RodJSM

Thanks much for these recommendations! My wife and I just spent our first anniversary in SF this last weekend. Let me tell you, when you have such unanimous approval for ANY type of restaurant, the way there was in this thread for Yank Sing, GO. THERE. It was truly a great experience with extra great food. Despite a higher than average exposure to Asian food I've never experienced Dim Sum. Now I'm afraid that I'll be disappointed by any other Dim Sum restaurant I try. It wasn't hard to spend over $80 either. We came in at $99, I believe. We tended toward the more exotic seafood type items rather than the doughy pork-bun type items which I'm sure skewed the cost upward a bit. That was with no drinks other than the pot of tea, either. This was Sunday afternoon. Saturday we were in China Town and wanting Dim Sum so we tried Four Seasons as recommended by wannabake. They only serve Dim Sum for lunch and we were there at dinner time but we had a great seafood meal (the whole meal type, with the menu items already chosen) that included our first crack at both jelly fish (appetizer) and shark fin soup. It also included honey walnut shrimp and a scallop dish. Not the experience Yank Sing was but still a delightfully enjoyable meal. Thanks again for the guidance!

I made a ginger infusion recently that I liked a lot. I added probably a tablespoon or more shredded ginger to about 12 ounces of (I believe) Smirnoff vodka. Let sit in the refrigerator about two weeks, agitating occasionally. Then strain off the infusion and discard the ginger. Cheesecloth or coffee filters work well for that. This adds a great essence of ginger to whatever it's added to. The lemon grass idea sounds good too. I'd love to hear recipe ideas for cocktails using a ginger infusion to go along with Asian food. I've had a mental block when it comes to creativity on this but I really enjoy the following drink with any meal involving soy sauce and rice: Ginger Cocktail (please don't ever call this a ginger martini ) 1 ounce vodka 1/2 ounce ginger infusion 1/2 ounce dry vermouth garnish with a sprinkling of roasted sesame seeds Substituting sake for dry vermouth works well too. Rodney

I often hang out in Robert's forum (the DrinkBoy community at MSN) and apparently stumbled onto this site just a couple days before him (5/28). That made me wonder if we happened to follow the same path to get here and I had to go back and trace it. I got here from a little link down at the bottom of a recent (but still a month old) Slate article about menu lingo. That took me to the amazing El Bulli article here at eGullet, a few more great articles from the front page, and on to the forums. Of course, the Spirits and Cocktails forum is the first one I checked! Rodney