Okun on Food

New Year's Resolution

If you make a restaurant reservation and can't keep it for some reason, make a solemn vow to cancel ahead of time. In talking with restaurateurs in the area, that's the message they want to impart. Especially on New Year's Eve is that important. If there's a table of no-shows, that table stands empty  -- there aren't many walk-ins on the last night of the year.

Tommy Lombardo of the eponymous restaurant at 1198 Hertel Avenue is oversold but says he usually figures a 10 percent erosion. That's counting things like a table of 6 becoming a table of 4, for instance. And then there are the guys who make New Year's reservations at four or five different places and finally cancel all but one at the very last minute. That's more common than you might expect.

Lombardo and other restaurateurs also mention the importance of punctuality. If an early res shows up late, there goes the evening. Sort of like planes stacking up at JFK.

Empty tables mean big loss of income, so don't get mad if the restaurant calls to verify a couple of days ahead of time. Just be glad it doesn't ask for a credit card number as a guarantee. Many restaurants (especially in the Big Apple) have been known to do just that.

What if they DO recognize me?

Questions. In my role, as restaurant reviewer for The News  I get many questions.

One of the  most common is about staying unrecognized. I  try to do just that, not always successfully, because I happen to think that's a more professional way to do the job. I make reservations under a different name.

But when you stop to think about it, there's serious doubt about what a restaurateur  can do even if he does recognize me.  Yes, I can be escorted  to a good table, and yes, I can  get  the best server -- but there's little that can change in the kitchen once I'm there. 

That  may be very bad news for the people who do visit a restaurant claiming to be me. (Yes, people do. I hear about it happening many times.)

But here, in the interest of making things easier for restaurateurs and impostors alike, are  three clues as to my identity: 1)I weigh 300 pounds. 2) I order a lot and don't finish much of it, and 3) I  am completely bald.

Oops, sorry -- only one of three hints above is true!
 

Guilty Pleasures

New Years resolution time is coming, as you can tell by diet plans and gyms sending warm messages on TV. Well good for them, say I, and good for all you people out there who are going to turn over a new leaf -- yet again.

But before we all take that Big Step, here are a couple of guilty pleasures in which to indulge. I was inspired by a wonderful book called "The Food Snob's Dictionary: An Essential Lexicon of Gastronomical Knowledge" by David Kamp and Marion Rosenfeld (Broadway Books, 2007.) Kamp also has a very funny website.

Among the decadent goodies the authors list are Jif and Skippy commercial peanut butter, which, they say, tastes  better and feels better in the mouth than the natural butters that always separate. Also, canned French-fried onions. Great  selections.

But I'd like to add a couple indulgences of my own, if you don't  mind.: M & Ms, either the peanut or almond kind. I'd rather eat them than any chocolate  with a French name and a percent symbol on the label.

Cold  pizza. Which everybody knows tastes better after spending the night in the fridge. Cold, stiff, congealed -- pure heaven.

Fritos. The original ones, just plain corn chips that don't put on any airs. Please take away those god -awful citrus-flavored chips. I  want to wallow in Friotos' very ordinariness.

Canned soup. I am talking about Campbell's Tomato (made with whole milk, if you please) and Cream of Mushroom (NOT the  low sodium version.)

I'm not embarrassed to admit that I am in love with truly inferior food. And confession is good for the soul, they say.

No one is immune from sinning.  So you can even add a comment of your own about your culinary weaknesses if you'd like. Go ahead - the doctor is in. And we're  all listening.

Supermarket Sorrows

A couple weeks ago I wrote a column suggesting how supermarkets can improve themselves.  Many readers responded. In today's column, I address the issues they brought up.

The thing many seemed to resent the most were self-checkouts -- technological "miracles" where the customer lifts, prices, pays for and packs his own groceries. The checkouts are offered as an alternative to conventional checkouts, where a cashier and, if you are very lucky - a bagger assists.

But there are also a lot of other things readers don't  like - at least based on the comments I received.

They don't like  special sale prices that require you to buy two or more of an item. They don't like coupons that award special prices only for large sizes. They get angry when the item they want is on the top shelf where they can't reach it, and they don't like displays in the middle of the aisles that impede their movements. All of which I can, at least partially, understand. 

Makes  me wonder, though. Is there really such a thing as a perfect food market? Maybe in heaven. What do you think?

Duck Fat (yes that's what I said)

Duck  fat is beautiful. And, of all the birthday presents I've ever received, it is the most unusual. A friend, equally as adventurous about food as I am, presented me with two cottage cheese container-sized tubs of the stuff. (It came from Dartagnan, and she bought it on line.)

Pure white, snowflake light, with a low melting point, it set up the sliced potatoes I put in the skillet.  had been inspired by some french fries I once ate in a restaurant called ( guess what?) Duck Fat -- in Portland, Maine.

My potatoes were the best spuds I've ever eaten, and now I'm going to take on Caramelized Onions (in a Crockpot, I think).

"Better than butter," says the label and -- it's certainly as good as butter. Before this, the only fat I ever thought could give butter any competition was olive oil. And yes, olive oil is healthier, but some of the research I've been  doing seems to indicate that duck fat is actually slightly lower in saturated fat than the bovine product, and slightly lower in cholesterol too.

I'm making no health claims here! And I'm not using it in cookies. But duck fat is certainly tops on my list.

Last supper continued

After I filed  my column on my choices for what I would eat if it were my last meal on Earth, I had some second (and third) thoughts.

Now I'm thinking I might just want a Ted's hot dog with onion rings and a loganberry (without ice please). Or, a thick steak, rare - with caramelized onions. In fact, anything with caramelized onions will do it.

Anybody out there have any thoughts on your last meal?

Words for Food

In the spirit of the holiday, let me introduce you to the  website  www.FreeRice.com It's a vocabulary game really. When you log on, you'll get a word with four different definitions.

Click on the definition you think applies. If you're choose right, 20 grains of rice will be donated to the United Nations World Food Program. Then you'll get another word, and so it goes. Some 182,433,040 grains were donated  yesterday; 7,536,669,470 grains since the site's beginning.

FreeRice.com  has been in existence since 2007 and is paid for by the advertisers at the bottom of the vocabulary screen. And don't think you're going to have it easy -- for every correct definition you select, another harder word takes its place, which makes it challenging as well as fun.

It's a win-win situation. Feed the hungry;  get smarter and have a great time.

Immortality?

This just in: I am informed by an impeccable source that a wax model of a Burger King Whopper is being installed for posterity today in Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum in New York City.  This is in honor of the burger's 50th anniversary- - it was introduced in 1957.

And that announcement brings a couple of thoughts to mind, the first one being that I never even knew there was a Madame Tussaud's  in New York City. The  second thought is a little more  obvious:

How will you be able to tell the difference between a real Whopper and the one that resides in the home of the Madame?

Actually that question is not really fair. I'll confess right now that I am a fan of the Whopper and I enjoy one once or twice a year in my car,  usually well hidden in the back of the parking lot. It is one of my guilty culinary pleasures

. So now I keep on thinking to myself -- what other foods deserve such spectacular enshrinement? Any suggestions? 

Tweaking the Supermarkets

In my column of Dec. 5, I took it upon myself to write an open letter to Frank Curci, the newly appointed CEO of Tops. I congratulated him and offered a few suggestions on how he might improve the stores, which had been operating for so many years under the absentee ownership of Ahold.

This was an easy thing for me to do, of course, since I shop at so many different supermarkets several times a week. And, it occurred to me that every supermarket I visit can use a little, er, tweaking.

Is it just as easy for everyone else?  Suppose you had just been appointed the big gun at a local supermarket chain (any chain in the area, I mean ). What's the first thing you would do to improve the place?  For argument's sake, let's assume that whatever money it would cost - no  matter how many dollars you had to spend - would not be a factor.