Jonathan Day

In the past, at least, Chez B have been very flexible about accomodating preferences. I have taken guests there who "forgot" to mention that they were strict vegetarians until we arrived. The restaurant handled this without missing a beat; I think they prepared a vegetarian risotto of some sort. That stuffed macaroni gratin with the coq au vin sounded a bit odd to me too. If it's still on the menu on my next visit I will ask about it.

Apparently service staff have suffered from the switch to the Euro. The old 10 franc piece was often used as "pourboire" e.g. when retrieving a car from the car park or rewarding some small service. The piece that corresponds to it in size, 1 Euro, was only 6.55957 francs. I have heard a number of complaints from delivery people, car park attendants and the like that they are being cheated. As related in an earlier post, I had a car park attendant at Tétou contemptuously hand back a 1 Euro piece I had given him.

Steve, the Martin article is not long and doesn't address all of these questions directly. On what happens to the McDonald's type of marketing, he says that the trend predicts trouble. Mass marketing and branding depends on "manufactured" status rather than the positional status that customers get by purchasing scarce goods: "To the extent that manufactured status enhancements are lsing their power to satisfy consumers, modern branding techniques may be running out of road. This will throw suppliers back on more traditional product and service enhancements and may help to explain some of the recent weakness in brand-related advertising expenditures." But it gets worse, because if consumers are really seeking experiences, they may be measuring their value in ways different ways to the traditional ones like product and service quality, ways over which companies have less control. "The challenge to consumer goods companies is a substantial one. Two of the main motors of generatiung demand growth -- product improvements and brand-related status enhancements -- both seem less powerful than before." The implication is that this affects multiple socioeconomic segments, not just the super-rich but also the typical McDonald's customer. Martin doesn't speak about equities. I would think the implications would be (1) problems for traditional consumer goods companies e.g. Unilever; (2) some shift out of equities and into real estate, art, rare coins, etc. However given that the vast majority of equity shares are held not by invididuals but by mutual funds, pension trustees and the like it is hard to know how strong this effect will be; (3) a general fall in productivity, since corporate innovation gets diverted from product improvements toward status enhancements. There is a longer academic article on the trend Martin speaks of, but I have not yet read it: Cooper, Garcia-Penalose and Funk, "Status effects and negative utility growth," Economic Journal, July 2001.

The Financial Times economist Peter Martin wrote an important article on 4th July, called "A homely challenge to branding." Under the new FT subscription system you cannot link to this piece, even though it is online. So here is a brief summary: - House prices are indeed rising: in the past year Spain is up by 18%, Ireland 8%, Britain in the year to May almost 18%. Smaller but significant increases in the US. - Martin thinks that "house purchases are part of a broader trend in which people are increasingly purchasing 'experiences' rather than goods per se." - Many of the experiences they seek are 'positional', i.e. conferring status. Your possession of a chocolate bar does not affect my enjoyment of my own bar. But with positional goods (example, lakefront property) your buying a house alongside mine harms my enjoyment. The knowledge that many other people have the same new car (or wristwatch, or access to a fancy restaurant) may make this less desirable to me. - Martin believes that there may be a broad scale shift toward positional goods, where supply of status is not easily created by innovation (or, for that matter, from product quality). There are all sorts of implications here for consumer goods manufacturers. If Martin is right -- and he usually is -- then this shift toward positional goods may explain (1) the rise of 'new dining'; (2) a broad trend toward higher prices; (3) a similar trend toward fewer tables and harder-to-get reservations. Conran, for example, is no longer building "gastrodomes" but smaller restaurants. There's money to be made here, but it sounds like bad news for diners.

At the last minute we called Chez Bruce and arranged a table for 9.15 pm. "Could we have a non-smoking table?" I asked. "No, we've been booked for two weeks, you only got this table because of a cancellation. It's in smoking." Too bad, because the small upstairs room is not only non-smoking, it is more peaceful and friendly than the more frenetic downstairs. And at this time of year, the late evening light coming through the window is very pleasant. The upstairs headwaiter is knowledgeable and helpful. A few months ago, after hearing a friend burbling over Chateau Musar, the Lebanese wine, I ordered a bottle. "I don't think you'd like that with what you've ordered," he said, and brought me a glass to try it. He was right. As it turned out, our table downstairs was smoke-free; the downstairs headwaiter was earnestly trying to put smoking tables together. Now if the woman at the next table had used a bit less than a pint of bad perfume, it would have been perfect. The food was very, very good. Bruce Poole was always talented -- we dined at Chez Bruce a week after it opened -- but he is now cooking with a confidence and verve that bode well. I started with a "salad paysanne with duck, fried calf's brains and red wine." This was a tangle of frisée scattered with smoked magret and tiny cubes of confit. There were equally small cubes of potato and a few croutons. The brains were panko'd and pleasantly warm. The "red wine" was a very small amount of a reduction that lent a little sweetness to the whole, and there were interesting herbs throughout. It all worked together beautifully. "This is Bruce's kind of dish," said the headwaiter, "all sorts of bits of animals scattered around in a salad." My kind of dish as well. My wife had the risotto nero, which was perfect: deeply flavourful, each grain precisely cooked. There were tiny squid with it, and two slices of red mullet that had a nice flavour but were overcooked. For the main, I had the stuffed rabbit leg. It was tasty but slightly tough and difficult to wrestle off the bone. The polenta was meltingly soft, and the beans exactly right in texture. My wife's assiette de veau was problematic. I should have thought of this in advance and checked with the waiter, because it had sweetbreads and kidneys -- something I love but my wife struggles with. Should they not warn customers of these things? Perhaps. But it was very good. For dessert I had the "plate of lemon and raspberry desserts", a long rectangular plate with, if I recall correctly, five different desserts: a tiny cake, a couple of mousses, a meringue filled with raspberry sorbet, and a lemon cream filled with fresh raspberries. My wife had the apple and cinnamon financier: "just like my Aunt Tillie's pound cake," she said, "but this one has a lot more flavour." We drank a 1999 Pommard; it started out a bit thin but opened up as the evening went on. The wine list seems to grow deeper by the week, and there is a great collection of pudding wines. When we return for the tasting menu (see below) I intend to ask the staff to choose for us. The service was efficient and friendly and spoke to the confidence and energy that have come to characterise this place. The waiters were knowledgeable about the menu, and the pacing was just right. The usual very good bread, a pleasantly salty loaf made with, I think, semolina, has now been supplemented by Poilâne bread. In the past they brought a lot of bread to the table, perhaps to fill in gaps between courses that were sometimes annoying. This time there was no need. In the past there was salt and pepper on the table. This time there was no need. Chez Bruce seems to have come into its own. "We are delighted to offer seven course tasting menus by prior arrangement", says the menu. We had not so arranged, and in any event a 9.15 seating was a bit late for a seven course menu, but will certainly be back to try this. Here is last night's menu -- it changes daily -- prix fixe at £30 for three courses. Starters Gazpacho andaluz Rocket and spinach salad with shallots and parmesan Salad paysanne with duck, fried calf's brains and red wine Foie gras and chicken liver parfait with toasted poilâne bread Scallops baked in the shell with leeks, carrots, pernod and chives (+ £4) Grilled salmon with potato salad, green beans and turnips Risotto nero with grilled red mullet and squid Deep fried lemon sole with tartare sauce Mains Coq au vin with a gratin of stuffed macaroni Côte de boeuf frites, sauce béarnaise (for two, + £5 per person) Stuffed rabbit leg served with polenta, borlotti beans and pesto Roast rump of lamb with spices aubergines, couscous and hummus Assiette of veal with garlic purée, puy lentils and balsamic jus (+ £4) Sauté of skate wuth beurre noisette, new potatoes and red wine Fillet of bream with summer bean salad, fennel and tapenade Roast cod with olive oil mash and gremolata Puddings Crème brûlée Strawberry sablé A plate of lemon and raspberry dessets Tropical fruit salad with grapefruit sorbet Hot chocolate pudding with praline parfait Apricot and almond tart with Jersey cream Warm apple and cinnamon financier, vanilla ice cream Cheeses from La Fromagerie and Neal's Yard (+ £5.50) Caramel ice cream or passion fruit sorbet

What follows is anecdote rather than systematic research. But George Stigler said that "the plural of anecdote is data", so it may be worthwhile. My impression is that the prices of ordinary goods and services in France increased sharply as a result of the conversion to the Euro: bread, fruit and veg, meat, dry cleaning, newspapers and the like. I was there over the introduction of Euro notes and coins, at the start of 2002. For awhile, prices were simply translations of Francs into Euros, and something that had sold for FF 100 was now EUR 15.24. The autoroute toll from Nice to Cannes had been FF 15.50; I think it went to EUR 2.36. I heard that some government ministry was monitoring prices to make sure that shopkeepers didn't take advantage of the Euro to increase prices. Initially the locals complained that the Euro was inconvenient -- in part because it was tricky to get hold of the currency, especially coins, in part because the new coinage was badly designed (the 1, 2 and 5 cent pieces are almost identical), and in part because the prices of things were in new, smaller units. By Easter, when I returned, there were plenty of Euros in circulation, and people had grown used to the new currency. And prices had been rounded, almost always upward, and not just to the nearest whole Euro but sometimes up to the next unit of 5 Euros. That autoroute toll was now EUR 2.40. Everything seemed more expensive. Later that spring I was in Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands; there was widespread complaint about the same behaviour. Apparently the ministry of Euros had closed its doors. My guess is that competition will eventually reduce prices for ordinary expenditures, though this could take a long time. For "destination" restaurants it is less clear. These are not substitutable goods: it isn't as if you can find an Astrance in Hackensack, New Jersey, so the choice is not "do I go to a cheap Astrance or an expensive one?" but "do I go at all?" Hence you would expect so-called price inelastic demand: within some interval, changes in price don't result in equal changes in demand for the product. It is also not easy to compare prices at "destination" restaurants, since the products are so different. Is a menu at the Grand Vefour the same as one at Arpège, so that price comparisons between the two are meaningful? Probably not. Finally, I would guess that the decision to visit "destination" restaurants involves a complex bundle of purchases. After all, the definition of 3 Michelin stars is "it's worth travelling a long way to this restaurant". If you are sitting in Chicago or Marseille contemplating a week in Paris with a focus on top restaurants, you will add up the price of flights, hotels and the like. The restaurant price is usually not the major factor here, especially for the Chicago traveller, and that leaves some scope for price increases.

Yes, and if an Italian cook, as opposed to a French one, prepared some meat you'd given him in specie it would be thenceforth be worth less, since Italian cookery, indeed all non-French cookery, is by definition Not As Good As French. Hence countries other than France are the cause of global price inflation. QED.

Elegance and formality can add a lot to a dining experience. The waiter at Chez Panisse, those many years ago, was perfectly dressed (black tie) and exquisitely polite. That made the evening even more special. Some of the best dinners I have enjoyed have been black or white tie events in small groups. And I far prefer being called "sir" or "monsieur" by a waiter than being put on a first-name basis by someone I don't know. For me the goal is to have setting (including the guests) and cuisine complement one another, rather than elegance (or a bad imitation of it) layered on top of bad cuisine. Jinmyo's comment (which I hadn't seen when I started posting this) says all this, and more, in fewer words.

Please believe me when I say that I have nothing against profits! The issue is how to get them. And here the answer is usually to focus people on other goals than profit. If a chef spent all her time telling the brigade to worry about food costs, or discussing the P&L, or thinking about how to cut one more waiter, or pushing waiters to "sell" expensive dishes, the quality of the total experience (as discussed elsewhere in this thread) would suffer. Eventually the margins would go away. I, at least, would not feel good if a waiter came up to my table and said, "Hello, I'm Nigel, your waiter, and my goal is to maximise shareholder value." This sounds like a carcicature, but too often Nigel communicates exactly this goal without saying so. Of course no business should be expected to accept losses, restaurants included. As you say, some may choose to accept temporary losses in order to build presence in a market, or win over a recalcitrant customer. On pricing, I would be the last to recommend price controls. Competition has a way of limiting price-gouging. There is a lot of science available to tell firms how to price more effectively, e.g. charging customers more for the things that they are willing to pay for, eliminating "cross-subsidies", and so on. Carried to an extreme, precise pricing can have negative consequences, as with the cheese service priced by the slice.

A challenging question, Nina. Examples of stuffiness: a table so crowded with wine glasses (no matter what wines the customer chooses) that there's no room to manoeuvre. A waiter who icily deigns to approve (or not) the customer's choices. Menus written in type fonts that's so swirly they are illegible. Enormous, heavy, leather-bound menus and wine lists. Pretension: frilly paper handles on legs of overcooked lamb chops. Waiters who swoop around tables brandishing enormous pepper grinders. Elaborate garnishes that add nothing to the taste of a dish. Foul-tasting sorbets served in swans carved out of ice. Maraschino cherries on desserts. Plates served under cloches, which are then whisked away by teams of waiters...but the plates and food on them are cold. These examples aren't working that well. At some level it's like obscenity: I can't define it, but I know it when I see it. Mind you, I am not claiming objectivity (!!) in these assessments....these are just a few of my less-than-favourite things.

There are elements of the "old dining" that I don't miss at all: stuffiness, pretentious waiters and menus, uncomfortable rooms, high prices. John and Karen Hess's The Taste of America pillories some of the faux-French high priced joints that you found in American cities in the 1950s and 1960s; Elizabeth David and Richard Olney had similarly scathing words about London restaurants going up to the early 1980s. Some of this "bad old dining" survives, often with poor quality food and high prices. Without dissenting at all from Robert's and Steve Klc's ideas, I have had desserts from dessert carts that don't measure up: faded, mushy textures, and so on. We need to bring back (find?) the best of the "old dining" while avoiding the worst of it. I could not agree more on the importance of a "total experience". Some writers outline a hierarchy of ascending added value: (1) commodities; (2) products; (3) services; (4) experiences; (5) transformation. The latter refers to an experience that fundamentally changes the customer's point of view, as opposed to just entertaining the customer. For me, Chez Panisse hit this 5th level. I was a fundamentally different person when I walked out of that restaurant, in a way that has lasted a long time. Allard and the Grand Vefour had a similar impact, some years later. Of course, transformation gets harder to bring about over time and as the customer gains experience. The meal we had at the Bastide St Antoine (Chibois) came close. I don't think this was because of a deficit in their cookery or service, but because I've been to many fine restaurants since those early transformational experiences.

There is a lot to reflect on in these posts. I will mention two themes that come to mind. The first is what some economists call the principle of obliquity: that pursuit of profit as a primary (or even a highly visible) goal is often detrimental to the long-run performance of a business -- i.e. that the best way to sustainable long-term performance (including profitability) is to focus on other goals: customer satisfaction, or quality, or a continued flow of innovative products. Hence Johnson and Johnson, the pharma company, in its "Credo" puts profit below its responsibility to doctors, patients, employees, management, and their local communities. And in the 1982 Tylenol crisis, J&J swiftly recalled all tablets from the entire US market, even though the deaths occurred only in the Chicago area, and mounted a huge communication programme to alert the public. But J&J is rare amongst corporate giants. More and more companies are focused on the bottom line as a goal in itself rather than as a way of keeping score. And this is not just happening in giant firms, but also in restaurants. As Robert says, there is more attention to table-turning, to charging for bread, cheese, and the like, and to operating a generally stingy policy. I have had many delicious meals in the "new dining" restaurants, but rarely feel that these are places to which I want to return again and again. Some of the discussions on loyalty in eGullet (and in Leslie Brenner's book on Daniel) suggest that this, too, has taken on a transactional quality: the restaurant isn't generous to you unless you are a "VIP". To become a VIP (short of being a movie star or well-known billionaire) you have to endure multiple sittings at 5 pm, 10:30 pm, and so on, carefully timed so that the tables can be turned at the appropriate moment. Eventually, having "paid your dues", you become known to the restaurant and get treated in a more civil way. And in any event, reservations are so hard to come by that it's unlikely most customers will ever become loyal. Hence the customers who do come through must be charged high prices. The best of the "old dining" was different. There was a sense of generosity from the start. If customer loyalty developed, that was a bonus for both customer and restaurant. The second theme is related. It is that a growing number of restaurants are owned by outside investors. There is a fine line between Diageo owning Burger King and "Dinex" owning the growing number of Daniel restaurants. Economic theory suggests that human capital businesses (of which a restaurant is a prime example) are better owned by their employees. The experience of professional services firms (law, consulting, advertising) is telling. Once there are outside investors, there is an inevitable slide toward formulaic work, predictability and a degree of diversification so that earnings are more regular. Oddly enough, one restaurant that exemplifies both the obliquity principle (seek goals other than profit) and the employee ownership principle is Chez Panisse. And CP has a fixed menu...and according to interviews with Alice Waters this was done in part to minimise waste. Yet as far as I can tell CP is not hugely profitable, nor have they tried to turn it into a chain or show any sign of selling out. Robert, I would be curious to know whether you would classify Chez Panisse as "old dining" or "new dining". On the surface, it's "new": no dessert cart, fixed menu. From the few times I've eaten there, it has the generosity of "old" dining.

I don't think I've used the terms "objective" or "subjective", which in my view don't do a lot to move the conversation forward. I did cite my criteria for a good fish soup: "robust, clear, strong, with plenty of garlic and just a bit of acidity". The soup at Tétou didn't meet them, and it had a scorched taste. On these criteria, the soup at Loulou was better. The one at Tétou was disappointing...given my criteria and expectations for a good fish soup. A tourist who had never visited France and was expecting a certain style of service (and who had never tasted bouillabaisse) might have had a great time at Tétou and found the Loulou fish soup overly simple. I don't admit to an absolute standard of taste or a single set of criteria. These things are in large part socially constructed. We generally reject bitter tastes in food, but Chinese bitter melon (foo gwa, I think it is called) has an honoured place in certain Chinese menus. That doesn't mean it is inherently "good" or "bad".

I am not arguing for relativism ("what's good is whatever you like") but for agreed criteria and rules of engagement. Otherwise we end up with "what's good is what I say is good and if you disagree you are stupid." For the person sitting in Iowa who can't get on a plane to Nice, that bottled fish soup may be better than Loulou's product. I struggle to imagine how anyone could acquire sufficient experience, historical knowledge, etc., to make one-dimensional relative judgements between world cuisines, any more than I would want to engage in a debate about whether a Vermeer Van Delft was "better" than a Monet or whether the Spring Sonata was "better" than the Musical Offering...not to mention some masterwork of Indian music, or Japanese. I do think it is very useful to have a conversation of the form "In evaluating a fish soup I look for the following characteristics: ..... and the soup at restaurant X had the following: .... "

The mullet (mugine) bottarga I have bought from esperya.com is of superb quality...the taste is clearer and less bitter than mullet bottarga I have bought in Borough Market or persuaded my local Italian shop (which for awhile referred to me as "signor Bottarga" because of my repeated requests for this product) to stock. Bottarga is turning up on chichi restaurant menus, but there are a few Sardinian restaurants that have offered it for years. In London, Olivo on Eccleston street made a mean spaghetti alla bottarga...but it's been a couple of years since my last visit.

[HOST'S NOTE: This discussion is a continuation of the original topic Fine Dining vs. Cheap Eats] The whole point of business is to sell things for more than they are worth. A business will survive and -- if it is public -- its share price will increase over time if it creates value ("profit"): i.e. generates revenues in excess of all of its costs: materials, labour, overheads, capital employed. Value comes in many forms. Several posters have mentioned scarcity, which may be created in different ways. Cartels are effective, as with diamonds, oil, and so on. Creating a unique brand (Nike, French Laundry, Daniel) is another. There are all sorts of analytic frameworks for describing product/service benefits. For example: Functional benefits -- the simple economic gains product/service produces for the customer, e.g. a new car reduces my fuel consumption by 5 mpg and saves me $X per year. I am very hungry, and a dish of spaghetti is available for $1 as opposed to a truffle at $100. Process benefits -- how the product/service is easier for the customer to find, select, procure. E.g. McDonald's is a known quantity and is on every streetcorner, so it may attract higher margins than an independent cafe even though its products may be less tasty ... the would-be customer doesn't know how good or bad the cafe's food is, and has no easy way of finding out. Relationship benefits -- the stream of further interactions created by buying the product or service, e.g. lifetime guarantees, a banking service that invites customers to money-management seminars, etc. Emotional benefits -- the intangible associations created by the product. Nike, again -- the weekend jogger can feel like a world-class athlete. Positional benefits -- the buyer's ability to exclude others and gain status. Seafront homes, for example, have something of this character. Just about every one of these could be applied to restaurants and cookery and there are other criteria that could be identified. The essence of the argument is one made earlier on the thread by (I think) Wilfrid: you have to have some criteria for what constitutes "better". Are you seeking food as cheap, nutritious fuel? Quickly and reliably available? As a way of joining an elite? You will come up with different views of "better" depending on the criteria you choose.

I was away from eGullet for roughly 8 hours, so this may be way out of sequence. Apologies for that. I wanted to add that we should not forget the Japanese. Their cookery is very complex, and at its height it varies in a nuanced way with the seasons, the weather, the setting in which people are dining, perhaps even the clothes they are wearing. I am not at all learned in Japanese cuisine or the artistic discipline that surrounds it, but I know that it is as least as elaborated as the French, though this complexity is less widely known. At least in the Heian period, there was a highly complex matching of clothing colours, foods served, table settings and the like. And the preparation of fine Japanese food isn't a doddle either. Years ago some friends and I spent a day with Stephen Toulmin, the philosopher (who also loves food and wine, and would be a wonderful participant in this group). Our friends had invited a Japanese "national treasure" (I think her name was Tanaka, but don't remember) whom they knew. She was a master of tea ceremony cookery. Together with Tanaka-san we cooked a meal and ate it together. The preparation took about 8 hours altogether. Stephen and Donna didn't join in the cooking, but they did enjoy and comment brilliantly on the result. At one point I was preparing a dish of squash. We steamed the squash, and then Tanaka-san directed me in cutting it into precise cubes. I could make reasonable cubes of roughly the right size but no matter how hard I tried, I could not make their sides perfectly straight, the angles exact. The steamed squash was too soft for the usual brunoise cut. Eventually Tanaka-san took over and cubed the remaining squash for me. Her cubes were perfect. Then she threw the cubes into a bowl and proceeded to puree them! It turned out that this was one of those dishes of a vegetable puree bound with some gelatin (agar-agar?). Haltingly, I asked why we had worried so much about the shape of the cubes. "Because the shape of the cubes affects the quality of the puree", she replied. Sweating the details, according to the master, made a difference in this dish. Perhaps that's a good test of whether a dish is "interesting" or not from a gastronomic perspective.

Not so. I simply don't find the geography explanation the most immediately convincing. Given suitable evidence I would change my view. There are other plausible explanations: upper-class French (and their cooks) travelling to other countries, expatriated French chefs (Boulestin, Soyer, Escoffier...). Or tourists coming to France, not because of its location but because of other attractive factors There's a specialised branch of economics that deals in location problems (e.g., why did you once find branches of Barclays, Lloyds, NatWest and Midland within 500m of one another on the typical British high street?). I am far from expert in this, but I don't believe that hubs arise because of geographic proximity. Silicon Valley isn't particularly on anyone's natural travel path, yet technology entrepreneurs go there. There's a part of Germany where there are more printing equipment and ink manufacturers than anywhere in the world. The story, as I recall it, is that "hubs" arise because of 1) demanding consumers -- e.g. in Germany people will ring up and send their morning paper back if the ink is smeared; 2) strong local competition; 3) skilled workers. See Michael Porter, The Competitive Advantage of Nations. To buy your geographic hub theory you would have to believe that if, say, Spain or Denmark had possessed a local populace enamoured with food, a system of rating and ranking restaurants, a system of rating and rewarding top chefs (Meilleur Ouvrier de France, etc.), and many of the other internal factors that enhance French cuisine and diffuse it across the world, the cuisine of those countries would NOT have spread as the French did, simply because, in crossing Europe (by train? on foot? boat?) people didn't naturally traverse those lands. 500g of caviar is even more expensive. And there is subtlety and interest in a caviar service -- the setting, the quality of the product, etc. -- but I think I could find more to discuss in a fine pappardelle al lepre than even the most expensive caviar service. And if you want to focus on labour costs, what about those horrible cakes and pastries that cost a fortune to make and buy but have no taste? Cost, in my view, is not the issue. Great cooking, cooking worth analysing and discussing and arguing about, is a kind of performance art (I use the word deliberately) going between the farmer and the diner, finding extraordinary ingredients and making them even more special without fundamentally changing what they are (Curnonsky's point). A canard aux olives at Allard was one of my first meals ever in France, maybe my first. I can still taste it. Is the place still there? I am prepared to believe that a hamburger could achieve this level of gastronomic interest, but it would take a lot of work. You would want to know where the beef came from (e.g. as with a bistecca alla Fiorentina I ate in a tiny village in Tuscany...the cook pointed to the hill behind the restaurant where the animal had lived and where one of its siblings was still grazing); you would want to know how the meat was aged and how it was chopped; how the fire was prepared; the quality of the bread; etc. Somehow this seems even stranger than Daniel Boulud's "hamburger" gussied up with short ribs and truffles and whatnot.

This may not be that helpful, but I have found two places to buy good grills. Both are cheap and extremely functional. Neither is near New York. What I want in a grill is (1) the flexibility to use a vertical firebox, so that a chicken or lamb roast can be spitted and turned in front of the coals, with a pan underneath to catch the drippings (2) the availability of a spit and rotisserie motor, to turn the roast. Few American grills offer these capabilities. However the French general stores (e.g Carrefour) invariably offer them. Almost ten years ago I paid FF110 for a small but workable grill, with spit and battery-powered motor. This was at the end of season, it was on sale. It is in cheap metal, and has finally rusted away after heavy use and outdoor storage. It made a fantastic chicken, though! And the motor is still working : I use it on the Turkish grill described below. I found a replacement grill -- again, with the capability to turn the firebox -- and use a spit -- at a shop in Istanbul. This was made of cast iron, and was slightly more expensive (I recall a figure like £20). It was no fun dragging the grill around Istanbul and then hefting it onto a plane!

People haven't mentioned the French tendency toward classification, analysis and scholasticism as a possible reason for the deeper analytic richness of French cookery. And this tendency applies in domains well outside of the kitchen -- to words, for example (the Academie). I don't find it surprising that there exists a richer and deeper tradition of analysis of French cooking than would be the case in other areas. I still remember my first serious French cookbook, Raymond Oliver's La Cuisine. It wasn't the Guide Culinaire, not by a long shot, but this was where I first encountered dishes whose construction depended on three other preparations, each of which demanded two other preparations, and sauces that were built up from other sauces -- a "layered architecture" as people in the computing world would say. Perhaps this penchant for classification and hierarchical complexity has led to the richness of writing on French cuisine, and in a reflexive manner, to an increase in the complexity of the dishes themselves. (This is a rather French perspective on the situation). I find this a more convincing hypothesis than the view that France is geographically the crossroads of Europe. There's also the fact that French was for many years the language of diplomacy and of many of the courts of Europe (e.g. Russia) and that French furniture, clothing, and ultimately cookery became standards of "civilisation". This social phenomenon may explain some of the diffusion of French cuisine. Which isn't to say that the "product" isn't good: it is. But conveying status is part of what makes some products valuable to their consumers. Conferred status is part of the merit. Personally I agree with Curnonsky: " La cuisine, c'est quand les choses ont le goût de ce qu'elles sont". Loosely translated: "when you are really cooking, the ingredients taste of themselves." The issue is how to get there. And I don't think that either the French or the Italians have a royal road to success. Consider lièvre à la royale (an elaborate, multi-step preparation of hare) and contrast it with papardelle al lepre, an Italian preparation of hare with noodles. The French cook, if I recall correctly, bards the hare, prepares a coulis, a hachis and mounts her sauce with wine and cognac. The Italian preparation is structurally simpler but not easy to get right. Each cook takes risks here. The French cook has more tricks up her sleeve to modify the flavours, add herbal notes, balance the acidity, change the richness and mouthfeel of the sauce, etc. But she risks turning the dish into a muddle of flavours. The Italian has to find a hare of superb quality, ensure that he captures much of the blood, and get it to the table so that it is succulent and not dry or tough. Both cuisines can produce a delicious dish; in both cases the result is worthy of analysis and comment in forums like this.

I've made the French Laundry carrot soup a number of times; this has about the most concentrated flavour you can imagine. You juice around 20 carrots, then you simmer another 20 carrots (cut up) in this juice, then you puree the whole. It's delicious, but the flavour is so pure and strong that an espresso cupful of this is plenty.

I have had several good dinners at the Caprice, but it's hard to regard it as a "destination" restaurant...the menu just wasn't that interesting. The only dish I can recall was a very pleasant risotto made with butternut squash. Have eaten twice at the Ivy: like the Caprice, nothing wrong with it but nothing that thrilling. The food was very competently cooked. Several friends (some good palates among them) think that J Sheekey is a truly wonderful restaurant. My experience has been far more mixed. At times it can be fine: the fish is reasonably fresh and it isn't usually overcooked. Potted shrimps were good, though you don't need to go to an expensive place to find them. I've also been to Sheekey's and had badly cooked food (I remember a sole that was like eating cotton wadding) and rude service, including noisy demands to vacate tables at a set time, even though a dish we had ordered had not yet arrived. For what it's worth my sense is that the menus at the Caprice and the Ivy have become rather common in London restaurants. For example the other day I had dinner at Le Palais du Jardin, a factory restaurant in Covent Garden. The dishes looked like an imitation of menus at the Caprice/Ivy, e.g. scallops with asparagus and foie gras (all three components served in mingy quantities on a giant plate, and virtually tasteless in any event). And the service was dreadful: two overworked waiters rushing between too many tables in our area. Nonetheless I doubt that these dishes would have been as common a decade ago, when the Caprice and the Ivy gained their reputations.

Unquestionably a series of dinners and lunches at a hotel in Liverpool. Gristly meat, vegetables that had been cooked to death, glue for gravy, sandwiches with the bread curling at the edges with unidentifiable paste inside. A colleague staying in the same hotel was bitten some mysterious bug; the bite became infected and swelled up to the size of a tennis ball. I don't remember the name of the place and would guess it has been closed for awhile. I trust that this degree of anonymity avoids libel exposure for eGullet...

I will not be back in France until the 2nd week of August ... not the ideal time, I know, but school breaks and other commitments leave no choice. I plan to make as many enquiries as I can amongst fishmongers, locals, etc. as to places for good bouillabaisse that don't cost the moon. I cannot believe that Bacon and Maurin des Maures in Rayol-Canadel are the only places to find this dish in the Côte! The Tétou story was fascinating and I only wish the soup I had there had been better.

I have found laboratory glassware very useful for measuring and pouring and mixing: graduated cylinders, beakers, Erlenmeyer flasks. Light, sturdy, available in a huge range of sizes and measuring precisions. The glass will tolerate liquids up to 600 degrees...Celsius...and it's cheap.