Jonathan Day

Bux, I hope I wasn't communicating francophobia -- I love the country, cheerfully pay a staggering sum in taxes to the Trésor Public and spend as much of every year in France as I can get away with. My point was simply that the French are happy to differentiate customers based on language or presumed national origin. Years ago I worked in a Chinese restaurant; I learned that there was one expression for 'ordered by Chinese' and another for 'ordered by foreigner'. This was done, I was told, because foreigners didn't like properly seasoned Chinese food. Given the time and place, the restaurant owner was probably right. The French do something like this, in their own way. I guess it's a matter of knowing that the differentiation is taking place and not being overly surprised. Like you, I don't see why the credit card could not be charged in advanced and then credited if the reservation is cancelled in good time. Perhaps there is a problem because it is relatively easy for a customer to dispute a charge to a credit card.

This may apply on long-haul flights, but I have noticed no difference between passengers on flights within Europe. For many routes the price difference between "fully flexible economy" fare and "business class" fare is almost nil. If you can plan your trip in advance and know that you won't change, you get a cheap economy fare. If not, you fly business class. Oh yes, you get a few more frequent-flier miles when travelling in business class. And at Heathrow you get to use the "fast track" through security -- this can make a big difference on a busy morning.

I wish I didn't agree with you, Marcus, but I do. Many of the French live in their own world. And it's a very nice world, and they don't seem that interested in leaving it or having it changed by others. Some Americans do things in Paris restaurants that some French staff find bizarre: they hold the fork in the wrong hand, switching it back and forth to cut their food and eat it; they ask for sauces "on the side"; they demand that coffee be served at the same time as dessert. A lot of this is tied up with the language: speak French, even with a foreign accent, and you will be far more readily accepted. Many restaurant staff, even in fine restaurants, either don't speak English very well or speak it less well than they think they do and thereby get in trouble. So the concierge system doesn't really help. The concierge is making a reservation for an unwanted customer. The business that's needed is one where French people would ring the restaurants, pretending that they were locals, reserving for themselves. Then they would give a local number (or a French cellphone number) where they could receive a confirming call the day before. Problem is that they would have to keep changing names and numbers: once "M. Baudrand from Passy" turned out to be Mr Smithers from Amarillo who didn't speak a word of French and wondered aloud why they had to doll up that goldurned steak with all that consarned French stuff, the jig would be up.

Bux, why is a bonding company needed? What is the problem with the customer giving the restaurant a credit card number in such a way that the restaurant has positive proof of the customer's assent to charge the card in the event of a no-show? Could this not be done through fax or a secured internet connection? The airlines are more sophisticated about pricing than are restaurants. Consider flights within Europe. The service offer for "business class" and "economy class" are basically the same -- same cramped seats, almost the same bad food. With business class, you get a more generous interpretation of the hand-baggage policy, and you may get newspapers and hot towels. But what you are really paying for is an option to change the reservation at short notice, without incurring a charge. That's the main differentiator. To me it seems perfectly legitimate for a restaurant in high demand to obtain a credit card number at the time of a reservation, and to levy a rather high charge (say, the medium-priced fixed menu per customer) in the event of a no-show. Or this charge could vary with time: no charge 24 hours before the reservation time, 25% up to 12 hours before, 50% up to 6 hours before, 100% if there is a no-show.

Sandra, thanks for the reference to the original thread. What I was curious about was "Le Cercle", the private section. Have members visited it? Does anyone know what the annual fee costs? Is the menu there the same as in the restaurant? Or is this exclusively for Paris residents?

The Lucas Carton website (www.lucascarton.com) advertises a private club, "Le Cercle". Here is a better translation of the proposition than the site provides; for some reason the English version fails to mention the membership fee: "The Circle" is located on the first floor of the restaurant, accessed by a separate door on the passage de la Madeleine. Elegant, private and stylish, the room is dominated by a New York style bar. For even greater intimacy there are two small private dining rooms for special meals with friends. The Circle now has more than 2,000 privileged members, who lunch and dine there regularly. If you are interested in joining us, you must apply by mail and you must be sponsored by an existing member of The Circle. You will also be asked to complete a questionnaire. If the management accept you, you will be asked to pay an annual fee and will receive a membership card. [The amount of the fee is not stated] Has anyone visited this place? Of more gastronomic interest, the site also has quite a few of Senderns' "harmonies" -- pairings of food and wine.

Jinmyo, could this be a reflection of the quality of rabbit you are getting there? Perhaps things are different in Canada, but the rabbit I remember in the US was almost always frozen and had very little character. Here, the rabbits I buy are anything but frozen -- at quite a few butchers and game dealers they hang in the shop and are skinned as you order them. This rabbit doesn't taste anything like chicken, even with a relatively simple preparation, e.g. marinated with olive oil and a bit of lemon and then grilled. You also get the liver, which can add a lot to the flavour of a finished dish. And, late in the year, you get hare, which has so much "character" that it can be a problem. I love hare, but can only cook it rarely because my wife finds the gamey flavour too strong.

The Brasserie Roux at the Sofitel St James's is not bad, and the prices are reasonable. Like other hotels, it should be open on the 25th.

I make pomegranate ice cream and sorbet in the fall. Easiest way I have found to extract the juice is to put the arils in a large, heavy "zip lock" plastic bag. Roll over the bag with a rolling pin to crush the seeds. Turn the bag once or twice so that every side of the arils will be crushed. Strain the juice.

Steve, how would you compare the tastes of New York City with those of France -- given, of course, similar ingredients and preparations? I can think of a few tastes and aromas that tell me "you are in France". One is the sharper intensity of garlic (most notable in the raw plant, but also in cooked dishes). Another is that chickens have what I can only describe as a deeper taste (more bass notes), either because they are given different feed or not soaked in ice water. The third is that real French bread often has a tang that is hard to find elsewhere. I have not eaten bistro cuisine in NYC but I have in Chicago and a few other US cities. The main difference I've noticed is a tendency toward sweetness in sauces.

In several years of attending Good Food shows and the like, my wife and I have somehow managed to accumulate an astonishing number of jars of chutneys, pickles, rubs, spices and the like. Friends who know that we like to cook send us ‘gourmet’ products – flavoured vinegars, mustards of all descriptions, spice rubs, pepper mixtures, argan oil, you name it. (I forgot to recount that, late in the game, Sophie discovered a little bottle of argan oil which she had intended to pour onto her scallop-pancetta-harissa-preserved lemon-garlic salad, but it had escaped her attention, hence the salad.) Most of these flavouring ingredients go on the shelf, with full intention of using them on chicken, or fish, or whatever. Most of them stay on the shelf. Then, about once a year, we have a clean-out, and toss away several bags of stuff. The reality is that you can do an enormous amount with very few pre-mixed seasonings. Sugar, salt, lemon, garlic and pepper would be high on my list; then the variations: a few different vinegars (red, white, balsamic, but not herb flavoured), shallots in addition to garlic, ginger, shoyu. A few dried mushrooms. Mustard. What almost never gets used are compounds: honey mustard, garlic vinegar, chilli-flavoured olive oil. Yet the ‘jars of terror’ have a strong attraction. And I’m sure that (until we downshift and move to a kitchen with one shelf and no room for anything but the essentials) we will continue to accumulate them and throw them away.

I see no need to defend Chez Bruce (or any other restaurant, for that matter). Educated and passionate people will disagree. What floats one eater’s boat will sink another’s. Especially in the absence of shared criteria or standards, there is no point in growing emotional over these judgements. My point about an off night was serious, but also made in a spirit of rhetorical generosity. I want to understand why someone reacts as they do to Chez Bruce, or Gagnaire, or the French Laundry. But the assertion that places like Chez Bruce or Racine are ‘Britishizing’ (!!) French recipes brings back an idea that remains core for me: the necessity of a nonclassicist view of the classics. Without this, we fall back either into dogma (‘there is one correct way to prepare Sole Duglière, and it is described on page 2238 of Escoffier’) – or, perhaps worse, total relativism. Again, if I were to try to defend the British cooks who have been influenced by the French tradition I would say that they are taking ingredients that they can source from local suppliers and sell to local clients, then applying French techniques and aesthetic sensibilities to them. In the same way, a French chef in Britanny will work with different materials than one in the Southeast and will adapt the style to local tastes. This isn’t a case of ‘Britannising’ Southern dishes. It is a dialect rather than a different language.

I think we could learn from your analysis of how the menu didn't read well. The CB menu changes daily, but its style is reasonably consistent. I've posted a menu from some weeks ago, earlier in this thread. Could you say a bit more about how you reacted to it or what was missing? I believe that there is a strong connection (including, perhaps, cross-ownership; I'm not close enough to know) between Chez Bruce and The Square. I've occasionally (though not lately) experiened oversalting at CB, but no more so than what I notice elsewhere. It's horrible when restaurants dump in salt to correct stocks or sauces that are insufficiently flavoured or reduced. Too many places in France do the same thing. At current price levels the gross margins on bottled water must be a big multiple of anything other category, including wine, so perhaps this is also a way of increasing water consumption.

It is difficult to react to a review like this, both given the lack of detail and also since it is clear that your party and CB somehow failed to ‘connect’ this time around. If the cuisine didn’t excite you, all I can say is that – not on every visit but far more often than not – I have found the experience very enjoyable. Like almost every restaurant, CB has its off days. Reflecting on your comments and on Robert Brown’s thoughtful review of the French Laundry, I wonder whether a restaurant can’t get into a ‘downward spiral’ on particular days, where the dance and flow between kitchen and front of house simply break down and it is hard to pull out of the downward dive. We had a lovely dinner at the Hostellerie Jérome in La Turbie last week; it was fine, right up until the end, when the service completely disintegrated. Review to follow on the French board. What I’ve enjoyed at CB has been high quality ingredients, cooking that is generally of a high technical standard (fish in particular, but also saucing) and interesting takes on French dishes. Bruce is more of a traditionalist than an innovator, and his cuisine is more bourgeois than haute, simple and good rather than elaborate. But this often suits me. And he is happy to throw in brains, sweetbreads, kidneys and other bits of the animal that too often don’t make it to the table in other restaurants. The service is usually very good, as well, though I have found it more variable than the food. And they are enthusiastic about wine. Did you discuss your wines with Bruce or with the waiter when you ordered? Did they suggest dishes to complement the wines? Did you have their cheeseboard? A month or so ago it was a nice balance of French (La Fromagerie) and English (Neal’s Yard) cheeses, all in fine condition and served with erudition and enthusiasm. I know that cheese is, in some sense, not ‘cuisine’, but it does speak to the restaurant’s focus on food (as opposed to atmosphere, etc.) and their attention to detail.

Steve, thanks for some evocative and informative posts. You have sharpened my appetite for a Piedmontese trip. In my experience – and many Italian friends confirm this – nothing in Italy ever quite ‘works’ as it is supposed to. Governments rise and fall, telecommunications come and go, water supplies vanish suddenly. Most of all, transport is incredibly unreliable. All sorts of things get in the way: ‘lightning’ strikes, road accidents, police interventions, extended lunch hours. It is worse than Britain, and that is saying a lot. That said, the Italians somehow manage to get on with life in a way that makes some of us envious. Appointments can always be rescheduled. Things can be worked out. Life goes on. I sometimes wonder whether the Italian love for mobile telephones stems, in part, from the fact that life there must be lived more flexibly and adaptively than in some parts of the world. Contrast this with environments that are more efficient but also more ‘brittle’. In financial circles in Frankfurt, for example, the infrastructure works almost flawlessly, but woe betide anyone who is late for an appointment. Which system is better?

Rochelle, I happened to scan some of your earlier diary entries, trying to locate something I had remembered in one of the subsequent discussions. I was struck by the degree of confidence and energy that has emerged in your writing, whether you are making pasta or cutting up chickens. This growing mastery is always a delight to see, even through the distant lens of this board. Congratulations, and best of luck with your search for the right externship.

I find that I rarely add salt when dining out in France, and I use it sparingly in my own cooking. I heavily salt water for pasta and boiled vegetables, but that's about it. My children, who have sharper taste sensations than I, are quick to notice food that is overly salted, and this has reduced my use of it. And I hate restaurants where the chefs reach for the saltbox to correct a stock or sauce that is fundamentally lacking in flavour. But this soup needed salt, and just a bit brought the flavour right up. I know what you mean about unctuous, gelatinous preparations – a properly prepared dish of pieds et paquets would be a good example. At times these are delicious, especially when you can go from the meal to a siesta. That wasn't the case that day, so the lighter preparation was perfect. The tripe had been cut into thin strips. My guess is that it had been sautéed. The sauce was not heavy, with a bit of saffron and lemon in it, and a hint of chilli. Julia Child might have called it “tripe bouillabaisse”. It was not tripes à la mode de Caen, and I apologise for forgetting the exact description that La Cave had chalked on the board. Whatever it was, it was good.

We returned from France on Saturday, sad to have gone from blue skies to cold, dark and rain. I was cheered to see Vanessa’s notice of the Food Lovers’ Fair in Covent Garden and went there on Sunday afternoon. It was one of those beautiful London afternoons, sunny and clear. Covent Garden was abuzz with mimes and Chinese musicians. The Food Lovers’ Fair was in full swing. I wished that I had brought the children. As I arrived at the demonstration theatre, Henrietta Green was introducing the next ‘chef’ to demonstrate: Sophie Grigson. I have always had a soft spot for Sophie Grigson, first because she has followed in the footsteps of her marvellous mother, Jane, and second because I had long enjoyed the simplicity and variety of her newspaper columns, later collected in Sophie’s Table. Sadly, the demonstration proved that you can be an interesting writer and a warm public personality, yet not be a very good improvisational cook. Sophie swung onto the stage, full of energy, trying to warm up the crowd with jokes and questions. “I don’t really know what I am doing here,” she said – and I had taken this ironically, only to realise that it was true. She had searched the market for interesting, seasonal ingredients and was improvising a meal based on these. A wonderful idea, if only it hadn’t failed in the execution. Sophie Grigson’s skills with the knife and the pan were lacking from the start; it took forever to get things cut up, and she was afraid to shift ingredients in the pan with anything other than a fish-slice (rubber spatula) – she was certainly not about to grab the handle and give it a good shake. Professional skills can be optional if the cook’s ideas are good. But, for the most part, these weren’t. The first dish was a sort of warm salad of scallops, wild boar pancetta, garlic, red peppers, Moroccan harissa, Moroccan preserved lemons and lettuces. The pancetta and garlic were fried in olive oil, then the peppers added, then the harissa, then the whole thing was doused in vinegar. “Oh,” said Sophie, “too much vinegar.” But the contents of the pan were “tipped” onto the leaves, with slices of preserved lemon, and the scallops placed on top. Because it was so vinegary, she poured more oil on top. It looked (and smelled) a ghastly mess. Then another scallop dish: “surf and turf”. This time she fried red onions in olive oil. In went more vinegar, then a big sprinkling of Demerara sugar to caramelise the onions. Venison sausages were extracted from their skins, shaped into patties about the diameter of a 50p piece, and fried. Scallops were fried. Sophie then called to Henrietta, who was waiting backstage: “Do you have a lovely sort of sauce back there, a kind of wonderful tomato chutney, that sort of thing?” Henrietta quickly emerged with a jar labelled “Thai Jelly”. “That looks just right”, said Sophie, who was busily slicing focaccia into small squares. “Surf and turf”, as finally assembled, consisted of a square of focaccia, a “tangle” of those sweet-and-sour onions, a sausage patty (which looked, by then, to have been thoroughly burnt), a dash of “Thai Jelly”, a scallop, and half of a cherry tomato. “Oh dear,” said Sophie, “now we can’t fit the top piece of bread on. Oh well, we’ll just leave it like that.” Quite. The final dish was the one that looked best, and it was the one that wasn’t improvised. Apples (Jonagolds, said Sophie) were cored but not peeled and divided into segments. These were fried in oil and butter, Demerara sugar was added, and then a splash of apple brandy poured in and set aflame. (She should have warned people, by the way, never to pour spirits straight from a bottle into a hot pan.) “Don’t you just love flambéeing?” trilled Sophie, “it’s so dramatic!” Finally, a large portion of cream was poured into the pan and cooked a bit more. Sophie chose a dish to serve the apples in: “How about this one? It has a big squid on it.” She couldn’t figure out why her sauce (“a lovely brandy butterscotch sort of thing”) wasn’t coming along with the apples, then realised that she was using a spoon with holes in it. Finally a lump of vanilla ice cream was put onto the dish. I suspect that the problem – apart from a simple lack of technical skill – was that Sophie was improvising. Had she been able to work through the dishes in her kitchen, she would have seen that, essentially, the same sweet-acrid-sour flavours were appearing in all three dishes, and that the first two, especially, were combinations that didn’t blend. Hodge-podges. I think this explains how she can be a very effective writer, despite having delivered a poor demonstration. After the demonstration I wandered the market. It wasn’t bad, but it was heavily biased toward prepared foods. The “fresh, local, seasonal ingredients” that Henrietta and Sophie had praised were scarce. But there were numerous stalls selling sugared, spiced and vinegared preparations: preserves, chutneys, bottled sauces, relishes. So perhaps the first two dishes that Sophie had prepared were not so bad, just reflective of the national love of this sort of sweet-sour taste. Still and all, it was good to see so many people there, following the demonstration with interest. A French family standing behind me watched the apple preparation carefully, interspersing comments (“You could use Calvados there”, etc.). Men, women and children were milling around the market, tasting and commenting. Even a brief downpour didn’t really spoil the mood: the clouds departed as quickly as they had gathered, and the fun went on. Henrietta Green deserves praise for this venture. I hasten to add that all of the above judgements are personal and subjective and are not evaluative of the relative merits of different national cuisines. No Plotnickiism here.

I had meant to dine at La Cave for quite awhile, following recommendations on this board from Steve Plotnicki and Robert Brown as well as a warm writeup in Gault-Millau, which awards it 13/20 and says, in essence, “The welcome and the cuisine convey an equal joie de vivre in this warm and pleasing bistro. A nice wine list and a terrific atmosphere.” (my translation). But La Cave closes for all of August, and we had not managed to get there on previous trips. The atmosphere that Gault-Millau liked started, for us, with the booking. Instead of the usual “and what time would you like your table?” the reply was “How about 12.15?” – as if we were being invited to lunch. And it continued right through the meal. The room itself is small but high-ceilinged, with mirrors, cream-coloured walls and part of the kitchen open in the back of the restaurant. The set menu offers a lot of choice, with the options chalked on the wall. The welcome was warm and inviting. Our starters were not perfect. My wife had beignets of courgette flowers, tasty but a bit heavy. I had a pumpkin soup that the waiter recommended – “very smooth and velvety”. And so it was, but also badly underseasoned. It needed quite a bit of salt to bring the flavour up. Then, it was fine. I thought about asking for a lemon, as well, but this felt too much like going into the kitchen to fix a dish that wasn’t quite right. Our main courses, though, were excellent. My wife’s duck with green peppercorns was delicious: the outside slightly charred, the inside very juicy, with a great sauce. I had, by far, the best dish of tripe I have ever eaten. Sometimes tripe is heavy and gelatinous. This tripe was tender yet deeply flavoured. The sauce had a touch of acidity that gave it brightness. Saffron potatoes went along with the tripe. They also had lambs' trotters on offer, which I plan to try soon. The wine list was long and interesting, but we had a busy afternoon ahead. When we asked for a half-bottle, the waiter suggested their house wine, private-labelled “Le Pot de La Cave”, which comes in a 50 cl version. This was perfect: a half-bottle (37.5 cl) is usually not enough, yet a full bottle (75) is too much. 50 cl is a nice solution. The wine was a pleasant red coteaux varois. Portions both of starters and mains had been generous, and we didn’t feel like dessert, but calissons d’Aix came along with our coffee – a perfect ending. We will certainly revisit La Cave, ideally with arrangements made so that we can sample more of those wines. It is exactly the kind of “old dining” that Robert Brown has written about, and that it is getting harder to find nowadays.

Dove's, in Northcote Road, did one of these for me, something like 7 years ago. If I recall correctly it was a small turkey, a duck, a small chicken, a pheasant, and one other small game bird -- five in all. Dove's called the whole assembly a "game bird". I don't think a goose was involved. I bought two black truffles preserved in oil, which I chopped up and spread throughout the insides along with garlic, herbs, bit of lemon and the oil from the truffles. I sewed it up and roasted it very simply, in a medium oven with a mirepoix in the roasting pan. Used an instant-read thermometer to check the interior temperature; I have no idea how long it took. It was fun to prepare, easy to carve and good to eat, but the different meats sort of blended together and the distinctive tastes of the different fowl didn't come through as strongly as I might have hoped. I haven't repeated the experiment. I did get a huge bag of bones and scraps which made a delicious stock. Cost, with truffles, something like £120. Even as a very faithful customer, it took a bit of persuasion to get one of the butchers at Dove's, to do this little operation for me, since it happened at the height of the Christmas turkey/goose rush. If I were to do this again, I would try to avoid this season to prepare such a bird. Or I would bone the fowl myself.

First, let me say how grateful I am for the time and energy you have put into these replies to our questions. Thank you. Since reading your Guardian column on low temperature cookery I have done a lot of experiments with this. I've had good success with duck breasts, as well as your chicken technique, and also with mutton. The challenge has been to get a reliable low temperature in a home oven. Normal home ovens just don't want to go that low, and the electric oven I use switches off when you open the door. Even the "plate warming" oven of our Aga runs higher than 70C. Most of my experiments with low-temperature cooking a have been with a professional "combi" oven with a digital control, one that happily goes as low as you want it. But how would you recommend that we get these low temperatures using domestic equipment? Again, thanks for your thoughtfulness in answering our questions.

One more data point: I've dined at a number of gentlemen's clubs where it was very clear that neither members nor staff cared much about the food; or if they did, they weren't going to say anything about it. It wasn't just that the meats were overcooked and the vegetables boiled for a minimum of an hour, it was more that these weren't valid topics on which it would have been considered legitimate for kitchen or the customers to have a point of view. More attention was given to the wines, oddly enough. It was OK to make an appreciative comment when tasting a Chablis (though not to aereate the wine in the glass or to sniff the wine before tasting); it would have been out of place to comment on the quality of the cooking. I think this gets to Wilfrid's important comment about the diner making a statement by choosing a specific restaurant or type of restaurant. Assuredly, clubs in St James's can hardly be considered representative of British cuisine as a whole.

Fair cop, guv. Guilty as charged. I would put The Ivy in the 'modern' category -- e.g. pumpkin risotto. Unfortunately I've had more bad meals than good at Sheekey's; its cuisine and service are surprisingly variable. I've only eaten once at Wilton's, which was very good (Dover sole). Rules can also be good, in game season and when the staff are well motivated, though again I've had some bad food there. Nonetheless you and Macrosan are right. Over the years I've had some very good trad food including, to my surprise, some rather tasty eels at a pie and mash shop. I can only plead that I did try to balance the ledger a bit with the portrait of American food, the quantity and fattiness of which is a fairly frequent dinner party topic here ... mostly amongst neighbours who have just returned from Orlando, Florida.

This weekend, while wandering in a forest of argument about French and Italian restaurants, haute cuisine, technique, and other topics that have trodden these boards for quite a while, I started to think about the implicit message that different kinds of restaurants seek to convey to their customers. And I am struck by how different the messages are. Some of the conversation so far has sought to capture the different communications of French and Italian restaurants, but I thought it might be interesting to pursue this line of thinking. So here are a few ‘pen portraits’ of the messages that it seems to me that restaurants of different genres are seeking to convey. I have had to indulge in some sweeping generalisations, of course, but so be it. These are, I hope, loving caricatures. I do but jest, poison in jest; no offence i' the world. The traditional French haute cuisine restaurant (Taillevent, for example, or a place outside France such as the Waterside Inn) says, “We have gone to enormous lengths to give you pleasure. Bresse chickens, Sisteron lambs and Normandy lobsters – not to mention a few of our overworked apprentices – have died for your enjoyment. We have concasséd, larded, barded, boned, stuffed, braised, simmered, reduced and puréed your food, to the point that you barely need to lift the fork to your mouth. Before you ever crossed our doorsill, our wine suppliers worked for decades to ready the finest wines for your meal. Our serried ranks of waiters attend your every need and seek to know what you want before you ask for it. Only you, and a few of the elite like you, can access the incredible techniques we have mastered. You are one in a million. Eventually the bill will arrive, but for the time you are with us, you are a member of royalty.” The Western ‘high art’ restaurant (Gagnaire, El Bulli, Fat Duck) is not as subservient in its message: “We are the teachers here, and you are our students. Those little dabs of brightly coloured purée, the peanut butter-spinach-horseradish gaspacho, the chilli-tuna-tomato lollipops, the boeuf bourguignon ice cream – they are all part of our art. You will eat them in the sequence and even the manner we prescribe, scooping your spoon through contrasting layers of foam just as we direct you. We will challenge all of your assumptions about food and find new ways to enlighten you and give you pleasure. It’s up to you to suspend your beliefs about food and find ways to enjoy it. While you are with us, we are not on trial. You are. The Japanese ‘high art’ place (e.g. a fine kaiseki ryori restaurant) combines elements of the first two: “We’ve studied for years to learn just how to slice fish in the right way, just how to create a magical little pile of shredded vegetable, just how to make a miso soup that is light and flavourful yet somehow proclaims “autumn!” with one mushroom and a wisp of herb. We’ll bring you course after course of what’s right for this time of year and this place, all presented in the right sequence. You may not be able to recognise or even appreciate the subtleties of colour, shape and flavour, but while you are with us you will know that they are present.” The French provincial cuisine restaurant – for example, one of the great old Lyonnaise Mères or a place like Loulou in Cagnes-sur-mer – says: “We have mastered our trucs and astuces over the years. It’s that dab of mustard in the sauce, that special way of simmering the chicken in the pig’s bladder, our wizardry with the grill, that enable us to transform the ordinary into something magical. And now that you’ve been clever enough to find us, you can share in the benefit of this knowledge. For the time you are with us, you are a savvy insider, a member of those in the know.” The Italian restaurant conveys a message something like this: “Look what we’ve just found in the forest and the market! The freshest mushrooms, the most tender young salads, the most beautiful beefsteaks. And you’ve just walked in to share this goodness. Now we’ll prepare it quickly and simply, with just a splash of the best olive oil and a few very fresh herbs. Our meal may not be elaborate or formal, but nothing will get in the way of this bounty. This isn’t really a commercial transaction, even though we will bring you a bill. For the time you are with us, you are a member of the family.” The classic British restaurant: “Life is hard and resources scarce. Bad things happen more often than good. But one must eat, after all. So see if you can choke down what we’ve prepared – after all it’s better than going hungry. Come in out of the rain. For the time you are with us, you can cheat starvation.” The modern British restaurant – St John, let’s say, or Chez Bruce – has a brighter message: “Food is good! It can give pleasure! What a wonderful surprise! Like a sunny summer afternoon, it may arrive only a few times a year – but what happiness it can bring! For the time you are with us, you can forget about how tough life is, and enjoy yourself.” The American restaurant: “Look how bountiful the world is! There’s so much food to enjoy! You can choose from a huge variety of foods and eat just as much as you want: the biggest steaks, mountains of fries, platefuls of pasta, enormous salads covered with prawns, grilled chicken, shredded cheese and baco-bits, all followed up with a whopping fudge-ice cream-marshmallow-caramel dessert. Or two. For the time you are with us, you can forget about finitude.” The Chinese restaurant: “Everything and anything can be good, if you can just work out how to prepare it. It’s just a matter of knowing how the particular animal, vegetable or mineral wants to be chopped up, and whether it wants to be fried, red-simmered, roasted, boiled, or … Yes, resources are scarce and you have to look in some strange places to find food. But once you’ve figured out how to prepare it, things, they can all be delicious. While you are with us, we’ll make luxurious ingredients, ordinary substances and things you wouldn’t otherwise touch taste very good.” Perhaps other members with different experience could complete the picture: German, Korean, Spanish, Jewish, …Canadian ?

I wonder whether we might find that this obsessive focus on a "star" performer is a relatively modern phenomenon. Go back far enough and you find artists who were deliberately anonymous, or were members of a specific school but not identified personally. Has the identification of the restaurant with its chef always been true, even in France? In countries where traditions of art are more communal and less personal (India, perhaps China), and where it wouldn't invariably occur to someone to ask who was the artist (e.g. of a piece of pottery, or a painting) would customers ask who the chef of a top restaurant was? I think it was in one of the Ruhlman interviews that Thomas Keller said that he was trying to create an institution with the French Laundry, a cuisine that he hoped would survive his departure: a chef-independent cuisine. But this hasn't happened in many French restaurants that I know of.