robert brown

That's a very interesting post (and trip), Busboy. You hit places either I haven't been to in a while or not at all. Locals have told us that they are not fans of L'Univers, so I haven't been. Now we will have to give it a go along with Menton1.

Suvir, this is great. I am sure it will be the #1 eGullet gathering place. How willl you be dividing your time between the kitchen and dining room? All the best for a grand success.

Mirazur closed on 8/31. It was okay when it opened almost three years ago, but someone I know whose office is across the street from it said it had really gotten bad. Chibois was but a consulting chef.

Dear Jellybean, It's good having another voice conversant with the Cote d'Azur. Your feelings about the highly-rated restaurants pretty much jibe with mine, particularly Maximin. He seems like a burned-out case. The main reason I didn't agree with your recomendation for Parcours is that The Viking's group (which he described to me in a PM) is aiming higher than that. I suggested Jouni to him because it is very intimate, a refuge for foodies because you can talk to Jouni and his partner about restaurants all over the place. (Three weeks ago they shut down for an extra day to drive to el Bulli). Also Jouni does some serious cooking. The tasting menu debate deserves a larger forum than this. It's always a hot topic and deserves to be reignited periodically since the membership keeps getting new people. But yes, Bux that's what I meant eating with one hand tied behind my back.

Pisa, Lucca and Volterra are all great. Around Lucca is good to stay. Pietrasanta, above La Spezia, is very nice and you would be near the sea, the Cinque Terre, Portofino, Santa Margharita, and Camogli. Genoa would be an easy drive as well (75 minutes I would guess), not to mention Firenze where one never gets bored regardless of the number of visits. Of course a lot of these places are in Liguria, and it's a somewhat different feeling. Otherwise around Montelcino is very beautiful, not to mention the Chianti region. I imagine, though, that you hit those areas as they were close to where you already have been. No shortage of good restaurants, either.

Pan, I agree with you about Bartok et al. With cuisine, which compared to the plastic arts, is a highly rigid form, I am sure that all "avant-garde" cuisiniers, whomever they may and will be, wll be lumped together always. Grant, keep us informed in matters such as Moto. What about David Meyers? My wife and I were discussing about what, if anyu, avant-garde characteristics there are in Wylie Dufresne cooking. Do you care to comment?

I had a less positive experience at Parcours than did Jellybean. It is an interesting choice if you go with a friend or a couple, but for Viking's purpose, I don't think he and his group would be too happy. There is really no choice in food, and the wine list is a joke, although I didn't see anything about a "Price Collection" Would you elaborate, Jellybean? I agree that the food is nicely made and it is a value for the money. I just don't like eating with one hand tied behind my back, on top of which I am a foe of tasting menus except when reasons for taking it are overwhelming.

Her mandate is, undoubtedly, to make money, though originally it was to freshen it up or give it some bite. Now it seems to be floundering. I haven't received my issue yet, but isn't it unusual to put a chef on the cover? I can't recall that ever happening.

Pan. let's not forget, too, that there is such a phenomenon as a collective avant-garde. You can probably discuss it best in terms of, say, New Music, where one artist would be seen as an oddity or a lone wolf, but collectively makes for a genuine movement that in the end makes it into the music history textbooks. Certainly Dada, Russian Futurism and German Expressionism in the 'teens and 'twenties were the same in the making of art. If this also holds true in cuisine, we can expect too see a lively broadening out from Spain (or Roses, Spain), which I don't see yet. Right now Adria appears as the loneliest of wolves, but an amazing one nonetheless. And yes, I hope Grant jumps in.

The nightmare scenario is that Molly O'Neill starts her own website. Who would like to try to get Faith Heller Willinger to come on over here. She's good at answering e-mail to her site, but that's hardly the same.

Victor, I suspect that you have the same protective feeling about MB as I had with Alain Chapel. It was inconceiveable to me that anyone could have a meal he or she did not like, and if they did, they didn't have the requisite taste, experience or sophistication. I followed his career closely and the only two times I had less than spectacular meals were on the first day of business after the restaurant's annual closing from January 2-31 (and a lousy time of the year for serious dining) and a few years later when I think he was going through a divorce and fell briefly under the sway of Gualtiero Marchesi, the famous Italian chef in Milan. But service never faltered (and it was amazing service) and it was always fun. Now I don't know MB from a hole in the wall, and I am glad that's how it was for my visit. I couldn't give the benefit of the doubt to my visit occuring on an off-night as too many major aspects were sub-par. Add in Blind Lemon Higgin's experience and the notion that there are ingrained problems seems inescapable. MB as well could be having personal problems; perhaps almost one is eating at the Bilbao Guggenheim (which wouldn't surprise me since the museum was all but empty when I was there); maybe the lack of tourism and high-end spending has given him sleepless nights. Who knows. but it sounds like something is going on that, I imagine, will pass.

Pedro, thanks. I want to expand my knowledge of addresses the next time. What you wrote is very useful and well-done.

Pho, I have spent 24 hours in Chicago in my life, but I would love to return if only to see how Grant Achatz works. Pan, one problem in trying to define the scope or narrow the scope as to what avant-garde cuisine is is that the term "avant-garde" was never used for cuisine in any significant way until about ten years ago. Furthermore, much of what great chefs created before then is in the realm of remembrances and oral history, which is why it is vital to talk to some of these chefs while they are still around to talk. (No one seems to be doing it, but I guarantee you that when Paul Bocuse, now 81 years old, slips his mortal coil, someone will say, "Why didn't someone with a recording device and microphone sit down with him for a few weeks ". And Roger Verge, Michel Guerard, Pierre Troisgros, and many other one could mention). It is interesting, though, that Ferran Adria has for at least ten years catalogued , references, and cross-referenced his avant-garde "oeuvre". So what we have, which dawned on me at dawn when I head for the loo and am at my peak of insightfulness, is that Adria is first chef to make his own "catalogue raisonne" which is what the "El Bulli: 1998-2002 and the subsequent volumes will be. (For those who don't know what a "catalogue raisone" is, it is a complete-as-possible compilation of an artist's life work. When undertaken by a scholar in the instance of an artist who is long gone, it takes lengthy, dogged work, which is why the catalogue is often updated since works come to light that were unknown at the time of publication of the previous edition(s). So in a way, Adria has put himself in a position where he almost single-handedly defines the conditions for avant-gardness in cuisine. Reading the attributes that Adria listed that are in Jonathan's post blazes a revealing path to how one might frame the phenomenon. Your points concerning bizarre combinations and concoctions are valid, to say the least. I think we are seeing in cuisine the same manifestations that have been in art and design for over a century, which is a conscious effort to be on the leading edge, but mostly without the prerequisites of great skill, talent, or technique. I can remember during the year I took off from college to work for Jonas Mekas at the Filmmakers' Cinematheque (which morphed into the current Anthology Film Archive). Aspiring filmmakers used to show up with these awful no-budget films, to which Jonas could never say, "This is apiece of shit". Also, we used to have open screenings in which filmmakers would show up with a can of film and we would project them sight unseen. Most of them were, indeed, pieces of shit, but they all fell under the rubric of avant-garde films. I am afraid this is what we are beginning to see the culinary equivalent in restaurants and will undoubtedly get more of it. I imagine that is why I feel that Adria constitutes the avant-garde almost entirely for me, and maybe it is a prejudice based on my perceiving immense craft as a prerequisite for what I respond positively to. I know I did not discuss the matter of form here, but let's see how this discussion develops further.

Pan, thank you so much. One man's concoction is another's avant-garde creation. I am trying to get people like yourself to try to get a more rigorous or tighter notion of what is, or should qualify as, avant-garde cuisine. It is an endeavor that will never be fully satisfied, but it is fun and challenging to try. I meant to say, or at least imply, that badly-conceived or self-conscious dishes; i.e. concoctions, are not avant-garde. Here again. however, it is a matter of taste in both meanings. For the moment, I believe that Ferran Adria is the only avant-garde cuisinier there is, although there is no telling when I may find someone I also consider as such. I believe that in order for a cuisinier to be considered an avant-gardist, there needs to be, as I said, creating food in terms of its formal characteristics. Now a few nights ago my wife and I were returning from WD50 and talking about Wylie Dufresne in terms of if we could consider him an avant-garde chef. I suddenly realized that the chef he reminded me most of was the Pierre Gagnaire I experienced in St. Etienne in the mid-late 1980s. That's weird because Wylie was just a pisscher back then. But, if memory serves me right, and I issue the caveat that I only dined at Gagnaire's restaurant two times, it was the same kind of cooking with unusual or ersatz ingredients and unheard of sauces with a quite free-wheeling conception. However, that was the period when such cuisiniers were called "crazy chefs", which to me is different than what Adria is doing.

Fat Guy, how much is the bounty on her head? Have your agent put you in touch with Schocken Books. Last I knew she married the head of it. If this works, I get to ask her the first question. Sorry.

Andrew Dornenburg and Karen Page recently posted a note on the New York Times coverage of the avant garde movement: click here. I did not have the time to reply to this post in a timely way. In their Q&A this past week in which they refer to this post, I was in the midst of writing the reply below when the Q&A ended. However since the notion of an American cooking avant-garde is a compelling subject, I hope to keep both discussion and debate going among the members since, for one reason, I have a differing opinion on the subject than do Andrew and Karen. Their thesis is that They cite Alice Waters as an innovator in her choice of ingredients, Jean-Louis Palladin and Jean-Georges Vongerichten as innovators both in ingredients and technique. They praise the American dining public for its They even quote Ferran Adria: Yet I don't think that Dornenburg and Page have made their case for the US as the world's center of avant garde cuisine. Every avant-garde movement I can think of has been a manifestation of form. Andrew and Karen's inclusion of access to more and fresher ingredients as a major reason for American chefs being front and center in the world of the culinary avant-garde is akin to stating that Picasso painted what is recognized as the first Cubist work of art, “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon”, because, in part, he applied more colors to his palette. Of course no one can minimize the achievement of Alice Waters and her influence on a great number of chefs by calling attention to produce in its optimal state, but this was something that European chefs cooks had been doing for decades and which has now been embraced in America by every style of chef who has had a passion for the culinary profession. Furthermore, the amount of good ingredients available at one’s fingertips is not a signifier of great cuisine or a great chef, let alone something avant-garde. In fact, as is often the situation in America and other countries that have grafted a high cuisine onto a traditional one, a surfeit of ingredients, frequently borrowed from other cuisines, is often a crutch for those lacking in technique or a good culinary turn of mind. The central role that Andrew and Karen attribute to fresh ingredients is called into question by the "anything goes" approach of truly avant garde chefs, who are exploring the culinary potential of canned, packaged and otherwise commercially-made products or ingredients. Andrew and Karen mention some American chefs who visited el Bulli, yet who did not greatly change their way of making food. How could one expect otherwise on the basis of a meal or two, or, at most, a stint of some weeks in Ferran Adria's kitchen? What I have seen instead in numerous restaurants in America is chefs who glom onto the simpler techniques of Adria (primarily foams, as Andrew and Karen mentioned) for the sake of trying to wow the culinary neophytes who constitute the majority of their clientele. The problem here is that they have avoided attempting to define what the culinary avant-garde is in order to use the term to fit their purpose of endowing American chefs and cuisine with a quality they do not possess. Some of what they say is incorrect, such as stating that "Alain Ducasse who doubtless had to move to the United States to find an audience to embrace his most cutting-edge creations…” This is false because Ducasse did not move to the United States; in fact does conceive many of the same dishes in Paris for his three upscale restaurants in Monaco, Paris and New York, and is certainly not viewed as "cutting edge". They also attribute as avant-garde what are no more than concoctions. Certainly the history of cuisine, even the recent history, has a smattering of creations that in hindsight may be called avant-garde, be it the first soufflé ever made to dishes that preceded Adria's foams such as Alain Chapel's "Soupe aux Champignons comme un Cappuccino". None of this, however, makes a chef an avant-gardist. Certainly the meals I had at Jean-Louis Palladin's Watergate restaurant and at Jean-Georges did not come across as avant-garde. At most, Andrew and Karen have indicated that with the help of hindsight and retrofitting, what was seen at the time as being creative can now be upgraded to avant-garde. Now nobody really knows the extent of the culinary avant-garde or what, if any, long-term impact it will have. All we know from the past is that a genuine avant-gardist never stops becoming an avant-gardist until either he no longer can create, or his quest for what has been called "the shock of the new" exhausts itself. None of the chefs Andrew and Karen mention strikes me as exemplifying either.

The Daily Gullet Dept. of Correction thanks vserna and Gerry Dawes for pointing out factual mistakes in the San Sebastian dining story. These rightings of the record have now been incorporated into the article.

We have lunch there each time we take our friends antiques hunting. The fixed menu is the only way to go at mid-day. It is always tasty and a good deal.

Speaking of the Fondation Maeght (pronounced "Mag") there continues until early November a terrific exhibitgon of Soviet avant-garde painting and sculpture from the teens through the 1920s. There are many works from provincial museums that you may never get the chance to see otherwise. I was in heaven.

How do you define "avant-garde" as applied to cooking, and on what do you base your statement that "American chefs are in fact the world's avant-garde"?

The wine shop is on the rue Henri Barbuse and the last name is Bessie or close to it. For a hotel on the Promenade des Anglais, that's a tough one. Laperouse may be a bit out of your price range and all the rooms don't offer a sea view. There's the West End that may be less, and that's right in the middle of the Promenade, while Laperouse is at the bend at the far end (Actually on the Quai des Etats-Unis near the old port.) For luxury modern closer to the airport is the Raddison. Better located is the Meridien. Great location. Maybe as a chain hotel you could get a deal. God know they all need the business. I hope I'm not too late. Bon Voyage

I've been talking about a Michelin Espana & Portugal three-star restaurant where none of what I and Blind Lemon Higgins reported is suppose to happen, be it from busser to maitre d'hotel a desultory, deflated and distracted staff; half-hour waits for bread or amuses-gueles; similar desserts; a desperate search for wine; and (I forgot to mention) bad coffee. At lesser restaurants, I have had decent meals one time and lousy meals on the return visit and vice-versa. Lesser restaurants are crap shoots from one visit to the next, (which is why I have only a few restaurants in New York I go to with any frequency); world-renown restaurants are not suppose to be.

You can walk away from a forgettable experience at a restaurant wondering if you were a victim of the luck of the draw, asking yourself if you took proper measure of the establishment. This, I imagine, is what happened to Fat Guy at Arpege. However, when your opinion is the result of quantifiable, observable events such as waiting 30 minutes for even a morsel of food; of interacting with a service staff that doesn't smile, make any attempt to engage the customer, or offer any advice or comments; and running the risk of choosing two comparable desserts from a limited selection, then you can be confident in saying that you have patronized a restaurant that is off its form. I was confident in my assessment and, indeed, saw it bolstered by reports of some turmoil in the kitchen and a report of an experience contemporaneous with mine that mimicked many of the same aspects and events of my visit. (On the other hand, Pedro seems to have had better luck, though his comments were more of a defense of Berasategui.) Regardless, those who had been previously and enjoyed it may have been there during happier, more stable times at the restaurant. And it is possible that I and Blind Lemon Higgins, by going public with our opinions, which may be taken to heart by management, may help elicit positive comment from those who visit the restaurant in the future. This is why I always say that the major positive of complainers is their affecting change for the betterment of consumers at a later time.

Michael's voice or posts are what helps give eGullet the special distinction it has. Taking pot shots is hardly unusual and of no significance if the person taking them now and then also contributes wisdom and erudition, which Michael does in spades. There are other members who specialize in little else but pot-shots and one-liners, but not Michael. His rigorous mind and keen intellect are something I look forward to being shared on eGullet. Michael, please don't go. I must add that Michael doesn't need to elaborate. His palate is very trustworthy and indeed his advice prior to my trip was right on the money: that Berasategui was "off the boil" and Aduriz at Mugaritz was making exciting cuisine. His advice and opinions in the Spain & Portugal Forum are second to none.

Then Blind Lemon Higgins and I must have been dining in the same place on the same night.