Seth's Blog

A few weeks ago, based on the good experiences of friends, I bought a sous vide cooker. As promised, food cooked sous vide (at very low temperatures, such as 135 degrees F., for long periods of time, such as 48 hours) was excellent, clearly better than other cooking methods. For example, I made short ribs. They came out a perfect texture (slightly chewy), very moist and full of flavor. I also made eggs. At the right temperature, they turned a wonderful custard-like texture.

Sous vide isn’t new. Professional chefs have been using it for many years. The equipment has been too expensive (such as $1000). What’s new is lower prices. A friend paid about $350 for a sous vide cooker and vacuum sealer.

My brief experience suggests two conclusions I haven’t read anywhere else: (more…)

I was in Seoul for a few days. I wanted to go to a really good Korean restaurant. I did a lot of research. Finally I returned to where I started — an article about “the ten best restaurants in Seoul” — and carefully picked one of them: Yong Su San.

I phoned the restaurant, got directions. It was almost dinnertime. To my surprise, it was only a mile away so I decided to walk. I didn’t have a map but I could aim for the nearest subway station. I walked toward that subway station for a while, then asked someone for directions. She said another branch of that restaurant was closer to where I was. It was as if after extensive research I had decided that the best meal in New York was at McDonald’s.

The restaurant was extremely good. For only $60 I had a fascinating and delicious meal. At the end they give you a choice of “main food”. I chose bibimbap. Bibimbap is all cheap ingredients (rice, vegetables, sometimes egg, hot sauce, sometimes a small amount of meat or fish) and strikes me as the best possible way of combining those ingredients. This is an eternal question — given a small amount of money, what’s the best you can do? It’s surprising that the best answer comes from a small country (Korea).

Last week I had pizza at the home of my friends Bridget and Carl. It tasted divine. The crust was puffy, chewy and the right amount. The thin-crust bottom was slightly crunchy.  The tomato sauce had depth. The toppings (two kinds of mushrooms, Jerusalem artichokes, zucchini, onions, goat cheese) were tasty, creamy and a little crunchy. It was pretty and three-dimensional. It was easily the best pizza I’d ever had, the best home cooking I’d ever had, and much better than the lamb I’d had at Chez Panisse the night before, although the lamb was excellent. The pizza hadn’t been hard to make nor were the ingredients expensive. Do other people wonder why this is so good? I asked my friends.

At some level I knew why it was so good — why the sauce was so good, for example (see below). The puzzle — let me call it the Pizza Paradox — was that commercial pizza, even at fancy restaurants (such as Chez Panisse), is so much worse. (more…)

• Japan Korea kimchi dispute
• Dirt restaurant in Tokyo. The dirt is treated to kill bacteria, which I think is a mistake.
• Around 2005, a teenager combined DNA analysis with public data to find his biological father (a good example of personal science — using science to help yourself). Recently some professional scientists showed this wasn’t a fluke. The teenager was far ahead of the professionals, in other words. Just as I discovered that my acne was antibiotic-resistant long before professional dermatologists discovered (or at least published) the idea that some acne was antibiotic-resistant.
• Edward Jay Epstein and Vladimir Nabokov. I told this story here.
• If high-school students designed their own school

Thanks to Alex Chernavsky.

• Bone broths may have too much lead. “Broth made from skin and cartilage taken off the bone once the chicken had been cooked with the bones in situ and chicken-bone broth were both found
  to have markedly high lead concentrations.”
• Upcoming discussion of the work of Renata Adler (in New York City)
• Ben Casnocha on Aaron Swartz
• The silence of doctors about bad medicine. “The silence of other doctors apparently gave company executives the upper hand; in meetings with Dr. Nargol, they said that he seemed to be the only doctor having trouble.”
• Dietitians for Professional Integrity. Some dietitians are fed up with their professional organization’s links to junk food makers, such as Coca-Cola

A restaurant near Seoul named Bean Table got a surprisingly bad review:

Then came a massive chicken salad dish, given the number of people we had we over ordered. The patrons we brought were split 50/50 on enjoyment for the chicken. We had so much leftovers and were wasting so much food, I asked the waiter to wrap the leftovers. . . . Asking the waiter to wrap this chicken came with a resounding “no”, so again to the kitchen to talk to a manager. Actually ended up talking to a chef, a young man who speaks good English, who also declined our request. We had a six year old and a three year old with us and that was the only food they were eating minus the pungent sauce.

Our driver then proceeded to get angry and went to talk to the chef, Sungmo Lee, and surprisingly Mr. Lee and our driver had a conversation that the whole restaurant could hear despite repeated requests by our driver to discuss outside. As that incident occurred being concerned for my family who flew on average 7,000 miles and were picked up for a total driving commute of two hours to come eat at this restaurant I went to calm both parties down. Things progressed from worse to horrible. I identified myself as a food critic, and Mr. Lee proceeded to take that as a threat and stated, “You don’t know who I am.” . . . . My father, a man in his 70′s, tried to speak reason to him only to be found that we were asked to leave.

At the end of the day, police were called, we weren’t allowed to pay the bill till police arrived even after we stated we wished to leave and skip the remaining courses. Police came and scolded Mr. Lee, telling him that if a customer pays for food then containers should be allowed for the customers to take food home. Keep in mind we are talking about cooked chicken, not fish, or tartar, etc. (Mr. Lee’s argument was that there were no take out containers in the restaurant and remained adamant about the no take out policy when we asked the driver to buy some containers). After the police came they asked us to leave while they dealt with Mr. Lee only to find an employee chasing out bus to pay the bill. No discounts, full price and another time suck of 20-30 minutes and the rest of the meal was safely kept in their fridge due to their “no takeout” policy. . . .

Before all of this nonsense came down my whole Korean family all thought that the restaurant was over rated and there was no single outstanding dish.

Until the Internet, stuff like this was never reported.

A new online open-access journal called Flavour has just started publication. The first issue has three articles and an editorial.

The journal

encourages contributions not only from the academic community but also from the growing number of chefs and other food professionals who are introducing science into their kitchens. . . . often in collaboration with academic research groups.

The first set of articles has an example of a collaboration between chefs and professional scientists — how to get a strong umami flavor from Nordic seaweed. Then you add the flavor to ice cream. Which reminds me of dessert at a friend’s house where he poured expensive balsamic vinegar on vanilla ice cream.

Thanks to Melissa McEwen.

An earlier post asked for Tokyo recommendations. A kind reader (Andrew Clarke) provided the following recommendations of off-beat restaurants:

One place I always recommend is Andy’s Shinhinomoto, in Yurakucho: http://www.frommers.com/destinations/tokyo/D61101.html. I have never seen a travel show that has covered the place, but it’s a best kept secret within the ex-pat community. Its menu is a standard Japanese Izakaya (pub) menu with some of the freshest sashimi (and fish in general) in Tokyo, and the strangest thing – it’s ran by a long-term British ex-pat, who is so renowned for his ability to pick good ingredients that he selects and delivers fish for several local sushi shops. Upstairs seating is best for atmosphere, but the food is the same downstairs. They have an English menu, and I’d also recommend the fish head and tempura. It’s also not super expensive, somehow I never manage to spend more than 7000Y  with alcohol. (more…)

• suppression of innovation in ice cream by the State of Illinois
• Nassim Taleb: “We have wasted three years doing nothing but transferring money to the pockets of the bankers”
• Fish oil associated with larger brains

Thanks to Dave Lull and Tucker Max.

Last night I went to a beer tasting in San Francisco. I didn’t taste all the beers but of the 15-odd I did taste the best were by Uncommon Brewers — especially their Siamese Twin (“the floral notes of lemongrass and sharper bite of kaffir lime blend with the deep malt”) and Baltic Porter (“whole licorice root and star anise”).

Five or six years ago I went to a sake-tasting event in San Francisco called “The Joy of Sake”. About 140 sakes. In a few hours I became such a sake connoisseur that the sake I could afford  — and used to buy regularly — I now despised. The only sake I now liked was so expensive ($80/bottle) that I never bought another bottle of sake.