Wilfrid

"Good." J. Baudrillard.

But does Citarella the restaurant get its fish from Citarella the store? I suspect not.

But which question, Steve? - I'm honestly bemused. If it's "Why did haute cuisine develop in France and not, for example, Italy?", I thought we'd absolutely hammered that one into the ground. If it's "Why hasn't Italian cuisine had more influence on international haute cuisine?" ( i.e. outside Italy), well I guess that's different. Or maybe there's a more interesting question I can't make out.

Good move. We sometimes overlook the fact, I suspect, that there's plenty of quite dreadfully average h-c to be had in expensive hotels all over the world. H-c is not automatically good food. Now, I think I read the original question as more to do with why Italian cuisine has had limited influence on h-c outside Italy, rather than why there's a lack of h-c in Italy. But who knows?

I think that's sort of consistent with my point Gavin. There's a lot of great food at all levels in France too, but that's surely independent of the existence of h-c in France. I just don't know what to make of this discussion.

Not wishing to muddy the waters, but I don't see why this is a question about Italy. Okay, forget Guam - most French people most of the time aren't eating haute cuisine. H-c is a kind of gastronomic lingua franca in which a large number of upscale restaurants in France and elsewhere are conversant. God bless it and where would we be without it, but it is very different indeed from the food eaten in everyday restaurants (let alone households) in France, Italy and anywhere else. Somehow Fat Bloke's original question got turned on its head, and we're worrying about why h-c doesn't have relevance in Italian professional cooking. I suspect it probably does, if you go to the right kinds of posh hotels catering for international travellers in Italy. It ain't like the French are eating this stuff and no-one else is.

Another bistro classic, salade des gesiers. I make this every couple of months - a salad of mixed green leaves tossed with chicken (duck if you can get them) gizzards which have been braised in red wine with onions. The gizzards got some fresh rosemary and sage treatment too this time. Also threw in some little bintje potatoes from Union Square, which I find very good cold (or lukewarm) - waxy and biteable. A tumber of vin ordinaire, then a snifter of Otard XO, which made me wish I smoked cigars. (Gizzards are not much more than $1 per lb in supermarkets. Go on and try them. But braise at around 325F for more than an hour until they are tender to the knifepoint, or they will be too chewy.)

Andy mentioned your background in "French bourgeois cooking". Masters of that tradition such as Alexander Dumaine have spoken of spending many years of their lives perfecting traditional dishes such as coq au vin or gratin d'ecrevisses. Is there a need for some chefs to sustain and nurture this tradition, or is it time to jump out of the nineteenth century once and for all?

Owen, you have picked a real favorite of mine. The Wakamba Cocktail Bar and Lounge has been around for a long time, and my guess from the name was that it was originally some kind of Hawaiian or Polynesian themed joint back in the days when paper umbrellas were the things to have in drinks. For as long as I can remember, it has been a Latino bar, and for many years it was a very edgy, scruffy dive. But I kind of liked it. It didn't help its image that the very unfortunate shooting of the innocent and unarmed nightwatchman by New York Police a couple of years back took place right outside. About a year ago, however, it got a thorough clean up and refurb (although it still looks the same from the outside). There are some iffy drinkers in there still, but the manager is very pleasant and trying to run a straight joint (we know him). The ladies behind the bar, some fresh from the Dominican Republic and speaking no English, continue to wear the shortest possible shorts and tightest possible tops. The lecherous among you should know that their target audience is the Latino drinker who likes, erm, well-upholstered ladies to ogle while slipping into a stupor. Splendid place, good music, but practice your Spanish before going. And, no, the place I'm thinking of was a country'n'western themed - barely - hole in the wall up in the forties. About a block south of that surviving hell hole, Smith's.

The time is coming when only drinking straws will be necessary.

Talking of visiting men's rooms, this was something once done never repeated at the Golden Lion in London's Soho back in its heyday. Not unless you were actively looking to attract the attention of insistent lonely middle-aged men, including mass-murderer Dennis Nielsen, anyway. All cleaned up now.

Yeah, I always feel comfortable when the angry drunk is too drunk to hit me. The legendary Jimmy's Corner gets its fair share of inebriated and grouchy passers by, but I've never seen anyone stupid enough to argue with Jimmy. Jimmy, after all, has been teaching professional heavyweights how to hit people for the last twenty or thirty years.

Slurp, slurp, soft food.

Can anyone remember the name of the mock honky tonk over on 8th in the 40s (NYC)? It was a small bar with a weird plastic banquette with special places to put your paper plates of fried fish. A cowgirl logo, and the name was something like the Blue Moon Saloon - but I don't think that's right. It later became a cleaned-up anonymous cocktail lounge.

I agree, Bux. That was the drift of my light-hearted remarks about Guam. We could pick any one of hundreds of countries and bellyache about why they don't serve French-style haute cuisine. I'm not sure that was the intention of Fat Bloke's original question, but if that's how we interpret it, I doubt it's going to get us anywhere.

You think it would help if he had?

Cold offal doesn't seem to work as well. Except blood sausage, of course.

I hear you, but it the analogy is stretched. A roast duck doesn't represent a duck, even a roast one; it just is one. But if we try your approach for the sake of argument, I suppose one would call a roast duck which was made to resemble and taste like something other than duck a kind of abstraction of roast duck. Okay, but I'm a bit nervous about it.

I can see you're unfamiliar with Psychick TV's version of "Skinhead Moonstomp". (Edit - I got my Psychick TVs and Throbbing Gristles mixed up. Easily done.)

As there's no representational content in the first place, I would agree the term "abstract" doesn't make sense here. If that's what you were saying.

Yes, there is such a thing as bad abstract art. And it wasn't yup, Steve, you're right, it was yup, Steve, let's not go all over that again.

Mmm. We could go round all the countries we can think of doing this, couldn't we? I wonder about Guam?

Yup. Ixnay to the rehash (I understand that is some kind of American backslang).

Now, that's the Steve I know and love. Firstly, you can leave me out when it comes to "relevance" - I didn't make a peep about it. I was only observing that it's silly to denigrate Italian cuisine in general because it includes dishes - or courses - that are allegedly excluded from French haute cuisine. French haute cuisine may well be the approrpiate yardstick against which to measure the places which people who eat at a high altitude for a hobby frequent. Secondly, there you go again with your historical summations. As has been observed before, there was a huge, wealthy class of landed gentry and merchants in Britain from the seventeenth century on. germany I can't speak for, but I've no reason to think they were poor. The French upper classes were notoriously strapped for cash. Can you file the "discretionary income" theory in the back drawer with the "France at the crossroads of Europe" theory, please? thanks

That relies on the premise that all art forms must share the characteristic one might call "potential to be disturbing". But since there are many other characteristics they don't share, that's as arbitrary assertion as saying something has to be "permanent" or "unique" to be art. We don't want to have this discussion again, do we?