Hest88

Oh, how awful! I mourn for the crawfish, and I mourn for the crawfish eatin'.

If you go to Cafe Rouge and you're a fan of dried meats, the way I am, try their pepperoni sticks. They taste like salami that's been highly concentrated. Wonderfully fatty with a pleasant overlay of heat. Whenever I see them I buy the whole bunch, 'cause they make them inconsistently.

My preference is jook. If I had it readily available (or wasn't too lazy to make it on weekdays) I'd eat that for breakfast every day.

I much prefer Sonoma to Napa. Plus, if you stay in the town of Sonoma proper, it's a much nicer town (with a good cheese store and a good bakery) than the city of Napa. Healdsburg as well is a nice little town with good restaurants and shops. You can certainly find a place to stay for under $200. Even some of the nicer B&Bs have rooms for that price.

In the East Bay, Enzo's has already been mentioned, but down the street from Market Hall on College there's also Ver Brugge. As for seafood, I usually go to Oakland Chinatown or a Ranch 99-type Asian market.

Yeah, I use my cast iron pan for asparagus all the time as well. I usually saute it with sesame oil. Mmmmm....

Slim Jims. The Tabasco ones.

I've never tried Sun Soy. How different is it from Silk? I love Chinese soy milk--the richness, the depth of flavor--and only drink American-style soy when I feel the need to be healthy.

Hee, hee, oh I do. I know I'm completely spoiled. My husband still talks about how much complaining I did in suburban NY everytime I encountered the sub-par bread at the local Italian restaurants and I refused to buy the supermarket berries that were shipped from, gasp, California. It's incredible he still married me!

I knew a lot of vegetarians in college who subsisted on chips, soda, and pizza. And then they wondered why they were getting sick all the time. I think this is a trap that some militant vegetarians do fall into, since they are veggies for philosophical reasons and not health reasons.

Ugh, I've just lost my appetite thinking about this. I grew up eating gobs of stir-fried Chinese veggies, so the vegetable medley, as far as I'm concerned, has absolutely no connection to anything resembling real vegetables.

Hear, hear! This is one my pet peeves too. Grrr. It's as if they want the noble label of being a vegetarian without the real commitment. Of course, another of my pet peeves are those college students who refuse to eat meat due to animal rights yet continue to wear leather.

I was actually thinking about this earlier this week and realized that it was silly to agonize so much over authenticity when it came to something that is essentially street food, anymore than we'd seriously argue that there was one right way to make a hamburger. By definition it is casual, eaten to fortify, and meant to be modified according to the tastes of the eater and the whims of the cook. This is not a sacred Escoffier recipe, even though it seems somewhat exotic to many of us.

It goes without saying that the parents are the problem. My husband is always fond of saying that it is cruel to spoil children or pets; you end up with a child or animal that neither you nor others want to be around. I don't mind well-behaved children, but if some obnoxious kid is screaming in a restaurant I don't care if it's the kid's fault or the parent's fault. I just want it dealt with. And I'm sorry if parents of well-behaved children feel me tense up when they enter a restaurant, but I don't know if their child is good or not. If I had been bitten by a dog, would a dog owner really expect me to first assume their dog doesn't bite as opposed to the other way around?

Yes, that's what my mother told me as well during New Year's. (Chinese New Year's, that is.)

I've never found any canned soup to be even close to tasting like real soup (except for some expensive bisques), so I judge canned soups in a separate category. I love Campbell's homestyle chicken noodle, chicken and rice, and chicken and stars, but as a food all it's own not to be compared to homemade soup. Any canned soup that tries approximate homemade soup is bound to fail, which is why I think Progresso is so inedible. What's really awful is that the one Progresso I was really impressed with--their lentil soup--has changed. Now it's really, really yucky. The front of the can claims that all they did was add more lentils, but they must have done something else. The flavor is completely off.

Dona Tomas in Oakland.

They're widely available in both in Chinatown and in any decent-sized Chinese market. When I was a child I loved how stringy they were.

I've been told that the proper way is to dip the meat in the sauce separately, so I'm relieved to read that the Vietnamese will squirt sauce directly into the broth. I always squirt in sriracha, basically because I like it spicy and because I usually eat pho alone. So, in order to accomodate a book in my left hand I can't be messing with the whole dipping thing!

I hate most squash, but I do like kabocha. It tastes more like sweet potato than other kinds of squash.

Bringing this back to the original question: This is a phenomena that exists on all "enthusiast" boards. When a group of people care about something enough to spend gobs of time on a related website, they are interested in all facets of the topic. It makes sense that many of them on eGullet are from NYC because NY is a sophisticated, metropolitan area with many restaurant choices so if you're the least bit interested in food you have many venues in which to cultivate that interest. Plus, if you're NOT interested, you may easily find yourself developing that interest. I live in the Bay Area, and it's really hard for me to meet someone who doesn't have an opinion on food. Not only can I easily pick over service and cuisine issues with new acquaintances, but get embroiled into discussions on sustainabilty, nutrition, food marketing, etc. during a simple cocktail conversation.

I"ve had Alaskan King Crab in Vancouver, steamed with garlic, and it's really scrumptious. Very different from the Dungeness I'm used to. It's a tighter meat, a bit more lobster-like. Definitely worth seeking out.

Yes, fizziness is not desirable. I don't know about the MTT brand, but the jars of the ones I get often do not look very airtight, so I imagine it would be very possible to get a jar that was contaminated. It should last a hugely long time, though, so if you determine that the jar is okay you shouldn't have problems storing it in the frig for your next use.

Okay, if you New Yorkers keep the French Laundry closed longer than anticipated, I'm going to be peeved. And I'm only semi-kidding!

Mmmm, cartilage. I don't like tendon all that much (unless it's beef braised Chinese-style), but I eat all the cartilage off of bone and of course chew up the bone for the marrow. And, if the bone itself is soft enough or crispy enough I'll chomp those up as well. I just got my husband into eating the crispy beaks off of Chinese roast duck and I'm close to getting him into neck bones. Unfortunately, that will mean less for me!