Tonyfinch

Oh no they're not.

You call THAT a "fantastic argument"? You should get out of Scotland more, Adam

Quite honestly I can never see why everybody gets so steamed up by this issue. Sure, it's a bit of sharp practice and shouldn't happen but you'd have to be either blind drunk or a blithering idiot to fall for it and its quite fun to try to embarass the staff by innocently pointing to the open card line and saying "but I thought service was included". Caveat Emptor is the rule to remember.

I know Simon won't agree but I like Cafe Spice Namaste in Prescott St E1. I don't know if it has private rooms but its a spacious enough restaurant to accommodate a large group. I really like the decor and service and although the food can be hit and miss I've had more hits than misses and there is a really strong sense of regionality about the menu.

Interesting how the discussion has focused around presentation and, for the most part, ignored the third element in the original post-temperature. Is this because people consider it to be relatively unimportant? A food definitely tastes different at different temperatures.One of the problems I find with elaborately presented pre plated food is that in "building the dish" the food is cooling down rapidly. As a result, by the time it reaches the diner a lot of haute cuisine food is served lukewarm, or at a kind of "room" temperature. I accept that with some dishes and foods this is the "correct" temperature, but I'm convinced that with others it is not and that the restaurant is sacrificing temerature, and therfore taste, on the altar of presentation. I find the obsession with presentation at rerstaurants below the very highest levels to be bordering on the ludicrous. I'm not saying they should just slop it on the plate, but food can be presented perfectly acceptably AND at the right temperature if there wasn't so much fiddling and faffing about with how it looks. They MUST think that it makes people think it tastes better or else why else would they do it?

Sorry, forgot to add My Mate Keith who lives in (well, near) Greenwich reckons the best restaurant there is Inside. I've had several meals there and again its a bit hit and miss but generally pretty good, reasonably priced "Modern European" kind of food. Very pleasant service from impossibly young staff. It's not a place for culinary fireworks but I don't know if anywhere in Greenwich is. This is Gavin J's neck of the woods is it not?

Blueprint Cafe and Butler's Wharf Chophouse are also Conran.Both are very good restaurants and IMO much better value than Pont de la Tour. The Chophouse does a cheap set lunch in the bar which is real value and if the weather's good you can eat outside by the river. The food at Blueprint is more interesting and I think its got the best view of any restaurant in London. Aquarium is very prettily set in St. Katherine's Dock marina and again, if weather permits it would definitely be pleasant eating outside. I posted on this place a few days ago (see below). Another more gastronomic option in the area would be Tentazione. This is a relatively unsung Italian restaurant behind Shad Thames which Jonathan Meades considered the best Italian in London about five years ago. I haven't been for a couple of years so I couldn't vouch for how it is now, but I've had several truly excellent meals there-although whether its a lunchtime option I'm not sure. Wapping Food is opposite where I live and is infuriatingly hit and miss.I've had wonderful and totally duff dishes within the same meal. At other times its just mediocre. I'm never sure who runs this show because although the menu posted outside has the date and time in bold letters at the top - FRIDAY APRIL 4th-LUNCH---half the time they forget to change it and the same menu will be there three days later although what you get inside will be completely different-pretty slack management approach which kind of sums up the feel of the whole place IMO.

Well if a restaurant says they'd prefer it if we came at 8.15 instead of 8 then that is reasonable. However Macrosan said he wanted a table at 1.15 and was told it would have to be 12.30pm. He was then told that they would "make allowances" if he was a little late. Not the same thing at all. Apart from a 45 minute differential he wasn't being asked if he minded coming earlier. Basically he was being told you come at 12.30 or not at all. And if you're late beyond the time we will "make allowances" for then you needn't bother turning up (at least that was the implication as I read it). Maybe none of it all matters if you're going to have a fantastic meal but I just get irked at the idea that a restaurant can get into a mindset whereby it feels its doing you a favour by allowing you to dine there. Normally I would steer clear but poor old Sam needs a couple of old codgers to accompany her to GR on the 28th to make her feel less bad about hitting 30,and Fahro and I drew the short straw( well someone's got to do it) However as far as I know (Scott?) our table is for 8.30 with no limit, so that's something.

What happened to "What time would you like your table sir?"

Hmmm.... there is something about this I find hard to buy. It would be OK if it worked and everybody turned up exactly at their allotted time. But it doesn't happen that way,does it. People are early or late for all sorts of reasons all the time. What do they do,refuse to serve early comers and serve latecomers first because their allotted time was earlier? Or are latecomers punished by being made to wait while earlycomers are served first despite having a later booking? Besides you weren't allowed to eat when you wanted to eat-at 1.15pm. Why not? Were they fully booked for that time?

Did anyone hear Locatelli on Radio 4 on Monday I think it was? When he was asked about the "secret booking hotline" his reponse was: "hee heee heee, hah hah, ho ho ho, hah hah hah, hee hee!" There was then a pause and the presenter said no seriously I hear that there's a line that only certain people know about. Locatelli: "Hah hah hah hah, ho ho, hee hee hee, hah hah hah hee hee!" Peculiar sense of humour, these Italians.

In Catalan cooking raisins are an essential in a number of vegetable dishes , including stirred into sauteed spinach with pine nuts......yum

I am not trying to say that everywhere that Catholicism continued to hold sway in Europe the food was great- ladies and gentlemen I give you-The Republic of Ireland. What I was saying was that in those European countries which struggled most bitterly against the hegemony of the Catholic Church one of the areas around which the struggle coalesced was conspicuous consumption. The Catholic Church was portrayed by its opponents as corrupt and hypocritical at all levels. It preached sin and damnation for lust and gluttony while its hierarchy and their powerful acolytes were perceived as gorging themselves on both. This hypocrisy was used by opponents to rally commitment to a more sober,plainer,more ascetic approach to the pleasures of the flesh (an approach which found its own form of extremism in 17th Century Puritanism on both sides of the Atlantic). The fact that Catholics still lived in large numbers in Protestant countries was not the point. Most ordinary Catholics couldn't afford to gorge themselves anymore than their Protestant countrymen. It was the fact that the power of the Roman Church had been broken which mattered and the new Protestant rulers were able to set new agendas which included new sets of psychological attitudes to the role and purpose of food in society. For wickedly witty look at the issues as they involve food I suggest a viewing of the 1987 Danish film Babette's Feast, with the wonderful Stephane Audran as the star Parisienne chef working in a bleak, remote religious Scandinavian community in the 19th century and cooking up a storm both on the villagers' plates and in their souls.

Oh, of course Momo. I forgot, sorry. It seems that all we've said really is that restaurant cuisines which are from wealthy countries where people can eat for pleasure are better than those where people eat mainly for survival. Those poor countries which do have great cuisines derive them from the mega wealthy royal and aristocratic feasting cuisine, not from what the majority of the population eat everyday. The Tibetan version has disappeared and there never was an African one. Wealthy Protestant countries like Holland and Germany have poorer cuisines because Protestantism as a philosophy opposed surfeit and excess for pleasure and regarded conspicuous gourmandising as sinful. It stressed the virtue of restraint and plainness. Eating purely for pleasure was wrong. This extends to the UK and to the Puritan Founding Fathers of the USA. Where does this leave the writer? Well he can keep his gullet to the ground for the emergence of the "new Tibetan" or the "new African", or whatever, cuisine and ensure that the audience are aware of his awareness and sympathy with such new culinary developments. He cannot dismiss anything, which doesn't mean he cannot express likes and dislikes, but he should beware of sneering at easy targets (I can say "squirrel guts---bleeech", but the writer should try at least to analyse and communicate WHY he feels bleeech and to admit to the possibility that squirrel guts might not always provoke a bleeech reaction). A food writer who dismisses a whole national cuisine is not one to be taken seriously IMO. I even have trouble when they dismiss a whole food. I remember Fay Maschler, doyenne reviewer of the London Standard, letting slip that she hated tomatoes. Naturally she's entitled to her dislikes but I feel she should have kept quiet about this particular peccadillo as it can't help bring her judgement into question on any meal or cuisine which likes to utilise the tomato.

What, your dog's name is Yak's Cheese?

What Paris is better than London for Thai, Korean Japanese and and Malaysian/Indonesian? I don't think so. I don't know but I've heard it said that even Vietnamese is better in London. Paris and London are probably on a par with the Middle East. I'll concede North Africa to Paris but then again does Paris have a restaurant as good of its type and as influential as Moro? London also has a incredibly highly developed Italian restaurant scene, a growing Spanish scene, and the best examples in Europe of Central and Eastern European cuisine and Greek cuisine.

But they're not cooking for Indians and Pakistanis or a white population that is really beginning to get to grips with Indian cuisine. It's got nothing to do with who's working in the restaurants. It's to do with customer expectation and demand.. There are a lot of crap Indian restaurants in the UK, but there are a fair number that shine above the rest and anything that can be found in Paris, because there is a very large community from the sub-continent here and they demand a degree of authenticity and regionalism that you wouldn't find if you didn't have to cater for them. Secondly, in the UK there is an emerging Asian middle class with disposable income to spend in restaurants who are now demanding up-market Indian restaurant dining experiences and from whom ambitious chefs are just beginning to trickle through. Thirdly, trained professional chefs from the sub-continent speak English not French and are setting up restaurants and doing stages here. Fourthly, because British cuisine is not particularly in demand, Indian cuisine is the default cuisine of choice for many Brits. and they are familiar with it and are now demanding more of it in terms of quality and cutting edge development. The French cook wonderful food but they are clueless about spicing and the use of spice masalas. Apart from black pepper is there a spice that the French understand? As for variety, Paris has NOTHING LIKE the variety of London. If you believe it has then you obviously haven't spent enough time comparing the culinary scene in both cities.

No, but you may want to hold fire on deciding that Tibetan cuisne as a whole is bad until you have a wider knowledge and experience. It's like comimg out of Cafe Rouge after a meal of gritty, watery moules and tough onglet and six hour old baguette and deciding that all French food is bad. Now its true that there may not be a better example of a Tibetan restaurant in town for you to get an opposite picture so you may be entitled to conclude "Tibetan restaurants in my town are crap". But switching to African (I know nothing whatsoever about Tibetan food) there ARE some African restaurants in London where you can get a meal where only those determined to hate the cuisine could honestly come out and describe it as "crap". For the food writer I think its OK to admit being on a learning curve with a cuisine, and attempting to see what it is that appeals to the millions who clearly don't think its bad. And when one says a plate of food tastes "bad" do we mean bad as in just not particularly good, or do we mean bad as in yuk, horrible, nasty? Because the latter was how I felt about the Braised Squirrel with pureed guts at St. John last week, yet I still like the restaurant and its cuisine. Do we really know a reputable restaurant of whatever ethnicity where all the food tates "bad"? Can we REALLY characterise whole national cuisines down to it tastes either good or it tastes bad?

She has cooked for the Indian Ambassador .

A Pakistani gourmet we know who lives in Paris is absolutely adamant that there are no Indian restaurants there worth eating in and that the French in general are completely cluleess when it comes to Indian food. She doesn't think its worth eating any non-French food in Paris but if you must eat "ethnic" you should stick to North African.

More than decent dinner at Aquarium last night. The pretty setting in St. Katherine Dock makes up for the fairly basic interior. This is a fish restaurant run by a Swedish couple, with a Latino bandido as greeter and a very Gallic server from Alsace who has worked at Le Gavroche. This place proclaims its Green credentials-tuna from Oman, not the Med; using pollock instead of cod; no warm water or dredger caught prawns; and generally using fish in ample supply- pollock, zander, Swedish perch. Arctic char, wild salmon only from Alaska etc. A blip in service saw our main courses bought one minute after our starter plates had been cleared and before our second bottle of Alsace Gerwurz, which came up too warm and had to chill for 10 minutes in the ice bucket before it could be drunk. It was only a genuinely felt apology from our chap from Colmar which prevented me from deducting at least some of the included "non-obligatory" 12.5% service charge. That, and the fact that the food was very nice. A starter of Ballotine of Gravad Lax with Dill Salad and Smoked Cod's Roe was artfully presented on a rectangular plate. The home cured lax came in a round chunk and was subtle and refined and paired well with the salty tang of the roe. Another starter of Roast Scallops (4 scallops in an indented plate divided into four compartments) came with Celeriac Puree and Cachel Blue (an Irish cheese) and Port Reduction. Four lovely little mouthfuls. Main courses of Roast Pollock with Prawn and Thyme Mash and Sauce Bois Boudrin (a kind of ketchup/mustard/vinegar jobbie-nicer than it sounds) and Roast Zander with Truffle Potatoes Oyster Sauce and Braised Salsifies both had lovely melt in your mouth fish but were a little tentative on the seasoning. I couldn't taste any trace of truffle, or oyster in the cream sauce (although two fried oysters sat atop the fish), and the prawn and thyme mash, though creamy and yummy, showed a very light hand with the thyme. Maybe its that I eat so much assertively seasoned food that I now find light touch stuff bordering on the bland. Place was half full on a Friday night. It would definitely be worth going in hot weather to eat outside on the terrace (though I'm not sure if you can in the evenings because of noise restrictions-the server said you could but when we tried to eat here last Summer we were told you could only eat outside at lunchtimes-maybe they changed it) Two pre starters ( a sightly salty coffeee cup of lobster soup) two starters, two mains , two bottles-£101 inc. service.

I do think it's incumbent on a food writer to love food. Sounds obvious but if there are some around who do not then it begs the questions why are they food writers and why does anyone pay them to write about food? (Pumkino,if you're out there, I promised Andy I would not get into another AA Gill thread) Obviously a food writer can't like every food but I would be worried if a food writer dismissed a whole restaurant cuisine. If Mrs.P hates Thai food it doesn't really matter much unless it matters to her. But if a food writer announces that s/he hates Thai ciusine then I think that is a problem for that writer's status and credibility and also does a disservice for those who are trying their best to serve up the best examples of Thai cuisine. I think its fair to say that you are not familiar with a cuisine enough to understand its nuances and dimensions and that you're working on it, but there's no reason not to slate an individual dish if it tastes bad to you. You don't have to take a definitive stand do you.

There is a problem though. If you really don't like something how can you tell if something's a good version or not? At St. John this week three people ordered braised squirrel which came with its guts pureed on toast. I'd never tasted squirrel before and I didn't like it at all. Now I don't criticise the restaurant for serving it but how am I to tell whether they'd cooked it properly in the sense that they know how to bring out the best of squirrel? Disliking it de-skills me when it comes to being able to assess their ability to cook squirrel well or poorly does it not?

Well I didn't make claims for African food to be "really good". I was saying that it wasn't "crap". And that in Africa I've had delicious African food. But yes it IS a comparatively limited cuisine because there are no "Royal" versions and because food in Afica does not often get beyound the primary purpose of food to sustain life and stave of hunger. We do not eat in restaurants to sustain life and stave off hunger. Food for pleasure only is something that African food has not yet advanced to embrace so it follows that it hasn't yet adapted to the demands and needs of Western restaurant goers.

Well I've been talking about cuisine in the wider sense. If you go to an African restaurant what is on the plate may be some African food but it is not "African Cuisine" and you can only infer so much from it-like the skill of that particular cook. He may be a crap cook. You cannot infer from that that African cuisine is crap. But if we're talking about African restaurants in the West then what have we been arguing about-they suck