Fat Guy

You might not have a high likelihood of success at a Tuscan restaurant in rural Virginia, but there's always a chance -- the US if filled with exceptions that would make a fool of anyone bold enough to be doctrinaire. The point being, you can't lay down rigid rules about the US cuisine scene because it's so heterogeneous. France, for its part, tends towards homogeneity, though of course there is diversity within that single dominant style -- so it's a lot easier to generalize that Mexican food will be bad in France than it is to generalize that Italian food will be bad in Virginia. Even though ostensibly the US is the land of the chains it is quite a lot more culinarily diverse than most nations that have smaller chain presences. It's also, to get back to a point above, a lot bigger. France is smaller than Texas. The US is 250% the size of all of Western Europe. The whole concept of "small-town France" has to be looked at differently from "small-town USA" because small towns in France are mostly in very close orbit to major cities. If you're in Paris you can drive to Reims for dinner and sleep at home that night. You're talking about the distance from New York City to New Haven, Connecticut -- a lot of Americans would call that a daily commute. So one of the reasons you have restaurants in "small-town France" that cater to culinarily sophisticated international urban tastes is that small-town France has a fictional aspect to it in that the culinarily sophisticated international urban people can get there in an hour and fifteen minutes.

I'd like to see anyone try to get a Mexican meal that good in France. In Paris, they don't have Mexican food really, just a cuisine they call "Tex Mex." On our first day in the city, we passed a restaurant called "Indiana" that served Tex Mex, which is a bit like calling a French restaurant "Bulgaria." --When in France, don't eat the fajitas, from the LA Times

Busboy, I certainly think that Michelin and the other French documentary sources are part of the picture. But they operate against a backdrop that owes its existence to a number of factors. One is that France is small, and more importantly it is densely populated as compared to the rural United States. If you look at the parts of the United States that offer similar density to France -- like the corridor from Washington, DC, up through Boston -- you can find a lot of great stuff to eat in the small towns. You can see scads of recommendations in Holly's opus, from the Sterns, etc. It's still not as easy to find as it would be in France, but it's there. Now, when you get out into the middle of the US, things get much more spread out. So things are very different. Who knows what would happen if we gave France dominion over a piece of land a thousand miles square with no population in it -- they might all of a sudden find themselves with a culinary crisis on their hands. I think there's also an issue of breadth and depth at play here. France offers a lot of really good food, but it's all French. You have a little bit of non-French ethnic food appearing here and there, mostly in Paris, but France mostly does one thing and does it well. Chinese, Mexican, etc., foods just aren't big categories when you're on a road trip in France. Even McDonald's in France isn't as good as it is here. In the US, you have quite a lot of culinary diversity built into the system -- even if you just eat at the chains, and even in small towns you typically have non-chain Asian, Mexican, etc., available to you. So there's a different focus. If, like me, you've ever come back from a trip to France and said "I need a slice of pizza, a burger and some fried chicken right now or I'm going to kill someone," then you know what I mean.

The French chain that I've usually seen across the street from McDonald's is called Quick. ( http://www.quick-restaurants.com/ ).

I have access to most of the major chains near my home, but I mostly save them up for road trips. That way, if I get into a situation where I expect that doing better than the chains is going to require more effort than I'm willing to expend (I'm hungry, I'm cranky, I'm tired, I just want something to eat and I don't want any damn risk) I go to a chain. Anyway, I consider maintaining chain literacy to be part of my job -- I can't see how it's possible to be a so-called dining expert if you don't know what normal people are eating. I also enjoy looking for regional variations in chains -- it's similar to how I appreciate the people in cookie-cutter condo developments who have done interesting things with their yards and entryways; there's always room for individuality within the boundaries of conformity. I love visiting the various concept McDonald's that we don't have where I live: The McCafe and McDonald's Bistro Gourmet Euro-style test restaurants, the Chef Mac's Cajun concept, McPizza, the World's Largest McDonald's on I-44 in Vinita, Oklahoma, etc. (here in New York City we have the flagship McDonald's near Wall Street, which has marble tables, a tuxedoed doorman and a live pianist). And then there are the regional chains, which I don't have access to: Golden Corral (yes, to me the one or two times a year I can get to a Golden Corral -- especially for weekend breakfast -- are a real treat), the amazing Souplantation chain (which kicks the ass of 95% of small town casual eateries), Biscuitville (ditto), etc. I'm a risk-taker but not a gambling addict. You gotta know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em, know when to walk away, know when to run.

While I fundamentally agree with the premise here, I think there are some commonly accepted myths that need to be debunked if we are to get to the bottom of things. Myth #1: France is an idyllic culinary nirvana where every randomly selected restaurant serves you a high-quality four-course lunch, and every French person eats this way every day. Reality #1: In any given year, you can read the same stories in the business magazines, for example this one from the Economist: "McDonald's is opening 30-40 new outlets a year in France, where it now has some 900 restaurants—more per head than most of its European neighbors, including Germany, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands. (Britain is still just ahead, but the company opened there earlier.) McDonald's now claims to be the leading restaurant chain in France. Its French sales and profits were both up by over 9% in 2001—a year when the company saw global net profits fall by 17%." Plenty of French people are eating with great frequency at the same chains as their American counterparts. Plenty of French people are eating at Denny's-quality chain cafeterias attached to hypermarches, which are incidentally on highway strips that look just like American highway strips but with less choice and shorter hours. Even those small family-owned cafes can suck -- I've had lousy meals at such places, which can be even worse in Paris than in the countryside. Myth #2: Frozen food is bad. Prepared food is bad. Reality #2: Come on, people. Freezing is a technology for the preservation of food that is used at most every level of cuisine, right up to restaurants with international acclaim. Most every piece of sushi you've ever eaten has been frozen. And prepared foods have their place; indeed, an industrial facility with high quality control standards can in many instances produce cheaper and better base items than the average restaurant. Myth #3: There's nothing good to eat at the chains. Reality #3: Many of the chains are not bad at all. They're just average. So when you're in a place where most of the single-establishment restaurants are worse than average, the chains are your best bet. You can get a pretty enjoyable meal at an upper middle market chain like Outback or Legal Sea Foods. And a few of the cheap chains are good too: Long John Silver's, Chick-Fil-A, Arthur Treacher's, Popeye's -- people may want to have the fantasy that local family-owned blah blah blah restaurants are better, but finding such a place that has better fish-and-chips than Arthur Treacher's is the rare exception not the rule.

Sometimes it is.

Even the ones at McDonald's?

Oh, you'll do worse in rural Canada.

You can get some pretty awful meals in France. The odds of a randomly selected cafe in the French countryside sucking are less than in small town America, but the risk is there. We could recite a litany of cultural, economic, geographical, et al., differences that account for the spread, but I don't care what country you're in it's always a bad idea to pick restaurants out the window of a car. What I've noticed is that, often, the same Americans who would be traveling in France with four restaurant guidebooks and a pile of computer printouts in the car will drive around the US with nothing more than the free map from the state welcome center. In that situation, of course you're going to have better luck in France -- because you're not relying on luck at all. But many, many American small towns, while they lack the culinary depth and sophistication of some of their European counterparts, have wonderful little restaurants -- you just have to be willing and able to invest the research time, which is admittedly a bigger investment of time here than in France because restaurants outside the major cities are not nearly as well documented here in the US. If you're not willing or able to invest the research time, the simple fact is that your odds of getting an acceptable meal will be better at chain restaurants.

FYI, there have been some recent enhancements to Fairway's web site. The cafe menu is now online: http://fairwaymarket.com/steakhousecafe.cfm

Regional 2607 Broadway, between 98th and 99th Streets 212-666-1915

The water service at the Modern is very nice, by the way. The pitchers are stainless and have very unusual clean lines -- they look like a cross between the bullet train standing on end and an asymmetrical bud vase. The bottled waters -- I forget the brands -- are in very elegant bottles and are not the typical Evian and Pellegrino crap.

In several Michelin three-star restaurants in France, when I have ordered tap water they have left a carafe of it on the table. A nice carafe, mind you, and very rarely have I ever actually gotten to touch it because they always top off your water anyway, but I do enjoy having it there.

I'm no expert on the book publication process, but as I understand it there are several dates in the sequence, such as printing date, stock date, pub date, etc. The only one that matters from a consumer perspective, however, is the "on-sale date." In the case of Turning the Tables, the on-sale date is August 16 (this has not changed). Bookstores, warehouses, et al., will surely get the book at the end of July, but I don't think they will actually ship them or put them on shelves until the on-sale date. Then again, you could get lucky. My wife Ellen has gone through five book publication sequences with her books and we were almost always able to get the book from Amazon and Barnes & Noble earlier than the on-sale date.

We were there on an atypical night for water, because yesterday there was this scare about the storm runoff and bacteria and such. So the whole level of water awareness was very high. We also completely tortured the waitstaff with our water requests. First we interrogated them about the number of microns of their water filtration system, then we had a discussion about how their ice maker also has filtration, then we ordered both still and sparkling bottled water, then one person in our group wanted ice on the side so they brought a silver ice bucket, then I switched to tap water because even when my life depends on it and my friend is paying for dinner I still can't stand to be complicit in spending money on bottled water. Needless to say, very early on we were identified as high-maintenance water customers and got a lot of water attention. I agree that basics like water and wine refilling are critical baseline elements of a four-star restaurant -- actually those elements should be flawless at the three-star level too.

What elements of four-star dining luxuriousness did you feel were not present? To me, the key elements were in place from the concept stage onward. The two slight bits of misdirection I've noticed are 1) that the restaurant is very contemporary -- very, well, uh, modern -- and so it doesn't carry with it some of the cognitive cues that an old-school plush-banquettes place would have (this threw a lot of people off when Jean Georges opened, and I think were it not for Ruth Reichl's premature four-star review and Jean-George's personal relationships with tastemakers the history of that place would have been rather different), and 2) that the proximity to the Bar Room -- especially the required parade through the Bar Room to get to the back -- gives a casual first impression (I think a separate entrance and a higher wall will, upon reflection, seem to have been good ideas).

I'd say four-star-potential, definitely. All the elements are there. Would I give a four-star review based on what I've seen? I'd probably give a three-star rave and point to four-star potential on about a one-year time horizon.

At the end of last nights dinner in the Modern’s formal dining room, after cocktails, canapes, amuses, the summer tasting menu, a dessert amuse, dessert and coffee came three sets of petits fours. First, the waiter presented a tray of mini ice-cream cones to each person at our table. Second, a ceramic box of handmade chocolates, including a bite-size nugget that seemed somehow to incorporate a double shot of espresso. Finally, a tray of assorted cookies and candies, with the highlight being the best macaroons I’ve ever eaten. Seriously, the best macaroons I’ve ever eaten, and I’ve eaten plenty. These were better than the macaroons at Laduree under Pierre Herme (Marc Aumont, the Modern’s executive pastry chef, is a disciple of Herme), better than La Maison du Chocolate, and better than Alain Ducasse in Paris or New York. The cookie pushed the edge of the envelope of lightness into territory where it seems impossible for it not to collapse when touched, and the filling was abundant with a lusciousness I’ve never before quite experienced in a macaroon. I was full. I ate four of them. Big ones. Overall it was a terrific meal. Two of us had the summer tasting menu and two ordered a la carte, so we got to try a lot of dishes. Probably the best dish on the table all night was loup de mer with lovage, spring vegetables and sea bean sauce. Like many of the dishes on the menu, it’s a minimalist, modernist composition. As Ed Behr once said to me in an interview, there are different varieties of culinary risk-taking. You can take a risk by preparing adventurous, radical food. But minimalism is also a kind of risk-taking, because there’s nowhere to hide. Gabriel Kreuther is taking that kind of risk over and over: subtle, restrained flavors expressed without any superfluous ingredients. The cumulative quantity of food throughout the meal is substantial, but the individual dishes feel light and refreshing. Also superb, roasted lobster with artichokes, rhubarb and caramelized baby fennel. Artichokes, rhubarb and fennel are three ingredients that have sui generis flavors, and it was fascinating to see how they worked in combination. I’m not going to go so far as saying you could sell this stuff in a jar, but there’s definitely a synergy that produces an unprecedented flavor. It would be hard to choose from among three other first-rate dishes: squab and foie gras “croustillant” (two pieces of squab sandwiching a piece of foie gras, all wrapped in cabbage and pastry crust) with caramelized ginger jus and mixed vegetables; bison tenderloin poached in cabernet with green asparagus and shallot-pepper jus; and duck breast with black truffle marmalade crust, “fleischneke” (a sausage-like circle of duck confit wrapped in a pasta skin) and Banyuls jus. Not every dish was a revelation. The foie gras with cherries was like something you could have been served at any good restaurant, the tuna carpaccio was overwhelmed by its pepper crust and the herb salad with shaved trumpet royal mushrooms was a testament to why slices of big, white, flavorless, raw mushrooms are not worth eating. I also felt the three amuses (a trout roe profiterole, a little fennel salad and a watermelon “bellini”) were not a good ambassador of the delicious things to come. Not only would I rather have one really good amuse than three just-okay ones, but also I got the sense that having three amuses was prioritized over making them great. In general, the menu started off slowly and became superb in the later courses. It was the final rounds of savory courses and the desserts that propelled the meal into the stratosphere. In honor of our Long Island duck, we had a merlot from Long Island and of course I forgot to write down which one (it’s the one for $55). It was tasty enough, and a good match for most everything we ate. We also had a dessert wine, made from yuzu, that was really unusual and light. I agree with those above who have mentioned that the Bar Room service team has a ways to go. I’ve been to the Bar Room a bunch of times and, with the exception of the attentions of managers who know me, service has ranged from competent to mediocre. It’s a big new venture and there’s a lot of training still to be done. But the formal dining room’s service is in a whole different league. I found it to be on par with the service at the best restaurants anywhere. Most of the servers in the dining room seemed to be seasoned veterans. I recognized faces from Ducasse and other four-star-level places. The room itself has similar aesthetics to the Bar Room but it’s much nicer (superior table settings, a view of the sculpture garden), more luxurious (the chairs even swivel), more spacious (as in space between tables) and quieter. I’m very much looking forward to returning to one of the most promising new haute cuisine restaurants of this century.

Today it's at 76,084 -- that probably means 3 people pre-ordered the book this week. Be sure to watch this number obsessively as it settles in to its natural resting place as one of the 50,000 most popular books of the fall.

Boy you are really on top of this stuff. It wasn't for another hour after you posted that I started getting e-mails from my publicist, editor and agent. But Suzi, I've got some disturbing news for you: that's the jacket photo from the book! Publishers Weekly online is a subscribers-only service. So the only way to read this piece is either to get a hard copy or be a subscriber. HOWEVER, you can sign up for a 30-day free trial and they DO NOT require a credit card for that. So if you're willing to invest a couple of minutes in the process, you can go over to publishersweekly.com and get it. It's a fun piece -- a nice two-page spread based on conversation at a dinner I had with Lynn Andriani in the Modern's bar room.

Assuming there are no special circumstances (e.g., a range that's pushed up against a wall, or an assymetrically powered burner array), on a four-burner range, righties typically use the front-right burner for all their sauteeing and other hands-on cooking, and lefties use the front-left. I've seen it so often that if somebody is using the front-left burner I'll say, "Hey, I didn't know you were a lefty." The back burners rarely get used for sauteeing by anybody, because you have to reach farther (and often across other burners) to use them. The back burners are more appropriate for stockpots and things that simmer. Of course, the burner you use the most will probably break first (as will its control knob). So if you wanted to vary your routine, the benefit wouldn't be fairness to the burners (though that is an admirable motivation) but, rather, the longevity of the range. Whether using a less convenient burner is worth it, I leave to each individual. I'd rather just repair my front-right burner every decade or three, or just replace the whole range, or move to a new home.

Sorry I missed your post, but for others it's worth noting that the menu is an evolving document. The last few times I've been I've tried a number of the raw and cold items, and I've got to say I think they're the strongest part of the menu -- not that the other dishes aren't great too, but for summer the cold stuff is brilliant. The arctic char tartare is one of the most vibrant raw fish appetizers you're going to find anywhere, plated in a dramatic brick and quite a generous portion. It eclipses the also wonderful tuna tartare. There are also several terrine and pate items worth looking at, especially the terrine of beef cheeks and goat cheese. On the pastry side, the blood orange "carpaccio" is one of the most successful minimalist desserts I've experienced anywhere. I'm tempted, next time I go, to do a raw-and-cold menu straight through.

If I switched from sugar-free soda to regular soda, I would double my weight in six months. I would have to start going by Fat Fat Guy. If I kept it up, I would eventually expand to the size of the known universe.

That's not a perception. That's a fact. If you drink a 1-calorie can of sugar-free soda instead of a 180-calorie can of soda-with-sugar, you will drink 179 calories less. If you're eating a 600-calorie meal, and you switch from soda-with-sugar to sugar-free soda, you can have 179 more calories worth of food and in the end consume the same number of calories. To see those calories as "freed up" is not at all unreasonable -- it's just simple arithmetic. Likewise, if you go to McDonald's and order a Big Mac Extra Value Meal with sugar-free soda, your meal will have fewer calories than the exact same Big Max Extra Value Meal with soda-with-sugar. In fact, the difference in calories between the two orders will be exactly the difference in calories between the two sodas. Now, if some people see sugar-free soda as "license" to eat more calories than the number of calories they save by drinking sugar-free soda instead of soda-with-sugar, that's something interesting to know. But it's hard to swallow the notion that such behavior means diet soda causes obesity. Rather, it would tend to demonstrate that people aren't very good at estimating the number of calories in food.