Steve Klc

No Michael, nor have I seen the book yet, but he supervises the desserts and petits fours at Ducasse NY, which were superb in every sense. I have high expectations for this book, though not as high as those for Alberto Adria's plated dessert book due out in November.

Deacon--why get so disproportionately hung up on the analogy? Isn't there a chance you misinterpreted Shaw's attempt to avoid the discussion of the analogy in order to get back to the real discussion? I think these recent excellent posts by Lizziee go a long way toward explaining the thought process behind what Shaw meant when he drew an analogy to the Constitution and how the Supreme Court justices have to put their personal, subjective feelings and preferences aside in order to evaluate the task at hand fairly and properly by working within the Constitution, and yes, even bending it to their needs. Lizziee wrote "I think it is important for anyone, be it a professional critic or an amateur, but knowledgeable diner, to honestly take into account one's biases and then try to assess a restaurant on what the chef is trying to achieve. I prefer Gagnaire to Ducasse, because I enjoy the cerebral aspects of Gagnaire's cuisine. Ducasse's emphasis is not the cerebral, but the integrity of the ingredient, perfectly prepared. My expectations at Ducasse and Gagnaire are very different and I think it unfair to use my personal preferences as a basis to downgrade one over the other." But each experience takes place within the longstanding, codified arena of fine dining which Michelin and Gault-Millau popularized and which the chefs themselves have built upon for hundreds of years, built upon what has come before and which knowledgeable diners and reviewers have to be aware of or they are simply not knowledgeable. It is not subjective and can't be merely explained away as subjective preference without the recognition of this over-riding achievement, this over-riding record. This collective history is the restaurant reviewer's "Constitution" if you will. It may not be a single or concise document but it does exist nonetheless. Ignore it at your peril and risk marginalization. Shaw urges reviewers and diners to be as "completely unbiased and objective about the job" as possible. So does Lizziee and so do I. You say "But you introduce a completely separate aspect of the equation when you begin talking about absolutes, as with the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court does not deal with matters of personal taste. Your argument is really about the Constitution being the law of the land, as if there were one standard of good food handed down on stone tablets from On High." No Deacon--the justices of the supreme court deal with personal taste all the time--and have to put their subjective, emotional, personal feelings and tastes aside each day--they have to ignore whether they are Catholic or catholic or Protestant personally--ignore whether they are subjectively against abortion for instance and assess whatever abortion issue presents itself as a matter of law--as a matter of how it fits within the longstanding legal framework which they themselves have helped to build up with their decisions but the framework and precedents existed long before. So to with restaurant reviewers and writers assessing the achievement of the current crop of chefs and restauranteurs. Deacon, you go on to say "As I said, we're dealing here with esthetics, not ethics." Again, no--we’re dealing with both aesthetics and ethics and also with professionalism, awareness, knowledge, fairness and experience--in both the Supreme Court justice and the critic or knowledgeable diner writing up a review of an experience or determing a "best restaurant" list rather than merely a list of subjective favorites. Granted, “the constitution says whatever the supreme court says it does” but that is until the other branches of government decide to change it and sell the change to the public. This is what I suspect Shaw didn't see as a productive path to go down, not out of condescension but because who really wants to go down that path on a food site? There are parallels to this in food media and if you insist I'll go down that road with you but again, it's off point and you risk getting even further distracted and Bourdain-like. You go on to state Shaw's "argument seems to be that the rules for effective restaurant criticism are as absolute as the US Constitution." Again, I don't think so--just that Shaw recognizes the criteria for evaluating the best restaurants as opposed to one’s subjectively favorite restaurants has existed for hundreds of years--as have the criteria for defining excellence of a chef's achievement--and that that excellence and achievement is not inherently subjective. It's much harder to determine "best" for both Supreme Court justice and restaurant critic. There is an immutable baseline--it’s called the 500 years of culinary history and man’s achievement in fine dining which has reached it's apex in the 3 star Michelin restaurants in Paris and around the world, the US restaurants everyone knows are the best like the French Laundry and the "eight best" in NYC like Ducasse, Daniel, Le Bernardin, et al--of which Blue Hill does not belong, yet. (I've never been there yet I can say definitively it is not one of the 8 best restaurants in NYC yet just. Whether it's top 15, top 30, I can't say until I eat there. How can I do that? Because there are at least 8 restaurants in NYC offering near flawless consummate achievements in technique, presentation, service, quality of ingredients, creativity, ambience night in and night out--delivering what the chef is trying to achieve against this historical standard of achievment--that's how. The small, personal nature, minor flaws and service mis-steps which have been reported mitigate against Blue Hill being included in this group of "best" just yet, regardless of whether one is pre-disposed to subjectively appreciate dining in this style.) You may have one underwhelming meal at the French Laundry but still have to conclude it is one of the very few, very "best" restaurants in the US. If you didn't, you would be suspect or marginalized, just like a certain justice or two on the Supreme Court. Yes there are sudden punctuations--the sudden emergence of an Adria or a Gagnaire which upsets the canon--but the really knowledgeable, really trusted sources find a way to deal with these and frame them in the context of what has come before--and this exists outside what one's subjective response is. Back to the analogy--Don't forget the only way the justices got nominated and approved to the supreme court in the first place is that they’ve proved their grasp of the laws that have been set down--their facility with the baseline, the canon--and so, too, a diner or restaurant critic has to demonstrate their knowledge of the culinary canon, their awareness, open mind and sense of appreciation beyond their own subjective preferences to earn the respect of others as a reliable gauge, a reliable source of something other than just personal feelings and reportage. In short, a proven authority. You go on with “Even granting that the Constitution were infallible and immutable, which it isn't, that still has really no bearing on restaurant criticism. There is no Constitution of How to Cook, and no panel of nine grand poo-bahs interpreting it.’ and “Restaurant critics get their jobs in a variety of ways, some of which have little to do with formal training in cooking. What's the analogy, the James Beard Awards? If anything, the analogy should be drawn to other areas of criticism, like painting, film, photography, etc.” Well, you're right of course, but that doesn't get you very far. All you've demonstrated is why restaurant criticism and acquiring culinary awareness and appreciation is so difficult. I'm afraid forming an opinion of Roe v. Wade is comparable to forming an opinion of a particular Dover sole dish--and for either opinion to be valuable is can't rely solely or even mostly on subjective personal feelings. Neither culinary nor legal achievement exists in a vacuum or a narrow, subjective frame of reference.

Do either of you know if these are recent additions online, perhaps in response to comments here on eGullet--or is the full archive of reviews going back more than a few weeks available as well? Is the review of the Ryland Inn online? Khao--do you know if they've always been available online--just obscured? If it were, why wouldn't the Ryland Inn have linked to it?

A book I'm waiting for is Rick Tramonto's "Amuses-bouche: Little Bites that Delight before the Meal Begins." I heard this Fall. I have no idea whether it will be geared to amateur home or serious home audiences.

For background and history, one book that I used was "Indian Food--A Historical Companion" by K. T. Achaya, which is in paperback. (Oxford University Press, 1998) It isn't the most lively writing--but I found it very interesting. Did you Suvir?

I'm not sure what you mean Cab--but what I mean and perhaps poorly stated is: should professional restaurant critics on the one hand and very experienced diners on the other both be held to a similar standard, as Shaw lays out, when writing up a report of their meal--and recognizing the greatness or achievement of such a meal or chef? Is a distinction, as Jinmyo writes, "a question of whether you are eating professionally or not?"

On the notion of fairness, there was this by Cabrales: "If I received a chocolate dessert (e.g., in a tasting menu or a surprise menu), it would be less favorable to my assessment of the meal than if I had received most cherry or lemon desserts. I do not consider that kind of assessment unfair to the applicable restaurant." Steve Plotnicki replied: "If you are in a restaurant and have ordered a surprise menu and you do not prefer to be served choclate for dessert, then you should just say so at the beginning of the meal. 100% of the restaurants in the world will accomodate you. Otherwise, if a restaurant brings you a chocolate dessert when you don't say anything, I don't see how you are entitled to hold it against them?" I considered Cabrales's initial stance unfair and then Shaw weighed in with: "Chocolate is an unassailable ingredient. It is as canonical as potatoes or lamb or veal stock. When a restaurant puts chocolate in front of you, the legitimacy of chocolate is not an issue up for discussion." On another ingredient--Shaw writes "once in awhile I do find myself telling myself that the only reason I don't like a dish is because I'm not partial to dishes with a lot of rosemary but I'm hyper-rosemary-sensitive so I need to put myself in the shoes of a rosemary-normal person and ask whether from that perspective the dish is good. And if it is that's what I write." Is it reasonable to expect a professional critic, as Shaw says, "to speak with the palate of an experienced diner who appreciates the things that experienced diners appreciate" and is it also reasonable to expect same from an experienced diner writing up an assessment of their experience?

If that were so demonstrably true Lizziee--why hasn't Michel ever retained a pastry chef with significant talent for a significant length of time--as one would expect of such an universally acclaimed, respected chef? Have you found chefs more or less likely than doctors to speak with candor and honestly assess their colleagues?

Michael--welcome back! The chef's table at Citronelle in DC is a long rectangle, one side has banquette seating, it's on the floor of the kitchen, running parallel to the passe and separated from the dining room by a glass panel--so you are submerged right in the kitchen. Very exclusive--it is not a substitute for dining in the restaurant but a wholly other experience and its status is very positional. Though I am not a fan of Michel Richard for any number of reasons currently, the best food I've ever had in my life was a few years ago when I was seated at his chef's table--in the company of about a dozen other chefs, most of them French--while he was in the kitchen, supervising our every dish. After a glorious, impeccable meal, when Michel sat down next to a few of the wives and started drawing cartoons and caricatures, the added value of his chef's table was made clear.

Cabrales--when you write "If I received a chocolate dessert (e.g., in a tasting menu or a surprise menu), it would be less favorable to my assessment of the meal than if I had received most cherry or lemon desserts. I do not consider that kind of assessment unfair to the applicable restaurant," I find this potentially very revealing, and as Steve P did and Steve Shaw probably would say: well, yes, it is unfair. I'm intrigued by what has begun to emerge on this thread--differences in philosophy, approach, the role of personal preference and the appropriate use of the term "subjective" to qualify reviews--and I thank cabrales and Steve Shaw for taking the lead in exploring it.

Maybe so, Bux, but that doesn't necessarily mean there will be a correlation of impact in the US. And don't forget Alexander Lobrano (the Paris Zagat guy) weighed in on Martin Berasategui and Jacqueline Friedrich served up Seville in the April 2002 Gourmet. Yes she gushed predictably over Hiramatsu but I don't expect that swoon to have legs. If that wasn't enough, there was a flamenco and food piece in that issue as well, which included the obligatory bunuelos dipped in hot chocolate. If Friedrich is savyy, she's already pitched and filed a few more Spanish pieces--for the Journal, Gourmet, et al--since Amanda got the Spain beat for the Times.

No, I just thought I'd stretch the muscles a bit. For lunch I fed sunflower seeds to the finches and nuthatches along the windowsill ledge of my condo. I guess it was joyful in an austere way.

Steve P--your point about easy access to the hubs of Spanish cooking is valid. But it's not just the American chefs that have been to Spain, the major gastronomes and power brokers of the media have been there as well. They've already decided it's the next HUGE thing. Wondergrrl Amanda Hesser filed her "Ashleigh Banfield on location" thing already. (And I'm not talking huge like Indian fusion was huge in NYC one year and then two years later all the food writers and chefs in satellite cities like Corby Kummer and Mantra in Boston caught up.) The media--that's all that counts. Right now they are plotting just how to phase Spanish cooking and paella into the American scene in order to make it accessible, popular and the next Italian cooking and risotto. We have only seen the beginning of the coming two-tiered tidal wave. There's enough there for the high end re: Adria and all the Spanish Michelin three-stars and there's enough there for the Saveur mag authenticity purists who want to apply 20 different definitions of the the word "simple" to a cuisine a la Richard Olney or John Thorne. America discovers Spain will be with us for a long time: it's the next haute cuisine/cuisine bourgeosie imbroglio. (Something Italy could never provide! Sorry Robert S.) And I expect right about the time the full impact hits--when Wolfgang Puck releases his line of microwaveable frozen paella pizza--you'll be posting on eGullet that Ferran Adria is the greatest chef of all time. (It's an open question whether you post this on the eGullet preferred user VIP site or one of the tiered premium access versions. I'm not sure how that whole paid premium archive online thing is going to shake out. I'm much more confident about the pre-eminence of Spanish cooking as the next wave.) This doesn't have anything to do with Robert's excellent post--but thought it as good a time as any to get it in print first. There will be the hierarchies of people JD referred to who will be able to experience elite Spanish cooking in situ--but because of the inherent travel disadvantages Steve P and others mention, it will be less accessible giving fewer numbers of people with jaded palates the opportunity NOT to be wowed--and then the rest of the New Yorkers will have to make due with the NYC Spanish equivalent of Babbo, which almost certainly Richard Melman will open a knock-off version in other cities around the US as well, all the existing Nuevo latino chefs and chefettes and Mexican purists will tweak what they do to reflect some newly discovered authentic regional Spanish cuisine because we're bored with what they're doing already, the Brits will come to NYC to try the Spanish "Babbo" and say their Indian cooking is much more interesting and cheaper anyway and boy, you should see Heston Blumenthal's deconstructed paella churned in a washing machine, and Middle America will make do with Paella box mixes by Kraft, Chef-Boy-ar-Dee paella in a can, the Wolfgang puck microwaveable containers and the chain restaurants which will have paella specials of the day with hot dog and Jimmy Dean sausage bits. Not to mention Fresh Fields/Whole Foods Markets will have their organic vegan brown rice curry paella abomination. To go! The word of mouth is so great it's inevitable--and since it won't be easy to go to Spain it will come to us. But...who will be our Mario? Lets hope it's not Douglas Rodriguez.

I do agree completely that there is a difference between "best" and "favorite" and appreciate all those members who attempt to make a conscientious distinction.

Very interesting Bux. The mussel/curry recipe is from his glorious book, which was published in 1994, and which most chefs serious about French cooking were eager to get their hands on. It's only taken 8 years to run the recipe in English but kudos to Roellinger for caring and for making the effort on his site, which is getting more rewarding by the month. Note he embraced toasting the spices whole and aging before grinding--very sophisticated awareness on the part of a Western chef--and way before the rise of French/Indian fusion articles started appearing in mainstream US media. (Or before the odd American chef was quoted spouting off mistakenly about how French chefs utilize curry.) The Gourmet article...well, someone must have had a nice vacation. Too bad Catharine Reynolds and her editors are almost a decade behind the curve. (Who's advising them?) Again, the book came out in 1994. And his cuisine was just as deeply personal then.

I wish The Times found the room to post all of their restaurant reviews online. Surely there is more room online than in the New Jersey print edition. That seems to be a legitimate complaint, no? Jhlurie--your point about "ego" if more restaurant reviewers were trained chefs is an interesting one worth exploring elsewhere and so, too, the analogy to certain media or arts critics as failed novelists or directors. I'd have to bring up my favorite movie "reviewer" Stephen Hunter, a writer and film critic of the Washington Post. He is much more than an accomplished newspaper writer, however--he's an acclaimed and successful novelist--and his extended essays are treats as well as his movie reviews. Would he be as critical--as perceptive--if he wrote about books rather than film? I wonder if that wouldn't bring us back to Steve Shaw and his argument that perhaps restaurant critics and food writers should merge and not be so narrowly defined or artificially separated. Chef or reviewer: either the quality of the work is good or it isn't?

TMTM--answering from the perspective as a diner, I couldn't care less. It doesn't affect how I experience or perceive a meal or a dish. It's either interesting, creative, satisfying and good or it isn't. No degree, no ACF certification or initials like CEC after their name will change that. However, neither will where they worked previously! Answering from the perspective of a chef, I couldn't care less as well. It's what you know and what you can do. You are either talented, hard-working, aware, experienced, interesting, creative and able to perform your tasks at hand or you aren't. To my mind, the only thing worse than decrying "formal training" is someone who claims to be a self-taught chef. But that's for another thread. Now on to some specifics: why set up this artificial distinction between "formal training" and learning on the job? Must one exclude the other? Must it be an either/or situation? Even those who've gone through the best schools say your real education doesn't begin until you get out in real kitchens anyway? Something that has been said on eGullet before TMTM is that cooking school, formal training, on the job training, externships, stages, internships, whatever--is only as valuable and rewarding as the effort you put in and the choices you make along the way--where to go, who to work under, who to learn from. Chefs succeed by navigating the bumps along many different roads and no two careers--no two stores of knowledge and skill--are accumulated the same way. Inexperienced cooks coming out of cooking school are just that...inexperienced. Where's the rub? Now, if you want to bitch and moan about newbies coming out of school with a sense of entitlement from certain schools--fine. But that's not news. You help this newbie from Johnson & Wales find the broiler and down the road, he might just introduce you to Daniel Boulud. You never know how your network of colleagues can help you. Bouland--either we don't know the same French chefs and pastry chefs or you don't know very good ones. Very few were not the product of a specialized trade school and technical certificate process initially. Do your friends have poor things to say about l'Ecole Lenotre or Thuries or Bellouet or Yssingeaux or Pascal Caffet or Olivier Bajard or Pascal Brunstein and on and on and on? Many French schools kick butt--so do their instructors--and so do several schools, programs and instructors here in the US and Canada. Thomas Keller may not have gone to cooking school but would anyone say he wasn't formally trained? Who really cares? What was he doing every hour he spent in a kitchen working under or alongside someone else or reading a book or dining in someone else's restaurant if not learning and training? No amount of school or on the job experience guarantees that you have any taste or palate or skill or creativity. Only your work testifies to that.

JD--no dissent taken. You certainly have had poor desserts off a trolley--but not because the form--the vehicle--has been supplanted or superceded but because of poor effort, lack of requisite skills and training, or poor attention to detail. You certainly must have poor plated desserts more often than you have had poor desserts off a trolley, no? I've had so many simple, simplistic or underwhelming plated desserts that it's been as if I could only read John Thorne over and over again. Even one of the current examples I wrote about--L'Absinthe in NYC--under-performed. My pastry chef wife and I liked very few of the offerrings. We had no mental block about their retro form--but the execution of these traditional items was not as good or as flavorful as it should have been. We appreciated the effort, the generosity and the impeccable service which this "old style" dining opportunity presented--but if the product ultimately underwhelms, what have you really gained after longing for it? At L'Absinthe there was no where near the level of skill and interest applied to the desserts as to the cuisine and it showed. With an equivalent effort--Robert Brown could perhaps find the precise experience he seeks. And that brings us back to the "total experience" which Macrosan, Robert S, chefette, JD, Robert and others have longed for from what is seen as old style dining. Now, with the trolleys by Eric at Bayards and with Robert formerly at Le Bec-Fin--a diner wouldn't be faced with this conundrum.

Steve P.--the "resentful argument." I like the new code word and your rebuttal to John is spot on. John's last post is just a continuation of the "anti-modernity--anti-chef--class conscious-- Chowhound--Robert Sietsema--cheap eats--moral relativism of ethnic cuisines--primacy of seasonal ingredients left alone presented simply" strain which many of us here at eGullet have already transcended and are working to convert the rest. Good writers write about what they understand. I find no fault with the "Elizabeth David, MFK Fisher, Waverley Root, Richard Olney, John Thorne, A.J. Liebling" efforts, only with those who ascribe self-evident truths to their superiority. John writes "If these writers concerned themselves primarily with ordinary food, it was because they realized that it was finally more interesting than the recherché and the grandiose." Really? I'm not so sure. They'd first have to understand haute cuisine and its tenets, stunning artistry, achievement and excellence which has evolved over hundreds of years and is still evolving as I type this. But as well-written/historical/nostalgic/romantic/quaint documents these still stand tall. Perhaps they always will. I don't begrudge the Johns--Whiting and his pal Thorne--and those like-minded--who either aren't able or are unwilling to embrace the highest levels of achievement in the culinary arts. That's what makes life and eGullet interesting. But it seems we're always being asked to swallow some form of this as if it were a priori: "They have chosen to write about the food which is simply the most interesting to write about. This is food whose roots go deep into the soil of human culture, not food invented to appeal to the baroque sensibilities of those whose endless quest for a dubious perfection has brought them to the edge of boredom." Fortunately at eGullet we hear from the other side, so often cogently: Bux--"We are all the products of our experiences and limted by our knowledge." John--"They were not limited by their knowledge, they were liberated by it." Then Bux nails it: "Liberated by their puritan spirit is what I'd say if I read that they were liberated by seeing excellence as a form of decadence. It's a good point--an ascetic liberty. Those you cite don't seem to espouse that all the way however. They seem to take such a middle class moral virtue to the enjoyment of food." So to Steve Shaw, Steve P and Bux, thank you for providing the other side which is either lacking or nonexistent elsewhere and thank you as well John for providing the impetus. Is there any doubt that if MFK Fisher, or David or Olney or Root were in a position to experience a Gramercy Tavern or a Blue Hill or a Daniel, let alone Gagnaire, Bras, Herme, Conticini, Adria, that we'd have a whole new definition of interesting food writing and it wouldn't revolve around "ordinary food?" Just maybe, those writers will come to be viewed as of an era in the same way Escoffier has come to be viewed--out of step with how the world has evolved beyond them.

Yes, yes Toby--the potato flatbread was fantastic. I should have mentioned it in my first post as a co-fave.

Here's how that article from May 2001--Vive les golden oldies-- opened: Once just a haute holdover, dessert carts roll back into relevance “When La Cote Basque moved to its new location and abandoned its dessert cart in favor of plated desserts, it was a sad day for New York City” says online restaurant critic and sometimes Food Arts contributor Steven Shaw. Who among us cannot recall a cart wheeled to the table overflowing with desserts? It’s only been 15 years since the dessert cart or trolley, also referred to as les chariot des desserts, or gueridon, was the most prevalent form of dessert presentation. Most of us have long since been seduced by the glamour of a new vehicle—the plated dessert—but lately I’ve wondered whether that form hasn't begun to fade? Are too many pastry chefs copying too few creative and original presentation ideas? Are plated desserts becoming less interesting and more disconnected from the savory cuisine that precedes them? For example, you might find eclectic cuisine and homestyle American desserts on the same menu. If so, why shouldn't the dessert trolley roll back into view, with its undeniably nostalgic charm, as a potential remedy for the sameness of the modern restaurant experience. I then built the case for the cart's current and continued viability--with discussion of chef-owner Jean-Michel Bergougnoux at L'Absinthe (who once was responsible for creating all the desserts on the Troigros trolley in Roanne, France,) pastry chef Eric Bedoucha at Bayard's, who employs the trolley at lunch and pastry chef Robert Bennett, under Georges Perrier at Le Bec-Fin, where one triple-decked trolley was never enough. Then Jacques Torres helped me make the case why carts fell out of favor: Given these ongoing success stories, one might be tempted to wonder why the dessert cart fell out of favor in the first place? Perhaps, as with anything repeated too often and with too little reconsideration, it had gone stale. Pastry can’t help but evolve, right? Master pastry chef Jacques Torres, formerly of Le Cirque 2000 and now the chocolatier/co-owner of Jacques Torres Chocolate in Brooklyn, thinks this decline came mainly because one could not guide the palate and sequence of flavors with a dessert cart or buffet. “You’d lose the control and the excitement of plated desserts,” Torres says. “Compared to a great plated dessert, with contrasting temperatures and textures, anything on the trolley lacked drama in the mouth.” The demise of the cart also proved inevitable for practical reasons. “Restaurants are too much of a business now and space is expensive,” adds Torres. “Tables have to be so close together, how could a cart pass by?" Then I made the case for what would have to change for a real revival to take place, after talking to a few older hotel and restaurant pastry chefs from the late 70's and early eighties, including Francis Lorenzini--who now is professor of pastry arts at New York City Technical College but for 15 years produced the dessert trolley at New York City's famed four-star restaurant Le Cygne. He transitioned them to plated desserts in '86 and then shifted La Caravelle over from dessert buffet to plated desserts in '89. My final graph: Maybe the biggest reason to reconsider dessert presentation is also the least complicated. "I don't want every restaurant to be the same," implores Shaw, who as a restaurant critic eats more than his fair share of meals out. "It's nice to go to a place that has a dessert cart and serves old-style cakes and tarts. If nothing else, it's a welcome change of pace."

As if you don't already have enough to do, right Rochelle! Do you have any idea how your notebook is shaping up compared to your classmates--and have you started to see any kind of competitiveness or secrecy developing?

Nina--I just saw your post about friends of yours taking FCI's "supposedly very serious amateur program." I did a few years of teaching avocational cooking classes in cooking schools--and usually taught them with the same level of commitment and intensity as I would have taught professional students. But as has been stated elsewhere about for-profit cooking schools, you pay your money and you get a spot in the class until it is full. And there are many different motivations behind enrolling in short term cooking classes--not all of them culinary. The fact that your two friends can't cook a lick is not necessarily a valid indictment of the instructor or the school, and I'm guessing you didn't intend it that way. I've known several of FCI's pastry chef instructors over the years--two ex-instructors have gone on to become Pastry Art & Design magazine 10 Best pastry chefs--and often the same instructor teaches part time evening classes and the full time program day classes. It just might be a case of students getting out what they put in--considering what potential they had to begin with. And so much depends upon the instructor--much, much more than the curriculum or the prestige of the school--any school. It's really a roll of the dice and a shame there isn't more of an effort industry-wide to attract, retain and pay instructors well.

I would often stop in for some of their flat bread squares with toppings--a wonderful takeaway snack. Mushroom and herb was my favorite. Wouldn't call it pizza, though--and it's hard to compare it directly to restaurant pizzas because you're usually not eating it right out of the oven. But for what it is trying to be--it is excellent.

Bunny--a gentle suggestion--post in one place. I left your duplicate post up in "Cooking" for now and deleted it in "General."