
Steve Plotnicki
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Everything posted by Steve Plotnicki
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I haven't looked yet. But my friend who spent some time in the store thought the wines were expensive. I am going to have to check it out.
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Marcus - How many cases would you like between $75-$90? (edited in later) Actually I just checked and the best price I can get these days is $105. But I know where a case is. I guess they raised the price a little and the exchange rate got worse (it's in the U.K.) Speaking of the U.K., I have been told that many of the '81's that are in this country are cooked because they were shipped in the days before people used reefers. The '81's I've been buying in the U.K. have all been perfect except for one case that I thought was a tiny bit off. Beachfan - I find the 1990 too bretty for my taste. Same with the 1985 and 1988. People like the 1997 very much but I don't see it. Haven't had the '94 though.
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Well who else is going to eat in that restaurant?
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Rayner - You'll do fine. Just make it 75% food and 25% the other stuff and I will salute you. What people really want to know is how the food compares to Gagnaire in Paris? That's the most important issue for the haute cuisine crowd. Everything else is more about lifestyle then food.
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Cabby - If this is the same as the Boston Wine Expo, I attended last year and was very disappointed with which wineries attended. A few interesting wines but all in all not a very discriminating bunch. As for the tastings, forget it. The only Beaucastel worth drinking are the 1981, 1989, 1995 and 1998-2000. Plus the Hommage Jacque Perrin is good in every vintage they make it in. Save your money on the tasting and buy yourself a bottle of 1981 and a bottle of 1998 for the combined cost of probably $150.
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There has been much written about Doe's. It was brought to national attention by Jane & Michael Stern in their opriinal book Roadfood where they proclaimed it, "the best steak in America." They opened a Doe's in Little Rock Arkansas and it was Bubba's favorite place to eat. I do recall that when he became President, they had a D.C. branch for a minute but I'm not sure if I'm imagining things. Did you have the tamales as well? Another famous dish of theirs which they sell by the coffee can if I recall the review correctly.
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I'm really not saying something that unusual. Let's see if we can use it in a sentence. Now class. The West End is going to open fifteen shows this season but the most important opening of the season is Andrew Lloyd Weber's New Delhi Dreams. New Delhi Dreams had a great opening last night as all the stars came out. Despite the great fanfare around it's opening, New Delhi Dreams is closing tonight after having poor box office for the last 6 months. There has never been as much anticipation for a show to open as Stephen Sonndheim's Sweeney Todd. The operatic story of a London Barber who slits people throats who then end up in pies is the most important opening of a show on Broadway since the opening of West Side Story. Maybe you want to rethink your last statement?
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Most important restaurant ever to open in London?
Steve Plotnicki replied to a topic in United Kingdom & Ireland: Dining
Gary - Haute cuisine is a style of cooking and has nothing to do with the amount of stars a restaurant gets. The Canteen was not a haute cuisine restaurant. Le Gavroche, Tante Claire, Gordon Ramsey, and MPW both at the Hyde Park Hotel and then The Oak Room served what you would call haute cuisine. The Canteen was more like a brasserie. Like Langen's but with good food. I was there a few times and it was quite good. In fact all of the MPW restaurants were really good until he started running multiple restaurants at the same time. -
Macro - What are you talking about. Gary - Sorry. Many people consider Gagnaire the greatest chef in the world. MPW never had that kind of respect among diners and his peers. You're talking about the difference between the Rolling Stones and Oasis.
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Stone - You're too young for us to share the code(s) with you. Pay your dues son.
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Well how do you know he does it for his own selected guests?
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Marcus - Sorry you had a bad meal but I'm not surprised. Restaurants have off nights to begin with and when there is only one choice on the menu it intensifies it. Next time you should try and eat upstairs which is a delightful experience of simple bistro food. What used to be a good wine list sounds like it has been picked over. Next time you should BYO which I know they allow.
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That word is reserved for special people.
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Okay I read it. I don't need the sommelier to do anything for me since I have probably tasted many more wines on his list then he has (this is surprisingly not such an uncommon occurence in NYC.) What I do need him to do is to point out the eccentricities on the list which is what I tried to get him to do the other night. It was not computing. Secondly, I mostly prefer meat so that's an issue right there. Also, my appetizer was a special and my wife's main dish was a special and both were resolutely ordinary. I also don't eat pasta due to my wheat intolerance so there goes that one too. Okay now that we have dispensed with that, that's not what I'm asking for. I don't want advice about what to do there. I want to know how to get their attention so that Mario himself hand picks my lamb chops and makes sure they are both fired up at the right time and cooked to the right temperature, as well as served at the right temperature. I'm looking for the magic word or phrase to tell my server so they will say, yes we understand you are not the same as evey other diner. Just like they did at Trotter's as soon as I raised it. I am conviced that Babbo is such a popular place that unless you can get their attention, your meal can be very good, or like ours, oridnary. But I am certain that if you get the kitchen's attention the food will imorove dramatically.
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Vivin - I can't find the thread you are talking about. Can you please post a link.
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Andy - And that is why the thrust of the article should have been about him coming to London and spending most of the article explaining who he is and what he means to the world of cooking. Paul - You can credibly say that Ducasse is as or more significant but not Guy Savoy. Gagnaire's reputation is among the elite of the three star crew. Ducasse, Bras, Veyrat, Adria & Gagngaire who I would nominate to be in the top echelon of three star chefs.
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Most important restaurant ever to open in London?
Steve Plotnicki replied to a topic in United Kingdom & Ireland: Dining
I'm not sure what this means but Sketch will be important if the food is so different and unusual and of such quality that people feel it is worth paying that price point. The important restaurants are ones that change dining thereafter. Some do it by cuisine. some do it as to who the restaurant is trying to attract as it clientele. Some do it by trying to establish themselves as permanent fixtures. Probably the most important restaurant to open in the U.K. over the last 30 years is Kensington Place. Hundreds of restaurants have been derived from that concept. Odeon meant the same thing to dining in NYC and then Union Square Cafe improved on that concept. There would be no Craft in NYC without those restaurants as predecessors. I don't find any of the high end French restaurants in London to be that significant. Yes they served good food but they didn't have the same impact on the worldwide dining scene as a place like Le Cirque did. And their descendants, places like MPW and GRRHR while getting recognition, did not create the same kind of buzz on an international basis as Daniel and J-G did. To this date, nobody in London has created a haute cuisine concept that feeds 200-300 people a night. That concepts derives from how the original Le Cirque was set up. -
Maybe they gave him shares in the company like William Shatner got shares in Priceline.com. And as an aside, someone just dropped off a gift at my apartment of a Lavinia catalog .
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I was looking for less ambiguity .
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Wilfrid - Three stars is one aspect. None of the chefs you mentioned have ever achieved the same amount of reverence among chefs and diners as Gagnaire. It's an entirely different category of chef. We are talking about someone who is considered by many to be the greatest chef in the world. Any restaurant he opens providing it is haute cuisine, is a more important opening then any restaurant Roux, Ladenis, MPW etc. could ever open. There are only a handful of chefs that fall into this category with Adria and Bras being two that quickly come to mind.
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No it's the same thing I just said except I have clarified it for anyone who didn't understand. I have no way of knowing what is going to happen to Sketch. If you asked me to bet on it I would say that it won't last for long in its current incarnation and Gagnaire will end up disassociating himself from the restaurant and it will become more of a private club then a restaurant. But that has nothing to do with its opening if you look at the opening as a defined thing. I can say the same thing about Robuchon's new restaurant in Paris. One could say that it is the most important restaurant to open in Paris in the last 20 years. Not because it is necessarily going to work, but based on what Robuchon said the format of the restaurant will be, it holds the potential to change the dining in scene in Paris.
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Sometimes I wonder how the English happened to have invented the language. I am using "opening" in a particular way. I am not using it to mean ever opened for business. I am using it specifically to refer to the period of time that would be described by the trade and the press as the restaurant opening. That entails anything from press dinners to the initial reviews from the important publications which will all come down within the first few weeks of the restaurant opening. The future of Sketch will be materially impacted by how it opens. And there is no other restaurant I know of in London that ever had such an important opening. But of course that doesn't mean it will be the most important restaurant in the history of the U.K. ever to have opened.
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Gary - I'm sorry I don't agree. It has nothing to do with the importance of dining in the U.K. It has to do with a chef in a different league then anyone else. As much as you can say about the Roux's or anyone else, they are not Troisgros, Passard, Robuchon, Gagnaire etc. This is the first time a chef of that stature has opened in London. The concequences if they are successful will probably be material. If it spurs other top chefs to open in London, it will change that city's dining scene forever. It could also provoke a shift from London to Paris as to which city is the capital of haute cuisine. Spoon doesn't have the same impact because it isn't an haute cuisine restaurant.
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Most important restaurant ever to open in London?
Steve Plotnicki replied to a topic in United Kingdom & Ireland: Dining
If Sketch fails, it won't be important at all. But "opening" is the key phrase here and it modifies "ever." So I'm only describing how one reports on it. But from a historical poiint of view, Escoffier at The Ritz is probably the most important. The Roux Brothers are up there as well. -
I've eaten at that El Gaucho place in Chelsea Market (is it still there?) and they have Argentinian steaks. Fair at best if you ask me.