Steve Plotnicki

Macrosan - The Thrill of the Grill by Chris Schlesinger and John Willoughby is a great book. They probably carry it at Books for Cooks.

"So the poor art lover who doesn't have the money to pay a scalper, but who does have the time to stand in line, could get shut out of tickets because of your scalper (who may or may not be breaking the law)." Blondie - I'm not promoting one system over the other, I'm just saying that there are items that operate completely in a free market where the price isn't fixed according to some standard. How about the cost of the paintings in the Matisse exhibition? Should we tell the people who own them that they can't sell them for fair market value because the people on line can't afford to buy them at that price? My only point is that additional "fees, costs, bribes," etc., however you want to designate those costs usually arise from a system that regulates price. And that the bad connotation of paying those fees is a result of the price being artificially limited. But as someone pointed out, if Sotheby's auctions a bottle of wine for $1000, that is heralded as a job well done. But if a top restaurant had the same bottle of wine on it's list unpriced, and at the beginning of the evening they sold it to the highest bidder, and the price happened to be $1000, they would be considered shiesters.

I tend to agree with John that tipping is bribery. But where I disagree with him is concluding that all bribery is corrupt. To reach that conclusion, one has to agree that whatever system is in place is fair. Unfortunately many systems are unfair. For example, the Museum of Modern Art has a Matisse exhibition. Tickets are doled out on a first come first serve basis which means the currency the museum is using is the time to stand in line. But I don't have the time to stand in the line. And I am willing to pay 10 times the face price of a ticket not to. Except the museum isn't selling them on that basis because their definition of "fair" means every one has an equal chance to go, equal being defined as the time to wait. So in order for me to see the show based on a free market system, I pay a scalper what is in effect a bribe to stand on line for me. Restaurants are similar in that prices are fixed. If each night Daniel was able to sell their tables to the highest pre-bidder, and each captain was responsible for selling the tables (which in effect sort of happens doesn't it,) and they were getting a percentage of what you bid (like an auction house) tipping wouldn't seem so underhanded would it? And in reality that is what a museum does doesn't it? I am a member of a number of museums and they always have special viewings for members at extortionist prices based on donations. And it doesn't seem so unseemly when it is done in the context of a good reason. But it does when Vito is making the spread between face value and market.

Wilf - It will have to wait until the last week of the month as I will be in Europe till then. I think you guys are making short shrift of my wine theory on a commercial level. It makes sense that a country who exports wine easily includes food both in theory (recipes) and in substance (ingredients). Of course one can say that the Brits imported port from Portugal. And why didn't the Portugese export their cuisine as well. Not up to snuff? Same with the Spaniards. I'm sure that Rioja made it's way into Britain. Where is the great impact made by Spanish food?

Adam - Good try. The English were the customers (punters ) not the developers . It's clear that much of the wine was developed by monks and royals. As for peasants, as I stated earlier, the jury is still out in where the aristocracy sourced their recipes from. In this period of conversaion from medieval to modern cookery (1540-1650,) I need to research their sources. But it seems that better researchers than I have yet to crack this nut so I'm not hopeful.

"But, not much to do with modern French cooking and even less to do with French peasant cooking, which I thought were the cornerstone of French cuisine and why it is so great? " Adam - Well let me print this excerpt by the Hymans about La Varenne in rebuttal; "As has been previosly noted, La Varenne's recupes are markedly different from any we find in European cookbooks printed prior to the 17th century. Not only has the repetoire of dishes changed but the spices, so frequently called for in previous centuries, have all but disappeared from savoury dishes with the exception of pepper, cloves and nutmeg. And the way these spices are used is very different indeed from 16th century French practice. Pepper, once marginal, has become the dominant spice; cloves, used more sparingly than in the past, are now stuck into an onion before being added to a soup or a stew; and nutmeg is now considered primarily to pates and tourtes, egg-based dishes and vegetable preparations. All of these traits subsist to this day in French cuisine as do La Varenne's reliance upon two quintessentially French flavouring agents, mushrooms and the bouquet garni which are encountered here for the first time. It also introduced a wide range of new terms including "au natural", "au bleu", "a la mode" and for Oeufe a la neige." One need only to look at the spices and condiments used in contemporary English texts to immediately understand the shock waves the publication of The French Cook must have engendered. In John Murrel's "A New Book of Cookery (1615), for instance, sugar is used in 50% of the savoury recipes, followed by cinammon (31%), ginger (27%) and mace (15.5%). Some forty years later, the publication of Joseph Cooper's The Art of Cookery (1654) confirms that these specicifically English tastes are still in vogue. All of the aforementioned spices are still important in savoury dishes albit in slightly different proportions. Cooper preferes cinnamon to all other spices (40%) followed closely by sugar and ginger (roughly a third of the recipes contain one or the other or both) and mace (14%). In comparison sugar is used in less than 5% of La Varenne's recipes, cinnamon and ginger in less than 1% and mace not at all. In addition to the recipes that were new to the French, La Varenne's book also contains the first omelet recipes in an Englsh language cookbook. Unlike the old English "Fraize", often described as a pancake, La Varenne's onmelet is often rolled much the way the French omelets are today." So if one accepts La Varenne as a cornerstone of modern cooking, the question becomes why? Is it the great man theory? Did La Varenne create a unqiue system of cooking and does it stem from him? Or did he just codify the basic retinue of a chef employed by the aristocracy in his day? But once you get past that question, you then get to the nub of why France? Where did those chefs in 1540-1650 draw their inspiration from? Was there already a system in place propelled by the types of dishes eaten by peasants and farm cuisine, or did they create it from scratch? As to the precise definition of the word peasant, for the purposes of this discussion, I've always meant it to be someone who lived on agricultural land, regardless of their fee arrangement with their landlord, and cooked using the ingredients they farmed and were able to trade for complimentary ingredients. Here is also an excerpt and then a link from an article that shows how the exportation of French wine is probably an important part of the stage neing set for French chefs; "In 1359, Jean de Bussieres, abbot of Citeaux Abbey, presented Pope Gregory XI with some of Clos de Vougeot's production. Four years later, the pope promoted the abbot to cardinal. In the 15th century, the powerful Dukes of Burgundy called themselves, probably accurately, "the lords of the greatest wines in Christendom". Napoleon is said to have had his troops salute the Cote d'Or vines when marching past them." A Taste for Burgundy And an excerpt from the history of Bordeaux and a link; "The history of wine production in Bordeaux dates back to when the Romans settled in St. Émilon and immediately established vineyards to gratify the Bacchanalian inclinations of their troops. Our Origins page traces the intriguing developments of the Bordeaux wine industry, over the centuries. It explains how the period between 1152 and 1453, when the region owed allegiance to the English crown, was fundamental to the development of Bordeaux’s burgeoning wine trade. The British, and soon afterwards the rest of the English-speaking world, rapidly developed a taste for Claret. The English description “Claret” derives from the French word “Clairet,” used to distinguish the light style red Bordeaux wines of that period, from the more robust reds of Portugal and Spain. The name Claret is still widely used today and applies to all red Bordeaux wines, while Clairet now refers to the rosé style wines of the region." A History of Bordeaux So it would also seem that based on their ability to export their superior wine at such an early date, they could create an infrastructure to export foods to eat with those wines. But that is probably limited to items surviving shipping. But one can easily see how a food industry (liberal use of industry) would form around the wine business, including the hiring of cooks by the aristocracy who could rise to a culinary level to match the wines. Is that the answer? The noblemen told their chefs to cook to the level of the Bonnes Mares? But there is a more important aspect about the export of wine which is that it brought them fame outside of their borders. And since their wine was superior than their competitions wine, Spain and Italy, it set the stage for their culinary technique being superior. And I don't mean it's the cause other than specified above, I mean it was an easier sell to the Brits and others.

Wilf - If you have a few hours one morning or afternoon, you should come with me to the medical school library and we will poke around for the answer. Then we can go have lunch at El Paso Taqueria which is around the corner. It's one of the cities better Mexican joints.

Excellent notes Liz. I could taste the food at the FL and can feel the pace of that meal. And I'm a long term Yank Sing fan as well.

Wilfrid - It isn't my assumption, it's the Hyman's assumption. They draw a huge inference from the fact that during those 110 years these techniques and recipes suddenly appear. They weren't there in 1540, why are they all codified in 1651. From no ragouts to 70? And to paraphrase them, much of the strategy of French technique as we know it today appears for the first time in La Varenne's book. And they clearly appear for the first time in English in 1653. But they make no assumption as to whether the evolution took place in 1542 or 1649. Just that it happened during that 100 years. Nach postulated a theory of a class of super servents who were in the employ of nobility who could lead a life of leisure. That the recipes that La Varenne codified were a culmination of how household chefs cooked for the French aristocracy. Two things must be relevent here. There must have been a competition as to whose chefs made the "fanciest" food. But there also must have been a spirit of comraderie amongst the chefs in sharing secrets. And indeed La Varenne, who undoubtably was a great self promoter, wrote the recipes down so he could achieve fame amongst his peers. I think we are trying to nail down what made those French guys cook so good, and how much of it is driven by indiginous peasant cuisine. Or maybe the word peasant is a red herring and indiginous will suffice? Another part of our conversation was the use of acid in food and the French being replete with wine, and then at some point tomatoes, incorporated acid into their cooking and that allowed the food to have a certain texture and velvety quality to it that the foods of other countries didn't have. Anyway it is just a theory. Bushey - I don't suppose the best culinary library is at a medical school, it's been told to me. I can guess that it arises from food being considered medicinal once upon a time. What was the la Cointe book called, La Cuisine de la Sante? But I'm sure my field trip will be most enlightening, especially since I haven't been in a library in nearly 300 years.

In my returning the Davidson book to Nach Waxman, we spoke about this topic. He immediately offered as a reason for French culinary dominance as the book written by La Varenne being translated into English in the year 1653. In the edition of "The French Cook" published by Southover Press in 2001. Philip and Mary Hyman (the same source Davidson used for his bouillabaisse research) wrote the introduction. The introduction states that several important cookbooks were published in France in the 1540's, and then reprinted in the beginning of the 17th century. But no new collection of recipes appeared until La Varenne's Cusinier Francais in 1651. They go on to say that is spite of the hiatus in cookery books, a number of techniques were developed in the first half of the 17th century including ragouts and bisques and that they were referred to as "modern." These dishes were absent from the books printed in the 1540's, but the first recipe in La Varenne's book is Bisque de Pigeneaux (can you imagine they were making those delicious bisques back then ) and that there are no fewer than 70 ragouts! While they go on to say that La Varenne can't be credited with inventing the new cuisine, he is the first to have set them down in writing. He is quoted as saying "During a whole ten years employment in your house, I have found the secret how to make meats ready neatly and daintily....I think, that the publique ought to recieve the profit of this experience of mine, to the end that it may owe you all the utility, which it will recieve thereby." The Hymans take these words to mean that prior to arriving in his master's kitchen, he was not acquainted with the secrets of how to cook in that manner. Another important fact was that it took only two years for the book to be translated into English, 1651 to 1653. And Nach said there is a theory being that the book was originally written for other cooks in his position and this was reconstituted as being for the "publique" when it was printed in English. I wish I could reprint the whole introduction here as it is so relevent to this discussion. But terms like bouquet garni, au natural, au bleu, a la mode, oeufs ala neige, omelet, caramel, and entire spicing regimens all appear for the first time in English. So this left Nach and I to try and figure out what happened between 1540 and 1651 that this great cooking technique was developed. The Hyman's do not have a theory. There are a few wars but they don't believe enough to interupt the development of a cuisine. But clearly the great French cookery we rely on today happened in that 110 year period. There also seem to have been unauthorized variations of the book printed in German and Italian around that time. That leaves the unanswered question to be, is there inherently something better about French cuisine that made it evolve during that period. And to that end I have been sent me off to the New York Medical School library which supposedly has the best culinary library in the country. But I'm afraid this will have to wait until I return from holiday.

Wilfrid - Two things. I've already forgotten. But that doesn't matter. If the food they made tasted bad, it would have been rejected regardless of how many horses there were. Ultimately I don't see how regardless of what evidence anyone puts forth, it doesn't supplant the theory that people liked the way the food tasted.

Wilfrid - Well just dealing with your response first, why were the French the only horse in the race?

Wilfrid - I have to go out so I can't give a detailed response to your terrific (but flawed) analysis . But quickly, whenever I say that the British "preferred" French cuisine to British cuisine, I am describing only those people who were given the choice. That in fact that it might only be the aristocracy and the very wealthy is a function of wealth distribution. But it jives with my theory that an elite (the aristicracy) with a superior vantage point ( a choice between the two) foretold what would at some point become true of more ordinary people. Their choice (the aristocracy that is) foretold what a larger percentage of people in Britain would choose to eat in the future. And it is because of that choice that we have La Tante Clare, La Gavroche etc. Those places are the descendants of that choice. Of course this goes to the point that part of the reason that French cuisine evolved to the extent it did was that more people were given the choice (in France) then in England. And to say it in a simple, but possibly not accurate way, a more democratic process allowed more people with the ability to discern good from bad to have access to the information, and that inertia of public opinion about what tasted good and what tasted bad, created competition among chefs as to who could make food that tasted the best. Okay I'll deal with the rest later. John - I'm not using best as in superior, I'm using best as in the cooking technique that was the most dominant. It is not to the exclusion of other cuisines and other techniques as you proffer, but to the inclusion of those cuisines. So it isn't that there wouldn't be any dishes from other countries, on the list, it's that a large percentage of the dishes would be French in origin.

Well the basis for hardcore P-ism is that underlying all of this is the way the food tastes. What tastes good becomes dominant because as more people get to sample it, more *knowledgable* opinions prefer it. It is only when that grouping of people decides what is good, that someone bothers to codify it. And the codifications are just the evidence of what people "with a superior vantage point" have already concluded. And if you expound on that theory, then if Dutch, German, British etc. cuisines had the underlying assets that were inherent in French cuisine, then those cuisines as well would have evolved in a similar fashion. But they didn't. And logic seems to say that the reason is that French cooking technique was more complex, and as each country was exposed to it, the native cuisine was deemed inferior (of course this is at the restaurant and high end level of home dining) except for home dining and everyday cuisine. I think there is another piece of important evidence on this point. It should not go unnoticed that it wasn't until French cuisine had gone through being reinvented at least three times during the last century, and that French technique had been taught to a sufficient number of people around the world, that chefs in countries outside France began to modernize their native cuisines. Whether you point to Gary Rhodes, or the chef who just got three stars in Holland, or the technowiz's in Spain, the modernization of other European cuisines seems to have begun more than 150 years after the French were on that track. If one assume that cultural traditions evolve slowly over time, like interest on the principal in a bank account, working backwards, how much better did the French peasant cuisine have to be once upon a time to end up in such a dominant position? Of course there is the theory that it was a product of the French Revolution. But that seems to be the launch point for what we now call modern cuisine. But shouldn't the inference be drawn that the "matelotte" that Davidson describes as the predcessor for BB tasted better than its fish stew counterparts in other countries, and that is why BB ended up as the number one fish stew in the world?

"that bit is rubbish . If it ain't broke, then don't fix it, could be appied here in some specific cases I think. But this isn't important." No I think this is at the heart of the debate because what we haven't been able to agree on was whether British peasant cuisine was as good as French peasant cuisine. I say the inference needs to be drawn that it wasn't. And I say the biggest piece of evidence isn't that the Brits employed French chefs because they were employable, it's that the British *preferred* the French dishes those chefs prepared over British cuisine. Clearly they could have told those chefs to make bubble and squeek instead of something French. But that isn't what happened. There could be only one reason that the British accepted French cooking. It tasted better. And if French cuisine of the 19th century is based on what were originally peasant dishes, one should logically conclude that "tastes better" be extended to peasant cuisine as well.

Adam - The best you are going to be able to get me to say (and I believe that in substance I have been saying this all along) is that these dishes are all based on peasant dishes. And that the reason they were codified and upgraded in the 19th century has to do with their tasting good in the first place. It is really at the source of this debate (actually all these debates) which is the contention by Plotnicki that in order for anything to be fanicified in the 19th century, it had to taste good to begin with. But P'ism takes it one step further and says, if it wasn't upgraded, then the inference drawn should be that it *didn't taste good to begin with* or to be fair, didn't have the requisite complexity to be used as a springboard for what became 19th century middle class cooking. And the best piece of evidence in that regard is the way that the Brits switched to French chefs in the mid 19th century. And why would they do that if a)British chefs were good and b) the source cuisine was up to it. And isn't it true that since they didn't we should draw the inference that the source cuisine left something to be desired? I also believe that in this context you are correct about peasant cuisine being refined by the middle classses of the 19th century, including the naming of dishes, and then being sent back down to the peasant classes in their bourgois form. In fact yesterday Nach was telling me that there is a professor of Anthropology at the Univ. of Chicago who has plotted much of that theory out.

"No, I will go as just another anonymous, infrequent diner, and I bloody well want the exact same level of quality in service and food as the local who is there once a week, beginning with the reservation process, and ending with the way we are seen off at the door." Robert S. - If you demand this the FL is likely not the place for you. It is easier to understand why once you have been there. Save to say it is a very casual place as far as 3 star types restaurants go, but they make what seems to me to be a very demanding cuisine. And the dishes arew constructed in a way where they are so dependant on the manner of presentation that I can understand why it would be difficult to make it taste great serving after serving. And considering that the place is so small, and that there is never an empty table at a single meal (other than last minute cancellations,) it really isn't surprising that the reguars and VIP's get treated differently. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me that on any given night the place is more than half full with regulars and VIP's.

John - Well I have the good fortune of living right around the corner from KA&L. So when I went in yesterday, I asked about a book on the origins of cuisine other than Elizabeth Luard. I was surprised to see Nach so stumped by that question. But when I narrowed it to cassoulet and bouillabaisse, after a few minutes of what I would describe as heavy thinking, he conjured up the Davidson and gave me his copy signed by Davidson. I've been treating it like it's the original copy of the Guttenberg Bible! Now who is Abe because I would like a copy of the book myself?

"1) peasants in france were in a poor state up till the revolution. at this time, france was the center of grande cuisine (or whatever it should be called)." Oraklet - I was always of the understanding that the French revolution took place because the peasants and commoners were getting a raw deal from the monarchy. The royals were coming onto what commoners felt were "their land" and poaching game etc. Whether they actually owned the land, or had some type of sharecropping or landlease type of agreement I don't know. But I do remember reading somewhere that they were unhappy with the split, and that is one of the main things that propelled the revolution forward. To the contrary in Britain there wasn't an uprising against the enclosure laws. For some reasons the Brits who had traditionally farmed the land on a sharecropping arrangement queued up to live in the slums of the big cities without kitchens.

Adam - So I went to see my most trusted resource on these things, Nach Waxman at Kitchen Arts & Letters. He was most kind to lend me his own personal copy of Alan Davidson's "A Kipper with my Tea" and I will print an excerpt from the chapter "The Harlot of Marseille." "The early French cookery books were more concerned with dishes suitable for the well-to-do than with the homely fare of fisherman; and writing about the regional dishes of France didn't really start until the Nineteenth Century. So I was not surprised that the description of the dish did not date back further. Indeed, it is probably safe to say that the first relevent published recipe of, is that given by Jourdain Le Cointe in his "La Cuisine de Sante." This recipe, along with much other pertinent information, was kindly brought to my attention by Philip and Mary Hyman. It is not only for bouillabaisse, but represents a sort of proto-bouillabaisse. Le Cointe called it "Matelotte de Poisson," and it reads as follows, in translation: "Most of the fisherman of the coast of Languedoc and Provence, when they have removed from their nets all the large fish destined for sale, are wont to use thr fry, gobies, and other little fish to make excellent and reknowned 'matelottes." On the very banks of the river where the fisherman disembark. their wives light a clear fire and place on it a cauldron half full of good wine and an equal quantity of fresh water. They throw in small white onions, chopped parsely, bay leaves, a large clove of garlic, salt, pepper, nutmeg and sometimes a couple of spoonfuls of olive oil. They boil all this together and, when their husbands arrive, they empty all the little fish from the nets into the boiling liquid, then continue cooking for half an hour, checking that the fish are only covered by wine and that the amount of broth is not too great. When the fish are cooked, they take them out, reduce the sauce and put it over their 'matelotte," which is really good, delicate and wholesome." Davidson goes onto say; This is recognisable , but there was no tomato (then a rarity, certainly not something that fisherman's wives would have had to hand); no saffron (expensive): the olive oil (also expensive at that time) is optional; and the cooking of the very small fish seems unduly long. We are not quite there yet, and we have not met the name bouillabaisse. Indeed, according to Le Petit Robert, the best French dictionary for this purpose, the first recorded use of the word bouillabaisse in print was nearly 50 years later in 1837. In fact, they seem to have overlooked "Le Cuisinier Durand" (1830) which gave two recipes under that name. Durand's recipe was followed quite quickly by another, in Le Cuisinier Meridionale (1839 anonymous.) (I've omitted both recipes but here is the punchline which Adam will find so interesting.) It is commonly said when a recipe appears in print it has already been in existence for some time. This is a logical notion and can often be shown to be correct (sounds like a Plotnickiism to me (emphasis added by writer .)) But in this instance it may be true in one sense (people were already making a dish like those described in the two recipes) but not in another (such a dish already existed under the name bouillabaisse.) The fact is there seems to be no earlier mention of bouillabaisse. And it is surely significant that when the first Provencal restaurant in Paris, Les Freres Provencaux, opened in the early years of the nineteenth century, there was no listing of bouillabaisse on it's menu. Where did the name come from?" I will stop printing the excerpt but save to say it goes into an extensive discussion of the origins of the word. But in the process of his research, Davidson finds recipes that use the phrase bouillabaisse but cointain no fish. One uses spinach and one potatoes. And that the term bouillabaisse, which arguably means to boil lowered down, as in put the pot directly on the fire to make it boil more quickly and rapidly, seems to be a common method of cooking that was attached to a particluar dish. So you can have a bouillabaisse of anything (method of cooking) or a boullabaisse (a type of fish soup/stew.) Is this the same as Fat Guy's once brilliant question of how "Appetizing" came to be called by that name? But what I gleen from all of this is, that a BB is based on a peasant fish soup/stew dish that preceded what we call a proper bouillabaisse. How it got it's name, or how it became fancified is a phenomenon of the modern restaurant or the middle class home of the 19th century. And that period coincides with the codification of the cuisine, and that some of these terms must have been caused by the codification, or by restaurants naming dishes, which in large part was due to the fact that they were trying to sell printed books to middle class homes, or good meals to an affluent customer. Which brings us to the very point of how marketing still works today, in that there is a need to concisely and uniquely express every item. And to offer a Plotnickiism to end this all, I would assume that this example will be a common one, where a peasant dish was "titled" and possibly refined for purposes of communication so it could be consumed by a different class than the ones it originates with.

I think placing the emphasis on whether one can judge it based on one visit puts it on the wrong place. It has to do with the restaurant. If you happen to be there on a night where they are serving you a typical meal, then the answer is obviously yes. But if you are there on a night when something is going wrong, the answer is obviously no. Take my abysmally boring meal at Trotters which was years and years ago. Is it fair judging the restaurant on that experience? Well yesif I'm offering the qualification of just one visit. However I've heard it from enough people I trust who think the place is mostly hype and that makes me feel better about offering my opinion.

Adam - What makes BB unique is the olive oil, garlic and tomatoes. The rest like fennel, saffron etc. is ancillary as far as I'm concerned and is really just a spicing regimen that evolved over time. Most places do not have tomatoes in their fish soup, regardless of the base of the soup. You can start in Belgium and work your way down the coast and it takes you a very long time before you get a fish soup with tomatoes.

Well I have a question about this. Wouldn't it be the case that any dish that precedes the emergence of a middle class be a peasant dish? Unless we are talking about the fancy stuff that royalty and the landed gentry ate, what other classes were there? Trades? What class of people were in the middle pre 1700 and how would their cuisine impact on anything?Otherwise Adam's point about Bouillabaisse and saffron doesn't seem to prove anything because it assumes that saffron is important for it to be an authentic BB. And maybe it is the case that peasant fisherman had saffron or maybe it was the case that saffron wasn't used until a later date and an authentic BB didn't need to have saffron prior to some date in time?

Robert - Here are the notes from my meal in May 2001. That's as recent as I can get. "Getting to Troisgros in Roanne is only a bit of a journey but it is more difficult on Sundays. The rest of the week one can take a mid-day TGV from Paris and change in Macon and go directly to Roanne. But on Sundays you either have to go at 7:00am (and what would one do in Roanne for an entire day?), or in the late afternoon, which gets you into Roanne too late for dinner. So we went to Lyon and picked up a car for the approximately hour drive to Roanne. It isn’t a very picturesque journey and someone among us questioned the wisdom of the journey just to eat and drink good food and wine. Well all I can say is that some times it’s worth it and some time it’s not. Telling the end of the story first, this was amongst the times when it was most worth it. I had wanted to go to Troisgros for years. Just reading about their signature dish, Salmon in Sorrel always made my mouth water. They have even updated the dish a few times, modernizing it to reflect current tastes. But for one reason or another, every time I had made plans to go my trip was cancelled. The restaurant itself is just across from the train station in Roanne. In keeping with the Michelin 3 star/Relais Chateau tradition, they have a small inn with 13 rooms where one can sleep after gorging themselves on the food and wine. As they bring you to your rooms, the first landing has a library with a few hundred choice books on food, wine and travel in general. The rooms are extremely large and very modern, but welcome and comforting. They all have extremely modern, sumptuous bathrooms. Every little detail has been thought out. We were psyched. This was going to be the real deal. Just to digress a little, it’s funny how one can tell if a place is good by the little things. Everything about this place was so perfect with every detail so well thought out, that it just gave off the vibe that the food would be as perfect as everything else. Not that it couldn’t have turned out to be a disaster but, it’s unusual when they are taking so much care about little things that they haven’t thought it all through. Dinner was at 8:15 and antsy as I always am I went down into the lounge a few minutes early. I asked for a wine list and I sat there with my mouth open and tongue hanging out at the astonishing selection at reasonable prices. In honor of my looming birthday, I was being treated to the red wine of the night and I zeroed in the various choices. After a few minutes the others came down and we sipped glasses of Roederer Champagne while looking at the menus. After a few minutes, they appeared with a tray of Chinese soupspoons that had seviches of eel, scallops and crawfish all marinated differently. We moved into the main dining room. It was smaller than I thought it would be. Maybe there were 15 tables. They took our wine and food order and delivered an Amuse Guele to our table of Clear Tomato Jelly with Basil, Mint and ripe cherry tomatoes. It had the most intense ripe tomato taste and the way the spiciness of the basil and the sweetness of mint played against each other was divine. My first course was a Flan Vapeur aux Truffes which was like a veloute filled with chopped truffles and mushrooms that was steamed so the bottom was set like a flan. Intensely good with an ethereal quality to it that was driven by the dish being only partially set so that each spoonful would have a soupy part and a custardy part of the same taste. Yumm. This was followed by a half portion of the famous Salmon with Sorrel, which was everything it was cracked up to be, and more. The sorrel sauce was so tangy, lemony and mixed with crème fraiche and herbs that it perfectly played off of the oiliness of the salmon. Sort of taking the edge off with an edge of it’s own. A testament to signature dishes. 1992 Coche-Dury Meursault Perrieres- Gee after those starters you didn’t think I’d let you down on the wines did you? The same people who make this wine must own Baccarat because that’s the only way I can describe the intense glow that emanates from the glass when you pour a Coche Perrieres. It was so good that even my wife who doesn’t care in the least about what’s behind the bottle other than if she likes it (she recently went to dinner with a friend and ordered a Chateauneuf-du-Pape for dinner, “I recognized the name” she told me afterwards) even asked “who makes that wine?” Do I need to say more. 96+ points and I hope I get to drink this when fully mature. My main course was a Pork Chop that was served with some julliened vegetables, braised baby garlic and slices of confit of tomato. The pork itself had the most interesting texture to it. It was firm and sort of crunchy but soft at the same time. Later in the evening Michel Troigros came over to our table and told us that the pork comes from a specific farmer in the Limousin who raises the pigs especially for the restaurant. 1990 Henri Jayer Echezeaux-Ah the birthday wine. We recently ate at Alain Ducasse with the people we were traveling with and it someone else's birthday and I bought the ’90 Jayer Cros Parentoux as the birthday wine. So the ’90 Echezeaux for my birthday was the perfect bookend for our little experiment of how the ’90 Jayer’s are faring. This was so different than the Cros. This is elegant and subtle and the Cros big and spicy. But I love that sour cherry Echezeaux thing. This one will live for years and if you own any, don’t drink it until 2015-2020 when it will be pure magic in the glass 95+ points All of this was followed by some perfect cheeses and a perfect Lime Souffle. Everything about Troisgros is perfect, but I knew that when I walked in didn’t I? The next morning as we were checking out, I ran into the sommelier in the lobby and he invited me into their Cave. All of a sudden I found myself standing amongst probably I would guess, 100,000 bottles of wine. An incredible experience, which is best summed up by what my friend Kim said in the car as we were driving away, “I can come back here every year.” I should add that another dish which my table raved about was a duck marinated in Asian spices and then roasted. It was done so perfectly and the duck meat was among the more succulent I've seen. And the Asian spices were a subtle yet noticeable presence. Have a great meal.

Or one who is not roasting on his laurels, regardless of naissance.