Pan

Whoa, that looks AWESOME! Great pictures, everyone!

Yes, that's indeed a beautiful way to end. Time really flew; thank you for the blog. And for anyone who would go into withdrawal without more great pictures from Susan, you can see more from time to time in the Dinner! thread. Right, Susan?

Agreed completely. I want to see the food I'm eating and the person I'm with. One interesting idea that just popped into my head is that I'd love to see a greater availability of hard cider, and more varieties thereof, and not just in bars but also restaurants. Cider can be very fruity to very dry, and it's possible that a restaurant that sold the novelty of cider pairings with an inventive cuisine might establish a niche for itself. I also think that a really good sake can be amazing and that the trend of high-end restaurants that are not Japanese offering more sake pairings will probably continue. I wouldn't be surprised to see more different kinds of Asian drinks (e.g. Soju/Shochu) offered in mid-to-high-end establishments, especially as Asia increases in global importance and visibility throughout the rest of the world. Continuing with this brainstorm, I was very impressed by some of the food I had in California this past summer. It's often said that national trends in the US start in California. If that's true in the case of cuisine -- and I think it may be -- there could be a spread of a type of cuisine that is fusion without so calling itself, a kind of natural fusion produced by and for people who grew up eating at the local taquerias, Chinese and Japanese restaurants, the Persian place down the road, etc.; a cuisine that emphasizes high-quality and often organic ingredients from the high end to places priced like diners. I believe that the Northwest Coast in the US and Canada (and perhaps the Southwest?) also have developed comparable local cuisines. I hope that we can get food like that in New York without having to pay like $100 a head for it. With wine or another type of high-quality alcoholic beverage that goes well with the food.

That's a good-looking mixed grill there!

I think what's most important in cultivating an appreciation of music and the visual arts which goes beyond "that just sounds/looks good to me" is a trained ear and a trained eye. Similarly, a trained palate is a good thing. Does one have to cook to train one's palate? I doubt it. Could it help? Sure. Same thing in regard to the fine arts.

Is DB & D a really good steakhouse with some of the other dishes really good and some not? (Did someone say that before in this thread?)

I wonder what percentage of diners know that part of their tips always go to management, and what they would think of that. I think many of us know that tip-stealing takes place in a lot of Chinatown restaurants, but I doubt that most of us knew this was happening -- albeit at a lower percentage -- at high-end places. But then, I think perhaps this is best discussed on another thread, so I started one.

I'm with mochihead on this one: The lychee is the most delicious, delicately perfumed fruit of all that I've eaten.

How beautiful!

I thought that constituting tip-stealing and constituted a form of fraud. Waiters sending part of the tip to busboys, sommeliers, et al. is perfectly reasonable, though.

Looks like an expensive festival! Do you have any professional interest in wine, or is this just for fun?

Enjoy your trip to Beijing. Here are the search results for threads including "Beijing" in their titles in the China and Chinese Cuisine forum. Look through the relevant threads and post your question in the most appropriate one.

Heheheheheh ... reminds me of a parody-doggerel from my grade school days: "Oh say can you see Any bedbugs on me? If you do, take a few, But leave some for me!" ← Hmm...My classmate in 8th grade used to sing: "Oh say can you see Any roaches on me? If you do, take a few, they look better on you!" But, getting back on topic, sort of [smile], if you can't bear for this dish that you don't want to eat go to waste, take it somewhere where there are birds that would eat it or something. It used to be easy for us in rural Malaysia: Whatever leftover rice or leftover most everything we didn't want, the chickens would come and eat it.

Daniel, this is not only a great travelogue from you as usual, but also a historic document. It seems totally beside the point now, but I'm curious whether you were hassled photographing the kids who were shaking down tourists and so forth, and did you ever have reason to fear your camera would be stolen and you'd get the crap beaten out of you? [Edited to add that I'm really glad you're feeling better!!]

Tenacious, isn't it? When I was living in rural Malaysia, some lemongrass was growing as a weed at the edges of the yard. Unfortunately, over a period of a few weeks, we snipped all of it for chicken soup and that was that.

Well, I suppose some of the most familiar dishes come from Toisan, but I don't understand why you would say that the "western" world is more familiar with northern Chinese cooking. Go back about 40 years, and it was pretty difficult to find a Chinese restaurant that wasn't basically Toisanese or Cantonese adapted for American tastes -- at least that was certainly true in New York, but I think also in most of the rest of this country. Sure, people had heard of Peking Duck, but what were people having most often?

Tickets can also be purchased in advance, which is highly recommended. I've been shut out of concerts there twice, and in the second case, because tickets sold out in advance. But the good thing is, Birdland is right near there and is unlikely to sell out, from what I've experienced so far.

I trust you all are still reading the foodblogs? Too many great ones for me to feel right about singling out one over another, though I do have my favorites. Also, the cookoffs and of course the Dinner! thread are evergreens. (Some really excellent stuff on the Breakfast thread, too.) But those of you who don't frequent the China and Chinese Cuisine forum might not have been looking at the Home Cooking Series threads that hzrt8w has started, with great step-by-step photos of Cantonese dishes he's been cooking. So far, no-one has posted anything that gives links to all of them, nor have links to earlier ones been posted in later ones, and "Home Cooking Series" appears only in the subtitle, which makes it difficult to search for each thread except to go to the China forum and do an "Edit - Find" for "home cooking" (which works OK as long as the threads remain on p. 1), but here for your convenience are links to the threads in the series at posting time: Pictorial: Fish Cakes with Sa Cha Sauce Pictorial: Soy Sauce Chicken Pictorial: Stir-fried Bitter Melons, foo yu Pictorial: Steamed Chicken with Mushrooms Stir-fried Mustard Greens w/ Salted Fish Look for more installments of the Home Cooking Series in the China and Chinese Cuisine forum. Another great thread with wonderful photos is the one Adam Balic started and has posted copiously to, on Greek Food Images, Hydra. For another of Adam's wonderful ideas, with notable participation by several others, have a look at Fish and other seafood, Images and discussion, which is already four pages long.

Now see--that's exactly where I got my familial reflex against sweet things in savory dishes. My family was Litvak (Jews from Lithuania), and thus grew up with savory rather than sweet cooking. My mom especially had a thing against the sweeter cooking from Galicia. I can still see her, after sampling a piece of overly-sweet pickled herring, making a face and muttering about "galitziana herring" as if it were a swear word. "If my mother bought a herring like that," my mom would say, "she'd throw it away out of spite." So, even though my family didn't know from gourmet, I guess they surely did know from foodie-wars! [...] ← That's funny, because though my grandmother (this is my maternal grandma I'm talking about) was born in South Africa, both her parents were from Vilna Gubernya (the province of Vilna/Vilnius, aka Lithuania). By the way, my grandma also lined the pan with the bigger cabbage leaves. I'll try to remember to ask my mother if she knows where grandma's stuffed cabbage recipe is. I know we had it on an index card.

Yum! When are you inviting me over? Seriously, I love mustard greens -- so tasty and refreshing. And garlic, that's one of God's greatest gifts.

Pan, First of all what was cryptic about my post? ← Only that you assumed that everyone had read to the end of the review recently enough to immediately understand what you were talking about. No big deal; maybe my brain was working slowly last night.

Tempeh is really good when fried do that one side is crispy. I don't think I've cooked with it, but my father used to fairly often make a delicious Indonesian recipe that included tempeh, peanut butter, sweet soy sauce (kicap manis), bean sprouts, crispy fried shallots, I think scallions, and hot pepper. I don't have the complete recipe handy, but I really recommend looking into Indonesian tempeh recipes, because to date, I've never had any tempeh dishes that were as good as Indonesian ones.

Have you looked through the Pre-Theater Dining thread? I'm sure you'll get some ideas in its six pages. Enjoy yourself!

I have no experiences with riding out hurricanes (well, except for the one in Miami I slept through as a 6-month-old), so I can't offer advice, but hang in there!

No, they steam it in a big bamboo steamer, which they bring to the table atop a plate. I like clay pot dishes too, however.