Archive for the ‘Chefs’
Eating History at EL SOMBRERO
They don’t make ‘em like El Sombrero any more. Every town, hamlet and city in the Southwest used to have one, or a number of them. Little hole-in-the-wall Mexican joints with a cook and a family working away, seven days a week, rolling out tortillas, pureeing chilies and dishing up the food of their homeland for folks of all stripes.
Eat This Now – Seafood Pasta at Lunch at NAKAMURA-YA
Is the seafood pasta at Nakamura-Ya the best thing on the menu? Possibly, but the Jidori chicken miso pasta (tasty snap #2) is mighty fine too…as are the little Kurobuta pork links in a bright tomato sauce over tender lettuce leaves (tasty snap #3).
Memo to Chefs – Pay Attention!
Memo to all current and future chefs: this is what happens when you get distracted in a professional kitchen while working with a high-speed hand mixer:
Au Revoir to LE BEC-FIN
ELV note: We only ate at Le Bec-Fin once, almost fifteen year ago now. In spite of what many would call a formal and dated restaurant, we found its cuisine outstanding and the whole experience transporting. True, its decor (somewhere between the inside of a Fabergé egg and the boudoir of Louis XIV) represented something of a time warp, but the food was classic and impeccable, and the service nonpareil. Au revoir to Georges Perrier — one of the titans of American gastronomy — a Frenchmen who took America (along with compatriots Andre Soltner and Jean Banchet) by the hand in the 1970s and showed it what great cuisine could be. The following testimonial was penned by our paisan John Mariani and can be read in its original form by clicking here. (BTW: ELV sat at the table at the bottom right of the page with his last ex-wife. Just thought you’d like to know.)
AU REVOIR TO LE BEC-FIN….FOR NOW
By John Mariani
The announcement that Philadelphia’s venerable Le Bec Fin, one of the true temples of haute cuisine in the United States, was closing after 42 years under the obsessive leadership of chef-owner Georges Perrier, 68, was greeted with the usual gasps that always accompany the shuttering of an institution. Some came from longtime regulars, some from food media–many that hadn’t mentioned Le Bec Fin in years–and some from people who had never even dined there.
The NY Times wrote a lengthy obituary of the restaurant, covering last Saturday’s closing night, quoting the always quotable Perrier as saying he had “absolutely no regrets” handing over the reins to Nicholas Fanucci, who had worked at Le Bec Fin before becoming general manager at the French Laundry in Napa Valley. (Fanucci plans to cut Le Bec Fin and re-open later this year.)“He will be the onewho will bring back the glory of Le Bec-Fin,” said Perrier, adding “I have given everything that I have.”
You Find the Strangest Things When You Google Yourself
You find the strangest things lurking on the internet when you google yourself.
Like this short piece from a couple of years ago…done at the behest of some website named In The MO…that we hadn’t heard of before or since.
But hey! It got 34 whole views!
And it does contain a nice little story about a four hour dinner we had at Restaurant Guy Savoy in Paris (France, not Tennessee) several years ago.
Restaurant reviews, quips, picks and pans-with some seriously salivating history-from the man who eats his way through Sin City every day.
