StephenT

I've obviously always had disreputable tinned beans then. I find them a bit too squishy.

Pedantic correction here . It was Stephen T making that point, not me. Yep it was me. I was still a couple of months away from being a glint in my father's eye 30 years ago so don't have much appreciation of how prices and values have changed between then and now.

Is that still likely to happen though? If someone tells me what they paid for a bottle of wine 30 years ago, it might not sound like much but for all I know it could have been the price of a small car in those days. My impression of the current market is that "investors" tend to push up the price of good Bordeaux and in order to be able to tell someone in 30 years time that you bought a bottle in 2002 for a genuine "mere pittance" and it turned out to be great in 2032 then you'd have to be very selective indeed to find something decent and ageworthy for a low price. I could be wrong though - and people on this thread have mentioned well-aged wines other than Bordeaux that they've enjoyed.

I fear that most reviews of this restaurant will be of the "holy xxx this place is expensive" sort rather than evaluating it and saying "yes it's expensive but it is/isn't worth it". Some of the latter variety might go some way to convincing people in the UK that it's okay to spend a lot of money on a meal if you want to. Whether or not any reviewers who write for widely read publications will admit to having such thoughts, we'll have to wait and see.

Good God, could you imagine the smell? And best not stand near any naked flames.

Well we could be guessing all day. The only way to know for sure is to ask them.

I usually go to Chinatown with work colleagues once a week or so because it's cheap and nearby. Whenever we walk in and sit down, a waiter will instantly appear and remove the tea cups from the table. Then he'll have to bring them all right back again when we say that we all want tea. So I've taken to telling them that we want tea before we even sit down (you have to be quick or your teacups will disappear without you noticing). A strange side effect of doing this is that we often get a little dish of chilli paste delivered when our tea arrives. Maybe they assume that if we know that want tea before we sit down then we will want dim sum. Who knows. I've grown bored and disillusioned with Chinatown though and will only go to ECapital or a couple of other places now.

A strangely named dish that I noticed at ECapital is called "Fish dressed as crab" and the explanation is "our famous scrambled eggs". Most confusing.

I've had "juicy buns" at ECapital before, which were a sort of steamed dumpling filled with a minced pork and probably other things) mixture. A slightly sour flavour, delicious and very dimsum-like. Never had the thousand layers, never been along at the same time as anyone else who's also wanted to order it I've only been in the past few months so I don't know how it's changed since then but definitely one of the best restaurant in Chinatown if not the best. I'm definitely going to ask them to translate the lunch menu for me next time I'm there though.

I take it you informed them that you're a ruffian not a gentleman and feel no need to conform to the rules they've made up for those that like to think that they're members of the gentry?

My wife loves chocolate. So when she says that we need dessert, it's easy to melt some chocolate in a fondue pot and dip things (chopped fruit, marshmallows, cake, amaretti, etc) into it.

Tony, I think that was the idea that the chef of Les Porte des Indes was trying to dispel when I saw him on Good Food Live. It's not an intentional "fusion" of the two types of cooking, it's something that's evolved over time. The most important part of that being that it was probably done mostly by Indian people who were influenced by the French, rather than the other way round. From what I ate at Les Porte des Indes, the Indian influence was by far the greater, resulting in Indian food with a bit of a difference rather than the unholy, apocalyptic union you foresee

I went to Les Portes des Indes recently, because my wife's a great fan of the Blue Elephant and I thought she'd like it. It is indeed run by the "Blue Elephant Group". Apparently the food that they serve there is from the former French colonies of India, which explains the French connection (so to speak). The chef was on Good Food Live a few weeks ago and he described it as "a cuisine that's evolved in the French colonies" when asked by the presenters (many times, if I recall) about its origins. I quite liked his style.

I recently bought some Fraoch, which is a Scottish heather ale. It's brewed with heather instead of hops and (IMHO) is brilliant. It's dry, has a floral aroma and a full taste which is quite unlike most other beers. I'm going to be drinking a lot more of it. Has anyone else tried it? I'm not sure it's available outside the UK though.

Love it Should be "BritishiSe" though, surely?

Tony, sounds like that's an area of research I'd like to contribue to. Where did you procure the subject matter? Although I do think that more people should drink sherry as it's really great, I'm quite happy for the prices to stay lowish... not sure they would if more people drank it.

Usually says "keep refrigerated and drink within a week of opening" doesn't it? When I buy a bottle there's not much chance of it lasting a week

I love chilled Fino and Manzanilla and drink both by the glass when cooking, as an aperitif or with a meal if it's appropriate. As for why sherry seems to be unfashionable, this is what I think... could be wrong... Dry sherry is believed exclusively to be the drink of the "Jeeves, I do believe I shall have a dry sherry before dinner" upper-class twats. Sweet sherry is believed exclusively to be the drink of sozzled old ladies and of students who want to get drunk and don't like anything else. So both are avoided. Which is a great shame. Whenever I mention sherry to anyone, they tend to assume I'm talking about sweet sherry and make a face that implies they had a bad experience with it as a student. So it boils down to the fact that people don't really know much about it... I'm sure that it they did they'd change their minds.

I get the impression that a lot of "normal" people are intimidated by high-end dining because they do think of it as the sort of exclusive club that Cabrales seems to want it to be. The more "demystifying" of it that occurs, the more likely people are to take interest in it. Which is a good thing, IMHO, as it would mean a general upward trend in standards.

Simon,we are talking about potatoes here. Good old inoffensive potatoes. They may = carb but they don't =crap Simon's obviously sorely tempted by delicious roasted potatoes and repeating his mantra helps him resist

The web is your friend. If you don't want to buy a book, try looking on the web. I went to www.google.com and typed in "food", "wine" and "pairing" into the search box and got a long list of matches. This page has some theory behind food and wine pairing This one lets you choose a food and tells you what wine goes well with it and what wine doesn't. This page links to many other sites that have food and wine pairings on them. wine.about.com page with both theory and practical info

I went back and re-read Fat Guy's initial post and from the text of the post it doesn't specifically mention modern high-end dining, it mentions "modern gastronomy" which could be taken to mean lots of things. Even if he did mean high-end dining though, the other influences are still important. There certainly has been a rise of the "gastronomic middle classes" in recent times, which is probably more attributable to people watching shows on television of celebrity chefs wandering around countries like Italy trying the local produce than to the culinary trends in the relatively small number of high-end restaurants. In the big picture of where the overall gastronomic landscape and peoples' attitudes to what they eat is moving, that has a big effect. Sure, high-end trends sometimes filter down through the culinary hierarchy and affect what the average person finds on their plate in a normal restaurant or in the supermarket, but I wouldn't think that that has as large an impact. Of course, we have a far larger than average number of people on eGullet who frequent high-end restaurants so there is a far larger than average chance that someone will dispute the relevance of what the average Joe is eating

That's true. This thread has for the most part (I'd have to re-read it all to be entirely sure though) concentrated on Italian cooking's contribution to haute cuisine and (mostly French) high-end restaurants, but there is also the other side of the coin - the way it affects how people prepare their own food at home.

Thanks for reaffirming that in case we'd forgotten it since last time you said it. Besides, lots of dishes are plain dishes "fancied up". Why pay good money for The Ivy's burger when you can get a burger at McDonalds? Why pay good money for fish at Sheekey's when you can get it at your local chippie? Why pay good money for truffled gnocci at Locatelli (don't start) when you can get cheap, ready-in-5-minutes gnocci at Sainsbury's? (Apologies to non-London people for the London-centric references). A lot of people on this thread have cited those conservative attitudes to preparing food as the reason that they believe that current Italian cooking does not have much relevance to modern gastronomy.

I could find this out by reading back through the whole thread painstakingly, but here it is: Was there ever a discussion that arrived at the notion that "modern gastronomy" and "haute cuisine" are inextricable or did everyone just take it as fact?