Pan

It is relatively recent in historical terms for plagiarism to apply to music in any important sense. As recently as the 18th century, composers were constantly copying one another's work with few hard feelings. And then there are the fake attributions: It's often been observed that Pergolesi is perhaps the only person who composed more music (was it twice as much?) after his death than when he was alive. As for copyright, in literature, countries like the US have had trouble with pirated editions in China and India in the last few decades, but in the 19th century, the US was king of the literary pirates and it was Britain that was outraged. As an academic myself, I care a lot about plagiarism. It stinks, not because it's copying per se, but because it's copying and not being open about that fact, and because it's substituting someone else's thoughts for your own. But doing a set of variations on a theme by someone else or paraphrasing their opera? Sure! Anyway, before I go further off on a tangent, my main point in this post is to reiterate the point that was made earlier: That is, the concept of plagiarism and standards of professional honesty are changing. We should advocate for standards that we believe in, but we should also understand the history of standards on plagiarism. And we should also acknowledge that if there were universal agreement on standards of honesty in cuisine, we wouldn't need to have this discussion at all.

I think you're thinking of Fanelli's.

I'm a New Yorker, but I want to say, first of all, that you should listen to mizducky because she's a person of good taste. I had an excellent meal at Khyber Pass with her, and there's no reason why you shouldn't eat tasty food when you're in San Diego. SD is also a pretty city; enjoy it. If you do go through Santa Barbara, La Super-Rica is not to be missed! You should try taquerias throughout the state, but I doubt you'll find any others as good as La Super-Rica, let alone better. When you look at the thread on Joe's in Venice, you'll see that I had one of the best 10 or 20 meals of my life there. Maybe I lucked out on the season or something, but man, was it great! If you're interested in Chinese food (and you should be, because there's terrific Chinese food in California), pay attention to where rjwong tells you to go in LA. He recommended CBS Seafood in Chinatown for dim sum, and it was by far the best dim sum meal I've had in the US. For the San Francisco area (and Sacramento, should you have occasion to drive through), pay attention to what hzrt8w has to say. Have a look at his thread on Chinese restaurant dishes in the China forum and the various threads he's started on SF-area establishments (in Millbrae et al. as well as SF proper).

I just thought of this, but Chinese people in my experience like omelettes, so how about some kind of frittata? Heck, you can make that a fusion dish by using some of the great sausages available in Shanghai. What do you think?

"Bagel with a schmear," with no qualification, means "bagel and cream cheese" to me. Similarly, "Bagel with lox and a schmear." I have to say that I don't eat bagels too often (there are no really good bagels I know of in my neighborhood, just passable ones at Moishe's), and even less frequently with lox and a schmear, though I do enjoy that.

if corporations were really motivated only by altruism, they would not be corporations, they would be monasteries. ← Right, they certainly wouldn't be for-profit corporations. And there is nothing inherently wrong or immoral about profit. Profit is what makes the system work, and without profit, the economy would collapse and everyone would be unemployed. John, I don't think your points are invalid, I just think they're small potatoes and don't feel too indignant about them. And yes, unions and nonprofits can also engage in fraudulent behavior for reasons of perceived self-interest. I don't think anyone in this thread is trying to indict corporations generally for misbehavior, and I certainly am not. What I've been trying to show is that, based on what was printed in that article, Whole Foods is engaging in very mild deception at best in its PR and marketing, by comparison with the egregious cases I've been posting about. For the record, I find Whole Foods stores generally very overpriced and almost never enter them. I probably haven't been inside of one for years. But hey, if people want to spend money there, that's their lookout.

My exposure to Japanese European-influenced pastries has been at Beard Papa in New York. How does that fit into this discussion, if at all?

I love liver but have always disliked snails and frogs, in any form or style. I'm pretty sure I remember there being another thread about foodstuffs that should be abolished, but I'm not sure what the thread title was. There are various foodstuffs that I hate but wouldn't call for the abolition of. For example, I think raw oysters are revolting, but why would I want to deprive those who like them of their pleasure? The things I'd love to see abolished would include artificial colors and flavors, gummy cream cheese (give me the ungummy kind), Velveeta, American "cheese," and trans fatty acids (no, not you, transfattyacid!) as ingredients in products. I don't think anyone considers these things irreplaceable delicacies. Then again, most of these things aren't that difficult to avoid. I'll be happy if Pepperidge Farm switches the trans fatty acids for real butter, though.

I get what you mean, but boy does that sound weird! Have fun.

I did see the Palio in person in 1991, from the center of the Campo. Or, actually, I didn't have much of a view of the Palio itself, but did see the procession that took place before the actual race, and that was beautiful! Did you know that members of the contrada (neighborhood) that wins put pacifiers in their mouths as part of the celebration? Yes, I've been to San Gimignano three times. I love their medieval skyscrapers, and they have great paintings there. I also ate well. I remember having cinghiale (wild boar) cooked in a red wine reduction for one of my meals. We've had several blogs by musicians, including mine and the ones by Sam Kinsey and Kathleen Berger -- both opera singers. I don't know if any of us really focused a lot on the connections between music and food, though.

We have reached agreement.

When for-profit corporations publicize their funding of charitable ventures, it improves their corporate image and they hope it will thereby improve their bottom line or/and the political environment in which they operate (in regard to taxes, government contracts, private bills, etc.). I don't mean to imply that executives can't be really great people who are genuinely concerned about others and motivated by that concern -- I believe some are. But if corporations were really motivated only by altruism, they would donate to all these ventures anonymously. (I don't contest your implication that perhaps some do, but that's not what I was talking about earlier.) And the greater the degree to which advertising is involved, the less I can be convinced that altruism is the primary motive. Case in point, ADM gets to put its underwriting statement of "Supermarket to the World" at the beginning of the News Hour on PBS, with no equal time for a reminder that they were convicted of price-fixing and fined hundreds of millions of dollars. Do you think that ADM's underwriting of the News Hour is mostly because they're big fans of Jim Lehrer, or because they get that advertisement? Now, compare the arguably misleading promotion by Whole Foods. Isn't that small potatoes?

Just a side point on Indian Jews: I understand that the Calcutta community did indeed have Iraqi origins, and I wouldn't doubt that many of the Bombay Jews could also have Iraqi ancestry, but I do not believe this was true of the Cochin community.

I think that a degree of arrogance in a creative artist -- which is what an inspired chef is -- is to be expected, and respected. Of course, all in moderation, but I have to wonder if a person of total humility would have the drive necessary to succeed in such a difficult field.

Eel in Italian is anguilla. I don't recall having eaten eel in Italy, but I know they eat it, and I'm sure they cook it very well. As for innards, in the US, my impression is that those who eat innards usually seem to stick to liver, more than anything else. Some kidney, stomach, and heart are also eaten. In upscale restaurants, sweetbreads (thymus) are available. Tripe, brain, and testicles ("Rocky Mountain oysters"), as well as pig's ears and the like, are less commonly eaten, except among certain subcultures. Intestines can be used for sausage casings. As for what's done with things like the spleen, penis, and uterus, I really don't know. Some of the odd ends of pork get put into spam, and beef "byproducts" get put into hotdogs. And I think some of the other "non-choice" parts end up as pet food. I think it's safe to say that in Europe, innards are eaten and appreciated to a much greater degree than in the US.

The place still seems to be around: [courtesy of www.superpages.com] Kar Restaurant AV N 5908 Avenue North, Brooklyn, NY 11234 (718) 531-8811 That is, unless you mean: Kar LUK Restaurant 437 5th Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11215 (718) 832-4500

Is there something special that differentiates a grove from some other type of stand of olive trees? I ask that because I thought that a lot of olives were grown in California. Is that untrue?

Henry, that meal at Salumi just looked incredible! The place where I've spent most time in Italy is Siena, where among other things, I picked up a love for panforte. I'd talk more about my time there, but this is your blog. The relationship between music an architecture is very close in a lot of ways, but there is a relationship between music and food, too. I like to explain to my music theory students that dissonance is as useful for music as salt and pepper are for food. I also like to make the analogy between certain very colorful chords and highly aromatic spices -- they give lots of flavor and nuance, but you don't want to overuse them and treat them as if they're ordinary. I also get mileage out of pie charts (always called pizza) in explaining the relationships between whole notes, half notes, quarter notes, and eighth notes to my beginning theory students.

The first thing I thought of was that I almost could be said to aspire to pretending I'm living in East Asia instead of the US, what with my Chinese, Malaysian, and Korean meals. Except that I have a kosher baked good most mornings and eat often at my local Polish diner, Teresa's. I aspire to try more upscale food, but my salary would have to increase for me to feel OK about that. For now, I'm happy with what I eat (he wrote as he was finishing his Sauteed Cucumber with Black Mushroom [really, tree ears] from Grand Sichuan St. Marks).

Yes. I also had a good experience at Grand Harmony when I went there some time ago for breakfast around 9 A.M. The atmosphere was very relaxed, the service was excellent (because they have more time and don't have to rush around at that hour!), and all the food was hot and fresh. The main point is, to reinforce what beayang wrote, it's best to go for dim sum at 10:30 or earlier, wherever you go. If you don't limit yourself to dim sum, you could always go to a place like New York Noodletown if you want Hong Kong-style food.

Whose recipe is that? Is it fairly old? (The word "Oriental" seems old-fashioned, as well as grating.) Tepee, I agree that black (and also red) rice is very nice, but aren't those actually different species than regular rice? By the way, one thing I keep thinking in this side discussion about East Asians' attitudes toward brown rice vs. white rice is that in the 70s, the most widely available rice in Malaysia was beras kampung (village rice) -- partially polished rice. The fully-polished white rice imported from Thailand had higher status and was considered of higher quality, but we liked the nasi kampung, which was basically white rice flecked with bits of husk and which I think we felt was the best of both worlds -- rice that functioned like white rice in sopping up sauce but also had some tastiness from the husk. (In Malay: Beras = raw rice; nasi = cooked rice.) Now that there is no longer much rice grown in Malaysia, is there any hankering for nasi kampung?

I definitely understand your concern, Leo. I'd at least partially counter the type of negative stereotyping you're talking about by letting you know that I think it's very honorable to use all parts of an animal you kill for food.

That does it! I'm definitely a hermaphrodite!

Isn't being a "good corporate citizen" primarily P.R.? Nothing new about that. Speaking of which, have a look at this brief article on Ivy Lee, considered by some the founder of modern public relations. I don't think anyone's accusing Whole Foods of the kinds of things John D. Rockefeller was guilty of. But what do we remember Rockefeller for now? For his wealth, for Rockefeller Center, and for the Rockefeller Foundation -- not for the Ludlow Massacre or other notorious crimes he was involved with, all of which are now pretty much forgotten by everyone, except for some historians. That's what effective P.R. does. I can't get too excited over Whole Foods doing a mild and relatively harmless version of it.

6 (Lexington Av. local) to Astor Place is a lot closer. And just as a reminder, we call the "underground" the subway here.