Lord Michael Lewis

How do other members percieve the current chefly obsession with novelty and innovation? Personally, I would prefer to eat one of Pierre Koffman's Pig's Trotters than Blumenthal's Snail Porridge, for the simple fact that Koffman has dedicated his long career to getting a few dishes exactly right, whereas Blumenthal's food relies on novelty and is harder to judge as it has no benchmark. On the other hand, I am old enough to remember food pre-Cuisine Minceur. In this period there is no doubt in my mind that food was much improved. However, I tend to feel that Michel Guerard and his contemporaries were innovating in order to solve some problems of their craft. This is something I don't see today, at least in the U.K.

To be yet fairer: a) Stockbrokers don't live in converted pubs. b) The other pubs in Bray aren't charging £100 a head.

Suzanne, don't waste your irony.

Perhaps you should write a self-help book for all the poor lefties. You seem to have the jargon down. I don't think you need to be a lefty to find Plotinki's beehive heirarchy offensive. However, I am in doubt as to how he classifies himself; Drone, Worker, or Big Fat Queen?

Thuuunk! (That's my jaw hitting the parquet). Plotinki, you are a dangerously insane fascist. No he's not, you're just in denial about how the real world works. Nina, if there's one thing worse than a snob, it's an arse-licking snob.

Thuuunk! (That's my jaw hitting the parquet). Plotinki, you are a dangerously insane fascist.

I've just read your C.V. too and seeing as you're pretty familiar with London, why don't you do yourself a favour and fly from London to Bilbao for a couple of days. You could eat at Arzak (very, very much improved), Martin Berasategui, and/or Zuberoa, all in the San Sebastian area. London prices being what they are it would work out the same or less and you'd be trying something new.

I don't see that this is obviously false. Why shouldn't variations in physiology result in variations in taste? Even learned responses might become sufficiently hardwired to be irremediable. Hmmm. Good point (scientific too). Clutch, clutch, straw, straw.

Or at least it would be, were you the spouse of an absolute monarch. I am inferring that you think Aunty Dot should be educated out of her "Sweet Tea & Jeffery Archer" cultural mire. Point of rhetoric; Must you use the odious Jeffery Archer as an example of a popular author. May I suggest the equally shit, but less despised, Nick Hornby.

Harold McGee goes into the legumes/rice/protein thing at some length. I can't say I read it though.

In the kingdom of the blind the one eyed man is king. LML -- Surely you didn't intend to concede that Blumenthal's cuisine is better than that of other UK cuisiniers. You're right. I didn't.

Hamptons' food shops are preparing themselves for a run on blue food colouring.

I should have added that after creating Brian, the record producer falls in love with him.

Okay, a Pygamlion scenario: Brian's favourite meal is steak and chips with a can of lager. Fate shows Brian her petticoats in the form of a wealthy Anglophobe New York record producer. The record producer wines and dines Brian, but is alarmed at his common taste. The record producer undertakes to educate Brian's palate (in his own image). Some time later Brian is regularly posting on internet wine boards. When Brian is asked what one should drink with steak & chips, he replies "why red wine of course". His education is complete, but he still prefers a can of lager with his steak & chips.

In the kingdom of the blind the one eyed man is king.

A: Well spotted. Chateaubriand, I might add, is a huge, fat and very expensive part of the fillet. B: It's your rhetoric that causes the problem here. Who is it that is "broadly speaking"? C: If you told me it was a shit meal I would believe you. If I ate there and enjoyed it and you told me that you didn't like it, I would believe you, different strokes etc. If I ate there and enjoyed it and you told me that you didn't like it, and that, as I liked it, my taste was somehow dubious, and that you knew gourmandes who could prove my taste was dubious, I would, rightly, knock your teeth out.

How the fuck do you know? If they drink Coke are they more interested in that? For every plate of steak & chips we can safely assume that someone is drinking something; Water, Coke, Beer, Wine, Whatever. In all probablity red wide is one of the least common companion to the dish. However, Wilfrid and Nina say that red wine is what should be drunk, thus giving the finger to anyone who doesn't share this belief. They base their argument on a consensus. Not a consensus of those who eat Steak & Chips, but a consensus only of those hand-picked to express a preference for red wine. For some people it the winning that's important not the taking part.

But you made that part up so you can use the word arrogant. Er,.. No I didn't. And anyway, I'm not sure how you'd know.

The fact that some people have better ears or better palates or whatever is irrelevant to the concept of Food Snobbery. No matter how acute one's faculties are, and discarding humility, the most you can claim is to have an acute palate. It is an abysmal and arrogant leap in logic to suggest that this gives one any rights to pre- or proscribe foodstuffs for anyone else other than oneself.

Good question. Tante Claire and Le Gavroche.

The comparison between the mathematical designation of musical notes and salting food sets a new low in reasoning.

Sorry to be pedantic, but I object to the use of 'democratic' to mean 'egalitarian'. It's misleading.

For fuck's sakes Wilfrid we're talking about steak and fucking chips. Is it only for gastronomes to decide what is correctly drunk with this most egalitarian of dishes?

"A pretty solid consensus among professional and knowledgeable amateur gastronomes" is a consensus among a minority interest group, if consensus were to be definitive in questions of taste then we'd have to consider everybody, not just the groups that echo our own opinions. Besides, when your gastronomes say red wine is the 'best' thing to drink with steak, are you absolutely sure they don't mean that it's 'better than' other things, white wine for example, but not necessarily 'best'?

Plotinki answered: "As to what wine goes best with steak frittes, well it depends on where the beef was from. If I was eating Bazas beef, I would want a claret. And I prefer Burgundy with my Charolais beef. And Rhone wines with my Sisteron Lamb. Do you do it differently my lord?" To my mind, the important thing about a question like this is not what you answer but what you choose to exclude, which, by not being the answer, is by necessity wrong. Plotinki says wine and defends his choice vigorously, so we must assume that milk drinker is, by Plotinki's standards, wrong , which to me sounds snobby.