Tag: food

Not all stars are given equally

eiron's company X'mas party was held in a West Village gastropub, which according to Michelin Guide 2006, is awarded one Michelin Star. eiron's colleagues were very excited because Michelin star is awarded only to great restaurant (even one star). But I was puzzled because eiron and I had eaten there previously with friends and although the food was good, it wasn't good enough to warrant any star! That place is more the place to be seen in rather than the place to have fine dinning. Sittings are cramped and service is definitely not up to Michelin standard (in fact not even NY standard). If that pub deserves one Michelin star then about half of New York restaurants should have one too! I can name a few just off my head: Alfama, Les Halles, Dillon's Prime.

After having eaten at two of Gordon Ramsay's restaurants in London (Angela Hartnett at The Connaught, and Gordon Ramsay's at Calridge's) which both have only one Michelin Star, I can safely declared that Michelin has lowered their standard for New York City. Mike Steinberger at Slate.com seems to think so too.

I hope NYers realised the difference in Michelin and rating and not compare Michelin Star-ed restaurants in Europe with the ones in NYC. At least not the one star ones. The three stars ones (Thomas Keller's Per Se, for example) are definitely better!

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QotD: Pizza Preference

How do you eat your pizza:  folded, flat or with a fork and knife?
Submitted by danimass.

It depends on where I am eating the said pizza. If I am eating it in the office where the slide is huge (normal for New York pizza) then I eat it folded. If the pizza is normal size then I eat it flat. And if I am eating the pizza in a restaurant then I may use fork and knife, but it all depends on how everyone else are eating their pizza. When in Rome, do as Roman does.

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QotD: My First Flight

Do you remember your first flight? Where did you go? Why?
Submitted by Laurel.

The first time I flow was when we took a rare vacation as a child. It must have been around 1987 or 1988. My parents and I went to Peking (Beijing) for a week vacation and since there is no cheap direct flight between Hong Kong and Peking we had to travel to Canton (Guangdong) by boat (I think) for an internal flight. At that time Air China was called CAAC (Civil Aviation Administration of China) but their schedules keeping was so bad that we joked CAAC actually stood for China Airline Always Cancelled. In fact, on our return trip from Peking our flight was mysteriously cancelled without notification and we got stuck in the airport (comprise of a largish brick house with no door and a long strip of concrete runway, I'm sure there must be a control tower somewhere out there) for 4 hours waiting for the next flight that may or may not arrive. The weather was brutal, think bitter winter wind in Northern China, and without any heating in an open brick house it wasn't much fun for that 4 long hours.

I was excited about flying and I kept asking my dad to take photos of the aircraft wing even though it was pretty boring. I was also very excited about airline food but it turned out that the mainland Chinese had a very different idea about airline food than the rest of the industry. We got served a pork chop in a paper box but when we opened the box, we found that the they had not heated up the food. So for lunch we had a frozen pork chop that could probably kill someone if you threw it hard enough. Needless to say, none of us ate that. Fortunately, one of the people on the vacation tour group had packed a bunch of instant noddles so we asked for hot water from the air hostess and shared the noddles among us.

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QotD: Save It For A Rainy Day

What's the best way to spend a rainy day?
Submitted by Vee.

Inside my apartment, watching DVD, HDTV, play Halo 2, and eat nice hot food.

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A Dumpling Manifesto

From Slate:

The Chinese dumpling is a magnificent product of the human imagination:
At its best, it is charming in appearance, chewy and savory, and can
trigger a head rush like sashimi or blue cheese.

My favorite part:

The Cantonese, clever by nature, are great dumpling innovators. They
understand the importance of sticky skin better than any other region,
which is why their shrimp dumplings (har gau) are justifiably famous. They are also credited with creating a giant variety of unusual dumplings for dim sum, including what are arguably the best vegetarian dumplings.

The real funny part is in the discussion board though. It starts off fine, people discussion dumpling as meant to. But somehow it degenerated into Rachael Ray flame war. Huh?

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