chefmatt

i am aware that i always moan about food descriptions but i would be seriously worried if any oyster was any less than "zingingly fresh". its bentlys, we know they are fresh can't we come up with a better description

i was always happy with illiada bought from odysea as an all rounder, greek again, about £20 for 5 litres

if she is as good as you say she is then she will have no trouble getting a job or someone to sponsor her. i suspect what is standing in her way is lack of experience, three years at school even with work experience is very different to three years in a patisserie. if she is serious then get experience eleswhere, france or the states, why not try to go and work for Pierre herme? has she contacted people like william curley, sketch, yauatcha, damian allsop, gordon ramsay, eric rousseau? or make a name for herself making wedding cakes but don't register as a business. Matt

Sad, we have lost him and Paul Haeberlin in the same month. one of my old sous chefs used to work at le souffle and said that Kromberg was a miserable sod but loved working with him and learnt loads.

What do you mean by "complete experience" and what are the other restaurants in your handful? ← oh i don't know, just sounded right at the time. i have tried to formulate arguments but you will find more holes in them than a holey thing with holes in it. it has something to do with equal effort spent on service and food without either dictating how the other should be. i think this stems from it being a restaurant without an ego, it is always trying to be better than it already is. anyway, don't really want to get into it as i am biased and i only reply because you asked!

sorry to sound like a bit of a sourpuss but i really don't think that there are any splurge or wow factor restaurants in london. I think the only restaurant in the country that offers this sort of service is The Fat Duck (but not one of my favourites). I just don't think we can do it like the French and americans, france you have Ducasse, Le Cinq, Ledoyen, Gagnaire etc, USA you have Thomas Keller, charlie trotter and daniel and in spain you have arzac, el bulli and others. i am not making any judgements about these restaurants other than they include long and interesting dining experiences, grand rooms and serious lets spend the whole evening here vibes. i really think that london is about a different sort of eating, to appreciate it you need to spend a few nights at several restaurants, st john, river cafe, chez bruce, yuatcha, square, hibiscus, ramsay etc. i have never eaten anywhere in britain that has delivered that mega blow out experience. i suppose that your best bets are ramsay and fat duck but make sure you are not on a table turn. matt

have always said that i would only go to l'arpege if someone else was paying!

firstly the actual most you have ever spent is a silly question as there are obviously the more illustrious among us that can blow big money on wine, some rules are needed but i am not going to be the one to create them! I am with Matt, if someone asked for a recommendation for somewhere special and they were unfamiliar with gastronomic restaurants i would recommend maze or claridges or even boxwood (if it was still there) over RHR purely because the leap in quality of these over pizza express is greater than the leap from these to RHR, (does this make sense? i have a hangover) jujst for the record, most in uk £360 at waterside, two bellinis, 1 average bottle of wine, coffees, food, biggest rip off of my life. France £560 euros ledoyen, well worth it. biggest bill, although picked up by someone else, le cinq, also worth it, well easy for me to say that!

"correctly timed" please, what on earth does this mean people, that it arrived on time in the same way that a train would? how on earth do you not "correctly time" rare grilled tuna? oonly if the chef goes out to have a fag and leaves it on the grill and then chooses to serve it.

i went last night but my report would be slightly biased, obviously a restaurant close to my heart and in my humble opinion still one of a handful of restaurants in the uk that offers the complete experience.

i think if darroze had a faultless restaurant in paris and nothing but good reports then it would be unfair to knock her before she came to town but as it seems that she should be spending more time in the kitchen with her name above the door then what on earth are we meant to think when she is branching out in another country? or is she closing up shop in paris? petit four trolley sounds good

i have heard very mixed reports of her eponymous paris eaterie (makes me sound like a jouno!) next i will be saying that her fish was "accurately timed" !

my prediction for the helene darroze opening is that we will be having similar discussions as took place with the ducasse opening. lots of expectation and hoo ha, lots of disappointment, lots of moaning and then it will all be forgotten and only be frequented by connaught guests of the eastern and american persuasion. i myself have always quite fancied helen darroze, but only from the publicity shot with her floppy chef's hat on, (if you google further this shot presents quite a misleading picture!) if she comes out looking like that and gives me a kiss after my macarons, caneles and financiers, i will be happy!

At RHR Jean Claude politely asks who is hosting the table but i think for slightly different reasons. The whole system is ripe for cock ups and embarrassing moments, especially in this day and age. a better system would be for the people for which it matters to request a no price menu on booking.

thanks, another trip to north london seems to be in order, i walked from wood green all the way down to the city the other day, maybe i was just in the wrong place!

i wanted to like this place i really did but the sight of mark hix swanning aroung shmoozing the likes of Rocco Forte while i get shite service leaves a very sour taste in the mouth. it is hardly good value either bearing in mind all you get on the plate is a hunk of meat, once you add sides you are looking at £20-30 main courses. i ordered "Grilled pork chop and kidney" i asked the manager what the pork came with, he looked over my shoulder at the menu and replied "a kidney" no shit sherlock! It obviously has good reviews because mark hix obviously knows who to look after. two starters had asparagus on but they had run out of asparagus (lunchtime) so two starters were off with no replacement when there were plates of asparagus going out all over the place in the restaurant. i just can't see it getting any better because if mark hix can be in the room when the staff are obviously out of their depth (he was essentially serving the vips, bringing them plates of food and even wine) service is obviously not his priority or he knows nothing about it. too many chefs underate the importance of service in a restaurant or think that because they have worked with good front of house (in hix's case the best) that they can replicate it in their own restaurants.

how to get in the news when you just happened to have opened a new restaurant!! i heard cafe boheme has a pretty stonking one. has to be better than some of the food and service i had at hix!

pork pies, although probably not allowed and good piccalilly

probably about 1cm

hey everyone, i am looking to source a rustic flatbread in london, pitta is too flat, foccacia generally too thick, the closest i have got is when i made my own naan but i don't want naan, i know i am being awkward, any ideas? matt

as simon says there are not many good pastry chefs out there so you want to keep them. the big salaries are generally with the ramsay/marco type operations. some one who is getting paid a lot less at 3* level is either in a very small place, or is not head pastry chef or isn't very good!

i would never dream of telling a pastry chef how to enrobe a chocolate, unfortunately it is not art it is about eating. in the same way that i have no idea how to make a side board i can certainly have legitimate opinions on how it should look and work. in the same way i have legitimate, if not more accurate opinions of how a dessert can taste as i know thye whole menu inside out from which the customers are going to eat. I know pastry chefs that drink nothing but diet coke and have little packages of dodgy wafer thin turkey hiding in their fridge, do you call that proper eating? pastry chefs and head chefs leaving eachother alone leads to a mis match in the cooking and is very old fashioned. Tetsuya's was my most memorable example where i had about twelve courses of light pacific rim savoury cooking and two courses of heavy old fashioned french style desserts. The dersserts were technically fine and elsewhere would have been welcomed but here it ruined the meal and left me with a very heavy feeling in my stomach. chef simon is exactly right, the previous post shows the opinions of pastry chefs not head chefs. trust me i would love a pastry chef that i could just leave alone it would be great. the sooner pastry chefs realise they are just chefs, approach food with flavour in mind and start being open to constructive critisism the sooner desserts in the uk will get better. (as always there are exceptions)

spot on simon, i also agree with what you said about trying to integrate the kitchen and get the kitchen chefs to get a bit of pastry under their belt. in my experience pastry chefs often don't have and don't want kitchen experience, this means that they jealously guard the secrets to their craft. a lot of the time this makes them think that they are beyond critcism because the other chefs can't produce something better. the head chef wants to get the most out of his chefs and if that means honing the technical ability of the pastry chef with suggestion and constructive criticism only an idiot would resist it.

sounds far too out there for my cooking abilities. i am taking delivery of a water bath for a project i am working on, i am a littl e freaked out by the whole thing!!!

isn't seattle the home of good coffee, at least thats the impression i get from frasier!