ajay

My sister is traveling in Australia, and she recentley reported that she had tried a sparkling Shiraz. Apparently, it is quite sweet, though in her case it was served with cheese, and not as a dessert wine. Are members familiar with this style of wine? If so, are there certain producers/years that are worthy of particular note? Where in NYC would I find such wine? Also, do members think this sparkling shiraz is in any way related to Iniskilin's (sp?) production of Cabernet Franc dessert wines? PS. have members tried the aforementined cabrenet franc from insikilin? Danielle, the sommellier at Lespinasse spoke very highly about them [ I must confess that I have a bit of a sweet tooth], but i have not yet had the opportunity to take in any.

Beachfan, your experience at Les Loges was exactly what my mom was hoping for at Troisgros Gagnaire and Arpege. However, we were never able to elicit a proposed vegetarian menu in advance. I noted briefly in the Lyon thread that most of the offerings that my mother received were garnishes of main courses thrown together with little consideration of how they stand on their own. Your experience is more in line with what we were expecting at that level of dinning. We gave each of the restaurants plenty of advance notice regarding the vegetarian diet. However, in every case, they were not prepared to provide a meal equal in caliber for her. So what's your secret? Are there any other restaurants in France (at any price point) that you (or perhaps more accuratley, your wife) have found to be vegetarian friendly. ps. if you have the time, I'd love to hear about your i.e. non-veg meal at Les Loges.

Please forgive my ignorance, but are any of the wines on the list drinkable now, or would they require prolonged cellaring?

Beachfan, I'm quite curious as to this vegetarian menu proposal. We didn't think to ask for one, and as a general rule, the vegetarian in our part was served mostly garnishes from the meat courses--some of which were excellent, but many of which were quite pedestrian--i.e. the vegetarian received the l'Astrance's avacado 'ravioli' with avacado cubes in place of the crab. THe result, natrually was a dish that didn't make much of a culinary statement, though the avacado was very fresh. In short, based on a single trip that included multiple three star experiencces (plus Astrance), we have become convinced that vegetarian haute cuisine is essentially an oxymoron.

FG, Was Assimov's (sp?) use of the phrase "midtown french dinosaur" one he got from you? THe attribution was not quite clear. Consider discussing if you feel it's appropriate (here or elsewhere in a separate thread) your relationship with Asimov--I seem to recall you reading that your interest in Grand Sichuan for instance was piqued by Assimov.

There does appear to have been some price creep. When we were at L'Astrance, the suprise menu was 76 euros. It included not only a bottle of the vin suprise, but when that ran out, they simply started pouring from another bottle. THe price also included water dessert wine, and to our amazement the apertifs as well. We thought that the staff mereley forgot to include these items in the bill but were told that the water and the wine were included and that the apertifs had been gifted to us. Scottf, The menu you had sounds delicious. If the quality of the ingredients and the skill of preparatoin were the same as when I was there early this spring, I'd ppay 200 euros for two for this meal. Someone on another board mentioned that it is all but inevitable that a great restaurant like l'astrance would experience price hikes, expansion, and/or a drop in standards. In my view, if they were going to do anything, I think I prefer the price hike. Getting a seat was a tortuous process, but the experience was wonderful. I'd rather pay a little more than lose what to my mind is one of the best and most exciting dinning experiences in Paris--at any price. Reading between the lines a bit, I get the feeling that you were not similarly floored by l'astrance. Would you care to elaborate on your orignial post?

That's the spirit Mogsob. I had a similarly lousy experience my ffirst time at babbo. But the second time, we sat at the bar, and it was as if it were a totally different place. The mint love letters had zing, we got an amuse bouche and petite fours (things that were not provided when we had a table late on Friday night), and we had the opportunity to sample wines before settling on one. I found the mint love letters to be particularly excellent, but then again, I did not try lamb or fish. I've been eager to go baack, but thus far, I've had trouble enlisting other diners to join me; they're put off by offal.

where exactly on 7th ave is Mirchi? I'd like to give it a try.

Bux, I for one still await a full report on your experience at Bras; from your comments above, you sound a bit disappointed, or at least less enthusiastic than I expected. What happened? Was going so close to the opening a bad idea in retrospect?

Suvir, Your post is rich in detail and I couldn't hope to respond to it all. I agree with your points that some Indian foods should not have added sugar or cream because they simply don't taste good that way. Certainley adding sugar to aloo ghobi or rajma would not appeal to my palate, though my dad prefers almost all of his dishes with lots sugar (and spice)--it's a result of the kind of food they made when he was growing up. I also concur with your pessimistic evaluation of most of the chutneys served around town; by and large they are sweet glop. The thing I most often find missing is enough sourness from the tamarind. I don't doubt that there are tamarind (we say amlee) chutneys out there with plenty of fire and spice, but my experience with them is that they are generally sweet and sour, with other chutneys notably the green--either made from cilantro, mint or some combination--or the garlic chutneys provide the heat when eating street foods. As to street foods, I don't eat them often in New York, though for bothh street foods and desserts, I am partial to Rajbhog in Jackson Heights. But based on your reccomendations, I have had some luck with dimple, though I didn't care for the chole--maybe it was an off night. thanks, as always for your excellent insight and ability to situate any one comment within the broad scope of indian cuisine.

Having not eaten at mirchi, I don't want to comment on their practices. But, in some indian dishes, esepcailly from the Gujrat region (but also Bombay because Bombay contains a large portion of Gujratis, and everyone knows shold be in that state ) contain sizable amounts of sugar. For example, pathra (sic.) is dish that has a bit of sweetness that mingles with the spice. (they do pathra pretty well at Dimple, by the way). Other meals are often based around sugar--e.g. poori shrikhand and aloo subzi (another variation on this is a substitution of Mango pulp, preferrably made from fresh mangoes, for the shrikhand). While street foods like tava bhaji, which I only get to eat at weddings for some reason probably should not contain sweetness, other dishes like samossa, bhel, wada pav, ussal pav and etc are all served with sweet and hot chutneys. So the point I wish to make here is that while lack of sugar/sweetness may well be a good thing at Mirchi, I would be careful about such generalizations when discussing Indian food.

Perhaps, though it might be somewhat repetitive, we should establish a cognate thread that points out restaurants that are particualry solicituous or at least tolerant of solo diners. Cefe Boloud has been mentioned on this thread. Are there others?

Mogsob, Lol The Supreme Court has already perverted and distorted equal protection doctrine well beyond its intended shape in the Bush v Gore case--I see no reason left not to push the envelope. There I had to mention Bush and Gore It feels good to get that off my chest [Wow the use of these emoticons is kind of amusing :wow: (and addictive )]

Where else? Indeed, Turkey (except for the slight portion on the other side of the straits) and all of the other states in the "Middle East" are technically in Asia. Are there any middle eastern restaurants on the list?

Cabrales, Forgive me for being presumptuous, but I wonder if you might not be happier and (less intellectually depressed) if you were to visit your old favorites a bit more often. You seem to have found a handful of restaurants that really do hit the mark for you. So perhaps that's where the marginal utility of further fine dining is to be found. Perhaps it's just that you only post about the new and interesting so that we that don't know you well are under the impression that you don't return often to your favorite places. In which case please excuse the erroneous comments, and you owe us some posts on how those experiences compared to the newer places like Hiramatsu and Herme that you have told us so much about

gentlemen, Could you please elaborate a bit on these wines. They sound interesting, and though I'm unlikely to ever acquire any of the bottles mentioned thus far, I would like to know more--if only so I can live, or more accuratley drink, vicariously through your tasting notes.

Has anyone noticed any differences between the corn one encounters here in the states and that found in India. I feel the corn I get in season is much sweeter and less fiberous than the corn we used to find in Bombay. I greatly enjoy roasted corn with chaat masala (and lime), but sometimes I feel that the combination doesn't work quite as well with the sweeter corn. I normally prefer to eat it boiled. Somehow, I've never been too pleased with my experiences with corn curry, though our family sticks to one preparation. Perhaps we'll try recipes posted on this board during this season.

Robert (Brown), In what way do you think that "health, calories etc" should be taken into account when dinning? And how much should such characteristics be weighted? So you think that if one was was concerned with health calories fats and so on, Tokyo is a better dinning spot, but if not, Paris (or France, at least) still reigns supreme? I'm fortunate enough that my health does not make such considereations mandatory. Thus, I generally avoid them when dinning out for special occassions. Bux, My family and I visited l'astrance with a somewhat limited background in haute cuisine, and an even smaller background in traditional Fench cuisine (the latter was largely due to the fact that traditional french cuisine and restaurants do not cater that well to vegetarians). Yet, the entire party agreed that our lunch was exemplary, and arguably the best overall dinning experience we had in a journey that included several other three stars. I'm sure the some of the subtleties of Barbot's cooking and choice of ingredients simply passed us by unnonticed. But, we noticed that Barbot seemed to present a cuisine every bit as tasty and exciting as that we had enjoyed at l'Arpege the night before--except that he was not using the same ultra-luxe ingredients (though one dish did contain caviar) or extremely labor intensive preparations. Steve KIc's commentary on El Bulli's mango/passion raviolis has added insight to the avocado and crab ravioli served at l'Astrance, but the dish, as you and Patricia Wells both note is delicious, and it afforded the non-vegetarian members of our party with great pleasure and stimulated some curiosity without the benefit these insights. Indeed, even the vegetarian version of this dish (with quasi pureed avocado in place of the crab and a heavier amount of hazlenut? oil) was also excellent. The combination of the textures and their interplay with the oil was an intruiging and enjoyable sensation that wasn't present in quite the same way with the crab. Even after experiencing l'Astrance, and the wisdom of this board, not to mention haute cuisine in France and NYC, I'm not entirely clear on what other aspects of the cuisine of l'Astrance are "avant garde"--except for the ingredients and preparations I've discussed already. I would be grateful if you could expand on this topic for me. Of all the restaurants I tried in France, l'Astrance is the one to which I'm most eager to return. The maitre d' informed us that the chef prefers to take staggaires (sic) from other countries to gain insights into more diverse cuisines. Moreover, we were told the chef was planning a trip to India in the near future and our reccomendations on where to experience local, Indian cuisine were solicited. In short, I have a suspicion that Barbot has not fully refined his personal idiom of expression, and I hope to see how his cooking evolves.

SamanthaF, I speak no French, but I found reservationist to be as polite and understanding as that of any other french restaurant I've ever dealt with in english. That said, I suspect that the restaurant would probably prefer to have more French clients--the afternoon we went for lunch, all of the tables save one were filled with english speaking tourists. I think the management may hold the tables upstairs at lunch for French speakers. The day we went, one party was seated up there, but the other tables upstairs went empty. Yet, the management professed to be booked when my father tried to secure a reservation (he didn't realize that I had already gotten one).

Thnkart, Reservations are indeed very hard to come by at l'Astrance. However, my experience is in line with the rest of this foru,; if you manage to secure a reservation, you will enjoy it. The suprise tasting menu was principally seafood, with one meat dish. I'm sure if you requesst an all seafood menu they would be happy to oblige. As Bux has previously noted, the price of this menu (including wine, and in our case coffee and water) is 76 euros. The carte prices are as follows: 15-25 euros (appitzers), entrees 19-32 euros (with most around 25 euros) for the main course and 10 euros for dessert. The wine list is also exceptionally well priced; I don't have enough experience to determine the value of the list, but the prices are quite reasonable.

Simon, I think Snowmans may well be a chain within India; I have recall fonldy many trips to an ice cream store of the same name in Breachcandy, Mumbai. Perhaps these stores are unrelated, but I suspect not. I can't speak to Delhi (our souce for ice cream/junk in Delhi has always been Neerulas), but the Snowman in Mumbai is still open.

I second the sentiment, how about it, Mr. Bux?

At least twice during the summer, I visit Toronto, Canada for a mango fix. The import laws there are much more enlightened and one can easily find the alfonso that all upstanding Indians crave. Also available are chikoo and sitafur (sic.)--neither of which I can find with any regularty here in New York. Occasionally we buy the Honduran or other Latin American Mangoes. When ripe, they are pleasant, but they simply can't match the joy of eating the Alfonsos.

Suvir, Thanks for the excellent post; I trust you'll fill us in on Singapore eventually--I'm really looking forward to hearing about the cuisine there as it is a complete mystery to me. YOur post raises a couple of questions: 1. Are the Kwalitys channa related anyway to chola? The description sounds remarkably similar to the brown colored punjabi style chickpeas that I'm quite fond of, but the name kind of throws me. 2. I'd love some more information on the mushroom tikkas. On my admitedly limited experience in India, I haven't seen a wide utilization (in fact, hardly any) of mushrooms; most of my indian relatives can't stand mushrooms. So, I'm curious, what kind of mushrooms were used. Moreover, being a gujrati, I'm not sure exactly what the traditional tikka preparation is--most of the time I expereince tikka, it's chicken tikka. Where tikka simply mean normal tandoori chicken made with small pieces of breast that have no bones. Thus, I'd appreciate a description of the dish, and how exactly it differs (if at all) from the traditional tikka preparation. Finally, I'm a bit intruiged by the notion of youghurt in uupma. I believe in my family we use raava and water along with onions cilantro, cashews raisins green chilis and cilantro. I'm wondering what kind of change in the flavor is caused by the youghurt? Is it merely an extra creaminess? That would feel a bit out of character from the Indian food that I'm used to. Due to your high marks, I will try to check out Khyber again the next time I'm in Mumbai. I was quite young the last time I was there. I insited on eating a hamburger, and subsequently got sick to my stomach. I think it's time to forgive them, though I'm still a bit leery of eating meat prepared in restaurants while in India.

Margaret, thanks for an excellent post. Next time I am in the region, I will be sure to pay Mde Ibarboure a visit. I would like some further detail on your sweetbread dish. Is it common to serve sweetbreads with langoustines? I would think that this combination would simply be too rich, and perhaps heavy. There would undoubtely be some interesting textural stuff happenin. I'd appreciate some more info on this dish, and what you thought of it. Did it work? Do other members have any experience with the pairing of sweetbreads and langoustines, or shellfish in general?