Archive for the Banter Category

Restaurant cooks prize thick pasta water. In “Heat,” his best-selling account of working in Mario Batali’s restaurant Babbo, Bill Buford describes how in the course of an evening, water in the pasta cooker goes from clear to cloudy to muddy, a stage that is “yucky-sounding but wonderful,” because the water “behaves like a sauce thickener, binding the elements and flavoring the pasta with the flavor of itself.”

I’ve been reading Heat, but stopped for awhile… this quote reminded me I have to finish it (before reading Ruhlman’s new book on the Kindle).

— How Much Water Does Pasta Really Need?

I came across a short, yet interesting story about fish soup.

The year? 1978. The place? Venice, Italy.

The owner returned in about half an hour with a huge fish overlapping both sides of the basket, which also contained a mass of greens and several bags of clams and shrimp and other things. This he took to the kitchen, and soon the most wonderful smell wafted out to the diners. The owner’s sons (one of them the chess player) and wife all hovered at the kitchen door, cooing sounds of delight.

I had almost forgotten my now-packaged cake. I began to walk out the door, but my waiter stopped me. “Thomas wanted you to have this,” and he gave me Thomas Keller’s new cookbook. That’s a $75 cookbook! I was in shock; I didn’t know what to say. I thanked my waiters relentlessly, then stumbled, awestruck, out of the restaurant. I had entered the restaurant at 11:30, I walked out at 4:15.

Neat blog entry of a teenager who ate alone at Per Se in NYC for his birthday.

Today I visited (for the first time) the fun at Brown’s Island at the 2008 Richmond Folk Music Festival.

I came across this tasting-menu review of Bo Innovation, a Hong Kong restaurant. I’m intrigued.

It sounds like an Asian version of molecular gastronomy. I’d really like to try some of this!