docsconz

At the end of this month, people in DC and the surrounding area will be in for a treat as Rafael Vidal, paella-master from the Valencia region of Spain will be around to make paellas and help celebrate Jaleo's paella festival. My visit to his restaurant, Levante, can be found here. The press release for this extended event: Vidal was also the paella master at the CIA's Spain and the World Table conference.

Amazing! I am in awe.

No doubt that a chef has the responsibility to run a financially viable restaurant, or as you say, the Apostate, it will soon be shuttered and good to nobody, however, there are many ways that a chef can do that and still take on a sense of responsibility to society. The example I cited of Chef Duarte and Taranta shows that being responsible can assist the bottom line. Alternately, a profitable restaurant that is churning out churlish food holds value to few but the restaurant's investors. Many chefs may be satisfied with that as it puts food on their own tables, but clearly many are not and for whatever reasons assume additional responsibility to society. If that is vanity, then three cheers for vain chefs! BTW, I do not begrudge those cooks or chefs who are either unwilling or unable to assume greater responsibility. I have come to understand that for the vast majority of cooks out there, the job is a difficult one with little thanks. For most there is more than enough responsibility just surviving doing their basic jobs. That is why, though, that those chefs who are successful and assume greater responsibilities toward society should be lauded as going above and beyond as should be the case for those who do so from within any profession. It strikes me, that it is difficult for many people to toot their own horns. I would be curious to hear of examples of chefs or cooks who have gone above and beyond like Chef Duarte and his "green" work at Taranta. Some have done so by mentoring, others by sharing their creative processes and still others by serving sustainably harvested food. If you are a chef or a cook or simply know of some, who has inspired or impressed you with what they have done in this vein?

Is it "sheer vanity" to provide good food on the plate for the customer? I don't think that a profitable restaurant necessarily serves "good" food as I know quite a few that do not, yet appear quite profitable.

You are right. Restaurants are a business and a chef has the responsibility of making that business work as well as putting good food on a customer's plate. Both of those elements are essential responsibilities for all chefs. beyond those two things, however, an individual chef's sense of responsibility to society may vary. There clearly is a wide range in this sense amongst chefs as there are in the general population. The responsibilities to the customer, the restaurant and to society are not mutually exclusive, however. A number of chefs and restaurants are using their sense of social responsibility and the greater good towards their own bottom lines as well. One example is Chef/Owner Jose Duarte of Taranta restaurant in Boston, whose commitment to going green has been good for the restaurant as well as the environment.

That is a shame! and you're right, restaurants generally lack terroir. This is because, unlike Perú, Mexico or many other latin american countries (including my native Bolivia), Chile hasn't kept a food identity through the ages. So, finding classical chilean cuisine with which to work with has been difficult. What do we do, then? Well, like you suggested, we have fun working with the great produce available. Chilean cuisine is one of products, not recipes. My restaurant, as with many others that I mentioned in my post above, is trying to rescue local ingredients and prepearing them in ways that are not usually presented in chilean homes or restaurants. In other words, we play with our food! Chile is, in general, a beef eating country (which is weird when you look into its geography) but we keep a higher variety of fish and seafood because 1. it's cooler to work with (imo) and 2. because this is what tourists really want to eat. ← Very interesting, Carlos. One of the things that has kept Chile from being higher on my list of desirable travel locations has been the relative lack of a culinary identity. From what I can see, it is a beautiful country. However, if there is inspired cooking going on along with quality ingredients, that may be a reason to move it higher on my list. What ingredients are there in Chile, that would not necessarily be found in a global marketplace of at least equal quality?

Looks and sounds wonderful, Carlos. I would love to get down to Chile someday and when I do, Fábula will be on my list of restaurants to try!

Hi Darcie - I live in a somewhat "food-challenged" area too (although perhaps not as bad as West Virginia <g,d&r>). But when I do get to nice restaurants - whether local or out of town - I don't want them to be the food equivalent of Disneyworld - with a "Kodak moment" every few paces. Luckily - I have never had a problem with food photographers. I've never even seen one. Perhaps there are very few people who take pictures - or they just don't go when or where I go. Whatever - I'll take it. First time I find myself at a restaurant where I am spending a fair amount of money for a meal and there is a photo-maniac next to me - I am either moving tables - or out of the restaurant. FWIW - I find that an excellent way to remember meals is to get copies of menus - particularly when you're dealing with complicated presentations. You might take a picture and say - in retrospect - this was lamb. But only with a menu can you say that was lamb with A/B/C/D. Robyn ← Gee, Robyn, if you have never even seen a food photographer at any restaurant that you have been to, what makes you think that this is such a big issue? I would bet that the reason you haven't seen any is not that they haven't been there, but rather, that they have been relatively inconspicuous and simply not noticed by you.

Brett, Rafa Peña and his restaurant, Gresca have received good press. He was one of the first speakers at this year's Madrid Fusion, with a presentation/demo on Bistronomics. I have not eaten there personally, so I can not give a direct recommendation. I'm jealous. Have fun on your trip and best wishes with the restaurant!

I don't believe that anyone in Saratoga currently carries what you want, though you might try Mrs. London's. If neither that nor Beanie's suggestions pan out, you may have to go mail order. WorldWide Chocolate is currently having a 10% off sale through Sept. 10 with coupon code labor10.

Unfortunately, I didn't get to eat there myself, but on separate nights my brother and one of my best friends from HS ate there this past weekend, both with rave reviews. Ronnie, I'm jealous!

This is the photo under discussion relating to fresh cod: I also found this photo to be particularly compelling: A Chorus of Fish Very nice images, Athinaeos. Looking at and taking market (esp. seafood) photos are some of my favorite things. Just by virtue of its location the Rialto market is particularly photogenic. Then when you add the great quality and variety of its market, it truly becomes one of the most special markets in the world. edited to add that the photos are Athinaeos', taken from his link in his post above.

I heard about this and did a little independent research. Turns out it's a multifaceted problem, some of which has to do with deception and some of which has to do with translation problems and other random factors. As Doc suggested, it turns out to be even more insidious in places that serve cooked fish, with tilapia being passed off as all sorts of other things. High end sushi places are only occasional offenders, and in most cases, the differences are due to translation rather than substitution. I'll do a bit by bit analysis as best I can below. In terms of "white tuna", the discussion is pointless, as there is really no such thing. Some people refer to albacore as white tuna (in Japanese, I'm pretty sure it's the closest thing, as it's sometimes called shiro magura, which means white tuna), and others use the term to refer to escolar, while still others use it to mean various other fish, but since there is no actual white tuna, it can't lead to a real discussion. In terms of the roe (flying fish vs. smelt), restaurants have been making this error for years, even when the two cost the same. In fact, many sushi restaurants carry both (tobiko and masago). For the record, the flying fish roe (tobiko) are the slightly larger of the two, and have a slightly firmer bite. They're also a bit less sweet than the smaller masago. Part of the problem is that saying flying fish roe sounds sexier and more interesting to English speaking customers, even though most of them unknowingly prefer the taste of the smelt roe. As it turns out, many restaurant owners don't know the proper translations and often swap names or call the one they carry by the other name. Personally, I don't think there's any pernicious swapping going on here...it's mostly a case of confusion in translation. The snapper issue is much more complicated. There are two things happening here. At the lower end, many poor sushi places are, in fact, substituting other things for snapper. This turns out to be even more prevalent in non-sushi places, where almost no actual snapper is found. In these lesser places, a much less expensive fish is usually substituted (often tilapia, which is a good fish impersonator, as it has very little distinctive flavor and can easily slip by most untrained palates). In the sushi world, this is most common in non-Japanese owned restaurants. It also turns out that in many cases, the restaurateurs aren't to blame. In investigation showed that they ordered snapper, and unscrupulous delivery places were delivering other things. In some cases, they were mismarking the fish they delivered, but more often they simply filled the snapper order with cases of tilapia that were marked as such but went unnoticed by the restaurants. However, in higher end Japanese sushi places, there were also snapper substitutions for an entirely different reason...the reason of translation. The various Japanese terms that refer to what we think of as snapper (usually tai, madai, kinmedai, etc.) actually refer to various types of bream. Specifically, the sushi known as tai has long been translated as red snapper, but in Japan is actually a form of red bream. True red snapper is very rarely eaten as sushi (even in Japan), and the term tai has actually referred to the red bream for years, without most American people realizing it's inaccurately used for snapper. Furthermore, red bream costs just about the same as red snapper, so there's no advantage in pulling a switch. The bream also has superior flavor in most sushi chefs' minds. The other (non-red) snappers are actually more likely to be blackeye breams and other related species, again due to translation issues and not deception. On a related note, I was a bit surprised to see the whole furor attributed to those two high school kids in New York. My understanding was that their "study" was really just a school project knockoff of the similar study that the Chicago Tribune did a little while ago, for a story about the same. In the Chicago article, it was clear from the names of the restaurant owners that most were not Japanese. ← Outstanding post! Thanks for the insights and extra detail.

If it works, why not? The reality is that Peruvian cooking is already a multicultural fusion so there is room for more.

I finally found and bought the Fage Total yogurt produced in NYS. I found the consistency and texture to be very similar to that of the Greek original. I did not find it to be watery or substantially different in this regard. I had it for breakfast with blueberries and 7 Whole Grain Nuggets by Kashi. Though I found no substantial difference with the texture, I found that this yogurt tasted less sweet to me with a slight bitterness on the finish compared to the original from Greece. This was fine with the cereal and blueberries, but slightly more noticeable on its own. Overall, I did not come away thinking that this was a bad product by any means, though possibly not quite as good on a flavor basis as the Greek original. I would buy this again if in the market for a yogurt with this texture.

Portuguese-Peruvian? That is an odd combo as Peru was colonized by the Spaniards and not the Portuguese. It strikes me that all of those dishes labeled under Portuguese could also be considered Spanish.

Meaning places that server fillets? ← Fillets, fried fish, heavily sauced fish, etc. - in essence any place or situation in which the individual character of the fish is subservient to the overall dish. I'm not saying that this happens in any place like this - I don't know - but I think it would be more likely to as people would be less apt to be able to distinguish the fish in the first place.

I would imagine that this is even more widespread in places that camouflage their fish more than sushi restaurants.

Everything (the restaurant and Alicia) is in the same monastery. It is a huge complex. ← Yes, it is a big complex. I visited it shortly after it was announced that Alicia would be put there and work had started on it. Alicia was a planned destination for my next visit to Catalunya, now doubly so.

We went there, right? I completely agree - it was fine, but not more than that. And we tried a lot of different dishes. I think it said the new chef has been there for 4 months, which would include that visit . . . Off night? We didn't order well? The review surprised me. ← I do not know if the food or the chef is good or not, but he would have been almost brand new to that restaurant when you went and may not have made any changes at that time. Then again, maybe he had. I suspect, though, that the restaurant has probably changed somewhat since you were there.

Wonderful markets indeed, however, I would put the Boqueria in Barcelona and la Brecha in San Sebastien right up there with them. The quality of the fish at the market in Ortygia is second to none, however, it lacks the variety of the others. It is the most purely local market of the set. They are 4 of the most beautiful places in the world to me.

Given this interest, I would suggest getting involved with Slow Food in New Orleans. There may already be a chapter on campus. If not (and even if there is), Slow Food New Orleans is run by Poppy Tooker, a very energetic and charismatic woman, who is responsible for the Ark of Taste program for Slow Food USA, which sounds like it should be right up your alley.

Main Courses at MiLa: My son's Tenderloin of Pork Creamed Corn, Confit of Farm peppers, Madiera Sauce This was simply outstanding - a great blend of flavors. Brooks and I both had... Crispy Skinned Mangrove Snapper Braised Artichokes, Baby Carrots, Orange-Chili Reduction The fish was lovely, the flavors well balanced and delicious, but the only significant flaw was that the skin was not as crispy as it should have been, especially given its title role. My son had the tasty... Chocolate Peanut Butter Tart Peanut Brittle, Chocolate Sorbet while I had the fun and delicious... Root Beer Float Vanilla Bean Bavarois, Ginger Snap Tuiles, Abita Root Beer Sorbet I had to have this as root beer seems to be ubiquitous in NO. In addition, the flavor of this root beer was selected by Brooks' kids. While not as exciting a presentation as some desserts, it did what it was supposed to do. In addition to those desserts, Chef Allison Vines-Rushing sent us out one of her signatures, the delicious and refreshing... Muscadine Wine Gelée Served with Ripe Tropical Fruits, Sweet Cream, Mint Chiffonade We had the pleasure of being able to chat with Chef Vines-Rushing, a most pleasant and friendly woman. Her husband had the evening off, a balance that they often have to do to be able to run the food and beverage service in the hotel and still have a life. Earlier this evening, I enjoyed seeing both of them on the episode of Daniel Boulud's After Hours with Daniel at Cochon. In addition to meeting Chef A. Vines-Rushing, I also had the pleasure of meeting Brett Anderson, who also happened to be dining at MiLa that evening. Unfortunately we had to be up and out early the next morning to catch our plane home. We had, however, in our short time in New Orleans achieved our goals learning more about Tulane, seeing New Orleans and eating very, very well. Given my son's heightened interest in Tulane as a result of this fine visit, I may very well be spending a fair amount of time here in the future, which may afford me the opportunity to explore the places I reluctantly had to miss on this visit as well as to return to some of those presented here. I can think of many worse things.

Excellent post. This is why it is often very difficult to judge a place with a single negative visit. While the best places are pretty consistent, they too have variability. I think that it is easier and fairer to judge a place on a good meal, since it shows what that place can achieve. Of course, if that only occurs once in a blue moon, it becomes simply a case of what might have been. I suspect that was the case with the cheeks and the sweetbreads as I think our palates and stylistic leanings are generally pretty similar. As for the backlit bar, that was only a problem with the silver cup for the julep. It was kinda cool for the other drinks.

I think the problem is that many vegetables can't set fruit in this kind of heat. The problem is nightime lows. For tomatoes, I believe you need lows below 70. Thats why our tomato crop peters out end of June or so. There is fall season, not as abundant as the spring though. Charlie ← Thanks!