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Gwen's explaination in the comments makes plenty of sense, though I think perhaps the Astor Center panel asked the wrong questions and that muddled the issue. What I take from Gwen's post is that there's sexism in restaurant kitchens, not that chefs' cooking is gendered. And of course that's important to talk about and understand the reasons why.

Restaurant sexism has assuredly been a part of the French haute cuisine tradition. Good rundown on this is here: ttp://www.stratsplace.com/rogov/women_chefs.html Also, "The Taste of America" by John and Karen Hess also touch on this, particularly on some sexist claptrap said by Paul Bocuse about how women could never be chefs.

In France, there's a distinction drawn between haute cuisine (in restaurants, prepared by men) and la cuisine de la bonne femme (at home, prepared by women). Logically, one is not better then the other, but which one has been accorded glory?

With the cooking and eating stunt I think the panel was trying to touch on the gender issues inherent in consumption of food, which to me is most interesting: why would a pink cocktail be girly? Why is red meat for dudes, while salads are for women? Some background on this can be found in Laura Shapiro's wonderful books "Something from the Oven" and "Perfection Salad."

Is it fair to say that there will always be a place for quality? I'm not sure that amateurs posting on sites such as Yelp carry as much influence as professional critics like Bauer and Frank Bruni. B&B go to a restaurant many times and have the weight of experience behind them when they write a review. It doesn't mean their judgements are iron-clad perfect - that's never the case with any critic - but they are well-informed, and most people know that and acknowledge their authority.

I'm not sure what the use patterns are for food media, but I'm willing to bet that people read a number of different sources - newspaper, blog, social media, sites such as this one - for food news. It's a healthy thing for the traditional critics to mix it up with scrappy onliners. Bauer should take all the interest in his profession as a complement and a friendly challenge.

Depending on the chiles, it might make sense to use gloves when peeling them if you want to use your fingers. I've learned to use the back of a chef's knife to scrape the skin off the chile after roasting to minimize touching it, and I always wash my hands well afterwards. Once is enough when it comes to getting capsaicin under my fingernails. That burns like nobody's business.

Concur with the general trend of this thread that Baogette is no great shakes.Though I wouldn't know a rice flour baguette if it whacked me upside the head, I did note that the bread in the Baogette sandwich wasn't as pleasant as the banh mi I've had at other locations. My problem was that the meat was too sugary and the mayo too goopy, tossing off the balance of the sandwich. Did anyone else think that the meat was too sweet? Was it just me? I'd rather have slices of spongy Vietnamese sausage.

Maybe I'm just the sort of philistine who likes her cheap pleasures to stay cheap, and thus I have an intractable bias against haut-ified fast food such as this place. My first banh mi was from a little storefront in Chinatown, and I thought it was manna from heaven; Baoguette, for all of its cheffy flourishes, isn't quite the same in ambiance or in execution.

The only thing I'd add to this is that the Chinese themselves are not percieved as hip, at least not in the "aspirational lifestyle" variety. Americans want to pretend, at least for an evening, that they are bistro-going Parisians or Romans at their local trattoria, as these cultures have romantic associations. As China becomes more promenant culturally and economically I think this might change; Americans will see the Chinese lifestyle as aspirational and will become more interested in authentic Chinese cuisine.

I agree with chevans, above, about restaurant decor as a factor in Chinese cuisine's lack of hipness. Many of the good, authentic restaurants in NYC's Chinatown have all the charm of a high school cafeteria. I like eating at these restaurants, but if I want nice ambiance I'll look elsewhere.

I like rich foods with yeasty brut champagne, like pate or salty nuts, like almonds. I really like to eat fried things with champagne. Most recently I fried squid and ate them standing up in the kitchen, when they were still piping hot - both the food and the ambiance went nicely with glasses of champagne...

I like my single malt neat, but on rare occasions a rusty nail does the trick. It's equal parts drambuie and scotch served over ice. Curiously, it gets better as the ice melts. But I save blended scotch for this - there's no use in blunting the subtleties of a good scotch.

Let a thousand food writers' voices bloom and all that, but Levy is right that a fair number of writers use bluster and bravado to cover up for the fact that they aren't great stylists. Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential was gripping as a tell-all about what goes on in professional kitchens, but it wasn't much more than that. It's too bad that Bourdain's approach has lead readers and writers to confuse clever insults with insight. Having a knack for tart, distainful commentary does not make for a smart critic or a honest writer - it makes for a one-trick pony.