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Comments

• [1] chestine from NY February 05, 2008 - 11:10AM

  Thank you Leonard for being a foodie and giving this topic air time. Meals - oh the changes - first i stopped eating meat (but I eat fish, not morally a veggie, just got disgusted by one meat at a time, maybe intitively, I wonder, now that i learn about grass-fed everything) Now I am a big Weston Price person and want to stay local - so imagine all the changes! love roasted root vegetables! love soups made with traditional (fish in my case) gelatin broth/stock and gorgeous raw cream. Don't have the energy for the big productions I learned to do (martyes never cater!) growing up but I miss those too. (Size matters) So I guess what gives me direction in making meals is the advice of Mary Enig and Sally Fallon - and my favorite cookbook authors (Mapie de Toulouse Lautrec, Deborah Madison, Nina Simonds, J-B Reboul...)

  
  
• [2] anne February 05, 2008 - 01:31PM

  I find appetizers/small plates to be more inventive and often tastier than main courses. The number I have gone to restaurants and said to my companions "I really loved the starters but the entrees were just ok."

  
  
• [3] Gene February 05, 2008 - 01:40PM

  We started splitting an entree and an appetizer when restaurants started piling food on the plate unmercifully. And _still_ we'd often take half the order home. Ordering 2 entrees would have been a repellant invitation to porcine engorgement.

  On salads--once in a while you hit a restaurant that can make a really, really _good_ house salad(!) Much better than I could make at home.

  
  
• [4] Sue from North Salem, NY February 05, 2008 - 01:49PM

  Gene, I agree, I have a tiny stomach and I would love to see more "half-portions" available in restaurants. After an appetizer and salad, I just can't manage a big entree.

  
  
• [5] stephen hunter laurette from new york city February 05, 2008 - 02:10PM

  Ms. Reichl's remark stating, in effect, "... those are the prices because that's what food costs'" demonstrates that she is stupid, un- (or poorly) informed or, most probably lying through every pore on her face.

  My wife, her mother and, on occasion, I myself, shop for food exclusively in Manhattan Chinatown (we live in an extremely unfashionable area of Brooklyn) and I can tell you that if ANY food that she bought on a regular basis had a price that would obviously support some ludicrous price Ms. Reichl quoted for an entre, we would be on a plane back to Guangzhou rather quickly.

  Also, we have a close friend - also Chinese - who does restaurant supply and there are a huge number of small, medium and large restaurants with perfectly reasonable prices, which he supplies, located around the city. The notion that if you are unwilling or able to drop a couple of hundred dollars on an evening meal in a decent eatery is part of the effort to drive anyone who makes less than $200 thousand per annum out of New York.

  Of course, maybe is merely crazy.