Wilfrid

Zombies, Priscilla. Good call. I have been listening to an import double CD of bits and pieces by various members of Split Enz and Crowded House, and there is a wonderful version of 'She's Not There' sung by Neil Finn. I also happened to hear 'Time of the Season' (the original) while nursing a guinness in Milano's on a Saturday afternoon. Unjustly neglected band, and Blunstone was a wonderful singer.

A 1.5 hour wait strikes me as a failure to fulfil a contract. Restaurants hate it when we do that. Unfortunately, I can't think of any effective sanctions right now.

No need to answer all the arguments here in detail, as to a large extent they miss my main point (and I take the blame for not being clear enough). Macrosan thinks some thing art galleries exhibit are not really art. Fair enough. Steve stipulates that if something disappears through use, it's not an art work, and indeed that the aesthetic value of purported art works is compromised by the need for them to serve another purpose (by the way, is an art work compromised if it is created purely to fulfil a commission and not out of any "urge" of the artist?). My main point is that the stipulations being advanced are arbitrary (which is not the same as wrong). A Guggenheim curator might say that the motorbikes displayed surpassed their functionality and should be regarded as full asthetic objects. Steve would disagree. I don't feel strongly either way. But by what criteria do we decide who is right and who is wrong? And is it necessarily the case that someone is right and someone is wrong, or is "art" a concept with fuzzy boundaries? By the way, it would be a good idea to get away from the "visual arts" model, as if cooking is an art form, there's no reason it should have any more in common with paintings and sculptures than they do with music, dance or literature. Incidentally, if you think about which organs of taste are delighted by cooking, it's hardly surprising that it "disappears" (although of course, the concepts/recipes don't). I don't know why this is an automatic disqualification from being an art work.

Yvonne, mustard in batter sounds like a good idea; I can imagine that would work nicely. Can I just give an irrelevant cheer for Maille's cornichons. Not only are they decently crunchy, but the Maille jar has a cute little lift-able basket fitted inside which solves once and for all the problem of scooping them out.

You had me going there, Macrosan. And I like to see people owning up to their disasters already. Last night, mortadella on a roll, then a vast portion of an expensive Swiss cheese bought from Artisanal. Spanser Roterli (check spelling?). Looks like reblochon, runs off the plate like vacherin, but has a kick like epoisses. Good stuff, with pieces of fresh baguette and a few Maille cornichons. Not drinking, because head already dulled by cold symptoms. Will have to drink tonight, as I am dining with acquaintances, some of whom I know to be thirsty types.

Good and bad. The good, banally obvious really - Maille from Dijon.* Surprisingly bad, an allegedly Bavarian style mustard I picked up at Schaller and Weber. Very sweet indeed, and viscous in a creepy kind of way.** *I expect someone will now tell me why this is the worst mustard in the world. **I realise that at this point the thread could plummet downhill. Please behave yourselves.*** ***If I add footnotes to my posts, I think it;s only fair Plotnicki should provide an index to his.

It won't bore me, Liza. Priscilla, I think this is a very good idea - I would have been to shy to start it off. Let's go. Monday night, braised some lamb shanks in red wine and onions with bayleaves. Made an utterly dreadful mint sauce, which I threw away. First time I've had a problem with mint sauce; either I needed to soak the mint in the liquid overnight, or this was just leathery, inedible mint. Last night, I had a very sizeable lamb shank left over. Took the meat off the bone and sliced it, and made an ersatz cross between a Turkish and an Indian dish by frying chopped onions in butter and oil, adding the lamb slices, covering it with yoghurt, but then spicing it with fresh ground garam masala. Would have suited being wrapped in pita bread, but I ate it with rice. A little rich, but the meat was very tender. Come on everyone, don't be bashful.

Is he still alive? Wonders never cease. I think I remember that he retired from recording his unlistenable letter a few years back. By the way, Charlie Drake is still with us (oh, it came up on another thread somewhere...)

Obviously, you'll be taking them to Rao's. In addition, I recall there's another Italian joint in the theater district which makes a big fuss about Frank being a former customer. It's in the forties on one of the streets leading east from Times Square. I can investigate further if you're interested. Two other tips. The bar which used to be Carnegie Bar and Books, on 56th near Carnegie Hall, hosts a big band wityh a reputedly good Sinatra impersonator on Saturday nights. Again, let me know if you're interested and I will check its name and address. Finally, how about the Lansky Lounge, a hidden and hard-to find bar in the rear of Ratner's? Named after mobster Meyer Lansky, it does its best to be underworld and sinister. I haven't eaten there (there is a dining area) but the cocktails are mean. There is a danger that they will be playing modern music.

Chopping minced liver sounds difficult to me. Once you get it down to small pieces, it's going to melt in an instant. Have you tried this, frankalangauge, or is this an armchair hypothesis?

Exactly. That's the key point which I think all these threads should be addressing.

Come on Macrosan, these are half volleys Found objects: what John Whiting said. Accidental blobs of paint? You have eliminated a galaxy of modern artists, and I don't just mean Jackson Pollock and the rest of the abstract expressionists. Francis Bacon avowedly introduced chance drips, blobs and brushstrokes into his paintings - so does that mean that part of a Bacon painting is art and part isn't? And what if we get into music (John Cage, various Fluxus composers) or literature (automatic writing, found texts)...? Chimpanzees. Well, no disrespect to the so-called "outsider" artists, but the art works (ranging from quite elaborate productions to frenzied scribbles) produced by schizophrenics fetch a tidy sum on the market these days. Galerie St Etienne in New York specialises in this field. What the intentions and motivations of these unfortunate people are, you are free to speculate. Note, I am not saying your opinions on these topics are wrong. Not at all. I am just pointing to the fact that there is by no means a consensus even at this basic level - in fact a healthy school of opinion on the other side.

Macrosan, I tried to warn you, but here we go again . Just to deal with your three consensual points: Art must be aesthetically motivated. Tautology. It's like saying an activity is "cooking" if it is "culinarily motivated". Must evoke a sensual response. Well, yes, it must be possible that someone, somewhere can see/hear/touch/smell or taste it (note smell and taste, there). But that's hardly draws a line between what is art and what isn't. Human creation. What about found objects? Anyway, hardly distinguishes art from non-art. So the consensus thus far evaporates like the air in a gougere. And the functional thing again. Major art galleries in New York have recently exhibited motorbikes, clothes by Versace and Armani, and the building plans of Mies van der Rohe. Functional gear? damn right. Not art? Who made you (and that's addressed to all of us) the art police? Or does a motorbike become art once it's wheeled into the gallery and parked up for display? If so, it would be consistent to acknowledge that a meal would become art if it was served in a gallery rather than a restaurant. Disappearing art? Stefany is right and there are a million examples. Performance pieces (which are not necessarily recorded), walks, happenings, and - increasingly - art works actually created with the intention that they would decay and vanish. Stuff made out of chocolate for instance. As I stated last time we addressed this, I am an agnostic about whether cooking is an art form or not. And I do not necessarily disagree with some of the views here expressed about what art can and should be. My role in this thread is anarchistic (by which I do not mean pettily disruptive). I just plan to point out that art exceeds any boundaries you are likely to try and draw around it.

Actually, Van Gogh's letters to his brother, which run to hundreds of pages, are a pretty interesting read. John's distinction between arts and crafts is sensible, but I think it leaves a huge overlap. I am playing the sceptic on this one. I don't believe anyone will come up with a definition of art to which there aren't obvious and very plausible exceptions. By all means go ahead, but I just meant to warn y'all that it'll be a long time before you can get back to the food question in any rational way. Let me put it another way: we can all have our own opinion about what is and is not art, and why. What is much tougher is to generate a set of criteria rigorous enough to distinguish between what is and is not art, in such a way that objects (in the broadest sense) which are widely considered art fit the criteria, and objects which are widely considered not to be art don't fit the criteria. Personally, I think that post-Dada, post-Duchamp, post-the Viennese Aktionists, not to mention Warhol, you are in pursuit of the legendary ganso salvaje. If you do come up with a set of criteria, the easy bit is seeing whether food/cooking is in or out. Good luck and good night.

Yeah? Like you've been funny today! Don't tell me, the NJ board is a riot!

Bouley closed just before I relocated to New York, although of course I have heard a lot about it. I was just wondering what the dinner prices are like. I am assuming its upscale, and therefore would be comparable price-wise with Bouley's own Danube or with Chanterelle (to take two Tribeca examples). Am I right?

Is golf functional? No, I'm keeping away from this. As I pointed out when we got into this a long time back, the only basis for determining whether food/cooking is art is, first of all, to determine what art is. That question has been occupying people, without resolution, for centuries - as stefanyb said, it has been a key question in the period of modernism. I predict it ain't going to get solved on eGullet.

Adam, I should have thought there was no open season for badger. Protected species, surely. Maybe these were poached. In red wine. HAHAHAHAHAHA! (falls off chair)

Some good points there, Ajay. Perhaps it should be recognized that different readers want different things from the journalists they read. A Plotnicki, for example, might want to read about everything of which a restaurant is capable. An Ajay might want to learn what he personally can expect the restaurant to provide. I think both demands are perfectly reasonable, and the consequence may be that Plotnicki and Ajay read different critics. Or maybe not. Mr P., music criticism has been only one of the ways in which have responded to the siren call of the muse*. I suspect a lot of other things have contributed to screwing me up, and I look forward to slowly laying out my droll and idiosyncratic worldview for your edification over the months and years to come. *This was a conscious mish mosh of classical references, just in case anyone thinks I am not paying attention.

Yes, I think the brisket is braised for the Bouludburger. I wonder if they chop it after braising it?

I agree with all you say, Mr P., and indeed was saying much the same earlier in the thread. The point which swayed me, specifically about restaurant critics, was that I could readily see that it would be hard for a well-known critic to report on the kind of experience a restaurant might offer an ordinary punter. I can think of no analogies for this in other fields of criticism. I did, therefore, concede that I understood the reason for anonymity, just for that limited project. At the same time, while I can see the reason, I am not sure it rises to a necessity, as some well-known critics do a decent job.

If you've been keeping up with Liza's posts, Jinmyo, you should know that the correct apology is "I'm very sorrell for being saucy." Not that I mean to pollack you about it, or anything.

I thought the use of brisket was a stunning innovation by Boulud at his bistro! I mean, I know he uses foie gras too, but the brisket was a lot more noticeable than the foie gras when I ate there.

What a useful thread, because that distinction between restaurant critic and general food writer was not clear in my mind when we started out. It is the case, of course, that some very well-known critics have been going for a lot longer than a decade, and are instantly recognizable. Yet their work continues to be of value; maybe they are creatures of unusual integrity. Let me throw a name in so someone can contradict me: Fay Maschler, working in London. The anonymity point is interesting too. It's hard to think of other fields of criticism where anonymity is of even potential importance. With books, movies and most art works, the job is finished before the critic shows up. Theatrical performances are hardly going to improve because there's a critic in the front row (what about opening nights?). When I was writing reviews of bands who were just starting out, I often avoided contact with them until after they had played, just so that they wouldn't feel self-conscious about having a critic in the audience. But the private and personal nature of a meal in a restaurant is something else again. Intriguing distinction.

Not at all. I see what you mean, in fact. I was thinking about food and wine writers as a board category of journalists, and reflecting that we should count on them egtting more than their share of freebies! But I now realise you have in mind the more specific category of critic who is attempting to provide the reader with a description of the experience anyone might have at a restaurant. I agree, that's a little different.