Steve Plotnicki

Isn't Babu Mario Batalli's new Indian restaurant?

Actually I meant the Hudson Valley. So it's either Dutchess or Columbia County. But check out this cool map of New York State. Just run your curser over a location in the state. New York State

Hmmm, I like this place too. But not as much as you guys do. It must be a British thing. I'm going to have to go again next time over. But one thing I loved about the place was the smell when you walk in. It has that classic fish house smell of a mixture of lobster broth and tomatoes, like a lobster bisque is in the air. Simon go to The Ivy next.

There are three very important dishes created at Lucas-Carton that you need to have under your gastronomic belt. Steamed Cabbage Leaves wrapped around Foie gras, Lobster in Vanilla Sauce, and Canard Apicius which is a duck roasted in a sweat and sour spice paste mixture served in a date sauce. Once upon a time (15 years ago,) these dishes were at the top of the gastronomic heap. Today they can be a little tired to those of us who have moved past this type of cuisine. The kitchen at L-C also varies in the intensity in which these dishes come out of the kitchen. But when they are prepared well, these three dishes are staggeringly good.

I believe that when they make the dough, they roll it out to be paper thin. Then they cut sheets and fold them into little packets that are the size of a credit card. The when they throw them into the hot oil, they sort of puff up and the outsides become crispy but still chewy and the inside is basically hollow.

Adam - In Sicily it is Panelle. They make some great Panelle at Ferdinando's Cafe in Brooklyn. You can get a plate of three of them, light as feathers topped with a mound of lovely ricotta and grated parmegian. Yum. It's a dish right out of wheat free heaven.

I can't remember whose recipe we use. I want to say Patrcia Wells from The Food Lover's Guide toi France. Can that be right? Anyway, we must have a dozen recipes in the house including Joanna Weir. None of them are particularly fancy. Chickpea flour and water. The toppings for little socca pancakes are endless. French cheese with tomatoes and basil are terrific. It's the consistancy of the socca that's tricky. When you get it in France, it is cooked in a wood burning oven and the bottonm of the socca is slightly charred and the edges are burnt. Hard to approximate that at home in the oven. Maybe if I use a pizza stone. But that's no good because the batter will run off the sides.

You mean farinata which is what I believe it is called in Italy. The food of Liguria is very much similar to the food of Nice. A few big distinctions I can put my finger on. Much greater reliance on meat in France. I can't think of the Italian equivelent of daube or a poulet Nicoise. But Liguria has things based on chestnut flour like trophie. Actually, I think you need to get to Genoa before you find trophie. If you flip through the Coleman Andrews or Fred Plotkin books on Riviera cuisine, it's remarkable how similar the cuisines are, dishes often just seperated by a name. There is even an Italian equivelent for Bouillabaise, the name of which is escaping me for the moment.

Just tell them no wheat. They will be very happy to comply. At Trotter's and Trio I told them in advance and they both baked wheat free bread for me. One from corn and one from rice.

Thank you. We sometimes make socca at home (made from gram flour) and we serve it with homemade pesto sauce and either shrimp or scallops. It's a surprisingly good combo. You can adapt that for an Indian palate by using your bhaja recipe but one needs a light sauce that is Indian in stylle to replace the pesto. I bet it would be very good.

Yes but, a perfect score leaves no room for improvement. The inference it draws is that there can be no better restaurant in the world. That half point left an ambiguity that people could extend out as far as they could. Now a restaurant like El Bulli can only be as good as Veyrat. But it can't be better. That can't be an accident.

Judge? When you say for me, you mean just for myself or for my table? Usually a restaurant wants the table to eat the same meal. Sometimes when you have four people, they will bring people two different entrees. The other night at Union Pacific, we all had the same menu six course menu but two of us had short ribs for a main course and two had venison. But the entire table is expected to have the same meal.

Well if I remember the story correctly, one of the big dairys in Hudson County (that's upstate NY) was experimenting with a product directed at gourmet restaurants. I don't think it is the same thing you are talking about though it obviously comes from underage beef. I have actually seen it on a menu only one other time. The version we had was like a strip steak, or a veal filet. It had a funny crunchy texture to it. A bit tough for my taste, but the flavor was pretty good. Something like beef lite.

Irish Cream - What we mean by no money is as follows. Say you go to a restaurant and the tasting menu has four courses on it, three savourys and desserts. But let's say there are more then three good looking dishes on the menu. So you ask your server would it be possible to prepare a 7 course tasting menu based on the printed tasting menu plus three you have chosen? In most instances, a restaurant would be glad to accomodate you. And it's quite possible, even though not likely, that the cost will be exactly the same because they have reduced the portion size of each course. But what I think you most typically find in this instance is that the cost is higher, but on a quality to price ratio analysis it turns out to be a bargain. And the four course menu might have been $90, and the seven course is $110. But here is the part that some people seem to be missing. When you identify yourself to a restaurant in this manner, they take you seriously as an eater. And it's very likely that on top of your seven course, the kitchen sends out 2-3 more course, some little bites, some full tasting size porrions, and you end up with 10-11 courses for the $110 which in reality nets it down to costing less then the $90. I can't tell you how many times this has happened to me. And Liziee and other will all have loads of stories just like this one. So this is what we are describing. It's a *value added* that isn't printed on any menu. But which kicks in at some point if you are able to communicate to the restaurant that you are the type of diner *that appreciates* thay type of service. The cost of communicating it is free. The cost of living it is a negotiation, just like anything else. But again, typically you will find that going that route not only gets you the best food, but the best value.

No I agree with you. When I said exceptions, I wasn't really referring to a different preparation. Like can you steam my salmon instead of pan roasting it? I was using it more in the way of their making you an "exceptional" dish that might have special ingredients that they are holding back. And I don't mean luxury ingredients like truffles either. Once when I was at Blue Hill, they served us baby beef. Now before I screw up the definition of baby beef, it was too old to be veal but not old enough to be real beef. Assuming that it wasn't on the regular menu, that was something they made as a special dish for a regular customer that had a pricing structure of its own. And in my experience, those dishes "typically" have some sort of upcharge to them. But they don't have to.

Simon - Or how about the recipe for Gram flour pnacakes? Are they sweet or savoury? Us wheat sensitive people are always looking for wheat substitutes.

Yes I will go with the Marcus theory on this one, although there has to be some level of Spanish-phobia going on for them too. But I think they knew how much publicity this would get them. Problem is, I don't think the aggregate of opinions out there support this type of conclusion. More then half the people I speak to do not enjoy, or at least don't think the food is that special, at Veyrat's place. So they are either going to be able to make credible sounding statements that support the promotion, or they will look like they were trying to get publicity. From that one Times article, I don't think they look bad at all.

What I said was that it doesn't cost anything to acquire the service. I didn't say the items didn't have an extra cost. Most of the times they do but sometimes they don't. Recently I had a restaurant prepare a chef's tasting menu for me. Two of us had three courses and each course had 5-6 small plates of food in it. The cost was $50 a person. Had we ordered ala carte, it would probably have been 50%-100% more per person. So whether it's a matter of more money or not depends on what it is. But in general, exceptions typically cost more. That seems logical to me.

How about Gram Crackers?

I used to drink that stuff in a different vinous lifetime if you know what I mean. Nowadays if somebody serves it to me, the bracing acidity mixed with the taste of fresh grapefruit hurts my teeth. I'm glad some people like it because that makes, well some kind of racing. And I have some '96 Cotats hanging around which are just terrific.

Why the sudden resurgence of Cote St. Jacques? Did they dust off some old ecipes or something?

Cabrales - Let me ask you, do you think your average everyday diner is beset with these concerns? La Nina - No sometimes you really don't want it. Sometimes you walk into a place and you hate it. And they are fawning over you and you have to make believe you love it. I'm not very good at not telling the truth in those situations and I find them pretty uncomfortable. Especially if it onvolves nice people who are trying their hardest.

Cabby is correct there as well. Sometimes restaurants want to give you VIP status and you would prefer to be a fly on the wall. This is especially the case when you don't like the food. I remember in 1984, Mrs. P and I had finished a poor meal at Georges Blanc. And then when we saw M. Blanc enter the dining room, we prayed he wasn't going to visit our table because we knew he would ask us about the food. The last thing in the world we wanted was for him to leave our table and indicate to the captain to bring us some special dish. We wanted out of there badly. Unfortunately we were the first table he visited.

Well this is the point isn't it? The non-VIP's basically get dumped into a single market. There might be multiple markets within that grouping, but they pretty much get treated the same irregardless. But in the VIP category, you start to see stratification and the management bends over backwards to adapt to their needs.

Yes but restaurants that are not trying to offer this level of service, like Basildog's, are not really part of the discussion. It's restaurants like Daniel, where each and every market that is interested in a haute cuisine meal comes across their threshold at one point or another in any given week.