Jonathan Day

I chose Shumi for a business dinner yesterday because, of the group of four diners, I knew one would arrive late and one would leave early. One visitor was staying at a nearby hotel. One was German, "doesn't eat sushis" and generally dislikes any food that isn't European. So my hope was that Shumi would give us some flexibility in ordering and dining, without having to resort to Japanese or Chinese food. Given Shumi's widely varying reviews in the media I had no idea what to expect. The reservationist left me on hold for a long time, trying to figure out whether they could find a table for three; when I called later to increase it to four, he left me waiting even longer. Would we be shoehorned into a tiny space, the last seat allocated in a completely full restaurant, like the last unfortunate passenger squeezing onto a Northern Line carriage? The building on St James's Street was once a branch of Barclays Bank. If I recall correctly, the tellers were downstairs and you ascended a narrow, steep escalator to meet the branch manager. It then became a rather forgettable restaurant called "Che". In its incarnation at Shumi, you are checked in on the ground floor where there is a noisy bar, and go up the same escalator to the restaurant. The receptionist went into a bit of panic when we arrived, since the phone upstairs had been left off hook. We couldn't go up there on our own. He couldn't abandon his station. He couldn't reach anyone upstairs. Eventually someone was found to take us up to the restaurant. The restaurant decor is nondescript modern, but not unpleasant for that. The tables are large and well spaced. In the time we were there, the place was perhaps 70% full. I never enquired as to why it was so complex to find a table for us. When we sat down, we were discussing the "philosophy" of a particular (non-restaurant) business -- the underlying concept, the beliefs about the world underlying the way this company worked. As if on cue, our waiter arrived "to explain the philosophy of Shumi". The food is Italian, he said, but served Japanese style. You are encouraged to share dishes -- except for pastas, which you are instructed not to share. A dish of well seasoned borlotti beans arrived as a starter. We worked the service team fairly hard. Our late diner didn't show up for half an hour, and our early leaver wanted to get his dishes quickly. A snootier restaurant could have insisted we all be present before seating us, or given us only one chance to order. As it was, the team at Shumi took our orders as we made them throughout the meal, leaving the menus with us and giving us a lot of flexibility on timing. Despite the rather silly concept -- chopsticks on the table, food "served for sharing" (which is not common with restaurant food in Japan) -- the food at this place isn't half bad. We had a superb pinzimonio (crudités with vinaigrette): the well trimmed vegetables were fresh, crisp and beautifully seasoned with finely ground salt and herbs. Roman-style artichoke salad was also good. A "trio of prosciutto" was supposed to be served with a special bread, but wasn't -- in fact, we were offered no bread throughout the meal. Perhaps they knew that one of us was on the Atkins diet, or perhaps the oven wasn't working. The prosciuttos themselves were interesting: they ranged from the very finely flavoured to one that was incredibly gamy and earthy. We couldn't bring ourselves to plot main courses for sharing, so these were individual. I had a dish of scampi, tasty but for £18 not a generous portion; others had seabass (though I believe he ordered duck) and pork tenderloin. Dessert was a hard cheese called piave, served with a chutney and a flavourful sliced pear. The biggest service gaffes involved the wine. We had a Vernaccia di San Gimigniano, 2002. Though the tables are large, the bottles aren't left anywhere near them, so you have to rely on the service team to refill glasses. And that didn't work -- some glasses were filled, others left empty for a long time. Water service was similarly erratic. After our mains, we asked for a dessert wine that was offered by the glass. After a long wait, empty glasses arrived on the table. "Your wine is coming", said a waiter. After an even longer wait, he apologised and indicated that they were "bringing the wine up from the cellar." Too late, I said, cancel the wine order -- and they did this cheerfully enough. I wonder how deep under St James's Street the cellar was, and whether they needed to dig a tunnel through to find our wine. Prices are aggressive but not out of range for this part of London, a road that contains L'Oranger, Fleur (the old Petrus) and a caviar restaurant. The dishes I tasted were all interesting and well executed. My sense is that the service at Shumi is still being debugged. The severs' attitude was friendly and upbeat throughout, especially given that we had a late arrival, an early departure, orders placed throughout the meal, and, when the drinks service broke down, some rather directive behaviour on my part ("Now serve another glass of wine, please. And refill the water glasses.") Worth another visit, I think.

Just to build on Robert's cogent point. The Adria brothers are turning over almost the entire repertoire of el Bulli at least once a year, if not more often. "Restless" rather than "experimental" would be the term I would apply to their work. They never seem satisfied. Hence the cooks at the French Laundry have, by now, probably cranked out millions of salmon and creme fraiche "ice cream" cones and servings of "oysters and pearls", all of them delicious. A noble effort, one worthy of respect. But this is not Adria's way. Last year's foams become this year's encapsulations which turn into next year's "airs". This is highly risky cuisine. Not everything will work for every diner. The "caviar of ceps" that we had, for example, was to me acceptable but (as food) not thrilling. Its package was charming, and the form of caviar challenging -- it just didn't taste that good. Given that in a meal of 30 courses el Bulli can serve up 10 that are outstanding (and I include delicious in that) 10 that are very good and intellectually challenging 7 that are just good 3 where you scratch your head and say, "I didn't get that" is absolutely remarkable, especially given that of those dishes perhaps only 1 or 2 was served in the prior year. And the prices for the food and wine are so generous that there is very little risk involved, beyond getting to Roses in the first place. (I am just making these numbers up, by the way -- the performance in our meal was for me more like 15 outstanding, 9 very good, 5 good, 1 "I didn't get that").

Ah, yes, Harrods. Or, as they say in French, 'Arrods. I had forgotten about them. One more poulet de Bresse story. I had ordered one last year, and had come to the butcher shop to collect it. When you get a chicken in a fine French butcher, it typically arrives with head and feet intact, in part so that you can see the feet (les pattes) which in the case of a poulet de Bresse must be blue -- as distinct from the black legged chickens that are also highly sought after. The shop will then chop off the head and feet, remove any remaining feathers, and truss (brider) the bird to your specifications. The shop was full, there was a long queue, and the butcher was busily cutting up a lamb. When I reached the head of the queue, the apprentice was the one to serve me. He collected the chicken and started to dress it. The butcher spotted him, dropped the lamb, grabbed the chicken and insisted on doing it himself. "C'est un poulet de Bresse," he said, brandishing a blowtorch, "il faut le respecter" -- "This is a Bresse chicken! Show some respect for it!" And that, in a nutshell, is why, even in these days of Flunch and McDo's, you can still eat very well in France.

Dove's or Moen's, to name two butchers I have used, will source a capon for you, through it will probably be British and not from Bresse. Bresse poultry is world famous -- like wines, their chickens have an appelation d'origine controlée (AOC), with strict standards both for the way they are raised and for the appearance of the products that are sold. This is the only AOC applied to poultry in any country in the world. Hence you will see poulet de Bresse identified on restaurant menus, in the same way that British restaurants are starting to identify specific pork breeds like Gloucester Old Spot. But it's more than just a breed: like other "industrial clusters" (ceramics in certain parts of Italy; printing equipment and inks in Germany) an area like Bresse will have a lot of inbuilt lore and knowledge about the best way to raise chickens. There are three official subclasses: poulet (young bird, 1.4 to 2.4 kg), poularde (older, fattened hen, at least 1.6 kg) or chapon (castrated male, at least 2.5 kg). For a presentation in French on Bresse poultry, see this. For a badly spelled but factually accurate presentation in English, this will do. The Roux brothers once had a butcher/traiteur in Chelsea that would source Bresse chickens. It closed a few years ago. I don't know that there is another. But there are fine British producers, and if I were cooking a capon here, that's where I would turn. A capon makes an ideal Christmas bird for a small family -- it will be about 4-5 kg. They are fattier than turkeys and don't have the same problems with the breast meat drying out. I've been slow-roasting meats and poultry a lot over the past year or so, but this is just a personal idiosyncrasy. It's also very difficult to slow-roast with most home ovens, because they will not maintain a steady heat below about 100C. You could easily roast a capon on high heat (220C) in the traditional way: I would recommend it be done unstuffed (or with just a bit of flavouring inside); trussed, of course, in the tricky new Chef Fowke/eGullet way.

To add to the list of "delightful, disgusting" things: fugu, the poisonous blowfish eagerly sought after by Japanese gourmets; Asian sauces made by fermenting fish guts; mushrooms grown in horseshit; rhubarb, whose poisonous leaves surround succulent stems; vegetables (taro?) that require hours of treatment to remove their toxins; blue cheeses whose odour (says Korsmeyer) is "rather similar to the smell of bile or vomit"; durian fruits.

Considered "taboo" by whom? Adherents of some religions would consider it nauseating to taste pork. Others, strict vegetarians, would feel almost as disgusted to consume meat as Western omnivores would to eat human flesh. Some people are revolted at the sight of an oven-ready chicken, since its form reminds them of the animal it came from; they will happily eat chicken breasts only if they come packaged, skinned and sliced, "so that I don't know where it came from." Others find the idea of eating offal almost as horrible as eating faeces. The French and Italians serve testicles (frivolités), which cross many peoples' lines. Taboos are socially constructed. As Carolyn Korsmeyer points out in her recent article "Delightful, Delicious, Disgusting" (The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 60:3, Summer 2002, 217-225) the line between the disgusting and the delicious can be a thin one: Korsmeyer ends her article with a description of the consumption of François Mitterand's last meal of ortolans, which had been drowned in Armagnac and were served whole -- so that the diners consumed their guts as well as the meat. She quotes Michael Paterniti's article in Esquire, 129 (5), May 1998, p. 117: Haute cuisine, served to the president of France for his final meal. As for me, I would never eat anything "just because it was served at el Bulli." Shit included.

I enthusiastically second RB's gratuitious plug for the Lighthouse Bakery. And while you're on the road, try: Philglass and Swigott, one of the better independent wine shops in London Salumeria Napoli, a traditional Italian deli with a good range Dove's, the butcher, already mentioned The Hive, a shop devoted entirely to honey and bee products, including its own resident beehive I Sapori, a more modern Italian deli run by the chef Stefano Cavallini Hamish Johnston, a cheesemonger with a good range Dandelion, a health food and vitamin shop with a wide range of grains, tofu, dried fruits and the like The road also has a pleasant organic food shop, two fishmongers, several other wine shops, a patissier, another butcher, numerous fruit and veg stands, many restaurants (GBK, a pizza-by-the-slice shop, a branch of Bar Meze, the more serious Nikson's, several Italian joints, a sushi place, etc.). From Northcote Road it is an easy stroll to Pizza Metro, mentioned many times on these boards.

If that's the message I have conveyed, Marcus, then I have to work harder. I don't advocate a "whatever works for you" relativism. There are grades of technical skill in making the ingredients taste "like what they are" (the motto from Curnonsky that I've been using as a signature line). Some cooks, some restaurants, are generally better than others. With that said, I am struck by how situated a diner's experience actually is, how much prior knowledge, age, expectations, and perhaps even physical characteristics of the diner will change perception of a dish or a meal. Before our children were born, my wife cheerfully ate gamey dishes like civet de chevreuil (venison) or civet de marcassin (young wild boar), or papardelle al lepre (pasta with sauce made from a hare). During each of three pregnancies, her taste for this sort of food changed, to the point that now she is almost unable to eat anything like these things. The diner's relationship to the restaurant can also be important: a place you travel halfway around the world to may be different to one that fits like an old shoe. Now, as has often been pointed out on these boards, a good critic can overcome many of these issues. But this requires creating a certain objectivity in the meal, and that is hard to do on one visit. I'm impressed with a diner who ate at el Bulli, didn't enjoy it, but finished his review by saying he would return at least once, more likely twice, to try to get a better sense of the place. That is very different from condemning the restaurant (or conversely, labelling it "the best in the world") after a single visit, or worse, on the basis of hearsay. One reason I enjoy restaurants and cooking so much is that they are wonderfully concrete, specific, a confrontation with the brute reality of the physical world, in contrast to the abstractions with which I spend most of my professional life. Yet it's striking how often we reduce the richness of a restaurant experience to abstract formulas: "nouvelle cuisine", "avant garde cookery", and so on. In the same way, it's all too easy to let the conceptual shock of a new ingredient or bizarre sounding preparation (e.g. rabbit brains, or parmesan "spaghetti", or ravioli made with milk skins) interfere with the sensory experience of the food. Children do this ("yuck! liver!"); sometimes they grow out of it, sometimes they never do. Perhaps some of what Adria is about is forcing us to confront tastes more as they are than as we expect them, based on existing concepts of what "real cooking" consists of. So, to Marcus's point: I hope we won't all pack up and go home. These things are worth debating and discussing. But I do think we would be well served by moving beyond the rather fruitless "Such-and-so is a good restaurant" vs "No it isn't" debates that have been applied to so many restaurants (Martin Berasetegui, Putney Bridge and Pied à Terre, Ducasse all come immediately to mind) around here. We need to find ways to let the dishes speak for themselves. If this group can't do that, what can?

I can't claim much credit for the hard parts of this one. A capon is indeed a castrated chicken. They tend to be larger and fatter than the usual chicken. This one was a chapon de Bresse from our French butcher. I asked for a farce (stuffing) based on the one he used for boudins blancs: I think this one was mostly chicken breast, cream and eggs. You can also do boudins blancs with veal or with pork, or a combination of meats. His version was exceptionally light and creamy. "Shall I put in some foie gras, for richness?" he asked, "and a truffle?" I assented to both. The final bird was in demi-deuil, or half-mourning, with thin slices of truffle inserted under the skin, and of course the diced truffle in the stuffing. Being able to get products like this is one of the joys of dealing with an artisanal butcher in France. A good butcher in London will happily procure you a capon, if you order in advance. I slow-roasted this one for a long time, in dry heat at, I think, 70C. In retrospect, I wish I had browned the skin with a blowtorch either before starting or just after it came out of the oven. Doing this again, I would cook the stuffing separately from the capon, because it took a long time for the stuffing to get to the right temperature; also I would have rested it longer than I did before carving. Still, it was good and juicy and the truffle flavour came right through.

Discussions about the "deliciousness" of the food at a restaurant like el Bulli are always difficult. Diner A: "I ate there and the food was wonderful. A range of tastes unlike anything I'd ever experienced. Dishes that danced in the mouth. Intellectually exciting and delicious." Diner B: "I ate there, and it was terrible -- I mean, really, rabbit brains? Bat's wings? Foie gras pushed through a sieve? Octopus in toothpaste sauce? Who could eat stuff like that?" A: "Well, the fact that you didn't like it means that your sensibilities are not well developed. Try again and try to taste with more of an open mind." B: "The fact that you did like it means only that you are a slave to gastronomic fashion. You wouldn't have dared say you didn't like it, especially after all the trouble you went through to secure a reservation." A: "Tastes develop over time. Children will declare that mashed potatoes is the benchmark for tasty food. Later they grow up and learn to enjoy all sorts of other tastes." B: "I have been tasting for a long time, and my tastes are well developed. I don't need bizarre combinations in order to enjoy myself. And are you sure your tastes aren't all in your head? Get real." And on it goes, with each side slagging off the other until the conversation grinds to a halt. In the case of Lizziee, the poster who started this topic, or of Robert Brown, there have been multiple visits to el Bulli, with different experiences, and in both cases the diner's thoughtful reflections on the range of experiences are interesting. Even then, the conversation is a difficult one. But what is the point of trumpeting the fact that another diner has not dined at el Bulli, or has cancelled a reservation? Any of us could name all sorts of restaurants we haven't dined at. So what? I suppose that if an important critic or tastemaker decided not to dine at el Bulli, it might be worth announcing, albeit briefly: "Steingarten cancels reservation at el Bulli." Hmm. Momentarily interesting. Noted. On we go. Finally, I wonder whether we are engaged in a futile search for some sort of "essence" of a restaurant: is it "good"? Is it "bad"? Hence Pedro asks, Now we are chasing that elusive "essence" through the views of someone reviewing a reviewer: "My friend who went to two restaurants that Rachel Cooke disparaged, and he enjoyed both meals." Again, what does this tell us? Does it matter that Rachel Cooke is a novelist, not a restaurant critic, and that Robuchon praised Ferran Adria? I don't think so. To my view, especially with a place like el Bulli, the best we can do is to say, "This is what I was looking for when I went to this restaurant, and this is what I experienced." That doesn't take us into total relativism, but it does acknowledge that there are interactions between the diner and the restaurant, and that we are not examining these dishes through a microscope but with a certain set of prior experiences and expectations, and that these background elements and interactions will affect our experience. Hence one diner's judgement that a restaurant is "good" or "bad" may be of little value to someone who approaches the restaurant with a very different set of prior experiences and expectations. (For more on this, see Robert Brown's imporant comments on aesthetic distance in restaurant reviewing.)

I went there this morning. By comparison to other Sainsburys branches, this one is pretty good -- a cross between a French supermarket and a fancy food hall. The aisles are wide, there is lots of space between displays, and there were an astonishing number of staff, more competent than the usual Sainsburys staff and and almost falling over themselves to help. Where do you keep batteries? Just here, sir, let me show you. At our local Sainsburys the staff (if you can find them) are friendly enough but usually as confused as the customers about where things are, giving directions like "It's a couple of aisles down, on the right near the floor." The products weren't bad, either. There were a few more olive oil choices than at an ordinary Sainsburys, but no more than at a good Italian delicatessen or food hall. The meat and fish ranges was larger and better looking than the one at our local. The shelves seemed unusually full. They insist on packaging most fruits and vegetables in branded plastic bags or boxes, so you are buying Sainsburys Cauliflower, not just a cauliflower, and there is the usual display of pre-cut pre-washed vegetables, each of which is guaranteed to turn brown before you've brought it home. I spoke with several members of staff. There was an evident pride in the new venture and a sense that it was special. "We even have different uniforms," said one. Another advised me to try the free parking, a rarity in Pimlico. A third asked why I hadn't visited the market before, since it opened in September. Is this anything like Borough Market for variety and quality? No, but this is easier to get to and through, and generally cheaper. Do the meat and cheese counter staff know their products like those at Neals Yard or Doves or the Ginger Pig? No, and the products aren't as good, either; but the ones I bought weren't bad. I didn't try the bakery or look at the wine selection. Is this a patch on one of the better French food halls, e.g. "Lafayette Gourmet", the food and wine section of Galleries Lafayette? No, but it's a lot closer to home. I try to avoid supermarkets except for "chemicals": washing powder, loo rolls, sugar, and the like, preferring the Northcote Road vendors for fruit, vegetables and meat. And I don't know how this compares with today's Waitrose stores. But it compares well against anything I've seen from Tesco, Safeway, M&S, or other Sainsburys outlets. Some of the energy in the staff is owing to the "shock of the new", and I wonder whether this place only gets more staff than the usual Sainsburys outlet for the duration of its launch. Nonetheless it's well worth a visit.

i have one of these in a shed in the backyard. the mice seem to love it. By "one of these" do you mean a mouse scarer or a caterer?

We had a plague of intelligent, gourmet mice this summer. They cheerfully ignored the traps, no matter what I put in them: aged Comté cheese, chocolate, peanut butter -- you name it. They refused to eat the poison that the exterminator had put down. They nibbled at and left mouse shite in my imported Carnaroli rice, in my 70% chocolate: their propensity for nibbling something was directly proportional to its rarity and cost. They probably had little computers on which to read mousEGullet.com, to compare notes about what was best to attack next. We borrowed a cat, but it was too fat and lazy to bother with them. (In the course of the summer we had a feral cat take up residence as well, but all it did was scream and set off the burglar alarm at night, until we finally chased it off). Finally, a builder found us an electronic "mouse scarer", a gadget that emits sounds so high pitched that only mice can hear them. The mice were gone within a day. I believe they have gone next door, to dine in our neighbour's kitchen. She is a caterer and a skilled cook, so I am sure they are eating well.

Turkey is for Christmas, not Thanksgiving -- which isn't a holiday over here. Most Christmas lunches and many dinners in the (gastronomically) grim run-up to Christmas will feature roast turkey.

Moby, I'd love to see your sprouts recipe. I think there are threads in eGullet with some interesting sprouts treatments -- roasted, the leaves removed, etc. A few years ago we did two geese at Christmas: one classically roasted, the other braised with sauerkraut, Alsatian-style. The sauerkraut goose was delicious; the grownups couldn't stop eating it but the children found it daunting. It was done in advance, the liquid taken off and defatted and the meat removed from the bones. Unfortunately the fat that cooked with the sauerkraut picked up its flavour, and had to be discarded; but we had enormous amounts of fat Last year we had a smaller group at Christmas, so we served a capon, stuffed with boudin blanc, foie gras and truffles and slow-roasted.

Most good local butchers will provide rabbit. In South London I get both rabbit and hare at Dove's, Northcote Road; also Moen's, on the Pavement. At some times of the year an call a day or so in advance may be needed. In Islington we used to shop at a butcher and game dealer (no longer remember the name but it was in Canonbury) where the rabbits hung by their hind feet from a hook, completely furred, until a customer ordered one. Then the butcher would take the bunny and peel its skin like a glove. The procedure was a bit grim but the product was very good.

To go back to Robert's initial and interesting question: what irks me most in a dining companion is their refusal to let me enjoy something I like but they don't, because it looks or sounds unappetising to them. Examples would be rare meats, offal, fish or birds served with head intact or unusual critters (e.g. elvers). I would never push someone to eat something they didn't want, such as brains or sweetbreads. But I have often dined with friends and colleagues who insist on looking at my plate and commenting, more than once, about how depraved I must be to eat whatever it is. One comment is fine, and I often get such from my favourite dining companion of all -- my wife. But repeated commentary about my food is not. The most extreme example of this happened many years ago, at university, in a shared house. One of the inmates was a guy who had turned religiously vegetarian. If Charlie spotted any of the rest of us eating any sort of meat, he would make loud comments: "Ugh. That's dead." "You are eating decomposing flesh -- just think what that's doing to you." "That meat is going to rot inside you, and you will rot with it." This went on for many weeks, despite our objections and acts of revenge until one day I arrived to discover Charlie grilling a huge steak. He couldn't take another day of beansprouts or tofu. Not my idea of a great dining companion!

According to a couple of sources I've seen -- most prominently the Noel Riley Fitch biography -- Julia Child was inclined toward Korzybski's theory of General Semantics (see this site for more details, but be warned that Korzybski's work is a hard slog, may have little overall merit, and in itself has nothing to do with cookery or food), in part because her husband Paul was a devotee of the school. One result of their devotion to General Semantics was a passion on the part of both Julia and Paul Child to subject everything she wrote about or taught on television to extensive "operational verification"; hence the thorough testing with a wide variety of products (all-purpose flour, cake flour, pastry flour, etc.), and the detailed line drawings and photographs that characterise her work. The result must have been incredibly costly: for example, Child shipped hundreds of pounds of American supermarket flour to France in order to make Calvel's method for French bread accessible to home cooks. She filmed most of her television programmes for free -- again, everything on these was subject to detailed testing and "operational verification". A Julia Child recipe will almost never say, simply, "1 cup of flour": either in the recipe or in the book itself, you are told whether that cup is measured by the sifting-into-the-cup method or the scoop-into-the-bin-and-level-with-the-back-of-a-knife technique. Of course a switch to the better system of weighing flour and other dry ingredients would solve the problem, but it does illustrate Child's obsession with verification and communication. I don't have insight into the economics of modern cookbook publishing but would guess that, unless you can find an author who wants to give away enormous amounts of time and labour for little financial return, that sort of grinding detail and overall reliability will be hard to find.

Getting appropriate staff attention through the course of the meal ... and then being unable to get the bill for 30 minutes at its end, with all the waiters disappearing.

I've seen a number of recipes for Gardiane, all of which call for "taureau" (bull) as the meat. I'll translate one: take 2 kg of bull meat, cut in small pieces; marinate the meat for 2 days in 2 bottles of red wine (the recipe suggests Châteauneuf-du-Pape rouge 1985, domaine des Melagnes) and salt, pepper, onions, garlic, carrots, parsley. Drain, dry and brown the meat, then cover it with the marinade and cook on a slow fire for 2-3 hours. Serve with Camargue rice and more of that Châteauneuf-du-Pape. Some recipes call for olives to be added, as well.

Heston Blumenthal's take on mashed potatoes is here. His technique (a two stage simmer followed by up to two stages of sieving) is fussy, but it works. Be sure you have an accurately calibrated thermometer before starting. This recipe will take an enormous amount of butter, should your arteries feel in need of clogging that day.

A Dove and Son 71 Northcote Road SW11 Tel 020 7223 5191 They can get very fine free range turkeys at this time of year, perhaps with a bit of advance notice. They aren't cheap; I would guess a medium sized turkey would cost at least £50. If you want to make a turkey ballotine, they will remove the bones for you. M Moen & Sons 24 The Pavement (near Clapham Common) SW4 Tel 020 7622 1624 Also do Thanksgiving turkeys -- as well as things Dove's dont, e.g. gulls' eggs.

I have only received the Borsa prices since early this year, after the white truffle season closed. They also track black truffles, summer truffles and a few other variants. But a little eGullet archaeology turned up the following, which I posted in October of last year (but very early in the season; the post was referring to a visit in late September): .About five years ago I remember buying a white truffle from Carluccio for £2400/kg. At the time, the prices in France and Italy came out to USD/EUR 2400, thus reinforcing the "dollar equals a pound" principle of shopping in Britain, which fortunately no longer holds as much as it did. Riva, in Barnes, used to have lots of white truffle dishes in season. I haven't checked to see whether they are offering them yet.

Great outcome. Looking forward to a full report on your dinner!

And from the same webpage, here is Rick's and As I pointed out many many pages ago in this debate, you don't have to go to the Chef's Collaborative to find the contradiction here. You just have to look at Rick Bayless's own web site.