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johnb

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  1. johnb
    Just stopping by for the first time in a long time. I checked but didn't find that anyone here had noted that Chang is a finalist for Outstanding Chef America in this year's James Beard Awards (maybe my lack of search skills?) https://www.jamesbeard.org/blog/the-2022-james-beard-awards-nominees
  2. johnb
    No it wasn't that one; Engel had bits and pieces of many fine vineyards in those days, including some Grand Crus if memory serves. As I think about it I think it may have been some Corton or other. Somewhere in a box with thousands of others I'm sure I have a label from one of those bottles. If I get really ambitious (not likely) maybe I'll hunt it down. That's another thing about the old days -- they didn't have modern glues back then, so you could actually soak labels off and preserve them. Anyway, whatever it was, it certainly would be more than $4 a bottle these days, probably even more than $4 a sip. Maybe a sniff.
  3. johnb
    Yes agreed. When I said "good" I was I was referring mostly to high reputation, premier and grand "cru" stuff. That said, based on what I was fortunate to taste over the years, while the "lesser" ones can certainly be good, the big names can be blockbusters. To cite one personal example, the '62 Chambertin Clos St. Jacque of Claire-dau just blew away anything I've ever tasted from among those"lesser-but-good" wines I've had, and it's not alone. What's more, back in the day, you could get wines in that league for under $100 a CASE. The first case of burgundy I ever bought was a '64 Chassagne-Montrachet red Morgeot, and I paid $36 for the case. I'll never forget it. The next case I don't remember exactly but it was from Rene Engel and it was a Premier cru, also a '64, and I do remember I paid $48. Ahh, the good ol' days.
  4. johnb
    The impact of the frost on quantity is clear -- yields will be way down. But the effect on quality is far less clear -- there may be some fine wines produced. Everything depends on the weather up to the time of harvest, not to mention many other variables. We just have to wait and see. Whatever good wine is produced will certainly be expensive given the reduced quantities. The advice to stick with producers whom one trusts is always good, but of course how can one be sure of whom to trust? Many "trustworthy" producers over the years have been found not to deserve the trust. Wine is always a bit of a crapshoot. Considering how little wine is produced in Burgundy anyway, it's a pretty academic discussion for just about everybody these days. Like those articles in car magazines about Italian supercars -- nice to read but of little practical significance for 99.999% of car buyers. I was lucky to be able to afford good Burgundies when I got started in wine, over 40 years ago, but those days are long gone, frost or no frost.
  5. johnb
    I was a grad student in NYC in the late 60's and remember that original TGIF, although I never actually went there, being too poor to partake of such places, and anyway it was way over on the East Side, a place difficult to access from my student digs on the upper West Side, both geographically and psychologically. In those days such places were known as "fern bars," and after TGIFridays showed the way they started to pop up everywhere, as the article says. They all looked pretty much alike, with junky decor on the walls and plants hanging everywhere. It was all the rage. The fact that they all looked alike is not surprising, nor it is a surprise that they are changing their decor in lockstep today. These things move in waves, as the pendulum swings back and forth. It's called "fashion," and just like clothing, every interior design follows the same cues. I watch a lot of house flip and restaurant makeover shows on TV, and it's the same thing. Throw out the old clutter, and install cool, simple, clean if not "natural" decor. Every "with it" home kitchen these days is done in grays and has subway tile backsplashes (another NYC echo). But that will soon fade and be replaced by the NEXT BIG THING. Nobody can predict what it will be, but inevitably it will come.
  6. johnb
    Well, at my stage of life and given where I live, eating out and air travel are less than even moderate. However I do find myself ponying up for some fairly costly cruises from time to time, so maybe I'll be forced to have a look at it.
  7. johnb
    Whew! Reading through this thread reminds me of why I decided to just get unlimited 2% cash back cards with no annual fee. KISS. From the proceeds I can buy my own airline tickets when needed; I'm also lucky, at least when flying United or other Star carriers, that I have a life membership in their club (bought for $500 from Eastern in the early eighties -- no longer offered), so that solves that problem.
  8. johnb
    AS long as you have a rating of 760 or so you are in the "best" risk category. Anything higher is just for fun. I actually got a perfect 850 recently, which I may frame and hang on the wall, but hitting that is mostly by chance and doesn't last.
  9. johnb
    This is different from what bob said above, but in general my understanding is that canceling a card will or may negatively affect your credit score for two reasons: (1) it reduces your ratio of credit use vs. credit available, and (2) if the card is one you've had for a while it reduces the average age of your credit accounts. I don't think the second one affects you in this case, but the first one might. In general, you want to keep accounts for a while and you want to avoid too many credit inquiries such as when you apply for a new card, both of which give lenders comfort that you pay your bills on time and aren't risky. That said, I can't say whether any such negative impact would be material to you. Probably not unless you are contemplating a major borrowing such as a home purchase and the difference in credit rate would have a significant impact. I am wrestling with this right now because I want to cancel the only card I have that has an annual fee and I don't really need it any longer (I have kept it because it offers primary rental car insurance which has value if you rent cars a lot which I don't any longer). But I have had it for over 40 years so it helps my credit rating some, and I'm a credit rating junkie. But I'll probably let it go next time.
  10. johnb
    If you're a Costco member, the new Costco Visa (issued by Citi) gives 3% cash back on restaurants and travel, but 4% on Costco and other "eligible" gas (whatever that means), 2% on all other Costco purchases, and 1% on everything else.
  11. johnb
    Personally, I find chasing after better "deals" on points and all that type of thing a hassle and not worth the trouble. I now have two cards that simply give 2% cash back on everything, with no annual fee. One is only available to Fidelity customers, but the other (Citi Double Cash) is available to anybody. No muss, no fuss, no need to remember whether you're in a limited time period to get a bigger percentage on certain things (which I do try to get when I remember, on a Discover Card I also have, but not obsessively). Works for me. I also have a Capital One card that gives me 1.5% back but also has no fee on foreign transactions, so I use that one whenever charging anything not in US dollars, thus saving the usual 3% FEF. In practice, I use the cash back to against future credit card bills. . I think I'm still ahead by having gotten all that previous cash back. If I fly somewhere, I just buy the ticket (and still get my 2% back).
  12. johnb
    I don't think this has been reported here previously. For those who may be interested in the next phase of John and Karen Shields careers, they are opening a dual restaurant (The Loyalist and Smyth) in Chicago. Smyth was the county in Va. where John and Karen's restaurant(s) were. Linked article gives some information, although the opening date has slipped a bit; Loyalist is in operation and Smyth will open Aug. 26. It's an upstairs/downstairs deal, one casual and one (Smyth) more serious with an 8-course menu at $135. Apr 27, 2016 - "Smyth & The Loyalist will Head for the West Loop in June" by Penny Pollack and Maggie Hennessey on chicagomag.com
  13. johnb
    Well naturally if a chain (or whatever you choose to call it) has three locations, prior to that it had to have had two. But having two doesn't automatically mean the outfit has aspirations of covering the world with its locations -- that wouldn't apply, of course, if the second location has signage, uniforms, menu, etc identical to the first. But otherwise I wouldn't jump to the conclusion that merely having two locations means they are planning to become really YUGE, particularly if the two places, tho under common ownership, operate under different names. If they are two local stores of a chain with many locations elsewhere, then clearly they qualify as chains.
  14. johnb
    My thoughts. Take them FWIW. Two links doth not a chain make. I think that would be beyond the pale. Anyway, the important distinguishing feature, for me, of a chain is not number of locations but whether all locations adhere to a formula, i.e. same menu, same signage, same uniforms, same color theme, same interior, etc. As you suggest, there is no doubt an infinity of variations in the makeup of multiple-location restaurant businesses, and in a website like this you can't have a category for all possibilities. My thought would be that any "chain" must have a minimum of three locations -- if it's only two then group it with conventional restaurants. Among chains, I'd have three categories: formula quick serve (McD, Chipotle), formula dinner house (Red L, Carrabba, etc), and non-formula (places with common ownership but not trying to appear the same as the others in the shared-ownership group). Of course there will be some that don't fit any of those well, but you've got to stop somewhere.
  15. johnb
    For what its worth, I stumbled upon the following article: (I know nothing about the author) "Craft Beer is Dead. Gose Killed It." by Joe Koehane on thrilllist.com Whether one agrees or not, it seems to me to have some interesting comments about staying ahead of the crowd for its own sake.
  16. johnb
    Sometimes, also for clarity, in more than just single letters..... four c.o.d.'s wearing pj's
  17. johnb
    I sure do miss post numbers; really can't fathom why they were taken away
  18. johnb
    The giving up of sovereignty by the 13 colonies was accomplished by the Constitutional Convention. I'm unclear why that was calamitous. I don't see where the various regulatory agencies, or the various departments for that matter, were created in any more a manner embracing "popular sovereignty," as you have defined it, than was the European Commission. For example, I don't ever recall being asked to vote on whether I wanted a, say, FCC, but what they decide does affect me, like dozens of other regulatory bodies who do things I may or may not agree with. The mechanism by which they are created may not be the same, but that doesn't change the reality that I see. There's a larger point here as well. Democracy has been deified of late, e.g. by Bernie Sanders and others. But think about it. Pure democracy has a fundamental weakness -- it is subject to the popular whims of crowds, and in the heat of the moment can lead to very bad results when voters are not fully cognizant of the ramifications of what they are voting on. There are already stories in the press about second thoughts that many who voted "leave" are having. The founding fathers had read their Plato, and were well aware of this weakness. That's one reason they designed the government as they did, to force decisions to be a multi-step process that would counteract the heat of the moment. Pure democracy scares me, and count me with those who don't believe in it.
  19. johnb
    While it's obviously not a perfect analogy, you could say something similar about the 13 American colonies, who were sovereign prior to ratifying the Constitution, coming together and giving up most of their sovereign rights to a central government. We've managed. And the so-called unelected bureaucracy is really no different from the unelected regulatory agencies in Washington who make regulations that apply to all the states, but nobody raises a sovereignty issue about that. It's all perception and emotion, and the sovereignty argument is bunk in my opinion. Maybe most here are too young to remember, but the EU was created with a major goal of insuring that the nations of Europe, in spite of their dissimilar languages and cultures, would forevermore cooperate and be interdependent, and thus never again go to war, as they already had twice in the 20th century and continuously for hundreds of years before that. Weakening the EU works against this principle, and in my view is dangerous and ill-advised for that reason alone. Yes, something like that could still happen. Once the cart is tipped over, it's not possible to know where the contents will roll.
  20. johnb
    Agree. Seems to me that "political correctness" is really nothing more than what used to be called being polite. But these days politeness appears to be on the endangered species list.
  21. johnb
    +1 on B&J. Once in the Jax area, there is a really good BBQ place southwest of town on the banks of the St. Johns River called Woodpeckers. Maybe 20 min. from the nearest exit. Get there early -- they start running out of things by 5pm -- they close at 7pm IIRC. They are well-known for their fatty brisket, which I have not yet had because of getting there too late. But everything I've had has been good.
  22. johnb

    Italy

    johnb replied to susan's topic in The Intrepid Traveler

    It's a jungle out there. What really gets me is that the rental agencies (in my case Hertz) know full well about this, but I at least was not given any warning at all, which is the least they could do. I'd be curious if others have received any warning at the time of rental. So far I have only heard from them about two infractions, but I have a few months to go before the one-year mark, which I understand is some sort of time limit, so now I get to hang around and wonder if any more will come in. We'll see. But the whole thing stinks, and the more I learn about it the more I wonder why somebody, like the EU commission, doesn't crack down on the abusive aspects. They are entitled to reasonably enforce their regulations, but taking advantage of unaware foreign tourists is not only dirty pool but may well start to hurt them in the long run. Tourism is a big part of the Italian economy, and you'd think they would think a bit beyond padding their stream of revenue with these Ferguson-like practices.
  23. johnb

    Italy

    johnb replied to susan's topic in The Intrepid Traveler

    Actually it is quite the scam, particularly in Florence which is where one of the tickets I got came from. Astrid referred to this above, about six posts up. Here is a link to a pretty thorough discussion of what is going on, with special emphasis on Florence. click But take it from me it can happen elsewhere too. Italy just isn't the pleasant place to visit that it used to be. Local governments can't raise money in the normal ways so they are resorting to scams like this and hitting up the tourists. I have paid up because delay appears futile. It seems the rental car company will eventually pay and bill it to you, which apparently they can do even if you no longer have that particular credit card, and if you balk it could make problems from your credit rating. And by then the fine could be significantly larger than it was. In short, they have you by the short hairs. I would not be surprised if this becomes such a well-known problem that it starts to have a negative effect on Italian tourism's image (a story on CNN would get the ball rolling) that the national government finally steps in and curbs the worst abuses. But it apparently hasn't happened yet. For now, maybe the south of France is a better option, certainly for those who wish to enjoy the countryside and need their own transportation to do that.
  24. johnb

    Italy

    johnb replied to susan's topic in The Intrepid Traveler

    Beware. After returning home from a recent trip partly in Italy I received two charges on my credit card from Hertz, fees for giving my contact info to police authorities, at 35 euros a pop. When the tickets finally arrived (sent by a third party processor of course, further driving up the fines ultimately to be paid) one was for driving in a restricted zone, which of course I had no idea we were doing, and one was for driving in a lane reserved for something else for 18 seconds I believe it was. Again I had no idea we were doing anything wrong. One of those was about 100 euros and the other about 150. Credits cards accepted of course -- everything done on the net. Quite the money-maker. Until this trip I always advised folks to rent a car in Italy. Now I'm less sure, certainly if driving in cities is involved. At the very least, don't drive anywhere unless you have seen locals drive in those same spots).
  25. johnb
    Think of it this way. You can pop whole-kernel popcorn, but you can't pop corn meal. Meal is what you get when you mill (grind) the kernels. Popcorn pops because heat causes the moisture in the kernel to become steam, which expands and finally explodes the outer shell of the kernel, disgorging the inner contents to form the finished popcorn. It can only happen if the outer shell is intact and holds in the steam pressure for a while so it builds up and finally is too strong for the outer shell to continue to hold it in and the explosion occurs. If that outer shell is gone, there is no pressure buildup and no explosion. i.e. no "pop."
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