slkinsey

How long before someone codes up a bot to make the reservation for them at precisely 10 AM?

It would take a lot more than that to make extruded pasta that even remotely competed with commercially made dry pasta.

As chance would have it, Dave Wondrich had something to say about that in a thread on Lime Cordial: Interesting to note Dave's note that Savoy borrows heavily from ABC, as this would appear to be the case here. Per DW, I wonder how it would taste at room temp with one of the high proof gins.

Don't bartenders also handle things like citrus twists, mint sprigs, etc. by hand? In my experience, one uses a scoop or tongs to retreive ingredients which would dirty the fingers (and which the fingers would likewise "dirty"). These tend to be garnishes in a liquid such as a brine or syrup such as olives, cocktail onions, cherries, etc. If those items are then going on to a cocktail pick, fingers are used. Other items are retrieved with the fingers. These are things like citrus halves, quarters and slices, twists, herbs of any kind, candied ginger, etc. A scoop is used for ice because (1) it's more elegant than using the mixing glass or bare hands; (2) it's more sanitary considering the nature of wet ice and how long it is likely to stay in the ice bin; and (3) it's easier than using one's hands. Given all the other finger-handling of ingredients, I don't think hand-cracking ice is problematic. FWIW, the bartenders should technically be wearing rubber gloves for this kind of thing. On a few occasions I've seen bar staff quietly don latex gloves when a DOH guy was in the house.

You mean like this? Or something lower on the price/performance scale?

So... this weekend I experimented with "massively retarded" pizza dough. I made up a recipe of dough consisting of 1000 grams of AP flour (Hecker's), 700 grams of water, 1 teaspoon of SAF yeast and 1/4 teaspoon of diastatic malt powder. Mixed the dough by hand only enough to eliminate any dry chunks. Bulk fermented overnight at room temperature so that the dough had risen a little and all the flour was nicely hydrated. Divided the dough into three balls. Two went into small ziplocks in the freezer. One went into a large ziplock in the refrigerator where it sat for around 6 days. In a deviation from Steven's technique, I baked on a stone rather than in a sheet pan. I have an extremely heavy slab of slate I use as a pizza stone that docsconz was kind enough to let me have after he had finished some yard decoration. I spread the dough out directly on a large wooden peel on top of some cornmeal while it was still cold from the refrigerator. The dough was so slack and pliable from the long retardation that I had only to continue dimpling the dough with my fingers in order to stretch it out to the desired size and configuration. Working quickly (70% hydration is a pretty wet dough) I topped with Pomi chopped tomatoes (I'll have to try again with strained,although the chopped worked well) and a mixture of broccoli di rape and cubes of Benton's bacon I had sauteed together. Oven spring was tremendous, which is one advantage to using a cold dough. All in all, I felt that this was the best pizza dough I've ever produced. I was very happy with the pizza, and it was really no trouble at all. The next day, all I had to do was lift out the stone and brush a few crumbs into the kitchen sink. I've already got a second ball of dough defrosting in the refrigerator right now. Ultimately, I think it would be a better with simple fillets of San Marzano tomatoes and better/wetter cheese (Whole Foods probably has the best supermarket "fresh" mozzarella I've had, and it's considerably wetter and creamier than the others) -- but it was damn fine just as it was. The wet dough and the great oven spring allowed me to get some really nice char on the bottom without turning the crust into a cracker. It's really quite easy, by the way, to make and freeze your own pizza dough for this. The beauty of the no-knead process is that it involved only around 10 minutes of work and the only cleanup was tossing the metal bowl into the dishwasher. By increasing the recipe a bit (easy to do using bakers' percentages) I could easily make a month's worth of dough-- assuming a weekly pizza night -- in the same amount of time.

I did a corned beef sous vide once before. Came out pretty good. There was a lot of shrinkage of the meat and production of liquid from the meat. The liquid was, as one might imagine, quite salty. I used the liquid to boil potatoes and steam wedges of cabbage. Came out pretty good, as I remember.

Glad you liked the class. You seem to have absorbed the principles I was trying to convey well, and were able to apply those principles to the cookware you're looking at. All of which is to say that you've answered most of the questions yourself. I don't have any personal experience with this line of cookware, but you're correct that the specifications look good if the price is right. A few things... That really depends on what you're using the pan for. For sauteing, I'd say that 18cm is way too small. I cook mostly for two people, and still find that 28 cm is the most common size I use. If you're thinking of that pan more as a reduction pan and saucepan, then it would probably be sufficient. Should be as good as All-Clad Stainless, certainly. No. That's marketing bullcrap designed to make you think you're getting "more layers" for people who think more = better. With electric stoves, the flatness of the base of the cookware is really more important than any other factor with respect to evenness of heat. All-Clad Stainless, which seems like a similar kind of pan, keeps its shape very well (I believe that full cladding conveys considerable structural strength and warp-resistance to aluminum). So these pans should perform well in that respect and, as you say, it keeps your options open for the future.

As someone pursuing a field (classical music) in which reviewing is also very important, I have always found the food writers' assumptions about the central importance in that field of anonymity and non-acceptance of comps -- even by writers at the very highest levels of achievement -- a bit solipsistic, and naive as to the extent to which other fields have, and deal with, similar influences. It's as though these writers believe that food writing, reviewing and criticism as a class is somehow sui generis and therefore susceptible to far more insidious influence and manipulation than other forms of writing, reviewing and criticism. Somehow, sports writers, art critics, book reviewers, music reviewers, automotive writers, fashion writers, computer writers and audio writers, to name just a few, have managed to do reasonably well over the years (centuries longer than restaurant critics in some cases) despite the fact that they are extensively comped, often receive preferential treatment and specially prepared/vetted samples, and are never anonymous. Indeed, I would argue that these fields are often blessed with an overall higher quality of work when compared to the body of work we have from non-comped anonymous food writers. So, how do they do it? Yes, it's true that the Metropolitan Opera cannot guarantee that the Times critic will see an exceptional performance, but they can certainly guarantee that he or she has the best free seats in the house, has special access to Metropolitan Opera stars, is invited for free to Metropolitan Opera events, and as any veteran of the opera can tell you, extra-special care is always taken to ensure that the opening performance the critics are attending is the very best the company can offer (for example, it's commonplace for the director to leave town after the first or second performance, and it's also commonplace that a Carmen production featuring Placido Domingo in the first 5 performances will have Cedric Schmengelthorper singing Don Jose in the last 3 performances). These are all ways that the opera company deliberately acts to show the critics their very best possible face, although most if not all of these adjustments benefit other patrons of the opera whereas a food critic can receive more individual preferential treatment. But it doesn't stop there. The opera critic wants to continue receiving those free opening night tickets. The fashion critic wants to continue receiving those front row invitations to all the fashion shows (about which see recent writing in the NY Times). The art critic wants to continue to be invited to those special previews of all the important shows and exhibitions. The political writer wants to continue to be invited on the campaign bus. The sports writer is unlikely to be barred from the press box, but he wants to continue to have that special access to the most popular and quotable athletes. These things are all vitally important to these writers -- so much so that their relevance, influence, reach and, ultimately, earning power are inextricably linked to having them. A political reporter who finds himself without insider access to political information and without a place in the campaign tour will find himself without much of a job. So there is a very large influence on the political reporter to not burn his relationships. The sports writer who is unable to get those special interviews with the most newsworthy athletes won't find himself writing for the front page article of Sports Illustrated. So there is a very large influence on the sports writer to not come out too hard-hitting against popular, quotable athletes. And yet, somehow, those negative opera reviews and those hard hitting sports stories and those political exposés continue to be written. Sure, some writers, reviewers and critics are clearly swayed as to what they do or do not write by these various influences. Some are not -- or, at least they do not appear to be unduly influenced. Some writers, reviewers and critics are good and some are not. I would suggest that, if it's possible for a sports writer who is comped tickets to the best seats in the house for every game, who is invited to observe training camp and practice sessions, who is allowed into the locker room, who is granted interviews with team coaches and management and who enjoys insider access to the team's athletes; if it's possible for that sports writer to still file a story about the management's horrible draft, the coach's poor game management, and a player's poor play or disturbing off-the-field behavior -- and this sort of thing happens all the time -- then it's possible for a food writer to respond critically to a restaurant despite having a comped meal or further relationship with the PR company, restaurateur, and/or chef. I don't believe that a good, experienced food writer who is recognized or reviews based on a comped meal should be unduly influenced -- either consciously or unconscoiously -- any more than a good, experiened sports writer would be influenced by his special considerations. Rather, these are things that the good writer should take into consideration. (I would actually argue that the food writer who dines under the assumption that he is anonymous and receives no special treatment is more likely to submit an unduly biased review than one who goes in with his eyes open for a comped meal.) And, really, it seems silly to me to further the proposition that food writing is so unique and so special and so delicate that it is more susceptible to influence than any other form of writing, reviewing or criticism. Rather, I would suggest that, just like the other fields of interest I have given here as examples, there are food writers who will be influenced by these things and there are food writers who won't be. There are, of course, food writers who may or may not be improperly influenced by any number of things, perhaps entirely unrelated to special treatment by restaurants. So I would suggest that the elements of discipline, talent, expertise and experience are more important than strict avoidance of the appearance of bias implied by accepting comps or dining non-anonymously. In a perfect, idealized world -- sure, it's nice gravy for the roast. But it's no substitute for underlying substance. I would suggest that accepting comped meals is no more a question of ethics than any one of a myriad of other possible influences or conflicts of interest which are accepted as the practical price of doing business in all these other fields. And I would suggest that the proof is in the pudding, so to speak, and we should evaluate the work of food writers, reviewers and critics on the merits of that same work. Personally, I put far more value in the work of certain food writers who are acknowledged industry insiders, with well known faces, who are undoubtedly comped and who undoubtedly receive special treatment, but who nevertheless turn in valuable, critical and informative work over the work of other, supposedly anonymous writers who dine out exclusively on the company dime and nevertheless turn in relatively inferior, uncritical and uninformative work.

What was your ratio of fat to booze? I think it takes less than an ounce of bacon fat to flavor a 750 of bourbon.

Um. . . No, I wouldn't say that this accurately describes the topic of the book, or even a particularly substantial percentage thereof. Among the many topics covered in the book, it acknowledges that regulars often get special treatment, encourages one to become a regular at a restaurant or two, and offers some strategies for getting an enhanced "regular-like" restaurant experience at a restaurant where you are not a regular. Did you read the book? I served rang up his wife at Shake Shack once and she waited on line like everyone else. This is a fundamentally different kind of business. I have a hard time even calling it a "restaurant." Other than letting certain customers jump the line (which would be a horrible idea and could potentially create lots of problems with those in the line) what other kind of perks could be offered?

That said, and as I mentioned above, the Momofuku restaurants are already quite nontraditional with respect to perks for regulars. I'm not suggesting that there aren't perks for regulars or advantages to being a regular at a Momofuku restaurant, but it's not the same as the advantages and perks associated with being a regular at restaurants operating under a more traditional paradigm.

Just on this one point: Anthony, I would say that it's pretty commonplace that a "regular" or "VIP" at most any restaurant would receive some version of special consideration at other restaurants under the same management. I would expect a Gramercy Tavern regular to get some special treatment at The Modern; I would expect a Landmarc TriBeCa regular to get some special treatment at Landmarc TWC; I would even expect an Ardour regular to get some special treatment at Louis XV in Monaco.

Exactly. With respect to supermarket mushrooms, I have found drying to be a consistent factor only with shiitake mushrooms -- which corresponds with Chris's results. As one might expect, I have also often found that supermarket shiitake mushrooms need some moisture in the pan to cook properly. Now, it's nice to be able to splash in some flavorful liquid (or fat) to be absorbed by the shiitake mushrooms, but nothing wrong with plain old water. Really, though, I'm not sure that the question of moisture absorption from washing has any particular relevance to supermarket shiitake mushrooms. I've never found them to be particularly dirty or in need of cleaning of any kind, never mind washing or soaking in water. The only "dirt" is usually found at the very base of the stem where it is easy to cut off and discard. In fact, the stems of supermarket shiitake mushrooms are usually too dry and fibrous to use at all, and I often discard them entirely.

The easiest way to give preference to certain parties in this situation would be to make it discretely known to a small number of people that they can reserve seats in advance of the date when those seats actually become available (e.g., bu sending someone on the team an email). If the seats are still going so quickly, no one would think about it one way or another if they logged on to the reservations site at 10AM and saw that 4 seats were already taken. Maybe those seats were "pre-reserved" in the system . . . maybe four people beat you to the reservations interface by half a second. No way lf knowing. This would be an easy way to give a small amount of preferential consideration without having to set aside a certain number of covers after the reservation date.

Really, I look at the whole thing -- not just the reservations system but the entire restaurant concept -- as an experiment. Changs other places also opened as experiments to one extent or another. Noodle Bar seems to have worked pretty well from the get-go. Ssam Bar, needless to say, went through considerable evolution. And both places continue to evolve. This is fundamentally different from many restaurants. Babbo, for example, really hasn't changed meaningfully since its doors opened, and while Gramercy Tavern has certainly changed plenty under the new chef, it's still not on the same scale of change that we've seen at Ssam Bar. So, he's trying out a new idea. The chances are that it won't work out quite the way it was expected to work, and I have the feeling that we'll see plenty of evolution in all aspects of Ko. I hope we all agree that trying new things is interesting and good, and I certainly feel that Chang's willingness to try new things (and then try more new things based on results or unexpected developments) is one of the most interesting things about his work.

I think it's possible to see both sides of this. Of course a regular will get, should get and reasonably does expect a certain amount of special treatment. That's the nature of the business, and of course the nature of the perks change from business to business. In some contexts, the perk may simply involve simply being recognized by the staff or being able to say "the regular" and get your food and/or drink just the way you like it. In other contexts, it may involve comping, preferential reservations, etc. Certainly I have stopped going to some perfectly good restaurants because I didn't feel like my continued patronage was sufficiently appreciated, and eventually took my business elsewhere -- not necessarily deliberately, but rather that the restaurant's lack of special attention made it easy for another place to win my affections with their easygoing special attention. I've posted about this in the past with respect to the demise of the excellent Upper West Side middlebrow neighborhood restaurant, @SCQ. Ultimately @SQC failed, in my opinion, because they never were able to sustain the kind of loyal following and repeat business they needed due to FOH problems and a failure to adequately reward regulars with perks. In contrast, the second time I went to the TriBeCa Landmarc, I was recognized, seated at the same table I had requested on my previous visit, told about an offal special that would be of particular interest to me, etc. Despite the fact that the food at @SQC could be more refined and innovative than the usually straightforward fare at Landmarc, it was pretty easy to transfer loyalty and business to Landmarc after getting better treatment on my second there visit than I had had over the course of several years patronizing @SQC. On the other hand, Momofuku Ko is a very different kind of restaurant. For one, it's not clear to me that this is a restaurant that will depend greatly upon repeat business from regulars at Momofuku Ko in order to sustain profitability and popularity. To the extent that the restaurant is sustained by regulars, these can be regulars at the other Momo businesses who are perked at those venues according to the somewhat unique practices associated with the Momofuku brand. And while it does seem clear to me that the other Momofukus do perk their regulars, it's also true that it seems to be a fairly different kind of perking that happens at these venues. As Momofuku regulars have observed, for example, they still sometimes have to wait an hour to be seated rather than being jumped to the front of the line as would be both normal and expected at most restaurants. This suggests to me that a Momofuku regular is not the same sort of person as, say, a Grammercy Tavern regular or a Landmarc regular. If the discussion here is any indication, it seems that around 95% of Momofuku regulars, semi-regulars and fans (or, rather 100% minus 1 person) kind of like the idea of Momofuku Ko's unusual reservations system. And, just as much as these regulars don't mind waiting an hour for a seat at Noodle Bar (which "normal" regulars would never abide) they don't seem to mind Ko's reservations system. Again: these are people who are Momofuku regulars, but are unlikely to become Momofuku Ko regulars -- and trips to Ko are likely to be a special treat. It's not clear that, under Ko's model, there can be such a thing as a "regular" at Momofuku Ko. Can this work and be sustainable? We'll see. Chang so far has a pretty good track record of having success doing things a little differently than conventional wisdom says he should. He also has a pretty good track record of making whatever changes and tweaks are required to succeed. It will be interesting to see what happens the first few times someone who's tight with the Momo crew asks if there's some way they can sneak in a few reservations in advance as a special favor. Of course, unless that person blabs, no one will ever know.

TVC: Your figures are looking at ascorbic acid -- aka vitamin C. Rather, we would like to look at citric acid. Dave: My forays in to sourdough microbiology suggest that the perceived sourness contributed by a slug of citrus juice to a cocktail is more attributable to total titratable acid than the pH of the juice.

Lillet thread Unfortunately (I feel), starting in 1986 Lillet reduced the quinine component in their flagship product.

Interestingly, it's not like this is the first time Ryan Sutton has had something to say about cocktails in his food writing for Bloomberg.

Most, but not all of them, created with vodka-drinkers in mind, IMO. There are a lot of reasons for this price difference, as we discussed over in the thread on mezcal. Here's what I had to say, and the same things are true for tequila. Compare this process and time investment to what it takes to make Plymouth gin: That is a much smaller investment of time and money -- especially considering that Plymouth most likely buys all its ingredients (including the unrefined neutral spirits if they don't actually to the initial fermentation and distillation themselves) on the open market, whereas tequila and mezcal producers may own the agave plants and the land used to grow them.

The beauty of the Negroni (and most, if not all, cocktails) is that you can make successful, albeit different iterations with a wide variety of brands. The only brand-specific ingredient is Campari, and even there I wonder what it might be like with Luxardo Bitter. So, if you prefer your Negroni with Hendrick's gin and Noilly Prat sweet vermouth, there's nothing wrong with that -- not to say that I wouldn't like the opportunity to talk you into a better sweet vermouth such as Carpano Antica Formula (Noilly Prat's dry is tops, the sweet not so much). Mostly it struck me as unusual that you held what seems an unusual choice of gin for a Negroni as the sine qua non, while at the same time reacting to the store owner's offer of a brand largely held among the handful that define quality in gin as though he had offered you an inferior product.

Hendrick's for a Negroni? Hmm. That wouldn't even be on my radar. Tanqueray, on the other hand, I feel is an absolutely first-rate product and while some might prefer other brands I'd be hard put to say that any other brand of gin was definitively "better." This is a fairly common feeling among cocktailian circles. Getting back to the Negroni, I had a nice variation the other day from Giuseppe Gonzalez at Flatiron Lounge. It was a Negroni Swizzle made with gin, Punt e Mes and Campari swizzled in a tall glass with crushed ice and garnished with a half-moon slice of blood orange.

Grapefruit juice is also very tricky to use as a mixer -- even more so than orange juice. It is not particularly sour, and it also has a certain bitterness. Ultimately, though, I think grapefruit juice is more rewarding and interesting than Meyer lemon juice. WRT a Jack Rose-alike with Meyer lemon juice: Not sure I have much hope for that. The Jack Rose depends on the acidity of the citrus juice to balance out the grenadine. With something like Meyer lemon juice, you'd either have to use a ton of the stuff in order to get sufficient acidity or you'd have to use a minute amount of grenadine in order to avoid an overly sweet drink. Either way, it doesn't sound particularly harmonious.

What I think it interesting is that, 5 years ago, there's hardly a food writer around who would have even thought to comment on "over shaking" of drinks and the size of ice cubes. It goes to show how far things have come even in that short time that now we have one of those "a little knowledge is more dangerous than no knowledge" situations.