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I had comments to make in response to this, but since they are general, rather than specific to Incanto or A16, I posted them in the General forum: Evaluation and comparison of restaurants, What criteria do you use?

At the present time, I can give a recommendation for their chicken shawarma, but after a while, I stopped ordering the felafel because I found it too heavy. Granted, that was a while ago, so take that for what it's worth.

The food sounds very good, but it also sounds like it's about the same price or perhaps a bit more than Lupa. Aside from its convenient location for Upper West Siders, is the quality of the food comparable to Lupa's? If so, that would be very exciting.

I've liked Ariana for a long time (but have them hold the dressing on the salad and use the green hot sauce that's on the table). I don't know if there's a better Afghan restaurant within city limits, though. There might or might not be one in Manhattan but there probably is at least one better one in Queens. I've never had a buffet in an Afghan restaurant. A Loya Jirga is a traditional Pashtun meeting of the elders. From Wikipedia: I'm guessing they don't have those in New York, so is a "Loya Jirga buffet" a feast of dishes that were traditionally served at such meetings?

No disagreement there.

This really looks like the type of food one would find in Austria or other points to the north of Italy. This photo looks a lot like a sausage and sauerkraut plate. Was there enough vinegar to make it taste like sauerkraut? I'm loving the photos, you all!

Don't give yourself such a hard time. I understood your points pretty easily.

Looks good, Dave! Lots of Cantonese food is actually "middle heat." If you look at some of hzrt8w's pictorials, you'll see that he will use a couple of hot peppers in a dish for moderate spiciness, rather than a layer of hot oil or a shitload of peppers like they often use in Sichuan or Hunan. In addition, many dishes have just a few slices of ginger, which is a lot milder than hot pepper. And there's also white pepper, as Dejah noted.

(Note: I will preface this post by stating for the record that I have been to Lupa several times but have not been to either A16 or Incanto, and that my remarks below should not be seen in any way to be commenting on those restaurants.) In the A16 or Incanto?, Which is better? thread in the California forum, eje wrote the following: My first reaction was that I disagree with the premise that it makes no sense to compare restaurants serving somewhat similar cuisine at similar price points in different American cities. But, on the other hand, it does make a certain amount of sense to judge a restaurant only on "how well it succeeds at accomplishing the goals it sets for itself" (I don't care how it pleases its target clientele if it doesn't please me, so as a customer, not someone merely engaged in an evaluation of the bottom-line success of a business, I don't find that a useful criterion). So I would like a discussion of whether and how you all compare restaurants and what criteria you use for comparison, but here are my thoughts: (1) If and only if you know what a restaurant's goals are can it make sense to judge a restaurant in terms of how well it succeeds at accomplishing those goals. On the other hand, if the goals relate purely to the bottom line and not the quality of the food, that is useless to me. Similarly, if the goals encompass only preventing people from getting sick from the food, they are not sufficient for me to judge a restaurant to be good if it fulfills them. Only if the goals are high enough to satisfy me will I judge a restaurant that meets them to be good or even acceptable. (2) It is also valid to limit comparisons only to restaurants of similar price or location, and it should go without saying that limiting comparisons to certain cuisines is also a reasonable way to focus one's appraisal. However, on a personal level, it is likely that most of us will compare restaurants that are dissimilar in terms of price, location, and even cuisine, because: (a) It is inevitable that many of us will compare an experience in one restaurant with a memory of another, even if the two restaurants are half a world away. (b) For most of us, price vs. perceived value is another part of our evaluation. This presents some difficulties when comparing restaurants in geographic areas that are cheaper or more expensive, overall. In particular, foreign exchange rates can cause a lot of havoc. To an extent, it is necessary to adjust one's sense of value to the prevailing prices in a given area. But it is unlikely that a person who's gotten bhel puris on the streets of Bombay will be able to completely avoid comparing the value of the many times cheaper bhel puri in Bombay vs. the "haute street food" bhel puris on offer in fancy restaurants in New York. (3) If you do not order the restaurant's specialties or/and do order dishes that are on the menu but do not constitute part of the restaurant's core cuisine, or if you simply don't like tastes that are basic to its cuisine, you may be handicapped in offering judments of the restaurant that will be useful to people who would order specialties or/and do like all the tastes basic to that cuisine, though your criticisms may be helpful to those with tastes or/and diets similar to yours (e.g., no spicy food, no salty food -- you can imagine many more). I'll flesh out my thinking with a few cases: When I go to a Malaysian restaurant in New York, I first of all compare it to stalls and cheap restaurants in Malaysia and find it seriously wanting; secondly, I compare it to the best Malaysian food New York has to offer; thirdly, I appraise it according to a personal standard of acceptability (but of course, I'm rating it on all three bases at the same time, not really in three steps). I do make very large allowances for the fact that I'm not in Kuala Lumpur, Ipoh, or even a Malaysian village -- in large part because there is little prospect of my visiting Malaysia again for some time into the indefinite future -- but I do not make any allowances for the lack of sufficiently high goals to meet my standard of acceptability. Making lousy or completely tasteless food that some restaurant owner thinks will appeal to most of the non-Asians it is targetting as its clientele is a way to produce an irate reaction in me, not a figurative pat on their back for meeting their goals. So taking this further, I could see how a person who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area but will not be likely to visit New York for years into the future could consider a comparison between Incanto and any New York restaurants irrelevant, while a San Franciscan who visits New York x-number of times a year may conclude that a restaurant that costs about as much as Lupa and in his opinion is not as good does not merit his patronage. Whether there may be useful questions about what he ordered at Incanto vs. what you ordered and whether not ordering certain types of specialties overly limits the basis of his analysis from your standpoint is a different issue, though. Which leads to my next point: Someone who goes to Grand Sichuan, orders mostly American-Chinese food and finds the Sichuan food inedibly spicy can give an appraisal of the restaurant or make a comparison of its quality with American-Chinese restaurants, but the appraisal and comparison won't be useful to someone who loves Sichuan cuisine and plans on ordering the firiest dishes on the menu. Nevertheless, their appraisal is valid to them, based on their criteria for what they like. Your comments?

Wow, Lorna, that's positively indecent! vkn, I'd definitely order that onion kheer if it were offered in a restaurant, just because it sounds a bit unusual, but that said, I've had Thai items that combined some sweetness with salt and onions and found them OK. They weren't desserts, really, I don't think, but your kheer doesn't have salt, and I like onions.

Thousands and thousands of people die of "normal" flu every year, there has at least once been a flu epidemic that killed some 40 million people, flu virus is highly susceptible to mutation and can be highly contagious, a significant number of scientists are very concerned that avian flu could turn into a form that could cause a pandemic, and avian flu has killed some 53% of the human beings who have had it, including young, previously healthy individuals. As I posted previously in another thread, I don't think that's a reason to panic, but I surely think that's a reason to watch the disease very closely and take steps to control its spread among both the bird and human populations. So if you think this is similar...

I love the different texture of these noodles! Next time you are in the Asian store, show the characters for 'yi mian' to someone in the store. That should help. 伊面 Let me see if I can format this so that it will be copyright OK----- ← Looks delicious! No reason to worry about copyright if you paraphrased the directions, but which cookbook has the recipe you adapted for this thread?

Sadly, it figures to be quite some time before I get a chance to come back to Malaysia. Which brand(s) of peanut cakes do you recommend?

I would disagree. Do you feel like when you check over your own work, you are impugning your own integrity, as well? The fact is, all human beings are imperfect and make mistakes. The fact that a waiter could have made an error does not mean or imply that the waiter was trying to cheat you.

I think it is newsworthy and informative. Policies on fisheries are certainly grist for the mill here. I'd encourage you to start a new topic on this, because I'd like to ask a question but don't want to take this thread off on a tangent.

Sure is! Though you could also add some leafy green vegetable like bok choy with good effect. Do you use fresh ginger in your stir fry?

If you'd rather do something other than steak, you are so good at frying chicken, so you could do your own chicken nuggets, right?

Agreed. I was confused because I had not yet seen Congee Bowery. It's north of Delancey and its entire appearance makes it obvious that it's a branch of Congee Village.

Based on your report, this doesn't sound like a place I'll be rushing to go to, but I'm trying to understand this: As a mushroom-lover, I'm trying to figure out how could they make something full of mushrooms a disappointment. Was it too heavy with root vegetables? Cooked too long or not long enough? Perhaps the ingredients themselves just weren't good enough?

I'm sorry you had a disappointing dinner, but in response to your last paragraph, I would generally advise that if you don't like hot pepper (and Sichuan pepper), you should stay away from all Sichuan-style restaurants. Stick to Cantonese/Hong Kong Style, Shanghainese, Fuzhounese, Chao Zhou, etc. There's plenty of good Chinese food to choose from in New York without seeking out a cuisine whose food tastes out of balance if they decrease the chili and whose non-Sichuan/Hunan-style dishes generally aren't going to be nearly as good as a good place that specializes in those cuisines. Yes, there are some non-spicy Sichuan-style dishes, but I don't think they're enough to build a meal around. And I don't think you missed anything by not ordering the Dan Dan Noodles, because they are firey! I like them, but I don't think you would have. I do agree, though, that some of their dishes can be overly rich.

Marlene, I'm very impressed that you're quitting smoking -- and eating vegetables! Likewise for Susan, Dave, Brooks, Maggie, and everyone else, but I personally witnessed Marlene smoking during her trip to New York and didn't even realize some of the rest of you smoked. I don't have a lot to add other than good vibes, but I do want to mention, especially for Dave's benefit, that I read an article within the last few months that stated that the results of a study showed that smokers who quit successfully took an average of five times trying to quit before they were able to quit for good. In fact, I have a friend who succeeded in quitting the fifth time she tried, and that was many years before I knew her, so both scientific and anecdotal evidence shows that having tried to quit numerous times is not a reason to believe you won't succeed this time. Something else that might or might not be inspirational but could be interesting would be for you to have a look at the "Everybody Loves a Quitter" public service announcements that have been up in the New York subways for the last couple of years or so. I've never been a smoker (I cough too readily and, as a flutist, I'm also too paranoid about breathing difficulties!), but I think these are among the more colorful ads in motion underground. Link to Everybody Loves A Quitter under "Media Campaigns" on the New York City Bureau of Tobacco Control page if you'd like to download a PDF showing three of the ads we subway riders have been looking at. There are more, and there are also Spanish-language ones, and I like 'em all.

As for me, some of you know I miss the really excellent, flaky Malaysian peanut cakes. The ones I used to like best were made in Bahau, Negeri Sembilan, by I believe Hong Choong, Sdr. Bhd. and came packed in paper (no plastic packaging in Malaysia in the 70s, I think, or at any rate, not much). As far as I can tell, you can't get really good peanut cakes of that type in New York.

No kidding, TP! That lunch looks sensational!

Where are the best candlenuts grown?

I would say that chili is not a soup, although it has a fairly high liquid content and is eaten in a bowl.