Wilfrid

Adam, you jogged my memory. BYO is pretty universal in Australia, isn't it? And I can see that corkage might negate the strategy you correctly identify as "being cheap".

That took me a while to figure out. A bad sign. Doesn't Plotfrid have a ring to it?

Not with the hangover I've got right now, no. But thanks for offering.

Cabby raises a very good question. What if one weren't bringing special wines, but just average, everyday drinking wines, simply to avoid paying the mark-up. Does that look bad?

I thought The Capital was first-rate when I ate there earlier this year. And I am pleased to see Simon talking up Sheekey's - it's unfairly overlooked. Lovely savories.

Guess who did do the seven course? My difficulty was not so much remaining upright, but that the variety of wines and other beverages, and the order in which they were served, tended to confuse my palate. After whites and reds in the early stages of the meal, I remember a glass of sherry turning up with a rabbit dish, then a sake with something else, then back to the wines again. Each pairing was quite interesting, but the overall effect was a bit of a challenge to say the least. I am also reminded of the sommelier at Peacock Alley, with whom I eventually fell out rather badly, telling me he wasn't allowed to pair wines with the seven course tasting menu. Idiot.

BYO has been discussed on a number of threads, and I'd be interested in learning more about the practicalities and etiquette. The possible cost-savings are obvious, and, given the frequency with which forty or fifty per cent of my restaurant checks reflect wine consumption, substantial. But I have some questions. The answers probably vary from location to location; I am unashamedly interested in how it works in New York, but I hope people feel free to discuss the customs in other locations. 1. Always call ahead to confirm the restaurant will permit BYO, right? But, if you're sure a restaurant does permit it, is there any need to tell them in advance that that's what you plan to do? 2. I assume one will normally be asked to pay corkage. What range of corkage charges should one expect? 3. Steve Plotnicki has said that he doesn't believe sommeliers object to BYO. I am concerned about the waitstaff in general; isn't it going to reduce their gratuity? 4. Why isn't everyone doing it? What are the down sides?

BYO deserves its own thread, so off I go...

Nope. I like my version better.

Nice avatar, Degustation.

Good to see Jean-Georges still seating solo diners. An example to other restaurants who are so up themselves it's unbelievable.

The sausage cart was there last time I looked, which I admit may be a year ago. Yes, the same guy also has a restaurant called Hallo Berlin, over on 10th Avenue, serving the same stuff.

Nobody like wild turkey? (Not the drink).

Slices of rice and pork kishka, cooked crips, on a big white plate dusted with paprika. Potato salad on the side. Very pretty.

Okie dokie. Edit to be more expansive: I never worried about what ethnicity Petrossian was before, but I'd say it was a restaurant specializing in caviar and smoked salmon service in a style derived from Russia, backed up with a menu of fairly typical mainstream American restaurant dishes, with a wrapping of fancy Parisian restaurant history. Not neat, but - I contend - reasonably accurate.

I've lunched there, and I know the former maitre d', Rudy. For some reason, although I have discussed many restaurant-related topics with Rudy, I never thought to ask him - "So, Petrossian - is it French or Russian in your opinion?" I assume what they serve to their core clientele is what's on the menu, and it don't look all that Russian or French to me. I am disturbed to learnt that the French failed to evolve and refine caviar, but I should have thought caviar and blinis are available at any number of upscale restaurants, without those restaurants being Russian. Take Alain Ducasse for example. I sometimes think we spend a lot of time on eGullet trying to apply neat labels and distinctions, when the world out there is a lot more fuzzy, wilful, and complicated. Can I get a big RAZ here?

Just for a bit of fun, I took a look over the weekend at just how widely the French style of dining (which is a little broader than the French style of cooking) got exported. As a snapshot, I took Vincent and Mary Price's collection of menus in their Great Restaurants of the World - a fairly representative glance at upscale dining in the fifities and sixties, I would say, although with a heavy bias towards the States. Here are the restaurants outside France with menus completely in French - presenting themselves, in essence, as French restaurants: Amstel (Amsterdam), The Ivy (London), Belle Terrasse (Copenhagen). Here's a rather longer list of restaurants where a significant number of French dishes and French terms are to be found on the menus. Some suprises here: Royal Daniel (Venice), The Rivoli (Mexico City), The Pierre (New York), Luchows (New York), Sardi's (NY - with some weird Franglish mix-ups), Locke-Ober (Boston), The Old Original bookbinder (Philadelphia), Whitehall (Chicago), The Rauqet Club (Palm Springs). The Blue Fox (San Francisco) democratically peppered its menu with french and Italisan terms. Gage & Tollner (New York) and Antoine (New Orleans), are a little bit different, as they are each serving a cuisine derived from a French speaking part of the States. And the restaurants which eschewed Gallicism entirely, and rested on their native wits: Tre Scalini (Rome), Sobrino de Botin (madrid), Longfellow's (Massachusetts), Super Chief (Santa Fe) and Hana Maui (Hawaii). The Four Seasons, to be fair, had a few French terms, but was mainly an American menu.

Are you just relying on the restaurant's history, or does Petrossian's menu strike you as French? Whole Maine lobster? "Our" smoked river trout? Roast Long Island duckling? Roasted breast of chicken? Maine codfish? Fingerling potato fritter? Larry Forgione might have served this menu at An American Place. (Fun to disagree with two Steve's at once )

Whoa, slow down a little there, Mr P. I have only attempted to get up to 1890, so far. It's a convenient cut off point, because with Escoffier in place, French cuisine is firmly established as the benchmark for upscale dining in England for at least the next sixty, or seventy years, and arguably to the present day. My original question was how and why this happened, not only in England, but worldwide. England was a good example to take, not least because I had references ready to hand. The story may vary from country to country. I think the role, not so much of the British aristocracy as such, but of London-based fashion-leaders and opinion-formers was important. Throughout the eighteenth century, and into the nineteenth, one finds no shortage of English writers attacking French cuisine as a disgusting attempt to disguise lousy ingredients - even compliments are somewhat backhanded: "The variety given by their cooks to the same thing is astonishing; they dress an hundred dishes in an hundred different ways" (Young, 1792). The adoption of French cuisine, and employment of French chefs, by leaders of society doesn't seem to have happened, except in aberrant cases, until the Regency (1810-20). This coincided, very roughly indeed, with the importing of the French concept of the "restaurant"; those two things together explain much. Given what I've said about the restaurant, which seems to have got a foothold in London via the dining rooms of hotels, I'm not sure I understand your question about bistros and brasseries. What do we need to say about them? I imagine a lot of the five thousand cooks who had arrived in England by 1890 came from relatively humble establishments, unless there was a mass migration of upscale chefs. With the oysters, I think you've jumping to a completely different period. Oysters were a staple of the British diet until well into the twentieth century, not least because of their abundance. Shellfish was still, in part, a poor man's food in Britain in the early twentieth century. By the nineteen fifties, I know that many varieties of shellfish (not all) had become more of an expensive treat. We could look at the reasons for this, but it seems a separate question. What I would like to discuss, when I have a chance, is what eating French food meant to the mass of middle class nineteenth century British consumers. Trubek has a wonderfully on point comment: "Would the bourgeoise have gone to a pub for chaudfroid de volaille?" In other words, weren't the customers buying much more than food when they bought into a French dining experience? (Clue: the answer's yes. ) P.S. - "French culinary expansion". The phrase was yours on a different thread, and I agree it's vague. You were arguing that it was associated with French political and social liberalism, and were therefore compelled to date it from 1870, before which time the French had nothing which even looked like a liberal social structure. Of course, none of this turns out to sit very well with the facts.

It was discussed once way back, so you might want to try the search engine. I ate it, but didn't much like it. Kind of soapy taste. Fat Bloke insisted I must have had a bad one. I am sceptical.

Thank you, old bean. I am doing the reading out of interest, but it's worth posting the results here so I can just quote myself the next time a Plotnickiist theory is advanced.

There's talk of Jamie Oliver being the new James Bond.

Well, it describes itself as French-influenced contemporary. And here's the dinner menu. If you ask me, it's just an American menu, with caviar and blinis. The lunch menu, even more so.

Town. Beacon. Union Pacific. Patria. Whatever the reason.

Thanks, Jaymes. The eight pages weren't wasted then.