markk

You can certainly ask them to choose, but in an effort to serve you better, they'd probably like to know your tastes in cheese - even if it's the case that you want to stick to the kinds you like, or to try others. So you can tell them "I want to try all the stinky cheeses you have", or "I don't like soft cheese, but would you suggest three hard ones", or any permutation. And if you defer and suggest "could you serve me the three you think are most interesting from your cart?", you'll get an explanation of the cheeses, and probably a good variety. But you shouldn't be afraid to ask. I have met with snooty and condescending answers in three-star places, even speaking French and giving away enough clues that I know which end is up when it comes to fancy food and fine dining, but let's assume that the OP has chosen wisely and that this is not gong to happen. But very sadly, it is a part of the three-star experience sometimes. Can we ask roosterchef21 where he's planning to lose his 3-star virginity?

Well, this may help you with a perspective. I myself only visit wineries whose wines I like. And, I go to great lengths (and distances) to visit. I like to hear all about their wines and their winemaking and I like to visit the vines and the cellar. But as a consumer, I don't necessarily want to hear any personal involvement that may lead to bitterness (i.e. "Why do I even bother to tell the story...?") until I have tasted your product, and enjoyed it. If I like it, I'll want to hear your views on what makes it so good, and what you had to do to make the wine that's in the glass that's won me over. But if I don't like it, I'm not going to want to hear all that you went through, no matter how hard you worked, and no matter how much you sacrificed. And I think that if I were in a situation where I stopped by a winery that I was passing, one that I did not know at all, and saw a sign that said "tasting today", I would definitely want to taste the wine before I heard a long spiel from the winemaker.

I sent your query to a friend who is on the faculty of one of the restaurant schools in town, and his reply, which I hope may give you a clue, was, "I have not heard of bovin and boiled potatoes. The Bovril recipe sounds interesting. But often words have evolved in our language from completely different sources than would seem logical. Hence, allow me to propose that the researcher also look back in time to "beau vin" as a remote possibility to explore for derivation." I hope you'll post again if this leads you anywhere. Good luck!

I think that's true because chefs and cooks can lose interest in cooking a dish, and when they do it by rote, the energy and excitement that's missing in the cooking is severely lacking in the the diner's mouth. Jean-Georges has been making many of his "classic" dishes for ten years. (The young garlic soup with frog legs, the turbot with the Chateau Chalon sauce, etc.) But each time they make it, they give it the same energy and excitement that they put into it when it was new, and that comes across in the dining room. I think a lot of things fall out of vogue because kitchens become complacent, and then people think the need a "new" type of cuisine to bring the excitement back. But they don't. They just need a chef dedicated enough to keep the excitement in the dish he's making. It's what they say of actors who get bored in part and want to change it each night: don't. You may feel bored, but it's the audience who's paying money to be entertained, and you have an artistic obligation to find the way to reproduce the same thing you did six nights ago, and three nights ago with a new energy each night. I know somebody will say, "but the chef gets bored making the same thing", and I'm saying that whether he is or not, he still has a professional obligation to make it just as well as he did when it was exciting for him, just as the Jean-Georges kitchen does with their classic dishes. Last year I had a Bolognese sauce at Babbo that one of my party likened to what's in the can of Chef Boyardee meat ravioli, and we all had to agree that that was a very accurate description of that batch of sauce. But I don't think the answer is a molecular Bolognese, or a deconstructed Bolognese. I think the remedy is to make the sauce as if you had just tasted a great rendition of it in Italy for the first time, and were trying to make a batch that captured that same excitement for your patrons. Now, I'm not saying that chef's shouldn't create new dishes as well. But to go back to the opening post of the thread, "I've wrestled for 2 seasons with how to sophisticate the classic combination of melon and prosciutto. I've tried pulverizing dried prosciutto, I've tried melon sorbetto, melon aspic...but nothing comes close to the texture and flavor contrasts of the original dish. For me, this exemplifies what I try to do in the kitchen....respect the original dish, while attempting to seduce the diner with a new rendition that is equally satisfying. I haven't found the answer yet..." I think that there are many dishes that don't need to be improved upon - they just need to be made with as much energy and respect as if they're being made for the first time, so they'll come out tasting fresh and exciting. If you want to take ingredients that are now in the market that weren't there twenty or thirty years ago, and find delicious ways to cook them, fine. But I'd still rather have prosciutto and melon to start than prosciutto dust and melon foam in it's place. Side by side I might be able to appreciate, but not instead of. I couldn't agree more!

I'm very tempted to say that in your predicament, I'd break down and spring for some airport food. But... here's what you requested, to a "t", as written up in the New York Times the other day: Gourmet on the Go

Thanks. Lunchtime = abundant available light. I can't put my finger on what it was about the dish either. I can't actually fault it on anything, but it didn't dazzle either of us, so I'm assuming it had an off day. I had a scallops and cauliflower once that really shouldn't have been sent out, so I know it happens. The charred corn ravioli fared way (way) better than that though, but I guess one last dimension got omitted that day.

One precision: I do not know what "head cheese" precisely means in English, I mean if it refers to beef or pork. In French things are clear: "fromage de tête" (literal translation of head cheese) is pig's head terrine (or pig brawn), "museau vinaigrette" aka "salade de museau" is beef snout. Both are delicious and taste rather similar, the pig version being a bit softer and the beef version slightly crunchier. Pig is diced, or served as a slab, and beef is thinly sliced. Both are dressed in the same vinaigrette, or rémoulade: lots of mustard, lots of shallots, lots of black pepper and vinegar. ← What about "tete de veau"? That's head cheese made of calf, no?

I guess when I think New York hot dog, I think Nathan's Famous (and then Sabrett). I had to chuckle a few years ago. I stopped at a reststop on the PA Turnpike, and in the food court there were all the usual places together, and a Nathan's. But they were serving a pale, skinless hot dog. I tried to say something (like, "This isn't a Nathan's hot dog!"), but they just didn't have any idea what I was talking about. I guess maybe the manager there thought you could bring in any hot dog you wanted? But I definitely associate Nathan's with New York hot dog first.

We had lunch today at Jean-Georges, and afterwards we asked to see the oven, which they took us to. I'm getting ahead of myself here, but the skate which was cooked in it was just phenomenal. Anyway, for lunch we had: Foie Gras Brulé with Slowly Roasted Strawberries and Aged Balsamic: (They also very nicely accommodated my strawberry allergy and made me one without the roasted strawberries woven through it because I was clever enough to call the day before; not photographed.) Green Asparagus with Morels and Asparagus Juice: Charred Corn Ravioli with Cherry Tomato Salad and Basil Fondue: Skate with the Château Chalon Sauce: Roasted Sweetbreads with Fragrant Pickled Peach, Wild Arugula, and Pink Peppercorns: We weren't as crazy over the charred corn ravioli as Frege apparently was, but it was certainly nice. The skate was outstanding and had a particularly wonderful batch of Chalon sauce, and the sweetbreads were other-worldly. The photos, which are larger than ImageGullet will allow, can be seen here: my Jean-Georges lunch photos (edited to add smaller versions of the photos after all)

Hah! Is it larger than this?... Harold's Deli Edison, NJ Height: 7 inches Weight: 26 oz.

I must digress only slightly from the topic of tablecloths to tell a relevant story. It's about bringing a bottle of very fine old Bordeaux to somebody's house, because the other guest, a friend of mine, is also a wine collector, and I wanted to share it with him. And it was his brother's house. So after we opened the wine, his wife asked the brother (whose house it was) for wine glasses, and was given some green-frosted plastic ones for picnic use. And she said, "I'm not drinking fine wine out of a plastic glass!" He then opened a cupboard and pointed to a mismatched set of jelly-jar glasses, and she said "I'm not drinking fine wine out of a jelly-jar either!" (I should add now that our "host" is a fifty year old hippie.) So she marched into the dining room to the breakfront, and took out three wine glasses, and her brother-in-law screamed "Those are the Baccarat glasses !!!!" And she replied, "how perfect - the wine is a 1982 Leoville Las Cases [a very great wine from a very great vintage]." And our "host" said, "You can't use those! They cost $65 apiece !!" And she said, "Are you telling me that of all people, you spent $65 apiece on wine glasses?" And he said, "Hell no! They were a wedding present 12 years ago." And she said, "And don't you use them?" And he said, "Of course not." And she said, "You've never used them, or set your table with them, in the 12 years you've had them?" And he said "No, of course not. One of them might break!" And she said, "Well, if one of them breaks you can buy another." And he said, "Why would I buy another? I'm not paying $65 to replace something we never use !!!" And she said, "Well, if you never use them, and one breaks, you won't miss it then..." and she rinsed them, dried them, and poured the wine into them. And he screamed, "If one of them breaks and I don't replace it, then I'll only have a set of 5 for the breakfront" and ran off crying. Things break with use. Things get scratched, and stained. You gotta be grateful that you have nice things, and even more grateful that you have friends who will accidentally break, stain, and scratch them.

I use tablecloths for when I go fancy, and leave it bare other times (it's a butcher-block table that's very pretty uncovered), and it does get scratches and a few other mars. But I don't like to be a slave to my possessions, and I can live with the imperfections it gathers. I remember the good times had at the table, and those mean more to me than a piece of furniture in perfect condition. I use the natural wood with certain meals and sets of dishes, placemats on it for reasons of aesthetics when the plating seems to call for it, and varying degrees of tablecloth, from rustic, to formal, depending on the occasion. Here's an example of when I go all-out formal and here's stuff served with the bare table edited to add photos as an afterthought

I had written this reply a few hours ago but forgot to post it, before John replied, and after reading his post, I decided to post mine "as is" and not change a word... Your waiter will undoubtedly speak English, because everyone in France who went through school since WWII speaks English, or can; in many cases, people have no need to speak it in their towns or walks of life, but people in the hospitality industry, especially in the fancier places everywhere, speak English. You can talk as loud as you want. I'm hoping that you don't want to yell into a cellphone, but you can converse in a normal tone so that your dining companions can hear you. You don't have to speak in "hushed" tones if that's what you're asking. You can ask for anything you desire. At that level, chefs and restaurants are eager to make your meal a memorable one, and you're welcome to ask for anything that you want instead of what may be on a proposed "set menu" and you're welcome to request a dish that you don't see listed; they'll undoubtedly try to please you with whatever they have that they can give you, and if you ask for something they can't prepare, they'll tell you. If you need to use the toilet, you may ask them where it is. And if somebody is smoking in a place where it's not legal to smoke, you won't have to say something - they'll notice it and take care of it. Dress these days has become more casual than in previous times. I still think that for men, a jacket and tie are appropriate attire for a three-star meal, and show respect for the chef and other people dining there. I'll let other people answer your tipping and cheese/dessert questions, since I'm sure there are other gulletteers who can do a better job.

We also reached the point when considering packing the photo equipment of thinking "you know, let's just have this one as memories". But now that the cameras are smaller than a pack of cigarettes, and about as heavy, and take brilliant photos without flash, we've gone back to tucking one in our shirt pockets.

I think it has to do with the fact that things will evaporate uncovered, frequently a desired result when you want flavors to concentrate, or certain ingredients to dry out, balanced by the fact that many things (like things with bones) will "cloud" if you cook them covered, at least while the bones are in there. Those are usually my starting points.

Yeah, you have to be on a "search and destroy" mission, or be a "man with a plan" at peak times, and when I went the other day I had somebody waiting in the car for me, so I went into "attack mode" - I made a path that was supposed to take me past all the items I needed, though I needed a cart as many of them were indeed the private label olive oils, and using a cart in an aisle that's not as wide as two carts means that you come head-to-head with another cart every 7 feet, and have to back out (except you can't move backwards or forwards from the crush of people) or intimidate the person you're head to head with to back out. All in all, I did extremely well - I have had years of practice and realize now that I could've played football in my youth after all - but I've known people with lesser determination to abort and leave in tears. And when you go off-peak - I've found that late morning on weekdays, or very early afternoon on weekdays are great - you can stroll and lollygag and explore. And another interesting thing for people not familiar with the store to understand is that as packed as it gets with people, the shelves are more packed with different items, unlike a supermarket where there are fewer items and more of them on display; at Fairway, so many different things are crammed into small spaces that if you walk too fast down the ailse, or if you don't bring a magnifying glass (as it were), or if you blink, you'll miss all the incredible variety that people talk about with wonder in their eyes. Now I've never tried to take a "crowd" photo in Fairway - I'd be deathly afraid that all the people would sue me for invasion of privacy (this is a high-strung bunch, as attested to by all the incidents of people accusing other people of cutting-in), but in the photo below, if you can imagine twice as many people in a store the size of your average deli or 7-11, you'll begin to get a picture of what it's like, though a sardine-can is really a better image... but if you picture the people below packed in much, much (much) more densely, you get an idea of what shopping at Fairway is like...

Let me make clear that I'm not quibbling with foods that evolve as chefs re-visit certain dishes, and certain ingredients (that is, unless nobody also remembers how to make the classics). I'd have to admit that I eat "contemporary" French food all the time, and love it. I'm sure that there's nothing "traditional" about the Young Garlic Soup at Jean-Georges, or the "Sweetbread, Rock Shrimp and Scallion Potato 'Gâteau' " at The Modern. I'm happy that food like this co-exists with the more traditional foods, like those we had when D'Artagnan was open. But... I'm really saying that I don't think that drying, pulverizing, beading, or foaming, are such great innovations. And perhaps the fact that you really can't improve on Prosciutto and Melon proves my point just a teeny bit. Of course, the chefs cited above claim that they're taking their specific French roots and applying them to what they find in today's markets, and they're doing it with a great deal of intelligence and culinary skill. Has anybody tried that with Italian food? Is there another avenue other than the dried prosciutto powder and melon foam? That's a serious question, not a sarcastic one. I've been to France more recently than I've been to Italy, and sure, I eat a lot of contemporary French food and love it. But none of it's been freeze dried and molecularized, and I'm curious if there's a similar movement in Italy?

I went today, having not been in about 6 weeks, reinvigorated by this thread to poke around and explore. But my day ran late, and instead of going at 1 pm, I wound up there at 5 pm. Those who know the store will know that at peak hours, it's so crowded, that you can't pass through the aisles, for how the people are packed in like sardines in a can, worse than any subway you could possibly imagine, and you can't even reach to a shelf for something, because you can't move your arms, let alone navigate through an aisle. (And nobody loves this store more than I do!) I got a few things I needed, gave up on many others, and got on line at the registers to find tempers more heated than I've ever seen. Flare-ups left and right with people accusing other people of cutting in the line. Of course for those people reading this thread who've never been, you cannot imagine the cramped conditions, or picture that the register lines form in another part of the store, and wait to proceed towards the cash registers, hidden from view at that point, the people are; newbies don't realize this, and just saunter up to what they think is the end of the line - - but few of them live to tell about it. Today there was practically a bloodbath on 2 different lines. Ah, Fairway. I love it. The selection, that is.

I don't know the size cases they come in, but if you can buy them by the case when you're here, you can check them as luggage. I've checked cases of wine for years and years with no problem - the trick told to me a long time ago was to tie them up well and provide a handle, so that luggage handlers can lift them, and of course write "Fragile" on them; the fellow who told me that was a wine importer, and said that as long as he had a good rope handle that people could lift the cases with, he never had one that was thrown and broken. It should work for the oil as well - surely they're in cases sturdy enough for shipping. Just a thought.

I am sure that at some point I will have a post 2000 dish and lose my mind over it. But I'd like still to be able to find the dishes of yore. And at the moment, I have trouble finding restaurants that will serve me the stuffed cabbage, boiled beef flanken, and chicken soup with kreplach that my grandmother made, and that I could get on any street corner in a traditional Jewish deli where I grew up. These restaurants are getting harder and harder to find. Is it because people have gone with "lighter", newer foods? (It probably isn't, though I don't know why it is, actually.) And if the answer is that the people who eat these foods have moved from New York City, I can tell you that it's almost as hard to find them in Miami Beach now. Of course, I can't blame the disappearance of traditional Jewish delis on anything in this thread. I'm just thinking that if all the people ganging up on Italy for being resistant to change actually get what they want, we might lose easy access to another wonderful cuisine. Of course, just today somebody really did ask me where to get Lasagne Bolognese in New York City, and I didn't have an answer. Does anybody know?

Mark, can you point to a great cuisine that has been hurt, rather than helped, by fusion? We wouldn't even have the great cuisines of today were it not for fusion, because fusion is not a modern phenomenon: it is part and parcel of the history of cuisine. And it has historically improved cuisines. Look at Japanese cuisine. Do you think Japanese cuisine would be better off without the fusion dish of tempura, which is based on Portuguese techniques? Japan's encounter with the West has not destroyed Japanese cuisine. It has enhanced Japanese cuisine by giving Japanese chefs more ideas and ingredients to work with. Fusion doesn't mean homogenization. Fusion means everybody gets the same tools to work with. ← Perhaps not a "cuisine" in general, but I've been offered Asian-fusion dishes in France, and to be perfectly honest, when I'm in France for a limited number of meals (even for two weeks) I don't really want to be eating things with soy sauce and ginger. I felt the same way one the time I was in Italy (in the late 1980's) and had to stay over one night in Emilia-Romagna enroute to somewhere else, and picked the town of Imola so that I could eat at San Domenico (in those days, there wasn't the information we had today - you saw stars, you thought "great food") and instead of getting the best Emilian meal I ever had - I was dreaming of food perhaps even better than Ristorante Fini in Modena which I'd been to a few times - I had the total "nouvelle" experience (and simply lousy food) that had very little to do with the traditional food of the region, and made me very sorry I had gone there, when I could just as easily stopped over in Modena instead. But I feel the same way when I go to an "American" restaurant (whatever that is) and one of the dishes is "soy-glaze salmon with ginger" and another is "pork chop with our house special bbq sauce" - I'd like to choose a Chinese restaurant when I'm in the mood for ginger, scallion, and "Chinese" flavors, and I'd like to choose a bbq joint when I'm in the mood for something with bbq sauce. Now we can have a Chinese restaurant, an American restaurant, and a BBQ restaurant on the same block, and have the same dishes at each of them if we're not careful. That severely limits my dining options. All I've said all along is that if we lose choices, it'll be a bad thing for me, culinarily speaking. If people forget how to make the traditional foods of their regions - whether the local chefs want to incorporate flavors and ingredients that are "new" to them, or whether they want to go off in a molecular direction, I think it will be lamentable if years from now, there's no duck confit as we know it from the southwest of France, and no Bolognese sauce as we know it from Emila-Romagna. In the 70's, I used to spend a great deal of time on the Island of Capri, and at one well known (and very fashionable) restaurant in particular, eating the most delicious and freshest seafoods from the local waters. Then I took a 10-year hiatus from Italy, and when I went back there, the owner of that same restaurant suggested I start with a "delicious salad with crab meat" - and when it came, it was a bed of arugula, with Krab (surimi) on it! I just don't like change when it applies to cuisine - sorry FG. I would like my cuisines frozen in time at the year 2000, please.

When I drive in from NJ to shop there, I always stock up on the various Lunor products, especially the various beans and the lentils, all of which I think are exceptionally good. I've never seen these anywhere else.

"Tu proverai si come sa di sale Lo pane altrui, / You shall learn how salt is the taste of another's bread" from The Divine Comedy may establish that Tuscan bread was unsalted in the 14th century, though it may also establish that other "Italian" breads were salted. I'm not sure how far back you're looking to go, and you'd be correct in theory to want earlier references to establish "tradition" though I don't think you could generalize "Italian". But as I understood the original post... Whether or not Tuscan bread was saltless because of Tuscan frugality, I don't think that pulverized dried prosciutto and melon foam will ever be thought of as a "traditional Italian" dish. I see a different issue. I personally am not, and have never been in favor of "fusion" cuisines. I think you are in danger of taking two perfectly wonderful cuisines, and losing at least one of them. You get a French chef who has traveled to China and is inspired to use soy sauce, ginger, and scallions in his duck, and a Chinese chef who is fascinated with French ingredients and applies the traditional soy sauce, ginger and scallion treatment to foie gras, and the next thing you know, you're eating the same things in restaurants in France and China, whereas before, you could enjoy two distinct cuisines. I think that people should definitely fuse (for many reasons), but that their traditional cuisines should remain distinct. And if any of those cuisines goes off on a molecular tangent, I hope that it won't be at the expense of people who remember how to make the traditional dishes. Or one day, no matter what restaurant we go to anywhere in the world, the only thing we'll be offered is pulverized ginger powder, soy sauce molecules, and protein foam. Or protein beads, ginger foam, and soy sauce dust. And like an episode of Star Trek, we'll discover ancient books with photos of Lasagne Bolognese and wonder what it even could have tasted like.

The "sandwich rearranging" thing amazes me. It presupposes that you have bought a sandwich that is already assembled. I could never eat a sandwich that wasn't made in my line of sight, so that I could bark and scream at them and stop them as they were about to place something in the wrong position. As far as cutting those I make, it's a spur of the moment thing. It depends on how the sandwich looks to me, and what the plating is like. Then again, I'm the person who never remembers where I keep things when I unpack groceries, and subsequently find things like ketchup in five different places in my kitchen.

Well, Fibilou beat me to it, but I was going to add that it's very common to see flashes from cameras go off in even the fanciest restaurants, and when you look (if you care, that is) you see that somebody's taking a group photo of the people dining at their table, or more likely, they have asked the waiter to take a photo of them (so that the photographer's not excluded). We - society, that is - think nothing of people taking a picture of people in a restaurant, at least the people they're dining with (I'm not referring to paparazzi invading the restaurant and taking photos of the guests) - so why should anybody care that the camera is aimed at your food instead of your dining companions?