Steve Plotnicki

Wilf - One night I will drive a bunch of us out to Don Pepe's on Ozone Park where I believe you will find the best Southern Italian restaurant in the city.

Baphie - You are blowing my mind. There are so many issues to explore in that spring loaded response of yours I don't know where to begin. But I assume the answer to the riddle of getting food writing and criticism accepted as a serious endeavor is for someone to do it. It is the literary equivelent of tasting the meal isn't it? Vengroff - Have you seen the exhibit? I thought the best photos were of Bert Lahr and Avedon's father. Lahr because he captured his anguish so well, and his father whose photos he took at a time when he was obviously dying. That Avedon was able to seperate himself from his father's situation so he could capture it as art, while also capturing his father's sadness while he was trying to hold onto his pride through dying, in a way that only a son could do, was one of the most moving things I've seen. And it gave me more of an insite into Avedon himself then any of the other photos did.

I think someone is going to have to give Cabby a valium now that she has met Fresh-a.

I'm very confused. To disprove that America wasn't isolationist the examples used have been things like Chicken ala King and Shrimp Diablo etc. Those dishes would argue that America was isolationist because they are American constructs of pseudo-foreign dishes. And then Jaymes makes the point that in 1969 she got a fondue set. Well fondue is hardly an overwhelmingly popular European dish. The fondue craze was driven by a pots and pan company to sell the fondue pot. In fact, and we discussed this on some of the British food threads a while back, much of what housewives cooked was gotten from the companies that made our appliances and pots and pans. And to say the food needed to conform to the American supermarket, well hello...., if the people in 1952 were looking to buy chorizo and duck confit they would have carried it. But they didn't. The point of this all is I think, that there is a great, big and wide food world out there that America ignored to buy packaged, mass-produced and frozen grocery products instead of adopting a way of life that traditionally delivered better quality food. That's the isolationist part. American turned inward for the answers to questions that had already been answered deacdes before by great European chefs. In 1952 when somebody went to roast a chicken, did they look for a recipe from a famous French chef? Of course not. That is what Julia and James Beard changed. They broke that isolationism. And it is one of the main reasons we eat better today.

Why do you say that about the Japanese?

This is at the heart of it. Our middle class is probably wealthier then theirs, and more homogeneous then theirs. I guess it goes back to the simple GDP of $30K a year for Americans and $20K a year for Europeans. Also, in countries that don't have historical class divisions like European countries, like Israel for example, their high end restaurants were more like the US/UK upper middle then they were like French restaurants. That same level of formality just doesn't exist there.

Cabby - I think those places are close but they fall shy of the mark. When you go to Helene Darroze, they have pretensions to being a 2 star restaurant so the service and atmosphere are geared that way. And whether we agree on The Square being upper middle or not, however you define it, it is that type of restaurant I think is missing from the French dining scene.

As a lifelong Francophile (okay it's only been 21 years,) one of the things that has bothered me most about travelling in France is the lack of restaurants that we often describe on eGullet as the "upper middle." Places like Union Square Cafe or Craft, Aqua in SF or Norman's in Florida or countless others that are appearing around the country. Even London has its version of this with places like Bibendum or The Square. But France, the country where they invented modern cooking seems to have missed this boat. In France you have cafes, brasseries, bistros and formal restaurants. Nothing I can think of in France is similar to any of the restaurants I described in either casualness of cuisine or ambience. This past September at the suggestion of Robert Brown, I dined at a restaurant named Jerome in La Turbie, which is a lovely town on the Grand Corniche between Nice and Monaco. I was hoping for a nice casual country style meal but when we got there, we were met by waiters in white dinner jackets and bow ties and the place, service, and clientele was far more formal then I had hoped for. And I think this uneccessary formality spilled over into the cooking because this place that prides itself on top market ingredients, let what I thought was overly fussy cooking get in the way. And what could have been a French version of Craft ended up being an inferior version of a place like Arpege or L'Ambroisie. I find that this is prevalent all over France. Take the one star restaurant La Beaugraviere in Mondragon. Waiters in tuxedos and bowties serve you simple food on fine linens that is gussied up to be "fancy" because the place is a truffle specialist and has an amazing wine list. Why couldn't they serve the best ingredients of the region prepared simply in a casual environment? In fact if you travel throughout the region, you will find two dining choices. Formal or rustic. Why on earth have they not created something in the middle? I find this the most disappointing aspect about dining in France. And don't get me wrong, I love dining there. But I would love to have a meal prepared by a top chef in an environment that seats more then 40 people, doesn't have tuxedoed waitstaff hovering over me, serves top quality but simple food based on the highest quality ingredients, and doesn't cost 50 euros a person for a veal chop, and most importantly, a place that is lively and fashionable and where I feel comfortable eating a top quality meal without a suit and tie. I mean I can go to a place like Craft and wear a shirt and slacks and the waitstaff will be dressed in an appropiate but not overbearing way and I can have a fine time. Why can't I do that in France? In France I can hardly pour my own wine. At Craft I've had some rather large BYO dinnner and they managed to keep our glasses full at all times without a team of sommeliers hovering around us. So why do you think the French haven't sorted out this style of dining? Two recent attempts done by outsiders, Nobu and Jean-Georges' Market, have either failed or are said to be on the verge of. I don't really understand why this is the case? And the French have a more casual version of the sort of ambiance I am describing and it is called a brasserie. But they all serve brasserie food. Why hasn't a single chef or restauranteur in France not done the obvious and create a contemporary brasserie menu that is the French equivelent of what was done originally at Odeon in NYC or Kensington Place in London? Why is always just a cafe, bistro, brasserie or restaurant? Will the French ever be able to redefine their dining experience? Or are we stuck forever with a simple fish restaurant like Bacon in Antibes serving bouillabaisse in silver tureens served by tuxedoed waiters?

Baphie - That was one excellent post and could make for it's own topic. How is it that food came to be studied as part of sociology? Was that driven by the foodies, the sociologists who were looking for one more item to add to their discipline, or by the aesthetes who rejected food as not being on the same level as real art.

I don't see what this has to do with seperation of church and state? If the newspapers thought their readers cared about viewing restaurants from an aesthetic perspective, they would hire people to do it that way. But they perceive their readers want it from a consumer perspective so they hire writers to do it that way. It has more to do with food being looked at as a consumable instead of an aesthetic and newspapers not motivated to change that. But if some publication broke the mold and it caught on, that would possibly cause them to change their thinking. In fact if a publication wanted to change this today, where would they look to find someone? Who reviews restaurants on this basis? Not even in private tipsheets do you have restaurants being reviewed based on the aesthetics of their food.

I am not understanding this not get a good sandwich at Katz's issue. As opposed to Blue Hill where you let the chefs decide what you are going to eat for dinner, Katz's has to be managed throughout the entire ordering process. When I was there last Thursday, I did my typical schtick and took out a few singles for the slicer to see when I ordered. He had a piece of pastrami in front of him, he trimmed it a little and cut me a few slices which he put on a plate on the counter in front of me. I tasted them and I rejected them as not warm enough or juicy enough for me. So he got a new pastrami from the steamer drawer, trimmed it and went through the same ceremony. This one wasn't perfect, but it was very good and it passed muster (I should say mustard) so I accepted it. But I would have had no problem rejecting 2-3 until they got it right. So I don't see why anybody shouldn't get a good sandwich there? Especially since the situation is so manageable.

I just don't believe this to be true. I think Americans were afraid of anything foreign which is why they developed dishes like Chicken ala King. Even the ethnic cuisine America ate was dumbed down for American taste. Chow mein, shrimp in lobster sauce, spaghetti and meatballs. veal parmegian, were all created for the American palate. Haven't you seen the movie Big Night? Risotto was alien to people. What Julia Child did was to begin the process of invalidating what used to pass for good food in America. We learned that people in other parts of the world did not look at food as something that was mass-marketed and bought in supermarkets. She showed us another way of life, a better way of life then the one we were taught to lead. And maybe more than anything else, she showed us that those people making daube ion Provence instead of eating Dinty Moore's beef stew weren't all that different from us as people. They just ate a hell of a lot better we did.

Pastrami Queen isn't any good and neither is the pastrami at Artie's. By the way, Schmulke Bernstein offered two versions of pastrami. Roumanian pastrami and another version that was just identified as pastrami. The non Roumanian pastrami was similar to what you would find in kosher delis all over the city. But the Roumanian pastrami, oy was that good. I am not sure what recipe Arte's bought at auction but I can tell you that they do not sell the Bernstein Roumanian pastrami there. The funny schizo thing about Bernstein's was that in addition to the kosher deli they served, they had an entire menu of kosher Chinese food. And it was served by Chinese waiters wearing yamulkes! Now where did they get them? Did you ever go to one of those Chinese Cuban joints with the schizo half Chinese half Cuban menu? Well this was half kosher deli and half Chinese. I always heard the Chinese Cuban places came about because they imported workers from China to build the railroads in Cuba. I wonder if the same thing happened here. Maybe they brought people from China to build the Minsk-Bialystock line and that was the genesis of kosher Chinese cuisine? Save to say, there is nothing worse tasting then kosher Chinese food. Veal spare ribs instead of pork and gloopy chow mein loaded with corn starch. The whole thing could make you brech.

Katz's is usually excellent but I think a lot of that comes from the meat bering very hot when they serve it. And hand slicing, which really means thick slices, retain their heat longer then thin, machine cut pastrami. But I think neither place, Katz's or Schwartz's compares to either the original Pastrami King, or the Roumanian Pastrami at Bernstein;'s on Essex.

Did you then go for dessert at Sweet n' Tart?

But certainly for the amount of food you had on the table, $100 a head isn't unreasonable. Why isn't that an important point to your readers? And thanks for being honest about who your review is being directed towards.

Opps, sorry Steve, I mean sheep's milk. I don't think they make a goats' milk yogurt. That's Coah Farms.

There is no price difference that I know of between the lunch and dinner menu at Taillevent.

Actually to add to this, an anthopology of dishes would be a great guide for someone to write. Like the history of sauces that were paired with salmon and how they evolved. Or how crusts on meat was fashionable once upon a time and how searing replaced it and what different types of methods people used for searing including spices to help form a crust. I would love to hear someone take a dish from say ADNY and speak of it in the continuum of dishes that preceded it.

We use the Vermont creme fraiche all of the time and think it's a great product. As for yogurts, I still think that the Chatham Sheepherding Goat's Milk Yogurt is a great product. Creamy and with a little tang to it.

I'm flying back from Lyon via Paris that day. I intend to be eating the Rosette de Lyon avec 3% Truffes Noir which I will have brought back with me from Les Halles in Lyon. It will be poached and then sliced into rounds and served with some pommes ala vapeur that is doused in beurre blanc. And a perfectly a point St. Marcelin from La Mere Richard in Lyon will follow. This will be topped off by some chocolates from Bernachon with a nice cup of coffee. I think after spedning a few days in the Rhone, with one of them doing serious wine tasting, Burgundy might be the drink of choice while watching the Giants or Jets, or possibly both play that day .

Well the fact that newpapers feel they can put almost anybody in that job is part of the problem. What did William Grimes write about before he reviewed restaurants, architecture? Would they make anyone the movie critic or theater critic? I don't think so.

Well I have argued that food is not art because it isn't purely aesthetic. It is functional, and I am big on saying that function deprives something of being art. But it doesn't deprive something from being a craft that expresses a serious aesthetic which is a metaphor for our daily lives or even something larger.

Rail Paul - You see I would argue this in the exact opposite way. The European sounding dishes like Sole Almondine were part of the isolationism that was going on in America. There is no need for sole almondine and shrimp diablo, pure American constructs, unless you weren't willing to accept sole meuniere and shrimp fra diavolo to begin with. That is exactly what Julia changed. She showed us that there was a better beef stew out there then the American version which was constructed as a result of isolationism which is why they didn't follow European recipes. It was called Boeuf Bourgignon, or daube, etc. and it was made from recipes that were hundreds of years old and dishes tasted of their point of origin. How about autos? When I was growing up, nobody owned a foreign car. A few very wealthy or erudite people owned Mercedes. But pretty much it was American made autos. But didn't the Volkswagon change that because the price point and the design promoted were reminiscent of European style egalitarianism? And didn't that car change the way we all look at cars forever after? srhcb - Wilfird has had much to say about Elizabeth David's role in the evolution of British cookery infiltrating the British masses and hopefully he will add to this thread tomorrow. But I don't see your point about MFK Fisher? What impact did Fisher have on the common household who was looking to improve their quality of life by making a few authentic French dishes? There is a sub-topic here on how PBS helped shape middle class intelect in the U.S, and how Julia Child was part of that, but we are going to need someone better versed in sociology then I to add that to this discussion.

Look I have just returned from seeing the Richard Avedon exhibit at the Met. And I would like to be able to read (or listen to as it was in this case) somebody speak about the food at Jean-Georges (just an example) from the aspects of aesthetics, sociology, anthoropology, popular culture, style and fashion, etc. That restaurant reviewing doesn't really get beyond, "And the Veal Chop with Morels at Daniel was a new and interesting take on the dish" is sort of a drag. Or maybe I am being too snooty about food, and it can never rise to that level.