Tonyfinch

The question I've never understood is: after foie gras de canard, raviolo with cream and black truffles, rouget with tomato puree, rack of lamb and before several desserts to come why the hell does anybody want to eat cheese?

A soccer phone in show in the UK is deluged week after week with disgruntled fans saying that referees decisions are "wrong". No way is it a "matter of opinion". The refereees's an idiot, got defective eyesight, doesn't understand the game etc. etc. One day the presenter said he was only going to take calls about wrong referees if that referees wrong decision went IN FAVOUR of your team. Guess what? Not one call. The point is that when we talk about right and wrong we ALWAYS start from the automatic assumption that we are the right ones. Is anyone here pontificating about right and wrong as regards food opinion and "defective palates" and so on going to admit that in some instances THEY are the wrong ones and that THEIR palate may be "defective" in some culinary areas? Where are you wrong and others right? I wait with interest.

Even if we concede that Macrosan's friend is wrong for liking shoe leather beef, my question is so what? What difference does it make? It doesn't make a difference to those of us who like our beef rare. We'll still eat it rare. It doesn't make any difference to Macrosan's friend. He'll carry on eating tough beef. Everybody's happy. The fact that he's wrong is of academic interest only. If the point of proving somebody wrong is to get them to see that they are wrong and prove to them that you are right you will have failed as long as he continues to behave wrongly and eat tough beef. Even if he concedes that you are right and he is wrong he will shrug his shoulders and continue to eat tough beef anyway. So what practical outcome does proving him wrong achieve? And if the answer is "none" then why bother?

What do you mean RIDE up and down. My wife broke her ankle playing tennis in Bend, Oregon and insisted we continue our trip down the coast to San Francisco. I was pushing her up and down those f....ing hills in a wheelchair for six f....ing days. The worst part was trying to keep a grip coming down because my hands were so sweaty. She nearly went sailing down on her own a couple of times I can tell you. We took refuge in a cinema which was showing The Last Temptation of Christ. The entrance was thronged with protesters one of whom screamed at my wife "Seeing this won't heal you, cripple" as I pushed her in. One good thing though. I lost a stone in a week.

Why did you go to different places?

Steve, if you think that was bad just make sure you never try to book an internal flight in India. You'll head will explode before you get up the hierarchy as far as Senior Booking Clerk.

Steve, I don't think what you said, or you, are racist or bigoted but it is your tendency to express yourself in ludicrous generalisations which gets you into trouble. In this instance you come across like the worst kind of tourist. You know, a few little frustrations and the whole country's full of incompetants. A couple of disappointing meals and guess what-no-one in this country can cook for shit. I know that's not what you said but that's how its received and it actually hinders rather than aids the discussion about Italy's place in the culinary universe.

You want I should talk about bloody sunrises over Hawaiian beaches? Hey-rhymes with peaches. I feel a limerick coming on

When we think of cuisine "moving on" or "developing" we are culturally conditioned to consider it a "good" thing. I read a review of a restaurant the other day which described the food as "very nice but somewhat old fashioned". It was meant as a criticism. We like to believe that things generally keep getting better. That what is bang up to date now is "better" than what was bang up to date then.That taste develops in a linear, progressive way. Because of this conditioning people are inclined to regard the familiar in matters of taste as passe. The disappointment that Jaybee'is asking about in the original question lies not so much with the quality of what's on the plate but in our need to perceive ourselves as moving ever onwards and upwards and a concomitant need to leave the past behind. Of course some things are so great that they transcend this problem-Shakespeare, Beethoven, the Taj Mahal. But in terms of food and cooking is there an equivalent from the past?

Christ Jaybee I thought that you were at least trying to stay on topic. Now you also wanna talk about bloody peaches.

Come on. There must be one of you who woke up this morning thinking "Shit! Did I really say/do that?"

The food eaten by the aristocracy in pre revolututionary France had infinitely more in common with that eaten by the aristocracies in Italy, Austria, Britain etc than it had with that eaten by the peasantry in France. I cannot understand how the idea that Grande Cuisine developed out of peasant cuisine has gained any credibility whatsoever. There are lots of histories detailing how cuisine in France was shaped and developed by social and political change. Jeanette Strang's 'Garlic and Goose Fat' about food in Gascony, for example, tells how well into the first part of the 20th century peasants in an area we now revere gastronomically were literaly ill with hunger for much of the time, surviving in Winter on scraps and soup and coarse bread. "French Cuisine" as we now think of it was made possible by the redistribution of wealth begun by the French Revolution and continuing on through the development of an industrialised middle class in the cities and agrarian reform in rural areas. Although begun by earlier pioneers it cannot really be called a national cuisine until well into the 20th century when the "belle epoque" in Paris saw the nouveau riche enjoying en masse that which had only previously been accessible to the very rich.

Familiarity can breed contempt. That wouldn't be a cliche if there wan't truth in it. Pierre koffmann tells how he was always trying to take his stuffed Pied de Cochon off the menu at La Tante Claire. Everytime he did he was deluged with customers demanding it be put back on. (Oddly some of them didn't evem order the dish. They just wanted to see it on the menu...a familiar old friend in an ever changing world, or something like that). Koffmann had to smile grimly ,therefore, when he read a review saying his cuisine was "stuck in a rut", that it hadn't "moved on" as evidenced by the fact that stuffed Pied de Cochon was STILL on the menu. To many people pleasure is derived from experiencing something NEW. Things have to be ever changing. They have to be "moving on". This site is full of reviews of restaurants that people loved years ago but were disappointed in when they re-visited. Just glance at the French and Italian boards for examples. Of course I'm not saying that restaurants don't go downhill. But its interesting how we automatically assume that to be the case and do not even consider that maybe it is our incessant desire for new/different/change that is the wellspring of our disappointment and how pleasure fron the familiar may be difficult for the knowledgeable to derive.

The original question was whether increased knowledege of restaurants leads to decreased pleasure from them. I think the answer is "no". That's because although you may be more attuned to look for and find faults that others may not spot or care about in a particular restaurant, the pleasure and reward you receive from your absorbed interest,the acquisition of your knowledge, the anticipation of your visit and your analysis of your experience all combine to give you pleasure which outweighs the criticisms that only you may worry about. In fact even recognizing faults can confer a kind of pleasure if you place them in the context of your knowledge and experience. People writing about restaurants on these boards criticise them all the time yet one can still detect their interest and enthusiasm in the subject. That's because being fascinated in our subject confers pleasure in itself which negative experiences in particular restaurants cannot diminish.

I think the question is a really interesting one. It calls into issue our capacity to enjoy ouselves as much if we are well informed. I agree with a lot of Steve's answer re context and expectations but there is another issue in here as well. Do you continue to enjoy ANY meal or any dish as much as you did when you had it the first time? Does the WOW factor, when you're lucky enough to get it,ever repeat itself? One often hears people say: "I used to love that restaurant but its not as good as it was" Well maybe they're right but do people ever consider that in fact its just the same as it always was but its THEM that's changed. Their taste has altered or moved on, they're looking for new tastes and experiences. How many times have you loved a piece of music when you first heard it, played it to death and then stopped listening to it. Now when you listen to it it just doesn't do for you what it used to. The music hasn't changed. You have.

Since antiquity aristocracies throughout Europe employed brigades of chefs/cooks to cook them fantastically elaborate multi course feasts and banquets based on complicated recipes and rare ingredients. The gap between what they ate and what everyone else ate was stark. Their cuisine was literally "haute" in the sense that it was only eaten by the "high born". The food at today's most elaborate restaurant would seem plain and simple in comparison to some of these recipes. The reason why aristocratic cuisine filtered down the social scale in France,as opposed to elsewhere, was because France had a revolution, wiped out the aristocracy and all these top cooks suddenly found themselves out of a job. Needs must and many of them drifted to Paris and other cities where they found work in public eating houses and inns and such like. They began incorporating some of the techniques they had learned in the private houses and adapting them for a growingly appreciative bourgeoisie who had directly benefited from the revolution. Some of these people made enough money to re-employ the chefs privately but most remained in the public domaine and hence began the rise of the restaurant culture the chef as retaurateur/proprieter. There is of course more than one French cuisine, but if we are talking about classical French haute cuisine then the idea that this has its roots in peasant cooking is, however attractive it might seem to some, completely false. Now Cuisine Terroir, or French Provincial Cooking-that's a different story.

You don't think syrah can make great wine? What about Nebbiolo? From your white list you omitted Viognier-capable of true greatness in Condrieu-and all the really great sweet whites are made from Semillon. I think you need to do some work on your lists and ratings.

Well I was exaggerating slightly. Good pizza can be nice but its not something I choose to eat anymore. I wouldn't ever go out for a pizza like I used to. Pasta neither. Still might venture out for good fish and chips though. Beer's better with that too. As is tea.

Haven't you noticed that no matter what the topping they all taste the same anyway?

I've had the Grange '83 twice recently and yes it is a huge wine and I agree that its the Aussie shiraz that the rest aspire to. However its also very complex and multi dimensional. On reflection I might have enjoyed it more with less complicated food than I had with it at The Square. Getting back to pizza-I feel about pizza as Steve feels about pasta. I don't care what example you serve up, after about two mouthfuls you're all doughed out, every further mouthful tastes the same but colder, that awful cooking mozzarella is stringy and gumming up your teeth, the tomatoes make your wine taste like metal polish and after you've finished the whole glob sinks to the bottom of your stomach and stays there for the rest of the day. Pizza is the worst fast food available and totally lacks any semblance of culinary relevance.

At its best Australian shiraz is great. Not the same as Cote Rotie but still great. Why doesn't wine go with pizza? Is it the ubiquitous use of tomato on Pixxa? Or is it that the doughiness calls for a longer drink? After all Pizza is often covered in cheese-which most people agree goes with wine.

Well it is Scotland Simon. You've got to make allowances. They eat Mars Bar Tikka Masala up there.

Cromwell reacted against the gluttonous friars. Trouble is they're still around. They're called Scott and Sam and they live in Surrey

According to Madhur Jaffrey the dish IS authentic and was first served at the Moti Mahal restaurant in Delhi in the late 40s/early 50s. Their tandoori chicken was cut into pieces and put into a rich sauce of creamed tomatoes, butter and spices. It wasn't called Tikka Masala but the results were very similar to the dish we know today.

Is there some endemic sleeping problem in the United States or something? All you people neurotic about not being able to sleep if you eat any later than 7pm. You know your trouble? You're not drinking enough wine with your meal. A nice apero at 7.30, followed by dinner at 8 with a good bottle, possibly a very small digestif with coffee and you'll sleep fine. I cannot abide the big lunch. It destroys you for the rest of the day.