Jim Leff's Profile
Restaurants With Piano
They seem to have a lot of angry low ratings. It's the sort of kooky/quirky place that has complete meltdowns once in a while. Sounds like you can eat well, though, if you catch them on the right night.
Restaurants With Piano
Nice find. Just checked out their web site, with menu and music calendar. Looks great.
http://machiavellinyc.com
I got a kick out of their topmost Yelp review: "This is not dinner. This an Experience."
Restaurants With Piano
Here you go: http://www.madmusic.com/song_details.aspx?SongID=5352
Chocolate Covered Potato Chips
Ashers are really really good. Surprising amount of strong potato flavor, salty/sweet balance is perfect. but I'm still looking for Royce's!
Restaurants With Piano
My standard stumper for pianists of that generation is a Hoagy Carmichael tune that's in the Guinness book for having the longest song title:
"I'm a Cranky Old Yank in a Clanky Old Tank on the Streets of Yokohama with my Honolulu Mama Doin' Those Beat-o, Beat-o, Hirohito Blues"
Restaurants With Piano
Hi, all
I'm not always shooting for urbanity, but when I do, I like to dine amid live piano music, which is a nearly extinct thing these days.
Can anyone suggest Manhattan restaurants with a piano (even if you've never actually seen it played)? Exclude, please, obvious performance venues such as Knickerbocker.
River Cafe, years ago, had an awesome pianist; not sure if they do anymore.
south bronx eats?
Narcisa, I was just reviewing some of your tips here. You were one of the best "one shot wonders" in the history of the site. So...on the odd chance you're still out there, lurking, I wanted to invite you to come back and update some of these tips!
If anyone else has had recent experience and can confirm places are still good, that'd be great, too.
OMG!!! H Mart is opening in Hartsdale, NY!
Couple update notes:
Sushi guy at the end of the food court is super friendly, speaks great english, makes very solid unambitious sushi a few notches better in quality than most local sushi restaurants, and sells premade stuff for half off near closing. Some of the premade food over by the produce section (e.g. the pancakes) is also half priced late in the day. And the store's pretty empty after 8:30. I know when I'll be shopping here!
Bakery claims to use fancy wheat strains. They're stuff doesn't look so great, but Korean baked goods can be deceiving - hard to eyeball.
Someone recommended frozen chive dumplings, but so far as I can tell, they're all made from big corps in places like California, and don't appear to be aimed at the discerning eater.
Like other HMarts, they carry Morinaga choco chips (way at the end of the store, near the food court), a hard to find Japanese brand of chocolate chips I love.
Grace's Table--White Plains
Just drove by. No time to eat, but VERY good vibe (good enough to make me pull over to look it up!)
OMG!!! H Mart is opening in Hartsdale, NY!
You definitely want to heat those pancakes before eating. A few minutes in a medium hot nonstick pan, uncovered, works nicely.
OMG!!! H Mart is opening in Hartsdale, NY!
Sashimi is what I hoped for: competent, fresh, satisfying. Tuna was clean (again, this was the variety pack). I won't buy stuff like this after they've been open a while and standards may have relaxed. The uni was a lot more deeply satisfying, but, hey, that's uni for you. Try those pumpkin pancakes!
I was there last week feiw
OMG!!! H Mart is opening in Hartsdale, NY!
A nice addition to the H Mart empire. I got a little package of Uni for like $6, and it was real good. As was a generous $16 package of mixed sashimi (I'm usually loathe to get supermarket sushi/sashimi, but this place seems almost fanatically fresh re: seafood, and I'm figuring the same diligence carries into this stuff, as well... at least for the moment).
One thing I saw here that I haven't seen at other area HMarts: pumpkin pancakes. They're pretty luscious, and reheat very well in a hot un-oiled nonstick skillet.
I'd like to hear more specific reports about the little food court concessions. The food court at Great Neck HMart is pretty much my main pick right now for non-exotic Korean "greatest hits", and, though that establishment and these are owned and run independently from HMart, I'm hoping lightning might strike twice....
I think I give up on Pizza in Westchester
Just a side note...the soups at Riviera are surprisingly good.
I think I give up on Pizza in Westchester
This is why it's difficult to rate (or even, really, discuss) pizza. Everyone has extremely specific preferences, and tends to project them outward as doctrinal. It's natural!
Here's how I approach it, just fwiw: if I don't taste that familiar pastey canned sauce, or that familiar gluey, flavorless cheese, or that familiar insipid, bleached out crust which 99.9% of area pizzerias use (all from the same friendly wholesaler), I start paying very close attention. At that point, if it tastes good, I rate it highly. If it tastes real good, I rate it real highly.
I don't think there's anything "wrong" with having personal preferences, or with measuring everything against idyllic memories of one certain instance. But the thing is, I've had superb pizzas which have broken each and every one of your rules. There are countless styles of pizza out there, and I try to enjoy each on its own terms. I don't complain when great Greek pizza isn't thin crusted, when great brick oven pizza has burntish crust, when DiFara's is so oily, when true Sicilian is super puffy-crusted, when Staten Island-style pizza has de-emphasized cheese, or when any given personal, unique approach fails to meet narrowly predefined expectations. But that's just me.
It Is Impossible to Find a Functional Stainless Steel Steamer Basket.
But, per the rest of this thread, the problem's not Target. The same unit is sold by all retailers. There is not, so far as I can tell, a really high-quality old style stainless steel steamer basket being made right now.
And I definitely DO eat the water under the steamer. If I steam vegetables, there's a lot of vitamins there. I'll drink it straight, or I'll cook pastina in it (to absorb the liquid).
I think I give up on Pizza in Westchester
You know that Anthony's Coal-Fired Pizza is a huge chain, right? If people like that sort of thing, that's cool with me....just letting everyone know! http://anthonyscoalfiredpizza.com/locations
I think I give up on Pizza in Westchester
Wait. You're actually criticizing pizza for being cold? A place that only sells fresh whole pies?
FWIW, yes, I certainly agree: cold pizza generally is "lifeless". That's why I try to eat it hot, myself....
Northern Blvd Canvassing
Good stuff, Polecat. Love the raised fist graphic. If I get reincarnated, I want to come back as an uberhip Asian kid with a great food biz.
Beer Paraphernalia Question
A highly-talented homebrewer friend lost this figurine, which he called his "assistant brewer", and he's heartbroken about it.
Can anyone suggest any beer paraphernalia experts who might be able to hunt down a replacement?
Thanks for any help!
Sabatino's Coal Brick Oven (Hawthorne, NY)
Crap.
Use it or lose it, you guys. Place was perpetually empty. If you want good guys to endure (and encourage other good guys to open), vote with your wallet and taste buds.
"Restaurants" Database To Be Eliminated
FWIW I'm familiar with a few of the issues re: the underlying platform of this site, and I find it credible that a true dead end may have been hit (I don't know it for a fact, but I think it's credible).
I also think we've made our point as persuasively as we could about why users are teed off about this. At this point, I'm pretty sure the issue's not just being sloughed off.
That said, I understand why hounds are teed off. Quite rightly so. The powers that be can do what they want re: placement of invasive ads, social media hooks and obnoxiously-named features; we're tolerant. But at the very least they need to keep up their commitment to preserve our data. Seems a fair expectation.
But moving on would be good. And, from my perspective, it's a freaking miracle that we're all still here, FIFTEEN YEARS after the site launched, trading chow tips. That was never in the plans, or even the distant hopes. This is gravy. And every chowhound appreciates gravy!
CBS certainly doesn't host it as a public service gift. But I'm still awfully glad they're keeping the lights on. I'd hate to imagine no Chowhound.
"Restaurants" Database To Be Eliminated
Hi, Jason,
Gotcha. And, yeah, I can think of security vulnerabilities caused by buggy s/w which you'd not want to discuss publicly, so it makes sense....to me at least. Thanks for the chime-in, it puts my mind at ease.
It would be a mistake to out-and-out promise to bring the user-contributed data back (until you see what's involved). But listen, I think it goes without saying that you'd have a lot of relieved chowhounds loving you if 1. you do find a way to import it into a new system, even if it's a hassle*, and 2. construction of that new system happens pretty quickly (if CHOW didn't realize how vital this was before, I'm figuring they know now; user anguish aside, certainly none of us are thrilled with dotting the boards with Yelp links!).
One thought re: #1. If, for whatever reason, the user contributed data just won't import smoothly, please consider dumping it into a free field within a given record, just as a "hail mary" last-gap solution. It wouldn't take too long for a few thousand hounds to massage the data (assuming the new db is user-editable). This would not be optimal, but would be better than forfeiting the data, and, again, it wouldn't stay ugly for very long ("the power of networks", etc etc). Just a thought.
"Restaurants" Database To Be Eliminated
PS I just thought of a Grand Compromise.
If you can get engineering to try to import all (or at least some) of the previous user generated content into the new system, I'd bet that would relax people quite a bit. So please consider at least holding on to that data, so they can try to tinker around with it when the time comes.
(If you addressed this already, my apologies, I haven't been able to keep up with all the talk on this.)
"Restaurants" Database To Be Eliminated
You're stopping just short of saying the bugs (computer, not biological) have a chance of maybe damaging the rest of the site. That's the point where reasonable parties would understand a rush to remove before a replacement's anywhere near ready. Anything short of that - e.g. "it's a hassle to maintain", "it looks ugly", "we're just unhappy with it" - doesn't justify ripping out right this second, with the consternation it's causing among our best users (I've never seen Melanie Wong on the warpath before).
The technical suckiness isn't news. We knew it sucked when it was first installed. But some hounds worked hard to turn lemons into lemonade......at your request. And then you ripped out everyone's work. Because it was built on suck. Which we knew going in. See the disjoint?
You keep returning to the plan to build something better. That's awesome, but that's not the issue. The issue is timing. Why rip out NOW, when there's nothing ready to replace it? You don't like it. It's technically crap. We deserve better. Agreed on all counts! But hounds found it useful enough as-is to kick up this fit. So I'm still not getting why it's got to go away right NOW, leaving nothing?
I ask this as a hypothetical question, because you've obviously gone as far as you will/can in answering this. So please read this as a Fiddler-on-the-Roof-ish exasperated throwing up of hands toward the heavens, rather than a red-faced customer poking his finger into your collar bone! :)
BTW, thanks for the ease-up on allowing links from Yelp, etc. I know that's not making anyone there very happy. Hopefully the resurrection of this feature will be good enough that Yelp will want to link to us! And hopefully you'll bring some of our veteran users in early to solicit their thoughts before building it out.
"Restaurants" Database To Be Eliminated
Hmm. Sounds like you guys are all still baffled by the discord. Perhaps an analogy will help.
Say your landlord asked you to voluntarily grow a garden in the back yard, and then, after you've worked very hard to transform the crappy, scrawny little saplings he gave you into something lush and thriving (and which, incidentally, improved the property value), he sent in workers to rip out all the plants, leaving a deserted plot of dirt for which there are no immediate plans.
The critical question: "why are you taking out the plants right now when you have nothing to replace them with?" remains unanswered. All you get is bizarre doubletalk about how this move displays "a commitment to good things in the future".
The messenger's getting shot, the workers are getting shot, the leases are being reexamined, new apartments are being looked at, all the while there's nothing but ineffectual spinning which never so much as touches on the only issue that counts: why kill it now?
The "rushing" you're decrying seems to be on your end. If you don't have anything to replace this functionality, why the rush to extinguish it, when so many users have worked so hard on it and obviously found it so useful? I hypothesized, one posting back, that there seemed to be an extenuating situation. But after your last posting, i'm not so sure.
I hope this doesn't come across as harsh. I'm just trying to frame the issue so it's understood.
"Restaurants" Database To Be Eliminated
Hi, Meredith,
I had a long reply to this, but finally got to your final posting in the other thread. Sounds like there's extenuating issues.
I of course won't support off-site efforts to extend this feature if you guys plan on redeveloping something. And I'm trusting (and it is blind trust) that you wouldn't dump all this data (representing so much hard work, pro bono, from chowhound users, all done at your own behest) unless there was truly no other way (and, IMO, you owe them a serious apology for putting them through that and then pulling the rug, whatever the reason). I hope my trust is warranted.
"Restaurants" Database To Be Eliminated
1. we are NOT going to build a parallel Chowhound, no! This will be done (if it's done) in a way that doesn't in the least annoy CBS or disrupt the activity of Chowhound. I built a food site once (and the process was hell). The very last thing on earth I want to do is build another. Especially because I really love this one!
2. that means per Melanie's idea of building a spider to pull the data, I'd rather do it more above board and with CBS's permission.
3. Can we PLEASE not discuss this in this over-stuffed, rambling thread? PLEASE someone start a new one
4. I'm going away for a couple weeks, so don't count on much participation from me.
5. If the notion of building a parallel database troubles anyone at CHOW/CBS, contact me (jimleff.ny@gmail.com) or Melanie and we'll do what's necessary to put you at ease. This isn't insurrection, it's a creative workaround. And, frankly, I'd rather if there were a solution right here at CBS. This isn't my idea of a good time!
Hmmm....in fact, if I wasn't involved, it would probably trouble CBS less....and avoid the misimpression that this will be a competing resource. So I'll chime in and advise, chip in on the server, but it should be run either cooperatively, or, by Melanie or someone (the less CBS has to worry about this, the more they can figure out ways to make revenue to keep Chowhound's lights on, etc. We need them doing that full steam)
