]]> http://www.abdinoor.com/2012/02/02/new-england-international-auto-show/feed/ 0 http://www.abdinoor.com/2011/12/21/restaurant-review-catalyst/ http://www.abdinoor.com/2011/12/21/restaurant-review-catalyst/#comments Wed, 21 Dec 2011 22:51:48 +0000 Dan http://www.abdinoor.com/?p=637 Continue reading →]]> The Kendall Square restaurant scene is on a tear lately. In the past few months there have been a bunch of new restaurants opening. We’ve got Area IV, Kika, and Firebrand Saints but my favorite addition is Catalyst. Before the opening I read somewhere that William Kovel was behind the restaurant, which left me with some high expectations.

I have now had a few meals at Catalyst, from lunch the week it opened through dinner last weekend. Overall I have been very pleased. The food has always been fantastic, but the service on one occasion was terrible. Service still seems to be the downfall, during my last visit the table next to mine got the wrong meals and failed to receive the appetizers they ordered.

Starters at Catalyst are a fairly typical mix of soups and salads with the occasional special thrown in like salt cod fritters. The signature salad is a mix of arugula, mild blue cheese, pears and candied nuts. It is full of flavor but the concept is uninspiring. A much better salad choice is the roasted beets with goat cheese croquettes. The beets are roasted until just tender and served room temperature with a small pile of dressed greens. The croquettes are warm and delicately ooze cheese when burst. The combination is a delicious well balanced salad.

Another creative starter is the Jerusalem artichoke soup with lobster meat. The soup is a fairly thick mixture with a heavy dose of cream and butter. The lobster meat is an added bonus, the soup is delicious and complex without any garnish.

Catalyst offers a wide selection of main courses, including meat, fish, vegetarian and full portions of house made pasta as well. The chicken dish is served with an intoxicating chicken jus and “drippings” potatoes that pick up their flavor by catching roasting juices underneath the rotisserie. The pork chop comes with a pile of house-made sauerkraut and buttery spätzle that are crispy on the outside and soft on the inside. The pork is a hefty cut, served on the bone, and cooked to leave just a bit of pink inside.

The dessert menu has a handful of interesting options but none that stand out (to me, anyway) more than the butterscotch pudding. A generous portion is served in a bowl topped with chopped nut brittle and whipped cream. On the side are batons of pound cake, deep fried in olive oil. Gluttonous? Yes. But overwhelmingly delicious as well. The pudding is understandably rich, but somehow the pound cake pieces offer a counterpoint and come off like high quality french toast sticks.

Catalyst is a fantastic addition to the Kendall Square restaurant scene. The interior design is a professional mix of cold concrete and warm recycled barn boards. Service can be spotty, but if you get Juan as your server everything should be smooth. Although certainly not an inexpensive restaurant, Catalyst offers good value. I think I will be making a habit of having dinner in the area more often.

I am not even going to bother pointing out all of the issues in this cover letter, I am sure you already found enough to leave your mouth agape. It is safe to say that no matter how amazing the resume looks, this candidate is off the table.

Here are my tips if you are applying for an Engineering position:

• Have a one-page resume and get it proof-read by another person.
• Include only relevant job history.
• Provide a link to a code sample or GitHub.
• Have some sort of online presence, preferably one that you control.
• Do not include a cover letter.

Have any great tips for applying as an Engineer? Please share them in the comments.

The menu on Sunday is for brunch, so it was mostly breakfast type items with a just a few lunch dishes. Krystal ordered the Brown Sugar Pancakes. There were three good-sized pancakes topped with blueberries, syrup, and a mound of brown sugar cotton candy. The cotton candy was a really cool touch, and tasted great. Overall, though, the dish was cloying. Two kinds of syrup were poured on the pancakes rather than served on the side, and the cotton candy partly melted into the pancakes to make them even sweeter. Krystal only ate about half the dish because it was so sugary.

I ordered the Curry Chicken Salad which was great. The dish included a scoop of chicken salad and a bunch of iceberg lettuce, red onion and radish. There were also a couple of pieces of crispy cracker-bread. The chicken salad had a great flavor, with just the right amount of spice and heat. All the elements went together nicely and I cleaned my plate, enjoying it thoroughly.

Service was great, perhaps a bit too formal. The brunch crowd at Towne was very casual but the staff was dressed to the nines, but that is not a complaint. Our server was very attentive and polite, he even asked if everything was alright when he saw that Krystal did not eat all of her pancakes.

I liked Towne and will definitely return another time. I am especially interested in checking out the dinner menu and the bar scene.

Let me start off by saying I prefer to be honest and direct, rather than misleading. Therefore, my answer to your question is that at this moment I do not know, which is the single worst answer I can think of. I just think the business culture of saying one more week, one more week, ad nauseam, is not only insulting, it is dishonest in its own way.

Mike V


I cannot be sure if this is a standard response or not, but it really did come across as honest and direct. I am actually really happy with this response even though it does not resolve my issue. All customer service should be this honest. Nice job, Marware.

Recently, I made a couple of big changes to my workstation: A new keyboard and a sit/stand adjustable desk. I did not add both at the same time, but so far I am enjoying each improvement.

A couple months ago, I caved in and got a Kinesis keyboard. I say caved, because I already had an ergonomic keyboard and didn’t think the Kinesis would make much of a difference. The day I got the new keyboard, I plugged it in and tried to do work. Total failure, my brain was just not adapted to the key layout. Although it is still QWERTY, the basic items like Delete, Ctrl and Alt are all on new keys for each thumb. I had to switch back to my normal keyboard to get through the day.

After a few weeks of working on and off of my other keyboard, I had finally adapted to the Kinesis and started to see improvents. On my other keyboard my right pinkie finger would tend to get sore, not so with the new one. It was really nice to move some of the load to my thumbs, and my fingers and arms barely have to move to reach everything on the Kinesis. I’m having much less painful days of programming with the new keyboard.

The second addition is a new sit/stand adjustable desk for my workstation. At our old office we had Aeron chairs which were great, but we couldn’t afford to splash that much on buying 300+ of them for the new office. The chairs we got have a foam seat, not suspended mesh like the Aeron. I found that after a few hours of sitting the padding would compress and make it uncomfortable to sit. After about a year of that — and squirming around side-to-side in the chair to compensate — I decided to start standing for some of the workday.

I assembled the new GeekDesk  and have been working with it for a couple of days now. So far, I love it. The desk uses an electric motor to adjust anywhere from super-low to higher than I need. It also never ceases to amaze my office-mates when I push a button and my entire desk full of monitors and accessories moves. I spend about 1/3 of the day sitting and the other 2/3 standing. I’m not sure if I will always keep that breakdown but it is really nice to have the option.

The keyboard and desk have both been great improvements to my workstation. I would definitely recommend both products.

Today, I finally figured out what went wrong. I had somehow enabled the multi-media keys on my Kinesis. It is kind of a random combination, but to turn on the mutli-media keys, hold down the “=” key and the press “n” (=n). This will make the following key mappings:

F3: Previous track
F4: Play/pause
F5: Next track
F9: Mute
F10: Volume down
F11: Volume up

Most importantly, to turn off the multi-media keys, hold down the “=” key and press “w” (=w).

Corton is interesting because it’s headed by chef Paul Liebrandt, a culinary wunderkind of sorts. He was the youngest chef to have received 3 stars from the New York Times. He trained under Marco Pierre White and Pierre Gagnaire abroad before bringing his skills to New York. Chef Liebrandt’s unusual story was even told in an independent film ‘A Matter of Taste‘ but I didn’t see it until after we ate there. The film was very good — if you’re into food — it’s playing on HBO currently.

Krystal and I headed from our hotel in Midtown down to TriBeCa, where Corton is located in the same spot as the earlier celebrated restaurant Montrachet. Unfortunately, we couldn’t get an Uber car and took a cab. We ended up arriving about 15 minutes late, but it was Thursday night and the restaurant was not very full. The hostess seated us immediately without any fuss. The Corton space was very nice. Subdued, off-white, colors with embossed leaves on the walls. The lighting was a bit funky — thin spears jutting out of the ceiling — but still elegant. It is not a very big space, only 40 seats or so. We had a table at a corner booth, right next to the kitchen. The kitchen was a decent size, all stainless steel, spotless as you’d expect. It was not an open kitchen, but there was a full length window so we could see into it.

Immediately after being seated, some little snacks were brought to the table. These included Oyster Crackers filled with Mornay Sauce; a kind of Mini Muffin; a crispy ball with a warm filling; and Parmesan Marshmallows. Clearly some modern technique went into making these bites, and they were tasty, too.

Next up was a proper amuse bouche, an asparagus custard topped with foam. It was sweet with butter and had more than a hint of salt, though it wasn’t overpowering. The amuse won the award for dish with the most plates: served on a stack of  four plates with the small cup of custard atop.

Bread service included four or five different options, including a roll made with smoked wheat which was interesting. There were two butters served with the bread, one plain and one compound herb butter which wasn’t great.

We opted for the three-course prix fixe menu, although there was also a five-course tasting menu available. For my first course I chose “La  Plume”. It turned out to be three separate dishes all served together, a sort of “flight” of starters. The first was a Pheasant Egg Yolk atop a small crunchy cake with Crayfish on the side. The server dusted the plate Trumpet Mushroom Powder at the table. I broke the yolk and tasted everything together, it was savory but very delicate; a nice start. Next was Quail served two ways, both very rare which is apparently the norm for Quail, but I did not know that at the time. Raw poultry is one of those things we’re conditioned to avoid eating, but I did it anyway, it was tasty. On the side was a pickled, jellied, cube of Rhubarb. It was an utterly strange mix of flavor and texture. Last was a gel of Pistachio and Cucumber which blew my mind. This was the kind of little twist that makes you remember a meal. A combination of flavor and texture that is unusual yet so damn good. On the side was a Parmesan cracker for some more texture. Krystal’s starter was “From the Garden” which you could call a salad, but you’d be selling it short. A ton of different unique vegetables and a gorgeous presentation.

For main dishes I ordered Wagyu Flatiron Beef and Krystal chose Maine Lobster. The Beef was served a perfect medium rare with a light sear on the outside. Accompaniments were a fried Veal Sweetbread, Corn Pureé, Romanesco, Yuzu and a Citrus Jus. The combination of fatty beef with citrus was a fantastic combination. The meat was flavorful, but the Sweetbread was even better. It was also my first time seeing or eating Romanesco, which is kind of between broccoli and cauliflower in flavor and shaped like a fractal, very cool. The technique behind this dish intrigued me as well. To get the beef cooked so evenly, I am guessing it was done sous vide. However, the cut was a flatiron which is not usually so thick, so maybe they even used transglutaminase to join two thin cuts together; I know Wylie Dufresne does this at WD-50. On the side was a small bite of Beef Tartare on a Buckwheat Blini and topped with Gold Leaf. The presentation was beautiful, but the meat needed seasoning because it tasted bland.

The Lobster was served with some vegetables and a Green Apple Sabayon. There was a portion of tail meat as well as a trimmed section of the claw. It was a very beautiful presentation. On the side was another dish, Lobster Consommé with Lobster Ravioli and Baby Squid. I did not try the Lobster dish but Krystal loved it and ate every bit.

After our mains they brought out a pre-dessert of Red Currant Sorbet with a bit of Whipped Cream. Very clean and refreshing, not too sweet, just a couple of spoonfuls. For dessert we had ordered “Chocolate Marble” and “Smoked Caramel” but before we got those, they brought out a small White Chocolate Cake with “Happy Birthday” written on the plate for Krystal. They also served us a couple of complementary glasses of Sparkling Chardonnay. It was a very nice, high class, touch.

The Chocolate dessert was very interesting, not very sweet, and part of the dish was Red Bell Pepper. Aside from the Pepper the dish was good, but not great. The Caramel dish was very good. A nice rectangle of caramel with texture similar to creme bruleé. It had all the flavor of a delicious caramel without being chewy. Despite being called “Smoked Caramel” there was not much smoke flavor, which was fine with me. The dish was plated with bits of sweetened Popcorn and a sauce that I think was Red Currant again.

After dessert we were offered our choice of mignardises (petit fours?) including macarons and hand-made chocolates. Both were very good. They also brought out some small jelly cubes, one was Red Currant but I couldn’t figure out the other one. Finally, along with the check, they brought a couple of small Red Currant Pancakes packed to go in small plastic bags and a Corton sticker sealing them.

Overall it was a hell of a culinary journey. So many courses, so many flavors and textures. Exceptional is the best word I can pick out for it. It was unlike any other dining experience in my life thus far: the exception, not the rule. Corton has completely earned those two Michelin stars in my opinion. Was the meal flawless? No. There were a couple of items that were either over or under seasoned, but I’m more than happy to deal with those small oversights in this expansive meal. Although this happened to be the most expensive meal I have ever paid for, it was completely worth it, and a perfect celebration. I would return to Corton again without hesitation and recommend it to other food lovers as well.

I have always been a big fan of food and science so it is no surprise that I love to mix the two. Over the last few years I’ve become more aware of the world of Molecular Gastronomy. However, I am not a big fan of that term, I prefer Modernist Cuisine. That title comes from the astonishing new book of the same name.

A few months ago I ordered up a host of supplies from Chef Rubber including sodium alginate and calcium chloride, the ingredients necessary for the spherification technique. To perform the spherification, you mix sodium alginate into a liquid and then drop spoonfuls into a bath of calcium chloride dissolved in water. The calcium causes the sodium alginate to set into a gel. After a few minutes in the bath you have an edible sphere.

The spheres are heat tolerant so it is possible to heat them to create a warm liquid inside the gel shell. Or you can let the sphere sit in the bath for a longer period amount of time and the entire contents will become a gel. I experimented with these textures by making mimetic blueberry (blueberries, water, sugar) and serving them in hot thickened milk. I was trying for a blueberries and cream flavored pudding type dessert, but ended up with something more like warm bubble tea. Not bad, though.

Getting a perfect sphere is actually quite hard. The viscosity of both the liquid and the bath has to be just right. Otherwise, the liquid drops to the bottom or floats to the top and you get a disc instead of a sphere. So I decided to try something totally different and make a cube instead. I blended strawberries with sugar and water and added 1% (by weight) of sodium alginate. Then I poured the strawberry liquid into silicone cube trays and froze them. Once solid, I added 0.5% of calcium chloride to water and dropped in the “strawberries”. As the cubes thawed, the gel set around the outside and held the shape.

Spherification is a cool technique that I am still experimenting with (reverse spherification is next). I don’t think it has a place in the everyday culinary world yet, but if you enjoy mainpulating food form and texture you should give it a try.

I am not a heavy Skype user. I have an account, I use it infrequently. I like the software, I just don’t have much need for video conferencing. For straight chat, I prefer Trillian Astra. But following the chatter about the acquisition, I’ve been thinking about what Microsoft could do with Skype.

If I were Microsoft, I would stay away from the consumer side of video conferencing. Going up against Apple/FaceTime, their fledgling open standard, is foolish. Apple is always going to have the superior user experience, they are going to win the consumer battle. Maybe Microsoft could copy them, it worked well for Windows 7. But I would just avoid the consumer side entirely.

Corporate VoIP, including video conferencing, makes a lot more sense for Microsoft. With Office and Outlook they are already the cornerstone of business software. There are millions of businesses that run their user accounts, operating systems and email on top of Microsoft technologies. Additionally, there are millions of users of Skype that rely on it for work. We use Skype at HubSpot to conference with some of our remote folks. Fred Wilson is another example.

They engineers at Skype are not just solving video chat, they are trying to build the world’s best VoIP solution including video. That’s a business Microsoft wants a piece of. Imagine if you had your Microsoft Active Directory server automatically set up a new VoIP phone line for every user account. Phones become as easy to set up as email. Take that one step further and give everyone a soft phone. Skype software? No, Outlook. Business people around the world already spend seven hours a day in Outlook, just add a headset and it can handle all their phone calls as well.

The VoIP market does not have a clear winner, but Skype is closer than most. Microsoft already has the dominant business productivity suite. By bringing Skype into the fold they can build a complete communications platform, video + voice + email all in one place. It’s pretty compelling.

Have your own theory for what Microsoft will do with Skype? Leave a comment.