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Wow, I love the look of those dark heirloom tomatoes!

I'm thinking some more about this. With only two days in New York, I think you should steer clear of both Ouest and Pampa and go to really great places, a description that I don't think fits either of those two. Ergo my mention of Babbo (which I haven't yet visited) and Lupa (which I've been to twice and love). You should also have a pastrami lunch (or, if you prefer, dinner) at Katz's. I haven't been to Devi yet but loved Amma when Suvir Saran and Hemant Mathur were there, and it's clear that Devi's cuisine is similar to what I had at Amma. Devi is serving two $60 tasting menus (one vegetarian, one non-vegetarian), which are within your price range if you don't have wine. And since you'll want another lunch possibility than to go to Lupa and Babbo in the same day, consider the bar room at The Modern, at the Museum of Modern Art, which has gotten a lot of positive reaction on this board. You can't see any menus on their overly arty website, but the prices look OK for you. All of these places except Katz's require reservations, and you'll want to get them as soon as possible. If you decide to go to Babbo without reservations, line up before opening time. I think I recall that when we asked a hostess at Lupa about this, she said to show up about 30 minutes before opening time to be guaranteed seats at the bar.

For places I think of as actual budget restaurants, look at THE BEST: "Non-Fancy" NYC Restaurants. For $75/person dinners? It seems to me, that eliminates only really expensive places. Go to Lupa. Heck, I suppose you could even go to Babbo, since their pasta tasting menu is $59 per person without the wine pairing (here's their website). Places that specialize in seafood? Sure. Well, the places I go to that specialize in seafood are rather less expensive than that and usually Chinese or Korean. Off the top of my head, though, people have raved about Le Bernardin and Aquagrill. Based on the menus on Le Bernardin's website, dinner would bust your budget but you could go for the $49 lunch prix fixe. Aquagrill seems to be within your budget for dinner, though (have a look at their website). I went to Le Bernardin many years ago and was fairly underwhelmed, but again, that was many years ago, and there have been personnel changes in the interim. I've never been to Aquagrill. For the record, I don't consider Ouest or Pampa budget restaurants, and I've been to both. Based on a quick check of their menu on menupages.com, it looks to me like Ouest's prices have gone up considerably since the time I was there, but note that they have an earlybird $29 prix fixe dinner if you order before 6:30. Pampa is not cheap but serves very generous portions. I haven't been there for over a year now but will go back one of these days with a friend who lives in that neighborhood and is a fan of the place. I like it, too. Just don't get the entrana (skirt steak) that's supposedly for two; share the order that's supposedly for one. Really, unless things have changed a great deal since all the other times I was there, the portions of steak are really, really big. And you'll want to leave room for their desserts, which are excellent. I also like their Morcilla (blood sausage) and their garlic fries. And now I'm wondering what price range would constitute a "cheap" hotel for you.

Well, at least in Hotel Circle, it's a lot better. Granted that I arrived after a heavy monsoon with flooding had recently subsided, but the tap water was quite alright, though nothing special.

I guess on the one hand, I may be less certain that such formal controls are so reliable or, even if so, do much to ensure accurate and knowledgeable criticism. Anyone who's been to a concert and when reading the review, concludes that the critic must have been at another concert or never showed up and made it all up knows what I'm talking about. On the other hand, the real "control" on the power of a critic is the byline, as long as it includes the name of the reviewer and not just "staff" or something. And in that sense, at a responsible website like this one, where you can be reasonably confident that each individual member is posting under only one screen name, a similar control is operational. Whereupon, I can only suggest that the reader judge eGullet restaurant reports by essentially the same yardstick as reviews in newspapers and magazines: Do you like the writing? Did it transmit useful information? And over time, have you found the member's opinions reliable or unreliable? Does anything else really count? I also have to point out that at least some critics have had questionable credentials to prove their expertise. Consider Frank Bruni of the New York Times, for example. Yet I gave him a chance to prove himself, regardless of -- correct me if I'm wrong -- his lack of professional background in food.

Sounds like a place I might enjoy. Where is it?

I was away in California for three weeks with limited computer time or access, so I still have a lot of reading to catch up on, including a few blogs. Anyway, though, having caught up on this one, I'm enjoying it. So you grew up in Brazil, later lived in Portugal, and are now living in Maine. Are there other countries you've been to that influence your current cooking or/and eating habits?

Bobmac, there's the possibility that the people running your Thai restaurant are really Chinese.Edited for clarity. ← I find that most of the southeast Asian restaurants in NY's Chinatown offer chopsticks, perhaps for much the same reason that Chinese restaurants in small towns and suburban shopping malls offer forks (or at least used to). It's not out of authenticity, but to please the client or meet his needs or expectations. ← Undoubtedly. But if any of you find a genuine Thai Chinese restaurant (serving the Thai-Chinese fusion food of the Thai Chinese community), you could be in for a great dining experience!

While I was in LA visiting my cousins, I made breakfast one day (this would be about a week ago). I hadn't cooked my scrambled egg dish for a while, but I tried it that day, and proved to myself that I can still do it well. (In fact, that time was probably one of my best efforts.) The concept of the dish is that it is Italian-inspired, and that the eggs end up thoroughly mixed up with vegetables and cheese in a wine sauce, and are saucy and eaten over toast. One large onion or two or three smaller ones, sliced and coarsely chopped. Several cloves of garlic (I believe I used about 5 or 6), moderately finely chopped. Stir fry these on medium heat in a small but sufficient amount of extra virgin olive oil until golden. Add: Two medium-sized tomatoes, sliced and coarsely chopped (I used vine-ripened ones from the local supermarket). A generous quantity of fresh basil leaves (and oregano, if available; fresh Italian parsley and dried basil and oregano if neither of the latter is available fresh), carefully washed and torn up. Also add several grindings of pepper from your peppermill. I don't add salt because of the salt in the cheese (see below), but you may choose to. While the vegetables are frying, coarsely beat two or three eggs with a fork. When the tomato juice has largely dried up, add the eggs, and thoroughly stir the vegetable matter into the eggs while you scramble them and prevent them from sticking to the pan. Choose some cheese you like. I usually have used fior di latte (low-moisture mozzarella, and the Polly-O stuff is fine for this dish) or/and provolone or/and imported parmigiano, but this time, I used Greek feta cheese preserved in extra virgin olive oil with various herbs, which didn't end up stringy but worked out very well. Add a good helping of cheese (I probably used about 13-15 little squares of the feta), stirring to make sure that it isn't concentrated in one part of the dish and not another. Once the cheese has all melted and is evenly distributed throughout the mixture, add wine. I don't measure the wine but I guess I used somewhere between 1/4 and 1/2 cup of the wine that was available, Kendall-Jackson Merlot. Keep stirring and taste to see that the balance is good (I actually did that earlier with the onion/garlic mixture, too, and added more garlic). Once the juice has reduced to a sauce and the dish tastes ready, make some slices of toast. We used sourdough, which added a lot to the taste of the final dish, which was hardly photogenic -- but that's beside the point. The dish, including one slice of toast per person, was enough to feed four people, when combined on the plate with some fresh blackberries. While I'm sure top-quality items would make this dish even better, you really can get good results with Kendall-Jackson Merlot. The Merlot is a strong-tasting wine and stands up to all that garlic and so forth. This is fundamentally a dish for a practical gourmet who wants to slap up a 30-some-odd-minute brunch, not a Keller wannabe. But it sure is satisfying when it comes out right.

Yeah, I had mixed feelings about flying back to New York.

I've never liked canned straw mushrooms or baby corn, both of which have that annoying canned taste to me. I can tolerate canned bamboo shoots and water chestnuts OK if the rest of the dish has enough taste to override the canned taste, but both of those are better fresh in season, and some fine Chinese restaurants do use fresh bamboo shoots or water chestnuts or both.

It's not only Chinese. I knew a young man from Carrara, Tuscany, Italy, who put salt, pepper, oil, and vinegar on his watermelon, just as he did with his salad. He told me that was the traditional way to eat watermelon in that part of Tuscany. I prefer watermelon plain, but it really wasn't bad the way he dressed it.

I don't know. Good.

On the types of rice, I always liked kampung (Malaysian village) rice, which was partly hulled, but white rice (especially Thai rice) was always of higher status there, so I don't think you can find the old style of kampung rice anymore, especially as it seems that most of the rice paddies in Malaysia -- at least the peninsular part -- were converted into pastures some time ago. Well, as someone who used to live in a real village, I'll say that in Malaysia, at any rate, the incidence of any type of diabetes was really low in the 70s, when most people were poor, did hard labor, walked or biked long distances all the time, and were skinny and muscular. And I didn't need hospital figures to know that; kencing manis (=sweet urine) was something people knew about and when it occurred, they could detect it without resort to urban medicine. Now that Malaysians are much richer, drive their cars and motorcycles instead of walking for even a few minutes, and leave the hard labor to foreign workers, the incidence of type 2 diabetes is very high in Malaysia. I don't know if that holds true in China, but I suspect that the incidence of type 2 diabetes is low anywhere where people eat adequately but not lavishly, get a lot of exercise every day from walking or biking and doing hard labor, and remain skinny and muscular. Now, what that has to do with type 1 diabetes is a different issue. I have no idea whether the incidence of type 1 diabetes has increased, decreased, or remained the same in Malaysia, or whether it has ever occurred or now occurs much at all there.

Have a look at my report on CBS Seafood Restaurant in Downtown LA. Great dim sum!

Here's my report on my meal at Joe's. If I ever go back some fine day, I hope it will be equally good. I do know that it would be hard for it to be better.

I guess Joe's has improved since 2003. Anyway, I really want to once again thank everyone who recommended Joe's to me. I went there for dinner with my cousins, a party of four. We sat in their covered outside area, next to the artificial waterfall. We got excellent service, starting with the fact that we were told that we could choose to order anything from either the $58 Heirloom Tomato Menu or the $68 Tasting Menu except the Pork Belly a la carte, in addition to the other a la carte items, and that any number of us could chose the prix fixe menus if we wanted to. In the end, we all ordered a la carte, including one item from the prix fixe menus -- a dessert for which no supplement was charged. There's no way my descriptions will do justice to the food or drink. I'll do my best, but I'll begin by saying that this was one of my top 10 or 20 meals ever. Without exception, everything was not only outstanding but imaginative, special, and surprising in some wonderful, amazing way. The three adults all had three courses, while the 10-year-old had two courses. I decided to go with two fish dishes. I started with the Citrus Cured Salmon with Beet Carpaccio (golden beets, it turned out), Radish-Watermelon Terrine, Mizuna, Aquavit Emulsion. It would be redundant to say that this was absolutely brilliant. The thin, firm slices of golden beet were marvelously earthy; the radish-watermelon terrine was an amazing combination of sweet and tangy, watery and crunchy; the salmon was perfect. Two of my dining partners chose the Heirloom Tomato Salad, Cherry Tomato & Basil Vinaigrette, Tomato Sorbet and Watermelon. This was miraculous! These heirloom tomatoes were so sweet that the little yellow cherry tomatoes really tasted like berries and the larger, beefsteak-sized deep red tomatoes tasted more like a sweet, juicy fruit I had never had before than an ordinary supermarket tomato. The tomato sorbet and watermelon accompaniment were also brilliant. Truly extraordinary! My cousin chose the Tuna Tartare & Smoked Salmon with Sliced Cucumbers, Diced Tomatoes & Lemon Oil. Yet another brilliant dish. I don't know what all the herbs were in the tartare, but it was such a great composition. For a main dish, I chose the Olive Oil Poached Northern Halibut with Vine Ripe Tomato, Onion Tart, English Pea Puree, Foie Gras Essence. I really didn't notice the foie gras essence, which was just part of a great composition. The halibut was one of the best examples of that fish I've ever had. The onion tart was of caramelized onions in a sweet tart, just great. I don't remember all the details, but it was another winner. My cousin's husband ordered the "Kurobuta" Pork Loin Roasted with Braised Escarole, Roasted Corn & Cippolini Onions Ravioli, Roast Garlic Jus. Wow, what a great use of escarole! And what great pork! My cousin had another first course as her second course, the Porcini Mushroom Ravioli with Wild Mushrooms, Parsley & Parmesan Broth. So mushroomy. The 10-year old impressed me by ordering a flight of five goat cheeses instead of dessert! I disliked goat cheese when I was her age and in fact don't usually order it even now. She gave me a little taste of each cheese, and all of them were very good. The little cheese-lover was delighted with her cheeses. I ordered the Caramelized Plums Wrapped in Crepes, Candied Pistachios, Vanilla Ice Cream, Burgundy White Chocolate Sauce from the $68 tasting menu. Wow, what extraordinary red plums! Almost cherry-like! My cousin's husband got the Chocolate Mousse Cake, of which the only thing I could think to say was that it was the essence of chocolate. As my cousin pointed out, it was made with very dark chocolate. If you think this kind of cake is a tired idea, wait until you try it at Joe's! My cousin got the Fig Tart, again a great dessert. I asked the waiter to pair a white wine with my meal, and the wine he chose was one of the best I've had in a long time. It was a Paige 23 2002 Chandon from White Hawk, an establishment in Santa Barbara that he said was so small their only customers are five sommeliers or so. Too bad, because my cousin and I otherwise would have visited the winery while we were in SB. The wine was smokey, earthy, complex, just delicious! My cousin got a bloody mary that was just amazing -- made from those great heirloom tomatoes, of course. My cousin's husband got two Lost Coast beers, which he liked (I didn't try any). Later, I got a chamomile tea which was not just chamomile but also had various other things in it, including some licorice -- complexity in an herbal tea! Iced Tea, Cappucino and Espresso were also drunk. I'm not sure what the item marked "SPECIAL" on the bill referred to. In any case, the total before tip was $210.55, and I actually returned the next day during lunch service with a handwritten note and an additional $20 bill for my waiter, Roberto, because I thought his service deserved a 30% rather than 20% tip. I thought it was a really generous gesture when he gave me a copy of the menu at my cousin's request. I wouldn't have asked -- which, she said, was the reason she did. Roberto treated this as an entirely normal courtesy, mentioning a time when he was given the menu after a great meal at Gary Danko, but the hostess did a doubletake when she saw me taking the menu out and was clearly surprised when I told her my waiter gave it to me, so I do think it was a bit out of the ordinary -- much in keeping with the rest of the meal. I couldn't afford to dine like that very often, but for the pleasure of sharing the experience with three happy people who appreciate fine dining, it was worth every penny.

i guess i should clarify, i'm looking for great plated desserts...i can't believe no one has any suggestions! ← Well, obviously some people have already made suggestions in this thread, but I still have to wonder whether you looked through all the "THE BEST" links. Did you notice the thread on THE BEST: Chocolate Dessert in NYC? Granted, as I write this reply, no-one has posted to that thread since June 2003, but there's still some interesting content, some of it probably still relevant.

For $30/person, consider Bianca, Col Legno, and Cacio e Pepe (there are eGullet threads about all of them but I'm too lazy to look for them now ). All three serve good, honest food and have a pleasant, sedate ambiance.

cupcakequeen, have you had a look at the list of links to "THE BEST" threads in NY Forum, which is pinned at the top of this forum? Some of them, such as "THE BEST: Pastries" are relevant to your quest.

What's there not to get?

Actually, I'd say that Babbo, Lupa, and Otto are all in the West Village, but in a way, they're in a sort of middle area, as the heart of the (West) Village is really around 6th and 7th Avs. I do consider Washington Square part of the Village, not the East Village, though. In any case, though, there are also good choices further east. It all depends on how much you want to spend, what kind of ambiance you want, etc.

I trust a restaurant recommendation from my brother a hell of a lot more than one from any food critic, because I'm almost guaranteed to like anyplace my brother says is great. Our taste doesn't coincide in everything, but in food, it's very similar. I also have done very well with recommendations from some eGullet Society members, but it's of course worth remembering that there is some overlap between professional restaurant critics and eGullet members.

Search results for "Little Italy." Little Italy wouldn't be my choice of location; I'd recommend the East Village, which has various good Italian options, or some restaurants in other locations. But if you do decide to go to Little Italy, look through some of those threads.

This taqueria is legendary, and never deteriorates. When I go to Santa Barbara to visit my aunt, it's always the first place I want to go to, and it had been about five years since the last time, so I had been looking forward to going back for that entire time. I went there twice, for lunch and dinner, during my most recent stay in that beautiful medium-sized city, and was far from disappointed. Whether you've been to many, a few, or even no taquerias before, La Super-Rica will be a revelation to you. The food is truly outstanding, which is why people are willing to wait in long lines to order from the menu and specials on the chalkboard. Everything is made to order except the salsas you can help yourself to in the dining room, and those are also made in-house. The food is inexpensive, partly because the ownership as far as I can remember has never expanded or renovated the space or hired additional help for the small kitchen. You can see here that La Super-Rica is the top-rated restaurant in Santa Barbara on Citysearch, higher rated than some extremely expensive places like Sage & Onion. Click on their entry for more information, but I'll note that the opening hours information is incorrect: They are open until 9:30 on weekends, 9:00 on weekdays. Those might be summer hours only, though, so if in doubt, call.