pedro

Of course the law is under effect! Does that mean that it has to be observed?

In terms of food for thought, probably Dan Barber was the chef whom provided the more complete presentation. His article at the NYT covers more or less the same ground: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/14/opinion/14barber.html Ferrán's was challenging too, challenging established mindsets about sourcing, luxury products and at the same time, completely aware that media wouldn't focus on that part of his presentation but on how he made oil caviar. I admire Santi Santamaría but I believe he chose a provoking for the sake of provoking strategy which occupied more time than needed in his presentation. He took the scenery by storm and the public applaud him almost constantly with a final standing ovation. I wonder whether he will appear more in this type of events after his unquestionable success at Madrid fusión.

- Gosset Grand Millessime 99 - Daguenau Pur Sang 2000 - Chablis Dauvissat La Foret 99 - Chassagne Montrachet Bernard Moreau et Fils Les Grandes Ruchottes 01 - Riesling Königsbacher Idig Christman 2002 Probably not the best wines in their wine list, but neither the worse. These are the wines we had this summer at elBulli. You can take a look at the menu: http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=88797&st=60# If you take a look at that menu, or at the menu of the so called avant-garde, hypermodern or hypervanguard restaurants, it's difficult not to raise one's eyebrow thinking that there's a wine that 'matches' most of the featured dishes.

Sorry, Craig, your sentence: made me somehow believe that you were talking about Europe. Craig, you certainly have a point regarding physical stores, but I can guarantee you that wine geeks in any country will go out of their way to access their desired wines. After all, from a Spanish perspective, we're talking of getting wine from three different countries mainly --emphasis on 'mainly': France, Italy and Germany. More often than not, going out of the way simply means accessing to an online retailer or wholesaler. Your point would be stronger would it have referred to wine lists in restaurants where clearly, being a producer country, the selection of wines tends to be focused on the wines from the country. But we're getting close to be off-topic, since we were discussing matching. My question about whether chef Achatz is actively involved in the pairing design process remains unanswered. On a broader perspective, I'd argue that avant-garde cooking is less wine friendly than more traditional cuisines styles. The challenge they present to the way we used to eat extends to what/how we used to drink. Most of these chefs don't think of wine when they create their dishes --though the Roca brothers have initiated a series of dishes featuring wine on them-- and even one of them, Aduriz from Mugaritz, is thinking of getting rid of beverages in the long term, getting the liquid you need directly from the dishes. This is clearly opposite to the model in which chefs like Santi Santamaría believe, that start from what he calls 'the Occidental way of eating' where wine is a key element of the meal. In this model, however, the dinner pivots around a main dish and so does wine: you try to get the best wine you can for that main dish --a roasted becasse, for instance--. I've dined twice at The Fat Duck. The first, I chose the wine pairing option. Only the pairing of the wine served with the salmon coated in liquorice was remarkable. What we paid for the wines by the glass, for the two of us, was around 225€, that is, near $300. The second time, would have we gone the same way, we would have paid 270€, that is, over $300. Instead, we had some champagne by the glass, a nice wine from Roulot --sorry, don't have the menu with me right now and it was in Aug 05--, perhaps a couple of glasses of red to finish the meal and some excellent Armagnac and Cognac to finish with. The bill was perhaps not much lower than what we would have paid if we had chosen the pairing, but I very much doubt that the experience would have been vastly improved.

You're not being serious, are you? Are you taking into account that UK, Switzerland and Germany, big importers of wine, are actually part of Europe? If we take Barolo, USA is the largest market with 14% of the share and UK the second with 13%. Even if your figure of 80% is right --according to Wine Business, it's 65%--, that hardly makes Barolo a wine that it's more consumed outside of Europe. It's like saying that few Californians know much about their own best wines because they're consumed outside California. That, without entering on the subject of whether the best barolos have the same export pattern, since your point was about Europe's best wines.

Is chef Achatz actively involved in the selection of the pairing wines? In the case of Adrià, he simply refuses to do that. He believes that it's simply too complex --why wine and not other beverage, for instance? So, pick a good wine --why not an excellent wine?-- which is not too intrusive and enjoy your meal. And your wine, too!

elBulli, by explicit and conscious decision of Juli Soler --Adrià's partner and FOH "master"-- don't offer wine pairing. His point is that going to elBulli implies conforming to many "restrictions": you plan it for months, you can't choose what you're going to eat, you receive guidelines on how to eat certain dishes. So, he believes that imposing also what you should drink would be a little too much. Sure, you would also have the option of choosing from the list, but seriously, how many patrons would go the pairing way confronted with a cuisine like elBulli's? I prefer it how it is: if you go there with a party of 5 or 6, you may end up tasting 4 or 5 different bottles you choose from their reasonably priced list. No reds the last two times. On a broader perspective, few restaurants in Spain offer that possibility. Josep aka Pitu Roca, from El Celler de Can Roca, will certainly do it if you ask him but I tend to think that it's not something listed in the menu. The expertise needed to create successful pairings outside the realm of more traditional cuisines --or new pairings in that scope-- is quite high. Extremely high, I'd argue. Just a handful of sommeliers out there would succeed. So, yes, I rather go the two / three bottles way in most cases.

I think you're referring to 5 à Taula, the collective firm in charge of restaurant reviewing at La Vanguardia, the Catalonian newspaper.

I see your point, Víctor, though for some reason it doesn't click for me. Frankly, cell behavior under freezing is not a field I'm versed in. My somehow simplistic reasoning was that more water = more ice = more cells broken = more leakage upon defrosting of water and the soluble elements contained in it = less flavor and bad texture. But again, I don't have any evidence to bring to the table to support this hypothesis. Btw, the confusion cellular/molecular comes straight from the article in Crónica. Also, in the article, one taster affirms that white fish is the one that suffers the most from freezing while another slips up about cells and molecules when talking about tuna. And, if you excuse my off topicness for a second, felices fiestas to everyone!

I'd argue that it's the other way around, Víctor: water increases its volume when it becomes a solid --ice-- much more than fat, thus water is more likely to break up cellular structures --not molecular-- when it becomes ice upon freezing. Albeit, college is well in the past and I could be wrong...

As an aside answer, even the page you linked to specifies that , that is, the fish that is going to be eaten raw or rare will be frozen. What is rare, I guess that's the point to debate.

This is the link to the article (in Spanish): Juan Manuel Bellver on anisakis and tasting frozen vs fresh fish Quite logic, having into account where the tuna is fished and where it's consumed. Which was the point I was trying to make when I questioned how much fresh fish arrives to the kitchens: only coastal species of the neighbor area have the chance to arrive fresh to the restaurants.

IMHO, to restaurants like Rafa's, nothing will happen. He grills all --virtually all-- his fish and that, as I've been trying to express from the beginning, it's outside the scope of the law. According to my interpretation of the law, of course. Hey, I sounded like a lawyer there!

Well, certainly there's been a lot of indignation coming out from respected chefs all over the country: Subijana, Arzak, Ricardo Sanz, to name a few. Honestly, I would say that there's being some overreaction going around. First of all, it'd would affect a few preparations and then there's the question of how much fresh fish actually arrives to the kitchens. Months ago, I visited a good restaurant which announced in the menu the preparations where fish had been frozen to prevent anisakis. I don't remember its name right now, but perhaps was one of Jesús Santos'.

Yes, that article also came to my mind when I read about this regulation. Doc, I think that anisakis doesn't affect shrimp and other shellfish. Not totally sure about it. The other day, while I was cleaning and cutting some cod fish to prepare bacalhau à bras, I found one anisakis worm in it. So, I cut a good portion of fish around it and continued pretending nothing happened. So far, so good. This was the second time around that I find anisakis in cod fish. The previous time, the fish was completely taken by these worms and I discarded the whole thing. Good thing that they're relatively easy to detect!

http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article2073028.ece ← Well, that's not exactly the case. The law specifies that the for frozen fish only applies to dishes where the fish is presented raw or lightly cooked: think of sushi, cebiches, boquerones en vinagre. The industry, however, is reacting promptly. Just this week I read articles about a salmuera --brine-- which kills anisakis and also about a way of getting rid of them by putting the fish into high pressures. Despite of how bad it sounds, the high pressure method seems to be far less intrusive than freezing. Details on the latter, in Spanish, at: ABC on anisakis

That's another Ibai, John. I guess vmilor is referring to the Ibai located at Donostia, which is not rated by Campsa and with good reason: it's a restaurant which doesn't accept reservations and rejects the most part of walk-ins. It works more in the way a club does than a restaurant. Glad to know that Etxebarri got two soles from Campsa.

He is a neurologist, John. It's not particularly difficult to get a reservation there, specially at lunch time and the restaurant currently holds a Michelin star, if I'm not mistaken. That said, I had lunch there two months ago and I found the featuring of micri in almost every single dish --amuses and petit fours included-- a little too redundant. It's worth noticing that they were starting holidays the following day and that the chef had already anticipated them a couple of days. From a visual composition perspective, the dishes are without any doubt the best I've ever came across. Absolutely outstanding.

Drolma is located at the hotel Majestic. Its cuisine has been described as the best bourgeoise cuisine of the country while others were not so enthusiastic about it. Expensive, though.

Regarding the preservation of intact beans during the cooking process, McGee recommends, besides avoiding soda to prevent added tastes --a barbarian habit, if you ask me --, to keep the temperature somewhere between 80 and 93ºC. If it rises above that, you have to resort to the old trick of asustar the fabes --literally, to scare them--: add cold water in small drops to keep the temperature within the desired range.

I suppose you mean October, Corinna. Better luck next time.

Hi, chef. I had the pleasure of dining at Gilt back in mid January. I remember that I thought that it was a restaurant which would very likely succeed --there go my prediction abilities--: contemporary cooking but well measured risks in the main courses, a wink here and there to more avant-garde proposals in the first part of the meal, a controllable size of the dining room, good service. Yes, the wine list was way too expensive, but that's not a surprise --unfortunately-- in NYC. How was the restaurant doing in terms of patrons? I saw a good number of seats taken on a rainy Tuesday night. Or was it a problem with the ownership?

True. In fact, it gets the name due to the resemblence of the texture with that of tripe or callos.

Hola, JR. With the best ham running over 120€ / kg here in Spain, do you think that it'd be well received in the States at higher prices? Do you believe that the demand from the States will be large enough to drive prices even higher up in Spain? Un abrazo, Pedro PS: You owe us a merluza en salsa verde.

Yes, observation seems to indicate that the longer you hear from them the more probability of getting a reservation you have. So, if you haven't heard a "sorry, but not this year" answer by mid November it's a good sign. Although I got a "no" last year on Nov 8.