Jonathan Day

Aliwaks, Your perspective makes good sense. In fact it fits exactly with the perspective I set out elsewhere. It doesn't sound naive at all. If I were investing in a business that I thought would make money but was otherwise uninterested in, I would insist on returns that are greater than my so-called "cost of capital" -- my best alternative for the money I'm investing. If the business doesn't return at least that cost of capital, I would rationally withdraw my investment. My point about restaurants is that many owner-managers have the same attitude that you do: running a restaurant is what they want to do, it gives them pleasure, it is the exercise of their art, and therefore they don't demand the financial returns that a dispassionate outside investor would. This is great from the restaurateur's perspective (psychic satisfaction is far more important than financial, in my view) and from the customer's. It isn't good from the perspective of an outside investor looking at restaurants purely as an investment. They are competing with a passionate chef/owner who is (economically) irrational, because she/he is pursuing goals other than economic ones. This is one reason why restaurants are "a bad business". It is also why outside ownership (investors other than the owner-manager-chefs or their immediate circle) is probably a bad idea for restaurants.

As I post this, their website indicates spaces available as follows: Thursday Dinner 8 May 8 p.m. /50 euros :space still available: Wednesday Dinner 14 May 8 p.m. /50 euros :space still available: Sunday Gala Lunch 1 June 2 p.m. /75 euros :space still available: wine included

Another way of framing both Jon and John's comments, I think, is that many restaurateurs and chefs have different goals in mind ("utility functions" in economist-speak) than accumulating piles of cash. The "rational actor" chef/owner would readily yield to the forces of consolidation and sell out to McDo's; or realise that he/she was earning well below the minimum wage when earnings were reckoned on an hourly basis. But many chef/owners march to a different drummer. I do think that many independent restaurants pay insufficient attention to stability and basic financial strength. Their goal might not be to earn scads of money but simply to build an institution that can weather the storms of boom and recession. This more modest objective would lead to better discipline in cost control, pricing and the like. John, doesn't classical music, at the very, very top (and by this I do not mean "the best" but "the most in demand") obey the Winner Take All model -- i.e. a large gap in earnings between the top 10 (conductors, violinists, quartets, etc.) and the rest? The simple reason for this would be that record producers would be more likely to bet on "name" performers than on those of the next tier. I grew up in a musician's household, and spent much of my childhood surrounded by talented and diligent classical musicians who eked out modest livings through teaching, playing in the local symphony and the like. The musicians who made recordings were in a different world altogether. As I have said, I don't think the Winner Take All phenomenon is socially optimal, or that it implies that everyone acts as homo economicus.

Janet, I would normally agree. With durian, somehow the smell stopped being vile after a few minutes, and after I got closer to the fruit. At that point, I was able to taste the underlying fruit flavour, which was interesting. I suspect that what was operating was a kind of sensory saturation or adaptation., where the effect of the bad smell diminished over time and rendered the fruit palatable. The durian I was served was carefully selected by a very skilled Thai cook; she rejected most of the fruit in the market before choosing them.

Jackal10, let me recap the "Winner Take All" idea with the analogy of a law firm. For corporate customers, it isn't that difficult to switch from one firm to another. And yet when a company is doing a large and difficult M&A deal, where millions will be lost if the deal fails (or if tax treatments go wrong), there is a push to use the best "white shoe" firm possible, to the point that companies will try to get the top firms conflicted so that they cannot advise a competitor. The firm generally acknowledged as the very best at M&A can (and does) charge something like 30%-50% more than the number two. The extra money is nothing compared to the potential cost of "getting it wrong". Now I would argue that something like this holds with top-rated restaurants. Suppose you are travelling from, say, Chicago to Paris, with a week in which to dine at fine restaurants. You know that some restaurants are rated at the top of the guides. Your trip, before you lift the first fork to your mouth, has cost a bundle, what with hotels, airfare, foregone income from vacation, and the like. So what if a three-star restaurant will cost €500 for two? You've gotten up in the middle of the night, a month in advance, to grab that table at L'Astrance; will you really quibble about the price? The economic mechanisms operating here are, I think: (1) an information problem in that you know that chef A will be better than chef B, but you have no idea how much; (2) a high opportunity cost, since you may not be able to repeat the trip any time soon; (3) a kind of network externality that stems from chef A's reputation; (4) a reinforcing effect for (3) as more and more people try to book chef A's restaurant, struggle to do so, and decide that chef A must be worth a lot more.

In another Symposium thread (here) I discussed the idea of so-called Winner Take All markets, economic systems in which a very small number of actors collect a disproportionate share of the economic payoff. I asserted that restaurants (and I mean "real" restaurants here, not chains) are examples of such markets. To test this, you might look at the payoff to the (relatively) best restaurateurs or chefs. Suppose that you could "score" each chef on a scale from 1 to 100 (I know, this is a big supposition) where 100 is best. Now suppose that you discovered the following: Chef....Score....Payoff ($000) ------------------------------------- A..........100.......750 B............98.......400 C............95.......300 D............90.......150 E............88.......100 etc. The "score" here is a measure not of the chef's aptitude or skill, but his or her relative desirability from an employer's or customer's point of view. By "payoff" I mean the total income of the chef: salary, profit share from the restaurant, book deals, TV appearances, etc. Think of Jamie Oliver's Sainsburys deal. Now in this case, chef C is only 5% "worse" than chef A, yet A takes away more than twice as much money. This would be an example of a Winner Take All market. A similar phenomenon occurs for CEOs and for athletes. So my question to "insiders" in the business is as follows: does the pattern of payoffs look like this? Even though the restaurant business is, in general, a difficult one, do those at the very top of the ladder (Gordon Ramsay, etc.) make largish amounts of money? Note that I am not saying that Winner Take All markets are a "good" thing -- in fact I believe, along with some economists, that they are socially damaging. Also note that a top chef may choose to divert funds to other purposes, e.g. charging customers less, or funding charitable purposes, or training other chefs, or closing the restaurant for 6 months of the year. It is said that Alice Waters earns little surplus from Chez Panisse, and that Ferran Adria basically breaks even on El Bulli. Economic theory explains many behaviours, but people, troublesome lot that they are, sometimes don't act as economists predict that they would.

Many thanks for joining in this Q&A. There are few things better than a lobster, perfectly fresh and simply prepared, perhaps with butter and lemon. But there are many, many elaborate recipes for lobster, removing the cooked meat from the shells and adding flavours such as vanilla (to highlight the sweetness of the lobster); anise (Pernod); tomatoes (provencale) and the like. Do you prefer simple lobster preparations, or do you ever make fancier ones? If you decide to gild the lily or elaborate the lobster, which versions do you prefer?

In a now-archived Symposium thread, here, we discussed Carolyn Korsmeyer's thesis that the line between "disgusting" and "delicious" is a thin one. I will try anything at least once, and have found very few foods in their natural states to be truly disgusting or impossible to eat. It is possible to have things very badly prepared and hence not attractive to the taste. Some commercially prepared products (e.g. certain flavoured crisps) seem to be so doctored with chemicals that they are difficult to eat. Perhaps the most difficult food for me so far was durian, because of the need to overcome the smell, but the fruit itself is very tasty.

I think for the comparison to make sense you have to have some "anchors" or typical meals (5-6 course degustation menu at one end, street snacks at the other); otherwise you end up saying, "street snacks in Thailand cost less than a 3 star meal in Paris" which is true but uninteresting. The Economist uses a Big Mac, I think, to run annual country purchasing power parity comparisons. Currency adjustments have an enormous effect here. In dollar term the costs of some categories of skilled labour in post-devaluation Argentina fell to between 1/3 and 1/4 those of comparable labour in the US or UK. And as a result, superb meals there became available for trivial prices.

It does look like an interesting city. However, I am surprised that you identified it by its name and not by LRH, its airport code. It seems to be served by flights to Clermont-Ferrand and London. (Edit: and service via Paris Orly as from tomorrow, 4 May)

Welcome, MobyP. I hope you'll write more, and I hope you'll tell us more about your own background (either here or in the "bios" forum).

No, Tony. Those were the financiers of two generation ago. Financiers one generation ago went to Petrus, ordered expensive wine and ran up £00000 bills. They they got sacked for publicly embarrassing their banks. Now, financiers just get sacked, without the wine.

Spencer, the point I was trying to make is that there may be a difference between "deep" creativity (which I think Adria practices) and "surface" creativity -- imitating the trappings of creativity but not really advancing the state of fine cuisine. Any hacker could take a classic dish and ring changes on it -- add toothpaste to boeuf bourguignon, serve a horseradish sorbet with your next roast chicken, take "coq au vin" apart by serving a broiled chicken breast, a glass of wine and a glass of chicken blood. What Adria did was different. In dining, cooking and reading I am generally more interested in traditional recipes, beautifully executed, and I tend to favour the simple over the baroque. I went to El Bulli with some concern that the meal would be conceptually interesting but neither tasty nor true to the essence of what the ingredients were. Neither supposition proved out. This food was delicious, first of all; then it was conceptually fascinating; finally, it was surprisingly simple. When you have the option to break the meal into 30 or so small dishes I guess it's easier to make each one more focused and direct. There wasn't a lot of "X with Y with Z". I have not dined at Trio (though it is high on my list) and I am curious to understand how it plays out on the "deep" vs "surface" creativity.

The April-May number of GaultMillau magazine has an article on "impertinent recipes": "Three ingredients, nine recipes to reinvent the classical and give meaning to modernism." (The magazine also has articles on Bernard Loiseau, on food criticism, and on an event that brought Michel Troisgros and Pascal Barbot together to cook endives. But this note focuses on the "impertinent recipes" piece). In each case, the author (Gilles Choukroun, chef of Le café des Delices) presents a traditional recipe, then two "modernist" variations. 1. Asparagus Traditional: à l'anglaise (boiled) with parmesan and soft-cooked eggs (oeufs mollets) Modern: served raw, with a dipping sauce made of olive oil, pastis, chopped peanuts and lemon juice Hypermodern: served as a purée, with diced raw asparagus, cream, argan oil, red pepper 2. Rack of lamb Traditional: Roasted, served with chips of Jerusalem artichokes and a coffee-flavoured jus Modern: "Pot au feu" of lamb with tea and spices ("Asian-Oriental" style) Hypermodern: a "Hamburger" of roast rack of lamb served with pesto, spinach leaves and ketchup 3. Chocolate (cacao) Traditional: Hot chocolate served with "soldiers" cut from pain d'épices Modern: Tagliatelle flavoured with cocoa served "carbonara" style, with a raw egg and chocolate sorbet Hypermodern: Chocolate tuiles with honey, lemon juice, red pepper, and vache-qui-rit (laughing cow) cheese (in its foil wrapper) * * * Apart from the fact that none of these dishes sound or look very appetising, I was struck that their "modernity" was a derivative of traditional dishes, rather as one might set new words to an old song, or present a Mozart opera with the characters wearing spacesuits. Thomas Keller does something similar, taking favourite dishes ("surf and turf", "coffee and doughnuts", "vitello tonnato") and ringing changes on them. This treatment can be valuable in that it may enable the diner to see the dish with fresh eyes, as it were, to taste it anew. But I am struck that very few of Adria's dishes seem to work this way. Yes, he makes "caviar" out of tapioca, and "tagliatelle" out of gelatin. And he does a few dishes that are in some sense derivative. In Secrets of El Bulli he describes the process of innovation, starting from the concept of "Mar y Montana" (sea and mountains, surf and turf) and ending up with a dish of marrow served with caviar. But for the most part, he seems to follow Maximin's dictum: "creativity is not copying", either other chefs' dishes or traditional recipes. His innovation is more basic, less a matter of taking old favourites and twisting them around then going straight to the essential form or flavour of something and making essential changes to that.

I've only been to Balzi Rossi, but have heard exactly the opposite view from those who have been to both places; and the Michelin reviews seem to confirm this: - Baia Beniamin is in the prettier spot but the cuisine has slipped (and it has lost the one Michelin star it held) - Balzi Rossi is not as lovely (though it does have some sea views in summer) but the food has held its quality. I'm not holding a candle for either place, just curious that the reaction would be so different.

Peter, I know your views on Michelin-rated restaurants, but the 1-star Balzi Rossi, just over the border (and I mean JUST over the border, literally 200 metres), is really very pleasant, and entirely Italian in style and spirit. I don't think you'd find it either disappointing or anything other than "real Italian", though it is not a local, downscale place. The Friday market in Ventimiglia is well worth a visit, though the traffic into the town can be horrible; we generally look ahead at the offramp from the autostrada and if it looks crowded drive on to the next down and double back to Ventimiglia along the coastal road.

Looking at your map, your villa is basically in Panzano. Another good town to visit is Radda and the Rampini ceramics / dinnerware factory, making beautiful dishes; prices are reasonable, and they ship.

Lucca is beautiful; another pleasant town is Greve in Chianti, which is a centre of the Slow Food movement. The neighbouring village, Panzano in Chianti, is also good and has (unless it has closed its doors in the last few years) an amazing leatherworker who will custom make shoes, jackets, handbags, etc., all of superb quality, and done very quickly. Both Greve and Panzano have very good local markets. Second the recommendation for Badia e Coltibuono. San Gimigniano is also worth a visit.

For me, a "sublime" dining experience involves a kind of aesthetic shock, a sense of revaluation and reorientation that comes after a particularly superb meal or dish. Now some of these have come at 3- and 2-star restaurants, where a brilliant chef demonstrated an unexpected degree of mastery, or where a dish arrived with layers of unanticipated complexity. But I have experienced the same sense of the sublime at places that prepare foods very simply: for example, a deep-fried squash blossom I had at Chez Panisse, many years ago; or a bistecca alla Fiorentina at a tiny village restaurant in Tuscany; or the carrots that accompanied the aioli I recently had at Les Arcades in Biot. Perhaps this comes from my spending a fair bit of time cooking. To some extent, the really complex dishes are almost out of reach, since they depend on equipment and techniques (e.g. sous-vide cooking, or the Pacojet, or really elaborate tricks with sugar) that are unavailable to most home cooks. But anyone can make steak, or fry a squash blossom, or cook a carrot, right? The shock, for me, came because, having tasted these dishes, I had to answer "no." These cooks had done things with simple, perfect foods that raised the bar for me. And they created the same sense of aesthetic shock and discovery, the same "shiver down the spine" that I have experienced at the highest of high-end restaurants.

According to BBC radio reports today, London's Chinese restaurants have experienced a serious drop in business owing to SARS fears.

Price is not irrelevant, in my view, it just isn't the primary characteristic of the continuum that Robert's first post set out. El Bulli, for example, charges a mere EUR 135 for 30 truly outstanding courses, and very modest prices for fine wines. On the other side, there are outstanding local restaurants that don't charge that much for their food, but cost a fortune to reach. And there are restaurants that charge very high prices but don't reach the high "extreme" on Robert's continuum. I would be happy paying a lot for absolutely fresh, perfectly cooked ingredients. In a net sense, I do pay a lot for this, because it costs a lot to spend time in Italy, France, Spain, and it takes a lot of time to seek out the places at one end of the extreme. Equally, I eat a lot of supposedly high end dinners that I don't pay for (they are business meals); I find it as annoying to receive a badly prepared, poorly executed high end dinner that I am paying for as one where someone else is paying. Price matters, but I at least don't see it as the defining point in the "in extremis" continuum of this thread. Robert may view it differently.

John, I also have enjoyed many pleasant meals and good hotel stays at the Logis de France establishments -- not every one has been successful, but the association generally seems to work. When in an unfamiliar part of France (and out of contact with eGullet) I tend to look either for a Logis hotel or for a hotel marked with the red rocking chair in the Michelin guide, signifying a quiet and pleasant setting. The red rocking chair seems largely independent of the grandness or simplicity of the hotel itself, or its price range. I hope you mean set menus priced at 200 to 500 francs rather than Euros! Your point about defining the "low" and the "middle" is a good one. I think Robert's original post was not an attempt to revive the old "fine dining vs cheap eats" debate, but rather a contrast between two different value propositions: the simple and local versus the exercise of a famous chef's technical skill. The two are somewhat correlated with price, but price is not the defining point. The Logis restaurants I have dined in have generally offered the first proposition.

In Secrets of El Bulli, Ferran Adria sets out 27 observations that others have made on his cuisine. I have translated his introduction to this section and the observations themselves. Some of them are clearly very personal (e.g. number 14) but others apply more broadly to avant-garde cuisine. * * * What people have said about my cuisine It is difficult to analyse the nature of my cuisine, because among other reasons it is hard to separate my ideas from my personal preferences. For this reason I have taken advantage of the great cooks and lovers of fine cuisine who have attended the courses we have given over the last four years at El Bulli, by compiling a series of their observations and hence providing a vision that complements my own. Naturally, observations that appear to some as a virtue will appear to others as a defect. 1. The element of surprise is very important. 2. We should bring something new to almost every dish, not just offer a mixture of ingredients. 3. Sometimes I use many ingredients (elementos) in a dish, sometimes far fewer. 4. To really understand this cuisine, it must be eaten in a tasting menu. 5. Almost every dish is served in small quantities 6. There are no second-class products; we get as much from a sardine as from caviar. 7. Nothing must be superfluous: everything must have a reason for being. 8. The complexity of simplicity. 9. This is a provocative cuisine, one that should lead people to think, rich in irony and humour. 10. It is also a transparent cuisine. 11. The cold savoury dishes (foams, jellies, ices, sorbets, soups) are without doubt what make our cooking distinctive; another differentiating element is the combination of many textures in a dish (menestra en texturas) 12. Nobody should really know where the "meal" ends and where the "desserts" begin. 13. We constantly search for new techniques… 14. … and new ingredients 15. We don't use fish fumet. 16. Temperature contrast is important… 17. …as is textural contrast. 18. We rarely follow the basic structure of "ingredient plus garnish". Garnish and sauce should be combined. 19. We have little interest in plates of meat. 20. But we have a passion for tapas, snacks, petits fours -- that is to say, for "little bites". 21. We look for consistency, for minimising technical faults as dishes are being cooked, seasoned, etc. 22. We use relatively few systems of cooking. 23. We respect the basic ingredients. Although we constantly transform ingredients, our point of reference is always the primary taste of the product. 24. Sauces that are soups, soups that are sauces. It is rarely possible to describe our dishes using the vocabulary of classical cuisine. 25. A passion for flavoured oils and vinaigrettes. 26. Almost every dish is matched to the rhythm and harmony of the meal. Each is carefully thought through. 27. Taste is the most important factor; cookery, before anything else, is about making things delicious.

A few comments, admittedly based only on one meal at El Bulli, but also made after reading both the new book and the 1997 Secrets of El Bulli. First, let me say that I am in no way arguing for "giving Adria a break". He has chosen to play at the highest international level, and he should be held to the highest possible standard. (That comment, by the way, has nothing to do with the prices at El Bulli, which are astonishingly low). Second, our meal was not perfect. It was very slow, especially at the end, and a few of the dishes could have been improved. The "caviar de ceps", for example, though wonderfully presented, didn't quite work either as caviar (it was too warm and the "eggs" didn't have the requisite texture) or as ceps (the flavour was slightly muddied). Having said all that, I am amazed by what Adria did, for a number of reasons. First, all of the dishes arrived in a relatively simple and unadorned state. We are all familiar with overcombined, overgarnished dishes, stacked, twizzled with sauces, adorned with fried dingbats, X-with-Y-with-Z-with-A-with-B-with-C. None of that here. Very few dishes combined more than two things (e.g. the oysters with fresh almonds), and in general each of the 30 dishes was highly focused and clear as to what it was supposed to be. Most of these dishes represented a kind of high wire act, with little to hide behind. And with one or two exceptions (out of 30) not only the presentation but the flavours were stunningly good. And even the exceptions were not bad, just not astonishing in flavour. Second, Adria's techniques, as far as I can see, look deceptively simple but must be devilishly tough in their execution; here I would include the gelatins, as but one example. Third, the kitchen cranked out 30 of these amazing dishes during our meal, plus several for those who couldn't eat pork or cheese or whatever. So I am left with an enormous (and unanticipated) sense of respect for Adria's mastery, not just as an innovator but as a cook.

Matthew, the ravioli place you are referring to is La Table D'Edmond. Edmond is a German chef who has tried to "brand" his take on ravioli by christening them "raviellis". We have had a few good meals there, but in general my take on Edmond's place is that it takes itself just a bit too seriously. In season there are sometimes good truffle menus at Le Rendez-Vous de Mougins and Brasserie de la Mediteranee, steps away from Edmond. Agree with you about the Petit Fouet and Resto des Arts -- both are friendly and pleasant, and I believe the latter is unusually flexible about the times for lunch service -- we once walked in at 2:10 pm, half expecting to get the usual cold shoulder and "c'est terminée" and instead enjoyed a good lunch. Le Mas Candille is an example of a place that is aiming above what it is really capable of doing. Sometimes the food there is very good, and I have had some superb fish dishes there. But in general the cuisine and execution at the Mas are a bit uneven, mostly because they are aiming so high. When I was there last summer, they were clearly chasing their first star. I don't remember any problems with the setting: in fact, coming there in winter, we enjoyed the reception area around a fireplace, where you could sip an aperitif and ponder the menu before going to your table. Chibois does the same thing, as of course do many other restaurants. The Mas also has a lovely terrace where you can watch the sun go down over the hills as you dine, in summer.