Pan

Yeah, but that's probably also true of Teresa's for Saturday brunch. If I'm right, I still don't think that makes Teresa's something other than a neighborhood restaurant with some patronage by people from "out of area."

In other words, terroir. (What would that translate to in Spanish?)

Interesting line of discussion, Busboy. The Bar/Tabac doesn't exist in the U.S. in any analogous way to the way it exists in France and some other European countries (e.g., Italy). We have lots of convenience stores and "smoke shops" in New York, et al., and there are a very small number of cigar bars (I have the misfortune of having one on my block ), but the Bar/Tabac (and Bar/Tabaccaio) is a place to get bus tickets, stamps, cigarettes, and a drink, among many other things. So what the Bar-Tabac will do and be in the future is open to question. Is there a precedent elsewhere (such as in a different European country) involving a truly similar institution (where you could hang out and drink) that was forced to prohibit smoking inside even though it was the place to buy smokes?

This sounds like great fun! I wish I were there to dust off my recorder and play some Renaissance music. Will there be any musicians at the banquet?

I didn't think that much of it when I had some in Sumatra, but I was 11 at the time, so who knows whether I'd like it more now?

You thought it was wonderful in what way?

That doesn't make sense to me. How much do you think it costs to raise and slaughter a goat?

Austin and Peter...thanks so much for your replies. I'm still slogging through my photos but I found the fruit photos. It's not a sapodilla. I've consulted the book "Asian Ingredients" and the Southeast Asian Culinaria...still haven't been able to identify what it is. They're so tasty, my mouth is watering just thinking about them! I haven't quite figured out how to upload photos on eGullet, but here's a link on my Flickr account: Fruit 1 Fruit 2 The photo I had of the inside was kind of crappy, so I'll just say that the seed was black. Ring any bells? ← Looks like what's called buah salak in Malay and Indonesian. Have a look: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salak

What would be in "Grigliata di Maiale Mista"? Different parts of pig, I presume? Judith, I can't believe it's been a week already! (I'm sure you can, because blogging is a lot of work.) Era moltissimo divertente! Grazie mille, e ciao!

Grand Sichuan St. Marks puts cucumber and celery but no bell peppers in its Kung Pao Chicken, and it's quite good.

Ah, the next blogger has outed herself! I'll look forward to your blog! Meanwhile, Judith, you're doing a wonderful job! Carry on!

No pictures! No fair! Yeah, Italy is interesting. They've respected nude portraits for centuries and are pretty relaxed about eroticism, and at the same time, there are churches all over the place. I love Italy!

I thought of Ore, too, but the Italian painting threw me off from considering him. Very astute of you to notice the shapes of the electrical outlets, Pontormo!

Do most people dress up to go there? If a restaurant is enough of a special occasion place for people to dress up for the purpose of going there, I don't think it's a neighborhood restaurant.

Yep, I did see a set of highly drool-inducing photos by you. Thanks for the link! All the photos of beautiful Malaysian food, Malaysian scenes and Malaysian people (especially the beautiful Malay women in some of the photos) make me really "homesick."

Is this place that old? ← I may be confusing it with another place in a nearby location on Mott.

I think this is really really good. ← I do, too. And further to oakapple's comments about Sripraphai, I would plan in advance and travel over an hour to Flushing to meet some friends for a great dinner at Spicy & Tasty, so I consider that a destination restaurant (as does some substantial portion of their clientele). Especially considering that Grand Sichuan St. Marks (which gets a fair amount of out-of-neighborhood eat-in diners but is clearly to a large extent - especially in terms of takeout and delivery orders - a neighborhood restaurant) is about two blocks away from me. Spicy & Tasty is just that much better and has that much more extensive a Sichuan-style menu. I don't get dressed up to go there, and in fact, would be best advised NOT to wear anything too valuable, because that red oil really stains!

(1) Transfats are often a "stealth" ingredient ("partially hydrogenated vegetable oil"); foie gras is very unlikely to ever be a stealth ingredient! (2) Very few people are wealthy enough to eat foie gras often enough for it to severely damage their health, I daresay. The same is very unlikely to be true of transfats.

They're called Ikan Bilis in Malay. Bilis, dilis, pretty similar, no? In Malaysia, they're a major ingredient in Nasi Lemak ("Fatty Rice"), which is a traditional breakfast and banquet food.

Key limes are native to Malaysia? Then why is the Malay word for lime "limau," which is the same word (spelled slightly differently) as the Portuguese word? No, I don't think the Portuguese borrowed the Malay word, because what of "lemon," in that case? By the way, I think the appearance of those limes is similar to garden-variety limau in Malaysia, but I'm not sure if there's some special name for that variety. Great demo!!

I went to this place a few times a couple of years ago, if I'm remembering correctly. I liked it but thought Yeah was better. I'll give it another chance or two, though; why not? Thanks for the reports.

Now that's a cuisine that doesn't seem to have traveled outside of China. I'd love to know more about Hubei cuisine!

He implies that price (along with a bunch of other factors) matters at the one-star level. Basically, a restaurant gets one star for being exemplary in its category. This explains how Babbo and Spotted Pig could both be one star. The printed book doesn't really explain that, and you can understand why the average reader would be perplexed.The two and three-star ratings seem to be more "absolute," and there's no indication that price is taken into account at those levels. ← They gave Spotted Pig a star? I was really underwhelmed with it when I went there with my cousin a few weeks ago.

One of the really fun serendipitous things I've done in Italy was when my brother and I took a late-night walk in Rome in the summer of 1998 and happened upon the Festa del'Unita'. There was food and drink, of course, but my strongest memory is not of the food or drinks but the fact that a Middle Eastern restaurant had some very good bellydancing in the open air. The food was fine, but the bellydancing was the real bonus. Italian Communists (well, Democrats of the Left - hardly the Leninists of yesteryear) really know how to party! By the way, there was lots of gambling there, too, just to show you how far the leftists have come from the days of Gramsci. ← I hear they also have a great bash on May 1st. ← I can imagine! Unfortunately, I've never had the pleasure of being in Italy in seasons other than the summer.

One of the really fun serendipitous things I've done in Italy was when my brother and I took a late-night walk in Rome in the summer of 1998 and happened upon the Festa del'Unita'. There was food and drink, of course, but my strongest memory is not of the food or drinks but the fact that a Middle Eastern restaurant had some very good bellydancing in the open air. The food was fine, but the bellydancing was the real bonus. Italian Communists (well, Democrats of the Left - hardly the Leninists of yesteryear) really know how to party! By the way, there was lots of gambling there, too, just to show you how far the leftists have come from the days of Gramsci. Judith, your cats are beautiful, and Rusty positively looks like an Egyptian God! What a beautiful piccolo paese (village) you live in! Is there any art worth mentioning in the church that I presume the bell tower is attached to? I'm going to take somewhat of a dissenting view on how hard it is to learn Italian -- or at least workable conversational Italian -- especially if you already know French. I've never been fluent in Italian (not enough time there), but I do have a good level of conversational Italian, when in practice. My method was to listen to tapes to get some rough simulacrum of a decent accent and also get the sound of native Italian speech (of a certain kind - Judith will attest to the incomprehensibility of southern dialects for those used to Umbrian or Tuscan accents) in my ears, and also to get a phrasebook, very clear book on basic Italian grammar written in simple language, a book of conjugations of a few hundred Italian verbs, and a decent Italian-English/English-Italian dictionary. Then, when I got to Italy, I embraced the process of making a fool out of myself repeatedly and getting laughed at for my mistakes, because that was the way to be corrected and improve. I found that Italians were happy I was trying to speak their language and always helpful. French is different (especially in grammar - Italian grammar is more complicated), but there are ways to guess with a fair degree of accuracy on how shared Latin-derived vocabulary will come out in Italian, as compared to French and English. English/French/Italian: Station/station/stazione; conduction/conduction/conduzione; productive/productif/productivo. Etc. You'll get pretty close most of the time.