PreservedFish's Profile
Oakland's best non-taco Mexican?
I couldn't find a good topic on this in the archives, although I'm sure it's been discussed before.
How about somewhere I can get a damn good Mexican square meal? It seems like we concentrate on tacos and antojitos here.
Makansutra Guide to Singapore -- What's Your Opinion?
Couldn't agree more with the above. The poor organization of the thing makes it borderline useless for a tourist. You cannot just show up to a hawker center with this book in hand and expect that it will tell you anything. In order to get any utility out of it, I had to study the guide in the morning with pen and paper and then use Google and a map.
One night in Hong Kong - I need one restaurant/neighborhood
Hello,
I have one night in Hong Kong coming up this January. I arrive at 6 in the evening and leave the next morning. I've never been.
Because I will only have a few hours to spend in the city, I'm looking for a combined restaurant/neighborhood recommendation. I want to eat somewhere awesome, more chowhoundy than fancy, and obviously something marked by an essential HongKongness. What I'd like is for the restaurant (or series of noodle stands or whatever) to be in a neighborhood that a first-time tourist would find appropriate for a pleasant and interesting evening stroll. This little postprandial walk will represent 100% of my Hong Kong sightseeing, so, the quality of the neighborhood is almost as important as the quality of the food.
Thank you!
Buying Cockscombs?
Anyone know where to buy cockscombs in the Bay Area? I went to 99 Ranch and the butcher seemed bewildered by my request.
Cheers!
Question about Chez L'Ami Jean
I think this question is impossible to answer without inside knowledge of the restaurant.
In a shabby or sloppy or lazy restaurant, sure, the first night would probably be dicey.
If CAJ has a great and very fussy chef or just a general culture of outstanding service that would not allow them to slacken their standards in any way, then they might be perfectly prepared for the very first customer.
Villa9Trois
Stephane Reynaud makes such beautiful cookbooks. And yet nary a word on this restaurant in the Chowhound archives. Has anybody been?
How much do you trust the Bib Gourmand?
Thank you John. Just so you know I have been raiding the Egullet board as well as this one and thus will probably end up at half a dozen places you've recommended
Jura
There is very little information about this region on this board, although one or two tantalizing mentions of it having some of most consistently delicious food in France.
Anything at all on this area? Any budget, any concept, town or country...
How much do you trust the Bib Gourmand?
I want to make sure that I'm right that a Bib is not automatically awarded to any listed restaurant under 30 Euros. It isn't just an indicator of cheapness, but also of quality.
Restaurants that are Creative+Traditional
Thank you Phil. That does seem about right ... I'll do some more research
How much do you trust the Bib Gourmand?
I will be traveling for a month throughout France by car, accompanied by my Michelin Red Guide. Only a fraction of my meals will be planned out and, as such, I will probably flip through my Michelin every single day in search of the next meal.
If I roll into a town with eight listed restaurants, one of which has been awarded a Bib Gourmand, that one restaurant will seem like the obvious first choice. Is that smart? I might have this sort of decision to make ten or fifteen times.
Restaurants that are Creative+Traditional
Well, I tried to clarify what I meant by "creative." I suppose I am focusing more on creative concepts than creative cooking.
If Robert et Louise or Ribouldingue opened in my city, it would be the only restaurant of its kind. You may call if specialization, but to me it is a sign of creativity if the chefs are pursuing new concepts, even if the specific dishes might all be traditional.
The truth is, it seems that 90% of the discussion on this board is about 3-stars or "authentic" bistros. And I'm interested in that stuff too. But this is just an attempt to carve out a little discussion on a trend that is interesting to me and doesn't get touched by those more popular categories.
Restaurants that are Creative+Traditional
OK, that is phrased somewhat clunkily.
I am interested in restaurants that have a more or less traditional outlook (no tamarind glazes) but still manage to stand out with unusual or creative concepts and executions.
I tend to like restaurants that serve big beautiful non-nonsense foods. I don't mean "creative" in the sense that your waiter will tell you "this is our take on ____," but rather creative in the sense that they have created a niche for themselves. I really don't care if they are starred or not, just that they are delicious.
To give you an idea, a couple places I've found while browsing this board that are are just what I'm talking about: Ribouldingue (the mostly offal restaurant) and Robert et Louise (the 25-seat fireplace-cooked steakhouse)
I have 4+ weeks in the country and will be cruising all around it, so any restaurant in any area is a possibility.
Possibly sacrilegious, but!!!
Cantal can taste quite a bit like cheddar. I have eaten it in America many times and it ranges in strength wheel to wheel, from a modest Swiss-Alpine type to a reasonable sharp Cheddar facsimile to a very pungent and funky thing. I am not sure what the ideal is meant to be.
Salers is a related cheese from the same region. I think it is essentially Cantal but made in a different season. I have had VERY funky and sharp Salers before, which tasted like a mistreated Keens cheddar, in which the rotten vegetable flavor (nice in small doses) got out of hand.
Neither has ever really approached the brilliance of a perfect English cheddar for me. But absolutely worth a shot; it's the closest I can think of. Probably both cheeses are more consistent in the hands of a smart Parisian cheesemonger.
Old-school Provincial Luxury
I want to go to the restaurant where the chef guns down a partridge on his day off, makes his nephew pluck the feathers, and stuffs it like crazy with black truffles and goose liver, and then bakes it and serves it with more truffles and liver. And maybe a puff pastry crust.
You read about this style of high-dining (it's not quite Escoffier, it's certainly not Nouvelle, it's not cuisine de maman) in old books all the time. I have a book that surveys Michelin starred restaurants in 1970, and many of the recipes in it are for family-sized portions (rack of lamb, entire ducks and chickens, etc), food which a current reviewer would probably find ridiculous in any restaurant with 2-star ambitions.
Anyhow, this is the first of what will be a number of threads I'm starting in anticipation of 4-6 weeks in France, driving throughout the entire country.
Can you point me to some of these old-school restaurants, where the portions are huge, the atmosphere is casual, but the technique and ingredients are first class? The place where the chef stuffs the bird he shot full of good stuff? I am looking for places that are "worth a journey" Chowhound style.
My Lotus of Siam Disappointment
"the lunch buffet is NOT the way to go there."
Understood. That was immediately obvious.
But the point is: would the "best _____" restaurant of any type really serve such lazy, bad food to so many customers? It seems incompatible.
My Lotus of Siam Disappointment
I just visited Lotus of Siam last week for the second time. I was disappointed, as I was the first visit. I probably could have added to one of the many existing threads, but I wondered if I might be able to start a little conversation in a new direction. But first, the food:
We had four dishes: Pork Jerky, Nam Kao Tod, Beef Liver Salad, Khao Soi.
The first three were let down. The pork jerky was just boring. The Nam Kao Tod, although it had nice flavors, seemed like it was executed poorly. Either the rice was deep-fried way way too long or there's something about it I just don't get, because the dish was very dry. Maybe the rice wasn't fried to order and was just sitting in a pan for the day. I had this dish (or something very very similar) in Thailand a number of times, and it was always done better, even when I was buying it out of a wheelbarrow and the rice had been fried hours beforehand. The rice was pressed into balls and then fried so that only the outside layer was crispy and the inside remained moist. The balls would be mashed in a bowl with the other ingredients on the order. A much more succesful preparation.
My thoughts about Beef Liver Salad were similar. Nicely seasoned, but the significant element was bungled: the liver, which was grilled, was almost entirely overcooked. It may, in fact, have been grilled previously and then reheated. So it was a sort of chewy thing. This could have been a winner had the liver been prepared nicely.
The Khao Soi was a definite winner. An awesome dish.
But the larger question I have is with the common declaration that this is the best Thai restaurant in America. (Here I note that perhaps the kitchen was having a truly uncharacteristic off day and some of my complaints aren't ultimately relevant). But in both of my visits I noticed a number of red flags that made me think "How could this possibly be the BEST Thai in America?"
I ate lunch. The first thing you see when you walk in is the buffet set-up. The buffet, which btw 75% of the customers were eating, looked horrible. Half of the dishes were basically repeats from a typical suburban Chinese buffet. Would any restaurant that has any actual claim to being the best at anything really have fried chicken sitting on a steam table? Would any self-respecting Thai cook really prepare a single batch of Pad Thai that could serve 20 people and just let it sit out for 30 minutes? It I tell you that you're about to visit the best Italian restaurant in America and your first sight upon walking in is a large pan of Bucatini alla Carbonara sitting under a heat lamp, aren't you going to get suspicious?
And then, the food I actually ate. The dry and rubbery liver. The rice krispy salad. Were these things really cooked to order? I'm not surprised that the Khao Soi was the best dish, because its broth is the only part of my meal that takes to re-heating well. If you went to a French restaurant and you saw that, despite the fact that 75% of its business was for a buffet and only about a dozen people in the whole place were ordering off the a la carte menu, there were 100 available dishes, don't you start to wonder how they pull that off?
I anticipate an objection. "Only idiots get the buffet," or, "you have to know how to order." But I think the crapiness I saw and experienced isn't just something isolated that smart people will be able to avoid. It is an honest reflection of the abilities and standards of the kitchen.
The Khao Soi I had was great. So if someone asks me about Lotus of Siam, I'll tell them that it's a largely shoddy restaurant with a handful of great dishes. But the red flags on display made it impossible for me to imagine that they would ever surpass that, let alone ever contend to the the "Best."
Jackson Heights Breakfast?
Trip home to NYC soon. I'll be arriving at JFK at 6:30 in the morning, and switching from the E to the F at Jackson Heights. Is there a good place to hop off the train and grab some delicious breakfast (of absolutely any sort)?
It need not be breakfast food, in fact. If by some miracle Sripriphai is selling Crispy Catfish Salad at 8 am, for example, that sounds good to me.
Classic French?
What are the most classic (maybe even region-specific) French restaurants in the city?
"Antiqua Trattoria la Romagna" in Bologna? Making sure it exists.
My boss, a damn good chef at a great Italian restaurant, recommended a place called "Antiqua Trattoria la Romagna" to me for dinner in Bologna. He said it was very much off the beaten path, virtually unknown to tourists.
The trouble is, either he gave me the wrong name, or I wrote down the wrong name ... or it is literally unknown, because google isn ́t giving me anything.
Some Small Towns in West Pyrenees?
We are planning a 3-day hike in the Western Pyrenees. Food won't be our only criteria (and I'm sure some of these towns are small enough to have only a handful or fewer of places to eat), but I thought it was worth posting here to see if anyone has had any experience with any of these places.
A few names of places we might visit: Sare, Ainhoa, Bidarray ... St Jean Pied de Port ... Lescun, Borce/Etsaut
Thanks!
