macrosan

I have to say, even as a non-American, I find this presumptious and offensive. The presumption is that of course the "American people" totally disagree with their elected President and Government, and of course the "American people" are against the invasion of Iraq, it's just that nasty maverick George Bush who is waging war, and of course the nice pacifist French people are entirely with the nice pacifist American people in opposing the nasty Mr Bush ....... I have no idea how the "average" French person is likely to interact individually with the "average" American person, but I can say with confidence that something like 70% of the French are anti-American (as disclosed in polls over the past few weeks) and a significant proportion of the Americans are anti-French (as disclosed in polls over the past few weeks) and my guess is that will not lead to too much entente cordiale.

I'm with Fifi on this one

This raises an interesting issue about eGullet and its role in "restaurant reviewing". I think Suzanne is wrong in criticizing herself, retrospectively, for initially having given a "rave" review because it now appears that maybe doesn't merit it on the basis of inconsistency. I think that what we do here is to write about restaurants as we find them, most of us just as "amateurs" writing about a single visit, basing our conclusions on our own personal preferences and experience. When someone else posts a similar conclusion, that's just one reinforcement; if it's a contrary view, then the jury stays out for a while. After a while, after several different people have posted, a consensus opinion starts to appear. That, surely, is the beauty of eGullet. Each of us will attach different weight to particular opinions, because we get to know who the experts are in particular fields, and because we start to discover (by trial and error) whose palate accords with our own. Almost all of the initial posts about Diwan arose out of the initial eGullet banquet, attended by over 30 people who definitely produced a strong consensus that this was an excellent restaurant. That was "excellent" by the standards of Indian restaurants in New York, or Indian restaurants anywhere in the world, or even restaurants in general anywhere in the world. Just to be clear, I am not suggesting that this means that Diwan is a Michelin star restaurant !!! Since the banquet, the reviews have been mixed and it absolutely must be the case (given the people who have submitted those reviews) that this demonstrates inconsistent standards in the restaurant, and not inconsistent standards of the reviewers And the great thing is that we now all know what to expect if we go to eat there. We are forewarned that certain dishes may not be up to scratch, that maybe if Chef Hemant is absent the standard will drop, or maybe just at random we will get a sub-par meal. I'm willing to take that risk when I next go there, but I am delighted that eGullet has enabled me to be aware that I will be taking a risk. I see nothing remotely wrong with this process --- it's the way it should be !

Very droll, Stone I also have a friend who has bacon on matzo for breakfast As cakewalk says, all these issues have nothing to do with logic, they're just about how you feel. And whatever you feel is right for you is right for you. Passover is an interesting festival, and it seems to have this ability to make all Jews, of all levels of observance, remember their religion and their roots. Yom Kippur is another holy day that has a similar effect. It's noteworthy that observance of both festivals is primarily related to food --- not eating it in one case, and heavy restrictions in the other. In fact, probably the reason that Passover resonates with all Jews is its reminder of enslavement and prejudice, and its restatement of confidence that we will be free in the future. That's the message of Passover, and as long as you relate to the message, the ritual that goes with it is relatively unimportant. I have to admit that I find the Passover week tiresome, mainly because it seriously restricts my ability to eat at restauarants but somehow I look forward to it each year, and then equally look forward to it being over

My refernce to "gracious elegance" was as much directed at the service and style of the staff as to the decor. I wouldn't dare quarrel with Gavin's obviously expert knowledge of "bourgeois kitsch"

That's an interesting question, displaying an interesting position For some of us, the important issue to discuss is simply "Did I like it?", "Did you like it?", "Are other people likely to like it?" and "Why?". Those of us who enjoy exploring answers to these questions are interested in the emotional before the intellectual consideration of cuisine. Others prefer to address issues like yours, Tony. And that's a purist and intellectual approach to the subject of cuisine. You see if I enjoy a dish at Le Gavroche, it doesn't matter to me much how it compares to the same dish cooked at RHR. I want to discuss the dish I actually ate with others, and explore what it was that made it enjoyable or not. From that discussion I can start to assemble the elements of what goes to make up my own preferences, and I can start to learn how to deduce what other dishes or chefs might also please me. The same is true of a total style of cuisine. Of course, if someone tells me that Ramsay cooks Bresse pigeon better than Roux, then I will indeed try Ramsay's version at the earliest opportunity, and I'll be very grateful for the lead. But for the time being, I'm entirely happy with Roux, thank you I'm just not a big fan of this intense need to discover "best" or "better" all the time. Maybe that's why I don't participate in so many "Top Ten" and similar threads at eGullet

"Gracious elegance" is the overriding impression left on me by last night's visit to Le Gavroche. My first contact, when I rang to book the table, produced a heavily French accented apology for having kept me waiting, ending with a warm and charming "We look forward to welcoming you". That Gallic charm offensive lasted all the way through to a quarter past midnight, when we suddenly realised that we were the only people in the restaurant, and the staff were (extremely discreetly) waiting to go home. Three of us gathered in the ground floor bar sipping sherry or champagne. The bar is slightly strange, awkwardly shaped and laid out, not quite relaxing, with suggestions in the decor of a past age of gracious living. But the service in the bar, quiet and friendly and efficient made up for that. The cpatain (whom we had all assumed until later to be the maitre d', was superb. He instantly picked up on our preferred style, and regaled us with witty comments and an entiirely easy and relaxed manner. He taught me a new French saying "Revenir a nos moutons" which he used when he returned to take our order when we were ready. Having ordered our meals, one of the two sommeliers approached us for our wine order. I had heard suggestions that the wine list at Gavroche was expensive, but absolutely not so. There were dozens of wines in most categories under £30, scores in the £30-£80 range, and of course a number of four-figure bottles. At first, the sommelier seemed to expect us just to tell him what we wanted, but Gavin quickly disabused him of that. The wine selection process was quite unusual in my experience. Gavin was selecting the white wine, so he told the sommelier what we were having for hors d'oeuvres and they agreed we wanted a rich, fruity wine. The sommelier recommended a Sicilian wine at about £40, in the face of a hugely long list (obviously) of French wines. It turned out, incidentally, to be an excellent choice. I was "choosing" the red. Our man asked me what I had in mind, and I said I have recently enjoyed St Julien and Ducru Beaucaillou. He finished up recommending a Syrah at about £80. Very nice wine, but I still can't work out the logic of his choice. Again, the sommelier was friendly and unpretentious, and we all enjoyed the dialogue with him as much as the wine. We soon were invited downstairs, and the dining room made an immediate positive impact on me. At 8.30 it was almost full, there was a light buzz of conversation all around. The ceiling is low, the tables are well spaced, the decor is kind of modernised early 20th century French, the whole effect was exactly in line with my growing image of Le Gavroche. It was pleasant, friendly, relaxing, and graciously elegant. We had an excellent table against the wall, with a surprisingly comfortable banquette for two plus a chair. The table setting was attractive, maybe a little full given that later on some wine glass shuffling was required. We admired our famous table statue in silver (a plumed bird) and the famous 'urchin' cutlery. And so to the food. My hors d'oeuvres was Terrine Foie Gras de Canard, served with French beans, a couple of token scrapes of black truffle, and an excellent redcurrant jelly with port, plus a slice of excellent toasted country bread. It was an excellent dish, well prepared and presented. My one complaint occurred here. After they removed the plates, we were all happily sipping at our white wine, when they brought our main dishes. Now I accept we may have been talking too much and drinking too slowly but I found this very offputting. They de-cloched the dishes, but I wanted to finish my white wine and move to the red before I started to eat it. By the time I started eating, the food was only warm. Ah well, perhaps I shouldn't have waited My main course was Bresse pigeon, a dish I've never eaten before and which has been on my must-have list for a while. It was superb. Tender, moist, excellent flavour, delightful (although of course not hot !). It was garnished with something that tasted like cole slaw (?) in a creamy sauce, and the sauce was definitely not a great match for the pigeon. And there were cubes of what I think was apple soaked in a red sauce. I can only put my lack of dertailed recollection down to the rush to finish the white wine and gulp down the red For dessert I had a souffle with apricots, which was easily the weakest dish of the evening. It resembled nothing more than stiffly beaten egg-white drizzled with apricot juice, sitting on some stewed apricots. Petits fours were good, coffee was fine. We repaired to the downstairs lounge, where I asked for a single malt whiskey and had an amusing dialogue with the 'other' sommelier. "What whiskey would you like, sir?" "What have you got?" "We have several, what would you like?" "Inverey please" "Ah we don't have that" "OK I'll have some Innishkillen" "No we don't have that either" "Well what do you have ?" "We have Tallisker...." "That's fine, I'll have the Tallisker" While we were happily sipping, three people started to turn the lounge into a Carolinan field fire by lighting up several large cigars, so we hastily retreated to the upstairs bar, where we idled away the rest of the night and part of the next morning, before realisation and guilt crept in, and we let the staff lock up This wasn't jaw-dropping food, but it was a great experience of old-style fine dining, without frills or pretension, and it was an experience that I thoroughly enjoyed. The total bill was £150 per person all in, and I feel I had good value for that. I may not be rishing back any time in the next six months, but I will not hesitate to go again sometime later than that.

We don't want to get over-distracted into a discussion of the Dutch, I guess, but it's worth commenting that I've been to Holland at least a dozen times, and have always eaten very well. One of my top twenty meals ever was at a well-reputed traditional Dutch restaurant in Amsterdam called Die Boerderij, and other memorable meal were at an Indonesian restaurant (whose name I forget) in Amsterdam and a great mid-range "bistro" called The Four Tulips in The Hague. Generally, the standard of restaurant cuisine appeared good to me, exactly as you would expect.

would he want that sort of job S Answer your PMs, Majum, instead of indulging in this pseudo-small-talk.

Tell you what, Prof. Cure cancer first and then we'll let you spell however you like.

Both. I was tempted to be Fergus Hendersonesque and stop there, but I'll go on. Oh LOL Jonathan Now that's unkind, JD. You just reminded me of the forthcoming "festivities" (only three weeks now) when I have to enter culinary purdah and pretend to enjoy taking matzoh sandwiches with me to work every day Take it from me that the "bitter dishes" (I assume you mean the bitter herb and the salt water) are not designed to bring pleasure, and they do their job very well On the general point now being discussed, I certainly lean towards FG's interpretation. I think that taste is taste, independent of the many external considerations that affect how we judge that taste. So horseradish tastes "hot" and bitter no matter who is doing the tasting. People who have become acclimatized to eating horseradish find it less hot and bitter and (presumabl;y) find the taste enjoyable, people trying it for the first time are likely to find the opposite. Similarly, I would guess that anyone tasting their first live witchetty grub may well not like or "appreciate" the taste. Jonathan is saying that an understanding of aboriginal culture is likely to increase his enjoyment, whilst I think it wouldn't affect my view

But are you suggesting, Jonathan, that why a dish is prepared in a particular way actually affects your assessment of it from a culinary point of view ? Or affecting how much you enjoy it ?

Professor Shesgreen's piece is, quite apart from it's scholarly intent, a great piece of debunking I really enjoy drinking wine, but I don't purport to know anything more about it than "I know what I like". I certainly do not decry those who take pleasure out of learning about wine, and I do acknowledge that there is indeed much to learn which can increase one's enjoyment. Nevertheless even the most ardent oenologist must recognise that wine is one of the last bastions of class and financial snobbery, and the language invented for it is designed more to protect the clique in its arcane practices than to inform those outside the clique. I accept britcook's argument that the elementary flavours within wine are most likely to resemble vegetable and fruit flavours. Wet dogs or sweat ? Well maybe at a stretch. But "almond, cocoa, marsh flowers, irises and undergrowth" or "oranges, golden raisins, brandied cherries, licorice, mint, and maple sugar" ? I think not.Those are the descriptions one might expect from someone with avery confused palate, or from someone who simply wished to confuse and mystify the reader. Britcook also said "Wine tasting is difficult because wine IS notoriously difficult to describe" and I'm not sure I follow that line of argument. Tasting is tasting --- you drink the wine and you taste it, it is what it is, you like it or don't like it, you think A is better or nicer than B, you can identify A or B, and so on. None of that process requires description. So in what way does the difficulty of describing make tasting difficult ? I agree that the process of description is difficult, but that equally applies to food or music or a host of other entities which depend for their assessment upon subjective preference. The interesting question is why oenologists attempt to insist upon a pseudo-scientific analysis of wine, given that it is so difficult. As a committed cycnic, I suggest that that has something to do with protection of the mystique. Incidentally, as someone said earlier, my cynicism equally extends to those musicologists and gourmands who try to apply these descriptive processes to their own spheres. I am reminded of one of my old mathematics lecturers, who was the man who had "written the text book". Having mastered the proof of Gauss' Divergence Theorem, I then asked him what it was about ? He replied something like "It is used to calculate flux integrals across a surface, by transforming to a volume integral". Now I'm not saying that there is any better way to explain what Gauss' Divergence Theorem is about, but I will suggest that that's an answer designed by an expert for an expert, it's not any way to help the wider masses .

It would have been useful if indeed Robert had done just this ! I guess the fundamental assertion is probably no more contentious than suggesting that familiarity breeds contempt. It's almost a given. It has nothing to do with chef-ownership, it has to do with motivation of people and motivation of businesses. All people become bored by repetition. The more creative, entrepreneurial or specialized the person, the more quickly this boredom will set in, and the more extreme the reaction to it. Chefs qualify under at least two of those characteristics, and it is, in my view, unthinkable that a chef could maintain a high level of motivation for more than maybe ten years. A chef then needs to move on, not just to a new restaurant, but also to a different restaurant, or maybe into ownership, or maybe into a non-restaurant environment. The same applies to the restaurant owner. The most successful owner I have ever known opened up his first restaurant (Italian trattoria style), made a brilliant success of it, and gave his manager a 50% stake after 6 years and moved out. He then opened up a high-end French restaurant, turned it into the best restaurant within 10 miles, won two Egon Ronay crowns, gave 50% of it to his manager and moved out after 4 years. He repeated this process two more times with a further bistro-style French, then a top-end Italian restaurant. 15 years after he started his first business, he had sold out his remaining 50% stakes in all four restaurants (three of which are still going strong 10 years later) and he is now in the music business. I find that all businesses go stale unless they regularly change their staff, or move their staff to new roles, or change their products or functions. The alternative to this is to happen to be in an industry where the marketplace itself changes so rapidly and significantly that a company is obliged to make similar changes just to keep in pace with the market. That is not, in my view, a characteristic of the restaurant industry. I would certainly doubt Robert's statement that "I can recall a time when a chef-owned restaurant generally improved over time as the chef gained experience, technical skill and sense of refinement or good taste." I suspect this is wishful thinking, nostalgia.

This is a fascinating discussion because in rationalizing how we might address unfamiliar cuisines we are also highlighting the elements of our basis for addressing familiar cuisines. I am all for the intellectual approach to food, but for me this list of "three divisions" will always come after my own top priority, which is simply "Do I enjoy eating this ?". Of course the food that qualifies under that test changes almost month by month. Once upon a time I hated raw fish, but now I love it. Same with rare steak. Time was when I was wary of oriental spiced foods -- but no longer. When I first tasted Mexican cuisine I thoroughly enjoyed it, but have now come to dislike it. Some of this change is the result of "acquired taste" and some of it the result of continuing experimentation giving me a broader palate. This purely subjective response to food works for me across each of FatGuy's three categories. On the "raw material" front, I could still not eat an insect as do many Asians, but I absolutely accept that I might acquire the taste were I to experiment. I might think I couldn't eat rotten meat, but I do enjoy hung game. I guess that around the world people eat pretty much anything that isn't actually poisonous. Why would they be wrong ? Who says that fruit or vegetables at a certain stage of their growth are "fresh" and anyone who eats them at another stage is eating "poor" food ? That's clearly nonsensical. Green bananas are "unripe" according to Western taste, but they taste terrific to me in the West Indies In Western society, we have an acquired taste for "good quality" vegetables, but many Eastern societies have a totally different, and perfectly right, notion of what that means. The concept of "getting" the cuisine is one I understand, but I don't find it necessary for my enjoyment. Yes it adds a layer, so I certainly don't decry it. This issue starts to move the topic away to that "left brain/right brain" discussion, so I won't push this too far. But I sometimes find that if I work too hard at understanding a cusine I may stop deciding whether or not I actually like it I'm not at all a fan of the "higher orbit" issue that completes FatGuy's list. I like to treat food for what it is for me, and I'm not overly influenced by what it was to someone else. If the Chinese happened to have a plethora of wild bamboo and had to slice it because they hadn't invented stewing pots because they weren't able to build ovens because they were nomadic and .... well I just happen to love fried bamboo shoots, and while the historical reason may be interesting in a wider intellectual context, it doesn't remotely affect my assessment of the food Of course the requirements on me are not the same as the ones FatGuy defines in his post. I eat entirely for my own enjoyment, not for the edification of others. And my approach to unfamiliar cuisine is pure "bull in a china shop". I'll try it because it's there. Then I'll try it again a few more times. I'll ask people in the restaurant what I should try. And somewhere in that process, of course, I'll analyze anything that strikes me as interesting or different. Then at some stage I'll sit back and ask myself "Am I enjoying the food?"

Yeah

Some of us are rather glad you don't

I just looked that up in my Dictinary of Etiquette, and it says that means you're paying ? That is just soooo generous, Andy, and on behalf of the 24 of us, we accept with thanks.

The situation is that it must be the best job in the world

Well as long as they really were a more attractive couple ..... Nope, I guess I'd just get on the phone to Wilfrid and tell him to come round to the restauarnt and beat the place up. After all, he is verrrry badddd ......

who says? where is that written? putting your made-up definition aside, i would say that wilfrid is *not* bad. at least not for that reason. sometimes. depending. I just did. Look ! I wrote it down. That makes it legit, surely Apart from other considerations, anything that proves that Wilfrid is bad must surely be credible

I can't find the :indignant tirade: smiley. Please help. Wilfrid, you are being bad, but maybe not very bad. A reservation represents an intention. You cannot intend to dine at two restaurants at the same time, therefore at least one of your representations is incorrect. That is bad. Claims that this is all part of restaurant life's rich pattern is no justification. If it's true, then if enough people broke the pattern, everyone would be happier.

That's probably OK. What exactly does you partner taste of ?

Aha, then that's me. I'll have the vegetarian alternative

Yeah, I forgot about the pie. In fact, it looked magnificent, and the crust was thin and light (which I like). But the contents were indeed a bit meagre and thin, even though the taste was sort of OK. I've just got back from seeing the first rushes of our (Tony's and my) new video. The director says he's "just thrilled, sweetie" but I'm not sure about keeping in the shots of the resuscitator being used on Finchy or my leotards splitting in an overly (in my humble opinion) revealing fashion. The producer is Gervais Entwhistle, famous for his work on that excellent corporate video he made for Enron and, more recently, the highly acclaimed satirical documentary "The Tale of the Bengali Tiger". Gervais wants to name our video "Tone up with Maccers" but I'm concerned about the double entendre. Must talk to Finchy about this when he recovers.