Pan

So you're revising your comments?

Thanks for your posts. I haven't been to the place and now I won't waste my time. But how were those those four small turkey testicles?

Result of clicking link:

No, there is no one authentic version; as you and Busboy pointed out, there are various different authentic versions. However, there are also inauthentic versions. I don't expect us to agree on the meaning of "authentic," but I do use the word. If something tastes "authentic" to me, that means it's like real X food that I ate and liked in X country or region. But I'm probably more likely to use "inauthentic," and I'm probably more likely to use that with the negative connotation of "adulterated" than in the context of "Well, it's not authentic, but I like it anyway."

Ptipois, not necessarily pork but bacon or some type of ham or sausage in sauces, etc. The reason I'm conscious of this is that my mother doesn't eat pig products and it was sometimes hard to get all of them to be left out of her food in fancy restaurants in France.

I've found that white chicken feet are almost all fat. Why is that? I love chicken feet and found the photo in the first post in this thread pretty appealing.

I'll give you the semi-ignoramus's rough-and-ready view of what constitutes haute cuisine: Rich food with lots of butter and cream Luxe ingredients and impressive, beautiful preparations and platings Staff dressed impeccably in formal wear, providing smooth, expertly coordinated team service Customers dressed in suits and formal dresses Very expensive prices Long, expensive wine list, including a good selection of dessert wines Excellent sommelier to recommend wines and do quality control for them Full-course meal with at least several courses (including amuses and pre-desserts) The food will probably be subtle or at least complex and expertly balanced, will go well with whatever wines the sommelier recommended, and unless explicitly vegetarian or otherwise changed for dietary reasons, will almost definitely include some ingredient(s) derived from pig, even if only as part of a sauce or accompaniment (bacon, some kind of ham, etc.) The meal will probably end with some kind of small post-dessert like chocolate truffles, pates de fruit, madeleines, petit fours, or all of the above There will also be an excellent cheese course, if desired Now, drive your truck through the exceptions to these.

You didn't do anything wrong! I just don't think Jerk Chicken is Latin food; it's Jamaican. Caribbean? Definitely. Latin? No. Many of the commonalities among Caribbean cuisines are the result of the African origins of so many of the people, whether in French-Creole-speaking (Haiti, Louisiana - at least until recently), English-speaking (Jamaica, Trinidad, Guyana), or Spanish-speaking lands.

Jamaicans are Anglos. They're not Hispanic, and their cuisine has some differences as well as commonalities with Hispano-Caribbean cuisines.

If you've never been to a country like China, India, or Indonesia, but only to the US, Europe and such, you have no idea what true crowding is. Yet, surprisingly, I didn't find it harder to walk in Shanghai than I did in 1987. I'm not sure I fully know how to account for that, but my fears of impassable pedestrian traffic were not realized.

I did get to Amma, twice. I still haven't made it to Craftbar, which is still pricey for me. I didn't go to California but will be there this August and look forward to going back to La Super-Rica and some taquerias in the Mission District in San Francisco. I also didn't make it to Boston and I'm not sure when I'll be up there next. However, I had a trip to China that wasn't anticipated at the time I wrote the quoted post above. Most of my meals there were good, and some were magnificent, especially my incredible dinner at the Li Family Restaurant. In terms of my New York eating, aside from Amma, my Restaurant Week meals at Union Pacific and L'Impero were highlights, along with the ramen at Minca, the great razor clams at Fuleen, and just about every meal at Spicy & Tasty (very honorable mention for Bianca and August). In terms of notable openings in my neighborhood other than Minca (which I have put off revisiting for too long), I am very happy to have Grand Sichuan St. Marks and Chickpea in my neighborhood and am a regular customer of both. [Edit: I forgot to mention my wonderful meal at Tanoreen in Bay Ridge.]

Low-salt tapas might be good for me. After all, one can always add salt but never take it away.

Well, yeah. I guess to take that argument to its logical conclusion would take us to the time before human beings learned how to harness fire for cooking. Most of us don't want that kind of "authenticity."

Elie, why don't you just let your son suck on those lemons?

Bux, the pizza that the Pizza Survey had at Arturo's was in an entirely different class from the pizza we had at Lombardi's. I don't think Lombardi's is even worth going to anymore, whereas Arturo's is just a cut under places like Grimaldi's, and their clam pizza is wonderful!

I've enjoyed Dominican, Mexican, and other Latin American cuisines for a long time, but I haven't noticed any shift away from Chinese food (one of my favorite cuisines, in its various regional guises) toward Latin American cuisines on my part. I have no doubt that if I were living in California - or, for that matter, Jackson Heights - I'd eat loads more burritos and so forth, but I'm in Manhattan.

Yeah, I like the "trustworthy" definition, although "according to fact" doesn't exactly fit. I suppose that most good cooks make everything pretty much by taste, adjusting as needed, so in order to make a good reproduction, you may need to share some of their sensitivity to the taste that's "just right." I see your point, Busboy. But basically, I think there are a lot of authentic versions of dishes and cuisines and certain things that make them inauthentic. I wouldn't think that using dried reconstituted instead of fresh mushrooms necessarily makes something inauthentic in every case. But the odd phenomenon is that there is such a thing as authentic Chinese-American food, even though that food is largely inauthentic seen from another angle.

So definition 5 ("true to one's own personality, spirit, or character") is not relevant to your descriptions of food? Could innovative dishes not be in that sense the authentic product of the chef?

Thanks, M.

Sam, the baby artichokes at DiFara's are fresh, never frozen. I've seen the boxes they get delivered from California. Trish, as far as I'm concerned, toppings matter, whether the pizza is in Napoli or New York.

I'll add a dictionary definition and usage note from http://www.m-w.com/: What's really interesting is that definition #2c may be in conflict with definition #5. And what of definition #3, "not false or imitation"? Is imitation in cooking authentic whereas imitation of accents is inauthentic? Why? Because the accent isn't native? In which case, how "fluent" does someone have to be in the cuisine of a different country or region to have an "authentic accent" in that cuisine? Definition #2b is also interesting, because it begs the question of what features are truly essential to a regional cuisine. It seems to me that, much as Soba stated, the meaning of "authentic" will vary in usage from one individual to another. Another way of saying this is that the meaning of the word is determined by usage, not by a consensus definition.

Oh, you can click on the article and the plain text pops up.[...] ← Thanks. I was clicking in the wrong places. That was a good read.

Ptipois, your last few posts have been inspiring. Thank you very much.

Acknowledged, but I think RobinsonCuisine's point is that the extras for friends of the house and such should be over and above already terrific service. And it was in response to the allegation that "regular Joes" are being treated like chopped liver that I reacted as I did. Now, why people wouldn't treat chopped liver with loving appreciation is another question.

That's impossible. Moreover, I would disagree with the premise that the primordial form of a thing is automatically the best, true, or only authentic form (which may not be quite what you mean). For better or/and for worse, things change over time, and all of us are in large part a product of the past, including those who, in full knowledge of the past, choose to break with it.