Jonathan Day

In some of her books, Alice Waters describes herself as a "restauratrice", not a chef. She has hired chefs (e.g. Jeremiah Tower, Paul Bertolli) from the very start of Chez Panisse. Should we be thinking of her not primarily as a cook, but as a restaurateur who, even though chefs were doing most of the work in the kitchen, has imparted a real gastronomic vision to the entire Chez Panisse operation? Or is the distinction irrelevant in an age of celebrity chefs, TV chefs, etc.?

Mike, welcome to eGullet. I haven't been to the Moulin de Lourmarin -- as noted above, it was closed when we came through the area. Robert Brown's views on these matters are always reliable; I would re-read his comments (click here) as you make up your mind. Why not try both and post a comparative report? I'll add, though, that the wine prices at the Auberge were surprisingly reasonable; perhaps this is one reason the sommelier was enthusiastic about the place.

I'm not sure why the Louvre has been equated to a tourist joint. Over the years I've seen plenty of French customers dining at Cafe Marly, the outdoor restaurant overlooking the Louvre. Tourists do flock to the Louvre, but there is no shortage of French visitors there. I'm also guessing that Alice Waters wouldn't have thought of a venture like this in terms of "target market", "customer segmentation", "return on investment" or any of the other businesslike terms that apply to many restaurant developments. There's nothing wrong with these things, but as John Whiting's history suggests, these aren't the directions in which her mind seems to turn.

The French would easily have identified a category for a restaurant that was primarily about beautiful ingredients, very simply prepared, "shopping" rather than "cooking": Italian.

I will add that many American food "gods" seem virtually unknown in France, except perhaps in very international circles: Julia Child, for example, or Jacques Pepin (even though he is French by birth and worked there for awhile), or Alice Waters. Gordon Ramsay seems better known, perhaps because of the football connections.

I think Bux was referring to the widespread influence of Robert Parker, the American wine writer.

Isn't the Cool Whip a bit of a red herring here? (I know, I know, it's not a fish, it's a synthetic dessert topping). Suppose Hostess reached into her fridge and brought out a container of the richest, best creme fraiche, just flown over from Normandy where it was produced by the finest artisan with milk from France's happiest cows. Suppose that everyone thought this was the best accompaniment for brownies possible? Isn't it nonetheless a bit obnoxious to want to doctor something that someone has brought to a potluck? A bit like a dinner guest going into the kitchen and correcting the seasoning in the pot bubbling on the stove.

Syngenta, the Swiss-British seeds company, claims to developed a brussels sprout that children like because the acrid flavour has been bred out of it. Details here. According to Syngenta's spokesman, "There was no genetic modification involved, only techniques that have been in place since Adam was around." The sweeter sprouts also passed a series of blind tests conducted on children. The spokesman again: "They even asked for second helpings until they realised what it was they were eating!".

"Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one should be silent," wrote Wittgenstein. He wasn't speaking about food, but his comment applies to the lunch that Moby and I had at L'Ambroisie. There were a number of moments when we simply fell silent, not because the food was bizarre or elaborate or in any way surprising, but simply because there was nothing to be said. Moby had called ahead to check that Bresse chicken "demi deuil" (with truffles) would be available, and the restaurant had remembered this. "Since you're having chicken with truffles, we would suggest beginning with scallops with truffles and a puree of Jerusalem artichokes." At this point, we realised that our best course was simply to hand the remaining choices back to the staff. The resulting procession of courses almost defies description; everything was simple, everything virtually perfect. We had a terrine of foie gras with black truffles and celery root "to thank you for placing your confidence in us". It was served with a tiny salad of mache. Then the scallops described above, covered with discs of sliced truffle; fillets of salmon with asparagus tips and a black truffle "tapenade". This came with a truffled sauce that was a marvel of lightness. "There's not a drop of cream in it," said the waiter; "M. Pacaud uses nothing but olive oil and the yolk of an egg". And then the chicken, a "poulette" from Bresse; it had a truffle butter under the skin, not the usual slices of black truffle, and there as a separate dish of salsify, and several beautifully done sauces, including a perigourdine (brown sauce, chopped truffles) on the salsify. We had cheeses, a pre-dessert of a scoop of exotic fruit sorbet and a rum baba, and then, again following the waiter's suggestion, the restaurant's chocolate tart, with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. "We use 6 vanilla pods for every litre of ice cream", said the waiter with pride, and brought us a glass of 1980 Rivesaltes to go along with it. Finally, there were mignardises and coffee, and we walked out into the Place des Vosges. "One doesn't have the sense of having eaten", said one of the waiters, commenting on the lightness of the chocolate tart. But I certainly had that sense. I had made the mistake of eating the gougeres offered at the very start, and too many of the crisp bread rolls that silently appeared at my place. The problem was that the butter on the table was good enough to eat on its own, and the sauces so wonderful that it was inconceivable to leave them on the dish. Next time, bread in moderation. The usual adjectives don't quite work for this experience, either in the setting, the service or the cookery. "Three stars" doesn't help much either. The service was friendly without being overly familiar, and there were no "tests" of our gourmandise or gastronomic knowledge. Whether they truly felt it or not, the staff conveyed the sense that bringing us such a meal gave them as much pleasure as we experienced in eating it. This place is very expensive, especially considering that one course was complimentary: 710 euros for the two of us, with a 98 euro bottle of Pouilly Fuisse, two glasses of Rivesaltes, mineral water and coffee. Again, cost seemed irrelevant. I will unquestionably return to L'Ambroisie, but I, at least, feel no need to do so for a long time. The lunch that M. Pacaud and his staff prepared for us was perfect, complete, sufficient in itself. Oliver Wendell Holmes's aphorism seems right for L'Ambroisie: "I would not give a fig for the simplicity this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity." On that estimation, 710 euros is cheap.

Goodness, I wanted to like this place. It had garnered favourable reviews, and the setting was beautiful. We even had a table next to the window. The staff were friendly and well informed, and the cooking was clearly "serious". Unfortunately virtually nothing worked for me. Flavours were muddied or weak, from one end of the meal to another. A starter "cone" with a parsnip mousse was set next to a little cup of mussel soup; the flavours didn't blend well, and the mousse was heavy and messy to eat. As a follow up starter, duck was served in several different ways (carpaccio, parfait of foie, confit, etc.); the parfait had an unpleasantly sweetish taste, and none of the other flavours really came through. Then oxtail "lasagne": undersalted, and the shredded meat was stringy; unpleasant strands kept getting caught between plate and fork, like eating a bowl of tangled spaghetti. There was a strange dark-green sauce served with the oxtail; the flavours didn't really blend well. Coffee came with pre-desserts and then macaroons (OK, but nothing exceptional); one of the four pre-desserts was interesting. The place is not inexpensive -- two lunch courses cost £28, mineral water £5, coffee £5. At those prices, and in such a pleasant setting, they should be able to do better. I'll certainly try again, hoping to find some of the pleasure that Andy and Matthew reported on.

I wonder if there isn't a simple economic explanation of the way the industry works: this is a winner-take-all market, where a few restaurants and chefs at the very top collect most of the profits. A number of the creative industries follow a similar pattern -- aspiring actors, for example, will work for very small sums in order to "break in". Parents spend huge sums educating their children in order to get them into the "best" schools; the aspiring superchef who accepts a low wage in order to work in a top restaurant is effectively doing the same thing. For a non-technical example of such markets in action, see this paper by Robert Frank, a distinguished economist at Cornell University.

There are a lot of these Confréries and Commanderies; they seem to be a cross between economic development groups, social clubs and craft guilds. Some of them have elaborate rituals and robes for their members. I think my favourite is the Académie du Melon du Haut-Poitou -- an "academy" founded in 2002 to promote the sale of melons. Like the melon academy, many of these groups were founded relatively recently -- some in the 1970s, many more recently. Most have a patron saint, often St Vincent, patron saint of winemakers. Here's a partial list, assembled from a number of sources. The numbers in parentheses e.g. (06) refer to the postal regions of France. I've translated some of the names; where I haven't, the group is usually a wine society. * * * RÉGION PROVENCE ALPES COTE D'AZUR Confrérie du Mimosa (06) [Flowers] Confrérie de l’Ail (84) [Garlic] Confrérie de l’Agneau (84) [Lamb] Confrérie Abeilleurs de France [beekeepers] Confrérie des Anysetiers (84) [Anise growers] Confrérie de l’Asperge(84) [Asparagus] Confrérie du Ban des vendanges des Côtes du Rhône (84) Confrérie de la Cerise des Monts de Venasque(84) [Cherries] Commanderie des Côtes du Rhône(84) Confrérie des Vignerons des Côtes du Ventoux (84) Confrérie de la Fraise de Carpentras et du Comtat Venaissin (84) [strawberries] Confrérie de la Truffe du Mont Ventoux et du Comtat Venaissin(84) [Truflfes] Confrérie de la Cave de Beaumes de Venise (84) Confrérie des Goutevins de l’Enclave des Papes (84) Confrérie des Louchiers Voconces (84) [soups] Commensale du Luberon (84) Confrérie de l’Ordre des melons de Cavaillon (84) [Melons] Confrérie du Plant de Vigne (84) Confrérie « Saint Vincent » des vignerons de Visan (84) Confrérie des Tastes Grappes des Terroirs d’Avignon, (84) Confrérie des Tastes fougasses (84) [Fougasse bread] Confrérie de Maîtres Vignerons de Vacquéras (84) Confrérie du Maintien des Traditions Provençales (84) Confrérie de l’Échansonnerie des Papes (84) RÉGION RHÔNE ALPES Confrérie de l’Olivier (26) [Olives] Confrérie de la Lavande(26) [Lavender] Confrérie des boyaux rouges(69) [A “boyau” is an intestine; the boyaux rouges were soldiers from Lorraine] Confrérie de l’Ordre du tire bouchon (69) ["Order of the corkscrews", but probably a wine society] Les Mousquetaires (69) Les Compagnons du Beaujolais (69) Confrérie du Gosier Sec (69) [literally, “dry throat”, so presumably a drinking society] Confrérie des Coteaux de Lyonnais (69) Les Grappilleurs du Beaujolais des Pierre Dorées RÉGION LANGUEDOC ROUSSILLON Commanderie de Tavel (30) Confrérie de Jaugeurs de Liracs (30) Confrérie de la Côte du Rhône Gardoise (30) Confrérie des Chevaliers de L’Olivier du Languedoc Roussillon (34) Confrérie de la Pierre sèche (30) [“the dry stone”, presumably similar to gosier sec] RÉGION MIDI PYRÉNÉES Confrérie des Maîtres Vignerons de Frontonnais(31) Commanderie des Grands vins de Gaillac (31) Grand Ordre de Rocamadour du diamant Noir et du Vieux vin de Cahors (48) Docte Collège des Maîtres de la Truffe et du foie Gras en Périgord Confrérie des vins de Cahors (46) Viguerie royale du Madiran (65) Confrérie du vin de Quercy (82) RÉGION AQUITAINE Commanderie du Périgord [General gastronomy of the region] Les Maîtres de la Truffe et foie Gras du Périgord [Truffles and foie gras] Confrérie de la Truffe noire du Périgord et du Tricastin [black truffles] Commanderie des vins de Tursan (40) Confrérie des Vignerons des Coteaux de Chalosse RÉGION POITOU-CHARENTES Confrérie de la Cagouille [snails] Confrérie de la Pomme de Terre de l’Ile de Ré [Potatoes] Confrérie du Sel de l’Ile de Ré [salt] Confrérie du Franc Pineau Confrérie du Tourteau Fromagé [Cheese tarts] Confrérie du Gouste Chèvre de France [Goat cheese] Confrérie des Chevaliers de st Antoine RÉGION BOURGOGNE Confrérie de la truffe de Bourgogne [Truffles] Confrérie des Chevaliers du Tastevin (27) Compagnage des Ambassadeurs des Vins Jaunes (39) RÉGION BRETAGNE Confrérie des Goustiers de l’andouille de Guéméné [Andouille] Confrérie des Chevaliers de la coquille St Jacques des Côtes d’Armor (22) [scallops] Confrérie du Marron de Redon (35) [Chestnuts] Confrérie des Panses de L’Oie [panse means “stomach” but I think this might refer to stuffed goose necks] Confrérie du Poulet Janzé [Chicken] Confrérie des Chevaliers de l’Huître de Bretagne [Oysters] Confrérie du Foie Gras de Bretagne et de Lanvaux Confrérie des Maîtres Cidriers de Cornouaille [Cider] Confrérie de l’Artichaut de St Paul [Artichokes] Confrérie des Mouliers du Vivier [Farm-raised mussels] Confrérie de la Frigousse [A kind of stew made with wild boar, pork, beef, veal, venison, herbs] Confrérie des Huîtres de la Baie [Oysters] Confrérie Pipéria la Galette [A galette is a sort of flat cake; I don’t know what Pipéria refers to] Confrérie du Coco de Paimpol [White beans] RÉGION PICARDIE Confrérie du Pinot Meunier (02) RÉGION CHAMPAGNE-ARDENNE Confrérie du Joyau des Bois la truffe de Champagne( 52) [Truffles] RÉGION LORRAINE Confrérie de la Truffe de Lorraine [Truffles] RÉGION ALSACE Confrérie de l’Escargot (68) [snails] Confrérie Saint Grégoire du Taste Fromage de la Vallée de Munster(68) [Munster cheese] Confrérie Saint Etienne d ‘Alsace (68) Confrérie du Pied de Veau (68) [Calves’ feet] Confrérie de la Choucroute (68) [sauerkraut] Confrérie de l’Asperge de Village-Neuf (68) [Asparagus] Les Talmeniers du Bon Pain d’Alsace (68) [Alsatian bread] Chaîne des Rotisseurs (67) [Roast meats] RÉGION FRANCHE-COMTE Les Ambassadeurs des vins jaunes (39) Confrérie des Maîtres Pipiers de St Claude(39) [briar pipes, for pipe smokers]

Ah, two great new words: squidy and chilliy. Very useful for a future Scrabble match. And Suzi, thanks for providing the address and phone number of the joint!

Mme St Ange (La Cuisine, 1927) writes about an omelette soufflée au rhum -- my translation and paraphrase of the recipe: The recipe calls for 4 egg yolks, 6 whites, 125 grams of sugar and 100 ml of rum. You work the yolks and sugar until it "forms the ribbon", add a tablespoon of rum to the yolk mixture, then fold in the beaten whites, first adding some of the whites to the yolk mixture to lighten it. This goes into a long or oval cooking-serving plate, which has been heavily buttered and dusted with powdered sugar. The top is smoothed over, and then a sort of trench, 3 to 4 cm deep, is cut in it with the blade of a knife held parallel to the surface of the omelette. "This trench helps the heat penetrate the interior, and it eventually becomes a reservoir for the rest of the rum." Several smaller incisions are cut around the omelette, in order to help the heat penetrate it. This goes into the oven -- "a good moderate heat", avoiding an overly hot oven that will form a crust. The dish should first be put onto a hot burner for a minute, to warm the bottom, then it goes into the oven. [Alternatively, it could go straight onto the floor of an Aga, or onto a pre-heated pizza stone in a normal oven]. After 20 minutes, it is removed from the oven, sprinkled with powdered sugar, and put back into the oven for the sugar to caramelise. Meanwhile, the rest of the rum has been heated with a bit of powdered sugar; when the omelette comes out of the oven, this goes into the trench on top and set afire.

There are "mini chains", groups with more than 1 but fewer than a dozen outlets. Some of these aren't at all bad. An example would be Bar Meze (www.barmeze.com), which has 5 restaurants in and around London. This enables some economies of scale without a complete loss of character.

I liked Nandos when it first opened. The shops were clean, the service cheerful, and, as Suzi said, they did one thing and did it well. It was a pleasant stop on a family outing. About 2 years ago we went to a Nandos on the Clapham Road. The place was filthy, the service slow and surly. Ah, that's all right, I thought, the chicken will be good. Unfortunately it wasn't. It was dry and overdone. I haven't been back, but after these positive comments it may be time for another try.

10th, the restaurant in the Royal Garden Hotel, Ken High St. Food OK, views outstanding. Le Suquet, Draycott Ave. The Belvedere, in Holland Park Axis, 1 Aldwych Joy King Lau, off Leicester Square; dimsam with the children on the way to the cinema Zuma, a Japanese in Knightsbridge +++ Good company at all of these; food nothing to write home about.

Winot, I agree. A year or so ago I had one of these nightmare trips that landed me on a Lufthansa flight from Frankfurt to Buenos Aires without having eaten for the previous 18 hours. I was famished, and hence broke my usual rule of avoiding food on long-haul flights. Lufthansa offered a chicken bonne femme prepared from a Raymond Blanc recipe: chicken, lardons, potatoes, etc. Even though Hunger ist der beste Koch ("hunger is the best cook"), this was really good, and it was the kind of dish that stands up well to advance preparation and re-heating. I'm told that Lufthansa now have flat beds in business class. We are rapidly flying out of the scope of the UK forum!

To Holly's point, there have been a number of restaurants in London that serve "school dinners" -- toad in the hole, spotted dick, sticky toffee pudding, etc. -- usually done to a better standard than the schools. Some of these are very exclusive and expensive. No doubt Virgin are picking up on this trend.

The advantage of first or business class travel (and Virgin Upper is basically a business class fare) is sleeping, not eating. BA Club (business) now has flat beds, somewhat smaller than the BA First beds but often quieter, because on overnight flights they tend to serve food on the ground and don't offer a hot dinner in the air. Virgin's Upper Class, in the new configuration, has large and very comfortable flat beds, and they are arranged so that you never need to climb over a neighbour. Virgin also offer a "snooze zone", a part of the plane that stays dark and where no meals are served. If you want a hot dinner, you sit in a different section. I've occasionally had tasty ingredients on international first or business class flights -- e.g. on Air France from Paris to Buenos Aires, decent bread rolls and Echire butter that was fresh and good, or warmed nuts. But I can't imagine how any airline could produce really good food at altitude, given the equipment they have, the need to prepare food in quantity at a central location, and the inability to provide specialised catering staff on board. A few airlines (Gulf Air, I think) provide "on board chefs" in first class, but I don't know whether these are truly trained cooks or cabin crew members wearing a jacket and toque. All in all, I'd rather eat on the ground and sleep in the air.

The debate on this topic suggests that "haute cuisine" is no longer as clear cut a category as it once was. It wasn't that long ago -- perhaps as late as the 1960s -- that most French people would have agreed an operational definition: haute cuisine was the cookery practiced in large, expensive restaurants. It was haute because of the effort and skill that it took to prepare it: making and refining stocks, preparing sauces, turning vegetables, and the like. Haute cuisine was defined by the métier (profession) of the people who prepared it. Home cooks would not practice haute cuisine, any more than they would bake bread. They didn't have the training, and they didn't have the time to do so. Home cooks, no matter how enthusiastic, practiced cuisine bourgeoise, which didn't require the layered, labour-intensive preparations of the haute cuisine. Many restaurants offered cuisine bourgeoise, by the way. Haute cuisine wasn't inherently better, as Steven points out above. It might require a large brigade to prepare lièvre à la royale (a complex preparation of hare requiring elaborate sauce work) but if the products that went into were of poor quality, the resulting dish would be poor; anyone who has visited many of the fancy (but poor quality) restaurants in top French hotels will have experienced this. Guy Gateau's essay on the Nouvelle Cuisine pointed out that part of the "renaissance" in this movement was a sharper focus on quality ingredients. Richard Olney described much of haute cuisine as "antigastronomic" and called attention to simpler dishes, prepared with the finest ingredients. Today, a number of changes have blurred what was once a clear distinction between haute and bourgeois cuisine. First, the "secrets" of haute cuisine became, over time, more accessible to the public, initially through television and more recently through the Internet. Raymond Oliver, chef of the 3-star Grand Vefour, presented cookery courses on television in the 1960s and published a popular book, La Cuisine. Unlike Julia Child's television series and books, Oliver's were more oriented to the haute cuisine. The methods and culinary mannerisms of the haute cuisine could be accessed, if not mastered, without serving a formal apprenticeship in a top restaurant. Machines became available -- for example, the vertical cutter (= Robot Coupe, Cuisinart) -- rendering some of the time-consuming practices of haute cuisine more accessible to home cooks, or to restaurant chefs who didn't command a large brigade. Over the same period, the cost of labour (including social taxes) increased, pushing up the labour cost proportion of any item sold in a restaurant. True, high quality haute cuisine became less and less economical, except in restaurants at the very top of the scale. Menus, especially in mid-range restaurants, grew smaller and simpler, a trend that continues today with the increasing emphasis on the set, prix-fixe menu. Another trend, again one continuing to the present, involves home cooks. Not only did machines make formerly inaccessible procedures (e.g. preparation of fish mousses) possible, but a growing number of home cooks moved toward what sociologists have termed "amateur professional" status. This is part of a larger trend that has seen people grow deeply serious about activities other than their principal profession: lawyers who see their true identity as novelists; dental hygienists who seek to attain professional levels of competence on the viola da gamba; accountants who try to make pastries as though they were in the pastry kitchen of a 3 star restaurant. Bread baking is a good example: some of the most accomplished baking I am aware of is being done either by home bakers or by career changers who started as passionate home bakers. This hasn't taken root in France as deeply it has in the US or UK, but a scan of the French internet (e.g. fr.rec.cuisine on USENET) will turn up requests for bread recipes and responses from enthusiastic home bakers. There are other trends at work here -- for example, the move toward lower fat, simpler dishes, the mania for "Mediterranean" cuisine. The overall outcome, though, is that haute cuisine, as it once was practiced, only turns up in a few restaurants at the very top of the scale in France -- and in the homes of enthusiastic "amateur/professional" cooks, the kind who post details of their multi-course dinners here on eGullet.

It certainly shouldn't be impossible to create a dish with a hot or warm interior and a cold exterior -- the reverse of the deep fried ice cream mentioned above. Make a sphere of ice cream with a hollowed out centre, then at service use a pipette to fill that centre with a very hot filling e.g. warmed Grand Marnier, and re-seal the sphere. But by "hot ice cream" do you mean something with the texture of ice cream, but warm?

Cheese in fine London restaurants can be dicey; often the selections are good but the cheeses aren't well kept, and they end up dry or ammoniated. The two best cheese services I have had in London have been at Gordon Ramsay, Royal Hospital Road, and Chez Bruce, on Wandsworth Common. In both cases, the cheeses are consistently in good condition, and the staff clearly love cheese and are knowledgeable about it. Bruce's English cheeses come from Neal's Yard and his French ones from La Fromagerie.

Robert, it's harder to shave even slices from the smallest white truffles. You can grate them, but you can't get as many slices per gram of whole truffle. I wonder whether this has something to do with the higher per-gram prices of larger truffles...

Restaurant Simon, 182 avenue de Rimiez tel 04 93 84 40 61 Au Rendez-Vous des Amis 176 avenue de Rimiez tel 04 93 84 49 66 You leave the A8 at exit 54 (Nice Nord) and work your way on ave de Gairaut toward Falicon. Eventually you'll turn right on the D114, which is the avenue de Rimiez. Get yourself a good map and take a couple of tranquilisers before setting out. The route is bloody difficult but both restaurants are worth the journey.