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LiquidSmoke
My title's cooler than yours DBK

Registered: 09/04/01
Posts: 25,335
Loc: S.A.G.G.Y.B.A.L.L.S.
Last seen: 6 months, 26 days
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Re: Iron Chef : Season 5 (Rant) [Re: Seuss]
#9829728 - 02/19/09 09:26 PM (14 years, 11 months ago) |
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Quote:
Seuss said: > I'm still perpelxed to people that think ass-burning hot food is actually palatable? You taste nothing but a transgeminal response to pain.
That is difference between good asian food and the rest. (disclaimer, not all asian food is hot) It is hard to make a good dish that is both hot and has flavors to taste.
> One piece of advice: If an ethnic restaurant is chock full of those very same ethnic people, it's probably good.
Agree completely. I love to find a "hole in the wall" that serves authentic food that most people would be afraid to enter. I don't mean a dirty place, but an out of the way place that serves authentic food to the locals rather than the tourists.

Your comments made me think of this special Szechuan restaurant I go to whenever i'm back home.
The place is a complete "hole in the wall" that most ppl would basically drive by and be too scared to even try. The restaurant is filled with chinese patrons, and the occasional brave caucasian souls.
All they serve is szechuan, which is a neat little find, and something you wouldn't find unless you lived nearby a very large CHinese community.
-------------------- "Shmokin' weed, Shmokin' wizz, doin' coke, drinkin' beers. Drinkin' beers beers beers, rollin' fatties, smokin' blunts. Who smokes tha blunts? We smoke the blunts" - Jay and Silent Bob strike Back
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Mr. Mushrooms
Spore Print Collector


Registered: 05/25/08
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Loc: Registered: 6/04/02
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Re: Iron Chef : Season 5 (Rant) [Re: LiquidSmoke]
#9831159 - 02/20/09 01:12 AM (14 years, 11 months ago) |
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I ate some homemade tonight. I made it spicy, spicy hot. My latest kick is Wasabi Cashews. They are awesome.
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Mr. Mushrooms
Spore Print Collector


Registered: 05/25/08
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Re: Iron Chef : Season 5 (Rant) [Re: soochi]
#9831337 - 02/20/09 01:49 AM (14 years, 11 months ago) |
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Chespirito
Stranger


Registered: 02/13/09
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Re: Iron Chef : Season 5 (Rant) [Re: Mr. Mushrooms]
#9834432 - 02/20/09 04:11 PM (14 years, 11 months ago) |
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Honestly pizza done like its done in Italy is usually trash. The best pizza without a doubt comes from the US (Chicago in my opinion). I lived in Rome for a little while, never had pizza Id consider worth going back for.
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Mr. Mushrooms
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Re: Iron Chef : Season 5 (Rant) [Re: Chespirito]
#9834594 - 02/20/09 04:49 PM (14 years, 11 months ago) |
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I've heard that. If Mario's is anything like it I understand why they say that.
I'd rate Chicago pizza 5 stars, some deep dish is to die for (had some for the first time in '76), but some of New York's pizzerias are kick ass too. Manhattan pizza has gone downhill in general I think. In the early 80's it was awesome, hard to find a bad one. This century it's hard to find a good one.
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Seuss
Error: divide byzero



Registered: 04/27/01
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Re: Iron Chef : Season 5 (Rant) [Re: Chespirito]
#9834680 - 02/20/09 05:06 PM (14 years, 11 months ago) |
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> The best pizza without a doubt comes from the US (Chicago in my opinion).
I used to get Pizzeria Uno pizza from Chicago delivered Fed Ex. Came packed in dry ice ready to pop in the oven. It takes too long to get through customs down, so I can't get it anymore.
-------------------- Just another spore in the wind.
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Chespirito
Stranger


Registered: 02/13/09
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Re: Iron Chef : Season 5 (Rant) [Re: Seuss]
#9834833 - 02/20/09 05:36 PM (14 years, 11 months ago) |
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ha that's wild, good place though. They have a bunch of locations now, though not in the Caribbean. As for good pizza in NYC, Manhattan still has a bunch of good places. The Bronx has some excellent places as does Brooklyn. Though I'm not too big a fan of the 'classic' Brooklyn place under the bridge
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soochi
Chef


Registered: 08/13/02
Posts: 2,420
Loc: The Richest County
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Re: Iron Chef : Season 5 (Rant) [Re: Chespirito]
#9838614 - 02/21/09 12:45 PM (14 years, 11 months ago) |
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Like anything else (even in Europe, you need to know where to go.) Nothing. Absolutely Nothing will surpass Pizzeria Cranciatelli in Naples. Chicago Pizza to me is just too much, too much of everthing and totally epitomizes the American approach to cooking. True artisinal pizza to me is all about the ingredients and their quality and freshness. In the U.S. I still go to Lombardi's everytime I'm in town (that and Peter Lugar's) two places that serve things uniquely NYC.
-------------------- Wee, sleeket, cowran, tim'rous beastie, O, what panic's in thy breastie! Thou need na start awa sae hasty, Wi' bickering brattle!
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soochi
Chef


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Posts: 2,420
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Re: Iron Chef : Season 5 (Rant) [Re: soochi]
#9872980 - 02/26/09 09:34 PM (14 years, 10 months ago) |
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So Hosea is the new "Top Chef" (in parenthesis for a reason) I really don't believe he's a better chef than Stefan; although to Hosea's credit, his excuse for not producing a dessert course was a valid one. (as is Toby Young's complaint of Hosea not having one) Stefan's dessert was completely old fashioned, lacked any type of vision and looked slopped together, why oh why didn't he just let Blais take care of that course? Too many "chefs" use the argument "I'm not a pastry chef or baker" as a crutch, it's complete non-sense, apprenticships in France usually start or end with some sort of pastry experience, as well as University level culinary courses here (@ JWU you take two pastry courses and one bread course for a Bachelors degree)
Why in the world did Carla listen to that dumb muppet Casey? She obviously did not feel comfortable sous viding anything and Casey didn't know what the hell she was doing, sous vide is an exacting procedure, not one to haphazardly try to accomplish. Poor Carla nailed her own coffin for sure; what a pity.
The technique employed by Stefan to make his fish carpaccio is the exact same method utilized by Michel Richard's kitchen in Citronelle, however the fish is lightly cured with salt to remove excess moisture avoiding the wateriness the judges alluded to. It didn't seem like either Stefan or Hosea acutally tasted their raw fish dishes (raw fish needs a bit more seasoning that most people are accustomed to, since the temperature and fatiness/protein factor play heavily on detecting flavors applied to raw fish) Halibut is seldom used to make carpaccio, it's quite bland, a good technique to serving raw fish is slightly brining it for a short amount of time (in a mild brine), then drying it off and proceding with garnishing. Or go the Morimoto route and press it between two sheets of Kombu and leave to cure for a couple of hours.
I think the amount of challenges you've won should play a factor on the final decision, at least when the decision is quite close as it was this season. Maybe they took pity on Hosea for "not having his own business" yet. Like 100g's would be enough? yeah right. Go buy a nice house instead, I here they're quite cheap nowadays 
To Mr. Mushrooms: Bad service and independent Italian restaurants go hand in hand. Not to mention poor management and a laissez faire attitude about everything. The last Italian chef I worked for didn't know how to cost out food or the relevance of "Health Inspector" I respect Batali a great deal, but once you start expanding your brand all over then you risk diluting your standards; very few have done that and met success (Thomas Keller and Daniel Boulud come to mind; they were smart not to have too many restaurants outside their flagship hub and concentrated on quality and demographics not to far from what made them successful. The antithesis to this idea is of course, Wolfgang Puck, where his approach is "all things to all people" and selling 25 piece cookware sets for $199.95 on QVC)
Although most of Batali's restaurants are in NYC, the man can only cook so much since he deals mostly with PR people and network execs than actually cooking on a daily basis.
There is place here in DC called 2 Amy's and they have a D.O.C from the Italian government for their margarhita pizza, their pizza is superb. (DOC margarhita must be made a certain size, utilize buffalo mozz, "00" flour, san marzano tomatoes, be free of garlic and dried oregano or fresh basil only, and it must be made in a wood/coalfired oven.)
-------------------- Wee, sleeket, cowran, tim'rous beastie, O, what panic's in thy breastie! Thou need na start awa sae hasty, Wi' bickering brattle!
Edited by soochi (02/26/09 09:56 PM)
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jewunit
Brutal!

Registered: 01/11/07
Posts: 34,264
Loc: Ohio
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Re: Iron Chef : Season 5 (Rant) [Re: soochi]
#9873236 - 02/26/09 10:16 PM (14 years, 10 months ago) |
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I don't really know a damn thing about fine dining (or cooking I guess would be the right word), and this is the first time I've followed a whole season, so take this with a grain of salt.
I think Stefan (and Fabio as well) got much too confident. He started going through the motions a bit. Every time towards the end of the season it would be "This dish was good but uninspired" or something to that effect. Maybe Stefan was too talented for his own good, or maybe he really isn't THAT great of a chef. He can make great food, but in a few years maybe he'll be making the same great food and Hosea (and some of the others) will be leaps and bounds ahead of him.
That probably applies more to Stefan since he's older and I feel like he received those comments a little more than most. Even in those interviews or whatever they're called he never seems to say something wasn't original. He may admit other flaws, but he doesn't seem to really get it sometimes.
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Mr. Mushrooms
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Re: Iron Chef : Season 5 (Rant) [Re: soochi]
#9874073 - 02/27/09 01:30 AM (14 years, 10 months ago) |
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Quote:
soochi said:
To Mr. Mushrooms: Bad service and independent Italian restaurants go hand in hand. Not to mention poor management and a laissez faire attitude about everything. The last Italian chef I worked for didn't know how to cost out food or the relevance of "Health Inspector" I respect Batali a great deal, but once you start expanding your brand all over then you risk diluting your standards; very few have done that and met success (Thomas Keller and Daniel Boulud come to mind; they were smart not to have too many restaurants outside their flagship hub and concentrated on quality and demographics not to far from what made them successful. The antithesis to this idea is of course, Wolfgang Puck, where his approach is "all things to all people" and selling 25 piece cookware sets for $199.95 on QVC)
Although most of Batali's restaurants are in NYC, the man can only cook so much since he deals mostly with PR people and network execs than actually cooking on a daily basis.
There is place here in DC called 2 Amy's and they have a D.O.C from the Italian government for their margarhita pizza, their pizza is superb. (DOC margarhita must be made a certain size, utilize buffalo mozz, "00" flour, san marzano tomatoes, be free of garlic and dried oregano or fresh basil only, and it must be made in a wood/coalfired oven.)
If I'm ever in town I'll have to try it. And, of course, you're spot on about everything else. I have heard the same criticism about Bobby Flay's Mesa Grill. So instead of having a disappointment with Bobby, who I really like, I opted for Mario's. After all, who could screw up a pizza? I suppose that's why it's such a shocker. I think too many people/restaurants aim for some signature style that sets them apart. I don't mind as long as it's good. Anyone can cook weird food.
I also remember John's, a pizzeria downtown where Woody Allen used to eat Kosher pizza of all things. All kinds of toppings save one, pepperoni. It was so-so. DOC margarhita sounds like this little hole in the wall in my county. The family came from Italy in the early 1900's. All ingredients are closely monitored for the slightest deviation, even within the same seller. Their pizza is top notch and they only sell two kinds, plain and pepperoni. They make a mint.
I'll have to check out this tv show so we can talk about it. I watch the Food Network everyday.
Cheers, MM
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soochi
Chef


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Posts: 2,420
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Re: Iron Chef : Season 5 (Rant) [Re: jewunit]
#9947262 - 03/10/09 05:47 PM (14 years, 10 months ago) |
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Your spot on about Stefan. He'll be doing the same old stodge twenty years from now while younger chefs like Hosea will hopefully keep abreast the current trends in cuisine. To Fabbio's credit he did delve a little bit into "molecular gastronomy" (I loathe that term btw.) with his olive dish, but that idea's been beaten to death like a dead horse (El Bulli took it off their menu after two seasons) But at least he was aware and open-minded enough to understand the technique and it's reasoning. Stefan just struck me as very old school euro chef,very derivative and outdated (like a lot of the Michelin starred German chefs of the 80's), his cooking wasn't refined enough given his age and "supposed" experience even in the last challege where they had plenty of time to execute things properly and methodically. In the end I felt that this season's competitors weren't up to par in talent and creativity and giving it to Hosea was kind of like getting a "Razzie" for worst movie.
-------------------- Wee, sleeket, cowran, tim'rous beastie, O, what panic's in thy breastie! Thou need na start awa sae hasty, Wi' bickering brattle!
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