Steve Plotnicki

Your mouth waters at every prospect .

After you say this you then go onto say the same exact thing I said in my prior post. I said, I don't see how that is materially different then saying that they avoid the foods that they are sensitive to in restaurants.But the thrust of my point is that in spite of their condition, super-tasters function normally in a society where normal tasters set the definition of good taste. The main point being that the article really had no bearing on the discussion we've been having.

Bux - Don't forget those orbs were a luxury on my tongue . You know I started to write this up on Wednesday and I was 3/4 of the way though it and then my computer crashed. I was disheartened enough that I had decided not to rush back to rewrite it so I could restore my creative juices. But then Marcus PM'd me yesterday and asked where the hell my reviews were. So I commited to write it again when I got up early this morning. But now that you have raised the issue, there was one part of the lost review that I forgot to include in this version. I mentioned as an aside that Passard's mustard ice cream was different then the mustard ice creams I had sampled at places that served Adria inspired cooking, Fat Duck being one of those places. And how Passard's ice cream struck me as uniquely French. As smooth and as creamy as an ice cream can possibly get with a fat content that could rival a pre-milked herd of cows. And that the Adria influenced ice cream was less smooth, more ice cream like. And I asked if those with more professional experience than I could expound on the difference in styles being somehow symbolic of the difference in French technique versus modern Spanish technique. Or was that making too much of it? So now due to your reminder, I've asked it here. Vivin - Yes I think you make the right point about Passard. There is an intangeable element to the meal that makes it worth a price that doesn't correlate with what the ingredients or preparation times might add up to as a function of some mathematical equation. Call it an artistic license the diner has to pay for. But the other side of that coin means the meal is limited to only the most discerning diners who "get it." Not a bad thing, but troubling in a way because in some ways that harkens that haute cuisine is becoming an esoteric ritual. I wish there were more chefs out there who copied his style and philosophy. But to be honest, part of the problem is that Passard has never written a cookbook. He claims he doesn't have the time to do it. But at some point all of his techniques need to be codified so they can be passed on to others.

"It is a large number, but requires people to recognize themselves as a group, which I suspect they cannot do and thus cannot band together to produce what they prefer. They may in fact be living in silent misery." Marcus - This might be true but I doubt it. Those numbers are something like 17 1/2% of the population. One would think that over the last 2000 years the trait would have manifested itself somehow. Maybe we don't realize it and those are people who predomimently buy bland foods. How do super-tasters in places where they make super-hot cuisine like Southern India or Thailand deal with their situation? They have to walk around with a seltzer spritz bottle all of the time to chill their tongues out.

Cumin. It's a jack of all trades. It goes in Mexican food, Middle Eastern food, North African food and Indian food and it adapts to each one as if it is indiginous to the cuisine. That's pretty diverse if you ask me.

Why spend $24 on a bottle of wine when you are friends with the importer and he trades you for olive oil? Anyway, I can think of better reasons to visit bar Demi like visiting the management .

Marcus - 10% of men and 25% of women is not a small part of the population. In fact that is such a significant percentage of the overall population that one would think they could create enough demand that someone would create food or a cuisine specifically for them. In fact I bet that this grouping of tasters is more populated then the group of people who are vegetarians. And there are vegetarian restaurants everywhere. It seems to me that given the fact that there isn't any special food or cuisine for the percentage of the populace who are super-tasters, either the writer is incorrect, the people who are super-tasters train their palates to accept off flavors, or they are living in silent misery while we enjoy a lomon tart while their eyes are bugging out of their heads on tasting it.

Each. I didn't feel cheated by anything in terms of food. The way the food was prepared and the way they organized the meal was stunning. It's just lots of money for what the ingredients must cost, even if they are perfectly prepared. I also don't think he ever had a veggie only approach. I think he announced there would be no more meat and a greater emphasis on vegetables and people mistook that for "vegetarian." Heron - The best cheese was a 36 month aged Salers (which is Cantal I believe) that was joyous as it had started to crystalize like a good parmagian would. Nightscotsman - I've been complaining that the mains are often boring for years. Less wiggle room there for some reason.

Wilfird - I really wasn't impressed by the space. I thought they could have chosen better photos then the ones they chose. They were trying to get an old NY feel but the finishes are all new so it feels that way. It would have been hipper if they figured out a way to be contemporary and traditional at the same time. Like the successor to the places of old, not a copy that doesn't cut it. I think the overall result come out to be generic.

After my extremely successful Chez Georges warm-up, and my false start at L’Affriole for lunch the next day, we braced ourselves for three evenings of three star dining. That much haute cuisine in a single trip is unusual for me. Normally when I’m in Paris, I’ll take a single meal at a temple of haute cuisine and then the rest of my meals are spent eating at bistros or having a good couscous. But eGullet has changed my life. And the people I’ve met through the board, and the experiences that have resulted from knowing them have inspired me to *get to the heart of what makes it all tick.* We started our journey at Arpege on Tuesday evening. If you have never been, on entering you wouldn’t think you are in one of the world’s great restaurants. It’s a small room, holding only about 35 people. The room is paneled in wood, and the walls are dotted with lovely Lalique inserts spread throughout. There is an additional dining room downstairs that holds 16 people that is decorated like an old wine cellar. If the staff wasn’t dressed formally, and the clientele didn’t have that posh and polished air about them, you would think you had walked into a luxury bistro. This was my second visit to Arpege, with my first one being last January. At that meal I ate with someone who is a regular and the chef, Alain Passard, prepared a surprise tasting menu that was based around market ingredients. But aside from the famous tomato dessert, it didn’t include any of his signature dishes. This time my plan was to sample them. And since this was Madame P.’s first visit, it seemed like a good overall strategy. Fortunately they were offering a tasting menu of most of their classics with a few additions thrown in. We ate the following; Egg with a light cream mousse and maple syrup Avocado and Caviar mousse with Ossetra Gazpacho with Mustard Ice Cream Sautéed Spinach with sesame oil and Carrot puree flavored with ginger Brittany Lobster with sliced Turnips in a sweet and sour sauce Line caught Sole prepared two ways Slow pan-roasted Chicken with Vegetables Canette Cheese Chocolate Napoleon Tomatoes The Arpege egg is lightly poached, topped with a small dollop of creamy mousse and lightly flavored with a small amount of maple syrup. It’s very delicate, with just enough maple syrup present so it can be detected. But in no way does it dominate the dish’s flavor. The dish is a good stage setter. The silkiness of the egg paired with the creaminess of the mousse coats your tongue and the hint of maple syrup serves as the icing on the cake. But in addition to a textural context for the meal, it introduces two valuable concepts. That the ingredients used here are going to be of top quality, and that the key to the cuisine is an impeccable sense of balance. The theme of lush and creamy continued with two small egg shaped (a whimsical reminder of the first course?) scoops of mousse. One flavored with avocado, and one flavored with Ossetra caviar. The texture of these two heavenly orbs raised the level of luxury on one’s tongue to a point that was just short of heaven. But when taking a spoonful of mousse, each scoop had a portion of Ossetra caviar tucked away in it’s middle that introduced saltiness as a component of the meal. Staggeringly good. Acidity was then introduced through the addition of a tomato-based gazpacho. But chef Passard had a trick for us here. You are presented with a bowl of gazpacho that has been pureed and strained so as to be almost perfectly smooth. Then the waiter adds a large scoop of mustard ice cream that has a texture that is somewhere between a mousse, ice cream, and thick whipped cream. The surprise comes when you taste the combination and the presence of the vinegar of the mustard ice cream suppresses the acidity of the tomato and brings out its sweetness instead, while at the same time adding a sharpness that is complimented by the tang of the mustard seed. But in the context of this tasting menu, the true genius of the dish is how Passard has created a crescendo of creaminess that began with the egg. Creaminess serves as the foundation so he can add sweet, then salty, and then acidity. By the end of these three courses your palate has been pampered as well as primed. But repeating myself, the success depends on an impeccable sense of balance and proportion. Just like a fine wine. We then moved into the next phase of the meal. We were presented with a small pile of lightly sautéed spinach with a scoop of carrot puree flavored with a hint of ginger. The spinach was warm, very buttery but without an overbearing taste of butter. It was cooked so perfectly. Soft but just firm enough to have a little crunch to it. The carrot puree had taken the place of the creamy textures that were present in the first three courses through the various mousses and ice creams. And the hint of ginger served to cleanse your palate for another small forkful of the spinach. The spinach was so good that I asked Laurent the Maitre’ d at Arpege how long they cook it for. “Just three minutes.” Gee I wish I could make spinach like that at home. We moved on to a small salad of Brittany lobster, which appeared to be exclusively claw meat. It was formed into a circle, and slices of very thin radishes covered it. Then a sweet and sour sauce was spooned on top. This was the dish of the night for both of us. The lobster meat was incredibly flavorful, and the sauce seemed to extract even more flavor then seemed possible. Bravo. We were now moving into the “real food” phase of our meal. We were each served 1/8th of a line caught sole from the Ile d’Yeaux. It was presented as a long, thin slice of sole that trailed into a point. The introduction of a firm, meaty substance was a major change for our palates. The first service was sweet, accompanied by buttered leeks and a sweetish sauce. Very delicious but I didn’t find it as enjoyable as the prior courses. I then asked Laurent how the second service is prepared. “I don’t know, the chef always surprises us.” It appeared about ten minutes later. A second long, thin, pointy spear of sole. But this time the sauce was savory and the spicing seemed somewhat Asian. It was far less successful then any of the other dishes. About 20 minutes later they appeared at our table with a rather large chicken. “Slowly sautéed for two hours in a pan” is what I believe they announced. It was then presented to the table that was directly across from us where another couple was seated. The restaurant had calibrated our meals so that when we got to our main dishes, they could prepare an entire sole, and an entire chicken that could be served ¼ each for four different people. The little presentation ceremony allowed us to bond with our French neighbors who seemed to be celebrating the husband’s birthday. They whisked the chicken away and about 5 minutes later they appeared with a dish for each of us with a ¼ of a chicken, skin still on, along with various vegetables that had been slow roasted with the chicken. It was haute cuisine chicken in the pot without the broth. It was good, but somewhat blandish after the acute flavors of the prior courses. Then we were each served a half of a canette, which for those who don’t know is a small, wild duckling. It was simply prepared, seeming to be slow roasted and it had a faint citrus glaze that I guessed as lemon. I thought it was quite good and the duckling was particularly flavorful with flesh that was nice and meaty and had a perfect chew to it. But as good as it was, it wasn’t as interesting as the “pre-meat” courses. I had a small plate of cheese to clear my palate. And then they presented a beautiful chocolate napoleon. This was the special birthday treat the restaurant prepared for the other table and we were going to share in the celebration. A chocolate napoleon is just like it sounds. Chocolate leaves surrounded by chocolate cream. It must have been a foot long. Since I am wheat sensitive, they sliced it into three parts. Madame P. reported that it was great, although she claims it could have used a little whipped cream or ice cream to cut the intensity of the chocolate. But exquisite regardless, even with that little flaw. And then the tomatoes appeared with a scoop of mint ice cream. As I expected, Madame P. hated them, as she does not like the flavor of savory spices like clove in her dessert. But that just meant I had four tomatoes to eat not two: wink:. Arpege has a new sommelier doing a great job. He returned to Paris after a five year stint in Atlanta (I forget which restaurant) and I want to say his name is Moulad and I ask his forgiveness if I’ve gotten that wrong. He has really upgraded the wine list since my last visit. It was chock full of good choices in both Burgundy and the Rhone (drinking Bordeaux continues to be pricey in France) and I ordered a bottle of 2000 Michel Niellon Chevalier-Montrachet at 217 euros which is less then the price at retail. Historically that wine would have been listed at 300-400 euros, which shows you how good the pricing was (I should tell you that we found that wine pricing all over France has improved a great deal but that’s for another post.) I found the wine very good, but not up to the standard of Niellon’s Chevalier’s from other years. My experience agreed with what Allen Meadows the Burghound told me about Niellon’s 2000’s when we had dinner in Beaune last April. He said that with age Michel seems to have become more adverse to acid and he is making fatter wines. It’s a shame if that is true on a long-term basis as Niellon’s Chevalier is probably my single favorite white Burgundy. It was now 12:30 in the morning. We had arrived at 8:30. Where did the four hours go? Looking back on it all, and Madame P. concurs with me completely which is unusual, our overall experience was great. But we both kind of feel that there wasn’t really any point to serving the chicken and the duck. Yes the meal needs a climax, but neither of us felt the chicken or the duck delivered the knockout punch. I’m not sure what would do it. Slow roasted lobsters or fish with a more aggressive flavor? There were other tables that ordered ala Carte instead of tasting menus and many of the people were eating a plate full of langoustes. Maybe we would have liked that more. Because from where we sit, the meal is almost over after the second sole service. It just needs one shot of strong flavors to cap it all off. But I’m really picking nits here because it was really a fantastic meal. The other thing to complain about is the price. 300 euros is a big ouch no matter how good the food is. I won’t take a position about whether it’s worth it or not save to say that the next day we ran into friends from NYC and told them we ate there the night before. The women then said that it was always her favorite restaurant in Paris and it wasn’t unusual for her to eat there twice on a trip. But that since they had switched to serving mostly vegetables, she wondered whether the price of the meal was justified? And a note about the superb service. Everyone on the staff from Laurent on down did an exemplary job. They were completely attentive while being unobtrusive. Somehow they manage to offer three star service without it being formal or stodgy. I’m not done with Arpege. I need to eat a few more meals to hone my palate so I can understand the philosophy of the cuisine to a greater extent than I already do. It’s funny how when you experience a seminal approach to an art or a craft, it calibrates your palate or senses and allows you to appreciate things you might have overlooked if not for the example shown. And I can say that my first experience at Arpege allowed me to experience restaurants like Craft or Blue Hill in a way that was different before I ate there. I think that’s a pretty big accomplishment. And it’s at the heart of what haute cuisine is about.

I promise you that the best $10 wine you will ever buy is Domaine de Pepiere Muscadet, It tastes like a bottle of wine that is worth 3-5 times the price. And they make a luxury bottling that costs something like $12 which can age for 10 years. The wines are loaded with fruit and they have laser beam acidity with a long, long finish. I couldn't think of a better wine to drink with some chilly and briny oysters or clams. It truly meets the definition of killer juice.

Ahr, Jordyn and I made it through the rain and went down to test City Hall last night. This was a first visit for me. I had eaten Henry Meer's food at a couple of benefits and always liked it. But I had never eaten at the restaurant proper. Given the good reviews the restaurant gets on a consistant basis it had been on my list of places to go. When I called for a reservation, their BYO policy made it even more appealing. They told me it was $25 a bottle but if you order a second bottle off their list they will wave the corkage fee. Now that's good business. We started with AHR and I splitting a "Light Fry" which were shrimp, oysters and calimari coated in rice flour batter and deep fried. Excellent dish with the batter light and not greasy. The calamari was cut into long fish stick looking strips and were partularly good. Warm and soft with just enough firmness to it so there was something to bite into. But I think my favorite were the oysters. They were on the smallish side but they had a good amount of light crunch when you bit into them. Since they are thicker then the calamari, they were cooked longer so they gave more of an appearance of deep fried. Excellent and I could have eaten an entire plate of them for my dinner. And the shrimp were good as well, but they weren't special in the same way. They served the Light Fry with three dipping sauces. A cocktail sauce, a mayonaisse of some sorts and a green sauce that I never tried. I'd have been happier with a big bowl of fresh tartar sauce. Ahr and I also split a half dozen kumamoto oysters. They were fine but not particularly distinguished examples. They were served with lemon only. Jordyn had some type of soup that I wasn't paying attention to so he will have to chime in here. We drank a 1999 Zind-Humbrecht Riesling Heimbourg that had nice flavor but I thought it was a bit flabby. We moved onto meat. When ordering I quizzed the waitress thoroughly about which steak she thought was the best on the menu. At first she didn't understand what I was asking her and she started to explain the attributes of each cut. I cut her off and explained that we were already expert in steak (you drink red wine with it right?) and what I wanted to know was her opinion of which is best. She immediately said Delmonico and gave a short dissertation on how it's marbled and has the most flavor. Done. Two Delmonicos for me and AHR and Jordyn ordered the lamb. It was all downhill from there. I ordered my steak rare and it appeared more then medium rare. After a bite and a cut into the middle, I had them take it back to bring me a new one. Less then five minutes later they brought me a brand new steak and I realized they just grabbed one that was already on the grill. I cut into it and it looked rarer then the first one so I kept it. It was better, but ultimately when I got to the heart of the steak, there was just a thinnish rare strip that was surrounded by two large ribbons of cooked steak. I held a chunk up for the others to see and it was declared a medium rare steak, not a rare one. The count was now 0 and 2. But then we have to get to the steak preperation. It seems that Meer is from the liberally pepper a steak before cooking school. Blech. I'm an au natural steak guy. I hate stuff on my steak. I can add the pepper myself thank you. Strike three you're outta here. But even if they got the cooking temperature right, and the steak wasn't adorned with pepper, the marbled, juicy, flavorful cut of meat I was promised was nowhere in sight. Both steaks served to me were dry, with no apparant marbeling present. And the steaks were trimmed in a way where there was very little fat on the edges of the steak. It was almost 90% eye which is the dryest part to begin with. Jordyn said his lamb was good but again he will have to chime in. A side dishes of Olive Oil Mashed Potatoes was good but was supposed to be flavored with dill which was nowhere in site. And we had some reasonable sugar snap peas but really nothing special. We drank 1985 Louis Jadot Bonnes Mares. It's still not ready to drink. It needs at least 4-5 years to come around. The wine has a deeper flavor profile then other Bonnes Mares from that vintage. More plum then cherry. It's somewhat fat and round, and doesn't have the typical Burgundian acidity I prefer. Nice wine but doesn't scream Burgundy to me. Hopefully it will develop. I had a non-exciting but perfectly fine dessert of poached white peaches with vanilla ice cream and a fruit sauce that isn't ringing a bell as to type the morning after. As if lackluster main courses wasn't enough, I found the ambiance at City Hall most disappointing. It's like any restaurant at the South Street Seaport that caters to a Wall Street clientele. Nothing discerning, or New Yorkish about the place. It's just generic, beer hall, New England/faux olde New York fishhouse atmosphere. With a crowd that looked the part of who would typically be eating in a place like that. So my feelings about the place are a little schizo. I really enjoyed the fish fry, but if I want meat I certainly can do better then this. A meal of some raw fish and then a double order of the fish fry, along with a chilly Sancere or Burgundy from my cellar would make an attractive lunch. Or I hear that the burger is a good one. The place sort of looks like a burger is the right thing. And I bet that's true to a greater extent in the daytime. But otherwise I'd have no reason to be going back there.

Marcus - I doubt your theory has any legs to it. Considering that supertasters are such a large percentage of society, I don't see that many people finding things like lemons too acidic or bitter. People pretty much eat the same foods, and I see no evidence that there is a group of super tasters who have materially different eating habits. I can extend this theory to saying that the group of supertasters is so large that one would think that there would be a chef or s group of food products that caters to their palates. I think a better answer is that people who are in this category train their palates in a way that allows them to conform to a broader standard of taste. Oraklet - Theoretically, one could smoke meats over darjeeling. So the combination isn't that surprising. That's another aspect of this discussion that we haven't touched on. Prune juice or milk with steak frites might be wrong or incorrect but, steaks are certainly served with milky sauces sometimes and there must be a way to reduce prunes into an essence or condiment and spice them in a way so it goes with a steak.

If you grind porcinis into powder, will it last? Or does it go bad after a while?

About what, food that tastes like a placenta? (rimshot please.)

When you guys recommend the Strip House for prime rib, do you mean it as in roast beef or are you talking about the rib chop they serve there? I've eaten there a number of times and have had that gigantic rib chop which I thought was overrated. The better steak there is the NY strip. But if Mikeyrad's original question was about where to get a good hunk of roast beef, The Palm has a reasonable roast beef available every night. But other then that I can't think of many places that serve it.

Since supertasters are measured scientifically, i.e., how many taste buds in the area of a paper punch hole, how would G. know I'm a medium taster? Has he been examining my tongue in the middle of the night? Surely not. What would really be interesting is to see if super-tasters have definitive differences in taste when it is applied to a meal. To squeeze lemon juice into your mouth might make for good science, but it makes for bad cuisine. Regardless of what kind of taster you are. Deacon - Once again, nobody has said that people should be forced to drink wine with steak. But everyone keeps confusing freedom of choice with right and a wrong. 37% of Germans voted for Hitler. They had the right to do so but their choice was wrong. Mark - Thanks I feel better now.

Tony - But you fail to say why Retsina tastes good with that meal. That Retsina is in reality plonk has no bearing on the fact that is goes well with the menu you listed. The way Greek food is cooked, grilled then doused with oil, lemon and herbs, a non-fruity, high in acid, chilled wine tastes best. Just like rose tastes good when eating in Provence even though it's a wine wihtout much breeding to it. Or Sancerre tastes good with a plate of fried fish. Or Pinot Grigio tastes good with seafood risotto. Retsina has all the right attributes to be paired with Greek cuisine. The issue of quality doesn't ever really come into play.

Well your little story works because lager happens to be a good drink with steak and chips. But if it was milky tea or prune juice, no way Brian could go back to them after his education and have the story be realistic.

Zeb - Your post goes into the category of believing there is no common standard people adhere to. That is simply wrong. There is a common standard. Go interview 500 top level chefs about what is the best thing to drink with steak frites and I assure you the answers will generally fall in a very small range. That range will be the commonly held standard. So when I say that Bob is "wrong" for drinking prune juice with steak, you have to read the inference of "as compared to the commonly held standard" when reading the statement. The inference that he is a bad person should not be drawn. But the inference that he knows fuckwit about food should . Mark Stevens - I understand your point. But I don't see how that responds to Nina's proffer that it is arrogant to express it that way. Not that your post bothered me. But she does have a point you know. LML - My kishkes tell me that you couldn't knock someone's teeth out if they were laying on the night table.

Tony - They have no monopoly. But they do make a consensus. And beer is certainly a fine thing to drink with steak and chips. But I'm afraid that the people you are talking about are more interested in beer then in the steak frites . Yvonne - I'm a huge fan of bloody marys, and certainly spicy tomato juice is not a long stretch from sliced tomatoes with dressing. They even put steak sauce (worcestershire) on steaks and in bm's. But how can you drink hard alcohol with food? It clashes with the flavor of the food and it numbs your tastebuds. This raises an interesting issue. It used to be the fashion for people to drink hard liquor with their food. Steak and Scotch in the old steakhouse days. But I don't know anyone who eats like that anymore. Coffee too. People used to drink coffee with dinner. I never got that. Even before I was into or knew anything about food.

What I find funny is that the same people who want to say that taste is a matter of opinion, seem to hold that there is a firm distinction between interesting and non-interesting conversation.

Absolutely. It's just that the opinion of people who aren't interested in the conversation wouldn't carry any weight in the sample .

Yeah what Nina said .

Tony - No you have shifted it around. You have to start with an actual sample. Next time you are in Paris go to a brasserie. I bet you that a majority of the people eating steak frites are drinking wine with their meal. There is your consensus. It already exists. You keep arguing against something that already exists and I can't understand why. Because the fact that some people drink soda, or Perrier, or beer or milk doesn't matter. Most of the people will be drinking wine. That is because wine is the right thing to drink with steak frites. That is already what most everyone does. Why are you arguing against that?