robert brown

I have to think that Mr. Dufresene is not too happy tonight. The review was decidedly mixed, and if Wylie thinks he got a bum rap, I would agree with him. As most of Grimes' reviews, this one was yeoman-like; not the work of someone who has a wealth of widespread dining experience or the love and curiosity of cuisine in his veins. I don't know what happened to the chocolate in the foie gras appetizer, but other than that Grimes does a decent job at describing dishes; he just didn't put Dufresne's cooking in much of a context and as a result doesn't tell a story, which is what a good writer does even when devoting his muse to a restaurant. I have dined at WD50 three times, each visit spaced apart, such that I could sense steady improvement in execution and service. Grimes makes the point that some of what Dufresne does is interesting, but he doesn't say how interesting in the context of what else is going on in New Yor City restaurants. I think the food at WD50 is the most interesting I have had in New York in a long time, but apparently Grimes doesn't share this feeling in any meaningful way. Notice, too, that his exit line appears to be contradictory.

Marcus, thanks for the information and your experiences at restaurants I have read nothing about until now and which I clearly have to visit in the coming year. But tell me: Did anyone outdo Rafa the man for color? It's a restaurant that wraps its arms around you. I find myself standing up half the time I'm there, watching him, looking at the fish, asking questions,and reading the labels on all the bottles of spirits. In his way, Rafa is as much a treasure as Adria.

Victornet, I was just talking to a friend of mine and of Wylie about the influence of Barcelona on WD50. An obvious example is the chocolate covered anchovies at Cacao Sampacka, the chocolate shop in Barcelona, and Wylie's foie gras wiith chocolate and anchovies; not to mention the ubiquitous foams, of course. It will be interesting to see how Grimes discusses this in his review that may already be on-line. But I am of accord with you. When I go to Barcelona in 16 days, I will be concentrating on the more classic, other than a visit to Espai Sucre, which sounds like something obligatory.

If the tables were turned, Chowhound's Jim Leff wouldn't post the above. Otherwise, a gentle reminder to all to keep the thread on topic.

Nerissa: My idea for the topic began with the discovery that I and a friend both used hot and sour soup as a gauge for measuring the quality of American Chinese restaurants.What evolved from that was that this kind of judgemental activity was a by-product of eating food that is familiar. I then thought of other benchmark foods I had (other than hot and sour soup) and how it is possible to have experiences with specific foods such that we could keep a kind of running account of where we had them and how well and differently various cooks prepared them. Also, the way we perceive and judge food (and form preferences for them) might have an influence on our food preferences and how we react to novel or previously untried foods. In a way there is such a notion as a food security blanket which some people are quicker to discard than others. I wasn't thinking of comfort food in the sense of making the deliberate decision to go out for a dinner at Joe's Diner. It is that we develop varying degrees, and a repetoire, of familiar dishes that can determine how receptive we can be to certain dishes or entire meals that fall outside of our personal norm.

Pixelchef and Merissa, thgank you for your wonderful replies. As soon as I return to my computer, I will answer or try to clarify the questions that you (Merissa) raised.

What began as an innocent conversation about the hot and sour soup at Jean-George's "66" has evolved in my thoughts into a phenomenon that may account for some of the current state of affairs in dining in the Western World. My friend said that although he did not have high regard for a meal he had at "66", he had enjoyed the hot and sour soup. I asked whether he, as I did, usually ordered hot and sour soup in Chinese restaurants. He said he did, to which I replied, "I guess hot and sour soup is our benchmark dish for judging Chinese restaurants". This conversation made me think of other benchmark dishes that I use either to compare restaurants or to see how examples of each vary from preparation to preparation. My benchmark dishes tend to be straight-forward ones. They include split pea soup, New England clam chowder, "terrine de foie gras au naturel", tuna salad, chocolate ice cream, chocolate cake and melon sorbet. Everyone has their own repertoire of such dishes, and it would be interesting to hear about yours. However, I started to reflect on to what degree the opportunity to engage in culinary benchmarking might shape our dining habits and preferences, along with the notion of the seeking out familiarity, which is at the heart of food benchmarking, and the role and influence of familiarity in culinary preferences, if not history. I suspect that culinary benchmarking plays, at one extreme, a large part in the mental divide between traditional food and artistic and avant-garde cuisine such as what we are witnessing today. We see this on eGullet in the yawning division of opinion of visitors to El Bulli. At first, some of us criticized the naysayers for lacking a certain sensibility to appreciate or enjoy the restaurant. I wonder, though, whether it was the lack of the familiar in Ferran Adria's cooking that upsets or puts off-balance his critics and accounts for some of the reluctance of a meaningful number of chefs outside of Spain to fully embrace the avant-garde. At the other extreme in the context of everyday dining, might familiarity play a decisive role? Does the bringing of prior history of eating to the table each time we confront a meal exert a bigger influence on some people than on others? Is it possible that our genes are programmed to influence how and what we eat and how we react to our food? Does benchmarking food and the opportunity to engage in benchmarking provide us a kind of security blanket of the familiar? Conversely, might there be people who, faced with the lack of opportunity to dine in restaurants in which the food is either foreign to them (in both senses of the word) tend to close their minds to the appearance and taste of such food? This thread, by the way, is one you can answer on very personal terms; or you can respond as an anthropologist, evolutionary biologist or culinary analyst. It’s up to you!

John, you sealed the deal for me. I'm not spending one of my two meals in Paris this summer at that place. This is a brilliant piece of reportage. I can't imagine that you didn't get the nail on the head.

In August, Il Desco is the only high-profile restaurant open in the area of the Lago di Garda. You give me pause, however, which means that I will do some research and see if there is something more modest but honest. As for Marchesi in Erbusco, I'll never set foot in that place again.

Craig, I have only dined at five of these restaurants including Guido. and am planning to hit another one in August. Gambero Rosso may be the best in Italy, but I would have serious reservations about many of the others. My gut feeling is that many on the list lack soul and are on the list for their fussy cuisine and relative opulence. Dal Pescatori (the only one of the three Michelin three-stars on the list, by the way) was too studied in its cuisine; in other words the food lack heart. I think the feeling is that Vissani doesn't impart authentic cuisine. I liked La Tenda Rossa a lot. Pinchiori I don't think was ever embraced by lovers of real Italian food. Guido was wonderful. Now that it has gone amoeba-like, we'll see. The Guido at the San Maurizio hotel had just opened when I was there and wasn't very good. Has the one at the Slow Food University opened yet? Vmilor is heading for Caino and am dying to know what he thinks. I'm going to try Il Desco in August and wlll report. The owner of Don Alfonso has already stated that he has lost interest in cooking and would rather be doing something else (I forget what).

It's not this week after all, but next week for the review. The manager told me this tonight. Might it be that the Times doesn't want to give out three stars two weeks in a row? Idle speculation, that's all.

FG, we didn't want this to turn into a poll, but a forum in which people could write why they value one choice over the other, or at what point one becomes more appealing than the other, even though we defined the question in terms of where you can spend $1000. for two for dinner. Although I expressed a preference for consuming a meal prepared by a great chef over a bottle of one of the world's great wines, some of my most treasured evenings have been at dinner parties at which the host uncorks very serious wine.

Pirate, I think it's called splitting the proposition down the middle. It sound delicious, though. But if you had the dinner at home, you would be coming down on the side of the wine store.

Awbrig, care to elaborate why?

During a recent conversation I had with the well-traveled gastronome Vedat Milor (vmilor), we were talking about the high cost of eating in Paris at Restaurant Arpège, the three-star establishment of chef Alain Passard. Figuring that it would cost a couple about $1000 (£600) to dine there, I asked Vedat if he would rather spend such a sum on a meal at Arpège or on a truly great bottle of wine. We both agreed that we would find it more interesting to spend the money to experience the art of the chef than that of the winemaker. However, some of you may feel differently about it; so let's say that a family member gives you $1000, with a choice of spending it on a great meal (no special occasion involved) or on a great wine now ready to drink. Choose the meal, and you could dine at, say, a French three-star or at one of America's great restaurant's such as the French Laundry, Charlie Trotter's or Daniel, or a London gastronomic palace such as Gordon Ramsay Royal Hospital Road, Le Gavroche or Sketch. Or would you spend your gift on a Château Petrus or Lafite-Rothschild from a great vintage; a Montrachet from Comte Lafon, Domaine Ramonet or the Domaine de la Romanée-Conti; or a Romanée-Conti itself; or a Richebourg or Musigny from Madame Bize-Leroy? Would you prefer to spend your gift on a fancy, possibly no-holds-barred dinner or would you prepare a meal well suited to a great wine and drink it at home?

I like the way Alain Passard (Restaurant L'Arpege) does business. On top of what was (and still is) the most expensive special chef's tasting menu of 300 euros, he has chosen, in the face of a huge drop-off in American clientele and a 17% drop in the dollar since it was around 1/1 with the Euro seven months ago, to add 20 euros on to the price of the menu. This may be an isolated instance, but is indicative of how the French think when they do business. It's like the guys I do business with: When they sell somethng they quote in dollars at a time the dollar's in the crapper, they say that they have to charge more. But when it's the franc or the euro that's weak and they love being paid in dollars, do you think they offer a discount? Not in a million years. That's one reason I enjoy being in France increasingly less. Don't count on seeing a substantial VAT reduction in food end up in your pocket. Bux has it right. The diner will get to keep half for a while. I say one year maximum. All my advance restaurant planning for the summer is for Catalunia and the Spanish Basque country.

Boy, did I screw that up. It is pumpernickel bread that he soaked in milk.

Jinmyo, the foam is made from pumpernickel that has been soaked in bread. The result is a very gentle foam with a taste of malty rye.

It is interesting that no one so far has said Gourmet is their favorite. Why do you think this is? While I am here, I can say that I save my copies of Gourmet for airplane reading and that is has regressed to be more like the pre-Ruth Reichl days. I like Behr and Thorne the best since they have forums that are conducive to candor and integrity.

This from a reliable source involved with WD50: Grimes’ review is to appear this coming Wednesday. If our dinner there last night is a harbinger, Wiley Dufresne merits three stars. This meal showed the kitchen in even better form than my first meal there a month ago. Because we were with “family” (our friend Louis from my initial post about WD50) we received a preview of two dishes going on the menu as of last night (Friday, June 6) and one dish still a work-in-progress. Nonetheless, my wife and I and the three others at the table all were in agreement that this was, without a doubt, everyone’s best meal there so far. I am returning for dinner there next week and will let you know more about the menu changes. The main-course dish that debuted this past Friday is a deboned and pressed poussin which rests along side a poached quail egg, both sauced with a pumpernickel foam. Roasted fennel seeds; sweet marjoram leaves; split peas; and a puddle of an intense “jus” were added to enhance the conception. The dish that Wylie is still fine-tuning is rouget. In its present state the fish rests on two dried cherry tomatoes with a salsa of dried cherries and Chinese sausage on the side. The fish was placed on a sauce of nasturtium (an edible flower) and cucumber. Our waitress brought us five desserts, two of which are new creations from pastry chef Sam Mason that may now be on the menu. Celery sorbet atop of peanut-flavored rice crisps was superb with the taste of celery both pronounced and refreshing. The texture of the sorbet was technically perfect. Warm cherries with walnut foam resting on crunchy caramelized walnut bits was, as my wife noted, a kind of dessert one might find at El Bulli. This was an absolutely delicious dessert, although we questioned if it was necessary to make the walnuts sweet. Of course none of the above gives me insight as to how Grimes will rate WD50. However, I have to change my guess to what Robert40 brings up. Its location and informality suggest to me a two-star rating with a three-star text.

By all means read the Diner's Journal because the blond-hair diner with her hand on her chin is my wife's daughter. She ordered the two-pound lobster, which she enjoyed very much.

I was out in Seattle a couple of years ago for an exhibition we organized that was held jointly with an artist friend. We went with eight people or so. They let us bring wine, so that part of it was really good. I remember the food as being quite good, not extraordinary, though. It certainly wasn't mediocre. That's all I can say. It's worth a visit if yiu can get in.

Being in the gallery business that highly emphasizes rare, expensive posters that I need to sell, I never got the collecting bug, even though I came from a family of collectors. I have been tempted to collect gastronomic-historical printed matter. If I were to start such a collection, I would hone in on one highly-defined area as this, in the end, is how one cashes in. Having the most complete collection of just about anything makes a collection highly desireable, even if it is mundane in nature (corkscrews, for example). Just as a goof and because it wouldn't be expensive, I would try to get menus from the great Nouvelle Cuisine restaurants in France. In fact, if someone offered me several hundred menus (and I bet there is someone out there who has them), I might be tempted to spring the several thousand dollars it would cost. There are however, some great gastronomic posters such as A.M. Cassandre's for Maison Prunier, the famous London and Paris seafood restaurant between the wars, or Ludwig Hohlwein's 1909 poster for Wilhelm Mozer Delicatessen in Munich. There are certainly many hundred restaurant posters that were done, and it would take a very large commitment of time and money to get the most interesting ones. What I have been tempted to do, but, alas, never will, is to collect just about anything having to do with cheese. These could be books and pamphlets, but more likely posters and cheese container labels. Really marvelous labels come from Normandie. Oh, to be a kid again.

Robert R., whether the review is tomorrow (which I think it will be) or not, WD50 has three stars written all over it. (God help me if I'm wrong). The NYC dining scene is in dire need of a "hot young chef" and it has been obvious for a year or so that the Times food section really likes Dufresne, as witnessed by that seven-part series they do, the feature story on his devising dishes for the opening, and running a picture or two of his dishes (as in the recent article on pork belly).

If you go to L'Ile sur-la-Sorgue on a Sunday, you will mostly be going head-to head with antiques shoppers, as this is about the biggest town for antiqueing in France. I believe the food market is by the church. Nearby it is a good Michelin one-star with a prix-fixe lunch menu I have always found to be rewarding. Just don't leave your car in one of the big parking lots if you have valuables even in the trunk. I think the tourism slump has made the lots unnecessary, at least when I was there last summer. Nonetheless, don't leave maps, guiebooks, etc. in the car.