robert brown

Excuse me for taking this stirring discussion into new territory that is applicable to dinner parties and overnight houseguests. I call the matter I bring up here “pitching in”. I have been at dinner parties at which the host or hostess is adamant against anyone helping to clear the table, let alone with the washing up. On the other hand, some like and appreciate the help, but then under these circumstances there are some people who just sit there not because they are called off, but because they are too selfish or lazy to help. The worst is the person who is an overnight guest (and that may mean three or four nights) who simply takes everything for granted by not doing his dishes after rising late after everyone has had their breakfast to going off to bed while the host and hostess are taking care of the dishes and cleaning up the dining area. To me, inviting someone to visit your house, saving him or her the expense of a hotel and restaurants, doing for them the food shopping, cooking, serving, and cleaning up, only to have the person behave as if you are obliged to wait on him or her hand and foot usually gets my blood boiling more than just about anything upsetting that can happen at a restaurant. Of course, the two are related: One is dealing with ingrates in both cases. Does anyone then have any stories about selfish dinner guests and/or houseguests and how you might, or actually have, handle such people? Even worse, has anyone ever kicked a guest out onto the street?

Margaret, how long have the confections that you describe been around?

M's put up 10-spot in first in honor of Colonel's BBBQ for Shaws (Seattle Post-Intelligencer) M's Cameron hits record-tying four homers in one game. Credits diet of Col Klink's bbq.

Patrice, thanks. Now that you mention it, I believe I read that somewhere else. The whole matter of collaboration has always been an interesting one in art (Gilbert & George, Stenberg Brothers, Rodchenko & Stepanova, etc.) It might be as interesting in making food as well. Who else is there? The Troisgros' in Roanne, Lorains' in Joigny,etc. However, twins or brothers seem more inherently interesting than father-son.) Has anyone looked into this or seen anything about it? What about the sisters in Belcastel, Bux?. "Culinary Collaboration". I claim the book rights for myself. Maybe I need a collaborator!!!

My wife and I were making tentative plans for a jaunt from Nice to Lagioule, with a stop at Le Jardin des Sens. While studying its website, I noticed that the grammatical construction of the description of the dishes resembled that of Chapel. The Pourcel twins apprenticed at different restaurants- Laurent at Chapel and maybe the other at Michel Bras. Can anyone who has been at Le Jardin des Sens tell me if they got a sense that each brother made his own dish or if they collaborated (or some of both)? This is a tough question, but did anyone notice a wide variance in the conception of the dishes or feel that two distinct styles were going on? Did anyone raise this matter with the chefs or the dining room staffers? It's interesting because most great restaurants are solo acts as far as the lead chef is concerned.

Suvir, such an endearing thought. Yesterday's rain put me in the same kind of mood as your discussion of Dimple inspired us to go there last night and for the first time. We had a terrific time. There ae so many offerings that I wish I had someone like you to guide us through. I wll try to write more on the dedicated thread.

The "one menu for the whole table" requirement is at least good for something.

Pan, two to five francs per 100 is what is appropriate in almost every case: two for bad to mediocre service, but not wanting to stiff anyone (although I have in the rare instance where I have received abusive, anti-tourist or anti- American service); five for good service in a low to medium price establishment and a few more percent in a classy joint. (Check to see if service included is 12-1/2 or 15 percent) I never tip the person who brings you back your coat- often it's the waiter-and I almost never give something extra to a maitre d'hotel or sommelier unless they have done something out of the ordinary such as accompanying me to my car holding an umbrella or giving us complimentary glasses of dessert wine, for example.

Jay, is there something about your friends that you don't know or don't realize; for example that their apartment isn't suitable for dinner parties (have you been there for other occasions such as cocktails before a restaurant visit); that neither of them cooks; that they don't have the accoutrements for entertaining? In our vacation home we entertain a lot while in our New York apartment we rarely do because it's a small, untouched Art Deco one configured, furnished, decorated and lived in by a designer who didn't care about having a dining room. But when we are invited over to dinner, I always bring wine that is much better than the host would serve. In other words I overcompensate. I am wondering if your friends think they are leveling the playing field in some way. Also, what happens when you go out to eat with them and it comes to bill-paying time?

First a couple of corrections: Andrew Sarris was the first American critic to bring to American film criticism the concerns and esthetic of the 'Cahiers du Cinema" crowd, several of whom went on to become "Nouvelle Vague" filmmakers (Godard, Truffaut, Chabrol, etc.) Second, Paul Goldberger now writes for "The New Yorker". One could argue that restaurant criticism as a part of journalism came into existance to fill space and sell advertising. Its nearest cousin is sports broadcasting criticism. I think that both phenomena leave us unfullfilled because they fall short as subjects of meaninful criticism. The question you should ask yourself is would you go to a restaurant with just the bare-bones information as opposed to acting on one detailed review. I view a restaurant review as one opinion that is thrown into a pot with other reviews (and this includes what people write on eGullet.) I then hope that something like a meaningful consesnsus arises so that one can make an educated guess where to have the next meal, or string of meals, out of the "universe" of candidate restaurants. I would also add that being a practitioner does not necessarily make one a better critic. Lots of, if not most, chefs have bad taste. In fact I would go so far as to say that their choice of restaurants would be less-inspired than most of the people who post here. Good taste and sharp critical faculties are a product of how one grew up, education, native intelligence, and that elusive quality known as "sensibilities".

Bux, in the case of "La Belle France" that does its reportage by regions, it should be necessary from time to time, if one wants to provide meaningful coverage, to be critical of an establishment, especially if it is one with a high recogition factor such as a member of Relais & Chateaux. Unwillingness to heavily criticize a hotel or restaurant that deserves it tells me that the people doing the writing are gilding the lilly and are not being forthcoming on what basis they are visiting the establishments in question.

Liz, where were you? I have looked at copies of "La Belle France" from time to time. They gave me the impression that the publishers were not paying their own way, although in all fairness I haven't seen an issue in four or five years. Do they ever really trash a place? If not, then you know the reporters are not traveling anonymously and not paying for hotels and meals. What does Graham do?

thnkart, I know of almost no restaurant in Paris that would cost you $500 per couple with decent wine. There are lots of restaurants in Paris that are not expensive and not multi-starred that will make you feel lots of "Parisness". In fact, there are several expensive, multi-starred restaurants that will not reek of "Parisness": "Starck"ly internationally-designed rooms serving some half-French/half-somewhere else "personal" cuisine that could be in any capital city. When I was really on top of the Paris dining situation several years ago, I would recommend to those who asked me where they should dine during a short stay in Paris, I almost always chose what I felt were the classic Paris restaurants: places like Benoit, Chez Pauline, L'Ami Louis (rather expensive and more than $75. but what a place!) and Le Recamier, a restaurant no one mentions, but which serves classic Burgundian food and lots of Burgundy wines). Others can provide a lot more names of restaurants such as these. Furthermore, I suspect they represent the kind of restaurant of which few will exist a decade or two from now.

Bucaneer, yes please do tell. Also, I come close to agreeing with you about Tokyo. In fact, taking into account health, calories,etc. it may be the best. It is also a bottomless pit of endless variety and impossible to get a handle on the culinary resources, which is something you can do in relatively short order even in a large city such as New York or Paris.

It must be Pongal, Suvir. I can't wait to try it and Dimple. I have only had dosa here in NY, not in India. The last ones were at Chole and the restaurant they appear to be owners of in Lee, Mass. Thanks for all your insights.

Suvir, where is this place? Also, did you ever try the dosa place on west side of Lex. around 27 Street? I am always intrigued every time I ride by. Now I remember a mention of it last fall (Dimple). Maybe it's on 28th St?

Bux, again I am not accusing anyone so far of doing anything sinister. Delouvrier most likely chose to use such plates to serve certain dishes on his tasting menus because he thought they were suitable. Perhaps even the dishes come with the hole in three or four different sizes so that he could choose the one closest to the portion size he would ideally want to serve. But I doubt it; at least not yet. Again, I took note of an interesting phenomenon: that of plate design being a factor in the amount of food a chef gives a customer. I also feel it was interesting to alert my fellow diners to a phenomenon that I feel has the potential of tightening the noose on portion control. To advance the theory that these plates are a by-product of, or evolutionary development in, an era in dining where cost control and portion control go increasingly hand-in-glove isn't nutty. All I am saying is watch and see what happens. In fact, here is how it may happen: Chefs will increase the number of "amuse bouches", "entremets", and palate cleansers, over which the diner has no choice and which can be prepared ahead of time, and then use these "portion-control" dishes to present "full plates" of lesser amounts of food for the rest of the meal. You heard it here first.

Lesley, just to confuse the situation, I found the Seattle market to be one of the best of its kind;i.e.an all-around, every kind of produce and interesting package goods kind of place. The one in New York is much inferior. It really is location, location, location. If you have access to good produce deliverable in a timely fashion and a willingness for the managers and management to allow frequent replenishing, it should be good. I guess you will have to wait and see.

Yvonne: It is the sort of protuberance you could put a large thumb in. It is molded so that it goes beneath the surface of the plate. That particular dish you could defend by saying it's a small plate made to look like a large one. The other one, however, since it can hold pieces of meat, fish, fowl, along with garnishes does offer more opportunity for going easy on the portion size. What to be on the lookout for is its use in serving what is offered as a full-size, a la carte selection.

Yvonne, maybe I'm not making myself clear. It's not so much the size of the plate than the"architecture' of the plate. The two plates are designed to render useless much of the surface as a carrier of food. In one model, all the chef has to work with is hole that is molded into the plate and protrudes below the surface. The other model is sloped on four sides, creating a valley. The "valley" is much smaller than the entire dish, is the only flat part of the dish and, therefore, is the only area of the dish that can hold any food. In other words, they are designed to turn big plates into small ones. The converse of these, which is what used to dominate the tables of the Nouvelle Cuisine chefs of a recently by-gone era, were the oversized plates that allowed the chef to put either several creations on it or a copious amount of one or two or them. Of course the plates were not infinite in size, but at least provided the chef to exercise much flexibility in what and/or how much he wanted to serve the client. With margins so low in the kinds of places uses Limoges china, every savings counts, especially in the use of expensive products. I had lemon in my risotto last night, not peyote. I think that people who were hitting the gastronomic trails in France in the 1980s would recall meals that would leave them staggering away from the table. It can still happen in the USA, but not as often. One can argue that it is not necessarily a bad turn of events. To me, though, it's as much a state of mind, an attitude, a feeling that concern with the bottom line has taken over, which is why I pick up on changes such as the design and marketing of these weird plates. ( I also find them unattractive at this stage, but that's another curmudgeonly matter).

Having cut my gastronomic teeth in an era when the generosity of great chefs (mostly French) was an attribute one could almost take for granted, I am wary of what may or may not be a budding tendency to resort to a subterfuge to limit the amount of food a chef gives to his customers. Before these Bernardaud dishes (unless someone wanted to use a salad dish to serve a main course, if you know what I mean), a chef determined of his or her own free will how much food to put on a plate. Now with these new-fangled dishes, a chef is stymied by the design of the plate in determining the amount of food he wants to let the customer have. For example, Bernardaud determined last night how much risotto I would consume, not Christian Delouvrier of Lespinasse. There was no space in the deep, narrow opening in the center of the dish to put additional risotto, and no way of knowing if DeLouvrier, left to his own devices, would have considered the amount or risotto that fit into the hole an optimum amount or if he perceived the use of the Bernardaud dish as a way to artfully short-change the diner.( Or he could have elected not to use the Bernardaud dish at all; but he did not) Regardless, because of the construction of the plate, I did not get a whole lot more than a small taste, which is why I suppose one calls what I ordered a tasting menu. I am not now accusing anyone of gastronomic larceny. In fact, I am not sure that this new design of dishes will be a tool of abuse in the hands of chefs and restaurateurs. All I’m doing is stating that there is a new style of dish that has found its way into up-scale restaurants, and that I noticed that it has the potential of further eroding the generosity in luxury restaurants that has steadily taken place over the past decade or so. I bring it to the attention of eGullet readers in the form of a Distant Early Warning System and as a phenomenon that one may follow that may or may not ultimately be nothing more than a red herring.

Patrice, I hope that the chefs use the big, square plates as much as possible. Then when they are feeling generous, they won't be cut off at the pass.

Thank you, Canada. Patrice, how did you find out the names of all the restaurant you mentioned that use these dishes? "Used correctly" is the operative phrase. I am not accusing anyone of abuse so far. I feel, however, that alert diners should be vigilant because it seems to me that there has been the beginnings of a change from the oversize plates you used to receive your food on to the dishes described above. Even though chefs are not obliged to state the net weight of their creations, this start of what appears to be a trend has the makings of the shrinking Hershey bar syndrome. I wonder if such artificial factors as plate design will also affect how chefs conceive certain dishes so that they conform to shapes and sizes. It will be interesting to see how other porcelain companies get into the act of design determining (limiting) portion size.

In a manifestation more typical of McDonald’s than some of the best restaurants in the world, porcelain makers now appear to be in cahoots with restaurateurs in a subtle game of portion control. We serious diners need to nip this one in the bud before it becomes endemic to fine dining. At least one famous dish manufacturer, Bernadaud/Limoges, has designed at least two dishes that restrict the portion of food that a chef can put in them. One plate, to cite an example, is made in a concave fashion so that it slopes down into a small dug-out pocket in the middle that can contain any kind of liquid or any other food that can be eaten without a knife (risotto, an egg preparation, a mousse or puree of some sort, to name just a few). Another, this one with wavy edges and sloping down into a small, flat area, can be used for small portions of just about anything, including desserts. I first took note of these dishes two weeks ago in a well-known restaurant in Piemonte and encountered it tonight in a lemon risotto dish at one of New York’s more expensive restaurants; thus these dishes are not just limited to Europe or America. In the latter instance, the risotto was part of a tasting menu, making the use of it a bit more understandable. Nonetheless, this smells like the beginning of a yet another trend meant to squeeze the restaurant patron. Has anyone noticed this latest wrinkle in dish design? Is there someone in the trade who thinks I am being paranoid and can give an innocent explanation, or reassure everyone not to give this a second thought?

Pan, with wine and tip that's what it came to. However, in terms of what you could call a special occasion restaurant; i.e. Lespinasse, Daniel, Jean-Georges,etc. it is a more-than-adequate and still special lower-price alternative. I didn't mean to damn with faint praise. Uneveness is, to me, a fact of eating out. I have had so few "perfect" meals no matter where. It doesn't mean that I am comparing the restaurant to the above-mentioned ones; I don't think informed NY diners consider quite it in the same class in terms of cuisine. I just found some dishes very good and some not as good.