Went for Chinese buffet tonight. They had steamed crab legs. I ate at least 8. I feel ill.

You ate eight??

Now I feel ill!

Signor V.

I've never been here as it is very far from where I live but a friend of mine swears by it. She says it's one of the better Mexican restaurants in SE Michigan.

Plaza Mexico

There is a special quality about a restaurant run by a family. I don't mean a "family-style restaurant," rather one that shows the care and dedication of the ensemble effort of a mother, father and offspring.
That's the story at Plaza Mexico, where Felipe and Ana Rosa Hernandez and their daughters, Cristina Hernandez Garcia and Monica, Roxana, Sylvia and Melisa Hernandez, form the close-knit family group.

Their 40-seat restaurant opened in 2001, after both Felipe and Ana Rosa had worked for other people for 20 years after arriving here from Jalisco, Mexico. Ana Rosa is the cook, Felipe helps out wherever he's needed, and the five sisters are in the front of the house (although not all at once), making people feel welcome...

For decades, Elaine Kaufman held court at the restaurant bearing her name with a hand-picked selection of favorite regulars, literary luminaries and celebrities.

After Kaufman died in December, longtime manager Diane Becker inherited the restaurant. She announced Tuesday that the Upper East Side restaurant will shut its doors for good on May 26.

Has anyone in the NY-NJ area ever visited this place?

H & H Bagels, the Upper West Side’s most celebrated destination for what is quite possibly the Upper West Side’s most iconic food, is closing its store in the neighborhood, employees said Tuesday.

H&H Bagels Closing

It was nothing special.... a typical bagel bakery in the City.

IT’S the dining version of the scene where the Gale house judders down in Oz. Monochrome up until that point, the world is suddenly, gorgeously Technicolor once Dorothy opens the door.

On any Friday night at Red Rooster, the crowd is likely to encompass not only elements of New York’s “gorgeous mosaic” but also David Dinkins, the former mayor who coined the phrase. There, either at the 76-seat restaurant, the 24 seats at communal tables near the bar, the 20-seat bar itself or the 40-seat sidewalk cafe, neighborhood bankers rub elbows with Bill Clinton; Nora Ephron might be seated alongside Thelma Golden, the director of the Studio Museum; Alicia Keys is likely to be found in a corner with Ralph and Ricky Lauren at a table bracketing her left side and a group of local church ladies on her right.

That, in a sense, is a typical experience at Red Rooster, the door onto Harlem opened by the celebrity chef Marcus Samuelsson at the end of last year.

Smack on Lenox Avenue just north of 125th Street, and with glamorous neighbors like Marshalls, Staples and CVS, the place almost instantly became a destination not just for those seeking soul food cooked with a Swedish accent, but for people with an appetite for a dining experience reflective of the New York Grace Paley once lauded for its “chromatic dispersion.” Very likely it was the latter that moved Barack Obama to choose Red Rooster as the spot for a $30,800-a-plate fund-raising dinner for the Democratic National Committee in March.

And, after all, there had to be someplace besides certain sections of hipster Brooklyn where — as Sam Sifton, the restaurant critic of The New York Times, pointed out in a review awarding Red Rooster two stars — the servers, the crowd and the atmosphere all come together to represent the “polyglot, diverse” city that has historically been “a shining beacon for people of all races.” ...

Full Article

What???

Would that make it Sjöl Food?

Boggles the mind...though I must admit I'm now a bit curious as to what's on their menu.

Signor V.

It seems that reviews for Red Roosteraunt (by average folks, not professional food critics) have been decidedly mixed.

Click here.

Signor V.

20 varieties of meatballs.

That's too bad. Hopefully they can get the kinks worked out.

America's Test Kitchen, and its sister show Cook's Country are perhaps the best cooking shows on PBS TV right now -- if not anywhere, at any time.

They actually TEACH YOU, and after pain-staking work, come up with the best ("lab"-tested) recipes for every dish.

I became a fan after seeing it a couple times, then subscribed to their magazine (haven't seen it yet). But I did just get their bonus "Cooks Illustrated Best Of" yet haven't read thru it yet -- but it seems perfect (tho you'd think "Illustrated" would mean color photos, but no, it's B&W photos, and B&W "illustrated" -- but no bother, these guys know what they're talking about!

I've seen episodes of both shows (isn't Cook's Country the successor to America's Test Kitchen?) and the shows do have merit, certainly.

The problem for me is when they claim their recipe for a given dish is "the best." Everything in cooking is very subjective. What one person thinks is the ideal recipe may be totally unpalatable to another. But the shows can be quite fascinating - often times I've learned something about cooking "mechanics" (or the scientific reasons for something) that I was absolutely clueless about before.

But, for me, perhaps the most worthwhile part of America's Test Kitchen was the product comparisons - how people rated things like canned tomatoes, non-stick fry pans (to name just a couple of items), etc., in blind tests. That part I found quite interesting.

Also worth mentioning, there are some weighty books put out by those people that are quite valuable. (Not cheap, either, I have to say, at least according to my wallet.) But public libraries may also have these recipe collections, and they are definitely worth looking at. The books also are instructional, which is a plus right there.

Signor V.

Too hot to cook. City Island tonight for sure .

Too hot to do anything, as far as I'm concerned.

According to the local weather forecasts, by the end of the week we'll be frying eggs on the sidewalk.

Cold salads and deli sandwiches are starting to sound better and better.

Signor V.

I would love to go to City Island. I don't remember the last time we were there. I could use a little Black Whale therapy.

The Black Whale is closed on Mondays, Babe. We just went to the marina for clams.

Do you remember the Seashore restaurant? It's the first one on the right when you come over the bridge, across from Saint Mary Star of the Sea. Anyway, in the summertime they open up a clam bar outside right on the marina. It's nice.

It was just me and my wife. We split 4 dozen littlenecks and a bucket of peel and eat shrimp. A couple of ears of corn on the cob and some delicious homemade lemonade. Then we walked over to Rhodes for a few cold beers.

It was like a date night circa 1986 .

Sounds good. I'm actually craving a little Greasy Nick's now, too, after reading about your corn. I don't know what they did to their corn, but it was always delicious.

I think they actually boil it in butter .

Wouldn't surprise me! Are they even still around?

Greasy Nick's is still going strong, even though that neighborhood is suffering economically (what else is new?). That beautiful Food Emporium just up Shore Road closed a few months ago. It was part of the A&P firesale.

And if you didn't already know this, the Thruway Diner is a Walgreens now. I wish I had a dollar for every time we stumbled there for eggs or burgers after going to Marty and Lenny's or Peachtrees.

Peachtrees! Oh, that's a place I had forgotten about! And what about the Casino? Summer's were a blast there.

Please, my brother almost cried when the Thruway Diner closed.

Montreal style Smoked meat at Schwartz`s Deli Montreal
http://www.schwartzsdeli.com/index_eng.html

I was in Pittsburgh last week. My sisters made spaghetti. Madonne! The sauce was just like my mother used to make - delicioso. I brought some back with me and have been stretching it over several meals. No place like home.

There's nothing like learning to make spaghetti sauce from your mom. When I first cooked it on my own it didn't taste quite like mom's. It actually took me years to perfect. I was fortunate to also have an Italian MIL and she worked with me a few times making it while my mom did as well. I think my sauce is actually a mix of both my mom's and MIL. I can't put my finger on how/why practice makes perfect when it comes to making pasta sauce, but it does.

I have two grown daughters who have watched me make it, asked for the recipe BUT have never made homemade pasta sauce. When I was at my daughter's a while back what do I see in her fridge? Ragu? ( Psycho music comes to mind) I told her (jokingly of course) that's a mortal sin for an Italian to have fake sauce in the fridge. Well, with three little kids and a job it's hard to go homemade I guess. I'll always tease her about that. LOL

TIS

I agree. Infamita!

TIS, tell your daughter I'm ashamed of her!! LOL

Sauce can be time consuming, but when the kids were little, I would make a HUGE pot of sauce on Sunday and freeze containers. Not only did I have homemade sauce, but it was convenient to have it there when I got home from work. It was perfect to defrost the sauce, boil some pasta, throw together a salad, and have a home-cooked meal in 15 minutes!

My mom taught me, too. My husband joked around that he wouldn't marry me until I could make sauce as good as my mom's. At least, I think he was joking.....

SB,

When I first got married and wanted to finally learn how to make it,I wanted a word for word recipe as to "exactly" what and how much of everything was in the sauce (btw, we call it sugu even to this day). On some ingredients (i.e. salt/pepper/basil) my mom would say "I don't measure, just put a pinch or about a teaspoon" or whatever. She never used measuring spoons cause she had it down. LOL I don't even have the recipe and haven't for years. I'm like her, and I just do it.

TIS

Same here, TIS, no recipe. I do have a precise recipe for other sauces, like when I make alfredo or vodka sauce, but not for meat sauce. I don't even follow a recipe for my meatballs.

http://tufanosrestaurant.com/

We went to see my daughter at her college in Chicago yesterday and ate here @ Tufano's. This is a great neighborhood restaurant that is a legend in Little Italy. See the clip on YouTube with Guy Fieri's; "Diners, Drive Ins & Dives". My parents & their whole family lived in this neighborhood until their apartment building was tore down to expand the UIC campus...now my daughter goes to college in the old neighborhood. (Insert proud Italian papa here!) BTW - the meatballs were just like my nona's!