Pan

H., it's gotta be more than a north-south thing. "Carmel" is not a majority pronunciation here in New York City.

If you're in Beijing, call it "ka ya" (roast duck). When you're in New York, it's up to you.

Does anyone have any insight into why plural Italian forms are being used as singular in English so often nowadays?

A friend and I went to Patsy's East Harlem for lunch today. We shared a mixed salad, a regular pie, and a fresh mozzarella pie, and he drank a beer while I had tap water (too early in the day for alcohol, I thought). I'm not sure whether he was unduly shocked by the $40+ tab, but it was about what I expected. I'm also not sure how impressed he was. As for me, I thought the regular was just as good as the time I went on a Pizza Survey outing. The crust was thin, crisp and almost wafer-like in consistency. The outer edges were perhaps over-charred, but it was a very good crust. The cheese had a nice consistency, too, and I like their tomato sauce, though my friend said not entirely approvingly that it is sweet (he said that about the fresh mozzarella pie). I liked the fresh mozzarella pie but thought it was not as good as the regular, because the cheese had a tougher consistency that made its application only on certain parts of the pie more problematic. The salad is nothing special but I thought it would be a good idea to have some vegetables/roughage with the meal. Overall, the trip was well worth my while.

I probably wrote this before somewhere in this thread, but what really annoys me is when people treat Italian plural words as if they were singular. I do not order a panini, eat a primi and a secondi, or have a biscotti. All of those are plural forms. I order a panino, eat a primo and a secondo (if I'm hungry enough) and may have biscotti for dessert, perhaps with some vino santo (not "a vini santi").

It's quite accurate for Malays -- certainly was in the 70s and I believe it still is. My father is lefthanded and made sure to use only his right hand to eat during his stay in the Malay village we used to live in. But I'll note that you typically eat with your hand, not with utensils (except for a spoon for soup) in rural Malaysia, and especially if you're invited to someone's house. You are permitted to use your left hand to tear roti canai and such-like, but you must put the food into your mouth with your right hand. ← Yeah but it's not because they were incapable of washing their left hand after going to the bathroom, which is what this quiz is implying. Muslim culture favors right handedness for everything, for example, you are supposed to enter a mosque right foot first, and so on. ← Right, but I guess we perceived the answer differently. I didn't get an implication that Muslims can't wash their left hands, only that the left hand is used for toilet functions or some such, which is absolutely true and how I seem to remember my Malay neighbors describing things: Right hand for eating, left hand for "washing shit." And yes, those lively villagers did say that.

I think misspellings bother me more than mispronunciations. But yes, languages do evolve, and there's nothing wrong with dictionaries reflecting usage rather than presuming to prescribe usage. As many of you know, the French have an organization that's tried to prescribe usage and has failed miserably in trying to ban words like "le weekend" and "le store," not to mention "le fooding."

That dinner looks great! How many people were there? Are there leftovers?

Where do you want to go?

I don't think it's up to the customer to question whether the bartender does or doesn't have the right to comp. If I'm comped by the bartender, I consider it a nice gesture and tip accordingly (at least $2 extra per drink).

I'm guessing that the second floor restaurant is probably Seoul Garden, which is another very good restaurant.

That would be Kang Suh. I'm correcting the spelling just in case you might otherwise have trouble finding the place, which many people for some reason seem to have trouble finding. In my experience, Kang Suh is a very good restaurant.

One of the really useful things we can do for prospective diners is write lists of recommended dishes. We've had several of those for Grand Sichuan, for example. We can also help prospective diners by warning them what to skip. On the whole, the more places we do this for, the better.

To me, this seems purely semantic, or perhaps more accurately, a function of how words are used by different English-speakers living or coming from different regions. Ammini, based on your definition, the sauce from a chicken/potato curry would be a "gravy," because it contains poultry juice, liquid (whether from tomatoes, yogurt, or something else), and a thickening agent (potatoes). But not to me. Within my family, I use the Malay word "kuah," which means the liquid part of most any dish, but when speaking English, I'd use "sauce" or "liquid." I restrict the word "gravy" to the liquid from baked poultry or meat, especially if such liquid is combined with other ingredients to increase its viscosity (there's that "thickening agent") on the stovetop. I don't consider stews cooked on the stove (which would include curries) to have "gravy."

Yep! More calcium. This is a dish which I have often ordered as part of a dim sum meal. Sometimes, when it isn't circulated on carts, I special order it. Relatively simple dish, great taste and texture!

It's quite accurate for Malays -- certainly was in the 70s and I believe it still is. My father is lefthanded and made sure to use only his right hand to eat during his stay in the Malay village we used to live in. But I'll note that you typically eat with your hand, not with utensils (except for a spoon for soup) in rural Malaysia, and especially if you're invited to someone's house. You are permitted to use your left hand to tear roti canai and such-like, but you must put the food into your mouth with your right hand.

There is such a thing as a Hong Kong-style (or Cantonese) curry, but it's quite different from a Massaman (Thai or Thai-Malay Muslim) curry.

Yeah, but what it really means is "fried rice noodles." I love the simplicity of the names of dishes in Malaysia and Indonesia. ← This I do know as Filipinos name a good number of their dishes in a similar manner; however, I was largely doing a cut and paste from Pondok's menu descriptions on their website.[...] ← I figured as much, Joie. My remark was mostly directed more toward Deborah, because it's funny how that thing she was trying to remember the name of is really "fried noodles." I think a lot of cuisines are like this in terms of dish naming.

Yeah, but what it really means is "fried rice noodles." I love the simplicity of the names of dishes in Malaysia and Indonesia. Moosh, does that happen a lot in Vancouver? In New York, it sometimes isn't enough to speak the language and ask for it very, very hot! And then there are other restaurants that serve it right without one needing to do anything but order. A lot of times, that depends on the location -- not only how close the restaurant is to an area where lots of Asians live, but sometimes, how much off-the-street business it gets and whether it attracts a crowd that's there for a date scene and not primarily for the food. When Sentosa, a Malaysian restaurant, was on a quiet corner of Allen St. and Division here in Manhattan, they had trouble getting much business, but the food was always spicy when it should have been, because their clientele were going there for the restaurant and the food. Then it moved to an even more Asian area, downtown Flushing, but it had fancier decor and an excellent location for off-the-street business and became a date place. I went to that location once, business was hopping, but the very spicy dish I ordered had no chili at all, even though I couldn't have made it clearer that I wanted it spicy! I congratulated the proprietress on her success, used hot sauce, and never returned. Ironically, on that same block is the best Sichuan-style restaurant in New York, and they have never toned down a thing for me. Now that summer is approaching and my schedule is starting to clear, I'll have to go back to Flushing for some cold bamboo shoot in hot oil...but I digress. Ironically, on the same block where Sentosa used to be, in Manhattan's Chinatown, there is now another Malaysian restaurant called Skyway which serves food with flavor...location, location...?

This reads to me like Pan Asian cuisine, but Ed described it upthread as mostly traditional. I'll look forward to checking out their menu.

Suzy, I keep thinking about the Korean-owned fruit, vegetable, and sundries stores here in Manhattan. Most of them probably wouldn't be called "ethnic" stores because they cater to a largely non-Korean (usually Anglo) clientele, but the ownership and often all or most of the employees are Koreans. Those started out as family-owned and -run and I think many of them still are. It's common for them to sell the same spotless-looking, shiny, water-sprayed produce that's sold at well-kept chain supermarkets, and they do make efforts to keep their aisles and shelves clean. So I'm not sure the question of whether it's a family or a corporation that owns the market is really what determines the condition of the stock and upkeep of the store.

I disagee. At least, that's not how I would interpret the terms. To me, the term "ethnic market" has always meant, very simply and just as the dictionary would seem to imply, a market that specifically caters to a particular group of people associated with a particular geographic derivation or ancestry. That would include, for example, the local Italian or Armenian or German or Polish or French (or whatever) markets that are largely run by, and cater to, caucasian persons. I've never understood "ethnic market" to mean "market catering to nonwhites," and I don't think that most other people do either. ← This is one of the things that was discussed in the older thread I linked above. I think the reason it comes up is that, just as "non-ethnic" is an unmarked (though unspoken) category in a country like the U.S., "white" is also an unmarked category here. By contrast, "ethnic" and "black" are marked categories. So it's not so much that "ethnic" really means "black" or "non-white" (I agree that it doesn't necessarily mean that), but that both terms are used to mark categories. A supermarket that caters to "average Americans" is also ethnic because it reflects and caters to the ethnicity/-ies of its shoppers; but because the supermarket reflects a dominant or "mainstream" ethnicity, most Americans don't mark or take notice of that. It is as if we are too close to an object to see it in all its aspects. What this doesn't mean is that the term "ethnic" is offensive and anyone should feel a need to apologize for using it. Treating one's own culture and religion (or the culture and religion of the majority of the population or ruling class in one's own country or whatever) as an unmarked category is extremely common and a product of the enculturation that we experience as part of our upbringing. I think the discussion of the meaning of the word "ethnic" may be a bit of a tangent in this thread, though. The thread I linked to is still open for more comments and discussion.

I don't get this statement. What does NY having more Asian and Latin American stuff have to do with the loss of marzipan? ← It has to do with things that are "interesting and unique" and available in Manhattan. Granted that the reason for Elk Confectionary closing is not that New York has gotten smaller. That isn't the issue, as I discuss below. Did I limit my remarks to Yorkville only? Did you read the post by Atomic Lunch which, since it's directly above mine, I thought it would be evident I was replying to? Particularly, look at the following sentence: Think about this sentence again and tell me whether it really is more false than true: "There are plenty of interesting things in New York, they just are no longer Mitteleuropean." Is Manhattan "big enough" to have something of everything? That's not the issue. There has to be a community there to support it. As the German and Hungarian communities moved out of Yorkville and others moved in, the clientele for the large number of Mitteleuropean shops that used to be in that neighborhood as recently as 2-3 decades ago largely disappeared. The same, by the way, is largely true of the Jewish bakeries that used to be all over the Upper West Side (and now, I'm particularly referring to the high 90s and low 100s, my old stomping grounds). It's not that there are fewer Jews there, but that they are another generation removed from the Old Country and don't have old-fashioned Jewish cake and other buttery and sugary Jewish bakery items often enough to support the old-fashioned bakeries of yesteryear (though some of the bagel-and-muffin places do have a few similar cakes available for the small percentage of their clientele who want them). If you want to find a bakery like the ones we used to have up there, come to Moishe's in the East Village, which seems to be supported mostly by a dwindling remnant of the Lower East Side Jewish community plus a good deal of window-shopping passersby and folks coming in for a morning coffee, plus some people who come in from far away, and is in a low-rise building whose days, I'm guessing, may be numbered. When the clientele dies or moves or the rents go too high for it to remain in business or the building is torn down and replaced with high-rise condominiums, the shops close. So anyway, it's very regrettable if there is no longer a good source for marzipan in Manhattan, but that does not mean that there aren't other interesting and unique things to be found on this island. As for your inference that there was something xenophobic about my remarks, I'll chalk that up to my meaning being unclear and you not knowing me very well.

Sure did! I can't see grilling being part of my life in the foreseeable future, but it was fun to watch the process. May you all have better weather next week.

Agreed entirely, Khadija. And the other thing that the usual(?) usage of "ethnic" does is to lump many almost entirely dissimilar cuisines and peoples together (dissimilar except for being human and being treated as a marked category). You might be interested in a lively discussion we had back in 2003: "Ethnic" food, Useless designation? For the record, I don't use "ethnic" to refer to cuisine. I find it much more useful to refer to Chinese cuisine, Japanese cuisine, Korean cuisine, etc., or regional subdivisions thereof. That said, as various people stated in the linked thread, we know what people are talking about when they mention "ethnic" restaurants or grocery stores, and the word is obviously a useful shorthand for many.