slkinsey
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Posts posted by slkinsey
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In the US the only variable part of the bill is the tip, so that is what is under my control.
And you're saying that, being fully cognizant of the prevailing custom in the US and the fact that your servers depend on tip money to make a living, you choose to reduce the "variable part of the bill" to zero when in the States.
I like your "prior negotiation" model. I think that, when you are in the States, every time you are in a restaurant where tipping is the expected norm, you should notify your server that you expect the restaurateur to pay a living wage, and that you will not be leaving a tip.
I'm frankly surprised you're ever served a second time in any restaurant you've ever patronized.Since he apparently only does this in the States, which he visits only infrequently, my guess is that he doesn't often revisit restaurants soon enough for there to be any kind of institutional memory of his previous stiffing on the tip. We know that higher-end restaurants often keep track of diner relationships, preferences, etc. I wonder if they also notate their records when someone has stiffed on the tip?
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For people who are generally against the practice of tipping as the main way servers earn income, I think it's a little more complicated than that, Jim.
No one is proposing that the restaurateurs simply raise their prices 20% and pay the servers 16.5% of each evening's receipts. Rather, the idea is to pay the servers a living wage, and to raise prices however much they might need to be raised to compensate your staff. Server wages would not depend on whether or not there were a busy night or a slow night. They would get paid the same regardless.
This is more or less how it works in most any other business. If, for example, you are a clerk in a hardware store, you are paid a wage as an employee of the store. If sales are down on Saturday, you don't get paid less for that day. Eventually, of course, if sales are down over a long enough period of time, the owner can no longer afford to employ you and you are let go. The hardware store's markup over cost has to "pay for" the owner's various expenses such as rent, heat, insurance, and employee wages.
There is no reason whatsoever that running a restaurant should be substantially different from running a hardware store staffed by hourly employees in this respect, but for some reason in the United States a tradition has evolved whereby restaurateurs are able to completely separate themselves from the responsibility of meaningfully compensating the waitstaff for the work they perform at the restaurant. If hardware stores can do it, then restaurants ought to be able to do it as well.
Stiffing the workers who are more or less "stuck" in the current compensation system, however, is not any kind of way to solve the problem. Frankly, if someone has a moral issue with the tip system so strong that they are not willing or able to compensate the people who serve them under the customs of this country... well, then they have no business eating in that restaurant, or perhaps even visiting this country. I certainly would never patronize a restaurant that was staffed with slaves, for example, nor would I be willing to visit a country that allowed such a practice.
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I can't help but reflect on the fact that for most of my 60+ decades on this earth, 10% was the hard and fast rule. Somehow, that escalated to 15% and now 20% seems to be the rock-bottom minimum, left only by miserly cheapskates.
It would be interesting to do an adjusted-dollar analysis that compares the earning power of a restaurant waiter relative to cost-of-living today and in 1958. I'd be willing to bet that standard of living based on an assumption of a 10% "standard tip" in 1958 would be about equal to a standard of living based on an assumption of a 20% "standard tip" today.
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I'm with those who feel that the tip system in general sucks, and that we should be paying these people a living wage and figure their income in to the price of the food. However, I'm also with those who feel that using this feeling as an excuse to eschew tipping in a country and culture where this is the expected norm and where it is the only meaningful way in which the waitstaff is compensated for its efforts and able to earn a living... well, that's simply a thinly-veiled excuse for being cheap wrapped up in pseudomoralistic sophistry in the hope of assaging one's guilt or perhaps even helping one to feel superior for being niggardly. Jack and others, if you want to bring an end to this practice so badly that you're willing to stiff every waiter that serves you, well then you'd better be out there writing articles, pushing for unionization of waitstaff, being activist on behalf of a living wage and an end of tipping, etc. Withholding your tip money as an individual achieves nothing other than to line your own pockets and deprive the waiter of income. I say, if you're not going to tip in a place where tipping would normally be expected, then it is morally incumbent upon you to step up to the plate and declare your intentions before you are served.
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For purposes of your publication, I would think that "contemporary cuisine" fits the bill. Has more or less the same plain-reading meaning as "nouvelle cuisine" but doesn't have the same connection to a certain historical period and style as "nouvelle cuisine." Also, any reader who understands what "nouvelle cuisine" means would also understand what was meant by "contemporary cuisine."
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"Nouvelle cuisine" seems to me somewhat similar to "modern art" -- which is to say that it has a plain reading sense that could be applied to anything happening "now" but has largely come to describe a certain era. Which is to say that art happening in modern times is not best described as "modern art" and food from a new perspective is not best described as "nouvelle cuisine."
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9. Jean-Georges Chocolate Cake, Jean-Georges (New York - and, like Nobu's miso black cod, available at many other imitators the world over.)
Interesting, considering that I've always been given to understand (from people I trust to know these things) that the "molten center chocolate cake" was a conception of Michel Bras and not Jean-Georges Vongerichten.
Anyway, I'll echo the sentiments of others who have observed that this is Saveur's list of "12 restaurants that matter" -- not "the 12 restaurants that matter most."
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The question in my mind is whether there really is more resin in the wood according to the phases of the moon, or whether some people just say this and/or take it as gospel. I also wonder whether or not, assuming the moon phase thing is really true, other factors might have a substantially larger effect (e.g., time of year the wood is harvested).
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Mike, is there any air taken out of the jar? (You can seal jars like this in a chamber vacuum machine, I know.) If not, it's not strictly speaking "sous vide" so much as "very precisely temperature controlled." What were the supposed benefits?
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IMO, the one real hole to be filled in the BABBP stylistic lineup is mutton barbecue from Owensboro, Kentucky.
Do they have anyone doing South Carolina-style mustard sauce?
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There are also those cool Indian stacking cannister things.
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I'd say that one way to get past this would be to buy bento boxes for your children, and put some effort into packaging them in a cute way, and you could even make the lunches together with your children. However, that still doesn't take away the fact that after lunch, the kid has to take the bento box back to his/her locker, or wherever the rest of his stuff is stored, and then remember to take it home, none of which they have to do if they can just throw the lunchables box into the trash on the way out the door to play on the playground.
I can't believe I am about to say this and not be kidding. I feel as though I have crossed some Rubicon into middle age. Here goes...
Back in my day (there, I said it) kids took lunch boxes to school and took them home with them at the end of the day. It wasn't that hard, and most everyone did it without forgetting.
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I could never undertstand things like "Lunchables." Because, you know, it's really hard to put some crackers, bologna and cheese in a container before you send your kid off to school.
My daughter used to love those. The boy not so much. It is less of a convenience thing and more of a cool thing.
Yea, I get that. My parents never let me have any of the "cool foods" when I was a kid, so I guess I have a different take on that. But, man... if I were going to send a kid to school with 480 calories, 20 grams of fat (10 saturated) and 1080 miligrams of salt... I'd want it to be something better. Not that I judge. I don't have any kids, so it's easy for me to say.
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I could never undertstand things like "Lunchables." Because, you know, it's really hard to put some crackers, bologna and cheese in a container before you send your kid off to school.
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All you're doing when you dry shake an egg is "whipping" the egg whites without a whisk to make an egg white foam. So, yes.
Not sure if you really want to dry shake a pasteurized egg white for 5 minutes, though. -
Cederlund's Caloric Punch
Proprietary venerable brand of Swedish punch liqueur (which see). The least smoky of the available brands.
Punsch (also known as Arrack Punch, Caloric Punch, Punch or Punsch) is a traditional liqueur in Sweden and to a lesser extent some other Nordic countries produced from arrack, neutral spirits, sugar, water, and various flavorings. -
Apparently it is possible to get a decent whipped foam out of egg whites which have been partially denatured by pasteurization, but it can take anywhere from four to ten times more whipping time.
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It's been cooked.
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I believe Josh may be naive about his ability to separate his considered opinion from the manipulation of the people who feed him.
You may be right there. I couldn't say. But I don't believe he is any more naive about this than Bruni and Platt and you and Sneakeater are about the many things that have been demonstrated to have a profound influence on what we perceive to be our independently-reached opinions. There is some question in my mind as to whether it's better or worse, in the grand scheme of things, to have most of one's potential influences clear and understood (as they are in the case when Josh receives a comp and must remind himself that it shouldn't unduly sway his opinion) or to have most of one's potential influences largely obscured and not understood or appreciated.
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Yea. I've always believed that if you're going to use commercial yeast, the smaller the amount you use, the better the result.
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In my observation it is typical of these sorts of things that most people believe other people are susceptible to their biases and influences, while I am able to eliminate or mitigate my biases and influences.
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If you want to do corned beef SV you need to make sure that you soak it very well beforehand.
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Daisy, I don't think there's anything "incorrect" or misleading about ordering a [specify your spirit] Old Fashioned. The Old Fashioned is more a family of drinks than a specific drink. So long as you have sugar, bitters and booze on a big piece of ice with a twist, you've got an Old Fashioned.
A Sidecar, on the other hand, is a specific drink calling for a specific spirit. Still, I don't necessary think there's anything wrong with telling a bartender (one who presumably knows how to make a decent Sidecar) that you want "something like a Sidecar, but with rum."
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Not sure that will help you much in ordering a drink at a bar. As far as I know, that's a Gary Special.
Thermopen Sale
in Kitchen Consumer
Posted
Actually, the difference between a "fast response" Thermapen and a "regular" Thermapen is the probe. If you have as look here, at the Mini Handheld Thermocouple that takes interchangable Type K Probes, you can see that the different probes have different response times. Interestingly, their "Fast Response Meat Probe" Type K Probe has a faster response than the "Super-Fast" Thermapen (2 seconds versus 4 seconds). I note that the Mini Handheld Thermocouple switches between the Farenheit and Celcius scales and has a range from -83F/-64C to to 1999°F/1400C. This is the one I'd be getting.