Wilfrid

Good Friends is the Limehouse Chinese which was once, at least, most worthy of a visit. Beware the many other restaurants in the area called "New Good Friends", "Best Friends", "Old Friends", etc. I hear Gilbert and George are concerned that the value of their work on the international art markets may plummet as a result of Simon's remarks.

Hello, Mamster, just got around to reading your article (my goodness, all you TDG writers are so angry, aren't you?). Some gastronomic footnotes: 1. Walker's oat cakes may not be the finest example of the species, but they seem to be fairly readily available in US supermarkets and food stores - East Coast, anyway. 2. Another excellent biscuit to accompany British cheeses is what we call a "digestive", a barely sweet, slighly salty, crumbly cookie. McVitie's in the classic brand, but look around - if they're imported, as they are likely to be, shake the box gently to assess how badly broken up they are. 3. Regular effervescent hard ciders such as Strongbow go fine with Cheddar; a little sweetness offsets the sharpness and acidity. But people have been drinking wine - yes, red wine - with these cheeses for years; nobody should be put off by current affectations about the difficulty of such pairings. 4. In addition to Keen's and Montgomery, look out for Isle of Mull, a Scottish cheddar also exported by Neal's Yard. It unanimously outscored it's English cousins at a tasting among some eGullet members a while back. 5. I would dispute that Lancashire's taste profile is all that close to Cheddar (unless you think Brie's taste profile is close to Camembert, which in the broadest sense I suppose it is). If anyone has access to English hard cheeses, I recommend enjoying the differences between several specimens - Wensleydale, more crumbly still and subtly flavored; Cheshire - creamy, less sharp than Cheddar, one of the greats; Double Gloucester, rich and almost fruity; and my personal favorite, Single Gloucester, when eaten young and fresh. 6. A general warning about English hard cheeses imported into the States. A lot of them are sold too old. None of those discussed above were meant to be blue cheeses. Sure, a vein of blue in a Cheddar does no harm, but too many specimens I've seen here are dry, greasy, mouldy, lined with blue and green. That's a taste you may enjoy, but try the cheeses younger and fresher too. And let me throw in a logical point: "...once someone has pointed out your errors and you continue making the same false statements, that's called lying". Not necessarily.

Good lord. What on earth to G&G do for lunch now?

I think I commented not long ago about the outrageous leap in prices at Jimmy's. I think it's around 7.50 for an entree these days. So many places aren't what they were: Lee Ho Fook must be one of the oldest restaurants in Chinatown, but it's been refurbished so many times that you'd never know. I wonder if Quo Vadis will still let you upstairs to look at Karl Marx's old bedsit, now that it's no longer Leoni's. That was one of the first grand Italian restaurants in SoHo. As for Italian caffs, what's the name of the one in Spitalfields where Gilbert and George eat? I believe that's a genuine oldie. (Photo Op: Gilbert and George and Gavin ).

My apologies. I'm behind the ball. Sadly, McClaren-Ross's nightly supper choice, the Steak An', is long since vanished. Nonetheless, one could stand at the bar of the Wheatsheaf from five to ten thirty, then dart madly across Oxford Street for last orders at the Nellie Dean (eek, I have a feeling that name has changed recently), and retire to someone's bedsit with a jug of pale ale and some bread and salami to discuss gangster movies until dawn. I'm sure there's someone who could stand in for Tambimuttu. Ah, but who...?

But, in the US and UK at least, the term is plainly not being used in that way. Daniel is not considered an ethnic restaurant. Neither is Le Cirque. Neither is Nobu. Neither, I contend, is Benny's Burritos - some may disagree. The Kabab Cafe is.

No 't'ain't. See my post above.

Gennaro's is long, long gone, Martin. Kettner's remains a remarkable building, but was purchased by Peter Boizot, owner of the Pizza Express chain back in the '80s. When he sold Pizza Express, he retained Kettner's, and last time I looked it was still serving dodgy pizzas. What a wasted space. Gavin, in addition to Soho, Fitzrovia could stand some further exploration. That which was once the White Tower has an interesting history, and I'd love to know what's on the premises today. And then there's that grand old French restaurant on Charlotte Street, which for years served hors d'oeurvres from a trolley to the likes of John Gielgud and Alec Guinness. L'Etoile - back in the '90s, it was taken over by the former maitre (or maitresse) d' from L'Escargot , Elena, and is now Elena's L'Etoile. Now? Well, it was when I last looked.

Gavin, I am expecting no less than a reinterpretation of Baudrillard's words, from a gastronomic perspective: "The disappearance of history is of the same order: there too, we have gone beyond this limit or boundary where, subjected to factual and information-al sophistication, history as such ceases to exist. Large doses of immediate diffusion, of special effects, of secondary effects, of fading - and this famous Larsen effect produced in acoustics by an excessive proximity between source and receiver, in history via an excessive proximity, and therefore the disastrous interference of an event with its diffusion - create a short-circuit between cause and effect, similarly to what takes place between the object and the experimenting subject in microphysics (and in the human sciences!). All things entailing a certain radical uncertainty of the event, like excessive high fidelity, lead to a radical uncertainty with respect to music. Elias Canetti says it well: "as of a certain point", nothing is true anymore. This is also why the soft music of history escapes us, it disappears under the microscope or into the stereophony of information."

Nothing wrong with Meades meets Sinclair. Pataphysicians everywhere salute you. I'd be interested in the fate of hot eels, pie and mash, if you can fit them in. Death of a working class staple.

It's just as well I love you, isn't it? MWAH!

I'll own up. I've used it, and this discussion has made me think seriously about the way in which I've used it. I think this is clearly an issue about race and ethnicity, and I'm afraid the fact that Greeks may get grouped in with non-white ethnic groups doesn't help - rather the opposite in fact. An alternative would be useful, but I think we need to face up to the issue frankly if we're going to find one. Pan: This is not central to the discussion, but while I agree with you that there is a musical form, known as "rhythm and blues", which you accurately describe, "R&B" has also been used for some time as an inaccurate but convenient catch-all for soul, hip hop, rap, blues and any other "black" music going. Example from Billboard.

I entirely agree with Lord Michael. While one has heard and read a good deal about Loiseau, one knows nothing about his health, his personality and his private life. I find it inconceivable that an otherwise untroubled man would commit suicide for the reason suggested. I contend we have absolutely no idea what led to this sad event.

Oof, page two. Wonders will never cease.

Sounds unusual. Alligator meat is widely described as chickeny rather than fishy.

We were griping about how well kept some of the cheeses are. I wouldn't complain about the selection, though.

Oaky doaky.

I didn't mean to have a tone. Sorry. Just trying to explain.

Not difficult. In the second quote, the phrase "no matter what you intend to say" means, if I can read at all, "no matter what you specifically intend when you describe a bunch of restaurants as 'ethnic'". It doesn't mean "no matter in what context the term 'ethnic' is being used". The two comments are, therefore, consistent and reasonable interpretations of the interesting point Pan made.

With that link, I'll go back and improve my post with a couple of Italian words - thanks.

Isn't the point that, in Pan's context, "ethnic" is being used as imprecise short-hand for cheap, "foreign", largely (but not exclusively) non-white cuisines, as if they were a homogenous inexpensive eating opportunity for the white middle classes. "Hey, let's eat something ethnic tonight". I am putting it in those terms just to get across what might be offensive about the term. Ron, I don't think anyone's claiming that all uses of the word "ethnic" are potentially offensive.

But there you go, Steve: how many cuisines have migrated since the 1970s? Belated thanks to Vedat for his last post, which I've just had time to read. I actually enjoyed the cuisine in Istanbul when I was there; not because the cooking was elaborate, but because the quality of the ingredients - vegetables and fish in particular - was amazing. Simple treatments - salads with a little oil, grills - seemed appropriate.

I concede that tourism broadens the mind, and is reflected in what people will and will not accept on a menu, but I think the influence of tourism on the migration of cuisines is at best minimal, and certainly not a model worth debating at length. So far the only example suggested of a cuisine migrating because of tourism is Thai.

I'm sure what Adam says is right, and I don't have the data to contradict Tony about Thai food. I only raise it because we've spent a lot of time on several threads debating Plotnickian theses about why tourists did or did not import certain cuisines to their own countries, whilst we should be cautious about the whole notion that cuisines move around because of tourism.

"Once upon a time there were some little white balls Very sad, because they were some little white balls (Little white balls)"