Food for thought

Did Google forget to renew their certificate? - No

2009-04-28T03:11:00.001-07:00

Here's what I get on all my Google accounts. Is this a joke?
Apparently Google did not renew their certificate and I have to define exceptions for all Google properties.

What's the point of having a certificate then?

Turns out (Thanks Ran) - My computer somehow went back several years in the past.
As a result, my date was not correct and Google's certificates were expired.
It's still strange that they were expired but who cares :)

Slideshare adds are evil

2009-04-20T07:16:00.000-07:00

I love Slideshare, I think it's a great site to put a slides deck and even a paper to share.
See here my latest:
http://www.slideshare.net/MbayeSmadja/webcentives-smadja-toluna
or
http://www.slideshare.net/MbayeSmadja/webcentives09-smadja (the paper).

However they started putting some really evil ads and I am thinking of stopping to use Slideshare completely. I cannot share a link with people that contains so ugly ads.

See what they gave me when I connected to it from Spain.

Gmail down?

2009-02-24T02:44:00.000-08:00

Already more than 15mn that gmail is not responding.

Apparently I'm not the only one: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23gmail+OR+Gmail

Update:

I think that there are many people affected:

http://digg.com/software/Gmail_Down_12

http://www.google.com/search?q=gmail+down

I am on Reversim.com

2009-01-25T03:54:00.000-08:00

Just did a fun podcast on http://reversim.com with my friends Ran Tavori and Ori Lahav.

Check it out (All in Hebrew).

It's about what makes a good engineer.

Frank

Chrome and Youtube issues

2009-01-25T03:48:00.000-08:00

We're sorry, this video is no longer available....

Interesting how sometimes even Google can be sloppy. I am getting a lot of errors on youtube if I use Google Chrome. The message I get is:

"We're sorry, this video is no longer available...."

If I copy the URL and put it in IE or FF then all works well. I think Youtube should put a warning: "This site is optimized to work with Microsoft IE" :)

Apparently, I am not the only one also: http://antivirus.about.com/b/2008/09/03/googles-chrome-may-need-polishing.htm

Anybody has a workaround for this or should we wait for the next update of Chrome?

Another Gmail issue - Import contacts

2008-06-19T08:08:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I am wondering how bugs like that could slip through Google's nets.
While trying to switch gmail accounts, I tried to export my contacts from one account in order to export them onto the other one.

It just doesn't work the message I get is:

Oops. An unknown error occured while importing your contacts.

Come on Google do something here.

I am a PC Weenies guest!!

2008-06-04T08:01:00.000-07:00

Hey I finally made it big, I am a PC Weenies guest.
All this thanks to my previous post on slow typers :)

Check this out: http://pcweenies.net/2008/06/04/guest-starring-frank-smadja/

My gmail account is locked down!@!

2008-05-07T01:21:00.000-07:00

Google is going crazy on me. While I was normally trying to send an email by clicking on "compose" in gmail, I got locked out of gmail and got this ugly message: "Your account is locked down because of suspected unusual activity"

Google says:
Unusual account activity includes, but is not limited to:

Receiving, deleting, or downloading large amounts of mail via POP in a short period of time.
Sending a large number of undeliverable messages (messages that bounce back).
Using file-sharing or file-storage software, browser extensions, or third party software that automatically logs in to your account.
Leaving multiple instances of your Gmail account open.
Browser-related issues. Please note that if you find your browser continually reloading while attempting to access your Inbox, it’s probably a browser issue, and it may be necessary to clear your browser’s cache and cookies.

I am sometimes doing number 4 - That is using gmail on several browsers, but I was not doing this this morning.

This is a serious issue as I am incapacitated without my email, docs, address book, etc. Nobody to speak to at Google. Any idea, suggestion?

Luckily my Blogger account is not locked down.

*UPDATE* - Google unlocked my account after a couple of hours. I got scared and started thinking of a plan B. No harm done this time.

Things I don't like and things I like

2008-05-01T07:20:00.000-07:00

I hate it when I am doing a chat session with somebody who is a slow typer
I love it when code I write runs on the first try

Searching attachments in Gmail

2007-09-09T01:38:00.000-07:00

I have been wondering this for about a year now, my answer to myself has always been: "They are probably working on it and by the time you blog about it it will be avalaible for all."

Well, it's been over a year now and it still is not available yet; so here it is:

Why can't I search my attachments from withing Gmail??

I mean, if somebody sends me an attachment in an email, there is no way for me to search within this attachment that I know of. The only workaround I found so far is to import the attachment to Google docs and then it becomes searchable from within Google docs. But I mean this is really cumbersome.

Isn't Google supposed to organize the world's information and make it accessible and useful? How about my own information?

Love the US open?

2007-08-30T01:39:00.000-07:00

Please answer the opinion poll below -

Thanks

Frank

Ball in the mail

2007-07-22T23:41:00.000-07:00

I just received a ball in the mail. A real ball, all inflated and all. The stamp was on the ball and my address too. It has been sent by Julian Cash because he enjoyed one my papers on tag clustering. Here's a Web friendly version written by Philipp Keller; Mail me if you want to read the original paper.

Thanks to Julian Cash for his creativity.

Facebook ads are evil

2007-07-22T07:47:00.000-07:00

I really think that Facebook ads are obnoxious and very bothering. See the one below on my personal profile? They even have some that blink in big red letters.

Is this what one should expect of the rising star of the Web2.0 sites?
Is this how they are getting some $80 million a year?

Am I missing something here? Free cash on Facebook??

Blog addiction

2007-07-08T00:50:00.000-07:00

It turns out I am 68% addicted even though I did not post that many entries recently.

68%

Mingle² - Online Dating

Caponata on the grill - Healthy and Tasty

2007-04-01T06:16:00.000-07:00

This is a version of the traditional caponata as shown here at Bencook.
This version contains much less fat as it uses the grill instead of frying and in fact it is much more tasty as you really taste each of the ingredients.

Also I took some more liberty and added Zucchini to add to this a unique Mediterranean flavor.

So here is goes:

Ingredients: 2 each of (Big) eggplant, zucchini, peppers, one small onion all cut up in small cubes.
2 tea spoons of olive oil.

Lay the cubes nicely on an aluminium foil and sprinkle a few drops of olive oil, Put the whole thing in the oven in the Grill position at the max heat.

Wait until the chunks are a bit burnt on the side.

Take out of the oven and sprinkle a good dose of fresh basil, a dollop of olive oil and some salt and pepper.

That's it you're in the Mediterranean heaven, the famous Gan Eden.

Not so delicious search -

2007-03-20T08:37:00.000-07:00

One of the things that surprises me about delicious besides its poor usability and its relative frozen stage is that the search is not really satisfactory. This is surprising because, although it is acceptable or even good for a one man show to have a poor UI and virtually no search, I think that a Yahoo! company should put the standard a bit higher. I mean Yahoo! is trying to position itself as a search company right?

So, here it comes, if somebody from Yahoo! reads this, please pass this along to whoever can do something about it. Here's what I think is broken with delicious search:

Here's what I expect from a search on my and other people bookmarks:

Part One: The Basic

- There should be only one way to search - Currently on delicious if you type something on the seach box you get a set of results, but if you click on a tag you get a different set of results. The difference is that on the first search you do a plain search and on the second you search only on the tags. I think that a regular user does not care about that distinction. Tags are simply an additional layer of information and if they are not here one should still be able to retrieve pages. So please keep this distinction for the "advanced searchers" - People who only click should have only one option and it should search not only on tags.

- Fast - del.icio.us search sometimes takes up to 1mn. Del.icio.us is already a Yahoo company for a year or so and I'd expect they had time to address this already. I don't think that they lack experience of money in making services go fast. So just do it. [For those interested, I believe there is a need for serious re-engineering here because tag-search is reasonably fast, however "plain search" is painfully slow. So I suspect the plain search has been done in an inefficient way and would have to be redone completely.]

- "bug tracking" and "bugtracking" should bring the same results. The fact that delicious is forcing users to write space delimited tags in the first place forces people to do ugly things like bugtracking or bug_tracking. There are 2 ways to fix this: 1. switch to comma delimited tags and 2. do some smart processing to be able to find out that "bugtracking" and "bug_tracking" are really like "bug tracking" -

- "tracking" should also bring pages that have been tagged "bug tracking" - I mean there are so many ways to tag a page that some people might say "bugtracking" whereas others would say "bug" and then "tracking" or whatever combination. One wants them all.

- Search on notes too - Again, Notes are like tags, simply an additional layer of information added by the users. Some users like tags some other like notes. The search engine should not discriminate and it should search on notes as well as in tags.

Part II The Advanced

- Related tags: I expect here to find tags that will help me find something, thus either tags that reduce my search or tags that change my search. Instead delicious puts tags that are related somehow. For example: if I search "google" then "google" will be on the related tags. This is not helpful, what I need are either the most discriminatory tags or tags that would help me search something else ("did you mean").

- Related users: When i search on a topic, I'd like to get the "wisdom of crowd" effect and see what are the users that are knowledgeable on this topic. Delicious does not even try to do that. Simpy does that well for example.

Well I figured that when a search company acquires a small startup, one of the first thing they would do is fix the search - Apparently it has not been a priority yet, I just wish they would put more effort into this.

Twitter is cool

2007-03-13T06:54:00.000-07:00

So here's what I think about Twitter - I think it is a great broadcasting tool !
I've seen several uses of twitter in various blogs already, but I think that what it boils down to for me is that with Twitter I am able to broadcast a short message to my "followers" -

These followers are for example all the people I work with and who need to:

know how to reach me
ask or answer questions

For example, if I am stuck with a technical question such as "How do I configure lighttpd with multiple sites?" instead of asking several of my friends separately, I can broadcast this on my twitter and whoever knows and is available this day can pick it up and answer.

The second best use of twitter is the "Message of the Day" or "Status message" that is currently available in most IM tools. I think this is a cool use but I am not sure this is sustainable until they have an automatic update from my IM. For example if I am away or in a meeting.

What I like most about Twitter: I like the gtalk integration. I don't need to go to twitter site in order to either update my message or get updates from the people I follow. Kudos to the twitter team for this feature!!

What I want from Twitter: I'd like to be able to have several groups of followers (in a way multiple accounts). I'd like to have a group of technical people following me, a family group and maybe a friends group and a co-worker group. Please do that for me and you'll be my favorite tool.

Here's my Twitter page: http://twitter.com/FrankieMbaye

The bar is too high !!

2007-03-02T05:21:00.000-08:00

Come on Gmail guys remove the "BETA" sign from the logo. This is really making hard on other software to go out of Beta.
I mean gmail successfully serves millions of users everyday, never (that I know of) has been broken off, (almost) always on, fast, reliable. Gmail is now available to everybody, no more invitation required. Nevertheless Gmail is still in Beta. I know a lot of software who would be lucky to be as reliable as gmail in production.

So please, gmail guys, do us a favor and remove the small Beta sign near the gmail logo.

Amazing India: Magai Paan

2007-02-15T09:36:00.000-08:00

Have you ever tasted Magai Paan?
It is probably among the strangest, weirdest food items I ever tasted. It's not really delicious but it is really fascinating. To make it short, Magai Paan is the Indian version of a chewing gum, people eat it after a heavy and spicy lunch to kind of change the taste and keep on chewing for a while.

It is made of maybe 20 or 30 ingredients including the famous betle, it has the betle leaves as well as the nuts, but you can also find there many fragrant things like clove, rose petal, I suspect some other types of nuts (cashew?), many spices and a lot of secret ingredients coming from small bags, tin boxes, plastic bags, etc.

What is amazing is that you are supposed to keep on chewing this thing for a long time and that at least the first few minutes are full of surprise. First it is a really big bite, then it is surprisingly made of many different tastes all very strong and unfamiliar. So you keep on chewing and suddenly there is this new taste happening, maybe you're cracking the clove, or maybe it's a betel nut, you don't really know.

Take a look here, this is the work table of the paan cart - See all the boxes?

This is the man at work:

This is a close up in mid preparation - you can see some of the ingredients:

This is my friend Grish after eating his double bite magai pan:

This is me just before attempting my double bite:

Now you can judge it yourself - Take a look at this movie, it shows the whole preparation for the magai. This is taken from the streets of Bangalore.

The writing on the wall

2007-02-14T09:43:00.000-08:00

I saw this sign at Ben Gurion airport - I guess the guy who did this just didn't know what to write and in what language, so he asked his 3 year old son to draw something that would indicate a low latrine for boys :)

Dahi Puri Chaat

2007-02-14T09:03:00.000-08:00

This is a real delicacy I just discovered - The amazing thing about it is that it is a really entertaining snack or light food. It is really fun to eat. Why?

It crunchy outside, tender inside and liquid too
It is spicy, sweet, salty
It is cold inside, wam outside
Usually it is served on a plate containing 5-6 servings, and each serving is supposed to be eaten in one gulp. This is not so easy as it is big and juicy

So when you eat it, the puri breaks in your mouth and then you start feeling all these different tastes explode one after another, the hot and the cold, the crunch and the soft. It really makes for a fun eating experience.
I think Dahi Puri is the Indian answer to a fusion Panko Crusted Fried Avocado Maki Sushi with Wasabi Crème Fraiche :)

Here's a picture with the Puri bread formed as a shell - This is the toughest one to eat.

Here's a picture of the version in which the puri is crumbled - Delicious -

Sometimes I am wondering why European food is so blend and unsurprising. Are European spice impaired? I mean compare this to a steak or burger, what a difference !!

On usability, adoption rates and deadpool for Web 2.0 services

2007-01-11T11:22:00.000-08:00

There's been a number of posts on the net about the fate of RawSugar since we announced that RawSugar stopped its R&D operations. See for example these blog entries:

Besides the journalistic headlines (I felt like David Beckham for a day or two), and the number of good words for the RawSugar team from users; what mostly interested me was the reasons mentioned either in the blog posts or in the comments for RawSugar's failure. Here are the leading causes of failures that are cited:

Poor marketing (weak focus on blogs, no differentiation with delicious, poor communication, poor positioning, etc.) - 5 mentions
Poor UI design (colors, homepage, coolness, overall usability) - 5 mentions.
Simply a victim of the bubble - 4 mentions
No business plan (nor revenue plan) - 2 mentions
Poor innovation - 1 mention.
Ofer Ben-Shachar (Founder/CEO) stubbornness :) - 1 mention.

As RawSugar's former VP Engineering, I find this very interesting to see what people really think about this. The first conclusion I draw is that the technology was not to blame, indeed, as I write this blog, RawSugar's investors are negotiating with several potential buyers of the technology. So I believe that the RawSugar tag-search technology will find a new home and that's a good thing.

However, what stroke me most on the comments of people above is that I don't believe any of these is responsible for RawSugar poor adoption levels. When I look around at other services I see all these points in successful services. See for example:

Did Youtube have a business plan?
Did Delicious havea good UI design (starting from the hard to remember domain name)?
Is gmail a model of usability? Maybe yes, but only after you get it.
Was Craig's list done with a great marketing strategy in mind?
Where is the innovation in myspace?

No, I don't think these are the real reasons for RawSugar underperformance. I don't think you need a business plan, a great UI design, a solid marketing plan and a huge innovation to make a winning Web 2.0 service. I am not saying it hurts but I don't think these are necessary nor sufficient criteria.

I have my own explanation but I won't share it on my blog right now, maybe in a later post. What do you think? Leave me a comment.

Frank

Why I love spam and gmail

2007-01-11T11:21:00.000-08:00

Here's the story. I used to read email from several Yahoo! managed accounts using Outlook and over time I realized that even though Yahoo! was catching a large majority of the spam mail I was getting, and Outlook was also catching a big chunk of what was left (all the false negative); I ended up spending more time cleaning up my Inbox than actually reading my email.

So it was time for a shakeup !!

Here's what I did:

I set up my gmail account to be able to send email from multiple accounts. So that gmail could now be used to send email on behalf of any of my other email accounts.
I set up all my Yahoo! email to forward all my incoming messages to my gmail account.
I created filters on gmail so that email coming from my Yahoo! email account Account1 was labeled "account1" and email coming from my Yahoo! email account Account2 was labeled "account2".

And voila!!! The result is amazing, I only have a couple of spam mail that gmail misses out of about 200 a day. That's pretty good I must say. In fact it is so good, that I sometimes go into the spam mail in gmail just to watch all these spam getting caught. And I smile at all this time wasted sifting through these. I also smile when I see the "spicy spam kabobs" ad they put up.

Sometimes software can really solve problems. Congratulations to the gmail team.

Related: Check out Jonathan Boutelle discussion on the comparison of several spam filters here.

Alexa broken?

2006-11-21T06:42:00.000-08:00

Am I crazy or is Alexa.com not responding for a few days already?
Somehow I either get a very very very very slow response from the site or no response at all.

I would expect something better from an Amazon site.

Tags: alexa, bugs,

Google accounts strange behavior

2006-11-20T03:49:00.000-08:00

I don't know if it's me only but lately all my Google services have been acting strangely. They all seem to get stuck at or near the authentication stage. Specifically, I can't log in to Adsense, Sitemap or Blogger.

The only way for me to make it work is to delete all the Google cookies. This is painful and it only solves the problem for a few hours.

Here are some screen shots that explain this a bit.

With Adsense the login frame simply does not show.

With Blogger - The page is truncated somehow.

With sitemap the whole page is blank.

I've sent mail to Google support but to no avail so far. Oh, by the way, this happens likewise using IE and FF 2.0 :-)

Tags: google, bugs.

Why startups condense in Israel?

2006-10-24T07:54:00.000-07:00

This post is in response to Paul Graham's: why startups condense in America. In there he gives 10 reasons why America is a great place for startups and even generously gives a few hints to the "rest of the world" on how to beat the US on a few points.
Incidentally, Paul Graham specifically mentions Israel and says: "... it might be a lost cause to try to establish a silicon valley in Israel. Instead of no Jews moving there, only Jews would move there, and I don't think you could build a silicon valley out of just Jews ..." -

I find this remark (in footnote 4) so strikingly wrong that I felt compelled to post my own entry on this. I know that there's been a number of threads on Reddit or Digg and I don't really want to revive them but I just felt like adding my own 5 shekels on this topic.

First things first, startups do condense in Israel. In fact, Israel is probably right after the Silicon valley in terms of sheer density and number of startups, probably fighting for a second place with the Boston area. This is so strikingly statistically abnormal considering the size, location and GDP of Israel that Mr. Paul Graham was not only off the mark but he could have chosen any other country in his footnote but Israel.

Let me just throw a few more points here:

Israel's population is about 6 million whereas California's is about 33 million. So there's a proportion of 1 to 5 here. If I use these sources Israel VC Funding and Silicon Valley VC funding we see that in 2004, there were a total of around 400 Israeli startups who raised VC funds for a total of around $1.4 billion; whereas in the Valley there were a total of 773 startups who raised VC funds for a total of around $8.2 billion. There is about a ratio of 6 in total funding and a ratio of 1.75 in terms of number of deals. If you factor in the GDP of Israel I believe that this is not bad at all for such a small country and at worse it is very comparable to the Silicon Valley.
Israel has a large number of companies listed on NASDAQ and NYSE. Probably more than most European or Asian countries. In fact Israel is number 3 after the US and Canada.

Now, just to keep the spirit of Paul Graham's original article, I also have my own explanation of why Israel is a great place for startups. Here's my list:

Israel IS a startup as far as countries go. Here's why:

Israel is young. Israel will turn 49 this year, it is one of the youngest countries in the world. The vast majority of Israelis come from somewhere else within a few generations. This is pretty much like all the startups I know.
Israel is not sure of its future. The recent Hizbollah's attacks and the declaration of Iran's Ahmadinajad just show you how incertain is Israel's future. Again very much like a startup and very different from IBM or France :-)
Israel is changing rapidly. Today's Israel is so different than it was some 20 or 10 years ago. Cities grow fast, people's lifes change fast, habits change, etc. In comparison, most places in the US or in Europe have not changed at all. This is again very much like comparing a 2 year old startup to a very established company like say GM or Microsoft.
Israel politics is very unstable, what is right today was left yesterday, extreme right politicians go into a coalition with labor party, etc. This is exactly like a startup trying to re-invent itself and changing marketing strategy and CEO.
Many people in Israel are multicultural. In fact, besides NYC this is probably one of the places in which people come from so many different horizons. It is true that the bias is still towards Jews but the cultures and languages are very different. I think this brings a lot to the overall culture.
Israel knows that it is small and young; therefore Israel is not afraid to copy big countries. By copying other places Israel is able to improve rapidly instead of being stuck in "doing things their own way."
Israel is not afraid to challenge big countries. Again this is what makes startups successful, when you think of Google 8 years ago trying to do a better Internet search engines for example.

In addition, Israelis have a few personality disorders that make them good entrepreneurs:

Israelis have a thick skin. You can shout at an Israeli or push him around in the street or cut the line in front of them and this is not going to unphase them. They will probably return the push or scream but that's about all; nobody will lose sleep on this. Just looking at the latest events this August when several thousand katyusha rockets kept falling on the north of Israel and people were just going to shelters and kept on working as usual. I don't think this could have happened in the same way in most places in the word.
"למה מה קרה?"
Israelis are risk takers. Not taking risks is often not high in the priority list of the average Israeli. "נחייה וניראה"
Israelis believe things will improve. "יהיה בסדר"
Israelis are impatient: "נו?"
Israelis do not feel compelled to follow the rules. For example, it would not bother anybody to smoke just under a "no smoking" sign. "אז מה?"

That's all I had to say, but I had to say it. I feel much better now, thanks.

For those of you who want to read more on the Israeli high tech front here are a few Blogs, news and sites to check out more:

Six Kids and a Full Time Job by Michael Eisenberg
Israeli VC on Sand Hill road by Tali Aben
Just check the action, deals and dynamics on places like Globes or Themarker
Some other bloggers who think like me:

Fixed:

Israel turns 59 not 49. (Thanks to Jeremy Fain)
See also Ouriel Ohayon's blog for some more on the Israeli startups landscape. See for example his entry on Israeli Web startups here.

Tags: Israel , High tech , startups.

Mafe - Senegalese Peanut meal -

2006-07-16T03:52:00.000-07:00

Mafé (pour 4 personnes) [Selon Francois N'Dour]:

Ingredients:

- Beurre de cacahuètes Dakatine 2 cuillères à soupe
- Agneau ou poulet en morceaux
- Tomates concentré 1 petite boîte
- Maggicube 4
- 2 gros oignons ou 3 moyens
- 4 gousses d¹ail

Preparation:
- Mettre de l¹huile à chauffer et faire revenir l¹agneau. Quand c¹est doré,
réserver l¹agneau.
- Faire rissoler les oignons coupés en petits dés et l¹ail râpé. Touiller
jusqu¹à ce que ce soit bien doré. Rajouter la tomate concentrée. Touiller
pour éviter que la tomate n¹accroche au fond. Surveiller.
- Recouvrir d¹eau et ajouter les maggicubes émiéttés (+ légumes si
souhaités)
- Remettre la viande et laisser mijoter en couvrant à moitié pendant 15 à 20
minutes.
- Diluer la Dakatine dans de l¹eau pour en faire un liquide compact (et non
une pâte).
- Verser sur le reste et c¹est là que tout se joue, remuer délicatement pour
éviter que ça colle et que ça retombe, et que ça fasse une sauce homogène,
il faut surveiller régulièrement !

Accompagnement : riz nature (que l¹on mettra à cuire avant toute la
préparation du mafé).

food>recipes>mafe, food>recipes>locations>africa>senegal.

Watch the result here:

Gratin de brandade de Morue

2006-07-14T08:08:00.000-07:00

Ingredients:
De la morue ou n'importe quel autre poisson blanc
persil, poivre, noix de muscade
Pommes de terre
Gruyere rape ou en tranche
Ognons
environ 10 Olives

Preparation de la brandade:

Faire bouillir le poisson, le nettoyer enlever les arettes et l'ecraser a la fourchette.
Faire revenir les ognons decoupes en des
Denoyauter les olives

Melanger le tout

Preparation du gratin:
Faire bouillir les pommes de terre. Ecrasez les a la fourchette.

Passer a la moulinette le melange de la brandade et des pommes de terres. Ajouter quelques cuilleres a soupe d'huile d'olive. Il faut que le melange soit assez gros, il ne faut pas le transformer en patte.

Prendre un plateau pour le four, y etaler un couche du melange. Etaler une couche epaisse de fromage, puis recommencer avec le melange, etc. Terminer par le fromage.

Mettre au four jusqu'a ce que le gratin ressemble a un gratin.


 food>recipes>brandade



Japonica - NYC
2005-09-20T02:06:00.000-07:00
One great sushi restaurant in NYC -  Not the same level as Hatsuana, but very interesting.  The Sake Nigiri is one of the best, the size of the salmon steak you get there is pretty amazing. 
I also recommend the Rainbow Roll -

Not very expensive and Japonica is in the West Village -


 100 University Pl (at 12th street).
New York, NY 10003-4508 
(212) 243-7752


Hatsuana - NYC
2005-09-20T01:51:00.000-07:00
Hatsuana is definitely one of the top sushi places in the US - If you love sushi and sashimi this is the place to go.  Oh, I forgot to add that you also need to have some change in your pocket because it is a bit pricey.

If you are looking for the fancy NY roll and all the enchillada, don't go there.  However, if you want to have your toro, chutoro, otoro, Chiro Maguro - then you'll be more than happy -   They usually a japanese only menu with all kinds of fish you can only find in Japan.   Just ask the Sushi man for his recommendation.

I suggest you just order whatever you want without asking for the price :-)

Enjoy

        17 East, 48th Street
Tel. 212 355 3345


Peking Duck Palo Alto, CA
2005-09-13T21:55:00.000-07:00
Pretty decent Chinese restaurant right on El Camino Real Palo Alto. The Peking duck is indeed fresh and crispy. The rest of the food is just decent and it won't knock your pants off unless you have too much of it.

Pekind Duck Restaurant
2310 El Camino Real, Palo Alto, CA
+1 650 856 3338


Shawarma HaKtana  in Haifa Israel
2005-09-09T23:18:00.000-07:00
  Right on Merkaz Horev
 I believe this is probably the best shawarma in the world - 
    
     
  



What I started this blog?
2005-09-08T06:05:00.000-07:00

I first decided to blog on restaurants I like (or dislike) especially when these restaurants don't have a proper web site -  The idea was to give a home (URL) to all those poor restaurants without a site -

Then I decided to add more stuff related to food (hence the blog name), and I am now starting to throw in other kinds of stuff, like startups cuisine.

Please check back soon  Bon appetit :-)

Frank


Yossi's place - Haifa South Dado Beach
2005-07-20T05:47:00.000-07:00
One of the best places in Haifa, Israel.  Directly on the beach but without the sand, simple menu, simple food, great taste.  Always fresh.
If you are lucky Yossi will come out of the kitchen to shake your hand -