Busboy

Hey, the thread said "burgers" and also "fancy." How muchh more fancy can a burger get when it has no beef in it. Would a "bison" or "venison" burger not count as well? ← I find in favor of the bison-burger, and that the law includes a penumbra covering bison, water-buffalo, yaks, the lesser kudu, musk oxen and all other members of the family bovinae, resulting in their legal an proper inclusion in discussions of hamburger. Venison, being a byproduct of the family cervidae, cannot therefore legally be the primary ingredient of a "hamburger." The court further rules that it's probably too lean, anyway. The court also finds that the term "'burger", unless properly appended with a prefix indicating the non-bovine nature of the burger in question, refers to a hamburger prepared with the support of aforementioned bovinae. Finally, the court also checked in at Old Ebbit Saturday night and found that the burger remains, indeed, quite tasty, especially with blue cheese and bacon.

I wonder. I wonder if the chef cult phenomenon is changing the way chefs think about themselves and their role as "artists." Years ago I worked for a couple of high-end restaurants run by talented chefs -- Yannick Cam and Nora Pouillon -- and those kitches were willing to do pretty much anything within reason to honor a diner's special requests. No we're seeing some local chefs so convinced of their own genious that a simle request for a minor substitution is met with a sharp rebuke. I don't know if this is a larger trend or just a couple of isolated cases; I'd be curious to hear what others are seeing out there. Regarding the high-rise cuisine and the degustations, I actually think those are neutral. Chefs experiment, people experiment, irreconcilable differences are found and tower food goes away, to everybody's relief.

Now you're just playing lawyer games. The tunaburgers, lobersterburgers and (on the west coast) salmonburgers of the world are no more true burgers than sweetbreads are bread or fennel confit is a true confit. Not that there's anything wrong with them, mind you....

What do you want to do in Paris (besides eat)? Shop, go to museums, hang out in cafe's, people watch...?

I agree with Bilrus that I haven't been blown away by the burger at Palena. I actually thing that their meat is too high-quality, ie, too low-fat. I don't know if it costs more than $10 but Old Ebbit can put out a decent patty and offer several manly reds to match, and the Palm burger is no slouch, either, especially if served with Palm Fries.

They don't? Sacre bleu! Next I suppose you'll be telling me that not all French women look like Jeanne Moreau.... Meanwhile, in an article whose origins I can't quite figure out and thus whose veracity I can't vouch for, one finds: Is there any research to support this? ← See -- it's a fatty diet any way you slice it. Although personally I doubt that anyone, in France or the U.S., chooses McDo for "formal meals."

In Markk's defense let me say that, for Americans --especially those who grew up before the era of nouvelle cusisine, cuisine minceur and the rise of French-Mediterranean cooking, --the image of French food as rich, fattening and delicious is deeply rooted and not unreflective of what American French Restaurants of the era were probably serving. A little foie gras, a cream soup, a meat with sauce that's been (just start laughing at my Frenglish now) montee'd au buerre a bit of cheese and some dessert. Not an unreasonable menu, distinctly -- if stereotypically -- French to the American eye, and likely to inhibit absorbtion of certain medications. We know that people never ate like this every night (although Julia Child's biographer claims that eating in France laid her up more than once with a crise de foie, brought on by the richness of the food) and that few people eat like this at all anymore. We also know that Frenchmen don't run around in berets and sailors shirts very often, but the cultural shorthand remains. And you have to admit: you guys do eat a lot of cheese (Chart here)..

The sell Bonapart at the Dean & DeLuca in Georgetown, but it's way too expensive -- I buy $30 worth of cheese and charcouterie every time I go in for a loaf. Whole Foods breads strike me as faux artisanal -- they look like the real thing but, when you eat them, there's no comparison. BLB -- if it doesn't take effort to chew, I don't like it. Crust that, after toasting, rips the inside of your mouth up is a plus, too.

[The backstory. You can skip ahead to the rant.] In the pre-Marvelous era, Vie de France grocery store baguettes were considered state-of-the-art French bread. As a college student, laying one out, with a cylinder of Boursin or some grocery store Brie was considered not unsophisticated. For a while I worked above the Bread Oven (Where I Ricchi is now), the kind of place that felt pretty authentic in 1981, that served a decent onion soup and sold acceptible baguettes -- loves with a real crust and a light mie and were pretty close to the real thing. After they closed, a place named Suzanne's (I think it was where the new City Lights is) on Connecticut Avenue with a good restaurant up top and a deli below sold decent baguettes for a while, I assume the baker had other outlets, though I never knew where they were. I'd pick up a loaf and some stinky cheese on the way to work, until my office-mate complained and Suzanne's switched to an inferior product. And then there was great sadness in the Busboy Household, for we had no good bread. Then Mark Furstenberg flew back from France with a sourdough starter given him by the bakers he trained with and bought those marvelous ovens -- the ones that bathe the baking loaves in steam to ensure a proper crust -- that no one in DC had, and Marvelous Market was born. And it was marvelous. People lined up down the street for their bread ration, two loaves only. And then he expanded to a spot on Connecticut Avenue across the street from the current location and I walked by it every day, on the trip from the metro to my apartment, and many nights stopped in for cheese and pasta and mesclun and, of course, bread. And there was joy again. About this time Uptown Bakers opened, offering, to my taste, bread that was pretty darn good but, compared to Marvelous, decidedly second tier. Over the years Utpown ended its retail biz and went wholly wholesale. Marvelous suffered financial setbacks; Marvelous and Furstenberg eventually parted ways. He now, as most of you know, runs the Breadline. [end backstory] In June, Marevllous announced that it would no longer bake its own bread. All baking would be done by -- horror – Uptown Bakery. Guess what? Even with the fine new French boulangier Uptown hired, mass-produce Uptown bread still isn’t as good as the old Marvelous stuff. The crusts aren’t as crusty, the mie lacks that unctuous pull and lightness it used to have and the baguettes, which are now bought from Breadline, aren't as malty and delicious as the old sourdough baguette. Worse, most of my favorite breads are MIA. Ficelles are gone. The Pain Rustique, my personal favorite, with a crust like a tortoise shell and a bubbly, light mie, seems to have been discontinued. The Palladin, named after and developed with the patron saint of DC Chefs, Jean-Louis Palladin, is gone. Even the little Bostogne – a bit of dough baked with cheese and olives, seems to have been put on hold. In the summer I generally pick up bread at the markets – the Breadline sells two blocks from my house and they have breads, aside from those baguettes, I dearly love. But all winter and into the spring I rely on the nearby Marvelous to supply the staff of life – that it has tumbled noticeably downhill depresses me to no end. And beyond the quality of the bread, it’s sad to see a pioneer and an institution reduced to the status of franchisee, a 7-11 for the foodie set. When Marvelous stopped making its own bread, it ceased being a bakery and became a marketing strategy, a distribution scheme. I’m sure I’ll still stop in for the occasional sourdough boule and wedge of gruyere, but it’s really not going to tastes the same...or be the same. C’est la mie.

I had them -- along with the jowell -- at a fine restaurant in Paris. It appeared that they had been braised and the roasted, they were quite crispy and tender. I ate the flesh off the cartilage, as I dislike the cartilage's texture, and it was delicious. Fergus Henderson calls for boiling them and, a la SuzySushi's snack, deep frying before topping with greens, capers and a vinaigrette. He also adds them to a pea soup.

I'd bet a lot more of those things end up going to the dogs than end up nestling crustaceans -- though that sounds like a killer combination to me. In the old days, both Friendly's and Howard Johnsons (who called the dish a "Frankfort", no "er") sold their sausages wrapped in those great buns, and when I worked at the snack counter in McCrory's, we even had a special toaster for them. They soak up butter and then brown gently in a way that can only be decribed as sublime. I'm going to be in Boston next month, I think I'll pick up a case. Sadly, except for one convenience store in a bad neighborhood in DC, I've never seen them sold in the grocery store south of the Connecticut state line.

Half the time we don't have dinner ready on time, and the other half of the time we just tell people to come over and hang out while we cook, so we always have people in the kitchen. It can be a bit of a mobs scene, especially if the kids and their frioends are coming through. I just put 'em to work as appropriate: some can chop, some can open wine, and everyone can haul stuff to the table.

Slate magazine saw fit to recycle dueling reviews -- by Jeffrey Steingarten and Amanda Hesser -- of the book Kitchen Confidential here, in honor of the show's debut. "The "culinary underbelly" of the title is not the dank, dismal, and disgusting underside common to all restaurants. It consists of the kinds of restaurants that were willing to hire Bourdain through most of his career--those with high volume, small and agonizingly uncomfortable kitchens, everything cooked ahead or bought already cooked ahead, rock-bottom food costs, unreliable and unskilled labor, cheap ingredients--places without pride, conscience, integrity, or taste..." [empahsis added]. As for the show? Something I'd watch if I were folding socks (or because it follows the infinitely superior "Arrested Development"). Anybody surprised by the fact that the show is unrealistic, clearly doesn't watch enough TV.

Yes. Busboy as a character in Ulysses. I am enjoying this thought. With the home kitchen as a metaphor for a Life on Rough Seas. . .an adventure, a saga. . . ← Or is it Fox's Kitchen Confidential? All I know: my name is Stephen Dedalus.

Well, the Library and Chinatown aren't exactly in the same 'hood, and a good dinner for under $15 is pretty much unobtainable in DC, so I'd go for Full Kee, 509 H St. NW, in Chinatown. Don't waste your time on anything that sounds familiar, get the weird stuff: oyster hot pot, jelly fish, pork belly and the like. If you're willing to go up from that budget, Sonoma, at 223 Pennsylvania Ave. SE is, I hear, pretty good at footsteps from the LOC.

If the parsley's already chopped and the onions diced and the spices laid out, it just gives you more time to mess with whatever you're cooking, or, as I do, stare into the cupboard and mumble "it needs a something," while scanning the little used herbs and exotica hiding back in the shadows. If you were creative before, you'll be a dang Picasso of the palate now.

You've never seen my kitchen after a big Saturday night.

I'm no Brad Ballinger, but I might look beyond the relatively small group of reds you lay out here. Even given that the euro likely goes further than the dollar on fine wine, I suspect you're going to have a hard time getting a top Bordeaux or Barolo within the budget you've set -- especially if, as sometimes happens with "afficianados", your boss is actually more impressed by labels than by taste ("what, no Gaja?"). Have you considered a mid-priced Chateauneuf-du-Pape, a California syrah or an Aussie Cabernet-Shiraz or straight Shiraz (Marquis-Phillips does some excellent work at very reasonable rates) ? Otherwise: Chateau Gloria St. Julien, though no longer the steal it once was, remains well priced, delivering (some say) a very close approximation of Grand Cru quality for Cru Borgeoise price. Interesting story and some tasting notes here. This thread has some good suggestions for Italian reds that may deliver more bang for the buck than Barolo. And this column "when your dinner guest is an expert" might prove useful.

Actually, it was Bushey's suggestion to rent an apartment, but I second it as a friend of mine who had business there rented one and was quite happy with way things worked out. I'd like to rent an apartment because I'd like to shop the markets and cook for myself occasionally, while I'm there. I'm a Left Bank guy myself and enjoyed staying in the Hotel Valadon or its sister hotel, the Latour Mauberg in the 7th and just generally hanging out in the 5th and 6th -- the Latin Quarter -- which, to be sure, are just across the river from the Marais.

Dude, be careful. My wife (then girlfriend) and I started with what we, too called "orphan" Thanksgiving dinners. Now the damn things are borderline out of control. No extended family, though, so we don't have that drama to deal with.

In our house, our tradition has been to cook whatever the hell we want, with the exception that turkey is disallowed as we all hate it. Not everyone at the dinner, which can hit 25 or so people, but we in the family that has the biggest living room and likes cooking the most, and thus gets to set the rules. Indian and Provencal dishes tend to creep in, as they seem to have a lot of recipes that lend themselves to large servings and preparation in advance. Ham, standing rib, tuna, leg of lamb, we've had them all at one time or another as the entree and, since it tends to be a communal effort with a variety of friends, we see Salvadoran food, old-school stuff and cutting edge trend-cusine. I guess it's not the same as turning the cranberries into a foam, or Kinsey's turkey things, but it's a pretty re-imagined process all-in-all.

Have a glass of Bellet for me! Glad you liked Universe. Note that many Internet Cafes in France have American keyboards (klaviers) available.

"Sticky" is the great Aussie term for a sweet, dessert wine. Sauterne, Muscat de Beumes do Venise or the many "late harvest" "botrytized" or "ice" wines produced in Cali and Oz (and elsewhere).

I just want to know how that waiter is going to hear my order and serve my dinner from 4 to 12 feet away. Hell, half the places I go to, 12 feet back is two tables down. It's like getting a hot dog at the ball game from half-way down the row. Not that I want the sucker breathing down my neck, mind you.

Actually, washing dishes with my son, especially while camping, brings the exact opposite of the calm glow I described above.