mugen

I'm not sure if this is serious, if it is, it's pretty ironic that you're posting this statement to a food board. So it's ok for a select few to enjoy food, but if it spreads too far, well, then the allure is lost and it's ruined? Curious. I have to concede both, on the face of it - it's a delicate point to try to argue without crossing into either elitism or hopeless contradictions. I'll try, anyway: I'd say that my interest in food has always been a private one - I never publicly make a point of it, it isn't a topic for discussion with friends, etc. For me, I love fine food, but at least as much of the pleasure is in the art and dedication of producing the finest example of something as it is in the actual consumption of the food. It's a form of something of a geeky intellectual pleasure that extends to anything that is fine, crafted and made with passion - cars, suits, watches, whatever. I like artisanal breads - they taste great, it pleases me no end to know that they are made by a guy who has dedicated his working life to perfecting every aspect of them, and they're a rich seam for geeky reading into the differences between flours, seasonal variations, amylase, starch gelling and retrogradation, etc. Food in popular culture seem to mainly be the latest object and expression of aspirations; a token of supposed status and urbane sophistication that, I hope, we'll come in time to group with 1970s dinner parties. As that greater popular attention to and expectation of food has translated into practice, it has done so crudely: in shades of what weinoo said, it has done so in forms like McDonalds thinking it necessary to inform me that the hamburger patty is from 100% pure-breed cattle; supermarkets that private-label bread should be 'slow-rise, hand-crafted sourdough'; or local cafes identifying the providence of every item of food on the menu (as though the notion that food has a source is a novel thing; as though, in the past, food had no providence and spontaneously came into existence - that the fact that the food was produced on a farm and that farm has a name imbues anything produced there with superlative qualities). The result is as Annabelle described it: it is tedious and dull to be confronted with this silly fad - with the apparent need to know and to demonstrate knowledge and discriminating taste in food and restaurants, and its reflection in the apparent need for all food to be capable of being described with prolix, hyphenated descriptions that denote its quality - everywhere.

I've had enough of food, in general, because of the excessive, inane, popular obsession with it: cooking shows, competitions, books, fads, dining and preferences as proof of status, etc. It seems to me that a decade or two ago, it was possible to inconspicuously be a gourmet; now it seems hardly an exaggeration to think that I could walk on to a building site and find that tradesmen have traded ribald jokes for discussions of how to achieve perfect souffles or chocolate fondants. Food permeates every aspect of popular culture, and it's tedious.

Watch UK Masterchef (any of the variants: amateur, professional or celebrity) - it's a serious cooking show/competition/culinary institution, and it eschews all of those elements that you've identified as making American reality TV an exaggerated, scripted, excessively commercialised, dramatic farce.

I love and drink a variety of teas - the current stock includes teas from Ceylon, Assam, and Darjeeling; Gyokuro, Russian Caravan, English Breakfast, Earl Grey, Sencha, Gunpowder, and Silver Needles - but none can compare to the rich intensity of a perfectly pulled espresso.

Too skinny? She looks the best that she has in a decade, and she'll be much healthier for it, as well. Let me guess: you would prefer that she be overweight so as to serve as an inane excuse (by the term, 'voluptuous' - the proper meaning of which has nothing to do with size and which, in any case, Nigella had vastly exceeded) for millions for women who can't be bothered to maintain their weight. Seriously ...

There wasn't really all that much comedy in the others' dishes - they were somewhere between gimmicks and props as after-thoughts (placing a hat over the rabbit - really?) - so I would have found it difficult to afford the 'comedy' much weight (relative to the substance of the dish itself) in the marking. I would have selected Simmonds over Gillan, to then (given that Simmonds didn't answer the brief at all) leave it to the judges to exclude Simmonds for failing to answer the brief.

Haha indeed. The blurb describes Tom Aitkens as a new entrant. I thought that he appeared last year ... ?

It's even more inappropriate in a fine dining restaurant, because they're one of the very last places where some sort of vestigial decorum is expected to hold. I don't care if someone rarely has the chance to attend fine dining; having to see him photographing every item makes the whole thing declasse for other diners like having to watch him licked the jus from his knife with relish, just to make sure that he was extracting every last atom of value from the precious experience. Meh. it's my food. If I want to commission an artist to paint a portrait of it for me, what's the big deal? Do it at home. At a restaurant, 'Meh. it's my food' doesn't hold, unless you're so utterly self-absorbed that you think that your table constitutes a perfectly sealed little bubble of reality, within which you have a divinely-granted right to do as you please: to photograph, answer calls, speak as loudly as you will, or whatever.

Excellent - love the series, and it's always fascinating to see the intensity of competition and chefs who are redoubtable in their own kitchens made to look, well, anything but that.

I'd love to see more restaurants ban cameras, though the trend is firmly against me. It is absolutely ridiculous to watch, as tables are served, every person at the table pull out a smartphone (well, more accurately, lift it from where it had been prominently left on the table) and start memorialising the dish, as though it is the most momentous thing to have happened in their lives to date (it probably is), and as though anyone on Facebook actually pays the slightest attention to their preening, aspirational posts about such-and-such restaurant they've attended (I'm more certain here: they don't). Every time I see it, it infuriates me. It makes me want to throw a carafe and scream, "It's not a new-born child; it's a fucking fondant, for chrissakes. What sort of moronic, vacuous existences do you people live!?" /rage

I can't tell whether you're selectively reading the sentence, so that you're entirely ignoring the qualification "if the choice results in costs to the rest of society", or you do in fact think that your freedom shouldn't be bounded at all, no matter how much it might harm or cost others. Which is it?

You'll forgive me if your welcome sounds contrived or as a way of intimating juniority to your length of membership or number of posts. The second point is deliberately obtuse: I don't know why you're at egullet if your interest in fine food is so limited or your palate so crude that you actually can't or won't distinguish between 3,000 calories in an exceptionally well executed bistro meal with foie gras and 3,000 calories in a Big Mac, large fries and a Coke. As for the third, I don't claim to know you, but what you feed your children is my concern if I have to directly or indirectly bear the costs of your choices. I derive not the slightest benefit from you feeding your children badly, so if that is the choice that you make, it is entirely in my interests to see that the government prevents you from doing so, because it vitiates the risk that I will have to bear the social costs of you doing so. Again: what an excellent subject you've chosen for a red-blooded expression of your American liberties - the freedom to feed yourself and your children bad food.

Err, what?

As has already been pointed out, that's only a fair expectation to the extent that your choices do not ultimately impose costs on society. If you choose to feed your children burgers (... a righteous proof and the best possible exercise of your liberty ) and that directly (Medicare or increased claims via private insurance) or even indirectly (seating and fuel costs on aircraft) costs others, I can't see any reason why you should be indulged.

No one 'needs' a double bacon cheeseburger or even a plain old 'cheese and beef puck between two slices of whitebread' kind of cheeseburger. No one 'needs' cheesecake. I mean, a slice of cheesecake every now and then--or, yeah, a bacon burger--isn't going to ruin your grand plans of not dying at sixty years of age, but maybe you'd be best off not having it at all. Ever. Drawing a line in there somewhere, where, oh, now it's just become excessive, we can't let people do that ... I'm not a fan of that. You draw the line there but plenty of people would draw it at the cake. I get where you're coming from. Especially in lower socioeconomic areas, some people do make poor choices. They'll eat poorly and smoke and take a significant portion of their limited income and 'invest' it in gambling. And yet, even so, I think the role of the state is only to educate (and to ensure companies are honest enough to make readily avaliable information about ingredients, calory counts, et al) and not to enforce diet plans. On a similar note, I don't think people should be able to come back at McDonald's/Cheesecake Factory/KFC later and attempt to take legal action on the basis of, well, I got really fat and then got really ill. Keep in mind that a fine dining degustation (or meal in general) probably also includes an excessive amount of fat, salt and other 'bad things'. Depending on what you order, a steakhouse or BBQ joint might also cross well over that line of horrifying excess. Sure, there are restaurants that really do make an effort to serve very healthy food (or are serving something there's pretty much good for you to begin with) but it's often very much a 'treat', whether you're paying $10 or $200 per head. Incidentally, in the States are sweet potato fries typically billed as a more interesting and 'healthy' alternative to regular fries in the way they often are here? Like all things, it is a question of degree and involves subjective judgments. Ingesting 3,000 calories in the course of a degustation menu is a qualitatively different thing from ingesting 3,000 calories of deep-fried sludge that has been produced from low quality, industrial-grade ingredients. I didn't mean to suggest that the state should proscribe acts that are risky and are not in some way needed: I wouldn't actively support restricting diets, but if governments did so, there is such a complete absence of any positive aspect to the examples the CSPI gave that I (and many others, I suspect) would struggle to be bothered to hoist the flag for individual choice and liberty.

I don't support paternalism or inteference that effectively absolves individuals from the duty of care that they owe to themselves, but, in this case, I cannot see even the most incidental and remote need for an entree with 3,120 calories to ever be produced or consumed by anyone, and so I wouldn't be bothered in the slightest if chains had calorific restrictions imposed on the foods that they serve.

In David Thompson's case, perhaps regulations did kill genuine ethnic cuisine. In all other cases, it never existed in the first place: I can't think of a single other chef who shares Thompson's concern for authenticity; on the contrary, every single example of ethnic cuisine that comes to my mind is of that generic, Westernised food that reduces the complexity and variety of the cuisines to a few flavours or elements that are mistakenly thought to be essential (for example, a dish has all of the essential elements that qualify it as 'Thai' if it contains basil, lemongrass and ginger; or Mexican if guacamole and some poor attempt at a flatbread is included), and then modifies even those to appeal to Western palates, which is generally achieved by adding sugar and omitting all of the elements that are in fact essential (so as to satisfy the majority of diners, whose characteristically inane profession is, "I love Thai/Indian, but so long as it's not too spicy"). Yes - have had the most fantastic Thai food in Sydney - but - as to growing- the climate vs UK is SO different Feel free to mention where, because every place that I know serves the same homogeneous, Australianised rubbish.

I'll pay for the best Riedel stemware, even without any expectation that it will affect the taste: it enhances the experience per se, because it's delicate, fine craftsmanship.