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Popular opinion? Do you think that Night Hawks hangs in the Art Institute of Chicago because of popular opinion or because it is a seminal example of American Scene painting, expressing the loneliness, vacuity, and stagnation of town life?



Actually I didn't notice your location. I was driving around Evanston today and some of the houses reminded me of his archicture.



Okay you lost me here, I don't understand how you can be influential and not great. In fact influence is the predicate for greatness. How can something be great if it isn't influential? But besides that, you are ignoring the practical reality of the situation by pointing to the exceptions to disprove the rule. What I mean by that is the following. Suppose we asked 1000 people who had a reasonable appreciation of architecture whether FLW was a great architect and 750 of them said yes. Do you think that creates a practical reality? If your answer is no, well increase that number to 850? Ready to yield yet? 950? 999? At what point do the dissenters become outliers that should be ignored?

The right of individuality is not a valid reason to ignore the practical reality of a situation, even if dissent is based on valid concerns. Hence, I present my opinions as fact when I believe I am expressing the practical reality of a situation. Chicago's Gold Coast contains a beautful series of buildings is a valid statement that can be presented as fact even though we can find people who dissent. And don't get me started on Pink Floyd and Milli Vanilli.



What exactly is wrong with dismissing entire cultures (from a culinary perspective?) Lots of cultures have crap food and lots of cultures have food that is ridden with limitations. Why exactly shouldn't they be dismissed or criticized for those shortcomings? Is it not politically correct or something. I really don't understand. I grew up in a kosher home and I can tell you that regardless of heritage and carrying on an ancient tradition, kosher food is crap. And the reason it is crap is not because Jews are making it, it's that the orthodox Jewish community values following Jewish tradition more than they value eating delicious food. So they end up with making fake scallops and phony bacon and whipped cream made from soy products so they can make believe they are not being kosher. What exactly is wrong for criticizing or dismissing them for that?

Some cultures value the dining experience more than others do. The French value it alot but the English not as much. The Belgiums do but the Dutch not as much. The Italians do but the Greeks, not really. The Spanish do and the Portugese not quite as much. The Japanese value dining more than the Chinese do. What exactly is wrong with criticizing or dismissing those cultures that value it less, and who have a less sophisticated culinary tradition than the countries that value it more?

Re fish sauce; Like with tacos I was using it as an example of a shortcut. If it turns out to be a bad example, pick another one. But, as Darren said, you can't prove that Thai food is sophisticated by proving me wrong. In order to do that you need to offer objective details about what makes it a sophisticated cuisine relative to other sophisticated cuisines.

Spoon Thai
4608 N Western Ave
Chicago, IL 60625
(773) 769-1173

So if I go back through this thread I'm not going to find a quote from you stating that the opinion of the majority is correct?
Yes or No?






Hint - yes I will

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The cake is a lie

I'm not sure what quote you will find, but I am certain that it will say that a majority of informed opinions set the standards and parameters of what passes for good and bad taste.

I find it odd that so many people here are rejecting this concept when the dynamic I am expressing is exactly how Spoon came to prominence among the LTH community in the first place. All I have done is add a few data points that are intended to allow people to recalibrate their opinions. But people are quick to reject what I have contributed to the discussion because it shatters the illusion that has been created by the groupthink on the topic.

Well Plotnicki, thanks for finally saying what I knew all along. You are basically a culinary Rudyard Kipling, fascinated that the dancing savages somehow learned to smash beans and grind corn cobs, but utterly sure that no matter what they do, they are simply incapable of human intellectual thought. This trope is as old as Europe's interactions with its "other" and continues to live on, in various ways, in places no less sophisticated than say, the New York Times. Glad to see that you're still fighting the good fight and manning the gates against the barbarians Stevo.

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"By the fig, the olive..." Surat Al-Teen, Mecca 95:1"

Gee Habibi I didn't say that. Saying that people do not practice serious intellectual discource is not the same thing as saying they aren't capable of it. I know that you would like to conflate the two because it makes me a bad guy in the eyes of readers who would like to discredit what I am saying but I have to cry foul.

I like to eat falafal too but I have yet to find a version that is as special as David Chang's pork bun or Ramen is. And there is a concrete reason for that. For some reason Semitic cultures have not developed their cuisines to the extent that Koreans and Japanese have. If you want to call my pointing that out some type of insult to their ethnicity you are seriously misguided. I would like nothing better than for someone to make the falafal to end all falafals. But my desire for that to hapopen doesn't change the cold hard reality that it doesn't yet exist, and the reason for that is the lack of culinary development in semitic culinary culture.

Why that is the case is an interesting discusion. But before it can take place, people need to be willing to ackowledge the relative level of sophistication of the cuisine under discussion.

I also wanted to add that your references to Chicago and Addis Ababa betray a deep ignorance of history. Addis Ababa, though founded and built not long after Chicago, nonetheless is a city where many languages are spoken, a city that served as the site of fierce resistance to a barbaric and genocidal Italian occupation, a city that indeed includes a commodities exchange, and a city that is the capital of one of the oldest Christian communities in the world. The "beads and rugs" thing? That's simply racial and cultural chauvinism.

Also wanted to add that I'm out after this post.

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"By the fig, the olive..." Surat Al-Teen, Mecca 95:1"

So, what points did you add other than you liked the soup, you liked the raw shrimp, and they used the same sauce more than once? Also, as far as I can tell, LTH is split on whether or not Spoon is the best, or among the best Thai in Chicago.

This is the best thread ever! At first I thought it was kind of loping along, sort of powered by LOLs and skewed logic in equal measure. But now it reminds of this infamous Norwegian dude on some other forum, a self-professed musicologist and master of melody, who has scientifically decided that the European melodic tradition is vastly superior to other traditions, and that the music of, say, Africa, while pleasant is prima facia inferior to European music, which is more, well, sophisticated. Ergo, the greatest band of all time, says this guy, is '70s Genesis. And the contributions of James Brown to popular music has been borderline disastrous, due to his stress on rhythm over melody. And so on.

Basically, we're on a collision course to Godwin here! I don't know if I should be proud or embarrassed.



How anyone can see this example, among many pedantic others, as anything other than a conflation of these two strains of thought is beyond me. It's a "seminal example" because of popular opinion!!! That is, the popular opinion of art historians and the like, who are certainly a less rarified bunch than armchair experts on ethnic food traditions. But beyond that, being a seminal example of anything doesn't necessarily make it superior. It's just a shortcut iconic symbol of a certain arbitrary standard of subjective measurement.

And, btw, you guys holding up Pink Floyd as some sort of gold standard epitome of quality is straight-up nuts.

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http://fishsticksandketchup.com/

I doubt most would have been caught up in this discussion if it had originated as currently structured. A new thread with Steve Plotnicki as the OP was started. I don't know who came up with the thread title, which I dislike quite a bit.

And I agree with MarkH that this thread seems better suited to "Other Culinary Chat" or the trashbin. Yet I got involved posting and continue to read it- somewhat perversely at this point- I must admit.

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Man : I can't understand how a poet like you can eat that stuff.
T. S. Eliot: Ah, but you're not a poet.

I made the call, performed the split and came up with the thread title. Mr. Plotnicki started the discussion, so there's no logical reason for his post not to be first. If he wants to edit the subject line, he's free to do so.

The main goal here, which was successfully acheived, was to preserve the Spoon thread. This multi-page tangent -- one certainly worthy of its own thread, regardless of anyone's personal feelings about Mr. Plotnicki -- would have been out of place on the Spoon thread and made it difficult to navigate for anyone coming here seeking information about Spoon Thai. That is why the discussion was split off, and I stand by my decision 100%.

As for where the thread resides, when it was first split off, the discussion was more about Eating Out in Chicagoland than it is now. But come on. Does it really matter where it resides? If you're in a vortex, it doesn't matter where a thread resides, you're going to keep reading it, regardless. If we move it, are you really going to stop reading/participating?

=R=
for the moderators

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I just wanna live until I gotta die. I know I ain't perfect but God knows I try. --Todd Snider

Twitter: ronniesuburban

Okay so Vitesse's post gets right to the heart of this discussion. I see the world in terms of people who are expert in a particular topic giving appropriate advice to others so they can do a better job of practicing their hobby or passion. But Vitesse seems to lump all of these people (like art historians) into a singular category called "popular opinion." Not only is that wrong, it is intelectually disingenuous because the same proposition would stand for the fact that people on LTH do not have an appropriate level of expertise to determine that Spoon is a good restaurant or that Mexican and Arabic cuisines are as good as any others.

So which one is it Vitesse? Is the world ordered according to expertise or is it ordered around a subjective reality which is determined by people with no expertise? And let me see if I underastand your position properly. The art viewers are as knowledgable as the historians, filmgoers as knowledgable as the critics, shoppers as knowledgable as the buyers and cardiac patients as knowledgable as heart surgeons. Why don't we just let the Three Stooges run the country so every time we had an international dispute it could be settled by Curley going gnar, gnar gnar?

Sweetbread - By pointing out a limitation in the ingredients and labor that they use at Spoon, I put forth the following question: Have people been rating Spoon too highly because they didn't consider those limitations?

Habibi - Are you telling me that selling rugs for cash at a market is as sophisticated a transaction as using an algoritihm to calculate future commodity prices? How about this one. 25% of homes in Addis Ababa don't even have toilets. Meanwhile 100% of Chicago homes have the, In fact you couldn't get a certificate of occupancy without one. Is it cultural chauvinism to point out that fact?

Steve, you keep saying that "most ethnic restaurants are cheap" (and use pre-fab, non-artisanal ingredients), and you even go so far as to say 99.999% (I forget how many 9's you used) of "ethnic" restaurants are cheap (and use pre-fab, non-artisanal ingredients).

I would posit that most restaurants PERIOD -- ethnic, non-ethnic, whatever -- are cheap, and use pre-fab, non-artisanal ingredients. I would also posit that, regardless of the percentage of "ethnic" restaurants that fall into the cheap category, the percentage of "non-ethnic" -- let's assume these are the restaurants that serve American- or Western European-based cuisine, or are otherwise not run by nor serve the traditional food of Thais, Koreans, Chinese, Indians, Mexicans or even Albanians -- IS EVEN HIGHER. Do you count the number of McDonald's in this country in your evaluation of non-ethnic restaurants? Is North Pond your idea of a reasonable representative of all restaurants that serve "non-ethnic" food?

Could I just as well cite the example of non-ethnic restaurants such as McDonald's, Burger King, Subway, Wendy's, IHOP, Chili's, Applebee's, your corner diner, etc., and then claim that most non-ethnic restaurants are inferior to most ethnic restaurants? Is "cheapness" of a restaurant more salient when the food is "ethnic?"

Natasha - But nobody is claiming that they are having a superb dining experience at McDonald's. What makes the conversation about places like Spoon unique is that people speak of the experience in ways that should be reserved for restaurants taking a greater degree of care in preparing their food.

Actually, every once in a while, there is no substitute for a Big Mac for me. On those occasions, that's a great eating experience. Or a middle-of-the-night omelet at IHOP.

So you don't think Spoon is worth the hype coming from some people here. That's fine. It's where you then claim that "most ethnic restaurants are cheap" (not merely "most ethnic restaurants that are getting praise on this board are cheap") with the underlying message that most ethnic -- as opposed to non-ethnic -- restaurants are inferior, is where people get bristly.

This thread is exactly like a talking dog with a Geraldo Rivera mustache dramatically announcing the approach of a cat-juggling, waterskiing shark about to jump over a whale shark (interrupted at the last minute with a Rick-Roll to a Plotnicki blog post). Yet we keep following like inept livestock (which just so happens to be an anagram of “Steve Plotnicki”!) We have ALL fallen down the rabbit hole!!

At least the merchants of Addis Ababa did not take down the global economy like the OPs "sophisticated" MOTU friends did.

While his comments have gone from the more subtle to more blatant racism ( "ethnic" to "beads for rugs") we are supposed to see Plotnicki as an ultimate arbiter of civilized living...
just stunning.

But the vast, vast majority of ethnic restaurants are cheap. Can you name many that aren't?

Otherwise I disagree with you about what people get bristly about. I think people have their egos invested in their expertise, and by my pointing out certain limitations that they didn't consider, that expertise is challenged. You can see this in this thread where so many people are asking me to admit that I don't know anything about Thai food. Well guess what, whether I know alot about Thai food has nothing to do with whether I can tell if something is a store bought product or a homemade product. I mean does anyone think I would make the same criticism if the usual shortcuts weren't present at Spoon?

Blatant racism? I assure you that I am one of the least racist people you will ever meet. And I am also on the side of 99ers (even though they came to my building to protest because the head of JP Morgan lives in it.) My kids and I were the only people in the builkding who went down to talk to them. But what I am not is a relativist and if one culture produces ballet and the other square dancing, I have no problem saying one culture is superior to the other. That isn't racist, it's just an assessment of which technique of dance is superior to the other.

And an even vaster majority of non-ethnic restaurants are cheap (and use pre-fab, non-artisianal ingredients), in vaster quantities. Do you disagree? So, what was your point in connecting the ethnic aspect of a place like Spoon with its use of pre-fab, non-artisanal ingredients (i.e., its cheapness)?

As far as I know, nobody here was saying that Spoon's food was at the same level as Arun's (which apparently doesn't use pre-fab, non-artisanal ingredients) or North Pond's or Charlie Trotter's. And nobody who takes a look at Spoon would think that the prices Spoon was charging was going to get them the same experience as at Arun's and North Pond's and Charlie Trotter's. But that's not their yardstick for a restaurant to deserve praise on this board -- Should it necessarily be?

Wow, and thanks for the part about you living in the same building as the head of JP Morgan!!! That was so useful.

Why should any fact be ignored? Every bit of information that is available should be part of the mix in assessing any restaurant.



Thanks. I knew you would find that to be useful information about food!

The perfect irony of this sentence is almost impossible to parse. I wish we had a "slow clap" icon...

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Hey, that's practically East Harlem!

Now you know why I can walk to such good taco carts.

The best tacos I have found are at http://tacosmog.com/rev/t/tacomix.html

They have a brazier that is always split between pieces of brisket and pig's ear. Nothing seperates the two cuts of meat so each one flavors the other. The suedero comes on mini-tortillas so 3 of them cost $5. Great stuff. At night they have a spit cooking al pastor and sometimes I order that but the suedero is really where it;s at. Come to NYC and I will take you on a tour!

But why does anyone's food or culture have to be superior to another one's? I hate Mexican food and I don't much care for Middle Eastern food but I certainly don't think Italian or Yugoslavia nor Thai is somehow a vastly superior culture foodwise or any otherwise to me. Personally, I see valuing all cultures on the same level is much more interesting and learning new tidbits here and there is what makes a person's great character. If I wanted to be racist and elitist and think one particular culture is better than all the other lowly peasants out in the sea, I would just hang with some mebers of my family which to me is akin to losing some brain cells. Not interested in that.

A large part of the problem Steve is that you desire to apply a professor of mathematics' analysis to food and not only is it not that simple, but that type of analysis is totally irrelevant to most people, even people whose lives revolve largely around food. That likely explains why you were so enamored with Next's Thai menu, whereas others (myself included) would have been happier eating Thai food at Spoon, Aroy or TAC Quick, irrespective of price or value. Forget the quality of Next's ingredients - I found the flavors did not meet up to my hopes and expectations, except that one of the desserts blew me away.

As for Spoon, you persist in discussing their short cuts, their use of commercially purchased and unaltered ingredients. And despite your demand for "empirical evidence" from everyone else, you hold yourself to a very different standard. You claim to be the expert and say "I just know" Spoon cuts corners and doesn't make its own sauces/pastes, but you admit that you have no such evidence. It's one thing to offer an opinion; it's an entirely different thing to claim a fact to be true when you admit that you have no such knowledge.

I enjoy Thai food. The whole Plotnicki disccussion makes me want to try Spoon Thai sometime in the near future after passing it by for years. Looking forward to when I do.

I think I would have continued to check in on this thread until the end of time if someone hadn't made the spot-on Geir Hongro comparison that provided me with the closure necessary for me to feel comfortable peacing on this kerfuffle. God I love the Internet.

The title of this thread is awful. Really, I'm not sure how connecting "ethnic" restaurants with the use of pre-fab, non-artisanal ingredients (i.e., with cheapness, lack of sophistication, and just general inferiority) can be anything other than blatantly racist. That is, considering that the vaster majority of non-ethnic restaurants* also use pre-fab, non-artisanal ingredients, and in greater amounts. Is this a case of a shortcoming of an individual entity being attributed to an entire swath of people or culture, so long as that entity is a member of "the other," whereas if the shortcoming is found in one of "one's own," it's just an isolated fluke or otherwise shouldn't be considered as representative of "one's own"?

If the objection to the kind of praise Spoon gets here is that certain segment of self-proclaimed restaurant experts automatically give undue credit to an "ethnic" restaurant just for being ethnic (which I could see is possibly condescending and pretentious in a Stuff White People Like kind of way), that's one thing. But to say "most ethnic restaurants are cheap" -- as if most non-ethnic restaurants are not cheap or are less cheap -- is another (in addition to being demonstrably wrong).

*Pertinent to the discussion is one's definition of ethnic vs. non-ethnic restaurants. My (somewhat) tongue-in-cheek definition of a non-ethnic restaurant is one that: (1) serves American or Western-European food; or (2) otherwise is not run by, nor serves the traditional food of, Thais, Koreans, Chinese, Indians, Mexicans, or even (gasp) Albanians. Included in the category of non-ethnic restaurants are: McDonald's, Burger King, Subway, Chili's, Applebee's, IHOP, Denny's, Ruby Tuesday, your corner diner, and pretty much every other restaurant on "Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives." So, mathematically speaking, which category of restaurant uses more pre-fab, non-artisanal ingredients, in terms of both frequency and quantity? If the above list of restaurants aren't included in your calculus or definition of restaurant, why not?

Stepping off my soapbox now ...

Oh gee how many times do I have to say that I offered an opinion about the shortcuts based on special knowledge and my own experience. The things that makes the odds of my being right so strong is the price point has built in limitations. You know it would be great if someone on this thread came along and offered evidence to the contrary. Like here is a way that Spoon is doing it and add a data point to the conversation. Yet people keep trying to prove Spoon's prominence by attacking my character and questioning my analystical skills. To that I say: If you have evidence, bring it on.

Okay let's have an analystical conversation about the Thai food at Next. If we may, I am going to limit the analysis to the Pad Thai. It's actually a wonderful example because it will tie many issues that have been raised in this thread together. There is a dish from the Lagioule region of France called gargouillou. It is a very simple concept. It takes 30 odd vegetables and puts them in a pot of boiling water with some ham or saltback to give them flavor. It's peasant food and best eaten with crusty bread, salty butter and a hefty glass of wine. Sounds good right? It's the great, French home cooking that someone brought up above.

Now despite the fact that the dish was made in French homes for a few centuries, a chef from the Lagioule region by the name of Michel Bras noticed something about the dish. What he noticed was the following: Each vegetable was better off if it was cooked at a water temperature that cooked it perfectly. Bras noticed that when you put the 30 vegetables together, some were done before others and you ended up with a dish where some vegetables were overcooked. Not only that, because you cooked every vegetable at a uniform temperature they released impurities into the water (you know that scummy stuff you have to skim off.)Last but not least, by cooking the vegetables together, the flavors bled into each other and got muddled. So Bras deconstructed the dish by using 30 different pots of water to cook the 30 vegetables, each one cooked at the perfect temperature so as not to release the impurities, and to keep the flavors from bleeding into each other and to make sure nothing was overcooked. When he was finished, he tossed them all together like a salad with the ham to give the dish flavor. He detemined the final product was an improvement because the flavor of each ingredient was crystal clear while creating a group flavor as well.

According to Dave Beran, after he and Grant sampled dozens of Pad Thais all over Chicago, they adopted this approach to create their Pad Thai. And while I am not going to take a position on whether you should have liked their version better than what they serve at a traditional Thai restaurant, the version served at a traditional Thai restaurants includes overcooked ingredients, impurities released from the way the ingredients are cooked together at a uniform temperature and flavors that have bled together. And while I personally don't care which version you like better, I will say that it seems illogical to prefer the one with the impurities and other "flaws" to the one that is cooked more perfectly.

By the way, there is nothing that stops a traditional Thai restaurant from improving on their Pad Thai by taking a similar approach. But they simply don't have the manpower or will to do it at the price point they sell their food for. Hence the title of this thread.

Natasha - I am not objecting to the type of prasie Spoon gets here. I have added data points to the discussion to try and tether the praise to a practical reality of what is really going on in the Spoon kitchen so people can learn something about what they are eating. Hopefully the next time BR orders a Pad Thai at some tradirional restaurant, he will remember what I wrote and out the dish through a different type of analysis.