geez. i must be out of the loop. when i saw the topic "Underground Restaurant" i immediately thought of a dark cave where people and hippies and celebrities went to eat food in a more "natural" setting..
i was way off then.
cool idea but why not take the time to find those restaurants that actually do serve fantastic food to pay their lease and tax? very interesting idea though..much more personalized... i could definitely see this being ruined as a major trend.

sonianervosa wrote: why not take the time to find those restaurants that actually do serve fantastic food to pay their lease and tax?

Agreed. Some of us spent a lot of money and time to open a legal business. If these people are charging similar prices as restaurants for this food, I have no respect for them as cooks or "chefs".

zom-zom wrote:Agreed. Some of us spent a lot of money and time to open a legal business. If these people are charging similar prices as restaurants for this food, I have no respect for them as cooks or "chefs".

The one on Bourdain and the one I know of here both charge a "suggested" donation for "membership" of $5.

In the case of the NYC one, most of the people who are involved are some kind of food professional: at least three are food writers, a bunch of the others work in restaurants as cooks, and a few of them are greenmarket people who are food suppliers.

The Bourdain show made it seem like the Portland gathering was more for a bunch of food geeks to get together and get excited about food in a non-rarified way. I would suspect (given what I know of the NY participants) that the one here is similar in spirit.

Well then just have a fucking "Dinner Party" and don't try to give it the cachet of some super-secret spy-restaurant.

So the cooks aren't happy with being line cooks, and they don't want to work their way up the restaurant ladder? Or shell out the money to open a restaurant? "Hey! I can be a chef too!"

Fuck foodies and a "food writer" too. You can get excited about your dinner by cooking it yourself every day.

burun wrote:I like haggis.

I dislike that I have to behave like a criminal to get the real kind.

I dislike that I have to go to Kearny to get the correct sheep parts to make it.

I ate haggis once as some kind of ancestral tradition (we're Scottish).

Jesus H, Jodi! It was wretched! If you gathered up the shits I got from digesting haggis and put it in a plastic bag, it would look roughly just as it did before it entered my system.

Come on man, haggis is excellent. And I'm not a bit Scottish.

Zom-Zom, I love you, but I have to wince at your vitriol here:

zom-zom wrote:So the cooks aren't happy with being line cooks, and they don't want to work their way up the restaurant ladder? Or shell out the money to open a restaurant? "Hey! I can be a chef too!"

Fuck foodies and a "food writer" too. You can get excited about your dinner by cooking it yourself every day.

I don't think it's a case of people not wanting to work their way up the chain. I think it's akin to the musician who gets a day job at a record store, or a recording studio. Maybe these people want to be around food 24/7.

I've written about food in the past, and I cook dinner for myself almost every night. I do not consider myself a foodie. I consider myself as someone who likes to eat. I occasionally have to resort to foodie behavior to get certain items (like buying whole cows) but that's just because I really dig beef.

If I ever come to your restaurant I hope you will not try to kill me with too much butter (as if there is such a thing) or similar.

I don't have the restaurant anymore, but I may be doing some charcuterie at another one for fun and money soon.

I really cannot imagine someone who actually works in a restaurant wanting to spend more time with food. As a sous-chef I spent about 60+ hours per week cooking and dealing with food. And I truly do love it and would cook on my days off. I get the feeling that there is ego involved to a good degree with these things.

Speaking of whole cows, my brother raises longhorn cattle in Wisconsin, and he gave me about 40 lbs. of it for Xmas. That's some fine beef, that grass-fed stuff.

Not sure if this is relevant, but I recently ate one of the best meals of my life here (excellent calamari and a french cut pork chop in burgundy wine mushroom sauce). It's a gourmet restaraunt located inside a Conoco gas station in Watauga, TX (just outside Ft. Worth). The chef is a Nigerian man who came to america to train as a pilot.

Most banks were skeptical of their lack of experience and collateral. They discovered that they were much more likely to get financing on a gas station and once they found a new station under construction that came up for sale, they jumped at the opportunity.

.

WF for actually listing their fries as "Freedom Fries" on the menu.

What makes something "gourmet"?. I hate that term.