Steve Plotnicki

Prime Rib as we serve it in the U.S. is really derivitive of British roast beef. And the Brits drink claret (Bordeaux) Old claret for that matter which I happen to think is the perfect match for prime rib. Even at L'Ami Louis in Paris where the prime rib is really a gigantic cote de boeuf, they drink Bordeauc.

Acccording to a friend of mine who is a rather large wine wholesaler (this was at dinner last week) the '97 First Growths are drinking wonderfully right now. A piece of evidence that shows you the wine isnt going to get that much better is that Robert Parker's drinking window ends at 2015. An 18 year lifespan is an incredibly short one for a Bordeaux, especially a First Growth. Better vintages can last up to 100 years. So Gavin's suggestion that the wine is going to be in prime time at around 2007 sounds about right. But if you want to drink it now, you won't be missing anything unless your palate is attuned to mature claret. But if you are going to drink it, I would suggest at least a two hour decant and good glasses.

A lovely recounting of what sounds like a fun trip. Your description of Enotecha sounds so much like what the region is about. It's such a funny part of the world. It's so close to urban centers, yet it seems so remote. And despite all the artisanal products, it's both industrial and at the same time extrmely wealthy. I guess the natural products of the region throw off enough wealth so they can have an insulated lifestyle and not have to commercialize their way of life. Because you can go to Burgundy or the Rhone and find food that is inedible. Still, I wish there wasn't so much sameness in the food from place to place.

I ate here last week with two frriends. We BYO'd and we drank an '82 Krug that was off the Richter Scale and a white Loire wine that was a tad sweet for the food I thought. But this was my first time at the restaurant. Robert Brown has been raving about it and is so fond of the place that he was eating there a few times a week before he went to France for the month of December. And one of the people I went with has been raving about it as well. So I was eagerly awaiting the experience. Well you know the rest of the story because I left there wondering what all the fuss was about? I mean don't get me wrong, my meal was very good. But what about this meal made it so different then other top sushi places? I like Sushi Yasuda much more then this. The highlight of our dinner was Nobu sitting at the table next to us. He was very relaxed and friendly. We also had the $75 omakase.

I was there on Saturday night and we had a terrific meal. Only one false start with shrimp that were on the raw side (nasty) but otherwise really good. I do have a question for Suvir when he has a moment. Why aren't the lamb chops neatly trimmed? I can understand wanting them thick because of cooking in the tandoor and you don't want todry them out. But why the irregularity in shape. Why not just the same neatly trimmed, double thick chops that they serve in a steakhouse but marinated and cooked in a tandoor?

Jaybee - If I recall correctly, the BS were shaved. I would assume they used a mandolin to shave really thin slices and then I bet each slice was cut into three little sections. Then when it gets tossed with the other ingredients the BS must uncoil.

Actually the type of ravioli you are describing, which is in keeping with the "black truffle surprise" ravioli I had at Trio, is different then what I am describing. For a time in the 80's, French chefs started serving ravioli stuffed with foie gras, lobster, or other non-traditional Italian fillings. What they served at Trio was just a method of delivering the black truffle flavor. "Ravioli" only had to do with the purpose of the package, and not conveying "paste." Okay. I'll put the pasta thread on tonight. I've been tweaking the corners.

Are you in a location where you can lightly smoke it?

It's a horrible trend that is the best evidence of French cooking having lost its creativity. I am going to post my pasta thread soon though. Jin has been running an advertisement for it if you haven't noticed.

Well of course if you reduce food to a utilitarian purpose there will be no dispute. Take a simple dish like pasta. How many places are famous for their pasta dishes? Considering how many Italian restaurants there are, somebody name some pasta dishes that are famous on a worldwide basis? Babbo's Mint Love Letters? Marchesi's Raviolo Aperto? Not saying this to denigrate pasta (which I intend to do later,) but the reason there are so few famous pasta dishes in proportion to the number of restaurants that could serve them is that they are too easy to make. Or saying it another way, too difficult for a chef to calculate a technique that diners will find interesting when comparing it to non-pasta dishes. I think that no matter how far down the food totem pole we go, personality trumps. It's that one tweak of technique that makes a place special. Even steakhouses. Peter Luger's is the best steakhouse because of a combination of the best meat, unique aging program and a certain way of cooking the beef. The style is not only delicious, it is unique to them. And it's what makes them different from 100 other steakhouses with delicious steaks but which are void of personality.

Petcha and fisalach (which is what they called them in my house) are are the same thing. Here is a recipe off the net; Petcha My mother used to make this for my father on occassion. Gross.

Tony - I don't believe the dichotomy is false. I just believe we've approached this subject from a place where we are having trouble locating it. Because if I approach it from the other direction and say, French restaurants are inherently better then Italian restaurants because they practice a more complex version of technique, we will then be in dispute. Except coming from this direction, I can't get the Italophile/ingredient pro members to draw the line at which they believe technique has gone too far. The line for me, and this is the point I was trying to make about the violin, is that I will never believe that great ingredients alone, even if they are prepared perfectly, could make for the world's best restaurant. Like classical music, I find the personality of the chef needs to be an element of the meal because it evokes something that is beyond the ingredients. Just like Isaac Stern playing a strad expresses more than the insturments tonality. So it isn't that a Mercedes is better then a mini, it's that Mercedes has engineered a certain feel in the way their cars drive. It doesn't just drive like a generic car that costs 50,000 pounds So for me, any restaurant, regardless of category, that doesn't create a personality to their food, can't be considered the best restaurant. Even if it is delicious (this is one of the problems I have with Ducasse by the way.) And the dischotomy exists in somebody else feeling differently about that. Because if nobody steps up to articulate it, I don't understand why are always disagreeing about this French/Italian thing.

Can't speak for where AW was in 1982. These days, it would hard to characterize her cuisine as being chock full of dazzling technique. But regardless of what is in that book, I can't imagine the technique is as involved as what they used in haute cuisine restaurants.

Not sure how much this will help but it certainly can't hurt. Maybe you can wend your way through the various sites to make reservations online European Railways

Gee I don't think I can agree with this. Especially since Julia's co-writers were French women. I think Julia was most interested in recounting French cooking as a way to improve the quality of people's lives. The "French program" of dining is paramount to her efforts. It exists outside the quality of ingredients. Her potato gratins exist outside of type of potatoes one could have purchased when her books were first published. The dichotomy here, or the pending disagreement we have been having trouble finding, has to do with philosophy. What Waters did was to say, here are ingredients that are so good, you don't have to use a chinois to screw around with the texture. And many people latched into that approach as "better." Personally I don't see it. I think of great ingredients as if they are great instruments. And while a stradivarius might sound great no matter who plays it (providing one has proficient technique at the top level,) it's presence is always secondary to the personality of whomever is playing it.

I have to say that the River Cafe is a place where I enjoyed many a meal. In particular on a sunny afternoon in May at one of the outdoor tables devouring a 12 hour slow-roasted pork shoulder. But Rodgers and Gray are just a variant of the "best ingredients" style. They aren't famous for applying technique, they are famous for evoking ingredients. And would one ever say that The River Cafe was the best restaurant in London? I wouldn't as much as I liked the place. That mantle had to be left to MPW or someone like him who was running in full gear during the same time period. In fact. I thought Alistair Little was better then the RC during the same period even though the styles were sort of similar.

Robert S - I didn't see your last post until after I posted my last post. So the question is, at what point along the continuum of technique applied does the ingredient side of the argument believe the application of technique shoud end? Cathy L - Do you really think that Alice Waters improved on Julia by going to better quality ingredients? I thought the rap against her is that when she went to better quality ingredients, she discarded technique in their favor. Nobody would be questioning whether CP is the top restaurant in the country if she cooked those ingredients like Ducasse or Passard.

But I thought the dispute was about something else. The Shonfeld side says leave my ingredients alone. I am interested in technique only to the extent that it evokes the natural quality of the ingredients. And once you apply more technique then necessary, it's no good because it detracts from the ingredients. The other argument is that a restaurant that practices this style of cuisine, by nature, can't be considered the "best restaurant" and that "dazzling technique" is necessary for that honor. So I'm not sure that the Shonfeld side would agree there is a continuum at all. Because by nature, once you accept the dynamic argument, you have admitted the ingredients argument is deficient. That argument lives and dies by resting solely on the quality of the ingredients combined with the near anonymity of the chef who prepares them.

Don't you like the way you've been marginalized? I wouldn't say there is no need for this thread. But from the way I posited it, I am waiting for you (or anyone else for that matter) to rebut my proffer that a combination of the two wins.

Well you would be surprised if a chef wrote as Julia did because that is exactly what Ferran Adria says. Now there's a guy who gets the essence of corn from canned corn and admits it. I actually think this point is a diversion of sorts in regards to the original question. Because I don't see how anyone can argue that the perfect combination of top quality ingredients and dazzling technique doesn't trump? But in fact people do and the entirety of the dispute is based on the fact that the Shonfeld side of the argument says, "waiter, hold the dazzling technique please." The most profound statement anyone has recently made on the website came courtesy of Ed Schoenfeld in response to someone's question about comparing Chinese to French food. To paraphrase Ed, he said that the goal of French cuisine is to cook ingredients together until they make an entirely new flavor. To me that is the issue here. You have dazzling technique whose goal is to make an entirely new flavor, and who in order to do that spends lots of time manipulating textures. And then you have people who want the flavor of the perfect ingredient unadorned. Personally I don't understand the latter argument when it comes to dining in restaurants. Not that it doesn't have its place as a complete philosophy. Dining at CP, or at Craft or at a top place in Italy is a great thing to do. But I find that style ultimately limiting and less interesting when compared to cooking techniques that express a greater extension of the human aspect of dining. I mean I can eat a slice of the world's best canteloupe in my home. Why do I have to go to a restaurant to eat it and pay those prices? That brings us, I think, to where the dividing line is on this issue and probably governs where on the continuum each of us falls on this question. I think you have egalitarian on one side (CP, Slow Food etc.) where the philosophy is that the ingredient takes precedence over the person preparing it, and those who are more interested in the experience of individual expression and how it affects the ingredients. And if we were to take a test similar to the political compass test people are taking on that other thread, how much intervention people preferred would be the determining factor. Because I think people like Shonfeld would be way out on one side of the graph, people who say that getting the essence of corn from a can being on the other, and then most of the other people who would be considered moderates on the issue as they are looking for some good combination of the two. And I think a good example of this point is the difference in the way they prepare vegetables at Craft as opposed to Arpege. At Arpege even though they spin it as "non-interventionist cooking," the personality of the chef is evident in every dish. At Craft, despite how marvelous the veggies can be, there isn't a house signature in the way the food is prepared. And while personally I love that style, I would choose Arpege as being "better" because the demonstration of Passard's personality is a unique and intangeable element that is at the heart of why I enjoy fine dining.

I would start a new thread if I understood the point of it. Why don't you write the thread out for me in schematic and then I will post it in detail under my own name .

Are you the Rat? Like from the book?

Hmm, I find myself having to defend it's choice as number 1 when all I have done is said I can see the set of sensibilities that would lead one down that road. Even though they don't represent my thinking. So maybe the best thing to do is to describe the intangeables of CP. How much credit does it deserve for starting a trend in food. And if it is performing at a high level, and the trend has influenced countless others, what is that intangeable worth on the scale theu used to rate the top 10?

You guys keep saying politics and I think it's more philosophical then politics. To some people, serving the best ingredients prepared the best way is not only as good as it gets, it should be the main purpose of every restaurant. If those are your sensibilities, then I can see putting a place like CP at the top of the heap. My sensibilities wouldn't allow me to say it's the best because I place to much emphasis on dazzling technique. But for people who shun dazzling technique as being "too fancy," what other factors would contribute to a restaurant being in the top 10 or even number 1?

I really don't have a hard time using the word "best" in a way that is vague. There are very few things it can mean. Best food, best dining experience, favorite dining experience, best quality/value ratio and most importantly in this case, intangeables regarding the restaurant or the dining experience. Did I miss anything? Anyway, if you assess those things and balance them, you should end up with a analytical reason as to why something came out on top. But it sounds like certain people do not want to take intangeables into consideration. Clearly Gourmet is willing to do that so there will never be agreement on this point. But I have to say that I use similar parlance myself. There was a time I would have told you that Stars in SF and Olive's in Charleston, Mass were "the best" restaurants in the U.S. in spite of the fact that if you only looked at the food, neither would be the top place. Here, CP is being lauded for their approach to the overall dining experience. That they demand the best ingredients and try to prepare them perfectly gis being given extra weight by Gourmet. Just like I gave additional weight to eclective cuisine that derived from multiple yet related sources. Or someone else might say that only a restaurant at the haute cuisine level qualifies. Whatever your reasons, I don't agree with their choice but I don't find the choice to be invalid.