TL

ice in your water - 10 cents a cube proper wine glasses - a buck a stem friendly service - out of stock

I believe the crust is a choice of topping (e.g., Parmigiano-Reggiano) put on the cooked meat and then the meat and topping are placed in the broiler for a couple seconds.

Pizza Booth on Bleecker

Hey Jim, How much mileage do you get out of a vacuum sealed stopper?

Wilfrid, In my experience, the following from your list significantly underachieve: Daniel Felidia (hit or miss, but I've had too many misses to include in the top 50 list) Gotham Bar & Grill (serious offender) Jean-Georges Le Cirque Mesa Grill (the biggest disappointment on the list) The rest on you list either deserve to be there or I haven't tried them yet.

Definitely flavorful for me. I prefer the homestyle mexican fare (that's what I grew up on in and around LA). My experience with NYC homestyle mexican is that it so bland and homogenous (much like chinese food in suburbia). I would love to find a place in NYC to prove me wrong. So far the best I've found is Taqueria de Mexico in the West Village. But even that (at triple the price) doesn't come close to what you get in southern California.

The glove is an absolute must. It didn't take me long after I got the mandoline to realize the guide is absolutely worthless. Working with the hand is the only way to use the mandoline. But, it also didn't take me long to slice off a nice piece of my finger to realize that the danger of the mandoline. Fortunately I found out about the glove early on and now I don't even come within 2 feet of the mandoline without the glove on.

If you're crazy enough to have both a 3.5L and 5L pressure cooker, you can actually make a decent amount of stock. It does save a fair amount of time and produce an acceptable stock. However, you still have to reduce it down after the pressure cooker is done with it.

Are you using sponges on food you intend to eat raw? If you're talking about cleaning a pan with a sponge and worrying about bacteria in the sponge being transferred to the pan, won't the bacteria die the same death when the pan is heated as it would in the dishwasher?

I never heard the term "Benriner" before but I assume you're talking about a mandoline. I used the plastic ones in the past and always found them to be awkward to use, not to mention they fall apart easy. A couple years ago I received one of the Bron stainless steel mandolines as a gift and there's no way I'm going back. Sure they're more expensive, but they'll last a lifetime. Broadway Panhandler had them on sale for ๪ before Xmas. Well worth that cost. As for the bulky contraption that comes with the device to guide food through the blade, forget about it. They never work. The best method is by hand. But you don't have to waste any food or risk injury if you buy one of those protective gloves (they work perfectly and are well worth the ฤ).

Check out Florence Meat Market down in the Village.

My understanding has always been that taquitos are made with corn tortillas and flautas are made with flour tortillas. Personally I prefer good homestyle mexican fare (e.g., Taqueria de Mexico, El Sombrero (aka Hat Restaurant)) to good high-end mexican fare (e.g., Maya, Rosa Mexicana). However, comparing the two is like comparing apples and oranges. Coming from Los Angeles, I have yet to taste any homestyle mexican fare in NYC that comes anywhere close to LA. In particular, Las Fuentes (just over the hill from LA) makes flautas that simply cannot be beat.