Jonathan Day

Herbal ice creams. Tarragon, mint of course, basil, lemon thyme.

Alice Waters wrote in one of her earlier cookbooks that she tried to provide at least one course -- usually dessert -- to calm diners whose nerves were jangled by "exotic" ingredients like tripe or sea urchins. After a "challenging" main course she would offer a simple, traditional dessert like an apple tart. My guess is that bread functions in a similar way. At el Bulli, there is a bread service -- and the bread was very good. It was in some way comforting to have something familiar amongst the onslaught of soups-that-were-sauces, sweets-that-were-savouries and the like. One downside of bread, in a meal of many courses, is that it is often too easy to consume too much of it and end up feeling stuffed rather than satisfied. In serving multi-course meals at home, I rarely serve bread during the meal service; but with the aperitif we almost invariably offer thin breadsticks, pane carasau (the Italian "music paper" bread), a sheet of lavash: something that is recognisably bread but is light and crisp rather than starchy and filling. People like to nibble something while drinking their champagne or sherry or whatever; and I personally hate preparing canapés and fiddly hors-d'oeuvres. Hence a dish of olives, some large caperberries if they are around -- and some form of bread.

This makes good sense. Do we know anything about the likelihood of a chef being able to attract outside capital for a start-up? In other words, what kind of experience do "restaurant angel investors", if they exist, look for in financing a chef in a new venture? What does it take to move from top salaried chef to chef-owner? The analogy with lawyers is apropros, because you can get internal financing for a new startup (where a chef-owner finances one of his star salaried chefs in a new venture, as Gordon Ramsay did with Marcus Wareing) or external financing, where a salaried chef jumps ship and starts a new place. Is there any data available on how often these moves happen, and on what terms? In a large metropolitan law firm the likelihood that an entering associate will become an equity (senior) partner is something like 1:12 or 1:15, right? Do we know what the probabilities are for a new line cook becoming a chef-owner? (I am guessing that no such data has been assembled, but it never hurts to ask).

For several years many Carrefour stores have featured an "artisanal" section, often staffed by local producers rather than Carrefour staff. In the one near Nice, for example, they often have olives, locally made ravioli, olive oil, tapenade and the like. It's rarely great stuff -- my guess is that Carrefour push down the prices, insist on large quantities and demand a heavy share of the selling price for the store. We tend to use Carrefour for dry goods and childrens' clothing rather than food. I wonder whether they are now starting to brand these artisanal displays under the reflets de France label.

I see no reason to disregard that component of the upside, though. Clearly, both the possibility of ownership and the possibility of stardom are responsible for attracting a large number of people to the business. And there the earning potential reaches into the millions, and the job descriptions are quite diverse. I wasn't disregarding the ownership or celebrity elements of the upside, just separating them from the salaried component. An ownership position involves the cook accepting a degree of risk that some may be unwilling or unable to bear. It takes us out of the realm of labour economics and employment practices. As FG says, celebrity and media "chefs" can make millions, especially if they get into a lucrative deal with a food manufacturer or retailer (Lloyd Grossman with his bottled sauces, Jamie Oliver with Sainbury's, etc.). However, in these case I would argue that the bulk of the reward is for acting skills, photogenic appearance, and just plain luck -- as opposed to culinary skill. I see no reason, in concept at least, why a media producer couldn't take an attractive actor and turn her/him into a "celebrity chef" -- with the backstage assistance of a real chef, some prep cooks and a bit of coaching in on-screen cooking skills. You could even film someone else's hands chopping that onion. Wasn't something like this once done with TV rock/pop bands, where the "stars" weren't actually singing?

I don't think it's off-topic to ask what the financial upside for a skilled chef might be. If that line cook who starts at US$8/hour learns and advances, ending up as the most senior chef in a major New York restaurant, how much might she earn? I'm not talking about chef-owners (e.g. Daniel Boulud) or media/celebrity chefs but the top salaried chefs in highly respected restaurants. My impression is that a top chef with a good reputation has substantial ($100k+) earning potential, opportunities to demand an ownership stake in a restaurant, and the like, health benefits and the like. Or is this incorrect? Isn't the pattern here a bit like acting? Lots of people willing to enter the profession at minimum wage; a few at the top who make a lot of money. I guess one difference between the line cook and the top chef in the house is that the latter is doing at least as much management as she is cooking.

There is some bouillabaisse discussion here -- including Frieda L's advice that the summer may not be the best time for this dish.

A "vacherin" (with no further qualifier) is the fruit and meringue concoction you received. Vacherin Mont d'Or (proper name) is a cheese. It is actually Swiss, though produced on the French border. It is supposed to be very seasonal, produced only from September to March, but this may have changed.

Some things about life in the USA are very good. At our local fruit and veg / cremerie in France the quality is superb -- virtually every piece of fruit or vegetable is perfect in flavour, texture, ripeness, aroma. It approaches slkinsey's heirloom product wrapped in spider silk by blind virgins. Anything that isn't absolutely perfect, they will cheerfully take back -- but in several years of shopping there, we've never had to do that. But the price! My guess is that the limes, potatoes and corn alone would together cost at least EUR 12 = US$14. The prices (and quality) would be lower at a supermarket, or at a farmer's market. Europe has its compensations, but low prices are not among them. I will try to do some comparative pricing here in London and then in France when we are there in August.

Vedat, thanks for an interesting post. In so many disciplines -- business included -- creativity becomes something "added on" to an otherwise pedestrian and dull product; wit and humour are circumscribed and separated from "business as usual". Could you say a bit more about how creativity, wit and humour manifest themselves at L'Ambroisie?

If it can do all these things, and if it can do it without changing the professional ethos, then that's great. I agree with you that it would be hard to retain amateurs in such a demanding environment, and that's perhaps for the best, since the "easy riders" would quickly be screened out. The other elements of the professional ethos would be the teamwork and mutual commitment that I and other posters mentioned, and also the school's ability to demonstrate that the majority of its graduates went into promising professional jobs. Admit too many amateurs and both of these are at risk; allow this to go on for too long, and the school's reputation amongst prospective students begins to suffer. Incidentally, culinary and law schools aren't the only ones having to screen out the amateurs. In many of the PhD programmes at the University of Chicago, initial admissions standards are relatively low given the university's towering reputation, and a good number of students are admitted to the early stages of the programme. But only a tiny number of new students are given tuition grants; the rest have to pay, and they have about a year to pass a tough set of exams and gain admission to doctoral candidacy. At this point, a large number of people voluntarily screen themselves out and leave (or are asked to); most of the remaining students, who have demonstrated their real commitment and ability, are given tuition grants. Other top universities screen much more rigorously at the beginning, admit very few to their PhD programme, but give all of those admitted tuition and living grants.

I find it hard to believe that any apprenticeship -- white or blue collar -- would not be affected by the quality, energy and motivation of the other apprentices you are learning with. I work in a profession not unlike corporate law: high pressure, long hours, a lot at stake. Every now and then we admit someone who is independently wealthy (really wealthy, e.g. a scion of a billionaire family). They are always problematic on teams, because their motivation is fundamentally different: they are with us "for the ride" and won't make the extra effort. It's not an impossible situation, but it is challenging for those managing the team and those on it. One thing that has surprised me about many cookery schools is that they don't seem to offer serious programmes for those who are committed to another profession but have reached a level of skill and experience at which the usual amateur's programme would be boring. By "serious" I mean training that isn't primarily about recipes but goes deep on, e.g., knife skills, sauce making, producing at speed -- the practical stuff that Jinmyo mentioned right at the start of this thread. You may not want to work in a restaurant, but you may want to be able to crank out a meal for 20 people, three of them vegetarians, and to do it fast and well. The Leith's School in London used to have an "intermediate" evening course that covered things like boning fowl, topics usually omitted from amateur courses. You trained for something like 4 hours, one evening a week. It was invariably oversubscribed, months in advance. For some reason it is no longer offered. The CIA used to offer an "amateur's boot camp" version of their Skills course; I don't know whether they still do. The advantage of a course like this is that it separates the amateurs, no matter how enthusiastic and energetic, from the pro courses, yet offers them some exposure to more professional technique and ethos. Given the number of Viking ranges going into houses nowadays, I remain surprised that more culinary schools haven't caught up with this trend. Or perhaps they have and I've missed it.

I also use Heston's 65C rule for chicken, and have done so for a couple of years with success. For example last year I roasted a capon with dry heat (in a professional "Combi" oven with a digital regulator, set to 68C); I checked the interior with a digital instant-read thermometer to verify that it had gone to 65C. The skin never crisped, but it did keep the flesh moist; I removed the skin, sliced the meat thinly, and covered this with the rest of a white truffle that we had for other purposes, finely shaved of course. It was very good. If you do want crisp skin, you can remove the chicken from the oven, heat the latter to scorching hot, and then put the bird in until the skin browns and crisps. Or use a blowtorch on the skin while the bird is resting. I've also poached a whole chicken in a cooking bag, a large and heavy one with the opening tied and held outside of the water with a jury-rigged clamp; the chicken, at the bottom of the bag, was fully submerged. This was an attempt to duplicate the famous poularde en vessie (chicken in a bladder). Again, it was delicious, but fiddly to get done. This time the water fluctuated around 70C. It is damned hard to keep water at a constant temperature. And I had no way to check the temperature of the meat until it was done. The big advantage of these low-temperature techniques for meat is that, if the temperature is right, they are relatively insensitive to timing. You can hold a piece of meat at the point where proteins coagulate, for a fair time without bad things happening.

Robert, the three "old time religion" restaurants I cited in recent posts (La Merenda, Nice; Les Arcades, Biot; Au Rendez-vous des Amis, Nice/Falicon) had menus of similar length: 6-8 starters, 8-10 mains. La Cave in Cannes and La Petite Maison had perhaps 10 starters, 12 mains. How would these menus compare with those you recall from regional restaurants from a decade or so ago? In the Escoffier museum in Villeneuve Loubet there are some astonishing menus, e.g. one from the Rocher de Cancale in Paris that must have offered 200 different dishes.

I continue to come across pleasant and reasonably priced restaurants, outside of Paris, serving traditional food with love and care. But they are by no means as thick on the ground as they were; they are hard to find, and locals are often less than forthcoming about the truly "good addresses". And, moderate price does not mean good: in fact, nowadays it often means the opposite. This is why I wish the guides would focus less on the palaces of gastronomy (we know, as Bux says, that French cuisine is still good at the top) and more on smaller, harder-to-find establishments. Michelin made a start, a few years ago, with the Bib Gourmand (a symbol for a restaurant providing good food at moderate prices). This is a service where eGullet could have a real advantage, since we have members who travel throughout France. But we would need to make people aware that this forum is not just for those who race from one 3-star meal to another.

Aliwaks, this evocative post captures for me both the glory and the tragedy of American cuisine. The glorious element is that this is truly a cuisine without borders, one free to absorb the best that any country has to offer. (Though I will say that British home cooking and London restaurant cooking have made huge strides in this regard). The tragedy is that the tendency to adapt and modify, coupled with an American love for technology and labour-saving methods, means that the adaptations of classic dishes are so often a compromise; hence the "shock of the new" that many of us have when eating in France or Italy for the first time. Alice Waters is something of an exception. Where Julia Child said that her masterpiece could have been subtitled "French Cooking from the American Supermarket", Waters has been uncompromising in her search for perfect ingredients and authentic methods. Her cassoulet recipe is rivalled only by Paula Wolfert's in its severe completeness. One of the Chez Panisse books (Paul Bertolli's, I think) includes, in the bread chapter, instructions in grinding your own flour. But for the most part, the tendencies to modify, soften, streamline and simplify are very strong. Hence, in far too many places in the US you find "French", "Italian", "Mexican", "Chinese" food that would be almost unreognisable to people from those countries.

Perhaps the presumption (accurate in the case of London restaurants, at least) is that the same people are unlikely to be working front-of-house 5 years after an inspection. From other interviews I've read, Michelin inspectors are extremely low-key and "ordinary" looking, and therefore have little difficulty maintaining their anonymity.

What I took away from the story was a bias toward service quality and setting (prestations, mise en scène). I was also struck that a change in star status could push a restaurant's revenues up or down by 25%; presumably this happens both because demand and utilisation change and because the restaurant that gains a star is able to increase prices without reducing demand. Other things equal, this is a staggering change in a restaurant's gross margin, enough to make the difference between a healthy profit and a serious loss. It wasn't clear from the piece where this figure came from, or how well it had been tested.

Final round as the fresh_a translation department. +++ How Michelin rates chefs Paris, 23 June (AFP). The head of the Michelin Guides, Derek Brown, has offered AFP several hints about the way in which the gastronomic guide rates chefs. Some of these were already well known, others less so. The inspectors, for the most part men, number around 100 across Europe. Their number in any given country changes depending on the annual release date of an issue. Their average age is 38 to 40 years, and nearly every one has graduated from a hotel management or cookery school. "These are people who are passionate and knowledgeable about cuisine and how to appreciate it. They visit all sorts of restaurants, and they rotate between regions to increase their objectivity." There are enough of them to visit even regions "not covered by other guides", says Brown. When a new restaurant opens, an initial inspection decides whether it deserves to be in the Michelin guide. "We then return to evaluate the consistency of the dishes, the quality of the products, the mastery of cookery technique, combinations of taste, the originality of a plate or the treatment of a classic dish," says Derek Brown. After a period that could be as long as two years, both as a result of readers' letters and visits from inspectors, the first star can be awarded. "After they have paid their bill -- which we require them to do -- the inspectors will sometimes make themselves known, in order to obtain further information," says Brown. "In that case, that particular inspector will not return for five years, in order to preserve his anonymity." A change of chef or the absence of a chef on the day of a Michelin inspection makes no difference. "We judge inspiration. The rankings belong to the cuisine, not the chef. If the inspiration is there, there is no problem. If not, we draw our own conclusions." "So that we can remain independent from external influence, there is no advertising in the guide. What's more, we never establish special relationships with the chefs. I turn down invitations to gala events at restauarants -- openings and the like." "That said, I do speak a great deal to chefs, and I will meet with them if they ask for it. In these meetings, I let them know the overall shape of their file: the views from the inspectors' most recent visits, and what we are hearing from our readers." Any transparency ends here. The indications given are very general, the deliberations around rankings secret, and there is little or no commentary on changes in star rankings from year to year. "Why would we need to provide that?" asks Brown. "Isn't the ranking itself enough?"

A loose (but I think accurate) translation follows: +++ "The pressure comes from the chefs themselves", according to the head of the Michelin Guides The Michelin Guide doesn't put pressure on chefs; "it comes from the chefs themselves", who seek after a system of grading. So inisted Derek Brown, the head of the most highly respected gastronomic guide in France, during an interview with AFP. Derek Brown waited four months after the suicide of Bernard Loiseau and the debate around food criticism that followed it to speak out, noting that "it isn't right to react too quickly during a period of high emotional intensity". "It's very tough being a chef," said Brown; "what with high value-added taxes, tough competitive conditions, and diminished tourism. It's also hard to get hold of qualified people and good products." "When someone as gifted as Bernard Loiseau ends his days, for whatever reason, it hits hard, right at the heart of the system," he added. "But a chef said this to me: if the Michelin Guide didn't exist, we would have to invent it. The pressure comes from the chefs themselves. We don't put pressure on anyone; we don't provide them with criteria to say what is good cookery or good hotel management," explained Mr Brown. To those who have, for many years running, complained about the lack of transparency around Michelin's system for ranking establishments, Brown replied that it was "out of the question to provide a set of evaluation criteria, because the chefs would find that they were instantly trapped within those criteria. It's up to them to cook, it's up to us to judge one chef against the others." "Nobody is required to appear in the guide. Nobody is obliged to have one, two or three stars," he added. 103 years after its founding, the Michelin Guide remains the number 1 gastronomic guide in France, with 550,000 copies of the guide to France sold on average: 400,000 in France, 150,000 abroad. The impact on a restaurant's revenue of the gain or loss of one star is roughly 25%. A more demanding clientele "We don't often downgrade an establishment. But when it happens, it's because there has been a change in the quality of service. We are well aware of our obligations. Nothing is done capriciously. Our decisions are based on objective facts and honest assessments. And this has always been the case: I don't really see why this debate has arisen today. I nonetheless accept that everyone doesn't agree with our choices," he adds. To those who still carp at a British head of a French gastronomic guide, Brown said: "Most of our inspection teams have been in place for a decade. When we say that such-and-such a place no longer merits three stars, it's the same inspectors who awarded it three stars some years ago." Asked about the growing levels of debt that chefs are taking on in order to gain or hold onto their stars, Brown retorted that "often, these investments are made after the stars have been awareded. The chefs tell me that it is their customers who are more and more demanding, especially about service." "The three stars mean that the quality of the restaurant's setting matches that of their innovative cuisine," he said, adding that, "Michelin has never asked a restaurant to change the curtains." Michelin inspectors visit an establishment several times, Brown emphasised, "because we want our evaluations to hold up over time. The guide only appears once a year." Brown concludes: "The customers' demands and competitive pressures force those who break away from the pack to truly be better than the others. That's all it is. Our role is to give reliable information to those who don't have it: our readers."

This was in the press back in January. Jill Norman, Elizabeth David's editor and literary trustee, got tired of storing a hundred or so cartons of papers in her home. If I recall correctly, Norman offered them for sale through a dealer such as Sotheby's. This provoked angry reactions amongst British foodies, who had expected these papers to join Elizabeth David's book collections, housed in the Warburg Institute at the University of London and at the London Guildhall Library. But Norman wanted to sell them, not donate them, and none of the British libraries had the resources to buy the papers. More a reflection of the poverty of British libraries and universities in general than anything specific about food, I would guess. Press release from Radcliffe: click here

Curse you, Stella. I read this post just before going to bed. I wasn't hungry when I started reading it. Now I am. And London is a damned long way from Oaxaca.

We all harbour romantic ideas, and for many of us these involve France and food. There is the small friendly place where the food is simple but wonderful. The sun sparkles on the brook from which the chef has just pulled a trout before sizzling it in butter and bringing it to the table. The vegetables were picked in the garden only moments before the meal. None of it costs very much and it's all good. It's all about "Provence", after all: warm sunlight, lovely colours, olive oil on everything, happy people, life lived at a gentle pace. Peter Mayle parlayed the romantic concept into book after book, and even Alice Waters was seduced by the idea of simple, unaffected cooking with perfect ingredients. A cynic or deconstructionist might say that the romantic idea of simple, delicious food is nothing but a con. Our parish priest in Mougins likes to quote Derrida and to remind us that "Provence no longer exists" -- if it ever did. Nonetheless, every now and then one of these romantic dreams comes true, at least for a short time. We stumbled onto Au Rendez-vous des Amis after arriving on a late flight and wanting to eat near Nice before restaurants closed. It was Sunday, so the choices were limited. It looked as though it might be tricky to find from Nice Airport, but we decided to chance it. It was amazingly difficult to find -- in part because an entire series of identically named roads actually appears twice -- once halfway up a hill, and the other at its peak. We arrived frustrated and sweaty. But it was worth the detour; in fact it was worth the journey to find this place. We had reserved the last outdoor table of the evening, warning the owners that we weren't sure exactly when we would arrive: it would depend on the flight timing. "Don't worry," they said, "your table will be here when you are ready." The menu is short and simple: EUR20 for three courses. I started with a tabbouleh with basil, my wife with ravioli, a dish for which this restaurant is well known locally. Both were superb: the ravioli meaty, with the pasta thin and very tender. The tabbouleh was the surprise: the flavours almost exploded as you tasted them; the basil was both worked into the tabbouleh and also served in a thin purée on the side. Both of us had chicken flavoured with pastis and served with a rouille sauce; the menu identified the farm from which the chicken had come. We ate every morsel of a very large platter; the chicken was surprisingly flavourful and the sauce almost perfectly balanced. You are offered a choice of vegetables: ratatouille, creamy polenta, potatoes of various sorts. Again, we both had the ratatouille, though I am now sorry we didn't take one serving of the polenta. The ratatouille was lovely, each vegetable coming through clearly. Dessert was a bowl of cherries, poached in syrup and served with a scoop of ice cream dusted with pralin. Delicious, but not as outstanding as the other dishes that evening. Simple, good, and appropriately priced: the Robert Brown/John Whiting school of gastronomy. These places still exist, no matter what the cynics say. This one is well worth seeking out. Au Rendez-Vous des Amis 176 avenue de Rimiez, Nice Tel 04 93 84 49 66 Closed Tuesday and Wednesday out of season, Wednesday in season Directions: exit the A8 at "Nice Nord" and follow Route de Gairaut toward Falicon. At Falicon, turn right onto avenue de Rimiez. But arm yourself with a good map of Nice before trying this: the place is not easy to find. The nearest landmark is the Clinique St Georges.

A return visit to Les Arcades last week. "The people are coming like flies" (ils viennent comme des mouches) said the proprietor, but he managed to find us a pleasant table in the shade. Within a few moments, the restaurant was full, indoors and out. The food was just as good as on our previous visits. As a starter, I had marinated herrings. They came in a large glass bowl from which you took as much as you wanted; they were served with a couple of potatoes, steamed just to the right point and covered with chives. The herrings were thick, meaty, and beautifully flavoured; I had to stop myself from taking a fifth. My wife started with a salade niçoise. The anchovies were tasty, but not as good as they could have been. The vegetables were fresh and flavourful and the vinaigrette nicely balanced. For a main, I ate a dish of rabbit "à la provençale", offered off-menu. It was perfectly prepared: rabbit can easily be overcooked to the point of dryness, but this was tender and juicy. My wife had an omelette "aux violets" (purple artichokes) -- also delicious. Strawberries and tarte au citron (lemon tart) finished the meal. The strawberries were far better than those I had had the night before at L'Amandier de Mougins, and less than half the price. I asked the proprietor the reason for the sudden rush of custom, at a time when many places were not all that busy. Was it my glowing writeup on eGullet? The positive mention in Gault Millau? "I don't give a fart about Gault Millau", he said; "Or any other guide, for that matter. I don't even respond when they call. As long as the food is good, I am happy." It was good, so I hope he was happy. We certainly were.

Lunch at top London places (GR RHR, Le Gavroche, etc.) is often far more reasonably priced than dinner, and a great way to get to know a restaurant's cuisine. Same is true in Paris. In London, at least, the captains of industry will not often have business lunches at the truly gastronomic places (as opposed to trendier spots like Le Caprice); doing so would be seen as lavish and in violation of the new lean and mean business ethos. And they won't take wine, either, so the opportunity to match food and wine is missed. But they will have dinner at these places, without missing a beat, and happily drink wine. I wonder whether this explains at least part of the substantial price difference.