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Wilfrid

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Posts posted by Wilfrid

  1. I agree that it's possible to tell, for example, great meat from poor meat. I disagree that this is a function solely of what's on the plate. What is on the plate can be factually characterized by an accurate scientific description of its chemical and physical properties. It's possible to try to correlate chemical profiles with sensory responses (and very difficult; companies spend a lot of money trying to do this). In principle, you might be able to identify the range of chemical and physical properties possessed by great steak. But you could stare at the scientific data from here to eternity without it telling you that it is great steak. That's a judgment the diner brings to the table.

    Of course, given the commonality of our human hardwiring, there is much consensus on what tastes good. At a minimum, we can recognize rancid food. But the limiting cases are too big to be ignored. Millions of people will reject fine cheeses and excellent preserved fish products as being "off". Millions will express finer preferences which are at odds with the opinions of professional gourmets.

    Does this mean it's a free for all? Absolutely not. I fully agree that some opinions are privileged, and the opinion of an experienced feeder, of eclectic tastes, in good health, will be an especially valuable opinion.

    Why are some opinions privileged? It's worth thinking about, but you won't find the answer by looking at the food under a microscope.

  2. Point taken Marty: why don't we keep it free and easy, because I just have it in mind that some people will be able to get hold of the Rosemount easier than the Marechal? I suggest we choose some generics and then edit the specific suggestions into the list.

    I am very much against dropping the Syrah/Shiraz option. I find Banyuls to be a bit of quirky customer; personally I'd be bored pairing port with cheese (maybe just me). I'd favor a sweet white - a Monbazillac, a Muscat, a Moscato? I'm okay with Marty's suggestions too. Is it just me, or is the Riesling a bit of an odd candidate as the only "dry" white?

    Cheeses. Marty, you're right. Scratch the Epoisses. I'd have bought myself a nice Soumaintrain, but that may be tricky to find for a lot of people. I'd go with a Pierre Robert instead (Brillat-Savarin and Explorateur would be alternatives in that category).

    I really want to keep the Brie, because tourists like Craig and Adam have had a lot of trouble with that notoriously hard to pair cheese. :raz:

    We're getting there.

  3. Oops, below posted before reading Marty = let me think so more.

    Good suggestions, Robin. I think most of us should be able to get hold of Rosemount Shiraz, the Montecillo and the Duboeuf, and they're not wildly expensive. I don't know if we're all going to get the same years, although it would be good to hear suggestions as to the year we should aim for.

    I wonder if a Trimbach Riesling is a good contender for a dry white. Maybe we don't want anything drier than that.

    As to the age of the cheese, I fear this is going to be imprecise. I strongly urge people to try to find cheddar's which are minimally blue-veined and not too dry. In other words, not too aged. I don't claim that an old cheddar can't kill a wine. But it's hard to find medium-aged cheddars in New York.

    As for the cheeses in the Epoisses style, please look for samples which haven't shrivelled up. If the perimeter of the cheese is nowhere near its box, it has started shrinking and drying up. Something closer to a flush fit should be sought. Brie - again not too old, not looking for that ammonia smell.

  4. Well I have a proffer on the cheeses. Do we want to add more or be more specific about the Brie? I'm thinking that four or five wines with four cheeses makes about twenty pairings, which is a lot to write up.

    Brie

    Cheddar (Keen's, Mongomery or Isle of Mull)

    Epoisses (or L'Ami du Chambertin, or Soumaintrain) - all Berthaud I'm assuming

    Roquefort or Lanark Blue

    Anyone want to change the cheese list? If not, let's hear from the grape-botherers. I am thinking we could do this over the course of the next week, and agree roughly when we should post the results (so as to reduce extraneous influences!).

    Bobbie's disqualified because she never wants me to drink red wine with cheese. :raz::raz::raz:

  5. I don't recall the American cheeses sampled at Artisanal. There may have been some, but it was a pretty global selection. I once had Max set up a pairing of American cheeses with generic European equivalents at Picholine, and the American cheeses held their own very well. I've been enjoying small production American cheeses for years now, so either I'm mad or you're wrong. I wouldn't contend the products are superior overall to British and French cheeses - but ban them?

  6. Steak is a somewhat tendentious example, by virtue of its simplicity - Japanese food is better.

    Let me see if I can keep this short. That the "subjectivity"/"objectivity" debate keeps rearing its head suggests that there's an important issue there. I agree we won't resolve it. I would observe that it manifests itself in most threads because people struggle to see that there are many alternatives to the two extreme postions. When user A contends that there are demonstrable influences on gastronomic appreciation extraneous to the physical/chemical condition of the food on the plate, user B responds that if that were the case then there would be no basis for any standards of judging quality, and that we obviously do apply such standards all the time.

    Since user A's contention is clearly correct, but it is also correct that we can and do apply standards of judgment to food, it follows that the extreme positions - it's about the flavor of the food and nothing else/flavor is nothing more than what an individual perceives with all the personal, cultural and other baggage - are both wrong.

  7. Okay, how shall we organize this? I don't think we'll get it together before Adam's tasting goes off. Indiagirl, I wonder if it's too ambitious to get exactly the same wines and cheeses - cheeses in particular tend to go in and out of stock. We could go for some generic pairings.

    Let's start with Marty's list, and add Adam's Lanark Blue, which I think I've seen in New York at least. Marty, black mark, Gloucester ain't a cheddar. I also think Epoisses and Camembert are very different, as is Brie and the triple cremes:

    --a fresh young soft goat cheese or an aged hard goat cheese

    --Aged English Cheddar (Isle of Mull, Montgomery, Gloucester or anything similar will do)

    --Brie, or any double or triple cream cheese

    --Camembert, Epoisse or any runny and stinky cow's milk cheese

    --Roquefort or Lanark Blue

    --Parmegianno Regiano

    --A Sauvignon Blanc (from the Loire Valley or from New Zealand)

    --A crisp unoaked Chablis

    --A German Riesling Kabinett or Spatlese

    --A soft Red Burgundy like Savigny les Beaunes, Volnay or a good regional Bourgogne (like Marechal cuvee Gravel)

    --A Syrah-based wine from the Rhone valley

    --A Cabernet Sauvignon-based wine, either from Bordeaux or California

    I don't think I'll be opening six bottles. We could shrink the list by concentrating on the allegedly more difficult cheeses. How about:

    Brie

    Cheddar (Keen's, Mongomery or Isle of Mull)

    Epoisses (or L'Ami du Chambertin, or Soumaintrain)

    Roquefort or Lanark Blue

    Marty - you're the winehead. Can we shrink that list at all; I think we do want to give the whites a chance, but the main bone of contention is how the reds react.

    Anyone else in? Craig?

  8. Spare a thought for the businesses which reconfigured their premises to take account of the City law, but have wasted their money because the State law prohibits even sealed off areas for smokers.

  9. New York magazine had suggestions, and this looked interesting. Any reactions?

    North Fork wineries, with stop-offs for road food at John Rossi's Smokehouse in Southold and Salamder's (fried chicken) in Greenport. No details in the magazine about winery visits, but I suppose that information can be retrieved.

  10. Sorting through my restaurant cards, I find the New Diamond at 23 Lisle Street. If the menu offers a long list of unusual and fairly exotic dishes, and it looks rather new and smart, that must be the one I'm thinking of. I won't give it an unqualified recommendation on the basis of one lunch, but it's certainly worth considering if anyone's looking for an interesting menu in Chinatown.

  11. You are very persuasive, Jonathan. At the risk of repeating myself, putting the diner in a sensory deprivation tank, or indeed in any strange and unfamiliar surroundings, is likely to distort rather than clean up your results; which is why scientists try to avoid it.

    Although there are admittedly some strange and unfamiliar restaurant environments out there. :blink:

  12. Interesting in theory, although as has been observed on other threads the events seem to have a lot to do with sitting on strangers' laps too.

    Nevertheless, it helps me focus my question about the Shavian position. Eliminating what I'd rather call sources of bias than "subjectivity" is "a goal". Yes, I can see it might be, and a reasonable goal at that. However, I wonder if it's a goal which everyone interested in food need share. If we agree, as I think we all do (and if not, Jonathan's post explains why we should) that an experience of food unmediated by elements extraneous to the mechanics of taste, is at best elusive, at worst perpetually deferred, then perhaps it's an equally reasonable goal to evaluate an overall dining experience. Perception of the food will be central to such an evaluation, but one will be conscious of presentation, setting, one's own preferences and state of mind, and even perhaps of the little yellow chicks which unscrupulous diners will be tempted to purloin. I think some participants here will reject that as an impure approach; but I'm not sure I want to be a food puritan.

    Lizziee's example of dining in the dark seems to me to go completely in the wrong direction. For most of us, anyway, this would be a dining experience completely out of the norm, and I would need a lot of convincing that one's appreciation of the food would not be seriously distorted by the circumstances, not made more precise. In experiments - and I'm sure Dr Death will back me up - strenuous attempts are made to avoid the subjects being placed in stressful and unfamiliar surroundings, because it is recognized that this will bias the results. (Obviously that's a generalization which applies only to experiments where the subject's reactions and behavior are relevant.)

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