Pan

Not listed as such, but ask for it.

I visited Hong Kong in 1987. I drank some water out of the tap in a bathroom in Kai Tak Airport, and mentioned to the woman I was travelling with that it tasted strange. The following dialogue then took place: "You drank the water?!" "Yeah." "It's not safe to drink the water in Hong Kong." "Bullshit! This is a big, modern city! How could it be unsafe to drink tap water here?" "If you don't believe me, ask the woman over there." So to settle the question, I asked a woman at the Hong Kong Tourism counter, and she said it wasn't "recommendable" to drink tap water in Hong Kong. Is it safer now than it was in 1987?

I want to recommend a new dish I tried today: 131. Steamed Tumip w. Cut Spicy Pepper. Translucent slices of turnip in a tasty, delicate light brown sauce with bits of cut hot pepper, scallions, and other tasty stuff. Very refreshing.

Condoms existed in the early 50s [though I don't see the relevance] when my mother, at the age of 19, was told by her mother that she was becoming an old maid and asked when she would get married (she got married at 20 and felt she was too young). In other words, you would have been nagged about why you weren't married, not why you didn't have children out of wedlock. In terms of your points about how boys and girls play, I think most of the difference is ascribable to enculturation, not biology.

Rich, I think you're probably misremembering. I filled out surveys for a few years, and it was always a 0-3 rating system. I think it's pretty inconceivable that they've ever allowed surveyors to use a 0-30 rating system. Think about it: What instructions would they give for each whole number in the rating?

Water is not safe to drink anywhere in China, as far as I know, including Hong Kong (though I'd love to be corrected if the water supply is now purified in Hong Kong or somewhere else in China). I've never spent time in Guangzhou but the water in Shanghai is known to be dangerous to drink without boiling and even when boiled tastes so bad that I found it tough to drink tea there and tended to stick with bottled water. Because of the use of nightsoil (human excrement) as fertilizer more than for any other reason, it is unsafe for visitors with no built-up tolerance to the local microbes to eat raw fruits or vegetables that can't be peeled. It is safe to eat cooked food, and I also ate pickles, figuring that since they were fermented, there was a better chance they were safe. I may have been wrong on that but I'm glad I indulged.

For more okra, inspiration, have a look at the Okra thread in the Cooking Forum.

Karen, I have to demur here. Many great artists haven't been very good self-promoters at all. And many of the best self-promoters are people who I would call mediocre to poor artists, though the success of their self-promotion caused them to be regarded as great. Furthermore, some great artists were blessed with a rich inheritance and thus had no need to earn money from their work. Corot is one example.

When young men starve themselves, does that slow or reverse secondary sex characteristics (facial hair, etc.)?

Of course, there's no real way to make a dent in the huge number of cheap eats in town on a week-by-week basis, but it is possible to have some 52 reviews of under-$25 places per year. That they don't do that seems to me rather an institutional choice than an inherent limitation.

Seconded!

I agree to an extent: Pushing the envelope is great, if and when it works. But not having tried any desserts at Cru, I wouldn't offer an opinion on whether these desserts work or don't.

I thought paraffin was carcinogenic if ingested. Is that an old wives' tale? And even if so, count me out on eating it!

I got delivery from Klong tonight. Green Papaya Salad (Som Tom on other menus, but my pronunciation was not understood) and Duck Rama Dish. Very nice Som Tom with some bite; the duck was not as peppery but the sauce was nice. (It's a peanuty sauce.) Mindblowing? No. But good delivery for an evening that's so far turning out very dreary for Yankees fans...

Count me in. And I have a friend (ex-girlfriend) who lives nearby and would probably love to join us.

No, they're not, but if the percentage of men among anorexics is increasing, that would seem to be further support for the notion that this is something other than a genetic trait. There must be some cultural reason for it, something about current societal conditions in countries where this phenomenon is on the increase among men. What that would be, I couldn't say.

That's not my point, though I personally know of one restaurant that bribes or bribed people to vote for it. My point is that a turnout of 3% of your respondants voting in any way on a particular place - well, is that analogous to an election in which virtually all voters vote one way or the other for President, let's say? Supposing one restaurant is rated by 200 people and another by 12. Also, if you haven't read Fat Guy's article on Zagat, I recommend it. One issue stated that a place was "better than its rating."

If it were really a democracy, wouldn't it reflect an absolute majority of all voters' preferences, knowledgeable or otherwise? Zagat is not really a democracy, as Fat Guy and others have pointed out.

We made reservations at Old Shanghai Moon (calling just before taking a cab there to check if they had room) but probably didn't have to. My Mandarin is rudimentary and our waitress did speak some English, as do many people in Shanghai. It's also not uncommon to find English-language menus, even in some inexpensive, out-of-the-way places in that city.

Which place is next? It's never too early to start planning, is it? I vote for Franny's, but there are various other coal oven places right here in the East Village.

That's interesting; I've never heard that before. What I've always heard is that it's often associated with an obsession with perfection and an unconscious desire for young women not to grow up (starve yourself and you eventually stop menstruating, e.g.). If your observation is cross-culturally accurate, we should probably expect more eating disorders to be expressed in Malaysia nowadays, as the incidence of child-rape - previously something that was just about unknown in Malay villages (or at least the ones I could have heard news of), though possibly because people may have previously been more reluctant to speak up about abuse by teachers and other authority figures - has seemingly skyrocketed, if the sensational stories in the Malaysian press and figures on reports of abuse are to be believed.

Amy, I ate at some other places while I was in Shanghai, and the food tended to be good everywhere (except for one wretched place on Nanjing Lu), but the only meal that was outstanding from beginning to end was at Old Shanghai Moon. I liked a dim sum lunch I had, but it was way out of the center of town on the Pudong side of the river (a really long cab ride from the Peace Hotel, where we were staying - 40 minutes, I think!). I was in Shanghai for only 3 days on my trip this past August.

It's Sietsema, Todd. Oakapple, I disagree with the idea of the Times simply not reviewing inexpensive restaurants. Not all NYT readers are rich. And I'd have to say, I felt Asimov covered that beat better than Sietsema. I didn't always agree with Asimov, but I sometimes wonder whether Sietsema is occupying the same planet as the rest of us, given his praise for a horror show like Proton Saga, for example. I realize I went there only once, but my Asam Laksa was so horrendous there that I cut Sietsema no slack for repeatedly rating that place highly. And that's not to mention other odd things like his ratings of Italian restaurants, which so many eGulleteers scratched their heads at.

Monica, I'm privileged to have a very good Bangladeshi store about 2 1/2 blocks from here, so I would never consider ordering spices online.

Emilymarie, are you sure Jean-Georges Vongerichten, with his ever-enlarging empire, is still mainly motivated by an "innate understanding of food and of how to put ingredients together"? At a certain point, don't fame and money (not necessarily in that order) become more important to some chefs? And Karen, what are you talking about?!