Fat Guy

He wrote that in 1991, sixteen years ago. I visited La Grenouille earlier this week, and it is pretty much the same as he found it then. The difference, of course, is that Miller didn't have it in for luxury dining, the way Frank Bruni does. ← If La Grenouille is packed, it's because there used to be twenty or thirty restaurants just like it and now there are two or three (La Grenouille, Le Perigord, and . . . ?). So all the demand for that kind of experience is now concentrated in less than 10% of the seats. I'm not sure how Miller's quote is relevant. Restaurants like Upstairs and Momofuku are not "turning away from haute cuisine and embracing little pizzas, pasta, coq au vin and grilled chicken." What they serve is best thought of as haute cuisine loosed from its historical moorings: first, because it's served in such a casual setting; second, because it incorporates haute cuisine (or the non-Western equivalents) techniques but not necessarily luxury ingredients or formal platings. I don't believe there were restaurants like this back in the day. I'd be interested to hear of some examples. But they seem like a distinctly contemporary phenomenon.

The Fra'mani salametti are the best salumi products I've tasted anywhere. I'm sure there's someplace in Italy where you can find better, but Fra'mani has become my benchmark for great salumi. In New York City they always have a few of the salametti sitting on top of the Fairway deli counter -- not where the rest of the small salumi are found. The stuff is not cheap -- the individual salametti run a little less than 3/4 pound and tend to be priced around $16 -- but it's worth every penny. With many food products, if you pay double you get a small improvement in taste. The Fra'Mani stuff is, however, an order of magnitude better than anything else I've been able to find. The salametti are noteworthy not only for their beautiful soft texture and subtle flavorings that don't rely on spice as a crutch, but also for the incredible blue-cheese-like bloom on the casing. The complex flavors are more like a wine experience than a food experience -- just amazing. You can get all this stuff by mail (link in the first post on this topic), and you should. If you're a home salumi maker, this is what you should be aspiring to. If you're a lover of salumi, this will give you perspective. It will spoil you, though.

If you want to pump up a stew with demi-glace-like flavor for a couple of dollars you can buy a quart of the beef stock now sold in aseptic box containers in most good supermarkets and reduce it down to about half a cup. It will be relatively salty, but if you're using it as an ingredient in stew just don't add any other salt until you incorporate the reduced stock and check the flavors. I use this technique occasionally when braising, if I don't have any homemade stock at hand.

Terms like "refined" can be misleading if not defined in context. For example, as noted above, if you squeeze the juice out of sugar cane what you get is nothing like molasses or any of the dark sugars. I just had some sugar cane juice at a Vietnamese place in an Asian shopping mall in the US South and it tasted a lot more like white sugar than like molasses, turbinado, etc. So if you mean "refined" to be the removal of impurities, sure, white sugar is refined. But if you mean "refined" to be the improvement of flavor through processing (such as heating and drying) then molasses and dark sugars are covered. One thing to watch for: not all dark sugars come directly from the appropriate stage of the sugar-making process. They can also be reassembled later on, by combining white sugar with molasses. This is how most "brown sugar" sold in supermarkets is made, for example. So don't just assume that because it's darker in color it's not based on white sugar. In cooking, you can do the same thing and save yourself some money: experiment with adding white sugar and molasses in combination, and you may get the flavor you want. It depends on the application. In many cases, when you're cooking, expensive sugars are as much of a waste as expensive salts -- though secondary sugar flavors are generally more durable than secondary salt flavors. Cocktail-making, table condiments and other cold applications are more likely to show the subtle flavors of alternate sugars. It's also worth noting that white sugar made from beets is virtually indistinguishable from white sugar made from sugar cane. In much commercial sugar packaging I believe they're used interchangeably and even in combination in response to commodity pricing.

We've touched upon tomato sauce in a few past discussions, most recently surrounding Kim Severson's New York Times piece wherein she investigates her family's tomato sauce recipe. For that discussion, go here. On this topic, let's discuss how to make delicious tomato sauce. Whether it's a quick-cooked fresh-tomato sauce, a long-simmered sauce based on canned tomatoes, a sauce with olive oil, butter, onions, whatever, let's hear your favorite method -- and please, give enough details and instructions so that someone could replicate your sauce. Let's limit this to straight tomato sauces -- in other words not meat sauces. There are additional topics in that, for anyone who wishes to start them. +++ The sauce I've been making recently is based on the Pomi tomatoes in the aseptic packaging. I've never been able to go back to canned tomatoes since I've started using Pomi. I know the cans these days are lined, however I still think I taste metal -- or maybe it's some other taste imparted by the canning process that's different from the process Pomi uses. In any event, despite Parmalat's weird bankruptcy or whatever is going on with the company, the Pomi tomatoes still taste wonderfully fresh and sweet to me. For awhile I insisted on the whole tomatoes, but the chopped are just more convenient for saucemaking -- plus I can't seem to find the whole ones anymore. One nice thing, also, is that the only thing in a box of Pomi tomatoes is tomatoes -- no salt, no herbs, nothing to mess with whatever flavor you want to give to the sauce. I sweat an onion, chopped fine but not obsessively so, in a little olive over low heat with salt, pepper and, as the onions get very limp, I use the garlic press to add a couple of cloves of garlic. A couple of minutes later, once the garlic starts to go translucent, I add three boxes of Pomi crushed tomatoes and a little salt. I add salt throughout cooking -- to me this works better than salting just at the end. I also add herbs as available -- I'm not picky, but I like the herbs to be good. If I have fresh basil, okay -- basil tends to be pretty good even from the supermarket. If not, I have some really good Sicilian dried oregano from a friend that gives the sauce a good flavor. Probably my favorite tomato sauce herb is marjoram, however supermarket marjoram tends to be flavorless -- but if I get some marjoram from a greenmarket or garden source, that's a treat. Fresh ground pepper towards the end. The whole process takes about half an hour for a relatively fresh tasting, light, thin sauce with very little fat -- if you cook it much longer than that, which you can do, you'll start getting something that tastes like Italian-American "gravy" as it thickens and the flavors mellow. When you dress pasta with a thin sauce, you want to toss the pasta with it in a skillet before service. Pomi tomatoes are quite sweet, usually, and the onions contribute much sweetness too, but occasionally I get a batch that's not as sweet as I like, in which case a tablespoon of white sugar towards the end fixes it right up.

It's barely worth noting that Chodorow addressed this letter to the wrong guy. Pete Wells, though currently the editor of the dining section, didn't hire Frank Bruni and wouldn't be able to fire Frank Bruni. Nor is he responsible for the stuff Frank Bruni writes. Pete Wells is doing a great job with the rest of the dining section -- it has improved quite a bit in the past few months, but like the new dean of the English department at a university he inherited a group that includes several tenured professors. The restaurant critic publishes in the dining section, and probably uses dining section resources for copy-editing and such, but is a relatively independent figure. For all we know, Pete Wells would like to be rid of Bruni just as much as any of us -- it wouldn't matter. In any event, anybody who has a serious non-publicity-stunt complaint about the Times restaurant critic should really address it to the executive editor, Bill Keller. Still eagerly awaiting Chodorow's first review.

The Times tried to address the problem structurally by adding "$25 and Under," but there have been three challenges: first, the fine-dining critics poach the best restaurants from the "$25 and Under" critics therefore undermining the possibility of a non-star review being a serious honor; second, price isn't the only dividing line when it comes to levels of formality, for example a place like Peter Luger, though basically a beer hall, is as expensive as many fine-dining restaurants; third, the restaurant base has become so large and diverse that without a third price category it's not possible even to begin to have a comprehensive approach.

Dave, I don't think Bruni's review is appreciably better than what Mariani or Lape wrote, and Greene's copy isn't comparable. Also, we don't know who got comped. It's clear from Gael Greene's writeup that she got at least one comped dish, however her disclosure on this point could easily indicate that she paid for the rest of the meal. Greene, Lape and Mariani have extensive dining budgets and pay for many meals. Without specific knowledge of what went down at Kobe Club, I'd be reluctant to accuse anybody of being unduly influenced. I'm not at all reluctant to say that Chodorow's behavior is more like that of an insane person than like a restaurateur trying to get some good PR. His narcissistic ad reads like a ransom note or a manifesto from the lunatic fringe. His plans to become a professional amateur stalker of Bruni and Platt are indicative of someone who has come totally unhinged. Which isn't to say he doesn't bury some reasonable points in there, as many nutty people are wont to do. I mean, he's right that Bruni thinks the steaks are delicious, and I have to agree emphatically that if you go to a steakhouse and the steaks are great only a non-culinary agenda can justify ripping the place with a mean-spirited zero-star review -- no matter how bad and overpriced the sides are. And he's right that pretty much all the critics agree on this point -- that the steaks are excellent. At least Mariani gives some bona fide information and speculates in an interesting way about Kobe/Wagyu beef itself. If Mariani got his meal comped, he nonetheless seems to have much less of an agenda than Bruni. And Bruni is a lousy critic. While Mimi Sheraton wrote a piece defending him, and while any such wacko attack against a legitimate journalist should be met with harsh disapprobation, I have to wonder whether she doesn't agree that Bruni is a lousy critic. She must. As perhaps the preeminent Times restaurant critic, she couldn't possibly take Bruni seriously.

Joyce Chen scissors are great (and outrageously overpriced). I wasn't imaginative enough to list them with my other shears, but I use them whenever I can find them (they're so small they tend to disappear at the bottom of the utensil crocks and drawers).

I don't think this is anything more than a recycling of the September 2006 press release, which contains substantially the same language quoted above.

Berry Bros. & Rudd is a wine shop, not a PR firm. I'm not exactly sure how it became the vehicle for this news item, which appears too short to be a Ducasse press release. I'll check into it.

As far as I know, there has never been any proof of a sugar-hyperactivity connection. Plenty of parents believe it exists, but scientific studies don't support the conclusion: http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art...rticlekey=52516

Okay, so the objection here is to quantity. Reasonable people can agree that it's okay to give some candy to kids. Even my pediatrician, who strenuously advocates organic milk and eggs, is fine with candy as a treat and a reward. Then the question becomes the acceptable quantity. It sounds like these caregivers are off the charts. Still, I wouldn't necessarily call this abuse -- indeed, I think it's a bizarre sign of the times that anybody would imply that it's abusive to give candy to children. The whole diabetes epidemic issue, while often repeated as fact, is very much still under review, and hardly justifies withholding sugar from all children.

It's certainly the case that a subset of young gourmets likes to dine at Per Se as well as at places like Momofuku and Upstairs. I'm a little older than the target audience, but at 37 I'm probably still in that category. At the same time, I think fine dining is getting more and more geriatric -- that's hard to dispute, and I don't mean it as an insult because I love geriatric fine dining -- and it's not clear that anybody has yet discovered the formula for capturing the next generation's audience. The Bar Room and several other places do indeed offer serious food in a more casual setting, but these true no-frills restaurants are in a different, post-modern category. They also don't require the same level of investment. It will be interesting to see how that sector develops. From talking to several young chefs and observers of the industry, I can say with confidence that everybody is watching, especially the young up-and-coming chefs who are thinking about starting their own places.

I must concur with Messrs. Nathan and Bruni on this one. There's a whole generation of gourmets that doesn't want to pay six hundred dollars, plan sixty days ahead and commit six hours to a meal at Per Se just to get the top level of food available in the city. They'd rather wait the hour than the sixty days.

How much candy per day are the kids being fed? Are we talking about three small pieces, or thirty? If it's just a few pieces of candy, it hardly seems like abuse. I'd be more concerned that they're watching several hours of TV.

Carlsbad, do you think Alain Soliveres operates at the level of chefs like Marc Veyrat, Marc Meneau, Pierre Gagnaire or even a two-star chef like Olivier Roellinger?

Certainly not when they came to their jobs. But it's a different situation. They had Ducasse and the Ducasse system (the ADF, stages throughout the Ducasse empire, the Ducasse written repertoire) to train them, oversee them and provide them with top-notch sous-chefs, line cooks, pastry chefs, ingredients, tools and everything else. Vrinat has no such comprehensive capabilities, so he needs a stand-alone great chef right from the start of the relationship.

Williams-Sonoma sells Premax shears, described just as "Made in Italy," though I don't know if they still sell the exact model I have (which I think is better than the straight Premax shears I saw last time I was in a Williams-Sonoma). You can occasionally find Premax shears like mine on eBay for about $25, though I don't see any for sale at the moment.

Comparisons have been made, not least by the men themselves, between the New York restaurateur Danny Meyer and Taillevent's owner Jean-Claude Vrinat. When Danny Meyer was developing the concept for Gramercy Tavern, he overtly wanted to do an American version of Taillevent. He felt Vrinat's priorities -- hospitality above all else -- were the most worthy of imitation, and chose Taillevent as the model even though the food is better at most of the other three-star-type restaurants in France. And I think, at some early point in their evolution, the Danny Meyer restaurants were flawed in the same way Taillevent is: the main characters behind them cared more about hospitality than about food, and it showed. But in the end, if you're running a restaurant and your food isn't as good as it can be it reflects poorly on your hospitality. I think Danny Meyer learned this lesson awhile back and as a result has been upgrading the chefs at all his haute-cuisine restaurants, to the point where he now has Daniel Humm, Michael Anthony and Gabriel Kreuther carrying the culinary ball. Vrinat needs to do the same thing. It's a straightforward fix. He needs a superstar chef, and he needs to let that chef cook.

The wine list is amazing, and well priced.

I've got two pair of shears and love them both: The shears on the left are Wusthof. They're great for all sorts of kitchen tasks, for example if you open a can of whole peeled tomatoes you can cut them up in the can with the shears -- totally self-contained, no mess. I use them with reckless abandon to cut open packages and, yes, to trim the fat and gristle off pieces of chicken. The shears on the right are Premax of Italy. They're dedicated, spring-loaded poultry shears. You wouldn't use them for much else. But for cutting through the joints of a bird, they are in my opinion far superior to the scissor-type shears -- I'm certain that if you did the equations you'd find that they exert more force on account of their shape, and the spring action keeps your hand from getting tired if you're performing the task repeatedly (something I've only done once, but I was glad to have the right tool). For that one task, they're worth having. They're also quite menacing in appearance. They look like a prop from the episode of Star Trek where they depict an evil alien human-experimentation surgical bay in space. When I do occasionally cut up a whole chicken with shears, I use both -- the Premax to do the heavy lifting, and the Wusthof to trim. The Premax shears are about twelve years old. The Wusthof slightly younger, but probably near a decade old.

My collection: Who's next?

This is what I wrote at the time (circa 2001):

My one meal at Taillevent was at best a two-star, and more like a one-star experience. We sampled quite a lot of dishes and the food just wasn't as good as what was offered at the other three-star (or two-star) restaurants we'd been to. Not really in the same category. The space, the style of service (if not the execution), all those things had their charms, but the food was third-tier. If Michelin is really signaling that it's going after the restaurants that have been hanging on to undeserved three-star ratings, that's a good thing -- if it's done even-handedly. If it's just a question of singling out Taillevent, that's not credible.