fabienpe

Daniel Clifford will be on The Great British menu again this year. In the 5th series, the chefs compete to cook for UK producers - to honour the places providing the best seasonal produce and links with Heritage locations, along with celebrating the long running partnership between the two. This year Daniel and two other great culinary talents will battle it out in the regional heats. The Great British Menu will be shown on BBC Two, Mon 5 Apr at 18.30.

Midsummer House in Cambridge will be running a week in favour of “Children in Need” from 17 November until 21 November 2009. During that week, Daniel Clifford, Chef of Midsummer House, will be hosting the following Chefs: - Claude Bosi (Hibiscus, London) on Tuesday 17 Nov. - Paul Cunningham (The Paul, Copenhagen) on Wednesday 18 Nov. - Glynn Purnell (Purnells, Birmingham) on Thursday 19 Nov. - Adam Simmonds (Danesfield House, Marlow) on Friday 20 Nov. - Tom Kerridge (The Hand and Flowers, Marlow) on Saturday 21 Nov. Booking are opened for dinner only. At £130 per person including wine with £40 per person going to Children in Need, it's great value! Fabien HOST'S NOTE: This is an member-organized event, not an official eGullet Society event. Please see here for the terms under which this event is listed in eG Forums.

What do you wonder about the rating? From what you say I interpret they deserve Rising 2 stars or 3 stars! Which I would agree with but maybe I go there too often to be unbiased ;-)

No you're not alone to be shocked by the fact that a small terrorist group manages to impose its sectarian ideology so easily. Letter to MP already sent. Support to the Chef already expressed. Each time you go to a restaurant still serving foie gras, take the time to thank the Chef for having some on the menu, even if you don't take any that day!

You really need to find a uk supplier that deals with the french markets personally ,what area are you in? ← Not sure what you mean. I'm not a restaurateur so that would only be small orders for private use.

Getting off topic but does anyone know a good foie gras (french artisanal) supplier in the UK?

Sure you can.... "It's a once in a lifetime collaboration... FiveLeaf has teamed with seven of the world's greatest chefs to bring elite gourmet dining into one of your favorite places... home! Now all you have to do to experience a gourmet dinner prepared by Chefs Daniel Boulud, Mark Miller, Charlie Trotter, Thomas Keller, Antoine Westermann, Reine Sammut or Gerard Bertholon, is boil water. That's right, all you have to do is boil water and voilá you're enjoying international cuisine!" http://shop.cuisinesolutions.com/store/index.php ← That's not quite what I meant. I was thinking of a dish straight out of the kitchen... **Fresh** food. Anything else is like ready made food... Bocuse and Robuchon have been selling dishes in French supermarkets for years... those sold by the company you point out are "delivered right to your front door, frozen and ready for your enjoyment." You have to fly to New York and book Daniel's to eat Daniel's food (assuming he's in the Kitchen that night).

I don't think this is the right analogy; in fact I find it already biased in a way I dislike. By the time intellectual property right will have gone through the kitchen doors vegans (or, as Bourdain calls them, the vegetarian Hezbollah), will have got their way through regulations and eating meat will be illegal. The analogy will probably be closer to: you're trying to figure out how to get a nice char on the steak, and the vegan is screaming about how eating steak is illegal. I do not want a world where I have to pay royalties to be able to eat a patented recipe (that my grand mother was cooking already anyway) and which is prepared with ingredients whose genes have been patented… putting out of business my local farmer.

This is not a new problem: see Coca-Cola versus Pepsi. I'm sure there must be previous cases. But how can you be sure that Aliena did not copy Interlude or, in fact, any other restaurant? Maybe someone in a small restaurant who does not benefit from the media hype has been doing this for a while... I don't know what the caviar dish is about but it strongly reminds me the Robuchon recipe with caviar and celeriac purée... which I found at the French Laundry. The inventor of purées could complain that Alinea has used their techniques, etc. The whole debate can becomes quickly ludricrous and I do not wish the art of cooking to become like the computing or biology (where you can patent absolutly anything) or the book business. You can order books from Amazon, download software from Microsoft. You cannot fedex a dish you need to go to travel to the restaurant to enjoy the food. Whether the dish was invented by X or Z, why should we care ? Copying or imitation has been stimulating innovation in the cooking industry for hundreds of years why would we want to involve expensive lawyers now? Fabien

You might be very disappointed unfortunately tomorrow then! The judges don't seem to have come up with a consistent and meaningful set of criteria for selecting the winners since last year.

I've heard from my brother (who lives in France) that the Fat Duck had some serious issues about hygiene. Is this some rumor spreading on the other side of the channel or is that true?

It’s true that they are friendly chaps when the cameras are off but this is superficial. If they were not, the atmosphere would be so awful, contestants would leave. I was considering entering the competition again this year but when I found out these two guys would be the judges again and that the format would be much the same I quickly forgot about it. The idea of loosing again against miss big-breast-out making chocolate cake was not pleasant. As I have no TV I’m not event tempted to watched (though I’d like to see the one filmed at Midsummer House) By the way they smoke a hell of a lot; to me, this just means they cannot be good tasters.

For me it's Jules Verne and Ramsay on RHR, which hopefully will leave me a better impression than last time I went. Nothing else planned. The difficulty is to find a "restaurant buddy"... anyone interested? Hopefully 2006 will bring some interesting new entries in my collection http://www.petitcolas.net/fabien/restaurants/

Interesting coincidence. I went to Midsummer House tonight and had the scallops and beg to disagree with Tony. Absolutely no problem of cold inside. So maybe AlexW is right: Tony was just very unlucky. I did not feel the dish required sauce really, although I tend to be a ‘sauce person’ and often ask for more. Scallops were soft, warm and moist, and the celeriac purée smooth and light. As for the tastes, I think the truffle flavour in the purée was pretty clear (maybe a bit too strong to my taste) and apple jelly cubes tasted like fresh apple juice. As for the combination truffle/scallop, it is a well tested one which I had at least at Ducasse, Passard, Darroze and Winkler! In fact I’ve just opened Ducasse’s Grand Livre de Cuisine and found no less than 9 recipes involving truffle (melano or alba) and scallops! The alumettes of fresh granny smith apple together with the jelly brought that little acidity which nicely balanced the sweetness of the scallops. By the way, there is a picture of the dish on the restaurant's website which you get by clicking on “The Menus” on the left menu but which is also directly accessible at: http://www.midsummerhouse.co.uk/images/content/plate3.jpg Fabien

Has anyone tried Maze in London? I noticed in the Harpers & Queen restaurant guide 2006 (for whatever that's worth) it was elected best in London and best new commer. Fabien

This reminds me my first and last visit (July 2002): arrive on time, table not ready. This is simply unacceptable. GR is the only 3 Michelin star restaurant I know, doing this. In fact GR (and Petrus) are the only Michelin starred restaurants I tried where this happend to me. Add the ironing of tables when we (and other tables) started our dessert and this did not leave me with the best impression; regardless of the sweetbread, pigeon and coffee soufflé I had. Fabien

I'm sure the chef at Midsummer does not need a lesson to cook scallops. Each time I had some they were perfectly cooked. Maybe it's the one off mistake which could happen anywhere. Who knows. Did you tell them? What did they say? Or did you do like most customers who leave a restaurant with a big smile saying everything is wonderful and then criticise heavily?

But the "judges" are also different...

When I think of my two experiences at the Fat Duck (March 2002 and yesterday) and read the comments of Wolfram Siebeck I can only agree. We had the ‘chance’ of being seated next to the kitchen exit where you are welcomed with a strong cheese smell and where you can admire the whole plate polishing exercise. Other restaurants prefer to show you a view on the actual kitchen. On this table for four, I was squeezed between the table and one of the pillars; fortunately I’m slim. Never mind, let’s say it was cosy, and was probably better than seating at this other table, next to the entrance door, where, I suspect, one can feel the cold air from the outside, each time new customers enter. At the Fat Duck, I finally understood what my English friends mean by ‘service tends to be rude and/or pedantic in France’. There were some prime examples here; so full of knowing they are ‘the best in the world’. Dishes were presented in such a serious and condescending way to us, ignorant customers who had the privilege of being served food. I could not help thinking of the amazing service at El Bulli where the touch of humour of the chef is not destructed by some snobby waiters. We were here to enjoy and play with flavours, textures, temperatures; not to be given a lesson. Add to this the stinginess on the bread (which is need if you don’t want to be starving after leaving the place) and the fact we were not asked whether things were alright. I think this service spoiled it all for me. Shame. On the positive side we were impressed by the relatively short time between each dish; but this is probably more an outstanding performance of the kitchen. The tasting menu, of which about 50% of the dishes feature ice-cream or sorbet (another 50% with jellies) is a mix of perfected dishes and others which make you feel like a guinea pig. Of all the courses I’ll certainly remember one: salmon with liquorice; I was impressed by the texture of the salmon but also the way the grapefruit was served on the plate. However, and this is typical of most dishes, there were a lot of different strong flavours (liquorice, grapefruit, vanilla, asparagus) and I don’t understand the motivation. Same applies, for instance, to foie gras served with chives + almond + cherry + chamomile + amaretto. If anyone can explain I’d appreciate.

The excessive hype also gets on the waiters. They are so sure they serve the best food in the world that they don’t bother asking you whether you liked it or not. And if you dare mentioning any other restaurant (‘oh this mustard ice cream reminds me of l’Arpège’) you are quickly reminded you’re eating at a restaurant which ‘has been elected best in the world’ and so ‘many people copy [them]’. Ah here we go. This is what was meant: ‘best restaurant in the UK’ :-) By the way give me the choice between Midsummer House and the Fat Duck, no doubt I’ll choose Midsummer.

This has not changed. I was there about a week ago.

Some random suggestions. I'll try not to repeat what the others have said. 1. Give it to me ;-) 2. Flammekueche (bacon, onion, crème fraîche on a very thin bread-dough) 3. Quiche Lorraine (the real one!) 4. Potée Lorraine (while we are in the area - bacon, porc fillet, porc tail, green cabbage, turnip, etc.) 5. Simply some vegetables slowly cooked with bacon (like they do at Louis XV) 6. Bacon bread 7. Bacon & wholenut kougelhof 8. Smooth creamy bacon sauce for some fish like john dorry 9. Raw on some nice bread which has been brushed with garlic (like they do in Ukraine I was told) Fabien

Odd. When I went there in May 2004 I had the impression the guy had just discovered foams. My starter had no less than three different foams. Each course had some type of more or less tasty foams. You don't get two Michelin stars for pouring foams around do you? Have improvements been made over the last year? F

I think MG is not about discovering processes (whisking oil in egg yoke gives an interesting thick substance), it’s about understanding why this works at the molecular level (formation and understanding of colloids). Understanding can lead to new ideas (why egg yoke? why oil?).

I talked to the Chef on on Tuesday 18th and he told me he got a phone call from the Guide...