babyluck

I always get a "Tall," so it's not so bad, but I do in general refuse to order things with cute names -- I find it demeaning. I will stubbornly refuse to use their marketing language & just call things by their generic names when they are too silly, like anything called "Xtreme." Ever notice how the B&N locations (at least in the suburbs) have Regular & Large instead of Tall and Grande & Starbuck's Coffee instead of Coffee of the Week? I guess they were having too many comprehension problems...

Heard on NPR this morning that the first Starbucks to open in NYC is closing -- on 87th, it opened in '94 when I was in college in the village. Back when there were only 281 locations. According to this press release, there are now 4308 locations worldwide, not including licensed stores. I personally don't think Starbucks is that bad. I would rather that good independent coffee shops had more of a chance, but you can hardly blame them for marrying good consistent product with marketing savvy. I wouldn't go there if I were still in NYC (unless I was late to work), but in NJ, and when travelling, you better believe they come in handy. You've got to breathe a sigh of relief when you see them in the hotel lobby.

Also caught the show for the first time last night. I propose a few questions: 1. Who are these people who think it's romantic to propose in that setting? Was the line too long for the Sally Jesse show? 2. How many of you professionals sympathized w/ Rocco and how many with the 3 disgruntled cooks? Technically, he was in the moral right (it wasn't a lie, but pulling the "you made Mama cry" card was a low blow) but I couldn't help feeling he deserved what they gave him. It may be just television, but somehow Rocco comes off a little short of human, like he's recovering from shock therapy.

That's a great resource; thank you! I had no idea that the Frontera Grill was nearby -- I've always wanted to go there. I will try to get reservations for Sunday night, since that's my only free night. Any place to grab lunch?

Nice chili history, SWoody! I also found the sauce to be thin at Skyline, and also have only been there that one time. The thinness didn't bother me, though. I was glad I'd tried it but didn't love it -- would have helped if I went in not thinking of it as chili.

Wow, that's quite an extensive menu. Any specialties? I'm drooling over the cheeses. Looks a little schmancy for me, but you know, I go both ways... I'm there Sunday through Wednesday, so I'm hoping the bars won't be too crowded?

Yup, I'm going to Chicago next Sunday for a sales meeting, staying at the House of Blues Hotel for a few days. I know zilch about the city or the neighborhood. Please tell all. Specifically, I am looking for one or two places really close by where I can grab a bite and feel at home -- a dive or a mom-and-pop type place. Also, any bar/club recommendations? (I'd love to know where the best pint of Guinness is, but post that here please.)

Please tell us, what is the brand of this amazing find? I can't find a reference to non-carbonated ginger beer anywhere on the web. I'd love to try it -- if it's hot enough...

The place: an upscale, intimate French restaurant somewhere on the East Coast (thankfully, in a private room) The crowd: my dignified French bosses, sophisticated marketing colleagues, some regular folks from distribution, and our IT consultant from the Midwest. He was considered a freak in the office but I loved him -- superintelligent and thoughtful, wore a baseball cap every day and slouched around with his head down. Not much in common with the average-IQ "what happened on the Bachelorette last night" flock. But judge for yourself after you read what happened that night... Cocktails: He ordered a "Bacardi & Coke" and asked several times to make sure they had Bacardi. When she returned with his drink, he tasted it and spit it out. He wanted to follow her up to the bar and check the bottles for himself. She was flustered but managed to convince him that it was not necessary. He then said -- get this: "Forget it -- just bring me a plain Coke. I HAVE A FLASK OF BACARDI IN MY CAR." She brought him the Coke and he took a gulp, walked up the stairs, through the main dining room, and into the parking lot carrying his glass, then returned by the same route after topping it off from the flask in his car. He repeated the same procedure several times that evening. Later, when the waitress was handing out the menus and the women on either side of him had both received them, he yelled, "Excuse me, you skipped me!!" and grabbed a menu out of the waitress's hands. She was on the verge of tears by this point and mumbled something about the ladies being served first, which he didn't hear, and continued to scowl like a child, thinking that he was getting lousy service. Either he got better after that, or the kir royales kicked in. Anyway, I was pretty conflicted during the whole episode -- I wanted to die of embarrassment, but at the same time, I sort of admired his blissful, conspicuous ignorance. I love the French approach toward eating, but in a way it was kind of a vindication -- I don't know of what, I guess the too-formal French corporate world I live in -- I really wish it hadn't happened at one of my favorite restaurants, but it was really fucking funny to see a yahoo take a tire iron to that ivory tower of propriety and take it down at the ankles. The "regular folks" I mentioned probably were almost as clueless but they were polite enough to play along. Not him -- he wasn't about to be intimidated into thinking that this must be the "right" way to eat and the way he was used to was wrong. I'm not totally trying to excuse his behavior. To me, there's no excuse for using that tone of voice with the staff in any restaurant, whether you are a Frenchman at a BBQ joint in Kentucky or a Kentuckian in Paris. It shows absolutely no grasp of pluralism or culinary adventure, a terrible sin to be sure. But it's 100x better than, say, a sales rep asking stupid questions about the wine just to show off. I've said it before & I'll say it again -- better to be a rube than a poser.

Let me first say that the diner experience is not primarily about food for me. But for taste, my favorite is Margie's Restaurant - 29 Union Avenue, Cranford. It's Ukranian (not the menu necessarily, but the owners). My mom grew up in Cranford and we used to make the trip to have breakfast with her uncle until he got sent to the home. It's damn expensive (for a diner) and not very diner-y (it's not a train car, and has too-elegant high-backed black leatherette booths), but it's definitely ahead of the curve in the food department. I don't like pancakes but mom & dad get orgasmic just talking about their shortstacks. They use great thick-sliced country white bread, so the French Toast & grilled cheese are killer. My home-away-from-home during high school & college was the Royal Diner on rt. 22 in Branchburg. That embodies a great diner for me -- classic train car, dive-y, gruff-at-first-but-then-motherly bleached-blonde 50ish waitress, truckers, absence of high school acquaintances you'd rather not run into, and, oh yeah, inoffensive food. The kind of place you regret ordering soup. Even has an attached bar that is the best old man dive around. There is a regular who always wants to bet you $5 for anything he dreams up. Last time I was there, he wanted to bet that Larry Hagman was Angela Lansbury's son. During college we brought this twink friend of ours there. The bartender asked him if he was 21 and he said "almost." They served him anyway. The Royal (the diner part) closed at 10:30, which was a problem, but since we always sat in the corner table where the neon OPEN sign was, our waitress would have us pull the chain to turn it off, set a thermos of coffee in front of us & let us stay till she was done closing. In those days, I always got a grilled cheese (with bacon if I was feeling flush) and fries (sometimes with gravy, which was orange & tasted like solidified pot roast gravy) and a Coke, or rice pudding & coffee between or after meals. Best diners in my area now: Scotchwood on rt 22 in Scotch Plains, Windsor in Clark, Vicki's Diner in downtown Westfield even though it's always packed and nonsmoking, it's charming as hell. The first 2 especially have a great babyluck hangover breakfast (bacon cburger deluxe & a Coke) Things I hate about diners: depressing brown exteriors/etched glass (Westfield Diner), minimum orders (Time to Eat in Somerville -- a true diner embraces the college kid & starving artist), cheesy 50's themes (Louka's Last American Diner), 80s mauve printed vinyl & black lacquer (the Pinwheel in Lebanon -- the kind of place that serves expresso [sic]), places that serve Pepsi instead of Coke (though this is the least of all these evils), "classy" reupholstery in blah beige or pink replacing the original bright, shiny vinyl seats, the black void left when they uninstall the table jukeboxes. The last 2 both happened to the Royal, unfortunately. It changed hands when I was in college and they changed the name to the Branchburg Diner (but the sign hasn't changed and this was almost 10 years ago), and even had a bloody knife fight over remodeling issues that was reported in the local paper. Hell, I guess I'd take out my blade too if I was protecting the original decor of a classic diner interior. Edit: got one of the names wrong.

Oh, yes. I had a terrible day yesterday, drove home late in the rain, went to the fridge to get some leftover Chinese & realized why I had a bottle of root beer in there -- it cheered me up immediately. Mine was Barq's and Breyer's. Actually, light Breyer's if you must know -- DH is on a D**T. I know I won't get much agreement here, but actually I sometimes go for light ice cream for taste reasons too. Well, more like mouthfeel reasons or digestive contentment reasons, I guess. My taste for fat & sugar seems to be dissipating with my youth. (Never mind the cheese steak & fries w/ gravy I had for lunch today...) Breyer's was on sale, I guess to launch its new lower-calorie options. Has anyone seen these? It's very wierd. There's a version called "All Natural" because it sticks to the Breyer's pledge. That's the lowfat version that's been around for a while. Then there are the new ones -- 98% fat free Vanilla or Chocolate, and a "2% milk" vanilla. The new ones contain something that makes them less than "All Natural" -- I think it's the mono & diglycerides? Whatever it is, having 3 different lowfat versions is nice, I guess, but extremely confusing since the differences are so subtle between them. (Needless to say, I got the one marked "All Natural" -- their marketing department probably rationalized that customers wouldn't feel betrayed by the lack of that claim, but I did.) Here's the website. Anyway, our RBFs were just lovely (though if it were up to me I'd go back to full fat ice cream for this application). Personally, I have a keen appreciation for RBF foam -- in fact, I thoroughly enjoy the whole process. Sucking up the foam, taking a few sips of soda, then eating the ice cream with a long spoon, scraping away from the outside and getting a little soda in my spoon with every bite. I always leave most of the soda until last, so I can wash everything down with the root beer -- when it's opaque and creamy from the ice cream and still cold, is there anything better than that?? Being a Hunterdon Cty kid growing up, our place for RBFs was Stewart's, of course. I always went out of my way to go to the one in Ringoes instead of Lebanon because they used frosty glass mugs, not paper cups. On a recent trip, I was shocked to learn that the frosty mugs were no more. I haven't been let down like that since Woolworth's closed. I really never thought it would happen. Especially when you just get a root beer with no ice cream, the experience of undiluted, creamy, rich root beer that stayed cold forever in the frosty mug is precious -- tons of crushed ice and a waxy taste from the cup just doesn't do it for me. On a happier note, I noticed today that Steve's Lunch (my local cheese steak purveyor) has Boylan's Birch Beer (fountain, not bottles). Yum.

That's my favorite, too. Wendy was on WFMU (a freeform radio station out of northern NJ) a few months ago and actually did give out one of the recipes for the first time -- I think it was for Fluffy Mackerel Pudding. She performed it like a pretentious spoken-word piece. The show is archived on www.wfmu.org, but unfortunately they had some computer problems so that episode is temporarily unavailable.

I was disappointed by them too. The Monterey Pepper Jack ones are much better! (But my #1 favorite is salt & vinegar.)

I had one like that -- unrequested wedding gift from Pampered Chef. Used it for 2 years cuz I never found the perfect "real" grinder. Now I have a nice one, and I miss that crappy one. The coarseness dial on the bottom is useless -- you get coarse no matter what, and it has a very flimsy feel to it. But it's totally convenient. I have the pump one from C&B now and it's not nearly as easy to use one-handed. I also miss the coarse cracked pepper taste everything had while I was using it. I think I've seen another version other than Pampered Chef, but where I don't know.

Me too! I made tons of it for my dad's 60th birthday party so cost was an issue. I thought it worked just fine -- no need for complex wine. Here's the ingredients: 2 gallons Paisano 12 oranges 8 lemons Orange liqueur My secret, from an acquaintance in NC, is to juice most of the citrus and add it to the wine, chop the rinds, and cook them in simple syrup that is then used to sweeten the wine. Then I slice the reserved citrus & add. A little Grand Marnier or Cointreau & you're done. I'm now known for my killer sangria. A similar recipe from epicurious w/ 2 gallons of wine is supposed to serve 100. For my dad's birthday party, with about 50 churchgoers, we had some left over. However, a friend of mine made the same amount for a Memorial Day party with about 40 guests, mostly twenty- and thirty-somethings, and she had to make a second batch that also disappeared. People LOVE the standard red sangria -- it's a guaranteed hit. Even old ladies will drink it cuz it's fruity. It's one of those things where you go "It was too easy" when they ignore the time-consuming gourmet stuff you make and heap you with praise for something any schmuck could do, but they don't have to know that. My experience is that given the choice, 90% of guests will go for red over white. I personally don't care for white sangria either. I made the tropical sangria mentioned in another post once. It was good for mother's day but not a party thing -- presentation was gorgeous but it was something you'd have one or two of, not ten. If you feel the need to get fancy, I definitely suggest making a small batch of something daring and a double batch of the old standard.

I go to a Chinese restaurant for Chinese food, and the ones I go to don't serve cocktails. If I want a proper cocktail that I'm not making myself, I go to a bar. If you have something to say, please say it directly, but don't belittle the discussion with personal insults and condescension. That's boring and well, fruitless. If you refer to my original post, you'll see that I mentioned several drinks to make with the rum he didn't feel like drinking neat. The mai tai was mentioned last because of a comment the original poster made about them. Let me try one more time....and then I'm done. The usual thing that passes for a mai tai is full of canned fruit juices like pineapple, orange and guava. They even sometimes add Kahlua and other liqueurs to make the drink even sweeter and muddy tasting. My suggestion was intended to relay the idea that the original poster might appreciate a drink that I'll go ahead and be daring and call a mai tai if it were made more like cocktail with a balance of fresh citrus juice to counteract the sweetness and less like a punch TGIF type of drink full of fruit juices. Or he may not, but options are always a good thing, even if some of them are not something that I care to partake of on a weekly basis. regards, trillium I apologize. I thought you were just showing off, but I can see now that you're sincere.

I just want to let everyone know that I do not condone putting grilled cheese in a blender for any reason. As the Queen of Grilled Cheese, I feel it is my sworn duty.

Don't forget Oscar's (Warrensburg, in the Adirondacks). My father-in-law has been going there since he was a kid. Apparently it was featured on FTV (the Best of, I think) and it's gotten more popular, but nothing else has changed. Stopped there a few weeks ago -- it looks like you're going to visit Hansel & Gretel with all the Bavarian kitsch on the grounds. Love it. If I start talking about the meat, the beautiful, succulent meat, I will never stop. But they also have excellent cheddar -- it's as sharp as the best crumbly NY stuff, but miraculously creamy at the same time. And they have a website. With an online catalog.

Real is a strong word, especially in the controversial world of tiki drinks. I've got my issues with Trader Vic, but I don't think there's any question it was invented inside his establishment. Here's the story, and recipes, on the company website. In a way I can see where this variation comes from, as long as you don't go for the grenadine, but without a unique flavor like the Martinique rum it ain't gonna work. This sounds like one I had in a Chinese restaurant in Wellesley, Mass. (But it was a Chinese restaurant known for it's good Mai Tais.) Would you be happier if I said a real cocktail instead of a real mai tai? That's more along the lines of what I meant. I guess I define a real cocktail as something that is balanced and not full of fruit juices. Vic himself suggested mixing dark and light rums to mimic the taste of the rum he ran out of for the original mai tais, didn't he? I'm not in the habit of drinking cocktails at the Chinese restaurants I frequent, so I make no claims of it's similiarity. I will say that I think using a nice innocent 17 year old rum along with Dekuyper orange curacao doesn't exactly lend a person the high moral ground when it comes to mixing! Of course, mai tais aren't exactly my favorite cocktails, so what do I know? I've had two in the last 11 years. One at Trader Vic's in SF (my first legal alcoholic beverage) and one more recently. I'll take a Daiquiri any day. regards, trillium Maybe you should have a nice cocktail the next time you go to a Chinese restaurant and contemplate all the logical flaws of what you just said. Either that, or someone could suggest a drink that is one of their favorites.

Oh, well. I was really looking forward to a good Mai Tai. I thought about it after I posted, and I'm not even sure that I want "a good Mai Tai" so much as I want a Mai Tai like they made at a particular Chinese restaurant I frequented many years ago. I have no idea how authentic they were, but it's what I grew up on, and thus they were good. I've tried at least 8 or 10 recipes, order some Trader Vic's Mix (blech) and missed Trader Vic's TWICE when traveling to Atlanta. All I want is a Mai Tai like I had when I was a kid. I just realized -- you grew up on Mai Tais? Tequila shots got boring after the 3rd grade?

I think the point was quite clearly explained in the first post. It obviously has little interest for those who don't enjoy Guinness, so what is the point of your interruption?

Oh, well. I was really looking forward to a good Mai Tai. I thought about it after I posted, and I'm not even sure that I want "a good Mai Tai" so much as I want a Mai Tai like they made at a particular Chinese restaurant I frequented many years ago. I have no idea how authentic they were, but it's what I grew up on, and thus they were good. I've tried at least 8 or 10 recipes, order some Trader Vic's Mix (blech) and missed Trader Vic's TWICE when traveling to Atlanta. All I want is a Mai Tai like I had when I was a kid. Could you describe it? Maybe we can help reunite you. First question -- color: red, pink, peach, tan, or other?

Babyluck which restaraunt is this? I haven't had a good Mai Tai in years, and I'm not that far from Wellesley. Checked w/ my sister-in-law -- it's actually in Framingham, called Lotus Flower. I remember it being in a strip mall across the street from the furniture store with the Mardi Gras theme (that was a new one for me). Now that you've cornered me though, I have to admit -- I certainly wouldn't make any claims to authenticity with their Mai Tai. I wasn't lying when I said it's known for them, but I was trying to soften the blow of the post. I didn't say it was known by tiki aficionados. I guess it depends on what you consider a good Mai Tai. Whether the emphasis is on the "good" or the "Mai Tai." It's not sickly sweet, tastes pleasant enough, and makes you happily tipsy. Good enough for me, unless I'm doing the mixing at home. Learned not to expect more when a bartender says he can make a "good" Mai Tai or a "good" Zombie -- it's all relative. I'm sure there's someone out there who would take issue with my versions. That said, I loved the restaurant. There's some magic going on there. It could be any uppity sit-down suburban Chinese restaurant, but some combination of alcohol, good lighting & acoustics & yummy food makes it a special place where you're guaranteed to have a nice, relaxing time. It would be perfect for any size group, foodies/non-foodies, kids/couples, etc. I was only there once, but my BIL & SIL go there all the time and never had a bad experience. So go there anyway, but don't get your hopes up about the Mai Tai.

I never thought I needed one of those milkshake makers until a friend got me one for Christmas. Somehow, my dad was always able to make a perfect milkshake in a blender without too much melting, but me. The machine (a cheap Hamilton Beach model) does the trick. I think it's more about temperature and speed than anything else. The motor is in the head, so the ice cream doesn't come in contact with heat. It also combines ingredients more quickly than a blender. I now find it indispensable. My dad used to make grilled cheese & chocolate shakes pretty often for Sunday supper. I intend to do the same for my (future) kids! Vanilla ice cream, Hershey's syrup, milk. OJ & ice cream -- we always called this a "Fribble" in my house, but at Friendly's it is a generic term for milkshake. Yum.

Can you name some of your other favorite wines ? Stag's Leap or Pine Ridge Cabernet Sauvignon Chardonnay from Australia/NZ Marc Brédit's Chinon & other Loire Valley wines Well, you've named some wines I consider good myself. I'll consider your recommendation of Bully Hill "Love My Goat" as credible and give it a try sometime. Thanks! And if you have recommendations for me, I'm all ears. I'm just trying to build up a nice stable of wines I like -- the serious stuff I won't let myself tackle until I'm at least 35. I know it will become all-consuming. Sorry, it's Marc Brédif with an F, not a T, everyone.