As we work on assembling our grand list of holiday menus (tomorrow, we promise), we wanted to point out some general guides that can help you through this time of eating and eating and eating.
A lot of your special New Year’s Eve dinners will be many-course prix-fixe affairs, to which end Michael Bauer just ran a piece on his blog noting the rise of the tasting menu around here. Conveniently, our own Chicago editor, Helen Rosner, just ran a national post on how to survive a tasting menu earlier this week. That just deals with the physical challenge, however. Bauer has another post with observations on what financial pitfalls to avoid when booking that big New Year’s Eve celebration. Hint: Don’t book this madness.
Also, this is a time when medium to medium-heavy appetizer platters rule the day. If you are faced with the task of making one of these, you should really consider doing a sophisticated cheese plate. This takes as little actual effort as possible, provided you get the good ingredients. Fortunately, Slashfood ran a post yesterday with a little tutorial all about that.
Tasting menus take hold [Between Meals]
The MenuPages Guide to Making It Out Of A Tasting Menu Alive [MPSF]
New Year’s restaurant ripoffs [Between Meals]
Cheese Plate 101 [Slashfood]
[Photo: Via Stephanie Booth/flickr]
