It was a surprise when Brett “Shaggy” Duffee left the kitchen at Karen Carrier’s eclectic Beauty Shop, in Cooper-Young, and headed for the eastern reaches of Germantown and Equestria, a restaurant with a long up-and-down reputation of being different things to different people. (Former Equestria chef Kevin Rains now presides at Roustica, where Marena’s used to be in Midtown.) So, perhaps a surprise but not an undeserved change for a talented chef.

Of course, Equestria is not Beauty Shop and Germantown is not Cooper-Young, so Duffee has tailored a menu that’s a bit more sedate than what patrons of Beauty Shop expected. Who would quibble, however, about a ramekin filled with white beans and tender rabbit meat and shavings of pungent black truffle under a crunchy breadcrumb and pecorino chapeau (”Rabbit Cassolette”). Or a special appetizer one night, a redolent and spicy duck, sausage and mushroom gumbo?

Duffee rubs a rib-eye steak with annatto seed (from the anchiote tree, popular in Latin American and Caribbean cuisine), grills it as requested and serves it with a slice of Cabrales cheese, an almond and morel mushroom reduction and melt-in-yer-mouth croquettes made of Serrano ham and Gruyere cheese. Nothing too restrained there, though more straightforward is the pork osso buco (the shank) served with crisp roasted fennel, a bacon and red onion marmelade and polenta. The servings, by the way, are more than generous.

A good way to end a meal is with a wedge of a delectable pecan tart.

Now Equestria is not cheap. Appetizers are $10 to $17, entrees $26 to $36, nor does the wine list shirk prices at least two times the retail price or more. The place looks comfortable and inviting, a bit masculine, and as “casually elegant” as the restaurant’s website suggests. Service is polite, decorous, even rather serious.

And that’s where my question comes in. On our first visit to the restaurant, sitting not far from us, were two couples dining together. One of the men wore a red baseball-type cap, and he kept it on his head the entire time eating dinner. Now I realize that the world is a far more casual place than it was 15 or 20 years ago, yet in a restaurant where dinner for two, with a good bottle of wine, can run over $200, where the waiters, dressed in black, ply their trade with solemn discretion, where the lighting and atmosphere suggest elegance and intimacy — wouldn’t you think a guy could take off his cap for an hour or two? Or are people so casual nowadays that they’re completely oblivious to mood and tone and propriety?

When we lived at the Greenstone at Poplar and Waldran, we used to go to Saigon Le frequently, because it was just down Poplar and around the corner on Cleveland. After we moved out east, though, we lost touch with the place and its great, inventive Vietnamese cuisine. Venturing downtown recently, however, and needing an early dinner, we stopped at Saigon Le and were really glad that we did.

The restaurant, which opened in April 1993, is owned by its unassuming chef, Hoa Nguyen (known as “Mama”) and operated by the expansive Le family. My first review ran in The Commercial Appeal on May 28, 1993, and while we didn’t use a star rating system in those days, my reaction was more than just enthusiastic; I thought the food was remarkably fresh, delicious and creative. I wrote a brief “Second Helping” on June 24, 1994. Then in March 1995, Saigon Le burned to the ground. Hoa Nguyen was determined to rebuild the exact building in the same spot, and that’s what the family did. The restaurant reopened in October that year, and I wrote another rave review. From that time until the early 21st century, I always included Saigon Le on my annual list of the city’s best restaurants and mentioned Hoa Nguyen as one of our best chefs.

Anyway, when we went into Saigon Le recently, everyone welcomed us with “Long time no see!” (there was none of the brusqueness that has occasionally soured patrons’ experiences at the restaurant) and our waiter immediately brought us a new salad in Mama’s repertoire, a small platter holding finely shredded seaweed, sliced cucumber, sliced onions, basil leaves and boiled shrimp, all bathed with a light, slightly sweet, slightly vinegary dressing. If any dish on earth were fresher, cleaner and tastier than this, with its blending of mild and piquant flavors and its lovely combination of shades of green and white with the pink shrimp — well, I can’t think of it, so never mind.

We ordered the appetizer pancake, which is actually an omelet (of sorts) folded around mushrooms, onions and bean sprouts. This comes with a plate of various salad greens — opal basil, romaine and such — that you wrap around a piece of the “pancake,” dip in a savory sauce (mixed with red chili paste) and happily devour.

For entree we asked for the curry chicken soup. Mama’s genius reveals itself here in a dense, mustard-yellow color broth of amazing complexity and subtle heat. This holds only pieces of chicken, white potatoes and sweet potatoes with a few bits of onion, and believe me, it needs nothing more to be completely satisfying. Oh, heck, let’s just say it: It’s awesome! The chicken you can dip in another multi-layered sauce, heavy on the black pepper, that contains slices of red chilies.

What a great meal, aided in its compelling nature by the fact that even with a couple of Tsingtao beers, the tab was about $30.

Saigon Le is at 51 North Cleveland and is open for lunch and dinner every day except Sunday. Call 276-5326.

Just back from a very nice lunch at comfortable and welcoming River Oaks with a couple of wine-tasting friends. Red wines being the theme, we stuck to dishes (mainly) that would complement what we were tasting, so let me dive in right here and say that the appetizer of beef short ribs ravioli, with sauteed wild mushrooms, garlic coulis and sherry emulsion ($8) was (1) perfect for a chilly afternoon, (2) incredibly tender and succulent, and (3) a terrific bargain. Now chef Ben Vaughn is deeply involved with deconstructed food concepts, so this was ravioli in the “new sense,” meaning that rather than being “ravioli,” it was one “raviolo,” and not only that but simply sheets of thin pasta draped over a heap of the melt-in-the-mouth beef. Did we care? I didn’t notice.

One of our party ordered the Caesar salad ($8), which, in the deconstructed sense, appears as a sheaf of hearts of romaine lettuce standing upright within a ring of puff pastry; that’s right, the salad was inside the crouton! So to speak. Another appetizer was the charcuterie plate ($8, another incredible bargain), which brings various rustic sausages, a selection of different cheeses, pickled cipollini onions and grilled flat bread. This serving is so generous that we saved some of the cheese for after the meal, to have with the last red wine and espresso.

Now I hate to be a disappointment to readers of Whining & Dining, but since the three of us were tasting red wines, we all opted for the tournados of beef tenderloin ($15), not very imaginative, perhaps, but certainly appropriate. The beef, cooked properly to medium rare, came with creamy, glossy mashed potatoes, sauteed baby green beans and a rich and flavorful truffle bordelaise sauce.

So that’s it, three guys tasting red wine and eating like robber barons on a winter night. Too bad River Oaks is so far from Downtown.

River Oaks is at 5871 Poplar, where the Cockeyed Camel used to rock. Lunch is served Monday through Friday, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.; dinner is 5 to 10 p.m. Sunday through Friday, 5 to 11 p.m. Saturday. Call 683-9305. Menus are available at riveroaksrestaurant.com.

Randy Caparoso came to Memphis early in April to build the wine program for Circa, John Bragg’s restaurant Downtown. Caparoso had 30 years experience in food, wine and restaurant management, and he created a unique and immensely gratifying wine list for the restaurant.

We interviewed Caparoso about his philosoply of wine and and food and wine pairing and posted the result to this blog on August 23, shortly after the restaurant opened. We asked Caparoso then about his commitment to Memphis and Circa, and he replied, “Circa is my job and my commitment.”

We learned by email a few minutes ago that Caparoso is leaving the restaurant and the city. His (brief) farewell and his paean to local indigenous food are here at culinarywineandfood.

A thoughtful reader emailed to tell me about Big Bill’s Barbeque where, he said, “I think I had the best bbq sandwich that I have ever eaten. (I am a past volunteer chairman for MIM and have sampled the contestant bbq many times.)”

Well, I’m not stupid, at least not about food discoveries. So I went out to Big Bill’s today. It’s in Raleigh, at the intersection of Ramill Road and Yale, in a small, well-worn free-standing building. The place is friendly. There’s a television going all the time. A regular barbecue sandwich, with one side order and a drink, costs $4.99.

Best I have ever eaten? I dunno. So many years, so much barbecue. But it’s a terrific sandwich, chopped (not pulled), meaty and flavorful, moderately smoky, with enough outer meat to give each bite a tiny crunch. The mild sauce is lightly spicy, just enough to bring a little nod of recognition, while the sauce is enlivened by a zing of vinegar. They ask if you want cole slaw on your sandwich — which of course I did; this is Memphis, right? — but I could have used more; you might ask for extra. Served on a conventional hamburger bun, this is a barbecue sandwich that by the time you’ve worked your way through half of it is beginning to dissolve into a squish of bread, meat and sauce. YUM! You’ll use plenty of those little napkins.

The beans were good too.

I’ll go back soon to sample ribs.

Big Bill’s is at 3530 Ramill Road near Yale. It’s open 10 a.m. to 9 p.m., Monday through Thursday, 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., Friday and Saturday. Call 388-9038.

We had dinner last Friday at Assaggio in Cordova. I ws really looking forward to the lasagna, which I noted as one of the best items on the menu when I reviewed the restaurant in the Playbook on August 10. I wasn’t disappointed. The lasagna is fresh and spicy, hearty and flavorful without being heavy, and the serving is generous.

We noticed after a few minutes that a couple who had come into the restaurant after we did and were seated at the table next to us seemed concerned about something. The gentleman had ordered the lasagna and evidentally didn’t like it and was complaining to his wife. He called the waiter to the table and complained about the dish and said he didn’t want it. The waiter politely asked what was wrong with the lasagna, and that man said, “It’s bland.”

Well, now, it seems to me that feeling that a dish is bland is not grounds for sending it back to the kitchen. Palates are different, of course, and what was pleasantly spicy to me may indeed have tasted bland to this diner. Why didn’t he, then, have recourse to salt and pepper or perhaps some red pepper flakes.

No, sending food back to the kitchen, which is a nice way of saying “refusing to accept a dish at the table,” is a serious matter and should be done when a food item is either prepared in the wrong manner (getting a well-done steak when you ordered rare or vice versa), if there’s a foreign object in the food or if there truly is a flaw, if, say, fish smells spoiled and disgusting or meat is so tough that it’s difficult to cut or the food is so salty that it’s inedible.

The staff at Assaggio performed exactly as they should have. The waiter took the lasagna away (while I thought “Bring it to me!”) and brought the man a menu and he chose something else for his dinner. One of the chef/owners came from the kitchen and apologized. Every effort was made to accommodate the patron.

But I think he was wrong to send the food back.

I wrote on my personal blog a few weeks ago about the decline in relevance of the venerable Gourmet magazine and the alarming blurring of the line between the magazine’s editorial copy and advertising, and I had two interesting responses from Jeff, who brought up, as an aside, this “Whining & Dining” blog. Here are excerpts from his second post:

There are many blogs out there devoted to food and what we would like Gourmet or Bon Appetit to really be like – basically not selling a lifestyle … but all about the food!
Blogs like W&D are fairly similar to NY Times, SF Chronicle, etc, and are very useful for the local buzz on the restaurant scene, farmer’s market finds, the local grocery now carries great new ingredients, etc, but aren’t necessarily like some food blogs that are strictly related to the food, cooking, recipes, ingredient sourcing, etc.

I think what Jeff is distinguishing between here are blogs that are primarily newsy and blogs that are primarily about the process of cooking particular dishes, recipes and so on.

Which kind of blog is “Whining & Dining,” and what would you readers of “Whining & Dining” like it to be? Or is “W&D” a combination of both types of blog? And is that O.K.? Jennifer and I seem to be pretty comfortable with the way we’re doing things now, but we like to hear from our readers, too.

Look at the posts that have gotten the most responses (over 20) since May:
5/24: Why Do Restaurants Close? 30 responses.
7/11: It Ain’t Heavy, It’s My Burger. 31 responses.
7/19: Smoking. 22. (That is, smoking in restaurants and bars.)
7/23: First Bite: Circa. 29.
7/25: Ciao, Bella (for now, anyway). 23.
6/27: Our favorite ethnic restaurants. 21.
6/27: Can I get a steak right? 47.
6/11: Strip mall and stars. 27.
8/17: Once more, to the stars. 52. (More on the CA restaurant rating system.)
8/21: Chain restaurants. 48.
8/23: Food we lie about. 38.
8/24: This morning’s review of Circa. 58.
8/29: Sigh: Those Yankees. 33. (About reviews of Justin Timberlake’s restaurant in New York.)
9/4: Restaurants We Miss. 67.
9/20: I call it tasting, he calls it theft. 24. (Sampling grapes in the grocery store.)
9/25: Now this makes me mad. 46. (About being charged for condiments in restaurants.)
10/2: Harrah’s puts money on Paula. 36. (Wow, do a lot of people ever hate Paula Deen!)

You will notice immediately that most of these popular posts were about dining in restaurants, service in restaurants, nostalgia for restaurants and thinking about, talking about and criticising restaurants.

While people clearly enjoy the other topics that Jennifer and I touch on — food finds, shopping for food, southern cooking and so on — I think that this list tells us what readers look for on the W&D blog.

Not a first First Bite, of course, the restaurant has been open since late summer of 2002, but a First Bite as far as new chef Tony Gault is concerned. Tonight, btw, marks the opening of the bar at Cafe 1912, an expansion that has made the restaurant proper more comfortable, because some tables have been transfered to the bar area, creating more room in the restaurant.
Gault has wisely kept old favorites on the bistro-style menu, such as the goat cheese ravioli, the pizza Margherita and the mussels among appetizers and the classic Lyonnaise salad and the roasted chicken, though even here he has tweaked details. On our visit last week, that ravioli, served in a shallot-tomato sauce with Parmesan cheese, was a hit, as was the simple pizza, topped with the tomato, fresh mozzarella cheese and basil. Salmon with Lyonnaise potatoes was perfectly cooked, and with its garnish of bacon was hearty enough for a red wine, though it suffered from too much butter in the sauce, which made the dish too rich. No complaints whatever accrued to the incredibly tender and flavorful pork tenderloin, cooked perfectly to medium rare and served with a crisp apple-fennel slaw and a brandy reduction.
Desserts added up to one hit — the toasted coconut pecan tart — and one miss — the chocolate cake with orange-caramel sauce, the problem being that it just didn’t taste like chocolate. More chocolate intensity, please!
On the whole, though, this was an enjoyable meal, made even more pleasant by food prices — the appetizers were $7.50 and $8, and entrees were $16 and $18 — and the short wine list, on which every glass is $5.50 and every bottle is $22.

Road house/fish camp atmosphere is not my favorite decor, even for downhome dining — unless I’m, you know, at a road house or a fish camp, two unlikely prospects — but Flying Fish, owned by the group that owns Flying Saucer down the street on Second, has the style down pat, so the place is sort of funky/junky/ironic, and even if you don’t care for “fast casual” service — you order at a counter and a waiter brings the food to the table — the place ticks along like clockwork. I had a terrific bowl of dark, flavorful seafood gumbo; a “BBQ” shrimp po’boy of which I expected greater things, and a plate that brings a trio of fish tacos accompanied by rice and beans. The tacos are heaped (as you can see in this image) with good cole slaw and a fresh-tasting pico de gallo. The result is pretty good, coming midway on the chart of my gustatory pleasure principle between the gumbo and the shrimp po’boy. Interestingly, you can pay a dollar more ($8.99 instead of $7.99) and trade-up to actual tilapia instead of whatever anonymous finny friend is utilized. What I must return to the restaurant for are catfish, which is fried or grilled, and shrimp and oysters, now that we’re in an “R” month. Flying Fish is — and I’m quoting from the take-out menu — “Open 11-10 Daily 7 Days a Week.” Yeah, me too, I’m always forgetting what daily means. The address is 105 S. Second. Call 522-8228.

Look at these beautiful eggs! I mean, they’re like glowing jewels in a humble cardboard setting. Look at the colors: Brown and tan and beige, a white so pale it’s almost blue, a green paler than the palest celadon. A few have clouds of little brown specks. And the eggs are truly precious; it took two months for us to latch on to one dozen.

They're from West Wind Farms, a certified organic spread run by husband-and-wife team Ralph and Kimberlie Cole. West Wind Farms is near Deer Lodge in Morgan County, about halfway between Cookville and Oak Ridge on the Cumberland Plateau and a good distance north of I-40. That's a far piece, but the Coles are in town every other Saturday for the Memphis Farmers' Market at Central Station. We have purchased beef and chicken from the Coles, and the quality, the textures and flavors are exemplary, the way that beef and chicken ought to taste like and apparently used to taste like.

The beef (dry-aged for two weeks) is grass-fed and pasture raised; the poultry forages in organic pastures and is additionally fed (quoting from the website — grassorganic.com) “our own balanced mix of fresh, certified organic grain, kelp and probiotics.” The animals receive no synthetic hormones or antibiotics and no chemical paracitides.

While buying beef and chicken from the West Wind Farms stand, we couldn’t help seeing the sign for organic eggs, and we conceived, well, an obsession for obtaining some. Unfortunately, they were always sold out by the time we arrived, even if we showed up by eight a.m. So we started getting to the market earlier and earlier; still, no eggs. The litany was similar every week: “Sorry, no more eggs.” “Sorry, the eggs are gone.” And it’s 20 dozen we’re talking about!

Finally, we got to the Farmers’ Market one Saturday at 7. As we were walking across the parking lot toward the shed, we noticed a man with a large bag in each hand, bags filled with cartons of eggs. This guy had bought all the eggs! No way! Boy, were we fried, and I don’t mean over-easy! It was obvious that this guy had been at the market since 6 o’clock or so or that he had ordered this shipment in advance. When we made our slow way to the table, we complained about the system or lack thereof that deprived people who really wanted a carton or two of eggs from being able to get them. “It’s difficult to be fair,” said Kimberlie Cole, but she could tell, I think, that we were massively annoyed.

O.K., the next time that the Coles were in Memphis, we dragged ourselves out of the house at 6:15 and got to the West Wind table by 6:45. Five or six people were already in line. Eggs were still available but going fast. Would there be a carton for us? Some people seemed to be buying in bulk, but when we got to the front, yes, there were eggs! We got one carton! And Kimberlie Cole smiled and said, “I’m glad you got your eggs.”

Were the eggs worth the epic efforts it took to obtain them? I would say so. There’s nothing standarized about them; the colors, as you can see, are different; they vary slightly in size, even the yokes partake of varying shades from light-lemon to orangey-yellow. And the flavor is platonic; one imagines Adam and Eve cooking up an omelet in Eden that would taste the way these eggs do.