slkinsey
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Posts posted by slkinsey
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Although one would think that Una Pizza Napoletana has brought that into a bit better perspective.
A big part of what you're paying for at Franny's is all the locally-sourced produce, etc. That stuff is spendy. I'm sure there is a reason no other pizzeria in metro-NYC is doing it.
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I think they use a harder-than-optimal (for me) flour at Franny's. This allows them to get a very thin crust with a good chew (as opposed to the more tender typical Neapolitan crust), but can make it a little more difficult to cut. I don't mind it. For me, it's part of the fun.
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... they should jettison that ridiculous no cutting policy.
I have to say I've never understood this. Uncut single-sized pizza has been standard in Italy since forever, and no one seems to have any trouble with it.
1. I expect better customer service in the U.S. then in Italy.
2. these pies aren't single-sized.
1. I don't know why, since that certainly doesn't reflect my experience.
2. Yes, they are.
... they should jettison that ridiculous no cutting policy.I have to say I've never understood this. Uncut single-sized pizza has been standard in Italy since forever, and no one seems to have any trouble with it.
The pies in Italy aren't as large as the ones at Franny's. More importantly, the ones in Italy are served on a platter that is bigger than the pizza, which makes cutting immensely easier (i.e. Franny's pizzas are hanging over the edge of the plate.
I've consumed dozens upon dozens of pizze in Italy, and my experience does not accord with either of your claims. Neapolitan style pizze are typically right around the same size as those served at Franny's, and I wouldn't say that it is typical to serve them on plates that are substantially larger than the pizza. Rather, I would say that it's typical to serve them on a flat plate with little or no rim that is right around the same size as the pizza. A brief image search for "pizza napoletana" on Italian web sites will bring up plenty of images like this one or this one or this one, showing a pizza more or less the same size as the plate on which it is served. I would say that this is the most common. Sometimes, as with this one or perhaps this one, the plate will be slightly larger -- but I'm not sure they're so large as to provide a significant advantage. Quite commonly, as with this one or this one or this one or this one, the pizza is larger than the plate. In fact, if you look at this picture of five people eating pizza napoletana, you will see that all but one is substantially larger than the plate on which it is served. The diners don't seem to be having any difficulty, and have simply moved their pizze over to the side to create some room on the plate.
What I think it is, is that Americans are used to eating pizza in slices with their hands.
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... they should jettison that ridiculous no cutting policy.
I have to say I've never understood this. Uncut single-sized pizza has been standard in Italy since forever, and no one seems to have any trouble with it.
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Undercook the ziti.
Use béchamel (I don't see a lot of ricotta in that picture, but I do see plenty of béchamel).
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However, it is patently obvious that both the queue and lottery systems I outlined are more accessible, fair and egalitarian than either the standard phone system or the Ko online system.
I'm not sure this rises to the level of "patently obvious" or even "probable." How would this work better on a practical basis?
Let's look at the queue model: According to your proposal, they would open up the reservations queue at some date, and people could load it up. Your specific example proposes offering a reservation slot nine months in the future. How is this egalitarian? This seems to unduly favor not only people who were "in the know" about Ko to the tune of 9 months of more in advance of other people, but unduly favors metro-NYC residents, since most visitors to the city are unlikely to know about their plans 9 or 6 months in advance -- especially where they might like to go to dinner. Would there also be some mechanism in place to prevent someone from placing his name in the queue 500 times and then picking and choosing (or giving away) the reservations they want? This would be simple to do for anyone with a knowledge of email forwading aliases and proxy servers (this favoring the technologically savvy). A queue system would either be too short a queue to offer any benefits over the current system, or would be so long as to be about as egalitarian as the queue to buy season tickets for the Green Bay Packers at Lambeau Field, which currently favors those whose parents guessed they might like season tickets some ten years before they were born.
A lottery system, performed on a daily basis, seems a bit more egalitarian, but still has many potential problems. Presumably the system would have some way of accounting for reservations for parties of two or one, which might involve some fairly tricky weighting math depending on how egalitarian you wanted to make the lottery (Does a reservation for two get one chance or two chances in the lottery? How do you account for the fact that some chances take away two slots whereas others only take away one?). And, of course, the technologically savvy should be able to game a lottery system to their advantage fairly easily. Presumably they're not going to assign staff to visually check the lottery entrants on a daily basis, and anyone with imagination and technological savvy could fool an automated computer system using proxy severs (to fool IP address checking), email forwarding aliases (to fool email address checking) and variations of, say, Steven Shaw, Steve Shaw, S. Shaw, Steven A. Shaw, Steve A. Shaw., S. A. Shaw, Ellen Shapiro, etc. It's even possible to get one-time credit card numbers for use online.
Either system has the problem that you don't know right away whether you got your reservation, which is a major advantage of the current system.
Now, it could be possible to make these models more "game-proof" and egalitarian (the lottery system much more so than he queue system) but it would require a much more sophisticated system, and most likely one that requires a certain amount of human monitoring. Meanwhile, the advantages over "first X reservations to click through starting at 10AM two weeks out" seem slight for the work and complexity that would be required to make another system work. The question is whether the system is reasonably fair and egalitarian, and the answer seems to be that it is. It doesn't seem reasonable to invent an entirely new system with much greater complexity and security, that is more burdensome to most customers, in order to solve the problem that some people seem to have a faster connection to the reservations server than others.
One possible solution might be to set aside a small number of reservations each day (say 4 seats) for a small lottery in order to accommodate those who may not have been able to reserve due to a slow internet connection to the Ko server. Even this would carry some significant technological burden for Ko, however, and may simply not be worth that amount of extra trouble.
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Now I'm really confused: Sam says I need Mentha nemorosa and this website says I need Mentha x villosa, and I can't get either one around here.
Mentha × villosa, called "apple mint," is a hybrid of M. spicata (spear mint) and M. suaveolens (also called "apple mint)."
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If you're in Cuba, you're likely making your Mojitos with Mentha nemorosa, aka "Cuban mint." The closest we can come to this, and it's very close, is Mentha spicata, aka regular old spear mint.
Pepper mint (Mentha × piperita) is a hybrid of spear mint and water mint (Mentha aquatica). I find pepper mint to be not very harmonious in cocktails due to its high menthol content.
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While I'm posting, here's a first look at the menu. This is available in various places around the interwebs, but I thought I'd summarize it here so it can provide context for future reports on experiences at the bar. Once nice feature is that the menus will be printed on nice paper, rather than inserted into the usual heavy leather book as they are at Flatiron and Pegu. This means you can take yours home, if you like.
The menu at Clover Club is somewhat smiliar to the menu at Flatiron Lounge, only expanded (in some interesting directions). This means that it consists of acknowledged classics, some "new classics" and a nice sprinkling of entirely new creations from Julie and her crew. This is not a menu that places a great deal of emphasis on new techniques and the unexpected, as with Tailor and some of the offerings at PTD. It's cocktails in the classic tradition.
The menu is divided into sections, consisting of sours & daisies, collins & fizzes, bucks & mules, cobblers & highballs, juleps & smashes, swizzles, royales, cocktails, and punches. Each section is prefaced with a short history, explanation and/or anecdote.
The sours & daisies included the Tequila Daisy, New York Sour, and Chaz Baker's Daisy De Santiago. We had a chance to sample all of these. It's especially fun to see people progress through surprise, puzzlement and pleasure upon reacting to the tannins in the claret float on top of the NY Sour.
Under collins & fizzes were the Southside Fizz ("London Style," which I think explains the otherwise unorthodox inclusion of cucumber), Hoffman House Fizz and Bohemian Fizz (gin, elderflower, lemon, soda).
Bucks & mules brings us Grandma's Buck (rhum agricole, sour apple juice, gingerale), the Gin Gin Mule, and the El Diablo, which I believe comes from Trader Vic. I'm anxious to sample Grandma's Buck. The other two were not featured at the opening party, but I've had them any number of times at both Flatiron and Pegu, and they're as delicious and refreshing as can be.
Now we start getting into parts of the menu that (re)break some fertile ground. Cobblers & highballs offers a Madrono Cobbler (a tweaked Sherry Cobbler including oloroso sherry, amaro and muddled strawberry), a Champagne Cobbler and a Hemingway Cobbler (essentially, a Hemmingway Daiquiri served cobbler-style). I haven't had the chance to try any of these yet, but they will be on the top of my list. What synchronicity that, just when I was thinking of exploring cobblers, here comes a whole menu section devoted to them!
Juleps & smashes is also a category I really like to see. It's not too manmy bars that will feature three crushed ice categories (Swizzles on the way!) that are this labor-intensive. As you can see from my pictures above, Clover Club has nice barware for their Juleps as well, and the bar staff are sufficiently well versed in Julepry that they won't have any trouble going off menu in this direction. In fact, the traditional bourbon Julep we sampled at the party doesn't seem to be on the menu. Instead, we find the Highland Smash (scotch, lemon, mint, honey), the Market Street Julep (pisco, pineapple, mint) and the Jersey Julep (applejack, mint, maple syrup). This is what I mean about "cocktails in the classic tradition."
For swizzles there are the Bermuda Swizzle, Queens Park Swizzle, and Negroni Swizzle. I had the chance to try the Negroni Swizzle when Giuseppe was working on it down at Flatiron. It’s compounded exactly how you might expect, but the swizzling and crushed ice creates an entirely different impression. Bermuda Swizzles were in great supply at the party, and theirs is a good one. They certainly aren't stingy with the Angostura bitters, making this drink at once warm and spicy, cold and refreshing.
For royales they have the French 75 (pictured above), Charles Baker’s Burra Peg, and the Sorrello from Flatiron (muddled orange, campari, punt e mes, champagne). Hard to go wrong with these, and they're priced to sell -- especially for champagne drinks.
Under Cocktails is the Clover Club, of course, the popular Slope from Flatiron (and quite popular among eGullet cocktailians) the Improved Whiskey Cocktail, the Gin Blossom (gin, apricot eau de vie, martini bianco, orange bitters), the Mole Old Fashioned (mezcal, mole agave nectar, angostura & orange Bitters), the Black Maamba (rye whiskey, pommeau de normandie, green chartreuse -- Giuseppe’s twist on the Copperhead/Diamondback meme), the Bramble and the Perthshire from Flatiron (single malt scotch, mandarin orange, lillet blonde, lemon, spice). I’ve had all of these, except for the Mole Old Fashioned and the Gin Blossom. You can see the picture of the old school ice they’re using upthread. The Black Maamba is a good introduction for those who may be working their way into boozier, herbal cocktails as the use of pommeau de normandie in place of the usual bonded applejack lightens things up considerably.
Last, but not least, is the selection of punches, all served in vingate punchbowls for 4 to 8. As Julie says, "it's my answer to bottle service." They have their Clover Punch (gin, lemon, blackberry, allspice, champagne) a Pimms Punch and the classic Algonquin Bar Punch (Jamaican rum, sloe gin, lemon, sugar, raspberry).
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More on Clover Club from Metromix New York.
A few of the Q&As below...
So you will be taking reservations for the back room?Yes, it’s going to be my Milk and Honey–style space. It’s going to be small and intimate and you have to be sat back there, so there will be no standing. We will be able to do private parties as well. We’ve been referring to it as the parlor. We wanted it to feel like you were sitting in somebody’s living room in the ‘20s.
Is there going to be a secret number?
No, I’m not really into that. All of my spaces are accessible to the public.
What cocktails would you say are unique to Clover Club?
The Market Street julep (pisco, pineapple and mint) is really different. Clearly pisco and pineapple go together beautifully. The gin blossom (gin, apricot eau de vie, martini bianco and orange bitters) is really smooth and an easy drinking cocktail. The Bermuda swizzle (dark rum, pineapple, lime, velvet falernum, sugar) is delicious. I had one last night, in fact.
You’re known for rehabbing old bars and retrofitting them into spaces. Where did Clover Club’s originate?
We found it in this old mining town called Sugar Notch, Pennsylvania. There’s a guy who finds old bars and matches them up with people—he was the same guy we bought the Flatiron bar from—and he found this bar in an old house that the miners used to live in. So we took it apart and brought it to Brooklyn.
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More on Clover Club in The Brooklyn Paper
The article mentions Julie's desire to bring "classy, swanky cocktail lounges" to the neighborhood, the punches they will have on offer ("my answer to bottle service"), the food from chef Gavin Citron -- and includes a nice picture of the always-pulchritudinous Ms. Reiner making a Julep at the bar.
I liked this quote especially:
For all of the haughty hooch and epicurean ingredients, though, Reiner hopes that her bar will be a neighborhood joint and destination for folks weary of having to take the subway for an upscale drinking experience."People call me a 'mixologist,' but I just like to stick with 'bartender,' " said Reiner. "At my other bars, we’re very well known for the cocktails we do. It's definitely serious mixology, but my goal is to have a bar that’s rea'ly fun as well. In our [professional] community, it's gotten overly serious to where it’s not fun, so we’re trying to bring it down a notch and still put out a high quality product."
This is something both Julie and Audrey have mentioned from time to time lately. The NYC cocktail community has become awfully serious lately, with drinks seeming to get dryer, boozier and more bitter with every cycle; and cocktailians looking down their noses at lighter, fruitier, sweeter libations as well as the bars that include them on their menus. I think there's room for both sides of the coin, and one of the things I've always admired about Julie's bars is that they're places where a serious-minded cocktailian can go for a serious-minded cocktail, but they're also places a relative neophyte can go to have a more approachable libation that it just as "cocktailian" as the hard-core drinks. There's more to cocktails than brown spirits stirred with vermouth, a herbal liqueur or two and a healthy whallop of bitters.
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In my opinion, yes. I think the rotary style ones produce a lot more pulp, and I don't think the flavor of the juice is as pure as a result. Besides, the large lever-style juicers are easier to use and clean.
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I bought a mid-size commercial orange-x lever-style juicer and never looked back. Way better juice than you can get from a rotary juicer, and none of the durability and bitterness problems of hand-presses.
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Do they employ any security measures to prevent people from creating web bots to make reservations? If not, I'm surprised no one has done it yet: just program the bot and let it hit the site a zillion times starting at 9:59.
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Maybe I'll give Kesso a second chance but to me it was watery/runny.
If you're worried about thickness, get the strained whole milk Kesso, not the 2% yogurt which is not strained.
Here's an article about Kesso: http://www.yogurtplacenyc.com/sections/about.htm
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FWIW, it's Giuseppe ("i" before the "u"). Not a big deal, but since this is a somewhat common (and perplexing) mispelling of this name and we're likely to mention his work in this thread, I thought I'd mention it now.
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More Clover Club pictures from last night. Please excuse my crappy photographical skills and Play Skool-quality camera. I'm posting them because of the intense interest and numerous requests.
Here is a flash picture of the main bar.
This is an ambient light picture of the main bar.
Look at the wood detailing on the top! I'm sure you can't see from these pictures, but the tops of the bar are adorned with fire-breathing dragons, complete with gigantic naked breasts. Julie told me some interesting history about the bar, but I'm afraid I don't recall in sufficient detail to relate that history now. I'll see if I can get the info a little later on. Both this bar and the bar at Flatiron Lounge are historical bars that were "saved," refinished, relocated and refurbished for her NYC bars.
A view of the main bar room. There is a whole section of tables behind me (which leads to the front door).
A closer, albeit sadly out-of-focus look at the pressed tin ceiling.
Ambient picture of the back bar room. Note the fireplace, etc.
Flash picture of the back bar room.
This area is more "club-like" with Victorian-era furniture and a marble fireplace. It's going to be a special area that features a much wider range of cocktails, including all those Julie, her crews and friends have developed over the years, special glassware, guest bartenders, parties, lectures/classes/demonstrations, reservations area, etc. It's a great feature, not dissimilar to the "two restaurants in one" concept familiar from many of Danny Meyer's restaurants.
Here is the supremely talented Giuseppe Gonzalez, who many of you may know from Flatiron Lounge.
He's going to be behind the stick at Clover Club now. As it so happens, he was making us an...
Improved Whiskey Cocktail. And they're serving them old school, on the rock.
That's right, I said "rock" -- singular. Another nice thing they're doing there is using cylindrical pieces of ice for some of their drinks on ice. The cylinder of ice fits neatly inside their glassware with just enough room for the booze. You can see it lurking just under the surface in that picture.
Here's a piece of that ice, after melting out in my drink for around 10 minutes. Nice size.
Eater has beautiful, professional pictures that more accurately reflect what the place really looks like here.
More later...
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210 Smith Street (between Baltic and Butler) in Brooklyn.
It's convenient to the Bergen stop on the F & G trains, and a little further away from the Hoyt-Schermerhorn stop on the A & C trains.
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As far as I know, the front bar (and often the back one as well) is going to be open to the public without a reservation, just like it is at Flatiron, Pegu, etc.
It's not a small space -- substantially larger than PDT or D&C. I'm sure it will be quite busy Thursday - Saturday, just like they all are. But I imagine you should be able to get a table or a spot at the bar Sunday - Wednesday with relative ease.
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Clover Club should be open as of this evening.
I stopped by for a pre-opening friends and family yesterday evening, and can report that it is one of the very most beautiful and comfortable cocktail bars you are likely to see. For those few not already in the know, Clover Club is the new Brooklyn bar of Julie Reiner and her group, which brought the pioneering cocktail bar, Flatiron Lounge, to Manhattan. Flatiron Lounge, along with Pegu Club and Milk & Honey, has been one of the major sites for developing and nurturing cocktailian bartenders in the City, so it's no surprise that Clover Club is packed with talent. There are some familiar faces, and some talented up-and-comers behind the bar.
I'll have more later, but here are a few pictures:
The space is absolutely amazing. Exposed brick, an antique bar and pressed tin ceiling in the front room; then go down some stairs to the separate back bar, which has an antiqued mirrored ceiling and a fireplace.
It's quite convenient to the F train.
(Fixed formatting)
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Not to mention that, as with this recent example of a customer's perhaps mistaken reaction to a waiter's perceived "attitude," we have to wonder whether this was truly the sommelier's "fault" or a reaction more founded in Bruni's attitude than the sommelier's. Of course, Bruni gets to write the story...
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We're talking about disasters like the wine-spilling and misrepresentation of a dish at Ago. Things that, if uncorrected, wouldn't be tolerable at any level.
I'm not sure that I believe that so many of the mistakes at Ago wouldn't have been made if they had known it was Bruni. Yes, they wouldn't have been late with his reservation, they would have kissed ass after the wine spill ("spills happen," as Bruni said himself) and he would have been seated at better table the one meal he was seated at a bad table. Do these things represent overall horrible service at Ago? Maybe. Maybe not. It's really not possible to tell, because it's based on one occurrence.
As for Bruni's other complaints, which I believe (hope?) formed the basis for his "poor" rating (mediocre food, poor reservations, staff not on the same page, etc.) -- I don't believe these are things that could have been gamed to the extent that would have made the review any better. Any restaurant that is operating at such a low level won't be able to get its act together to game a critic into an undeservedly good review (certainly not without getting nailed -- it's not like he's not going to notice that his waiter is only serving his table, or that the chef is personally delivering each dish). Rather, the wine spilling incident is employed simply to illustrate and reinforce his negative impression of the restaurant. I have no doubt that, even if that incident had gone as poorly as it did, if the rest of his experiences had been positive on balance, it wouldn't have found its way into print. And, indeed, it very well may be the case that Ago's service isn't as bad as Bruni's review makes it seem by leading with the wine spill story.
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There is some truth to that. But the other assumption is that the 4-star place, will have a very low failure rate while trying to execute 4-star service, whereas it is acceptable for the 1-star place to have a higher rate of failure. The margin of failure is also significantly narrower with the 4-star place. If you wait 15 minutes for someone to refill your water glass at Jean Georges, that's a pretty big deal. If you wait 15 minutes at Landmarc, not so much.
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Nathan, that makes no difference. All it says is that there is a low percent chance that he'll experience a screwup event when he sits down. That defines his experience, but doesn't allow us to extend his experience to the restaurant at large, because the sample size is way too small (never mind the fact that we all understand that even a restaurant with great service will still occasionally give sub-par service to a valued customer or recognized critic).
The trouble is, I understand what you're against, but I don't see what you're for.
Do you envision the Times saying one day, "From now on, we no longer report on service, because we've decided we can't."
Or do you envision the Times deliberately sending Bruni out to be feted as if he were the King of England, then writing reviews that disingenuously suggest that every customer can expect a similar experience?
Or do you envision a series of reviews like Craig Claiborne's famous $4,000 dinner, which no one claimed could be reproduced by the ordinary consumer, but which he reviewed mainly for the readers' entertainment?
I'm certainly "for" abandoning the argument that "it exposes bad service for non-VIPs" as a justification for presumed anonymity of restaurant reviewers. Because I don't think it does, in any meaningful way.
Baked Ziti
in Cooking
Posted
Then, where is the ricotta?