Jonathan Day

Richard Olney, the writer on French cookery, insisted that mashed potatoes be passed through a sieve once and moistened with butter and the water they were cooked in. The resulting puree can be slighty greysish but is very tasty. Some time ago I was rushing to get dinner on the table. I had a lot of "Roseval" potatoes -- reddish skins, waxy -- which I boiled, threw into a Kenwood mixer and whipped at high speed for a good long time, adding a fair bit of butter in the process. I know that this is supposed to turn them into glue, but for some reason it didn't -- they came out light, snowy-white (even though the potatoes had yellowish flesh) and good. No idea why.

Jack, I don't think I've seen anything like this in any cookery course or cookbook, anywhere. Simply astonishing in detail and richness, but also far more concise than I might have expected given all that content. I do have a question about pommes Anna. I was taught a fairly classical approach to this dish, including a recommendation to use a special copper casserole or cocotte dedicated only to making pommes Anna (click here for a picture). The top fits over the bottom, allowing the potatoes to remain soft in the centre while browning on both top and bottom and compressing the potato layers. I don't have one of these casseroles but I have used one for pommes Anna, and the first attempt didn't work all that well because the potatoes stuck everywhere and had to be painstakingly reassembled on the plate. On the second try, I drowned the thing in butter; this time it emerged from the casserole intact and tasted delicious, but seemed a lot of trouble. I now make them in a very well seasoned cast-iron pan, with a weighted lid, lined with cooking parchment, on top. Is there a new and better way to make pommes Anna, using silpats or cooking the layers outside of a casserole?

Midweek lunch reservations are generally possible to get at GR RHR, if you call a few weeks in advance. Dinner reservations are significantly more difficult to obtain. RHR is well worth the hassle in securing a reservation.

FG, please say more about holding and heating and serving mashed potatoes. I have been using the Robuchon/Steingarten/Blumenthal approach where you precook sliced potatoes at a lowish temperature, then cook them again, then put them through a ricer onto lots and lots of butter. The flavour is good, but the texture is still not quite what I have been aiming for, especially after they have held for a bit. So more advice would be welcome, especially this close to the holidays.

There's very little that isn't interesting at Borough market, but some regular stops for me include: Booth's, for mushrooms of all sorts and some very good salads and veg; the fruit and veg vendors near Booth's are also more reasonably priced than Turnips. New Forest Cider company The Ginger Pig (butcher); but many of the other meat and poultry vendors are also very good e.g. Farmer Sharp for Welsh lamb and mutton L'artisan du chocolat Brindisa, for everything Spanish especially wonderful hams In general I find it easier to come to to terms with the profusion at Borough by focusing first on "unprepared" or "basic" foods (meat, fish, poultry, fruit, veg). There has been something of a trend over the last few years toward so-called value added products: prepared foods, spice mixtures, preserves, chutneys, etc. Many of these are delicious and hard to find elsewhere, but they can distract from a mission of laying in basic provisions.

Chef Fowke's wonderful trussing method works brilliantly for chickens -- I don't see why it shouldn't also work for turkeys. In addition to exposing more of the skin surface, it seems to balance the cooking time so that the breast is still tender at the point the legs are cooked. And the bird should be cooked unstuffed, or with just a quartered lemon inside it. If you roast it to the point that the stuffing is cooked, the bird itself almost always gets overdone. Or you end up doing as a short-sighted friend of ours once did: including the dishcloth in the stuffing.

If you interpret "Modern British cuisine" as "dishes that middle-to-upper class Londoners would expect to find offered in a restaurant, or would serve at a dinner party" then the "Modern European" category Time Out provides a resonably accurate representation of this term. None of the dishes I mentioned, with the possible exception of the grilled sardines, seemed particularly French. The influence of the mediterranean is very strong: Spain, Italy, Greece. Here I think the impact of Elizabeth David and Terence Conran may have been just as strong as the "Michelin Effect". More traditional dishes -- shepherd's pie, steak & kidney pud, toad in the hole, etc. -- are often called "school dinner food". I've often dined at our neighbours' houses and have frequently been offered things like red peppers with anchovies, but almost never these more traditional dishes.

I first came across the category "Modern British" in the Time Out guides of the early 1990s, which had a separate category for "British" i.e. traditional British cookery. Some time around the turn of the century they changed "Modern British" to "Modern European". In the 2004 edition the introduction to the "British" section praises Go figure. Nonetheless, in the 2004 listings this "British" category focuses on places like St John, Quality Chop House, Rules and the Dorchester Grill Room: traditional foods like grills, steaks, trifle, usually simply prepared. The dishes in the "Modern European" category seem to be more eclectic and perhaps a bit lighter. Some examples, pulled more or less at random from the guide and with no endorsement meant of any of the restaurants listed: Spinach and parmesan tart with truffle and crème fraîche sauce (Searcy's at the Barbican) Duck salad with papaya (Smiths of Smithfield) Roast venison and parsnip mash (Axis) Assiette au chocolat, "three desserts highlighted by ice cream tinged with Malteasers" (Bank Aldwych) Grilled sardines with lemon zest and parsley (West Street) Roast scallops with squid, served with a white wine risotto (Harvey Nichols, The Fifth Floor) I don't know how this compares with "New American cuisine".

Andy, I thought that the whole of Britain (or at least the whole of England) was "a suburb of London".

Unless you have a very unusual butcher in Florida, it is probably not mutton that you are getting, but rather mature lamb. Even in the UK, mutton is hard to find -- and delicious when cooked appropriately. Mutton thread

Either would work for us, but Friday or Saturday strongly preferred, especially if we are having a big meal and some good wines.

This is how I think of Michelin. I wonder about G-M, though. Don't they adopt "agendas" from time to time, and use those agendas to shape their ratings, e.g. their endorsement of nouvelle cuisine? If you haven't looked at Le Bouche à Oreille, I recommend it. The writing (in French, unforuntately) is often very funny. They rate restaurants from five chandeliers ("Exceptionelle") to five zeroes ("Scandale"), and have, in addition to the cuisine, separate ratings for each restaurant's welcome, service, quality-to-price ratio, decor, bread, coffee and toilets.

If the goal is to amass data that will accurately predict one's own reaction to a restaurant, there are at least four sources of added variance to deal with: 1) No restaurant is ever on totally consistent form. Perhaps the chef is absent, or getting ready to open a new restaurant, or the sous chef has a hangover, or a supplier sent a bad batch of foie gras. As has been noted elsewhere on eGullet, it's very difficult to reach a conclusive picture from one visit. Beyond this short-term variance, it is well known that even great restaurants change over time. The Moulin de Mougins was once great; it then became horrible; it is now somewhat better, though still a shadow of its old self. Vergé's rise, decline and partial resurgence happened over many years. Today's Grand Vefour is far better than the one I first visited. So multiple visits are needed, and these can't be spread over too many months or they have little chance of predicting a reaction. 2) Diners differ in their tastes and even in their physical reactions to food: allergies, bad memories associated with a particular food, and so on. Someone with a very sensitive palate may be constitutionally unable to eat blue cheese. 3) As Margaret points out, expectations make a difference. More generally, food is a complex aesthetic form because of the high level of interaction between the "consumer" and the "product": there is no other art or craft that we literally take into ourselves. It is striking how many reviews on eGullet and in print media begin with a discussion of the welcome, service, reservationist, and so on, and let these first impressions influence perceptions of the meal later on. 4) There is a socially reflexive aspect of "reviewing", especially on an interactive message board like this. Diner A goes to restaurant X and criticises it. B, who loved it, slams A for having an uneducated palate. Or C praises a restaurant and D dismisses C as being undiscriminating and inexperienced. Then A and C, having been criticised, strike back at their critics for being snobby, or biased to like a famous restaurant, or whatever. So not only does a diner have expectations of what she will experience, but may also worry about what other members will think of her comments. I continue to think that we should try to make our reviewing less one-dimensional (a scale from good to bad, or no stars to 3 stars, or whatever) and more focused around specific criteria: "if you like elegant, minimalist design in a meal, you'll love restaurant X. If you are looking for fun with friends over rough but very tasty food, you'll like Y." With what other art form do we put some much attention on stars or numerical ratings? Should the Louvre start putting star ratings on its paintings? The advantage of Michelin and Gault Millau is that their reviews are based on multiple visits, anonymous (in the case of Michelin, at least, I don't know about G-M) and are updated annually. But they convey relatively little about the atmosphere and the character of a given restaurant. Personally, I try to read multiple opinions on eGullet and then to triangulate with the guides. I use Michelin, Gault Millau and Gantié, as well as Le Bouche à Oreille (click here). Even then, it is rare that I encounter exactly what I expected in any restaurant. Of course the opinions of locals are often useful, but never on their own. Does this mean adopting a pessimistic or relativist view? I don't think so. It does imply a recognition that reviewing restaurants is very difficult; and abandoning the view that any of us, no matter how "well dined", can write the definitive statement on any restaurant.

Yes, because there are always drop-outs from these affairs.

Can I suggest that someone ring the restaurant NOW and book the private room? Otherwise we may not have much of a choice of tables for that evening. Andy can always work his magic with Philip Howard later -- if he is as persuasive as he was with Bruce Poole, we should have a great meal. Personally I would prefer dinner to lunch, but I'll go with the flow as well.

23rd would be fine for me and Melissa. I would continue to advocate the private room, especially if we get at least 10 people. The main dining room is buzzy but it can get noisy.

Sounds bizarre to worry about this in mid-November -- but it's really only a few weeks until holiday madness hits, restaurants fill up, and the last thing many of us want is another big dinner, no matter how well executed. Shall we try to visit the Square before the year is out, or wait until January? What say you?

I haven't been to the Square in awhile and would be keen for a return match. Perhaps we could contact Philip Howard and challenge him to do his best for a group of eGulleteers. They have a very pleasant private room, but it's large and I am guessing they would need at least ten diners to book it.

A castrated chicken from Basingstoke or Dusseldorf or Madrid might raise concerns, but if you tell the customs official that it's French, they will understand and forgive instantly.

Doves import duck breasts and guinea fowl from France, but not chickens. Harrods and Harvey Nichols, according to posters elsewhere on this thread, import Bresse chickens from France. My query was whether they would import a real capon from Bresse. If these shops won't import capons (and they are good, but mythical ortolans they aren't) and you are really desperate to try one, then it's a quick trip to Paris or Nice and a cold pack to bring one home. Do the easyjet rules prohibit poultry in checked luggage?

I'm starting to think we should retitle this thread: "about capons". I asked Mr Dove, the grouchy but very knowledgeable butcher, about capons. "We can get you a bird called a capon, but it's really a large chicken," he said. (I should add that Doves' large chickens are very, very good -- lots of meat, great flavour.) He warned that many so-called capons are chemically altered, by giving them testosterone injections. "You don't want those. They don't taste good and God knows what they will do to you." I asked whether he could order a surgically caponised bird from France. "I don't buy French poultry," he said, adding, after a short pause, "except for duck breasts." And guinea fowl, I thought, but decided that discretion was the better part of valour. So no chapon de Bresse from Dove & Son, Butchers. I'll ask at Harrods next time I am there.

Seems to me that many posters on this thread may have made what social psychologists call an attribution error. Such errors can include mistaken assumptions about causality or intent -- I am seated at a "bad" table in a restaurant, so I conclude that the restaurant staff may have been critical of my appearance or demeanour. That may be so, but it could equally be a chance outcome that I ended up at that table. They can include judgement based on a salient attribute that in fact conveys little information: I see a student wearing glasses and a plastic pocket protector and conclude that he must be studying engineering. Adam, as several posters noted, never seems to have engaged with the real Charlie Trotter's. He classed it as a fancy restaurant, part "of the us-them world of fine dining". Everything was interpreted as part of the hoity-toity and pretentious. That, plus an attempt to be self-consciously funny (Adam's Chowhound review actually describes itself as funny in the title, always a warning sign) means that his comments on the food are superficial at best. Equally, many of the critics on this thread seem to have made an attribution error about him. 24 years old! Surprised by the cost of the meal! Orders Bellini as aperitif! He must have a leaden palate, his judgements must be worthless. Adam isn't as "well dined", to borrow Robert Brown's great phrase, as some of our members, but that is very "well dined" indeed. He has dined at Jules Verne, which may be touristy but continues to hold a Michelin star. He may not be a total ignoramus. Finally, several posters have made the most common attribution error on eGullet: assuming that a restaurant is always "good" or "bad". You didn't like Charlie Trotters? That must mean you are not ready for it, inexperienced, etc. Some very "well dined" members have had bad experiences at Trotters. Perhaps it is highly variable in delivery, creating some good meals and some bad. The reality is that after 152 posts (now 153), we don't know much more either about Charlie Trotters or about Adam. Adam, let me join the group in welcoming you to eGullet. Keep on reading and dining and posting. You'll learn the difference between a palate and a palette, and many other useful things. There are some very clever and passionate members here. You are a welcome addition to the board.

I will ask at Dove's this weekend about sourcing a capon -- a real one, not a "large chicken"; I guess it would have to be ordered from outside the UK. I've checked a DEFRA document on surgical castration of fowl and it is indeed illegal here. Don't know when this came into effect.

It is -- £30 I think.

I don't know how to represent this phonetically, but both in France (Paris as well as the South) and in francophone Canada I have always heard the "t" in words like Montrachet and Montreal pronounced with the tiniest tap of the tongue on the palate. "Monrashay" doesn't quite capture it. Elision is not the same as omission.