Dirk Wheelan

I wasn't here last year, so for me this thread has been relevant and intriguing. I suppose if it does bore the pants off you, you could just not read it.

Too Late!

Yes, but then it's not called 'Favourite Restaurants of the World". I realize, as has been pointed out, that these kind of things are "a bit of fun", but even so they must mean something to somebody in order to attract some of the big names present last night. Surely, Shaun, 'free wine' wasn't the only reason you were there? My own take on this list is that while it includes some very good places to eat, their order and the many anomalies (the Gallery at Sketch ) render it useless. I'm sure eGullet, with its international membership profile could do much better job of coming up with a realistic and far more meaningful list. Should I start a thread on it?

What an utterly bizarre list. What's happened to France? L'Ambroisie not included, but the dreadful Gallery at Sketch, yes? I did a Lexis-Nexis search on this story, and notably there was not a single report in any language except English. I think we're talking parallel universes here.

I drove through Birmingham once in the 80s and witnessed a man emerge from a white transit van with a Rottweiller and set it on a group of Indian men. I've not been back since.

'The only magazine dedicated to food in the Midlands.' Not for long. With such a rich gastronomic tradition, I predict a food magazine explosion in this area. Coventry Culinaire The East Midlands Gourmet Eat Birmingham! Flavour of Nottingham. Ambrosial Uttoxeter (featuring Delicious Derby) etc.

The Evening Standard describes Tough Cookies as 'surely the most obsequious book on chefs that has ever been published.' And at the launch party, Gordon Ramsay made Jonathan Meades look positively compassionate, with his sensitive evaluation of the book's main drawback, 'The only trouble is that 90 per cent of chefs can't read."

Well, at the simplest level, on the one hand you have demonstrated and developed a certain cognitive ability, and on the other hand, as you point out in your bio, you have chosen cooking rather than cooking having chosen you. A trained mind and impressive commitment must signify an unusually high probability that you are genuinely food orientated and would eventually cook better than someone without this profile.

Compo ration stew, anyone? Let me understand you here - the leaders are, or should be educated, the led are uneducated? ← No.

What's this supposed to mean? Anyway, at £97.50 (just gone up) the tasting menu would probably be one of the cheapest in France, but it's the most expensive in the UK, and I think you'll find that the Spanish three stars are also significantly cheaper for both food and wine, with the possible exception of el Bulli. Which is to not to say that all three star restaurants aren't seriously expensive.

Yes, but having learned to cook, it might make a difference to what you would cook if had your own kitchen.

Meades seems to perceive a problem in that he sees the spotlight of culinary fame pointed on the noisiest members of the troupe rather than the most talented, and he doesn't believe that noise will ever equate with talent. However, I agree with you that Meades' analysis is potentially political, but why shouldn't it be? And anyway, (if you and I can recognize it such) I don't think his intention is to obscure this trait. Meades notes that between (university) educated chefs and their less academic colleagues, there is a difference in approach characterized by restraint in the former, and showboating in the latter. Now, if we were talking about literary criticism it would hardly be controversial to suggest that level of education results in a difference of approach or style. So what's the problem here? The problem is that Meades prefers the approach of the educated chefs. I don't agree though, as you seem to be suggesting, that he prefers their approach because they are university educated, but that he is struck that in the UK the approach he likes seems to be exclusively deployed by a handful of modest graduates. Seems like quite an interesting observation to me, and one that I'm increasingly sympathetic to.

You may claim to be unswayed by Michelin stars, but I doubt you'd claim that that was a common trait in the gastronomic milieu. Indeed, professionals who do opt out of Michelin criteria, also opt out of receiving anything but the most perfunctory recognition in other media. Anyway, Meades disagrees with you and is saying that British Michelin food isn't fantastic. However, he is implying that it should be and is trying to identify a reason why it isn't. I suspect that what your unnecessary name-calling comes down to in the end is that Meades is challenging your tastes and values, but instead of just trying to undermine Meades' person, why don't you try to argue the contrary. Then perhaps we could have an interesting discussion.

France has a stronger tradition of mentorship. ← France also has a stronger culture, of which gastronomy is but a part. I realize that Moby's rabid response is the de rigeur liberal reaction, but despite his neologisms, and his apparent lack of research into French kitchen culture Meades does make an important point. "here exists a parallel strain of (better) cooking practised by enlightened chefs, many of whom can read and write, many of whom are women." I think Moby's attack is a good example of the problem that Meades identifies, because Moby's attitude implies that Michelin recognition places the chefs in question beyond criticism. However, if one doesn't accept that Michelin is the absolute arbiter of gastronomy then there is no reason why Michelin chefs should not be subjected to scrutiny. The fact that their work is not held up for critical examination, and that they are often embarrassingly lauded is precisely because they are not 'taken seriously', for most people the evaluation of Michelin or Restaurant Magazine is more than a sufficient confirmation of quality. Hardly serious attention. Meades' 'parallel strain' is important, because it's borne of culinary reflection and not Michelin monomania. The fact that its exponents are educated does not make it good, but the fact that it is conceived with the food in mind rather than as a means of recognition does demand some level of respect. It may be coincidence that that these cooks are educated, although I doubt it. However, I have no doubt at all that Shaun Hill, Sally Clarke et al, have more than enough skills to operate multi-starred establishments, but they choose not to. On the other hand I doubt that 'Macrame Martinets' would fare as well in the parallel world for the simple reason that it does not offer enough opportunities for self-publicity. In other words the problem with the 'parallel strain' is, as Meades suggests, that it is excessively food-focussed.

I'm not sure that Meades is attacking chefs, rather he seems to be questioning their motivations, which (I suppose inevitably for the famous ones) do often seem to be the pleasures of ostentatiousness. I think what Meades is getting at is that the driving force for gastronomic change in this country is fame and attention rather a love for food. I haven't read the book, and don't think I'll bother now either.

In the process of reviewing Tough Cookies in the Sunday Times Jonathan Meades also analyses the current state of the British Dining scene from critics ('gastronomically ignorant wiseacres'), to the Michelin chefs ('Macho martinet cooks who produce a kind of tweely kitsch culinary macramé). I only wish he still reviewed restaurants.

This is news? ← This is a useful comment? ← I have it on good authority that Gordon Ramsay recently purchased a new hat. (is this more useful?)

This is news?

There is no MG doctrine. If there was, it certainly wouldn't be this one. A good cook is a good cook. A bad cook is my mother-in-law. Someone who suspends a piece of protein in a vacuum at 58 degrees centigrade for 3 days is trying to alter the internal structure of the collagen to the strands of muscle fibre. See the difference? ← You're right, doctrine is the wrong term, but I still maintain that those that cite MG as the basis of their technique imply with their 'perfect' dishes, that any other approach is flawed. However, I do see the difference, I also hear the difference (a lot), but I'm sceptical because I don't taste the difference.

The application of this term as related to a food movement is only something used by the press as a tag, and so misappropriated by the public as a style of preparation. Which is to say: you can use all of the principles as outlined by the various MG studies, and come up with an end result that you would otherwise call Nouvelle Cuisine. Keller uses MG information, as does Ducasse (in most of his restaurants). Neither could accurately be called a part of the MG movement. ← I quite agree, but from the perspective of a restaurant-goer there is a distinct correlation between a certain type of food and the invocation of MG. For example, bacon & egg ice-cream is not bacon & egg ice cream but 'encapsulated flavour'. The point is that despite being imprecise in my use of terminology there is an 'I know it when I see it' type of menu that corresponds to MG, even though, as you say, the technological know-how is available to, and used by many of those who are outside my definition. In fact, this detail does tend to suggest that there is an element of choice involved as to how much a chef professes to base his cuisine on MG, and those, like Heston, who are closely aligned with the term are probably related this way because they want to be.

I entirely understand if you don't want to contribute to this discussion or reply to anything I've said, but for my part I think I've put my case as succinctly as I can, so can you please stop demanding that I write you lists?

I think you have it backwards. Nobody makes that claim. Good cooking is at least as much about inspiration, feeling. Its like having good ingredients; a bad cook willstill spoil them. What I think is claimed is that by understanding the molecular basis of the process you may get additional insight which a good cook can use to their advantage. ← I'm not talking about This and Kurti, I'm talking about chefs who make a fetish of expounding on everything via its molecular explanation. MG is like a Pacojet, it opens up some interesting possibilities but it doesn't actually make everything else obsolete. Chefs have been applying scientific principles to their cooking with every relevant new technological development that has arrived on the market (the thermometer, for instance). It's only now that an public interest in what chefs do has aligned with some new technology to coalesce into the 'style of cooking known as MG', which seem to be just as much a style of self promotion as anything else.

Ruth Rogers and Rose Gray, maybe? I doubt they're on the line every night, but that's whose "concept" you are eating. ← The point I was trying to make is that the food was magnificent, and not at all eclipsed by the personality of the person preparing it; the antithesis of MG. Also, I am not so terribly cynical as to think of simply prepared high quality food as a 'concept'.

I'm not aware of Heston Blumenthal distancing himself from Molecular Gastronomy, quite the opposite. Although I agree that Simon Rogan and Antony Flinn reject the term as applicable to their work, and having eaten at both restaurants I'd entirely agree with them. It's not my fault that the term is mis-applied or over-used by journalists, but then neither is true that it is a 'pigeon hole' and 'not a style of cooking'; unless John Campbell, Heston Blumenthal, etc. are desperate to pigeon-hole themselves. I'd concede that perhaps it isn't a movement (out of wishful thinking more than anything else), but either way the MG doctrine that good cooking is a science, and that by learning that science you will become a good cook is clearly nonsense if one considers that just about all good cooks are not molecular gastronomers. Unfortunately, it has the trappings of a movement if only because it allows its exponents to vaunt technique over anything else; in other words it makes what chefs do to the food more important than the food itself, which makes it irresistibly attractive to publicity seeking chefs. I would argue that globally, the quantity and influence of those wishing to invert the traditional respect for ingredients in favour of directing attention to themselves is such that it constitutes a powerful restaurant trend. We can argue about the correct terminology for this trend as much as you like, but I'd much prefer to argue about the value of the trend itself if you don't mind.

I'll believe MG (the cooking style) has something to offer when it can usurp the primacy of good ingredients. Until then I maintain that MG is too often an excuse for many chefs to serve up personality bites (usually expressed in novelty forms) instead of food. About a month ago I went to the River Cafe after an absence of four years. I had forgotten how good food can taste ... can't tell you the name of the chef though.