Knives and thumbtacks

Oh, what I wouldn't give for a Bob Kramer chef's knife (his knives are used by some of the most famous chefs in the world, like Thomas Keller of French Laundry fame). I'm on Kramer's waiting list, and I hope to make it to the top of it while I'm still in my cooking prime.

I received an e-mail from his mailing list saying he'd just put one of his knives up for bid on eBay. It sent a brief surge of excitement through me that lasted until I followed the eBay link and saw the current bid price.

***

Some famous people share their favorite places on Google Maps. Not a very long collection of people, though I was curious to see what places Ferran Adria of El Bulli picked out.

google, knives, maps

Factory indeed

Michael Ruhlman teases Kelly Alexander for lauding Cheesecake Factory. Alexander challenges Ruhlman to try the miso salmon there, and if he doesn't like it, she'll pay for the meal and buy 15 copies of Ruhlman's new book. If he loses, then...

The dishes Ruhlman and his group order all turn out okay, but he concludes that the "Factory" part of the restaurant's name rings all too true:

The biggest drawback is the mall-like atmosphere, a sense of faux everything that is perhaps inevitable in any large chain. The fact that any of the 146 CFs around the country can put out this astonishing variety of food is an impressive work of corporate organization and efficiency. But I left feeling sad, and not sure why. I think, on reflection it was because of the sense that what we'd just experienced was simply a company responding to the demands of America, and the demands of America were helping us to take our food one step backward rather than one step forward, and I don't think we have time for backward steps.

What's more frightening, though, is the caloric counts of some of the dishes there:

The salmon weighs in at 1,673 calories -- which is to say, a bit more than 75 percent of the food an adult male should eat in a day. The piccata is a comparably slim 1,385 calories. The crispy beef is 1,528 calories. And the carbonara? 2,191. (source: Ezra Klein)

dining, food, restaurants, michaelruhlman

Wine tip

Many of us should be drinking our white wines warmer and our red wines colder to maximize appreciation for their character. This is one reason people are often surprised when they go to a wine tasting at a winery and find the reds served cooler than they're used to.

wine

Miscellany

Sportswriter Jim Murray once wrote about Rickey Henderson, whose excessive batting crouch helped him to draw lots of walks:

Rickey Henderson's strike zone is smaller than Hitler's heart.

***

A recent New Yorker article in the Food Issue examined the knife-making industry and profiled Kramer Knives of Seattle. Bob Kramer is one of a select group of Master Bladesmiths in America (as credentialed by the American Bladesmith Society); there are only about a hundred. To pass the test, one's knife must undergo a grueling series of tests, from rope cutting to wood chopping to shaving hair.

There is a multi-year waitlist to buy one of Kramer's knives, used by the likes of super chefs like Thomas Keller (I myself am on that waiting list). He has collaborated on a more widely available series of knives that are sold exclusively by Sur La Table. The Chef's Knife from that series is a beauty (if you're looking for a last-minute gift idea that will just dazzle a loved one who loves to cook, that's a great way to go, though my mother always shunned giving knives as gifts because of the Chinese superstition that giving such a gift foretold the severing of that relationship).

Upgrading the dull chef's knife is one of the best investments a home cook can make. Dull knives make cooking a lot of work and leads to injuries when a knife slips. Proper knife technique is the other simple lesson a chef should learn. To properly capitalize on your knife's edge, the blade should be moving horizontally across the food being cut. Too many people just press down, and that's not how a knife is designed to work. Doing so exerts a lot of needless effort and is slow. Think of your arm and knife moving in a continuous elliptical motion, like the horizontal metallic bar on the outside of a train engine car's wheels.

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I don't recall what things were like four years ago, but it feels to me like there are many more "letters to the President-Elect" in the media this time around, on topics from bailouts and reviving the economy to drugs, food policy, and education. I suspect this is the consequence of having a President we regard as well-read and thoughtful.

***

An old article from The Morning News, as seen back on Reddit today: How do you know if a girl loves you?

If you’re Gael Garcia Bernal: She loves you.

barackobama, baseball, cooking, newyorker, knives, rickeyhenderson

Michael Pollan's letter to Obama

This is hardly a new article, but I'm so busy that I don't ever get to reading issues of the New Yorker or NYTimes until weeks, sometimes months later.

In the food issue of the NYTimes Magazine from Oct 9, Michael Pollan pens an open letter to the President-Elect urging for a reform in U.S. food policy. It is one of the best articles I've read all year, appropriate for both those already familiar with food policy and those who don't know the first thing about where the food on their dinner plate comes from.

Pollan's thesis:

There are many moving parts to the new food agenda I’m urging you to adopt, but the core idea could not be simpler: we need to wean the American food system off its heavy 20th-century diet of fossil fuel and put it back on a diet of contemporary sunshine.

The most fascinating part of the article is Pollan's history of how our current food production system came to be.

After World War II, the government encouraged the conversion of the munitions industry to fertilizer — ammonium nitrate being the main ingredient of both bombs and chemical fertilizer — and the conversion of nerve-gas research to pesticides. The government also began subsidizing commodity crops, paying farmers by the bushel for all the corn, soybeans, wheat and rice they could produce. One secretary of agriculture after another implored them to plant “fence row to fence row

Design matters

Gregg Rapp is a menu engineer. He designs menus to increase restaurant profitability.

The first step is the design. Rapp recommends that menus be laid out in neat columns with unfussy fonts. The way prices are listed is very important. "This is the No. 1 thing that most restaurants get wrong," he explains. "If all the prices are aligned on the right, then I can look down the list and order the cheapest thing." It's better to have the digits and dollar signs discreetly tagged on at the end of each food description. That way, the customer's appetite for honey-glazed pork will be whetted before he sees its cost.

Also important is placement. On the basis of his own research and existing studies of how people read, Rapp says the most valuable real estate on a two-panel menu (one that opens like a magazine) is the upper-right-hand corner. That area, he says, should be reserved for more profitable dishes since it is the best place to catch--and retain--the reader's gaze.

Cheap, popular staples--like a grilled-chicken sandwich or a burger--should be harder to locate. Rapp likes to make the customer read through a mouthwatering description of seared ahi tuna before he finds them. "This is akin to the grocery store putting the milk in the back," he says. "You have to walk by all sorts of tempting, high-priced items to get to it."

The adjectives lavished on a dish can be as important as the names of the ingredients. What would you rather eatplain grilled chicken or flame-broiled chicken with a garlic rub? Scrambled eggs or farm-fresh eggs scrambled in butter? "Think 'flavors and tastes,'" Rapp says, repeating a favorite mantra. "Words like crunchy and spicy give the customer a better idea of what something will be like." Longer, effusive descriptions should be reserved for signature items. Especially the profitable ones.

design, restaurants, menus

Marathon Man

I was in NYC the first weekend of November to watch my brother James run his first marathon. It was a true family affair as James ran for Fred's Team to raise money for Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center where my other brother Alan works. James raised something like $13,000, just an amazing amount.

I flew in late Thursday night. The next day, while James was off at work, I got up and just walked around. New York City is still my favorite among all the cities I've lived in, and I suspect it's because it's the one city where I can feel both alone and among people at the same time.

I stopped for lunch at Momofuku Ssäm Bar, one of the outlets in the David Chang empire. Back when I lived in NYC, I came here on its first day open, when they still didn't have a menu. It was like a burrito bar back then, and when I walked in the one guy behind the kitchen counter looked surprised to see anyone. Now it's transformed into a fairly chic sit-down joint with a menu and prix fixe lunch. I had crispy pork belly buns...

...and spicy rice cakes.

It was Friday, Halloween, but more importantly, it was the last day of the Banksy exhibit in the West Village, The Village Pet Store and Charcoal Grill. I managed to get there just about a half hour before it closed.

Banksy is to the art world as Michel Gondry is to music videos, just conceptually brilliant. This faux pet store wasn't populated with the real animals. Instead, there was a depressed and caged Tweety...

...a caged animatronic monkey wearing headphones, clicking on a remote control, and watching a TV playing a documentary about monkeys free in the wild...

...a rabbit looking in a mirror and applying lipstick...

...animatronic fish fingers swimming in fishbowl...

...and animatronic sausages squirming around like earthworms.

A leopard fur coat basked in a tree branch, its "tail" hanging down and swaying lazily. A rooster watched over its children, little Chicken McNuggets with legs bobbing for food.

Not Banksy's most subtle social commentary, but a humorous conceit executed simply. According to the security guard, the exhibit was on its way to London next.

That night I caught a production of David Mamet's Speed the Plow at the Barrymore Theater on Broadway. This three person meditation on the conflict between art and commerce in Hollywood starred Jeremy Piven, Elisabeth Moss (Peggy Olson on Mad Men), and Raul Esparza.

Bashing Hollywood for favoring money over art is hardly an original form of cynicism, but the underrated Piven is always fun to watch on stage. He plays a character not so unlike his Ari Gold from Entourage: Bobby Gould is a studio exec tasked with making commercial hits. When Elizabeth Moss, a temp secretary, playing someone not unlike her Peggy Olson in Season One of Mad Men, appeals to his conscience to push for an adaptation of a dense and decidedly depressing novel (for some reason I thought of Blindness by Saramago), the battle for his soul is on, with Raul Esparza playing the devil on his shoulder, having brought Gould a made-to-order action script with a big star attached.

Piven has a way of making greed warm and fuzzy. His Ari Gold and Bobby Gould both talk a game of mindless materialism, but the body language conveys a person not entirely comfortable with all the bravado. We see in Piven our own greedy nature, but because we sense his chance for redemption is our own, and so we root for him. Tony Soprano and Don Draper are part of a recently crowded stable of antiheroes, and Piven is like their comedic brother.

After the play, I set off to my old neighborhood haunt of Union Square. I'd read that there would be a flash mob of Sarah Palin look-a-likes this Halloween night, but only a few materialized. Dagmar and Alex, two other folks from UCLA Film School were in town for a thesis shoot, so I met up with them and followed them around, taking pics of Dagmar with costumes that struck her fancy. We snapped a lot Palins, among others. But the most popular costume, by far, perhaps for ease of creation, was Heath Ledger's smudged-lipstick-and-white-face-paint Joker.

The night ended, as many busy social days in NYC end, with my sister Karen hobbling in pain alongside me at 3am in her Audrey Hepburn circa Breakfast at Tiffany's high heels, the two of us trying and failing to find a single unoccupied taxi in Greenwich Village.

The night before the marathon, we all stayed at the Westin in Times Square as James and all the Fred's Team runners were put up there for their fundraising efforts. They got their own transportation to the start line.

The family met up to watch him at the Fred's Team viewing bleachers on 1st Ave., near 67th St, around mile 17. We saw the wheelchair division fly by. One man in a wheelchair stopped across the street, attached a pair of artificial legs below his knees, and ran. The competitive women and then the competitive men flew by, and we saw both eventual winners in those groups.

Thanks to the marathon's e-mail alerts, we knew when James was approaching. As he ran by, giving Alan and the kids a quick hug, I shouted out to him to "Drop the hammer!" He looked back, then down at the street, puzzled, thinking I'd said that he'd dropped something.

We tried to make it across town to the finish line to catch him, but he was too fast. He'd already finished in an impressive 3:57 by the time we waded through the Central Park mob.

Congrats, on both the great time and the amazing fundraising haul! Each speaks volumes, one to his obsessive nature, the other to his likability.

marathon, nyc, restaurants, running

Black Bull

A Starbucks coffee grande has over 4X the caffeine of a Red Bull. This and many other interesting coffee facts via this NYTimes article.

Serious party people know that the go-to drink to get you to the crack of dawn is coffee and vodka.

health, coffee

Drinky drinky

"New Hints Seen That Red Wine May Slow Aging"

The Wisconsin scientists used a dose on mice equivalent to just 35 bottles a day. But red wine contains many other resveratrol-like compounds that may also be beneficial. Taking these into account, as well as mice’s higher metabolic rate, a mere four, five-ounce glasses of wine “starts getting close

blah blah blah

I'm not picking sides on the debate about the impact of the web on journalism, but I do venture to say that stories like this would not have made the news prior to the rise of the web.

American Airlines to start charging $15 for the first checked bag. That's great, because I just adore flying those roomy coach seats. I I look forward to being charged to use the bathroom, charged to do the crossword on the in-flight magazine sudoku, and charged to rent an overhead bin for my carry-on luggage, too.

Eating vegetables raw is not always the healthiest way to consume them. Thank goodness. Also good news: eating vegetables with a bit of fat, for example in full-fat dressing, may help you absorb more vitamins.

airline, dining, food, health, humor, travel, news, cooking

Recommended

Chris Rock's latest standup tour - Last night I caught Chris Rock's latest standup show with some coworkers. I have to let it soak in over a few weeks (during which I will dutifully, as a male, repeat his jokes to many of my coworkers and friends with a substantially substandard delivery that will deflate 85% of the humor of the routines), but with the performance fresh in my mind I'm convinced it's his best standup performance yet. I was in tears a couple of times. The Presidential election, race relations, differences between men and women, marriage, sex, steroids...he ranged over all the topics I was hoping he'd hit. If he's coming to your town, get yourself a ticket.

There's nothing like seeing good standup live; you can watch the inevitable HBO special, but you won't have the energy from thousands of people laughing to feed off of (the flipside is probably also true, that seeing bad standup live is exponentially more uncomfortable than seeing it on TV).

I last saw him live in Seattle some four years ago, during his Never Scared tour. Of all the standup comedians I've seen live (not a huge list, but includes folks like Dennis Miller, Seinfeld, Russell Peters), Chris Rock is my favorite. I saw Seinfeld twice in a four year span, and he repeated a great deal of his material. Though Rock covers similar themes in each show, I've never heard him use the same joke twice.

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Lays ketchup flavored potato chips - one of my coworkers brought a bag back from Toronto. Apparently this flavor is a specialty north of the border. In America we love ketchup with our french fries, so why hasn't this flavor of chips caught on here? Whatever the reason, to satiate my fix I may have to resort to bidding on eBay.

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State of Play - the British just seem to be able to crank out great political thrillers and police procedurals (I'm still a huge fan of Spooks, or MI-5 as they rebrand it for BBC America). This six-part miniseries stars the always fantastic Bill Nighy and a young Kelly MacDonald and James McAvoy, to name a few actors more recognized this side of the pond. It starts, as these things often do, with a dead body. When the press, government, industry, and police all tug on the thread, the plot unravels at a healthy clip.

chrisrock, comedy, food, standup, tv

Things I Like

* Modern Love, the weekly column in the Sunday Styles section of the NYTimes. I enjoy the introspective, confessional nature of each installment. This past week's column, "Mom, It’s Me, Your Son, Finally," was a good example of its tone. It's interesting to me how my tastes for various sections of newspapers and magazines has changed over time.

* New Balance 1220 running shoe series, of which the latest incarnation is the 1223. My flat, wide feet are thankful for shoes that, unlike Nikes, aren't made for people with perfect feet, narrow, high-arched. I guess that's to be expected from a shoe company named after a Greek goddess. The 1220's don't change too much from generation to generation, so when I walked into the store looking for a replacement for my 1221's, the saleswoman simply handed me the same size for the 1223s, and I walked out and was running in them fifteen minutes later. There's something to be said for product continuity in the shoe market.

I loved the Air Jordan VIII. It was the first pair I ever owned, and the day my mom bought it for me from a sports store in a mall is still a tactile memory. But subsequent models of the shoe changed so drastically that they just didn't fit my feet anymore.

* Runner's high (proof it exists?). I'd always thought runner's high was the occasional feeling that one could run forever without getting tired, but the definition in the article implies that it's something you always experience during running. Which may be why I have not experienced it in so long.

* Taco trucks. Seemingly an LA institution, the Hulu dev team seems to find a new one every week, each better than the next. I have yet to find one comprehensive listing of all taco trucks, though partial coverage can be found at The Great Taco Hunt and this Google Map.

food, LA, nytimes, tacos, running, shoes

It's your birthday

Yesterday was, alas, one more tick of the odometer on my life gauge. Yesterday some friends of mine decided to accelerate my progress towards the grave by taking me to Cut, the acclaimed Wolfgang Puck steakhouse in the Beverly Wilshire hotel, a 2007 nominee for "Best New Restaurant" by the James Beard Foundation and the winner of Esquire's 2006 Restaurant of the Year award.

It's one serious luxury steakhouse with one heavy-hitting menu. Walking in we strolled past a Bentley and an Aston Martin and several dozen middle aged people whose dress and mannerisms screamed of old money. If I knew what many executives in town looked like I probably would have spotted several seated in the dining room

The first three starters listed:

• Kobe Steak Sashimi, Spice Radishes


• Prime Sirloin "Steak Tartare", Herb Aioli, Mustard


• Bone Marrow Flan, Mushroom Marmalade, Parsley Salad

It went on to include starters such as...

• Austrian Oxtail Bouillon, Chive Blossoms, Chervil, Bone Marrow Dumplings


• Prime Filet Mignon "Carpaccio", Celery Hearts, Shaved French Black Truffles


• Maple Glazed Pork Belly, Asian Spices, Sesame-Orange Dressing, Winterella Pear Compote

Even the breadsticks and bread, laced with parmesan, tasted decadent. Cut serves four levels of beef (listed here from expensive to obscenely expensive):

• U.S.D.A. PRIME, Illinois Corn Fed, Aged 21 Days


• U.S.D.A. PRIME, Nebraska Corn Fed, Dry Aged 35 Days


• American Wagyu/Angus "Kobe Style" Beef from Snake River Farms, Idaho


• True Japanese 100% Wagyu Beef from Kagoshima Prefecture, Kyushu, Japan

Before our meal, the waiter brought out five huge slabs of beef wrapped in cloth, three slabs of American Wagyu and 2 of true Japanese Wagyu. The marbling in the meat was apparent to the eye, just beautiful and mouth-watering.

I went with the American Wagyu 10oz Rib Eye, while others ordered Bone-In Filet Mignon, New York Sirloin, Colorado Lamb Chops with Cucumber Mint Raita, and Kobe Beef Short Ribs "Indian Spiced" and cooked for eight hours.

For a starter I had the bone marrow flan. I still prefer the cleaner and simpler mix of flavors of the Beef Marrow with Oxtail Marmalade at Blue Ribbon Restaurant in New York, but the bone marrow flan is damn impressive. Transformed into flan, the bone marrow lost a bit of that marrow flavor I love so much, but in combination with the mushroom marmalade it made for one fancy bread spread.

Seven waiters delivered our entrees, setting them down in front of us with the choreographed timing of a theme park fountain show. I cut a piece of my rib eye, cooked rare plus, and dipped it into the shallot-red wine bordelaise sauce. Then I put it in my mouth, and about 1.7 seconds later, as I finished my first bite, I went to a happy place. The marbling produced a rib eye with the consistency of foie gras. It was spectacular.

Dessert of banana cream pie and chocolate souffle brought traffic in my remaining arteries to a standstill. As far as steak dinners go, this was one of the more memorable ones of my life. I may not eat another piece of beef for the remainder of the year, but if so, the memory of the various cuts I tasted last night will tide me over.

Technorati Tags: dining, food, LA, restaurants, steak

LA's stars

The Michelin guide for LA and Las Vegas cameout, and EaterLA has the star count summary.
I've been in LA a year but have not really explored the "fine" dining scene much at all. Besides Melisse and Spago and Matsuhisa I haven't heard of any of these starred LA restaurants. The value here seems to be in ethnic food, always to be ignored by guides like Michelin which value ambience and service.

Dark

Via Eric and Christina: the latest branch of a unique restaurant opens in Beijing, China. These so-called dark restaurants put a twist on the dining experience: you eat in complete darkness, guided to your seat and through the meal by visually-impaired waitstaff wearing night-vision goggles.

The goal is two-fold. One is to increase employment opportunities for the visually-impaired and raise awareness of the challenges they have to overcome. A second is to enhance your appreciation of the taste of the food by shutting down one of your other primary senses.

Add that to the list of novelty dining experiences, like Ninja Restaurant. There are Dans Le Noir restaurants in several major cities around the world.

The bathrooms, wisely, are brightly lit. There are some affairs one should conduct without the help of a spotter, for the benefit of both parties.

Pinkberry

The dessert chain Pinkberry is all the rage in Southern California. They serve "frozen yogurt" in a clean, minimalist store with Philippe Starck furniture and sell designer accessories like $60 dog bowls.

I put quote around frozen yogurt because the Pinkberry Wikipedia page links to a now pay-blocked archive article in the LA Times in which they sent samples of Pinkberry to a lab that found that it did not contain enough bacterial cultures per gram to qualify to call their product "frozen yogurt" with all its attendant health benefits.

I think it tastes fresh, with more of that sour true yogurt taste than stuff like TCBY's in the 80's, but at $5 for a medium (8 oz) 3 topping yogurt, it ain't cheap, and the lines at the stores during peak hours are more than it's worth.

I don't know which store inspired which, but a whole host of frozen yogurt competitors have sprouted up, all clustering around similar sounding names. Besides Pinkberry, there's Red Mango, Kiwiberri, Snowberry, Yogurberry, IceBerry, and Berri Good. Straight from Korea to LA, it's the frozen yogurt revival.

Eric and I have discussed opening a business selling toppings right next door to Pinkberry locations. Customers could save the $0.95 they charge per topping by ordering their yogurt plain and then walking next door to choose from our even larger and cheaper selection of toppings. $0.95 for a teaspoon of Fruity Pebbles?

And a side of angioplasty, please

Some insane doughnuts offered at the Portland eatery Voodoo Doughnut. A maple bacon doughnut?

How about the Triple Chocolate Penetration (chocolate doughnut, chocolate glaze, and Cocoa Puffs):

You can find other interesting ones on the menu, some not safe for a child's eyes (though anyone with an imagination can probably connect the dots using some common donut shapes).

Technorati Tags: dining, eating, food, restaurants

The river

I'm still recovering from a weekend in Vegas for Betina's wedding. Good times, though exhausting. If I ever stayed there for more than a weekend I'd surely end up like Nicolas Cage in Leaving Las Vegas. Two cruel and stone-faced blackjack dealers nearly made it a costly weekend, but I managed to fight back valiantly at a poker table and a blackjack table, finally surfacing into the black sometime around 4am on Sunday morning.

Get your order in now for the 2005 vintage of Marilyn Merlot.

A list of the world's fastest growing religions. High birthrates in countries where a religion dominates are critical for growing the religion.

SomeEcards offers e-cards for the modern, sardonic sensibility. I'll definitely be sending some of these in the near future (some are funny but borderline NSFW).

Steampunk Star Wars desktops.

RetailMeNot collects coupons for online shopping sites. They offer a Firefox extension that notifies you when there's a coupon for the online shopping site you're visiting (there's also a Dashboard widget).

Tim Allen to star in the mixed martial arts drama Redbelt which David Mamet wrote and will direct. Huh?

Technorati Tags: desktop, film, humor, movies, coupon, religion, shopping, wallpaper, wine

Budget kitchen

Mark Bittman advises readers how to assemble a well-equipped kitchen for $200 to $300 by hitting up restaurant supply houses. The low prices he quotes for many kitchen tools are impressive.

The economics of The Godfather.

The Visual Effects Society announced its list of the 50 most influential visual effects films of all time (remember, the difference between visual effects and special effects are that the latter must be done on set, e.g. blowing up a car, turning on a smoke machine). The top 10:

1. Star Wars (1977)

2. Blade Runner (1982)

3. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

3. The Matrix (1999)

5. Jurassic Park (1993)

6. Tron (1982)

7. King Kong (1933)

8. Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)

9. Alien (1979)

10. The Abyss (1989)

RIP Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. Can't say it bothers me much. The show never really grabbed me.

Technorati Tags: cooking, economics, film, howto, movies, tools, tv

Tidbits

Lousy placement of a Yahoo ad at a baseball stadium.

Mozy offers 2GB of free online file backup for Mac users. Their unlimited backup service is only $5 a month which is not a bad deal. You get backup religion the first time your hard drive dies and takes your MP3 collection to the grave with it (Disclosure: that link contains my referral code, and for every four customers I refer I get 1GB additional free backup).

"As Hotel Prices Rise, a Villa May Be a Bargain" - the headline says it all. I want to stay in a villa!

Mmm, now this is some fresh sashimi (YouTube)

Technorati Tags: food, humor, internet, tech, travel, video, web, youtube