Steve Plotnicki

I have attended two Beard meals and I was disappointed with the quality of the food served. And I find the space cramped and don't really enjoy eating there. So based on those two reasons I didn't join. But I'm sure it's like anything else, some meals are better then others.

Well it isn't only about good dining in the neighborhood, JD wants to know where the French people eat? Otherwise from your list, Daphne's is fine, and so is Itsu. And that new place between them Tartine is acceptable as well. But is that really South Ken or are you getting into Chelsea or Knightsbridge there? But none of those places are fine dining and we are talking about London's poshest neighborhood aren't we. Don't those posh people like to eat?

Tony - I was off by 21 pounds. Go to the Farr Vintners website and they have 1985 Haut Brion for 1450 a case. But Lynch Bages which is a good '85 is 75 pounds, Leoville-Barton and Las Cases are 45 & 63 pounds respectively and l'Evangile is 100 pounds. The big boys are Margaux and Cheval Blanc at 2200 and 1950 pounds respectively. But if you want a great bottle of perfectly mature wine in this price range that is just spectacular, buy 1981 Beaucastel Chateauneuf-du-Pape. Killer wine, years of life left to it and only 750 pounds a case which is a steal for a wine of that quality that is 21 years old. Britcook - As for my rules on Bordeaux, it is one of the reasons I don't buy Bordeaux anymore and sold off all of my wines except the few bottles of very old stuff I bought at auction or a few special wines from the 80's. Still, I don't find much quality wine from any region that drinks well before 12 years of age. And most of them need 12-15, possibly 20 years. I have just finished a case of 1989 Jamet Cote Rotie that is drinking perfectly. But the '88 Jamet still needs 2-5 years.

Toby - I essentially asked the same question and it hasn't been answered yet (and maybe never will.) Maybe there is no difference although something tells me there is. Suzanne's research on the phrase haute cuisine leads one to conclude that it means the "practice of an art." That's why it would be similar to a designer's role in haute couture. It seems to be a phrase the French constructed to describe an artist who does things for a commercial purpose. The French were very good at inventing phrases that inferred that whomever was being described would have special status. Like a maitre boucher. It's sounds artisanal but in contains a commercial inferrence that is intended to communicate quality to customers. Jaybee - Bespoke really just means custom. It doesn't have to be expensive to be bespoke. It just needs to be "made-to-measure." It can be bespoke of inexpensive cloth. And the connotation of bespoke is more of made for indurance then made for fashion. Couture has a connotation to it that means fashionable. It implies stylish and the latest in fashion. Add the word "haute" and it just means it is the most stylish and the most fashionable. Same with cuisine. But I do find it ironic that the Brits marketed things by focusing on the fact that things were well made and enduring, and the French focused on what would be fashinable, i.e., change with the times. equivelent of "haute bespoke"

South Kensington is sort of like the upper east side of Manhattan. The neighborhood is lovely but there is nowhere to eat other than places with more style then substance. Hillaire used to be good, but I don't think it was ever patronized by the French in the neighborhood. Where I have seen French people eating are at Le Suquet on Draycott Ave and Le Pescadou on Old Brompton Rd. just west of Earl's Court Rd. The only other place I know of in the neighborhood that is good is Star of India on Old Brompton down near the Gloucester Rd. But I haven't been there in a while. In general I don't find that the French people living in the U.S. or the U.K. spend lots of money on food. I mean it sort of goes against living in those places in the first place. If you are a food crazy Francophile (and a French citizen,) why live in London or New York? I think there is another issue as well. I will bet you that upper middle class homes in NYC or London are spending as much or more on food per capita then the French do. Now that would be a useful statistic to have.

It was a joke. Fat Guy - You are coorect about saucing having been reduced to a minimum or even being non-existent. Now the trend is to have the sauces be a natural jus that comes directly from the ingredient being cooked. And possibly that is mixed with a natural sauce extracted from a vegetable (shades of Bernatd Loisseau.) Yet there is a great disctinction between the French mthod of extracting natural juice and the Italian way of getting some natural gravy out of a pan roasted piece of meat. Why is that and what distinguishes one from the other?

Yvonne - What makes Blue Hill and Annisa (I've never been to Tocqueville) similar is the scope of the operations. There are only a few restaurants in that category, and by that I mean size of the place, level of ambition as to the cooking, level of service and price point that are open anymore. Of the restaurants in that category that we would say try to serve serious food, how many more are there? There is Fleur et Sel, 71 Clinton, Savoy (which is the original in a funny sort of way,) I can hardly think of another. Ultimately what ties those restaurants together is that they could be realized on a greater scale. Any of those places could transition to a Gotham or Gramercy or Union Pacific style venue easily if they made the food preparation a bit more serious and ambitious and added some frills to it. As for each of the restaurants, you are right in that Annisa is the most elaborate in terms of food preparation. But that's because Anita's technique is mostly French so it's fancier by default. I guess shorthand for that is her food is adorned (with sauces.) But the Blue Hill philosophy of cooking the food from the inside out (modern French culinary thinking for eliminating or lessening the reliance on sauces while keeping the same intensity of flavor,) is just as French in style. It's just less obvious. And it allows their cuisine to be presented as New American, where Anita's clearly comes off as French/Asian fusion. But it is so that they can keep their status as a New American restaurant that BH says the dish is "poached in fat." Because if they called it confit, that would make it too French and I don't think that is what they are trying to express. They are trying to express local artisanal ingredients prepared in a contemporary style. It just so happens that most of the techniques employed originated in France.

Tony - Those wines are all way too young. You need to stick to the Plotnicki rules about Bordeaux which is don't drink anything less then 35 years old and really try and drink them at around 50 years old. Yes I know that means unless your daddy left you a cellar or you went out and paid a fortune for someone elses old cellar it's virtually impossible to do. And that's one of the main reasons that I have left Bordeaux as special occassion wine. I find that if I don't stick to those general rules I'm disappointed. If you insist on drinking younger Bordeaux drink '85's. They are fruity and lush and not as tannic as the vintages you drank. The top wine of the vintage '85 Haut Brion can be bought in the 100GBP range and is a really a great bottle of wine. 1995 has some pretty wines too and some of them are drinking well these days. But '86 is about the most tannic vintage I've ever seen. And '82 isn't that far behind IMO.

Scahem - Well do you think as a chef that your personal evaluation of whether he has gone too far is materially different then the way non ITB (in the business) diners think about it? That's an important aspect of fine dining these days. For instance the market for cookbooks from high end chefs is almost completely supported by other chefs. Not that I am saying that Gagnaire's patrons are mostly chefs, he has many rabid fans among eaters. But what if your evaluation of his worthiness and relevancy is skewed by your particular vantage point of being in the business? Let's take that point a step further. Let's say that the world's greatest chef comes along with new technique etc. But he never ctaches on with the public and his techniques and styles aren't imitated. But aesethtically he/she makes what you consider to be the world's greate food? How do we categorize that person?

No they do not. I don't think they pull haute cuisine out of it's context. Rather they have adopted various cooking techniques used in haute cuisine restaurants and have adapted them for a bistro context. Just because you use the same method of slow-poaching fish in low temperature olive oil that some famous three star chef uses doesn't mean you serve haute cuisine. There is the choice of fish, how perfectly it is trimmed, what veggies you source, how you prep them? Now I love eating in Blue Hill but are they as discerning with what they put on your plate as Alain Passard is with what he puts on his? I tend do doubt it. Even though I'm sure at times it's the same, or the diminution is so little that it is indiscernable. I'm always reminded about rhe converstion I had with someone who was a stagiere at a big time NYC haute cuisine restaurant who also staged at another big time NYC haute cuisine restaurant. They said the difference between restaurants A & B (A charged much more money for a meal) is that they are quick to throw something away if it isn't perfect. Butcher a chicken just the slightest bit wrong and Didier (oops ) will look at it and tell you to throw it away (at least they must make chicken salad for the staff. But at restaurant B, the famous chef will look at it and make a suggestion as to how to save it, i.e., they serve the food with knowing imperfections. And I think regardless of how the dishes are concieved, whether we are talking about a simple poached cod or a boeuf en gellee, the issue comes down to how much time you spend on making it perfect, i.e., application of technique as I like to say. The higher up the rung you go, the more technique they apply. And of course this includes Cathy L.'s point about the technique continuing after the food leaves the kitchen

Not so fast Fat Guy. Some people keep cans of Bummble Bee tuna fish in the fridge but I keep individual portion size cans of "Duck Gelé with Crawfish Watercress Vichysoisse, Haricot Vert Salad and Summer Truffles," On nights Mrs. P. and I don't want to bother cooking a haute cuisine meal, I just flip the lid on one of those babies. And we always drink Crozes-Hermitage because that's the right thing to drink. We save the Hermitage for the haute cuisine.

Tony - You should wait until I actually give my opinion before chiding me for it. All I said was that *the French* use the term *haute* because *they believe* it's the *highest expression* of cuisine. What I think about it has nothing to do with it. And try as you might to deprive them of the use of that word, it is not only the word they use, but the word people the world over accept as an accurate description. But now I will give my opinion. It seems to me, that aside from certain Kaiseki restaurants in Japan that I know people travel to, the only restaurants in the world that I know of that people go out of their way to eat at serve haute cuisine. There are a few that specialize in Italian or Provencal derived cuisine, like Chez Panisse. And then there are great restaurants in the simple food category like steakhouses or farmhouses in France serving great roast chickens. But those places don't qualify as "haute." But it seems to me that the French have constructed a fair use of the word. Especially when "heights' means that the highest level of technique, ingredients, presentation, service and setting will be applied to the food. So yes it is "the best" of all of those things. It just not might be the best tasting food. And can there be haute Chinese cuisine? Sure. If somebody applies the requisite level of technique to each of those parts of the meal. Something I have yet to see in a Chinese restaurant. In fact let me ask you, aside from French restaurants and Japanese kaiseki, which different cuisines do you think have the requisite techniques to offer a meal on the level we are describing?

When you and I agree everyone else is screwed. But then there is always Wilfrid who will find a way to didagree with us on Monday morning. So what do you think this all means haute cuisine is? A technique? An approach to how to prepare and serve a meal? A philosphy, strategy, way of life? Or is it simply a category of dining and everything else like cooking techniques, methedology, presentation and service is calculated to fit within the category?

Hey Fat Guy you're good at this game. That was the right question to ask. I think that ultimately what makes a porterhouse at L'Ambroisie different then one at Peter Luger's is the level of care the meat gets before they serve it to you. I have no doubt that the extent of the way they trim the meat at L'Ambroisie is much more detailed then it is at Luger's. And I believe that this attention to minute details even goes as far as L'Ambroisie serving the steak at the right temperature almost every time. And you and I know from our personal experiences of eating at Luger';s how inaccurate they are in this regard. And ultimately it ends up with L'Ambroisie slicing the meat so as to be able to arrange it in a lovely manner with garnish atop. As opposed to Luger's putting the egg back together again to make it look like a whole steak. The problem is that the extra care in trimming and the rest of the fussiness doesn't add much pleasure to eating a steak. In fact it detracts because we don't eat porterhouse steak to expresss the esthetic of refinement. So foods like pastrami sandwiches, porterhouse steak, bacon & eggs are hard to express as haute cuisine because they are so perfect in the mode in which they exist in. Plain eating. It's why it is hard to make a haute cuisine cassoulet. Aside from my terrine example, what can a chef do? He can make a cassoulet, debone everything or cut it into easily chewable size bits and compose them atop a bed of beans. But has he improved it? I doubt it. Without adding some ingredient to make it preferable in that form, he has probably made it worse. I can think of two examples of people changing the way a dish is conceived and presented that offer different results. The Algerian restaurant in Paris Le Table du Charly offers a tagine of lamb. But instead of giving you the entire lamb shank with the bouillon etc. and a bowl of steaming cous cous on the side, they carve the lamb up and serve it atop a perfectly shaped mound of cous cous. It's a more refined presentation that makes the dish worse. What makes a lamb tagine great in the first place is digging at those fatty bits stuck to the shank. But if you go to The Fat Duck and have the Crab Risotto with Guava Jelly and Crab Ice Cream, he has raised the level of presentation you usually see for risotto to a higher level. He fills a shallow soup bowl with risotto and smooths the top flat. Then he layers the top with jelly so it looks like it has been wrapped in cling wrap. Then he lays a scoop of crab ice cream atop. And it works. This is why I think any food can become haute cuisine. All you have to do is put it throught the h-c assembly line. Whether it works or not is a different matter.

Well in France you would go up to the "Haute de Cagnes," which is what they call the old walled in town of Cagnes-sur-Mer because it is up on the top of a mountain. The heights of Cagnes is what they are saying. When they say haute cuisine or haute couture, what they are trying to express is that this is design or cooking at the highest level. And to use my favorite peasant/haute cuisine example, and this goes to Fat Guy's point as well, the Robuchon mashed potatoes are haute cuisine because that is how he is trying to present them. That he happened to be super successful at it has nothing to do with the fact that it is a h-c presentation. They could have been lousy but still h-c. Fat Guy - This is why I think regardless of how one considers offshoots of h-c like nouvelle cuisine, as long as the dish properly expresses the goal, cuisine expressed at the highest level, it fits the description. A bistro does not intend to express food at its highest level. It intends to express it on a level that is comforting and homelike (hamische is a better word.) As a technical matter, and maybe some of the chefs here can chime in, how much of the difference rests on h-c being built around pre-existing stocks and bistro cuisine creating gravys and liquids based on the actual braising of what is going to be served?

But does it really need a personal touch for it to be h-c? How about Tour d'Argent? They serve haute cuisine (even if it's bad) so does Taillevent. Their cuisine isn't so chef driven. There are countless hotels all over the world serving h-c with no-name chefs. The key seems to be, whomever the chef is, they apply h-c techniques when preparing the food. As for the line between what is h-c and what isn't, ala Union Pacific and Cafe Boulud, I think both of those places serve food that implement many of the techniques used in h-c. I just wouldn't categorize those places as restaurants that practice h-c in every instance. As opposed to Daniel which ensures that whatever they serve you it goes through the h-c grindrer.

The way the term is used is to describe the cuisine at offered at a certain type of restaurant. Now that I am thinking about it this way, it is really a term the French used to codify a type of restaurant that serves the "highest form of cuisine." Of course what that means varies from place to place and chef to chef but, if food expresses the philosophy then it qualifies. Jaybee - This question arises from the discussion on the relevance of Italian cuisine. That question asked why Italy didn't adopt haute cuisine or create a version of its own. And the way that discussion developed, it framed this question. But even if that wasn't the case, people consciously choose haute cuisine as a way to dine all of the time. They just don't express it that way. Nobody says to their wife, "c'mon honey, let's get some haute cuisine tonight." But that doesn't mean that my three meals in Paris weren't haute cuisine Of course there is the other way to look at this. There are many popular restaurants that do not serve haute cuisine. Take Craft or Chez Panisse as two that have been mentioned. How about some more difficult ones. How about Gramercy Tavern or Union Pacific? Do you categorize GT as haute cuisine? Gee that's a close one in my book. Like a simplified version. Union Pacific? Again a simplified version. But what makes the difference? And how about Daniel vs Cafe Boulud or Jean-Georges vs Nougatine? Where is the line between h-c and bistro food. Anybody? Chefs?

Schaem - I don't think that it's the great man theory. What you're saying is that it's a matter of context. That roasted mushrooms served at Arpege seem "better" then ones served elsewhere because of the context. Alain Passard and Daniel Boulud are just part of the context. But what you are also saying is that with some foods the amount of haute cuisine intervention is limited. For roast mushrooms to be haute cuisine they need to be special mushrooms, and they need to be roasted in something like a salt crust at low heat for 40 minutes (ala Passard.) Then he can serve them sliced a certain way (artfully) and he can paint them with some type of sauce, or just put a large pat of artisanal salted on butter atop. There isn't much else to do to them is there? But as long as you brought this particular point up, and not to stray from this thread, isn't this Passard's genius? He has reversed the process of intervention and serves veggies in a way where they should taste and seem just like plain roasted or sauteed vegetables. But they appear at your table and everything about them is haute cuisine. And it's a matter of the texture and amount of flavor he gets out of them. Somehow Passard has figured out how to extract sufficient flavor without manipulating the ingredient out of it's natural form or texture while still expressing the H-C esthetic. JD - Are you saying that it's the practice of a French tradition .

Dave - I think the beure blanc is a secondary issue. The icing on the cake so to speak. What makes it HC (and I am just speculating that it is because I've never had it,) or approaching HC is that he changed the dish from a casserole and gave it form and shape. You need to see a picture of it to understand what I'm talking about (and there is a full page picture of it in the book) because the presentation is really superior. But does it taste exactly like a cassoulet? Did he add or take away certain ingredients to make the flavor or texture more refined? Don't know. But the point is that Novelli has rethought the dish in a way that has raised it's status above a peasant dish. Like Boulud has raised the status of a hamburger from a coffee shop/bar & grill item to a respectable lunch dish. And it's the small details that count. The DB Burger is cut in the middle so that the presentation includes the cross-section showing all of the ingredients (not unlike Novelli eh?) A small and simple, yet material part of the presentation. Most places would have just served the burger on a bun. Tony - That Louis Bertholle book is the single greatest cookbook ever published. I think a precondition of H-C is that the food has to look beautiful when presented. And in order to make it beautiful the chefs have to manipulate the food into the shape of the design. And in order to do that they have to puree,, strain etc. to make ingredients pliable. It's the difference between serving fava beans, a pile of fava bean puree that looks like green mashed potatoes, or fava bean puree that is formed into scoops that look like ice cream.

I think Britcook's explanation does a good job of showing that if you apply that technique to anything you can turn it into haute cuisine. That is why I am puzzled by people saying that not eveything is haute cuisine. And I am especially puzzled by the example of cassoulet. If anyone has Novelli's cookbook, he makes a terrine of cassoulet. That's right, it looks just like it sounds. He makes a cassoulet and forms it into a loaf surrounded by aspic and then it's chilled. He then cuts slices of it and serves it in a beurre blanc I believe. And it looks just like cassoulet that has been molded into a loaf, with cross sections of sausage and bits of duck and beans. That's haute cuisine casssoulet isn't it? I've never tasted it but it is one of the most impressive looking dishes I have ever seen. So I don't think there are any boundries to HC.

Sobasan - Nobody is arguing that kaiseki isn't the "haute cuisine" of Japanese food. It's just that when I asked the question I was referring to western style food preparation and service. But you are free to expand the context by demonstrating that kaiseki or anything else meets the definition of HC as soon as we figure out what that is.

Soba - I don't think Craft is haute cuisine because they don't apply HC technique to the food. Their thing is more Italo-American in style, with some French technique mixed in and some Asian influences as well. They have fantastic ingredients and they serve them perfectly. But ultimately what they are serve is "New American" cuisine. Now Jean-Georges or Le Bernadin. They serve haute cuisine.

Wilfrd - Well you know it doesn't have to be smooth and silky. As long as it expresses the philosophy of HC (which is what I'm trying to get a definition of.) To me the practice of HC is like painting in a style. In order to be an Impressionist painter you have to adopt the philosophy and technique of how Impressionism. And to serve HC, you need to cook and present food that is consistent with a certain technique and style. Coarse, unfortunately for you, is often not consistant with HC.

Well this is the typical argument around here. One that always says that because the definition of what haute cuisine is has to be evaluated on a case by case basis, that the definition of haute cuisine is relative to what people agree is the definition. Excuse me for saying this but that is incorrect. They teach haute cuisine in numerous cooking schools in France and elsewhere. It is the practice of a specific discipline in regards to food preparation and food service. It is a way of doing things. It is a philosophy and a strategy. And though it contains a range where a number of different opinions can be correct, it is not a matter of opinion. You might go to Daniel and eat Tete de Veau, and the expectation would be that it is Tete de Veau at the most refined level. And you expect the same dish at Cafe Boulud to be less refined, more so at DB Bistro Moderne and even less refined at your local traiteur. Using this example, one would think that haute cuisine comes down to "the most luxurious way to serve a dish including artistic preparation." Undoubtedy that usually means the smoothest and the silkiest and the creamiest. And that's why the Tete de Veau at your local bistro might be better then what they serve you at Daniel. It's a dish that is meant to be coarse. And then you might go to Daniel and eat a mushroom flan with a slab of sauteed foie gras laid atop so perfectly that it is seemless with the flan. And the same dish at a bistro might be served as roasted musrooms tossed with cubes of sauteed foie gras (that sounds good doesn't it?) and dressed in some way. Where is the line here?

Wilfrid - Of your list, I find that number three takes precedence over the others. Look at my flan example. It's getting mushrooms into a consistancy and texture where the chef can manipulate the shape to his liking. Combining a technique where the flavor is intensified along with the ability to make an artistic presentation has to be at the heart of what HC is. As for a new paradigm, I think that there is a new paradigm that is based on certain techniques that have been extracted from haute cuisine. And they have been combined with the best part of Italian cuisines, and possibly other cuisines as well. Look at the entire raw fish/seviche phenomenon which is influenced by Japanese and South American cuisines.