Tonyfinch

Well I have already acknowledged that he has helped consumers. But so have plenty of other wine critics and wine writers. Whether he intends it or not, and I can't believe that he doesn't think it should happen, Parker's scores are not regarded by the wine world as "just his opinion". If they were his views would have no more power in the market place than any other critic's opinion. His rank ordering system and the assignation of a number to every wine is regarded by millions of Americans, and many others also, as a definitive guide to quality. He has achieved this by realising that people like league tables and numbers because they are simpler than words and then postulating the notion that he has the palate that can tell an 86 wine from an 87 wine. Of course one is free to ignore him, but his power in the industry is such that it would appear that those who don't conceptualise wine in this way and who feel that Parker's power is not a totally benign influence have a hell of a long way to go still to redress the balance.

It would be a case of "The King is dead. Long live the The King!" It is utterly inevitable that someone who sets themselves up as a Wine Guru will eventually be found out. This because you can fool all of the people some of the time etc. etc. I go back to my original point. Parker may well be extremely knowledgeable and may well have helped consumers a great deal. But he purports to be able to do more than that. He claims to have such a nuanced palate that he can assign every wine to a place on a 50 point scale. These points are not just indicators of or pointers towards quality. They confer a pseudo scientific exactitude upon his judgments which is bogus becuase such exactitude cannot be applied to matters of taste and wine is too complex a subject and has too many varying qualities to be reduced to a set of pseudo scores. People are bound, after a while, to start saying "hang on a minute he's wrong about this and he's wrong about that". It must happen. And it will happen to whoever else sets themselves up in the same way. They may get their time in the sun and make a lot of money in the meantime but in the end they will be called into question too as surely as night follows day.

So your friends don't rate post 82 Clarets as age worthy. They must be a hell of knowledgeable bunch to know more than Parker and just about every other wine writer I've read, all of whom rate several post 82 vintages as marvellous and eminently age worthy. As to competing with Parker, I think you are misunderstanding the nature of Gurudom (or a prophet, to use your word). You don't compete with a Guru. You supplant him. You overthrow him. Someone doing what you describe (using Parker's scoring system but re-rank ordering the wines) would not be engaged in friendly rivalry but in a (professional) life and death battle for supemacy. If the interloper won Parker's credibility would be shot for good. That's why he must be so keen to raise a successor. This is because Parker and his acolytes do not perceive his judgments as opinions to be debated but as facts to be stated. Saying a wine is "86" or "92" doesn't leave much room for discussion does it? He's either right or he's wrong, and if he's shown to be wrong time and time again then he's banjaxed.

For authentic Indian food in London you're going to have to venture out of SW3. Those upmarket places are generally hybrids serving Frenchified Indian food for people who want Indian food to be French. The food can be very nice or it can be awful but either way it ain't what Indians are eating( I exempt Chutney Mary from that.) The Time Out Guide lists most of the best places in Whitechapel, Southall, Tooting, and Wembley. Also Mela in Shaftesbury Avenue and the Rasa chain of Keralan restaurants (although some say they're going down hill). Drummond St behind Euston has the original Bel poori house and a large Ambala(Indian sweet and snack centre)

Why would they do that? What would be the point? To rank all the wines in a different order? To invent a different scoring system-150-200 points?. If someone came along and rank ordered all the wines differently all they'd be saying is "I don't agree with Parker's rank ordering". What would that achieve except confusion for wine consumers. Parker HAS competition. It is all of those who don't conceive of rank ordering wines on a 50 point scale but who prefer a combination of rank indicators and prose. There might not be one single person who heads this particular field but that is because this approach does not lend itself to, or seek after, gurudom. The idea that there needs to be a "battle of the giants" in the field of wine criticism does not even occur to them. As I've already said it also does not resonate nearly as much in Europe, where Parker is just another critic among many. The veneration of Parker to guru status is a very American phenomenon and reflects certain values where I think, innately, we differ.

Maybe but it also may imply a temporary surfeit of a generally enjoyable experience. If I did what some of our American friends appear to do and spend ten days or so on the trot eating in 3 star restaurants in France I know I would be jaded after three days at the most and be yearning for a curry. Similarly if all I drank was first growths,after a while I'd be saying someone give me a chilled Beaujolais for God's sake. Maybe Jaybee's friends have got their culinary lives out of balance and the key to remaining enthusuastic as you acquire more knowledge is to recognize that just because somthing is better than something else it doesn't mean that you will neccessarily enjoy it more if you have it all the time, or even that much more often than anything else.

Charlene. Have you had a pizza from Il Bordello yet?

You mean the American marketplace. Parker is not nearly as influential in Europe (which is not to say he has NO influence). Generally speaking Europeans are not as impressed and as influenced by numbers as Americans. Hugh Johnson's books sell in their millions in the UK and far more people know him than Parker. He doesn't compete directly because he's not trying to do the same thing (ie rank order all wines). He does use a four star system but in general he relies on words. His Pocket Guide to Wine is a huge seller and has introduced more people to good wine than probably just about any other single book.

'Cos it's fun. And Steve yes you did enjoy New Tayyab and you were fun to dine with. So maybe Jaybee's NOT talking about you after all.

Why you didn't enjoy the meal is not germane to the topic. Jaybee's question was whether those who move in your "sphere of experience" inevitably moan and complain in restaurants because 99% of them don't meet your standards. If the answer to that is "yes" then all I can say is you all may well be knowledgeable but you must make dreadfully dismal dining companions.

Durian would go OK with any wine which goes with sweet and sweetish fruits. The best combination I've had recently was Torcolato with peaches. Tokaij would go well, as might a chilled 10 y.o Tawny Port. Whether one wants to be drinking wine with fresh fruits is another question.

Zafferano

There's also Les Portes Des Indes behind Marble Arch tube. I haven't been a friend goes regularly and really likes it. For French Michelin type food on a budget there's The Crescent in The Montcalm Hotel.

Try Mandalay. Burmese restaurant run by two brothers. Haven't been for a couple of years but I used to go a lot. Everything is fresh and authentic and cheap.

The problem with working on the basis that some people have better taste than others is that it overlooks the reality that in most people good and bad taste co-exist. I have a friend whose taste in food and wine I respect enormously. But one day after dinner I realised I had run out of coffee. "Do you have instant?", he asked. "I prefer instant". "You're joking", I said. "No, honestly", he said. Now if anyone is going to tell me that instant coffee is in the same league as freshly brewed fresh coffee then I'm Charles Laughton's sister. Not only that, I'd run out of milk (I must have been having a bad day). "Do you have any dried milk?" he asked. Now tell me this. Does dried milk count as food? It smells of vomit and tastes worse. It is non-food. But my gourmet friend would have had dried milk in his instant coffee if I'd had any. So, do I now regard him as a no-nothing putz when it comes to food? Of course not. I still respect his taste. He is erudite and knowledgeable. But he prefers instant coffee and he likes dried milk. So he has good tate and he has bad taste. Just like everybody else.

Now THAT'S quite an interesting idea. If Jaz is wrong for disliking blue cheese why isn't anybody wrong for disliking anything that a substantial body of people like?

The notion that there is a body of knowledgeable people out there whose expertise determines that food's place in the hierarchy of gourmet delights is misconceived. Often a food's market value is determined more by its availability than any innate qualities it may or may not possess. Oysters are a good example. They were never thought of as a luxury food until the 20th century. Before then they were so ubiquitious and so cheap that they could be considered the equivalent of fast food.Salmon was the same, with the massses in Victorian times complaining about how much of it they were forced to eat. Truffles aren't the price they are because of their complex flavour. It is simply because no-one has figured out a way of cultivating them en masse yet. If truffles were as available as mushrooms their price would plummet. There is nothing about the taste of caviar which would lead you to know that it costs fifty times more than any other single foodstuff and I refuse to believe that a "knowledgeable person" could identify such qualities if the shelves were stacked from floor to ceiling with tins of beluga. Of course I am NOT saying that some wines, truffles, caviares,oysters etc are not better than others. But a hierarchy is only meaningful WITHIN categories not across them. You can say Latour is better than Pichon Lalande because you are comparing like with like. But you cannot say that someone is "wrong" to dislike red wine per se. And if the standard is the fact that loads of people like it, well billions of people like McDonalds (far more than like blue cheese). Does that make disliking McDonalds "wrong". Or are they the "wrong" sort of people?

Well I have a hard time agreeing about the language. We respond emotively to language. When someone tells me I'm "wrong" about something I require a more absolutist explanation than "most people think so". People tend to react defensively to being told that they are "wrong" and it is a natural response to demand to be shown where, or, to shrug one's shoulders and say "so what?" People also react badly to being told fault lies with them in matters of taste. Telling Jaz she is "wrong" about blue cheese or that her palate is "defective" or that she is "incapable of understanding" it are all responses calculated to irritate and alienate. Better to say: are you open to being persuaded about blue cheese, or rare beef, or whatever because lots of people love it and it would be good if you could enjoy it too? The ball is then in their court and they can either say yuk-no way, or OK I'll give it a go. Either way the language is more positive, encouraging, inclusive, rather than exclusive and alienating. And there's just a chance (though maybe not in Jaz's case) that they'll end up seeing what you're talking about and another culinary soul will be saved. Hallellujia!

Serious question. Are there any food and drink issues that you're "wrong" about, Steve?

It may well be true about the greatest cooks working in private houses in India but I would guess that that's not the reason for your problem in Canada. It's more likely that Asians from the sub-continent and Africa who have emigrated to Cananda are more likely to be from the more educated classes and have professional aspirations which go beyond running a restaurant. They've gone to Canada to be lawyers, doctors, accountants, not to be cooking for a living. The vast majority of so-called Indian restaurants in the UK are run by Bangladeshis, who are the poorest immigrant group in the country. The cooks are generally untrained and the staff work for a pittance. It is an area they can go into which does not require specialised training or qualifications. Do you have an equivalent immigrant "Indian" group in Canada?

Actually Balex city dwellers can be divided into two types of people (whether they kow it or not)- those who don't mind dog shit all over the streets and those who do. Never forget which one you are. There is no compromise.

Actually it probably isn't an example. All Jaz is saying is that he or she doesn't like blue cheese. In order to be "wrong", accordong to the right/wrong brigade, she'd have to say I prefer shrink wrapped pasteurised supermarket Cambozola to farm made organic unpasteurised Cambozola which can only be bought in very expensive cheese shops.

Really? What do you have them with?

Er....I'm not sure i understand your point here Hollywood. I've got a feeling our wires are crossed.

Jaz your example does not alleviate my bemusement with the discussion. You say "I hate blue cheese". Why you hate it may well be of interest to you and your analyst but to anybody else it ain't too enthralling is it. I can have two responses to you. I can either say-well I like blue cheese therefore my taste in respect of blue cheese is different to yours (we may well agree about lots of other foods). OR I can say- well I like blue cheese---and what's more so do lots of other people whose opinion about food I respect. So I'm right and you're wrong. I can't see how saying the latter makes me anything other than a prat.