mags

Again?!?! =R= You make an excellent point.

Actually, I think my favorite Drew Moment -- well, aside from handing out the free drinks and leaving the restaurant open to having its liquor license yanked by serving drinks underage -- involved his desire to pull down the statue of the madonna. I mean, I don't know if that statue is there as a function of Rocco's religion or as a kitsch-reference to Little Italy red-sauce joints or both, but even assuming that Drew was meant to help improve the restaurant's efficiency, since when does that have anything to do with his imposing his taste in interior decor? Nah, forget it, all the Drew Moments were my favorites. What a little bedbug. I hope he doesn't get laid again until he's 45.

I'd agree that Best Bits don't exist in a vacuum, but does their specialness reside in contrast -- with, it's to be assumed, less stratospherically delicious stuff -- or in their specialness, in their conferring on the eater a sense of having gotten something the other eaters are missing out on?

LOL! Yeah, that pretty much sums it up. The Hasty Pudding club vs. Darth Vader.

I wonder if Drew the Intern was aware of how completely he was cast as the villain -- the one character EVERYBODY could loathe -- and to what extent his loathesomeness was created for dramatic effect.

How do you feel about the various evil kinds of goo inside a lobster shell?

I think that's a great idea, WB. I'm about to start on batch #2. Batch #1 eventually turned out well, but by no means great; the plan is to add a bit more oil this time (I was very stingy with the first batch) and a bit of brown sugar to kick the caramelization into action.

Most of the time I find them barely noticable. And a number of blind-tests have suggested that they don't have any impact on taste. Your taste my differ, of course, but "un-deveined shrimp" certainly aren't one of my restaurant pet peeves.

What interests me about this thread is how much it's about textures -- we're all about crispy and oozy, with, preferably, a bitter edge to set off the fat. Except the person who craves stale peeps. That's just.......words fail me.

Actually, there are certain salads in which I really like iceberg lettuce -- nothing else has that crunchy chomp. And I don't really care if the shrimp are deveined, so long as the vein doesn't look revolting.

I'm willing to guess that they're not thrilled with the idea of INS snapping photos, either.

Well, we're now at about the 12-hour mark of Mags' First Onion Confit, complete with demi-glace, bay leaves, fresh thyme, ruby port, and my brand-new Rival Crock Pot's maiden voyage. So far...it's not looking fabulous. The onions have indeed cooked down a WHOLE bunch, and taken on a not-unattractive purply-brown color, but most of that seems to be due to the port, rather than to any caramelization. They taste and smell like boiled onions, with that (to me) vaguely unpleasant, grassy flavor I know, I know, others before me have doubted and lived to sing the Crock Pot praises, so I will persevere, for at least another three hours. But, though I quake to say it, I am horribly afraid that my evening is going to feature many hours of slicing onions and stirring them around in olive oil (I am tempted, however, to use the "cheater's caramelization" method that showed up early in this thread -- the "make a caramel stock" method, which sounded interesting.) FWIW, the apricot "chutney," made in the microwave according to a Barbara Kafka recipe, has turned out pretty well. It's sort of sticky and dark and sinister-looking, dotted with bits of fermented black bean, and tastes like a somewhat-more-complex version of the "duck sauce" that arrives in little squeezy-packets with take-out eggrolls. I think it will work fine with the pate, particularly in combo with the hot mustard, but I do have God's own plenty of the stuff, so if anyone in the greater NY area is craving home-made duck sauce, give me a shout.

it is kinda funny, cause he told me that the Trout Ice Cream is something he plans on adding at his place in Japan! ...and it'll probably play there. I'm just a rube out here in flyover country =R= I asked that question to Yuki from Fuji today at the shoot....She said that she would enjoy the Trout Ice Cream...So I think its a palate thing..east vs west. mmmm, might also be a love-of-the-ingenious thing. I remember covering a fashion show in HK a few years ago, and several of the designers were showing what I thought of as Clothes That Do Tricks -- it's a skirt, but if you button this here and undo this zipper, it's a backpack! And if you hook that strap there and turn the pocket inside out, it's a pair of shorts! Etc. I tried very hard to think of a context in which these clothes would be desirable, and the only thing I could come up with was a camping trip on which one felt the need to wear designer outfits. With the Trick clothes, you could pack light -- in fact, your backpack COULD BE AN OUTFIT -- but still be chic on every occasion. However, I was a total neophyte (read: fraud) in the world of fashion journalism, and some of my better-informed colleagues clued me in: The Trick Clothes, they said, were primarily designed for the Japanese market, which has a passion for things clever and/or transformative. You remember those kids' toys, the robots that turn into buildings, the fighter-planes that turn into...ummm, buildings, I guess? I'm told they are huge in Japan. So the dish that's a fish and also a dessert might have real conceptual appeal.

Gosh, I just spanked my customer on the wrist. But hey, go for the drama, by all means.

I don't know that there's much to be gained by trying to analyze the motivations of people who are, apparently, semi-professional pains in the ass. Many years ago, I was in a cab at about 3 in the morning, when even Manhattan streets are all but deserted. We were about to cross an intersection when some kid in a souped-up convertible went roaring across, against the light at about 70 mph. My driver, an elderly gentleman, slammed on the breaks and clutched his heart, moaning, in a thick accent, "WHY would he do that? WHY would he do such a thing?" "Well," I said, "He's an asshole." The driver turned around to me and exclaimed "YES!" as though I had just uncovered the secret to the Rosetta Stone. "YES! That is IT! THAT is the reason! He is an ASSHOLE!" Now, it's possible that the same guy from the convertible was seated at the table the returned Tan's dessert. But my guess is he just has an awful lot of kinfolk.

When my mother was going to college in the late 40s -- a women's college -- every Thursday was "White Day" in the dining room. Mashed potatoes, steamed cod, and boiled cauliflower, with rice pudding for dessert. She still shudders at the memory.

I once had a customer that would not allow any red food at a catered dinner (for a famous NY WOman Senator no less).... Naught so strange as folk... Makes perfect sense to me, if it was for a Senator. You never heard of blue states and red states?

Well, there's an awful lot of French cooking that doesn't involve foie gras and caviar. Maybe I'm reacting to the sense, that I mentioned earlier, that trout is inherently a down-home dish. I mean, I'd like to see what it's like to treat trout as a luxury ingredient; in one dish that would be interesting and creative, like somebody doing a high-end take on chitterlings or pigs' feet or sweet potatoes -- or some other ingredient that Americans typically associate with simple, inexpensive preparations. But when it's every dish, it reads to me like an attempt to cover up a fundamental lack of interest in that ingredient, along the lines of the theory that could could deep-fry (or pile caviar on) just about anything and it would taste good. Re Mario v. Morimoto, I'm guessing Morimoto lost some serious points for Too Much Raw Lobster. Americans have become nicely conditioned to raw finfish, but we still tend to get real squicked by the notion of raw crustaceans. Morimoto seemed to be operating within a much more traditionally Japanese context than he used to on the old Japanese IC battles, and heaven knows Mario was channeling largely Italian traditions, so it became a showdown between Japanese and Italian food. And while Americans tend to respect Japanese food and can gobble sushi and tempura like maniacs, our comfort zone is a lot closer to Trieste than it is to Tokyo.

(laughing) I'll see if I can swipe my partner's digital camera. You have to understand, I am NOT a professional; please feel free to try this at home.

Sparkitus, That's interesting...the other day Donald Trump said he was going to get a lot more money for another season of 'The Apprentice.' So is Apprentice paid and Rocco's not paid? When I interviewed Topher and Tad from Season 1 of The Restaurant they also told me that none of them were paid by NBC.... This 'Roccette-Chowderhead' nickname thing is creeping me out... I have visions now of Rocco dressed up like a chorine in a kickline.... and Jeffrey Chodorow wearing a hat (like a cheesehead) only of a bowl of Clam Chowder... Manhattan style of course.... There's a difference between getting paid and getting paid as an actor. If "The Apprentice" is produced by NBC News, Trump is free to work out whatever kind of contract he likes with NBC, as are the other people who appear on the show. If it's being produced as a dramatic series, the terms of the contracts would be governed by union regulations (meaning Trump would be deamed to be an actor), which include required residual payments, etc. It's no wonder the networks love "reality" TV. No SAG to deal with, no AFTRA, probably no Writers' Guild. They've just removed a couple of layers of salaries.

Ah well, another dream shattered.

Oy, Tan, had NOTHING to do with your dessert. Zippity-do-dah. People are just irritable and irritating morons sometimes. I will tell you that at my bookstore, a few years ago, one of my longtime customers was basically behaving like that, and I smacked him. But I don't really recommend this as an effective response.

You mean all three of us were hanging around the playground near the Soliders and Sailors Monument at the SAME TIME????? Balmagowry, I bet you were one of the cool big girls at the playground. They always chewed gum -- which was one of the things that was cool about them -- but my mother wouldn't let me, so I used to wander around sort of wiggling my mouth and making wet "chomp chomp" noises so that people would THINK I was chewing gum.

I've only eaten at Mesa Grill once, and I was surprised to find that I liked the food; all of the recipes I've seen Bobby Flay demonstrate -- on those "I can't sleep and it's 3 in the morning, so I might as well watch Food TV" occasions -- have turned me off. I'm not a chili-head, and I actively dislike most (non-Asian) preparations tha pair meat and fruit (much less meat and honey), in which he seems to specialize. I don't think I've ever seen him cook anything that appealed to me. More than that, though, I find his entire public persona hugely off-putting, along the lines of an overgrown frat boy. He comes across, to me, as arrogant, shallow, and fatuous, with an ego the size of a small midwestern city. He also doesn't seem to have any sense of humor about himself, which for me is a major, MAJOR strike. Plus he's an old friend of someone I loathe.

Actually, as much as I tend to dislike Bobby Flay -- and I do -- he got my armchair vote. First, I did think the trout ice cream was novelty for the sake of novelty. I mean, if it tasted like trout, it would have been revolting; if it didn't taste like trout, the dish would have failed to serve the purpose of the contest, which is to highlight the main ingredient. Reminded me of that place in Bar Harbor that makes disgusting lobster ice cream purely because they know that teenage boys will dare each other to order it, toss it after one lick, and then order a cone of fudge-ripple. Second, I thought his use of "luxury" ingredients like caviar and -- wasn't there foie gras in something early on? --was almost insulting, in an odd way. "Oh, the moron Americans with their Teflon palates...I'll just heap on the caviar and the foie and that way they'll 'know' the stuff is good." I actually found the heavy hand with the caviar almost lazy, in a way. I agree with Rachel that Sakai was not playing to U.S. tastes, but what I'm thinking of is American associations with trout. In my experience, we tend to think of trout as a sort of down-home fish; we eat it with bacon, or smoked, or pan-fried with cornmeal. So to our tastes, putting trout in, say, a spicy Chinese-style soup with shark-fin DOESN'T highlight the trout; it masks it. I am almost never a fan of Bobby Flay's food; he seems to put fruit (or honey) and chiles in everything, and even the recipes make me itch. But his dishes were the ones I wanted to try last night.