Andy Lynes

But does New york really need Keller as well as Vong, Nobu, Boulud, Portale etc etc etc. How many 3 or 4 star chefs does one town need? Wouldn't it be better to save the Keller experience for a trip to the West Coast rather than import it to the East? How much sense would Alice Waters make in NY for instance, not a great deal I would bet.

I have to say as a non NY resident, that I think it's a shame that Keller feels the need to open a second "branch", purely on the basis of resisting global homogenisation. Having said that, I am pretty excited about having a branch of Charlie Trotter in London, so that makes me totally two faced.

Robert, the point of my little pastiche is that Asian influenced cuisine is only one of any number of trends in London. If I wanted to, by choosing a couple of recently opened French restaurants, I could make a case for the resurgance of french regional cuisine in London. By highlighting the fact that Michel Bourdin and Peter Kromberg are retiring this year, I could say that the old guard are giving way to the new wave of chefs, and perhaps it's time for the Roux brothers and Pierre Koffmann to hang up there whites. All the above could be used as the basis for a dodgy magazine or newspaper article by a desperate food journalist with nothing better to do, but nothing of the above facts are particularly indicative of anything, other than some new Asian and French restaurants have opened, and that a couple of chefs who have worked in their respective jobs for over a quarter centuary each have reached retirement age. I hope I haven't confused the issue here with my sarcasm, I am simply casting doubt over the existance of a "trend" as identified in the NY Times article originaly quoted.

To me, Schramblings piece epitomises the use of a lazy journalistic devise whereby the tradition is dressed up and paraded as the latest fashion, the "brown is this seasons black" syndrome ("The Conventional is now experimental, the experimental is now conventional" to quote the legendary Mancunian genius Mark E Smith from the 1980 song "New Puritan" by his band The Fall). It's attempting to establish a trend for the sake of generating an article by focusing in on a very narrow band of activity, whilst ignoring the broader picture. Here's my version of what a lazy food journalist might write about London at the moment: "Forget fish and chips, pie and mash or the traditional roast, London has gone crazy for the far east. Everyone has downed knives and forks and are picking up their chopsticks to eat at the capitals most fashionable new eateries. The bold new ethnic cuisines of Mju, Nham and relative old timer Nobu typify what London foodies most want to eat. They are just not satisfied unless they have enjoyed the multi course marvels that chefs like David Thompson are dishing up. "The 3 course meal is dead and gone. No one wants to eat all those heavy classic french sauces anymore. Diners are more discerning these days, and are looking for lighter food, in smaller portions, but that still packs a big flavour punch" says one leading restaurant critic. If you are visiting London, forget about the Savoy, Claridges, the Ritz or the Connaught, with there last centuary cuisine, and head straight for the new millenium delights of somewhere like the Halkin, but get ready to join a very long queue!!!!" I would hold up my little article as being about as accurate a picture as what is happening in London as Regina Schamblings is about New York (ie not very I suspect). And it took as long to write as it did to type (I bet you couldn't tell!).

Jean Christophe Novelli uses a reduction of balsamic to decorate plates, how old the vinegar is I'm not sure, but it was the real thing rather than the supermarket product. Bruce Poole uses it to season a salad of confit pork, summer beans and salsa verde. His is 15 years old I think. Raymond Blanc is a big fan of the stuff and definitely uses the real thing. I do agree however that in less than excellent restaurants, balsamic is used as a substitute for a modicom of thought and effort.

Would a further drying out in a very low oven, maybe overnight, help. This is a guess as I have never reduced dried mushrooms to powder, but do that it is a favourite process used by UK chef Richard Neat. I do have an article stored away somewhere about Neat, I'll dig it out and see if there is any indication how to do this. I do remeber however that he generally used ceps, a great deal more expensive than shitake.

I must say that the photos on Aquavits website are taken from quite odd angles, I guess to try and include both the room and give some impression of the scale of the atrium. I can easily imagine the restaurant looking very different in the "flesh". I have just booked for lunch at a London restaurant called the Square and discovered they have a website. Apart from the fonts used on the menus and wines lists, this seems to me to be an excellent site, especially the 360 degree picture of the dining room. Perhaps a model for other restaurants to follow http://www.squarerestaurant.com.

Oh dear! I don't want people to run away with the idea this is a major problem for me, but I might have to think again about the Cresent. The downstairs restaurant at Harvey Nichols "The Foundation" had a waterfall effect behind the bar. Not only was the sound disconcerting, the design was very reminisant of a stainless steel urinal. I only ever visited that bar once, I wonder why.

Steven : all is forgiven. Conran has opened some big restaurants in his time, but the scale of Gustavino's looks gigantic from the website. I don't know how many covers they do a day, but surely the sheer size of the place must introduce logistical problems, such as how to get the food from the kitchen to the diner before it gets cold.

I have been pondering the state of Terence Conran's restaurant empire on the UK board, and as a result decided to read Steven Shaws review of Gustavino's, Conran's first (only?) US venture . I quote: "Most of Conran's restaurants are in England, where you can't expect the customers to be particularly discriminating about food." "Order the "smoked salmon plate," and you'll get British culinary cluelessness on a platter." Why, I oughta.....!!!! (Edited by Andy Lynes at 10:50 pm on Oct. 10, 2001)

Rob, hello from the UK as well, nice to hear from you.

I've just given the restaurant website a once over and can't help thinking that with a six story high atrium and a waterfall it would be a bit like eating dinner in one of those amusement park water worlds. I also have a bit of a weak bladder and the sound of running water would not be beneficial to a comfortable evening for me.

That would be my dream line up, just add the Gotham. I have only been to Nougatine, the "cheap" part of Jean Georges, out of the restaurants you are visiting and I thought that was great. I hope you will have breathing space between these grand meals, although I have to admit to eating breakfast at Sarabeth's Kitchen on the Upper East Side, lunch at Tribeca Bar and Grill and then dinner at Windows on The World all on the same day last time I visited. I did an awful lot of walking that day if that's any excuse.

Scott - have you decided on where you might go yet? I'll look forward to your full reviews when you come back!

Well, due to some unusual work circumstances, I ended up in Cigala on Monday night. The place was absolutely rammed at 8.00pm when I arrived, I got the last but one table, the last filled about 20mins later. I don't like the restaurant room, it's way too noisey for my tastes, with the open kitchen adding to the overall heat and sound levels. They are obviously running on a tight budget, with just about enough front of house staff to manage the busy room. This meant that they were rushing around all night adding a rather frantic edge to the atmosphere. I started with a dry and rather tastless coarse country style rabbit pate, followed by a large red bream ala plancha (grilled on the bone), a compote type thing of marinated veg, peppers and aubergine mostly, and a side order of patatas bravas which turned out to be a works canteen style portion of deep fried potato cubes with some tomato and herb sauce on top. This weas nice enough, but I did get bored of eating it after a while, as I had the pate. I had a glass of beer and a white rioja and the bill was £33.00. I won't go back as it's not really my thing at all. I think I ordered badly, but the menu is short and duff items should not really be present. They sold an awful lot of bream whilst I was there so I was not alone in anticipating that it would be good, which in fact it was, but just not that interesting. If you like uncomplicated Spanish style food in lively surroundings and are a fan of Spanish wines and sherries, I would guess that there is no better place in London to enjoy them.

The unusual thing about the white cocolate and caviar combination is that the two flavours mingle and you don't get a salt/sweet sensations at all. It really is quite extraordinary.

I very nearly always have dessert when dining out. Many London restaurants now have portion size sorted so that you want dessert at the end of the meal. I eat it when it's part of a set price, I eat it when it isn't, I eat it at fine dining establishments, I eat McDonalds donuts, crappy ice cream at Pizza Hut, great slabs of cake when we go to cafes, steamed puddings with custard. I realise writing this that dessert is totally central to my enjoyment of eating out. The only time I never order dessert is in a bog standard Chinese, Indian or Thai restaurant, then we stop off at Hagan Daz on the way home.

It's definitely a sweet white chocolate, I think Heston uses Valhrona. The button is the thickness of one egg of caviar and is obviously served cold, so therfore the chocolate is less cloying than if it were hot. The reason it works is that the chemical make up of the two main ingredients is very similar (Heston gave me the data to prove it). I did think of trying out Heston's recipe for hot chocolate fondant with a warm white chocolate and caviar sauce but Heston thought that it may well not work in a molten state so I gave that up as too expensive to risk. Anybody out there with some money to burn, let me know if it works.

Very enjoyable show I thought. I tried to phone in but I discovered that international calls are barred on my work supplied mobile and I was on the internet on my land line, ####! I e mailed Arthur just in case he was monitoring e mail for questions during the show, but obviously not. Those endorsements are a pain because they are seamless from the actual content so you don't quite realise immeadiately that Arthur has gone from expressing his own opinion to reading from a script (yes, I know that's the point). I guess that's commercial reality for these stations, but it's a little annoying. The real content however was very entertaining, shame you're not on more regularly.

Was that our very own Yvonne with the British accent that phoned in to the show? We need to know!

As we are talking white chocolate, Heston Blumenthal of Fat Duck in Bray on Thames in the UK is currently serving a white chocolate and caviar button. It taste great, so maybe you could fill your cake with caviar!

Yes, of course. I don't have a microwave and won't give one kitchen room.

It's more interesting than that. Apart from the announcer endorsements of vacuum cleaners and god knows what. Is any egulleterian going to phone in.

Is anybody listening right now? It's great so far. They must have said egullet.com 10 times!

That makes more sense to me now. I think I need to read some more of Grimes' NY Times stuff to getter a better idea of what he does, when he does it, what is and isn't a review. Do we know if he has actually eaten at the restaurant, or was purely an overview of the menu and surroundings based on a look-see.