Category: Food

Yelp And Michelin Do New York

by A.J. Coltrane

By Nate Silver, posted on his Five-Thirty-Eight site. The piece looks at the correlation between Yelp reviews and Michelin stars in New York. “Yelp and Michelin Have The Same Taste In New York Restaurants”  (Please excuse the messiness. I didn’t feel like spending my evening winnowing out the hyperlinks):

…Yelp and Michelin largely agree on the best restaurants.

Michelin revealed its 2015 ratings for New York on Tuesday. I took each restaurant on the Michelin list and looked up its Yelp rating. I also looked up Yelp ratings for restaurants that have lost their Michelin stars since Michelin first published a New York guide in November 2005. This serves as a control group for “Michelin-esque” restaurants that are no longer performing up to the guide’s standards.2

Firstly — (VORB is an aggregate of Yelp review volume and quality and Michelin ratings.):

…There’s a reasonably strong correlation between Yelp and Michelin ratings. Of current and former Michelin-starred restaurants, those with the highest VORB scores are Le Bernardin (28.7), Eleven Madison Park (28.2), Gramercy Tavern (27.7),Daniel (26.6), Per Se (25.9) and Jean-Georges (23.3). Four of those six restaurants have three Michelin stars, the top rating. The exceptions are Daniel, which was just demoted to two Michelin stars, and Gramercy Tavern, which has one.

And:

By contrast, most of the restaurants with the lowest VORB scores have since lost their Michelin stars, (and in some cases have also closed). The bottom five are the defunct Vong and the still-open Laut, Pok Pok NY, Lan Shengand A Voce Columbus. Mind you, these aren’t the worst restaurants in New York. I’d personally vouch for a couple of them as being pretty good. But the standard is high, and Yelpers feel they’re closer to average than to the top tier…

…The restaurants to have lost their Michelin stars have 3.83 Yelp stars on average, barely better than the average for all restaurants citywide. Each additional Michelin star translates to about 0.2 additional Yelp stars. The one-starred Michelin restaurants have an average Yelp rating of 4.02 stars. The Michelin two-star restaurants have a Yelp rating of 4.25. The Michelin three-star restaurants average 4.47 Yelp stars.

That’s what I found the most interesting — relatively lowish Yelp reviews tend to foreshadow the loss of Michelin stars.

Finally:

Outside of the canonical European cuisines (French, Italian) and “new American” food,12 Michelin seems to struggle. Thai restaurants and Indian restaurants, for example, have often won Michelin stars only to lose them a couple of years later. It’s almost as though Michelin is cycling through representatives of these cuisines at random — putting forth some effort to increase the diversity of its list but not going to great lengths to identify the best examples.

Which… I don’t know… The list can’t be all European or they’d never hear the end of it. I’d like to think the Michelin reviewers just couldn’t come to a consensus due to lack of familiarity, but who knows? And maybe I’m cynical thinking that maybe they’re cynical..

I’d assume that the Yelp reviews are influenced at least somewhat by the Michelin rank, but maybe that street runs the other way too? Michelin would have a hard time convincing diners of the authoritative quality of their guide if they favored restaurants unpopular with the unwashed crowdsourcing masses.

Anyways, lots of food for thought.

 

 

Container Garden Update — October 4, 2014

by A.J. Coltrane

Previous post here.

October 7, 2013 post here.

141004 watering cans2

We still had summer vegetables growing at this time last year. They’re long gone by now this time around, replaced by winter vegetables:

Bunch Onions
Bunch Onions

I’m still figuring out when to start winter veg, and what varieties do best in cold/long storage conditions. As an example, small, fast, round radishes do best in the spring and are intended to be harvested promptly after they’re ready. Longer maturity “carrot-shaped” radishes tolerate being held in the ground much better. Actual carrots have 4 or 5 different broad types as well. This is all new to me — just like I assumed that *all* vegetables did well in the heat of summer, it never occurred to me that different varieties of certain vegetables prefer either fall/winter or spring.

It may be that the vegetables in the EarthBoxes have been direct-seeded too late in the year. In the future we may start them in pots a month or so earlier an then transplant when the summer veg has been cleared out of the way. As it is, the plants in the whisky-barrel containers are well ahead of the EarthBox plants. Pictured below are spinach and cilantro that were started about a month ago (I should have labeled the date next to the new sowing.) I left the dill in place that’s now around two months old.

141004 dill spinach

They’re covered with bird netting because something — I think squirrels — had been digging in the newly exposed dirt. The carrots below are protected from flies with tulle:

141004 carrot

That’s carrots in the foreground, bunch onions under plastic in the middle, and romaine/arugula in the whisky barrel. I’m guessing that the whisky barrels don’t drain well enough for the alliums, which led to the shallots rotting this spring.

Other recently planted boxes include mache/parsley (interplanted); mache/cilantro (interplanted); spinach; pak choi; more bunch onions; mache; dill; and leeks. This afternoon at least one of the tomato boxes is going to become shallots.

It seems everything is doing better in the cold frame, so the open boxes got plastic-covered hoop houses. More pictures next week. Hopefully there will be something to show.

Container Garden Update — September 29, 2014

by A.J. Coltrane

Previous post here.

September 30, 2014 post here.

The final harvest took place last year on October 7. This year it happened on September 28. Last year we got 226 pounds out of the EarthBoxes. Yesterday’s harvest brings us to 270 pounds of produce for 2014. Improvement!

Here are yesterday’s twenty-three pounds of peppers:

140928 peppers

Overall we harvested 31 pounds of peppers in 2014. Next to the cat are ten pounds of King of the North. In the center sheet tray are two pounds of hot Pasilla peppers. Last year’s final pepper harvest is pictured below:

The October 7 harvest.
The October 7 harvest.

By weight it’s about 50% more peppers, though to be fair we also allocated more space this time. I think that 2014 shows more “red” as well.

We’ve had a busy couple of weeks breaking everything down. Last night we borrowed SeattleAuthor’s dehydrator for the Pasilla and Thai Hot peppers. He’s right — they’re so aggressively toxic that the dehydrator needs to go outside, otherwise stinging fumes fill the air.

Overall it was a pretty successful year. As a group everything that ripens, ripened better, especially the tomatoes. The yield was up somewhat when looking at 1-to-1 comparisons. Even though six of the 12 boxes fell over at some point the plants were still more productive. And we learned more things that we can apply to year three, such as the importance of support for the boxes…

“Recap” posts coming soon.

Rick Bayless’ Tomato “Carpaccio” Salad

by A.J. Coltrane

The Actual Title is much longer than that — Heirloom Tomato “Carpaccio” With Tomatillo Salad, Avacado and Fresh Herbs. LWN recipe link here.

The recipe:

INGREDIENTS

  • DRESSING
  • 3 garlic cloves, unpeeled
  • 1/4cup (lightly packed) cilantro leaves
  • 2 1/2tablespoons light vinegar (like cava or rice wine vinegar)
  • 1/4cup good-quality olive oil (or unrefined corn or peanut oil)
  • Freshly ground black pepper, usually about 1/4 teaspoon, plus addition for the sliced tomatoes
  • Salt
  • SALAD
  • About 1cup Thinly sliced red onion (preferably the long, skinny
  • About 6ouncestomatillos, (preferably the small purple tomatillos – about 6 of them), cut into eighths (about 1 cup)
  • About 6ounces cherry tomatoes (preferably a mixture of red and yellow – about a dozen), cut in halves or quarters
  • 4 to 6medium-size ripe heirloom tomatoes, cored and sliced 1/4-inch thick
  • 1 medium-sized avocado, pitted, flesh scooped from the skin and diced into 1/2-inch pieces
  • A generous tablespoon roughly chopped fresh herb (cilantro is an easy choice, but don’t overlook basil, lemon balm, or anise hyssop – even arugula – or mixture of your favorites)

INSTRUCTIONS

In a small, ungreased skillet over medium heat, roast the unpeeled garlic, turning regularly, until soft and blotchy black in spots, 10 to 15 minutes. Cool until handleable, then peel off the paper skin. In a blender or food processor, combine the garlic, cilantro, vinegar, oil and pepper. Process until smooth, then taste and season with salt, usually about 1/2 teaspoon.

In a medium bowl, combine the onion, tomatillos and cherry tomatoes with 3 tablespoons of dressing. Let stand while finishing the salad, stirring from time to time.

On a very large platter, lay out the sliced tomatoes in as close to a single layer as possible.

Just before serving, dot the tomatoes with the avocado and sprinkle with the herbs and fresh-ground pepper (I like the pepper pretty coarse for the tomatoes). Drizzle with the dressing, then pile the tomatillo salad in the center, and your impressive tomato salad is ready to serve.

Some pictures:

Roasting the garlic. This is my new go-to way to roast garlic cloves. Turning on the oven to roast garlic seems so wasteful:

140919 roasted garlic

The tomatillo salad, before dressing. We used Sun Gold tomatoes because that’s what we had. (And Apple Cider vinegar as a best substitute for the recommended Rice Wine vinegar.) On the attempt that we served to company we scaled back the quantity of tomatillos a bit. Also, we decided that smaller tomatillos = better:

140919 salad

The “Carpaccio” element. Black Krim, Taxi, and Tigerella:

140919 carpaccio

The finished salad:

140919 combined salad

It’s a really nice recipe. As I mentioned, we scaled back the tomatillos a little bit for company. There’s a nice balance of sweet, fat, acid and salt. Every bite allows the opportunity to mix and match textures and flavors. We especially liked combining Sun Golds with tomatillos. Two thumbs up.

And since we’re overdue for a girl cat pic:

140920 girl cat

WSU couldn’t quite pull it off against Oregon.

A Quick Weeknight Pizza

by A.J. Coltrane

A big disadvantage of preparing a two-hour dough is that it’s not enough time for enzymes to liberate natural sugars from the flour. The flavor suffers as a result, and the color is rarely as nicely carmelized as seen on longer-rise doughs.

Last week’s Batali dough got me thinking about adding sugar, or honey, to a quick mid-week pizza. The formula below is influenced by that last recipe, omitting the wine but increasing the water content:

Ingredient Measure Baker’s %
AP Flour 400g
Water 260g 65
Salt 9g 2.25
Honey 1 TBP
Instant Yeast 1.5 tsp
Olive Oil 1 TBP

That’s a lot of flour — the same amount as goes in the No-Knead breads, or even two medium size pizzas. For a single pizza I’ll more often use 200 or 300 grams of flour, scaling back the other ingredients as needed. This was a thick pizza:

140909 pizza

Chopped fresh tomatoes, mozz, basil. The crust was finished with an herbed olive oil. (A post on that later, it’s a nice local producer. We purchased the oil at the farmer’s market.)

The recipe:

1.  Knead all ingredients at low speed for 10 minutes. Let rise two hours. Preheat oven to 500F.

2.  While the oven is preheating, halve the tomatoes across the equator and squeeze out the worst of the juice. Chop the tomatoes, basil, and mozz.

3.  Very lightly oil a pizza pan, apply the stretched dough. Top the dough with the chopped tomatoes.

4.  Bake for 10 minutes. At the 10 minute mark sprinkle on the mozz.

5.  Bake for 6 minutes. Remove from the oven and strew on the basil. Lightly brush the crust with olive oil.

—

The pizza would have been improved by using somewhat less flour, and possibly by swapping out the AP flour for Bread flour. Marinating the tomatoes in garlic would have been good too.

I was fairly happy with it overall. I think it’s the “right track” for quick weeknight dinners.

 

Recommended “Game” — Untappd

by A.J. Coltrane

Drink beer, receive badges!

That doesn’t sound like an “enabler” app at all, does it?

From the Untappd website:

Explore Nearby Popular Bars & Beers

Not sure where to grab a pint? Untappd shows you popular bars nearby and what’s on tap.

 

Discover What Your Friends Are Drinking

The best recommendations come from your friends, so find out where & what they drink.

 

Share What & Where You’re Drinking

Share reviews, ratings and photos of the beers you drink with your friends around the world.

 

Drink New Beers, Unlock Badges

Expand your palette by trying new & different beer styles and unlock achievements along the way.

 

master-badgeUntappd has a fun “game” element to it. You get badges for drinking different types of beer. You get badges for drinking multiples of one type of beer. You get badges for drinking beer at odd hours. At one point my traveling companion got a badge for drinking on the ferry. “Ohoy Matey!” It makes casual beer drinking a potentially entertaining surprise.

Untappd has a lot of other neat features too. It’s a giant crowdsourced look at what everyone is drinking, and where. You can search by brewery — right now I can see that people are drinking Night Owl at the Elysian. It functions as a journal of what you’ve been drinking — it allows for comments and ratings, and you can save pictures too. We’ve shown this to a few people, most of the time they’ll cackle, then download it as fast as they can.

Highly recommended, and free!