bugsy gugoff

Knowing how to act and react in a restaurant???? You are the customer for christsakes! You make it sound like they are doing you a favor. And where do you get off saying that people who posted here who asked for the "chef to cook for them" want to push people around or feed their egos? What presumption!! So what of people who ask? Some of my best meals came from a chef-constructed tasting menu. Maybe it was on the carte maybe not. And if the guy says no, so what, you pick your food like anyone else. Sure, when you are are a friend of the house, it is almost de rigeur to say, "Tell Fernando to make me a nice meal." To do that in a place you never ate at would be kind of stupid.

You guys have strong opinions about a subject you seem to know nothing about. Cripes. Any serious chef appreciates an invitation by a customer to design a menu for him. If they are too busy, the captain comes back and says, "Chef would love to do it, but another night when the kitchen is not as busy." How can you think a chef will be insulted? Maybe a hash house cook would be, but not a bonafide chef. I speak pretty good Japanese. I learned that the sushi chefs love it when you sit at the counter and converse with them in Japanese. I tell them to serve me what they think is best right now. The wait staff hate it when you order in Japanese. Because they have to wait on you in a proscribed way when you speak Japanese, but the gaijins require much less formality. The other night I told the owner of a restaurant that I'd love a whole dover sole, grilled with a particular sauce. It wasn't on the menu and never has been. She said, "call me the day you are coming, next time, and I'll see that we have it for you." I only ate there once before. And that namby pamby crap about not wanting to make extra work for the kitchen staff by messing up their menu plans. Any place reacts that way is a phoney baloney. There hasn't been one Michelin starred place I ate at didn't smile when I handed the menu back to the captain and said (in my lousy French) "Si Vous Plait--le Chef choisy pour moi?.

I was told by someone who is familiar with the negotiations that the building placed very firm restrictions on him. A coal or wood burning oven was totally off limits. He said he did not want to be like any other place with a conventional gas pizza oven so he went this way. Looking at the space, I think the design and layout is very different. When I asked the owner of a Roman restaurant what he thought of the pizza concept he used, the Italian guy shrugged and said "management decision."

What with all the commotion I decided to try this place. It was a schlep for me to come in from upper Westchester but I thought I would see The Pianist and kill two birds, as they say. I loved the look of the place, especially the front room. I can see myself standing there wearing a Borsolino and smoking a long thin black cigar with a young Anna Magnani on my arm, feeding me olives. What I would not be happy doing is eating those so-called pizzas. Very unsatisfying. I felt like scraping the toppings off and eating them as side dishes with my wine. Individual pizzas are great. thin crust pizzas are great. These are not great. They are an attempt to solve a problem--no pizza ovens allowed. IMO, they fail. Call them Biaylis with toppings for all I care. They are not very good eating The Pianist, on the other hand does not disappoint.

I may use that as my signature.

Curious. I'm getting the lay of the land here, so to speak. Many posts devoted to pizzles in an unending erection of the thread. But the "high school" thread I had tried to post on is marked "closed". I guess eating penises is more relevant than what we did with them in high school?

The ones on top, they sauteed with Viagra?