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I haven't been to Bubby's in two or three years, I guess, but I always found it overpriced and kind of mediocre. So, should I have had my meals somewhere else and gone there just for pie or cake? (Would they have let me is another question.)

Thanks for the name of the one on Mosco St. As previously mentioned, the Thai-Indonesian store on Bayard is Udom's.

Between Bayard and Canal, I reckon?

Cut it open with a machete and eat it. Durian is very rich, and you may not be able to eat more than a section or two at a time. I have to say that I would be very reluctant to buy a durian outside of Southeast Asia, however. I just doubt that it would be very good, especially as durians have to be frozen for importation to the US.

That really doesn't look bad to me. Not neat and fancy, but I'm sure it tasted good.

Roz, what did you eat that was so superb?

Udom's Thai-Indonesian store on Bayard St. between Mott and Mulberry or the Thai store on the corner of Mosco and Mulberry, right across the street from Columbus Park. Various other stores in Chinatown have some of the ingredients you're looking for.

I really love this article. It has so many good links that it reads something like the best Wikipedia articles, but it's a meaningful short story which touches on so many things, and especially time, taking the time to mark the passage of a new week and share that with family. Yes, it does help to have some kind of rite of passage to begin the new week, and it's a shame that the fast pace of the lives we lead in North America (and not only North America) today makes that more difficult. One of the things that a habitual Sabbath-breaker like me (my longest teaching day is on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath) appreciates about the Sabbath observance I work through instead of taking part in is that in this world of rushing and cellphone access, it enforces a day of contemplation when the telephone and other electronic devices are off. We have a lot of interchange on an electronic medium like this, but there is really no substitute for breaking bread around a table.

Cezanne was not an impressionist painter; the really big impressionist name that should be mentioned with the others above is Monet. Also, oil painting (at the very least for things other than shields) was an innovation of Jan van Eyck in the 15th century, and paintings from the Middle Ages used tempera, not oil. This Wikipedia article asserts that "[o]il paint was probably developed for decorative or functional purposes in the High Middle Ages," so Pedro, it looks like you are right about the date of its invention as a process, but keep in mind that tempera and not oil paint was used for paintings until van Eyck and his followers came on the scene. Sorry for the digression; it's a habit for me to address this kind of question because my father is a painter.

Veselka is a Ukranian-American non-Jewish diner, and I frankly don't consider it a very good one, unless it has improved greatly in the last x-number of years (2? 3?) that I haven't eaten there. But yes, you can get versions of these dishes at non-Jewish Eastern European restaurants that, for example, stuff cabbage with pork and rice, as is the case for example at Teresa's, a Polish-American non-Jewish diner I frequently patronize (for the record, I think their stuffed cabbage is just OK, however). But to get really good goulash, I'm guessing that you'd probably want a Hungarian restaurant or perhaps an Austrian one. The Stage Restaurant, a tiny luncheonette (Polish-American, I think) just next to the theater between 7th and St. Marks on 2nd Av., does make a fairly satisfying goulash that it sells quite cheaply, but it's really just a good value for the neighborhood, and it is so far from having the great flavor of the gulyasleves I used to enjoy in Budapest that I would call those two different dishes.

I was part of a party of two at Lupa for a late dinner tonight. Our waiter was superb, but this was certainly the weakest meal either of us has had at Lupa. None of the dishes was more than good. We found the beets with pistachios appetizer enjoyable; the cacio e pepe good but a bit oversalted, with the pasta perhaps a bit undercooked (and we like our pasta al dente, but this was a bit raw in the center, though I found that OK); the skate and broccoli orecchiete, a special, was pleasant, with a spring-like taste (my dining partner at first found it fishier than he was expecting or prefers, but got used to it, though he did suggest that this was an example of a special created to use up old fish); the three beans contorno with mint just OK and again a bit oversalted; and the Tuesday duck special disappointing, with a red bell pepper sauce far inferior to the lemon sauce in a previous incarnation of this dish, and some of the duck meat stringy and dry. My dining partner bit down on a piece of skate bone that wasn't supposed to be in the orecchiete and hurt his teeth some, an unpleasant experience to be sure. A man in chef whites who I believe was the Chef de Cuisine came to our table to apologize and say that they check for bones carefully and this should never happen, which I thought was a very nice gesture (just as a point of information, I will note for the record that my portion also had a small bone in it, undoubtedly a hazard in ordering a sauce with a fish component). When the waiter came over to ask how the duck was, we told him it was OK but explained what disappointed us about it. He offered to bring a different dish for us, which astonished me because we had already eaten more than half the duck. In the end, we decided that we were too full to take him up on his offer. Our dessert of tartuffo seemed to me to be the same high quality as usual. The orecchiete were comped on the check, and we left a large tip for the waiter. Lupa obviously remains a restaurant where the staff try hard to please patrons, and I certainly appreciate that. But it occurred to me that I have had many better meals at restaurants like Col Legno and Bianca than I had at Lupa tonight. Our meal was not bad, to be sure, but I'm not used to thinking of Lupa as a "not bad" restaurant. I hope that tonight was merely an off night. It is likely that I will try Lupa again, but I think that the next time tonight's dining partner is back in town, we will be going back to Hearth instead of Lupa.

The discussion of whether or to what extent it's appropriate or accurate to credit or blame the Executive Chef, and how to properly credit those who in most cases actually cook the food, is certainly relevant to the mission of the eGullet Society, but it is tangential to this thread, which is about Per Se. It's understandable how we got off on this tangent, but I think it's time to get back to using this thread to discuss Per Se, so I would strongly encourage anyone to start a new thread in the General forum about who to credit/blame for one's meal in what degree in everyday speech or posting, or in the Food Media and News forum about how and why writers in the media tend to credit and blame the Executive Chef to an arguably excessive degree, while leaving out any remarks about those who actually cook most of the food. If any of you does start such a thread, please post a link in this one. Thanks.

Ah well, Swiss, Savoy, what's the difference? Now, how did we get on that tangent in the first place? Never mind...

Beware of the demon chicken, El Pollo Diablo! ← Yes, if you're a worm or cockroach. They also will eat most any kind of meat you may choose to feed them, including chicken.

Unless I'm very much mistaken, I seem to remember having gone to Ariana since the early or mid 80s, at the current location. I've certainly gone there a long time.

Possibly off-topic, but human beings can have infestations of whipworms in their intestines for years without noticing anything. I happen to know this for a fact. ← Well, sir, I trust what you say to be true and I won't ask *how* you know this. ← Good move. Now, carry on, nothing to see here.

Possibly off-topic, but human beings can have infestations of whipworms in their intestines for years without noticing anything. I happen to know this for a fact.

I think that's fine. But to me, that's the point: It's an upfront charge, charged equally (by percentage) to all patrons. I can't see a reason to argue that it's unfair, unless you want to be able to punish poor service with a lower tip, and I doubt that really bad service is likely at Per Se. The only problem I have with service charges is that, supposing the service charge is 15%, that can make it difficult to calculate the 20%+ tip I might have otherwise given, if left to my own devices. I'm not always so good at subtracting 15% (and is that before or after tax?) by just calculating in my head. But in principle, I have no problem with it and understand the reason for it.

Beautiful presentation, Adam!

I've been looking forward to this blog for some time, ever since the teaser in another blog a while back. It's amazing to me that you're able to take photos of your train and bus when they're pulling in and you're about to get on. I suspect most of us would be too busy gathering up our stuff and rushing off. And to think, when I blogged, I waited until I was on summer vacation.

Couldn't I just post a "We're meeting at such n'such for Offal Outing 2 on such date, etc" in the ISO Friends thread?[...] ← Definitely, as phaelon56 pointed out (except for limits on how far in advance you could post it -- not three months in advance, for example). My only concern is that if you want good attendance, just an ISO post without prior PMs to check on interest and availability might not be adequate. But let's leave off discussing mechanics in this thread and go back to offal, something I've liked for a very long time. I'm going to Lupa again tomorrow, I think (it's still a bit up in the air), perchance to have their wonderful livers cooked in balsamic vinegar again.

Nathan, aren't you talking past my point that in Italy, they have started to extend a form of denominazione d'origine controllata to traditional foods such as la vera pizza napoletana? Clearly, there are places where some people think traditional foods do need and merit protection. The idea of protecting only what can be demonstrated to be new and original instead of true to the possibly threatened old way is clearly a choice and an illustration of our values system. akwa, to make my position on molecular gastronomy clearer, I have no position, because I have not tried any. And people's comparisons of work by people like you to combinations of sampled music that I find odious are very unlikely to deter me from trying the hot new cuisine. What could put me off for some time into the future is a combination of the high prices and the doubts that I will find the expenditure worthwhile. That's because money is worth more to me than it is to many other people, not because I actually have any reason to have anything against a type of cuisine I haven't tried. And the less worth I ascribe to my money, the more likelihood I would use some of it to take an interesting risk and try some of this intriguing cuisine. People can compare your food to Warhol's Campbell's soup cans, Jackson Pollock's drip paintings, rap with all unoriginal (!) sampled music -- that doesn't make any of those analogies tell me what your food tastes like. And the taste is the bottom line, because if your food doesn't taste good (obviously, most of the members who've tried it feel strongly that it does), I don't care how it looks or how people conceptualize it.

me not from fear of being copied fear of being ripped off working conditions cannot be separated from protecting the livelihood of the suckers who provide the content the correct obsession is with quality, but there has to be a reward for originality comparing food and fine art is not an inapt comparison because you prefer something classical to something modern, it actually serves to support the grouping by showing preference for diverse members of the same class within a subgroup. ← akwa, are you implying something about my food preferences? I'm sorry and also interested to read that you decided not to create a new dish for fear of being ripped off.

I was looking at restaurants in that vicinity lately. I considered Town but decided it wouldn't be reasonable to spend so much money without knowing it would have been likely that we'd get a great meal there. As you can see, when I searched this forum, I found a thread that hadn't been posted to since 2003, with no reports since 2002. Have any of you been to Town relatively recently? If so, how was it? For the record (courtesy of superpages.com): Town Restaurant 13-15 West 56, New York, NY 10001 (212) 582-4445 The website listed for Town on menupages.com is www.townrestaurant.com, and on superpages.com, www.townnyc.com. Neither website is active.

Actually I've seen a variant of this dish in Malaysian restaurants as well. They dry-fry the string beans, and add small dried shrimp as well as ground pork, but then they toss in fermented shrimp paste in addition to the chili/bean paste, and I beleive garlic and shallots as well. I'm pretty sure it also has the preserved vegetable. I think Penang in NYC makes it that way, the NJ location in East Hanover certainly does. I think we order it just about every time we go there. I wasn't aware this was typically a Sichuan dish, though. ← Yes, although this dish is typically made with long beans (kacang panjang in Malay). String beans are not traditional in Malaysia. Also, the pork is inessential and never used when Kacang Panjang Belacan is made by Malays, who as Muslims cannot eat pig products. The typical dish would include plenty of little dried shrimp, plenty of belacan, and indeed the chilis and shallots you mention, but I'm not positive about the garlic and I normally wouldn't expect any meat to be in the dish, unless you count shrimps (there could be some non-dried medium-sized shrimps in the dish, too). I would be surprised if the Malaysian version of the dish has origins in Sichuan, though. I think belacan dishes go back a long way in Malaysia and Indonesia.