slkinsey
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Just a note: Please keep in mind that this thread is for discussion of Wolfgang's Steakhouse. Any discussion of the recent Times review in this thread should be within the context of what it tells us about Wolfgang's, whether we agree with what it tells us about Wolfgang's and other things directly relating to... wait for it... Wolfgang's. If you would like to talk about the review as a piece of writing, whether or not you think it has anything valuable to say, what you think about Bruni's style and overall views... there is a thread for that in Food Media and News.
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Here is an interesting quote from Gary Regan in another thread:
The best martini I ever had. I mean that--the absolute best. Was made by Sasha Petraski, owner of Milk and Honey in Manhattan. He used the regular bottling of Tanqueray, and M&R dry vermouth. This was at a Martini competition at the book party for Dave Wondrich's "Esquire Drinks" and he, along with the other bartenders, was required to use those products. We weren't allowed to see the bartenders make the drinks so we had no preconceived notion of the preparation, or of who had made each Martini.Sasha's Martini was the coldest Martini I've ever had, but I'm not sure exactly how he achieved that. What I do know, though, is that he used a 50/50 ration of gin to vermouth. I was blown away when he told me.
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).
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I'm just curious, Sam -- what do you use for gin cocktails other than martinis? I generally have two bottles in the bar -- Gordon's for cocktails with lots of other ingredients for distraction, like the (now) famous 20th Century or Corpse Reviver, the Jasmine, or a Bronx on those very rare occasions when I drink one. I've even come around to Gimlets made with Gordon's, although for years I made them with Tanquerey. But then I have a bottle of something better (Boodles is my standard; Cascade Mountain my new favorite) for martinis.
Do you have a two-tier gin system too? Do you think it's a waste to use premium gin in other cocktails?
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.
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I have only heard about this, I've never seen the episode, but is it true that Julia Child, on air, once dropped something she was plating on the counter, scooped it back up on the plate, and said that "if it happens in the kitchen, no one will ever know"?
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:
A 1997 Los Angeles Times review of Julia Child's biography, Appetite For Life, said:Julia worked hard in preparation for the shows, always determined to direct her efforts toward the home cook, but on camera she was, as Paul [Child] said, "a natural clown" as much as she was a teacher and chef. She improvised, she joked, she dropped food and utensils. In one of her best-known television episodes, she flipped a potato pancake in the air and, instead of landing in the skillet, it plopped on the table. Julia simply looked straight into the camera and said, "You just scoop it back into the pan. Remember, you are alone in the kitchen and nobody can see you."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.
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When I'm being particularly bad, I chalk this sort of thing up to a "stupid tax". Like the lottery is a "math tax". Does that make you feel any better? It usually works with me.
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.
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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.
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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.
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Can somebody please explain to me in "for dummies" manner how it is that the pocket magically appears in pita when you bake them?
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.
- A thin disk of (relatively moist) dough.
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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.
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Guanduja chocolate seems to have replaced all other varieties on city menus these days. I wish I knew the difference (new thread, please).
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.
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Guanduja chocolate seems to have replaced all other varieties on city menus these days. I wish I knew the difference (new thread, please).
Gianduja is chocolate blended with hazelnut into a smooth paste. Nutella is probably the most widely-known brand and form of gianduja.
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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.
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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."
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Bouley and Babbo both get 3 stars. One reads like a kind, friendly love letter, the other is filled with backhanded compliments.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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).
When Bagels first hit Greenville, SC big about 10 years ago, there were bagel runs and many minivans making bagel runs all over town (and I was often in the back seat of these minivans), yet 50,000 people did not descend on Cleveland Park to eat bagels . . .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.
But New York has this fixation on barbecue that puzzles me. It's sort of a collective attitude of "We have the best of everything, so we should have the best barbecue, too." Well, no. You don't have the lifestyle, atmosphere or history that would have given rise to great barbecue. So why the obsessation with declaring New York a barbecue capital?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.
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The problem with most restaurant risottos is the use of arborio rice. If carnaroli was used the results would improve significantly.
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.
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In [bonilli's] words:"what all of them are missing is a kitchen Pavarotti. The tenor from Modena hasn't been one of (opera's) greats but he was a great communicator."
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.
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Hey... I see he covers Zubrowka; I would like to draw attention to the fact that I have come through with the answer to the mystery of bison grass - only a year after the question was raised (hey, what can I say - I wasn't here in time to get to it sooner). Please notice it and be pleased, somebody! I was all proud of it and everything....[brit West, brand manager for Türi Vodka, says that] while some consumers may be able to categorically say, 'I don't like the taste of cognac,' it is rare that you hear people saying that about vodka."
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).
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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.
vermouth -- still kicking?
in Spirits & Cocktails
Posted
It strikes me that there are both good new cocktail trends and bad new cocktail trends.
What's good in my book -- and I have a feeling that most of the cocktailphiles on these boards would agree with me -- is evolving the craft, but doing so with a firm understanding of the roots a base in the "classics." This philosophy produces carefully balanced and crafted libations using ingredients such as fresh citrus juices, bitters, etc. If I had to come up with snappy description of this philosophy, I'd call it "moving forward by looking back."
What's bad in my book is exactly what Lan4Dawg describes: "chilled spirits in a pretty glass." Or, in other words, simple and not particularly elegant or complex drinks based on not much more than the newest flavored vodka, usually with something to sweeten it up. The devolution of the martini from a gin-and-vermouth cocktail to a glass of cold vodka is emblematic of this trend, as is the scarsity of bitters -- and, it must be said, the widespread use of the ending "-tini" for drinks which bear no relationship with a martini instead of a more interesting and unique name.
People should, of course, try to be aware of both trends in the cocktail craft before making blanket condemnations of all that is new. On the other hand, most people are afforded much wider exposure to the latter trends than the former, and not everyone is able to live in a city like NYC, London (and, no doubt, the right places in Cleveland
) among the leading proponents of the good new school, and we should have some understanding of that too.