooks than we are. A reasonable facsimile of 4-star cooking is not 4-star cooking. It may be great stuff, but it's not 4-star.

A significant chunk of the best and most promising chefs in the world stumble through New York. The line up extraordinary suppliers, hire brilliant and energetic line cooks and spend 80 hours a week over the stove. Some of them, a tiny percentage of the chefs in New York, earn four stars. You can't cook that good, I can't cook that good, nobody -- nobody -- who hasn't dedicated a significant portion of their life to cooking and brought extensive natural gifts to the table can cook a 4-star meal at home. 2-star? Now you're talking. Not to be discouraging or anything.

Well, if your're going to bring bacon into it for crying out loud. Thats cheating. ← As long as you're cheating, Mrs. Busboy, who can't walk past those big brussels sprouts branches in the market without throwing one over her shoulder like an vegan AK-47, likes a recipe from Gray Kunz's Elements of taste where you brown brussels sprouts in butter, hold them off the heat, brown some Granny Smith apples, and toss both sprouts and apples with turnips that have been softened in cider vinegar (vinegar should be reduce by half but the end) and bacon, salt and a pinch of sugar. Imagine seeing the kids eating brussels sprouts and turnips simultaneously! It would probably be a copyright violation to add more detail, but you can do the whole thing by instinct if you think about it for a moment. We do a similar recipe to Eunny's green beans, as well, only I brown garlic slices in the pan and add some olive oil before I throw the green beans and shallots in. Once the boy looked up from a plate of these and said, "Dad, these are the best green beans ever." Something I don't think he's ever said about anything else I've ever cooked. Edited to add: and, of course, you can always sautee about eight cubic feet of spinach or the greens of your choice in copious quantities of garlic and a puddle of olive oil to get a clean, pleasantly bitter contrast to the richness of the rest of the meal.

Faccia Luna has been closed for a while -- weeks or months, I think. There's a handmade sign tied atop the old sign that reads "Kavanaugh's Pizza." Haven't been since the change, though, so no details to report.

I don't live in New York but have been to both and, while I was disappointed in Balthazaar as a "destination" place, I assume that if I was living in Manhattan there would be many a night where I'd head over to one or the other for steak frites or oysters on the half shell. Well-decorated, lively, good -- if not excellent -- food, and prices that seemed modest by New York standards, and late hours. What more could you ask?

When I have a restaurant complaint that I feel can be resolved reasonably without inconveniencing myself or my fellow diners, I don’t hesitate to discuss my feelings with the appropriate authority figure. However, the customer no duty to brief the manager/chef/owner of any restaurant or any business regarding the quality of service upon departing, whether the experience was good or bad. Further, taking a grievance to eGullet -- where one is almost guaranteed to find a diversity of opinion -- is as legitimate a move as singing an establishment's praise, a practice which encounters little objections. Generally speaking, most people deliver feedback with their decision to return or not. If I don’t like the service at the Gap I go to Macy’s. If I don’t like the help desk at Toshiba, I buy a Mac. If I have a problem at one restaurant, I go to another one. In neither case do I feel the need to lay out my reasons to management. It’s their job to worry about me – to get me to give them my money -- not the other way around. Obviously, I’m not making or breaking anyone’s business, but if a place has a problem, the cumulative message can be pretty clear – ask Carol Greenwood. In addition, at a restaurant, one has one’s tip as a pretty effective carrot or stick. Most servers know that tips fluctuate based on the habits of the individual leaving them. But they’re also smart enough to wonder at any wild variations from the norm. So, generally, there are two ways to make one’s feelings known to a restaurant or business already. Approaching the manager is more problematic. Sometimes they approach you during the meal and you can say something like “kitchen seems a little slow tonight” and they can explain or expedite or whatever. But, sometimes they don’t come by the table. Then, if the waiter is busy or weeded or blinkered, you just have to roll with it. It happens, and it’s not necessarily a deal-breaker. But service is an accumulation of a number of things -- many of them small in their own right -- which add up to the full experience, good or bad. Pulling the manager out of his or her routine, while friends and clients wait, to try to quantify and describe a series of judgment calls and minor infraction which, at some point, accumulated critical mass strikes me as a frustrating experience for both parties. If a waiter spills soup on your lap, the manager can comp the meal and pay for the dry cleaning. If the wrong plate comes out, it can be sent back. More nuanced complaints, however, don’t necessarily lend themselves to easy solutions, and it often seems appropriate to just cut one’s losses, figure the tip, decide whether this was a random or a chronic problem – ie, whether or not to return – and go home. As to whether or not posting one’s experience is “passive aggressive” and wrong, I’d suggest, first, that the use of the phrase “passive-aggressive” is little more than name-calling with a Psych 101 course behind it and, second, that if restaurants are going to bask in the sunshine of posted praise, they have to live with the rain of posted criticisms, as well. As I said at first, I don’t hesitate to speak up in person when I feel there’s some point to it. And I generally don’t hesitate to post in eGullet, if I feel that there is something to add – positive or negative – to a discussion. eGullet is populated with intelligent, opinionated people who can make up their own minds about me and my posts. The Palena thread, in particular, is chock-full of high praise. My post, one of more than 200, will be considered along with all the other wisdom accumulated on that thread and judged accordingly. In fact, by posting publicly, I allow and even invite opposing views to appear – as they did. It’s a new world; Tom, eGullet, and other electronic outlets are just word-of-mouth in the information age and if a restaurant is not confident that they can prosper in this medium as easily – or more easily – as they could in the days of paper and ink, need to look carefully at the way they do business.

People who sneer are inherintly suspect. There are few things better than hot crinkle cut French fries topped with ketchup and copious quantities of salt --preferably served after midnight -- at a drive in, diner or the snack bar of a bowling alley. However, if you must sniff at this great American gift to the culinary world -- and in calling French fries "frites" in public -- I suggest serving them on the side of any dish calling for a Sauce Bernaise or a mango buerre blanc and dipping them in those sauce. Ask for extra.

When Ms. Busboy was pregnant with Thing 1, her only real craving was arugula, raw, with vinaigrette.

I always think of frittatas as involving some type of potato but, otherwise, if it feels good, do it. A couple of things I like to do: slice (lots of) garlic and brown it in oil in the frittata pan, then set it aside until near the end, cooking the potatoes and whatever else in the garlic-y oil and throwing the slices back in just before the eggs are added, and putting some kind of green, like sauteed spinach, in.

My first cookbook was "The Charlie Brown Cookbook." I'm sure it's long out of print, but the good thing about it was that it was simply a set of recipes that a kid could follow: no grand lesson plan, no pop sociology or psych, lots of pictures of Linus, Snoopy and the crew. The most important thing for the kids to learn is that cooking is fun, and accessible. Once that lesson is learned, everything else will follow; I distrust any cooking for kids program that turns cooking into yet another self-improvement project. That's what music lessons are for. For what it's worth, my kids (11and 15),have learned to cook by hanging out in the kitchen with me and mom, and their education is pretty haphazard: Dylan does pizza dough and spaghetti sauce, the Nora makes cookies. They both blanch vegetables and make sausage. They know their way around a kitchan, they come with me to the butcher and to the market, and have both cut and/or burned themselves in the course of preparing a meal, and lived (though Dylan had to get stitches). When the time comes to cook for themselves, they'll be fine, happy, and competent. Though it's not written for children, the title that should spring to mind when contemplating putting a six-year-old in the kitchen, is "The Joy of Cooking."

If I was going to try to get a bead on a new Greek place, I'd look at the grilled fish and the octupus, looking for freshness, quality of preparation and simplicity.

I can`t say much about the rest but Chef Ruta`s style of cooking if not fast pace since he has those perfectly rested meats ← I'm familiar with the pace of service in fine restaurants, and have even been known to request that it be slowed on occasion. What we got last night was a server so eager to take our order that he couldn't wait for someone at the table to finish their sentance before bursting in to solicit orders, then having the courses come out via the Red Line or some such thing. OK, not via the Red Line, but at a pace that made a group of diners who have eaten in fine restaurants...yada yada yada... start peering around the restuarant wondering when the boudin blanc was going to appear. As I said, the food was excellent, but the service was irritating.

Don't Panic! Go back to your go-to dish! Fifi's ideas sound good. Also, give the garlic a little stir as you add it, so even if it is determined to stick it doesn't get a chance. And remember, sometimes shit just happens, for easons only the Kitchen Gods know. Take a deep breath, check your garlic, your recipe and your karma and cook it again. It will be fine.

That's absurd. There are college students all over the country earning their way by waiting tables. And they do a great job. It's not brain surgery. ← Good point Stone...Not to mention, these aren't beauty school students, they are Culinary School students. Supposedly the future of fine dining rests in their hands. That may be a bit of hyperbole, but you should expect more from them than from your average server... ← Given the number of legitimate complaints here and everywhere about poor service, especially in nicer restaurants (and, as a former server) I'd like to point out that, while not "brain surgery," waiting tables is indeed a skill that takes time and dedication to master and should not be dismissed. That being said, even a new waiter should be competent enough to get the glasses on the table and add the check properly, and should have enough respect for their patrons and their house to care about the service -- that, more than any particular skill, seems to be what was lacking.

I had dinner in the main dining room for the first time last night with three friends and colleagues and, while the food was excellent, the service was frankly bad. Not awful, not legendary, but irritating enough that on the way home my friend lept out of the middle of a conversation to say "I just have to bitch one more time about the service tonight." Courses took forever to come out; there's civilized pacing and there's "have they lost he order?" The waiter filled the wine glasses so full -- getting only four glasses out of the bottle -- that it was clear that he either did not know how to pour wine our was overpouring in an effort to peddle another bottle. It took three tries to get the red Burgundy open for a little breathing. Coffee came out with the cheese course. The waiter seemed to have no problem bursting into the middle of conversations to deliver whatever message he had that moment, but had the most amazing ability to avoid eye contact when I wanted to flag him down. The cheese course lecture was little short of condescending, though Palena is hardly the only restaurant to puff their chest out about the age and patrimony of their chevre. The check arrived with an alacrity that put the dawdling pace of the rest of the meal to shame -- and almost seemed like they were eager to see us go. Very irksome, given that the food was excellent.

I'm not a Seattle native, so I might be talking out of my hat (and I don't recall what the transport links are), but it seems to me that taking an early morning shopping expedition through the Pike Place Market in mid- or late summer, then spending the day cooking what you bought would be a valuable lesson on a number of different levels.

I am green with envy. A couple of thoughts from a fellow Paris newbiw, but who's been lucky to spend a little time there this year and last. 1) Relax. Really. You will do fine. I took two kids and two parents -- none of whom spoke a word of French -- through Paris on my own thin French vocabulary and, save for one taxi driver who left me with a great story to tell, never heard a discouraging word. 2) Remember that the French are more formal than we are. They are not acting reserved because they dislike you/Americans/tourists/whomever, they're just reserved. 3) Buy Patricia Wells' "Food Lover's Guide to Paris." 4) Have a great time. Never think of yourself as "ignorant and provincial." Hell, everyone is their first week in Paris. Make the rhythms of the city your own, don't force yourself to see or do anything -- if ever there was a city made for just hanging out and not doing anything, it is Paris. 5) The Mona Lisa is overrated (Pan, I prefer the Virgin of the Rocks). Winged Victory of Samothrace (aka "Sammy"), is underrated.

quote: m-l I once worked in an excellent French restaurant and one day I asked one of the line cooks how they made the excellent buerre blanc that was served with the grilled swordfish,. He smiled the smile of a stockbroker giving you an inside tip, and said "vermouth." That was their secret ingredient and still remains a significant contributor to my culinary repertoire today -- cheap, flavorful and it never goes bad. Generally, rather than use the wine I'm drinking to cook with -- unless I'm drinking inexpensive wine or the quantity needed is small -- I'll use a decent, but less expensive version of the same wine. The key is to use a wine worth drinking in its own right, but of the same styke. An inexpensive Chilean Cabernet, for example, that you'd be happy to drink with family on a Wednesday night, might not make the cut on Saturday when the guests come buy. But it still yields an excellent marchand du vin sauce, while freeing up the brutally expensive classified Bordeaux for the serious quaffing portion of the evening.

I'm going to back out of this because, while I find the topic interesting, I don't want to look as though I'm just trying to rattle the cage. But before I go, let me ask two fundamental questions that I don't think have been answered. 1) Given that it is neither a religious nor a philosophical text, where is it written that the lead NYT review must be devoted to a "serious" restaurant every single week? 2) Without saying I/we/everyone knows it when they see it, what are tangible objective differences between a reviewable and a non-reviewable restaurant. Edited to add: regarding the lit crit, you've again given yourself an easy out. First, Sri didn't get 4 stars, it got 2. Second, a more apt example might be, say, a Jean Le Carre novel and a Graham Greene novel. Greene dabbles a bit in the spying and intrigue, but is considered literature, while Le Carre is a genre writer but a talented and insightful one. Do we cut Le Carre off because he's a genre writer, or do we allow him partial entrance into the canon -- say a one-star to Greene's three?

There is no such bright line. You can even have a fine dining street food restaurant, also known as Spice Market. But you don't need a bright line to know that some things are in one category and some things are in another. Nor is the distinction terribly complicated or mysterious -- it's already pretty well defined in most cuisines that have haute cuisine equivalents. If you go to Thailand, nobody there is going to have any trouble distinguishing between the street food and the fine dining restaurants, just as nobody here has any trouble distinguishing between Gramercy Tavern and a burger joint. There may be some restaurants that challenge the distinction and defy the old categories, but Sripraphai isn't one of them. ← Using Justice Stewart's concurring opinion in Jacobellis v. Ohio as your logical precedent?