Bux

I would assume at the two and three star level, which is where it counts as those are the chefs most likely to be away doing promotional or charity work, you'd want to sample as many nights as possible when the chef's not there, although it might not always be easy to plan. As a diner, I'd be more interested in assurances that I'd eat well and not that the chef would be there. I recall Bernard Loiseau the French chef being quoted as saying his sous chef cools Loiseau better than he himself cooks his own food. He was quoted as saying this the year before he earned his third star.

A few random thoughts. I assume pigskin acts just as feet and bones do to provide gelatin which is the reason aspic gels. I've never been sure how the juice gets into soup dumplings, but I've always suspected it may have been frozen. The meat itself will provide some juice as is evidenced by many boiled or fried dumplings. A recipe source would be interesting. I suspect the price comparison between the five for a dollar fried dumplings and soup dumplings is unfair or misleading. The price differential between fried dumplings and soup dumplings is not that great, and maybe there isn't a difference, when purchased in the same restaurant. The five for a dollar places aren't restaurants. The level of comfort, ambience, decor, amenities and whatever, is considerably down scale from most fast food joints, as is the kitchen equipment. Consistency is not something they have going for them either, although the one on Mosco seems pretty consistent. It's good to know I've hit them on their good days and shouldn't expect better the next time. The one on Eldridge has been consistently tastry, but the crispness and state of the skin is another story. Still five tasty pork and chive meatballs for a buck isn't all that bad.

My first point was that the same olive may be picked green (green) or ripe (black) from the tree. It's possible that a green olive will turn black if cooked at high enough heat, but that's not how ripe olives get black. For the most part they grow black on the tree. I'm sorry, but a representative from a large West Coast olive processing house wouldn't be my source of information on olives anymore than a large commerical American dairy corporation would not be my source for cheese information. The Cincinnati Enquirer not only asked the wrong person, but I suspect the wrong question, albeit one that played into the hands of Bell Carter Foods who apparently cooks their black olives in the can and packs their green olives in jars and brine. The Bell Carter answer is about what they do, but misleading in terms of what you'll find in Fairway, where I'll wager none of the black olives sold in bulk are cooked. Bell Carter pasteurizes green olives and cooks black olives. Whole foods says they sell mostly unpasteurized olives because "Pasteurization is harmful to the flavor, color and even texture of the olive." Cooking the olive is even worse. Canned ripe California olives don't have a delicate flavor as much as they have what remains after the flavor is cooked out, but it was as rude for me to imply it was not a refined and acquired taste just as much as it would be to imply Epoisses was better than Velveeta. The Whole Foods site has some clear concise information on curing and processing olives and on the color. Outside of California, we have this interesting information from Zeea, Inc. "For packaging and shipping, Spanish cultivators usually pack olives in pasteurized cans or tins. Moroccans are known for using vacuumed packing methods. Greek manufacturers, once again abiding by ancient traditions, always pack processed olives in traditional plastic pails." This may only apply to their suppliers however. Here's a site with green olives for sale in cans and black olives in jars.

My experience is that tossing in a large piece of pigskin, perhaps from a hunk of fat back, will give an unctuous quality to the sauce when braising a stew or pot roast.

The former look better on your resume than the latter. It's also a different kind of learning experience. For whatever it is worth, many take a lesser salalry to work in a special restaurant for a year of two while they're still learning the trade.

A bit of history. Spain wasn't really involved in WWII. As a result it wasn't defeated and kept it's fascist government long after the end of the war. It's probably more accurate to say it had a fascist government, than that is was a fascist country. I mean Spain is Spain before and after goverments rise and fall. I suspect the isolation that followed the war is one reason there are fewer Spanish restaurants outside Spain. NY for instance, had a Spanish community (as opposed to a Latin-American community) with restaurants and at least one important food shop, but it's all petered out. The newer upscale Spanish restaurants haven't caught on, but there are signs that's changing. With it's post Franco successful economy and intellectual awakening, Spain is probably the most interesting place to eat in Europe right now. I have no proof that diners from the UK are under represented in the fine Spanish restaurants, but I've had that feeling. On the other hand, chefs from the UK seem to know what's happening and have a shown a keen interest in Spain.

Surely I'm not the only person who's seen black olives in jars. I have also seen some rather dark olives at the mill ready to be pressed for oil. It's not been my opinion that olives slated to be pressed for oil are cooked. Black olives have always been referred to as ripe olives. I've never heard of them as being cooked. It appears that many olives are picked green -- green as in unripe -- while others seem to be allowed to ripen. OLIVE Fruit Facts "Harvest: Olive fruits that are to be processed as green olives are picked while they are still green but have reached full size. . . . Both green-cured and ripe-cured olives are popular as a relish or snack. For California canned commercial olives, black olives are identical to green olives. The black color is obtained by exposure to air after lye extraction and has nothing to do with ripeness. . . . . Ascolano Very large, ellipsoidal fruit. Skin color very light even when ripe, pit very small. . . . . Manzanillo Large, rounded-oval fruit. Skin brilliant purple, changing to deep blue-black when mature. . . . . Mission Medium-sized, oval fruit. Skin deep purple changing to jet-black when ripe. . . . . Picholine Small, elongated fruit. Skin light green, changing to wine red, then red-black when ripe." None of this explains why canned black olives from California are among the world's most tasteless and useless fruits.

Up price from the brasseries there's l'Atelier de Joël Robuchon with it's counter seating perfectly suited to solo dining. I have mixed feelilngs about Pinxo and Chiberta, but I believe they both offer counter dining. For brasseries, I'm fond of Vaudeville, for it's style although the food may be no better or worse than the rest of the Flo Group.

I'll take your word for it that they don't.

So perhaps the answer to the original question of why did Fernand Point go to Japan in the first place is, "To retrieve his wife." ← I'll bet that picture was taken in Vienne at la Pyramide with Point's widow. I'm also beginning to suspect the instuctor may be confused about his facts or his chef.

I'm confused. Joe's had two places on Carmine. One was at the northwest corner of Carmine and Bleeker. That's recently closed. The other is further north of Bleeker. Both were on the odd numbered side of the street. 26 and 28 are south of Bleeker. I don't recall what was at 28 Carmine. It is interesting that the menu in front of 26 still offers slices from Joe's for $3.75.

Between Mulberry and Elizabeth Streets. We buy bags of the frozen dumplings and boil them. They were recommended by a friend and they're pretty good. At least the two varieties we've bought were good. Never tried cooking the soup dumplings. I only recall the number 5 coming into play up thread in terms of the 5 for a dollar dumplings. I don't recall anyone suggesting soup dumplings are five times as expensive to make. Maybe one fifth more trouble and expense. They rarely sell for that much more in restaurants. Goodies on East Broadway has been offering orders of them dirt cheap -- something like 8 dumplings for $2.50, one order per individual. They have a good reputation for their dumplings too. I suppose it's a loss leader. They're practically right next door to Dim Sum GoGo.

It's a good market and comes highly recommended. I recognize a face or two from my last butcher shop, or better yet, they recognize me, so I get served quckly. It's crowded and, to say the least, it's not the kind of place where they take numbers for orderly service. You've got to get the attention of someone behind the counter. On the whole, I find the pork very good at Chinese butcher shops, but haven't been able to say the same for the beef. I rather wonder if they have beef cheeks, but wouldn't know how to go about asking for them. The joys of identifying cuts of meat and reading English labels are never ending. The last time I was shopping, I came across both drum steaks and trum steaks in the packaged and frozen meats. Not surprisingly, I thought they both looked like old fashioned drum sticks from the kind of chickens I knew as a child. I don't mean to appear unkind or unsympathetic to my neighbors whose command of English is no worse than my grandfather's was all his life. There is humor none the less, though not as much as I found on the black board in front of the Manhattan Bistro, a closer neighbor in the heart of sophisticated SoHo, where "beef bourgonous" was recently featured.

I've been busy, but I trust it's not too late say what I said to the sous chef last week when we had dinner at Cru. We enjoyed our meal very much. While the lamb was very good, the best part of my meal was dessert. Mrs. B, who is trying to avoid desserts for a while and who intended to have me eat half of her dessert as well as mine, was, in the end, very reluctant to give up any part of her dessert and only willing to allow me a taste if I gave up an equal quantity or more, or my dessert. For the record, I had the dessert that wasn't a pear doughnut With Respect to its Inherent Nature, and my wife had the olive oil financier. If whoever was making dessert last Tueday is in the kitchen, I'd consider stopping in just for dessert. On the other hand I know full well the joys and attractions of young daughters. I've got a grandson she'd like to meet someday.

As I've spent all of a couple of days in the UK over the past decade let me continue to ask questions, but first, I realize I didn't thank you for coming here and subjecting yourself to this for our pleasure. Thanks for the insight you're offering here. I'll suggest it would be naive to believe any guide, especially one with scores, be they numerical or the award of stars, doesn't have an effect on the very things it rates, if it is a successful guide. We've all heard of French wineries that attempt to "parkerize" their wines. In fact it was a winemaker from the UK working in France who first used that expression in speaking to me. Do you, the corporate Michelin "you," take any responsibility in this regard and is there really anything you can do about it. You have your standards and certainly it would seem as if anything an establishment did to meet your standards would be good for the consumer if you believe in your standards. Thus my question might better be phrased as do you worry that establishments will misconstrue your standards and do the wrong thing in a misguided attempt to gain a star and is that your problem? Would it serve any purpose to be more explicit about the ratings why they were given? Has any thought ever been given to the idea of offering full blown text critiques of the multistarred establishments?

You say that with the conviction of a man who's just said that getting hit by a car while crossing the street is not the worst thing that could happen, while he's thinking it would be worse to get hit by a truck. I'm on your side though. I have fond memories of drinking grape flavored alcohilic ink, from a goatskin bota that imparted the additional taste of leather uphostery, in my youth before or after running the bulls in Pamplona almost half a century ago. That fond memory is not filed in the gastronomic section of my brain and there is no cross hyperlink either. That memory fades when I think "wine."

You bet. I'm still short on time today, but believe me, I couldn't wait to get out of the place. ← You make it sound as if you'd seen the light early in the meal.

I gave him the link to this question, so hopefully it will be soon. ← Now I'm really quite confused. Who is it that proposed this question in the first place what prompted the question. I had assumed it was asked by the instructor and that the answer was to be delivered in class, perhaps in a discussion or a test. My assumption would be that whoever asked the question had some knowledge that Point was in Japan at some time and that the statement that preceeded the question in your post has some facts behind it. Soon we will be asking where you are going to school and perhaps questioning why.

Miss Sylvia delivers a decent espresso, with crema on a good day when the Danesi arabica beans are fresh and the gods are on our side. Miss Sylvia is the name of our espresso machine. It's not my knickname, but that given to her by the Italian manufacturer.

Context and relativity are most important. I don't drink coffee on an airplane, but on arrival in France, I am most likely to stop for my first cup of espresso. I will usually have a dose of nameless carbohydrates as well. They label it as croissant, but to call it pathetic would be to flatter it. gdg, from time to time I still find an acceptable croissant in a bar, but it's not as often as I used to. Don't get me started or I will sound like the old curmudgeon I am. The French croissant has seen it's better days. For a while, the one thing I was able to enjoy about coming back to NY after a trip to France was the quality of the croissants at my local pastry shop in NYC. Alas, they've deteriorated so much that even on a nice day I'm content to have a breakfast of cereal and milk rather than take the walk I used to enjoy even in rain and snow. We live in hope, but even the newer shop whose croissants were almost twice the price and who won me away, now bakes croissants of such unreliability that I refuse to gamble so early in the morning lest my whole day be ruined at the start.

Which I suppose, is why I don't search out Korean food in Paris. gdg, in the US we refer to milk without the cream as "skim milk," and milk with the cream in it as "whole milk." Most dairies in the US now sell milk with various percentages of cream. There is skim milk with no cream, 1% milk with 1% cream, 2% milk and whole milk which I believe generally contains about 4% cream. The cream is removed from the milk and sold at a much higher price, but the resultant skim milk is no cheaper to buy. Skim milk is no less expensive, just inferior.

We were in le Baron Rouge last September on a Sunday. We met friends. Actually we met the American daughter of an old friend in NY and her French boyfriend. They lived in the area and were going to be shopping in the nearby Aligre market, so it was a good meeting place. I don't actually recall anything that resembled service, good, bad, friendly, or otherwise. Mrs. B secured some oysters while I fought my way to the bar where I obtained four glasses of wine to bring outside and enjoy with the oysters we shared while leaning on a parked car for support. It's that kind of place that's always a joy to find, but bound to be disappointing if you've already been told about it.

On the corner of Mosco Street (or is it alley, or is it even Mosco)? Are you referring the woman selling "hot cakes?" There are a number of stands around selling these litte balls of pancake or waffle batter. They're always sold as "hot cakes" -- sometimes as "Hong Kong hot cakes" -- although once I noticed a stand where they were being made faster than they were being sold and little bags of them were piling up. It occured to me that they weren't selling like hot cakes. ← Well Bux, I was referring to the dim sum, and got caught-up in the sub referencing. However, I have found it. BTW, I get the impression that you don't like asian hot cakes. Sun Hop Shing Tea House 21 Mott St (212) 962-8650 ← My mistake, I thought you were referring to the stand, not the restaurant near the stand. I don't have strong feelings about those hot cakes or egg cakes. I don't know that I've bought them since my daughter grew up. When I bought them for her, I also ate them. If I'm in Chinatown and want a snack, I'd probably buy a pork bun somewhere rather than the hot cakes. The hot cake lady on Mosco usually can't make them fast enough, but once on Canal Street I saw a vendor who couldn't sell his fast enough and I though it amusing that they weren't selling like hotcakes. They are among the least Asian tasting of anything in the neighborhood with the exception of Hagen Daaz ice cream. They are very much like pancakes or waffles, but not as dry or crisp as waffles.

"La vache qui rit." I'm reminded of it's cousin, not Velveeta, but it's European cousin, crème de Gruyère[/e] not to be confused with Gruyère at least not with the aged piece I bought the other day. That stuff, let's not call it cheese, in silver foil triangles used to appear in gourmet food baskets all over America at one time and may still do that. It's a horrid soapy stuff made from leftover bits of inferior cheese whipped up with chemicals and stabilziers, but it was imported and passed for fancy food and, as I said, may still do in some quarters, as no doubt La Vache Qui Rit all the way to the bank does.

Sadly, this is true all over. Even in Paris one needs to do research to be sure of getting good food. It's still a lot easier than in many other countries, and even with the dollar as low as it is, I think it's easier to eat well on a budget in Paris than in NY and often more satisfying to splurge there. I don't know where to slurge on the coffee, but the pasty is another story.