Vadouvan

You sir should not take such statements as absolutes on the internet, perhaps I should have been more succint. By the way the elephant is still sitting on the coffee table......why hasnt anyone answered this question ?

I am not having a difficult time with the fact that I may be wrong, I am actually having some raisin challah with gorgonzola dolce and a glass of Anselmi's Recioto Soave. Back to my point, if you read what I last said..... It seems like rather than have a philosophical discussion on the future of restaurants, all I did was rile up a bunch of pissy pastry chefs. By the way why is the BINDI truck parked outside several manhattan restaurants with "pastry chefs" ??? http://www.bindiusa.com/bindiusa/index_flash.htm I wont name names but lets not be hypocrites.......

And thank you MikeB19... Many cooks especially the smart ones who understand the logic of what is possible with today's technology can come up with desserts that are quite delicious. In most cases, 80% of pastry chef concieved desserts are way to sweet to follow the continuity of the meal that preceeded it. If i am making a caramelized endive tarte tatin to serve with bay scallops and sweetbread nuggets, whay the F cant I put f-ing apples and caramel in it's place. Singularly the worst thing that has happened to the food business in terms of young cooks in the last 10 years is the ACF indoctrination of the young ones to strive for those silly titles like CEC, CMC ect ect. Even the frenchies get together and call themselves maitre cuisinier de france while they are serving tuna tartare in thir flagships......it's all BS. Learn to cook, cook everything. If I hand a 13 year old kid from south central LA a creme anglaise recipe and a thermonix, he can make it as well as any CIA graduate with an hour.

Again I am not saying *ALL* pastry chefs wil be extinct, I am stating that the proliferation of broad knowledge based kitchens will increase. Interesting I have gotten PM's from some nationally recognized chefs who agree with my general point. Maybe we are all crazy. Answer me this... Is a clear verbena infused watermelon consomme garnished with redcurrants and encapsulated balls of other red fruits made the same size as the redcurrants a dessert, a pastry item or both ? By the way this is an actual menu item special I just had which was fantastic ?

Pierre Herme does not have a restaurant, he has a pattiserie. Francois Payard whom I have cooked with on 2 occasions and is very talented isnt a great example. Payard on Lex is a very good pastry shop but besides the desserts, there was a strong component of people going there for Phillippe Bertineau's bistro cooking which was fabulous at the time. Jaques Torres has a chocolate factory and yes when he was at Boulud's, people werent saying lets go to Daniel and spend goobs of cash so we can eat Torres's deserts. As to the rest of the people, yes i am aware of who hey are but the average member of the general public couldnt give two craps who they are, People go to restaurants to eat. The Sona team is well known amnd are praised more because they have a story as opposed to the fact that they are catually doing anything nationally rave worthy. Will goldfarb is like charlie parker, Keats and a pastry chef rolled into one and operating on a much higher plane of intelligence that the average person. What seperates intelligent "pastry" chefs, Kitchens and leaders from the usual restaurant acrimony and jockeying for position is the will to work together and find your place while supporting the goals of the team. Many of those in the food world have complete tunnel vision because they have xero exposure to other creative or liberal arts. In order for you to understand my points, I suggest you sir go out and buy the miles davis album "Kind of Blue" and listen to the collaboration betweem Miles, Coltrane, Cannnball Adderly,Jimmy Cobb and Paul Chambers. It is singularly the best illustration of how 5 people can synergistically achieve higher goals. Isnt that what a kitchen is about rather than walking around with bullshit titles on your jackets ? Edited to add: next time you are in Paris, Herme is excellent but he isnt the cats ass, go check out Laduree, that place easily makes anything in NY look like pastry made in a federal prison's vocational kitchen http://www.laduree.fr/

Outside of the obvious high profile, actually talented specific few who ALL reside or work in NYC like Mason, Stupak,Rouxel,Iuzzini et al, your statement is not true. Would you give me an example of ONE restaurant in America that the primary draw is the pastry chef besides the implosion of Varietal ? I am not asking for respect or tacit agreement, if you want to base the validity of the comments on what I do then so be it. I am simply posting opinions.

by the way it's time to hit the sack.... Let me leave you wth the 10 thousand dollar question. Who is Alinea's current pastry chef ?

Am I the only one who thinks its a little bizarre that you have an admittedly deafeatist attitude towards pastry but you are confidently able to describe your cooking as "UNBELIVEABLE" ?

That is precisely the problem. This disagreement is simply a generational issue and it is an old school mentality to conclude that all restaurants need a pastry chef or the desserts will therefore be bad. My previous reference to Mason is simply to show that the world of desserts, if you define desserts as "sweet endings to a meal" isnt all about what would be classically referred to as "Pastry". Plus...um......most restaurants dont have pastry shops, they have one or two guys making desserts and both of them combined arent making 90K

Whether or not, if , when and where I cook is not at all the point. Chefs by any logic will not become obsolete, someone still has to lead the food program, pastry is part of the food program, the point as I made earlier is that restaurant people tend to look as things adversarially. This isnt about chefs vs pastry chefs, it's about the increasing proliferation of Kitchen teams that make great products. Whether or not you have met any chefs who claim to be better at desserts than pastry chefs is simply irrelevant. As I said to Sethro, this are emotional responses and logic is the first casualty of emotional responses, I did not say all pastry chefs will be obsolete, I said the concept of a pastry chef in all but the largest restaurants will decrease and it's happening already in lots of places. Interestingly neither of you responded about the Plumpjack Cafe review which is a legitimate example of a well regarded restaurant in a major american city.

I am not splitting hairs. It simply is an important point that most desserts are not pastry. Thus there isnt much in the logic that requires a specific person trained only in one discipline in a small to medium restaurant. Yes most chefs are not passionate about desserts nor could they care less and One would say how much do you really care when you dont really care about educating yourself on what may be the last thing that people eat in your restaurant.. You arent even in the discussion, you are just responding emotionally.

1. The analogy does not work. Being forced to learn biology in high school is no assurance that you will become a confident biologist. Coughing up 25 to 50 Grand to be educated at Lenotre, Ritz Escoffier Place Vendome, Cordon Bleu or CIA has a strong implicit guarantee that you will become confident in making desserts. 2. A lot of people still make the assumption that Dessert = Pastry. Sam Mason for one who is rightfully regarded as one of the city's most talented pastry chefs made a lot of interesting "desserts". Less than 20% of them were actually "Pastry". Did that diminish the flavor impact or his competence, not at all.

TB86, you are obviously a very competent person and good at what you do but my point is that you and a lot of other cooks (pastry or savory) exist in a bubble that you create for yourselves and subsequently assume that everyone else has created that bubble around them. It simply isnt true. Some people want to learn more than is expected of them. You talk about continuation of creativity and pastry getting more complicated, you *should* strive to understand more about braising, sauteeing or making pasta. I would love to see a braised quince in elderflower syrup in your desserts or a sauteed pineapple with coconut sorbet or chocolate cavatelli with pistachio "alfredo". These may be absurd examples and laugh if you will but everyone in Ny seemed to swear they could taste "purple" when they had the dessert named meditation in purple and I am the crazy one. You dont need any stabiliser for ice cream and if you want to, you can buy Frederic Bau's, ducasse's or Paco Torreblanca's books to figure it out. Yes chefs do know what temp to store ice cream, it's the same temp we store our fennel and yuzu sorbet for the kumamoto oyster appetizer. Of coure Ice cream should be run daily, we defrost overnight and re-run ice cream. The carpigiani machines are excellent. http://www.carpigiani-usa.com/ and if you cant afford the Italians, Americans make perfectly good ones too http://www.taylor-company.com/product/ss_menu.htm Everyone know's how to make puff dough, few people actually make it anymore. The need to know the tempering curve of chocolate is fast becoming a moot point with the advent of carageenan, methocel and xanthan gum. My point is this isnt an attack on pastry chefs, there is a field of broadly knowledgeable people who continously seek information on how to do things properly and they do get them done. There are no cryptic things that only pastry chefs know, information is out there for those who wish to access it and that is why I gave you the Plumpjack review as an example. But economically, I still stand by my position that the salary category of a pastry only chef will be slowly eliminated in the next few years from the mid level independent restaurant once operators find they cam employ broadly competent people.

That's inherently the problem, limited thinking. I dont know what cooking school you went to but last time I checked averyone in the culinary program is taught the basics of pastry and just as soon as the graduate thats it, no more interest. My post was not to elicit your agreement, all I am simply stating is that small independently run restaurants are in fact starting to assemble kitchen teams composed of "Tournant Cooks", essentially a group of passionate people who walk the walk and are able to produce food without the old mentality that you need a formal "pastry chef" or tha pastry is for women. Limited thinking produces the concept of "savory chefs", anyone who asks to be called chef should at least be able to make a dessert that isnt a fruit plate or store bought ice cream. Why would a capable chef have to buy store bought ice cream ???? If you can make sabayon or hollandaise, i believe they also taught you creme anglaise during that same class. It's not about the chef making the dessert personally, it's about the chef delegating someone in the team to make the dessert and assuring they are competently doing it. PASTRY isnt getting more and more complex as time passes. PEOPLE are complicating "pastry" more and more as time passes. There is a difference and in most cases the results are not good as in the recent Varietal fiasco. Unfortunately today Innovation easily trumps flavor because it gets press. Perhaps you ought to read this review ....... and pay attention to the dessert section. That would be 3.5 stars out of 4 from the same Michael Bauer who trashed Gordon ramsay. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?...FDGSCO75B11.DTL

Katie, before you ask me to put on my assless chaps for the spanking, hear me out.... Yes my statement does sound a bit harsh but I feel it is accurate. It is based on several meals over the last 2 years that I actually swore never to set foot in there again. Thus I shall qualify. They have 2 good dishes. The burger. The fries. Everything else I have had is just mediocre at best, it would be simply classified as OK but factoring in the egregious prices........it becomes mediocre. Dont get me wrong, my opinions are meaningless outside the context of those who go to restaurants primarily for the food and the expectation that it is presented as described and prepared properly without reliance on embellishment of prose. Here are a few snippets of my last few meals.... Oxtail ravioli with oxtail that tastes like it was braised in water. Pasta dough for said ravioli that is 4 times as thick as it should be which becomes further worse when you double up the edges for ravioli. Hardly any filling in the ravioli. The restaurant uses salt the most where it is needed the least and vice versa. Most of the food is consistently underseasoned. The butter they serve on the table is covered with a copious amount of what they call "Fleur de Sel" The "fleur de sel" is of a huge crstal size that it is impractical for butter, all you get is butter and salt bombs in your mouth. Furthemore the aforementioned "Fleur de sel" isnt actually Fleur de sel and is obviously "Sel Gris" which costs 10 times less and is noticed because it is a murky gray as opposed to the same crystalline WHITE of Maldon.......and it tastes different. The Salads are either overdressed like zsa zsa gabor or devoid of any distribution of dressing. The Mac and cheese with bacon is ABSURDLY rich to be inedible. The cheese plate has boring cheeses considering dibruno is around the corner. Mashed potatoes $7 1/4 lb of spinach $7 The apps range from $13 to $17 which is just hubris They dont take reservations but empty tables in the window are always reserved, in more than a few cases empty during the entirety of my meal, its just BS. The entrees hover around $26 to $36 The "prime" steak is not prime. The shrimp and lobster spring rolls have barely either seafood in them that they ought to be renamed cabbage, carrot and jicama spring rolls. On the face of it, these would seem "nasty" but after dropping serious coin on bad food, what can you say. The lady who manages it is very professional as is the bartender "tommy" but virtually everyone of the servers make it seem like they are doing you a favor by allowing you to eat there.

You dont need a 90K pastry chef. Hire Will Goldfarb to set up your pastry program and teach your cooks In 5 years short of large hotels and gargatuant restauranrts, pastry chefs are history.

Rouge serves some of the worst food in Piladelphia. Not just bad but insulting. I will actually pay you not to eat there.

Biggie I am pretty sure I see people eating lunch at Tria just about every day. Amada does have that Catalan express thing........ Vietnam ????

of course i knew you were joking...... You blinked too soon......

Tria ? Rae has a bargain 3 course at $30. You gotta check it out sometime.......?

I assumed your "inability" (to quote you) to understand the post was due to the correct usage of the english term "Though". Is it your contention that "immensely fatty" should be equated to "Delicious" ? I know that clearly isnt true. Many people say "Fat =Flavor" Actually Fat =Fat Flavor is composed of several other particular points like acid balance and salinity just to name a few......... Thus there are lots of delicious things that arent immensely fatty (Corn in August) Lots of immensely fatty things that are flavorful (Foie gras) Lots of Immensely fatty things that are disgusting (fermented whale meat the national icelandic dish) Does that help ?

Like in a crispy pork belly way ? I found this online quiz to help, hope it helps.... http://www.usingenglish.com/quizzes/89.html

It was the tool used for making the crepe. I think it's caramelized similarly to creme brulee iron........ apparently lets you make trasparently thin crepes

Great post Megan, I saw Lady M on one of Martha Stewarts shows, she was eating lunch there and they showed a demo of the crepes being made with some japanese tool called "aborahiki" quite interesting. The cakes looked good. What were you taking a picture with and at what point did they actively say you could not take pics, just curious ?

Depends on Egos If the restaurant can support both salaries and both people can functionally supplement each other. There is no problem. The subject illustrates inherently how the responders look at life, either objectively and making the best of the situation or adversarially and shooting each other in the foot. Life can be as easy as you make it. The real question is how it differs from a traditional chef/sous chef relationship.