Wilfrid

Is there a chef whose name is at all "known" who does not have a signature dish? Or are we just seeing how many we can remember? Marco Pierre White: scallops black tie. There's one.

Oh, I insist they're historically and culturally contingent. And I'm glad Steve P. seems to have come around to that point of view. Critical or aesthetic judgments are contingent (as, I suspect, are ethical judgments). I am only arguing with people who imply that such judgments cannot be made. Perhaps you would adopt a literary analogy, and say - we're not arguing about whether Pam Ayres is a better poet than Wordsworth, because that would be silly, but two intelligent people can disagree about whether Wordsworth is a better poet than Blake; the latter is a matter of opinion. I think that's fair. Some of us feel that steak and prune juice falls into the silly category, whereas which red to drink with steak falls into the matter of opinion category. Steak and beer is perhaps between the two. My only dispute is with the suggestion that any beverage is as good an accompaniment to steak as any other, and that there is no basis for challenging that.

I have never made fruit cake, but I am adept at eating it. One tip: try it alongside a thick slice of really good English cheddar (Montgomery's, Keen's) - if you can't get it in your area, probably the best pre-packed for this purpose is Cracker Barrel. And a glass of madeira.

I can never remember which type of bass we're supposed to boycott, and I think I got the one I shouldn't - Chilean sea bass, right? Well it was nice braised in olive oil with a mushroom, tomato and tarragon ragout. Marques de Caceres rosado to wash it down.

Norman Davies's The Isles has been staring meaningfully at me from a high shelf for a couple of years now. Food reading: Lesley Brenner, The Fourth Star (oh, of course I read it before the Q&A, so I must be reading it again ). Other: Joris-Karl Huysmans, La Cathedrale; Sextus Propertius, poetry; George Barker Selected Poems; J.M.G. Le Clezio, Le Proces Verbal; Goethe, dramatic works (no, not all of them).

Yes, I had suspected for some time you believed that, and I am sceptical about the thesis. But I need to think about it and then, if appropriate, start a different thread. The question I am formulating is along the lines of whether this rage for smoothness is a relatively recent and possibly unwelcome development in h.-.c. But I need to convince myself before wasting hundreds of words failing to convince you. I think I do have a preference for the heartier, although my tastes are, of course, sufficiently catholic to embrace both styles.

Finally caught up with this thread, and how puzzling it all is. Steve P. is wrong about so many things ( ), I can't understand why you all pick on him on the odd occasion he's right. Every one of us, I suspect, when we're not anxiously worrying about the principle of the thing, believes that some ways of eating, and some food and beverage combinations, are right and proper, while others are not. To take the position that a preference for curry with custard (to use my earlier example) is no more or less correct than a preference for curry with rice, is, I suspect, to adopt a posture. The interesting questions lie in the extent to which the standard we do, in truth apply, can be rigorously defended, and whence they derive. But if there's no agreement that any standards whatsoever exist, we can't progress to the interesting stuff. And I can't resist expressing amazement at Deacon's challenge. I would guess I have about 1% of Steve's wine knowledge, but all things being equal I would expect to identify the main varietals in a blind tasting, and to be able to guess country of origin more than half the time. What's supposed to be so difficult?

Behave yourself. I didn't for a moment say that I didn't like haute cuisine. The approach of refining dishes to the point at which they resemble very tasty baby food is not historically essential to haute cuisine. Nor is it necessarily a stamp of high quality cooking. One must look case by case to see whether it is appropriate, and I just wondered whether there were too many creamy dishes in the meal you described. And it's nothing to do with the ethnicity of the palate in question; whether you agree with me or not about h.-c., French cooking of other varieties incorporates a full range of textures.

Slowly catching up on your French trip, Steve, and this was an intriguing thread. Reading through it, I ended up feeling that I personally was not missing much in not having dined at L'Arpege. I think I understand, from your description, what Passard is trying to do, and it sounds like he does it well. But I haven't nearly tired of the wonderful things kitchens can do with meat, especially game and offal, and with profoundly flavored sauces. The series of light, creamy dishes which introduced the menu bothered me a lot. I tried to express a similar reservation about some of Blue Hill's dishes in the Q&A with Dan and Michael. I am happy to eat a dish of "ethereal" smoothness, delicacy and tenderness, but I am not sure a succession of them appeals. Whatever happened to crunch and snap and chewiness (although I see your duck had some chew to it)? Whatever happened to bones? I don't want to drink dinner through a straw, and I sometimes wonder if chef's aren't unnecessarily restricting their palettes (not palates) by catering to their customers' perceived preference for pureed mousse of filet of something soft? I exaggerate to make the point, and would be happy, in all seriousness, to check M. Passard's food to see if I'm right.

David Gower, the flamboyant but gifted English cricketer, tried this at a party for the visiting Australian cricket squad. Despite his brilliant timing and sure hand to eye co-ordination, Gower memorably showered his guests in broken glass.

How did I miss that? Thanks, Steven, and the wine progression was indeed tricky to manoeuver. I meant to mention the price - $240 Canadian, or about $150 US. That's a seven course tasting dinner, with champagne and slightly too much wine (I was comped some of the wine because of the initial confusion). You can see what a bargain a straight three course dinner might be. Tommy: the ice wine was nice (it wasn't the famous Inniskillen, which they didn't have by the glass), but I wouldn't pretend the chardonnays knocked me out.

Nice one, Steve. My taste in food when in France runs, I fear, to the conservative, and I enjoyed Taillevent very much a couple of years ago. And I managed to find some offal on the menu.

A short drive out of the city center, Susur Lee's restaurant is a brightly lit splash of white on a quiet shopping street. Modern and minimalist inside, with white walls and some tasteful art works (I especially liked what looked like children's toys inside small vitrines strung across the wall). Monday night, but the restaurant was fairly busy, a little noisy because of the bare walls. Service was a bit frantic, especially the hasty, advance delivery of cutlery for future courses. I was surrounded by spare knives and forks most of the evening. I ordered the seven course surprise tasting menu at $110 (about $68 US), and ate an amuse of soy bean custard with a black bean garnish with a very reasonable NV Louis Roederer. Then the evening started going backwards. My waiter should have warned me, or I should have taken the trouble to consult the sommelier; but imagine my surprise when, as I tasted a fresh, sweetish California chardonnay, my first course turned out to be a very large and generous meat dish. When another meat dish followed, I began to suspect that the kitchen was sending out the courses at random. Then the sommelier noticed my bewilderment and I learnt the truth. Susur's tasting menus are designed backwards, moving from the heavier to the lighter meat dishes, then through fish to salads. In synch now, the sommelier started pairing wines with the dishes, and everything started to swing along nicely. What a meal. The recitation with which each dish was delivered revealed a dozen or so ingredients. This is what I can remember, and turn your PC upside down if it doesn't make sense: Two roast squab legs, one with a foie gras reduction with chopped gherkins (an "evolved" sauce charcutiere?), one with a sauce based on a reduced Chinese stock; chanterelles, rutabaga, fresh chives. Confit of foie gras (prepared in house, I'm sure) and a slice of Muscovy duck breast served over a black plum stuffed with nuts, and wrapped in a garlic potato twirl. Braised belly pork from an 800 year old Chinese recipe, with mushrooms and a rich, almost chocaltey dark sauce. This was accompanied by a light, cool, petillant Italian red. Warm slices of slightly spicy salmon, garnished with tomatoes. A glass of Funk Riesling. Lobster tail garnished with sea snails over a mussel and mustard sauce (excellent, grainy English mustard made more tha one appearance in the menu). Sandstone 2000 Chardonnay from Ontario. Salad of tomato and basil jelly, stuffed fresh tomatoes, beets, etc. A different local Chardonnay, Inox. A warm spicy ginger cake speckled with dried fruits, ice cream, and...well I lost track. A local ice wine. That barely does it justice. The foie gras reduction in the squab dish was profoundly rich and earthy. The combination of lobster and sea snail with the mussel and mustard tones of the sauce was incredible. This was a knockout dinner. Susur Lee was omnipresent in the dining room (and he must have a great kitchen crew to be turning out dishes of this complexity all night). I had a couple of pleasant chats with him, and he's a diamond. He explained his theory that with orthodox tasting menus, people satisfy their hunger by consuming plenty of bread and wine at the outset, leaving little appetite for heavier dishes in the later stages of the meal. So he's turned the traditional tasting menu on its head. I am not sure that Escoffier and all that came after can be discarded so easily, but dishes of this magnificent quality excuse idosyncracies. I told him the cooking reminded me a little of Gray Kunz at Lespinasse, which I think he took for the compliment it was intended to be: he mentioned the importance of his French training. Just in terms of what's on the plate, I would say this is a destination restaurant. Exceptional.

Stroll on. I am going to have to take a week off work to catch up with this thread.

Tripes a la mode de Caen, for example. Canard aux cerises. Cuisses de grenouille. And so on.

Okay, Steve, step aside and let me deal with the smug bastard. Your example, GJ, isn't a counter-example. Take the results of the article at face value. A significant minority of the population have different hard wiring in their tongues than the rest. the consequences of that, I think we've all demonstrated we don't really know for sure. Yes, they may be "better" readers in the sense that they can discriminate more chemicals than other tasters, but that does not necessarily make them more "efficient" readers for a particular defined purpose. As you know, the typical individual successfully edits out the vast majority of the sensory data available to them at any one point. They have to in order to function. Someone hyper-sensitive to such data might be a "better" reader of the world around them in that sense, but not necessarily a more efficient one. But moving to the real point. The claim that, within given cultural and historical horizons, there are gastronomic standards, and that it is in principle possible to describe a deviation from those standards as a mistake (whether it be prune juice with steak, preferring your potatoes raw or putting custard on your shepherd's pie) is not, I think, dependent on the assumption that we all share the same physiological hard wiring. I said all along that certain individuals, having been offered the chance to experience eating and drinking in accordance with those standards, may nevertheless choose to adhere to certain personal preferences which taste good to them. And I said they may have good reasons for those decisions - it doesn't make them idiots, but it doesn't stop them being "wrong" either. Maybe eccentric taste bud configurations are one of those reasons. But the fact is that we do have standards, and they have evolved against a background of people having whatever taste buds and olfactory receptors they have. So I think the two arguments miss each other. SHORT VERSION: If someone's tongue is hot wired so that custard on curry tastes good to them, there's no denying that fact, but it doesn't negate the principle that, by and large, it is wrong to put custard on curry.

For that very reason, I have been a bit over-cumined in recent years. Parsley is an all round herb in my kitchen. Tarragon is perhaps the most dramatically loveable, in the right dish. A bit stuck on spices. I use them less than herbs, more sparingly, and no one particularly stands out.

That's not my understanding as far as wine goes, by I may well be wrong. I thought that taste buds would only get you as far as telling a dry wine from a sweet one, a tannic wine from a soft one, and such like. But actually distinguishing a dry, tannic French Bordeaux, for example from a dry, tannic Australian Cab/Shiraz requires olfaction - to say nothing of the much finer distinctions which are there to be made. Two such very different wines, I understand, are not readily distinguishable by taste buds alone. I can see that a significant deficit in pure taste might throw everything out of whack. Dunno if it does or not. But I am teetering beyond the limits of my knowledge, and am happy to be corrected by someone who knows this stuff. I'm not sure bored physicists whiling away their Friday afternoon fall into that category.

I just read the article properly for the first time, and was disappointed to find that it really is only about tastebuds on the tongue, which play an important but very limited role in our sense of flavor. Take Robert Parker, for instance. I don't know how his tongue would perform in that test, but it wouldn't really matter. Wines generally taste pretty much the same as far as the tongue alone is concerned. The highly complex flavor notes someone like Parker can discern are received by olfaction (receptors up behind your nose).

Helena: Feel free. Spoonful: Never you mind, young lady .

Suzanne, I do pre-fry the potatoes when I am making fries. I just wouldn't parboil them first, because I find that encourages them to break up. And, Suvir, I think with or without skin is entirely a matter of taste. I have reached the stage in my life where I find peeling potatoes soothing!

Alva was noisy and it sounds like the refurb may have exacerbated the problem. Still, it sounds like the meal competes well with the flabby-batter veal chop sold by Sammy's Roumanian at about the same price - no sides. (Oh, I can keep on about Sammy's for some time yet )

Very interesting, Steve. I have been lucky enough to have my steak cooked as ordered when I have eaten there, but it's sufficiently long ago that I can't comment on the cut. I recall the light fry as being very good, and also enjoyed the oyster and clam pan roasts - on a par with Gage & Tollner I would say, and I prefer both to the Grand Central Oyster Bar version. Didn't you like the big old grainy photos in the dining room. It's not an elegant place, for sure, and I seem to recall it doesn't have table cloths ( ), but I thought it had a little verve, nonetheless.

That's a new departure for Fleur de Sel. I have eaten the tasting menu there at weekends on a number of occasions. Maybe they are trying to turn more tables, as it's a very small room. What a shame.