robert brown

Da Marisa is the lead restaurant described in Issue # 50 of the Art of Eating. The problem is that, according to the publication's owner and just about sole writer Edward Behr, you have to reserve seven weeks in advance. There are lots of restaurants described. The best is to go to the Art of Eating website and order it. At the same time buy a subscription if you care about learning about food in its purest form and primary habitat.

Beachfan, are you familiar with one of Deborah Kerr's most famous movie roles? It started out as a stage production. I bet Margaret knows it.

Are you sure you don't mean a sympathetic tea shop?

Steve, that was a tremendous review you wrote there. We had two meals at L'Arpege in two days and left with the impression that ordering a la carte is better, but only after some familiarity with the dishes, or at least being in possession of inside knowledge. In fact our a la carte lunch in July was one of our greatest meals in our life. Passard is a hard chef to pin down, harder than Adria. He seems to be able to create remarkably balanced and elegant dishes using ingredients of opposites in the same dish, or taste sensations from opposite poles put together. I don't sense these days the working out of similar bags that the old cats were doing, or at least going to sensations-on-the palate extremes we now have (for better or worse). Passard is a clear example of what separates the very good chef from the spectacular ones: The latter grab the lead through some general, indefinable sense of elegance and ingenuity that appear in dish after dish. These are gifts that belong to only a handful. I'm not sure that Passard's doing a cookbook would result in the influencing of chefs, at least truly good ones. Most cookbooks by great chefs are watered-down recipes they create for the amateur chef. It's the young chefs working for the master who spread the Gospel. I suspect that Passard does not want to write a cookbook, given how fastidious and deliberate his approach to cuisine is.

Expect a rash of restaurants in the style of Kitchen 22. Charlie Palmer’s newest venture in what is becoming the latest round in the value-for-money new restaurant crapshoot is perfectly positioned for the current stage of the economic cycle. The “formule”, as the French say, is appetizer, main course and dessert for $25. with a choice of five dishes in each section of the menu. Formerly occupied by the restaurant Alva, the long, narrow room has been redone in a somewhat severe, minimalist style of white walls, a long narrow mirror running the length of one side, light blue banquets on the other, a giant fez-shaped lamp shades hanging from the ceiling. There is a big bar scene going on in the front as the restaurant attracts a preponderance of young people throughout. An up-to-date menu almost the same as the one at the restaurant is posted on the web, the site best obtained by typing “Kitchen 22” in your search engine. The four of us started out with an heirloom tomato salad with a sorbet and pines nuts; the chilled corn soup with poached shrimp and basil cream; and peppered seared tuna with pieces of boiled potato and hardboiled egg. While portions were not large, they were adequate. The best appetizer was the tuna-- two small pieces seared rare with smashed potatoes and pieces of hardboiled egg-- very honestly and straightforwardly conceived. The two wives ordered plates of Gemelli pasta with mushrooms, tomatoes, and greens with truffle oil, while the guys ordered steak frites; a smallish (9-10 oz. I would guess) strip steak and a copious amount of French fries. My wife felt that the diverse ingredients in the pasta dish all worked well together, each playing off the other quite adeptly, including the truffle oil which she generally tries not to have in anything she orders. The steak and fries were a terrific bargain. The meat was well marbled and cooked nicely medium-rare with our ploy and gamble of ordering it rare working just as we expected. Of course, it was not of the caliber of what one gets in the best New York steakhouses, but it did not taste cheap either. Only a slight bit of toughness kept it from tasting as if it cost nearly twice as much. The taste sensation of the night, however, was the French fries. I ordered mine well done and they arrived exactly as desired. They were long and not too thick and not too thin. The texture was “melt in your mouth” and the flavor delightfully nutty. In fact, I have not had fries this good in years. Only desserts were a letdown, or at least two of the three. A tiramisu and chocolate mousse both came with whipped cream, and both had their flavor overcome with too much sugar. Nonetheless, the lemon tart, despite served with what my wife described as “genetically-engineered strawberries” had a nice crust and a good citrusy, lemony taste. Besides suggesting wines by the glass and the bottle for each main course, the wine list offers two dozen or so wines for $25. or $35. a bottle. I tried to ascertain if one could bring a bottle in from outside. However, this restaurant makes you leave a message since there are no reservations accepted. Besides, this is not the type of establishment conducive to drinking, let alone bringing, major wines/ Unfortunately, the restaurant has one overwhelming deficiency that may keep some people (us among them) from returning. I cannot recall a nosier restaurant since the old Memphis place on Columbus Avenue. Holding a conversation with those opposite was often impossible without asking for them to repeat themselves. That is too bad since Kitchen 22 offers more bang for the buck than almost any other in New York. Come either with earplugs or with taciturn friends.

Wilfrid, after you visit Le Veau d'Or, head down to Marchi's and tell us how it is.

Steve S., why order red cow Parmesan that's already apportioned and sealed tight in plastic when you can go down to DiPalo's and have it hand-cut from the entire cheese and wrapped in paper? There's a place in Providence that sells the red cow variety and does the same thing. It was bad, relatively-speaking. Once I went to Marie Cantin in Paris to buy some cheese to take with me on the plane to Nice. They put the stuff "en sous-vide" which definitely compromised the cheese by making it moist. Selling cheese in quantities you don't want and putting it in Saran-Wrap are two of several reasons why I put my cheese buying on virtual hold when I walk into one of my local overpriced so-called specialty food stores. How's that for food snobbery?

Marcus, I found on the web a few references to Jo Rostang as a Michelin three-star chef, but no dates. I may have to bite the bullet and pay up for the “Trois Etoiles Michelin” book if the Librairie Francaise has it. Otherwise we will have to wait for Cabrales. You open up (no pun intended) a can of worms about “artisinal”. The word was intended to define a trade that is executed by a skillful use of hands, be it bread making, carpentry, masonry, etc. How it got perverted into some qualitative adjective is something for an etymologist to figure out. Perhaps the French were the first to do it (and recently, I am willing to bet). But the root of the word must be “artisan”. If my wife were to take our herbs to market, there would be nothing artisan-like in the whole exercise. The problem with using the word “artisinal” to describe a product of nature instead of man is that the consumer really has no way of knowing where the product in question has been for how long, and how it has been handled and treated, which I suppose is not really different than buying a lousy loaf of bread baked on the premises. Nonetheless, I still think the work should be done away with in instances of the former. Fat chance of that, however.

Steve, I recall that La Bonne Auberge lost a star before you went there. Whether it was a third or second star, I don't know. His less-heralded son Philippe has the restaurant now. I went a few years ago and have not gone back. We had an obligatory 200 franc, or so, "menu" that was unexciting. I think it was a two-star place even when I first went down to the Cote d'Azur for the first time in the mid-70s.

Cheese, ice cream. sorbet, bread, and whatever else is made by the trained, skillful use of hands to put together an assemblage of ingredients are artisinal. The herbs in our garden in France that my wife looks after are not artisinal. To use the word "artisinal" to mean something akin to home grown, farm-raised, organic, or wild is an example of bad English, used in the service of hype and word inflation. Those who care about language have plenty to be appalled about from the world of gastronomy. As I used to say to my tablemates as we were looking at the menu, "I hope the chef doesn't butcher the meal the way he butchers the English language." Once you begin to give false attributions and meanings to what we eat, its true nature runs a very high risk of being camouflaged and obfuscated. One "fresh-frozen" is enough.

Marcus and Hollywood. I ran into a chef we forgot all about, both in general and on the Cote d'Azur who had three stars at least in the early 1950s: Michel Rostang's father Jo Rostang of La Bonne Auberge in Antibes. Waverly Root's book, "The Food of France" states that Rostang had three stars at the time the book was published. Does anyone know when the restaurant lost a star?

Steve, I wonder how they compare with the ones from Birkina Faso!!!! I trust you're writing the definitive glowing review of the Jerome. Or else....

Marcus, Barrier falls right on the cusp of when you began to become interested in fine dining in France (I was certainly aware of it at the time since my folks had dined in some of the restaurants when I was a kid), but it was certainly 7-8 years before I had significant first-hand experience, other than a few meals in the early '60s). Regardless, it is a prodigious feat of memory to recall the restaurants that you did. Someone did mention Pic in Valence, but it was not until 1973 that Jacques Pic regained the third star his father lost in the 1940s. Cabrales needs to get that book back. Steve, the haricots verts I see in the winter in the Marche Forville are from Birkino Faso. Are you sure the season in France is over? This summer we saw native beans in different sizes, which I am not sure you get in the product shipped from Africa. If you saw them marked as being from Kenya, then I have learned something new.

How about getting the redness of out your eyes before you came home after smoking a couple of joints?

I ran into Eli Zabar in front of his store yesterday. He mentioned a bistro on Boulevard Hausmann that also owned, or was next to, a wine store. The name was close to "Petrossian", but wasn't. He likes it a lot and said they serve big portions of meat. Does it ring a bell, anyone?

Marcus, a tie goes to the poster: Charles Barrier received his third Michelin star in 1965.

The Michelin maps are so good that in 1944 or 1945, the US Army distributed the guide to with special covers to its soldiers for use in the field. (I use the regular editions in fighting the gastronomic battles.)

How does it compare to El Bulli and the French Laundry in terms of getting a table?

Cabrales, that is the book. Can you get it back?

John, this must be the article Nicholas Lander referred to in last weekend's FT. Do you think it is? Can you still get it to me?

To paraphrase what Bill Clinton said to a questioner during one of his press conferences, "Whiting, you're good."

Marcus, we also had the fish terrine along with the sandre of the Loire. We only went there once, but remember it well. It was a lovely restaurant. I noticed several months ago when I searched on Google for Guide Michelin a book in French about the history of French restaurants based on Michelin ratings (maybe it was only the three-star ones). As I'm thinking of buying it, has anyone seen or read it? I'll dig up the title/author later unless someone wants to do it before.

Marcus, was Charles Barrier in Tours a three-star back then? When I ate there in the late '70s he had two. I also think he took a hiatus at some point, but that may have been after: or he sold the restaurant and stayed on as a figure head.

Desireable and not unreasonable. But actual? Le Grand Cafe de Turin sells oysters 'til the cows come home, however. Then again, Nice isn't Paris. (But I would still ask).

Mogsob, unlike you, I must be the gastronomic equivalent of the person who somehow instinctively and inexplicably gets into bad relationshiips. If I go to a restaurant in France without any a priori knowledge, I almost inevitably regret it. I find the phenomenon you talk about much more prevalent in Italy where the odds of walking into a respectable-looking restaurant that serves satisfying meals are more likely to be in the diner's favor.