WHS

We stopped in for lunch there a few years ago. They had an incredibly lavish buffet spread--imagine the food you would get on a cruise. In fact, the experience is very much like being on an ocean liner. You're in the middle of nowhere, the facilities are luxurious and diverse, and the crowd tends to be homogenous and well-heeled. By the way, every 4 years The Balsams hosts the first vote in the first primary in the US--at midnight, when all 12 registered voters of Dixville Notch come to the hotel to cast their votes.

The Carlyle used to have a nice afternoon tea--haven't been in a while.

You'll need to take a taxi, but Logan is practically next to downtown. Try the East Coast Grill or the Blue Room in Cambridge. Also, a unique experience is Kelly's, on Revere Beach. It's a walk-up fast food place that has fabulous roast beef sandwiches and fried stuff.

You might want to check out the website of the Prague Post, the english language weekly. They have reviews of currently happening spots as well as an archive. They recently featured a place that serves both Thai and Czech specialities...hmmm. www.praguepost.com

The review should have appeared in the Sunday Styles section. No one EVER went to Indochine for the food; you went there to be insulted by the gorgeous waitstaff and to see Calvin Klein having dinner with Dolly Parton.

cheddar cheese on triscuits nuked for 30 seconds in the microwave with soy sauce drizzled on top

I made duck confit last night. There's a moment when the duck fat starts slowly bubbling and the duck legs start cooking and suddenly the whole house smells like a farmhouse in Dordogne...(the kitchen, not the stables).

SCORE! I hit redial 5x at 10:20 this morning and got through to the reservation line. Waited on hold for 25 minutes (I actually got up from the phone and gave someone a tour of my company, came back and was still on hold) and finally reached a living, breathing person who was quite nice, and got a reservation for Dec 6, exactly 2 months away. They have a dress code, BTW.

Quick homemade pesto: couple of cloves of garlic, some salt and 3 tbs pignoli nuts in the processer till chopped fine, add 3 cups basil leaves, process til chopped medium fine, add 1/2 cup olive oil while the machine is running and finally add 1/2 cup grated Parmigiano Regianno. Takes 15 minutes tops, and the pasta is ready when you're done chopping. You could start with a nice heirloom tomato, basil and bufala mozzarella salad.

Hi Snowangel, Do you have a repertoire of Thai dishes?

That was GOOD, Episure! Which reminds me of the bhang lassi stand in Benares where they shake a wad of ganja with yogurt into a very potent milkshake. I broke out in hives, but otherwise it was a pretty mellow afternoon on the burning ghats...

We were dining at a particularly pretentious couple's house and the host served an obscure Japanese dish involving "yamaimo"--my partner said in a totally deadpan voice "Gee, that looks like puppy vomit". He capped off the evening by asking of their Venetian chandelier "Did that come with the house?" They shortly moved to San Francisco.

I've never tried Robinhood Free Meetinghouse, but I just checked out their website. It looks pretty eclectic--I get nervous when I see Thai vegetable curry and wienerschnitzel on the same menu. Do they pull it off?

You can get the full dining room menu at the bar, seated on stools. There is a lounge area, but there is no food service there.

We came over from New Hampshire last Saturday to visit our friends in Cortlandt Manor. We admired their 8-car garage (Lexus, Corvette, giant pickup, vintage Plymouth, Harley V-rod, etc), spent the afternoon at Kykuit, and were taken to dinner at BH@SB. Since it was impossible to get a reservation, we got there at 5:30 to secure 4 seats at the bar. We had the 4 course menu and rolled out around 11:00. With cocktails, 3 bottles of wine, desserts, cheese plate and after-dinner drinks, the bill came to $950. (I peeked.) Like madziast, we had the tomato salad. Being later in the month, the tomatoes were at their peak. 11 greens salad was great--best part was the eggs rolled in pistachios. I had a perfect piece of sea bass, followed by a pig plate (a chop, a hunk of bacon and a slice of sausage--hog heaven!), and the duck. The oenophile who was our host meanwhile was hunkered down with the sommelier ordering $200 bottles of Italian red so the duck course will have to remain vague. My dining companions also loved the poached chicken breast--said it was the essence of that bird. We had raspberry souffles for dessert--how do they get them on the table in 10 minutes? Let's face it--this is not like eating at some quaint little place in the country. This is a restaurant catering to a rich suburb of New York City with highly stylized, highly conceptualized food and presentation. There are very few places in the world that could support an effort on this level. BTW, I went back the next day to see how they raised the pigs. They were rooting around in the mud and looked very happy.

Our friends in France serve champagne to their 13 year old daughter on special occasions--and don't get arrested! So much for our drinking laws... I think the difference between Northampton and Worcester is that N'hampton is a cute little college town with the surrounding upscale commuity to support a healthy restaurant scene, and Worcester is a big gritty town with a depressed economy slowly making a comeback. Your best food options in Worcester are probably ethnic. If you like deli, go to Weintraub's on Kelly Square. It's the real thing, looks like they last redecorated in 1940.

BTW, if your college-bound daughter is interested in restaurants with decent wine lists, the drinking age in MA is 21.

There is a very good restaurant called Union Station-The Restaurant in the old train station downtown. The building has been beautifully restored, and the restaurant serves creative, contemporary cuisine. Here's the website: www.unionstationtherestaurant.com

Creamed herring Prime rib--boring why eat an apple when you can eat a peach? "Bloomin' onions"

John Whiting, you are bad! We had no wait at 10pm last summer. The Israeli diamond merchant with his trophy wife and 6-year old son (who he kept calling "the kid") sitting next to us must have ordered 25 dishes...we loved the ris de veau, lamb chops w/pureed potatoes, and the chartreuse souffle, though our budget limited us to about 3 little plates, desserts and wine by the glass.

My two cents about Chez Panisse: 3 of us had dinner there in June. We ate downstairs and had the $65 prix fixe. Starter was three different salads on a plate, approximately 2 tablespoons each, followed by a very nice piece of fish, then grill roasted quail with local sausage. Dessert was fresh berries and sorbet. With wine, dinner was over $350. Everything was fresh and local, service was friendly but not perfect, and I felt like Peggy Lee the next day--"is that all there is?" Everything was very good, but it wasn't the transcendent experience at l'Aigle d'Or in Pont l'Eveque or as memorable as your first good pastrami sandwich. Will someone tell me why this place is the epicenter of the California food universe? It felt like a good neighborhood restaurant that you could visit a couple of nights a week. Is that the point?

Don't believe there is a minimum stay required, though a few days there will really get you into the rythym of the place.

If Bar Harbor evokes the reaction "been there, done that", and the lower coast instills claustrophobia in the summer, give Monhegan Island a look. We drove up from New Hampshire, making a quick lunch stop at Bob's Clam Shack in Kittery. Bob's has been around since the '50s and is now surrounded by outlet mall blight, but the fried clams and lobster rolls are still excellent. We spent the night in Rockland, ostensibly to catch the early ferry, but really to have dinner at Primo. Melissa Kelly’s Mediterranean-influenced cooking is enhanced by fresh vegetables and herbs from her beautiful garden. Firsts included a nicoise salad with fresh tuna poached in olive oil, and grilled grape leaves stuffed with feta. Main courses were pork tenderloin saltimbocca and grilled sea bass. The wine was a very good Damijan Collio white, recommended by the waiter. Service was professional and friendly—the staff obviously takes pride in the place. Definitely the best restaurant north of Portland. Monhegan Island is reached by ferry from Port Clyde. The trip takes about an hour, and you are transported back 100 years. There are no paved roads, private cars, bars, or movie theaters and electricity is a recent innovation. Accommodations are B&Bs and two old Victorian inns. We stayed at the Island Inn, a wooden pile with rocking chairs on the verandah overlooking the water. Our activities were edited down to reading, taking walks, sleeping and (of course) eating. The Island Inn has a perfectly good restaurant—how can you screw up a lobster?—but Monhegan House is the place for dinner. When you consider the logistics of getting food and produce to a one square mile speck in Penobscot Bay, unloading it by hand and getting it to the kitchen, the restaurant’s offerings of hangar steak, beet gnocchi, and pumpkin risotto were impressive. They also served local scallops as big as hockey pucks, and we had a sea bass just off the boat with heirloom tomatoes. BTW, on your return trip, stop by the Dip Net at the ferry dock in Port Clyde. The cook is from Ecuador and his batter for fried clams is top notch.

I don't know if Billerica is on your route, but there is a very good South Indian restaurant called Masalaa located there that serves all the classics--dosai, iddly, vadai, thali, etc...