Steve Plotnicki

Hollywood - The problem with using food as the example all the time, and it really is the underlying issue around here, is that it is invisible and so difficult to rest your case on when the argument being put forth by the opposition is that taste is subjective. So that gives rise to the need of putting forth examples you can see with your eyes as opposed to ones that arise out of your mouth. But as to wall-to-wall, it isn't that people don't use it, people use it in bedrooms all of the time. It's just that they used to use it in the more public rooms. But to me, that they used it for a time and then went to the better design means the market was eventually efficient. I think if someone said that there is often an element of fashion that people are willing to pay for and that skews prices, there would be no argument from me. But I am saying that even though the price of wall-to-wall must have been at a premiuim during the 70's when it was popular, it still stayed cheaper relative to what a good area rug costs. You know why? Because if people were paying astronomical prices for wall-to-wall and the prices started to rise to the price of nice rugs, the rug salesman would go out to get their share of the pie. As for shagetti, I'll stay clear of that one.

Jaybee - Foods from Italy are by far the predominant foods exported into the U.S. They are much more popular than French foods are here. And the quality of the food is great. But we are talking technique here. Name me one Italian chef who is considered among the greatest chefs in the world? That's right, there are none. Robert S. would say that the reason for that is the quality of the food is so good, they don't have to prepare it any better than they do now. And I say hogwash to that. The French have ingredients that's every bit as good and it doesn't stop them.

Toby - Well if you go Patog, my favorite Persian restaurant in London, and had their stupendous kebabs made from organic meat and poultry, there is a large similarity to the way they make a sikh kebab in an Indian restaurant. Not the spicing regimen, but the way the meat is chopped and minced. If you went around the corner to the Edgeware Road and ordered a kofta kebab in any number of the Lebanese restaurants that are on the street, the texture would be completely different. Also, there is something in the Persian Chelow or Pilau that makes one thing of Indian cuisine. An Uzbekistani Pilau reminds me of Indian food as well except it's much closer to a European style dish. But if you changed the spicing regimen to something more like Indian, it could almost pass for Indian food.

Gavin - Hey that was a good post. If you just corrected a few things it would almost be perfect. Like mentioning Catherine DeMedici and the influence she had on art and food, or the fact that when French food came into its own it was probably the most liberal society in Europe. Otherwise it's pretty good. I think you left out that short days caused too much depression among the Scandinavian populations to make them want to eat much more than a schmaltz herring. But it does make me wonder why Persian and Indian cuisine didn't have a little merger there. Because if you dig deep into Persian you start to see the Indian in it. Otherwise you did great.

Robert S. - Wait a second. As I was walking home from my homeowners association meeting, I realized that it isn't that Italian chefs haven't tried to advance the ball of Italian cuisine, it's that they haven't been successful. At least if the measure of success is worldwide attention to their creations. Once upon a time it was thought thay Gualtiero Marchesi would lead the way but that petered out. Even though his Raviolo Aperto wasn't such a bad dish even if the star made from gold leaf was a bit excessive. But there are loads of famous restaurants and famous chefs throughout Italy. Arnolfo, Dal Pescatore, Enotecha Pinchiori, Baschi, Ai Sorriso etc. None of them have made an impact on the international dining scene. And I can't think of a single technique that they championed that has influenced other chefs in a significant way. You can correct me on this, but it certainly seems that way to me.

Robert S. - Italy has been stuck in a corrupt society for a few thousand years. Whatever the Church didn't manipulate, the mob did. When the population of Italy ever gets out of their shadows and truly speaks with a free voice, I'm certain they will update their cuisine. Until then, you can go on making excuses for them.

"There are plenty of banknotes and coins, not to mention stamps, around that are worth far more than face value." Bux - Yes but the market for them changes. They pick up the quality of collectability and they operate in a completely different market. It's like if someone were able to take a steak and mount it on a canvas and sell it to a museum. You aren't selling the steak, you're selling the art. Same with coin collecting. "but the value of things is related only to what people will pay" But I don't understand why any of you think people would pay for something if it didn't offer them requisite value? You all talk about it like Wonder Bread could sell for more money than bread from Poillane if someone created a craze for it. It just can't and it never will. It's like the story of the tulips that somebody around here always brings up. It isn't that tulips are ugly so the price paid for them was ridiculous to begin with. Tulips are beautiful. It's that they were priced disproportionately to their beauty as it relates to the beauty of ALL FLOWERS. Why pay $10 for a tulip when you can get a rose for $1? You couldn't muster up an argument about why that should be the case. The natural beauty of a tulip vs a rose doesn't warrant a ratio of 10 to 1. Of course the market for tulips will crash if that happened because people will just buy different flowers. But if you were to lay out all flowers in a line and allow people to buy them, a natural hierarchy based on their unique qualities would occur and tulips would fall into line proportionate with what they have to offer. Robert S. - I think your profer about the noodles with sage being a perfect encapsulation of la stratagia that great food is acheived using the minimum number of ingredients is a bunch of hooey. To me it's an excuse contrived after the fact to defend a style of cooking that hasn't made any advancement in hundreds of years. And once again, that doesn't take away from how wonderful it can taste and how deep the flavors can be, but let's call a sparacedo a sparacedo okay. They still cook like that because they haven't been able to figure out anything better that was able to stick. But let's wait until I post my pasta thread and I will lay out the arguments there. Fat Guy - Saying that it isn't mathematically certain doesn't prove that that what I'm saying isn't what always happens. And money does represent meat. $5 of it represents hamburger and $15 of it represents strip steak. That on certain days hamburger costs $6 and steak $14 doesn't change the basic concept. People eat hamburger when they are in the mood for that type of meal, same with steak. Price follows use and use follows quality.

"The thing I liked was where there was some residual neighbourhood feel" Gavin - I always got that feeling from the commercial strip of rue St. Dominique between Latour Maubourg and Ecole Militaire which is why I like that area. It's one of the few commercial streets in the center of Paris that is geared around everyday life. Granted it doesn't have the color of rue Belleville, but it's still mainly populated with Parisian moms picking their kids up froim school. Mogsob - Is Poilane in the 6th or 7th? That side of rue de Cherche Midi is in the 7th on the other side of Blvd. Raspail.

Jaybee - Actually I can't think of a recipe we made from any of her books that came out bad. I think she does a good job of testing her recipes which is more than you can say about other cookbook writers. Jaybee it must be you not her! John W. - I thought that all bistro dishes started at home. What bistro dish was invented in a restaurant? Isn't that what draws the distinction between bistro and restaurant in the first place? Bux - Do you think her reviews are less accurate than they used to be, or do you think the refining of your palate through eating experiences have made you reassess her talents as a reviewer? The latter is somewhat true for me. I have eaten so many meals in France that were thrilling, I often find that what Well's likes to be somewhat bland and boring. She is exceptional at ferreting out good ingredients and good producers though.

"It's not true that anyone can make the pasta dish" Robert S. - Well you know you and I are going to have a philosophical discussion about the meaning of the word anyone. When you say anyone, you are talking about people who can make the dish perfectly. But in the context of this conversation of cheap eats, anyone means anyone. Fact of the matter is that so many people can make the make pasta with mozz, tomatoes and sage there isn't a single chef in the world who gets paid alot to do it or is famous for doing it. Of course this does not speak to the enjoyability of the dish, nor the complexity of the ingredients if produced properly. But remember where we started. People are interested in things where the technique is ratcheted up a few notches. That they feel is an accomplishment. But wait to argue this through because I'm going to start a thread on whether pasta is worth eating or not. Beachfan - What your really saying is that the cost of therapy from the guilt of eating the ham sandwich with milk ultimately makes the sandwich cost more. In fact a good bottle of Mouton is only 3-4 sessions and one needs many more sessions than that to work through the guilt. That's a sound argument. Okay next time I have a ham sandwich, I'll drink Rayas so I can save the money on therapy Fat Guy doesn't scare me. I have yet to see examples of the demand side distort the price set by the supply side to such an extent so as to overcome inherent differences in quality between things. The odds of chopped meat costing more than strip steak are about as good as a $5 bill being worth more than a $20 bill.

Jaybee - I said complex, not unusual. But it sounds like fun anyway. How did you all fit in the restaurant at the same time?

"It's to prove to you that if the Mouton Rothschild were produced in the same volume as milk, the price differential would be negligible. The price is not set by an elite, independently of supply and demand. " Wilfrid - If they made unlimited amounts of Mouton that wouldn't change how people use it. People still wouldn't use it at breakfast. Let's take me as an example. I can drink a First Growth any time I want to. That's really not much different than the supply being unlimited. Yet I drink them very sparingly. You know why that is? There just aren't that many occassions that warrant drinking a wine of that caliber. And I don't mean as a matter of expense, I mean as a matter of matching food and wine. That's the part you keep missing, the gastronomic part. You don't use Rayas Chateauneuf-du-Pape for an occasion that only merits drinking a Cote de Rhone. And conversely when at a black truffle extravaganza in Provence, one might want to splurge for a 1978 La Chapelle. But I don't want to drink '78 La Chapelle with a ham sandwich. That's where your glass of milk comes in handy. No matter how much more Mouton they produced, it won't change when and where people drink wine or what occassion Mouton is appropriate for. Robert S. - Well I'm glad you intend on eating those things. I hope you enjoy them. But what that has to do with this thread I don't know. Anyone can eat those things. In fact anyone can make them. They don't exactly qualify as cheap eats as defined by Fat Guy. Nor would they be defined that way by me either. G. - *The resentful argument* ( I need a macro for this)

Hollywood - I love responses on the merits. You are describing all man made stuff that is fashionable and then went out of style. Wall to wall carpet will never have the depth and complexity that a nice hand woven rug will have. So what happened? The market corrected itself to the better quality item. Same with hardwood floors. When I lived in Forest Hills I had carpeted floors but when I moved to Manhattan I made sure that I had parquet. Same thing. I think you have just raised a different demand side argument than the ones that have been raised. Because even when wall to wall carpet was in vogue, a well made area rug was still profoundly beautiful. Less people might have been educated to that 40 years ago and they might have been cheaper to buy than they are now, but their beauty and quality wasn't ever in question. Somehow great Persian rugs or beautiful Ivan da Silva Bruhns art deco rugs were always considered beautiful. And the artisans who made them were always recognized for their special abilites. The only thing that changed was the price. But if your point is that wall to wall carpet in its heyday sold for more money than an area rug, surely you must know that isn't true. It might be true of the worst area rugs, but there are area rugs that were always extremely expensive. Worthy of hanging in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. You know you can point to "the herd" as an example that people do stupid things, but that doesn't mean they have any impact on determining the price or quality oif things that are not stupid. Helena - Well I wouldn't want to eat lobster more than once a week either. Hell, I don't want to eat it more than 2-3 times a year. So I have rachmunis for those prison inmates.

Okay here are my five favorites, Mamouns on MacDougal for the best falafal and sharma Katz's for pastrami Yatagan on MacDougal for the best donor kebab or gyro if you like The Taco Lady just off the corner of 97th Street and 2nd Avenue I give her a slight nod for masa snacks like gorditas and sopes etc. over El Paso Taqueria which is better if you want to sit down. In fact I had lunch there on Tuesday. But if you want to stand around and eat your tacos with Mexicans on their way to and from Metropolitan Hospital her location can't be beat. Win Hop Noodle Shop on Bayard between Bowery and Elizabeth is my favorite of the chinese noodle shops. I can list dozene more but you asked for five.

I didn't say Scottish.

I'm just happy my position about how things get codified has itself been codified. Sounds like a position to reckon with. Robert S. has not offerred an example of how less complex is better, he's saying that sometimes simple things have greater complexity than more complex preparations. No disagreement from me there although I think in general it is quite difficult to find cases where it is true. But of course there's that perfect peach. As to my refinement argument, I know I'm right so there . But in case you didn't realize it, the reason that vin ordinaire is so cheap is because there is so much of it. And the reason for that is it's ordinaire. If it was special it wouldn't be ordinaire any more. Then it wouldn't be so cheap. You see people don't buy things because they are scarce. They buy things because of their unusual qualities. But what people will do because of scarcity is pay more for the item. But they won't pay more unless the item is special to begin with.

My lord I just realized that this thread has over 600 posts. Just to prove to people that a bottle of Mouton Rothschild is more valuable than a milkshake. I love eGullet.

Macrosan - Do you know where you can get a Wilfburger Special? Wimpy's of course.

Robert - Sorry it took me so long to respond here but they had me drowning on the Cheap Eats thread. Finally I can come up for some air. First of all, that was a lovely post. I know where you're coming from but I think asking for it to return is like waiting for the next Miles Davis to come along. It ain't happening. And before I get to the heart of the post, I'm in the dessert cart camp. I'm personally disappointed with most plated desserts. I'm much happier with the melange you get from a cart plus, I find the whole cart experience to be celebratory. And you get to taste everything too. But getting to the heart of your post is another thing. I need to ruminate for awhile and maybe I'll try to comment later. But my initial instinct is to say that what makes haute cuisine different today than the old days is that todays chefs need to be phenomenons in order to survive. Whether it be Passard's minimalism, Gagnaire's polyphony or Adria's technical mastery. The focus has been shifted from dining being a sumptuous experience to one that relies on a display of the chefs wizardry. That is probably in large part caused by how experienced we are as eaters and how jaded we are about cooking. We go to be wowed first, sated second. That acuurately describes your El Bulli experience I believe. And it could also describe your L'Astrance experience except for one thing, they failed to wow you. And while I make no value judgements when comparing things today to the days of old, and despite the fact that I myself like the old style you described so much, I sometimes wonder if generations younger than mine view some of our dining rituals with the same dismissiveness that I have for things like Beef Wellington or Gigot d'Agneu en Croute. Oh the days when you could book at table at Robuchon or a meal at Moulin de Mougins meant something. They won't make cooks like that in the future anymore than there will be a new Fred Astaire. I hope you saved your old menus. Let's go have a bowl of fish soup so we can remember.

"Yeah, but who would put a bun inside a hamburger ?" Macrosan - It's that new British invention. Inside Out Pie. "but my crack team of Norwegian programmers is all over it" Fat Guy - Is your website frozen?

Fat Guy finally grasped the concept. Anybody else?

Wilfrid - Wait a second, wait a second. Beer and pork belly cost less than wine and filet of pork because they don't have the qualities that people want on the occassions they would choose to drink and eat something more refined. It's like cashmere costs more than shetland wool because it gives the same amount of warmth in a lighter weight wool and as a result it's use applies to more refined expressions of fashion. I believe that the difference of opinion here is that you think that quality in items we eat, drink wear or use otherwise is totally subjective and contrived by man. And I believe that quality is something that happens naturally though an organic process. The only part humans play is to notice those qualities and appreciate them. I believe that if we had never tasted beef before, and we were presented with all the cuts of beef to try, after enough experience eating them we would decide to use the various cuts in eactly the same way we use them now. Roast beef would once again end up as Sunday lunch providing our culture still had a meal that called for that type of ceremonial presentation and needed a cut of meat that was a metaphor for the durability of the family. Do you really not see it that way? And while one can roast up a delicious pork belly, well it's good for a night out with the boys at a place like St. John but its not the type of thing that you are sharing with your grandparents for Sunday lunch. Price just flows from those concepts. But that is comparing like things, but when you ask about comparing beer with wine, or apples and oranges, those are unlike things. So like anything else, you have to find a common denominator to compare them or as I like to say, all things being equal. But the simplest way to compare them is to ask, what are their special qualities? And if you think that the complexity of brewed malt and hops can match the complexity that comes out of the Clos St. Hune parcel of the Monchsburg vineyard, well I don't know what to tell you. In Germany, where they have maybe the greatest beer in the world, they serve wine at places that consider themselves to offer serious cooking. Does it occur to you that if beer was as complex as wine that in the 100 years of haute cuisine sommeliers would have paired them in the way they pair foie gras and d'Yqueem? Or are all the sommeliers in France and the rest of Europe daft? "Anyone going anywhere in Europe passed through France and dropped off a packet of spaghetti, but didn’t bother taking any foie gras home with them." G. - Well in making fun you only put down the Brits. Because it is true, while the French were expanding their cuisine with whatever idea they could get their hands on, the rest of Europe were culinary isolationists. You know the saddest chapter in Paul Richardson's book that J.W. always quotes is the first one when he gets off the boat from France. He describes how vibrant the restaurant and general food culture is in the town he sailed from and he agonizingly goes through how pitiful it is in the town he arrived in. And the next saddest chapter is when he goes to eat oysters and he writes about the downfall of the British oyster industry. If I recall correctly he talks about how the French (and Belgians possibly?) have thriving oyster restaurants that dot their coasts. But I think the town he is in, which is the main British oyster town has two. So yes they didn't carry the foie gras back with them and for the life of me, it makes no sense at all. They ate porridge and pie instead. You then go onto say, "4. The price of an item reflects its worth because it’s determined by the markets except when it’s determined by a small group of connoisseurs." And you got that one wrong too. The connoisseurs ARE THE MARKET. That's why this thread is so loony. The people who aren't part of the market are questioning the presumptions that the market relies on to work. It's like people who have never or hardly eaten foie gras want to take a position that hamburger is just as good. Or people who have never had '47 Cheval Blanc want to insist that somebody can't prove that wine is "better" than beer. At least Fat Guy says that a good hamburger is better than bad foie gras which is a proposition that nobody would disagree with. But that's just a way of saying all things ARE NOT equal. But if they were, saying hamburger is as good or better than foie gras in an indefensible position.

"In the midst of all this rhetorical flash, I sometimes find it useful to sit back and ponder: W.W.C.T.S.? What would Calvin Trillin say?" Aside from the fact that I am a huge fan of Trillin, and think his general contribution to the study of good eatin' is profound, it reminds me of a conversation I had many years ago with one of my oldest friends about an article where Trillin raved about some place. I had been to the place as well(but my friend hadn't) and I thought it was pretty awful. I asked my friend, why the discrepency in our opinions and he said "C'mon, Trillin doesn't have a good palate." I had never thought of it that way until he said it. But once he did say it I realized he was right. And if anybody ever ate Arthur Bryant BBQ, or went to Mosca's or to any of the places he wrote about, they were cool places and the food wan't bad and often very good but it was more about the folklore than it was about their being great.

"You have to say that the market is bound to reflect the judgment of connoisseurs, all things being equal, because cost is explained, not by supply or demand, but by quality." Okay I will agree with that one but you have to insert the word "initially" (or always) before the word explained. I can't vouch for what happens on the demand side other than to say that *most of the time* there is a correlation between cost and quality especially when there have been objective benchmarks set by an industry like my example of the Chambolle-Musigny vineyard or of Hondas. But otherwise, I'm just trying to find out why you don't agree with that other than not having the ability to see it (meaning taste it) from the connoissuer's perspective? Mind you, I'm not saying there aren't valid arguments from a different perspective. In fact, Robert S. makes one. But that's just replacing one type of connoisseur with another. But what's the argument that says that people who don't have the requisite expertise to discern the difference have a valid opinion as to the topic? In otherwords, if I flip your logic around, show me a group of people who dispute my theory by having more in common than the fact that they disagree with my theory. Show me a set of connoisseurs who believe that pork belly is a better quality item than a rack of lamb is. The answer to your quastion about pork belly/oxtail lies within. It's really not my burden to show you why pork belly is underutilized, or underappreciated. It's your burden to show me why pork belly should fit into our general cuisine more often than it does now and has the requisite qualities that would allow it to do so. Then you would be arguing the point on the same terms I am raising. But I will do a little work for you. Isn't it the case that something as fatty as pork belly is harder to cook with because of all the fat it renders when cooking? So it's harder to combine in a dish where flavors and textures are blended subtly? And while those qualities would make a slab of it a good addition to a stewlike dish, it would make it a poor choice to be used in haute cuisine. Not that it could never be used in haute cuisine but, the key is somebody mastering a technique which brings out the qualities that would make it apllicable for that type of use. So I have now raised an additional factor here which you have yet to acknowledge, and which John Whiting tried to cut off at the pass but did such a poor job at. Connoisseurship begins with professionals, not professional eaters. By the time I as a big fresser get to say something about it, a purveyor has concluded what things are of the best quality and how they should be applied, and a chef has tinkered with those things and has tried to match it to the right occassion and at the right price. It is only at that point that the level of connoirsseurship you are describing kicks in. That's why I think your argument is a slam dunk loser. It has nothing to do with the subjective taste of the market, even as it is driven by connoirsseurs. It is a function of the objective abilities of all levels of connoirsseurship including the professionals who decipher the code that makes things tick. Ultimately where your argument leads is that Christophe Roumier doesn't know how to distinguish good quality wine from bad quality wine. That's bass ackwards. He does know how. And once he establishes how to segregate things based on quality, the market takes it from there. And if he is a reliable producer that knows what he's doing and he has a good track record, the chances that a free market will override his decision are as close to slim and none as you could find the because the totality of connoirsseurs in the world wouldn't be able to muster up a strong enough argument to defeat Roumier's assessment. And that's why Bonnes Mares cost more than Amoureuses. It's objectively better.

Fat Guy - Something that operates in a market system is prone to the ebb and flow of the market. In markets, there is no such things as *always* unless pricing is fixed because it is established by law. Did I really have to explain that? Quite often in these discussions we end up with arguments where people try and disprove the theory that markets revolve on by pointing to the inefficiencies of the market. This focus on "always or mostly" is just a variation of that argument. In the same way, you can't disprove theories the supply side works on (creating a hierarchy based on quality) by pointing out the imperfections in the demand side. Our government could decide to fix prices based on quality. Meaning, that the government could frustrate price fluctuations based on demand (like a communist country.) But that wouldn't eliminate the reasons why people would choose to use certain cuts for certain situations. And if they didn't allow the market to release its energy through a fluctuating price, they would have to do it some other way. Like limit the access to strip steaks to a certain segment of the population that makes the greatest contrbution to the state (like athletes) and tell them they can eat strip steak on Tuesdays and Saturdays. But as I think I have demonstrated, eliminating the demand side does not negate the need or the ability to discern what makes filet steak or strip steak special. Their special qualities are intrinsic as to how we consume them and even if we eliminate the market, we would still allocate them for *special occassions* based on the *special qualities* that people who have good palates can discern about them. As for explaining why things like filet steaks have qualities that are valued more than things like strip steaks, I would have the same difficulty probably more if I had to explain to you why the qualities of cashmere are more valued than those of lambs wool. Or why $50 an ounce perfume is of better quality than $25 an ounce perfume. That I can't explain these things as well as a professional doesn't mean that the price differential placed on items at the point of manufacturer is not an accurate measure of quality. Steve Klc - Thank you so much. It's my little mission in life to try and keep moral relativism out of a discussion about who makes the best mashed potatoes. Wilfrid - Well done and well argued . But it still doesn't get you past the issue of whether people who can't taste the difference have a valid opinion. And now I see that Gavin has made the same point you have made. But where you are both wrong is you are trying to say my conclusion is based on my opinion. That's wrong. My conclusion is based on my assessment of what the market has chosen. That my own personal opinion happens to in large part agree with the market is fortunate for me, but not relevant to my point. That I might not agree with Clive Coates's palate has nothing to do with the fact that he's a better taster than I. And that he can tell you if a wine is showing the true characteristics of a Bonnes Mares better than I can, and why those characteristics are *better* than the characteristics of a Chambolle-Charmes. As my wife would say, what a coinkidink that most people with good palates agree with him when he concludes that Bonnes Mares is a *better quality wine* than Chambolle-Charmes. Macrosan - It would be a pleasure to take you anywhere and for any purpose. And of course I would gladly pay.