Set adrift on butter, brown sugar, and rum bliss.
Although Bananas Foster is widely known as a New Orleans recipe, I never had any experience with this particular dish while I was cooking in the Crescent City. I dealt with plenty of bread pudding recipes, and I had an occasional hand in the hyper-decadent sweet potato-and-pecan pies at K-Paul’s, but Bananas Foster was never part of my repertoire. However, when I was attending the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park NY, I did have the opportunity to whip up several batches of Bananas Foster while I was [... read more ...]
Look closely. It's all there.
If you live in the United States and you ever decide to visit the Napa Valley, then I probably wouldn’t recommend the Soscol Cafe as a breakfast destination. For lack of a better term, it’s your classic hole-in-the-wall greasy spoon, and you probably know of a similar-style place somewhere in your own home town. However, for those who might be visiting the U.S. from abroad (and therefore, who may have never dined at a classic greasy spoon), then the Soscol Cafe could represent a venerable culinary landmark, something that’s authentic to its very [... read more ...]
Almost famous.
Only in New Orleans could a sandwich as glorious as the muffaletta take a backseat to the po-boy. In just about any other city in the United States, the muffaletta would certainly rank as a culinary claim-to-fame, earning a mention alongside the cheesesteaks of Philly or the towering deli pastramis of New York City. But even in the shadow of the more famous po-boy, the muffaletta of New Orleans boasts a loyal legion of followers (after all, one cannot exist on po-boys alone). With its roots at the Central Grocery in the French Quarter, the [... read more ...]
Blah, blah, blah — here we go again: Although I’ve long gone on record against the idea of rating a wine by points, the sad fact is, when an influential wine critic bestows a “perfect” score on a particular bottle, it’s difficult not to take notice and wonder what all the fuss could be about. It also raises the question: What does a 100-point score really mean? On one hand, we may tend to assume that a 100-point wine is somehow a “flawless” wine, meaning that it’s technically sound, full-flavored and balanced, with no shortcomings. But on the [... read more ...]
There’s no possible way that I could ever review Terra in St. Helena without heavy bias: I know too many people in that restaurant — from the kitchen, to the GM, to the waitstaff — to maintain any semblance of impartiality. For similar reasons, I can’t really offer my unbiased opinions about Martini House, Auberge du Soleil, or Etoile at Domain Chandon, either. Of the people whom I know socially in the Napa Valley, most of them work at either of these three restaurants. But despite these personal connections, I don’t think there’s much harm in showing some pictures [... read more ...]
