MitchW
-
Posts
1,379 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Days Won
124
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Articles
Events
Posts posted by MitchW
-
-
21 hours ago, maison rustique said:
Yes--I lump the starlings, grackles and red-winged blackbirds into that category.
And they travel in packs!
-
1
-
-
On 2/26/2026 at 7:23 PM, maison rustique said:
Common Grackle (Grrrr)
Bullies!
-
I wonder if my new request to the kitchen is going to be: "Please don't add finishing salt to my plates?"
Actually, when the wait persons asks if there are any allergies, that's a great time to say: "yes, I'm allergic to finishing salt!"
-
2
-
-
2 hours ago, Orik said:
I think it's just how recipes are written these days - a series of precise steps meant to deliver consistent results, followed by "...then grab a fistful of finishing salt and, without thinking, drop it over the perfectly fine plate of food"
When I am able to see the kitchen or the line, I see this all the time!
-
1 hour ago, maison rustique said:
And I know a lot of chefs and a lot of them smoke--not sure when that started happening, but I don't recall that many chefs smoking back in the old days.
I don't know how old the days are, but Bourdain smoked like a fiend. Jean-Louis Palladin was a pretty heavy smoker - who died of lung cancer. Marcella smoked incessantly. My guess is there were a lot of French and Italian guys chefs who cooked way back when and smoked like fiends.
-
1
-
-
Smoking, yes. I believe age and training too - none of the chefs I worked for would allow some of this stuff to be sent out so salty.
I think location, too.
-
Yes, I've been privately ranting about this for a while, but I feel as if it has gotten out of hand.
Why so much goddamn salt? Is anyone teaching cooks how to salt properly any more?
The other night, I watched as a cook salted my app before it got served to me - I wanted to scream, yo - enough! And there's already salt in the food for sure, so putting another teaspoon atop doesn't really make it better.
But we have had two meals since the beginning of the year that I feel are worth mentioning, because the salt levels were proper. At both Ci Siamo and Via Carota, we had lovely food, and I wasn't up all night drinking water. Interestingly, both are places where the chef is a woman or women, and let's just say, of a certain age.
-
1 hour ago, MitchW said:
Every month I get an email from this company that imports Bordier, and allows me to preorder it (which I don't, because...the prices)...https://definegourmet.com/
When they were reasonably priced, I'd get a bunch of friends together, order a few pounds, and drive up there to pick it up...I think they were in Larchmont, or Scarsdale, but I don't remember.
Strangely, I just got the email this afternoon. Here's what they are charging:
Add on shipping, which is like $30.
-
1 hour ago, SethG said:
. But sometime last year it was restocked and the bars (8oz) had gone up to $21! That was a hard no.
Whoa - I think when they first opened, it was $7 for plain - though I think that was for a 4 oz. bar.
Every month I get an email from this company that imports Bordier, and allows me to preorder it (which I don't, because...the prices)...https://definegourmet.com/
When they were reasonably priced, I'd get a bunch of friends together, order a few pounds, and drive up there to pick it up...I think they were in Larchmont, or Scarsdale, but I don't remember.
Maybe Tin Building used the same marketing team that worked on the Market Line?
(FWIW, Formaggio usually has some nice butters).
-
A few nights ago:
Chicken curry with new crop (2025) rice from the Rice Factory. Onions, carrots, potatoes, mushrooms, ginger, garlic, soy, honey, ketchup (!), chicken stock, chicken and homemade curry roux.
Last night:
-
2
-
-
3 hours ago, SethG said:
Last time I was there I *tried* to spend money but couldn’t. Someone stationed behind the meat counter told me I’d have to come back in half an hour for a chuck roast that was already sitting there, the size I wanted, needing no additional work. The butcher was on break. They tried to get some help for me from the fishmonger but apparently they were incapable of weighing and tagging mammalian meat.
Now that's funny! I like the fact that, in the early days at least, they carried Bordier butter at a very reasonable price, and also the roast chicken was quite good. But I really only bought that once or twice.
From a friend...
QuoteWylie Dufrense was supposed to be involved in that early as well but he bailed. I saw some original concept designs for his place. It’s a whole bunch of financebros and VC people with nothing better to do with their money.
The project was spearheaded on the operational side by Saul Scherl, president of the New York tri-state region for Howard Hughes Corp., who worked closely with Vongerichten to develop the “culinary theater” concept. The two traveled to Spain, Italy, and London to research market halls before settling on their vision for the space.
-
I wonder who sunk the money into renovating, restoring and opening that place.
-
-
At 95. RIP - a true giant of the profession.
-
2
-
-
A lovely, 1.5" thick heritage pork chop. Pan-roasted, served over and with a sauce made from the fond, mushroom, onion, stock, mustard, butter, s & p. (Chef gets the bone).
Boiled and sautéed new potatoes with pimentón and chives. Salad on the side.
-
1
-
-
Drummer for the band The Pogues.
Here's what Cáit O'Riordan had to say on social:
QuoteFare thee well, slán leat to the mighty Clobberer
An awful sad day, let's light a candle and sing a song for the man who held steady and true through all the chaos. I love this Paul Rider photo, putting Andrew right up front - ní bheidh a leitheid arís ann
-
1
-
-
Last night brought a pair of Austrian wine makers to Cafe Katja, to pour and discuss their wines:
A good time was had by all.
-
Back to making pizza, the easier way for me:
Comes out really good! Crust is crispy, yet tender.
This is an overnight, 70% hydration dough - only flour, water, yeast, salt.
-
2
-
-
Walked by the other night:
And listened to this:
-
I think this is Matthew Schneier's best (double) review yet; in it, he reviews both Saga and Cove (fwiw, I did have an early reservation at Cove, and decided I wasn't going to like it, so it was canceled).
I did think of Sneakeater after reading the review, as he and I often agreed that we like entrêes more than bites (as well as not liking share plates - or sharing, for that matter).
QuoteMcGarry may have picked up his hay-smoking technique for his pièce-de-resistance squab working in a restaurant in Belgium, but his bird — already a hard sell for any pigeon-wary New Yorkers — put me in mind more of the animal’s essential animalness than I’d have liked. It came with bitter lettuces dressed with squab vinaigrette and a mushroom fricassee scattered with chips of dehydrated squab jus. By the time the curious desserts started arriving — parsley-and-gooseberry granita with rose-scented cream, an apple mille-feuille whose pastry had been swapped for cinnamon-toast tofu skin — we were exhausted.
As an aside, I had hay-smoked duck some 20 years ago in Paris, probably just about when McGarry started cooking at home - at age 3.
Quotewhy did Saga leave me wanting more? If I wish McGarry were a little more intent on the whims of his customers, I wish Mitchell were a little less. His cooking is so much more interesting than the tired playbook of tasting-menu voluptuousness dictates. It’s a snappy and fabulous sally to open a menu with cornbread, in the form of a scallop-edged tartlet, a fine confit of chicken in its golden heart. It’s dutiful, and a little boring, to then spackle it with caviar.
His fried fish has been so upscaled — Japanese madai, tempura-fried, dusted with dehydrated hot-sauce powder — that it seems like a ghostly shadow of itself, neither salty nor spicy enough. And (to paraphrase the old joke) such small portions.
As an(other) aside, wasn't Wylie doing tempura-fried dogfish, and dusitng it with dehydrated vinegar, at the late, lamented Alder?
-
11 hours ago, SethG said:
Only complaint is unless they install a vestibule or something I won't sit at the bar in the winter months again. I can do without the rush of frigid air every thirty seconds when someone opens the door. Our once-hot plates literally felt like they'd come out of a refrigerator after a few blasts.
Cute story: We walked over the night after Wilfred's dinner posted above, on Tuesday, sans reservation. We like to sit at the bar, and not at the seats close to the door, but from the middle over toward the kitchen. They're usually able to accommodate, but the bar was almost full - the only seats left were by the door. I said we'd rather not, so instead they sat us a table in the dining room. Shrimp croquettes were new to us, and great - they fry really well here.
Chef comped us that Cara Cara salad, which was quite nice.
I know Cervo's has a vestibule, but I think because of the step up to get into Eel Bar, they're not able to do that there.
-
43 minutes ago, backyardchef said:
Beautiful crumb @MitchW
Thanks! Tastes good, too, but I really need to try it in more of a loaf form, because this is basically not great to use for sandwiches.
-
I thought I might have taken this bread a little too far:
I think I actually raised the oven temperature 25°, rather than lowering it when I took the cover off the Dutch oven. But it all turned out okay:
Ken Forkish's same-day white bread.
-
2
-
-
Ekiola definitely great. As mentioned above, they're the sole importers of the cheese, and it has that lovely fruitiness to it.
Corner Bar
in New York
Posted · Edited by MitchW
At the very beginning, it was actually pretty good. However, that didn't last too long.
Looking at my "notes," that was June, 2022-ish.