Steve Plotnicki

Adam - You are delving into a level of technique in making ratatouille that is beyond my personal expertise. It very well might be that the best result is to cook the veggies separately first, and then combine them later. Can't tell you. We need experienced ratatouille chefs to disclose the magic answer. But, I can tell you that a true Provencal ratatouille is not a small stew of vegetables in the way it's portrayed in NYC and London. It's really like a chunky vegetable jam. How we best get to that consistancy and flavor is obviously up for debate and I harbor no prejudice for any particular method except the one that gives the best result. As to the question of whether you want it to taste Provencal or like an American ratatouille, I suggest the former and the only thing that will get you there is the right olive oil. Of course you might want to tinker with the recipe depending on what your RT is going to accompany. If for example you are serving it with fish, you might want to have a small saute of vegetables in the style of RT because the crunch of the vegetables would compliment the fish. But if you are serving it with a leg of lamb, you most definitely want the jam consistancy as I assure you a small piece of lamb combined with some of the vegetable jam is a combination of monumental proportions .

Thanks Ellen. Those are works of art.

I'm going to disagree with Bourdain here. Ratatouille is supposed to be cooked long enough for the vegetables to almost become the consistancy of jam. Like a ragu. People think it is just stewed vegetables when the goal is to make something that stews until it develops its own flavor and texture. If you drain it well after you cook it, and let the excess oil seep out of it, when you serve it you can pour a bit of extra virgin olive oil on it to liven it up and to combine a fresh taste with the cooked taste of the vegetables. As for the color, it turns brownish because of the skin of the eggplant. But if you use a sufficient amount of zucchini and tomato you should have some variance in the color. If I remember correctly, there is a great recipe for it in The Food Lover's Guide to France by Patricia Wells and she writes about a place in the town of Cassis that she describes as making the epitome of ratatouille.

What dates are you going to be in Barcelona/El Bulli?

I think that people who want to protest by getting rid of their French wine, should give them to children of Holocaust survivors, especially Polish survivors, to do what they please with them.

Disagree.

Sometimes writers are too silly for words. She basically goes to all of the same type of restaurant and then asks where the balance is? If every meal is at a bistro, famous for stewing and braising things in their fat and/or then pairing them with rich sauces, of course it's all going to be the same. And it isn't that her ultimate point isn't a good one. France does not do a good job with casual meals. But there are still wine bars and cafes where you can take a light meal. Or brasseries where you can sit with some oysters or crevettes mayo with a pichet of junky muscadet while watching the world go buy. But if at every meal you order an unsusual cut of animal that is notiously fatty, and which has been stewed in even more fat where wine and butter have been added, then of course it is all going to be the same.

Excuse me, Dirler and Boxler.

But all you are saying is that sometimes the differences between the three and four star restaurants are too subtle to notice. For example, if you have the roast chicken at Ducasse, it will be a more carefully chosen chicken, a more carefully butchered chicken, the method of cooking it will be more particularized, and the sauce it is paired with is likely to be a more complicated preparation that is both more time consuming as well as more demanding to make perfectly. This philosophy will even extend to how they present and serve the food. Theoretically they have done the best that it is possible to do with these ingredients. But then of course, none of that has to be true. It can all be a bunch of hype. But obviously enough of it is true because we all leave places like Daniel and Ducasse feeling that they are four stars and Gramercy Tavern as if it is three. I don't think it is our imaginations although the fact that Gramercy isn't as formal as the other two must create some type of bias in our minds. But I imagine that if you ate in one of those three restaurants every week for three or four months, you would learn how to easily distinguish the differences.

Well you don't think the d'Yqueem has been on that shelf for 57 years do you? You need to inqure about their provenance. Also, in what condition was the label in, as well as the fills in the bottle?

But what did you eat at this meal with the curious food?

'Tis a shame. Just one more big piece of evidence that major dailies continue to dumb down the dining experience by viewing everything though the lens of consumerism. And to be honest, 143 pounds is not out of line with what dinner at any of the top places in the world would cost. But I doubt an article entitled, "Why you should spend 143 quid for dinner" would be very popular. That's because people would immediately believe that the article is saying that if you don't spend that amount, then you can't eat well.

Pumpkino - I'm not sure what you mean? There are lots of places in the U.S. where you can get a whole fish that has its head on and which hasn't been fileted.

Kind of like Italian when you take away the vino .

Actually most people do. Which is why the guide books that are the best sellers have rankings and ratings in them. Even the most popular newspaper criticism of restaurants has a star system which tries to create a nice, neat order to things.

Yvette - Thanks for your very nice post. The answer to your question is that it's the capitalist perspective and manner of doing things. Everything nice and ordered to reconcile with market valuation. That is why Michelin stars, Robert Parker ratings, and other things that give a clear and concise way of communicating quality are popular. What I might ask you in turn is, why are some people so resistant to that concept? Because saying Greek cuisine is inferior to Turkish cuisine is not a very remarkable statement. That's because when you are in the mood for Greek cuisine, well nothing will replace it and that is when all of the things ancillary to the cuisine like environment make a difference. But what does that have to do with an ackowldegment that Turkish cuisine incorporates finer techniques and ingredients. It is just a basis for discussion. In fact, quite often we actually learn something from these exercises.

Chines restaurants usually overcook their lobsters. Some places are better then others, but I find this to consistantly be a problem. It is even worse with dishes like clams in black bean sauce and it usually results in rubbery clams. Which by the way, tastes better IMO as I do not find the flavor of the liquor of the clams to be a good match for black bean sauce. The taste improves IMO when the liquor of the clams evaporates during the cooking process. But getting back to lobster, I also have never had a lobster in a Chinese restaurant that is anywhere as sweet, and with the depth of flavor, that you get in one of those larger lobsters that are in the 4-7 pound category which are typically found in steakhouses. For my money, I think the Chinese do a much better job with crab then they do with lobster. The single best seafood dish in Chinese cuisine I know of is the Salt & Pepper Dungeness Crab at Yuet Lee in SF. It's not the fanciest dish, but it is awfully good and the crab is so large to begin with, that you actually get entire sections that have large enough pieces of meat so they can be extracted from the shell.

Yes where's Trader Vic's when you need it.

I'm talking about your typical guide to dining published in book format, usually by a newspaper encapsulating their reviews of a city, or just a restaurant reviewer's book. Exactly the thing I might buy when I go out of town because I want a more in depth assessment of where to eat. Here's one I bought when I was in Amsterdam in January, IENS Independant Restaurant Index published in both Dutch and English. Most large cities have a version of this type of book. The problem with these types of books is always the same. You need a way to calibrate your palate and your environment expectations against what they write and they only way to do that is to physically sample their taste. Good guide books have figured out a way through the narrative to express their taste clearly. Like the first time I bought a Gault Millau Guide in English. I suspected that their 12 and 13 point ratings where they admired how they grilled meats and fish would be the type of places I would like and they were. So the rock and a hard place is, you need a narrative (which can be expressed numerically as well,) or editorial slant, that permeates the guide in a way that communicates a clear picture. But the problem is that in order to grasp what the narrative is saying, readers need to make an investment of time to read ththrough a substantial portion of the data to learn what the narrative is. What you would like to do is to condense that process. Good luck. I don't think it can be done. You might be able to organize it in a way that helps people get through it a little more quickly. But I'm not sure how much value that has over any other method of doing it.

But this is what most guide books already do. They list 25-50 places in the French or Upper Middle Category, a bunch of the best steak houses and unique NYC eateries like the Oyster Bar or Rao's or John's Pizza, and then 2-3 of the best restaurants in every ethnic category. That fills an entire book. What is so new and so different in what you are proposing? Even Zagat has a list of the top five restaurants by category and that covers many ethnic categories. So what exactly is it that this is going to add to the mix?

Didn't she pass away?

None. But some of them should be demoted.

It's impossible because one category of people doesn't dine in restaurants in the other category. To people who are in the ethnic/cheap eats category, they are not happy seeing Congee Village and Sripaphai coming in at 35th place, after 34 versions of Daniel and Gramercry Tavern. It's the same inference of inferiority that besets wines that Robert Parker scores at 89 or 90. That they are good wines is irrelevent. What jumps out at people is the huge increment between those wines and ones that score 100. This issue, even though people like you and I might be immune to this, turns people off because it makes the list seem like it is not directed towards them. And I thought the purpose was to make one big list that everyone felt was directed towards them without succumbing to Zagat style populism?

That defeats the purpose. What would be groundbreaking is if you were able to codify them all on the same list and signal their relative importance to diners.

But ordering a plain piece of broiled fish is not bad, and really merits a star given what he typically gives stars to. It's when they start saucing the fish that they start screwing up. But their smoked fish platter is good, and they have those shrimps that are deep fried in rice batter flour (which City Hall makes as well) which are also good. It's just that their is lots of bad too. I also happen to hate the space. To me it feels like you're eating in the subway.