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I have eaten at Kin Shop and Sripraphai....Kin Shop food is more refined and the menu more focused. Srip is great but some dishes can be hit or miss....and I have certainly had more meals there. Kin Shop offers a menu without duds...better service and drinks.

I've spent a good amount of time in Napoli eating pizza...and lots of espresso and pastries...gotta say the pizza looks good. Can't wait to try it.

I am certainly on board with the idea of a pickle in every sandwich. This holds true if the sandwich contains cheese or cured meats...you need the vinegary component to cut through the fatty richness of the cheese and meat.

Domestic prosciutto on the whole is an absolute trainwreck....UNLESS it comes from Herb Eckhouse at La Quercia in Norwalk, Iowa. I would happily welcome any of his cured pork products on any sandwich.

And people, people, people...use the salt! Please, please, please....food fear and salt fear in particular is for the "dead at 30 and buried at 70 crowd". Give me my Maldon or hold the brussels sprouts!

This is an interesting discussion. I am going to have to side with Ferretti for the most part. Ed makes a nice point about Chinese chefs having to adapt to ingredient availability but beyond that I think Fred is right. I would be intrigued to know which Sichuan restaurants Ms. Dunlop enjoyed....for my own reference.

As for the rest of the piece I think the argument depends on how one views eating ethnic food. I like to eat it to learn more about a culture. Clearly the deep-fried, sticky-sweet glop that is Chinese-American cuisine is going to teach us that Americans like sugar (and far too much of it) with deep fried stuff. I like authentic Chinese because it is telling of where it is from (chilies & Sichuan pepper from Sichuan, chilies & vinegar from Hunan and so on) and like Thai food it tends to walk the tight rope of balance between all of the flavors in a dish. I like duck tongues and daufu and beef tendon. Can we at least agree to distinguish between Chinese-American and Chinese? The difference is tremendous and that way I'll know which places to avoid.....

I just finished reading a few more of the posts in this topic and I think a few things need clarification:

Jamon Iberico is not finished on acorns. It is finished on it's normal feed. Bellota is finished on acorns.

Like I said in my previous post....I would skip the bread (and melon and anything else) and enjoy the Iberico on it's own with a few drops of good (ideally Spanish) olive oil. I would certainly precede or follow the ham with the pan con tomate that another poster suggested. Just my opinion.....