Pan

Well, Nathan, as someone who raised chickens in rural Malaysia, I had a very different experience. I found that none of the chickens hung out in the coop except to sleep at night, and all of them, male and female alike, loved to scratch and peck at food and walk around the yards. Maybe your chickens in Vancouver were taking refuge inside because the weather is a lot colder there than in equatorial Malaysia?

This post was all very interesting, but I have another question for you and anyone else who wants to answer it: What's the difference between an "educated opinion," which -- correct me if I'm wrong -- you presume to be a form of knowledge, and "received opinion," which is simply what the prevailing taste currently holds, taken on as one's own opinion unthinkingly?

Looks good. How much did that cost? I walked past the street sign in your first post today, on my way to Skyway after work. I had some Ipoh Bean Sprouts (lame today -- not enough soy sauce or pepper, and the sprouts were a little old) and Curry Mee with Yong Tau Fu (very good, and fans of hot pepper should try the long hot green pepper stuffed with fish -- that stuff is really hot!). When you're not going for a liquid meal or cooking at home (do you do that much?), where have you been eating out in your hood lately?

Yum!!

Yeah, their xiaolong bao aren't really the thing to order, because those are Shanghainese. Get the Sichuan wontons in red oil!

Great pastries, as usual from you! They look great, and I only wish teletaste existed!

I'll look forward to getting to know you better, donbert. Feel free to PM me if my participation in any of the New York stuff you're doing this week would be useful. I'm a bit busy but do have some free time on some days.

Yes, it's an accurate description of what the Lower East Side used to be like, and Russ & Daughters was part of that. I live nearby and hardly ever buy anything there, though. Their stuff may be good, but it's quite expensive.

The advanced quiz produced a more accurate result:

Nope, definitely not uniquely Southern. Jewish humor is full of very funny self-deprecation.

Well, I showed up as 41% Dixie, "Barely in Yankeedom." Just because I use "You all" to address a group of people (I sometimes use "You guys," too) and say "crawfish" instead of "crayfish," a legacy of my father's year in residence at LSU when I was 2?

Interesting find, but... somethings amiss with that first one. I mean, my God, I've never been north of Hot Springs. And I'm expanding that a little farther into the frozen north next week when I go to Nashville. I only scored a 58% southern rating. You certainly can't go by that thing. ← I rated 55% Dixie, and I am a New Yorker born and raised!

Don't feel penitent. Food-related or not, your life story is fascinating and a good read! I guess I'm just impatient to read the rest of the story.

So, the results: The cocktails were expensive and LAME. The gnocchi were oversalted even though I asked for light on the salt, and just very good for bar food, I thought. I tried a bit of a charcuterie plate, which was not bad. So I had fun talking to people and then had a REAL dinner around midnight at Katz's!

He follows up with: The odd thing is that, while I've heard plenty of complaints about Alain Ducasse at the Essex House (and indeed about every top restaurant), the one complaint I've never hear is that anybody was ever treated with "derisive huff and repellent hauteur." I really think this must have been some sort of awful miscommunication or bad fit, maybe a language issue. I mean, go to the Modern and ask for the sommelier -- same guy at his new job -- and see if you get anything near "derisive huff and repellent hauteur." It's just not going to happen. As for the analogy to music criticism, can you imagine any of the above being written in the context of serious arts criticism? ← What would the equivalent be? A review of a Martha Argerich recital at Carnegie Hall which begins with a complaint about one's treatment at the hands of the Carnegie Hall staff? I don't think so! Because the review is not of Carnegie Hall, but of a recital taking place there. Actually, I could make a complaint about the behavior of the staff at the Metropolitan Opera on one occasion, when I had tickets to stand for a performance of Wozzeck, and when a bunch of people left in between acts, the staff rudely refused to allow any standees to take those freed-up seats. But surely, a critic would never be treated that way by the Met -- it's a classist kind of snobbery.

I didn't choose the location of the party. I'll enjoy the company and make the best of service problems on a Saturday night.

I had never heard of Sterling Hall, so I Googled it and got this result. Excerpt: ChefCarey, I enjoyed reading your latest installment and will look forward to however many installments are left. I'm a bit younger than you. I was a little kid through most of the 70s and came of age in the AIDS-terrified 80s, not the permissive early 70s. Though my parents participated in the anti-war movement, I was a youngster at the time. When as a 5-year-old, my mother marched down 5th Av. with me on her shoulders, all I knew was that it was pretty with all the candles. I knew when I saw things exploding and body bags coming back on TV news that something bad was happening and people were dying, but not much else. And I thought that Watergate was the thing the good guys on the Senate committee were doing. Those kinds of political things were complicated for a 5/6-year-old. But Washington Square Park was a lot of fun in those days, with the friendly, already gently aging hippies (or so they seemed to a boy of my age -- maybe a product of their long beards). I used to hang out there around 1972 as a 7-year-old, with my older brother, who was already in high school. Some other things, like "open corridor" schools, as implemented in my local public elementary school, weren't good at all. And lots of families in my neighborhood were breaking up as a result of men not being able to deal with Women's Liberation and trying to tell their wives not to pursue a career or go to college -- a rather different situation from yours. My mother took part in the Women's Liberation Movement, went back to college at my father's suggestion and ultimately fashioned a second professional career for herself as an anthropologist (her first, to support my father through grad school, was as a legal secretary), and my parents stayed together. But none of what I'm talking about is really about food. Let's hear more about the food!

If she's receptive, introduce congee to her. That's a great way to use leftover rice (I imagine cheap rice is to be had in Wichita) with scraps of this and that for flavoring, and it's filling and calorie-rich for the children. Among other things, it's another place where eggs can be used. I think that pork fat may be pretty useful for this family, to flavor things from congee to baked beans to split pea soup. If there is a decent East Asian store in Wichita, there are certain flavorings that should be buyable in bulk and good to use in small quantities to impart a lot of flavor. I'm thinking of items like soy sauce, Shaoxing rice wine, rice vinegar, fried shallots, fermented black beans, dried baby shrimp, dried fish, dried chilis or/and chili flakes, etc. These things add taste -- and in many instances, protein -- to the diet. The fried shallots and hot peppers can just be used in small quantities out of the container, while some of the others just need to be reconstituted with some hot water for a few hours. It would take a long time to use up a bag of any of those items. Meanwhile, you could have tofu with black bean sauce; fried rice with baby shrimp, plain omelette, and leftovers, with fried shallots sprinkled on top; congee with dried fish, some kind of cheap squash, soy sauce, chicken stock (made from the carcass of an already-eaten chicken, et al.), and some chili flakes; etc.

That's funny!

I agree with a small percentage of that: I don't think a very picky eater should be a critic, unless there's some particular beat that's tailored to that person's preferences (like you could be a vegetarian and review restaurants for a vegetarian magazine, but a vegetarian as the New York Times reviewer wouldn't fly). Beyond that, I can't buy the love-every-ingredient requirement. I mean, do you reject the whole notion of acquired tastes? A good food critic must be born into the world appreciating every food on the planet? Anything he needs to learn to appreciate represents dereliction of duty, and if there's so much as one edible substance in the world he doesn't enjoy he should slink away, humiliated, because his palate isn't sufficiently broad? I assure you, all critics -- at least every working critic I've ever gotten to know -- have preferences, likes and dislikes. The good ones come to terms with them instead of imposing them willy-nilly. Go back to mackerel. There's no need to like it. Let's say you're going to write an article comparing six sushi restaurants. What you need to be able to tell the reader, among other things, is which place serves the best fish. So, among other samples, you get a piece of mackerel at each. You don't have to like the stuff to be able -- assuming you've bothered to educate yourself -- to tell which place serves better mackerel and why. So, you've done your job -- you haven't sacrificed your flavor-preference principles, you've just dealt with a situation. ← Acquired tastes are fine, but I can't see being able to help someone choose a good version of something you truly hate. I think that a mind open to a broad variety of tastes is a requirement for the type of criticism you're talking about (while agreeing with your caveats about vegetarians and so forth). Maybe that shows a lack of sufficient imagination on my part.

No. Yes. Would you trash mackerel, or learn what makes mackerel good? Are you contending that a food writer who's personal taste doesn't accept mackerel should go out and campaign against mackerel in order to "shape opinion"? Of course not. How about a "Chinese food sucks" campaign? It would be absurd. A food writer who engages in criticism and does a really good job of it mostly shapes opinions at the margins, not at the core. For example you might pick a restaurant that you think the consensus of knowledgeable diners has under-rated, and you might explain by reference to common standards and language why you think it deserves better. But you're not going to make your case by saying "USDA Prime beef is bad, moldy fruit is good." ← I do agree with you generally, of course. I hate verbena, so there's no way I could judge the quality of something with a strong verbena taste. I wouldn't therefore trash it -- that would be absurd! -- but I wouldn't be able to give a positive appraisal to it. A positive appraisal of it would necessarily be someone else's opinion, or an attempt to project what I imagine would be someone else's opinion. I think that what a good food critic actually needs is a very broad palate such that there are no ingredients s/he hates per se, not an effort to make allowances for ingredients s/he hates. Such allowances are at best a distant second to an actual appreciation of the ingredients. I don't think I'd agree with an analogy with music, where it's not simply a question of physically hating the taste of something. I could affirm the technical competence of a minimalist composer on his/her own terms but still trash minimalism on aesthetic grounds as a boring type of music that I fear may be damaging to standards of what makes music (Western and Indonesian alike) worthwhile and types of active listening that I consider important. I don't think there's a direct analogy with appraisal of food, which is so immediately physical.

Wow, tempoyak with petai! Talk about stinky! (For the record, I find tempoyak OK with nasi ulam, but prefer budu [fish sauce]. I do like petai on occasion, but it sure does a number on the urine.)

But then, aren't you substituting other people's opinions for your own? Is a critic supposed to present received opinion, or shape opinion?

The waiter should either know or be able to ask and get the answer. And I call "bullshit" on the supposed requirement to order a glass of wine with the meal. I will or won't, according to MY whims. If you want to require all diners to have wine with the meal, print it on the fucking menu. Otherwise, serve me professionally and keep your mercenary complaints to yourself. If I like the meal (including the service), I'll recommend the restaurant to others who may order wine, and I may come back and order wine another time. If you behave unprofessionally, I'll never come back and will pan the service publicly and privately. These things may hurt your income, asshole!

I definitely take your point here. But is it possible that even so, your opinions about what is best are STILL subjective? I mean, what are your bases for determining that something is great? Because others say it's great, or because you have certain criteria about what constitutes greatness? [i write "you," but I could ask anyone including myself this question.]