VivreManger

Any recommendations for good South African wines and sherries that do not regularly make it to the States? My wife is in Cape Town and I wanted to suggest what she might look for, particularly if there is a well-recommended wine shop. She prefers steely whites, pino grigio and pinot blanc. I like all Burgundies as well as Rhone wines. We don't care for zinfandels or exploding in the mouth, fruity Australian whites. Nor are we interested in the burnt rubber that some South African reds have acquired. As for sherries, any dry recommendations? Thanks

Iraq's culinary traditions are regional and within regions, distinctly ethnic. So there are Baghdadi Muslim and Jewish cuisines as well as recipes popular in the Kurdish north and the largely Shiite south. Historically the wealthiest, most-powerful, and longest-lived of the Arab dynasties, the Abbasid Caliphate had Baghdad as its capital. Claudia Roden's "New Book of Middle Eastern Food" has a few references to medieval Baghdadi cooking indicating that its influence has spread throughout Islamic Middle East and North Africa. There had been a restaurant in SF, Ya Ya Cuisine, 663 Clay Street 415 434-3567 which my sources inform me specialized in Iraqi food, but last time I checked it seemed out of business. Some Baghdadi Jewish foods are TABIT, a kind of cholent-kishke-haggis, slow-cooked, rice, tomato, and chicken, classically stuffed in sheep intestine. KARII, rice, lentils, and yellow squash often served with yogurt on Rosh Hashana and Shavuot. SALON, fish cooked with sweet peppers and tomatoes, often served cold. KUBA SHWANDRY, farina-bulghur (I am not certain of the grain) dumplings stuffed with meat and cooked with beets to achieve a rich red-purple color. Many of these are classic Baghdadi recipes in general since during the first half of the 2oth century Jews were the largest single group in Baghdad, the others being Shiite Muslims, Sunni Muslims, and Kurds. The classic Iraqi condiment is AMBA, that is mango pickle, shared with Indian cooking. Because of the close trade connections between Iraq and India, many other food ways have passed from the sub-continent to Mesopotamia. During the last Gulf War when Iraqi scuds were targetting Tel-Aviv, many of them fell in the Ha-Tikvah quarter of the city, by repute filled with Iraqi Jews. The joke was that they landed there because they had special AMBA sensing devices on the war-heads.

You're right. Todd English, Jasper White, they all sound the same. Perhaps they are one and the same.

Ripe cranshaw melon.

The Chestnut Hill Oisihii is located on Hammond St. at the intersection of Boylston St. This is near (and across the street from) the Chestnut Hill shopping center complex that contains Legal Seafood anda Shaw's (ugh) formerly Star Mkt. I hope to go there next week and offer a report. I share Bushey's skepticism about the Jasper White empire. The Summer Shack has gotten some bad notices. I looked over his place -- King Fish Hall or something similar -- in the Quincy Mkt. area. The decor was spectacularly over the top, reminded me of Farallon in SF, the menu was intriguing, the smells arising from the ovens were tempting, and the occasional dish that came over the counter was attractively presented, but we happened to be passing through at an odd hour and did not feel up for a real meal. I think the Boston Globe had a review of both Oishii's. It might be worth checking the Boston.com website for the details.

Little Boaz, They sell pomelos in the Northampton Stop & Shop and I presume in other S&S branches in western Massachusetts. Unfortunately they are inedible. In Israel I have gotten some bad ones as well, but at least there is a chance of finding a tasty specimen. The inadequacy of American appelation controlee regulations and the lack of a shopping culture that expects it, means that Sunkist can get away with marketing an Isr pomelo. Do all Holland peppers come from the Netherlands? I have seen Galia melons in the States from California and Mexico. Without being certain, I have always assumed that the Galia melon originates in Israel. By the way Galia melons in the US -- whatever their origins -- are unreliable. A recently announced USDA regulation, unfortunately subject to hostile lobbying by most of the large-scale corporate food industry, will in fact introduce country of origin labeling for all fruits, vegetables, fish, meat and poultry. These are to go into effect in two or three years time. For the moment the regulations are open for public comment. Already the large-scale supermarket chains are lobbying against the requirement since they never know where their products come from, don't care, and will find it too expensive to find out. Hamburger meat can come from anywhere. I certainly encourage all interested to inform themselves about these regulations and act to further their full implementation.

Important ADDITION In every instance where I mentioned smoked meat, the product in question is called OLD-FASHIONED. The other stuff should never have been made. Almost any NY deli meat could beat the pants out of NON old-fashioned smoked meat, so if that was the product compared, NY wins all the time -- only slight exaggeration.

I do apologize. I don't consider anything but old fashioned, smoked meat. The other stuff, forget it.

Pardon the multiple typos in my original post. One misleading statement in the recipe mifht be read to suggest the liquid should be sufficient to cover the meat. What I meant to say is that the cooking broth should go up about 1/4 of the height of the meat in the sauce pan. What you need to cover is the pan, not the meat. As far as Montreal expansion goes, I think that the major Montreal migration to Toronto took place in the aftermath of of the first PQ victories in the 70s -- that is the politival victories of the separatist Parti Quebecois. Most of the Anglos who were going to leave, left then. The subsequent anglo hemorraging has been minor, by comparison. Subsequnetly some smart food-purveyers followed a market. By now those who were going to succeed have succeeded, so further expansion into Toronto makes little sense. New York is an opportunity, but I would start with smoked meat, it would be an easier product to market and would NOT have the wood-burning zoning problems. Montreal bagels may be too much of a culture shock for New Yorkers since most of them would consider the product a soft pretzel. If the bagel option were tried, I would set up the bakery just outside of New York City, where the oven regulations are more forgiving and then ship the product into a city store-front. True they would not exactly be hot out of the oven, but a quick well insulated shipping system could keep them close enough and the marketing ploy would be Montreal bagels banned in New York City -- too hot to handle. When one of you does it, I don't want a cut, just guarantee me a life-time supply whenever I show up. By the way, as far as I am concerned any discussion of smoked meat, means the spicier old fashioned kind. The other stuff should be banned.

Many thanks to you both. At the very least I have confirmed my 2-star memory. I am actually trying to reconstruct what we might have eaten in 1956 so the 1980s Michelin guides would not help much, particularly since the restaurant died and was resurrected in the interval. I do have some notes, diaries, post cards and other souvenirs from that trip. If I recover anything that might be of general interest I will post it.

One important note to be assumed in all my discussion of smoked meat -- this one added later through the edit function. We are talking about old-fashioned smoked meat, the other stuff looks like a naked chicken and does not pass mustard, pardon the pun. This continues a thread which I spun off Katz's Pastrami in the NY forum, then into the Canada-Montreal forum -- suggestions on where to get the best smoked meat in Montreal. Now I have some suggestions on how to prepare it at home. In the Montreal forum I lamented the decline of individual artisanal smoked meat making in Montreal. However I suggested that since the quality of the sandwich ultimately depends on the counter-man and steaming, the consequences are still remediable. There is also a silver-lining. The Levitt's cryovaced Canadian-inspected whole brisket is a perfectly legal immigrant to the US, even in these days of Ashcan-Ridge paranoia. If you are at all squeamish about bringing meat into the US, have no fear, NAFTA has come to the rescue. Smoked meat is also available in small sandwich sized plastic packages, don't go there. My suggestion is that you invest in a whole brisket, about 6 to 7 pounds. It will cost you around $10 Canadian per pound, but even if I got the price wrong it is till a steal for the US dollar shopper. If you buy it from the deli -- at least this is the practice at Snowdon Del -- they will mark on the outer package the angle at which the meat should be sliced. Basically it should be cut on the bias, parallel to a line that connects the most distant two points on an oddly shaped rectangle. Most of us are not capable of finishing off seven pounds of smoked meat at single sitting. My suggestion is to cut it up into more managable chunks, keeping in mind the proper cutting angle. I like a combination of fat and lean in my sandwich so I combine the appropriate chunks together in the zip-locked freezer bag. Properly sealed and stored it will easily keep for six months. A few months ago I organized a smoked meat party for four hearty carnivores. None were Montrealers. Two had studied at McGill, but one was originally from Ottawa and the other was from Brooklyn. The third is a New Yorker and I am from New England, but I visit Montreal regularly. The New Yorker had never had Montreal smoked meat before. The rest of us are veterans. We made french fries in a fryolator -- excellent grease and salt but we forgot the Malt Vinegar. We did not have the small seedless rye bread favored by Montreal delis, but we came up with slightly chewier alternatives. The normal Montreal mustard is French's yellow, but Hebrew National deli is acceptable. None of us feinschmeckers would allow French's into the kitchen. We did get some Canadian Bubbie's Pickles, but still not as good as Mrs. Whytes Garlic or even Lieber's (sp?) whole sours. We did not have good sour vinegar cold slaw and none of us took the trouble to make the classic dish, Rumanian smoked eggplant salad. So much for the garnishes. Now to the meat. The following are the keys to enjoyment. You need a very good sharp knife that can produce the thin slices, that are essential for dealing with what is basically a tough meat. Smoked Meat is not melt on your fingers brisket, it is a much sturdier stock. After what it has been through, brining, pickling, boiling, smoking -- who knows what else -- it is not a mellow customer. So it must be sliced thin to be eaten easily. The tougher lean slices must be mixed with the softer fatty slices to achieve the proper chewable combination of textures. After you have slowly defrosted the chunks of lean, medium, and fatty meat, you must prepare a court bouillion for steaming and near-boiling the meat. I add quite a bit to the liquid in order to achieve an even fuller range of tastes than is common to the deli-counter experience. I never measure anything, but work on scent and smell. You need the following whole coriander seed, whole pepper corn, ground ginger, ground coriander, whole bay leaf, allspice, cloves, cardamon pods one whole red chili pepper and a bit of bovril beef bouillion. Through in the following to the water and bring it to a boil: about two to three TS of coriander seed, a TS of pepper corns, a pinch of ginger powder, one TS of coriander powder, three bay leafs a couple of cloves and a couple of cardamon pods, one whole red pepper, a pinch of allspice and a small teaspoon of beef bouillion. The size of the sauce pan is determined by how much meat you are serving, but you need something that you can cover and let simmer slowly. After the spicy liquid has come to a boil for a few minutes, reduced the heat and let the meat simmer. It should take about ten to fifteen minutes to reach the right temperature. The aroma should start to tell you its ready. Slice thin and serve. By the way my unbiased collection of carnivores were content. The semi-Montrealers felt that they were back on the Main. The New Yorker liked it better than pastrami and corned beef.

This continues a thread begun under the title of Katz's Pastrami in the NY forum. There Steve W recommends Snowdon Del and Schwartz's Hebrew National. His recommendations are solid. Schwartz's is the better-known and closer to the normal tourist haunts in Old Montreal. Amusingly despite the name, for many years it has been owned and run by Greek restauranteurs. Snowdon Delicatessen is in the Snowdon--Notre Dame de Grace neighborhood of Montreal, famous for among its many other attractions for the Notre Dame de Grace Kosher Meat Market. One of the few instances where Our Lady has graced kosher meat. Although out of the way from the familiar down-town haunts, for those driving to Montreal from the States, it is conveniently located on the Decarie surface service road adjoining the Decarie Expressway (at this point I think it is TransCanada 10 or 15, but I don't have a map to refresh my memory). The Decarie Expressway is the major north-south route at this end of Montreal. It is one of the many routes into which the norhtbound Champlain Bridge traffic discharges. Snowdon Delicatessen is on the east side of the expressway, north of Sherbrooke and Queen Mary, south of Isabella. It is a very convenient stop on a drive into the city, if Decarie construction has not turned the Expressway into a parking lot, a common occurence at rush hour. SteveW confirmed this recently and I have suspected it for awhile. Snowdon's smoked meat is not of their own creation, while Schwartz's still prepares its own, certainly a plus. A few months ago I bought a whole brisket at Snowdon's and it was a cryovac Levitt's product. Levitt's is one of the big meat processors in Montreal. The cryovac brisket is convenient (and legal) for bringing to the US, but it is not the artisanal product wrapped in butcher paper that I remember from my early adventures in the smoked meat trade. The strength of Snowdon's smoked meat lies in the skill of their preparing and hand-slicing the meat, coupled with volume and turn-over. The meat is freshly steamed and sliced to order by experienced counter-men. You can order it fat as well as lean and medium. Snowdon's also makes a mean chopped liver, with sauteed onions, as well as the normal range of turkey, tongue, white-fish and lox. Their cole slaw and Rumanian smoked eggplant salad are incredibly tasty. The eggplant in partiuclar is owrht ordering and bulk and taking home. It is one staple of the Montreal shiva meal. Snowdon's are open for early dinner, but the time to go is lunch when the smoked meat is flying off the counter. Don't even mention Ben's and Dunn's. Ben's is down-town, run-down, and open late, otherwise it would have (and should have) folded years ago. The one time I went there not only was the food horrible, but the men's room floor was decorated with the results of late night revels. Another old-line delicatessen is Chinoy's, further into the Anglo-Jewish suburbs of Montreal. The first time I tasted it was about 25 years ago at a Montreal reunion which they catered in Boston. I had been meaning to try them again. It was a mistake when I finally tried them a few years ago. The quality in their restaurant was abysmal. I am placing my next post in the cooking forum, title, Montreal Smoked Meat, II, description how to serve it at home.

Many thanks for your research. I was 11 at the time so the memory is not perfect, but three things I do remember about the Chapon Fin: the elegance of the room and the service, a very fine sole meuniere fileted at the table (I think), and a spectacular crepes suzette (of this I am certain). Although I can claim no madeleine-like recall, at moments I still can almost taste the grand marnier and I still do see the fire in the pan as it flashed in the subdued lighting of the room. I have not had crepes suzette much since then so I trust my thought is pristine. Does your Michelin survey list the specialities of the two-starred? I am curious to know what they were at the Chapon Fin. France in the mid-50s was still under gas rationing and the economic recovery was spotty at best. My parents had bought a 1957 DS-19 which had been first produced only in 1955-6. Until 1955 for some twenty years the top of the Citroen line was the classic X. In many parts of the country-side from Paris to Marseilles via the Loire, Royen, Cognac, Lascaux country (the cave was still open), Carcassone, and then on to Beaulieu-sur-Mer before turning back, ours was the first DS ever seen, a rather striking entry card to la France profonde.

Check out today's NYTimes article on the lettuce shunning Yazidis of Iraq. Now that would be a politically correct method for avoiding rabbit-food. The article is more supercilious than sympathetic and lettuce-avoidance is not the essence of Yazidi faith and practice, but the substance is relevant to our theme. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/03/internat...nt&position=top

Perhaps your expertise can answer the following? Sometime in July-August of 1956 I ate, I believe, at the Le Chapon Fin in Bourdeaux. It was the major splurge of a month-long drive to France with my mother and younger brother and I thought that at the time the restaurant had two stars. Subsequently I have checked some later Red Guides. I can't find the restaurant in the 1983 issue, though it resurfaced in the 1997 Guide Michelin with one star. Do you know its star-quantity for 1956?

My limited understanding is that, on the whole, the variety of Hindu regulations are more highly developed, but the issue is extremely complicated and requires much detail for a definitive answer. The source for complexity in the Hindu system derives from caste variations. I believe that certain high Brahmin castes are vegetarians. Within vegetarianism there are further variations, veganism included. Lower caste Hindus will eat lamb. By the way I have never heard of pig cooking in the subcontinent, is that a Hindu taboo or is it merely because most Euro-American Indian cooking is in fact Mughal (i.e. Muslim) based, prepared by Bengali Muslims and therefore excludes pig-meat? In Kerala State (Goa as well) which has a largely Christian population with significant Portuguese influence there must be an Indian pork cuisine. While there are variations within kashrut, over time and between different regional communities (i.e. Jews in Muslim countries as opposed to Christian countries), up until recently class and status variation of food taboo within the same geographical area (on the Hindu model) was uncommon. In the past an exception had occurred as a result of migration, for instance when after 1492 Iberian Jews migrated to Italy and the Ottoman Empire whose indigenous communities has slightly different interpretations of the details of ritual slaughtering. In modern Israel however, among the ultra-Orthodox, these minute divergences have become a source of significant economic clout and control for the leadership of small cults. Thus one group of Hassidim does not recognize the kashrut validity of the seal of another. Among some modern Orthdox the suggestions has been raised that Schneersonite-slaughtered meat (that is Lubavitch) should be declared non-kosher since many Schneersonites espouse a theology of messianism that violates the Jewish tradition. Hindus, I believe, do have regulations concerning the use of plates and cooking vessels restricted to one use as opposed to another, similar to the traditional Jewish use of milk and meat utensils. However I do not believe they observe a further seasonal distinction as well. Thus for the holiday of Passover yet another set of utensils and plates must be employed that have had no contact with leavened foods. There is a procedure for rendering such utensils ritually pure, but it is arduous and many simply buy additional sets or shut their house up for the duration and repair to the Catskills. In addition to food taboos there is the related question of purity regulations in general which do affect the preparation of food. Most interpretations of kashrut allow for gentiles to prepare the food as long as it is under the supervision of a a properly trained observant Jew. However within Hinduism and Shiite Islam (particularly as practised in neighboring Iran) the strict interpretation of their elaborate purity regulations can restrict food preparation to members of one's caste or religious community. The Indian Untouchables are a well-known example, but at times in Shiite Iran comparable restrictions against the use of Jewish or Christian kitchen staff prevailed as well. Imagine the affect upon the Euro-American food industry if similar caste and class restrictions were imposed in their kitchens.

Thanks to all. My wife now has all the suggestions.

SP's statements: 1) First of all, you stilll need the basis for impurity to define "unclean to you" or else it is ambiguous. So you would still need to probe why they chose animals without clovenly hooves. Or fish without fins and gills? I defy you to find me yeshiva or Jewish afterschool programs anywhere in the world that make the distinction between dirty and unclean. If there is any distinction left after you get to the source of what "unclean" means. Regardless of what the torah says in specific (which is ambiguous at best,) from my own yeshiva and talmud torah experience, it is taught as dirty. And they encourage you to look down on people who eat pork and shellfish or mix milk with meat. 2) The issue isn't freedom or no freedom, the issue is doing things based on the truth instead of it based on theology. Nobody is forced to go to Jewel Bakko or to like it. And if you don't go, or if you go and don't like it, nobody is turning you into a pillar of salt. Re: 1 I make the distinction between what the text originally states, however complex and ambiguous, and whatever interpretations and meanings have been placed upon it. You are correct that the fine points are lost in most schools and that the distinctions between ritual uncleanness, physical dirt, and moral impurity are consequently lost. The role of the pig in the long history of Christian-Jewish-Muslim polemical art and literature is directly relevant to the contemporary approaches in Jewish education. A very well-developed theme in early modern German Christian art was the Jew-pig, or the Jew riding upon the pig. In some medieval Christian polemics against Islam, Muhammad was supposed to have been killed by a pack of pigs. If the details of these traditions interest anyone, I can send a variety of references to a scholarly literature that would deepen our understanding. Re: 2 I take a far more agnostic approach to truth and theology. Having studied more claims to truth from a wide variety of traditions -- theological and anti-theological -- over the millennia than I would care to admit, I can't arrogate to myself the confidence that I always know what is what. However whenever someone claims to know the truth, I make sure to know where I put my wallet. The most consistent element in most theological systems is a claim to knowing the truth. Modesty and uncertainty in the face of what is unknowable -- and sometimes not worth knowing -- would be a far better instinct. By the way, Lot's wife was not turned into a pillar of salt because she ate swine, though all that salt might be good for preparing a Smithfield ham.

A propos R Schonfeld's astute comment. One person's freedom is another's anarchy. The distinction between the two while certainly significant is not equally clear to all. By the way I just checked my friendly local concordance to the Bible, in this case to the King James version of the so-called Old and New Testaments. Despite the fact that the NT is about 1/4 the size of the OT, it contains more references to "swine": 13 as opposed to 6. Without going into the details of each citation, it appears that the derogatory character of the animal in the OT is not reversed in the NT. The NT references appear in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. This usage suggests that the Jewish aversion to the animal continued for quite some time in early Christianity. Off hand, I can't remember the precise date of the final translation and redaction of the Gospels, but I think it is complete by early 2nd century.

In fact, the Hanafi legal tradition, historically dominant in Turkey, defines the alcohol that is prohibited differently from the Hanbali tradition, dominant in Saudi Arabia for example. As I indicated wine is consistently prohibited, but other forms of fermented alcholic beverage may or may not be. With regard to SteveP's assumption that people prefer freedom, that is an exceptional modern assumption, historically, most people want to know what is good and seek knowledge of what is good from authority. The existence of eGullet's valued food critics and the respect that they engender suggests that those who consult this list want to be told whether or not Jewel Bako is better than any other sushi bar. Freedom would mean complete indifference to the comments of the cognoscenti. The notion that pig is "dirty" is absent from the Leviticus and Deuteronomy statements. The term in both Lev 11:7 and Deut 14:8 is TA-ME, usually translated not as "dirty", but as "unclean". The full statement is "unclean to you", meaning not absolutely unclean for all, but specifically for you. Such usage should be set in the context of notions of ritual purity and impurity that were commonplace in all ancient cults. Cut to run out and move the cars away from the snow plow.

sacred food requirements and sacred food taboos are both part of a larger world view that marvels at the mystery of human life and its sustenance. How does the food we eat ensure that we will live.

For what it was worth, I did try to expand the discussion into a general discussion of food -- as well as the related question of sex -- taboos. However the only points of my contribution that seem to have prompted a response concerned the discussion of kashrut. With regard to Steve Plotnicki's question concerning the consistency of Jewish kashrut observance. As a norm, well into the 19th century, Jews accepted the notion that they should observe kashrut, even though some did not. However the details of what kashrut actually required could vary, as I have indicated. The first sustained critique of the binding nature of kashrut as a norm from a self-avowed Jewish perspective developed with the Reform movement that first arose among German Jews in the early 19th century. Among other aspects of traditional Judaism, they also raised the idea of abandoning circumcision. Now with regard to the larger question of food taboos in general. We have to rid ourselves of a number of anachronistic assumptions. We assume that the absence of ritual prohibitions and requirements makes a religion more appealing. That may be true for some today, but it has not been so in the past. Christianity's abandonment of many Jewish rituals was in fact much slower and more complex than some have here suggested. While Paul opened the door it took more than a century for others to follow him. The very important Christian community of Antioch practised a from of Judaeo-Christianity well into the late second century. The even greater success of Islam (success here defined as rapidity of rise and wide-spread success -- as Fat Guy noted), a religion with almost as involved a set of food taboos as Judaism, proves that point. Furthermore Islam proscribed wine, and most Muslims extend that prohibition to alcohol in general. Just as in Judaism so in Islam, there are a number of significant variations. There are four accepted traditions of legal interpretation within Islam. The strictest, and before the rise of petro-dollars, the least influential, was the Hanbali school that forbade all forms of alcohol. That is the practice of Saudi Arabia today. Up until the 20th century, the most influential in the Middle East was the Hanafi school, dominat in the Ottoman Empire. Their attitude toward alcohol was different. They accepted a beer-like drink, called, I believe buz-bag. Today some Hanafi jurists also accept the drinking of scotch. On the other hand the Quranic prohibition against wine is universal among all traditions. The practise is more complicated. Egypt, a country whose dominant Islamic tradition clearly prohibits beer, has a market for beer much larger than its Christian population (about 10 to 15%) could support. During Ramazan -- the month-long day-time fast -- the proof of this important Muslim market is revealed through the decline of beer sales throughout the country. Hindus also practise prohibition -- one reason why I have never been able to take Indian beer too seriously. Hindu food taboos are the most complicated of all since they vary from caste to caste. The underlying point is that such taboos do function as social markers, distinguishing one group from another. Identifying and distinguishing one group from another is not the same as segregating one group from another. What characterizes one as opposed to another is how one chooses to follow and interpret a particular practise. This may or may not have much to do with theology. On this point the practise and theology of the followers of Schneerson, popularly known as Lubavitcher Hassidim, are fundamentally in conflict. The dominant trend in the theology of modern-day Schneersonanity is very close to Christianity. Their notions about the messianism of their late leader denies deep-rooted Jewish traditions opposed to a dead messiah and the possibility of the specific resurrection of such a human being. On the other hand their observance of food taboos is among the strictest of any modern Jewish sect and is thus the closest to segregation. I think that Christianity's record with regard to food taboos is much more complicated than has been here assumed. Particularly before the period of the Reformations, that is the rise of reforming movements within and without the Roman Catholic church around the sixteenth century, the number of fast days and their requirements were much more onerous. Vatican II was but the last in a series of changes in Catholic food restrictions.

This is going to be a long-response that I hope will help the discussion and set it in a wider historical and philosophical context. Please be forbearing of its length. A lot of ingenuity has been expended trying to discover a rationale for the origins of food taboos. Food taboos are practically universal, but since the precise object of the taboo is so variable, a consistent explanation has proved illusive. A health reason, genetic intolerance, economic accident, migration pattern, climate change, or ethical qualm may explain one particular set of taboos, but by no means all. The origins of a particular taboo may be as arbitrary as the division between the big-ender and little-ender egg-eaters, according to Jonathan Swift. It is importance to recognize that a taboo is not the same as a preference. A taboo prohibits certain behavior, but it does not necessarily mandate another. Thus consumption of lard is a taboo in Islam and Judaism, but the use of olive oil, though a practical response, is not a requirement. This is the difference between food restrictions and food distinctions. French food is different from Italian food, not because their different cultures -- defined as religion, language, tradition, local agriculture and produce -- PROHIBITED the use of one or another ingredient, but because their different cultures encouraged the use of what each distinctively had in abundance. That acknowledged, food -- as well as sex -- taboos do play an important cultural role and as a universal phenomenon invite similar interrogation and understanding. First, they recognize an attempt to control and understand a mystery of the body at the core of human existence and survival. Food like sex involves the ingestion and expulsion, through our varied orifices, of solids and fluids. Without this interactive process, life would cease. A human would die if s/he failed to eat, drink, digest, defecate, and urinate. Human survival as a distinct entity has required the mingling of male and female fluids and solids in order, through intercourse and pregnancy, to create and expel a human life from the body. Even in the era of test-tube babies and cloning, the same fundamental ingredients, sperm and ovum, and the same environment, the female womb, are required to create life. The development of artificial insemination and artificial wombs are still dependent upon the original corporeal model. The major difference is the method of mingling and the process by which the fertilized egg enters the womb. The end result has remained remarkably similar. In order for us to maintain individual and collective life, we have through nature and culture accumulated ways -- some easier than others -- of making the process of ingestion as pleasurable as possible. Accompanying these methods is a complex of super-structures through which we try to come to grips with the bizarre mysteries of human life and existence. We don't simply take things for granted and mindlessly fress and fuck to our heart's content and capacity, but rather we cultivate methods by which we do this, socially and transcendentally, in the best possible way. How do we define the best possible way? We place these methods within an immediate social network as well as a within a transcendental cosmic framework. In other words, we try to connect these actions in ways consistent with what the people around us are doing as well as in ways that help us understand and explain the origins and destiny of life. After all it is our very life that these activities provide and sustain. And we don't like to treat life and its sustenance, lightly. Most of us take it seriously, at times too seriously perhaps. I have noted the two contexts through which we construct the rationales or super-structures through which we try to understand life, one is the social and the other is the transcendental. For most of human experience these have been inextricably linked. That is, one's social existence, i.e. family, village, community, language, etc. is situated within some larger understanding of the cosmos that justifies and indeed sanctifies the mundane and daily. Over the long-haul, humans crave the kind of explanation and understanding that justifies and organizes the chaos that surrounds us. Sanctification allows such justification to acquire a meaning more permanent than the dust to dust of existence. One aspect through which we define our social existence is identity and familiarity. We may crave the new -- a relatively modern inclination in human experience -- but we can only fully experience and appreciate it, if we have a familiar basis for comparing and understanding it. We achieve this by establishing markers of identity that we can share with a common community. These markers are drawn from a host of physical and psychological elements, of which the most important are probably: language, dress, and food. Thus food becomes part of the process by which we establish and sustain a familiar identity. The key question in this process returns us to the dichotomy posed at the beginning, the difference between food distinctions and food restrictions. What are the circumstances in which a food preference becomes a food taboo? Food preferences become taboos as a group increasingly feels that its distinctive identity is worth preserving and must be maintained against an outside challenge. The transcendental meaning of food in ancient culture is best revealed through the ubiquitous cult of the sacrifice. More than prayer this was the means by which humans demonstrated their fealty to the deity. Cultic sacrifice reflected the particular beliefs and identity of its adherents. In the ancient Near East as agriculture increasingly displaced the earlier hunter-gatherer economy, cultic sacrifice was also one of the few regular opportunities for the consumption of flesh. Most of the diet consisted of grains, fruits, and dairy, flesh was expensive and rare. The expense arose not only from the loss that slaughtering would create for dairy and wool production, but also because of the great cost of constructing and maintaining ovens. We live in an age of profligate energy consumption, a phenomenon only a few centuries old. Even into the 18th and 19th centuries, most homes lacked an oven necessary for baking and roasting. Typically in early modern Europe the local baker acted as a communal kitchen-oven for the community. Thus cooking of heat-intensive foods, such as meat, was a shared social activity. In the ancient world the consumption of flesh would be part of a larger community activity typically linked to cultic sacrifice. To consume that flesh was to accept that cult. If for various political, social, economic, or religious reasons, one rejected that cult, one would have to reject that flesh. Thus flesh consumption in the ancient world represented a particularly acute mark of identity. Food taboos were a remarkably efficient means of maintaining collective identity and distinctiveness. Of course the intensity of such taboos ebbed and flowed over time. If one studies the evolution of kashrut over time and place its details are revealingly variable. Biblical kashrut is much more easy-going than early rabbinic kashrut roughly 200 c.e. (i.e. the time of the Mishnah) as opposed to later rabbinic kashruth, roughly 600 c.e. (i.e. the time of the Talmud). Clearly in the aftermath of the fall of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 c.e. and the collapse of the Judaean commonwealth, an increasingly complex means of maintaining social identity and cohesiveness were deemed necessary by the rabbinic authorities, who were the only elite left standing to claim leadership. An example of this concerns the regulation of milk and meat. It is clear that the biblical prohibition in no way restricted the consumption of chicken and milk. The mishnaic discussion makes it clear that eminent authorities were equally tolerant, but later talmudic discussions prohibited it on the grounds that the chicken might look like beef or lamb and could lead the onlooker to assume the taboo was being violated. This notion of appearance and apparent violation is key since it reveals how important the taboo is in establishing social standards and markers. In the absence of a political entity, such social markers assumed an ever greater importance in maintaining identity. Chicken and milk suggest an increasing rigidification of kashrut over time, but there are also significant differences over space. Wine has been a revealing marker. While most observant Jews of Eastern European descent drink only kosher wine -- variously defined as either Jewish-processed wine or "cooked" wine -- for generations equally pious and observant Italian Jews have no such taboo. Much of these and other differences in the details of kashrut reflect in fact local customs and the different rulings of well-established rabbinic authorities in one community as opposed to another. In the modern period the opportunities for inconsistency and apparent hypocrisy are rife. The late 18th-early 19th century movement for Jewish enlightenment and emancipation had as its goal the integration of Jews into western European society. Their slogan was be a Jew at home and a man on the street. In eastern Europe this process arose later and with greater tension. This distinction between home and street led to the gradual acceptance of inconsistency of dress and diet. A skull-cap might be worn in the private home, certainly in the synagogue and place of study, but not on the street. A strict diet would be maintained in the home, but compromises might be made in the gentile public in order to ease social integration. The North American Jewish community is heir not only to the compromises and inconsistency that emerged among western European Jews, but also to the relatively greater adherence to tradition that characterized the Jews of the Romanov empire. The reemergence of a Jewish political entity in the twentieth century with the establishment of the state of Israel has meant that the particular social and political circumstances that contributed to the rigidification of kashrut among Palestinian Jews have disappeared, but two thousand years of custom does not disappear over night. While this argument has given particular attention to the issue of Jewish taboos, I could give examples of similar trends among Muslims, and I suspect, among Hindus as well.

I hope the new Marks&Sparks doesn't drop the chicken tikka and freshly-squeezed oj. That was my on-the run London meal of choice, pre Pret a Manger.

I ate at Cafe Atlantico about four years ago and definitely second the recommendations. Can't remember the details of the menu, but my duck was excellent, the signature cocktails, great fun and the ambience very alluring.