Great Advice from NYT

There's a piece in today's (Nov. 26, 2008) New York Times' Dining section about how dinner hosts can achieve a successful Thanksgiving dinner, and the advice comes from business school professors. "The CEO of Thanksgiving Dinner." I read it out loud to Julia and within 10 seconds, we both had the same thought: "This could apply to our Gourmet Club." In case you haven't read it, here's the link: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/26/dining/26dele.html?_r=1&ref=dining .

Happy Thanksgiving,

Leonard

Restaurant Ramblings

This is my first time contributing to a blog, and since this one was created I've been to a few great restaurants. One of them was in Chicago last May, while visiting
Rachel. It's called North Pond. http://www.northpondrestaurant.com/ It's nestled in Lincoln Park in a beautiful old building, with wonderful food, noted for focusing on local produce, meats and all things within an hour or so radius of Chicago. They're serious. When the waitress asked for drink orders, I put in an order for my standard cocktail, a Stoli on the rocks. I was surprised when she said the restaurant bar did not carry the famous Russian vodka, but they did have several vodkas from the region, including ones from Wisconsin and Illinois. I ordered one and it was quite good. The food too, needless to say, was wonderful.

Then in August, while at a wedding for a first cousin's son in Napa, Calif., Julia and I spent our wedding anniversary having a celebratory lunch at Ubuntu, a wonderful vegetarian restaurant in downtown Napa that's so creative you'll be enchanted throughout the meal. We might have gone for dinner, but the wedding was that night. It's claim to fame is that the New York Times' restaurant critic Frank Bruni lisited it as one of his top 10 most influential restaurants in America for 2008. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/27/dining/27count.html?_r=1&ex=1204779600&en=4ede7ee9683b0376&ei=5070&emc=eta1&oref=slogin .

Finally, while in Israel in September and early October, we ate at a great home-cooking Yemini restaurant in Tel Aviv, the name of which escapes me now, but I'd be happy to give you if you contact me. (I have their card.) And a great Asian fusion restaurant called Wang's Grill in Eilat. Actually the only great thing there were these spring rolls filled with absolutely delicious duck. Of course for me the fun thing was ordering meat with abandon since Wang's Grill, as the Tel Aviv Yemini restaurant were both kosher.

Aslyum Avenue Hazardous for Eaters of Food!

You are all invited to view a befuddled me on Channel 3 News, hopefully before You Tube removes it for possible copyright infringement. I labeled it "inadvertent Jewish humor". When you get the page with the video, read "More..." about it, in the upper right hand corner. Michael the link is below, just copy and paste it and enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZqn59qoyhw

You are SUCH a movie star! rb

Connecticut Restaurants

I like the idea of restaurant recommendations; we had dinner last night at 2 Hopewell
in S. Glastonbury and do recommend it; it is all local produce and organic meat and
fish and was delicious. The ambience is nice too.

Hi Linda. I changed the posting title to Connecticut Restaurants. All of us are now administrators of the blog, so we can edit anything. rb

Food Allergies/ Strong Dislikes/Preferences

Sam- no hummus, no sesame seeds(his tongue DID swell after Judy's chicken which Sam chose to eat). rb

Leonard- kosher.rb

Boston Restaurants

Lumiere- West Newton. Wonderful. A Green Restaurant. Organic/Local/Sustainable. rb

Blue Ginger- Do NOT go there. Had a horrible dinner there last August. rb

I ate at Rendezvous in Cambridge(Central Square) earlier this week. Really good. Local/ best seafood chowder with striped bass, clams, corn and tomatoes. rb

Chicago Restaurants

I ate lunch at Rick Bayless's Frontera Grill this past weekend. Great. Relatively inexpensive, fresh preparation. I had a tortilla soup and it was delicious. rb

New York Restaurants

We should absolutely, without question, have recommendations for restaurants, probably by city. I'll start with New York City. I want to know about Asian restaurants in Queens!

Cafe Zest-opening this week on 47th between 3rd and Lex. Japanese bakery and food. In August they are opening an organic prepared food restaurant upstairs, called Nonoca. Grub Street(New York Mag) is very excited.

In today's NYT(July 20, 2008) the restaurant Kunjib in Koreatown was mentioned as the author's favorite Korean restaurant. rb

Len and I ate at Hell's Kitchen right in or near the theater district last weekend. We thought it was great. We ate at the bar because we didn't have reservations. Small, Mexican, we loved it. Of course the menu is online. (7/19/08) jmr

Sip Sak- Turkish at 928 Second Ave. Sam and I enjoy this restaurant and have been there many times. The grilled lamb dishes are the best. rb

Jubilee- French neighborhood place. 347 East 54th St. between 1st and 2nd. rb

Sarge's Deli-great deli. Forget about the touristy places. 548 Third Avenue between 36th and 37th. Open 24/7. rb

Invitations have been sent, I think!

I believe that I just sent you all an invitation to join this blog! I will find out soon if I was correct. It seems that once you accept we will all become "authors" and will be able to make any changes that we want. Seems too simple. 

Posted July 19. As you accept the invitation, I am able to make each of you an administrator so that you can edit an existing post. rb

Welcome to OUR blog!

Hi everyone! Last night we started talking about books and I realized that setting up a Wiki would be a great way for us to share books that we've enjoyed with each other. However, as I just sat down in front of my computer to begin, I realized that a Gourmet Club blog might be a fun thing. We can still post comments about books, but we can contribute pictures, memories(like the first annual spa day), funny anecdotes, etc. I am making the assumption, and I hope it is not an erroneous one, that we can all work on this blog. Let's see what happens........

Books

I started this blog so that we can share books with each other. Some of my recent books were:

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz. rb

The Boat(short stories) by Nam Le.rb