robert brown

Steve, I have no previous visits to compare it with. It is more French than GT; that's for sure. I found it to be uneven, but high points that were very high, just in the context of the one meal. Is it still Kerry Heffernan cooking? I sense it is the Danny Meyer restaurant least talked about, yet it seems the best. I think Bux said he like the food there better than that at GT. So did we. Maybe Danny Meyer figured that the room held so many attractions that he could afford (if that's the word) to let a chef do more of what he wanted. That's the impression I got. It's more like a chef-owned restaurant in terms of culinary conception or freedom.

Richard, that was an amazing post. I started the "Foam on the Range" post as I was Chapel's biggest American amateur client, I believe. However, after I wrote the post I did go to Madrid to wave the family flag at my brother's exhibition "Sale of the Century" at the Prado (not to brag, but to bring it to your attention as I am sure you would appreciate the conception even if you are a late 19th through the 20th century lad and this is 17th century). Of course I dined at La Broche where the chef had worked for four years in Rosas. What he made was a foam much different than Chapel's cappochino mushroom soup; much thicker, like shaving foam. Your friend did indeed sound like he knows Stan Brakhage. I knew him fairly well in the early 1960s just after he made "Dog Star Man". Those films were amazing. Do they hold up? I would like to try La Ambasciata. Maybe this summer. Until then, my favorites are Guido (soon about to move. See my Italy post), Gambero Rosso on the Tuscan Coast, and a French chef's place, Miramonte L'Altra near Brescia. I raised the concept with Bux at dinner last night about the differences (in the context of Rosas) of a "chef's" cuisine; i.e. cuisine chefs make for other chefs, and the cuisine that us amateur gastronomic travelers seek out (not always the same). I will just have to get on the phone everyday this summer from Nice and hope to jump on a cancellation at El Bulli. There's too much talk and too much to find ouot. I've heard enough; now it is time to see for myself. Raymond Roussel is adored by a good friend of mine and under-appreciated painter who does remarkable work: Trevor Winkfield. I believe he has also written about Roussel.

My wife and I completed the Danny Meyer cycle last night, meeting up with Mr. and Mrs. Bux at Eleven Madison Park for dinner. I have been hard on two of Meyer's restaurants, Gramercy Tavern and Blue Smoke, on eGullet recently, being critical of the food and the style of overbearing, slightly obsequious service (conceived to make the unsophisticated diner feel he or she knows what he or she is doing, as my wife pointed out). I would like to think that our being treated like "menches" was "de rigeur" for Eleven Madison Park, not because of Bux and his wife being known to the restaurant. Although our waiter kept referring to us as "you guys" ( as did our waiter at much more casual Blue Smoke), he and the busboys were unobstrusive and efficient. Only the end-of-the mealtime disappearing act of the wait staff that often characterizes the greatest of restaurants marred the service. Nobody, it seemed, wanted to take our money. Of all the Danny Meyer restaurants, Eleven Madison Park feels like a good classic restaurant. Besides making you feel you are in a serious, respectable dining establishment, the cooking is the most interesting. One gets the sense that the lead chef is left more to his own devices than any of the others in Meyer's empire. Best of all, there are no rigid, fixed-priced menus. Instead, you can put together your own from the list of a la carte dishes. Our selections from the cuisine at Eleven Madison Park were uneven, but not really bad except for my carpaccio of King Salmon that was cut too thick and without much flavor. Our appetizers were followed by a service of small portions of other appetizers, with each person receiving a different one. My wife's mousseline of English peas with a thin strip of Bayonne ham and a morille and oyster mushroom was one of the best dishes we have had anywhere ihn recent memory. The texture was smooth and light and the mushrooms fresh and full of flavor. Although my loin of pork was cooked longer than I had requested and was therefore too dry, it still retained the pleasantly mild taste of great pork. The piece of pork belly served with it was perfect. No one complained of the Thursday special of squab, except for the berry sauce being a little too sweet. I had delicius pistacho crunch ice cream served on the side of a chocolate covered dome of biscuit that I was unable to finish because of the richness of the dark chocolate and the copious amount of food that preceeded it. The room must be, as many of you know, the most awe-inspiring of any restaurant in New York. This genuine Art Deco three(?) story high dining room is unforgettable. Although it gets rather loud when the restaurant is full, it is worth the tradeoff to be transported back before you were born. The touches of vintage photographs outside the main room and a few wall decorations are tasteful. Of all of the Danny Meyer restaurants, perhaps even of any in the city, this is the one to celebrate a special occasion without suffering a financial hernia, or to take an out-of-towner for dinner.

Cabrales, did you ever notice that hotels are notorious for providing out-of-date guibebooks? Do you keep past meal information on your spreadsheets if you are revisiting a restaurant?

Cabrales, thanks. I didn't know Loiseau had based so much of his cooking on using water and had given it a name. I ate there about eight years ago and, like you, wasn't blown away. However, given the requirements of Pan's father, you could do a lot worse. I did have a fabulous chicken dish there, the conception of which escapes me. The wine list was also really special.

Doesn't Bernard Loiseau make it a thing not to use butter in anything, sometimes even using just water as in his "Saumon a L'Unilateral?

I took the liberty of sending an e-mail to Derek Brown, editorial director of the Michelin Guides. I alerted him to eGullet and to consider my posts about restaurants in the countries the Guide devotes editions as if they were sent to Michelin. I think if others wrote similar letters, it would encourage him and his staff to bundle the relevant posts with what Michelin readers e-mail and send in the mail. You can do this on the viaMichelin site.

At some time or another I have bought every French restaurant guiebook. At the end of the day, it's only the Michelin and Gault-Millau that I put in the car, along with the regional Guide Gantie, which covers the territory roughly from Avignon to Menton. So much of the wine and restaurant information you get in France is corrupted and self-serving, so you really have to be careful. I will look at other guidebooks just to see if it includes an address that other books have omitted (often for good reason). I will always take away one of these "Association" directories ("Cuisiniers of So-and-So"; Chateaux Hotels,etc.) for addresses. But the rest is just what Cabrales does; using the web, buying the English-language press, the food magazines. However, you need to reside long-term in France or GB to accumulate the stuff. In general, I think the Italians do a bit better job. They have their Michelin and Gault-Milau equivalent ( La Guida d'Italia) along with Gambero Rosso, Veranelli, and one or two others, especially the annual "Osteria" guide from Slow Food which fills a lot of gaps for less-expensive places serving the local cuisine. Every one of the above is in Italian, however.

Bux, are the oyster and the pippick the same thing?

With three-week old reservations in hand, I, my wife and two friends had dinner (as opposed to “dined”) at Blue Smoke this past Saturday. The restaurants got off to a good start by having our reservation in their computer and seating us in “real waiting time” of the ten minutes they said that they would. Blue Smoke is among the least attractive restaurants I have been to in quite some time. It is as dark as it is noisy, probably reinforcing the notion that dimly-lit, dark eating places are synonymous with bare-bones food, which, after all, is what ribs are. In the front room is a long bar that was understaffed especially when one of the chores of the bartenders is serving food and clearing off the “couverts” of the occasional diner taking a meal in what are very cramped dining conditions. For some inexplicable reason, one of the walls in the front room is decorated with framed larger-than-life photographs of some of the restaurant’s offerings, and hideous chandeliers meant to suggest a stagecoach wheel, are made of these fashionable industrial lights that are oblong bulbs encased in open metal fixtures. The back room, where we sat, was someone nicer with its exposed brick and very large glass vases filled with long-stem fauna. Our waiter took our drink order in a manner that precluded ordering any food, (“Let me take your drink order and then I’ll come back for your food orders”), obviously a time buying or catch-up measure for the kitchen since our beer and soda did not arrive until 15 minutes later. Choosing what to eat at Blue Smoke is one of the situations in which, depending on your mood, everything looks equally appetizing, or nothing seems appealing. Our friend and I blundered into one of the most desultory Caesar salads we have both ever tasted. I am wondering if the kitchen ran out of Romaine lettuce since it made our salads with iceberg instead. The little grains of Parmesan tasted like the grated cheese you buy in a bottle, and there was nothing other than croutons in the salad to give it any additional taste. My wife, at the our waiter’s urging, ordered the fried bread, which was four large pieces of unsweetened donut with a red pepper salsa and a kind of cream cheese of herb and tomatoes served on the side in little metal cups. If you like greasy donuts, this dish should suit you well. Furthermore, the salsa’s red pepper taste was clearly defined and the cream cheese made a good textural contrast to the bread. As a kind of “entremet”, if one may invoke that word around barbeque, we order a rack of the baby-back ribs, of which there were a dozen. My rib experience has been limited to the Northeast United States at such places as Stick to Your Ribs and a little spot in West Philadelphia owned by, and named after, the old Braves and Phillies outfielder Wes Covington. Within this context, these ribs at Blue Smoke were as good as I have had. I tried them with and without the sweet sauce in the plastic squeeze bottles, and they were so tender and flavorful that the sauce deterred from their succulence. The problem is that a rack at $21.00 with just a small cup of average coleslaw ( half a dozen or so side dishes are offered “a la carte”) may not satisfy a hearty appetite. The half of an organic smoked chicken with French fries as my “plat de resistance” raised more questions than it answered. It was remarkably like the chicken I had had several weeks ago at Gramercy Tavern. It was without dark meat (which I feel is more flavorful than white meat) and when cut into, had a built-in ridge or step in it, an indication of its compact density. The color was also “blanc casse” like top quality birds, yet the flavor was restrained, although the meat was moist. The skin, however, was nicely crisp and smoky. The kitchen loaded up the plate with the French fries, which I found to be lacking a assertive potato taste and were a bit greasy as well. Fried onion rings that we ordered for the table suffered a different fate: They were not greasy, but cut into enormously wide rings which reduced the covering of batter on each piece. I had one small bite of my friends smoked baked salmon, which, although praised by Gael Green, struck me as a standard issue piece of farm-raised salmon (a fishy and “off” taste) with a small hint of smoke. The pulled pork sandwich my wife and our other friend ordered was served on a roll that seemed to her was coated with some kind of saturated fat. The meat itself struck us all as ordinary, if not overly dry. We passed on dessert and coffee which would have prolonged what was a two and a half hour dinner in a room that got increasingly noisier as the evening went on. In all fairness, however, it does seem that the acoustics dampen the noise to a level where you do not need to strain to hear your tablemates. As we were walking from our table to the street, a few of the wait staff wished us a warm and friendly farewell. I began to think about our waiter; how he referred to the four of us as “guys”; kept asking if we had questions or if there was anything we wanted him to explain to us; and took the rap for a mistake or two in the kitchen. I began to realize that in Danny Meyer’s restaurants it was a lot more than the kitchen that determined what motivated people to patronize the restaurants (and be able to reel off the name of each one) and to think of them first when deciding where to eat out. Meyer figured out that because of his core constituency of the unsophisticated diner with adequate disposable income, it was the front line of captains, waiters, waitresses, busboys, and bartenders whose job it was to hold the customer's hand, bond him or her to the restaurant, take the fall for others, keep the client from blowing his stack, and seeing that he never asks to speak to the manager. When I began putting forth my hypothesis to my friend’s wife, I said that it seemed to me that all the front of the house employees must undergo sensitivity training. She replied, “Yes, just like they do at the Disney theme parks”. In the cab on the way home, I suddenly realized something: I hadn’t just dined at Blue Smoke; I had just eaten another meal in Danny Land.

Because I was joking around about Dutch food.

Richard, does you filmmaker friend admire Stan Brakhage?

Cabrales, are you able to contrast The Fat Duck to Arpege in terms of construction or how the dishes are put together and hold together? In terms of taste, does one chef seem more flavorful than the other. Can Passard rock you back on your heels with a more pure conception than Blumenthal, or would you need more experiences at Fat Duck? Did you have post-meal reassessment (a phenomenon worth exploring, by the way) after you left Bray?

Here's another dimension: Do the restaurants that require a jacket allow you to take it off during the meal? If you are as warm-blooded as I am, it really matters vis a vis being comfortable while eating.

Bravo and O-lay Steve, Liz and Bux. This has turned into a marvelous thread. The discussion recalls to me the time nearly 13 years ago when I asked Pierre Gagnaire if he had been to Michel Bras’s restaurant. He told me he had not, and that Bras’s approach held nothing for him. Now it would be interesting to know if Bras has been to El Bulli and if Adrias’ cuisine holds anything for Bras. Ordinarily I would have guessed until 10 days ago that it was only American, British and younger Continental chefs who were beating the path to El Bulli’s door, with American comprising the majority since it is the USA , owing to its uneven gastronomic landscape, that is most open to adapting the work of the most innovative chefs. (Before Adria, American chefs were making Laguiole one of their “must” visits). However, on April 9, my wife and I returned to one of our favorite restaurants in Northern Italy, Ristorante Pinocchio in Borgomanero, a small industrial town between Turin and Milan. Faith Willinger’s guidebook, “Eating In Italy”, alerted us that the chef Piero Bertinotti, who appears to be about 60 years old, has now been making some dishes that were not of the Piemontese tradition that the restaurant was known for. Of the three dishes I had, two of them (agnolotti filled with “three white meats”-chicken, veal and rabbit-and roasted baby goat) were of the region. The one that was not, and which I and my wife both order and greatly enjoyed, was a coddled egg topped with a small amount of Iranian Beluga caviar that was in a yogurt foam that hid a layer of crushed almonds. Was this inspired by, if not borrowed from, Adria? To me it was a dish that well could be on the menu of La Broche, the Madrid restaurant run by an Adria disciple. To come across this dish in a traditional Piemontese restaurant owned by a middle-age chef has to tell me that Adria is most likely the most widely influential chef since Fernand Point. (By the way, I think I noticed an Adria touch or two at the two-star in Aix-en-Provence, Le Clos de la Violette). Until we hear otherwise, my admittedly circumstantial evidence combined with a visit to Madrid last month and Liz’s relatively recent visit, which is the most recent of any on record on eGullet, is it possible that Adria, perhaps having run out of innovation room, has been trying too hard and has gone beyond the bounds of the major objective of fine cooking: making food taste good? Or, even in the face of a staff candidly saying that most dishes go uneaten, has Adria, as Steve suggests may be possible, been thrown off stride by culinary celebrityhood? Or, as Steve also wrote, is there now an Adria backlash? In a more macrocosmic vein, does Adria represent a new paradigm in which the need to innovate, which drives the popular arts, found its way into cuisine? Is Adria innovating for the sake of innovation, or is he one of those quantum leapers that comes along once or twice a century in various fields of creative endeavors, such as Picasso in painting, Artaud in poetry, or Wagner in Opera? He represents, it would appear, monumental change in cooking. Is it for real; driven by, or a result of, dining as a component of mass popular culture; a flash in the pan,; or, in the end, something more minor than what the food media have made it out to be? In other words, lots of questions looking for answers. P.S. Steve, I just saw your 10:00 P.M + thread. For Bras to equal himself in Providence, he would have to be in the restaurant full-time and have a brigade that could execute his ever-changing food. I assume that you are assuming he does like Daniel and Jean-Georges, which would really mean being here for good. Let me count the chefs who have tried to operate in two countries at once and flopped. But I know what you mean. I have to say, however, I think he would become enormously frustrated given what he would have to cook with.

Margaret, you were with us in spirit at Maximin (sorry if you also did not like the food). I said to my tablemates that you seem to have disappeared from the site. Is it my imagination or what?

Steve, I suspect that Adria holds a kind of interest for you that makes an appeal to your professional work. However, to the likes of culinary lay people such as myself, were I to secure a cancelled table at El Bulli, my concern might be different than someone taking a busman’s holiday (and it does sound like there are a lot of busman’s holidaymakers passing through Rosas). I would want to know before taking to the road for five hours from Nice, or even from Barcelona on what is alleged to be a partially-arduous drive, that there is going to be some kind of reward at the destination. It does not necessarily have to be one of the best meals I have ever had, so long as it is not a travesty. It would be fine if I had a culinary encounter unlike any I have ever had, but that I could relate with a straight face. To be candid, both Steve Plotnicki and myself shared an e-mail from Liz that was a preview of the notes that she subsequently posted. I must admit that after digesting it, I did not adhere to my original plan to call the restaurant from the South of France over the last two weeks, prepared to hop in my car immediately to take over a suddenly freed-up table. As for Steve, he changed his travel plans for mid-May, after reading the e-mail, scrubbing his stay in Barcelona also with the hope of getting into El Bulli on a cancellation. Of course the ideal goal is for Steve and me to experience the restaurant on our own. However, Liz gave us pause by providing us with the most recent report so far and, more important, possesses prior experience at the restaurant against which to judge her last meal, not to mention that someone who appears to be an accomplished chef wholeheartedly agreed with her on the resonance of the encounter. I am not soliciting advice here, as I feel that there is nothing anyone can add. However, Liz’s e-mail raises the possibility that the man has now become a parody of himself, or, at the least, that fame has gone to his head. I would also like to know if you or anyone out there has heard anything recent;`i.e. another opinion from El Bulli’s 2001 season. I could then at least determine if I would be going to some place that is more a restaurant than a post-Fluxus food event (to quote my wife). To change emphasis, do you really think that it is a positive that Adria would be Adria in any decently endowed city or region? (Or just about anywhere that sells canned goods)? Is that not an endorsement of the internationalization of cuisine? If so, do you devoutly wish it so? I suspect that Michel Bras would be the first to say that he would not be who or what he was if you took him away from his beloved Aubrac and its botanic life. After all, he got to be who he is because of them. The word “terroir” is not the one to use when I feel we should be invoking the much more legitimate phrase “gastronomic landscape”.

Frieda, thanks so much for the recommendations. Le Logis des Guetteurs is a restaurant a friend of ours in Les Arcs took us to a few years ago. We liked it a lot. I like the idea of a farm restaurant. Last summer I drove from Nice to Rocquebrun s/Argens to check out this cheese "affineur", Robert Bedon. He only sells wholesale now, but he supplies a food store in the town. I would have to say that I missed the main event by some months. Do you know the fellow? Keep the names coming. Have you any places in St. Tropez you like? I need addresses in your neck of the woods since we are in the Var fairly often.

I'm telling you, "La Grande Bouffe", circa 1980. Try to rent it. It's about a group of guys who literally kill themselves eating. It's got more food than exists. And ,as I recall, good food. Maybe even the stuff Wilfrid is looking for. Check it out, Checkbook Lady.

Gault-Millau (or GaultMillau) has greatly increased the number of establishments in the book. However, the descriptions seem often more brief. Maybe it's the reduced font size. Has anyone this same perception? A good place between Lyon and Laguiole was what I could have used when I used to make that trip. Thanks Bux, in case I ever do that route again.

Cabrales, if I had been more venturesome. I would have proposed for our dinner together the newly-promoted-to-two-stars Hostellerie Jerome in La Turbie that is the unofficial shrine to the Menton lemon. I had delicious San Remo prawns in a lemon sauce and an unusual and delightful confit slice of the lemon. Then as a follow-up dessert, they serve a terrific Menton lemon sorbet in a scooped out lemon, just like those Motta sorbets in frozen lemon or orange skins, but infinitely tastier:not icy or tart. I have been meaning to post about the restaurant, but if I don't, people take note. It's coming on very quickly. I have to agree with you about Lourmarin. Two meals at La Feniere showed uneveness, with the first meal mediocre and the second meal quite good. Edouard Loubet, on the other hand, shows his pedigree (Chapel and Veyrat among others) with great finess and imagination. I'll be going back soon for sure. Frieda, what do you like down there?

Richard, you are great to have around. What took you so long? The closest I have gotten to Rosas is Sergio Arolo who owns La Broche in Madrid. He worked at El Bulli for four years. (I never had the opportunity to write the rest of my Madrid post before going away.) He told me a bit apologetically after my meal that unlike Adria, he did not offer "an 18-course tasting menu”. What I had was a "conventional" meal (in terms of number of courses) with preparations based on his being an Adria disciple. He clearly was offering a tamed-down menu based on my reading of some of the El Bulli postings, which is perfectly understandable when your clientele is Madrid businessmen. (Nonetheless, one of the Spain's oligarchs told my brother that he seldom ate there because “It was not real Spanish food”) Nonetheless, I highly enjoyed my meal, although a few dishes (there were three of us eating a la carte, which was the only way one could order) were quite conventional and these turned out to be the chef's least interesting ones. I am wondering, therefore, if you and others think that Adria will end up being considered a fad or aberration, but nonetheless regarded as having made some significant midcourses changes in serious cooking. Steve K, I do not mean to put your feet to the fire, but as you may recall I asked you during our dinner together if Adria had great technique. You replied, “His technique is nothing special; it’s his palate”. Care to elaborate? Richard again: I loved reading your invocation of Conceptual Art. I was never an avid fan or follower. I am wondering, however, if you can make the same case for Adria’s work in the context that just maybe Conceptual Art was an advanced reworking of Duchampian sensibilities, which means you can go back at least to the Armory Show of 1910. While I am not so familiar with Sol Lewitt’s work in its totality, are grid computations related to the almost-universal use of the grid in graphic design; something that has often been attributed to Anton Stankowski in the 1930s? In other words, are there antecedents to Adria’s approaches; i.e. Chapel’s circa 1987 mushroom soup cappuchinno we previously discussed? Any chance of telling us where and when we can avail ourselves of your keen and interesting awareness of food and wine?

Wilfrid, as you no doubt know, Americans drive on the wrong side of the road. Nonetheless I bet that staying overnight and renting a car will be considerably more expensive than a room in DC and getting a cab back. Perhaps getting a car and driver in DC and having him wait while you eat is a way to do it, as you seem to imply. Cabrales, I was there perhaps seven years ago. The operative model struck me as Georges Blanc in that it was the closest to replicating in America a great French Relais Gourmand with rooms. The food was ambitious, but not on the level of a three-star country inn in France. But very good nonetheless. I remember the chef's partner being in a bad mood more than I remember the food. He seated us with a scowl.

Bux, that sounds most pleasant indeed. But stop teasing us. How much longer must we wait, or do I have to phone you to find out?

Circeplum, I have a good one for you in Pietrasanta, maybe just 30km. away towards Tuscany.It's called "Martinatica", owned by a woman chef. It is a charming, if a bit tattered, reconverted mill in a very rustic setting about five km. east of the picturesque town center. We had a delicious lunch about two years ago. We felt very fortunate to have picked it out of the Michelin. You can get the basic information from the viaMichelin web site. A restaurant also near Cinqueterre, Paracucci/Locanda da' Angelo, has a large reputation. For us, however, it didn't deliver. They put a more expensive wine on our bill, something I noticed when I checked out the next morning. It is in a terrible light-industry surrounding in a brute, ugly concrete strucuture built in the 1970s when that sort of architecture was in fashion. The food we also found to be mediocre.