Kenji Dreams of Sausage
December 28, 2017 6:43 AM Subscribe
Can the nerd king of home cooking conquer the restaurant world? Jonah Weiner writes for New York magazine about the cult of food writer and cook J. Kenji Lopez-Alt and his preparations for opening his first restaurant, called Wursthall, in San Mateo, California.
What he's a divisive figure? Oh Metafilter, eat your own. I love his writing and the empire he's built at Serious Eats, great stuff.
Can't wait for Wursthall either. It seems like an odd choice for him; beer hall cooking does not exactly require his attention to detail scaled down for home cooking. OTOH maybe that's exactly right. Also risky opening such a big place but presumably that's more his business partners' problem than his. I imagine it's been fun for him, the challenge of designing a restaurant.
posted by Nelson at 7:25 AM on December 28, 2017 [11 favorites]
Can't wait for Wursthall either. It seems like an odd choice for him; beer hall cooking does not exactly require his attention to detail scaled down for home cooking. OTOH maybe that's exactly right. Also risky opening such a big place but presumably that's more his business partners' problem than his. I imagine it's been fun for him, the challenge of designing a restaurant.
posted by Nelson at 7:25 AM on December 28, 2017 [11 favorites]
I have the strong impression that what is problematic about his work and his fans is really in spite of his best efforts.
posted by JPD at 7:35 AM on December 28, 2017
posted by JPD at 7:35 AM on December 28, 2017
Why doesn't the article paint a good picture of him? Seems consistent with how he presents himself- he's a cooking nerd! I really loved his cookbook and am excited to hear there's going to be another.
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 7:36 AM on December 28, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 7:36 AM on December 28, 2017 [2 favorites]
I think this article paints a good picture of him that's very in line with his style -- critical, but not with negative intentions, and nevertheless a little too hyperfocused at times, but very matter-of-fact. I find some of his food writing more valuable than other pieces. Sometimes I find his methods more complicated than is warranted, bang-for-buck wise. Sometimes he starts with a given "best" that is not in line with my personal priorities. OTOH, I appreciate his level of disclosure and that makes his methods informative to me as a home cook, even when I ditch them.
posted by desuetude at 7:36 AM on December 28, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by desuetude at 7:36 AM on December 28, 2017 [1 favorite]
Ohyeah, his superfans are terrible, though.
posted by desuetude at 7:37 AM on December 28, 2017 [3 favorites]
posted by desuetude at 7:37 AM on December 28, 2017 [3 favorites]
I've never gotten a bad vibe from Kenji's writing. He's not prescriptivist in his approaches to cooking. It's all "Hey, this is what I found works best. Try it. If you want to do something different, go nuts. You're eating it, not me."
Though I can totally see why his fan-base would be prescriptivist assholes. You get some of the same stuff with Alton Brown (who I also adore, and feel has an approach that is similar to Kenji's)
posted by SansPoint at 7:37 AM on December 28, 2017 [19 favorites]
Though I can totally see why his fan-base would be prescriptivist assholes. You get some of the same stuff with Alton Brown (who I also adore, and feel has an approach that is similar to Kenji's)
posted by SansPoint at 7:37 AM on December 28, 2017 [19 favorites]
I mean, restaurants are a lottery ticket at the best of time so any success is unlikely, but celebrity chef led restaurants tend to disappoint for a very obvious reason - it's human nature to treat the 30,000th pulled pork disc you serve differently than the 30th you cooked during testing and for photo purposes.
I can't imagine how J. Kenji will find line cooks who can meet the meticulous standard he's set online cooking 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, 6 months from opening. Pub food has been reimagined six ways from Sunday already and I think many great chefs miss the point which is that scalability and consistency are what make pubs good, not imagination. The pub you want to be at has the beer you like on tap and a fish and chips that is cooked perfectly every single time.
If you're operating a 10,000 sf restaurant, you're in the manufacturing game, not the artistry game. The point is not to create the perfect pulled pork disc, but a very good pulled pork disc that can be served 1,000 times a day the same way for months on end by tired chefs. It's hard to imagine what getting slammed in a kitchen truly is like until you're there - the heat, the pressure, the unending line of things, it's actual hell and people do what they have to (i.e., cut corners) to survive.
I think as good as J. Kenji is at what he does today, he's either going to have to hugely change his tactics (which will leave the customer disappointed as meticulous detail is his signature) or the reviews will come in that the food could be spectacular but is inconsistently prepared. Either way, I just don't see how this succeeds to meet the expectations it will have set for it.
posted by notorious medium at 7:40 AM on December 28, 2017 [12 favorites]
I can't imagine how J. Kenji will find line cooks who can meet the meticulous standard he's set online cooking 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, 6 months from opening. Pub food has been reimagined six ways from Sunday already and I think many great chefs miss the point which is that scalability and consistency are what make pubs good, not imagination. The pub you want to be at has the beer you like on tap and a fish and chips that is cooked perfectly every single time.
If you're operating a 10,000 sf restaurant, you're in the manufacturing game, not the artistry game. The point is not to create the perfect pulled pork disc, but a very good pulled pork disc that can be served 1,000 times a day the same way for months on end by tired chefs. It's hard to imagine what getting slammed in a kitchen truly is like until you're there - the heat, the pressure, the unending line of things, it's actual hell and people do what they have to (i.e., cut corners) to survive.
I think as good as J. Kenji is at what he does today, he's either going to have to hugely change his tactics (which will leave the customer disappointed as meticulous detail is his signature) or the reviews will come in that the food could be spectacular but is inconsistently prepared. Either way, I just don't see how this succeeds to meet the expectations it will have set for it.
posted by notorious medium at 7:40 AM on December 28, 2017 [12 favorites]
Since it's a German place, they probably won't be serving Mexican Coke.
posted by jessssse at 7:41 AM on December 28, 2017
posted by jessssse at 7:41 AM on December 28, 2017
Eh. I suspect the less we know about Browns politics the better off we are.
posted by JPD at 7:41 AM on December 28, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by JPD at 7:41 AM on December 28, 2017 [2 favorites]
I love Lopez-Alt and think he's so damn affable and nerdy and self-aware in his writing, so my mind seizes a bit trying to imagine how he could be divisive unless you are a cook and he's directly "well actually-d" some traditional technique you held dear and sacred.
I really miss when he lived in NY and would cover all the best ethnic restaurants in Queens, Harlem, The Bronx, etc on Serious Eats.
posted by windbox at 7:42 AM on December 28, 2017 [4 favorites]
I really miss when he lived in NY and would cover all the best ethnic restaurants in Queens, Harlem, The Bronx, etc on Serious Eats.
posted by windbox at 7:42 AM on December 28, 2017 [4 favorites]
I find Lopez-Alt's writing fine and his recipes good when they are not too much a magazine stunt. It's the profiles who descend into the Mantastic Let's Make Sure Cooking is not Some Thing that OLD LADIES KNOW Best. I could not actually read that article because the breahtless "NO NONNA EVER DID THIS WITH RISOTTO" start. That anecdote is--well--contrary to the lived experience of all the cooks in my family, including my Great-Great Aunt (from Abruzzo, not Lombardy) who ran one of the most successful restaurants on Taylor Street until her dick husband stole it from her,
Thart's what the fans do. They take this guy who is being pretty respectful with his approach to other people's food traditions and talk about how he's a MAN from MIT with SCIENCE and NO ONE EVER THOUGHT ABOUT CHANGING THIS WAY. Which is demeaning to all the women who've been correcting poorly written down recipes through understanding the science of cooking for generations.
posted by crush at 7:49 AM on December 28, 2017 [30 favorites]
Thart's what the fans do. They take this guy who is being pretty respectful with his approach to other people's food traditions and talk about how he's a MAN from MIT with SCIENCE and NO ONE EVER THOUGHT ABOUT CHANGING THIS WAY. Which is demeaning to all the women who've been correcting poorly written down recipes through understanding the science of cooking for generations.
posted by crush at 7:49 AM on December 28, 2017 [30 favorites]
If you don't find the idea of Kenji standing up in a room of Italians and telling them "you're doing it wrong" when it comes to find both hillarious and hideously naive I can help you.
Very funny tho. Especially if you follow "Italians getting mad at food" on Twitter.
posted by JPD at 7:50 AM on December 28, 2017 [4 favorites]
Very funny tho. Especially if you follow "Italians getting mad at food" on Twitter.
posted by JPD at 7:50 AM on December 28, 2017 [4 favorites]
I tend to like Kenji's stuff, for the most part, and he tends to do a good job at presenting the main variables so you can tailor your technique to the result you want to obtain.
Sometimes, however, he does go down a serious rabbit hole in pursuit of what seems to be a highly personal result. A perfect example of this, in my opinion, is the risotto technique mentioned in the article. He bases his entire technique on the premise that risotto rice should be fried until it browns, which idea I believe results from a misapprehension of the Italian verb tostare (which effectively translates to "toast" but doesn't have the same connotation of browning as the English verb). I mean, I'm not saying there is anything wrong with browning off your risotto rice, if that's what you like. But the risotto tradition does not involve browned rice, so he has only found a "solution" to a "problem" he created for himself. If you don't brown your rice, there is no need to use his technique. That said, on average his writing is mercifully bereft of ATK-style narrow focus on a quirky artificial standard.
posted by slkinsey at 7:52 AM on December 28, 2017 [7 favorites]
Sometimes, however, he does go down a serious rabbit hole in pursuit of what seems to be a highly personal result. A perfect example of this, in my opinion, is the risotto technique mentioned in the article. He bases his entire technique on the premise that risotto rice should be fried until it browns, which idea I believe results from a misapprehension of the Italian verb tostare (which effectively translates to "toast" but doesn't have the same connotation of browning as the English verb). I mean, I'm not saying there is anything wrong with browning off your risotto rice, if that's what you like. But the risotto tradition does not involve browned rice, so he has only found a "solution" to a "problem" he created for himself. If you don't brown your rice, there is no need to use his technique. That said, on average his writing is mercifully bereft of ATK-style narrow focus on a quirky artificial standard.
posted by slkinsey at 7:52 AM on December 28, 2017 [7 favorites]
López-Alt drizzles his marinade over a thick cut of fish. Then, multitasking, he commands an Amazon Echo to activate one gizmo that he keeps in near-constant use: his sous-vide circulator. “Alexa, tell Joule to set the temperature to 150 degrees Fahrenheit.” The Joule, a sleek white cylinder submerged in a tub of water, burbles into action on his countertop; he squeezes eight chubby sausages into an airtight plastic bag and, when the temperature is right, dunks them.Right on brand.
posted by notyou at 7:53 AM on December 28, 2017 [6 favorites]
Why is he a divisive figure?
I will say that I have been a bit underwhelmed by a lot of the "hacks" - like, I've tried that vodka piecrust thing and maybe it's just that my piecrust isn't high-level enough for it to make much of a difference, but I didn't find that it made much of a difference.
But I've always enjoyed his blogging and I do feel confident, as with Cooks Illustrated, that if I follow the recipe, it will work. Also, I make Osaka-style cabbage pancake, okonomiyaki, all the time now.
The "you're doing risotto wrong" thing, if it went down as described, seems pretty dumb. Why not just say, "I wanted a toastier flavor than the usual recipes provide, I found that it ruined the rice if I kept toasting it too long and so I tried this other way - if you also like toasty-tasting risotto, you should totally try it!" What's wrong with framing it as "here is my kitchen-wonk risotto variant" instead of "you're doing it wrong"?
posted by Frowner at 7:53 AM on December 28, 2017 [6 favorites]
I will say that I have been a bit underwhelmed by a lot of the "hacks" - like, I've tried that vodka piecrust thing and maybe it's just that my piecrust isn't high-level enough for it to make much of a difference, but I didn't find that it made much of a difference.
But I've always enjoyed his blogging and I do feel confident, as with Cooks Illustrated, that if I follow the recipe, it will work. Also, I make Osaka-style cabbage pancake, okonomiyaki, all the time now.
The "you're doing risotto wrong" thing, if it went down as described, seems pretty dumb. Why not just say, "I wanted a toastier flavor than the usual recipes provide, I found that it ruined the rice if I kept toasting it too long and so I tried this other way - if you also like toasty-tasting risotto, you should totally try it!" What's wrong with framing it as "here is my kitchen-wonk risotto variant" instead of "you're doing it wrong"?
posted by Frowner at 7:53 AM on December 28, 2017 [6 favorites]
My first reaction to this was wondering if his new place would have vegan options, since he takes time to focus on vegan recipes on his website and he's mentioned eating a vegan diet part time himself. It looks like the new restaurant will indeed include vegan sausages!
We find Simpson downstairs, inspecting what will become a men’s room. López-Alt presents him with a Tupperware container containing two prototype meatless sausages.
“It’s crazy that this is vegan,” Simpson says, nodding in approval.
posted by Gymnopedist at 7:58 AM on December 28, 2017 [1 favorite]
We find Simpson downstairs, inspecting what will become a men’s room. López-Alt presents him with a Tupperware container containing two prototype meatless sausages.
“It’s crazy that this is vegan,” Simpson says, nodding in approval.
posted by Gymnopedist at 7:58 AM on December 28, 2017 [1 favorite]
He bases his entire technique on the premise that risotto rice should be fried until it browns, which idea I believe results from a misapprehension of the Italian verb tostare
Exactly!!! I was shouting this at the article when I read it. Who wants toasted risotto rice? (Actually the misapprehension is quite common with American cookery writers, and normally I ignore it, but it was the lead-in of the article). Also, I agree with crush that there is a bit of a "only men can science food" touch to the article that is a bit insufferable.
That said, I really enjoy his blogposts and read the most of them though I rarely follow the recipes. He has a distinct taste that I get even if I don't agree and that makes for good writing. Actually, I made his tonkotsu ramen broth for my family recently and it was delicious and has been elevated to instant pre-Christmas tradition.
And he is a stay at home dad who has taken his wife's name, so the macho posturing is all with the journalist, I think.
posted by mumimor at 8:07 AM on December 28, 2017 [3 favorites]
Exactly!!! I was shouting this at the article when I read it. Who wants toasted risotto rice? (Actually the misapprehension is quite common with American cookery writers, and normally I ignore it, but it was the lead-in of the article). Also, I agree with crush that there is a bit of a "only men can science food" touch to the article that is a bit insufferable.
That said, I really enjoy his blogposts and read the most of them though I rarely follow the recipes. He has a distinct taste that I get even if I don't agree and that makes for good writing. Actually, I made his tonkotsu ramen broth for my family recently and it was delicious and has been elevated to instant pre-Christmas tradition.
And he is a stay at home dad who has taken his wife's name, so the macho posturing is all with the journalist, I think.
posted by mumimor at 8:07 AM on December 28, 2017 [3 favorites]
Serious question: can someone point out an example or two of superfans being terrible?
vodka piecrust thing
I don't think this is even a Lopez-Alt original--I make a lot of pie, and I think I first saw it in Cook's Illustrated (speaking of divisive cooking nerds!) in the 1990s. Similar to Frowner I tried it and immediately determined the result was not worth it, not in the least because heck if I'm about to start keeping a bottle of vodka around just for pies.
posted by pullayup at 8:13 AM on December 28, 2017 [2 favorites]
vodka piecrust thing
I don't think this is even a Lopez-Alt original--I make a lot of pie, and I think I first saw it in Cook's Illustrated (speaking of divisive cooking nerds!) in the 1990s. Similar to Frowner I tried it and immediately determined the result was not worth it, not in the least because heck if I'm about to start keeping a bottle of vodka around just for pies.
posted by pullayup at 8:13 AM on December 28, 2017 [2 favorites]
All I know about KLA is that his method for hard boiling eggs creates hard-boiled eggs that I actually want to eat on a regular basis.
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:13 AM on December 28, 2017 [3 favorites]
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:13 AM on December 28, 2017 [3 favorites]
I've tried that vodka piecrust thing and maybe it's just that my piecrust isn't high-level enough for it to make much of a difference, but I didn't find that it made much of a difference.
I think this may mean that your pie crust is too high-level. Until I tried the vodka version, I was never able to make pie crust that worked at all. Too crumbly and hard to work with, or adding tons of water that made it really tough. The vodka "hack" is what allowed me to make the first successful pie crust of my life.
I realize that this may say more about my baking skills than about the brilliance of the technique.
posted by primethyme at 8:13 AM on December 28, 2017 [1 favorite]
I think this may mean that your pie crust is too high-level. Until I tried the vodka version, I was never able to make pie crust that worked at all. Too crumbly and hard to work with, or adding tons of water that made it really tough. The vodka "hack" is what allowed me to make the first successful pie crust of my life.
I realize that this may say more about my baking skills than about the brilliance of the technique.
posted by primethyme at 8:13 AM on December 28, 2017 [1 favorite]
He seems like a nice guy and I wish him much success.
posted by freakazoid at 8:16 AM on December 28, 2017 [4 favorites]
posted by freakazoid at 8:16 AM on December 28, 2017 [4 favorites]
I don't think this is even a Lopez-Alt original--I make a lot of pie, and I think I first saw it in Cook's Illustrated (speaking of divisive cooking nerds!) in the 1990s.
Lopez-Alt's first food job was a test kitchen Cook for CI in the 90s, where he came up with the Vodka trick.
posted by Frayed Knot at 8:21 AM on December 28, 2017 [13 favorites]
Lopez-Alt's first food job was a test kitchen Cook for CI in the 90s, where he came up with the Vodka trick.
posted by Frayed Knot at 8:21 AM on December 28, 2017 [13 favorites]
vodka piecrust thing
This is indeed is his thing (even mentioned in the article as such), from his Cooks Illustrated days. He's since put out an easy pie dough recipe via Serious Eats that does not use this "hack" and still makes excellent crust.
"you're doing it wrong"
The thing I like about the Kenji's approach is that he pretty much never says "this is the one perfect way; all other ways are wrong." Instead he lays out the goal he is going for in a dish (e.g., toasty risotto, crusty burgers, etc.) and then explains how he maximized that effect in his dish. It's "this is the way I like it!" more than "this is they way you should always do it." The fact that he often has multiple variations on a theme (like with his cookies) or entirely different ways of cooking something (like with his burgers) attests to this. If anything, I get the feeling his least favorite part is putting together a singular recipe at the end of trying 18 different ways of preparing something.
posted by Panjandrum at 8:27 AM on December 28, 2017 [9 favorites]
This is indeed is his thing (even mentioned in the article as such), from his Cooks Illustrated days. He's since put out an easy pie dough recipe via Serious Eats that does not use this "hack" and still makes excellent crust.
"you're doing it wrong"
The thing I like about the Kenji's approach is that he pretty much never says "this is the one perfect way; all other ways are wrong." Instead he lays out the goal he is going for in a dish (e.g., toasty risotto, crusty burgers, etc.) and then explains how he maximized that effect in his dish. It's "this is the way I like it!" more than "this is they way you should always do it." The fact that he often has multiple variations on a theme (like with his cookies) or entirely different ways of cooking something (like with his burgers) attests to this. If anything, I get the feeling his least favorite part is putting together a singular recipe at the end of trying 18 different ways of preparing something.
posted by Panjandrum at 8:27 AM on December 28, 2017 [9 favorites]
Lopez-Alt's first food job was a test kitchen Cook for CI in the 90s
I know he started out there, but he and I are the same age, and even in 1999 I was still a teenager.
posted by kate blank at 8:30 AM on December 28, 2017
I know he started out there, but he and I are the same age, and even in 1999 I was still a teenager.
posted by kate blank at 8:30 AM on December 28, 2017
The CI vodka pie crust is from 2007.
posted by betweenthebars at 8:39 AM on December 28, 2017
posted by betweenthebars at 8:39 AM on December 28, 2017
I like him because he has that nerdy test-everything-and-show-results ATK thing, but he is not afraid of spices and heat the way Chris Kimball is. I don't care for sous-vide cooking, so have to ignore a bunch of Kenji's SE articles... but the recipes of his that I've made have nearly all been delicious and added to my regular dish list.
Stella Parks's pie crust is the best one on SE, though. Flaky and perfect every time!
posted by lovecrafty at 8:54 AM on December 28, 2017 [4 favorites]
Stella Parks's pie crust is the best one on SE, though. Flaky and perfect every time!
posted by lovecrafty at 8:54 AM on December 28, 2017 [4 favorites]
The CI vodka pie crust is from 2007.
I'm almost certain it was before this--I remember the recipe in the magazine, there's basically no way I would have been looking at a paper copy of CI in 2007.
posted by pullayup at 8:56 AM on December 28, 2017 [1 favorite]
I'm almost certain it was before this--I remember the recipe in the magazine, there's basically no way I would have been looking at a paper copy of CI in 2007.
posted by pullayup at 8:56 AM on December 28, 2017 [1 favorite]
Serious Eats is the first place I check if I'm looking for instructions for something. It's generally pretty solid, whether it's one of his recipes or someone else's.
But superfans of anything pretty much suck and they tend to taint the thing they're superfans of.
I had this problem for a while with Alton Brown fans. A bunch of snotty kids who watched the show would go around 'correcting' people for doing things wrong, despite having almost no cooking experience themselves. It was a thing for a while that internet people were claiming that it is IMPOSSIBLE to sharpen your knives at home because Alton Brown said so on his TV show for beginner cooks. And there were at least a few things where people were 'correcting' Julia Child's techniques with Alton Brown's too, which is ridiculous.
I haven't personally run into Lopez-Alt prescriptivism that I know of, but of course they're doing it with him too.
I still like the site, and largely trust the recipes on it, but I never follow recipes exactly, and I don't know what kind of superpowered microwave that guy has, but mine is not sufficient to make enough ricotta for a lasagna without taking hours and making it in batches, so he was wrong about that. And he's always telling you to fuss around dirtying up everything in the kitchen for sometimes negligible improvements. So: Also wrong about those things.
Oh, ha ha! Same lasagna recipe: He tells you that, if you don't have any fish sauce, you can substitute anchovies (OK) and Marmite (WTF?) Oh, certainly, I cannot find a reliable source for fish sauce, so I will go into my cupboard and get out my handy jar of MARMITE that is, of course, there. In my cupboard. Or refrigerator or root cellar or toilet tank or wherever it is that one would keep their Marmite.
posted by ernielundquist at 9:08 AM on December 28, 2017 [8 favorites]
But superfans of anything pretty much suck and they tend to taint the thing they're superfans of.
I had this problem for a while with Alton Brown fans. A bunch of snotty kids who watched the show would go around 'correcting' people for doing things wrong, despite having almost no cooking experience themselves. It was a thing for a while that internet people were claiming that it is IMPOSSIBLE to sharpen your knives at home because Alton Brown said so on his TV show for beginner cooks. And there were at least a few things where people were 'correcting' Julia Child's techniques with Alton Brown's too, which is ridiculous.
I haven't personally run into Lopez-Alt prescriptivism that I know of, but of course they're doing it with him too.
I still like the site, and largely trust the recipes on it, but I never follow recipes exactly, and I don't know what kind of superpowered microwave that guy has, but mine is not sufficient to make enough ricotta for a lasagna without taking hours and making it in batches, so he was wrong about that. And he's always telling you to fuss around dirtying up everything in the kitchen for sometimes negligible improvements. So: Also wrong about those things.
Oh, ha ha! Same lasagna recipe: He tells you that, if you don't have any fish sauce, you can substitute anchovies (OK) and Marmite (WTF?) Oh, certainly, I cannot find a reliable source for fish sauce, so I will go into my cupboard and get out my handy jar of MARMITE that is, of course, there. In my cupboard. Or refrigerator or root cellar or toilet tank or wherever it is that one would keep their Marmite.
posted by ernielundquist at 9:08 AM on December 28, 2017 [8 favorites]
If you're operating a 10,000 sf restaurant, you're in the manufacturing game, not the artistry game. The point is not to create the perfect pulled pork disc, but a very good pulled pork disc that can be served 1,000 times a day the same way for months on end by tired chefs. It's hard to imagine what getting slammed in a kitchen truly is like until you're there - the heat, the pressure, the unending line of things, it's actual hell and people do what they have to (i.e., cut corners) to survive.
It's not as though he's never worked in a restaurant before, he wrote in his book that he spent eight years working in restaurants before getting his gig at CI.
posted by indubitable at 9:12 AM on December 28, 2017 [1 favorite]
It's not as though he's never worked in a restaurant before, he wrote in his book that he spent eight years working in restaurants before getting his gig at CI.
posted by indubitable at 9:12 AM on December 28, 2017 [1 favorite]
JPD: Eh. I suspect the less we know about Browns politics the better off we are.
According to TIME, he did leave The Southern Baptist convention because of " its anti-gay stance", which is a positive for me.
posted by SansPoint at 9:14 AM on December 28, 2017
According to TIME, he did leave The Southern Baptist convention because of " its anti-gay stance", which is a positive for me.
posted by SansPoint at 9:14 AM on December 28, 2017
Laugh all you want at the Marmite, but damn if it doesn't take the SE Shepherd's Pie recipe to the next level. (And that one's Daniel Gritzer, not Kenji!)
posted by lovecrafty at 9:16 AM on December 28, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by lovecrafty at 9:16 AM on December 28, 2017 [1 favorite]
I cannot find a reliable source for fish sauce, so I will go into my cupboard and get out my handy jar of MARMITE that is, of course, there. In my cupboard.
In significant stretches of the Anglophone world, it may well be easier to find Marmite in a semi-ordinary grocery than to find fish sauce. Marmite's an Anglo food (at least for those who eat it), fish sauce is Southeast Asian. Whether this represents a tragedy for the Anglo cook is left for the reader to discern.
posted by praemunire at 9:17 AM on December 28, 2017 [5 favorites]
In significant stretches of the Anglophone world, it may well be easier to find Marmite in a semi-ordinary grocery than to find fish sauce. Marmite's an Anglo food (at least for those who eat it), fish sauce is Southeast Asian. Whether this represents a tragedy for the Anglo cook is left for the reader to discern.
posted by praemunire at 9:17 AM on December 28, 2017 [5 favorites]
On the subject of pie crust: I have never achieved a truly master-class crust, but I make an adequate pate brisee using the Martha Stewart recipe, except vegan - half buttery spread and half of the not-coconut-flavored coconut oil. (In general, people don't realize this is vegan - it doesn't brown as well as a butter or lard crust, but the coconut oil makes it flake and it isn't flavorless and tough, either, and in general I've gotten lots of compliments, which is just as well as I have several friends who are allergic to dairy and I would hate to give up baking pies.)
The key to pies, IM-clumsy-E, is to make gallettes and other "rustic" ones, or to make the kind of thing where you can pat the pastry into the pan. If you find that your pastry doesn't transition nicely to the pie plate, make a fruit gallette and everyone will be just as happy, maybe happier.
posted by Frowner at 9:19 AM on December 28, 2017 [6 favorites]
The key to pies, IM-clumsy-E, is to make gallettes and other "rustic" ones, or to make the kind of thing where you can pat the pastry into the pan. If you find that your pastry doesn't transition nicely to the pie plate, make a fruit gallette and everyone will be just as happy, maybe happier.
posted by Frowner at 9:19 AM on December 28, 2017 [6 favorites]
It's not as though he's never worked in a restaurant before, he wrote in his book that he spent eight years working in restaurants before getting his gig at CI.
He's been out for at least 10 years and has developed a niche of ultra-detailed and controlled cooking. I'm not saying he can't make the switch, I'm saying that his brand and operating a 10,000 sf restaurant are at odds and I think meeting expectations is going to be an immense challenge.
posted by notorious medium at 9:27 AM on December 28, 2017 [2 favorites]
He's been out for at least 10 years and has developed a niche of ultra-detailed and controlled cooking. I'm not saying he can't make the switch, I'm saying that his brand and operating a 10,000 sf restaurant are at odds and I think meeting expectations is going to be an immense challenge.
posted by notorious medium at 9:27 AM on December 28, 2017 [2 favorites]
Also, both fish sauce and Marmite can be purchased online. Fish sauce at least is definitely worth having on hand, and one tiny jar of Marmite will last forever. Neither will ever really spoil, if stored properly.
posted by lovecrafty at 9:29 AM on December 28, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by lovecrafty at 9:29 AM on December 28, 2017 [1 favorite]
I'm not saying he can't make the switch, I'm saying that his brand and operating a 10,000 sf restaurant are at odds and I think meeting expectations is going to be an immense challenge
Or to put it another way,
Or to put it another way,
People are going to come in with an impossibly high bar: ‘This is gonna be the best X I’ve ever had!’ And hopefully it will be, but maybe it won’t, because it’s impossible to operate at that level all the time at a family restaurant where you’re paying 14 bucks a plate!”posted by zamboni at 9:32 AM on December 28, 2017 [3 favorites]
Alton Brown is objectively obnoxious. It's his shtick on TV and I find it loathsome. (I suspect in reality he's not so awful, but who knows.) Kenji doesn't have much of a shtick but the persona he projects in his writing is affable, nerdy, probably smokes some weed. He's got opinions on how stuff works but he's always explaining where he got those opinions and how to apply them simply. They seem well earned. I just had a great hard boiled egg for breakfast thanks to this thread and him.
I can't put my hands on my paper archive of Cooks Illustrated right now but here's the vodka pie crust recipe online (paywall). It's dated Nov 2007. If anyone has a copy lying around it'd be easy to verify if that was the first publication date.
Kenji first shows up on Serious Eats masthead around November 2010. But he'd been writing there for awhile, The Food Lab blog started in October 2009 and there's a couple of articles of his from before. In August 2008 he was still writing for Cook's Illustrated as well.
Serious Eats itself started in December 2006. Ed Levine's name is front and center, along with Adam Kuban, Metafilter's own Meg Hourihan, Metafilter's own Alaina Browne, and Adam Roberts.
posted by Nelson at 9:39 AM on December 28, 2017 [3 favorites]
I can't put my hands on my paper archive of Cooks Illustrated right now but here's the vodka pie crust recipe online (paywall). It's dated Nov 2007. If anyone has a copy lying around it'd be easy to verify if that was the first publication date.
Kenji first shows up on Serious Eats masthead around November 2010. But he'd been writing there for awhile, The Food Lab blog started in October 2009 and there's a couple of articles of his from before. In August 2008 he was still writing for Cook's Illustrated as well.
Serious Eats itself started in December 2006. Ed Levine's name is front and center, along with Adam Kuban, Metafilter's own Meg Hourihan, Metafilter's own Alaina Browne, and Adam Roberts.
posted by Nelson at 9:39 AM on December 28, 2017 [3 favorites]
one tiny jar of Marmite will last forever
Not in *my* household, it won't.
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 9:42 AM on December 28, 2017 [6 favorites]
Not in *my* household, it won't.
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 9:42 AM on December 28, 2017 [6 favorites]
In significant stretches of the Anglophone world, it may well be easier to find Marmite in a semi-ordinary grocery than to find fish sauce.
I stand corrected. I had no idea there was a significant number of places where you could get Marmite but not fish sauce. It read to me like, "If you don't have access to chicken eggs, substitute 1/8 of an ostrich egg." Like it was written for a really tiny audience.
posted by ernielundquist at 9:53 AM on December 28, 2017 [1 favorite]
I stand corrected. I had no idea there was a significant number of places where you could get Marmite but not fish sauce. It read to me like, "If you don't have access to chicken eggs, substitute 1/8 of an ostrich egg." Like it was written for a really tiny audience.
posted by ernielundquist at 9:53 AM on December 28, 2017 [1 favorite]
Last Marmite comment: in my experience, if you live in the US, the closer you get to the Canadian border, the higher the likelihood of finding Marmite at a Safeway.
posted by lovecrafty at 10:20 AM on December 28, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by lovecrafty at 10:20 AM on December 28, 2017 [2 favorites]
Oh, certainly, I cannot find a reliable source for fish sauce, so I will go into my cupboard and get out my handy jar of MARMITE that is, of course, there.
The WASP grocery store a 5 minute ride from my home has Marmite and possibly but probably not one brand of fish sauce in the bowels of the faux "international" section featuring a few dismal shelves of plum sauce and jarred butter chicken sauce.
But the massive pan-Asian-pan-immigrant store 20 minutes from my home which carries things by aisles like "Jamaican" "Filipino" and "Indian" (soon to be regionally divided I think as the store is doubling in square footage) and is basically a map of colonial influence on comfort food also carries Marmite as well as Vegemite. And a lot of different brands of fish sauce.
All of which is to say Serious Eats is often one of my online saviours when I have impulse spent on ingredients I know nothing about because everyone else had ten bags of dried shrimp in their cart and I figured it must be a fantastic sale.
posted by warriorqueen at 10:39 AM on December 28, 2017 [4 favorites]
The WASP grocery store a 5 minute ride from my home has Marmite and possibly but probably not one brand of fish sauce in the bowels of the faux "international" section featuring a few dismal shelves of plum sauce and jarred butter chicken sauce.
But the massive pan-Asian-pan-immigrant store 20 minutes from my home which carries things by aisles like "Jamaican" "Filipino" and "Indian" (soon to be regionally divided I think as the store is doubling in square footage) and is basically a map of colonial influence on comfort food also carries Marmite as well as Vegemite. And a lot of different brands of fish sauce.
All of which is to say Serious Eats is often one of my online saviours when I have impulse spent on ingredients I know nothing about because everyone else had ten bags of dried shrimp in their cart and I figured it must be a fantastic sale.
posted by warriorqueen at 10:39 AM on December 28, 2017 [4 favorites]
The vodka pie crust excells in one area over all others, in that I can make a huge batch of it and store balls of it in the back of my fridge to allow me to grab one and roll it out spur of the moment for weekday pie nights, easy quiche for breakfast on the go, quick leftover shepherd's pie and other fun perks of the on-the-run, trying-to-be-healthy, mid-life, broke-as-fuck lifestyle.
posted by 1f2frfbf at 10:49 AM on December 28, 2017
posted by 1f2frfbf at 10:49 AM on December 28, 2017
Serious Eats itself started in December 2006. Ed Levine's name is front and center, along with Adam Kuban, Metafilter's own Meg Hourihan, Metafilter's own Alaina Browne, and Adam Roberts.
...sorry, can I just take a moment to feel really f*cking old here...
everyone else had ten bags of dried shrimp in their cart
Make this, you won't regret it.
posted by praemunire at 11:02 AM on December 28, 2017 [4 favorites]
...sorry, can I just take a moment to feel really f*cking old here...
everyone else had ten bags of dried shrimp in their cart
Make this, you won't regret it.
posted by praemunire at 11:02 AM on December 28, 2017 [4 favorites]
Regarding the "divisive" issue, I feel about Lopez-Alt like I do about Alton Brown - the research, food science, etc. has taught me a lot, but I've learned to avoid their actual recipes. And I've come across some actual misinformation in some of Lopez-Alt's SE articles, though I can't recall what they were at the moment. The upshot is that neither is my first go-to when I look up a new recipe.
As far as his restaurant project, though, I wish him well.
posted by Greg_Ace at 11:49 AM on December 28, 2017 [1 favorite]
As far as his restaurant project, though, I wish him well.
posted by Greg_Ace at 11:49 AM on December 28, 2017 [1 favorite]
I have no idea who this guy is but nothing in the article sounds objectionable bar some possible risotto cockiness. The "this temperature causes this, this amount of sugar causes that" sounds like exactly what someone opening a restaurant where they'll be supervising rather than cooking everything themselves with infinite time would do. I learned cooking basically by buying interesting ingredients crossed with tons of trial and error over years and years - I (and many others) can cook very good restaurant-quality food for 4 or 5 people, but a restaurant doing 150-200 covers per night needs to either get lucky and have a bunch of geniuses working there, or Henry Ford their approach a bit as described in the article.
posted by kersplunk at 12:28 PM on December 28, 2017
posted by kersplunk at 12:28 PM on December 28, 2017
I often check serious eats first when I'm about to make something I've never made before and am rarely disappointed with the results.
I'm glad I tend to avoid superfans though, as I have no doubts that they're utterly grim.
posted by knapah at 12:49 PM on December 28, 2017 [1 favorite]
I'm glad I tend to avoid superfans though, as I have no doubts that they're utterly grim.
posted by knapah at 12:49 PM on December 28, 2017 [1 favorite]
Re: my comment on him being divisive on MeFi, I think I recalled this thread being fightier than it is. I'm probably also conflating MeFi with other corners of the internet that hate on him a little more. But yeah, in the article he comes across as a little snobby (refusing to go out to eat in SF, dunking on NYC for basically no reason, bragging about making people angry) and awkward (characterizing tech nerds as "men and Asian women") which isn't a vibe I generally get from his writing. I'm a huge fan.
posted by capricorn at 12:51 PM on December 28, 2017
posted by capricorn at 12:51 PM on December 28, 2017
"And he's always telling you to fuss around dirtying up everything in the kitchen for sometimes negligible improvements."
Heh, this is my beef. The recipes are great when you WANT to be fussy and are making a fancy main dish or cooking for a party or whatever, but when you're like, "I want a simple recipe that JUST WORKS and doesn't require 4700 steps that I can make on a weeknight with minimum dishes," it is usually not the right place for that! Frequently I read a recipe and I'm like, "Oh, yeah, that WOULD make my cookies chewier, that's a good trick" but it requires three extra steps, an extra dirty mixing bowl, and an extra set of beaters, and frankly nobody cares if my chocolate chip cookies are 10% chewier and more delicious, but I definitely care if I have to wash extra dishes.
But for learning the how and why of cooking, it's awesome, and you can adapt those techniques and ideas thoughtfully. I also find the "here's how to get a simple technique right" very helpful. And I mean, it's not like Serious Eats is MAKING me use the super-complicated recipes to get The Perfect Whatever, they're just giving me options, and that's fine. Although one of my brothers is a hard-core Serious Eats fan and he's constantly like, "No, you have to try the super-gold saffron raisin ramen with porcini mushrooms with the 47-step recipes, it's SO MUCH BETTER than the normal way!" and I'm always like, "Cool, next time you make it, tell me, and I'll come over." I have a high tolerance for festive fussery, but zero tolerance for weeknight fussery. He wants to be fussy every time he goes in the kitchen, which is not for me.
Maybe we can get Kenji on a one-pot kick so he can come up with all kinds of simple weeknight meals.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 1:20 PM on December 28, 2017 [6 favorites]
Heh, this is my beef. The recipes are great when you WANT to be fussy and are making a fancy main dish or cooking for a party or whatever, but when you're like, "I want a simple recipe that JUST WORKS and doesn't require 4700 steps that I can make on a weeknight with minimum dishes," it is usually not the right place for that! Frequently I read a recipe and I'm like, "Oh, yeah, that WOULD make my cookies chewier, that's a good trick" but it requires three extra steps, an extra dirty mixing bowl, and an extra set of beaters, and frankly nobody cares if my chocolate chip cookies are 10% chewier and more delicious, but I definitely care if I have to wash extra dishes.
But for learning the how and why of cooking, it's awesome, and you can adapt those techniques and ideas thoughtfully. I also find the "here's how to get a simple technique right" very helpful. And I mean, it's not like Serious Eats is MAKING me use the super-complicated recipes to get The Perfect Whatever, they're just giving me options, and that's fine. Although one of my brothers is a hard-core Serious Eats fan and he's constantly like, "No, you have to try the super-gold saffron raisin ramen with porcini mushrooms with the 47-step recipes, it's SO MUCH BETTER than the normal way!" and I'm always like, "Cool, next time you make it, tell me, and I'll come over." I have a high tolerance for festive fussery, but zero tolerance for weeknight fussery. He wants to be fussy every time he goes in the kitchen, which is not for me.
Maybe we can get Kenji on a one-pot kick so he can come up with all kinds of simple weeknight meals.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 1:20 PM on December 28, 2017 [6 favorites]
I can't put my hands on my paper archive of Cooks Illustrated right now but here's the vodka pie crust recipe online (paywall). It's dated Nov 2007. If anyone has a copy lying around it'd be easy to verify if that was the first publication date.
I don't have time to go allll the way down this rabbit hole, but I did find something curious. This Smitten Kitchen piecrust 101 article is absolutely referencing the CI article, which came out the month she wrote this post.
But in the comments, a reader named Eileen says:
Anyhoo, my point is that I think its fair that using alcohol in pie crust was something that was a known (if little-known) trick, and Kenji didn't literally invent it for the first time, but he was perhaps the first to publish it as a baking method in a major publication.
posted by desuetude at 1:37 PM on December 28, 2017 [1 favorite]
I don't have time to go allll the way down this rabbit hole, but I did find something curious. This Smitten Kitchen piecrust 101 article is absolutely referencing the CI article, which came out the month she wrote this post.
But in the comments, a reader named Eileen says:
We’ve used alcohol–usually vodka, sometimes gin or brandy for years in pastry with great success. I wouldn’t use anything low alcohol or with excess sugar. I fondly remember using a pear eau-de-vie…hmnmm where is that bottle?I also first recall hearing this trick from a friend as using pear eau-de-vie, which seems such a distinct and expensive example that I feel like it must be from something specific? That sounds to me like a pastry chef-interview thing to say more than a recipe-focused type of food writing.
Anyhoo, my point is that I think its fair that using alcohol in pie crust was something that was a known (if little-known) trick, and Kenji didn't literally invent it for the first time, but he was perhaps the first to publish it as a baking method in a major publication.
posted by desuetude at 1:37 PM on December 28, 2017 [1 favorite]
The last thing I tried from Serious Eats was immersion blender mayonnaise, but I couldn't get it to work. I tried 4 times. Gave up and did it the Julia Child way, with a whisk. I also went back to the article but still couldn't figure out what step I must have missed.
Serious Eats is a nice resource but I think people who recommend it are blind to the self-selectivity of an attitude towards food/cooking that goes into such a readership. I can say this because I'm partly in its target demographic. The symptom is that people don't talk about this aspect of privilege, socioeconomics, explicitly.
posted by polymodus at 1:59 PM on December 28, 2017
Serious Eats is a nice resource but I think people who recommend it are blind to the self-selectivity of an attitude towards food/cooking that goes into such a readership. I can say this because I'm partly in its target demographic. The symptom is that people don't talk about this aspect of privilege, socioeconomics, explicitly.
posted by polymodus at 1:59 PM on December 28, 2017
And just to give one example, in the article the restaurant problem is to be solved using sous vide--to tech out of it--keeping hiring practices and a culture of restaurant labor exploitation untouched. There's zero discussion of the latter, in keeping with Silicon Valley mentality. That's something to think about, for people (like the journalist) trying to evaluate what's actually happening.
posted by polymodus at 2:08 PM on December 28, 2017
posted by polymodus at 2:08 PM on December 28, 2017
Were you using a container with a diameter barely larger than the stick blender? The technique will not work in a bowl.
If you did, I have no idea why it didn't work.
posted by bh at 2:27 PM on December 28, 2017 [1 favorite]
If you did, I have no idea why it didn't work.
posted by bh at 2:27 PM on December 28, 2017 [1 favorite]
Frequently I read a recipe and I'm like, "Oh, yeah, that WOULD make my cookies chewier, that's a good trick" but it requires three extra steps, an extra dirty mixing bowl, and an extra set of beaters
I recently tried a SE recipe labeled "easy French lentils." It requires a (flexibly defined) mirepoix simmered with the lentils and then another, finely diced to cook in the last step with butter. The lentils are supposed to simmer for 20-25 minutes...if you have only middling knife skills, it takes about 2/3 of that time just to peel and brunoise all those root veggies. This for an "easy" dish which, at its most fundamental, is just "simmer some lentils, then glaze them in butter and add some vinegar."
But it is nice to have the option. I've been trying to bring myself to eat lentils again, having been raised by a mother who thought lentils were God's protein and didn't really bother to season them, so mirepoices, herb sachet, etc....maybe necessary.
posted by praemunire at 2:34 PM on December 28, 2017
I recently tried a SE recipe labeled "easy French lentils." It requires a (flexibly defined) mirepoix simmered with the lentils and then another, finely diced to cook in the last step with butter. The lentils are supposed to simmer for 20-25 minutes...if you have only middling knife skills, it takes about 2/3 of that time just to peel and brunoise all those root veggies. This for an "easy" dish which, at its most fundamental, is just "simmer some lentils, then glaze them in butter and add some vinegar."
But it is nice to have the option. I've been trying to bring myself to eat lentils again, having been raised by a mother who thought lentils were God's protein and didn't really bother to season them, so mirepoices, herb sachet, etc....maybe necessary.
posted by praemunire at 2:34 PM on December 28, 2017
In Canada at least, should you be looking for Marmite, every supermarket I've been in shelves it in the baking aisle with the rising agents. It does have "yeast extract" on the label, after all.
posted by glitter at 3:13 PM on December 28, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by glitter at 3:13 PM on December 28, 2017 [1 favorite]
Maybe we can get Kenji on a one-pot kick so he can come up with all kinds of simple weeknight meals.
You're in luck! The article says his next cookbook "will focus more on 'everyday cooking.'"
posted by Aizkolari at 4:41 PM on December 28, 2017 [1 favorite]
You're in luck! The article says his next cookbook "will focus more on 'everyday cooking.'"
posted by Aizkolari at 4:41 PM on December 28, 2017 [1 favorite]
And just to give one example, in the article the restaurant problem is to be solved using sous vide--to tech out of it--keeping hiring practices and a culture of restaurant labor exploitation untouched. There's zero discussion of the latter, in keeping with Silicon Valley mentality. That's something to think about, for people (like the journaliste) trying to evaluate what's actually happening.
This is a technique used in a lot of very high end restaurants already and not really new/high tech, it's just a different way of providing heat and hitting a very precise temperature/texture. If you have an easier way to do a task that gives you better results you'd be a fool not to use it.
posted by WaterAndPixels at 6:11 PM on December 28, 2017 [4 favorites]
This is a technique used in a lot of very high end restaurants already and not really new/high tech, it's just a different way of providing heat and hitting a very precise temperature/texture. If you have an easier way to do a task that gives you better results you'd be a fool not to use it.
posted by WaterAndPixels at 6:11 PM on December 28, 2017 [4 favorites]
Huh. I'm certain that I was baking pies with whiskey in the crust before 2007, but damned if I can figure out where I got the idea from. It's not in the Joy of Cooking, or in two late-90s references I would have used, Mark Bittman's book or Rose Levy Berenbaum's Pie and Pastry Bible. Perhaps it came through the Berenstain Bears time-slip.
posted by mubba at 6:12 PM on December 28, 2017
posted by mubba at 6:12 PM on December 28, 2017
I remember Alton Brown suggests using vodka in pure crust in an episode of Good Eats bit I don't know the date of broadcast.
posted by Evstar at 6:52 PM on December 28, 2017
posted by Evstar at 6:52 PM on December 28, 2017
Sorry, that should read 'pie crust' not 'pure crust'.
posted by Evstar at 7:03 PM on December 28, 2017
posted by Evstar at 7:03 PM on December 28, 2017
Maybe we can get Kenji on a one-pot kick so he can come up with all kinds of simple weeknight meals.
Just off the top of my head, here are three one-pot recipes of his that make easy weeknight meals.
posted by ultraviolet catastrophe at 7:09 PM on December 28, 2017 [2 favorites]
Just off the top of my head, here are three one-pot recipes of his that make easy weeknight meals.
posted by ultraviolet catastrophe at 7:09 PM on December 28, 2017 [2 favorites]
I would eat a pie that's pure crust.
posted by Greg_Ace at 7:14 PM on December 28, 2017 [5 favorites]
posted by Greg_Ace at 7:14 PM on December 28, 2017 [5 favorites]
I currently have a cupboard with marmite but not fish sauce. Also, I was at a friend's house the other night and we were cooking dinner from a recent Marley Spoon delivery. They had included all the ingredients except the 'staples', which they expect you to have in the cupboard. One of these was fish sauce. My friend had none, so we checked the internet, and made do with vegemite, as suggested. It worked great.
posted by lollusc at 8:11 PM on December 28, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by lollusc at 8:11 PM on December 28, 2017 [1 favorite]
Better Than Bouillon vegetable base is a pretty decent neutral replacement for all those Umami flavors like anchovy paste, fish sauce etc.
I‘ve always enjoyed Kenji‘s writing (even though I‘m not part of the ‚obvious‘ demographic, being neither male nor asian). It reads like he really really enjoys the process of cooking and that‘s something we have in common.
(The Wursthall place, though, sounds absolutely horrible and like an antithesis to all this. And I say this as a German living in the Bay Area.)
posted by The Toad at 8:42 PM on December 28, 2017
I‘ve always enjoyed Kenji‘s writing (even though I‘m not part of the ‚obvious‘ demographic, being neither male nor asian). It reads like he really really enjoys the process of cooking and that‘s something we have in common.
(The Wursthall place, though, sounds absolutely horrible and like an antithesis to all this. And I say this as a German living in the Bay Area.)
posted by The Toad at 8:42 PM on December 28, 2017
Maybe we can get Kenji on a one-pot kick so he can come up with all kinds of simple weeknight meals.
Other people have mentioned this, but he's pretty good about doing quick meals too. When he did chicken paprikash, for example, he did a pull-out-all-stops recipe and then another that had 4 ingredients.
posted by asterix at 10:18 PM on December 28, 2017 [1 favorite]
Other people have mentioned this, but he's pretty good about doing quick meals too. When he did chicken paprikash, for example, he did a pull-out-all-stops recipe and then another that had 4 ingredients.
posted by asterix at 10:18 PM on December 28, 2017 [1 favorite]
A List of Home Cooking Educators Metafilter Finds Divisive
- Alton Brown: Hokey delivery, slick presentation, has the audacity to have fans.
- Chef John: Hokey delivery, amateur presentation
- Christopher Kimbal: Not hokey enough, ordinary presentation
- Kenji Alt Lopez: Dated Techbro reference right in his name, has the audacity to have fans
- Julia Childs: Never delivers on her shark-repellant recipe.
- Rachel Ray: That shit never takes 30 minutes or less.
- u/gregthegregest: He once used a Webber charcoal grill to deep fry chicken.
- Paul Hollywood and Mary Berry: There is no way those are real names.
posted by Slap*Happy at 5:44 AM on December 29, 2017 [16 favorites]
- Alton Brown: Hokey delivery, slick presentation, has the audacity to have fans.
- Chef John: Hokey delivery, amateur presentation
- Christopher Kimbal: Not hokey enough, ordinary presentation
- Kenji Alt Lopez: Dated Techbro reference right in his name, has the audacity to have fans
- Julia Childs: Never delivers on her shark-repellant recipe.
- Rachel Ray: That shit never takes 30 minutes or less.
- u/gregthegregest: He once used a Webber charcoal grill to deep fry chicken.
- Paul Hollywood and Mary Berry: There is no way those are real names.
posted by Slap*Happy at 5:44 AM on December 29, 2017 [16 favorites]
Sorry, I don't metafilter much so I'm not sure if I'm threading this response correctly, but I hope it makes sense anyway.
@Nelson
Absolutely it's been fun and also extremely challenging.
@notorious medium
I actually played a very similar role in a restaurant a few years ago, designing the menu and kitchen, training the staff, etc. Harlem Shake in NYC (which now has two locations). It's done quite well! Back then was before my book came out so there wasn't that much focus on me and very few people actually picked up that it was my project, which I think was definitely to my advantage because there was a lot less pressure.
Wursthall has had so much coverage that you're right - the bar for some people coming in is gonna be set impossibly high and both I and my partners realize that. When I first joined my partners I thought it would actually be pretty similar to Harlem Shake: I'd get a chance to work on a project in my neighborhood aimed at the immediate community, and maybe a few of my biggest fans would make a trip out and check it out or stop by to say hi. Then every website and newspaper reported it and suddenly there's a TON more pressure than I expected. This is both exciting and nerve-wracking to say the least.
I know that we're not going to be able to make everyone happy all the time, but that won't stop us from trying our best. I have a lot of restaurant experience as well as plenty of menu/kitchen/operations advisory experience (about a half dozen restaurants in some capacity or another over the last decade or so) so I do know what I'm getting into as far as how to plan a menu and a line so that cooks can execute consistently.
We're not going for super fancy or anything. It's sausages and beer, nothing too special. Consistency is priority #1 and at the size of our place, even that is gonna be hard, but it has been the #1 guiding principle of menu design from the start. I think most people will come in and have a great time accompanied by some pretty darn good food.
You're absolutely right that my writing "brand" is both a positive and negative thing as far as customer expectations at
@jessssse
We will be serving Mexican Coke. My partner is setting the price but dear god I hope it's not $5.
@slkinsey
I know deeply toasted risotto is not traditional and not what everyone wants! I worked in an Italian restaurant for a couple years and have traveled extensively over Italy. I know how risotto is traditionally prepared. This idea started just sort of a "what if I took that toasting a little bit further" idea when I was making risotto one day and surprisingly, it didn't become creamy when I started adding broth but I found the flavor interesting and pleasing. So from there I tried to see if I could figure out a way to get that flavor along with the traditional creaminess.
When I was presenting this to that audience (and I haven't re-read that article in a while, but I think in the article as well), I tried to make it pretty clear that this was a particular thing *I* was interested, and that if you wanted to get similar results, you could try it to. I never, ever would suggest that Italians have been making risotto "wrong" for hundreds of years. This is just a different way to do it that gives you different results that you might or might not be interested in. That's all!
@Frowner
It's probably because you're too good at making pie crust. The "hack" was designed to help people who have had trouble with pie crusts being difficult to roll out and cracking. It solves that problem without making the baked crust leathery or tough like adding extra water would do. It's not a trick that's gonna be useful for everybody out there.
The video of the festival is actually online here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkL3b0Wrh5M
It wasn't really exactly as described. I never told anyone they were doing it wrong, just that this was a particular aspect of risotto technique that I was interested in. Your take on what I should have said is prettty much exactly how it went. and the audience was actually very supportive and having fun, other than the one lady the article mentioned (she comes in around 58:30 in the video).
@Gymnopedist
Vegan sausages are in the works! What I'm more excited about is vegan döner kebap sandwiches. We're using the faux meat from Impossible Foods, seasoning it like döner kebap (and using a little transglutaminase to bind it), cooking it sous vide, slicing, and crisping it for the sandwiches. It's really f'ing good!
@pullayup
If you go on some of the food subreddits or Twitter, you'll see people saying things like "you cooked that steak wrong. Proof: [link to my article]" which is a terrible misinterpretation of my intent. I write about food to help people cook better and bring people together over a good meal so it's really frustrating when I see someone using those articles to put other people down.
That pie thing was actually mine. It's from the Nov/Dec 2007 issue of Cook's Illustrated. It was not published before that.
@capricorn
I don't refuse to go to SF restaurants. I do enjoy when I go out. But I have a 10-month old daughter at home, live 20 miles away from the city (which means over an hour during rush hour), and just prefer to go to my low-key neighborhood spots. I also don't think I said anything negative about NYC. I grew up there. I like it a lot. I just don't love living there. Quieter life with a backyard to work on my woodworking projects just suits me more. I still enjoy NYC every time I go back to visit my mother and friends. I've definitely never bragged about making people angry, not sure where that came from, and the tech nerd thing was a kind of tongue-in-cheek comment I made to Jonah, the reporter. When I do live events/talks etc., the audience really is like 90% bearded men in their late 20s/early 30s, and Asian women and from talking with them, they're mostly in tech (or science).
Funny enough, I recently looked at my Facebook following demographic and it's 43% men 52% women (5% undeclared) which is the opposite of what it was about 5 years ago. Maybe having a physical book on the shelves attracted women, maybe it's just because I've been more vocal in my social media channels about women's issues, or maybe it's because I've focused a little more on everyday recipes and less on the "here's how to make perfect hard boiled eggs and it only takes 3 hours" type recipes I used to do.
I think part of the problem was that the writer did seem to be pushing a certain narrative (MIT drop-out-turns-chef (I didn't drop out, despite what the article initially said. I had them correct that)) so a few things I said were stressed or taken slightly out of context. Writing a good profile is hard though, and I think this one was quite fair.
@Eyebrows McGee
I'm currently working on my second book which has a ton more one-pot type stuff and is a lot more focused on the way I cook and feed my family at home (hint: I DON'T make three-day meatloaf or 2 million ingredient chili every night). Hopefully that'll scratch your itch!
@desuetude
If I remember right (this was over a decade ago that I researched and wrote that pie piece), I think there were a few existing recipes kicking around that used alcohol in pastry crusts for flavor purposes, but I don't think any of them made the connection that alcohol could actually be used to control gluten. That was something that came up over the course of testing (I did over 100 individual tests for that recipe) and was a true "a-ha!" moment that solved the big dilemma I was having (testing panels had trouble rolling out pie crusts that were sufficiently low in hydration to remain tender without cracking them).
@polymodus
If I may, I think most likely the problem with the mayo not working was having a blender jar that was too big for the head of the blender. At least, this is the problem like 99% of the time when people tell me it didn't work for them. The head of the blender has to *barely* fit the bottom of the jar so that the egg makes good contact with it from the start.
As for the restaurant labor issue, examining kitchen culture and the way cooks (especially female cooks) are treated has been something of a priority for me and my partners and I are taking very explicit steps to try and ensure that our kitchen is operated in a way that all workers feel comfortable, their needs are heard, and their requests are met to the best of our abilities. I worked in restaurants for many years and know firsthand some of the problems with the culture so I've promised to try my best to fix some of those issues.
The sous vide thing is something I'd do no matter who is working in the kitchen. It's one of the steps we're taking to ensure that food comes out consistently at such a large scale and also why I recommend it for home cooks who want consistency without having to think/worry too much about it. It makes cooks' lives easier, whether at home or in restaurants.
@praemunire
Do you have a food processor? You can just pulse the veg in that if you want. Not as pretty as a brunoise but it'll taste pretty darn similar and go much faster. Of course, the more you brunoise vegetables the better and faster you'll get at it, so you can think of each pot of lentils as an investment in your future ;)
@Evstar
Alton Brown's pie crust episode where he talks about vodka came out after the CI article I wrote.
@The Toad
What about Wursthall is unappealing to you? Genuinely curious!
@Slap*Happy
haha, that's a great summary what's the "dated techbro reference" you're referring to in my name? The "Alt"?
posted by kenjialt at 7:39 AM on December 29, 2017 [83 favorites]
@Nelson
Absolutely it's been fun and also extremely challenging.
@notorious medium
I actually played a very similar role in a restaurant a few years ago, designing the menu and kitchen, training the staff, etc. Harlem Shake in NYC (which now has two locations). It's done quite well! Back then was before my book came out so there wasn't that much focus on me and very few people actually picked up that it was my project, which I think was definitely to my advantage because there was a lot less pressure.
Wursthall has had so much coverage that you're right - the bar for some people coming in is gonna be set impossibly high and both I and my partners realize that. When I first joined my partners I thought it would actually be pretty similar to Harlem Shake: I'd get a chance to work on a project in my neighborhood aimed at the immediate community, and maybe a few of my biggest fans would make a trip out and check it out or stop by to say hi. Then every website and newspaper reported it and suddenly there's a TON more pressure than I expected. This is both exciting and nerve-wracking to say the least.
I know that we're not going to be able to make everyone happy all the time, but that won't stop us from trying our best. I have a lot of restaurant experience as well as plenty of menu/kitchen/operations advisory experience (about a half dozen restaurants in some capacity or another over the last decade or so) so I do know what I'm getting into as far as how to plan a menu and a line so that cooks can execute consistently.
We're not going for super fancy or anything. It's sausages and beer, nothing too special. Consistency is priority #1 and at the size of our place, even that is gonna be hard, but it has been the #1 guiding principle of menu design from the start. I think most people will come in and have a great time accompanied by some pretty darn good food.
You're absolutely right that my writing "brand" is both a positive and negative thing as far as customer expectations at
@jessssse
We will be serving Mexican Coke. My partner is setting the price but dear god I hope it's not $5.
@slkinsey
I know deeply toasted risotto is not traditional and not what everyone wants! I worked in an Italian restaurant for a couple years and have traveled extensively over Italy. I know how risotto is traditionally prepared. This idea started just sort of a "what if I took that toasting a little bit further" idea when I was making risotto one day and surprisingly, it didn't become creamy when I started adding broth but I found the flavor interesting and pleasing. So from there I tried to see if I could figure out a way to get that flavor along with the traditional creaminess.
When I was presenting this to that audience (and I haven't re-read that article in a while, but I think in the article as well), I tried to make it pretty clear that this was a particular thing *I* was interested, and that if you wanted to get similar results, you could try it to. I never, ever would suggest that Italians have been making risotto "wrong" for hundreds of years. This is just a different way to do it that gives you different results that you might or might not be interested in. That's all!
@Frowner
It's probably because you're too good at making pie crust. The "hack" was designed to help people who have had trouble with pie crusts being difficult to roll out and cracking. It solves that problem without making the baked crust leathery or tough like adding extra water would do. It's not a trick that's gonna be useful for everybody out there.
The video of the festival is actually online here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkL3b0Wrh5M
It wasn't really exactly as described. I never told anyone they were doing it wrong, just that this was a particular aspect of risotto technique that I was interested in. Your take on what I should have said is prettty much exactly how it went. and the audience was actually very supportive and having fun, other than the one lady the article mentioned (she comes in around 58:30 in the video).
@Gymnopedist
Vegan sausages are in the works! What I'm more excited about is vegan döner kebap sandwiches. We're using the faux meat from Impossible Foods, seasoning it like döner kebap (and using a little transglutaminase to bind it), cooking it sous vide, slicing, and crisping it for the sandwiches. It's really f'ing good!
@pullayup
If you go on some of the food subreddits or Twitter, you'll see people saying things like "you cooked that steak wrong. Proof: [link to my article]" which is a terrible misinterpretation of my intent. I write about food to help people cook better and bring people together over a good meal so it's really frustrating when I see someone using those articles to put other people down.
That pie thing was actually mine. It's from the Nov/Dec 2007 issue of Cook's Illustrated. It was not published before that.
@capricorn
I don't refuse to go to SF restaurants. I do enjoy when I go out. But I have a 10-month old daughter at home, live 20 miles away from the city (which means over an hour during rush hour), and just prefer to go to my low-key neighborhood spots. I also don't think I said anything negative about NYC. I grew up there. I like it a lot. I just don't love living there. Quieter life with a backyard to work on my woodworking projects just suits me more. I still enjoy NYC every time I go back to visit my mother and friends. I've definitely never bragged about making people angry, not sure where that came from, and the tech nerd thing was a kind of tongue-in-cheek comment I made to Jonah, the reporter. When I do live events/talks etc., the audience really is like 90% bearded men in their late 20s/early 30s, and Asian women and from talking with them, they're mostly in tech (or science).
Funny enough, I recently looked at my Facebook following demographic and it's 43% men 52% women (5% undeclared) which is the opposite of what it was about 5 years ago. Maybe having a physical book on the shelves attracted women, maybe it's just because I've been more vocal in my social media channels about women's issues, or maybe it's because I've focused a little more on everyday recipes and less on the "here's how to make perfect hard boiled eggs and it only takes 3 hours" type recipes I used to do.
I think part of the problem was that the writer did seem to be pushing a certain narrative (MIT drop-out-turns-chef (I didn't drop out, despite what the article initially said. I had them correct that)) so a few things I said were stressed or taken slightly out of context. Writing a good profile is hard though, and I think this one was quite fair.
@Eyebrows McGee
I'm currently working on my second book which has a ton more one-pot type stuff and is a lot more focused on the way I cook and feed my family at home (hint: I DON'T make three-day meatloaf or 2 million ingredient chili every night). Hopefully that'll scratch your itch!
@desuetude
If I remember right (this was over a decade ago that I researched and wrote that pie piece), I think there were a few existing recipes kicking around that used alcohol in pastry crusts for flavor purposes, but I don't think any of them made the connection that alcohol could actually be used to control gluten. That was something that came up over the course of testing (I did over 100 individual tests for that recipe) and was a true "a-ha!" moment that solved the big dilemma I was having (testing panels had trouble rolling out pie crusts that were sufficiently low in hydration to remain tender without cracking them).
@polymodus
If I may, I think most likely the problem with the mayo not working was having a blender jar that was too big for the head of the blender. At least, this is the problem like 99% of the time when people tell me it didn't work for them. The head of the blender has to *barely* fit the bottom of the jar so that the egg makes good contact with it from the start.
As for the restaurant labor issue, examining kitchen culture and the way cooks (especially female cooks) are treated has been something of a priority for me and my partners and I are taking very explicit steps to try and ensure that our kitchen is operated in a way that all workers feel comfortable, their needs are heard, and their requests are met to the best of our abilities. I worked in restaurants for many years and know firsthand some of the problems with the culture so I've promised to try my best to fix some of those issues.
The sous vide thing is something I'd do no matter who is working in the kitchen. It's one of the steps we're taking to ensure that food comes out consistently at such a large scale and also why I recommend it for home cooks who want consistency without having to think/worry too much about it. It makes cooks' lives easier, whether at home or in restaurants.
@praemunire
Do you have a food processor? You can just pulse the veg in that if you want. Not as pretty as a brunoise but it'll taste pretty darn similar and go much faster. Of course, the more you brunoise vegetables the better and faster you'll get at it, so you can think of each pot of lentils as an investment in your future ;)
@Evstar
Alton Brown's pie crust episode where he talks about vodka came out after the CI article I wrote.
@The Toad
What about Wursthall is unappealing to you? Genuinely curious!
@Slap*Happy
haha, that's a great summary what's the "dated techbro reference" you're referring to in my name? The "Alt"?
posted by kenjialt at 7:39 AM on December 29, 2017 [83 favorites]
(The Wursthall place, though, sounds absolutely horrible and like an antithesis to all this. And I say this as a German living in the Bay Area.)
Sounds a delight to me, and I say that as a (former) German living in Rome - will there be a take on currywurst, too? (I'll be giving that alt-risotto technique a whirl for sure, every tradition deserves a critical take every now and then.)
posted by progosk at 8:26 AM on December 29, 2017
Sounds a delight to me, and I say that as a (former) German living in Rome - will there be a take on currywurst, too? (I'll be giving that alt-risotto technique a whirl for sure, every tradition deserves a critical take every now and then.)
posted by progosk at 8:26 AM on December 29, 2017
(Oh, and: now that you are, erm, metafiltering, I'm sure I'm not alone in looking forward to your take on a plate of beans.)
posted by progosk at 8:34 AM on December 29, 2017 [3 favorites]
posted by progosk at 8:34 AM on December 29, 2017 [3 favorites]
I'll say the alt-risotto recipe works really well and isn't too hard to do. The only channel for me is that my previous approach (an American Test Kitchen recipe) was memorized so habits are hard to break.
posted by mmascolino at 8:37 AM on December 29, 2017
posted by mmascolino at 8:37 AM on December 29, 2017
@progosk
The "currywurst" on the menu is one of my favorite things actually! It's quite different from traditional currywurst. I'm probably beanplating it.
It starts with smashed fried new potatoes, so small potatoes that are boiled, crushed by hand to make lots of craggy nooks and crannies, then fried crisp. The "wurst" part of it is a local spicy smoked sausage that we cut into short segments and score so they kind of spread apart into stars when you fry them and crisp up. The curry sauce is made with fresh garlic and ginger that we char until nearly blackened, then blend with a bunch of spices, tomatoes, vinegar, etc. So it's similar in tone to a curry ketchup, but has a deeper flavor than any curry ketchup I've had. Potatoes and sausages get tossed with blistered mustard and cumin seeds, then the whole thing is topped with curry ketchup and a whole grain mustard aioli.
Like I said, it's "currywurst" in quotes - based on the dish but really quite different - but it's f'ing delicious, if I do say so myself. We're also doing a couple variants on it (one plain fried potatoes, one topped with mustard-braised pulled pork, and one topped with a vegan mushroom gravy).
posted by kenjialt at 9:12 AM on December 29, 2017 [21 favorites]
The "currywurst" on the menu is one of my favorite things actually! It's quite different from traditional currywurst. I'm probably beanplating it.
It starts with smashed fried new potatoes, so small potatoes that are boiled, crushed by hand to make lots of craggy nooks and crannies, then fried crisp. The "wurst" part of it is a local spicy smoked sausage that we cut into short segments and score so they kind of spread apart into stars when you fry them and crisp up. The curry sauce is made with fresh garlic and ginger that we char until nearly blackened, then blend with a bunch of spices, tomatoes, vinegar, etc. So it's similar in tone to a curry ketchup, but has a deeper flavor than any curry ketchup I've had. Potatoes and sausages get tossed with blistered mustard and cumin seeds, then the whole thing is topped with curry ketchup and a whole grain mustard aioli.
Like I said, it's "currywurst" in quotes - based on the dish but really quite different - but it's f'ing delicious, if I do say so myself. We're also doing a couple variants on it (one plain fried potatoes, one topped with mustard-braised pulled pork, and one topped with a vegan mushroom gravy).
posted by kenjialt at 9:12 AM on December 29, 2017 [21 favorites]
Ooh that sounds good. Traditional Berlin currywurst is awful IMHO, that is a dish that welcomes reinterpretation. Ginger is a great idea.
posted by Nelson at 9:28 AM on December 29, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by Nelson at 9:28 AM on December 29, 2017 [1 favorite]
In Providence, there's a highly regarded fine french restauraunt called Chez Pascal - a half decade back, on the leading edge of the Food Truck craze here in the Northeast, they opened a sausage-on-a-bun truck. You can absolutely do high-volume beerhall food and have coming out way above expectations culinary - they had a currywurst onna bun, with what I believe was an in-house banana ketchup and it was pretty amazing.
posted by Slap*Happy at 10:03 AM on December 29, 2017
posted by Slap*Happy at 10:03 AM on December 29, 2017
Oh! And the Alt reference is explained in tedious detail here. It's never too long a way to travel for a throwaway joke, I say...
posted by Slap*Happy at 10:06 AM on December 29, 2017
posted by Slap*Happy at 10:06 AM on December 29, 2017
it's "currywurst" in quotes
That 'wurst sounds the best (though pretty much impossible to try at home...)!
Btw, the objecter at your Mantova conference was hardly angry, just a proud tradizionalista blowing off a young whippersnapper for trying to teach a grandma to suck eggs (as it were) - by mentioning your speedy delivery I think she was admitting she hadn't really understood much of what you were getting at.
posted by progosk at 10:36 AM on December 29, 2017
That 'wurst sounds the best (though pretty much impossible to try at home...)!
Btw, the objecter at your Mantova conference was hardly angry, just a proud tradizionalista blowing off a young whippersnapper for trying to teach a grandma to suck eggs (as it were) - by mentioning your speedy delivery I think she was admitting she hadn't really understood much of what you were getting at.
posted by progosk at 10:36 AM on December 29, 2017
kenjialt, thank you for taking the time to join the thread and respond to everyone. Good luck to you with your restaurant. Hopefully my next time in Gilroy visiting family I can make the trip.
posted by Evstar at 12:04 PM on December 29, 2017 [7 favorites]
posted by Evstar at 12:04 PM on December 29, 2017 [7 favorites]
"a lot more focused on the way I cook and feed my family at home"
Looking forward to it! Love cooking for my family but can only do a big fancy dinner once or twice a week, and it's nice to find recipes for wholesome, healthy, delicious homemade food that are quicker or easier or one-pottier! So much "quick" food or "easy" food is also kinda rotgut, which is fine now and then! but for a daily thing I want healthy and wholesome and tasty.
(Meanwhile my brother will stay steady on at your most complicated recipes so I'll get to eat those at his house.)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 6:02 PM on December 29, 2017 [1 favorite]
Looking forward to it! Love cooking for my family but can only do a big fancy dinner once or twice a week, and it's nice to find recipes for wholesome, healthy, delicious homemade food that are quicker or easier or one-pottier! So much "quick" food or "easy" food is also kinda rotgut, which is fine now and then! but for a daily thing I want healthy and wholesome and tasty.
(Meanwhile my brother will stay steady on at your most complicated recipes so I'll get to eat those at his house.)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 6:02 PM on December 29, 2017 [1 favorite]
@progosk
Oh, I'm pretty sure she was angry given the look on her face and the fact that she kept hounding me after the event and the moderator had to kind of step in and intervene on my behalf.
posted by kenjialt at 7:48 PM on December 29, 2017 [3 favorites]
Oh, I'm pretty sure she was angry given the look on her face and the fact that she kept hounding me after the event and the moderator had to kind of step in and intervene on my behalf.
posted by kenjialt at 7:48 PM on December 29, 2017 [3 favorites]
What about Wursthall is unappealing to you? Genuinely curious!
There‘s three main things:
- Wurst is what I make when I‘m tired and the kids are screaming and I just want a protein everybody will actually eat on the table in 15 min. It’s a lowest common denominator, not something that would draw me to a restaurant, personally. BUT fret not, I know restaurants that serve comfort food have been very successful around here - Homeroom in Oakland comes to mind. It‘s a Mac n Cheese restaurant, that I would never consider going to because I can make Mac N Cheese myself, but again, that‘s a personal preference a lot of people don‘t share!
- I‘ve been super underwhelmed with the local wurst offerings. Dozens of flavors that seem unnecessary (it‘s just the American way?), and - my pet peeve - a lack of snappy natural casings. As a Bavarian who grew up on Schweinswürstl, I just miss that stuff and can‘t get anything close to it around here. It just feels like a letdown every time I try. But again, this is personal idiosyncrasy.
- as far as mass appeal: sausage is as far from ‚eating clean‘ as you can get. How do I put this? It probably feels even more unhealthy than it actually is. I‘d say the majority of my friends have some kind of healthy eating restriction and to them, ‚sausage bar food‘ will not sound appealing, even if you try to work around it by offering vegan options etc. So, I’d be unlikely to even ask friends to go there because I would assume it wouldn’t sound appealing to them and I wouldn’t want to have that conversation. But maybe that‘s just my weird Berkeley bubble.
In any case, even if I‘m unlikely to seek out Wursthall, I wish you the best of luck for the project! Oh, and: Welcome to MetaFilter.
posted by The Toad at 1:36 AM on December 30, 2017 [1 favorite]
There‘s three main things:
- Wurst is what I make when I‘m tired and the kids are screaming and I just want a protein everybody will actually eat on the table in 15 min. It’s a lowest common denominator, not something that would draw me to a restaurant, personally. BUT fret not, I know restaurants that serve comfort food have been very successful around here - Homeroom in Oakland comes to mind. It‘s a Mac n Cheese restaurant, that I would never consider going to because I can make Mac N Cheese myself, but again, that‘s a personal preference a lot of people don‘t share!
- I‘ve been super underwhelmed with the local wurst offerings. Dozens of flavors that seem unnecessary (it‘s just the American way?), and - my pet peeve - a lack of snappy natural casings. As a Bavarian who grew up on Schweinswürstl, I just miss that stuff and can‘t get anything close to it around here. It just feels like a letdown every time I try. But again, this is personal idiosyncrasy.
- as far as mass appeal: sausage is as far from ‚eating clean‘ as you can get. How do I put this? It probably feels even more unhealthy than it actually is. I‘d say the majority of my friends have some kind of healthy eating restriction and to them, ‚sausage bar food‘ will not sound appealing, even if you try to work around it by offering vegan options etc. So, I’d be unlikely to even ask friends to go there because I would assume it wouldn’t sound appealing to them and I wouldn’t want to have that conversation. But maybe that‘s just my weird Berkeley bubble.
In any case, even if I‘m unlikely to seek out Wursthall, I wish you the best of luck for the project! Oh, and: Welcome to MetaFilter.
posted by The Toad at 1:36 AM on December 30, 2017 [1 favorite]
kenjialt: I'm probably beanplating it.
Dude, you have found your tribe! Beanplating is what Metafilter EXCELS at.
posted by culfinglin at 10:07 PM on December 30, 2017
Dude, you have found your tribe! Beanplating is what Metafilter EXCELS at.
posted by culfinglin at 10:07 PM on December 30, 2017
@The Toad
Ha, well if you don't like the basic concept of a restaurant serving sausage, then wursthall absolutely won't and shouldn't appeal to you!
I can tell you that a snappy casing and good quality sausages was my #1 priority in terms of sourcing and I've found a couple makers who really know what they're doing. I also ate tons of sausage in Bavaria just before embarking on this project, so I'm aware of what German sausages are like, and I think we're gonna hit that mark (though we're also serving non-German sausages).
Our vegan options are not there as a "healthier" alternative to sausages or any of the other food on the menu. It's there because I want vegans to be able to come and dine with their friends and enjoy the same type of food. It's not health food, it's just delicious food that goes well with beer. I would not recommend coming every day. Nobody should eat sausages every day. But a couple times a month as a fun night out with friends is not gonna kill you right off the bat. I think Berkely definitely has more of a healthy eating bubble than San Mateo or the neighboring towns do. Of course we'll also have plenty of lighter stuff on the menu as well.
Anyhow, I do hope to see you there if you ever change your mind. Let me know it's "that guy from MF" and I'll try and convince you that sausages in the states can be great!
posted by kenjialt at 5:57 PM on January 1, 2018 [5 favorites]
Ha, well if you don't like the basic concept of a restaurant serving sausage, then wursthall absolutely won't and shouldn't appeal to you!
I can tell you that a snappy casing and good quality sausages was my #1 priority in terms of sourcing and I've found a couple makers who really know what they're doing. I also ate tons of sausage in Bavaria just before embarking on this project, so I'm aware of what German sausages are like, and I think we're gonna hit that mark (though we're also serving non-German sausages).
Our vegan options are not there as a "healthier" alternative to sausages or any of the other food on the menu. It's there because I want vegans to be able to come and dine with their friends and enjoy the same type of food. It's not health food, it's just delicious food that goes well with beer. I would not recommend coming every day. Nobody should eat sausages every day. But a couple times a month as a fun night out with friends is not gonna kill you right off the bat. I think Berkely definitely has more of a healthy eating bubble than San Mateo or the neighboring towns do. Of course we'll also have plenty of lighter stuff on the menu as well.
Anyhow, I do hope to see you there if you ever change your mind. Let me know it's "that guy from MF" and I'll try and convince you that sausages in the states can be great!
posted by kenjialt at 5:57 PM on January 1, 2018 [5 favorites]
Anduille, boudin and basically every meat product this grocer makes proves Americans know how to stuff meat into intestines with old world authenticity and flair.
(In my little part of New England, in addition to a half dozen Portuguese sausage makers, we also have Central Falls Provision Co. keilbasa and the both the "RI Saugy" and "New York System" Hot Weiner styles. Yanks can do good sausage.)
posted by Slap*Happy at 7:46 PM on January 2, 2018 [1 favorite]
(In my little part of New England, in addition to a half dozen Portuguese sausage makers, we also have Central Falls Provision Co. keilbasa and the both the "RI Saugy" and "New York System" Hot Weiner styles. Yanks can do good sausage.)
posted by Slap*Happy at 7:46 PM on January 2, 2018 [1 favorite]
kenjialt, thanks for the response - really appreciate it, and I enjoy your work a great deal!
posted by capricorn at 6:48 PM on January 6, 2018
posted by capricorn at 6:48 PM on January 6, 2018
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posted by capricorn at 7:09 AM on December 28, 2017 [2 favorites]