slkinsey
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Like most people, I find that being "fat but fit" is OK healthwise, and not even too hard fashionwise. . .
This is important, I think.
BMI is important to epidemiology because it's easy to assess without doing a lot of stress tests and the like, and across large populations a certain BMI does tend to correspond to a certain level of fitness as well. But the problem with epidemiological studies and applying the conclusions on the individual level is that individuals are... well, individual. I know plenty of people with a BMI that makes them ostensibly more "healthy" and "fit" than I. But I live in NYC and walk all over the place. I've also got a big "opera singer's ribcage" that makes me naturally heavier than someone with a slight frame. Put me up against many or even most of the people my age who are thinner than I with a "better" BMI, and I can walk longer and faster, have more strength, better blood pressure, will kick their asses on a stress test, etc. This is true of most of my "higher BMI" friends in New York, because we walk a lot more than the average suburbanite. There are different kinds of "thin" and different kinds of "fat" (there are plenty of people out there who might be described as "skinny fat people") and it's not clear to me that, on an individual basis, BMI is the end-all, be-all determining risk factor. A "fat" person who has good blood pressure, heart rate and cholesterol levels and does well on a stress test, etc. may very well outlive that skinny guy down the block.
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Just made a recipe of orgeat using marcona almonds and the Art of Drink recipe previously linked. Easy to do in one evening, and as others have observed the difference is huge. What a silky mouthfeel!
Even better, though, was the recipe I made up alongside it using pistachios instead of almonds. Pistacheat? Pistacchiata?
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It's not my position that the diabetes epidemic is actually an epidemic of diagnosis. I didn't invent it. I read it. It's the position of diabetes researchers -- you know, people who have made it their life's work -- as reported in their published work.
If I may, I think some of the current disagreement isn't disagreement, but rather stems from insufficent recognition and acknowledgment of a crappy quotation in the original article:
Some of [steven Shaw's] views about diet and health border on the extreme. "I think the whole diabetes thing is a major hoax," he said. "They are overdiagnosing it."I assume that what you were responding to in saying this was something along the lines of: "What about the diabetes epidemic and the huge increase in diabetes we're seeing these days?"
I agree that there is convincing evidence that the "diabetes epidemic" -- the dramatic increase in diagnoses of diabetes and related disorders over the last 40 -- is, for the most part, a result of increasing diagnosis rather than increasing incidence. In this sense could be described as a "hoax," since I think most people assume that incidence has dramatically grown over the latter 20C.
Your quote, followed by the statement that you think it's overdiagnosed (implying that many people are being diagnosed with diabetes who don't really suffer from this disorder -- for which I think there is not so much support) creates the impression that you think diabetes itself has become a "hoax" because doctors are telling everyone they have diabetes when really they don't. I gather that this is not really your viewpoint.
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With all due respect, asserting that a condition is underdiagnosed is a logical impossibility. The only way to obtain facts to back up such a statement is to have, well, diagnosed the condition. In which case . . .
Wouldn't Perlow be an example of an undiagnosed case of diabetes? Dude thinks he's healthy, starts feeling crummy, talks to a doctor who says "Surprise, your 400 pound self has diabetes!". How many people like that are walking around under the impression that everything is fine?
Perlow has been diagnosed.
One can look at a the diagnosis of someone at a certain stage of diabetes and, with the appropriate medical expertise, reasonably say, "this guy has had diabetes for X amount of time, and it should have been diagnosed already." During the time between when it should have been diagnosed and the time it was diagnosed, he was "undiagnosed." One can make reasonable assumptions and projections about the population to come up at a percentage of "people with undiagnosed diabetes."
Of course, I suppose there are various meanings of "underdiagnosed." What I have outlined above would be one way of describing "underdiagnosis" -- that there is a X number of people who should be diagnosed with diabetes but aren't. One would like to reduce the value of X to the greatest extent possible. Whether they have visited a doctor and been tested or not is irrelevant with respect to this meaning. A visit to the doctor that should have resulted in a diagnosis of diabetes but didn't would be a misdiagnosis.
Another way of looking at it would be, there are people who have tests and are revealed to have a certain kind of blood sugar response. Some people light look at those results and diagnose "not diabetes." If one is making the argument that people with that certain kind of blood sugar response should be diagnosed as "diabetes" but aren't -- that would constitute "underdiagnosis." Similarly, one can take the opposite viewpoint: If the same population is given the diagnosis of "diabetes" and one is making the argument that they shouldn't be -- that would constitute "overdiagnosis." Presumably one would need to have the appropriate medical background, or access to the same, in order to take either position.
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Another piece in the Times (this and the preceding column are both by Gina Kolata; article here) talks about Rockefeller University obesity researcher Dr. Jeffrey Friedman:Dr. Friedman points to careful statistical analyses of the changes in Americans' body weights from 1991 to today by Dr. Katherine Flegal of the National Center for Health Statistics. At the lower end of the weight distribution, nothing has changed, not even by a few pounds. As you move up the scale, a few additional pounds start to show up, but even at midrange, people today are just 6 or 7 pounds heavier than they were in 1991. Only with the massively obese, the very top of the distribution, is there a substantial increase in weight, about 25 to 30 pounds . . .
A few things to point out:
First, while these articles you have cited tend to support the notion that predisposition to a certain range of weight is largely genetically-mediated (something with which I agree) they do not speak to the data showing that certain health issues are strongly associated with being above a certain weight (perhaps better described as "being above a certain amount of fatness," since high weights can sometimes be associated with large muscle mass).
This raises certain issues. For example, plenty of people have reason to believe that they may be genetically predisposed to have certain medical issues in life. Perhaps a close relative or two has developed diabetes or, in my case, heart troubles. That person can then, hopefully, try to mitigate against those genetic predispositions to the greatest extent practicable. Hopefully one doesn't simply just thow hands in the air and declare, "well, I guess I'll get horrible diabetes and have my feet amputated by the time I'm 60" or "nothing I can do about it -- I've got a fatal heart attack waiting for me in my mid-50s." Mitigating against these genetic predispositions can be difficult and, of course, all the mitigating in the world doesn't mean you won't develop some form of diabetes or have to get an arterial stent somewhere down the line.
So, it may be constant and life-long work to regulate one's weight downward, but people do accomplish it. I know any number of people who have lost in the range of 20-30 pounds and kept the weight off more or less permanently. I've made relatively minor adjustments to my diet and lifestyle that have resulted in my weight centering around 12 pounds below where it had previously been (interestingly, and in support of a premise of the article, one of these adjustments has been a reduction in the frequency and extent to which in indulge in "foodie gluttony"). Considering the health and longevity issues associated with a "certain level of fatness," I don't think I'd be comfortable with simply saying "it's genetics" and leaving it there. I'm a pretty big guy already, but if I ate everything I wanted to eat I could easily be 50 pounds heavier.
Second, the Friedman articles,and particularly the parts you quoted, seem to be centered on "how fat the fat people are" rather than "how many people are fat." This is important, in my opinion. An "in-between" passage missing from your quote seems crucial to me: "In 1991, 23 percent of Americans fell into the obese category; now 31 percent do, a more than 30 percent increase." Considering that entry into the obese category is gained by crossing a thresdhold weight (or BMI), I'm not sure how this number could be skewed by a drastic increase in the weight of the "most obese" people in the same period. Rather, it says to me that a substantially greater portion of our population is now across the threshhold weight or BMI compared to 1991. And that is a very short period of time! How about we compare today's percentage to the percentage in 1971? I can tell you that, in my elementary school in the 70s, there were around one to two "fat kids" per grade of around 100 (2%). All you have to do is walk by the school to see that today's figure is at least 30% -- and it's not like we were working in the fields all afternoon when I was a kid.
With all due respect, asserting that a condition is underdiagnosed is a logical impossibility. The only way to obtain facts to back up such a statement is to have, well, diagnosed the condition. In which case . . .With all due respect, and not speaking to whether anything is or is nor underdiagnosed, I don't think this is what is meant by a "logical impossibility." A statement that something is underdiagnosed (meaning that more people have the condition than are disgnosed with the condition) may be difficult or perhaps impossible to prove, but it is not a "logical impossibility." I would suggest that applying, or seeming to apply rules of logic is not appropriate in this case. One can have very strong reasons to say that a certain condition is underdiagnosed today. Certainly diabetes has historically been underdiagnosed. This is one reason why many people (myself included) don't believe that we are seing a huge explosion in diabetes. Rather, what we are seing is increased diagnosis. It may be true that, as Steven asserts, it is being overdiagnosed. Or it may be true that, as others assert, it is still underdiagnosed. The rules of logic, however, aren't relevant to a discussion of either viewpoint.
ETA: "Underdiagnosis" is discussed all the time in medical research. For example, the researchers take a look at the rate at which "hypertension" is diagnosed in a medical clinic. Then they look at the medical records of that clinic, apply whatever diagnostic criteria they think are relevant, and come up with the number of people they think should have received a diagnosis of hypertension. Then can then say, "based on our
(or commonly accepted, or these new, or whatever) criteria, hypertension was underdiagnosed at the clinic [by this amount]."
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Do you think you achieved results that wouldn't have been possible with conventional cooking?
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Daniel: Please describe your experiences, techniques, goals and results with collards, broccoli rabe and asparagus. I'm interested to hear.
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Bouley Upstairs has something like 30 seats. What do/did they do?
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Possible. I just know that 1/2 ounce of St. Germain in 2 ounces of Tanqueray is too sweet for me, whereas 1/2 ounce of Cointreau in 2 ounces of Tanqueray is okay. It's rare that I'll find 1/2 ounce of a liqueur too sweet in 2 ounces of a relatively dry spirit, which is why St. Germain sticks in my mind as being particularly sweet. Of course, it's also very strong in flavor, so I don't need to use as much of it.
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I think it's heresy, but still better than commercial yeast alone.
Baking with 100% sourdough, particularly within the constraints of NYC apartment baking and a busy schedule, is challenging. Ordinarily, I find that sourdoughs which have had a full rise and then are retarded overnight have fairly significant gluten degradation by the time it comes to put them in the oven the next day. This degradation is caused by acid, and so gluten degradation and acid flavoring are linked to a certain extent. This is the central challenge of sourdough baking.
I guess my question is whether and to what extent you feel that your hybrid dough had real sourdough character? Given your reported technique and results, I'm guessing it came out more like a conventional commercial yeast bread with some "sourdough character enhancement."
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Host note, merged from Tiki Ingredient topic.
Interesting. I'll have to see if I can do some measuring, because I could swear that St. Germain is significantly more sweet than Cointreau.
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So, I picked up a few bottles of Louis Royer Force 53 Cognac yesterday, and mixed up some Improved Brandy Cocktails with 2 ounces of cognac, around 2/3 tsp of homemade gomme syrup, 1/2 tsp of Luxardo maraschino and a few dashes of absinthe. Really nice, and entirely different from what you get using an 80 proof cognac.
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How long before someone codes up a bot to make the reservation for them at precisely 10 AM?
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How about a home pasta machine that has bronze dies? The KitchenAide one gives no texture.
It would take a lot more than that to make extruded pasta that even remotely competed with commercially made dry pasta.
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As chance would have it, Dave Wondrich had something to say about that in a thread on Lime Cordial:
Historically, there are two schools of Gimlet-making: the British, and the American; with Rose's, and with fresh lime juice. Which is the "real" one?Going by date alone, the American school seems to get the nod: as far as I can tell, it was the first to see print, with the following formula from Tom Bullock's 1917 Ideal Bartender:
"Use a large Mixing glass; fill with Lump Ice.
Juice 1/2 Lime.
1 1/2 jiggers Burnette's Old Tom Gin.
1/2 teaspoonful Bar Sugar.
Stir well and strain into Cocktail glass."
There's only one problem with this: Bullock calls this the "Gillette" cocktail (and adds that it's "Chicago Style"; why, he does not explain). But names for new or obscure cocktails tend to vary quite a bit, and this is the recipe that Mr. Boston picked up and printed in its influential 1935 bar guide as a "Gimlet."
The British school gets into print 5 years after Bullock (at least, that's the earliest mention I've been able to find), in Harry MacElhone's ABC of Mixing Cocktails (the Savoy Cocktail Book borrows from this shamelessly), which gives the following recipe:
"Gimlet.
1/2 Coates' Plymouth Gin
1/2 Rose's Lime Juice Cordial
Stir, and serve in same glass. Can be iced if desired.
A very popular beverage in the Navy."
There are a couple of things about this which suggest strongly that, date notwithstanding, this is the "authentic" recipe, and that it did indeed originate in the Royal Navy.
--The Navy had a huge base in Plymouth, and Plymouth Gin had a long history of popularity among its officers (the ratings had their rum ration, which forced the officers to drink something else in order to maintain the class distinction).
--Rose's, as has been observed, was standard naval issue.
The lack of ice and the proportions of the drink indicate a naval origin as well.
--Ice was scarce or unavailable on ships (when the US invaded Cuba in 1898, the only ice available was on William Randolph Hearst's yacht, which he brought down there to observe his war).
--The proportions, disgustingly sweet by our standards, make more sense when one considers that the spirits the Navy carried were either at "proof" (50% alcohol by weight, or about 114-116 proof by our system) or 4.5 degrees under proof (our 109 proof). If you're mixing overproof gin with no ice, you're going to need a lot more Rose's to make it palatable than if you're shaking normal-proof gin with ice. (BTW--Plymouth has reintroduced a Navy-strength gin, at 114 proof, but it's not yet available here in the US).
To me, the American school is most likely an attempt to recreate the old naval Gimlet in the absence of Rose's Lime Juice. I don't know when Rose's was first introduced to the American market, but it rarely if ever turns up as a cocktail ingredient before the 1930s.
Authentic or not, I like lots of ice in my Gimlet, and a proportion of 4 parts gin to 1 of Rose's.
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.
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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.
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. . . I'd sure be happy to have appliances that find that middle ground between power and price more consistently. In particular, if I could find a better immersion blender, stand mixer, and meat grinder along these lines, I'd be a happy man.
You mean like this? Or something lower on the price/performance scale?
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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.
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Its St Patricks Day.. No corned beef and cabbage a la sous vide?
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.
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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...
The Sautese is only 18cm (7'') but I think it'd do as I only cook for two.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.
Am I right in guessing that this core thickness will provide pretty even heat?Should be as good as All-Clad Stainless, certainly.
Does the 'bonding agent' which they count as a layer affect anything?No. That's marketing bullcrap designed to make you think you're getting "more layers" for people who think more = better.
My stove is electric, with heavy disk elements, so fast heat response isn't really the main concern, I just want nice, even heat... but I do want to keep my options open in the future.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.
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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.
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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.
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. . . I think there are three true statements that can be made:
1. An author has written a book and teaches seminars about how to get special treatment by establishing yourself as a regular at restaurants. . .
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?
Didn't I read once that at Shake Shack even Danny Meyer's wife has to wait in line? Or is that urban myth.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?
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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.
Reservations and Regulars at Momos and
in New York: Dining
Posted
They're clearly taking very good care of you. And I have to believe that part of the reason you go there, whether consciously or not, as often as you do is because they do take good care of you.
The question is whether, as a Momofuku-brand regular, you will ever become more than a "few times a year" diner at Ko if it proves to be a serious hassle for you to obtain reservations there (especially reservations for yourself plus a date). If they're doing 168 covers a week times 52 weeks a year, that's approximately 8,700 covers a year. I don't see them filling a substantial percentage of 8,700 with rare visits by regulars at Ssam Bar and Noodle Bar. Even if every Ssam Bar and Noodle Bar regular visited Ko six times a year, mathematics suggests that they won't fill a substantial percentage of 8,700.
This suggests that Ko's long-term post-buzz commercial viability will depend on either: (a) Cultivating Momofuku Ko regulars, which means some kind of perking that is meaningful to regulars (I would suggest that the current incarnation of the reservations system will make it difficult to become a regular); or (b) the buzz for Ko remains strong enough that they are able to maintain a profitably filled house without really having many regulars. The other option is that they stick with the system, eventually the buzz dies down and seats become easy enough to get that regulars can snag seats through the system with relative ease. This, I have to imagine, will lead to a period of time that will be viewed by fans and regulars as a Golden Age, but will have somewhat shaky profitability for the restaurant -- which will either change or close.