Suzi Edwards

no one came :-(

just to confirm, we'll be there tonight at about 7:00pm. i'd give people my mobile number but it doesn't appear to be working.... there's a photo of us on here Suzi and Jack: they both have red hair so you can recognise us. we've both considerably fatter than we were then as we've just spent four days in new york eating for six. hopefully catch up with some people later :-)

oh my god. i am deeply impressed with you committment to food.

i went for the prestige and was stuffed. but somehow when the tarte tatin came out i managed to find another tummy somewhere. let us know how it was. i think i'm about due for a return visit so a reprot will tip me over the edge!

i'll say it again, i loved the show. but that said, my favourite tv moment of last year was wife swop's lizzie, so i have a track record of being a mean old, peeking through the fingers voyeur. "he always wanted to be a chef. he said "mam, i'm booking a ticket to the good food live show and i've going to meet gary rhodes" *cries with laughter*

anyone fancy an egullet trip to bonapartes? my favourite tv programme of the year. easily.

and they are fully booked tonight....arrrragh. they were fully booked when i turned up on sunday as well. looks like it's ramsey's dinners for me then.

The fact that restaurant magazine have managed to get together some of the big names for its awards gives the top50 a veneer of respectability. Nevertheless, from a methodological perspective the results are meaningless, because there is NO methodology. Therefore, when the Daily Mail report that Fat Duck is the 2nd best restaurant in the world they are basing their claims on what is essentially an unsound straw poll of 300 individuals who cannot be in a position to answer the question "what is the world's best restaurant", because, as everybody knows, the only answer is "I don't know, I haven't eaten in all of them". Consequently, the Daily Mail is perpetuating an untruth generated by Restarant Magazine's misleading (50 best restaurants in the world) choice of name for their feature. In fact, if it was called, "50 restaurants collated from a list of 300 foodie top 5s", I don't think there would be any argument here today. Of course, it sounds shit though, and I doubt it would tempt T.Keller to cross the Atlantic . oh yes. what he said. i wish i'd put it like that.

oooooh. that's just rained all over the pret salmon and egg wheat free sandwich i've just scarfed at my desk.

I don't see a disconnect, surely "most enjoyable/favourite" = best. Its not often that you'll hear someone say "I didn't enjoy it, and I would never return, but its the best restaurant in the world."

there's a disconnect between the criteria of the voting, most enjoyable/favourite and how the poll is reported in the media, best in the world 2004. still, it's the magazine's yearly piece of the publicity pie, so we shouldn't deny them that!

we're about on the 5th. our mini bar table is at 8:30pm. would love to meet for drinks before/after. malawry, i really want to hear how the new job is going!!!!!

i haven't thoroughly looked at the list yet, but i rememeber thinking last year that there was little change from the previous year. it strikes me that the top ten in things like this will change very little. i'd be more interested in a "best new restaurants" poll. strikes me that those long established places are just more likely to come out on top as more people have eaten in them and they have better brand recognition.

i think they need to get their publicity machine in order...it's a glaring omission IMHO.

gary, gary, gary. stop this, you're going to make me travel to leeds to eat there very soon with more posts like that one.

yay! we have a slightly crazy itinerary...as always... maybe drinks before we go to mini bar? anyone else up for that as well?

*laughs* glad to know i am so memorable. you met me at the pig pickin last year. i was an english girl last time i looked.

hurrah, hurrah, hurrah. am finally getting to eat here! what's the dress code here?

welcome to egullet dan. are you an islingtonite? moro has a nice sherry selection and isn't too far from lolas. well recommended.

welcom to egullet david, hopefully you can join gary as our "oop north correspondant"! lord knows i never venture out of zone one so it'll do me good to broaden my horizons :-)

hummm. i'm from the midlands. shush. don't tell anyone :-) birmingham has undergone fairly extensive regeneration recently. the city centre has been like a building site for years, but it reopened at the end of last year. there is now some pretty good shopping, selfriges and house of fraser spring to mind. i understand the HOF food hall is pretty special. it's also supposed to be pretty good for retail therapy. there's a hotel du vin in the centre, which will be a nice place to go if you like wine. my brother works in birmingham so let me get some ideas on restaurants and nice stuff to do from him. i can be quite withering about the midlands, but there is a fair amount to get up to these days. what sort of stuff do you generally like doing? i don't want to recommend anything that you'd hate...

i ate there last saturday but i'm away at the moment so i haven't had time to post about it. in short - the food wasn't quite as good as my first visit but i didn't see any evidence of slow or poor service and they were packed. looks like they've ironed the teething problems out. we had the five course tasting menu so i can't comment on the veg side of things. at least he's trying though, eh? the hightlight was a ballantine of foie gras, beautifully, classically and simply presented. low point was my raspberry souffle desert. jack took the left hand side of the menu, i took the other and he won. from memory we started with a watercress cream with frogs legs, jack had foie, i had smoked scallops with a really light raw asparagus salad, can't remember the fish, jack's lamb main was really, really good with at least two different preparations, but the pommes anna with my pigeon was crispy and delish. cheeses were a tad dry... jack said the coffee was great. i was too busy shovelling the mignardises down without him looking (there was *a lot* of negotiation attempted around these.) i can't remember a huge amount more but this is not a reflection on the restaurant, more on the fact that we were nursing terrible hangovers from the friday night. i still think this place is good value (39GBP for the tasting menu, although there was one suppliment for the lamb, i think) and look forward to going back.

i am here in bangalore! did you get my email?

(feel free to move this as i didn't eat at the kitchen table but this seems the most obviousl place for the post) I've made trip to Evanston twice now. Once to satisfy my curiosity, once to check if the first meal was a fluke. For me, Grant Achatz is the most important chef in the world at the moment. He's at that point of the bell curve where the inventiveness of molecular gastronomy meets emotionally and physically satisfying food and he nails both almost every time. I can forgive him the almost as the misses (and there have only been five out of all the dishes i have eaten) as food this thrilling and inventive doesn't come without experimentation. I don't need to be convinced about molecular gastronomy. However as a person who hates pigeon holes I kind of resent the term. Sure, the label helps me identify the restaurants I want to eat at, but more importantly it allows people to bracket Achatz, Blumenthal, Adria et al together without concern for the differences in their approach and food. For me, Adria is the mad, crazy alchemist determined to conjure gold out of tomatoes, Blumenthal the chemistry teacher who impresses you with his culinary flights of fancy while convincing you that molecular gastronomy the obvious next stage in the evolution of dining out. And then there's Achatz. To me his food is more emotional, on the plate no less inventive than Adria and Blumenthal, but deeply rooted in (to me) the intrinsic necessity of a cook: to sate an appetite yet to create food that people want to eat again. And in my case, again and again and again. I believe that everything we eat adds up to form your personal pantheon of food experience. As a former anorexic a tendency to fetishise food still remains. Memories of driving myself crazing sniffing the biscuit barrel yet denying myself the cookie makes me desire food that smells great. Equally, huge portions daunt me and I would rather eat 15 different single bites than one large portion. As someone who has taught herself a basic understanding of the principals of a number of different cuisines, I love food that takes something I've cooked myself and subverts it. I believe that food can evoke memory more than anything and so i like to eat food that reminds me of other food I have eaten. Yet I crave the new and exciting and love nothing more than trying something for the first time. Achatz satisfies all of these personal needs. And so onto the food and restaurant. The room and the service are relaxed and informal. The room reminds me of a log cabin, it's kind of low ceilinged, with a real warmth to it. The staff are having a blast and this translates into a fabulous experience. I've eaten here alone both times and I am almost loath to go back with friends as talking to the waiters about the food and wine is a damn sight more interesting that most dinner conversations. I’m not going to talk about every dish I’ve eaten here, there are too many for that, but instead I'll concentrate on my favorite bits. Cheese n Cracker, Salad, Virtual Shrimp Cocktail, Chicharrones con Salsa. Some might see these dishes as curiosities but to me they are some of the most entertaining, whimsical and delicious on the menu. Cheese n Cracker is a crisp parcel filled with Wisconsin cheddar. I joked to my waiter that I didn't think Americans knew how to make cheese, but this was stellar. A molten, oozing single bite of great cheese wrapped in the cracker. Salad is a granita of different lettuces (juiced and then frozen and shaved) dressed with oil and vinegar. The inventiveness of the execution should be enough by itself, but it was perfectly dressed as well, something that many traditional restaurants can't pull off with real lettuce. It came at the half way point in the TDF and was a perfect palate cleanser and it also regirded my loins for the second "half" of the meal. Achatz has cleverly created a long and involved tasting menu that has phases, doesn't throw all the cool and inventive stuff at you at first and that is perfectly paced. Virtual Shrimp Cocktail is an atomizer that you mist onto your tongue; didn’t work for me, reminded me of my asthma medication, but the flavor was there, even though the delivery mechanism failed. North Dakota goose (foie gras, roasting goose aromas) Rib eye of Prime Beef (spring lettuce, morels, smoked tongue) Tapioca of Roses (raspberries, clove, cream) These are the dishes where smell really comes into play and Achatz's desire to deliver new ways of experiencing the food and smell are apparent. The goose is served with a small dish on the side full of aromatics and a hot stone is placed on the dish (with a warning not to eat it) that releases the aroma. The rib eye of smoked beef comes with a small beaker over the beef and tongue, the beaker is filled with smoke so you experience the real hit of the smoking as you eat. The tapioca of roses is served in a plastic tube with a single red rose and three warm raspberries on the plate. The first dish I was served at El Bulli came with a rose, but I found the experience somewhat embarrassing as we'd literally just sat down and were being commanded to sniff. Achatz saves this until the end, so you're more relaxed and happy to let yourself do what he says. Last time I ate here one diner grasped the rose in his teeth and was grinning like a schoolboy. Not something I saw at more formal places like El Bulli or Gagnaire. Tempura of Gulf Shrimp (vanilla, cranberry, Meyer lemon) Black Truffle Explosion, Confit of Melysol Melon and Fricassee of English Peas (cured goose, ramps, pearls of eucalyptus). the tempura is the most delicious thing I have ever eaten, beating Ramsey's Tarte Tatin by a very long way. It's not the most inventive thing on the menu but it's made of things that i love (prawns, vanilla, fried food) delivered in a new way (speared on a vanilla bean) and eaten by lifting the bean upwards and lowering the tempura into your mouth. People look almost religious as they throw their heads back and eat. The temptation to snatch it from the hands of those who closed their eyes to do this was strong, but I managed to resist. The Confit of Melysol melon is Achatz's take on that old faithful melon and Parma ham. Melon is balled into almost nerd sized balls, arranged and then covered with the thinnest slice of prosciutto that's flashed under the grill until it becomes transparent. this dish works in so many different ways; you've had it before but never like this, the melon is the sweetest you've ever eaten and it looks like the candy you had as a child. Simply stunning. And the fricassee of English peas. What a spring like dish! To me it's a riff on the peas and mint thing, but here the mint is replaced with eucalyptus pearls (gelled balls flavoured with eucalyptus oil) that mimic the size, shape and mouthfeel of the peas, but with a surprising flavor. There's an erotic nature to trio that I don't want to overemphasize, but needs mentioning as so few restaurants deliver this. It's not seedy erotic, more the frisson of flirting when you know you shouldn't and playfulness that comes from being physically and mentally stimulated. I don't know if it's intentional or just imagined by me, but the delivery of the food (frozen hibiscus lollipops to suck, tempura with vanilla beans allowing you to close your eyes and throw back your head (still can't stop thinking about this dish) charred pineapple and smoked salmon speared so you lean in, as if for a kiss and, on my last visit, a tube of foie gras) coupled with the low lighting and drapes on the ceiling, makes this a really intimate place to eat. If you live in Chicago and you haven't been, go. If you live anywhere else, get on a flight and go.

ahhh. cake. you've sold it to me. am offically planning a trip to leeds. loads of questions to follow :-)