Steve Plotnicki

I ate at the Old Chatham Sheepherderding Company when Mellisa and Price were there. I had a great meal even though I can't remember what we ate. I do remember we drank Araujo syrah but I can't remember the vintage. Two weeks after we were there they "eloped" to Maine. There doesn't seem to be much press about them now that they are in Maine. When they were in Old Chatham, the buzz about the was really strong.

Went to the 51st and 9th Ave branch last night after seeing Adaptation (very good.) It was our backup restaurant after Hell's Kitchen where they had a 45 minute wait for a table. Grand Sichuan sat us immediately. Excellent smoked spare ribs. Chicken with Green Peppers was just spicy enough and the Braised Pork Belly with Chestnuts has to be one of the best Chinese dishes anywhere. We ordered the Sliced Beef in Chili Sauce and I asked the waiter to hold the heat down. He didn't take me seriously enough because what he came out with was a mouth scorcher even though ne told me he instructed the kitchen to go easy. So I sent it back with instructions to make the new one mildly spiced. Much to my surprise that actually worked and the resulting dish wa terrific. Add some Yang Chow Fried Rice and their great Dry Sauteed String Beans and the four of us were swimming in food. In fact the left over sliced beef and veggies made a great lunch today before going to see the Rangers get zotsed by the Bruins.

Linda Dannenburg's book on Paris bistros is a gem as well.

Okay I'll repeat it without usingthe word "bait." I asked our waitress what would happen if we told her to take the menus back and asked them to cook for us. She didn't seem to understand what it was I was asking her for. How's that? Some restaurants do that for people all of the time. Others don't. In this instance, either they don't, or she doesn't know anything about it. That's as close to a no as I was interested in getting.

Most people I know who have gone to Argentina are in the wine business and they go to visit the wineries. To a person, while they like the beef, all think it inferior to American beef.

Well it doesn't make a difference why it happened. When I said the publisher cheaped out I was just speculating. But what could have been a glorious book is not a very ordinary one and none of the blame should be placed at Dorie's feet. Unless of course if she insisted on the layout and design.

Lou - I don't know why I have to keep repeating the details. We weren't interested in a chef's menu. I just wanted to see how she would react. Since she didn't take the bait, we dropped it. But if she had gotten excited at our raising it, as they did when I had raised it at Trotter's three weeks ago, we might have tried it. As for planning a chef's menu in advance, I never had to order one in advance before. It isn't really much of a request. All you are asking the chef to do is to choose your meal for you. Either they do it or they don't. But I don't see how much extra work it is for a chef to say, oh yes, the pork loin was especially good today so that is what I will serve them.

It's a guy thing.

One good thing about Cannes is you don't have to drive to go to dinner if you don't want to. There are two 2 star restaurants in town I believe plus La Cave. If you throw a night of simple food in the mix (pizza) you killed a long weekend. And the two best bouillabaisse places are a short ride, plus there's another 2 star in Juan-les-Pins. That takes care of a week. But the worst thing about Cannes is that it has an atmosphere that can be described as "international." Though I have to say that walking along the Croisette in the later afternoon is one of the greatest things to do in any city of the world. Nice on the other hand is not as self contained in my opinion. If you stay in Nice you will be going out of town for dinner. And if you stay in one of the smaller towns, which are certainly lovely, you will be driving to a long distance to dinner every night. Not sure how important that is to you or what type of drinker you are. As for culture, you are going to need a car to visit the museums. No city has more then one good one and many of the good ones are in the smaller towns and you need a car to get to them.

Fat Guy - You might be right. Sorry if I broke the rules by using the wrong profanity. Next time I'll use dickhead.

Helena - No I haven't seen that book but I will look for it. The most disappointing book to be released recently has been the Dorie Greenspan book on Parisian desserts. The concept is terrific and the content looks great but they cheaped out on the layout and production. The book is a veritable guide to Paris using desserts but it doesn't have any photos. It's really a shame.

Okay so it is understood by all, what I recommended that people do at Blue Hill is a general recommendation providing a restaurant is willing to do it. If they don't offer it, or normally do it, I can't see how that advice is going to help you. Secondly, if anyone read this thread from the top, the waitress didn't seem to know what we were talking about. Finally, even if they did have a practice of doing it, that wouldn't have corrected the flaws in our meal which were a matter of the kitchen not executing properly. Bux - One more foolish comment in a long line of them. Do I have to send you a copy of FG's email to me about it? In fact the discussion of using profanity was thrashed through in a thread last winter and there was no objection to it. In fact there's a thread which discusses the approriate times to use f**k and a**hole. This was one of them if you ask me. Profanities are not name calling Tommy - Well sorry if I took your comments the wrong way. It's hard to tell when you are busting chops, being a wiseass or trying to get actual information. Dave the Cook - The reason we explored it is because there has been so much talk about it. I can't speak for the others except Mrs. P who was dead set against it but, I wasn't really interested in it either. However, if my question brought a glimmer to the waitresses eye I might have felt differently about it.

Nina - I just don't agree with you about the shunning or ignoring tactic. I think that behavior that is directed at interfering with the purpose of the discourse here should be struck from the board. There are many others who feel the same way. So you should leave me alone about it because we are just not going to agree. Banana Cream Pie for me though.

Nina - I have permission from Fat Guy to use the word asshole. Dick was another word he didn't mind the use of. I can't remember the rest of the list but you can imagine the words on it. The problem here isn't with the use of any specific words, I could have made the same point without using that specific word. Asshole just happened to be a good way of describing his duplicity when he cut and pasted those two threads together to make it seem like I had said something I didn't say. I'm sorry if my poetic license didn't meet with your approval. Next time I will have you vet my responses before posting them. The original post about Blue Hill offered advice from a number of different people on how to get a better meal there. Since then, those who offered the advice have been tormented by those they gave it to as if we were doing something bad by showing them how to improve their meal. It's the craziest thing in the world that advice about how to get the best meal in a restaurant is derided. Tommy brought that part of the discussion into this thread not for the purpose of helping anyone get a better meal at Babbo, but to show people up. If that is his purpose of posting on this thread, no doubt the result will be that those who he has targeted will lash out at him.

You're the one who deserves to be thanks for one of the best Q & A we've had around here. I hope to see you someday at the other end of a perfectly cooked plate of salt baked something or other.

Actually I apologize because you didn't say arrogant, you said this;

This is from the guy who said it was "arrogant" to ask a restaurant to do this for you. Now he is complaining about name calling when an explanation is being offered as to what motivated him to describe people that way in the first place. I like the wisecracks better.

Helena - Do they talk about food in the book?

No it's a matter of expertise. Just like everything else in life is.

Listen asshole, you cut and pasted posts from the Blue Hill thread where I am talking about what hapens in that restaurant with what happened at Babbo where I have made no representation as to how to, or if you even could, get a chef's menu. The whole thing is disingenuous on your part and it shows how dishonest you are. Please stop trying to bring me down to your level of incompetancy and self loathing. That you do not feel good about yourself to the extent that you are were uncomfortable asking Blue Hill about the Chef's menu isn't my fault.

Cannes is hundreds of miles away from Michel Bras. Even if you were to fly to Clermont-Ferrand which is the closest airport, the trip would take you 3-4 hours between flying and driving. Cannes is a more upscale resort town with many five and four star hotels, nice beaches and designer shopping. It also has a great food market. The town is basically new and modern. There are a number of two star restaurants in the town and there is the terrific La Cave but in general I don't find it to be a good restaurant town. Nice is a middle class town and it is old fashioned and has a lively and colorful old town with a pedestrian zone and market. The food is more workmanlike and there are a few places to eat authentic Nicoise cuisine. I prefer it to Cannes as it has less of a transient feel to it then Cannes does but it also has it's limitations. But the two cities are a mere 35 kms apart and the drive between them takes about 25 minutes or the train takes 35. You don't have to stay in either of those cities as there are smaller towns in between Cannes and the Italian border that offer good places to stay. And there are a mulitude of places to eat everything from haute cuisine to local dishes.

Gee that's not what I said.

Well the more I think about our meal, the more I feel like our waitress should take the brunt of the blame. But as I said, I can project the food to the point of perfection but then I still don't get what the big fuss is about. So where do you think Babbo sits in relation to NYC's other top restaurants?

This is a much better explanation of sensationalism then I gave. I find this aspect of journalism sad. So many of the good things in life that people should try and experience at least once are derided and made fun of by publications as a way of maintaining their readership. I wish the public understood how they are being constantly misled. It's like they precalculated the tone of the review based on readership income level and demographic.

What's wrong with screening? Restaurant reservation books have changed significantly since they have been computerized. I made two reservations today, one at Red Cat and one at Blue Hill. In each instance after I gave them my last name, they asked me if it was Steve P. and is my phone number the same and they repeated my cell phone number. When I remarked to the person on the phone (this was at Red Cat,) that they kept good information, they were able to tell me when I ate there. So the type of information that restaurants keep these days has changed since the days of yore. And why they need to know your company name can be for any reason from their own market analysis, to they want to pitch companies about having private functions at their faciilities. And if their special events manager is armed with a list of employess who patronize a place that might not be a bad piece of information to start out with when you're pitching an ad agency on having their x-mas party there. But the person who wrote the article prefered to treat the request as an intrusion and not as something that could be potentially benefitial to the diner. That's why I used the word sensationalize. Now the pens at Ducasse on the other hand are completely frivolous. Unless they ever decided to give away the pens .