jogoode

Come on, no more cheap shots at Sietsema. And if anyone's going to take shots, he should be careful to get his facts straight. Sietsema never made any predictions about New York barbecue; Kim Severson did. Paul Kirk's restaurant will have to succeed on its own merits, not on its pitmaster's rep.

So when are we going?

Loads of stuff on East Tremont and some on Gunhill. Here are some from Robert Sietsema, the intrepid Voice critic.

Fatty pork? All the better... But do you really think it significantly increases their food cost? Soup dumplings don't usually cost much more than fried dumplings, do they?

One great thing about Dumpling House's fried dumplings, and this might also apply to NGB's, but I don't remember, is that they have some of the juiciness of soup dumplings. I imagine that they use the same technique of adding frozen or solidified stock to the filling.

Really? I was appalled when last year at my first and only time at New Green Bo I had rather standard soup and fried dumplings. I've also tried both at Yeah Shanghai, and preferred Yeah's to NGB's. Dumpling House can not be beat, in my opinion, but I'll have to hit NGB again and perform a more systematic comparison. And then I need to go to Flushing!

But in NY you would be run out of town operating a hole in the wall joint. New Yorkers have such different expectations of what a restauraunt should be that it would be next to impossible or so prohiitively expensive (i.e. Masa, who can do whatever they want because they charge so much) that nobody would want to do it. ← Thanks, bbq chef. Your perspective is very valuable here. I can imagine that one of the hardest parts about running a profitable food business is knowing when to cater to your customers and when to stick to your guns.

I agree with most of what you said, but think it deserves noting that aside from this mental component decor often signals the intentions of the restaurant owners. People's criticism of the theme-park decor is a way of their asking, "Who are the owners catering to? And do the people they're catering to want real barbecue or would they be happy with mediocre barbecue?" What's so great about a barbecue shack in the South is that it is essentially saying, "Don't come here for anything but the food." There are, however, plenty of holes in the wall serving bad food and plenty of places with flamboyant decor serving good food, though right now I can't think of any. Am I alone in this, or did anyone else smell a ton of wood smoke inside Dinosaur?

Bedford Cheese Shop in Williamsburg borders on awesome. They have 5-year-old Red Cow Parm and 8-year old Grafton cheddar that I've seen nowhere else. I'm not a fan of the new Murray's space. There was something so charming about their cramped old shop. (And, though this has nothing to do with the new shop, they sell an Epoisse for $13; at Fairway, it's $8.)

I second Dumpling House. What a place to take friends from the suburbs, who are used to paying $5 for five dumplings of the doughy steamed variety -- there's no way you can spend over $5 a person at this place!

And let's respect our fellow food journalists. Severson doesn't deserve the title of "this lady." She's an award-winning food journalist!

So now we are saying that Dinosaur is objectively good and that there can be no criticism of it. Severson wrote that two of the times she ate the ribs they were overcooked and devoid of porky flavor. Overcooked. This could account for the lack of porky taste and betrays nothing but her ability to describe what she ate. Her disclosure was full: "On two visits, the pork ribs ($13.95, $17.95 or $20.95) were nearly void of pork flavor and so overcooked that the meat came clean off the bone in one chunk. A third visit last week brought a better version, greatly cheering two Syracuse University alums who lived on them in college." Nobody is saying that Dinosaur is disgusting. If Sietsema has "eaten [barbecue] all over the country -- probably in many more places than I have", then why are you so dismissive of his take? You're saying he doesn't know about barbecue while in the same breath saying that he's eaten at more places than you. He didn't like the ribs, implying that they were overcooked. He liked the pork plate: "The best thing I tasted on three eating visits was the "big ass pork plate" ($12.95), pale meat pulled in clumps, quite smoky-tasting." Won't someone criticize Severson's take on the brisket? Or can we agree it's not good?

Thanks so much to you knowledgable-about-shawarma types. This information on this thread is great -- and pictures, too!

This doesn't make sense to me. Are you saying that I can't criticize a barbecue place by saying that I don't taste enough smoke in the meat? Isn't using the word smoky in a discussion of barbecue just a concise way of saying that meat has the unique flavor you refer to above and not a comment meant to suggest the meat tasted like a block of hickory? It seems to me that many people posting on this thread are just looking for a way to discredit these reviewers, suggesting at every opportunity that they missed this detail or misrepresented that. Fine, you know more about barbecue than Severson and Sietsema. There is validity in some of what's been said, but, to me, a reviewer's experience with barbecue is far more important than his or her knowledge of the cooking technique. I couldn't tell you much about making sushi rice, but I can tell you if it's good or not. As criticism of the reviews, this makes the most sense to me, although I still don't think you should take Severson's "thesis" so seriously. Her saying "Driving that axiom is a simple, irrefutable truth: Regional food tastes best in its region" is a statement that suggests the complex interaction of nostalgia, expectations, and emotion that makes barbecue "taste" better from a shack in NC than from a Theme Park-like restaurant near Fairway. She could have said "Regional food is only good when eaten in its region." But I think her words were carefully chosen here. Inspired by this thread, I walked to Dinosaur tonight with my girlfriend and had dinner. The barbecue chicken was excellent. The chicken had great flavor, clearly from having been smoked, and the skin was slightly crisp and sweet from whatever sauce Dinosaur brushed on. The two pork ribs on the outside of my 1/4 rack were great, powerfully porky and had a forceful but not overpowering smoky taste. The other ribs on the rack were good, though for some reason they had less meat and the meat they had was a bit stringy. I have never had pork ribs down South, so I can't make a comparison. Brisket I have had. This summer, for the first time, I had real Texas brisket in Lockhart -- a defining experience. Not that I was expecting Dinosaur's brisket to compare to the brisket in Lockhart, but Dinosaur's showed no signs that it ever could. It had some smoke flavor, but was very, very dry, like bad pastrami.

Guys, is it impossible to accept that the reviewers didn't like Dinosaur? The criticism goes far beyond talk of overly sweet sauce. The titles argument -- this is barbecue, this isn't barbecue -- is moot here. Neither reviewer said, "The food is great, but how dare they call it barbecue!" They each criticized what they thought was poor food. And, presumably, Severson made her comment about irrefutable truth after she ate at Dinosaur -- and I doubt she meant it as a Nostradamian prophecy. When I read it I took it with a grain of salt. If Dinosaur were good, she would have opened the piece differently.

Yes, no matter how good the food tastes, if it's not cooked with wood smoke you could make a cogent argument that it's not barbecue. I think most Society Members would agree with this. You can steam brisket in a bucket; even if it were good it would not technically be barbecue. And he won't eat his words when R.U.B. opens because he said nothing about it. He just said that he doesn't think Dinosaur is good, perhaps because it doesn't use enough wood. It raises a host of issues, yes. It raises so many, in fact, that she can't address them in her short $25 & Under review. All she was doing is providing some context: New Yorkers have been promised great barbecue many times before and no one has delivered. It might be time, she was saying, to accept that no one may ever deliver. I think that's valid. Tell me who among you would dare say Dinosaur or Blue Smoke or even Pearson makes brisket that compares to the better Texas places?

I received this email from Robert Sietsema this morning: (I couldn't upload the picture.) Edited to add picture

... What makes a good shawarma? as i stated earlier, it's all in the vinegar!!!! ← The owner of Alfanoose told me that his main criticism of most of the shawarma in the city is that very few marinate the meat in vinegar and spices overnight and, in fact, many don't use vinegar at all. The shawarma at Alfanoose is the first I've tasted in which you can taste the vinegar, so I'm hoping you'll like it, zeitoun!

Pictures? Yes! Have you tried Alfanoose, on Maiden Lane in the Financial District. Damn good shawarma.

In no way does this suggest an agenda. Instead, as the posts above have made clear, it reinforces the claim that Sietsema should have been way more careful in his research before suggesting that Dinosaur didn't use wood. No question it was a mistake. But let's not dismiss ten years of some of the best and most interesting restaurant reviewing in the city because of it.

And I hear Ozersky knows his meat.

I'm a bit close minded in my preference for Sushi Yasuda over Kuruma, but I've only been to Kuruma twice -- and got a set both times. It's much closer in style -- the size, the rice -- to the sushi I ate at Miyako, a very traditional and excellent sushi-ya in Tokyo. But based on your recommendation and expertise, I might have to give in and give it another shot. Damn you. ← i smell a lunch opportunity together next time i am in NYC... ← I smell that, too!

I'm a bit close minded in my preference for Sushi Yasuda over Kuruma, but I've only been to Kuruma twice -- and got a set both times. It's much closer in style -- the size, the rice -- to the sushi I ate at Miyako, a very traditional and excellent sushi-ya in Tokyo. But based on your recommendation and expertise, I might have to give in and give it another shot. Damn you.

There are many possible reasons. The most likely in my mind is that Citysearch reviews, like Zagat reviews, come from people with a wide range of experience with food. So you can't trust that their opinion will even resemble your opinion of the same food. Some of the citysearch responses to Kuruma are laughably uninformed. Some are price-obsessed. For them, all Kuruma is is overpriced sushi -- as Milla said, just fish and rice. If you can't appreciate the difference between Haru and Kuruma, there is no way you'll accept the $200 premium that you pay to eat at the latter. But even for people with experience with good food, when you're paying $300 for anything, your expectations are extremely high, and any disappointment, however minor, becomes more significant. Some people can criticize while keeping their heads (i.e. docsconz at ADNY). Others get hostile, exaggerating, though not always intentionally, the negative aspects of their meal. To whom, I wonder, would Kuruma's sushi truly qualify as third rate, as some citysearch responders described it? Remember, you are paying for luxury when you order all out omakase. If you a order a set or by piece, you're getting the same quality fish and the same rice. A sushi chef is not doing his or her job if the only way you can have a great experience is by going all out. I've spent $60 on Yasuda at dinner. If you were so inclined $60 could buy you as much as 20 pieces!

We expect a full report!