Breakfast: We each grabbed a doughnut from Dunkin' Donuts at JFK Airport before our flight back to Austin.

Lunch: We had Nong Shim Seafood Ramyun with Napa cabbage and egg.

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What I Ate: October 19, 2010 (Texas Roadhouse)

Dinner: We had a late dinner at Per Se (10 Columbus Cir # 6-REST, New York, NY (212) 823-9335) starting around 10pm. This was a bit late for us to start eating dinner, especially after not getting much sleep the last two days (traveling between New York and Philadelphia and back). Execution wasn't perfect - the butter poached lobster was very chewy and flavor wasn't as good as the similar dish we had at Le Bernardin, but the high points of the food were simply amazing - the best foie gras preparation we had ever tasted, the best fish course (sauteed halibut), all the breads were outstanding with the highlight being a brioche toast that blew me away, the best doughnut we've ever had, a seemingly endless supply of mignardises…

Service was a bit weird at first, making us feel pretty awkward for the first thirty minutes of our meal. At these prices, it's unacceptable - but, over the course of the evening the staff seemed to warm up and by the end everything was made perfect by a visit to their expansive kitchens where Thomas Keller waved at us from the kitchen of The French Laundry via teleconference! (Tina said I kept waving at him like an idiot… what can I say, it's Thomas Keller!)

I'm working on a more complete documentation of our dinner to be posted at Cooking For Engineers and I'll post a link here when that is ready. In the meantime, enjoy these teaser photos.

Through these doors (the automatic sliding glass ones on the sides, not the big blue door) awaits one of the best fine dining restaurants in the United States.

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What I Ate: October 18, 2010 (Per Se)

Breakfast: In the morning, we walked down to High Point Cafe (602 Carpenter Ln, Philadelphia, PA (215) 849-5153) in the West Mount Airy neighborhood of Philadelphia where I enjoyed a hot chocolate and split a cinnamon roll with Tina.

Lunch: After taking the Chinatown bus back from Philadelphia to New York, we found ourselves in (you guessed it) Chinatown. We couldn't pass up this opportunity to eat the xiao long bao at Joe's Shanghai (9 Pell Street, New York (212) 233-8888) again, so we rolled our luggage over and ordered another two orders of xiao long bao (one order of crab with pork and one order of pork).


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What I Ate: October 18, 2010 (High Point Cafe, Joe's Shanghai)

I use Razer mice almost exclusively on all my computers, but every year or two a problem arises where clicking results in a double click. This issue is usually caused by dust or lint collecting near the clicker inside the mouse which changes how quickly the button goes from depressed to open circuit. Because the timing changes, the firmware which controls the debouncing logic gets confused and intermittently (and then later always) registers a double click. This is of course very annoying when trying to highlight text (because the double click cause the text to unhighlight) and other mouse clicking activities. Solving this problem is pretty easy and the procedure is the same for both the Copperhead and Diamondback mice that I have.

Flip over the mouse and look at the underside. There is a screw underneath the bottom pad by the heel of the mouse.

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Fixing the Razer Copperhead (or Razer Diamondback) Double Click Problem

Lunch: We met up with our friends Trevor and Signe in Philadelphia where we had cheesesteaks from both Pat's King of Steaks (1237 E Passyunk Ave, Philadelphia, PA (215) 468-1547) and Geno's Steaks (1219 S 9th St, Philadelphia, PA (215) 389-0659) which are situated across the street from each other.

I believe Pat's invented the Philadelphia Steak Sandwich in the 1930's while Geno's came along later with a snazzier shop with brighter lights. Both claim they were the first to add cheese to make the Cheesesteak, but it seems that Pat's was the first to use Cheez Whiz.

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What I Ate: October 17, 2010 (Pat's King of Steaks, Geno's Steaks, Buddakan)

Lunch: We stopped at a bagel shop in the Upper West Side called Absolute Bagel (2788 Broadway, New York, NY (212) 932-2052) which had been recommended in a couple different places as an excellent example of the New York Bagel.

We bought a couple bagels and walked to nearby Straus Park and ate them on a park bench. I had a garlic bagel (toasted) with lox spread and tomatoes and lettuce ($3.65). The lox spread was a little too mild in flavor (really, not much lox flavor that I could taste). The bagel itself had good chew and good flavor.

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What I Ate: October 16, 2010 (Absolute Bagel, 53rd and 6th Halal Cart)

I manually color corrected the photos from Le Bernardin now that I'm back home and no longer working off a laptop screen. The lighting at Le Bernardin was so yellow that it couldn't be easily color corrected without significant hue shifting. Even so, I couldn't produce a neutral gray based on my gray card shots without massively distorting the more saturated colors in the food. I really wasn't happy with the first set I posted (much too yellow), so I tried to reduce the yellow a little while still preserving the colors. Not entirely happy with the new pictures, but I think they are better than before.

Here's an example using the butter poached shrimp canape that started our meal (right is newer):

Egg and Caviar:

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Replaced Photos from Le Bernardin

Lunch: We took the subway down to Chinatown - a place that could never exist in a modern city that didn't already have a Chinatown (no modern city health codes or zoning ordinances would ever allow something like Chinatowns in older cities like New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco to exist; street vendors selling groceries out of paper boxes they pulled out of their trunks on sidewalk corners just doesn't seem possible unless grandfathered in). Our reason for visiting this part of the city that feels like it never developed past a certain point? Joe's Shanghai (9 Pell Street, New York (212) 233-8888). We didn't have a chance to visit their original location in Flushing, but the Chinatown location is supposed to be similar (unlike the midtown location which we've been warned against multiple times). We went to taste their xiao long bao - according to some, the best in the United States (and some say anywhere outside of Shanghai). I haven't heard much about the rest of their food and didn't get a chance to taste much besides the xiao long bao which I can now vouch for as excellent.

We ordered two different types of xiao long bao (which were very large - bigger than any we've had before; we joked they should be called da long bao since they were not "small steamer buns" but "big steamer buns"). Crab and Pork ($6.65 for 8 dumplings) and Pork filled ($4.65 for 8 dumplings). Both were served piping hot and filled with the most flavorful and rich soups imaginable. The skins we both tender and strong (able to hold the ample quantities of soup and meat filling). Everything, I've ever looked for in a xiao long bao was present in the ones from Joe's Shanghai, an experience I have never had before. These were everything I could ask for (at a great price too). There is currently a debate that Nan Xiang Xiao Long Bao makes a better soup dumpling than Joe's Shanghai, but without having tried Nan Xiang or Joe's Shanghai in Flushing, I have to say that the ones we had today at Joe's Shanghai in Chinatown were the best I have ever had. On our next trip to New York, I'm going to have to make it a special point to go to Flushing and experience the original location and Nan Xiang Xiao Long Bao to see if xiao long bao can be made even better, but, for now, I am more than satisfied with the ones I got to eat today.

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What I Ate: October 15, 2010 (Joe's Shanghai, Ippudo)

Lunch: We walked over to Empanada Mama (763 9th Ave # 1, New York, NY (212) 698-9008) in Hell's Kitchen for a late lunch before heading to the GE Building for a taping of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon (who I got to high five!). We tried a whole bunch of different empanadas as well as a salpicon fruit cocktail that came with a large quantity of chopped fresh fruit (grapes, apples, watermelon, and bananas).

The empanadas arrive in their own paper pastry bags stamped with the type of empanada at the top. I took a picture of each empanada whole as well as cut open to show the fillings.

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What I Ate: October 14, 2010 (Empanada Mama, 53rd and 6th Halal Cart)

Dinner: Le Bernardin (155 W 51st St, New York, NY‎ - (212) 554-1515‎). We ordered the eight course Chef's tasting menu (six savory courses and two sweet courses). During our lobster course, Chef Michael Laiskonis (2004 Bon Appetit Pastry Chef of the Year and 2007 James Beard Outstanding Pastry Chef) came out to greet us. Chef Laiskonis had also been interviewed for Jeff Potter's Cooking For Geeks and contributed a couple recipes (Caramelized White Chocolate and Beurre Noisette Ice Cream). He said he was going to send out a few additional desserts in lieu of the two planned on the Chef's Tasting Menu. By the end of the evening we had eaten 6 savory dishes (plus a marvelous amuse bouche that could easily have counted as a dish) and 8 desserts. When the petit fours came out (seven more sweet bites), we had to have those packed to go.

None of the courses had any execution problems. Service was impeccable. If there is a restaurant equivalent of a "perfect game", then tonight's dinner at Le Bernardin would be such an example. However, we did feel that we would have prefered a menu with more variety (perhaps some proteins from the land and some vegetables), but we can't fault Le Bernardin for that since they are focused on French seafood. Normally, I take a lot of notes (it's easy to do so because both Tina and I are detailed oriented and quite picky when it comes to food), but tonight, I didn't know what to write except a few notes on texture, flavor, and words like "perfect" or "excellent".

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What I Ate: October 13, 2010 (Le Bernardin)