Pan

I haven't been to Bali since 1976 and still remember the amazing babi guling my folks and I had in a hole-in-the-wall eatery in Denpasar. So spicy, so flavorful. I also remember Bali as the first place that I had fresh waterchestnuts that reminded me of crisp apples, in an otherwise not terribly noteworthy Chinese restaurant, also in Denpasar. The waterchestnuts, if I remember correctly, were served for dessert! And I believe they said they were grown locally.

Try that chicken some time. You can get half of one rather than the whole thing.

We turned out to be not the 13 I made reservations for but 15 plus a baby; there were people my parents knew about and I didn't. Anyway, I profusely apologized to the manager, and four members of our group were accomodated at a separate table. I think actually that 13 would have been hard to fit at the table we were given, anyway, and there was but one table, it seemed, that could have fit all of us, but it was in the VIP room and of course had been reserved before we made our reservations. Anyway, the food was good. I will evaluate only the items I had a chance to taste: The crab congee was very good and possibly better than the congee at Congee Village. The lotus root with red bean sauce was also quite good. I started off liking the sea bass with black bean sauce (and lots of onion), but ultimately decided that there was some taste in it that was off to me. That "off" taste was definitely intentional, and certainly, there was nothing at all wrong with the fish; it's just that the sauce wasn't entirely to my taste, and therefore, there was too much of it. A dish of pea shoots came with a good deal of garlic and was also quite pleasant. But I think the two knockouts tonight were soft shell crabs fried with a really tasty spice rub that to my palate included both cayenne and paprika, and a whole chicken (including the head, which I ate) fried with lots of garlic and hacked. I heard reports from the other table of a good lamb dish, and those who like such things liked a dish of shrimps with walnuts, a dish I do not like (the walnuts are glazed with large amounts of sugar and the dish is served with a white mayonnaise sauce). The vegetarian congee reportedly was just OK and not that interesting. With all the controlled chaos tonight, I'd say the dinner was a success, and my mother was saying that she would go to the restaurant again. I would, too, happily (as long as I'm not expected to eat shrimp with walnuts), even if it's not my top choice. I didn't handle payment but lobbied for a good tip because the staff were very accomodating under the circumstances.

My brother and I had a terrific lunch at Lupa today. We arrived without reservations but didn't have trouble getting a table. I arrived first and had some wine at the bar. I didn't take notes on the names, but the wine I got was a nice earthy red wine from Calabria with some complexity and cost $11 for a caraffina. We also shared a caraffina of a nice Sicilian red with our lunch for $13. My brother also had iced tea and was given two free refills of his glass, which was a pretty big and pleasant surprise. I'm tired now and just had a large Chinese meal that I'll post about separately, so I may have to correct some of the foregoing descriptions. That said, after enjoying some rustic bread (salty and oily, but we liked it) and olive oil, we shared a delicious dish of chicken livers with fennel, hearts of palm, and red onion, topped with sprigs of thyme; a wonderful dish of acorn (I believe) squash puree with pecorino romano and farro that was a revelation to me; a cold contorno of chard with whipped mozzarela di bufala; another contorno featuring chanterelles; a savory custard with corn starch and parmigiano that was lovely; and a stupendous tartufo for dessert, which had delicious chocolate, was filled with gelato that had an excellent hazelnut taste, and was topped with bits of walnut. The chanterelles were dried and we both found them somewhat too chewy, though we liked the taste. I thought the chard contorno was least impressive dish. Overall, though, it was a great lunch and the best Italian food I've had since I was in Italy. My brother felt the same way. Bravo Mario! By the way, the whole lunch excluding the $11 + tip caraffina I paid the bartender for separately was $60-something plus tip, which both of us thought was a terrific value.

So they lost your business, but I wouldn't have even asked in that circumstance. You leave the certificate home, oh well, would be my attitude. I find it hard to blame them, especially as I'm guessing it was your first time there. If you were a regular customer they trusted, that would be different. One time, I went to Frutti di Mare, a local restaurant in the East Village where I've been a customer for probably about 20 years, but less and less now that I have so many more appealing options. Anyway, though, one time, I forgot their no-credit-card policy and didn't bring enough cash to cover the bill. I apologized profusely and said I would go to the nearest bank, get money, and return to pay the check. They didn't make a big deal about it, I went and got the money, and I returned and paid the check. But they had known me for years. Had I been a first-time customer, they might have been considerably edgier about letting me leave the premises before paying. By contrast, Cornus had the certificate in his hand and they tried to get out of honoring it. That's quite different from your request for a rain-check.

Um, no, I set the table for dinner tomorrow night. The only thing I don't put out the night before is the silverware. Breakfast we'll eat in the kitchen! ← Where do you eat lunch? Where I grew up -- a sizeable apartment for New York, but with the big room being the livingroom -- the kitchen was too narrow to set up a table, let alone put chairs around it. We ate our meals at the dining room/hall table (the room has both functions), as my parents still do today.

Marlene, I'm glad your meal was such a success! I'm also impressed that you set the table for breakfast the previous night. I can't imagine ever doing that, but then again, I live in a very dusty location.

That sounds like a negative remark. Is it? Thanks for the recommendations. Has anyone had a seafood dish other than congee at this place? My mother wants to order some shrimp dish or other.

Congratulations on your gifts, Marlene, and Merry Christmas!

Sanur is where again? I didn't like the savory food I had at Curry Leaves, but that was a few years ago. Have you ever compared their savory food with Restaurant Malaysia or/and Sentosa?

Thanks, Suzanne.

In a similar vein, I like to buy nuts at my local Bangladeshi store. I like their cashews and almonds, but I wish they got Iranian pistachios nowadays. Bad relations between countries can be very annoying for food-lovers.

Merry Christmas, Anil! What dumplings do you like there? Also, are there any flavors of congee you particularly recommend? This question is for you too, Suzanne, because my father will be having congee for dinner tomorrow while the rest of us eat a variety of dishes.

Agreed. Salt has its place, and if I didn't think so, how would I be able to eat so much of the Korean, Chinese, and Malaysian food that I like? Salted nuts to me are not a judicious use of salt, and obscure and overwhelm the taste of the nut.

Doc, it sounds like you're blessed with not having a sweet tooth. Do you like pecan pie, cheesecake, cannoli, gelato, dulce de leche, or other desserts that don't have a sour, spicy, or salty element, or much of one? Or are you strictly a key-lime pie, gelato di limone, salty pralines kind of guy? I hate excessive salt in desserts and don't really need any. An even bigger pet peeve is salted nuts. So maybe I'd crusade against saltiness.

There used to be a Thai restaurant in my neighborhood that was pretty mediocre except for one great dish, which I miss: Whole red snapper with mango, fish sauce, lime juice, cashews, and hot pepper. Of course, that's probably a whole lot more complicated than the chicken dish you're describing, which sounds like it just has mango puree slathered on it. You'll note that that great sauce on the fish was a combination of sweet, sour, peppery, and salty/fishy, plus nutty. Dates on meat can be terrific and if it were something halal, Moroccans would call it a tagine. Tagines even have some brown or powdered sugar added sometimes. (I don't like them to be too sweet, though, and was just a bit put off when a Moroccan restaurant on Atlantic Av. in Brooklyn added lots of powdered sugar.) The thing that seems weird to me about that dish is dates and gorgonzola, not dates and pork. But really, if you think about it, meat plus fruit is a very long tradition. Canard a l'orange. Roast chicken stuffed with apples (though you probably don't eat the apples in that case). Boeuf a la flamande (beef stew with quinces). Prosciutto e melone. Etc., etc. I think that adding sucrose, let alone corn syrup, is different from cooking meat with fruit, because fruit has a taste other than pure sugar. As for tomato sauce, I've never added sugar to it, but sometimes, the tomatoes themselves are quite sweet, or/and the wine I sometimes add gives the sauce some sweetness.

I loathe the smoke of most cigars, so it's difficult for me to be sympathetic to your difficulty in smoking outside if it's cold or rainy. But you may have to get used to limits on your smoking, as indoor smoking bans seem to be gradually increasing in EU countries. Would you be really surprised if Austria imposes a ban within a few years?

Are you talking about the place that has a big sign saying "Wholesale Seafood Distributor" (I think that's the wording of the sign, but in any case, with the word "wholesale" prominently displayed)?

If you go to Italy in decent weather, why not smoke your cigar outside on a piazza?

Thanks, hzrt8w. I was interpreting xiao cai as "small vegetables" but wasn't sure if the tones were right and didn't understand what that would have meant, anyway.

I knew about long life noodles. [pleased at myself for knowing something about Chinese food]

Thanks for the great pictures as always, Ellen! Some random thoughts: I saw those honeycomb coals in Beijing last summer, but I don't remember noticing whether anyone was using them for cooking, and I sort of assumed they were for heating in wintertime. But I didn't make a big point to note what fuel was being used in kitchens. Those roosters for sale as food look beautiful; it's almost too bad they were going to be killed. But I wonder how they prevent them from pecking each other in that basket, and why they don't flee. Do they breed roosters for docility in that region? Did you try any of that cheese in the market? I look forward to the third installment!

I have talked about this in some other threads. Chinese eating habits are different from Westerners/Americans. In most Chinese restaurants, you won't find "salads" as you know them in American -- with raw lettuce, raw carrots, raw mushrooms, raw celeries, raw everything and a drizzle of dressing. Chinese in general don't like to eat raw vegetables, with the exception of lettuce for wrapping (e.g. minced squab in lettuce) or for garnishing (e.g. chopped green onions and cilantros).[...] ← You're right of course; poor choice of words on my part. But some of the dishes in dumpling houses in Beijing, for example, had large quantities of raw cucumber in them, for example, as more than a garnish but a major part of the dish. As I said, I operated under the conceit that pickled dishes should be safe but that fresh raw vegetables over which had been drizzled some vinegar/water mixture were not. And the latter were certainly easily available, but fortunately, so were the former (though often garnished with fresh cilantro).

Right. That's why I found the cleanliness offputting. I haven't been to Tokyo in over 29 years (time for a return trip!) and have yet to visit London (upcoming this summer) or Toronto, but no way would I call the streets of New York "clean." However, the cleanliness or otherwise of the streets isn't necessarily a major health issue, as long as we're not talking about large amounts of actual shit or old, rotting garbage on the street or something.

It does depend on the individual. You could be right about seasonal differences. I was there in the summer, after all.