cdh

Have indeed been back... actually. Had a fine steak dinner there about a year and a half ago. Haven't dissed the place to others, though when those of us who were there are together, sometimes a snarky reference to THAT MEAL gets made. No ongoing vendetta.

Hmmm... I dunno. I think that we were grumpy enough at the point of leaving that nothing done on the spot could have salvaged the mood. We were reveling in the righteous indignation that inspired the miniscule tip evil we had just perpetrated, and anything immediate to raise our mood might have inspired feelings of guilt in us for that. (I've still not felt a twing of guilt over that particular microtip yet.) I must admit that had the final trisection of the check been successful and I'd not had to dispute the charge I was stuck with, I'd not have addressed the management at all.

Well, I'm just wondering what would have happened if a gripe with the manager on the way out was lodged. We felt our tip left our message pretty clearly. What more was to be gained by reporting it to the authorities as we're being urged to do here? What would a good manager do after hearing that litany of missteps has just happened? The bill was settled (apparently finally, though not in actuality). No comps could have been granted... an apology would have done nothing to make the situation better...

Hmmmm... Sometimes even with clueless rude front of house folk, the idea of tattling to the manager in front of them seems a socially maladroit thing to do and one I'd not do. We're all socialized to hate tattle tales and stool pigeons... what's running to the manager but that, exactly? Honestly, having a waiter dressed down in front of me is not what I want. Once, a few years ago at a steakhouse, three friends and I went for lunch. (To spoil the punchline, I've got a copy of the complaint letter around here someplace, but I'll just present the lowlights that have stuck in my memory 3 years after the fact.) The food was fabulous, but the service abysmal. Waiter so clueless that he couldn't tell the difference between mayonaise and bernaise and brought the former to the table with the steaks. Trying to catch his attention to see about getting the sauce replaced with what we'd asked for was a chore, punctuated by his snippy quip "hold on a second, I can't get out of this room without going right past you." After the sauce was straightened out and the meal was consumed in all of its beefy, hash-browny, creamed spinach-y deliciousness, the worst excuse imaginable for an espresso was proffered upon request for same. Clueless waiter was challenged on this, and said that it was just how they made it there. Ughhh... Train somebody to use the damn machine right... grrrr... Then the billing debacle occurred with several runs back and forth to the credit card machine to properly trisect the bill and put an even third on each of the cards presented. After the first round of slips added up to 150% of the bill they had to go back... then the second round had 1/2 on one card and 1/4 on each other card... back it went... then it looked right.. This never, actually occurred, as it happens, me being the lucky party charged for 100% of meal when the credit charges were posted, necessitating a fax of my 1/3 of the bill signed slip in order to dispute the charges. Having gotten to that point and raising our party to the attention of the establishment well after the fact, I sat down and wrote out a narrative explaining the parade of errors we were subjected to. The restaurant's management responded quite nicely, sending a $100 gift certificate that could be used at the steakhouse or several other restaurants that are also owned by the same folks. Anyway, after feeling maltreated at the hands of the server, we were all grumpy, yet none of us thought to run to the manager on the spot. Some time to cool down and reflect on the experience seemed proper... we were feeling mistreated, and tipped accordingly... but the tip was intended to convey the message to the dang idjit we wanted to communicate with. A dressing down by the manager would do less to make this fellow reconsider his career choice than making it it actually cost him a few bucks in taxes on assumed tip income he didn't make would. Just my amusing tale of restaurant misadventures and how they got handled... I'm sure there are horrified folks out there... so sorry to horrify you, either by my tale of mistreatment, or my party's bad tipping reaction to same.

The best-spiced scrapple I know of is from Habbersetts. Alderfers' is also pretty tasty. There are a lot of scrapples of out there that don't get the balance right. Either too liver-y, or too corn-y or too bland... Those two, above, are pretty close to ideal. What's funny is that out here in Pa Dutch country (Godshall's is a couple of miles from my house), the only variety of Godshall's scrapple regularly stocked in the the supermarkets is their turkey variety... which just strikes me as wrong.

Absolutely... if you promise to send me a case of the wine you use it on.

I love the German sweet wines as well... Mmmmmm Auslese... and good French dessert wines as well... mmmmmmm Banyuls, mmmmmmmm Montbazillac, mmmmmmm Sauturnes! However, the sweet wines that most people come into contact with are more along the lines of White Zins and jug wines like Gallo Hearty Burgundy. The white zins can often (to me) taste as if there is some rotten fruit in there... there is a hint of something not right. If other people taste that and associate it with sweet wines, I'd say that they're pretty reasonable in running as far away from them as they can get. Wine is complex, and no one factor is going to make a wine good or bad. There are yummy sweet wines and crap sweet wines. Same for dry wines. But thinking statistically, given the oceans of crappy jug-grade wine and white zin out there that not-quite-wine-drinkers encounter, the conclusion that sweet wine is bad wine ain't too far off. Some people like wines, and have no desire whatsoever to understand the underlying factors that contribute to the characteristics that they like. It's easy to get caught up in ridiculing the obscurantism... "Grapes from the top of the hill picked at dawn by only left-handed pickers wielding silver shears, and carried by hand to be crushed at the stroke of noon, blah blah blah."

Well said, Sam. What's particularly sad, however, is when one finds a particularly well stocked bar and then discovers that the individual behind the bar has no idea what to do with half of the stuff stocked.

Is it brewing style or marketing hype? Are they making a super malty barleywine meets oktoberfest beer, or are they just slapping the word imperial on the bottles because it sounds manly and classy and increases sales? How long have imperial IPAs been around? What's their story? The whole imperial nomenclature thing strikes me as shorthand for the manifestation of the "too much is never enough" mindset in brewing. But hey-- whatever they call it, if it tastes good, then that is all that matters. What did the Imperial Oktoberfest taste like?

Marvellous blog! What an oven! When you said you built it instead of a barbeque, does that mean that you had anything to do with the brickwork, or just instructing your local masons what to do? That brickwork in the dome is quite something to marvel at. Just finding somebody capable of doing work of that quality would be a task in the USA, I think.

This bartender as database idea seems a little off, honestly. If you have a favorite drink, then know its recipe and be able to communicate it. If you want to try something new and different, then ask the bartender if they have a specialty, or if they can make something you'd like if you also like X drink. I'd bet that almost all drinks that get sold are either the top tier classics, as discussed above, or drinks that get actively promoted by the establishment. If the bartender had trouble making one of the drinks that appears on the cocktail menu, then they really don't belong behind the bar... but inability to construct an Aviation (as if any commercial bar had maraschino behind it) or a Monkey Gland, or a Bronx is pretty much meaningless. Nobody expects a bartender to be able to make them without guidance, so none of them can. If you want one, come in with the recipe, and hope they have the ingredients.

I have to agree with Bob about the Belgians being the ideal place to start for somebody who doesn't like the readily available mass market beers out there. But Belgium is the land of variety, and not all of its beers will be to your taste. I'd start with the abbey style beers, more particularly the dubbels. They have a very strong malt profile without a lot of hoppy bitterness. There are the Trappist breweries, which are run by a specific order of monks who actually brew the beer, and there are other abbey style beers where I'm not sure who does the brewing. You'll get a wide range of flavors, from toasty to raisiny to honey-like. Then there are the tarter Belgian styles: witbiers are the least tart of the bunch, but quite tasty with orange and coriander flavors taking the place of the hop flavors. Hoegaarden is the Belgian standard, and Celis White ( in its old incarnation) is just as good... they were both developed by the same brewer, Pierre Celis. They're a very good beer for people who don't like beer. Some of the american versions are pale imitations, so try to get your hands on a Celis or a Hoegaarden, and then taste the rest with full knowledge of the top of the line. I'll say that Ommegang's Witte is quite good if you can get your hands on it. There are the much more tart lambic family of beers, which are often fruity. They are much more like wines than beers, but they are tasty. Lindemans is widely distributed, and has a number of fruit flavors where the fruit definitly predominates over the beer. There other lambic makers represented in the US as well, like Cantillion and Boon... they are much much more tart, and some of the lambic funk shines through. There are also the unflavored lambics, which are just wheat beers fermented with the natural yeast in the air in a certain valley in Belgium. These are challenging brews, though by no means hoppy or bitter. Also, you might want to try the products of Liefmans brewery, which makes a beer similar to lambic but not lambic. Their Goudenband is of the "old brown" style, rich, sour, very complex. Their Framboise and Kriek are fruit enhanced versions of this beer. If you can get your hands on anything brewed by Rodenbach, then you're in for a treat. Rodenbach brews Flemish red ales, which are also a sour beer. Their different offerings are set apart by the amount of ageing they've received, and they age in wooden vats, so lots of flavors make their way in to the beer while it is maturing. Rodenbach also augments one of their beer blends with a cherry flavor... it used to be called Rodenbach Alexander, but has been discontinued and rebranded and reintroduced in a different formulation that I've not tried. Other beers in this family that you might run across in the US are Duchesse de Bourgogne and Petrus... also worth trying for their not-like-beer-ness. On the other hand, I'd suggest staying away from trippels and strong blondes if bitter beer flavors don't agree with your palate. These are strong, sweet, but hoppy. Probably not your cup of tea (or beer as the case may be.)

Btw... There is a beer tasting wheel out there... Click here if you want to see it... But I don't know if I want us to have that much guidance in our choices. Like Derricks notes, everybody is vulnerable to suggestion. I'd like to see what emerges from people not conditioned to seek a flavor on the wheel, but rather come up with their own description.

What I meant to say about the beers I brought was that neither of them was either bitter or hoppy. Both were variations on the witbier theme, so had a crisp tartness to them that works so well on a summer day. "People who don't like beer" are often people who don't like bitterness, and neither of my beers had much if any bitterness to them. The Blackened wit had a bit more of a hoppy thing going on with it, but it was more in the aroma than in the flavor... The ordinary wit was appropriately spiced with coriander and orange and devoid of hoppiness altogether. Neither came anywhere near 120 Minute IPA, or Wild Bill's Alimony Ale... they were at the opposite extreme of hoppiness... and yet were quite popular.

The wine note format seems just about right for these purposes, but the long term application will be different, insofar as wines are new and different every year, whereas beers strive to remain consistent. That means that more people can try an example of the product being reviewed and comment on the description, honing it down and coming to an agreement on the words being used and how they relate to the flavors. Wines change and improve with age and are subject to small runs, and each bottling will almost certainly be different from the last, whether because it has been in the bottle longer, or the juice is different. Beers generally (and there are notable exceptions) don't get better with time and are marketed accordingly, and each batch is calculated to be quite a lot like the last batch... thus making getting a relatively fresh example of any particular beer with decent interstate distribution not an arduous undertaking for anybody who might want to try it and comment. The important part of this project is that multiple people are tasting the same thing, and coming to a consensus on the description of that thing. With luck and some effort we'll get to the point where we can then start describing things which, like my homebrew, aren't getting widely distributed but everybody reading will still have a pretty good idea of what we're taking about. Of my homebrewed witbier, for example, I could say: Blonde with coppery hints and a white head. Tart, with wheat malt evident, and obvious coriander seeds and orange peel flavors. Little if any hop bitterness evident, no hop aromas. Long lasting on the palate. Now somebody else who had tasted it would chime in with their own observations, refining the description. Anybody who was at the NJ BBQ and tasted it care to chime in ? That's why I like the idea of giving lots of different beers their own thread in the great tasting project, and watching as the descriptions evolve and coalesce.

If you're automotively mobile and out in the 'burbs, there is a well stocked purveyor of subcontinental spices and such on 202 in King of Prussia hidden in the US Petro gas station between Allandale Road and Henderson Road. I believe the shop trades as Royal India, and their signage indicated they opened another branch out in Malvern somewhere or other.

What exactly does this mean? What rights and duties attach when Protected Designation of Origin is granted. In what jurisdictions? If this allows the Swiss to certify that certains cheeses are "real" Emmental, and conveys the exclusive right to use a certification mark, then that is great. If is makes it illegal for any other cheesemaker to use the word Emmental at all in relation to their cheese, then it is a terrible idea. Emmental has already slipped into a generic usage and has been there for years... trying to undo that with a wave of a legislative wand seems like naively wishful thinking at best.

Hello eGullet Beer Forum folks! The beer forum has been kinda slow lately, covering a few homebrew projects and a few beer events. Let's see what we can do about livening things up with some talk about what we've actually been drinking recently. Since we're now a Society for Culinary Arts and Letters, I think we're up to the challenge of writing clearly and meaningfully about the beers that we choose to drink. While the wine world is notorious for the verbosity of its descriptions, beer more often than not falls into the Tonto, Tarzan and Frankenstein school of reviewing: This beer GOOD!, or That beer BAD! Fire BAAAAD! Let's see what we can do about raising the level of discourse here about our favorite liquid bread substitute. I'm not the ideal person to kick this subject off, since I've been drinking mostly my own homebrew lately, so almost nobody here is going to have a chance to engage me on the merits of my observations, since nobody else can go pick up a bottle of the stuff. However, there has been an out of the way commercial lawnmower beer in my beer fridge recently that I'll start up a thread on. In this thread, we should engage in the meta-discussion about beer tasting and reviewing and what a beer tasting note should look like and include. I'll start with some of my own thoughts on the subject. Please argue with me if you think I'm wrong, crazy, both or otherwise. I think that a beer review should concentrate on the aroma and flavor of the brew in question. Lots of reviewers spend time describing the visuals... the head and how long it lasts, the lace left over after it subsides, the color. These should, as far as I'm concerned, take up no more than a sentence. Aromas are a tough subject to write about, since there really isn't structured vocabulary for describing things that the nose picks up. Everything here is an analogy to other things we expect people to know about. Just like in the wine world, with its leather and barnyard and violet descriptions, we're going to have to pick out a set of words to capture what we're taking about. That is why I think that each beer should have its own thread here. That way when tasting the same beer, we can work towards a standardized vocabulary that describes what we're experiencing. Hops aromas especially need some work to build a vocabulary that captures them. Saying "that is a hoppy beer" is really almost meaningless, since hops contribute so many different possible flavors. Some hop character is citrussy like grapefruit, while others are orangey or grassy, or sharp, or just really bitter. We must work The body of the beer should get some analysis, but in the context of what it does to the flavor. Is the body too thin for the malty sweetness that comes across on the palate? Is the body too thick to harmoniously coexist with the sharp hoppiness. Beer flavors go all over the place... at the NJ BBQ my homebrew contributions were intended to challenge people's conceptions about the nature of beer and show how broad the world of beers can be. Several "people who don't like beer" tried my offerings and discovered that they liked it, despite the preconceived notion that they wouldn't. Getting to the point where people can read a beer review and decide whether this is a beer they'd like or not should be the goal of this project. We should try to avoid numerical scales if at all possible (God forbid one of us become the Robert Parker of beer), for either summary purposes or for descriptions of specific elements of a beer. In homebrew circles there is a shorthand for how bitter a beer is-- how many IBUs does it have. I'd like to avoid pigeonholing this description as a simple numerical score, and describe the nature of the bitterness instead. I'd like to see descriptions put forth by one taster discussed and debated by others who have tasted the same beer... lets work through the meaning of the description and come to a consensus on what the words mean. Tastes are, after all, subjective. And beers do change over time. Even though they aim for constitency, they don't always hit that goal. Should one find a funky bottle of something, that would also be a welcome addition to the thread, since the odds of getting a spoiled bottle are something any potential beer consumer would want to know. Finally, I'd like to save the judgement for last, since it is the most subjective part of the review... when describing the flavor try to tell us about the taste, not whether you like it or not. After a description of the flavors and aromas, then let us know whether the combination worked for you or not. Too much tartness for so sweet a beer? Too bitter for your palate? etc... If several people write reviews of the same beer, it could be quite helpful to everybody, since what one person notices when they taste may be totally different from what another notices, even when they're tasting the same thing. Seeing what somebody else got out of the same experience could well broaden the perceptions of somebody who noticed something but couldn't put a finger on exactly what it was. I'll sign off for the moment, but would love commentary on your thoughts on the project.

Hey again Brooks-- Just noticed that Ivan is pointed right at you, so you've clearly got other things than yeast on your mind right now... Once the chaos subsides, let us know how you made out down there.

Welcome to eGullet, Phyllis. Thanks for reading and posting. I hope that you explore and enjoy the discourse on things culinary that we do here. Since you're the JBF's Director of Information Services, how about answering a few questions about how things work there so that we can proceed on a firm foundation of facts rather than rampant speculation? To get things started, what is the relationship between the Board and the membership in the Foundation's organizational structure? I've been a member for a couple of years and have never noticed an invitation to any board meetings or other organizational functions in any of the correspondence I've received from the Foundation. Who sits on the program committee, and how are they chosen? How would a plain old ordinary member who, in their travels, runs across a chef worthy of notice go about nominating that chef for a slot on the program calendar? Those are just the first few inquiries off the top of my head... I hope others with questions also chime in and we get a good factual basis established from which to continue the overarching conversation about the Foundation and its mission.

Hey Brooks-- How's that yeast hunt coming? Any progress on getting your guys in motion? My first 1.75 gallons is bubbling away and I'll probably rack it into something in the not too distant future... and I've got another 6 pounds of honey to play with, so if you've got a line on a good and proper mead yeast I'd gladly wait for it so that I can give it a try.

Yes... all that sounds nice. The library would be more useful if its opening hours and access policies were publicized, rather than just its existence. The Beard folks were actively soliciting applications for their scholarships over the past year... a full page ad in every publication that they sent for a while, separate postcards, etc... If one wanted to get into the application process for one of their scholarships, that would be easy. They should make accessing and using the rest of their facilities and programs equally easy.

The past few weeks in Pennsylvania have had quite a variety of weather, and on a particularly overcast morning when a low pressure zone was sitting on top of me, I noticed that my espresso turned out particularly delicious. The crema was thicker, there was more body, etc. I've since been paying a little attention to the correlation between the weather and the quality of the espresso I pull myself each morning. I think I have half decent control over the other variables like bean, grind and tamp... and I think there are differences from day to day. That observation, combined with my understanding that Seattle is often overcast and rainy, and is the world capital for high quality espresso made me wonder what, if any relation anybody else has observed. I'm almost tempted to put a barometer next to my espresso machine and take notes... if only there were an objective and quantitative method of describing the quality of the espresso. A neat thought, anyway... I'd love to hear ideas for experiments that might disprove this hypothesis.

Word. And another thought-- make the organization a little more transparent and comprehensible. And make it clear how one would get involved in the organization as a volunteer. And get over the whole Hamptons-venerating socialite-wannabe thing... show that the people running the place care more about quality than panache. Beard should be about the cutting edge... not the trendy. Let chefs with wild new ideas come and cook, and if their ideas catch on, then all the better...

Re the library-- what's in it, and when is it accessable by either the membership or the general public? I've been a member for a few years and never seen either the space, or its opening hours. Or is is reserved for those who know who to ask for access to it? As to the speculation about the House Purveyors' stuff not being in the house... well... there are lots of house purveyors whose stuff isn't readily visible in the house. If they've purveyed, then where is the stuff? And even some of the visible stuff is somewhat questionable... for example all of the Illy espresso pods by the coffee setup in the sunroom downstairs. Nobody I've ever seen there in dozens of dinners has ever consumed one espresso. Now I've never asked for one, but I've never been offered the option either. Those things don't stay fresh forever, and if, for lack of use, somebody takes them away where they'll get used before they go off, I can't say I blame them... but if that sort of practice is just the tip of the iceberg, then... hmmmm... grrrr.... I'm a member too... where's my swag?!