Pan

Where do you go when you want genuine Provencal Soupe de Poisson and Salade Nicoise? What if you're looking for Norman, Alsatian, Breton, or Burgundian cuisine? How many genuine regional specialists are there in the five boroughs, and which regions are represented? Inquiring minds want to know.

This afternoon, slkinsey, SarahD, Blondie, JosephB and I had a disappointing lunch at Lombardi's. After lunch, all of us except Blondie went to this gelateria on Mott St. between Houston and Prince. It's terrific! Probably the best gelato I've had in New York, and it would probably be superior quality even in Italy. I got a double cone of hazelnut and chocolate. The flavors were very concentrated. Great hazelnut flavor, and rich dark chocolate! For $4, I consider that a bargain. Only the sugar cone itself was blah, and you can always get a cup instead. Apparently, many other people agree that this place is a good value, as a line formed outside the small premises. There's no room to eat in the shop, but don't let that stop you from going!

Wow, what great pictures! I was up at 6 A.M. because I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn't go back to sleep until after 6. I'm a bit tired now, but the weather here in New York is wonderful, the trees are blooming, and I took a bunch of photos. Then, the card on my digital camera died and I wasn't able to copy any of the photos to my hard drive. But anyway, enough about me. If the crystallized ginger is too strong for you to eat by itself, try using it with poultry. For example, if you want to make a cranberry sauce or some other kind of fruit-based sauce (a cherry sauce, perhaps), maybe especially one that also includes some kind of citrus zest or/and lemon juice, you can add crystallized ginger to it with good effect. Another possibility is to add it to ice cream. Or, you could add it to stuffing for poultry. I imagine it would also go well with pork, in much the same manner as what I'm describing for poultry. Basically, treat it as a tangy fruit.

So if toxins are being concentrated in filter feeders, how does only eating a sellect part of the scallop help? I have heard from experts that the more delicious a shellfish and the less like mouse guts the edible bits look like, the less likely you are to get poisoned. Well, if the concentration is mostly in the filter, couldn't not eating it help? Also, to balmagowry's point: I used to eat clams in rural Malaysia, and they have to have been pretty damned clean because the water they were filtering was pretty clean water - I knew that because I myself dug them up from the silt near the mangroves on the sides of the stream that ran near my house, and I used to wade in the estuary at the end of that stream, which was then and still is now so clear that you can completely see the bottom from the middle of it. But I'm never sure how clean the water was when I get bivalves in a restaurant. When I do order mussels, I don't eat the ones that didn't open up when they were boiled and won't eat any that taste at all fishy. Am I right to think that if you have to pry open the shell, it's better not to eat the mussel? Adam, I'm guessing the eggs and sperm taste good and that's why you want to eat them, right?

I'm bumping this thread up again to provide a link to my rave review of a meal at Tanoreen in Bay Ridge. 3rd Av. in Bay Ridge is an interesting and quite diverse restaurant row of its own. In a walk to the north after my meal at Tanoreen, I counted Arab, Greek, Italian, Indian, Chinese, and Japanese restaurants. And clearly, the restaurants continue to the south (toward the Verrazano Bridge), too. Any other favorites any of you feel belong in this list?

I'm reading through the posts on this thread again from the beginning. I'm wondering whether we should revisit this idea.

In New York, I see Fresh Samantha juices at least as often as Odwalla. I don't remember if they have an orange juice. Any fans of their juices here? For what it's worth, I definitely rate Odwalla highly - it's fresh-squeezed from high-quality fruit - but I find not-from-concentrate Tropicana orange juice fine for normal drinking.

Interesting. I wonder how many people share your clearly-expressed opinion that a restaurant turning out great food can deserve any number of stars, depending on various factors including the luxury or inexpensiveness of the ingredients, degree of complexity of preparations, quality of the wine list, and a number of aspects of service, decor, and ambiance. I still probably don't completely agree (partly because I place so much more importance on the deliciousness of the food that aspects of the star system are much less relevant to me than to many other people), though I believe I understand the general outlines of your viewpoint. But that's probably a discussion better pursued in thread on the star system. In this thread, it's probably much more pertinent for me to ask what you would think the restaurant would need to do differently in order to merit a 3-star rating. [Edited to insert link.]

Is it safer not to eat it, or is it really the filter that's at issue, since bivalves feed by filtering large quantities of water and thereby absorb and concentrate whatever impurities are in the water? (And no, I'm not being alarmist or telling people to stop eating bivalves, though I limit my consumption of bivalves other than scallops, whose filters as far as I know we don't eat.)

Thanks, Steven. And after that rave, do you agree with the 2-star rating in the Times?

Um, what does that mean in your dialect?

There's gushing and then there's gushing! Yes, of course you have to be careful how you phrase things, etc.

Your story is excellent, but this is my favorite quote from it.

Lesley, I don't have a problem with slamming or gushing reviews if they seem justified.

Geez, pate' and cheese is eating "very simply"? This is going to be fun!

If Marcus had said that reviews should be mostly negative, I would have disagreed with him. But I didn't read him to be saying that. Is that how you read his post, Lesley?

I agree with you, Marcus.

Have a good trip back, StInGeR. I hope your leg heals well and hope you had a good time in these parts in spite of the injury.

I really appreciate your post, Greg. Most informative.

Yeah, I remember that, now that you mention it.

Yeah. And hire me. Flute. Piccolo. Is there a woodwind instrument you don't play? I play only flute/recorder family instruments (well, I have theory teacher-level piano-playing skills). Incidentally, I can remember as a child (maybe in 7th grade) hearing a violist play a Bach cello suite one octave higher than written. I still remember his last name, but I'd rather not mention it. My father asked whether I liked the performance. I said I had. He said that it was a great performance, but it wasn't his: It was a complete copy of Casals' famous recording, in every detail. The point being that musicians are free to attempt exact copies of other musicians' performances, but risk being found out by audience members. I suppose it's more or less the same for a chef who copies another chef's recipes without crediting the source.

Are any of these people still friends, after that?!

Yes, it would. Do you have any idea where these foodstuffs originated?

Politics is a major concern of mine, so I've discussed it over lunch or dinner many times. I also agree with balmagowry that religion can also be an interesting topic. Basically, there are just certain things that are disgusting enough to be distasteful to think about while eating, and they've already been covered here, so I won't mention them.

Yeah. And hire me.