robert brown

Having four people for the giant seafood platter is ideal as it gave us a chance to order a couple more dishes. Another waiter told me that the new auberge-restaurant is "five minutes from the Bergamo airport". As I wrote above, the new esgtablishment is called "Cantalupa". If going there provides the level of gastronomy that the current Vittorio has, I will be both surprised and delighted. Otherwise, it will join da Guido in Costigliole d'Asti in the category of defunct great restaurants of Italy.

Buried somewhere deep in the Spain & Portugal forum is a post I wrote stating that the dinner I had at Espai Sucre two years ago was one of the worst of my life. If there's such a concept as atonal food, this is it. Now perhaps there are those who like "atonal food" just as there are music lovers who adore Arnold Schonberg, for example. The boss's wife or girlfriend, picking up on my mood, wouldn't give me a menu and she got really pissed off when I asked my wife's daughter's boyfriend to take a picture of the menu they had posted outside.

Cy, thanks so much for the vital information. Indeed I am going for lunch since I have a reservation for dinner already made. I am staying at a hotel that should have some clout, so I'll have the concierges try to nget it straigh for mke. It seems, however, that you liked the restaurant and perhaps would have liked it more under less difficult travel circumstances. Thanks to my research, both printed advice from big names I trust, and people such as yourself on e Gullet, I anticipate correct, honest and tasty food in Venice. A good gourmand tries everything from the most humble to the most pretentious!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm too lazy to dig up the past Nice/Cote d'Azur topics. Therefore I'm starting a fresh one. For several years I have passed a little restaurant in the Place Garibaldi that always intrigued me. Last summer I ended my curiosity and went there for dinner. Its name ( or double name) is Humbert/La Petite Alsace, and not Humbert (W.) Humbert. You will find it at the end of the arcade that marks the beginning of Rue Catherine Seguran where many antiques shops are. As the name implies, Humbert (which I believe is the owner-chef's last name) specializes in Alsatian cuisine, particularly several varieties of choucroute including a seafood one that I haven't yet tried. It is the kind of restaurant that is more for the locals; part-time Nice residents like myself; those who are dying for Alsatian cuisine; i.e. adore choucroute; or want to be reminded of what bistros were like 20 to 30 years ago. This is opposed to those who want to try the local cuisine while passing through, in which case I can't recommend the restaurant as helping to fulfill your aim. The portions are copious, to say the least, and I could find no skimping or cheating on anything in my three meals to date.. There are also bistro classics like terrine of foie gras and another of pork with a sauce of cherries. I also have had a good escalope deveau a la creme. However, the main event is the classic choucroute garni with a giant ham hock, several pork sausages, boiled potatoes, a thick piece of boiled ham, and a huge pile of cabbage. You can easily share one, which is what you can say about many of the dishes on the rather extensive menu. My wife proclaimed a tarte de fromage blanc as her all-time favorite of the genre. The restaurant requires patience as there is only one person serving the relative handful of tables and Humbert and a helper in the kitchen. I find La Petite Alsace a little jewel and one of a breed of bistros that is inexorably dying out to be replaced by le menu establishments. The wine list is modest and fairly-priced. We find the Riesling Kabinett at around 20 euros suitable for most everything on the menu. Furthemores: La Merenda of Dominic le Stanc has been in peak form. The former two-star chef of Le Chanteclair at the Hotel Negresco has this little classic cuisine Nicoise bistro humming, contrary to the way I found it several years ago. Our most recent meal had as its most memorable event a 90 minute blackout that extended from Marseilles to Beaulieu. It was the only time I've been at La Merenda when you could have walked in at 9:00 and immediately sat down at a table. My wife and I were the only ones who stuck it out, giving us the opportunity to have a long conversation with Dominic. As many know, La Merenda has no phone and doesn't take reservations. There are a several ways, however, you might get a seat: 1. Get there early---say before 7:00 PM 2. Throw a note over the transom the afternoon of the evening you want to go. 3. Ask during the first seating if there is a place in the second seating 4. Try again around 8:30 to see if you can slip in between seatings if you are willing to eat in an hour. It's filling a spot between the departure of an early arrival and the arrival of a late-reservation holder. This is what happened to us on a second inquiry drop-by. 5. Don't give up. If turned away the first time, give it another try 30-60 minutes later. 6. I never tried it, but ask for a reservation for the next night. It could work. To resuscitate an old recommendation, we feel for now that the best Nicoise meal is the roasted chicken and pommes purees at La Petite Maison. Preface them with the assortment of hors d'oeuvres Nicois (petits farcies, marinated red peppers, artichoke salad, breaded squid, and more) followed by a shared order of the risotto with summer truffles. The chicken is always on a supplemental menu that you may have to ask for; and as I posted recently, order the chicken as soon as your waiter makes your acquaintance. It's a 45-minute preparation. One chicken really is plenty for three people given the rest of the meal. The owner is a bitch on wheels, but pay her no mind. We have been at least 15 times and she is finally giving us grudging respect. Celebs get treated well here. It's that kind of place. Yet, it's one of the best run restaurants in Nice, though it can take a nod and a prod get the bill. We had the misfortune of losing our dear friend Sandro Kroo, an Auschwitz survivor and a towering figure in philately who, beside writing many books, amassed an enormous stamp collection and curated the collection of the philately museum in Monaco. He also owned an apartment in the Palais-Hotel Materlinck where he would often invite us for lunch or dinner. We always found the cuisine rather banal and overreaching. However a couple of months ago Sandro's widow and love of his life invited us and a mutual friend for lunch. Whether we engaged in the phenomenon of wanting so hard to like the food or was solely the food itself, it was the first time that we experienced a delicious meal at the Maeterlinck. Of course we like to think it was the latter, and I think my wife and I have been around the block enough times to be able to invoke emotional distance in order to judge the cuisine on its merits. I believe there is a new chef there, which probably accounts for the difference. In terms of ambiance, there may be no more overwhelming spot in the area, if not beyond, for al fresco dining. Often I would stare at the number tattooed on Sandro's forearm and then look around at the privileged surroundings and out at the open sea with big private pleasure boats passing by, and reflect on his remarkable life while seeing in front of me the symbols of its extremes. I didn't take notes, but almost every dish we had provided pleasure. The one negative, and a substantial one at that, was the terribly long wait between courses; so much so that I had to go inside and speak to the manager a couple of times to give him my "this is why the gourmands are dining in Spain and Italy" refrain. However, the service regained its footing after the main course and we left very contented, I didn't see the bill that I wanted to pay because our hostess. being a regular and a resident, took care of everything beforehand. I imagine, though, that your looking at 125-150 euros a head before wine and small gratuity.

Joe and Cy, I'm gong ahead anyway with my visit at Trattoria La Laguna. It did sound good in the Apple story. But Cy, how do you get from the boat stop to the restaurant and vice-versa?

Cy, I had Il Rigoletto on my itinerary, but removed it. I think I did because I couldn't find an agreeable-enough place to stay. Perhaps it was also because my wife and I really like Mantova and having shown up at Al Berasaglieri the night it was closed, I felt that after a friendly chat with the chef's brother who was doing some work there, I owed it to myself to actually have a meal there. I imagine you stayed at the Hotel San Lorenzo in Mantova (no great shakes, but adequate), but did you find anywhere closer to Il Riggoletto that may have provided a pleasant overnight stay?

Cy, I give your commentary an A+. They are endearing and never boring. You tell it like it is and give us very good guidance. Overwrought details of diner's reports are often counter-productive. Please return. Why not find a nice hotel in Piemonte for the truffles and make it easier on yourself? The trip I'm planning for the summer is less taxing than yours.

Moby, just make sure you visit the Philippe Starck-designed Laguiole cutlery factory and store.

Take a drive between Laguiole and Conques. It's one of the most beautiful in France.

Isn't Laguiole far from Gourdon (unless there's another Gourdon besides the one in the Alpes-Maritimes).

I agree with John. The less Brussels sticks its nose into the cheese business, the better. Not adopting the new EU Constitution would mean just that. Being a patriot of my country's currency and a big consumer of cheese in France, I voted "non" in spirit.

John, there's a category of traveling gastronomes I call "Michelin star f---ers", who spend all their gastronomic time, energy and money going to France to eat in the two and three star restaurants. (They also are very interested in Spain.) However, they skip Italy altogether even though there are several places (Le Calendre, Combal, Joia, Cracko-Peck,etc.) that would fill the bill for their quest of "the latest and the greatest". But the essence of dining in Italy at the restaurants that have the qualities you refer to above are those that have proven themselves over generations and respect the traditions while often having a refreshing degree of sober modernism or interpretation. I think this is mainly due to the role of the family (often entire families) and the handing down of restaurants from generation to generation. Now this happens in France at the higher-end, but not to the extent that it does in Italy: Most notably Trloisgros, Michel Bras, Haeberlin, Georges Blanc, Lorain (Cote st. Jacques) and others. But as we are discussing, who will take over Lucas-Carton, Eugenie-les-Bains, Arpege, L'Ambroisie? Maybe there are some sons in these places I'm not aware of. But already Girardet, Robuchon (the three-star one), Peyrot, Barrier, and so many others are gone. Then you get the situation of Chapel whose son is working without the benefit of his father and has no interest in perpetuating his cuisine.

It’s interesting how the good Spanish and Italian (and Swiss) chefs just bop along doing what they want to do, or have to do, without anyone getting all hot and breathy. If a chef in those countries gets a star or loses a star, relatively few followers of the food scene really care. Of course gastronomic heritage and history play a more profound role in France, but it’s more because of the Guide Michelin and all the restaurants they have bestowed three stars on that distort and create undue and unwarranted stress on the cooking/restaurant profession. My guess is that you get rid of the Michelin stars and no one will get panic-stricken when a celebrated chef decides to change the kind of restaurant he has. I’m starting anyway to believe that almost no one knows who is really good and what is really great. The press and other forms of the printed word distort the state of gastronomy while debasing the ability of people to think for themselves. This situation with Senderens is just another chink in the armor of haute gastronomie or temples of haute gastronomie. It’s all part of an inexorable march at the mid-to- high end towards what I call “cuisine de demi-pension” or the way we eat at a wedding or a bar mitzvah. Take a seat and eat what they bring you, which is the same as what everyone else in the place is eating. So it doesn’t really matter in the long run that Senderens is “giving back his Michelin stars’, which he isn’t doing anyway. He’s changing his restaurant from a temple of haute gastronomie to a minion of haute gastronomie, where a group of guys can stand around and mourn its death.

When the Sultan of Dining joins me in sharing the sentiment that da Vittorio has little competition in warming a gastronome's heart, I have no hesitation telling people to go out of their way to dine there. This means commuting from Milan or stopping en route to Venice and points in between to otherwise dine at Le Calendre or the several famous restaurants in and around Verona such as Perbolini and Il Desco. I would even go so far to say that da Vittorio may be as fine a luxury seafood restaurant that one could hope to find, bar none. Da Vittorio is a throw-back to the times when restaurant owners built restaurants that were made to be restaurants. The ambience is luxurious without being formal or stodgy and the fixtures and fittings more pan-European than “designo Italiano”. Let’s not go too much into the present situation, however, as da Vittorio is leaving its 40-year-old premises a few blocks from the Bergamo train station in August for the countryside 8 km. east where there will be ten suites in which to sleep off the ambrosia and elixirs . In fact, the enterprise will no longer invoke the name of its founder Vittorio Cerea but “Cantalupa” instead. Anyone who knows my culinary likes and dislikes also knows that I inveigh and fulminate against tasting menus, but when Vittorio’s charming daughter Rosella urged us to take the seafood one instead of the huge seafood assortment that we were contemplating and which the Sultan so lusciously describes in the Gastroville blog, we backed down (but not before I said , “Are you really sure, because I don’t want a tourist-type meal”). She assured me that the restaurant’s seafood degustazione indeed was terrific. Ah yes, if only even 5% of tasting menus were like Vittorio’s, I might reconsider their legitimacy. In its way, ours was every bit as generous as the Sultan’s Trionfo di Crostacei e Molluschi. In a flawless execution of service, two waiters brought out three crudo dishes for each of us, followed by three warm appetizers. Pasta with gamberi from Sanremo came next.;then a risotto of sea bream. The only tasting-menu shortcoming of our meal was that our sea bass with vegetables that was cooked under a bread dough covering was just two fillets instead of the whole fish that came a la carte. The waiters brought it to us in the pan, still covered with the browned crust which they broke open in front of us. Having read in the Gambero Rosso guide that da Vittorio served the world’s best frito misto, I made doubly sure that it was part of the meal. We received a large serving that confirmed, at least to our fairly extensive experience with the reputably humble dish, just that. The lightness, delicateness and freshness, with minimal covering, of the fish were unlike any other we have ever had. After an assortment of six desserts, the least interesting part of the meal, we helped ourselves from the ten serving dishes of assorted chocolates and bonbons. More than anything, they punctuated the spirit of generosity that ran through the entire experience. Unlike Per Se, this wasn’t what one food writer described as a meal of canapés, but often portions that would pass as close to full-size a la carte. As our meal drew to a close, I told one of Vittorio’s sons as we were discussing the impending move to the countryside, “Don’t change anything” He gave me a reassuring smile; but just to protect myself, I’m having another meal before the Cerea clan pulls up stakes.

Cy, I should live so long, let alone be galavanting around Italy dining at virtually a different place each night. But did you get the e-mail I sent you at the Villa Crespi in which I told you that I had ordered a few days earlier the seafood tasting menu at da Vittorio? I'm trying to write it up right now without the benefit of notes.

I'm planning a visit in late July, but in working out my intinerary, I discovered that Vissani is not in the Veronelli. Has anyone taken note of this? Why might this be?

Just to chime in, having put in a lot of time in Piemonte, but not so much the eastern part. Peter is pretty much on the money as far as my experiences go. Antico Corona, Cesare and Enoteca are my current favorites. We had a great meal outside of Turin at Combal.Zero, but ordered a la carte as opposed to the more avant-garde multi-course menu Bill had. Ciao was good until the desserts, which were pretty bad. Il Centro was last year a bitter disappointment after a great first visit. Something was wrong, I sensed. Maybe it's back on track. I Bologna is great fun, though a bit on the modest side in terms of available dishes. In Acqui Terme there's a cheap little restaurant specializing in a version of socca; i.e. a chick pea pancake. It's fun, but is no longer in the Slow Food Osteria book. I forgot the name, but people should know it. Good eating, Ed, you lucky fellow. Where kin Switzerland are you?

I've been around fine art, academia and the world's greatest restaurants before the new reigning prince of Monaco was born. I don't "take a piss" ever on any restaurants or with anything that I have ever written about food, art, or design. I do enjoy, however, taking a piss in the fin-de-siecle public loo at the Hotel de Paris, but that has nothing to do with the Louis XV.

After listening to "A Night in Tunisia" for nearly half a century, it was great to see what the place looks like. You make it seem really wonderful.

Vedat, do you know the status of the new Robuchon in the 16th? I would only take exception to your saying that Robuchon deserves to cash in with these Ateliers. He won't be doing any of it with my wallet, on top of which he shhould have a legacy to protect. He's taking a big fall in my eyes, and while I haven't had completely negative experiences at one visit to the Paris Atelier and two or three to the Monaco one, they best illustrate where certain high-profile chefs and restaurants are today on both sides of the Atlantic. I suspect that the new Paris Robuchon is like the one in Monaco: a sit-at-a-table place. You should check in more often here.

Gareth, it sounds like you may want to consider some of the luxury hotel dining rooms such as those of the Juana in Juan-les-Pins, or the Majestic, Carlton and Martinez in Cannes. This is as aspect of Cote d'Azur dining I don't get into much, having tried only the Juana and the Majestic, and not recently either. I have had mixed results at Jacques Chibois' hotel-restaurant in Grasse (Bastide St.Antoine), but people generally like it. To my mind, there are no restaurants down there that would knock your sox off, although you can get lucky. I also have come to believe that the Louis XV is a dying quail and a monmental rip-off. I wouldn't bemoan anything about not going there. The Colombe d'Or is fine for having drinks at the bar and looking at the pictures in the dining room. Eating lunch outdoors is pleasant, but this is no culinary oasis. Some of us like La Table de Mon Moulin, even though there is no choice in what you will eat.

Getting back to the article itself, my wife farm-raised the question of what might be the criteria (or criterion) for Marian Burro's choosing the establishments that she did. My wife wondered why Citarella's wasn't singled out for the testing of its salmon; and why did the Times jump on M. Slavin who is a wholesaler without telling us poor folks who don't have an uncle in the fish business who some of its retail clients are? I look at the advertisers in the Wednesday food section, but do any of the businesses that Marian Burro's hook advertise there?

I go along with the "mixed bag" paradigm. On one hand some cheeses are dying out in France while, on the other, young budding food artisans are setting up small goat and coe farms for making cheese. I go along with the belief that France won't become like Switzerland where one no longer produces the raw-milk Vachrin de Fribourg or Mont d'Or. However, it's not an "either-or" situation, at least where I spend my time in France. I don't like any of the affineur-owned cheese shops in the Nice-Cannes area: One keeps his cheese out too long and the other often offers cheeses that haven't been aged long enough. The greed that has permeated the French culinary sector doesn't necessarily stop at the door of food artisans, and just because you can find lots of raw-milk cheeses at the Lafayette Gourmet or Carrefour doesn't mean they are also impeccable, especially when they come already cut and wrapped in cling wrap, and possibly stored and conserved in less-than-ideal conditions.

Whoever commissioned the article or let it get set in type, as they used to say, deserves the Pulletzer Prize, to resurrect an old joke. To my mind it forgives the Times for much of the uncalled-for cheerleading they have done in the name of "gastronomy" in New York. For almost as long as I have been participating in eGullet (and I joined a month after it began) I have occasionally proposed that there be an area or forum to discuss faulty practices in the food markets. Let's hope this article reverberates, as I would hate to see its short-term reaction fade away. Even if we don't address the rip-offs formally, I hope we will be less reluctant to complain. I spend a lot of time in NYC's so-called gourmet food stores and I find something to bitch and moan about every time I go into one.

Maybe we should change the title of the topic to: BLT Fish Hold the fish