response 1 of 54:

Jan 26 21:40 UTC 1993

When I'm in Boston, I always try to eat breakfast at Henry's Diner 
in the Brighton section.  It's a real pre-fab diner, and the food is
good and cheap.

response 3 of 54:

Jan 27 03:00 UTC 1993

Far away fond places:  I like the Tablit in Guatemala City (if it's still
there...I was there in about '71).  A steak house where your plate is
a giant wooden tablet with the menu burned in, and the steaks are so large
that they flop over the sides.  As I recall, the restaurant was on the Calle
de Los Arboles.

response 5 of 54:

Jan 31 22:20 UTC 1993

   On the slightly more accessable side, if you like Thai food, try
the Thai Cafe on 9 Mile, about 50 feet away from Sams Jams.  Really
good food, at cheap prices.  A warning though: don't underestimate
how hot they can produce food.  Mild is a good place to start off with
for most people.  If you know you like hot, try it at medium.  I
personally find their defintion of hot so hot, that it drowns out the
flavor of the food.

response 7 of 54:

Feb 11 18:38 UTC 1993

I just got back from NYC recently, and I'd like to comment on one
restaurant:

Mr. Chow's, on E. 57th between 1st and 2nd:

Mr. Chow's is a rather exclusive restaurant for New York; it does not appear
to be one based on it's exterior.  Instead, it looks like some sort of
private club.  One of my brothers lives next door to it, and did not know
what it was.  I have another brother who was introduced to it via a NYC
business associate, he took us there for dinner last Friday.

(The most exclusive restaurants in LA are so understated that they have
unlisted phone numbers.  The brother who took us to Mr. Chow's has the phone
number of The Olive, one of these unlisted bistro's out there.)

The restaurant specializes in eclectic, er, bent, dishes with an oriental
flair.  The service staff were all occidental, yet the service was confused.
(My brother say's it always is.)  Every table had bottles of San Pellegrino
instead of wine on it, which, I suppose, is the new High Culture that is 
oozing its way into fashion from the West Coast.  I never saw a menu.

We started with two of the specialties of the house.  I know there were
house specialties because every table seemed to have ordered them.  The
shredded seaweed with chili sauce was based on extremely thin nori that
melted in the mouth.  And I have high praise for their diced squab, which
was served with hoisin and large iceberg lettuce leaves to use as wrappers
(a la Peking Duck).  Both of these dishes are worth going back for.

Our middle courses were chicken sate, which was bright red, almost Tandoori
in color, shumai and hargow, which were unusually standardized in flavor
and appearance, and a startling chilied prawn dish with bright green prawns.

Fingerbowls were brought after the finger food (which the prawns weren't),
they contained lukewarm tea.  All part of the "bent" of this restaurant.

Our main course was not their Peking Duck, a specialty.  Instead, we opted
for their Peking Chicken... a spicy dish of chowed chicken, vegetables, and
candied walnuts.  


We declined dessert, though there were many interesting items to select from,
such as spiced mandarin oranges, and a panoply of standard tortes.

Be prepared for a strange bill.  Ours came with only two items on it:

     Beverages:    $8.00     (We had San Pelligrino water)
     Food:       $200.50     (Lord only knows how that added up)

This was for five people.  Expect to spend about $50 per person without
alcohol.

response 9 of 54:

Feb 14 05:28 UTC 1993

   ...Sounds like a lot of NYC places, to me.

   My stratgey when in NYC is to find a cab driver who understands
something about the food you want, and find out what he or she would
go to.  I'd done this three times there, and got *wonderful*, and I
mean *really wonderful* holes in the wall.  The phones file I had
at the time got damanged, so I lost these resturaunts and I consider
this a great loss.  Once you get out of the notion that you have to
go to a "good place" in NYC, the options really open up.   The little
places that look like they've been blasted out of some previous
business have been the best resturaunts I've ever been to in large
cities.

response 11 of 54:

Feb 14 15:19 UTC 1993

re: cab drivers only being in NY for an hour longer than you.

Last time I was there, a couple of us hopped in a cab and told the
guy to take to the Carnegie Deli, arguably the most famous deli in NY.
The cab driver looks at us, and with a heavy Russian accent asks,
"Vere'z Carnegie Deli?"

response 13 of 54:

Feb 15 17:46 UTC 1993

Some more drift on NYC cab drivers:

Douglas Adams writes (as Ford Prefect writing in the Hitchiker's Guide
to the Galaxy):

Tips for aliens in New York:  

Land anywhere.  Central Park, anywhere.  No one will care or indeed
even notice.

Surviving: get a job as a cabdriver immediately.  A cabdriver's job is to
drive people anywhere they want to go in big yellow machines called taxis.
Don't worry if you don't know how the machine works and you can't speak
the language, don't understand the geography or indeed the basic physics
of the area, and have large green antennae growing out of your head.
Believe me, this is the best way of staying inconspicuous.....

      (excerpted from So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish)

----

Dave Barry says of NYC cabdrivers, "Be sure to speak very clearly to the
driver, as he probably just arrived from a Third World nation where the
major form of transportation is vines."

     (quoted from Dave Barry's Only Travel Guide You'll Ever Need)

...

response 15 of 54:

Apr 11 15:01 UTC 1993

Speaking of 'on the road' places, I just entered an item in the travel
conference on B&B's; feel free to check it out and respond to it.

Also, I've downloaded a number of recipes from AOL that some of the B&Bs
have entered [that they serve at their own B&Bs].  Many of these recipes
sound wonderful!  I'd enter them here but there's so many of them and
with my being long distance and all, it would cost me a small fortune
to do so...  So if someone here would like me to USmail a hard copy of
these recipes, I'd be more than happy to send it on to you, to share with
the rest of you here online.  Just let me know where to send the recipes
too!

response 17 of 54:

May 3 22:04 UTC 1993

[I'll add some of them when I've got a little more time, Dan--in your
reference to recipes and titles...]

response 19 of 54:

Aug 3 11:04 UTC 1993

Now that's something a^2 doesn't have to my knowledge; a fondue restaurant.
Big news for those who care, "Schlotski's" (sp) is opening a restaurant 
in a^2 sometime soon.  A Schlotski sandwich is great.

response 21 of 54:

Aug 3 18:27 UTC 1993

Actually the food did kill someone there last year.

response 23 of 54:

Aug 4 11:37 UTC 1993

I was afraid someone would ask. It's been about 10 years since I had one in
Texas. As best I can recall, it's made with a large flat bread, and contains
various meats and dressings that were really quite delicious. Big help eh?:)
I only heard about this one in Ann Arbor recently and wanted to possibly
confirm it and find out where it is going to be located.