Andy Lynes

Petrus restaurant interiors : Petrus bar

No details I'm afraid, maybe try Harrods main number?

A composit question if I may Randall: Is the UK market a significant one for you? Has it embraced your wines, or do you feel there are still barriers for you to overcome here? What are the main problems for you as an exporter of US wines?

Tasting menu at both those restaurants is £10 more than Putney Bridge I think i.e. £59.00 compared with £49.00?

Where's the beef?

Bonny Doon went from a struggling start-up to a standard in the California wine industry. Has that change affected your winemaking choices?

I have a column due for publication of The Daily Gullet which touches on that sort of restaurant behaviour (one which I also follow, as the column will explain). I'll be interested in you reaction to it!

The other Michelin starred restaurant that hardly gets a mention here is Mr Underhills. They are a no choice restaurant, but I'm sure would offer a vegeterian option if warned in advance.

Astor Wines and Sprirts near Union Square may be worth a bash, but I can't find it mentioned on their website.

Is that the name of Kellers new place?

PAULA WOLFERT, a resident of San Francisco, is the author of five previously published cookbooks, all considered classics. Among them: Couscous and Other Good Food From Morocco, The Cooking of Southwest France, and three books on Mediterranean cuisine including the much praised Cooking of the Eastern Mediterranean. She has won the Julia Child Award, The James Beard Award, The M. F. K. Fisher Award, The Tastemaker Award and been a finalist for the Andre Simon Award. Craig Claiborne wrote of her: "I think she's one of the finest and most influential cookbook authors in this country. Her recipes are done with incredible accuracy. She brings a sense of wonder to matters of taste. She has an uncommonly fine palate. In sum, she is one of the leading lights in contemporary gastronomy." On Paula's website Peggy Knickerbocker writes : For over a quarter century, food writer Paula Wolfert's quest for flavor has drawn her across the Mediterranean, from Berber villages in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco to the plains of Slavic Macedonia, from the far reaches of the Ionian Islands and Sicily through southwestern France and Catalonia. She has knocked on hundreds of back doors in obscure towns, searching for the cook who best executes a particular dish. Her adventures and findings are compiled in five (now six) serious and sensuous cookbooks filled with scholarly information about unpretentious food and regional folklore. Moroccan tagines, Lebanese kibbeh and French daubes were not always part of Wolfert's repertoire. In fact, when she married her first husband, she literally could not boil water. Following a few unsuccessful attempts at recipes from Glamour Girl After Five, a wedding gift from her mother, she signed up for cooking classes at Dione Lucas's Cordon Bleu cooking school and immediately found her calling. Wolfert ended up leaving her college studies to work full time with Lucas in return for classes. In 1959 her husband's job took the couple to Morocco, the beginning of a 10-year sojourn abroad. It was an exotic and exciting time for this young woman from Brooklyn. They socialized with co-expatriates Jane and Paul Bowles, William Burroughs and Tennessee Williams; and little by little Wolfert became fascinated with the richly flavored local dishes and Mediterranean ingredients. It wasn't until more than a decade later that she decided to write a Moroccan cookbook at the urging of her second husband, the Edgar-winning crime novelist William Bayer. They moved to Tangier in 1971 and stayed for five years, during which time she wrote Couscous and Other Good Food from Morocco (1973) and Mediterranean Cooking (1976). Both books were enthusiastically received by an entire generation of curious cooks who were hungry for unfamiliar ethnic fare. The year that the Moroccan book came out, Williams-Sonoma did a brisk business selling couscous cookers at Christmas. Although Wolfert was criticized early on for including hard-to-find ingredients in the name of authenticity, she's remained relentlessly adamant about their use. "Ingredients from a given region have amalgamated gracefully over the years, and if you change them, you simply won't get an authentic taste," she says. "When people return from their travels they want to replicate what they have tasted. It is my job, as a food writer, to explain how to integrate unusual tastes. Most of the ingredients are now readily available, at least by mail order. But you have to be romanced into searching them out. That's part of the fun." No matter how unusual or common a recipe may be, Wolfert's criteria for including it in a book have always been brutally simple: "Would I like to eat this dish again? Am I absolutely in love with it? "My life seems to revolve around finding new recipes---food with plenty of flavor that lingers in the mouth," she says. "Such food appeals to all my senses; every nuance has a meaning. To me, good food is memory. One time or another, I've had a fling with each of the recipes in my books." France Beckons Wolfert set out to write The Cooking of South-West France (1983) in the late Seventies after traveling around the region in search of the perfect cassoulet and discovering "a magnificent peasant cookery in the process of being updated." Wolfert explains that "southwest France is very much part of the Mediterranean. Most French food isn't very forceful; it's delicate, complex and built on subtlety. But the southwest employs robust ingredients ---truffles, peppers, cepes and chicken and goose fat; hardly subtle ingredients. "It's Wolfert's style of cooking: country food with layers of taste, simple dishes that showcase the natural affinities of ingredients (as opposed to the wild experimentation that she disdains in certain restaurant dishes and fusion foods). In order to convince readers not to be put off by the region's reputation for high-fat dishes. Wolfert describes how to use animal fats as a flavoring agent, the way one might use a cinnamon stick in a red wine fruit compote. If she uses good, duck or pork fat in a stew, she simmers it all very gently so that the fat mingles with the wine and juices but does not bid with them; then she chills the stew in the refrigerator and skim off all the fat, leaving behind just its flavor, soluble in liquid, to impart what she calls big taste. A More Healthful Way to Eat Without ever sacrificing flavor or changing the nature of a dish, Wolfert has been addressing current concerns about the benefits of a balanced, healthful diet. In fact, in the revised edition of Mediterranean Cooking (1994), she replaced 60 of the heavier or overly complex dishes with over 75 new, more health-conscious recipes. Wolfert claims to have had a culinary epiphany at a conference in Spain sponsored by OLDWAYS PRESERVATION AND EXCHANGE TRUST, an international food-issues think tank. In the midst of dissertations on the healthful aspects of the Mediterranean diet, she realized that the hearty meat-driven meals needed to be rethought. "I turned my plate around: I magnified and minimized it." Wolfert explains. In doing so, she expanded her repertoire to include more greens and grains and diminished the use of meat, cream and butter. She traveled across the Euphrates and came back with a new daily routine that even gets her eating vegetables in the morning in what she calls her Biblical Breakfast Burrito. As a result, she's lost over 30 pounds, slowly---a pound a month over the past couple of years. At 57, Wolfert looks amazing, especially for a woman who would rather eat wood chips than exercise. "I've reversed the emphasis, but I haven't really given up anything." Wolfert explains. " The ingredients I use are still delicious. It doesn't take extra work to eat 5 to 10 servings of vegetables and fruits a day, and I get so many compliments I must be doing something right." (Don't worry: Wolfert has hardly become a smug abstainer. She still indulges in a good cassoulet and was even seen eating a juicy hotdog on the Fourth of July.) In her first book many recipes called for half a pound of meat per person; in her latest book, The Cooking of the Eastern Mediterranean (1994), and in the forthcoming Mediterranean Grains & Greens (1998), most call for far less and in many cases none at all. When meat is used, Wolfert is full of tricks to maximize its flavor while cutting fat. Many dishes use inexpensive lamb parts, particularly shanks and neck bones. "These cuts give intense, incredible flavor. I run after dishes that use inexpensive meat not because I'm cheap but because I think less expensive meats cook better and taste better in the stew dishes of the Mediterranean." Recently, Wolfert has found a new talent as a television personality; she sold thousands of cookbooks on the QVC channel in just 12 minutes. But despite her success as a salesperson, she'll probably continue to follow her muse around the Mediterranean. "I'll spend the rest of my life doing this, and I will never finish," she laments. "I'll probably do a book on garlic and olive oil and maybe another on fruits and vegetables of the Mediterranean. There are so many more villages to explore, each with a great cook with a great undiscovered secret." Paula will join us on 7 & 8 October and will be able to answer up to 30 of your questions. The session will be moderated so you may notice a delay between posting your question and it appearing on the board. We have a signed copy of Paula's beautiful new book "The Slow Mediterranean Kitchen:Recipes for The Passionate Cook" and 1 signed first edition of the currently out of print "World Table" to give a way to participants of the session, so get posting for a chance to win one of these highly desirable prizes.

Very tempting, but I'd have to get a very early train from Brighton to make. Although I will be out in London on Thursday night, so maybe I could just sleep in Harrods doorway instead of going home.

Do you mean Kummel?

I'd like to thank everyone for sharing their views in such an open and honest manner, but in order that that this thread does not to degenerate further, its time for us to accept that the arguments have been made and are there for the record, agree to disagree and move on. In order to take something positive from all of this, I've started a general thread on the subject of working conditions in kitchens here which you may wish to contribute to.

I think the worst you could say about that quote is that it is slightly sarcastic in tone, which is not helpful I admit, but I would not accept it as an example of prejudice, or containng innuendo. I am quite overtly stating that I think it is likely that your realtionship with Martin may affect your ability to be totally objective about this issue. I am more than happy to listen to any arguement which proves otherwise.

Victor, I am not dismissing what you have said, but simply stating that Ginger Chef can provide a first hand account whilst you have a second hand account. I have chosen to give information from Ginger Chef more weight because of that, which is my right and is reasonable. It is entirely irrelevant if I have met you or not. As a journalist, do you think it is necessary for you to have met every single one of your readers for your words to carry weight with them? Your sources may well be reliable and give you no reason to doubt the information they have provided to you. Equally I have no reason to doubt the little that ginger chef has reported of his direct experience of working in MB's kitchen, and neither should you. There is no innuendo intended in what I have said, I think I have been very clear. I have no prejudice in relation to this matter and I would be interested to understand what you mean by that.

I'd hardly describe stating the bleeding obvious as fascinating LML, but I'm glad it kept you interested for a moment or two. An arguement about what exactly?

I'm working to a definition of authoratitive as being "accurate" and "highly reliable", and in my experience, hearsay is generally considered to be neither of those things.

Surely you are not suggesting that the Roux scholarship, or any other come to that, including Ramsay's, is a work to pure alturism? To re-iterate, I believe that the Roux brothers record on improving the level of skill within the professional British kitchen is second to none, and I don't doubt their continued commitment to the cause for a second. But the scholarship ensures that their name is associated with young talent in the UK and prevents them from being seen as the dinosaurs of the industry. They are smart businessmen and I would guess that they would not have a problem in admitting that running the scholarship has longterm benefits for their reputation, brand and business. There is no criticism intended or implied in these statements to anyone involved in the Scholarship, which I think is an excellent scheme.

But the stage has been arranged as part of a high profile scholarship. I have no doubt that Caterer & Hotelkeeper will be writing an article about GC's experiences in Spain. Although I wouldn't doubt for a moment that the Roux brothers genuinely want to continue to improve the standard of cooking in this country by running the scheme, I am equally sure that they are keen to exploit the publicity potential of it as well, and therefore there is an element of "entertainment" to the venture.

So you can provide us with some secondhand information coloured by whatever your relationship with MB is, but I'm not sure that really constitutes authority on the subject. Ginger chef is actually there and I am therefore minded to give his contributions more weight regarding this matter, athough obvioulsy his comments are also coloured by his own relationship with MB, that of boss and unpaid "employee".

If you read Jon's post you will see that there was no attempt whatsoever to compare MB to MPW or Robuchon. In addition, to say that intermating that someone is a git, whatever that might mean, is "character assasination" is a gross mis-representation, at best mischevious, at worst mendacious. If a false picture has emerged form this thread (and frankly I don't really have any sort of picture of MB at the moment, there is far too little information about the man to draw any sort of conclusion), then we can lay the blame for that at your almost willful misinterpretation of what others have said. Ginger chef has been good enough to share his thoughts with us on his days off. We should remember that he is actually there, has been for a number of weeks, and is the only person on this thread that can speak with any authority on the current working conditions for a stagiere in MBs kitchens. I hope that he does not keep his promise of remaining silent.

I'm tempted by any beer to be honest, but it really was the packaging in this case. If you want the horrifying truth about my drinking habits, speak to my wife, otherwise you can read this article that hints at the depths of my depravity.

Thanks for the compliment Jinmyo, I enjoyed writing and especially researching it. I really wish I could have photographed the meal, it was quite spectacular.

Kronenbourg have launched a new premium lager called 1664 Permier Cru. Retailing at £1.99 for a 500ml bottle, it is somewhat more expensive that the standard 1664 which you can pick up for around £3.99 for a pack of 4 440ml cans. It comes in a striking matt blue bottle and is 6% volume (1% more than the standard brew). The website states that it is made using a "combination of roasted barley and hops" which are fermented slowly over a long period to create a "mellow premium lager with a dark, lustrous colour and an aroma with hints of honey, bourbon and soft fruits". I really liked the look of the bottle, so couldn't resist trying some. I have to say I was underwhelmed. The beer was certainly stronger and darker with a little more flavour than your average lager, but that wouldn't be terribly difficult to achieve. Honey, bourbon and soft fruits were not in evidence, to my palette at least. So despite how nice it looked in the fridge, I won't be tempted to pay over a third more for my Saturday night (and any other night of the week come to think of it) beer.