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After 12 years of reviewing restaurants, I'm leaving the table

nytimes.com

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Re: After 12 years of reviewing restaurants, I'm leaving the table

#111

Post by fuzztester »

UIUC_06 wrote: post #43
fuzztester wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I disagree. If we're talking about restaurants and not fast food, it's portion size that's typically the issue in the US. i think you are right. i have always seen big portion sizes in restaurants when i have gone to the US. also, very recently, i saw a youtube video in which a french person says the same thing. they said that even though the French eat a lot of fat, their overall portion sizes are smaller than thos…

My own impression from a week in Paris is that you're right: if you get the "menu" at most restaurants (appetizer, entree, dessert), you walk out full but not stuffed. The weight-loss drugs like Ozempic, supposedly make you feel like that. I haven't taken them myself. It's like you don't really want any more. Americans seem to feel entitled to two meals for the price of one, and they may or may not eat them both in t…

>Americans seem to feel entitled to two meals for the price of one, and they may or may not eat them both in the restaurant. (If they don't finish, they take the rest home with them)

yes, when my parents used to go to the US, a few decades ago, they told us kids about this practice called using doggie bags. apparently people used to ask for the uneaten part of their restaurant orders to be packed in what was called a doggy bag, under the euphemism that they were taking the extra food home for their dog.

I don't know whether the practice is still followed.

Re: After 12 years of reviewing restaurants, I'm leaving the table

#112

Post by fuzztester »

ghaff wrote: post #73
fuzztester wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I disagree. If we're talking about restaurants and not fast food, it's portion size that's typically the issue in the US. i think you are right. i have always seen big portion sizes in restaurants when i have gone to the US. also, very recently, i saw a youtube video in which a french person says the same thing. they said that even though the French eat a lot of fat, their overall portion sizes are smaller than thos…

It is a generalization but maybe I know it's because there's often a lot of relative filler in entrees and I often gravitate towards one or two starters/apps. That said I mostly don't find portions in Europe (including France) to be especially small.

Interesting ...

I guess it varies between restaurants, and everyone is talking based on their own experience.

apps?

Re: After 12 years of reviewing restaurants, I'm leaving the table

#113

Post by UIUC_06 »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #87
carlosjobim wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paradoxically, it's the fast food staples that are most difficult to do at home – because you need a fryer. Haute cuisine is no problem making at home, because fine dining is not based on using fryers. It can't be made with restaurant speed nor quantity, but you can get the same quality at home.

> because you need a fryer What? There are many, many YouTube videos explaining how to make "fast food" style french fries (double fried, and all that) at home, without a fryer.

My air fryer makes decent fries, using only olive oil as a fat. It did take some practice to get it right.

Are they as good as deep-fat fried? No, but they're crisp on the outside and tender on the inside.

OK, you all want to hear this, you know you do:

===============

Start preheating the air fryer to 400F.

Slice the potatoes. Drop them in a bowl of water, swish them around and drain off the water, and fill the bowl again. By now, the water should be clear. If not, do it again.

Take the fries out and dry on paper towels, as dry as you can get them.

   *These steps are important; you need to wash off the surface starch, and get them dry so you're not steaming them*
Dry the bowl, and put in some olive oil, with seasonings (salt, pepper, garlic salt, etc.)

Put the fries back in the bowl and get them all oily. Put them in the fryer. The basket should be hot enough that they make a sizzling sound.

Every 5 minutes, toss the fries. You can either get compulsive and turn each one individually, or just pour them in a bowl and shake it, or shake the fryer basket (if that doesn't cause it to separate, as it does mine). Put them back in the fryer.

Check periodically that they're as brown as you want them.

==============

Good variations? I want to hear them

Re: After 12 years of reviewing restaurants, I'm leaving the table

#114

Post by bigstrat2003 »

xanderlewis wrote: post #93
analog31 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of the measurements are aided by how the ingredients are packaged. For instance, butter is sold by the pound, in boxes of 4 "sticks" that are marked as being 1/4 cup each, which ignores the density variation but is familiar to every home cook. Chocolate comes in "squares" that are some predictable amount. In fact some recipes call for squares. "A pint's a pound the world around" is a workable rule of thumb for a…

If it was at least all in cups, it’d be somewhat more forgivable. I’ve even seen recipes using amounts of flour measured in a combination of cups and tablespoons! Actually, maybe that doesn’t sound as mad to everyone as it does to me… Anyway, it makes more sense hearing that sticks of butter are labelled in cups. I didn’t know that! In the UK, butter comes in 250g blocks.

Sticks of butter are also labeled in tablespoons here. One stick is 1/2c, and the paper it is wrapped in also has markings for 1-8 tbsp. So it's pretty common to see that in US recipes as well.

As far as flour goes, it's incredibly common to have both cups and measuring spoons in a US kitchen. So if a recipe says "1 cup and 2 tablespoons" or something, it's really easy to measure that.

By contrast, I hate recipes which use weight measurements. It takes a ton of faffing about to get exactly 300g (or whatever weight) of flour weighed out. Add a bit... watch scale... add a bit more... watch scale ad nauseam. And then I often wind up overshooting anyways, so then I have to try to scoop some back out! Whereas with volume measurements I just dip a cup/spoon in, level it off, and I'm done in a couple of seconds.

Re: After 12 years of reviewing restaurants, I'm leaving the table

#115

Post by bigstrat2003 »

fuzztester wrote: post #111
UIUC_06 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My own impression from a week in Paris is that you're right: if you get the "menu" at most restaurants (appetizer, entree, dessert), you walk out full but not stuffed. The weight-loss drugs like Ozempic, supposedly make you feel like that. I haven't taken them myself. It's like you don't really want any more. Americans seem to feel entitled to two meals for the price of one, and they may or may not eat them both in t…

>Americans seem to feel entitled to two meals for the price of one, and they may or may not eat them both in the restaurant. (If they don't finish, they take the rest home with them) yes, when my parents used to go to the US, a few decades ago, they told us kids about this practice called using doggie bags. apparently people used to ask for the uneaten part of their restaurant orders to be packed in what was called a…

I don't know that anyone has ever used "doggy bag" to mean/imply an actual bag for dogs in my lifetime (I'm 39), but yes it's still common to get the rest of your food in a container to take home. These days your waiter/waitress will usually ask "do you want a box" instead of referring to a doggy bag, but everyone knows what you mean if you ask for a doggy bag.

Re: After 12 years of reviewing restaurants, I'm leaving the table

#116

Post by nradov »

analog31 wrote: post #41
UIUC_06 wrote: post #6

Great article. If you ask a real chef, "What do home chefs do wrong the most?" They will often say, "Not enough butter, not enough salt."

Since my mom moved to town, we've been eating at her place frequently. She uses a lot of recipes from the NY Times. They are heavy . Lots of butter, cheese, coconut milk, etc. We've asked my mom to cut those things in half. She's a very good cook, and the things she improvises or makes from memory are much lighter fare. I learned to cook from her, so my meals tend to be fairly light too. Sure, the fat and salt (and d…

To a first approximation, fat won't kill you. There's no reliable evidence that a diet relatively higher in fat causes worse health outcomes, as long as you maintain energy balance. Salt won't kill you either, unless you're genetically susceptible to hypertension and don't drink enough water. The sugar is more problematic.

Re: After 12 years of reviewing restaurants, I'm leaving the table

#117

Post by bigstrat2003 »

laweijfmvo wrote: post #65
otterley wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is possible both to be a saint and serve terrible food. A food critic isn’t supposed to give you a handicap for being a nice guy.

the food isn’t terrible, it’s just gimmicky. and 90% of the people going to Guy Fieri’s _want_ a trash can full of nachos.

Eh, I think it's like media reviews. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, and a lot of times what professional critics think has nothing in common with what the average person actually wants. The high end restaurant world is much like the professional art world in that it gets really pretentious and out of touch. It just is what it is.

Re: After 12 years of reviewing restaurants, I'm leaving the table

#118

Post by EGreg »

slv77 wrote: post #109
EGreg wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for this! I didn’t know the guidelines were published. This is like FINCEN’s 2013 and 2019 guidances for cryptocurrencies. “The limit on not-for-profit losses… does not apply to corporations except S Corporations”. It doesn’t seem to mention LLCs. These are “disregarded entities” at the IRS level, so what does that mean? For tax purposes they are treated as sole proprietorships? It seems to me there is some “m…

Business expenses must be ordinary and necessary to be deductible. A roofer would have a hard time justifying deducting a boat under the rule but a commercial fisherman wouldn’t have trouble. Entertainment expenses are no longer deductible with recent tax law changes with few exceptions. It would be difficult today to get a CPA to sign-off off on a lot of what may have passed previously. A decent write-up can be foun…

* However, a taxpayer’s trade or business must be considered. For example, a theatrical performance, which would normally be considered an entertainment expense, would not be an entertainment expense for a professional theater critic attending the performance in a professional capacity (Regs. Secs. 1.274-11(b)(1)(iii), 1.274-12(a)(1), and 1.274-12(b)(3)).*

This seems to support what I’m suggesting

Re: After 12 years of reviewing restaurants, I'm leaving the table

#119

Post by MeImCounting »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #31
UIUC_06 wrote: post #6

Great article. If you ask a real chef, "What do home chefs do wrong the most?" They will often say, "Not enough butter, not enough salt."

This is also why I don't like eating out much anymore. Every restaurant just leans so hard on heavily salting fats to make their food taste good. I'd rather cook myself now where I can actually taste flavors and feel good, rather than just having the primal "mmm good food" button bashed in my lizard brain and feeling like garbage afterwards.

This comments and many of the others on this thread strike me as written by people who have either never worked at a real restaurant and/or tend to order bland and fatty food (eat like a toddler) by default when they patronize restaurants.

This is fine but really not reflective of good restaurants and the majority of the food they serve.

Re: After 12 years of reviewing restaurants, I'm leaving the table

#120

Post by CoastalCoder »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #31
UIUC_06 wrote: post #6

Great article. If you ask a real chef, "What do home chefs do wrong the most?" They will often say, "Not enough butter, not enough salt."

This is also why I don't like eating out much anymore. Every restaurant just leans so hard on heavily salting fats to make their food taste good. I'd rather cook myself now where I can actually taste flavors and feel good, rather than just having the primal "mmm good food" button bashed in my lizard brain and feeling like garbage afterwards.

When I was in college in Massachusetts in the mid 1990s, there was a buffet-style Greek restaurant named "Brothers". (Somewhere near Peabody I think.)

The Greek woman behind the counter made me (well, guilted me into) getting some vegetables with my order. They weren't too salty or fatty; they were just good for me (and tasty).

It was like being fed by one's own mom. It was awesome.

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