Steve Plotnicki

Ah, I wasn't waxing about the quality of the truffle but the curry dusting. Maybe we can get Robert Linxe (sp?) to dust some truffles with sweet curry.

Wilfrid - Well things don't always move in one direction. Retro is always part of fashion along with modern isn't it? But I think that for a long time, cooking has been about manipulating textures to make things easier to eat. I doubt we will see that change. In fact techniques like foaming etc., move even further in the direction of changing the shape and form of food. But there will always be someone like Fergus Henderson who modernizes traditional cuisine, or someone like Tom Collichio who restates traditional cooking technique through a more modern pallet. But I think our boredom comes from lack of innovation.

I should add that my steak at Frontera was very good. It was marinated in red chiles and it had an edge to it that made it interesting. Just a tinge hot and spicy. And well salted. And surprisingly, as per my instructions, it came out perfectly rare with a thin char crust on each side. Also, have you had the Naga Chocolate Truffles at Vosges in Chicago? They are dusted with a sweetish curry powder. They give you an assortment of truffles when you check in and I loved it and went downstairs and bought an entire chocolate bar that was dusted in the curry powder.

You know a place like Rhone in the meatpacking district but featuring desserts and dessert wines. It would be soooooo trendy.

You should consider opening up such a place with an Indian theme. I might even be willing to put in some funding. We can attract the elite Indian crowd for late night ras malai and dancing. Actually I am joking but there is a dearth of places that are dessert specialists. There is Serendipity but is there anything else? There really is a market there that someone should tap into. This combination of high end desserts and high end dessert wines and champagnes has potential.

What drives businesses are the opportunities for talented people to express their talent and combine that with making money. So it isn't empty theaters, it's empty theaters with the potential to be full theaters that encourages people to enter a profession. Why be a playwrite when you can be a screenwriter or someone who writes for television? And do you think young chefs are as motivated to work in Carrol Gardens as they are in the Flatiron District? Or in an industry where the menus at every restaurant in the country are that same so that the environment stifles innovation? Talented people need an outlet to express themselves. Economics manages to play a silent but unbelievably important part in that equation. I guess there is a business model we can impose on this question (maybe JD can chime in here) that has to do with immature vs mature businesses. Part of the problem with the restaurant industry is that over the last 30 years it became mature, i.e., big business,. There are models for getting everything done. Much of the innovation that we are pining for historically took place in a mom and pop business environment.

Suvir - Once upon a time Frontera Grill was a solid A minus, possibly an A. But like with so many places that have been in business a long time, the kitchen stops cooking at a high level of intensity. But the good news is that Mexican food is more forgiving then other cuisines would be and the meal was still very enjoyable. In fact I wish they had a place like Frontera in NYC. Sugar was written up in the New York Times this past summer. It bills itself as a "dessert bar and club." And although the Times made the physical plant sound more exotic and appealing then it was, in fact it was like going to any smalller club for drinks. Except that this place has about 20 different desserts on their menu. Unfortunately, the way they are presented is pretentious and they are all given silly names that make "Death by Chocolate" sound like War & Peace. I had a Yam Caramel atop an almond torte and the whole concoction was swimming in what seemed to be almond mil. It wasn't bad, but the loud music (it's a club remember) and the written presentation were a little distracting. But I thought the concept was a great one and something a serious pastry chef like a Pierre Herme could consider. They were charging between $12 and $20 for desserts, plus they sold everything of coffee to champagne. And it was the fisrt place I had ever seen where a velvet rope was needed to keep people from having dessert!

Do you really think there was as many high end restaurants around then as there are now? Even if the costs were as high (including cost of living increases,) the potential to attract diners was much better because there were so few places at that level that were meaningful. And I think the cost of real estate in this city has skyrocketed over the last 10 years. Forgetting about national chain stores, show me a successful independant retailer and I will show you someone with a good lease.

Railpaul - You can't compare the theater to restaurants. There isn't really much exciting new theater and there is almost no such thing as an exciting new musical. But there are some exciting new restaurants. They are just not in NYC. And if cost was the issue, this new exciting theater would be Off-Broadway where it wouldn't cost $100 a ticket. But it isn't there either because it doesn't exist. And if it does, the public has little or no interest in it.

You need the right business environment to do that. Where is a new chef to be innovative if it's hard to attract patrons and the rents are so high? Add to that, the start up cost for a new restaurant can easily be a million dollars. That's quite a bit if debt. I hate to point out that money is the most important factor in the equation but, the cost of trying is onerous. Look at the few places that are trying to be innovative. Anissa, Blue Hill, Fleur de Sel, they're not even full every night. The foundation of any retail business is a good lease with cheap rent. Tell me where in NYC you can get a cheap lease? You can't. So where are the new chefs going to be creative? This is why you end up with 71 Clinton on the lower east side, or chefs on Smith Street in Bkln.

I am sorry I gave Vivin's good post short shrift. He has raised what I see as two issues. The culturally different but still haute like Nobu and Sugiyama, and the acute sharpening of technique which he raised through his point about Arpege. What is wrong with the restaurant world in NYC is that there doesn't seem to be any value in chefs inventing a better wheel. I always use it as an example but the Robuchon potatoes are a better wheel, so is the DB Burger. The Hachis Parmentier with Boudin Noir I ate at La Regalade was a better wheel. What we are really all complaining about from a technical perspective is that it doesn't seem to be worth a chef's time and effort to sharpen their cuisine. All the places Wilfrid mentioned in the original post, those guys are all fantastic chefs. Except their energies are not directed at fine tuning their cuisine. Their energy is directed at turning tables.

Wilfrid - Well the phrase "upper middle" implies that new money has access to luxury items. And luxury items tend to be smooth and silky rather then rough and coarse. Along with making luxurious food for that class of people, the clothing was made from luxurious fabrics, the furniture was styled a certain way, automobiles etc. When I was growing up, Shetland wool had a little panache to it. Today cashemere can be so reasonably priced that I never hear Shetland wool mnentioned anymore. That's why I always come back to these things being sociological. I believe that anytime a newly formed class or segment of society acquires affluence, everything changes. Fashion, food, furniture. Artisans need patrons and patrons need wealth.

There's a more nuanced version of referring to Hitler during a discussion then you are offering. Hitler, besides slaughtering millions of people, actuallly had theorys about mankind you know. Quite often I hear someone cite a theory that one could portray as "Hitlerian in nature," not using Hitler in the context of a murderer but in the simpler context of a fascist. Or maybe a better example would be that if someone proposed to erect Albert Speer like buildings one could call them "Hitlerian" and not be subject to their argument being "devoid of reason." But I agree with you that comparing the French to the Nazis (in this context) is going overboard.

Before I add a response, I just have to take a joust at this one; That's because you just want to keep rolling back the clock until you come to the day where Britsihs cooking is the equivelent of the cooking from you know where . If you take the "food as metaphor for life theory" (Plotnickiism section 1 paragraph 1,) interesting food follows in the footsteps of societal expression. And I'm not trying to get myself into too much trouble here by trying to bite off too much specificity when I say that but, I think that in threads when we analyze the cooking of various countries we eventually get around to that point. Interesting cooking is some sort of expression of the populace as educated consumers with a high level of aesthetics. And since consumerism drives cooking, i.e. the restaurant business, chefs play for their audiences by creating these fantastic things that hold our interest. It's not unlike pop music or fashion which is why I made the comparison. The pop hit ala Beatles, the mini-skirt and sea bass wrapped in a potato crust all probably have similar useful commercial lives (I'm waiting to see what is going to replace the mini skirt.) So I think in order to get at the heart of this issue you have to ask yourself why the population in the dining capitals of the world eat the way they eat? For example, I recently bought a cookbook that featured modern tapas dishes from Spain (can't remember the name of the book.) The book goes through each region of Spain and gives recipes from various tapas restaurants. Well even at the tapas level, so many of the dishes are so interesting and in a number of cases much more interesting then what most restaurants in NYC serve. And what I think the important issue question isn't why do they have so many chefs there doing interesting things, I think the question is, why did it catch on there and not here or in other cities? If you take a restaurant like Cub Gascon in London, which if it resided in Spain, could be an entry in this book, you have to ask yourself, why hasn't there been a number of spinoffs or copycats of the Cub Gascon style in London? Or why is GC in London and not in Paris? Why did a guy from Gascony have to go to London to create a new style of French/tapas cuisine? Why don't we have something like it in NYC? Or as Suzanne asked, why didn't Liebrandt catch on (which is an entire conversation in itself.) Or why didn't Alex Urena catch on here in a big way? The answers to those question lie in the fact that something special is going on in Spain. And it can't only be in food. It has to be part of a greater manifestation of societal expression because the population accepted it. And if you look at upper end dining in NYC, that's really what it always has been. Like Bux says, it's dining for the "upper middle." Well if you want to get at the source of why the restaurants are boring and jaded, it's because our lifestyle is boring and jaded. Once upon a time it was an exciting experience to eat that potato scaled sea bass in your designer suit. But that expression of a NYC lifestyle has been going on for the last 20 years. Personally, I don't see it changing anytime soon. I think it's expanding downward and outward and not up. That means, they are expannding the definition of the upper middle. As long as that is going on, why give us anything new? Jean-Georges, besides his two restaurants in Trump has Jo Jo, Mercer Kitchen, Vong and now he is going to have the restaurant ion the new Richard Meier building on the river. What's his motivation to creat a new cuisine? Not only that but, the strength of his overall business occupies a half dozen good restaurant spaces where if he didn't have such a strong brand name, would most likely be available to up and coming chefs. It's a viscious cycle. Wilfrid raises another good point in that we are far more competent as home chefs and that has taken away part of the magic. Last night I was having dinner and one of the diners was talking about how much he loved sauteed foie gras. I was able to recite a recipe from memory of a foie/apple dish that could be prepared in 4-5 minutes (excluding that nasty prep time of course.) And when you make that dish which isn't difficult, it's every bit as good as what you might get in Le Cirque. How much has our ability to cook like that lessened the thrill of the restaurant experience? It has to be by a lot.

Good question. How about we try and figure out how come there have been no rock bands as important as the Beatles since 1963? Someone should look at a chronology of fine dining in the 20th century. I bet one can quickly gauge the length of cycles. My gut tells me we are in the midst of a cycle that started around the mid 80's and is on it's last legs. That's why everything seems so redundant. I think this point is further exacerbated by how chefs can become celebrities. They can expand their businesses vertically by creating more casual versions of their cuisine. What impetus does Jean-Georges have to reinvent his cuisine when he can open Vong's or a place like Market in Paris at a lower expense and with lower overhead. It's much easier to keep the J-G name going if you don't set the bar in a high place.

There is a malaise at the high end because the style of cooking they offer has been institutionalized. That we are jaded is one aspect, but that they don't have many new tricks to show us is most likely a bigger problem. If you look at trends in dining the way one looks at fashion, or music, the names you mentioned have all been stalwarts on the NYC dining scene for appx 15 years. To think that in that time nothing or nobody of importance has come along to do something so interesting that it changes the way we eat. Yes you have Ducasse but that is a variation of the same theme. And by the time Thomas Keller gets here, his restaurant might be the same. High end dining sits at a crossroads now. Especially in NYC. What purports itself to be the dining capital of the world outside of Paris is without a local version of an El Bulli or Fat Duck. And I'm not sure that is going to change anythime soon.

Tony - Cultural discrimination and race based discrimination are not the same thing. For example, I haven't noticed French Jews being treated then other French people. Hitler gassed the German Jews because they "weren't really Germans." So it's one thing to point out French bias which we all agree exists. It's another to mischaracterize them as doing something worse then what they actually do.

But isn't a seekh kebab cooked on a skewer in a tandoor?

Gee most koftes that I've been served have been on skewers. In fact that's one of the tricky things about making them. The meat has to be chopped or minced in such a way that you can mold it around a skewer and shape it so the meat sticks together. And some of them are shaped into ridges. I had lunch on Sunday at Hemsin (Turkish restaurant in Queens) and their refrigerated case was loaded with skewers of adana kebab (kofte) that were laid out on skewers and each skewer was ridged from top to bottom.

Or maybe he can tell us how Peter Luger's should close because they aren't good anymore.

Is it at Diwan where they serve red lentil koftas? Germany is the world's leader in kofte kebabs. It is akin to curry in the U.K. and it has almost become the national dish. It's sort of amusing considering how much discrimination there is among German's towards the Turkish population in Germany. The problem with most koftes is that they are often dry. Few people get the grill time right. But a perfectly cooked kofte is like a hamburger plus. Almost a sausage but not quite. When they are on, the koftes at Sahara in Brooklyn are really good. They sell so many that there is a guy who does nothing other then skewer kofte kebabs all night. I'm not an experienced halal meat shopper but, I understand that it's the motion of the knife that makes the right kofte kebab. We've tried to make them at home and it's all about the texture. You also can't pack them too tight. Loosly packed koftes with the right grill times are really juicy. And I'm with Jason in that Iskender is the way to go. But what about Seekh Kebabs? How do they differ from koftes?

Not Dalga again . Do you still think it's good? Should I try it again? I'm going to have a hard time convincing Mrs. P.

The doner kebab I know is the same as gyro. Ground and pressed lamb with spices. I don't know of any lamb dish on a vertical rotisserie that uses sliced lamb other then schwarma which is sometimes turkey and sometimes a combination of lamb and turkey. But you had a good defense of Romanos and I will go try it next time I'm in Queens which is often. I've eaten many gyros at Opa Opa in my day. I don't think it's as good as it used to be. But even when they were at their best, I don't think it's as good as Yatagan. You should try it. Also the doner at Sahara in Brooklyn is good if you ever get out that way.

Many people want to see a restauarnt's list in advance so they can call ahead and have them open wines in advance of their visit. I've done that with Veritas among other restaurants in the past where they have opened bottles for me up to six hours ahead of time. Most places will do that with a credit card number.

Doner seems like pressed ground lamb to me. But tell me, are people afraid to say that on the board? Why would someone PM that information? Is it top secret?