Fat Guy

Try searching for "papanasi prajiti" and you should find some recipes.

Ducasse has been a major advocate of sous vide cookery in haute cuisine (I believe there are several sous vide recipes and parts of recipes in his Grand Livre, which is only available in French as far as I know -- here's one I found by googling). A couple of years ago I spent a week in Ducasse's kitchen at the Essex House and watched them employ the sous vide method with several dishes, most notably the signature Ducasse pigeon which so many have said is definitive. There are a few different ways to handle it, as best I understand this. One way is to use a water bath that is at the exact temperature you want your meat (or veg or whatever) to end up at. With that method, you cook for many, many hours -- possibly days depending on the size of the cut. You can never really overcook, because once the product reaches the temperature of the water bath it won't go any higher (for example in the Ducasse recipe cited above it says "Conditionner sous vide avec le confit d'oignons, les sommités de thym et les abricots (soudure à 6; pression 2,8), cuire par immersion d'eau dans une ambiance à 62 °C ( 143 °F) pour atteindre une température à coeur de 62 °C (143 °F) pendant 36 heures."). You can also handle it by using a high temperature of water (boiling or near boiling) which brings the package up to temperature much more rapidly. For that method, you really need a temperature probe in the center of the meat so you can cook to an exact number. The only way to avoid the temperature probe when using the higher temperature sous vide method is to have extremely uniform cuts of meat -- in terms of both mass and shape -- so you can essentially run a program specific to that cut, e.g., a 5-ounce piece of lamb loin that's 2" x 1" x 5" cooks in a 190-degree water bath for 42 minutes or whatever. At the haute cuisine level, however, the water bath has in the past couple of years given way to the steam oven or combi oven. At Mix in New York, Ducasse's newest New York restaurant, all the sous vide cooking is done with steam not in a water bath. We have a good relationship with Doug Psaltis at Mix in New York, and could possibly get someone in there to talk to him, get some basic information, and take some photos -- though of course we'd have to clear it with him and the Ducasse organization. But we can certainly make the request. Nathan are you in New York? If so, and if we can set up a tutorial, maybe you can tag along.

Last year I ran into Jerry Stiller at the Passover store on Broadway. I think that time around it was in a former vitamin shop. I doubt it could work anywhere else, because it's not just a question of Jewish population but also of Jewish population density. I imagine the Upper West Side of Manhattan represents the densest such population in the diaspora. There's also a question of local product availability without the need for a distribution-and-shipping system.

Someone needs to tell Mr. Stern that the guy's name is Ed Mitchell, not Roy Mitchell!

The exact ones I have come from Chefworks.com and you can also get a version with an aquamarine colored background from Chefwear.com. I have a great deal of respect for Ed Mitchell, and plan to devote a nice chunk of a book chapter to his operation. There is so much to admire about him and his operation. But to zero in on my single objection to it, I don't think the cafeteria-line style of service is the best conveyance for all those food products. Many of them hold up very well, especially given the high turnover: the vegetable dishes in particular, most of which are braised/stewed anyway, are great, as are all the chicken and rib items. But two items definitely suffer from being held in trays: the hushpuppies and the chopped barbecue. The hushpuppies we had were downright cold, which is crazy given that Mitchell's is one of the only barbecue operations in existence where every hushpuppy is made by hand. And the chopped barbecue, well, it loses too much moisture. We had some from the steam-table and some from the kitchen before it sat in the steam-table. Guess which was ten times better? Mitchell's is a work in progress -- he is quite up front about the fact that much of what he's doing is preparation for potential franchising and expansion, and that he's constantly tinkering -- and I think if they can get the steam-table issues licked they'll rise right to the top of the barbecue charts. I don't think it's hard to do: hushpuppies should simply be brought out in smaller quantities with greater frequency, and the barbecue should be held covered and also in smaller quantity. That's how it works behind the scenes in the kitchen of any barbecue restaurant: it's not like they're cooking a whole hog to order. Mitchell's simply puts this process in plain view, and has a little tinkering to do yet.

Rabbi Ribeye does cholent, in The Daily Gullet.

But Rich, what I'm wondering is how big the intersection of sets A & B is -- those who aren't sophisticated enough to understand that the bad-PR issue is bogus but are sophisticated enough to follow the food media closely enough to know about the various predictions in the first place. But you do raise an interesting issue: Per Se has a publicist; a very expensive one. In fact, at least two of them: one in California (Welles Folsom) and one in New York (PR Consulting, Inc.). I wonder, who took charge of the crisis management on the media side? Did the publicists give good direction to Keller's management team? Was that direction taken or ignored? It would be interesting to know what happened behind the scenes, not that we ever likely will. Whomever makes these decisions, however, has a pretty poor track record: the same bullshit occurred with the opening dates. When I was working on a story for Elle about the Per Se opening, I was consistently given incorrect information about the opening -- premature dates, that is. (A publicist friend of mine recently referred to these dates at "Hopening" dates.) Ultimately, even though all the photography had been done and the text was written, the story got killed (pushed out of the magazine and onto Elle's Web site, that is), something that probably wouldn't have happened if we had the right opening date to begin with. And I'd love to know if the publicists were given a voice in the name choice, because Per Se remains one of the most nauseating restaurant names ever.

Anybody who views Per Se negatively on account of an accidental fire or overly optimistic re-opening estimates is a customer the restaurant is better off without. The media and the public aren't Per Se's customers; Per Se's customers represent a tiny segment of the population where most everybody is sophisticated enough not to care about any of this. The only thing Per Se could do to piss off its core customers would be to tell them their reservations aren't going to be given priority in rescheduling. And nobody at Per Se is dumb enough to try that.

In terms of the media aspect of the review, why no mention of Ruth Reichl's three-star review? It's written as though there has been no discussion of Montrachet in the Times since the Bryan Miller review -- that's misleading or at least incomplete. In any event, Hesser is right about the restaurant: Montrachet is barely hanging on to its last few shreds of credibility.

If you're going to poach eggs for a large number of people, the best thing to do is poach them in advance.

Turning half the tables means, simply, that any reservation before time X (say, 6:30) will have another reservation behind it (after, say, 9:30). The tables booked after time X can't accommodate a second sitting -- an 8:00 table would de facto be a single sitting. There are several issues that arise when you do it this way. For starters, you force more than half the customers into reservation times they probably don't want. For the most part -- with a few exceptions -- people only eat at 5:30 or 10:00 at a restaurant like Per Se because they're forced to by availability. Whereas, if you do a single sitting as at ADNY or most any Michelin two- or three-star restaurant in France, almost every customer can be given a reservation between 7:00 and 9:00 -- and those very few who want to eat earlier or later can be accommodated as well. With 1.5 turns, you can accommodate 50% more customers, but 66% of all your customers will be dining at undesirable times. Needless to say, given the reality of the market, the situation will likely develop to the point where no non-VIP customer will ever get one of the desirable reservations. Once you have a table with another reservation behind it, the dynamic changes. There's no avoiding it. Many, perhaps most, of my meals at the three-star level and at ADNY have lasted more than 4 hours. If you want to do a degustation where the total number of courses with all the little extras runs up to 13 or 14, and you want to enjoy some bubbly or a cocktail beforehand, and you want to linger over coffee afterwards, you can't have that meal at an enjoyable pace if the waitstaff and kitchen have been oriented towards getting you out and having the table reset by a certain time. And the restaurant is too small to provide much in the way of flexibility. At a place like Gramercy Tavern, they know that if a party lingers at one table they'll probably have another table of the same size turning 10 minutes later. They can work it out. At a tiny place like Per Se, the restaurant gets forced into a position where the choice is between pushing a party out in order to clear a table, or having another party start off the evening on a bad note with a half-hour wait. And the party sitting at 10:00, who wants to have the full degustation experience from Champagne to coffee? The choice is between rushing it, implementing a no-degustations-after 9:30pm rule, or having that party finishing up alone in the dining room at 2:00am. I think -- though I may be wrong -- that most anybody who has dined around France a bit will testify that the single sitting is either the most significant or one of the most significant factors differentiating Michelin three-star restaurants from the best restaurants in New York. It changes the whole feel and dynamic of the place. There's a whole life-cycle to the evening that you experience in a single-sitting restaurant that just doesn't occur when tables are being turned. Per Se is one of only two restaurants in New York that really has the potential to best the Michelin three-star restaurants of Europe on all fronts. But if the restaurant starts turning its tables, it essentially removes itself from the category.

The sandwiches at Mike's are far better than those at Manganaro. They're probably the best of that genre. But Melampo makes a different species of sandwich: not the overstuffed, many-meat orgies served at Mike's but, rather, something much more minimalistic and, in my opinion, elegant. Each Melampo sandwich contains just a few carefully chosen ingredients in considered ratios -- they are compositions, the best of their kind that I've tried.

I'll give you a tip: don't ask for extra anything, or try to change the sandwiches in any way. If you try, Alessandro may kick you out of the store.

You are not alone, Brenna. Extensive eGullet discussion of Peeps here . . .

I spent 4 years in Burlington as a student at UVM, and I've been back many times since, but my information on the better restaurants in the area is sorely out of date -- I mostly do cheap eats when there. On that front, I'll certainly second the motion in favor of Al's, which is one of the greatest grease joints in the nation. I believe the relevant ingredient is a percentage of beef tallow, rather than lard, in the fries, and they are fried twice in two temperatures of fat. Penny Cluse opened after I graduated, but I've been there twice and agree it's a terrific place for breakfast. Then again I don't know that there exists a terrific enough place for breakfast to justify waiting on such a long line -- I'll only go back there if someone helps me figure out how to game the waiting situation: early, late, whatever. I wouldn't say it's the only place for breakfast, though. Sneakers in Winooski is, in my opinion, better. And, while not in the same gourmet-breakfast catgegory, Libby's Blue Line Diner in Colchester is one of the finest examples of that species in existence. I'm afraid I can't support any of the Eastern recommendations like Five Spice, India House, and Peking Duck house. I'm not sure where you're traveling from, Alan, but if you're accustomed to eating Asian and Indian cuisines in any major metro area you're not likely to be impressed by Burlington's renditions, which are acceptable but not particularly strong. Leunig's, which I haven't been to in a few years, used to have some of the best bread pudding around -- I'd go there just for dessert and coffee. Note also that Burlington is less than a 90 minute drive from Montreal. I would consider a pilgrimage to Toque! or something of that nature one evening. Even if Burlington experiences significant and sustained economic expansion for the foreseeable future, it will probably be another decade or two before the town can support a restaurant on par with the top Montreal places.

You can find menu price ranges for most of these places online, either on the Relais & Chateaux site or on the individual restaurants' sites. For example, Relais & Chateaux report that Grand Vefour offers: Menus 78 € s.i. (lunch), 230 € s.i. Carte 160-200 € s.i. http://www.relaischateaux.com/site/us/rc_vefour_tarifs.html ADPA's menu is online: http://alain-ducasse.com/public_us/plaza_a.../fr_cuisine.htm It's 190 € s.i. for the basic five-course menu (three savory dishes chosen from the carte in half-portions plus cheese and dessert), with several more expensive options. Wine is of course going to make a big difference, and it's worth noting that Taillevent offers not only great wine service but also very attractive wine prices. Note also that the s.i. prices include taxes and a service charge -- so it's not like in New York where you have to compute 25+% overage for tax and tip. You might leave an additional gratuity in France, but it will generally be a small one and is not implicitly mandatory as it is in the US.

What are the odds?

With all this talk of chefs, can anybody even name -- no googling! -- the chefs at Taillevent and Grand Vefour?

Piege's departure from ADPA is, to me, the equivalent of Alex Lee's departure from Daniel or Marco Canora's departure from Craft: I know that Piege, Lee, and Canora are excellent chefs in their own rights, but the cuisine served at ADPA, Daniel, and Craft is not the cuisine of Piege, Lee, and Canora. It is the cuisine of Alain Ducasse, Daniel Boulud, and Tom Colicchio. Those changes would not presumptively affect my decisions about where to dine. Of course, if someone I trusted told me "The food has declined since Alex Lee left" I would be inclined to conclude that the transition had been mismanaged and that I should wait.

That's correct, but it's not just a matter of the raw numbers. There's a big difference between serving a 100-seat dining-room in a single sitting and serving a 65-seat dining-room in a sitting and a half. Once you book a party behind another party at a given table, your whole operation has to reorient towards the goal of clearing that table in time for the follow-on party -- and on servicing that second party at an accelerated pace. It also means you have to force people into very early and very late reservations in order to accommodate the turns. Especially in a restaurant that primarily serves 10+ courses to its customers, it's a bad idea. It will only be a matter of time before we see the first post on eGullet from someone who 1) was rushed at Per Se, or 2) had to wait an hour for his table at Per Se.

The whole Ducasse system has been designed from the ground up such that it should hardly matter that Piege has moved on. And one can be certain that Ducasse himself will devote the personal resources necessary to ensure a smooth transition. Indeed, for those who take a great interest in who's behind the kitchen doors, the answer these days at ADPA is much more likely to be Alain Ducasse than at any time in recent history. Let me put it this way: if my first three-star meal had been at Taillevent, I'd have reached the conclusion that Michelin three-star dining is bullshit, an elevation of form over substance. Taillevent has that great wine list (and great wine service), it offers a ton of hospitality, there's a lot of art all around, etc., but the food is to me entirely unremarkable generic luxury food. Those of you who have dined at five, ten, or more three-star restaurants in France, let me ask this: will a single one of you step forward and take the position that Taillevent or Grand Vefour is the best? I don't know any food-knowledgeable person who takes that position. The only really savvy people I know who peg Taillevent as a top place are restaurateurs like Danny Meyer who respect it as an institution (both Danny Meyer and Thomas Keller have, I believe, mentioned that they seek to emulate much of what is good about Taillevent). If somebody is going to have one three-star experience, it should be at one of the top-tier three-stars. That's a fairly small group, and in Paris (someone can help round out this list because I don't have a guide handy) it would certainly include ADPA, Gagnaire, and Ambroise, and would certainly not include Taillevent or Grand Vefour.

Depends which Michelin three-star you're talking about! Seriously, though, when I was there it was very much like a Michelin three-star experience -- albeit still rough around the edges. The only other place in New York that hits that level overall is ADNY. But, it should be said, when I was at Per Se they were doing a single sitting -- this makes such a huge difference it's hard to overstate the importance of the single sitting as one of the major defining elements of Michelin three-star dining. When Per Se goes to a table-turning schedule -- a plan I very much hope the restaurant abandons -- it will lose that attribute. In New York, there's no major food hurdle to overcome in terms of competing with what Michelin three-star restaurants in Europe are offering. It's really the non-food aspects where we still lag behind. You can go to Daniel, for example, and experience a reasonable facsimile of a three-star meal -- and in just 120 minutes! I'm hoping, however, that ADNY and Per Se will mark the beginning of a trend towards the restaurants at the top of the pyramid abandoning the multiple-sittings approach in favor of the European model. Of course, the New York Times could help by doing what Michelin does: make it an unwritten but well understood rule that, with limited exceptions, you simply can't have the top rating if you bang out the food for three sittings per night.

I'm not prepared to debate architecture with Bux, but I happened to like the room at the Plaza Athenee. I suppose the most responsible thing would be for me to say you can judge for yourself. You'll find a 360 degree virtual tour of the room here: http://alain-ducasse.com/public_us/plaza_a...atmosphere.htm# You might recognize the Plaza Athenee from the final episode of Sex & The City. Ducasse's desinger, Patrick Jouin, who also did Mix in New York, has taken the grand dining room of the Plaza Athenee (which dates to around the turn of the century -- maybe 1910 or thereabouts) and given it a modernist overlay. I think it's kind of cool, but it's probably a love-it-or-hate-it situation. I don't have a basis for comparison against Grand Vefour, but ADPA is about a million times better than Taillevent in every respect. I'm sure the room at Grand Vefour is great, but if the food at ADPA isn't quite a lot better I'll eat my hat.

Pretty good, definitely not that un-crusty crap most places are using these days. Did Ed Levine say anything about Manganaro in his deli sandwiches piece in the Times? I can't remember.

I would choose Alain Ducasse at the Plaza Athenee. Of the three-stars I've visited in Paris (Ducasse, Arpege, Gagnaire, Taillevent, Ambroisie -- I think that's it though I could be missing one), ADPA was for me the closest to the ideal expression of that experience. I'm not sure I would recommend any of the others for a one-time, one-hit experience: Taillevent was unremarkable, Gagnaire was amazing but quite radical, Ambroisie was excellent but minimalist and strange, and I didn't find Arpege to be particularly impressive or even worthy of three stars.