PDC

Ahhh Tony Luke's. Brings back memories of....ECW! ECW! ECW! Not to mention some awesome pepperoni chicken cheesesteaks. Altough whoever said the roast pork Italiano is the best thing on the menu is bang-on! Gotta get to the NYC one soon....it isn't far from my office.

Simple. Fine Living is not a ratings sell right now. Its distribution is so limited it's not currently measured on a daily basis by Nielsen. So, the only selling point to advertisers is the perceived upscale quality of the audience. Once a network moves out of the niche phase of development and becomes widely distributed it becomes a ratings sell and needs to appeal to a wider audience. What most of us here on egullet would perceive as "quality" would in most cases draw very, very low ratings because most of the rest of the country could care less. Such is the bane of having esoteric tastes.

Just as an FYI, Food Network scored its highest prime time rating ever in November. That's against sweeps competition too folks. My personal take? I like Good Eats and Iron Chef, and Ms. Ray is good to watch in a Mystery Science Thater 3000-kinda way. (edited for punctuation)

Made the pork shoulder with beer-mustard sauce yesterday (sorry, don't have the book with me at the office for the exact French translation). Came out just great, heck, even the carrots and onions used for the sauce tasted good. My only (minor) criticism is that the recipe doesn't specify what kind of beer to use. Given that it's French bistro cooking I went out and bought a bottle of Fischer Amber and it worked out just fine. Has anyone else made this one yet? And if so, what kind of beer did you use?

You'd have to cross a bridge to SI, but it's worth it: http://www.killmeyers.com/

NBC.

From this morning's Cynthia Turner's Cynopsis: "Fox has given a script commitment to a project called Kitchen Confidential from Darren Star (Sex and the City), based on the book by Anthony Bourdain, and produced by New Line TV / 20th / Darren Star Prods. The premise is restaurant life from the POV of the chef and kitchen staff, per Hollywood Reporter. " Darren Star? Maybe we could call ths show "Cobra Heart 90210". Still a big fan though, Tony!

An odd thing about Oktoberfest in Munich - when I went back in 2000, the beer you get in the tents actually isn't the Oktoberfest you get over here in bottles. I hit just about all the tents over a couple days and it seemed to me that they were selling their regular lagers rather than what we see here in the US marketed as Oktoberfest beer. The lone exception was the Hofbrau tent, but their bottled Oktoberfest beer seems to be lighter in color and flavor than we normally see. Has anyone else been there and run into this phenomenon?

I think Ms. Ray has to be watched in the right spirit. With perhaps the addition of some spirits...maybe some "clueless college kid" needs to invent a 30 minute meals drinking game. As for her recipies, I've made a bunch of 'em and they've just about all been good. A lot of 'em take more than 30 minutes (on the show the assumption is your produce and herbs are all already cleaned, your stock has been boiled if the recipie calls for it, etc.), but they're still good for a weeknight meal when you commute in NYC which in my case means I'm out the door around 7:15-7:30am and back home around 7pm. Grimes' take was unsurprising, but I just shrugged and considered the source. If a NY Times food critic didn't rip cookbooks of this ilk it'd be a shock.

A well-placed source tells me there are plans for 10 episodes to air in the first quarter of 2005. Shhh...don't tell anyone I told you guys this.

Sorry if this has already been posted..... From Cynthia Turner's Cynopsis (online media newsletter) Fox has bought the US format rights to a reality show dubbed Hell's Kitchen from Granada Television, that stars Gordon Ramsay, chef and former soccer player apparently with a sailor's mouth, according to Variety. The show casts a group of chef wannabes, has them all live together, naturally, and for this show, they will also all work together. A restaurant opened specifically for this show and operated by the houseguests under Ramsay's acerbic watch, is the venue as well as the ultimate prize. The houseguests job is to run the restaurant, feeding up to 80 people a day. Those not measuring up, will be fired, expelled, down the garbage disposal. The last contestant standing, wins the restaurant. Production is expected to kick off in September

Yeah, a satisfactory is weird given the (relative) amount of positive things in the article (the seasoning mix comments aside). Has anyone else brought up the fact that the text of Hesser's reviews don't always seem to match the star rating?

Just saw this news item in Cynthia Turner's Cynopsis (a TV biz e-newsletter) today: "The Restaurant will be moved off the NBC primetime schedule for the remainder of the May Sweep, according to Daily Variety, slotting in repeats of L&O SVU and/or Crossing Jordan in the 10p Monday time period. The show will return to air all unseen eps post-Sweep, as well as be repeated on Bravo." Guess Rocco's ratings are as good as the food....

Oh....my.....God. This is the greatest news I've heard in weeks. Jacques-Imo's was one of the high points of my trip to Jazzfest last year, and the fact that they're here puts them at the head of the list of restaurants I must go to. Bad thing is here in the Giuliani-Bloomberg law-and-order kindergarten that passes for a city I won't be able to have a couple Franziskaner Weissbeirs standing out on the street while I wait for a table.

My comment: I wish I could find it here in NYC. Anyone have any ideas who might have it? I've been able to come up with it in past years but haven't seen it around yet. For that matter, I haven't seen Harpoon Winter Warmer anywhere this year yet either - anyone know if they're making it this year? That's one of my favorite Christmas Eve treats.

Well, since as far as I know Pabst beers are all made by Miller nowadays, who knows? Did it taste the same to you?

Hey everyone- Thanks for all your responses and links so far. This is all great stuff. I knew I was coming to the right place to ask what I'm asking. -Dave

I had originally posted this in slightly different form on the "Charlie Trotter's Superdud" thread, but thought it probably was OT and needed it's own thread so I edited it a bit and stuck it here. I look forward to the community's answers/suggestions/whatever. Note that I'm not after anything necessarily specific to my case, just general guidelines: __________________________________________ As someone who's a relative newbie to "fine dining", I have a question: How does one educate oneself to appreciate high-end dining? There was a post in the Trotter's thread that said you have to "work up the ladder" to a very high-end restaurants. So...how do you do that? What would be a list of say, ten restaurants in the US that one could use to refine one's tastebuds? Or maybe the regional coordinators could all chime in with ten in each of their regions? Secondly, I'd be interested to find out about do's and do not's in interaction with service, ordering (or not ordering) wines and drinks (I had no idea ordering a cocktail before a meal was a major faux pas, for example), how to find out what a restaurants top-of-the-line dishes are so you can maximize your dining pleasure (I know, "reviews", but what's a good archive or source? Not Zagat from what I've read on this site), and, just as importantly, what not to order (read Kitchen Confidential, got the "no fish on Mondays" thing). Despite the presence of Food Network, sites like this, and abundance of books etc. many of us are still a bit wary of going to the "very best" restaurants because we don't know how to play the game. One of the posts on the Trotter's thread said waiters can "smell a rookie", so how does one go into a place without appearing to be a rookie? If something could be put together as well as the EGCI has been, it would be an amazing resource to those of us who want to jump in to super-high-end dining but are a bit intimidated (rightfully so too, judging from some of the stuff on the Trotter's thread). "Fine Dining For Dummies", maybe? -Dave

My background (short 'n'sweet) is as follows (and I will post my initial query to a new topic in the general food area). I live in NYC (OK, Staten Island if that counts) and the path to my interest in good food came via my interest in good beer. I'm in my mid-30's, and have been a "beer snob" since I was legally old enough to drink. My approach to finding places to eat was therefore dictated in part by the availability of good beer which led me to lots of pub or brewpub-type places. (Side note: it is interesting how difficult it is to get a decent beer in "fancy" restaurants). The other approach I've used is to find local, non-touristy places and especially ethnic restaurants that are actually frequented by people of the same ethinic background as the food the place serves. So, when I travel I'm invariably drawn to hole-in-the-wall type places in various Chinatowns, little Italys, little Vietnams, whatever. Growing up on Staten Island I ate in what I've recently found out are called "red sauce" joints, the best of which were (and are in a few cases) family-run businesses that had been around a while. On the "celebrity" end of things, I've eaten at Morimoto in Philly and NY's Les Halles in the past six months and enjoyed both immensely. Neither qualifies as "fine dining" in the sense that Trotter's does, it seems. Another memorable meal I had this year was at Jacques-Imo's in New Orleans. So I guess I'm hopelessly middle-to-lowbrow. So, where should I eat next? (BTW - sorry for wandering WAY OT, but figured I'd post a response before moving the topic).

As someone who's a relative newbie to "fine dining", and having gone through all nine pages of this, I have a question: How does one educate oneself to appreciate a place like Trotter's? There was a post somewhere along the line that said (and forgive me if I misinterpreted this), that you have to "work up the ladder" to a place like that. So...how do you do that? What would be a list of say, ten restaurants in the US that one could use to refine one's tastebuds? Or maybe the regional coordinators could all chime in with ten in each of their regions? Maybe this should be a whole new topic somewhere: "Fine Dining For Newbies". The experts on this board (and clearly there are a ton) could step us newbies through do's and do not's in interaction with service, ordering (or not ordering) wines and drinks (I had no idea ordering a cocktail before a meal was a major faux pas, for example), how to find out what a restaurants top-of-the-line dishes are so you can maximize your dining pleasure (I know, "reviews", but what's a good archive or source? Not Zagat from what I've read on this site), and, just as importantly, what not to order (read Kitchen Confidential, got the "no fish on Mondays" thing) Whew, sorry for the run-on sentence. If something could be put together as well as the EGCI has been, it would be an amazing resource to those of us who want to jump in to super-high-end dining but are a bit intimidated (rightfully so too, judging from some of the stuff on this thread). -Dave

For consistency, I'll go with Yuengling or Rolling Rock among the domesics though neither is my first choice if some good local or craft brews are available. Any of the mass-produced Canadian brews is fine in that situation as well (Blue, Canadian, Moosehead, Kokannee, but NOT Molson Golden). Pilsner Urquell CAN be quite good, but has anyone else had as much trouble with skunky/spoiled bottles of that beer as I have? Even on tap the stuff seems to taste a bit off quite often. I guess it doesn't handle the trip well. Of course, part of me is ruined on that beer as well since I had it in the Czech Republic in bars and from a barrel at the very brewery itself in Pilsen (which is where the Plisener style gets its name), so any sip has to compare with those memories. As you can imagine there's no contest.

My wife and I ate there for the first time last night, and count us among the fans of the place. We deliberately decided to go off the steak-and-frites track though. For appetizers, we had the frisee (bacon was warm and fresh, mmmmm) and the rilletes and both were excellent (extra goodness from the little pickles with the rilletes). For entrees the Mrs. got the mahi-mahi special (can't get more off the steak and frites track than that), and I wanted to try the pigs feet but was steered away by our server who encouraged me to get a guinea ham special instead which was spectacular - crispy skin, nice layer of fat and melt-in-your-mouth meat. For dessert we had the cheese platter which was also excellent and because I needed a jolt of caffeine after that meal I had an espresso with the check. Unexpectedly, it was possibly the best darn espresso I ever had - not that I thought it would be bad, but I was surprised at how good it was. Especially with the little brownie-type square. Drinks-wise, I know next to nothing about wine so I stayed away...but I do know beer and the the Fischer La Belle was pretty good as French beer goes. The beer selection was the only disappointment - I didn't see a big selection of Belgian or Belgian-style ales (a domestic like Ommegang or anything from Canada's Unibroue would've been nice) on the menu, looked like they just had Chimay and that's it (or perhaps I missed them - the service was a bit quick on the drinks, we barely had time to look at the wine/beer list before it was taken away).

You are assuming they just run the Blue tap a little longer and bottle the excess as Bud or whatever, which is entirely possible--although doesn't the Bud recipe contain rice, which is unheard-of in "Canadian" beer? It could be the case. I'm not sure how faithfully they have to follow the cheapness of A-B's procedures. Could be just like that episode of the Simpsons where they have one line going into kegs marked "Duff Beer", "Duff Ice", "Duff Dry"... Canadian Bud sure tasted awfully similar to Blue the last time I had it though (and the only reason I tried it was that a friend tipped me off onto the contract brewing). Still haven't had the gumption to try Molson's Coors Light though, I can't imagine that being any better than Molson Golden which I think is pretty bad. I'll take Ex any time though, or Canadian, or XXX if I feel like killing a lot of brain cells. For those who are giving Canadian micro tips, allow me to humbly suggest Unibroue's excellent line of Belgian-style ales. For those who like Ommegang's flagship beer, try a La Fin Du Monde. You'll be happy you did. And the Trois Pistoles is quite excellent as well. And on the Moosehead front, the Moosehead Pale Ale (red label) is a good mass produced beer if you can get it. I've only ever seen it in New Brunswick and (oddly enough) Ottawa.

Sorry, that wasn't me directly, I just snipped the quote and that's how it came out. No offense intended or anything.

Actually, to my knowledge the Bud in Canada IS Blue. Labatt produces all the A-B products under contract, and Molson produces all of Coors' products under contract. It even says so on the containers. Of course, that's why the Bud in Canada tastes so much better. I can't stand American Bud, but I do like Blue as far as the mass-produced beers go.