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Barbara Wilde

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Everything posted by Barbara Wilde

  1. *Sigh!* That was back in the day, as they say. What a difference 24 years makes! Sadly, that kind of selfless devotion to the art of restauration now seems to exist mostly in the pages of memoirs... What was the wine? ITs an atrocious sum.By the way,next time, you may try white wine with cheese .Usually it goes better with most fromages ← As usual, I can rebut any story. How about this: In 1984, at Pere Bise, I knew he was out of the kitchen, but Colette and I were still enchanted by the place (ever since "Claire's Knee") and stayed there two days. The first night, we'd had finished our requisite bottle with dinner so when I wanted cheese I stammered to the waiter, "Do you have a glass of wine" - "Sorry, Monsieur, only by the bottle." Gulp. Cheese board arrives along with 1/2 a bottle of a very, very good Rhone red - waiter says - "M. Bise (beckoning to a table 10 feet away) wanted you to have it." Bless you, François. That's class (especially after the loss of a star). ←
  2. I too am happy--oh so happy!--with the wines in France. I find that to get an "equivalent" American wine (meaning "good" as there are no equivalents), one must spend so much more. I know much more about our wines now than when I arrived in France 8 years ago, but still consider that I know relatively nothing. As long as the traditional vinification methods can hold out here against the onslaught of quick and dirty (as in, aged with oak sawdust South African reds) wines from outre mer , I consider that I have a lifetime of discovery and learning in front of me, of delightful wandering among infinite subtleties... Barbara - You and your husband are the opposite of me and my husband (he's the wine drinker in the family). He has usually had good luck at all kinds of places ordering wine by the glass simply by indicating what he is eating - what kinds of wines he usually likes - and about what he would like to spend. He was pretty happy with the wines he had in France - especially considering that he knows almost zero about French wine (most of the wines he drinks at home come from south America or "down under"). Robyn ←
  3. I can't remember what it was. Perhaps the shock of the price wiped it from my memory board. I still prefer reds with most cheeses--excepting some chèvres, very old Comté, and vacherin of course. What was the wine? ITs an atrocious sum.By the way,next time, you may try white wine with cheese .Usually it goes better with most fromages ←
  4. Most upscale butcher shops in Paris will order anything you want with a couple of days notice (read, they'll get it on their next trip to Rungis). I highly recommend trying to get marcassin , or young wild boar. Make sure it is hunted and not farm-raised. The former is much more flavorful.
  5. That's right, pigeon is farmed in France. Some of the best comes from Bresse, as well as Provence, where raising them is a tradition. In my part of Haute Provence, many houses (including ours) have pigeonniers--a sort of pigeon-roosting tower with access holes on the outside, often surrounded by glazed tiles which attract the pigeons.
  6. I eat pigeon all the time, buy it in Normandie, Paris, and Provence, and have never seen such tiny pigeons as in your photo. Sure that wasn't quail? Also, even in 2004, pigeon cost considerably more than €2. That's a quail price. This is a VERY delayed response, I realize!
  7. Robyn, you raise a good point about the cost of wine (not to speak of the price). However, in reality, I doubt one can expect that the two will ever be rated separately by Michelin. Reason being, as one of Paul Theroux's characters always said, that for most people (at least the French), wine and food are inextricably linked and form an accord that equals the Great Experience. I form half of a couple in which one of us (me) adores wine and the other couldn't care less about it. However, neither of us can bring ourselves to drink great wines in great restaurants, because their price is so prohibitive. I'm thinking of the cheese course chez Marc Veyrat, when the waiter proposed (to me, the drinker) a glass of red to accompany it as we had already finished our bottle. I agreed, never imagining I should have enquired after its price first, which turned out to be around €80 (as we discovered to our chagrin when we got the check)!
  8. There will always be many camps when it comes to Michelin and I know I am in the vast (ly small) minority. Nevertheless. I persist in my opinion that at good part of the responsibilty for the financial failure and the stress accompanying it of any 3-star restaurant lies at the door of the Michelin structure. Its exigencies drive chefs to constantly outdo themselves and others, and this comes at a price. Unfortunately, the striving has to include not only cuisine, but decoration, personnel, dishes, silver, le tout, quoi. Many of our 3-starred chefs came from poor backgrounds. Couple this to the fact that the French are culturally conservative spenders, and I don't think these chefs would be going into such deep hock without considerable pressure to do so. If you doubt that Michelin exerts that pressure--directly or indirectly is a matter of semantics, talk to the chefs! Personally, I'm there for superlative cooking and warm-hearted service. To me, that is what makes a restaurant 3-star--in my heart. I couldn't care less about the quality of the silverware. (I do care about the decoration and especially the paintings, but sadly, money isn't the answer to the need for good taste.) If the 3-star chefs could afford to spend less on keeping up appearances, more of us could afford to eat at their restaurants more often! Robyn, the rooms at the main Esperance building are relatively spartan, making them affordable for those who wish to treat themselves to the restaurant without having to worry about driving to a more affordable bed afterward. I suggest if there is ever a next time, you take a room in the Moulin across the street, also part of Esperance. There I stayed in the warmest, most beautiful room I've ever had in France. As for using Michelin as a sort of Bible, that is absurd. Eating at 3-star restaurants isn't necessarily at all an indication of a person with a passion for good food. The only thing it definitely indicates is deep pockets. I think having a good "nose" and gut sense and being able to ferret out good restaurants--and make your own judgments!--is much more important. Many great restaurants exist who for one reason or another have chosen not to be michelinized. Some of them offer only one or two menus, but prepare those items superbly, at a much more reasonable price. Why? They are able to use the best ingredients, because their risk of loss is much lower. As Marc Meneau said, what do I do with the rest of that 6-kilo turbo when only one person orders turbot en croute (perhaps his signature dish) ? Needless to say, that item has now disappeared from the menu. Bonne soirée , All!
  9. I'm not sure if this forum is the place for this comment, but I offer it as an aside. Perhaps it's heresy. I have a very jaundiced eye of the Michelin ratings. My perception is that they have and do directly or indirectly cause untold woe to some of France's great chefs--including near bankruptcy and even suicide. And, that the ratings are at least partly a racket. How else to explain that the moment Joel Rebuchon opens a new restaurant in what in my eyes amounts to a chain, it already has a star or even two? Some of these JR addresses are simply and absolutely mediocre, and some are just correcte in the French sense of the word. But back to my first premise. There is a very dark backstory to the Michelin ratings. I learned about it when researching how Marc Meneau, one of my favorite chefs and a true intellectual of cuisine, could be threatened with bankruptcy. I read an interview with Meneau where he described the life-and-death power of those stars over the success of his restaurant--a "destination" address in St-Père-sous-Vézelay. He and his wife wept wept when they lost a star (because they knew what it meant) as if they had lost a child. Once a year, starred chefs are expected to make a pilgrimage to Michelin headquarters to basically kowtow and ask the Masters how they could improve. Meneau couldn't bear to go; his wife went. The Michelin treadmill pushes chefs--many of whom aren't good businessmen anyway--to invest more and more money in an endless effort to be up to Michelin's snuff. Meneau almost disappeared in bankruptcy. He squeaked by in a court-ordered restructuring which has entirely emasculated his restaurant. Sadly, I can no longer recommend it. The prices are higher than before the restructuring, The glorious ingredients have vanished. Mme Meneau is no longer en salle and the time-honored staff--with the exception of the car valet--have been replaced by eastern Europeans. A sharp-nosed, thin-lipped court-appointed surveillance woman stalks around with a notebook, making everyone feel miserable and interrogating the customers KGB-style, before driving off in her immense BMW. From within his straight-jacket, Marc Meneau is going through the motions with as much dignity as he can muster in such a situation--which is surely sheer misery. Personally I don't see how the restaurant can survive in its diminished state. For Bernard Loiseau, our other Burgundy luminary, the misery was simply too much. He blew his brains out, and the world lost not only a great chef, but a warm and wonderful human being. A week or two ago, Roellinger "gave back" (read "renounced") his three stars. Senderens got off the treadmill long ago. I hope it's a continuing trend, because I consider these chefs part of our world patrimony, and I don't want to lose them to the tyranny of Michelin.
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