Tonyfinch

Macro, are we talking about "kosher" wines or "kosher for Passover" wines? Is there a difference? Are Jews allowed to drink any wine outside of Passover? If so why? If not does it mean that all of those who drink non-kosher wines the rest of the year are drinking traif? Please explain .

I always thought that Kosher wine was that sweet stuff called Palwin's No.1, or Palwin's No.4, and where there was absolutely no difference at all between the numbers that anyone could detect. Anyway, how the hell can wine be kosher? Or rather what processes are used in grape picking and vinification that can be described as non-kosher? Wine is made from GRAPES, not pork or prawns. Does it have to be made on a certain day of the month or something? I suspect that this is another case of us Jews allowing ourselves to be conned into paying more for an inferior product because some Rabbi said a mumbled prayer over the vineyard. Whyowhyowhy do we continue to put up with it?

Cafe Spice Namaste is not a Goan restaurant as such. The chef is from Goa and there are some Goan specialties on the menu, but it also serves dishes from other regions and some Anglo-Indian inventions (Barbary Duck Tikka anybody?). I'm told that the second branch of CSN, in Clapham, has closed. There is a Goan restaurant,Ma Goa, which is in Charlotte St, I think. I've never been but Fay Maschler used to rave about it.

Why have you all been so dismissive of the notion that it's in the imagination? Or rather in the state of mind? Pastis does NOT taste the same in Fulham in February (or wherever Peter Mayle cites) as it does in a Provencal village at dusk. Or rather it may chemically taste the same but YOU are not the same. Your mindset,your stress levels, your expectations, your cultural and culinary reference points are`all different. Countries SMELL different for goodness sake. They look, sound and feel different, even a few miles across borders. Therefore you are different. Therefore why should the food NOT seem to taste different according to the changes wrought in you bu your changing surroundings?

Well I've probably had as many arguments with Steve as anybody but in this case I concur with him up to a point The question to ask for me is whether adherence to a pasta course as an inescapable part of an Italian restaurant meal is holding back chefs from developing less simple approaches to their starters and main courses. The much heralded "simplicity" of Italian main courses may be a direct result of people not wishing to eat anything that's not fairly simple as the edge has already been taken off their appetites by a pasta course. By the time they've had bread, a starter and a pasta, the main course has become a less relevant affair. It's well known that people's appetites for bulk quantity are not what they were for reasons we all know. The type of meal that involves eating a bowl of pasta in the middle, however good that pasta is, means that chefs are left with little incentive to get people to focus down on really emphatic and creative main courses, or even starters. It may be this innately conservative approach to meal structure which is "holding back" Italian cuisine at the highest level and cramping creative chefs' styles. Maybe at a certain level Italian meals do need "liberating" from the pasta course.

Well based on one visit I thought Cinammon Club was actively bad Gareth. The food was pre plated picture on a plate stuff but was seved tepid . Unless a dish is meant to be otherwise then Indian food needs to be served up HOT IMO. Room temperature is just no good. Presentation also took precedence over taste. This was no doubt the blandest Indian meal I've ever eaten. I'm not confusing blandness with subtle spicing. It was all tentative and hesitant, as if designed for people who had never eaten spiced food before. Then there were all those coulis and puddles and purees. PLEEEZE. If I want to eat that stuff I'll go to a French restaurant where they know how to do it properly. Or I'll buy tins of baby food. This was an Uncle Tom of a meal. All the character and punch of a top Indian meal had been deliberately taken out in favour of a watered down Frenchified rendition for people who want Indian food to be French. And it was very expensive And it was packed. Jay, tell me Zaika isn't like the Cinammon Club, please.

Sounds lovely. Is the tasting menu normally available for riff raff or was it specially laid on for your esteemed party?

If you were out of the movie before 8.30 then there was really no excuse for not going somewhere a bit decent. I mean the ICA bar for Godssake. You should know full well by now that eating in any arts connected bar spells mediocre at best and disaster at worst. There are loads if places nearby you could have gone for an interesting bite. Come on guys. You're letting the side down.

The Cinammon Club is hopeless. I've not tried Zaika but I'll also give it a go based on Jay's comments. I had a nice meal in Tamarind a couple of years ago but I really couldn't see why it got a star and several others did not, at least in terms of the food. I preferred Bombay Brasserie, Chutney Mary, Cafe Spice Namaste and Vama.

I didn't say that there was no such thing as good "fused cuisine". I just said that there is very little of it done well by French chefs. I've enjoyed Peter Gordon's cooking at the old Sugar Club twice and had some excellent meals in Sydney and Melbourne which were brimming over with fusion ideas. My meal at Bayona in NO last year showed some creative spicing and some unusual ingredients. Its the French (and the Italians) who don't know how to do it and that's because the're steeped in their own traditional culinary language and don't see the need to make much of an effort to learn a new one.

Sorry? Why do I comment about what?

Well that's the same with lots of ingredients-salt and pepper included- but they use those with confidence. I think its less an issue of balance than congruity. Spices and other Eastern ingredients just don't work particularly well in the context of most French cuisine. It's like what I said about a Japanese chef serving up Sushi with Mornay Sauce. You can do it, and some people might find it an amusing diversion, but it's not really what the cuisine is all about. It doesn't really fit. So why try to force it to fit?

Yes, well I said use spices "to a significant degree". You're right some French chefs do flirt with them from time to time but they don't establish a lasting relationship because they are speaking a different culinary language. If you read Koffman's account of his training and his years as a chef working in various places before opening La Tante Claire it will strike you that despite discussing many aspects of his apprenticeship he appears to have no relationship with spices at all. They just don't come into the picture. When French chefs do flirt with spices its extremely tentatively done. Its as if they're really wary of these exotic creatures and they really don't have a clue how to handle them. French chefs are much better at other things, why should they use spices? I wouldn't see it as a culinary advance in any way. They're better off moving forward by making things like bacon and egg ice cream and such and leaving spices to those who know how to speak that lingo.

I was thinking more of R&B and Blues songs covered by white artists in the sixties. I mean the Stones did passable versions of "I Just Want To Make Love To You" and "Little Red Rooster" but once you've heard the Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf versions-well why bother listening to the Stones do them? I feel that way about French chefs and spices. Why bother? Suvir, I'm pretty sure in the UK there are no French chefs who use spices to any significant degree. There are some Western chefs-David Thompson of Nahm, Peter Gordon of Providores and that Jean George guy who heads up Vong-who have made a feature either of Eastern( not Indian) cooking, or incorporating Eastern ingredients and processes into their cuisines. But French and French styleBritish chefs largely leave spices alone (very wisely IMO).

But Western chefs use herbing routines in their dishes all the time. They do not see this as an issue of being " subordinate to the ingredients" And before you reply that herbs are more "subtle" than spices I would argue that those Easten chefs who use spices in a galumphing way which dominates the ingredients are not very good chefs. Spices can be just as subtle as herbs in the hands of a cook that knows what she/he's doing. But to me its not just about spices. Eastern and Western cuisine differ in several fundamental ways apart from spice use. Western chefs are just not steeped in Eastern cusine styles and vice versa. It's like asking a great Western classical guitarist to play an Indian sitar raga. He may be able to copy it note for note if he's good but he can't achieve the same "feel" as a top sitarist who has lived all his life with the music can. So in the end why go and see a Western guitarist play a raga when you can see an Indian sitarist play one? I think Western chefs should leave spices alone. Apart from black pepper they do not understand them and I think its a mistake if they feel they need to learn to use them in order to enhance their cusine. All it does is jar incongruously, as a mornay sauce would with Sushi.

Alain Chapel possibly? Maybe I'd better stop before I consign half of France's culinary greats to the grave.

My apologies. Who was the famous French chef that died not long ago? I don't mean Loiseau. It was a while ago.

Maybe not to stage but many French chefs are very vocal about their treks around Asia and how the foods they ate their have made them re think their own cuisine and use of ingredients etc. etc,. Trouble is I wish they wouldn't. French chefs are steeped in a certain style of cooking and more aspects than not of that style are not conducive to Asian influences, ingredients and techniques. The best French chefs recognize this and allow Asian influences into their style very minimally, if at all. To me, if ever I see the words "curry epices" on a French menu I walk on by. As for Senderens, he may have got the idea in Sri Lanka but since everything he cooked had half a bucket of cream in it it kind of negated the influence. (I put that in the past tense. I am right in thinking Senderens is no longer with us am I? Or am I mixing him up with another top chef?)

Reminds me of Jackie Mason: "I hate Chinamen those sons of bitches. Anti-Semites they are. All of them. You know why? All over the world night after night thousands of Jewish people are eating in Chinese restaurants. Thousands of them. Every night. All over the world. But tell me this Did you ever see a single Chinaman eating in a Jewish restaurant? Well did you? Did you ever see a single Chinaman wandering around saying "I 'm chalishing for a piece of Gefilte Fish? Did you? Anti semitic sons of bitches"

Jon, Chavot was brought in to The Cinnamon Club to advise on food presentation, not on the actual cooking. All he did was advise them to present Indian food as though it was haute French food as far as I could see.

Ahhh-Sarah Finklebaum. She was only a cab driver's daughter-but she knew her way around.

Why is it? Are you saying it makes a difference to circulation?

Yes well they went all around and about but the two main groups went to North and East London to take advantage of new suburban developments in those areas and the fact that transport links into the centre were generally better than from the South London.

When the Jews left the East End they either went North-to Finchley, Hendon, Golders Green- or East-to Ilford and Gants Hill which are on the main A12 route running out towards Essex. Us Northerners used to call it Gnat's Hell. Gants Hill is on the tube-Central Line. It was also famous for a huge old fashioned Odeon cinema which has now either been demolished or converted into something else. A lot of cab drivers live in Gants Hill. I went out with a girl from Gants Hill once-Sarah Finklebaum. There's not a lot to say about Gants Hill.

Why would they not? Film reviewers review largely the same films each week don't they? Art critics review the same exhibitions. Why should restaurants be any different?