Steve Plotnicki

Because Youssou n'Dour is a big star there . Have you offered any evidence that they are popular? I don't know them to be popular in France. I might have missed something but, I can't recall ever seing a Senegalese restaurant in France anywhere. But there is a large Senegalese community in Paris, which is the home of World Music. So it wouldn't surprise me if it was big in France. I actually have a guide book to ethnic dining in Paris and I would check it bbut I can't put my finger on the book.

Do they have good palates? Look at the Dutch, The food in that country is bad compared to their neighbors. And I am sure Dutch people like their cuisine well beyond its actual worth. But it's an affluent country and they can afford to have great food but they don't. So I'm not sure that what Tibetans like matters all that much. I would venture that Fat Guy knows more about food then 2,599,998 people in Tibet. I think it's important to differentiate between an acquired taste, and something that will not taste good no matter who or what is eating eat. There is a lot of food that is plain lousy. We shouldn't be afraid to admit it. If you read that link, those Senegalese dishes look fine, but they might be lousy when you are there because the ingredients are poor. In fact, I am always suspect when a cuisine revolves around stews because it signals tough meat that needs to braise.

Well I assume that Indian cuisine, which is a delicious cuisine, will overcome whatever hurdles and obstacles that face it with time. But there are many cuisines that derive from affluent countries that are crap, or that do not vastly improve beyond being an ethnic cuisine. In reality, cuisines are nothing more then theories. And like all creative endeavors, some theories can only go so far then they exhaust themselves. This issue of spicing, is not exactly an easy issue to deal with. We are all assuming, and hoping that this happens successfully, and that Indian chefs will find a way to crack that nut so to speak. Let me ask you a question. What if the chef who does it is a non-Indian like David Thompson? I ask this question because Suvir, like me, thinks the best dosas in NYC are made by Hampton Chutney Company which is owned by an Irish/American Guy and his wife who studied yoga in India. So there is no guarantee it will be someone who is Indian.

Yes but most cuisines that are acquired tastes come billed as such. It isn't like when you think that Senegalese sucks, there is a body of literature that is going to dispute that and then recommend that you try it ten more times because it is an acquired taste. Most cuisines that are good, have been figured out by someone who champions them and some literature exists. For example, you can try Kimchi and hate it. But it is obvious that there are people who like it very much. Not only is that a huge clue that there is a version of it that can be good, but they usually provide the key to finding a way to acquire the taste for it. Hang on, let me call some of my Senegalese friends for you. This is absolutely correct. We all knew that sushi was considered good before we ever tasted it. Some people were fortunate enough to taste it for the first time and understand why, and some people had to figure out why it was good and it took them a while. But before you ever tasted it, the opinion in favor of sushi was so overwhelmingly in favor that it would be hard to muster a credible argument against it that isn't based on preference. But if you eat Tibetan and hate it, who's going to disagree with you, Richard Gere?

Only if it's Chicken Yassa. Guess what Lamb Yassa is made with? . Actually you might be right, but I'm remembering lamb yassa at that place on Fulton Street arounf the corner from the Cambodian Cuisine Place. But my memory might be failing me.

But while this is true, it depends on who is telling me I'm wrong and why. Some people can move mt to take a second, third and fourth look. Some people I can dismiss as easily as the restaurant. But that has nothing to do with being confronted with a Yassa for the first time. The following questions are raised; 1) Does this taste good? 2) Is this a good dish? 3) How does this dish reflect on the cuisine? Because when it comes down to it, it's just a lamb and lemon dish. How can it be bad? It's either the restaurant or the recipe. But a lamb and lemon dish should be no worse then boring.

Adam - To be informed you have to have a worldview of cuisine. The Thai people you are referring to do not have that worldview. They have a great cuisine, which takes advantages of the great techniques that are involved in Thai cooking. But the other perspective of the same cuisine is that it is limited on an overall basis because it is isolationist and only looks within itself. The cuisine doesn't improve. It is stagnant. If you take the British chefs who have been at the forefront of modern British cuisine, people like Gary Rhodes and Paul Heathcote, what inspired them to raise the level of British cuisine is their experience of eating other cuisines outside of Britain. Go eat a roast chicken in France, or a veal stew in Italy and the clarity of flavors hits you in the face. Chefs do that and they go back to their own country and they say, how can I get my Bubble & Squeak or Sausage and Butter Beans to have the same clarity of flavors. And they improve the local cuisine because they adopt techniques they source elsewhere and they impose it on their own cuisines. All of a sudden they take the way the French prepare their beans for cassoulet and use it in Sausage and Beans and poof, the flavor is amazing. This is the phenomenon that drives cuisine. From what I see, it is not happening in Thai cuisine at the moment, unless David Thompson is doing it. Nor is it happening in Indian cuisine outside of Tabla and Zaika and the others in that genre. But interesting cuisine, depends on this to happen over and over again.

Well this elucidates the differences better then anything. If you think the difference between Arpege and Blue Hill is that Arpege "fussied up the cuisine," we will never get anywhere because you aren't accepting the premise that cuisine is gauged by. If what moves you is a more raw cuisine, so be it. But that does not negate any of the arguments I have made because I am describing what that market values. I have never purported to be describing anything else. And you can deride that market as being fools, but you are not doing a good job of deferring to authority when you do that . I'm more of, the experts are experts school and should be treated that way. That is because I have found from my own experience, their opinion and my assessment seem to be very much in agreement. But as I keep saying, the reason that nobody has tried and failed, is that the people who back these restaurants (experts) do not have anyone to back in the context of doing it with Indian cuisine. I assure you that if there was an Indian chef out there who people who finance restaurants felt the NY Times would give 4 stars to, they would take the chance and open a place like that. There is no backing because it doesn't exist. You know I do this for a living. I finance creative ideas that people have. And if you ask people in my industries, or in the musical theater or drama, or in the film industry, or the toy industry, or in the restaurant business, the biggest problem we all have is that there isn't enough creative talent to drive demand. We are alll desperate for the next big thing. And I am sure that people who finance restaurants would love to have a four star Indian chef come along. Look at how popular Tabla is. How come, when they are so successful has nobody else opened a modern Indian restaurant in this town. Did you ever think that what stops it from happening is that Floyd Cardoz is a one of a kind and there isn't anyone else like him?

It does suck. But I have confidence that someone could make a good Lamb Yassa. But I have zero confidence that it could be good in this country. And you could also convince me it would suck in Senegal. But as a conceptualization of cuisine, it's not much different then a tagine with preserved lemons from North Africa. So it makes perfect sense that it could be good. But I just think when it sucks, you are right and it sucks. And the only time you should sweat it is if lots of people are telling you you are wrong. That is the only time I try and reevaluate my assessment and do research on what I might have done wrong.

Wilfird - Like I said, I haven't eaten at Le Cirque in years. So I do not know what level they are currently peforming at. As for your proffer, like I told Fat Guy, my proffer has nothing to do with indivdual restaurants, just levels of cuisine. It is possible that a restaurant that serves a lower form of cuisine can be more expensive then, and be better then, one that serves a higher form of cuisine. The exercise here is to be able to determine how sophisticated restaurants are and what level of cuisine they offer. And while the food at Blue Hill is more "involved" to use your world, I would be disappointed if I went to a four star restaurant and that is what I was served. It isn't high enough cuisine. The cuisine at a place like Arpege shows, and again, these are Vedat's words, "One has to take other components of fine dining into account such as superior technique, research that went into the dish, intelligent combinations, focus and harmony, etc." There is far more of this at Arpege then at Blue Hill. And there used to be far more of it at Le Cirque. Well what I said on the Babbo thread, and this is the most concise statement about it, is that it evidences that the supply side can't create interest at that pricepoint. That statement is irrefutable. Because it only takes into account that there is't any at that level (a fact) and it interposes a theory as to why. The answer for anyone who disputes that is, how come the other cuisines do not have this problem? But that is the only level I am referring to. And I haven't said it is going to be impossible for someone to create that. In fact I've been quite clear in saying it is possible. But what I have said is that in order for them to do it the cuisine needs to move beyond high class home cooking and into a phase of cuisine that transcends its ethnic origins. That doesn't mean completely discard them, that means transcends them so a culinary statement can be made on an international level. That is what Nobu did. It is possibly what David Thompson is doing. Heston Blumenthal is doing it. Grant Achutz is doing it at Trio. Obviosuly Adria and others are doing it in Spain. If you look at any of those chefs, you will find the same thing to be true. They all transcend point of origin. But what makes them all the same/similar, is that they practice a very high level of technique, which by the way of you haven't noticed, is how cuisine gets measured . Adam - But how can you say I am uninformed. I have the worldwide food press at my fingertips including what diners on this board write. Bourdain just flew all over SE Asia and he highlighted one single restaurant as being among the best of the world. Why do you not think that if what I am describing existed out there, I wouldn't know about it?

What is the point of that article?

The reason there is no demonstrable industry built around those cuisines is that the cuisines won't support the industry. I keep saying that and you keep saying I can't prove it. We keep coming back to this very same disagreement. I say in light of demonstrable evidence that it exists, and I have offered three different ways to evidence it, price point, cookbooks and the press, I say it does not exist. You want to draw the opposite inference and I'm not sure on what basis other then some sort of political correctness or egalitarianism. Either it exists, or it doesn't exist. That it might exist in the future, or there are socio-economic reasons it doesn't exist today, or that it is percolating somewhere and I don't know about it, all that is fine and dandy. The situation is fluid and the market for cuisine adjusts itself all of the time. I can only take a snapshot in time and assess it against a standard criteria. As for "cultures cuisines" (I assume you meant culture/cuisine,) yes there are cuisines that are inferior to other cuisines when using certain standards to measure the sophistication of technique they employ. But this is true in every aesthetic. Naive painting is an inferior technique of painting then cubism. Folk song writing is an inferior method of composition to writing symphonys. Haute couture is a superior method of clothing design to making bluejeans. Every world has it's way of measuring things including cuisine. And if you don't want to accept the way things are measured, well then don't. But just because you don't want to accept them, that is no evidence that the people who develop what the standards are and critique things according to those standards don't know what they are doing. I think if you dug deeply into how they arrive at their conclusions, you would see that they very much know what they are doing. In fact, you really have no evidentiary basis to not defer to their authority other then you don't want to for reasons that have nothing to do with an evaluation of the aesthetic they are measuring.

But there is plenty of thrid party ratification for what I am saying. For example, there is an entire industy built around cuisine. There are famous chefs who have cookbooks that are sold on a worldwide basis. Many of them not in English. There are French chefs (many,) Italian chefs (fewer,) Spanish chefs (extremely prolific at the moment,) British chefs (prolific as well,) Australian chefs (were extremely prolific but seems to have slowed a bit,) and over the last few years a surge in German chefs and even a few Dutch chefs have published books about their cuisine. And of course there is Nobu and Testuya who anchor Japanese cookbooks. But there are no Indian chefs, Thai chefs, Chinese chefs, Mexican chefs etc. Chefs who do things so unique and creative that there are cookbooks published with their recipes, seem not to exist in those cuisines. And it isn't like there aren't cookbooks published about Indian and Thai cuisine. Loads of them. But they aren't written by restaurant chefs, they are writen by home cooks. And they feature home cooking. My pricepoint argument is tied into the state of cookbooks today. The restaurants with chefs who are able to publish cookbooks because they have a unique restaurant cuisine, are able to charge more money for a meal then restaurants that serve a restaurantized version of home cooking. That is not a generalized statement. It's a true statement based on real facts. And the worldwide food press is in line with this as well. The magazines are full of places to eat in all of the countries that have chefs who have excelled beyond their peers. But there is hardly any copy about places to eat in India, Thailand, etc., all the places that are without chefs who haven't managed to distinguish themselves outside of the context of the local cuisine. But this is a naive view. What the chef at Zaika is trying to do is to blend two concepts. The western concept of risotto which means the rice tastes a certain way and the Indian concept of a spiced cuisine. Where he went wrong is that a risotto is a specific thing. Like classical music, there are rules. If you want to call something a risotto, the end result means that you have to have done something to the rice that makes it unique so it can be the focus of the dish. He missed that point and made the spicing the focus. That isn't a risotto anymore. Had he done a better job at it, it would have has the characteristics of a risotto made in an Indian style. One of the great things about creativity is that there are no boundaries. Most people that try and adapt techniques from other cultures do it poorly. But a good chef can notice the similarity between a pilaf and a risotto and make a statement about both of them at the same time. Whether that statement rings true with diners is a separate and discreet issue. But in the first instance, we are not assessing the diners reaction, we are trying to identify which chefs are making aesthetic statements. Home chefs I contend are not making aesthetic statements. What diners support, and are willing to pay more money for, and what cookbook publishers print, and what food magazines write about, are chefs whose cuisine offers a unique aesthetic that can't be found elsewhere, especially in home dining. Price points, cookbooks published, magazine articles or guide book reviews, those are all third party ratifications that certain chefs practice a higher art, and that certain cuisines are higher up on the cuisine food chain. I haven't seen anybody put forth any evidence to dispute that.

Actually it isn't. You have taken my statement to mean that the formal rules will arrive at an absolute truth and I haven't said that at all. One needs to look at the rules to understand this because there is wiggle room as part of the process is a critical analysis. But that only describes the very high end, where applying the rules in a way where there is a clear result is difficult to do. But what the rules clearly do is to seperate wheat and chaffe. They make it easy to eliminate Mary had a Little Lamb when comparing it to The Rite of Spring. Mary had a Little Lamb is is not a symphony because it doesn't conform to the rules. And it's melody is simplistic and the main theme from The Rite of Spring is complex. Should we get the scores and compare them and demonstrate why? That is why the first question that you need to ask is, what level of cuisine are we talking about? The proffer is that people are willing to pay more money for a higher level of cuisine then a lower level.

Adam - You keep raising variations of the absolute truth argument. What I don't know, or what is not available to me, has no relevance to my assessment. I can only measure what is part of the general marketplace. That there might be a chef that nobody ever heard of, who is in the deepest Himalayas, and who is cooking the greatest food in the entire world, has no bearing on what I am saying. It is like you are telling me that I can't take the position that Stravinsky is the greatest Russian composer because there might be some composer from Siberia that wasn't fortunate enough to be performed for extenuating reasons so my statement about Stravinksy couldn't absolutely be true. Hogwash and that is relativism. I can only make comments on what is available in the marketplace. Where we get into a rut is that you keep saying (and this particular argument is popular around here with the academics,) that the correct inference to be drawn when you can't absolutely prove anything is that you can't reach a conclusion. But that isn't responsive to my proffer which is limited to how the market feels about what is available to it. The dish at Zaika is nothing like Persian cuisine. It was more like how the chef was trying to present it, a risotto. Problem was, a risotto is delicately spiced because you are trying to taste the quality of the rice, let alone any other ingredient that is included. And if you add a high percentage of spice to the dish, you can't taste the rice and the shrimp very well. This is a perfect example of what I call "overspicing" and Indian chefs are going to have to change their strategy about how they spice things if they want to westernize their cuisine. Yvonne - High class, is not the same as haute. Gilbert & Sullivan might have made high class music (depending on your point of view,) but it is still operetta and not opera. What distinguishes opera from the other is a lengthy list of formal rules that you need to comply with. And they are not interchangeable. When you want to see an opera you can't just go see The Pirates of Penzance instead. This is the same. Many cuisines have luxury versions of home cooking that are not haute but are indeed high class. A $100 bouillabaisse or cous cous are good examples of that. Or a roast beef dinner in the U.K. at a place like The Dorchester Grill is another good example. A high quality meal that is very pricy, but it is not haute cuisine. Indian food operates on this level if you ask me. In fact, for this level of cuisine it is amazingly complicated. But it is not the same as haute cuisine. I'm sorry to hear about your BB in Nice. As someone who has eaten a good dozen authentic ones over the years, a good one can be as compelling as I described. The key ingredient in a BB is the Rascasse fish, or rockfish. Something that isn't available in NYC. So I'm afraid your Le Bernadin BB couldn't have been an authentic version.

I didn't say people paid more for haute. I said they paid more for French. Haute is just one of the things that the French have to offer that other cuisines can't offer. There is also a luxury food category for non-haute cuisine, like luxury bistros where roast chickens for two are $80-$100 or four inch roasted prime ribs that price out in that range. In my experience, the French have the most expensive fish stews, sausages and cabbage, bean casserole with meats, and probably many more dishes if I cared to look. But if you want to know a little more about bouillabaisse, and caccuico, which is like a zuppa di pesce, here is a good link to an Arthur Schwratz article. Fish Soups And if you want to understand why bouillbaise costs so much money, try this link from Clifford Wright. Even I was impressed. Bouillabaisse Pan - For a soupe de posson, after the fish is cooked, they puree the broth with the fish still in it and then they strain it. So you get a thin broth that is full of fish flavor, as well as having some body because of pureeing the fish. A bouillabaise gets its body from the rapid boil which emulsifies the olive oil into the broth. More of a velvety mouthfeel. Your meal sounds like a womderful memory. I wonder if that restaurant is still there? Yvonne - I reread that quote and it doesn't say haute does it? It just says that they created a fancier version of a peasant dish. Fancier soup doesn't mean it's haute. It just means it's fancier. Haute is a specific style of cooking like opera or ballet are specific styles of singing and dancing. Have you never been to the Cannes/Nice are for a bouillabaisse at either Tetou or Bacon? I promise you it is an entirely different experience then what you had at Le Bernadin. A good BB is monumental in both appearance, as well as the effort it takes to eat it. If you have a hearty appetite you can easily go through four or five bowls of soup that are loaded with fish filets and croutons slathered with rouille and doused with grated gruyere cheese. It really is a heady experience and it gives you a rush. The last time I had one (1999?), one of the people we were dining with became hypnotized somewhere around his third or fourth bowl and we found him with his head crouched low over the bowl just staring into it. The thing is, the broth in a BB can be iffy and it is crucial to the success of the dish. I don't know why it is great sometimes and others sort of lackluster. I could never figure out if it is seasonal or not. Someone must know the answer to this. The other dish that offers the same type of heady experience is a good cous cous. If you are in Paris and are dining with say, 10-12 people, they will bring you a platter of cous cous that is the size of a pizza tin from Ray's Pizza, with a cous cous that is perfectly formed into a mound and must be almost a foot high in the center. And laid out on the cous cous are all sorts of grilled meats and chicken. In fact so many different cuts and portions of them that the cous cous is almost completely covered. Then they deliver a series of tagines to the table, chicken with olives, lamb with cinammon, prunes and almonds, and lamb and chicken with preserved lemon, and a huge tureen of spicy lamb bouillion and a bowl of boiled chick peas. Mrs. P loves to make a bowl filled with cous cous and doused with bouillon, dressed with some chickpeas and then treated with some harrisa (moroccan hot sauce.) She then cuts off various pieces of the grilled meats and small portions of the tagines and has an unbelievable plate of food. Have you not done this with 12 of your best friends in Paris? I don't know if what I just described could cost quite $100, but you can get close. But the cost is for the sheer quanity of food. I don't think in the instance of the cous cous or the bouillabaise, that expert culinary technique is what you pay for. It sounds to me like anybody could learn how to be the bouillabaisse or cous cous chef without any formal training. So those are instances where people are paying for something else, other then haute cuisine. But there are examples of this in other cuisines. How about a Bollito Misto? Another peasant dish but which is also found in some of Italy's more elegant restaurants where they make more refined version.s So it's not a cut and dry thing. But still, it dosn't change the original assertion that people are willing to pay more for things of better quality. Sometimes those things are small plates of food where a chef has handled every aspect of the dish and hours and hours of effort result is a four inch square portion of food and it costs $45 as an appetizer. And sometimes people pay for an abundance of quality but without the same amount of effort in preparing it. But that doesn't mean that the dish is lacking when compared to other dishes in its class. It just means the emphasis is placed elsewhere. What's amazing to me, is that the French, and their colonies, excel at both types of cuisine. They are the best at the haute and the best at the naught haute. Isn't that amazing?

Actually no I didn't. What I said was that it used some sophisticated techniques compared to Zuppa di Pesce and a Catalan Style fish soup. And those techniques are why it is a better fish soup. I agree with you that an Indian meal is complex. But it is still like home cooking, and it is missing the level of refinement (at least at places like Tamarind and Diwan) that is associated with haute cuisine. Upscale home cooking and high cuisine are two different things. Like Tony says, it will happen one day. It just hasn't happened yet.

That's a fair summation of my position. This is actually an interesting aspect of the development of cuisine that Torakris touched on. When the French abandoned highly spiced cuisine and started to create a new one based on mild spicing, how much did that help the development of their cuisine? I would imagine quite a lot. There are some obvious reasons for that. Let me make a list. Or maybe I should wait for India Girl because she is so good at making lists . I would think that lessening your dependancy on spices and creating better agro systems have some connection. The more mildly spiced, the easier it is to taste the ingredients, the better quality ingredients you need. I will place my money on this very simple riddle I just constructed. Especially if the issue is the "westernization" of the next generation of Indian chefs. Pan - Do you remember what you ate?

Now that was a nice post. Full of pride for what you love. It is a good quality to be able to see the potential in the future despite the limitations that might exist in the present. And let me know when you are organizing your event. I'll be the first to sign up for it.

Wilfird - Well I do not think anyone in the food industry would agree with you. I haven't been at Le Cirque in a very long time, but I do not recall what you are saying to be the case. I always found it to be a true Four Star restaurant (NY Times). Blue Hill is either a two or three star at best. There are reasons for that, that have to do with the scope of the cuisine. Blue Hill might be creative cuisine, but it isn't particularly involved cuisine. It's mostly three or for ingredients that are cooked in a way to bring out their natural flavors. Anissa is similar in scope. As is Prune although it's a little more rustic. But none of those cuisines have the refinement and complexity of Le Cirque, if they stil cook the way I knew them to cook there when Daniel, Sylvan and Sotah were the chefs. Dan and Mike are great chefs, but do not cook in the same league as those guys. Can you not taste the difference when you dine at these places? Vedat actually makes a point that is very similar to mine in his Northen Italian thread. It's in he post where he responds to Craig Camp, Liz and me. But it's near the end of the response to Craig. What does profatibility have to do with anything I said? I have no way of knowing what is more and what is less profitable. Based on my business experience, unless costs vary so greatly from one genre of cuisine to another, the more you gross the more falls to the bottom line providing you do not lose control of your business because it has gotten larger. And in general, I do not know a restaurant owner in the city who wouldn't want their average check to be larger if it could be. That's what they all dream about. Yvonne - Well we are going to have to parse the word complicated now aren't we. How can we get a shortcut here? If you are familiar with the Moroccan dish Dafina, it is a very complicated dish. It's what they call a "Sabbath bake." Morrocan Jews were able to prepare it and put it on the fire before sundown. And since you are not allowed to cook after sundown, and placing something on the fire would technically be cooking, they devised this terrific dish. But the dish is basically the following. A highly spiced cassoullet like stew made from lentils and soup meats, and there is a meatlof stuffed with baked eggs wrapped in cloth in the middle of the stew. The entire concoction is placed in a large pot with a cover on top, and then, bread dough is placed around the edge of the pot to seal in the juices and aromas while it is cooking. It cooks for approximately 18 hours. From sunset on Friday to after synagigue lunch on Saturday which is when it is eaten. As you can probably imagine from the description, it is one hell of a delicious thing. And it has tremendous complexity to it. But no matter how complex it is, it is upscale home cooking. And as Vedat said on his Italian thread; However, to declare what is basically an upscale home cooking with top ingredients to be among the top 10 restaurants in the world is a hectic and, in my opinion, a false statement. One has to take other components of fine dining into account such as superior technique, research that went into the dish, intelligent combinations, focus and harmony, etc.. So when you say the following; I know you mean that when you say it, but it's a theoretical that can't really happen anymore. Today's high cuisine is based on the individuality of the chef. Just like you go to the theater to see Nathan Lane in The Producers. Why go to see him instead of his replacement? Because he is unique and original and he lends something to the part that is indispensible. Same with chefs. The only 3 star restaurant in the world that I know of where the restauranteur is as famous as the chef is Taillevent. And that is only because he has upheld a tradition that his father started more then 50 years ago.

Tony - You are going to hate my answer but it is a very simple one. No Indian chef does something that is so unique that it warrants naming the restaurant after him. I have been indirectly making that point since the beginning of these threads. And I'll even take it one step further. I will bet you that Indian cuisine is still in the stages where chefs are just employees, and the restaurants are owned by restauranteurs. (happy birthday by the way.) I keep trying to explain this as well. And yes it is business acumen. Part of what made haute cuisine so successful was the entrepreneurship of the chefs. Look at Hermant Mather at Diwan. He's the greatest tandoori chef in America. He's an employee. But Floyd Cardoz is an owner and he gets more money per meal then Diwan does. And the chef at Zaika is an owner and his price point is up there as well. I can't speak for David Thompson because I haven't eaten there, nor have I read much about it, but he's an owner. What makes their price points higher is they have an individualized take on their cuisines, i.e., they each have their own cuisine. That is what diners value. Original cuisine that you can't get elsewhere. I agree with you it is a tougher burden. But let's be honest, the reason there isn't a restaurant called Cyrus Todiwalla (great name for a restaurant by the way) is that what he does isn't so distinguishable from what other Indian restaurants do. Let's take what I think are the top tandoori places in NYC and London. Diwan and Tamarind. Nothing about what they do at either place is distinguishable to the chefs hand. That is the key. Distinguishable to the chef's hand. Where we started was whether interesting spicing routines are distinguishable in the way that western diners would latch onto. Wilfrid - Well, yes I do. Le Cirque is in a different and higher category then Blue Hill is. They serve true haute cuisine, higher cuisine then the bistro-ish/modern small restaurant style cuisine they serve at Blue Hill. You see the measure I keep using is the level of cuisine they prepare. Not how proficient they are at preparing it. Proficiency is a secondary factor that mitigates the first factor. That way a good performing small restaurant with a lesser scope like Blue Hill, can be a better restaurant then a poor performing haute cuisine restaurant like La Cote Basque. But from my last meals there. Le Cirque is still a very good restaurant and offers much finer cuisine then Blue Hill does. Adam - But folk music is an inferior form of composition to symphonic composition. And I'm not using the word composition in a casual manner. There are rules of composition and that governs what is considered better. Same with cuisine. When the chef at Zaika is trying to make a higher Indian cuisine, he says for example, I am going to take a basmati rice pilaf, a certain style curry sauce with vegetables in it, and sauteed shrimps, and instead of serving them on three different plates. I am going to prepare them in a way that combines them like a risotto or a paella. His aesthetic statement is that he is improving the cuisine and moving it beyond simple ethnic cuisine, or folk music as in my Stravinsky example. Now what he created might not be any good. But that really has nothing to do with the fact that it is judged by a standard we call cuisine, that has rules just like formal composition has rules. And when I go to his restaurant (and I mean me in this instance,) I weigh how good the cuisine is. And not only compared to other Indian cuisine, all cuisine.

What you really mean to say is that the cuisine isn't good enough to warrant a higher price point. Isn't that it? Because if we add expertise and creativity to your list of labor and ingredient costs, what we get is better and worse cuisines. And that is what sets the price point isn't it? And I am using "cuisine" in a specific way, as the sum of the variables we listed. Let' see, where have I gone wrong here. Better ingredients, more labor intensive, more creativity in the cuisine, and a certain type of expertise, that should add up to a better cuisine shouldn't it? Isn't this exactly what people are willing to pay more money for?

Adam - Since you don't eat in these places, how would you know? Are you saying that all the people who travel through Europe in search of exquisitely prepared meals don't know what they are doing? When Stravinsky wrote symphonies based on Russian folk melodies, what was he doing, dumbing them down or making great art? And how do you know what the chef at Zaika is doing? Is he dumbing it down, or is he inventing a new cuisine that isn't based on xenophobia and isolationism? How do you know? When the Italians incorporated the tomato into their cuisine, dumbing down or an improvement? I can give thousands of examples like this. How do you know if they are dumbing down or an improvement? But popularity, and price point, is how every level of the market is gauged. It isn't like this criteria only works for haute cuisine. It works for cheap places too. The best places are typically the most crowded, and/or can charge more money for what they serve. Wilfird - But they are not getting $100 a head for it in the U.K. either. The price of a meal at Tamarind, and at Gordon Ramsey are completely different price points. You keep avoiding my question, but this time I am going to ask it the other way. What is it about French or Japanese cuisine that makes people want to drop $125 for the tasting menu at Jean-Georges or at Suigiyama. Or the $160 menu at Ducasse, or the $160 "best quality" menu at Sugiyama. Or the 270 Euro tasting menu at Arpege? There is clearly no Indian restaurant that anyone has told us about that is in that price range. Why are diners willing to pay more for those cuisines? And we don't have to stick with Indian as a benchmark. Pick a cuisine. When is the last time you heard of someone dropping 270 euros on a mezze? And you know how much I love a good mezze. I've eaten in more middle eastern restaurants in London then the Brits have. Why won't people spend that kind of money on it? With all the Arabic high rollers in London, running around with their offshore bank accounts and mistresses, there is no $125 mezze I know of. Why is that?

I said "could" you know. I didn't say should and I didn't say had to.. But aside from that, you are looking at it from an academic's perspective and I am looking at it from a businessman's perspective. If it is so good, why aren't they selling it? I do not know people to be stupid when they can make money from something that is as easy to sell as good food. If it existed, wouldn't someone be trying to make money from it? I wish longevity was a substitute for good cuisine, let alone creative cuisine. Go to Egypt if you want to see an ancient society that has crappy food at every level. Or should we make a list of all of the ancient or established societies with bad food, or food that hasn't evolved in hundreds of years? How about Germany? Or Holland or Russia? How about Bolivia? You can't even eat the fruits and vegetables there as the ground is contaminated. Not only do they have to be washed, they have to be washed with chemicals. Yes at the $50 a meal level and not at the $75 or $100 a meal level. Why shouldn't the data be read to conclude that the reason they can't get the higher pricepoint is that the cuisine isn't good enough? And I am not drawing that conclusion, but it would be a fair one to draw in my opinion. Yvonne - Sorry I missed that. Because the cuisine they serve is more refined then it is in a place like say, Red Fort or Star of India. Tamarind, a place I like very much,serves a more classical cuisine then Zaika, a place I didn't like very much. But the menu at Zaika reads extremely well and I was looking forward to my meal after reading it. But the end product was slanted too heavily towards traditional cuisine, and not firmly entrenched in the concept of the restaurant which is fusion. I thought the chef would break away from tradition to a greater extent then he does. But let me ask you this now. For either of those restaurants to have three stars, what about the cuisine and presentation do you think would have to change? And you can take 3 pages to answer if you want .

But that is exactly my point. One can draw an inference that it isn't on their "to-do list" because they do not have anything to offer that will interest enough people, i.e., it isn't unique, original, creative enough to compete in a worldwide dining marketplace. If it was going to be more lucrative for them, it might very well be on their to do list.