Bux

It's been a few years, but when we were in S.F., we chose Ton Kiang and were most impressed with the quality. At the time, it seemed far better than what we could get in NY. Dim sum has gotten better here, but it's been too long for me to try and compare Ton Kiang with our best these days. I can't remember how we did our research. It was well before eGullet. Strange neighborhood though. I seem to remember seeing a lot of Russian bakeries. There were a lot of Asians at the restaurant though.

You can "craft" your own sandwich. Isn't that pretty much what Craft had to tone down? I remember when Future Shock was published and Henry Ford's idea of an assembly line was declared no longer more efficient than one that offered cars in colors to order at the press of a button. I still question the ability to maintain that range of selections and have them all fresh tasting. The question is really do people want those choices and if the answer is that they'll choose their favorites and plug themselves into the computer, I share Jason's skepticism. Most of all, I remember deciding to give up most of our department store credit cards because I liked the idea of just using one of two credit cards for everything. Of course then I couldn't pay my bills on line and it meant sending lots of checks to various sources, but I still don't think single outlet/use card is worth the space in my wallet. Either people are going to eat here once ot twice a month and don't want to have a special card, or they're going to eat here every other work day and will look forward to variety, in my opinion. Of course it's been noted that I am not very representative of the American consumer and particularly of the dining consumer and even less of those who just eat out, as opposed to dine out.

We had an excellent dish for the first time the other night at Daniel in NYC. Everyone was surprised we hadn't had it before. Apparently, they've been preparing it for a long time. It was a very simple dish with of sliced scallops and sliced matsutake mushrooms. The scallops are evidently put under the boiler for seconds, just long enough to warm them, but not long enough to change their texture. I believe the mushrooms get the same treatment. The slices are arranged on a warm plate and drizzled with an herbed olive oil. Even thought they're still raw, the temperature change affects the way they're perceived in your mouth.

The Beauvals airport site also states that a taxi from Paris should run anywhere from 100 € to 160 € depending on traffic and whether the night charge is in effect. The shuttle service seems well priced.

The first savory foam I've ever had was in a small, rather nondescript restaurant in a beach town near Narbonne in France. Maybe in was in Narbonne-Plage, a rather new city full of summer houses and condos, but not particularly upscale. I'd hear of Adrià whose El Bulli was but a couple of hours south even via back roads, but it was a few more years before I got there and I don't think Adrià was anything like the household name he is today. The dish was a cappuccino de poisson or fruits de mer. More or less, it was simply some foamed cream or milk on top of a flavorful fish soup, made rather exactly like the coffee drink. It seemed like a thoroughly reasonable idea.

I believe that the liquor is sake, and that the shimp are meant to die from alcohol poisoning and then be eaten sashimi-style with the ingestested sake flavoring them. I would assume, from having a similar dish with prawns in Tokyo, in less stimulating circumstances, the shrimp are meant to be anesthetized and to be eaten live as well as raw, but motionless. Should you be offered this dish, eat quickly as the anesthetic wears off in time.

The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea ??? nope - it was an early to mid-90s flick actually. i can't for the life of me remember who was in it tho. I believe the wife was played by Maria Conchita Alonzo. As for the men, I guess I didn't pay that much attention. My recollection was that it wasn't so much a hustler as a young guy who sort of got unofficially adopted by the husband who was teaching him the business and the wife.

Was there ever a requirement to think to be a represenative in the Kentucky state legislature? I've sure as hell seen no evidence of it in the NYS legislature. As for Moolatte, I don't watch enough TV or visit enough DQs, at least not since my college days. When I hear "moo," I think "cow," when I hear "latte," I think of "milk." "Latte" is the Italian word for "milk." It's not the Italian word for a coffee drink, although "caffe latte" would get you coffee with milk much as "cafe au lait" or "cafe con leche" works elsewhere. For what it's worth, I have eaten in Mulate's in Breaux Bridge, but not the one in New Orleans or the one in Baton Rouge. It's a pretty touristy place, but what I mean to say is "what they hell were they thinking?" I guess they've just been laying in wait for the chance to sue the first guy to come out with a moolatte drink.

It appeared December 31, 2003, in the Wednesday Dining section and was discussed in a thread back then.

Roissy (CDG airport) is 27 k from Paris. Beauvais is 88 k from Paris.

Why most? This shouldn't be decided by a popularity contest. May I assert my authority here? By the mid sixties I was looking for croissants whenever I could. Now I have a better understanding of why. It wasn't just the appearance of croissants in NY, it was the decline of the bagel. Curiously, that article seems exactly the same one that appeared in the NY Times, but I see no mention of that. The bread of NY has changed drastically in my lifetime. Almost gone are the top quality "Jewish" rye breads and pumpernickels, not to mention the corn breads which are in no way to be confused with cornbread. There's no greater sign of that decline than in a Katz's pastrami sandwich that all but dissolves in the steam of the pastrami. On the other hand, all sorts of italian, French, whole grain, olive, etc. breads have popped up in new bakeries. I guess it's a trade off. NY is still a good city for bread, it's just different bread. I've had better bagels ourside NY these days however. The NY bagel of my youth is gone from Manhattan. It may live in Queens. I don't know, but as Fat Guys says, there aren't enough people around to to mourn it properly. There's really no counter argument a forty year old kid can make about that. Sure there are some very fine sandwich rolls passing as bagels these days. I enjoy them for what they are. As soon as they get rid of that vestigial pinhole in the middle, they won't leak mayo from my tunafish sandwich. The evolution will then be complete.

One thing that's sure is that restaurants that please on the first visit are more likely to fail on the second visit than restaurants the displease on the first visit are likely to succeed on the second visit--if only because it's rare that we return. Some times a restaurant does five dishes really well and five very poorly. It could be the luck of the draw on a first visit. If a poorly executed dish is the first one I taste, I may write off the restaurant. On the other hand, if I've had a couple of successful dishes before I run into the clunker, I'm liable to be more philosophical and learn to use the restaurant for what it does well. Nevertheless, I think we make first visits in a very optimistic mood and tend to give new places the benefit of the doubt. We want to like them. Somehow when we go back, we feel more more cheated if the restaurant isn't as good as we remember. For all the philosophical explanations, I should add that we are as grateful for your updates as for your original posts on these places.

This doesn't surprise me. It's a shame, but success often breeds its own downfall. It's also my understand that the neighborhood behind La Boqueria is being gentrified. On a parallel note perhaps, I was speaking with Rogelio when I was in Madrid earlier this year and mentioned the old market in Valencia, which is a beautiful old building and somewhat of a tourist attraction itself. He noted that it was not as great a place to shop as it used to be. Even earlier this year, I recall commenting on the market in San Sebastian. It seems to be as good a place to shop for food as I recall it was years ago, but the food vendors have been moved back and underground with the historic old structure being converted into a modern and somewhat banal shopping mall.

Not only that, but if I find a cockroach in my dish, you're going to have a hard time convincing me it belongs there.

For a kid your age, you must have done some reading. I can't remember when I last had a NYC bagel that wasn't a sacrilege. They don't make 'em like they used, or like they should and haven't for a long time--maybe before you were born. There's nothing however unkosher about toasting a bagel or for that matter in buttering it and laying on a hot griddle (more likely a frying pan in my childhood) as long as you're not using bacon fat.

Yeah, that's what I've been paying. Three-fifty for a plain slice is way high. + + + Katz's Dr. Brown's sodas are traditional, but I never got it. I never developed a taste for the Cle-ray and the cream (vanilla) soda is a sweet taste I outgrew long ago. I don't like Coke with pizza either. Beer or seltzer for me. I've never thought about wine with pastrami until this minute. I don't think there's a particularly good combination there either and Katz's doesn't have wine. Right? The pastrami sandwiches are pretty big and full of meat. If you go late before a big dinner, you might want to share a sandwich. You get lots of pickles and pickeled tomatoes for free. The bread really sucks, but I'm not so sure the club roll is much better either these days. The ticket is important. I wonder how they let you out with one. Everyone gets a ticket and everyone hands in a ticket on leaving even if it's blank. That's to stop people from getting two sandwiches on one ticket and six on the other and just handing in the two sandwich ticket. There's a sign saying you have to pay a certain price if you loose the ticket. It's like getting on a toll road. Lose the ticket and you pay from the first entrance. Bear in mind that if you lose a ticket and put everything on one ticket, it could be an expensive lunch if they enforce their policy. You can put it all on one ticket if you hand in the blanks when you pay.

If you hold a non-Eu passport or driver's license, it's much cheaper to rent your car from ourside Europe rather than at the local car rental agency, although the use of the web may work as well. Unfortunately the rates are much better when the rental is for three days or longer.

Jaime, you're lucky to have boring business meetings in interesting restaurants. Most often boring business meetings are held in boring restaurants. A few members have expressed legitimate reasons for using a pseudonym and once we grant that right to one member, we feel obligated to grant it to all, but we prefer that members use a real name. eGullet staff and all members of our team used a real name as their user name or in their signature. I can't really speak for others, but two things lend credibility to posts for me. One is the use of a real name. The other may be more important, but it's the rounded picture I get from reading a member's posts over time. If I feel a member has a one track purpose, there are two likely reasons. The first is that he tends to post on one subject and to introduce that subject into threads, often where it seems to derail the thread back onto that poster's favorite subject. The other reason would be that I am not familiar with the range of posts by that member. As for this having the opportunity to be an interesting discussion, I suppose my sense is that it looks as if it's going to be the same old subjective argument without much in the way of substance. Discussing plagiarism in a dynamically changing culinary world where the average diner sees creativity as it appears to him often not only means a subjective view of what's out there on the tables of foreign restaurants, but must preclude experiments carried on in the kitchen which may take years to reach a restaurant table. If chef A makes a discovery in 2000, but for one reason or another (not having his own restaurant, or not having the right clientele) it doesn't make it to the table, and chef B makes a similar discovery in 2001 and served it in 2002, is he the more creative or more avant garde chef? Most of us know what we've tasted and where we first had it; some of us manage to be aware that a similar dish may have appeared elsewhere already; but very few of us have much of a clue about what's going on behind the scenes. What I sense in this thread is the introduction of a discussion about the evils of plagiarism even when it's admitted that the majority here don't see Blumenthal as a plagiarist. Even if Blumenthal were to be judged as a derivative chef, (and I'm not of that opinion) I would assert that his work was worthy of intellectual discussion as well as gastronomic praise from those who have enjoyed eating it. Even if history judges him as a minor chef, he wouldn't be dismissed. Why should any restaurant discussion be dragged down with such a focus on whether or not the food may be derivative. Even precise supportable examples shouldn't overpower the rest of the discussion. As alluded to earlier, few people are likely to dismiss a traditional restaurant by saying it's too derivative of Escoffier. Perhaps it's a subjective difference in opinion about discussions, but I don't get what seems like harping on a single issue, that I don't find central nor necessarily relevant.

That's quite an absurd position for many reasons, and I do think crankiness and axes to grind are often the reason we get such nonconstructive criticism and cries of plagiarism particularly from anonymous sources. The sense of deja vu has already been cited. Of course a few people might know more than the major part of the membership, but it's really doubtful that a couple of posters who log on with pseudonyms to make the same point over and over are really not going to convince many that these same anonymous voices are those of knowledgeable diners. One very highly respect critic has posted (on the Spain forum?) that Adrià has great respect for Blumenthal and while I'm not willing to disclose my private conversations, I have quite a bit of respect for Blumenthal based on conversations that indicate Blumenthal was doing some stuff well before Adrià did similar things. This is not to say that he's better than Adrià or that he's more avant garde than Adrià. Anyone involved in the creative arts or even scientific experimentation, that due credit doesn't always go to the first innovator. Some artists, and some chefs, benefit from a better press, while some chefs just suffer a surfeit of anonymous critics on the Internet. Tarka has already suggest that cuisine is part of a continuum and creative cooking as well as molecular gastronomy are no less so. Chefs, like the rest of us, are products of their times and all respond to similar stimuli. The cross pollination is too great to make the kind of absolute distinctions you want to make between leaders and followers if only because the followers need credit for pushing the movement along. To focus on the superficial aspects of any innovation--foam for example--is to lose sight of the variations and creativity within that aspect. Nevertheless, I return to my original point, when an anonymous voice arises from time to time with a single purpose, it's always going to be highly suspect. When it claims to be the voice of greater knowledge than that possessed by those each of us may already respect, that anonymous voice becomes a tiring presence whose influences wanes with each post.

Menton, I assume he's thinking of the same town with a different spelling. I believe that at one time, Rheims was the preferred spelling in English. I can sense why an Anglophone would want to put the "h" in there. I've never understood why Lyons and Marseilles were at one time the preferred, or at least the more commonly accepted English spellings. Even the city's own web site manages to use both spellings in different places. Johnny, as to whether Reims is doable for a day trip by public transportation, it depends on where one is coming from. As for visiting the Champagne houses without a car, it seems that according the Reims tourist office site there are at least 10 major marques represented in the town itself. There is also one major cathedral that shouldn't be missed. There have been reports of meals in Reims on other threads. Boyer has retired at les Crayères so I don't know if it's up to it's previous standards of three star quality, but it was one of the best restaurants in France and priced accordingly.

For me, this dish is--or should I say these dishes are--fascinating. They are quite removed from British-French-Italian cuisine that mostly influences American cooking on the east coast and also, as far as I know, absent from the "Spanish" food in America--or at least I have not seen it in Puerto Rican or Mexican food. I've had variations mostly from the hands of creative chefs and although I've loved each and every version, I've regretted not being able to make a connection to the traditional versions. So I never know if I'm impressed by the brilliance of the chef's creativity or his interpretation. Thank you to Victor and Jesus. I do so little cooking these days--a complaint of Mrs. B's, by the way--but I think I may research some recipes for ajoblanco and try them.

What a simple and unpretentious, but absolutely lovely presentation of the rice. I too passed up on what I actually thought was a very handsome tie. I don't remember why, it may have been too expensive for my taste or we may have wanted to spend our money on pates and jams as gifts for friends. In those days you could bring jarred and canned meats into the US legally. I believe it was the peach jam with vanilla that was super, albeit premium priced. Anyway, the ties are the same ones worn by the waiters in the main restaurant. One Asian diner was sporting a Georges Blanc rooster tie that evening. When he noticed the waiters were wearing the same ties, he retreated into the rest room and returned without the tie. In addition to at least two restaurants, Blanc operates two inns, or did at the time. The less luxurious rooms were in the buidling just over the shop. It very much resembles a theme park devoted to cuisine (and to Georges Blanc). There was a grassy square surrounded by Blanc establishments. When we were there, they also very proudly showed us a heliport installed in a field behind the main residence.

My understanding is that adding salt to water makes it boil at a higher temperature. In one manner, all salt is the same. It's all sodium chloride except for certain trace elements and impurities. On the other hand, when it's not in solution is can be quite different to use because of the crystalline structure. So it's all the same but sea salt is not synonymous with fleur de sel. Fleur de sel is a specific sort of sea salt that is pure white, very jagged so it clings to food and of a very uniform size that suitable for sprinkling on foods where you want that crunchy saltiness. Naturally, plain sea salt is going to be less expensive than fleur de sel. To get back to the trace elements and impurities, the sea salt I like is the grey salt from Brittany. I don't know what makes it grey. For all I know it's offshore oil spills. I will pick up a kilo when I'm there, but I think it's ridiculous to pay the price I see it going for in "gourmet" markets in the states.

Do most (many?) places in NYC get more than two, two and a quarter or two fifty for a plain slice? I could swear I haven't paid more than that.

A plate of new potatoes, some Breton butter and a bit of fleur de sel. I'm getting hungry.