Busboy

Regarding monkey food, we tended to let snack be a little treat without overregard for the nutritional content, and work on getting the good food into their systems at regular meal times. Lotta peer pressure at snack time.

Ssssshhhhh...you're going to wreck a good thing! I bought a bottle of Savennieres because it had a cool label and the liquor store guy had taped up a column from the local paper about it. It was the first time in a long time a bottle of $25 wine really changed my life. I should learn more about it, but there are so few bottlings available in DC, I usually just grab whatever the shop has. Including a sweet version once, so be careful. Great stuff.

I go by color: white or green. Onions are white, like potatoes, rice or pasta, and so should be treated as such. Don't ask me about carrots, corn or eggplant. No system is perfect.

When a customer goes to a high-end restaurant -- Trotter level, say -- he carries with him or her a couple of assumptions. Among those are that the chef, within his budget, is using the best possible ingredients to cook his meals, regardless of the blandishments of the various suppliers and salespeople marching through his kitchern. Another is that the menu is the result of the chef's (and his team's)unique genius and determination, undiluted by outside influences and consideration. I think that's what Menton1 was referring to when he used the phrase "objective" -- that the chef is making decisions based purely on what results in the best possible meal (within buget etc. considerations). The fear is that, when an endorsement is involved, that the chef suddenly has other considerations besides taste. Chefs are human, they are also business people. To pretend that they're somehow immune to the temptations that everyone else on earth deals with is to ignore reality. If a chef's TV show has a big sponsor, the sponsor's wishes are going to be in the chef's thinking. If you have a choice between two types of chocolate, one of which can be had much more cheaply, you're going to think about that. It's not necessarily a bad thing, there are probably a dozen good reasons for chefs to cut a good sponsorship deal. But sponsors don't just give money away, they want something in return. The thought that their interests as sponsors and my interests as a diner might diverge is a troubling one. I think the sense of "outrage" -- probably too strong a term -- is also fueled by endless reams of PR and stacks of coffee table cookbooks that present chefs as modern day saints, cooking all night over a hot stove and foraging all day for the perfect organic peach, with nothing but their customers and the perfection of their craft in mind. Chefs are marketed like indie rock bands, pure and unsoiled by thoughts of commerce or marketing. It's a ridiculous notion, but it apparently sells. Trouble is, when people find out that their idols are human, they they can react poorly.

If you can make scrambled eggs, you can likely make a frittata. GG's recipes look like great starting points, but you can throw in anything you want. Give yourself a break and use a non-stick pan, and don't be afraid to finish it under the broiler, to keep the bottom from overcooking. Personally, I like to add slices of garlic clove that have been browned in olive oil, along with spinach, potato, whatever onion-y thing is laying around the kitchen and, of course, potatoes. I cook mine in olive oil, instead of butter, with the vague idea that, with the garlic, it makes it more "Mediterranean" tasting. I have no idea if this is so, but it works for me. I also like to rough chop some canned tomatoes with garlic and salt, as a little garnish on the side.

Appears you're headed much higher-end that this but I think a serious pink -- Domaine Tempier or some other Bandol or Cote de Nimes -- would make a swell paring. Talk about classic Mediterranean flavor. I'm thinking that the Corton Charlemagne is a little too dressy for the recipe though, I'm sure, a lovely sip in its own right. I think of Med cooking as a little more "open collar" than that. Maybe if we cross our fingers Paula will pop in her own suggestion.

Yeah, the waiter seemed to be having an off day, and Bond Girl got all New York-y on the kitchen for microwaving a tart, rather than warming it in the oven. I was waiting for a classic BdC confrontation, but they just took it off the check. word on the street is: don't mess with BD's sweets. A good solid meal, though. I am developing a taste for their Lotte Americain. Never having had it anywhere else I assume that the bisque-ish sauce and the crawdad garnish are standard for the dish; they are excellent, especially when sopped up with the barley side after the fish is finished. I am hesitant to post this, as I am afraid that you'll drink up my wine, but they have a list of six or eight knockout wines at very good prices. I hope Slater will weigh in on the price/value ratio here but Opus One, La Mission Haut Brion for $150 and other very serious stuff for less, down to our crisp, almost Chablis-ish, Jadot Savigny-les-Beaune (les Guettes, I think) for $30 -- wine shop prices in a restaurant, in other words. Drink up, my friends.

That can't be the first time that's happened to you on a Saturday morning, can it? ← Yeah, but before the Internet, the only people who knew were me and, uh, well, uh... "of course I remember your name...just give me a second while I find my socks."

I am not familiar with your hotel, so this may be an unhelpful suggestion but, if you are in or near the 7th, not far from Invalides and the Eiffel Tower, there is a laundromat on the corner of Rue Valadon and Rue de Grenelle. If you're looking on a map, ignore the much larger Boulevard de Grenelle, which runs perpendicular to the river; the rue is smaller and parallels the Seine. Given that you are posting on eGullet, it will be worth going to that neighborhood because the street parallel to Rue Valadon is Rue Cler, which is an excellent market street and well worth exploring. Can drivers will recognize neither street , btw. The nearest metro is Ecole Militaire. On the corner of Rue Cler and Rue Champs de Mars, there is a spectacularly classic cafe, the Cafe Marche, where you can kill time during the rinse cycle. PS, I am not positive that Rue de Grenelle is the cross street but, if you find the Rue Cler market, you are looking for the street that marks the northern (towards the river) end of the market. I seem to recall the 5th being full of laundromats, towards the eastern edge of the arrondissement, once you get away from the Notre Dame tourists, towards the Institut du Monde Arab.

It's tough to wake up on a saturday and, even before you've had your first cup of coffee, find out that you've made an ass of yourself. My apologies, Chef.

Money is money, and we like it. Dinner is dinner, though, and we like it, too. If Jose is taking money to change what he serves for dinner, then his focus has shifted from my palate to his sponsors. I applaud his skills as an enterpreneur. As a chef...we apparently don't have the same priorities.

And Shaq makes $15 Million a year and does Icy-Hot commercials. Money is money. ← Not to add fuel to the fire but an athlete endorsement usually does not have an effect on his/her game while a chef endorsement (a la Jose Andres' avocado deal) usually does. ← Shaq gets paid to put balls in the hoop. None of his sponsors are telling him how to play basketball. Andres gets paid to cook dinner. His sponsors are telling him how to do that. That's the difference.

Andres is running more restaurants in DC than Pizza Hut, so I'm not sure he needs bakshish from the avocado trust to make ends meet. As for frozen dinners? That's chefs pissing outside the tent. When the payola starts dictating menu choices, that's pissing into the tent. I'm sure Andres is a good guy, I've never had a bad meal at one of his joints, but taking money to change your menu is a bad road to go down.

Speak no ill of Waffle House. They serve a noble purpose - the late night must-eat-vast-quantities-of-grease-NOW breakfast, which none of the late-night breakfast places around here seem to have mastered. ← No disrespect to the Waffle House -- I got a pretty reasonable command of their menu graphics for a Yankee, ain't I?

I volunteer to be one of your test cooks. I write, too, if Touaregsand gets bored. ← I don't get bored. But I find that I'm putting too many of my own projects on the backburner, what I really want to do is direct. The biggest challenge in ghostwriting is translating Farid's Franglish and writing the way he sees and speaks about the world. My own voice is more like Faulknerian drunken rants, interspersed with adaptations of Dylan Thomas poems with a touch of Borges and the attitude of Jeanne Moreau in a Black and White film smoking cigarettes while staring out the window saying, "we are all out of wine. life is sooo difficult." After "The Beautiful Algeria" project is complete we'll begin working on the Lyon/Beaujolais book. We want to include other writers in this one and have been keeping an eye out on egullet. PM either one of us if interested. We have a lot of other projects that are being sketched out. Test cooks and test readers of completed chapters are needed. ← Just PM me and I'm happy to help. I've been wanting to learn a lot more about about North African cooking for a while, and would enjoy playing lab rat for you.

At least he didn't screw around with his own menu.

You know what? The last paragraph of Making of a Chef makes me cry every single damn time I read it. Makes me feel like a sap and I really don't care if anyone else understands or not, because I get it. So I am glad you got the chance and your books were published, because I enjoy them immensely. And you should know there was a Chef Coppedge incident the one time I went up to the CIA with my son's cooking class, and it was all your fault. Angela ← I gotta say, there seem to be a lot more people trying to tell stories than that actually have that many good stories to tell. A couple of recent cookbooks have been particularly egregious in this regard, even if the recipes are good. I could name names. Sometimes I want to yell "shut up and cook!" A little reminiscing goes a long way if the point of a book is to help you cook dinner, and not many chefs are poets or philosophers. Apparently I'm in the minority these days, though.

If you're cooking dishes because you're paid to, and not because you think they taste good, your restaurant will decline. What demands do the sponsors impose? How many avocado dishes to you need on one menu? What's coming off because avocados are going on? Happy talk aside ("when it's something I love..."), once someone else starts dictating a chef's menu, the menu -- assuming it's a good chef -- declines. I'm looking forward to one of those NASCAR-cum-Waffle House-type menus, where everthing is a Kraft Grilled Cheese Sandwich or OScar Meyer Hot Dog, and there are more logos than prices on the menu, next time I go out for tapas. PS -- this trend may have been going on for a while. My one trip to the Mini-bar it seemed like there were a dozen mango courses. Maybe the mango guys got to him first.

I volunteer to be one of your test cooks. I write, too, if Touaregsand gets bored.

isn't that illegal?? but yeah. . if i remember correctly, govt. won't allow the sale of cheese that is aged less than 60 days, unless it's been pasteurized, or something like that. ← Last time we came back from France they siezed the few scraps of cured Savoyard ham (DCMark, what do they call it?) that I'd inadvertantly carried off the plane, but ignored the cheese, even to the point of letting a foil-clad (not vacuum sealed) clot of something old and goat-y into the country, despite the fact that the smell nearly burned the nose-hairs off the customs lady.

Jeez -- 18 months since I posted this and, despite hours spent squeegeng fish, I still haven't got the stuff to crisp up right. Not that I cook as much fresh fish as I should. I will try again with hotter oil and a longer "burn time," if you will. Also, where do the experts stand on scoring? Occasionally we get that odd crumple from the skin contracting while the flesh stays the same size. No salt on the skin?

Negative. Anything that's not on the bill, doesn't receive a tip, and charging a cake cutting fee or corkage fee only nominally helps the server, since none of that fee is paid to the server and the patron only tips, perhaps, a percentage of that fee. What's 20% of $1.50? Not a lot, but the cake cutting isn't nearly as bad a deal as corkage on bringing your own wines. In some cases, a server loses the opportunity for a $60-80 sale in exchange for $10 corkage. Same amount of work, significantly smaller tip. Of course, unlike those in the Vancouver forum, I'm speaking from the perspective of someone who earns $2.13 per hour aside from my tips, as opposed to Canadians who make a real wage, and have health care. . . ahem, not to get sidetracked. Actually, this thread made me smile because it reminded me of a party I observed at a restaurant, where a group of 13 people reserved a private room, and they not only brought in their own Kroger sheet cake with that Crisco-based frosting or whatever that muck is on top of it, but their beverage of choice, which they also provided for themselves, was not champagne but Welch's Sparkling Grape Juice. The entire party, who had never been to that restaurant before, nor did they return, only bought one course from the restaurant and were not charged either corkage or cakage. Personally, I think that when a restaurant starts accepting deals like this, it's time for the owner to wake up and realize that his vision has failed, shut the doors and redesign the restaurant entirely. Or perhaps become a shoemaker instead. But that's just my opinion. ← Are you certain that there wasn't a room fee charged up front? My wife arranges rooms in restaurants on occasion - though not the kind of place Kroher-philes would frequent -- and there seem to be two approaches: Free room/expensive dinner; and expensive room/order what you want.

We plant parsley, it seems to do pretty well -- much better than its relatives cilantro or chervil. And it's nice not to always have a bunch of parsley decomposing in the fridge. This is another one where cutting the difference between home-grown and market-bought seems large. I forgot to mention terragon, which comes back every spring, but seems curiously weak, no matter which variety I plant. Maybe it's the soil.

This from a gardener perhaps closer to your skill-level than other posters: Sage and thyme appear to be unkillable perennials. Their origins as weeds are obvious. I plant them in random spots, fertilize and water indifferently and they keep coming back. They do like sun. Lemon balm and mint are impossible to kil, as well. They will take over your garden, however, and so are best planted in pots or your neighbor's yard. Lavender is pretty tough, too, but is less useful in the kitchen. Basil takes a little attention in the beginning. Frost will kill it, you have to "prune" the baby stalks to get it to branch out and generate more leaves. But, of all the herbs you grow, IMHO, basil is the one where the difference between your own stuff and even the freshest farmer's markets is greatest.

One assumes that the restaurants make their own calculations. If the amount of money a party brings in -- with or without cake-age fee -- is sufficent, the restaurant acquiesces. If not, they don't. Better to give it up for a cake, sell dinner and booze, and create a little customer goodwill, than to leave empty seats. I'm sure if you're spending enough money at your cabinet-maker or Mercedes-dealer or your topless bar, they'll be happy to do something free for you, as well. I personally browbeat my Jeep dealer out of a free cup-holder when I bought my Cherokee, ("that's a $40 item," he said of the 40-cent piece of moulded plastic on display) I'm sure a bigger spender could cop a substantially better freebie than I. It's also worth noting that the point of a capitalist economy is, theoretically, to benefit the consumer, not the producer.