Steve Plotnicki

Well you just keep changing the definition of the word taste from the objective to the subjective. The wine is from the Musigny vineyard is a statement about Musigny and not the person tasting the wine. That is a constant and can't be changed by human perception. Tasting is an objective analysis. The key part of the analysis is noticing what trace elements are present. It is tied to a standard based on the ingredients you are tasting. They are always constant. One's ability to taste things is a different use of the word. And in that instance, I agree with you, different people taste things differently. But, and it's a truly large but, not differently enough so that the legitimacy of the concept of quality in ingredients, which I demonstrated above, is undermined. In fact, if you go to a greenmmarket and there are heirloom tomatoes on offer and you pick one up and taste it, and I ask you how it is, I want an answer that is objective about it's qualities. I have little use for your personal take on it. Because experience shows me that singular opinions that are outside of the box on these things are likely daft. But a valuable opinion about the tomatoes is one that notices more qualities then the average person would notice. Tasting, as it applies to food, will always be about noticing what is there.

It is the intensity of the spicing and herb routines that is the issue. In European cuisine they use them both lightly. That is not the case in many Asian cuisines including Indian. As for the rest of your post, gee I hope that doesn't happen. The best world to live in is a world full of diversity. One of the best things about diversity is that people create new ways to express themselves based on old cultures and traditions. To say that the end result is that someone will play a raga on their Fender electric is a simplistic example. But there are great examples of diversity, like jazz and rock and rolll. Or should we have told those blues musicians to have stuck to African drum beats and not progress by incorporating traditional American rhthms into their music?

Nobody said taste was absolute. What was said was that ingredients have specific tastes to them (i.e., chemical makeup) that are independant of people's ability to taste them. The second thing that was said was that in relation to the original post, the manipulation of a diners ability to taste things was limited to the context of dining, and as such, not material to our ability (I should say my ability, I can't speak for yours) to determine the quality of the ingredients present.

I had a bottle of my pal Joey D's 2001 Pierre Chemette Beaujolais last night. Great juice, especially slightly chilled down. Drank like it was silk.

Well we've gone round this one already. A western idea of balance in cuisine subordinates spicing to ingredients. So to the extent that the original question applies, the answer is probably no. Western chefs who do use spicing as a more central part of their cuisine, like Rocco DiSpirito, are still not what I would call spice based chefs. It's still just a way to accentuate, not something to build a meal around. That was the import I got from Suvir's original question. Which French )let's expand that to western) are "expert" (meaning feature spicing as the central focus) of their cuisine.

Two cigars.

I was making a different point. The laws against murder are good for both the potential murderers and the victims. That's just how laws work. They all have two sides to them. And that's the function that the AOC or DOCG has. They are trademark laws tied to physical locations. The rest of it is all consumerism and I was just pointing out that it will always be up to consumers to accept or reject quality. That's just how a free market works and you shouldn't blame an inefficiency (or efficiency depending on your point of view) of the free market on the DOCG. If the Barolo producers can sell plonk under that name, just because it's grown in the DOCG, they are entitled to. But I am also entitled to not buy their wines because they stink. Ultimately what drives good Barolo winemaking is the lure of getting bigger money, not maintaining DOCG status. Because you and I both know, just having the word Barolo on your label isn't going to get you the $75$125 a bottle that the better houses sell their wines for, It will get you $30.

Are French chefs going to Bombay to stage?

You mean Indian chefs aren't experts in presentation? Sacre bleu. Certainly there must be some Indian chef who stole the presentation secrets of the famous grand meres. In fact my grand mere (except in my house we called her Bubby because we made believe we were Jewish,) a famous French chefsused to drop by her tenament apartment on the Lower East Side all of the time to get tips on the secrets of haimische cooking from her. In fact, more then 60 years later, the vibes in that apartment were so strong that they opened up 71 Clinton Fresh Foods on that block. No joke. That was the block she lived on. And though she swore me to secrecy about it, since she has been dead for more then 30 years, I am now going to reveal the name of the French chef who used to visit her for tips. Fernand Point

You mean they all don't buy it at some central commissary? It sure seems that way. The creamy chopped spinach at Mitchell London Steakhouse at Fairway is pretty good and different. It's a little watery. But it's good with a bit of their mashed potatoes to soak up the water.

Give that man a cigar.

As much as I can agree with everything Craig says, I do not agree that appellation control trademarks don't offer any consumer protection. Saying that trademark protection only protects the producer is a simplistic point of view. It does afford some protection to the consumer. I mean if there weren't regulations regarding what you could call Barolo, they would truck wine in from Morocco and label it that way. At least when a wine says Barolo on the label you are assured the grapes come from a specific place, and the wine is made according to some standard. That they still make loads of crap wine from that region, and get to charge a lot of money for it due to the DOCG designation, is a consumer issue and has nothing to do with the Barolo trademark being abused. Just because appellation control exists, that doesn't excuse consumers from needing to be savvy about what they are buying. The problem with food and wine is not the AOC or DOCG system. The problem is people accepting crap food on their plate without complaining about.

Your question seems to assume that there would be value in a French chef doing that. Where would the value be to a French chef and why would that be valuable to people who patronize French restraurants? I mean, why didn't you ask if there were any French chefs who have mastered Chinese wok cooking?

Even if we do, it's not enough of a difference to make a difference.

Liz - All of that is true. Except it doesn't matter very much. Food is still tied to the good ingredients standard. Nobody orders a Bresse chicken to have it taste like a Landes chicken, or a Bell & Evans chicken, or a Purdue chicken, or to taste like a duck. So it doesn't really make a difference that taste isn't finite, or that you taste things differently then I do. The differences between us are so small that we manage to like the same restaurants.

It's not. Taste is about the ability to notice things properly. I can't stress the word properly enough, especially the ability to notice which elements are present and work in harmony with other elements. And while that might include noticing and appreciating enhancements, which change perceptions, it will always be about the ability to notice what is actually there, not what is only percieved to be there.

You mean like the entry for La Pesa in Milan which is marked novita? That's a 100 year old tratorria that cooks in about a traditional (home cooking) style as you will find in the entire city of Milan. So there has to be other dimensions to the book then you are realizing. I just thought that it's a listing of restaurants that adhere to a principal of cooking with the freshest, and best quality ingredients. It didn't make a difference if they were modern or traditional. But it seems to be limited to tratorrias, which is home style cooking. It might be interesting home style cooking, but it is not high cuisine, which is the distinction we were trying to draw between the Osterie and the Gambero Rosso.

It's amazing how some countries have such a huge buildup of non-tasters.

I don't think your data proves anything. For it to be meaningful, you would have to show that the same person tasted it differently. Switching from a baby to an adult doesn't prove anything.

Just scroll down to the Mostarda listing. Mostarda di Cremona

You were doing well until you got up to this. I submit, this type of example is outside the scope of the dining experience. And as such, invalidates any claims based on it. To make your point, and this is for the benefit of others who argue that taste is perception, you have to stick within the confines of what we would reaonably call the fine dining experience. The only way you can accurately assess how much presentation adds to a dish, is by sticking to those parameters.

No. For some reason you keep confusing restaurant reviewing with tasting. Tasting is a specific thing that happens to be subsumed within restaurant reviewing. And they are not on equal planes. Tasting is like the foundation of a building. No foundation, no building. Same here. If it doesn't taste good, it can't be a good dish no matter what. They are not equivelents. They are sequential. Well you can't argue with this reasonable statement. But the issue is, how much can a diner be manipulated when you are talking about first class ingredients?

Green yes, herbal no. I think they picked too soon. Or it was a cool summer etc.

No you haven't offered any evidence of the sort. You have just offered evidence that says that humans are fallable and our ability to taste is often impaired. As such, things often taste differently to us. But that has nothing to do with the way that wines from the Musigny vineyard are supposed to taste based on the geological make-up of the vineyard site. That is always a constant. You see there is a fundamental difference we are having here. I believe that a person and their tasting ability are subordinate to ingredients which are a constant. Tasting, the correct definition, is the ability to taste the natural qualities of the ingredient as well as its offshoot, the recipe, correctly. But if your definition makes the ingredients fungible because it's all a matter of perception, that means that the worst commercial field corn can be "better" then the best sweet corn, just because our taste buds have undergone some gross maniuplations. That can't be right. Fine dining is about recognizing the superiority of the Musigny vineyard. That part of it is a constant and isn't a matter of percpetion. It's something that is organic. More things I didn't say. In fact I said the opposite of that. If you happen to find yourself having one of those bad tasting days, you need to invalidate your opinion because it is worthless.