mongo_jones

now, that's global kitsch for you. almost as bad as venetian gondolier songs in a restaurant in the u.s.

if you're in an indian restaurant with any of the following words in its title you should leave: taj mahal, curry, taste, india, maharaja, tandoor(i), india's anything. if it has two or more of these words in the title you should leave and return with a flame-thrower.

recently at a thai restaurant in boulder: all of the first velvet underground album. i didn't object of course: nothing quite takes the anguish out of eating an overly sweet pa-nang curry than "venus in furs" playing in the background. i instituted inquiries: turns out the young college student staff take turns putting on cds of their choice. in case you're wondering, no we didn't make it all the way till "the black angel's death song". a group of guests finally objected and the velvets made way for the dave mathews band. such is life under late capitalism.

not to mention the spam on the mainland doesn't taste the same. just kidding. has there been a discussion here on the place/history of spam in hawaiian cooking? i am always interested in how one culture's "low" food can so unproblematically become a part of another's "tradition". my wife, for instance, uses spam a lot in kimchi-chigae and some other korean soups and dishes. when i first came to the u.s i used to devour wonder-bread and spam sandwiches: a colleague then asked me if i knew i was becoming white trash. my room-mate at the time, however, used to happily make spam curries at home. they were quite good too.

the words "made from scratch" are on the menu; especially, if in close proximity to "chef's special sauce". the latter always brings unpleasant images to mind. "just like mom makes/made it" is another ambiguous recommendation.

so i gather. at what point in the cooking process does this happen--i am assuming i can't just peel, halve and tear out strands. do i have to cook it whole for a while first? i'm guessing i'll end up with a twice-cooked dish: first cook the squash, tear it into strands and quickly saute it with onions, mustard seeds and spices. what does it taste like though? is it sweet like butternut? is it completely bland? nutty? thanks in advance.

when in rosemead fulfill all your dim sum needs at 888 seafood. accept no substitute. then on your way home stop at the 99 ranch market and buy a lot of really nice fish you'd never get at santa monica seafood or any seafood counter at ralph's. oh, how i miss their mackerel and carp and freshwater prawns. not to mention all the kinds of snapper. no such luck in boulder.

aiiiieeee so it is called spaghetti squash for a reason then eh. what does it taste like? trying to figure out how i might cook it indian style.

my wife has returned from the grocery store with spaghetti squash. what she was supposed to get was either butternut squash or kabocha. i have never cooked spaghetti squash and from what i can see about it online it doesn't sound like it can be cooked like kaddu. any suggestions?

perhaps the avant-garde works better in little doses? ever tried to watch all of warhol's "empire" or "sleep"?

ah well. i am at the point (may already have crossed it) where all i'll be doing is repeating myself tiresomely--so, i'll let it drop. i've tried to be clear--obviously i have failed. for whatever reason. (edited to add a missing article)

it is possible, perhaps, then that adria's own fetishization of rafa's displays some sort of anxiety/desire on his part--a desire to situate himself at least partially in a different kind of tradition (folk spanish, sushi) than classical french? "i may be wild and crazy and out there but i'm also here"

you're the moderator and are free to move these threads as you see fit but i don't think this discussion is unrelated to el bulli--recent replies have brought it directly back into the conversation it is possible we are talking past each other. i didn't raise this to rant about colonialism but to point out that there is a much more direct reason why the average indian of the 1880s would know less about france than perhaps the average frenchman might know about india (thanks to orientalist scholars): restricted cultural mobility. the point is that in our present age people have far more access to information and movement, and yet the patterns of these flows (from the first world) and the way they are coded remain similar. not really. a large percentage of indian gourmets and foodies look to the west for their cues. they too fetishize wine, single malt scotches, french techniques etc. often times this elite indian love for these things is cited by them and by others in the west as proof of their universality (as with shakespeare)--when the fact remains that artefacts of certain cultures get to travel everywhere (and in first class) and those of others don't (or go in the baggage compartment). to return to el bulli: pedro asks: pedro, you may have a point. as i stated in my first post my initial thoughts were provoked by bourdain's citing of a conversation with adria in which he made certain comments about rafa's. if that assumption doesn't hold perhaps much of the conversation about adria in this thread since i got involved is moot. but it doesn't alter the issues in the larger discussion of the cultural politics of haute cuisine. in any case, i didn't read bourdain as suggesting that adria was trying to replicate rafa's actual dishes (in terms of taste or mouth feel) but the metaphysical experience of experiencing simple, pure cuisine like that again. this is what made me wonder if he was aiming his experiments at rejuvenation of palates that didn't/don't know they're jaded. docsconz says: i'm not sure why you think my position displays cultural insularity. i live in the u.s--i've eaten a lot of good french food and enjoyed it (though if i had to pick, god forbid, one cuisine to eat for the rest of my life i'd pick a couple of chinese, a couple of indian and a couple of italian cuisines before i'd come to french). if i had the money and means i'd be very interested in trying el bulli multiple times. i have said before that i am not knocking el bulli or trying to undermine adria from the conservative, reactionary perspective that argues that experimentation is meaningless or that his food must taste like shit. i'm trying to engage with his theory--once again as reported by bourdain--and simultaneously musing about the larger cultural politics that seem to me to inevitably get enmeshed in how people talk about these things. personally, i don't think it is healthy to separate these two things but i'll bow to the power of the moderator's toolbox. but your last statement is what i am getting at: is it the case that restaurants such as el bulli don't exist in "other cultural traditions"? or is it the case that despite the massive access that multi-national capital affords to first world travellers in the third world, and the massive amounts of information flow, no one has bothered to check? we all know about el bulli and its cookbooks, but even the most informed among us (and i think egullet site managers qualify) are still wondering abstractly about "other cultural traditions".

is there anything more tiresome than new york snobbery about l.a food? i especially like it when new yorkers complain about chinese food in l.a. you could eat in a different restaurant in the san gabriel valley every day of the year without eating a meal that any but the very best chinese restaurant in new york could compare with. even at the fine dining end of things--for those who don't like "ethnic" foods--there's just so much in l.a. apart from the names hollywood has already mentioned there's joe's, the water grill, the drago bros.' various italian houses, campanile, patina etc. etc. put this down to a sudden burst of overwhelming nostalgia from a recent exile from lost angela.

i should add that i don't mean to imply that any of these other cuisines in any way require first world recognition for validation--they're doing just fine by themselves (though some proponents of these cuisines--especially when they come to the u.s-- do seem to develop certain anxieties that map onto the kind of thing i am describing). since i live in the u.s, however, and have access to particular situated narratives here i am critiquing those.

yes, well there's at least one good reason why the average resident of the indian subcontinent didn't move around the world too much in the late 19th century. it starts with colo and ends with nialism. in any event, most french people in monet and manet's time didn't care too much about the differences between them either--they preferred to look at pretty pictures of boats on the sea. i don't really get that analogy. anyway, the point is that we don't live in those times. the average first world gourmet has a far greater mobility and access to the entire world than at any point in history--you don't have to be fabulously wealthy to do it anymore (which seems to also be theme of many an egullet thread); nonetheless, when it comes to haute cuisine the movement seems to be only in particular directions. i'm not surprised that being a french chef (or being generally in or out of that tradition) carried a mark of distinction in the western world; i'm a little disappointed in the degree to which it continues to monopolize a certain kind of recognition. and i don't think the italian cuisine analogy works either (with the caveat that i haven't seen the discussions here about it that you cite): there is a strong understanding of the differences between italian cuisine in italy and italian cuisine in the u.s. your average american egulleter--especially of the gourmet variety--knows these differences; perhaps has even made trips to italy to eat at both traditional and modern restaurants. with the exception perhaps of japan, and maybe parts of china, this isn't the case with most of asia or other parts of the third world. the truth of the matter is that egullet is a hetereogeneous beast. the kind of thing i am critiquing is probably only relevant in these general forums and in the european ones. the asia forums--especially the indian one--are largely dominated by people from within those traditions so different kinds of narratives prevail--though not always dissimilar.

there is a similar thing in korean cuisine. at many korean restaurants and homes rice will be brought to the table in incredibly hot stone pots--usually well in advance of other items. once the other foods arrive the rice will be uncovered and scooped out and water added to the stone pot--at the bottom of which will be a small quantity of scorched rice. this gruel is eaten at the end of the meal almost as a dessert. ain't it funny how similar food practices travel?

jonathon, others, thanks for your considered responses. at the risk of over-extrapolation i continue: okay--though the jury seems to be out on whether "enjoy" would be the right word. his dishes aren't just intellectual exercises then. and i'd add various indian cuisines to the mix as well. the question becomes one of how we define "high" and what gets to be "high" and why. on egullet, and elsewhere, there's a privileging of wine-pairing (indian food is often subtly decried for not going well with wine or on the flipside gourmands are constantly trying to find a good wine to go with indian food, as though the experience, perish the thought, couldn't be good without wine), an emphasis on particular notions of service, china etc. etc. then there's also the fact that even most well-meaning and democratically minded gourmets don't bother to get to know the average asian (or african or south american) cuisine to the extent to which they study french or italian cuisines--when's the last time threads were begun here by people who'd gone to india just to eat at bukhara or dum pukht? that's partly because those experiences don't carry as much cultural capital. michelin and their ilk don't bother either--and we know how much we fetishize those stars. what we usually have instead is a recognition of indian or other asian cuisines as "progressive" or "exciting" only when they're re-articulated in a western idiom (we've had some good discussions on the india forum on this subject). other than that asian cuisines are celebrated for being "traditional" or "authentic"--europe is where "progress" happens--if you get my double meaning (for an indian restaurant to be "progressive" it almost has to make a journey of sorts to "europe"). but what might it mean for these cuisines to be contemporary or progressive on their own terms and in their own contexts? oh, i'm not saying that adria needs to start using more asian methods or ingredients. just wondering to what degree the fuss over him (pro and con) serves to once again center the discussion of "high" cuisine on europe and its traditions. you misunderstand. i am not suggesting that you need to be from a particular culinary tradition to be "shocked" by experiments within it. my question was with regard to his feelings, as quoted by bourdain, on rafa's. if rafa's is down the street why do we need to go to el bulli to re-discover the rafa's experience? more precisely, who needs to go that circuitous route? i'm wondering if adria is aiming this at people who wouldn't ordinarily go to rafa's--whose horizons are so much within particular haute traditions that they need adria to re-orient them, as it were. i'm wondering if for someone like me, who can take french food or leave it, the experience adria wants me to have (not the specific food but the psychological-metaphysical one he points to in the rafa's discussion) might not be had more directly at rafa's. make sense? in any case your example of japan is one of going from one entirely different culinary tradition to another; el bulli's "shock" may well be only for people within his "tradition"--howsoever contested. my parents, who have never eaten spanish or french food, might not be shocked at all, not having the normative context to guide them. they might just think that's what crazy french and spanish food tastes and looks like. i don't mean to suggest that i was put off by the discussion of rabbit brains because it involved rabbit brains. one of my favorite north indian dishes is brain curry--usually searingly hot and dangerously oily (oh the memories of kake da dhaba in its heyday on connaught circus). i was put off more by the increasingly petty bickering and point-scoring as the thread devolved for a while.

the apology wasn't serious. re. the cucumbers, i may be making this up. i seem to remember thinly sliced cucumbers but maybe it was radish. we'll be in l.a for a couple of days on our way to india in 2 weeks. i don't know that we'll eat at corner place but if we do i'll confirm.

not that i'm aware of. i suppose you could always add some red food coloring--that's a time honored indian restaurant tradition for making things look good. my mushoor dals turn almost green when i'm done with them. in an unrelated dal note: while i've had no trouble cooking mushoor, kal urad or channa dal since i moved from l.a to boulder, moog dal is really pissing me off. it takes forever to soften (i don't pressure cook it). i know altitude changes cooking times but why the hell does just moog dal have to behave this way?

so over a lunch of chicken udon (home-made broth) and duk-buk-ki i finally got around to asking my wife what the noodle-soup thingy i was referring to is called. she tells me that is not technically a soup since no broth as such is made for it--rather the liquid is cold kim chi water. the dish (which has white noodles) is called dongchimi-kuk-su. it is a noodle dish and as such belongs in the cold noodles thread. my apologies.

oh, i am very familiar with the career of the brilliant (and brilliantly annoying) stoitchkov--i wish i could have observed cryuff's interaction with him at close range. he used to be one of my favorite footballers in the early 90s--he had an amazing sense of vision. he was also perhaps one of the biggest twats in the history of the game: lots of spitting incidents in europe and more recently in the mls in the u.s he broke the leg of a young college player with a needlessly rough challenge in an inconsequential game. what is it with barca and temperamentally unsound strikers? you also had romario and now kluivert. anyway, how about that football cuisine eh? (desperate attempt to avoid the censors.)

kangaroo is pretty damn tasty. and from my experiences on my trip it didn't seem to be something for tourists only (we ate at some pretty fancy restaurants, courtesy my host)--though i doubt it is also a home staple. i do recall that there are tremendous restrictions on it: they can't be raised for slaughter, i think. i suppose it is possible that it only shows up in fancy-schmancy restaurants or in tourist traps (along with emu and crocodile: the indigenous animals degustation menu). are there no living, breathing australians on this forum who could enlighten us?

yes, well the cost of getting there would not for me be separable from the cost of the meal--i'm not planning any trips to spain, and if i was my extra money would be invested instead in a game at the bernabeu or the nou camp. as for the first point, i don't think you've fully addressed my question--which to be fair i may not have fully articulated. let me put it this way: does el bulli make sense without an immersion in particular traditions/idioms of cooking. what does el bulli, or adria, have to offer, for instance, to someone who has spent their entire life eating sichuan or bengali food? in other words, is the el bulli phenomenon (whatever you make of it) possibly understandable only within a particular european food context? if so, is this context really so important that goings on in it need to be talked about as embodying the future fate of all food?--i'm not saying that anyone here is directly making that claim; but it seems to me to be the surreptitious subtext of the conversation (not just on egullet): that high cuisine=particular european traditions. from a less fraught angle i am trying to make sense of his rafa's comment. he says that is what he is trying to get to via his bleeding edge route. what does that mean? that rafa's evokes a sense of the purity and simple wonder of food and he is trying to surprise/shock people into returning to that point? well, does everybody require that surprise and shock--or is it only a particular set of diners (whether the adjective we use to describe them is highly aestheticized or decadent)? also, his chemical/culinary experiments to create food puns and hybrids (i'm making him sound like the dr. moreau of expensive food)--how are these qualitatively different from the long tradition in chinese cooking of making soy proteins and gluten resemble and taste like pretty much any meat you want? i'm not saying he's doing exactly the same thing but the idea itself has been explored in great detail and with great versatility in another culinary tradition (albeit one that doesn't usually get a seat at the banquet table of "high" cuisines). if it isn't the novelty or originality of his food camoflauge that's significant, what is? i'm not trying to come down hard on el bulli--it sounds very interesting, if not entirely appetizing--just trying to understand the terms of the discussion. i'm sure these are not entirely original questions--i tried reading the entire thread but the rabbit brains excursus did me in--so please forgive me if i am retreading worn ground.

as someone who will likely never be able to afford to buy the el bulli cookbook, let alone eat there, i have been enjoying this discussion a lot. i've been taken especially by comrade bourdain's evocative critiques of adria's philosophy and practice. reading the excerpts above, however, i have to ask: is the el bulli experience truly revelatory only for people (chefs or gourmands) who have been ingrained in the classic french idiom and now need to be (re)awakened to different ways of thinking food? can the rest of us plebs just eat at rafa's to begin with and not worry about returning our taste-buds to a place/time where we can appreciate it? yes, yes, i am a crass philistine. but we eat too.