MaxH

Interesting topic (do I detect a little defensiveness here and there?); here's another angle. I just explained on another forum how in earlier days of Internet food discussion (when the 'net had only a million, not a billion, readers and was becoming widely accessible, if not known, in North America) people hesitated at first to self-label their comments "reviews," that term being broadly reserved for professional work. People without such hesitation began doing so -- I can tell you the first such that I saw, on rec.arts.books in 1987, it may still be online. The practice has become more common, but some people still observe the distinction (as confirmed by responses after I posted about it).

Now THAT is cool. Thanks for posting, G. R. An example of the Internet as inspiration. (Like the Potted Meat Products tribute pages. Or the Destruct-O-Tron, proof that those disintegration rays and stuff in science fiction aren't all unrealistic. That page is from madcap adult UK physics hobbyists who demonstrate that, for instance, strong enough magnetic pulses can crush cans, shrink coins, and make teabags explode ...)

Fair enough as a testimonial, but did you only go there once, Carolyn? A professional guide like Michelin, if any good, will labor to transcend anecdote to estimate, from enough evidence, a typical diner's experience. I know respected restaurants (like the one above just raised from one to two stars) where anecdotal accounts range widely. Some of them are demonstrably atypical, or even show customer attitude evident in the comments, but these are not factors people seem open to considering when they post (or defend) their resolute opinions. Especially jaundiced opinions. Actually I have more and longer experience with that particular restaurant than almost any other customer, enough to've seen its ups and downs and strengths and weaknesses. Enough therefore to gauge the reviews by the restaurant, rather than vice versa. Enough to spot as misleading a snide comment by one (anonymous, unnacountable) diner, a comment chosen nevertheless for inclusion in a survey-based guide. Enough experience to spot as atypical, even bizarre, some postings on a restaurant-comment site whose incentives include invitation to parties "comped" by some of very restaurants rated (according to both word of mouth and the Wall St. Journal). These sources are what the Michelin must be compared to when criticizing it, for they're the alternatives. (They, and countless bloggers posting opinions from random perspectives with little fact checking, accountability, or sense of need for these things, but lots of opinion.)

Next week if I remember right. They're releasing the different US guides in successive weeks, New York first.

The new 2008 Bay Area Michelin restaurant guide was just released. Two restaurants were elevated to two-star ("worth a detour") awards: Chej TJ in Mountain View and Meadowood in St. Helena. There are now six two-star establishments and one three-star (the French Laundry) in the Bay Area. Well done! Press-relase link

Why's that, Tupac? Serious question: It does (or at least it used to) mean something. "Adam and Eve sold themselves for an apple. What would they have done for a truffled fowl?" -- Brillat-Savarin (it's in my notes on Amazon about MFKF's translation of the Physiologie du Goût.) Of course, in Brillat's day there were more truffles, and they were real truffles; flavorless minor species tarted up with real juice and passed as the Real Thing didn't have the respectability they do today; there weren't ubiquitous fake "truffle oils" made from 2,4-dithiapentane, characterized by makers as "something from the truffle that is not the truffle." ("While synthetic, they are not unnatural," one advocate told me in apparent sincerity.) But I'm curious what Tupac had in mind.

Exactly, eje: That was a fairly common international custom when entertaining for dinner -- for many years, until recent decades. The quaint, clinking "post-prandial" cart of liqueurs and brandies still appears at US meal functions put on at restaurants by a wine organization I belong to, based in Europe. The table is conspicuous for being so uncommon now; few people partake, and those normally are not driving. (When I organized one of these events, I didn't bother offering those drinks.) I rarely think of more drinks after a good meal, even when there's no driving. But it seems like a charming custom and in the right circumstances, good company, etc., liqueurs after coffee might be a very fine end to a meal.

I keep business cards, sometimes menus or supplemental notes. Doing it for 35 years. Posting occasional restaurant recommendations on the Internet since the middle 1980s (when it was less popular, but starting to be accessible to the public and already had passionate and knowledgeable food-loving communities). Food on the Internet has changed rapidly the last few years (it's almost a point of distinction not to write at length on a blog ). To recommend or comment on a restaurant, I look to where the interested readers will be, which varies, and try to put it there. Recently for instance I recommended some restaurants on the venerable SF-area newsgroup since the middle 1980s, ba.food. Newsgroups predate HTML, use broadcast rather than central content storage, and are convenient sometimes to post information if you want to refer to it later, as in the link above.

Couple of details on the larger context of these drinks aren't in recent online mentions I've seen, nor the current Wikipedia entry. (I did not get any of the following information online.) First they're somewhat cyclic in US interest. I've seen a couple of these cycles -- didn't realize the drink had returned until this thread. Footnote I wrote last decade to help explain a scene in a 1940s Warners film-noir: Café brûlot, spiced black coffee flamed with brandy, was an old-fashioned cliché of elegant dining, like silver toast racks, midnight Champagne suppers, and Russian salads. Multilayered pousse-cafés (rediscovered every few years) do not qualify, Toulouse-Lautrec notwithstanding, because they make you sick. The last, facetious, remark reflects eje's point, they are mainly a visual thing. After all, liqueurs in general are niche products, few people consume them regularly. (They were more routinely offered with coffee a generation or two ago.) Second, larger point: pousse-café has a much more general meaning than you'd know from this thread (or Wikipedia etc.) It's standard informal French for a liqueur served after coffee (like something that pushes the coffee down). I've seen Europeans surprised to hear that US bartenders understand the word in the special sense of a layered cocktail. Cassell's reference French-English dictionary defines pousse-café only as familiarly a liqueur after coffee. (This situation parallels the even more atypical US use of beignet, from New Orleans, not the main francophonic meaning of beignet. ) I notice also that Grossman's classic Guide to Wines, Spirits, and Beers (mentioned in this forum before) has a table of specific densities (and alcohol contents) of a couple dozen cordials, for use in the multilayered pousse-cafés.

How many do you want? I started collecting quotations that "you won't find in Bartlett's" around 1980; many are about food and wine. Used some in past eG postings. Here are a few choice ones mostly used earlier here. In small type to save space. For the modern books, briefly quoted, I strongly recommend reading the full originals. You have heard the news: excommunicated. Come and dine to console me. Everyone is to refuse me fire and water; so we will eat nothing but cold glazed meats, and drink only chilled wines. -- Talleyrand (Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord), in a letter to his friend the Duc de Biron (better known as the Duc de Lauzun), April 1791. Sources: Larousse Gastronomique 1961 Crown edition; also Duff Cooper, Talleyrand (Harper and Brothers, 1932). A light supper, of course. I am exceedingly fond of Welsh rabbit. More than a pound at once, however, may not at all times be advisable. Still, there can be no material objection to two. And really between two and three, there is merely a single unit of difference. I ventured, perhaps, upon four. My wife will have it five; but, clearly, she has confounded two very distinct affairs. The abstract number, five, I am willing to admit; but, concretely, it has reference to bottles of brown stout, without which, in the way of condiment, Welsh rabbit is to be eschewed. -- E. A. Poe, Some Words with a Mummy [At the end of the 19th century in Berlin,] even at court, a strange relationship to good food prevailed. According to author and art historian Max Rapsilber, Emperor Wilhelm II once said after a banquet at the Adlon Hotel, "Dinner was good, but what pleased me most was the discipline with which it was made." The Brillat-Savarins came of heroic stock and all died at the dinner-table, fork in hand. Brillat's great-aunt, for example, died at the age of 93 while sipping a glass of old Virieu, while Pierrette, his sister, two months before her hundredth birthday, uttered (at table) the following last words which are forever enshrined in the memory of good Frenchmen: `Vite,' she cried, `apportez-moi le dessert -- je sens que je vais passer!' -- Lawrence Durrell's preface to Marcel Rouff, The Passionate Epicure. English translation by Claude [sic], E. P. Dutton, 1962. No matter how thin you slice it, it's still baloney. -- Rube Goldberg, as quoted by Lee Roth in <1259@sousa.ltn.dec.com> Baron Philippe de Rothschild became impatient waiting for lunch at the Tadich Grill after asking his host to take him to a "place that's typically Old San Francisco." He said "I dislike doing things like this, but perhaps it would help if you told them who I am." His friend replied, "I dislike telling you this, but I did, 15 minutes ago." -- Story summarized; quotations from Herb Caen, 1970 Calvin Trillin, joking about the meaning of [“continental cuisine” in the 1970s US], suggested the continent in question must be Antarctica, because so much continental food is made from frozen ingredients. -- Jane and Michael Stern, American Gourmet, Harper Collins 1991, ISBN 0060167106. Nasty, brutish, and long. -- Ted Talley (wholesale wine merchant), striving to describe the flavor of a remarkably hideous wine at a blind tasting in my presence, 18 May 2000.

Thanks, Pontormo -- I was thinking along some of those lines, then saw your posting. No reflection on the specific books on that list, many good -- but I guess it shouldn't be surprising when commercial publications recommend mainly recent best-sellers and classics permanently in print. Individuals do too, because those books are so well known. That leaves the question of where to find recommendations of food books by authors who are not on TV and don't have cheeses or metaphors named after them. This thread has some. Also, this thread is about books for chefs. I can think of several books fitting Pontormo's and my criteria above, but for general readers -- many of them have already appeared in earlier threads on this site. Not being a chef leaves me less clear what's appropriate for them. Does "fine" fiction exclude modern humor classics like the wicked Someone is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe, Nan and Ivan Lyons, 1976, with its unforgettable beginning and quotable lines (movie version, 1978), or the lighter Monsieur Pamplemousse by Michael Bond (1986)?

Thanks for the detailed report, Doc. Glad that you finally made it to the restaurant. If I understand right, your experience was on a Saturday night. As a side note just tangent to your experience, it reminded me of Jim Quinn's book, But Never Eat Out on a Saturday Night (the Kitchen Confidential of 25 years ago, originally a series of magazine articles, which came to wide attention when the most critical of them appeared in Harper's). One article, the title story, explains why to avoid Saturdays. Yes, we might reasonably expect consistent service, especially at an upper-end restaurant. No, the reality is not like that, or at least the constraints on the restaurant are at their worst then. (I've eaten out a bit in the last 30 years and my experience bears out Quinn exactly. For 25 of those years the dining has been very rarely on Saturdays, and increasingly not on Fridays. Including when Saturday was the "only time available." If we must eat then, it's usually as early as possible.) None of which should be misunderstood to say I might not do exactly the same thing you did, when visiting, in good company, etc.!

Like, cocktails? :-) That's only half joking, from the following data. Much of what I see on cocktails now in US newspaper food-wine sections is written by and about people in their 20s and 30s. And this coverage is mostly in recent years. Which makes sense, because cocktails were out of fashion among young people, for a generation or so. For a generation, cocktails were people's parents' drinks, making them uncool (like with music). Then new people came along without that memory. Most dramatic example: the Martini. Way unhip among younger folks for years, until its return (along with cocktail-shaker and bar-glass displays in housewares shops) in the middle or late 1990s. I mentioned this six years ago on Amazon re Conrad's Martini book. Martinis went from mainstream, in US culture through the 1950s and 60s, to unhip by the 1980s. In 1990 a popular writer had a character ordering Martinis as a signal of how out-of-it he was. Then they came back. (With one or two twists. Like the need now for some writers to specify "Gin Martinis" which would have sounded ridiculously redundant before 10-15 years ago; and the sweet colorful spin-off drinks I've heard called KoolAidTinis.)

Yes, 15 and 20 years ago there was a lot of local enthusiasm for the Plumed Horse and its rival across the way, the Mouton Noir. Alumni of both establishments have furthered high-end dining elsewhere in the region. Chef Patrick Farjas and some folks now at 231 Ellsworth since its change in 2000 come to mind. (These, the half-dozen other well-known high-end places, and many excellent moderately priced one-of-a-kind family-run "ethnic" restaurants in Santa Clara and San Mateo Counties come to mind among many locals, whenever someone from out of the area confidently declares that the peninsula or south bay have no restaurants worth note.)

N.B., this is a very well established fine-dining restaurant in the foothills, with a lot of history. Bit of an institution in (if I may so call them) the suburbs of silicon valley. My experience there was all before the change of ownership. Some very good people became involved in the business, there was an approving mention of this in the SF Chronicle food section several months ago when the remodeling started. I'd like to see the new operation (maybe wait a little longer for things to settle down more).

I don't want to add much here, only some history that I didn't see yet in the exchanges about service. This restaurant underwent a major change (and upgrade) in front-house management in 2004. If anyone's experience is only before late 2004, be advised that there were changes, so comparing then and now is a little like comparing the Plumed Horse of today with the Plumed Horse of the last decade (apropos another posting). This doesn't, of course, rule out the chance that some individual experiences could be very similar, then and now; or better then than now ...

I mentioned the short history of the PN glut-turned-drought on the California bulk market (Here). Ironically, at the PN conference this year where I heard that, I had with me John Haeger's unique history North American Pinot Noir (ISBN 0520241142), 2004. In 2004, there still was a PN surplus and Haeger speculated about the future. He could not have anticipated "academy awards night") (Turrentine's phrase) when the PN surplus vanished suddenly. (Haeger, who is local to me, has been writing a second edition as I understand.) In other words, this scarcity of PN is a historical quirk. (The same conference discussed the almost desperate overplanting of PN now underway. In time it could yield another surplus.) Short answer: Drinking the same inexpensive PNs we all bought before drinkable PNs became common from US winemakers 20-25 years ago: Bourgognes Rouges, the basic Burgundian Pinots Noirs and throughout all this time, often good values at US $10-$15 from larger producers like Jadot and Drouhin.

Out of curiosity I checked some excellent current and older (printed) sources that describe medicinal herbs, but none mentioned "numatea." They did mention maté (Ilex paraguayensis) as a source of caffeine and tannin, including 0.2 to 2% caffeine, or 1 to 10g caffeine per pound. Since caffeine and thujone are convulsive poisons at the same lethal dose level (ancient information, reiterated for example Here), anyone anxious about thujone's health effects might best avoid it. (Or sage, or tea, or coffee, or cola, or chocolate -- I haven't even touched on congener xanthines such as theophylline and theobromine, or congener terpenoids like menthol, thymol, and camphor -- it's a dangerous world out there ...)

In this thread are reminders of the medicinal or semi-medicinal origin of so many cordials and specialty wines. (Which continues: the digestive bitters so popular after meals in C. Europe -- Unterberg, Fernet Branca, Stonsdorfer, Wunderlich -- all used as traditional herbal medicines.) Remember (I hope it's well known -- this has been in absinthe books for decades) that vermouth is from Germ. Wermut (wormwood, acc. to my Cassell's reference German dictionary). Vermouths have always had a connection with wormwood and mugwort plants, therefore with absinthe liquors. Maté (yerba maté, aka "Paraguay tea") is a major caffeine source in Latin America (with or without the traditional natural or manmade gourd to drink it from), I think it was discussed on this site a few years ago. In the US (at least on the west coast) it's commonly available in specialty, Latin, and some general grocery stores -- the kind of thing you'd find in bulk at Whole Foods for example. It was common in my father's house in California 35 years ago -- he liked teas and coffees, and my main memory of the stuff (I still keep it at home but rarely make it) is a grassy appearance, pleasant savory herbal flavor, and that it is phenomenally cheap compared to other caffeine sources. It goes well with food. The Gauchos who herded the cattle of Argentina were (are?) said to live on eight pounds of beef a day and a gallon or two of brewed yerba maté.

Though wikipedia (and standard written authorities) focus on acetic acid which is common, VA includes a wider range of organic acids. Also they show up indirectly in the smell because they react with alcohol, yielding just the sorts of solvent esters people associate. Experienced tasters I know don't consider VA a gross flaw like TCA (cork taint). On the other hand, this thread is the first discussion I've seen to actually ask if we should "like it."

Thanks for posting, Don. This is the Frequently Asked Pronunciations subject. Before internet, guidance was in the backs of conscientious wine books. I think the best, most definitive pointers today are those that link to a sound recording, or use the International Phonetic Alphabet (standard in good mutlilingual dictionaries) which in turn has standard reference pronunciations online.This favorite topic of food-and-wine fora has a history on eG too, like the long and popular Food Pronunciation Guide thread, which includes many wine words such as Veltliner. (That thread also sheds incidental light on the emotional baggage of pronunciation issues: please don't laugh at this, don't blame me, I feel both smug and unbearably stupid, etc.)

Earlier this year at the Pinot Noir conference in Anderson Valley, Bill Turrentine (wholesale grape and wine broker) gave interesting statistics and predicted a "sweet spot" in the market for $12-$20 wines (of that particular varietal), assuming yields adequate for profitability while retaining varietal character. I talked also to some informed folks about this tonight -- US markets have been buying box and "two buck" products and $75 connoisseur products, but numbers of the non-winegeek public seems ready to spend $12 or $15 for something more interesting than bulk wines.(Remarkable tangent: Turrentine's hard data on Pinot Noir volumes were dramatic. A big surplus of California PN was available to the bulk market after about 2000. Partly from investment for "millenium" sparkling wines, some of which got diverted to still wines. Then the curves show this surplus "falling off a cliff" in the latter part of 2005 -- what Turrentine called Academy Awards Night in honor of a certain helpful movie. From 2005 to 2006, the spot-market price for PN grapes doubled.)

Pull up the drawbridge, Brad. From the late 1990s, artisanal German producers were blessed with an extraordinary string of good vintages and many of these producers were practically giving the wine away. (Except a few that got noticed by the points critics, thus removing those wines as good values.) I was ordering extra dozens just because excellent Kabinetts at $8-$9 in the US seemed absurd to pass up, and after all they go so well with so many foods (is that part of the story now out too, or still overlooked?) I'll trade you some good ones if you have any white Burgs. (I also have a strategic reserve of single malts from good producers, accumulated against the time when some of them become hard to get because the distillers go through those multi-year shutdown perionds that they do.)

I've heard good things about that edition. Will do. ← You must!The 1971 you mentioned, Carrot Top, was a mezzanine edition or reprinting of the '61 (I don't remember), in relatively small numbers if I recall. The Crown 1961 was the first, and for a long time the main, Anglophone edition, produced in such quantity it has been ubiquitous on the used market since the 1970s, found in almost every US used bookstore I've checked that has a cooking section, for example. (I have four or five copies, some of them often lent out; I've cited it here and on other online food fora since the 1980s). It is close to the 1938 French, including some Francocentric chauvinisms and eccentricities [1,2] thoroughly expunged from later editions, and is interesting just for those. Examples below illustrate touches so dramatically missing from the new, more international, more sanitized 1988 Crown Anglophone edition (and the newer one, 2000). LG did not go as far as Escoffier, who explicitly omitted, for instance, curry recipes because they are "not to European taste," but it had remarks about ghastly foreign habits -- American fondness for sweet sauces and "automated" restaurants (surely written in the 1930s when Automats were more fashionable) and other corruptions from which (1938, 1961) "French cooking has nothing to gain." [1] Discoursing on the history of coffee houses: Having first introduced, sort of reverently, the appearance of early examples in Paris in the late 1600s, the Larousse then, characteristically, dismisses them: "But these miserable cafes were really no more than dirty little smoking-saloons, frequented only by confirmed smokers, travelers from the Lebanon, and several Knights of Malta." [2] "You have heard the news: excommunicated. Come and dine to console me. Everyone is to refuse me fire and water; so we will eat nothing but cold glazed meats, and drink only chilled wines." -- Talleyrand (Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord), in a letter to his friend the Duc de Biron (better known as the Duc de Lauzun), April 1791. Sources include Larousse Gastronomique, 1961 Crown English-language edition (but missing, like so many other tidbits, from the two "modern" editions).

Another point on Panisse, rarely mentioned in online fora. More philosphical than practical. The restaurant was conceived to capture the quality, local-ingredient-driven cuisine of provincial restaurants its founder had experienced in France. As opposed to a grand-palace or "destination" restaurant. This has sometimes caused letdowns for people who arrive from, say, New York having often heard the name Chez Panisse, yet surprised to experience a low-key, country-inn presentation. More so if they were folks who liked to go to famous high-profile places, spend a lot of money, be fussed over, and boast about it. A small secondary body of online commentary has developed over the years from this phenomenon. Not to distract from tupac's good advice, and without getting into subject matter more properly private, I'll mention that Chez Panisse (the restaurant) has a history of keeping the prix-fixe as low as possible consistent with good wages for the employees. It is not known as a high-profit-margin restaurant. Therefore you might be paying a little for a name, but unlike some restaurants you are paying chiefly for costs.