Tonyfinch

Scott I was at NT tonight. My wife and I had a portion of sizzling marinated tandoori lamb chops (4 chops) with onions, four sizzling seekh kababs (bursting with ginger and ajwan) , a portion of murgh channa (chicken and chickpeas) three tandoori rotis,unlimited salad and three cokes-the damage? £12.70 She caint be beat.

Some more for the file. Aubergeine, Bonds and 1 Lombard St do not allow it. Pied A Terre and Zafferano charge £25 per bottle.

Beachfan it is indeed 100% SB, which is not that usual for dry white Bordeaux.

Good. Then you're going to be one person less queueing up night after night to eat there. It's absolutely jam packed from 7pm every night these days.

Well it depends on how good the food is AND how cheap it is. I have long trumpeted NT as the best price/quality ratio restaurant in London by some margin. It may not have the very best food in London, and it may not be the very cheapest restaurant, but for great food at ridiculously low prices nothing beats it.

'Fraid not. That's to be found at New Tayyab, Fieldgate St. Whitechapel. And there's NO corkage.

There tonight with the scallop dish and lovely chunks of calves liver. Friend had the chicken parfait and the veal chop. Dessert of steamed Seville orange pudding lacked the bitter bite I was looking for from Seville oranges. We were the only customers on a Monday until Fergus Henderson and some staff from St John came in. Blagged on semi -drunkenly to Fergus about e gullet and he agreed that the suckling pig would only serve ten people with "normal" appetites.

Bux, I'm not sure it so much a fear of getting ripped off as a worry about looking gauche or or naive. Of being looked down upon. And its not only Americans who worry about that. The British do too. I've posted before about how Pierre Koffman ex of La Tante Claire here in London offered all of the workmen refurbishing the restaurant along with their wives a free dinner one eveningto celebrate finishing the work They all declined on the grounds that they would feel uncomfortable and out of place in a "fancy" French restaurant. Koffman muses on the fact that that would never have happened in France where they would all have jumped at the chance for a free meal in such an esteemed restaurant. I think its a shame that people feel that way and it does lead you to wonder whether restaurants of this calibre could/should do more to make people who may feel self-conscious feel more at ease or whether creating an air of superiority is all part of the schtik.

Adam it was the waitress who told us it fed 14 people but I did notice there wasn't 14 in the group. I counted 10. I only caught a glimpse of said piggy when they brought it in to the restaurant. I'd say it was larger than could fit into a conventional domestic oven but not much. Thinking about it I agree that even ten portions would make fairly meagre portion sizes for someone with my galumphing appetite.

There was a recent thread asking about suckling pig around here somewhere. Can't seem to find it now. Anyway had a nice meal at St John last night but I'm posting to say that they brought in a whole roasted suckling pig for a group. When we asked we were told that it costs £280 and that it has to be ordered 7 days in advance. A whole pig will feed 14 people.

That's what I said. Ask for advice. Just DON'T WORRY

I'm always amused at how some Americans appear to worry about how they are perceived by these very high end Parisian restaurants. You (not you personally) start with the tortuous machinations of booking a table and being grateful to the restaurant for deigning to allow you to eat there and carry on with a kind of awed deference, worrying what the waiters will think of you if you do this or don't do that. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with asking for wine and menu advice. But they're there to serve YOU. You're paying and while I don't subscribe to the absurd theory that the customer is ALWAYS right, but if you behave properly and treat people with respect then let THEM worry what YOU think of THEM!

71 and 78 were the best years of the decade for Barolo. If they've been wll made and stored properly they should be at their very best.

The Villa Maria will be fine if your fond of the very distinctive NZ style. Their reserve wines are excellent. Your other option could be Sancerre or Pouilly Fume. Sancerre has ridden through its trendy image of some years back and and is producing softer, richer, more subtle wines than most NZ SB

The three French brasseries close to each other -Chez Max, Racine, Brasserie St Quentin- are not cheap exactly but they are reasonably priced for the area. This aint a cheap area.

Drink.

Anybody who travels in France cannot help but be struck by the fact that in every two bit, one horse town you go through there will be five charcuteries, four boulangeries, six boucheries, three patisseries, two traiteurs selling luxury fare, three fishmongers etc. etc, not to mention several restaurants, cafes, bars etc. It has always been a mystery to me. WHO IS EATING ALL THAT FOOD?? Not the townswomen by the look of it. In general French women are a slender bunch. I can only conclude that in every town and village there are a dedicated group of men who commit their days to scoffing their way through mountains of quiches and pates and rillettes and rillons and langue de boeuf sauce piquante and tartes au framboise an all the other goodies which fill the windows and counters of these places. And what happens to the stuff that's left over? Is there an arrangement whereby its delivered to the local hospital, or old folks home or something? Or is it just chucked out? These are only slightly frivolous questions. I'd really like to know.

In the Independent article a chap called Robert Cockroft is decribed as "one of the country's best food critics". Who is he Andy?

Other cost factors which spring to mind are faulty/corked bottles and breakages. The former could admittedly be ameliorated if the restaurant has a sale or return relationship with its suppliers. Is that common?

This is the quote that opened the thread. Note how the French chef perceives cuiisine in terms of satisfying the senses only To him this is the be all and end all-how his cuisine can literally be "sensational". Nothing wrong with a cuisine that pleases the senses of course but the problem is that the senses become sated notoriously quickly and need ever new stimulii in order to keep them interested (analogies with sex and some kinds of music also come to mind in this regard) This does lead to the possibility of variety for variety's sake being the goal in order to stave off jadedness and that in turn does open the door for the charlatan who may well be able to fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time. True "balance" in cuisine is about more than satisfying the senses, however well that is done. It is about starting from a philosophy of life in which food is part of a holistic way of living, which links past, present and future and which works in harmony (music analogy again) with not only the senses but the intellect, the body and the "soul" to promote health and well being and to satisfy at a level beyond that envisaged by the foams,gellees and mousses which pass for progress in modern Western cuisine. For a taste or sense of what I'm talking about I suggest a viewing of the best (IMO) movie ever made about food: Ang Lee's "Eat, Drink, Man, Woman" in which the old master chef's philosophy of cuisine as linked to the traditional rhythms of Taipei social and family values, becomes increasingly tested by the intrusion of Western mores into his daughter's lives. If it doesn't make you see Eastern cuisine differently, nothing will.

Basil, if a restaurant buys a wine for £15 and sells it for £40, that £25 is not clear profit is it? There are all sorts of costs which must be taken into account first are there not?

You could blanch the parsnips first in boiling water which softens them a bit. Then season with salt and pepper and place in REALLY HOT fat before roasting. This crisps up the outside and prevents the parsnips from absorbing fat and being soft and greasy.

I agree with LML that the word "balance" is being used here to indicate "variety", which is French cuisine's interpretation. It is revealing how automatically contributors are speaking of this topic in terms of French cuisine only. The concept of balance in Asian cuisines means more than just "nutritionally" balanced , although it does mean that. It also means balanced in terms of achieving a unity between our inner and outer selves and the world around us, and a recognition of the link between our physical, emotional and psychological well being. In Asian philosophy food is medicine not in the narrow Western sense of medicine, but as a promoter of all round health and well being in which the notion of "balance" is core. What is really being talked about by Lizzie etc. here is "sensations" because that is what French cuisine sets out to achieve-a series of sensations which can be...well...sensational as an experience in and of itself. But that has little to do with "balance"-at least as I interpret the word because, as LML pointed out, French cuisine does not embrace the philosophies needed to create it.

Cabrales, I don't think that's so. I don't know how much a wine has to cost the diner in order for the restaurant to make £25 clear profit on it but there were several wines on The Square's list which cost less than £25 and plenty in the £25-40 price range on which they're obviously not making £25 clear. Maybe Basildog or another with restaurant experience will know how much a wine needs to cost the diner before the restaurant is making £25 clear. For a restaurant with The Square's overheads I would guess £50 plus minimum. As for drinking tap water, well maybe not but I'm sure there will be plenty who maybe only drink a glass or two, or stick to the cheaper end of the list.

I recently took a wine which currently costs £180 pounds at Oddbins to The Square, which charged me £25 corkage on it. The same wine was on their list for just over £400. The restaurant only loses if I was to either: a) buy the wine from their list at £400- not a possibility b) buy an alternative wine on which they were going to make more than a £25 profit- maybe I will or maybe I won't and they don't know which. From a business point of view it makes sense to relieve me of £25 (£50, actually because I took 2 bottles) for doing nothing more than pulling the cork and giving me a glass, than to refuse to allow me to BYO and run the risk that I'll drink tap water all night or order two wines on which they won't make £50.