fresco

Thirty years ago most people weren't sure how to spell organic. Now it's a fast growing (in some places, the fastest growing) segment of the food market right across North America. If BK customers started demanding organic food, you can bet BK would find a way to deliver. And if they couldn't, their customers would go to a fast food joint that could.

Ontario's Liquor Control Board brought this in as a featured special a couple of years back at about $10 Canadian a bottle, which is cheap. Can't remember the vintage, but most likely a 1999. It was pretty insipid.

Can't miss with capers.

Did you happen to see the current issue of Saveur, with all the tuna tins on the cover and a pretty good story inside celebrating tinned tuna in all its glory?

Hopleaf, First, congratulations. Second, exercise. Get enough of it and some of the dietary considerations take care of themselves. (Not that I ever get enough myself )

I absolutely agree with you that it is possible to prepare quick, inexpensive meals from scratch, and that mussels are an excellent example (especially since that is what we prepared for dinner last night). The problem is that mussels, and most kinds of fish, are viewed with horror, I suspect, in about 99 per cent of households in Canada and the US. And that the same households probably consider Kraft Dinner to be not just more convenient, but actually tastier than anything they could make from scratch.

i just don't see that. price adjustment, of course, would happen. however, it would not necessarily be "up", and more than likely the new price would be posted, and you'd pay what you thought you were going to pay, rather than 2/100's of a dollar more. Of course. Rounding can be up or down. but removing pennies from a curreny isn't rounding, at least in the sense of the word as it's taken in this discussion. this particular "rounding" was a server over-charging a patron on products that presumably had their prices listed from the get-go. They're not the same thing, for sure. One is stupidity. The other is at least an attempt at efficiency.

of *course* it has. i've never heard of anything quite like what suzanne has described. i have to think it was a dumb move by a dumb server, and a dumb manager. i wonder if the owners know about their "policy". I find it hard to see this as an attempt to gouge. We're talking pennies here. It just sounds like a dumb decision compounded by an even dumber explanation.

Come to think of it, on the odd occasion when a merchant has, for whatever reason, decided to round, it has always been in my, or some other customer's, favor. It seems like a very inexpensive way to buy goodwill.

i just don't see that. price adjustment, of course, would happen. however, it would not necessarily be "up", and more than likely the new price would be posted, and you'd pay what you thought you were going to pay, rather than 2/100's of a dollar more. Of course. Rounding can be up or down.

I have my doubts about The Wine Clip, but love the idea of putting it to the test. There's no end of products that need a good, hard eGullet scrutiny.

There are sporadic efforts in Canada to abolish the penny, because it is literally more trouble than it is worth--among other things, it costs a bundle to air freight pennies to banks in remote northern parts of the country. Doing away with pennies, of course, is the same as rounding. It's also interesting that one often sees pennies on the sidewalks or streets, presumably because people feel that it is not worth the effort to pick them up, or they worry about being seen doing so.

I don't know if this problem is widespread, but suspect it might be. Over the last couple of years, the price of garlic in just about any place I shop has plummeted to something ridiculous, often the equivalent of about 60 cents US a pound. But usually the quality is terrible--lots of those brown spots, often cloves that are beginning to rot. I think all this stuff is coming over from China. The solution may be to seek out one really good source and travel across town if need be to get it. Even at 10 or 20 or 30 times the price of the terrible stuff, it would still be very cheap.

Agree that some restaurants have seized upon tapas as a way to overcharge and under deliver. But I also wish that the Spanish way with snacks was a lot more widespread over here. I remember coming across a little hole in the wall bar in Valencia that was completely packed. You ordered a glass of wine or beer at the bar and also a bowl of mussels or clams, prepared a couple of different ways, but very simply. You ate and drank, threw your very small paper napkin on the floor, and ordered more. If there was a place like that near me, I'd been in it a lot. Of course, the health department would probably close it down inside a week because of the paper and other debris on the floor. Mussels, of course, have become bar food in many North American cities, but not in quite the same way. And while we're on the topic, I'm going to be in Madrid in a few months. Any tapas bar recommendations would be much appreciated.

Is this an obscure Britishism? I thought vegetable margarine was, well, vegetable margarine.

stranger yet is someone from the UK suggesting how to make a sandwich. Well, they did invent sandwiches. Not that this necessarily counts for much. They also invented the chip buttie.

I had occasion to try chunks of raw narwhal on a trip to Baffin Island last week. It was part of a lunch buffet, and was extremely chewy, about 100 times more chewy than, say, grilled squid. Can't say that I'd want to make it a regular part of my diet but I did "get" that it was an important source of vitamins, omega oils and other nutrients for people who live in a place with practically no vegetation and practically no sunlight for many months of the year.

Black Label enjoyed brief renown as the hipster beer of choice in Toronto and Montreal about 10 years ago. Never could figure out why.

Can't think of an entire cuisine that I abhor, but the popularity of some dishes, at least in their North American iteration, does puzzle me. There must be thousands of restaurants within a 100-mile radius of where I live that offer what they call a "Greek salad" even if the rest of the menu isn't Greek. What you get is invariably an unappetizing (often nauseating) assortment of underripe tomatoes, wedges of iceberg lettuce, cucumbers, feta cheese that is either sour or tasteless, onion (usually the only edible ingredient) all doused with dubious olive oil and far too much vinegar, with a few doubtful black olives as a garnish. But made with the best and freshest ingredients, Greek salad is a revelation. I suspect that if my only encounter with "southern" or "Mexican" food was KFC or Taco Bell, I wouldn't "get" these cuisines, either. And while I'm at it, the commodification of dim sum into greasy, gristly bits isn't doing much for the reputation of Chinese cuisine. Most sushi, especially inland, is downright scary.

Love those tats. The fish sounds pretty good too.

Does anyone know what the reader response to these issues has been outside the rarified circles of eGullet?

The cover is a problem, but the same problem is inside--Riechl seems to be working her way through old cliches. Isn't her mandate to freshen up Gourmet?

The October issue is pretty conclusive proof that Ruth Reichl should quit playing at being an editor and get back to writing about food.

I'm fine with NY. I'm not fine with going to NY for a steak. And I suspect you would get strong disagreement from people in other parts about NY being about the only place in the world worth eating steak. In fact, I've heard a lot of claims about NY. That it trumps steak anywhere else is a first.

If I'm reading you right, the gold standard for steak seems to be places in NY and only places in NY. If that's so, probably the best argument I've heard so far against steak houses.