slkinsey

Here is an interesting quote from Gary Regan in another thread: Sasha Petraski is known as one of the top bar guys in the City, and some in these forums have called the martini at Milk & Honey "definitive." My personal opinion and experience is that most people say they want little if any vermouth but, if you make a proper martini with around 4:1 or 6:1 (maybe 8:1 if it is a delicate gin and a strong vermouth), they will say it's the best they've had. I would assert that, if the vermouth isn't present in sufficient quantity to be tasted, it is not a martini and it is not a cocktail -- it's just a glass of cold vodka or gin served in a funny glass. I'm very interested to try the 1:1 martini Gary describes -- although it sounds like extreme coldness is a crucial element, and I'm not sure how I'd get that other than pre-chilling the ingredients, which presents other problems (chief among them, insufficient dillution).

Wood sugar is xylose, which Merriam-Webster says is a "crystalline aldose sugar (C5H10O5) that is not fermentable with ordinary yeasts and occurs especially as a constituent of xylans from which it is obtained by hydrolysisxylose." It is extracted from wood or straw and sometimes used in foods for diabetics.

A few things: As I imagine many know, "gelato" and "ice cream" mean the same thing in two different languages. Gelato is merely a specific style of ice cream that happens to be prevalent in Italy. We use "gelato" as short hand for "Italian-style ice cream" but it is just as much variation between different styles we call "ice cream: as there is between what we call "gelato" and what we call "ice cream." I think it is a mistake to suppose that the use of eggs (i.e., a custard base) is a defining characteristic of Italian-style ice cream. First, it is not the case that Italian-style ice creams are always made with a custard base. Second, it is the case that plenty of American-style ice creams are made with a custard base. In fact, custard bases are so common that there is a special name for American-style ice cream made without a custard base: Philadelphia style. The significant differences between the American and Italian styles are two 1. American style uses cream and has a much higher butterfat content. As the ice cream is frozen, air is actually "whipped" into the ice cream, making it lighter. Think about the texture of a fresh scoop of American-style ice cream -- all those little holes. This is possible because of the use of cream. Italian style uses milk and is not fatty enough to whip up. 2. Italian style is frozen and maintained at a much higher temperature. This temperature difference also contributes to a denser texture. One big problem with purchasing Italian-style ice cream in American grocery stores is that it is held at too low a temperature, which negatively affects the texture. The end result of these two differences is that Italian-style ice cream is much more dense than its American counterparts. This provides a rich mouthfeel while at the same time being light due to the lower fat content. American-style ice cream works the opposite side of the equation. The air pockets provide lightness while the fat content provides richness.

Mario Batali's fennel dusted sweetbreads with sweet and sour onions, duck bacon and membrillo vinegar at Babbo is one of their signature dishes and also one of the best sweetbread dishes I have had anywhere.

Exactly. I, too, use Gordon's for cocktails where the gin won't shine through and various other high-end gins where the gin will really shine through. I mean, what's the point of making a Twentieth Century with Hendrick's or Plymouth? The whole point of most high-end gins is the subtle and delicate flavors. On the rare occasions I use a high-end gin in a non-martini cocktail, it tends to be because the high-end gin is a particularly strongly flavored one like Junìpero that can cut through the other ingredients. Gordon's is, by the way, a perfectly good gin, and one I am proud to use in cocktails. Seems like you feel the same way.

Yes, I believe it was a whole chicken. Emeril claimed it was a swordfish, legend says it was a chicken, videotape shows it was a potato pancake. But the quote was right. The quote is not quite right. According to the good folk at Snopes.com: Child has admitted time and again to the potato pancake incident but has always firmly maintained she never dropped a chicken, duck, or whatever else the rumor has ascribed to her. Thanks to the power of manufactured memory, fans of the show remain convinced they saw something she has directly and repeatedly denied.

Hey, come on now! Why, you have a chance of winning the lottery that is only 4 or 5 times less than being struck by lightning.

Any cocktail or mixed drink (martini excepted) using an expensive super-premium vodka is a waste of money and booze. I can't think of a single cocktail other than a martini where one could taste the difference between drinks mixed with, say, Ultimat at $70/L, Precis at $50/L, Belvedere, Ciroc, Chopin and Van Gogh at $38/L, Absolut and Ketel One at $27/L, Skyy at $19/L or Luksusowa at $17/L. This suggests to me that it doesn't make sense to use anything but Luksusowa.

There are various synthetic clarifying and chillproofing agents one may use that are not animal-based, such as Divergan. If any winery claimed its wines were "vegan" then I would asssume that no animal products were used.

You have these things: A thin disk of (relatively moist) dough. A slab of thermal material (e.g., baking stone, hearth of traditional oven, whatever). A hot oven. You then slap said disk of dough onto said slab of thermal material, causing heat to shoot into the dough. This heat has two effects: 1. the leavening microorganisms go into a brief overdrive before expiring from the heat, thus producing lots of gas; 2. some of the water contained in the dough also turns into gaseous form. At the same time, the heat of the oven "sets" the top part of the dough sufficiently to trap gas. So, at this point, we have a whole lot of gas being produced in a very short period of time. We also have a well "set" bottom crust and a somewhat "set" top crust on the dough, and a very thin interior. Under these conditions, there aren't a lot of places the gas can go. The expanding gas therefore tends to "blow out" all the little cells in the interior of the thin dough and form one large gas bubble sandwiched between the bottom and top crusts. The result is that the whole thing blows up like a baloon, forming a "pocket" in the interior of the thin bread. Voila: pita. The same thing will happen with any leavened dough that is sufficiently thin, unless the dough is treated to mitigate this effect. This is why cracker dough is docked, why ciabatta dough is poked with the fingers, etc.

Ah, Trillium, once again you beat me to the punch. I was just trading through the thread thinking, "why is everyone saying smaller capers are better? some of the best capers are the big ones. I'll just scroll down and make sure no one else has poste-- d'oh!!" Seriously, though, size has nothing to do with the quality of capers. The best capers money can buy, salt-preserved caperi di Pantelleria, are quite large.

Gianduja is chocolate blended with hazelnut into a smooth paste. Nutella is probably the most widely-known brand and form of gianduja. Whether or not one considers Nutella to be gianduja, the Nutella sold in the states has more peanut oil and sugar than chocolate or hazelnuts and is laced with transfats from partially hydrogenated peanut oil. Its ingredients are, in order or quantity, as required on the label: sugar, peanut oil, hazelnuts, cocoa, skim mild, reduced minerals, whey, partially hydrogenated peanut oil, soy lecithin and vanillan. Nutritional information here. I'm not sure what your point is here. Ingreduents like sugar, peanut oil, cocoa, skim milk, reduced minerals, whey and vanillan strike me as relatively unexceptional ingredients for making chocolate. The peanut oil and partially hydrogenated peanut oil make the mixture spreadable and they hydrogenated stuff also acts against rancidity. The soy lecithin is an emulsifier. And, of course, there are hazelnuts. No one, least of all me, is suggesting that Nutella is the highest quality gianduja on the planet. But it certainly is gianduja. Indeed, the original brand name for Nutella was Supercrema Gianduja.

Gianduja is chocolate blended with hazelnut into a smooth paste. Nutella is probably the most widely-known brand and form of gianduja.

Sounds nice. I had a drink at Landmarc the other day they called a "French Gimlet." It was gin (although they usually make it with vodka), fresh lime juice, Rose's lime juice and the glass was rinsed with Ricard. Although lime with licorice sounds odd, it turned out to be really tasty.

That's what I said when I walked by there with Herb and JJ on our "NY Offal Tour." I was like, "who knew that Cheap Trick recorded their first US hit album in such a small place." They looked at me like I was from Mars. I said, "you remember... Cheap Trick Live at Budokan?... 'I want you to want me' and all that? Came out in the late... 70s... when... neither of you guys had been born. <Grumble> Forget I said anything."

Just to play Devil's advocate for a moment... isn't this somewhat inevitable? I mean, Bruni was saying that Babbo was designed for three stars and is achieving very near the pinnacle of what it is to be a three-star restaurant. Bouley, on the other hand, was designed for four stars and is substantially underachieving in some key areas (not too many people seem to be disputing that Bouley has fallen off the four star mark). This equals mostly praise of Babbo and mostly criticism of Bouley.

Guys... Understanding that Stephen Starr's star looms large in the Philadelphia restaurant scene, I can understand that there is some temptation to discuss his Philly restaurants in this thread. However, please resist that temptation and keep in mind that this thread is about a New York restaurant. Discussion here should be directly relevant to the New York restaurant Buddakan and the New York restaurant scene. If members would like to engage in discussion about Mr. Starr's Philadelphia restaurants, we have a great forum for just such discussions.

With the advent of a fresh review in the New York Times by Frank Bruni, we are going to close this chapter of discussion and start a new thread for discussion of Bouley.

I think it just happens to be a coincidence that the BABBP happened in NYC. It could have happened anywhere, and I have no doubts that plenty of people would have attended (although there may have been more enthusiasm for the diversity of styles in NYC than there might have been in a region with strong stylistic biases). Well, I think there is a pretty easy explanation for this. The population of New York City is around 8 million. The BABBP probably drew attendees from a much larger population area, but let's go conservative and call it 8 million. Assuming that there were 50,000 attendees, that's 0.6% of the population of NYC who checked it out. Greenville, SC has a population of 56,000. 50,000 attendees at a bagel festival would represent 90% of the population. 0.6% would represent around 335 people. Do you think it would be impossible to drum up 335 people for a bagel festival or something similarly "foreign" in Greenville? I don't. In fact, I would argue that bagel appreciation has permeated the zeitgeist of Greenville, SC far more deeply than barbecue appreciation has permeated the zeitgeist of New York City. The fact is that the average New Yorker doesn't really give a rat's ass about barbecue, but there are so damn many of us that even a small minority can make something look like a big deal based only on numbers. I don't quite understand where you get the idea that New York has a "fixation on [traditional American] barbecue." I think you'll find, as I say above, that most New Yorkers really don't care about it all that much more than they do, say, hotdogs. As one of the panelists in the "barbeculture" talk said, "barbecue" has become an identifiable flavor throughout most of America. Additionally, much the same way that the Black migration from the South to the North brought barbecue to cities like Chicago, so has the migration of Southerners to New York City brought an increased interest in barbecue (and other Southern foods) to the City. Also additionally, the immigration of other cultures with similar meat cooking traditions (notably Caribbean and African) have tended to reinforce an interest in barbecue-like foods. So it stands to reason that barbecue would find some interest in the City. I'm not sure it's accurate to suggest, however, that New York City is trying to establish itself as a "barbecue capital" by virtue of having some restaurants that are trying to make good barbecue any more than Raleigh, NC is trying to establish itself as a "pizza capital" by virtue of having some restaurants that are trying to make good pizza (assuming that they are). What I think we have here with the BABBP is nothing more complicated than a dense population center (NYC) combined with some people (Danny Meyer, et al.) with an interest in barbecue and the financial and organizational wherewithal to pull something like this off.

Or my personal favorite: vialone nano. There really aren't any places in NYC that have what I would call such an outstanding risotto that it was substantially better than I could do myself at home, although some feature luxury ingredients I probably wouldn't use. Risotto is one of the few dishes that are more difficult to execute well in a restaurant setting than in one's own home. My favorite restaurant risotto in NYC thus far has been the escargot and black truffle risotto starter at Town. I don't know if it's still on the menu, though.

Pavarotti hasn't been one of opera's greats?! It's hard to take someone seriously when they say something like that. It sounds to me like Bonilli is looking at Italian restaurant culture through a French lens.

I beat you to it. Without taking away anything from vodka, which I use with some frequency, I would suggest that the above statement is true largely because vodka doesn't have much taste (a.k.a., flavor).

Dude... what is up with that? You totally have to take from the deckle. Well, the best is a carefully crafted mix of deckle and flat for just the right amount of fat. Absent a skilled counterman, though, I'd rather have all deckle than all flat.

Some interesting points made, and worth making. I will suggest, however, that Megu's and Bruni's use of "kobe beef" to describe waygu beef from America is not particularly relevant to a discussiuon of Megu as a restaurant or of this review as it relates to Megu as a restaurant. So, if there is significant sentiment to continue this fork of the discussion, please start a new thread in General Food Topics.

Franny's was reviewed in today's NY Times: Brooklyn Pizza With a Résumé I found it kind of odd that the write up of what is in essence a pizzeria only devoted a quarter of the review to their pizza and doesn't have much illuminating to say about them: This is Dana Bowen's second or third $25 and Under, afaik, and it seems like she's still feeling her way around a bit. It was a positive review, I thought, but didn't really say as much as the New York Magazine review (although NY Magazine had 70% more words to say it in). Interesting that Bowen doesn't like the pasta, though, as other reviews have been very positive.