lamington

Fantastic comments, thank you!

Fantastic and very all of you, thanks! Lots to work with there. I'm staying in 92108. I could have kicked myself for not thinking more about the word "hypermarket"-- for some reason I'd forgotten it's wider remit, and my poor wording "gamut of consumer excess" should have been "gamut of consumer food excess"... so no, I'm not in the market for camping gear , but nonetheless the question appears to have been answered wonderfully. Thanks! Edited: for zipcode clarity.

Thanks for the interesting and diverse suggestions so far. Perhaps I can add a little more background/explanation: On previous visits to the US, I've only ever had access to supermarkets which were, well, rather diminutive -- I assume this is in part because of the very regional nature of many of your grocery chains. I have also been to a Costco once, and whilst it is a temple to bulkness, it certainly presents problems for a one/two-man cooking expedition. So what I seek is something that some places might call a "hypermarket" -- a fantastically well-stocked supermarket, where "well-stocked" means "carrying the gamut of consumer excess and an old-fashioned homecook's supplies". For exotic things, in the end I will have less time for that, and the availability of ingredients for many overlapping cuisines is pretty good here in Aus -- with the exception of Central/South American foods, and ingredients which are exceptionally popular in (or unique to) North America. I suspect my dining-out focus would be American (Central/South/scary Northern:P), while my homecooking would be with the supermarket goodies.

I'm visiting a friend in SD in late September for a few days, perhaps with one or two days in/near LA. I've read the dining threads for SD and will revisit them closer to departure. Right now I'm trying to gauge what will be interesting for me. In dining out, it looks like Mexican is the main point of interest/novelty for an Australian from a well-catered home city, and I've noted the comments about taquerias and the like. (I'm visiting an Afghani friend, so I'm sure he'll introduce me to that community too.) What about cooking at home? I've never yet been to an enormous supermarket in North America and wonder where to turn in the SD area (or on the road between LAX and SD... straight off to the plane and into a shopping cart? ) I have a perhaps perverse interest in the normality of everyday cooking. I want to see (1) what people buy, (2) what the gamut of basic ingredients is like (and play with some of them), in addition to (3) finding interesting produce and (4) testing the difference between Aus/US beef and lamb. Maybe also (5) looking at some characteristic CA wines.

My companion will have to try it -- I can't go near it, alas.

Thanks DaleJ, and MMerrill (I've PMed you). Heading to Sicily in early October. Looks like Catania will be a base for a lot of sightseeing trips, even though few people seem to have pleasant things to say about the city itself, and then a few days in Siracusa/Ortigia (or at the Limoneto agroturismo), and then a few days using Modica as a base for a few trips and eating.

Thanks John and John, both for encouragement and enthusiasm. I suspect Palermo is just pushing the envelope a bit within the time available Perhaps I could add Modica (or Ragusa?) as a base for two days, also making the sights of Piazza Armerina a little closer (yet to check the transport logistics for that combo).

Imagine you were preparing for 14-20 days exploring parts of eastern Sicily using public transportation only, and perhaps wizzing through Palermo... then imagine your travel companion has to curtail the trip to just 7-9 days... Where would you go/what would you do to maximise gastronomic interest/enjoyment on such an abbreviated trip? Remember, public transport only, so agroturismos are difficult. Possible bases would be Catania, Siracusa, Taormina and/or Palermo. Seafood is *not* our main interest.

Disappointing stuff indeed. My experience of reviewing is that, with the exception of the professional reviewers (with whom we all disagree from time to time), almost anyone will be given the job to review stuff. I've accompanied a cadet to a classical concert in order to "help" her write a review -- she had probably never even heard of Bach. On the food side, there is also the depressing problem that some reviews, especially the short semi-anonymous type, get fed through a hip/cool/garbage filter before publication and come out creating a totally different picture (though that's clearly not the problem with the review under discussion in this thread).

Looking at the ingredients list of many stock cubes/powders can be a surprising adventure too. Science. Gotta love it.

That's amazing. Never seen a pie floater in Melb! Or Syd. I thought they really did stop at the SA border:)

Thanks! I've always cooked the a** out of the discoloured ones to make sure they wouldn't kill anyone:) Now I can rest easy.

On occasion, my preserved lemons discolour during the curing process/storage - is this a common occurrence? (I'm afraid I'm chromatically challenged so the exact colour escapes me, but it didn't look yellow - darker... useless description, sorry).

You could argue the reverse and say that deep discounting makes the very same artistic efforts accessible to more people. Providing consumers with access to something which is deeply discounted usually provides little benefit to anyone other than the consumer (and that only in the short-/medium-term). The end result is that the creator receives less financial benefit and is thus deprived of the means to keep producing OR people become less willing to buy books at a price which sustains (1) the retailer, (2) the publishing house, and (3) the author (not to mention some additional intermediaries).

Hear, hear! Although recent history indicates that the "unsustainable" can endure

I'm curious about what benefits people have really obtained in book-income terms from using an agent (I'm not questioning the agent's value, just what concrete differences result) -- 'typical' royalties in Australia appear to be 10% of recommended retail price, and agent commission is 15%, so the author would receive 8.5% in the end. I *don't* know what the known author-chefs in AU get on their books, but the above percentages are the typical figures quoted in the publishing/writer sphere.

I'm very curious to know whether there are any noticeable differences between the US/UK/AU editions. The AU edition has both metric and either Imperial or US measures, so I assume other editions do this...? Is it just a case of localised ingredients/cooking terms?

Have to disagree about some of that, Shinboners. Low-volume (high price) imported books are the ones that really show a difference, and it's regrettable but understandable, given the import costs. Many other books, and in my experience especially UK books, seem to be fairly similar at RRP. What AU lacks is the might of something like Amazon to press prices - a win for consumers, or a distortion of the market and destruction of the local booktrade? Tough one. And CDs in AU can hardly be called expensive - they're generally cheaper than anywhere in Europe or the US (with the exception of some deep-discounted items on, eg, Amazon).

Koko Black's isn't bad. Seems to be very popular, especially with international students. Brunetti, although indeed a sit-down place, always seems a bit overrated to me. Too much cornstarch custard for my liking. And by the way, we still haven't established if the original poster was asking about Melbourne or elsewhere!

Could you tell us where you are interested in, stephietoronto?

Tim has that too, as do a few other places round town.

It should be noted that in the Australian context, "sticky" isn't usually used to refer to [ed: just any] sweet wine/liqueur, but just to the types of wine mentioned by Busboy, SBonner and loiosh. I'm not sure that even port would fall under the "sticky" label in current usage... others would need to comment on that. EDITED for less ambiguity -- I meant it doesn't refer to sweet wines in general, but rather to a very specific set

I really think 'dying out' is exaggerating things. Lamingtons were never, in my experience, the domain of 'cafés', so they haven't disappeared as they perhaps weren't there in the first place. My local shopping strip has about eight bakeries and all of them sell lamingtons. If they vanished from the natural home of the bakery, one could worry.

I ate recently at a restaurant in Parnell called, i think, Iguaça -- recommended as a 'good Auckland restaurant' by colleagues. It wasn't memorable, not awful but not super. I was there as part of a conference dinner, so the cuisine might not have been representative of normal quality.

I think there are a few different issues that need to be sorted out here. To my knowledge, it is unusual to find white flour that comes close to 15% protein content anywhere, not just in Oz. Bread flour in AU, UK, US tends to be in the 11.5-13.5% range. Bakers buy commercial flours, many of which are not available at consumer level (just surf the websites of flour mills!) and are generally in the 12.5-14% range, tailored to particular commercial uses. Wholegrain flour usually contains more protein, so I'm afraid it's not a relevant comparison with white flour. I grew up being told that Australian wheat varieties are generally harder than overseas (presumably Europe/UK -- North America is very varied). Plain white flour here often has 10+% protein (the one on my shelf now has 10.8%). Australians have been successfully baking bread and cakes with this sort of flour for rather a long time, so there's no reason why you shouldn't manage too within traditional home-baking parameters. Cake flour is rarely available at consumer level in AU or UK, so again, home-baking has successfully survived on standard white flour. Meanwhile, if I understand things correctly, in the US you need to be careful about knowing where in North America a recipe is from, due to strong regional differences in flour types. And last of all, protein content is not the sole indicator of how good a flour will be for a given purpose, so theoretically you could still end up with a high protein flour which has been poorly milled and has undesirable qualities relating to, eg, extraction rate, ash content, or absorption. In consumer level products this is particularly true.