Jonathan Day

When this kind of thing happens it's almost always a case of simultaneous rot on the inside (management) and on the outside (board). Now and then one thing goes wrong; more often things go wrong together. It may be possible for a restaurant to deliver great food and fine service from a dirty kitchen, but it's more likely that if the kitchen is dirty, the food is bad and the front of house staff are lackadaisical. In management-speak this is known as the principle of complementarity. Put yourself in the position of a board member. They could admit that the whole thing had gone wrong, and the entire board could step down, turning the operation over to a new group. Even if that act had no adverse consequences for the board members -- loss of reputation, for example -- it would be hard for them to admit. Simple human nature. Hence the position that a few things were wrong but they've been smoked out and are being fixed. It may not be an accurate representation of the true state of the foundation, but it's easy to see why they arrived at such a position. It's striking that they have only just appointed a chairman, to lead the Board in supervising the Executive Director. Not having an independent chairman, for a foundation of Beard's size and reputation, was a major governance error.

The Beard Foundation press release is I am far from an expert on institutional PR, but tan almost exact clone of dozens I've seen in corporate situations where malfeasance has been discovered. "We've sacked the CEO, we've replaced the accountants, we're committed to honesty and transparency, and we're back to business as usual." It would have been hard to admit, at this juncture, that the Foundation needs strategic redirection, even though I agree with Tony and many others on this topic that this is the case. I guess the Board could have said, "We had no idea why we were raising all this money, and, by the way, funds were being fiddled from inside, and we were too comatose to see either problem" -- but after an admission like that, the only reasonable thing would be for the entire Board to resign. Even if they do realise that a clearer purpose (etc.) is needed, I doubt they have a clear idea of where they want to take the Foundation. That will require debate, and will surely be affected by the next Executive Director. So it's at least conceivable that this press release will be followed, over time, by further statements that help the Beard Foundation clarify its charitable purpose and find better ways to deliver it. Meanwhile we can keep up the pressure from outside, and establish the eGullet Society in a way that sets a high standard.

Folks, this dialect discussion is interesting, but the topic has drifted way off anything to do with food. That's what we're here to discuss. Thanks.

If you'll be near Grasse, you might try the Bastide St Antoine; I have had some fine meals there. It's pricey (two stars) but can perform at a very high level. They have a non-smoking room, something still rare in France. In Mougins, near Grasse, ALain Llorca, the new chef/owner of the Moulin de Mougins is doing interesting things. Lunch is good value: € 58 for champagne, wine, three courses (plus amuse-bouches and pre-dessert), mineral water, coffee, mignardises. He has held to former chef/owner Roger Vergé's concept of "cuisine du soleil". The lunch we had there was light, pleasant, with lots of energy and no technical flaws. I have yet to see what he would do with a dinner from the carte, wines from the main list, cheeses, or the "ronde de tapas" which is a somewhat el Bulli-ish round of twelve small dishes, e.g. mussels with colombo spices and kiwi, warm foie gras with old vinegar reduction and "barbe à papa" (= candyfloss = cotton candy). If you venture east, stop in La Turbie for the Hostellerie Jérome. Simple but very good. Also worth checking out in Nice is Terres de Truffes (= Trufflesville), Clément Bruno's truffle boutique and restaurant. It's almost adjacent to La Petite Maison. Truffles in every course, including dessert. Even though this is the wrong time of year for truffles, it's a diverting place to eat at least once.

At around 1100 in the morning, stop in at La Merenda (on the edge of the old section). The staff will be eating "family meal"; respectfully interrupt them and reserve your lunch. You can't do it any other way, because they don't have a phone. Bring cash, because they don't take credit cards. You'll have a good meal. La Petite Maison, a stone's throw from La Merenda, has fine Niçois food. Fried squid can be exquisite. There's usually a socca vendor in the Cours Saleya; this is a local product well worth trying if you haven't experienced it before. Fenocchio, the ice cream shop in the old section, has an amazing array of flavours, including herbs (thyme, basil, etc.); black olive; bubble gum; etc. -- and most of it is reasonably well made.

Robert Brown, his wife Susan, my wife Melissa and I had dinner at the Moulin on the 24th. It's a simple, lovely setting, with a handful of tables overlooking a small stream. Dinner is at 8:30 pm exactly -- no earlier, no later. The "menu" for the day is written on little slips of paper which are placed in a jar hung on the gate, but in fact there are no choices. I wouldn't describe the cookery at this place as particularly innovative or refined, but it's generally very good, and it's fine value for the price charged. There were good olives and some excellent toasts with tomatoes, lentils and the like; then a composed salad; then lotte (monkfish) with asparagus and truffles; then "alouettes sans têtes" (="headless birds" actually made of veal and beef). The cheese tray was in fine condition, and simply placed on the table, for us to take as much as we wished. Dessert was a confection of berries and cream, light and refreshing. And then, with coffee and infusions, large chunks of dark and milk chocolate, again placed on the table with a sharp knife for everyone to take whatever they wanted. The only dish that I struggled with was the composed salad, which contained an omelette, tomatoes and so many other components that it didn't really work. The other dishes were fine: the alouettes sans têtes were boldly flavoured and the monkfish precisely cooked. Bread was delicious. But the amazing thing about the Moulin is the wine list. It's extensive and very deep, often with 10 different years for many of the great wines; and very fairly priced. The place has a warm, idiosyncratic, generous feel to it. Well worth a return visit.

This is generally the case in Europe. Julia Child's television programmes and books somehow didn't make it over here. Perhaps not surprising for France -- after all, she was trying to teach Americans to cook French food. But she has little name recognition in the UK, compared with, say, Delia Smith or Elizabeth David.

That was my point. The El Bulli tableware seems to be "grounded" in that the foods rest on stones and containers of various sorts. The Alinea tableware seems more airborne. But a design expert would make a better comparison. A follow-up question, if I may. Even with traditional tableware, it's not difficult (for me at least) to end up with food or sauce on my shirt front, or at least on my napkin or the tablecloth. The new Alinea tableware looks as though it would make spills even easier. Will the tables have white tablecloths? Has the likelihood of customers spilling food or sauce been factored into the overall design?

Martin, a warm welcome to eGullet. And to Martin and Grant, thanks for the start of a thought-provoking conversation. Here is a link to Robert Brown's photo-essay on the "taller" (= studio, atelier) of Ferran Adrià, with some examples of the el Bulli group's tableware. The comparisons are interesting.

We'll have to visit the Feu Follet again, because several visits there a year or so ago were deeply disappointing. It's one of the older restaurants in Mougins, and Simone Beck, Julia Child's collaborator, was a regular. The Feu Follet turns up in a number of older guides, and even in the current Michelin guide. Our meals there were, in a word, terrible: overcooked fish, underdeveloped flavours, poor service, mediocre ingredients. But perhaps it's worth another try, because restaurants do change. The Moulin de Mougins, for example, which was struggling a few years ago, has come back to life under a new chef/owner, Alain Llorca. It now offers a good value prix fixe lunch (EUR 58 for champagne, three courses, wine, mineral water, coffee/tea and mignardises). The cooking was precise, the ingredients very good, and the overall experience rewarding.

In French the Seven Deadly Sins are orgueil (pride), envie (envy), colère (wrath), acédie (sloth), avarice (greed or avarice), luxure (lust) and ... gourmandise (gluttony). I believe there's a movement seeking to have the last of these declassified.

There are a variety of ways of making socca in Nice and the surrounding area. There are travelling vendors who bring a little "beehive" oven on a wheeled cart, heating it with wood; the socca pan (sometimes thin iron, sometimes copper) goes into this and is heated, then the batter gets poured in. Then the pan goes back into the oven for a few moments so that it is browned, almost burnt on top. The vendors on the Cours Saleya, as Menton1 says, use a steel drum over a charcoal or wood fire. Socca isn't that hard to make at home. Chick pea flour does go off, so make sure yours isn't rancid. Be sure that the batter isn't too thick -- it should look like thin cream. I find it helpful to let it rest for awhile, then pass it through a sieve to remove any lumps. Heat the griddle well, then add a good bit of oil, then heat it a bit more, then pour on the batter. I tend to let my socca finish in the oven, but you could do it on the stove top. Serve it with lots of ground pepper. A very attractive variation is to sprinkle VERY finely chopped scallions over the batter as soon as it is poured into the griddle. It's addictive stuff, with a wonderful smoky flavour.

Denton's Catering Equipment, on the Clapham Road. Good prices, and the people "upstairs" will help you with professional equipment (stoves, fridges, etc.) if you're interested in that kind of thing. Some very good special offers from time to time, e.g. glass bowls at two for £1. Decent prices on knives.

Thanks to everyone on this thread for some wonderful ideas. A question about the salt. Does it need to be refined or purified? In France it's easy and inexpensive to buy large bags of very coarse sea salt (sometimes called sel gris, gray salt), but this stuff is not at all refined; sometimes it's even a bit damp. Can this be used for curing, or should you stick to a refined product like Maldon salt or Diamond Crystal kosher salt?

I'd nominate Formulas for Flavours: How to Cook Restaurant Dishes at Home by John Campbell (Conran Octopus, 2001).

Robert, thanks for a great tip. If the museum impresses someone of your connoisseurship, it's unquestionably worth a visit. I have been to the chateau and to the gardens, which are lovely, but never to the museum. Gourdon is a touristy town, as Robert says, but it has some interesting features. Go to the end of the town, where the views down the gorge are incredible. There are four or five hiking trails leading away from Gourdon, including the "chemin du paradis" which leads from Bar sur Loup up to Gourdon. Be careful if you take this: one path is lovely, the other leads you through damp caves and along a rusty aqueduct. Other paths away from Gourdon go along high cliffs, where you can see hang gliders take off and fly. The tourist office can give you a hiking guide to the area. At the end of the town is Le Nid D'Aigle (the eagle's nest), a restaurant cut into the side of the cliff. It has tables for three that are literally hanging from the edge of the cliff; you feel as though you are floating in mid-air. The food is nothing to write home about, but it's not horrible. A different approach to Gourdon is via Valbonne and Opio, where you can stop at the olive oil mill, l'Huilerie d'Opio. The oil is reasonably priced and of decent quality and there are lots of olive-related items for sale.

Robyn, if a poor or mediocre meal poisoned future visits for me, I'd be in trouble, since I end up with repeat visits to many places, in the UK because of business entertainment and in our corner of France because that's where we so often stay. I'd say that at least 40% of the time there is some improvement on the second visit. An example would be the Moulin de Mougins, which plummeted from three well deserved stars to one scarcely deserved. We dined there a few years ago and it was bad and expensive. We heard reports that it had improved, regained its second star, and returned for lunch right before Roger Vergé had sold it. It was far better, though I'm not sure I would have given it the second star were I an inspector. I'd go further to say that I hesitate to "review" any restaurant until I've been there more than once -- a rule I often break, but not a bad one if you are serious about evaluating a place's performance. Even at the 3 star level there's enough random variance from one night to the next that either a rave or a pan based on a single visit may not be useful to others. Have stayed at Gidleigh Park multiple times (good food, lovely setting), ditto Chewton Glen (food sometimes good, usually blah). The appeal of the Manoir is its focus on gastronomy -- a serious chef, rather than a hotelier, at the helm; the gardens; and the cookery school. So I'll definitely be back.

Toliver, thanks so much. There is so much to learn here. I switched off the lighting for pictures 1 and 2 because it was casting shadows -- which I had seen criticised in earlier posts on this thread. No shadows! But maybe it's worth having a small shadow if the picture is better lighted. I have different portable lights -- household lights, not photography lights -- incandescent, halogen, fluorescent. Any suggestions? The overhead shots were a pain, since I had to stand on a chair to look through the viewfinder and press the shutter release. I had tried that angle after seeing some pictures in a glossy cookbook, where they used a lot of overhead shots. But now that I look at those photos again, I notice that they used fancy plates, tablecloths and other decorations to give the images depth. I had a lot of trouble "cleaning up" photos 2 and 5 -- so yes, I'd much appreciate your posting what you were able to do in Photoshop and indicating what changes you made. Once again, many thanks!

OK, I will give this a try. All critiques and advice welcome. I am a complete novice at photography (analogue as well as digital) but would like to learn. This was a bistecca alla fiorentina -- the real thing. The steak came from the val de Chiana, via Esperya. It was cooked and served virtually unadorned: the steak, a bit of salt, a grind of pepper, and (before plating) a splash of olive oil. It is a rough dish, not at all refined; purely for carnivorous pleasure. I was trying to capture the simplicity of the dish. First the meat itself: Here's another version, on a white background: The grill pan, heating to the smoke point: The finished steak, resting before being sliced: Ready to eat: I used a tripod and a very show shutter on all of these, so as to avoid the flash. Some practical issues that I suspect real food photographers might not have a problem with: first, we actually ate this, and I wanted to serve it while it was hot and juicy. So the "Ready to eat" photo isn't very elegantly plated. Second, I didn't want to get grease and smoke all over the camera. So I didn't photograph the steak being cooked; that was too bad, because it was visually interesting, though a bit smoky. What do real photographers do when shooting in greasy/smoky situations? I enhanced all of these with PaintShop Pro, either using the automatic image improvement script or blundering around with brightness and contrast controls. The photos aren't very good, but the steak sure was tasty. The first time I had this dish was in a tiny village in Tuscany. Bistecca alla fiorentina was the only dish on offer, and the cows from which it had come were grazing on a hill that the restaurant overlooked. The experience was transcendent. Afterwards I went outdoors, sat on the crest of the hill, and thought about Life. This time I just washed the dishes. But it was a great steak nonetheless. Milo the dog (see avatar) will get a few scraps for his dinner later on. All comments and improvement pointers very welcome.

Allard was one of the very first restaurants I visited in Paris. My girlfriend (now my wife) and I had gone in the early 1980s. It was late springtime, we were in love, and Paris seemed to glow. We rented a flat on the Rue Jacob, at the Pl. Furstenburg end, near a tiny but wonderful market. Asparagus were in season, and I was charmed that the proprietor of the best vegetable stall was more than happy to discuss her product as we returned each day to buy. The flat had a minuscule kitchen, but it was equipped with every tool you could want, and none you didn't need. There are only a few things I remember about that first meal at Allard: enormous asparagus, covered with the freshest butter I had ever tasted and perfectly tender. At a neighbouring table, a single woman had ordered duck with olives, which I believe is a speciality of the place. We couldn't understand how one person could consume a whole duck by herself (the olives made the bird look larger than it is), and were puzzled that she kept taking pieces from her dish and putting them under the table. Was it the French way to throw indigestible bits on the floor? We later realised that her dog was having a duck feast underneath the table. We returned to Allard some 10 years later. It no longer had the same ethereal glow; the shock of the new was gone, and I have no doubt that the restaurant declined in performance, as restaurants tend to do. Nonetheless we enjoyed it. This time we ordered duck with olives. It was tasty, though just a bit oversalted. An American couple at the next table was so interested in the dish that we gave them some to try. Obviously, this is a dish to share. John, I hope that your meal at Allard is as wonderful as that first one seemed to us.

When I was a child, my parents belonged -- for a short time -- to a local gourmet club. The head of the club would send around a list of recipes for each evening, always on a different national theme: French, Russian, Spanish, Polish, etc. The members would cook these. Then they would get together and the head would critique the dishes. I still wonder why they didn't tell the head gourmet (a senior professor at the local Univ. where the club members were faculty) to stuff it. It was a nightmare. Nobody enjoyed it. Batuta, your club sounds infinitely more fun.

Long ago, when I first came to London, clients had private dining rooms with name's like the "Directors' Mess" or the "Chairman's Table". Working lunches featured silver service, staff dressed to the nines, white wine, claret and port (at least) and, often, very good food. If the captains of industry weren't eating all that well in local restaurants, they certainly were in their private dining rooms. Those days are mostly gone. Now, the term is "sandwich lunch". Sandwiches, a couple of "wraps", a fruit basket and some Kit-Kat bars. Soft drinks. I don't regret the change -- it could be impolite to refuse the drink, and impossible to get through the afternoon after a glass or two -- and the companies and the arteries of their executives are probably better off in today's more abstemious climate. But, with no disrespect to the Earl, I wish the bloody sandwich had never been invented. Especially if you're on Montignac or Atkins or some sort of low-carb regime, you're out of luck. If it can be done so without seeming rude or scattering bits all over the place, I will (very rarely) remove the fillings and eat them -- this is easiest if there are discrete pieces of cheese or meat, impossible when there are pastes of various sorts. When I arrange a working client lunch, I usually ask the canteen to send down "plated salads": greens, smoked salmon or tuna, some bread rolls for those who want them, cheeses, fruit. Mineral water or soft drinks. A much more pleasant way to eat and work.

This is a point not worth skating by. Some of the finest chickens I have tasted in French restaurants (Ledoyen and the Grand Véfour both come to mind) have had breast meat that was just on the edge of pink. A recent chicken with tarragon at L'Auberge, in London, was done in this way. Chez Bruce, also in London, sometimes features a poached chicken; the waiters warn customers that the meat will be slightly pink. Corby Kummer wrote a piece in The Atlantic -- unfortunately so long ago that it's not on their website -- called "Cook Pork Pink: It's Better That Way". Maybe something similar should be written about chicken.

I would also add a strong recommendation for a visit to The Wolseley. Like the Ivy, to which it is related, the food is generally reliable and the service and setting memorable. It's a challenge to spell the name, though.

If you turn up without these, the staff of Le Gav will supply them for you, though no guarantees are given as to style or fit.