Pan

I understand that the same dialect spoken in Rapallo, Italy is spoken in Provence. My father likes to tell a story about a man he knew who was nervous about being understood in I believe Marseille because he didn't speak French, but when he spoke to them in Rapallo-dialect Italian, he found out that they spoke the same dialect, which I guess is essentially Provencal though called something else in Italy.

Wayne, I warn you that rambutan generally travels poorly, so it's pretty unlikely that you'll have good rambutan in Canada. If you don't find the fruit very good, therefore, don't assume you won't like the real thing when you have the chance to taste it. As for the mangosteen, even a mediocre one will probably taste pretty good to you; what a wonderful fruit that is!

No disagreement there. I don't judge anything as crap if I haven't viewed or listened to the work, or at least other works by the artist. Even then, the same artist can sometimes create worthwhile works as well as crap. And I do like some of Cage's works, for example. But as you can see, my point has to do with the inherent limits on cuisine as compared with the lack of limits nowadays in the fine arts. The one probable exception is architecture, to the extent that that has a clear utilitarian purpose. That's really interesting about Cage as a mycologist.

I've done a little web research and have found out that the jujube is actually not at all closely related to the date, but neither is it closely related to the olive. General information about Ziziphus: Ziziphus jujuba is the Chinese jujube. It is mentioned on http://www.desert-tropicals.com that Olea europaea (Olive) is a member of the Oleaceae Family. A page on the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences Department at the University of Arizona Pima County shows that the date palm has the Latin designation Phoenix dactylifera, and is a member of the Palmae family, which also appears to be called the Arecaceae family. You can see a listing of genera of that family here.

Man are you getting ripped off Pan, if you aren't getting at least 10 panchan at your local Korean restaurants! Heck, usually you just keep askin', they keep bringin'. ← Seven is enough! Seriously, I go to Korean restaraunts only when I'm really hungry, because the panchan plus the dish is a really big meal.

How about olive oil ice cream?

Wow, looks like you had a 10-plate panchan at the Korean restaurant! That's a lot of side dishes! What kind of pa-jun was that?

One of my childhood favorites was a dish my mother cooked occasionally: Leg of lamb with pureed carrots, onions, black pepper, coffee, and cream (she used milk), from the Swedish Princess Cookbook.

They didn't offer me a free meal with friends. The offer was the takeout, which did serve me for two meals. I do consider that we had a good banquet, like the food at Sweet 'n Tart, and recommend the establishment, with the caveat that communication can be difficult at times and certain things have to be made very clear in advance.

Fully agreed, Sam.

Fashion has clear utilitarian limitations, like cuisine. That's an involuntary limitation. Everything conforms to the laws of physics! So I respectfully decline to see that "limitation" as having any real relevance to this discussion. It probably doesn't. We could argue about whether the avant garde movement in the fine arts in fact ended when there were no more rules to break, but my main point really relates to the limitations on bad avant-garde (or so-called "avant garde") fine art vs. cuisine. As a matter of fact, I think there was plenty of excellent avant garde work in all the fine arts, but I believe that the bulk of the greatest of it was already finished in the 50s or 60s and since then, there have been some good, even great artists in every field, but the lack of boundaries or a consensus on what constitutes art, let alone good art, has meant that, with the assault on previously-inviolate rules having long since been taken to the greatest extremes, we have a situation today of many people working in individual styles plus fashions in "art" being promoted by a critical establishment and a small number of very rich people (e.g. the Saatchis, as I understand), especially in media which require a great expenditure to collect. And this media-driven establishment is calling these fashions "avant garde." Is that analogous to the situation in cuisine? In some ways it is, but as has often been pointed out, even a $500 meal is nowhere near the expense of a $100,000 painting. In music, too, to the degree a ticket-paying audience is necessary, there's some insulation from the whims of critics in deciding what approved style will be the "avant garde" of today.

What's a pib? Web searched turned up "Press Information Bureau," "Processor-In-a-Box," "Philosophy-in-Business," and "El Producto Interno Bruto" (=Gross National Product). www.m-w.com found no such word. I'm very curious.

In my experience, the only people who make good mock-meats are the Chinese. You don't have to be a vegetarian or eat a vegetarian meal to enjoy Shanghainese mock duck. It's not even that much like duck, which may be part of the secret. I loved a little vegetarian dim sum stall in Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon, when I visited that beautiful city in 1987.

I've had Chinese sweet preserved jujubes and olives, and they definitely aren't the same thing. Jujubes are a kind of date for sure.

In the Christo and the Gates thread in the New York Forum, Bux wrote: Telling point, Bux. Perhaps a good meal would be most apt to be considered "art" by the art world if it were wrapped in large quantities of pink plastic by someone claiming thereby to be an artist. "Avant garde" food still has to fulfill a requirement of edibility, by contrast with some of today's so-called avant garde art (which I'd call post-avant-garde), which can be absolutely anything someone claims is art, including (at a 70s show in the Guggenheim in New York) a year's supply of used toilet paper by the "artist." Standards like edibility for food seem to me to limit the boundaries of the culinary arts in ways in which nothing at all limits the "fine arts." And as a musical example, I "played" a shortened version of John Cage's 4'33" in my Music Appreciation classes this week -- a "piece" in which the "performer" does not play a note. It provoked an interesting discussion -- none of my students considered it music, nor do I, but it is generally so considered by scholars. Imagine, by analogy, going to a restaurant for a "meal," during which you were served no food or drink but given empty dishes and silverware while the staff pretended to give you things to eat and drink, then expected you to pay for real at the end. Would anyone consider that "cuisine" or credit the chef with anything worth a damn?! Can you imagine a statement analogous to this one? American Masters: John Cage (PBS) A "piece" with no music, the most important piece on any level? Some of you may violently disagree that most of what's called "avant garde art" nowadays and in the last 30 years or so (though the Cage dates back to 1952) is bullshit, but I wonder how many of you would agree with me that the need for edibility creates limits on just how far cuisine can go in the direction of total nonsense. I think that that utilitarian grounding to the sense of taste is a positive point for the art of cuisine by comparison with the state of boundarylessness the fine arts are in nowadays.

Devi is upscale. For Thai, so is Kittichai, which I also haven't been to. The other places we're talking about are inexpensive. You also might consider Klong for Thai. I don't love it, but then I don't love any Thai restaurant I've been to in Manhattan.

I'm glad you warned me about the volume of the music. I enjoyed the video.

I have yet to go to Devi, but it obviously doesn't fit into your criteria. I think you'd have some arguments for Angon, which is Bangladeshi. Keep in mind that Indian and Chinese cuisines are very different from region to region. I don't know if that's equally true in Thailand. I'm sure the Malay-majority southern provinces are pretty different from the Northeast, but it is a much smaller country than either India or China.

That's gnocchi, and it's "nyok(k)i." "Gn" in Italian is like "ni" in "onion." "Nochee" would be spelled "noci." Noce means "walnut." Perhaps you're thinking of that word.

Nice article (2 pages, so it goes into some detail), and eGullet gets a mention with a link.

I vote for Madras Cafe as one of them. Are you restricting this to Manhattan?

I finally got to visit the restaurant this afternoon, and it was hopping around 4:30. I spoke with the manager I negotiated the menu with, and also with the man in the suit and tie who was there at the end of the meal that evening and turns out to be the overall manager of the restaurant. I had thought he was somewhat dismissive and not very apologetic at the time, but both of them were apologetic this time. He said they had made a mistake, his waiters don't speak much English and had misunderstood me, that I have a right to be upset about it, and asked me what I want him to do about it now that it's over and done with. I said if he could see his way clear to giving a free meal for me and a couple of friends, that would be a nice gesture. In the end, I settled for a half of the chicken I had liked so much at the banquet plus a watercress dish. I think that's OK. I had a chance to have my concerns heard, they apologized, and they gave me something in partial compensation. I'm satified and will go back to the restaurant for future meals, but if I ever have a banquet there again, I'll make sure the wait staff are informed in advance in clear terms that they are to keep the leftovers and offer them to members of the party at the end of the meal. I'm sure they weren't overjoyed to give me anything for free, but they know they made a mistake and it's possible that they will take my suggestion to explain to the waiters that they shouldn't assume people don't want to take leftovers home.

That's news I can use. Please post about them separately, either in separate threads or in threads like the one about your favorite "middlebrow" restaurants or non-fancy restaurants.

Don't forget that both customers and management have the freedom to express their opinions, as long as that's done within the bounds of the User Agreement. It's unfortunate that feathers have been ruffled, but haven't we learned something from the experience?

Indeed, there have been numerous discussions of cheese. Here's the most relevant.