robert brown

Is there a French reader who wants to tackle the book and give us a full-length review? I also picked up a copy of "Food Business" (also in French), but I am not sure that I have the time to read it especially since I don't read French as fast as English. Also, if you put any creedance in the rumor that one of our members told me (and step forward if you want) that Bernard Loiseau took his life "for other reasons", then much of what the authors carry on about is a red herring

John, on behalf of the panelists I can write with certainty that we are all honored to be compared in such a way. Thank you so much. I wish to include everyone who followed on. The erudition and the new voices were something I never would have anticipated. This morning I received an e-mail from Guy that simply said "Wow!".

We are ending the Q&A today at 6:00PM EDT. Until the next Q&A begins, you may add comments to any of the topics. However, in fairness to Guy Gateau, we need to let him get on with his busy schedule. The Roundtable and Q&A with Guy has been remarkable. I think Guy would say that the discussion reached levels that even he did not anticipate. Most important, Guy bent over backwards to give eGullet members the benefit of his remarkable life in cuisine. His deep experience and gift for storytelling came through as the various compliments he received during the event confirm. Guy, our thanks for a great series of discussions. We hope you will visit eGullet again as your time allows, and share your wisdom with us.

I do the shopping and my wife does the cooking both "here" and "there". In a general way we always are sad and frustrated to have to return in September to New York from Nice. It is the corn and tomato season when we return, so our first stop on our first day back is to Barney Greengrass for appetizing and a small framers market on Columbus Avenue. We are always disappointed by the tomatoes from New Jersey. They have gotten worse over the years possibly because of much bigger yields. Corn is not as good either, but it's a product that starts to deteriorate as soon as you pick it. I think of the produce I get at the big farmers market in Cannes or by the Prefecture in Nice's Cours Salaya where the array and the quality of produce is remarkable. Even better at times is the market just across the border in Ventimiglia, especially for fish, the freshness of which you never see in New York. Yet Guy is enamored of what he sees in the States, often more so than in France. Perhaps there is no one country better than another and that it all depends on where you are in terms of location and shopping resources. (and there are "vintage" summers for fruit and vegetables) Pumpernickel's wonderful comparative post is probably as close to some objective notion of reality as we are likely to get.

Guy, I think that if we hope to see a new middle ground (somewhere between the bistro classics and today's avant-garde) it also has to come from the grass roots and made into reality through restaurants or special events such as the kind that gastronomic and wine societies have. It's great that people like Ducasse and others are codifying the patrimony of French cuisine and new schools are opening that are not strictly for aspiring chefs, but writers, researchers and even ardent amateurs. I believe, however, that we need more than documentation in order to have a real idea of the nature of the great -but-forgotten dishes. Right now La Nouvelle Cuisine is somewhat forgotten and underappreciated, but I think this is about to change as the academic and pedagogic interest in cuisine in general is moving ahead so quickly. We need living links such as yourself who are teaching at places like your Universite-du-Vin and concerned and thoughtful individuals such as those who have been part of these discussions.

One of the mysteries around here is why so few people went to Mionnay before Chapel left us. I only know of Balex (which I wasn't aware of), vmilor and Jellybean. Anyone else? When Guy was Chapel's #1 in the kitchen, the brigade was turning out many regional classics. In fact the first main course I had was a Poulet au Vinaigre. Even the Gateau de Foie Blond was, as Guy told me, a 19th-century creation. Toward the end there were sensational contemporary dishes such as the Bouillon de Champignons comme un Cappuccino which chefs everywhere reproduced; or the amazing Petite Tripiere de ris de veau et d'agneau. Whatever, I love the photograph by Anthony Blake that Guy found and can be seen with Guy's article in the Daily Gullet. Maybe my head has been twisted, but I find the portrait of the brigade catching the spirit of the place in the mid-1970s; romantic, unpretentious, and even a little rough around the edges. It had to have been hard work, however.

This leads directly into a concept I have been contemplating for a few weeks. Wouldn't we be better off if all but the greatest chefs learned to make great dishes of the recent past rather than subjecting us to their ill-conceived, badly-made "original" dishes? I'm not talking about bistro cuisine, but 20th-century classics created by great chefs. In other words, if the most talented pianists are out there playing Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, and Brahms, why can't great chefs learn how to make a great salmon with sorrel, lobster in Sauternes, or duckling with white and yellow peaches. I realize that there are intervening factors today such as labor intensity and access to, and costs of, the right produce. However, there are hundreds, if ot thousands, of recipes and disciples of these masters that chefs can learn from. It seems to me that there is a whole fertile ground out there that no one is attacking. Even if interpretations that don't score bullseyes are the final result, it has to better than eating a lot of the misguided food we are being subjected to today.

Commander, thank you so much for making your very first post so thoughtful and contributing it to this forum. Your comments reminded me of a story that you may want to comment on. About eight years ago we took friends for their first visit to Eugenie-les-Bains to dine and stay a few nights at Michel Guerard’s spa-restaurant. Not knowing if Guerard’s famous scrambled eggs with caviar that he serves in the shell was on the menu, I asked in advance to have the kitchen make it. When we arrived, I asked if our order was going to be realized, to which the person replied that it would. The dish was, after all, on the menu, but the one they prepared was different. The eggs were a light green and had been infused with some herb. To my mind, and my wife’s as well, this was an inferior version lacking the differentiations and intensity of the original. This was clearly an example of what you discussed: the diner’s wish to have a dish meet prior expectations and experience (although in the same restaurant) and the creative need for a chef to try something new. I always relished the opportunity to relive a dish I could never get out of my mind. One of the riffs my wife and I liked to play was, in anticipating going back to a great restaurant, was “Are you going to order (whatever dish) again.” And as you wrote, we always conjured up the memory of it (but, of course, not the intense taste of it) between visits. These days can we fault Michel Bras for always taking up a slot on his menu for the Gargoyle of Baby Vegetables (which, by the way, may well have changed since the last tine I had it in 1997) or Alain Passard for his lobster in yellow wine?

Vedat, I should correct myself a bit. There was good dining after 1990, but there's a romantic part of me that considers the beginning of the slide to when we lost Chapel in 1990. It put a large crimp in my dining enjoyment, but as many people know, I'm a Chapel nut. I think you have to add the emergence of the Herb Boys-Michel Bras, Regis Marcon and Marc Veyrat as three great chefs who caried the ball well intgo the 1990s. However, I mark the European recession that began in 1990 as something that put a crimp in the way we ate prior to that and which brought us to where we are today; an era that you and I find less appealing and rewarding ikn certain places. I should probably start a seperate thread about degustation menus. You pointed out something along the lines that people overlook when you were talking about the French Laundry. But I'll write about it tonight or tomorrow.

The term "Golden Age" always refers to the best manifestations of whatever it may be, and certainly not for the purposes of this discussion the general eating habits of the populace or restaurants in general. Therefore I was talking about cuisine at the top. Whether one likes the term "Nouvelle Cuisine" as Guy used it, no doubt referring to "La Nouvelle Cuisine Francaise" since he was at the center of it for several years. Whether one likes the term or not, it signifies the many relevant chefs in France working in the 1960s through the 1980s. I think there has been a sea change, or we are in the midst of one, since 1990 due in a large degree to Adria, Gagnaire, Heston Blumenthal and others. I think, however, that part of this sea change is also taking place in other areas of what Guy refers to as eating habits. I know that Vedat, Jonathan and I have concerned ourselves (having engaged in some social scientific inquiry) with the economic, even fiscal, impact on institutions. These factors have infuenced gastronomy in ways that nearly all food writers turn a blind eye to. Maybe we should look at how a simple concept called le menu degustation has influenced contemporary dining. That to me is more widely influential than Adria or Molecular Gastronomy across a wide range of restaurants and chefs.

Guy, that frames the matter perfectly. I'll hang back because I know that the other discussants will want to take this on.

Guy Gateau and I go back 30 years, even though we only recently met. On about twenty occasions between 1974 and 1980, Guy and I were less than twenty feet away at times; I as a diner at the three-star Restaurant Alain Chapel and he as its chef de cuisine. In Chapel’s kitchen, Guy was in charge of making many of the most succulent and well-conceived dishes I have ever tasted. A few months ago I tracked him down and arranged to meet for lunch near Avignon. I quickly recognized that given Guy’s remarkably varied and wide-ranging career at the highest echelons of the culinary profession, the eGullet community could derive enormous benefit from his perspectives and experiences. The other three gourmands in the roundtable, as you can read in their thumbnail biographies are no slouches either. To begin, I’ll ask the group if you think we are entering a new Golden Age of Gastronomy, with the previous one being (I strongly believe) from 1968 to 1990. Contemporary gastronomy is interesting, but I wouldn’t call it a golden age just yet. Perhaps I’ll elaborate later, but I defer to you fellows, and especially to our guest of honor.

Joining Guy Gateau in the Roundtable discussion are: Robert Brown: An art gallery owner in New York and Nice, Robert Brown has also been a well-traveled gourmand for thirty years. He has visited every area of France seeking out the most interesting gastronomic landmarks: restaurants, markets, purveyors and food artisans. Other labels on his gastronomic luggage include Italy, Spain, Japan, India and Thailand. He is forum co-host for eGullet's France forum. Jonathan Day: Jonathan lives in London and Mougins, France, where he is an ardent amateur cook. He is a frequent diner in the restaurants of Great Britain and France, but his work as an international management consultant has also taken him to fine restaurants in Russia, Africa, Asia and the Americas. He has a special interest in the economic and management aspects of gastronomy and culinary institutions. He is a site manager of eGullet. Jack Lang (jackal10): Residing in Cambridge, England, Jack is an entrepreneur with an abiding interest in gastronomy. He is a restaurant backer and a culinary book collector on a grand scale. He is deep into cooking and the science thereof as evidenced by the frequent courses he creates for the eGullet Culinary Institute. Vedat Milor (vmilor): Vedat lives in Atlanta, Georgia where he teaches at the School of Public Policy of the Georgia Institute of Technology. He's the Mad Turk of the European gastronomic circuit, joining it whenever he isn't teaching. France, Italy and Spain are his dining countries of choice, and have been for more than 20 years. He is indefatigable in this regard and approaches international gastronomy with great thoughtfulness and insight.

Guy Gateau, our guest for a roundtable discussion and Q&A, has had an extraordinary variety of experiences in the highest echelons of cuisine. In a culinary career spanning two continents and more than 35 years, Guy has been a chef de cuisine for diplomats, kings and their royal palaces, the prestigious hostellerie alliance Leading Hotels of the World, bistro owners, world-famous chefs and restaurateurs; he has been chef-patron of two restaurants, a culinary teacher, and a restaurant/hotel consultant. Guy has seen it all: the birth of the food boom; the vastly changing cooking and restaurant phenomena; and the shifting cross-cultural culinary winds on both sides of the Atlantic. He is also one of only 337 Maitres Cuisiniers de France, a title which instantly identifies him as a first-class chef. Born and raised in the famous Loire Valley wine town of Sancerre, Guy Gateau sought a profession that "made people happy." His father found him an apprenticeship with Henri Trottier, one of the first Maitres Cuisiniers de France, who had a nearby restaurant. Guy then went to Paris to work as chef de cuisine for Guy Girard, owner of the remarkable Paris bistro Le Petit Coin de la Bourse. He left to take charge of the kitchens of the Canadian Embassy in Moscow where procuring good produce was a constant challenge. This preceded seven years (1973-1980) as chef de cuisine for the great Alain Chapel, making some of the most famous dishes in the history of modern cuisine. Guy then had his own restaurant in Vichy, and was well on his way to obtaining a Michelin star there. However in 1983 he found it impossible to turn down an offer from the American construction tycoon Theodore Gould to go to Miami where he established the highly successful restaurant The Pavillon Grill, in the Pavillon Hotel (now the Miami InterContinental). The US capital beckoned next with an offer from master restaurant showman Warner Leroy to head the kitchen of the Potomac Restaurant. Some two years later, after a dispute between Mr. Leroy and the landlord, the restaurant closed and Guy set off to New York and the Ritz Carlton on Central Park. After a year's consulting on this project, Guy returned to Virginia and opened his restaurant Maison Gateau in Occoquan. He and his wife then returned to France so that their son could receive a French education. After a four-year partnership in Lyon with Jean-Paul Lacombe's bistro collection, Guy moved his family to Provence where he continues his active international culinary consulting and his association with the Universite du Vin in the Rhone Valley where he teaches cooking to both amateurs and professionals. Guy recently wrote an essay for The Daily Gullet on the evolution of modern gastronomy. We are proud to welcome our first Maitre Cuisinier de France to eGullet. We hope you will participate in the Q&A that follows this roundtable discussion.

There are imperfections and work to be done, but Blue Hill at Stone Barns on the Rockefeller Estate a short ride from downtown Tarrytown will probably be the big story in the New York food media this spring. Three of us took the train from Grand Central Station and then a taxi for about five minutes where we alighted by a large agglomeration of stone structures with slate roofs that reminded me of a couple of those grandiose hotel-restaurants I have visited that are in the Germany section of the Relais & Chateaux Guide. We entered a vast courtyard surrounded on three sides by I guess what you could call something between a barn and a castle. A woman greeted us and explained that besides the restaurant there would be a catering facility and rooms for classes and lectures which she pointed out to us. It's a long story about how $30,000,000 of the accumulated Rockefeller fortune has gone, or is going, to create this facility and turn 80 acres into organic gardening and the raising of animals. We were more interested in seeing how Mike Anthony and Dan Barber of Blue Hill were making out up there, having been chosen among several upscale New York restaurants to provide the restaurant concession. We encountered the bar and sat down at a table to have a drink while waiting for our table. It and the dining room are fitted out in a Minimalist fashion and not in the best taste. The dining room is really big and seats 90. Our table looked out into some of the fields around the restaurant. Bear in mind that we were there for what is called the soft opening. It was the fourth night of service. To be succinct since I don’t have the time to offer a diner's report, the service staff was wet behind the ears and not attentive to see when the clients were in need. This included the manager. In fact, the best server was a busboy that one of us knew from Blue Hill in the city. The cuisine ranged from that which shows why Mike and Dan can be as good as any chef in New York to a few dishes or parts of dishes that need beefing up. Generally speaking the greens and the herbs that came from the property were impeccable; the best I have ever had in New York. This also included delicious asparagus. For some reason, however, the eggs from the farm, which are featured in three or four dishes didn't measure up to the fresh eggs we find in France. Main ingredients were disappointing. Wild salmon and sturgeon were without much taste and somewhat overcooked and lamb (from a near-by organic producer) and pork lackluster. Desserts were excellent with rhubarb from the farm the best ingredient. I like the way these two chefs cook. Their approach and execution is well-grounded and inventive in a disciplined way. It's easy to give the enterprise at least another two weeks before the official opening to work out the current deficiencies. You should also take into account that the agricultural aspect is still a work in progress with many months remaining before it is fully implemented. On the other hand, there are shortcomings that unrealistically can’t be fixed in such a short time. I am probably being overly-romantic and unrealistic, but my food muse wants to see perfection, or something that approaches it, in such a magnificent setting backed by the rarest manifestation of culinary largess or idealism that exists. This is an incredible undertaking that shouldn’t be allowed to be corrupted by such distractions as catered events or a maximizing private gain.

Thanks Marcus and Peter. Peter, where did you eat last month?

Mark, while I admit that the seaside towns west of Genoa don’t have the cachet or the toniness of those on the other side, places such as Albenga, Arma di Taggia, and Sanremo have a “B” movie atmosphere I find appealing. Most of the restaurants along the coast are simple, honest and fresh, although you should try to stick to those that have a good turnover so that the fish is fresh every day. It has been nearly seven years since I first went to Conchiglia in Arma di Taggia, but it is still considered a serious restaurant. It’s on the bustling main street that runs parallel to the beaches, so it’s a lively scene around there. In Sanremo we belatedly discovered last month what now seems like the best dining bet in Sanremo. It’s called Gianinni and is a classical, serious Italian restaurant with the wife cooking and the husband in charge of the dining room. It’s a tad overpriced but we didn’t see any stinting on the quality of the ingredients. The restaurant is a bit hard to find. It’s at the beginning of the public beach about 150-200 yards past the train station. Dolceaqua is a wonderful old town that is overlooked by just about every foreign tourist who goes to the French or Italian Riviera. You can visit it in an hour or so if you want to go through the old part and climb up to the top of the hill it is on. There is a very good restaurant in the middle of town called Gastone which, although only five miles or so behind Ventimiglia, offers a menu very different than what you find along the coast. It’s a more hearty country cuisine with rabbit, frogs, and veal. In other words a nice change from what you will have been eating just prior. Bordighera and Ventimiglia offer four restaurants that are more upscale than most along the coast. The Via Romana on Via Romana in Bordighera offers a good limited-choice lunch menu at something of a bargain. It’s between the sea and the autoroute exit, rather high up in the town. Skip Carletto on the main street near the sea. It seems to have fallen on hard times and the fish has not been fresh according to me and two other serious eGullet eaters. Ventimiglia’s two rather fancy places are worth a visit. Baia Benjamin has managed to lose both its Mchelin stars over several years and offers a cuisine that is above average, but fading. The foreign waiters are unsmiling and unpleasant. One goes for a delightful time sitting right against the quiet beach and the utterly charming gardens. I have always been tempted to spend the night in one of its five rooms. Balzi Rossi, just a stone’s throw from the French border has appreciably better food, and while relatively not as glamorous as Baja Benjamin still has a dining terrace suspended seemingly over the sea. Our last meal last summer was excellent.

In our on-going, multi-year project to visit every worthwhile restaurant in Piemonte, we still have many stones unturned. We plan to make our next hit-and-run sortie in July and would appreciate any opinions by anyone who has visited any of the restaurants below. If a restaurant you know isn’t on the list, we likely know it or is closed in July.. Thanks in advance: Gardenia (Caluso) Angiulli (Condelo/Biella) Carmagnole (Carmagnola) Cacciatori (Cartosio) Caffi (Cossinosco) Antica Corona Reale da Renzo. (Cervere) Locanda dell’ Arco (Cissone) Forlino (Montacuto) Braja (Montemagno) Luna nel Pozzo (Barbaresco) Le Clivie (Piobesi d’Alba) Vittoria (Tigliole) Caffe Grappi (Trecate) Noce (Volpiano) Locanda del Pilone (Piobesi d’Alba) Osteria dell’ Arco (Alba) Cascina dei Fiori (Borgo Vercelli) Boccondivino (Bra)

I'm sorry I'm late to the party. Before taking the gloves off with a few of my dear friends who have already posted and with whom I have dined, I can offer this pratical advice. Yes you will need a car for sure for every day you are there. To get a table at La Merenda, pass by in the morning or early afternoon of the evening you want to eat and write a note with the particulars and throw it over the transom, which should be open. Our dinner in February was very good; the one a month later so-so. Order the tomato tart if there is some left (go early just in case). As Menton1 implied, La Petite Maison has the best local cuisine. Reservations for dinner are essential a day or two before. Lunch is usually a walk-in, but you never know. We always order the roast chicken (on the "menu du jour" sheet, not the main one.) Problem is that it's a one-hour wait before it arrives. One chicken for two is a lot. We like the hors d'oeuvres Nicois which are varied and generous (stuffed vegetables aka "petits farcis"; fried squid, marinated artichokes,etc.) Jellybean, I forgot to tell you we had an unsatisfactory dinner at the Port Palace in Monaco. The 80 euro lunch menu at Ducasse/Louis XV will be memorable if you order the pigeon (squab) aux abats. I'll defer to you on this restaurant since you have probably dined there more than any living soul except perhaps the Prince and his son and daughters. The 50 (may be more this year) euro prix-fixe at Hostellerie Jerome in La Turbie is usually very good. This restaurant may be the best address around for consistency. It's a real honest place with solid conservative cooking. We had a good lunch at the Marco Polo in the port in Beaulieu. The port in Villefranche and the old town adjoining is great for a visit. Don't miss the little chapel with the Cocteau frescos. But don't eat in any restaurant in the town. Don;t eat in Eze-Village but have a drink in the bar at the Hotel Le Chevre d'Or and go out on the terrace/swimming pool for the magnificient view. Jonathan, Loulou seems to have cut back. The Simmenthal beef was gone on our last visit last summer. I had a delicious lunch at the aforementioned Clos St. Pierre and I know you and Jellybean did not last week. It's a no-choice affair, and as I wrote to Jellybean, it illustrated a major shortcoming with these single "menu" restaurants: No safe harbors.

Mark. At Ristorante Rosa in Camogli you will have about the most arresting, all-encompassing view of any restaurant you have been to. The restaurant is on top of a cliff facing out to sea, but with views of the coast to the north and the picturesque port with small boats and brightly-covered residences. The cuisine is classic Ligurian seafood that is simple, fresh and tasty. I like Martinatica in Pietrasanta. It's in a charming wooded area beyond the town going east. When we were there a woman cooked and her daughter served. It's quaint and slightly run-down, but delicious based on our one meal. This side of the coast isn't my strong point. Are you going to be close to the French border?

When I was dining full-tilt in France in the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s and had the chance to visit some chefs on average every couple of years, I was easily aware of the notion of style or change in the cooking of the chefs in the upper-echelons. You have to realize that these restaurants were chef-owned, and while there may have been outstanding bank loans, these chefs seemed otherwise unencumbered and free to do what they wanted. To me, most of them got better, at least for a while, but I would call this a result not so much stylistic, but of growing experience as manifested by realizing more what did and did not work. There were, however, exceptions. Pierre Gagnaire in St. Etienne did amazing technical feats of daring which I only got to experiences twice; After Jean Troisgros died in 1982, the restaurant began introducing Asian ingredients as did Louis Outhier at L’Oasis outside of Cannes. Michel Guerard invented a whole new cuisine, Cuisine Minceur, in the 1970s, while Alain Chapel evolved from preparing the ultimate manifestations of Lyonnais cuisine to make more personal creations without changing the sources of his ingredients. I believe, however that unlike the plastic or “seven lively” arts, cuisine doesn’t generally lend itself easily to the notion of style. It’s usually more a matter of approach and what a chef is capable of doing. Most chefs don’t have the training or technique to have a style in an artistic sense, and those that do are often hamstrung by commercial considerations or not being in the position to be their own man. I don’t eat out at a frenetic pace in New York, but it seems to me that other than Wylie Dufresne (and he has backers he has to deal with), there aren’t a lot of other chefs trying constantly to evolve in a formal way. Some chefs are so talented that they can shift the way they cook in sudden and drastic ways. Marc Veyrat and Alain Lorca (who just acquired Le Moulin de Mougins from Roger Verge) come to mind. The best one can say is that finding immense talent in a permissive environment makes for a culinary notion of style that bears some resemblance to style in what Europeans call “free art”. Chefs have so many different considerations than do the solitary artist or the subsidized ones that the notion of style or stylistic evolution usually isn’t critical. It is fortunate for this discussion that eGullet is having a roundtable and Q&A the last week of April with a Maitre Cuisinier Francais who has been during five decades in the top echelons of the culinary scene in France and America and knows these concerns first-hand. His opinions should be interesting.

The interview and the format was at a level higher than any food magazine. Other than my noting that Picasso never would, and probably never did, explain anything about his work (and why should he have to) and that I question Ferran, one one hand, saying he is a child of the Nouvelle Cuisine while, on the other, calling great produce a romantic, egocentric concept, he's a great culinary thinker.

I used to go to Basel a lot. Donati was one of the better Italian restaurants outside of Italy. The old man Donati died and the son took over. I recall that he got out of the business and the restaurant may have been closed. Now I think there are new owners. I visited it once after the re-opening and it seemed about as good as always. Regardless, it's worth a try as it's a pleasant place with dishes that rank among the most popular among those who eat Italian. I had a few meals at Stucki/Bruderholz. They were very good, but I don't think Franz Stucki was in Girardet's league, if you want to compare Swiss chefs.

Steven, don't get me started again. Are you talking about domestic, foreign, or both?

I was fortunate enough to have lunch five days ago near Avignon with an extremely experienced, well-traveled chef who was chef de cuisine during the 1970s at one of the handful of restaurants considered as “the greatest in the world”. One of his lamentations about French cuisine now is how the press influences so many chefs to cook in certain ways. As a corollary to what my chef friend said, I have held for a long time the notion that the press acts primarily as a public relations tool (both paid and unpaid) to alter and enhance perceptions, usually in an overall, nationalistic way. In America this can be succinctly illustrated by asking yourself this question: is cuisine and chefdom as good in an empirical sense as the food media make it out to be. In France, the lack of discrimination and negative criticism in the culinary press, especially in guidebooks, is nearly universal. What I think the primary reason that people trusted and held in high regard the Guide Michelin for France was that it avoided this problem with its simple way of rating and lack of critical prose. That this ex-inspector chose to spill the beans in an attempt to cast dispersion is shaking up long-held beliefs in the integrity of Michelin. I wonder, however, if there is not a subtle shift in Michelin taking place between the phenomenon I describe in my first paragraph and the reputation the guide has for striving for objectivity. Given the widely-disseminated notion that French cuisine is taking a back seat to the new Spanish cuisine, it certainly raises the concept that this is having an influence, subtle as it may be, on how Michelin is allotting its three-star ratings. Just to add a bit of fuel to the fire, I found it odd (as did Jellybean) that the Michelin gave back third stars to two restaurants that has lost them several years ago: L’Esperance and La Cote St. Jacques.