Steve Plotnicki

Well here is another aspect of the kind of blowback you get on this topic. Instead of someone being able to say to themselves, the world loves oysters, I don't, I guess that I might be deficient in this area, those who can't admit that to themselves turn to calling the speaker insecure and then try to make the conversation personal. And of course they also want to argue that the things you say have a certain inference that just isn't there. Like LML's post about complexity. If you read what I have written about the word and its use, all I have said is that the trade uses it in a way that identifies something as good. What I haven't said, even though I am being accused of it, is that someone will never describe a dish as being too complex. In fact here is an example, "the addition of pipe tobacco to the brownies added a level of complexity that was offputting." But that is wholly different then saying that the reason that Latour sells for twice as much money as Pichon Lalande is that it is a more complex wine. In my experience, "complexity," unless it is qualified to identify it as something that is bad, is always good. But of course you can argue that it isn't untill you are blue in the face. And that is because the standard is not factual, it is reasonable, which I submit LML is not being considering the accepted verbiage among trade and amateurs.

It's fine to seperate the two. But what does that have to do with paying first? Paying first can only be a matter of trust.

Well the barrista can only write the check up so there can still be a cashier. But you are implying that the barrista can steal from the cash register by keeping money aside for himself, or by writing bills that are less then the correct amount. No matter what, I don't see how any of it prevents stealing. I can go pay for a coffee and approach the barrista with my little white receipt for a 3 euro cup of coffe and a five euro note sticking out and ask him to give me a shot of 1959 Strathisla single malt Scotch which normally costs 25 euros. So you haven't convinced me. I do not know a country in the world where you pay first. Why Italy?

You have a hard time agreeing about the language because of ego, which is why this is a recurring problem (I don't mean with you I mean in general.) Because all the statement means is that you have evaluated it incorrectly, or you are incapable of evaluating it. What's the big deal about that? There are loads of things that I am incapable of evaluating correctly or evaluating at all. And Jin's good point goes much further when the "me" she is describing is the collective me, meaning it describes a group of people. When Jaz says that blue cheese is bad, can she really be saying that all the people who like blue cheese are wrong about it? How far exactly does her bad go? It seems to me that in order for us to have an intelligent discussion, the verbiage we use has to transcend personal feelings about food and wine. Especially when so many people are lined up on one side of an issue like oysters tasting good. In those instances one has to take an objective view about it, meaning that they need to evaluate their own personal preferences against opinions that have been formulated by knowledgable groups of people and which have been reasonably stated. To say that oysters are good isn't controversial yet there are people on this site who will come on and argue they are bad, with the implication that others are wrong about it. But how can they be bad when you can go into places like J. Sheekey's, Grand Central Oyster Bar or Bofinger in Paris and see that countless people are eating them? Isn't that overwhelming evidence that they are good? How can anyone who doesn't like them not take that into consideration when they do their own personal evaluation and then stating their opinion?

But the language isn't absolutist. That is the mistake everyone keeps making, or I should say where everyone goes wrong . Follow the bouncing ball now. If standards are a matter of what people agree on, that leaves room for disagreement and there still being a standard. So lets say 50 people tasted blue cheese and 5 people hated it, i.e., thought it was bad. 45-5 sounds to me like it would be reasonable to say those people (the 5) are wrong about it. Isn't that the context that Jonathan spoke of? If the standard is a function of a statistical result and not a mathematical formula and that is what the language tracks, how can the language be absolutist?

Sure it is Robert. That naked peach you like better then Peach Melba can only be "better" if it is a complex peach. There is no way that a commercially grown peach that you would buy in Food Emporium for $.99 a pound can be complex enough for you. The difference between a good NY Strip Steak and a lousy one is that a good one has a more complex flavor, deeper and beefier, and the texture is better. What you want to do is to distort the semantics like Glyn did so you can reserve the use of words like better to describe your personal preference. You want to say that raspberries and bologna are complex too and that is an example of complexity that is bad. Poppycock I say because that is not how the food industry uses the word. The DB Burger is a "better" burger then the Kobe Beef one because the flavors and the textures are more complex. No other reason.

Gee I don't hate Italian food in Italy, I happen to like it and have had many a good meal. What I have said is that I am typically disappointed in their dinner cuisine. That they excel at the tratorria level but are unsophisticated at the restaurant level when compared to other cuisines. On my Piemonte thread my friend who I quoted said it perfectly. Lunch is great but dinner is the same as lunch. And to make things worse, they try and make it fancier which screws it up all together. As for Italians eating in the U.S., well I can see that they wouldn't like it because they have a strange cuisine that doesn't translate well outside of Italy. When I was in Milan last week and was rushed for time (to make it to the airport for my cancelled flight, had I only known,) we had lunch at Bagutta which is a simple Tuscan tratorria on via Bagutta. I ordered the mozzarella appetizer,. What they served me was a half of an entire round of fresh mozzarella (terrific quality mind you, really flavorful) sliced on a plate. Not a tomato, a pepper etc. in sight. Just a cruet of really spicy and roasted olive oil (which I didn't care for) to dress the mozz with. Boy that is an odd way to serve cheese. A plate of cheese with nothing else. But Italy is full of those types of examples and I am sure that when Italians get to the U.S. they are often lost trying to figure out what to eat. The French on the other hand seem to have no problem. They are all in places like the Palm eating gigantic steaks and lobsters, or at the Oyster Bar in Grand Central having large platters of American oysters, or at Katz's having pastrami sandwiches. They are hamische those French.

I showed you the statistics. Every top restaurant has at least one blue cheese on their tray. Some have three blue cheeses on their tray. Of course that doesn't mean everyone has to like it. But then again..... Maybe there is another issue that I haven't yet raised. I don't think there is a reason not to like any food. As long as a food is eaten by people who actually know and like food, I can't think of a reason why that food should be considered bad unless it is an isolated instance of some sort. Maybe food can be an acquired taste but, what is the argument for saying blue cheese is bad other then you don't like the taste? And that is describing preferrence?

Sure I've said them before. I am not fond of game and I don't like oysters. And I'm sure there are other things. Clearly I am missing the boat on those things aren't I? I mean how can I describe it any other way? Last week when we were at that fish stand in Lyon, I passed on eating the oysters those two guys offered us. My friend who ate two of them, went into a happy fit. Now here are three guys who are going bananas over the quality of the oysters. And from speaking to the other two, they knew their food. So what are the statistical odds that I see something about oysters (bad) that they don't see? Not very good in my book. So would it be wrong to describe me as "wrong" about oysters? I don't think so.

I thought we were making progress this morning, but after attending a friend's daughter's Bat Mitzvah, and then going to the hockey game, I have returned to see you are all still mired in semantics. What I thought everyone was agreeing to this morning was that it is reasonable to use the words like "wrong" and "better" in certain instances. Here is an instance I thought we were agreeing to; Jaz is wrong to dislike blue cheese Now what I have just said is that she is (I was told Jaz was a she and apologies if that is erroneous) mistaken about disliking it. I haven't said she isn't entitled to dislike it. But I have said that either she lacks the palate to tell that it is good, or she has a physiological issue with being able to taste it. Whichever one it is, it is reasonable to call her wrong for the following reason. More then a sufficient number of people who I would consider knowledgable to the level of being expert about cheese like blue cheese. In fact such an overwhelming number of people like blue cheese that you won't see a cheese tray in a restaurant that does not have some kind of blue cheese on it. So the statistics are so overhwhelming in one direction that I don't see the argument that blue cheese is bad. Not that someone couldn't fashion one, but I don't see it. This is the point I believe Lxt was trying to make. The statistics on liking blue cheese are so overwhelming in one direction, it acts as an objective standard even though it isn't as perfect an equation as saying the world isn't flat and proving it. So maybe people have misunderstood me all of this time, but I have been using words like "wrong" and "better" this way for the past year and a half. For example, a person who doesn't see that coal oven or wood burning oven pizza is a better quality product then the stuff you get at Ray's Pizza is wrong about it. And he also doesn't know anything about pizza. Pizza from a wood burning oven is just simply better then the stuff you get at Ray's. And despite the fact that what I just said isn't absolutely true, they are all reasonable ways to use those words when having a conversation among people who are knowledgeable about food. Why? Ask 100 people who are knowledgable about food about the pizzas and see what they tell you. I just saw Jonathan's post and he has said something similar to this post. To add to that, I happen to think there are many words in food and wine that are shorthand among professionals and amateurs and we are constantly forced to argue the definitions of here. The discussion on this thread about complexity is a good example. Complexity in the food and wine industry always means better except for the rarest exceptions. The typical thing you hear is, why is wine A better then wine B? Invariably the answer will include a phrase like "has more complexity."Never will you hear anyone describe a bad wine as too complex. What they will says is it has off flavors. And to bring this full circle, isn't one of the reasons that heirloom tomatoes are considered "better" then Holland tomatoes is because they have more complexity? And if someone preferred Holland tomatoes to heirloom could they be anything but wrong about it? To me, those are all reasonable uses of those words. Sometimes I think we try and reinvent the wheel here. There is already a rather large food and wine industry out there and they have adopted verbiage for certain reasons. For us to try and redefine a term like complexity, we better have a good reason and I don't see one. Or for us to argue things like Nestle's Quik is better chocolate then the Maison du Chocolat is absurd. But you see those arguments pop up on the board all of the time. Let's force people to prove what has already been established by the food industry. So if you want to say that a person who likes his meat cooked to the consistancy of shoe leather isn't wrong about it, you better show me a chef who thinks serving it that way delivers the best quality product. Because I dare anyone to find me a chef who prefers to serve it that way. And that is the standard that things need to be measured by. That is a reasonable standard. Saying that it is all a matter of opinion is unreasonable, because that means that Swiss Miss Hot Chocolate mix can be better then the Jacques Torres hot chocolate mix. That is simply not true.

That won't save you when we look at the naked peach.

Gee that's funny, I must have eaten meat something like, 5000 times in my life. I'm pretty sure that I have experienced the following; raw meat - no natural juices, hardly any flavor properly cooked meat - natural juices released, maximum flavor well done meat - no natural juices as they have dried out, less flavor But maybe that's me and I have been eating special meat. As for lessening/diluting flavors, I thought I dealt with that. That's why we don't serve green peppers raw very often. Cooking them changes the flavor into something less harsh. Which is what I thought I said. But carry on otherwise.

Well I guess we have proven that U.K. football fans can't view the game objectively. Well they can't view their food objectively. Why stop there . But you know, and I say this all of the time, at least I try to, if you just read what the writer is saying and the type of comparisons they are making, you can tell the difference between who doesn't prefer something and who doesn't understand something. Take the famous meat example. Rare meat is juicy, well done is dry. The end. I have never heard a proper argument that explains that dry is better then juicy. Juicy gives off more flavor chemically. And where in the cooking process do we ever seek to lessen the flavor of anything unless it starts out as too harsh in its raw state? And raw meat starts out pretty much tasteless. Cooking releases the juices. Where is the argument that says the most flavor isn't the best result? Okay there are some arguments that say the texture is important too. And the temperature of the meat has to be a certain temperature so you aren't just eating raw meat. Okay I can see that as part of the acceptable answers. But that transformation occurs well before you even get to medium, let alone well done. Part of me wants to say that in the future, some scientist will plot out what tastes good means on a piece of paper. Just like the chefs now are working on molecular gastronomy. At that time, taste will cease from being quasi-subjective to being even more objective, or inter-subjective as Jonathan says. And people who do not naturally like certain tastes will learn how to acquire them. The same way that kids who might not naturally take to geometry still learn it and pass their finals. But instead of the repitition method which Jeffrey Steingarten so humorously writes about in his book (he says if you force yourself to eat something ten times in a row you will learn to like it,) there will be methoology for teaching a hierarchy of tastes and flavors to people. Now that would be a worthwhile exercise for the Ferran Adria's of the world to undertake. The ulitmate codification of a hierarchy of flavors and how they affect us.

Sounds yummy. I really enjoy eating there. The food isn't breaking any new ground but the quality of the food is terrific and while classic, is just modern enough (for my taste) not to be boring. Sorry about the cheese though. Hope you took a long walk the next morning to Anne-Marie Cantin or Barthelemy to cure what ailed you.

Lxt - To actually find this you have to be looking at wines from different regions. 2001 German wines might be of the same or better quality as say, 2001 white Burgundy while being 30%-60% of the price, but the reason is they are less popular among collectors because the style of Riesling is more intelectual and not opulent like WB. But while this exercise works when comparing different regions, or different varietals in the same region, I would think it would be next to impossible to find a 2001 German wine for $10 that is of the same quality as a $100 one. Possible as a freak accident (we are talking about nature you know) but highly, highly unlikely. And if you did, the reason would most probably some type of inefficiency like the producer didn't know or didn't want to bring the wine to market properly. Jaybee - There have been two categories of disagreement in this thread that I see. Macrosan's saying it's just a matter of opinion, because the dining experience is about personal likes and dislikes, and Glyn's saying that telling people they are wrong doesn't hold because we can't nail down the concept of "tastes good" as a matter of exact science. And while they both happen to be right, I also feel that the points they are making do not address the issue I have been raising, and which you raised in your German beer example. The issue isn't whether it is accurate to call someone who can't tell wrong, the issue is whether it is reasonable. When you proclaim that the person who likes Budweiser better then tap in Dusseldorf "wrong," you aren't claiming 100% specificity, but it is reasonable to describe the taste of the person that way. You are just measuring it against a standard that has been adopted by a certain group of people. And I think the difference is a subtle one. You might not like Foie gras and I might think that a reasonable statement, which is the Macrosan assertion. Different strokes. But if you said Foie gras was bad you would simply be wrong. And if you said that Mrs. Gold's Chopped Liver which you buy in your supermarket prepared food section was better then Foie gras, "wrong" would be a reasonable thing to say about your opinion. Maybe this approach will end the debate on semantics here. Because anyone who thinks that Twinkies is a better dessert then the Pierre Herme Isfahan, both doesn't know what he is talking about and is also wrong about it. But I hope they enjoy the Twinkies. As to price/quality/merit etc., that is an even more inexact science. But I think it is reasonable to say that price usually reflects quality and it's probably reasonable to say that it always does with the occassional exception. It also reflects factors other then quality like supply, but it is rare in my opinion for supply and demand to be so distorted that the price of inferior things is significantly higher then better things. But it does happen and taking my German/White Burgundy example, taking the position that German wines are better wouldn't be an unreasonable one (though I would personally think that is wrong) and those wines are priced more cheaply then the burgs are.

No, it's just proof that he doesn't know good from bad. Joe H - Now that was a lovely story. I'm glad that Venice holds such a warm place in your heart.

But wait a second, which wrong are you speaking about? Wrong not to like the Luger's burger better or wrong not to be able to assess the qualitative difference between the two? How many people who can do the assessment do you think would choose the McDonald's burger?

Well that is a fine defense but you have switched the subject. You have to start with Macrosan's assertion that there isn't any right or wrong. Only a matter of opinion. So it isn't that we are looking to prove Macro's friend wrong, it's that we are trying to prove Macro's contention to be false.

Toby - Macrosan is right. Those mealy and pale tomatoes they sell at Gristedes are better then the heirloom tomatoes at the market at the height of the season. You know why? Macrosan's friend who likes the shoe leather beef said so. In fact we should phone him before dinner from now on so he can tell us what is good to eat.

But why do they prefer it? Is it random? People must go through some routine where they evaluate it before they reach a conclusion don't they? And why do so many people come to the same conclusion? What does the fact that 50 out of 50 newspaper critics could choose the same burger mean? Some of this must prove something. It can't be completely up to the individual palate. Too many palates are alike for that to be the case.

You are just delaying the inevitable. We know where each place gets their meat from. What type of quality they buy. What the fat to meat ratio is. How they grind it. What method they use to cook it. We can measure the other components like the bun and the quality of the ingredients used to make it. And we can measure the quality of the condiments. In fact we know all of those things (generally) before anyone ever puts a hambuger in their mouth. So in this environment, how can anyone who says a Big Mac is the best of the three burgers know what they are talking about? And of course this doesn't take into account circumstantial evidence like if you were to choose 50 restaurant reviewers from daily newspapers, likely that zero would pick the Big Mac as best. So how much more evidence do we need then this to be able to prove it? And we don't need to prove it like we can prove the earth is round. Nobody requires that level of precision when describing food.

San Francisco is modern and effecient, they just have those dumb hills there. They're fun the first time you ride up and down on them. But after a few times they are simply a pain.

I wasn't commenting on the fact that they change locomotives, just on the extraordinarilly long time it took them.

I didn't say that. I just asked how do we take into consideration that the conclusion is faulty due to the inability of the taster? Why does the fault always have to lie with the food? Why not the taster?

But what if the problem is that your palate can't asses the dish properly? What if it is the greatest dessert ever made but you don't understand it? Is your assessment valid?