Busboy

Mr. and Mrs. Busboy will likely drop in, at least for a glass or two of wine. Se you tomorrow.

We just took the TGV from Paris to Courchevel and back, and I can't for the life of me figure out how this restriction of luggage space makes the trains any safer. Large bags, the kind our family of four used to pack the ski clothing and cold weather gear, will most definitely not fit overhead. We were fortunate to have an empty row of seats on the trip south on which to stow the bag, and on the trip back to Paris our car was next to a bicycle holding-car, which rapidly filled with large suitcases, baby carriages and the like. Note that overhead space is finite - people forced to split one large bag into multiple smaller bags will soon find that space exhausted, as well. A real solution, or better yet, a return to sanity needs to be put into place. Closing the luggage space is simply untenable and ineffective, if the SNCF wants to remain a major transportation resource for travellers.

I assume you've already considered the option of raiding the local traiteur and bringing a picnic to the banks of the Seine or the park below the Tour Eiffel... In my brief parisian experiences, I've developed quite an affection for the Cafe Marche on the corner of Rue Cler (in the heart of the market) and Rue Champs de Mars in the 7th. Great people watching, great activity around the market, very traditional in look, feel and clientel (to this Yank, at least).

What Mayhaw man said!

During our week in Savoie, our family was able to meet its minimum daily requirement of reblochon with very little effort. It's difficult to explain how good a tartiflette is, unless you're familiar with the local ingredients. The dish is just ham, cheese, and potatoes, baked together in a casserole. But when it's fine white boiling potatoes, (my kids pronounced them the finest potatoes ever for hash brown) ham hung from the rafters of the local charcoutriers (similar to proscuitto, but a littel more earthy) and reblochon, tartiflette is an unforgettable dish. I'd be hard pressed to pick one, or even a handfull, of cheeses as favorites, but snarfing reblochon, ham and potatoes after a morning skiing the French Alps is simply an extraordinary thing to do. Wolfing down leftover reblochon and ham instead of eating the in-flight meal on the way home isn't a bad way to spend lunch-time, either.

Reminds me of our "ghetto" apartment. Honest to God, the people right under me were a pack of drug dealers who played what we called "booty tunes" constantly. Normally we could tune it out, but during finals I'd had enough. After going downstairs and screaming at them that if they could shut the damn stuff of for *one* week I'd not bitch until next semester, they agreed. At which point I return to hour 34 of wakefulness and frantic typing. Hour 37, they forgot. Speakers to the floor, 1812 Orchestra, *repeat*. Took them five minutes to knock it off until that Friday. Heck, forget picnic spots. Mahler could drive me out of a concert hall! I was once camping in Oregon at one of their many, wonderful state-owned public campsites when an oversized pickup truck dropped off a couple of frightening-looking characters and sped off -- looking for beer, one assumes. A few minutes later the sound of boom-box speed metal sort of settled over all the nearby campsites. Any music would have been out of place, drowning out the sound of Steamboat Creek and the birdsongs, but this stuff was really obnoxious in a campsite. Summoning all my courage, I approached a 40-something with a poneytailed rope of grey hair and tattoes that had been carved long before tattoes got cool again. You knew just from looking at him that he carried a knife (at least) at all times, and none of his good friends were yupppies in rented sedans with California plates: the kind of outback "local" that tend to scare city kids like me. More or less trembling, I walked into his campsite and asked if he could, please, turn the music down. "What?" he yelled. "The music's a little loud, could you turn it down some?" "Too loud? Sorry, I'm a little hard of hearing." He turned it down and there was never a problem for the rest of the weekend. His mamma must have raised him right. And I never had to resort to Mahler. On the larger point, I think music is part of a restaurants decor. I don't much care for loud techno-pop as I munch my mezze, but hey -- the owner has as much right to choose the volume and the variety of his music as he does to choose the food and the silverware. It's irksome when the music is out of character for th4e restaurant, and I have asked managers to turn it down, but to unilaterally impose my taste on other diners would be arrogant and inconsiderate. Restaurants, like much of life, are meant to be enjoyed on their own terms

To get through customs, just wrap carefully in a pair of Happy Underpants. We just came in from Paris with a wedge of Vacherin ("ze last of zee season, monsieur. Zer will be no more until Octobare") a round of Ami de Chambertin (resembles a double-thick epoisse, haven't tasted it yet) and two rounds of camembert, which the people at Marie-Anne Cantin had vacuum-packed at the shop, in an attempt to satisfy U.S. customs. We alos hit the U.S. with leftover odds and ends, as well as some charcouterie, in a plastic grocery bag which we intended to finish or leave on the plane. We got totally busted at Dulles customs because my wife tried to use me as a mule to carry in the last of the Sovoyard hard salami and cured ham we'd bought in the Alps -- she won't cop to this but I am convinced that she decided that if I didn't know what I was carrying, I could get it through. Good thing her choice in vices has changed since our reckless youth together. The customs officer asked if we had any food and I said "No....uh, except for the wine, olive oil and cheese." "Any meat?" "I think we left it on the plane." The customs officer threw one of our bags into a device that looked like a bomb-detector but which was apparantly a cured pork products-detector (what a handy insrument!) and pulled out the sack of leftovers. The ham and salami went into a waste basket, but she was utterly uninterested in the remaining morsels of cheese. In fact, once the smell of happy underpants began to permeate the area, (generated by the last of an aged, ash-crusted chevre) she handed the now-meatless sack back to us with a certain urgency, telling us that they didn't care about cheese, but that meat was a no-no. Her advice didn't reconcile with what I had heard from a number of different sources, but hey, I got my cheese and the feast is underway.

For a couple of years, dinner time was spmething of a battle at our house, with an endlessly slouchy, ill-mannered, back-talking 6-to-8 year old boy. We kept at it (it wasn't really that awful, but here were nights....), though, and if he's not ready to marry into the Emily Post family he is better-mannered than some of my adult friends and dinners are now a delight. We just got back from France where he and his hister, now 15 and 11, were perfectly well behaved and their good manners and my bad french seemed to bring out the best in servers in Paris and Courchevel. To the already excellent points I will add: I'm a strong believer in "elbows off the table" perhaps the result of an upbringing in which anyone else at the table was allowed to "fork" your elbow if it somehow got to the table-top before dinner was cleared. In a family of three boys, catching your brother in violation was something of a gleeful dinner-time sport. I've also seen too many adults who wrap one arm around the plate and hunch over, while shoveling food in with the other -- it makes it look like they were raised in an orphanage and had to protect their gruel from poaching by the other kids. No criticizing others' manners, even if they're dining in a way that would be considered intolerable by our family. Cut your damn food! Never put a piece of _____ that big into your mouth again! Parallel lesson: unless we're in Japan, you may not slurp your noodles like that. If the restaurant has a cloth tablecoth, French Fries are to be eaten with a fork. Kids have to stay at the table until the adults' finish their main course. ("Why?" "Because, believe it or not, we actually like your company.") When it's your turn, "set the table with love," as Lala (grandmom) would say. Let your sister get a word in every now and again. Disfiguring diseases, flatulence and gross behavior are not appropriate subjects for dinner conversation. A nice dinner, well-behaved kids, a lively conversation...it doesn't get any better.

This page has quite a bit of back-and-forth on dining in the Villefranche area, including my own observations on where not to eat while there. Have a great time. I'd be envious but I'm typing this from my Paris hotel (not great discoveries to report...yet).

This page has quite a bit of back-and-forth on dining in the Villefranche area, including my own observations on where not to eat while there. Have a great time. I'd be envious but I'm typing this from my Paris hotel (not great discoveries to report...yet).

Too bad you woin't be around -- if you leave with further investigating to do, I'd be pleased to follow up on a couple of leads for you and report back. I was in the US MasterChef, sadly for only one round. Regarding the telcom thing, we were almost co-workers (if I read one of your other postings correctly), as I was in the communications dpartment of MCI, whom BT left standing at the altar way back when.

Andy -- it appears that I will be in Paris on the evenings of the 18th and 19th, and would love to get together for a bite and perhaps to compare notes about our parallel experiences in the MasterChef competition and the telcomm industry. I believe I'll be staying in the 7th, if that affects your plans at all. PM or reply here. Charles

When you live in Jacksonville FL - it has to be fedexed from somewhere . So I'd just as soon have the cheese skip the layover in New York . (And it's great fun watching my cheese as it works its way through the fedex tracking system.) By the way - the web site I use - Fromages.com - has been pretty dependable in the past. And you can sign up for regular emails about things like the cheeses of the season, etc. Robyn Sorry. Somehow got the idea that you lived in the urban northeast. I guess your fedexed cheese is much more a necessity than an extravagance.

this is why god invented Zima. Finishing that last half-bottle of warm white wine that you find while doing the dishes the next morning can be helpful. Works better on weekends, though.

I confess to being a little mistified by this thread in the sense that, in five years of working in restaurants and many years of eating at them, I have a hard time recalling any egregious child-related incidents. Admittedly, I live in downtown DC, where there are relatively fewer children, but I still have a hard time seeing the obnoxious child thing as an epidemic problem, as opposed to a series of irritating anecdotes. On the whole, it appears more likely that my dinner will be ruined by overcooked veal or maladroit service, than by monstrous tykes. There was incident, with an ill mannered French child. Some extended family or another trying to have linch on the terasse at a nice restaurant near Gigondas. Towards the end of the meal the baby began wailing so loud that he almost woke my father up. Guess those three hour lunches are tough on those at either end of the spectrum.

A cynic could read through this thread and suggest that a number of us are just using it to show off our discerning palates and dedication to quality through our compulsive acquisition of rare and expensive -- maybe even extravagent --ingredients. Not me, however. A man who has been know to stare into his cupboard and debate which of the five olive oils he has secreted therein would perfectly complement the evening's entree would never be so petty. I would suggest, however, that we are lacking something important: a definition of extravagence. "Excessive" and "unduly lavish," from Webster's seems too vague. So let me attempt the logically unsatisfying (formal logic, that is) but useful exercise of creating a negative definition. An igrediant is not extravagent if: 1) It makes a noticeable difference to a dish's flavor or other significant attribute (texture, presentation, etc.). 2) It is purchased in quantities such that it is likely to be used up before it goes bad. 3) It is purchased in quantities that accord with the buyer's other financial obligations. 4) The price relationship between the item in question and near substitutes is proportional to the taste/quality relationship between the item and near substitutes 5) The item is used to bring pleasure, or for some justifiable practical purpose (make mom happy, celebrate an anniversary or impress the boss, for example), rather than to show off or to demonstrate one's own superiority. To be non-extravagent, an item must meet all these criteria. But extravagance is a sin with many levels, and one easily forgiven. The number of criteria an item fails to meet gives a rough idea of its point on the continuum between harmless indulgence and SIN. For example: AzRaeL's shopping list meets all criteria. Not extravagent. Robyn's fedexed cheese: dubious relationship between the additional cost of fedexing cheese from France and the quality difference between it and good cheese from Dean and DeLuca. Probably extravagent, but within the realm of harmless indulgence (Robyn: I hope to sneak some stuff into DC at the end of this month. You can come over when we turn the house into a fromage-orgie.) Making pasta in bottled water seems to fail on three accounts -- doesn't make an appreciable taste difference, notably more expensive than tapwater, and it reeks of showing off. I have Ms. Ferigno is dangerously close to sinfully extravagent in this case, and needs to back off. Everyone else, I absolve you, as long as you're enjoying your food and not spending rent money on extra virgin olive oil, or snearing at your friends when they don't.

I don't mean to sneer at your mom's low-acid juice and especially not at people who live in "50 types of frozen pizza" areas. What I did mean to sneer at is smarmy Frito-Lay marketing execs who pretend they're empowering the consumer by topping their potato chips with another choice of artificial flavoring; or Starbucks bragging about their 15,000 combinations of coffee drinks when, in fact, they overlay targeted neighborhoods so heavily that there is little chance for an independent shop to survive - giving people a real choice. And, as to whether or not I'm in touch with reality, I'd suggest that most people actually do live in places where they can make real choices If not with artisanal cheeses, then with local bakeries, with old-time butchers, with the one local fish vendor who has real line to fresh seafood, with a diner that has excellent grits or a great chili recipe. When people, wherever they live, begin to think that choice is saying "hold the mayo" at Burger King, rather than chosing between Burger King (and I go there, too, I'm not trying to get too high and mighty) and another unique establishment, they've given up part of themselves to the marketing drones, and pushed the process of standardization one more step in the worng direction.

As in "I've got a weak idea and I can find the statistics to prove it." Here's what bugged me about the article. With the exception of some discussion about Whole Foods and their offerings, the whole article is about vast corporations pumping out minor variations on spirit-less, mass-produced fare. Consumers are being manipulated by corporations who would have no problem utterly destroying what eGulleters would call good dining and real choice, if it brought them another three points of market share, and consumers are duped into believing their choices are expanding. (Oscar Meyer) balony. Customizing your dinner at Applebee's, demanding vinegar-dill-ridged potato chips or precisely calibrating the temperature of your latte is being neither picky nor discerning. It's being manipulated. Real choice -- real power -- is having a choice of restaurants, coffee shops and munchies, not what some marketing honcho and a focus group of "representative" Americans think will fit into a bland and soul-killing mass market. Hey, I eat potato chips and I go to Starbucks. And I know that a case can be made that Americans have more choices today than they did "way back when," but it isn't Arby's who gave them to us. It's determined cooks and farmers who have introduced to new foods and fought off the larger grocery and restaurant chains; it's immigrants who introduced us to exotic and unusual ingredients and founded the stores and networks that bring them into our neighborhoods; it's adventurous few (us, of course!) who created the markets and demand that supported the spread of responsive entrepreneurs. Choice is a dozen kinds of artisanal cheese at a Farmers market, not 50 types of frozen pizza at Safeway.

Anybody else see a little irony in this statement? "Consumers want more control over their lives — especially over what they eat," says Stephen Quinn, Frito-Lay's marketing chief."

Apparently USA Today has been in contact with my children.

I just found that my dough stuck to it, making it difficult to slide it into the oven. The fault may lie with my dough but, nevertheless, the wooden peel worked much better. Busboy Have you tried a light dusting of corn meal or flour on the peel before you place your dough? I don't think your dough is at fault. If you are doing a really thin crust pizza and its not all tacky, then I believe that the dough is not going to be up to your expectations. I do dust the metal peel, but finf that the wooden one still works better.

Colorado isn't much of a food place but one thing they do dang well is their spin on huevos rancheros -- beans, fried potatoes, eggs, fired pork products and, most important, green chili. Plus, of course, flour tortillas, to scoop it all up with. It's so universally available that it's obviously a regional specialty -- not a faux specialty, like Denver omlettes -- and has so many variations atop the basic combo that every diner in the state has a distinctive taste. It is the perfect transition between a night of drinking and a morning on the slopes.

As a long-time Washingtonian I know that the Smithsonian Institution is supposed to have John Dillinger's, ahem, six-shooter stashed away in a backroom somewhere, but I was unaware that another historically significant organ could be found within the Beltway, as well.

We freeze leftover wine all the time. For drinking, I'd say you get less detioration than if you just corked it and threw it back in the fridge. I can't say that I can taste any difference if I'm cooking with it. This may be due to the the quality of my palate rather the method of storage, however.

I'm sure you're already considering this, but if you haven't a day trip to Chichen Itza -- the old Mayan Town is well worth the drive time.