Pan

In case he's looking for it, it's actually roti canai or roti chanai (in old spelling).

I want to add that I disagree with Oraklet that no avant gardistes had the goal of shocking the bourgeoisie. Some were quoted as saying that they did various things in order to shock the bourgoisie. And the point in those days wasn't that they would enjoy being shocked so that they could consider themselves cool.

Fat Guy, the way I define a "successful" avant garde artist or composer is in whether I consider him/her artistically successful. And in point of fact, most artists and composers do not earn their living from the art they produce. Some were independently wealthy as a result of inheritance; some, like Ives, had very well-paying day jobs; some earned their livings as teachers; and some were poor. In fact, the only example I can think of off-hand of an avant-garde composer becoming rich as a result of his music is Stravinsky, and I think that's in significant part because he backed off from the radicality of Rite of Spring and Les Noces and came up with a Neoclassical style that was generally easier for people to listen to than any other Modernist style - witness that a bunch of Americans like Copland further simplified it and became wealthy, but who would call someone like Copland "avant garde"? How many restaurants can run on a negative or negligable profit margin? Not many, I would think, though fresh_a's point is interesting. How many people can paint, sculpt, write, or compose without earning anything much from it? Loads. And the point of avant garde art is that it's whatever the artist wants to create, regardless of whether it will make him/her any money or not. Anyone who lets a desire to earn money affect his/her art is not (or, as arguably in Stravinsky's case, no longer) an avant garde artist (with the possible exception of doing some "pandering" work to support the "real stuff," but that's fraught with dangerous temptation to the artist), and I would claim that this is absolute and definitional.

I agree with the others. That's way more than a recipe with an introduction; it's a beautiful story. Which part of India are you from, Monica?

That sounds like a deal, Suvir! [virtual handshake] I'll look forward to meeting you fairly soon and will surely invite a friend.

I think you ought to serve the dishes you want to serve at the prices that you consider a fair value and reasonable profit to you. I'm just hoping that when you do that, I'll be able to afford to patronize your restaurant more than once or twice. It looks to me like a dinner at your place would probably cost somewhere in the $40s-60s (well, maybe less if I were to have just a main dish, but that kind of defeats the purpose, doesn't it?), inclusive of tax and tip, which would probably make it a special dinner with a special friend perhaps once every year or so, except in the unlikely event that I get a lot of playing gigs in this economy or get a full-time teaching gig. Might a $20 lunch be possible? I could do that more frequently. I presume you'll be serving non-alcoholic beverages as well as wine. Any possibility of a masala lassi? I used to get a very pleasant one at Madras Cafe, but the chef/owner told me they stopped making it because too many people (about 40%, he said) returned it after finding it weird. For a while thereafter, they specially made it for me because I'm a regular, but it just got to be too much of a hassle. But maybe your clientele will be more adventurous and less fixated on having sugar with the meal?

Precisely, and well said. And that's why we'll never see high-end restaurants making an effort to gratuitously shock the bourgeoisie, like various avant gardistes in music, visual arts, and theater did.

Madras Cafe delivers.

I went to Big Wong once and it was such a pedestrian experience I can't remember what I ate. Varmint, if you come back in June, maybe you'll be available some time when it isn't a major Jewish holiday.

Congratulations, Suvir, and mazel tov to you! This puts into perspective all the talk about what would make a good upscale Indian restaurant. Your menu is intriguing and I feel pretty sure I'll find a way to go to dinner some time. But one question about your pricing: Will you charge the same for lunch and dinner?

I've never been to Volterra. Lucca is pleasant. No single thing in the city is spectacular, but the combination of various nice things adds up. And it's known for good food. Pisa has one spectacular piazza (the Campo dei Miracoli, with the Camposanto, the Duomo, the Baptistery, and - last and least among that bunch!!! - the Tower) and at least one other beautiful building (Santa Maria della Spina, which I've seen only from a passing bus), but it's otherwise a rather drab and kind of ugly town. It was heavily damaged in WW II and had to be substantially rebuilt. (Caveat: I haven't been to either Lucca or Pisa since 1991.) I found Spoleto pleasant when I was there in August of 1994, but that's high season for Italian tourists, and it's actually pretty hot then (though bearable compared to Florence and Rome, where most of the tourists come from). I visited some mountains near Nocera Umbra, I think, which were downright cool. One idea no-one's mentioned yet is the area of the Marche near Gubbio (ergo, near Umbria). The cave at Frascassi (I think that's the right spelling) is one of the most spectacular I've ever seen, and the landscape near there is full of striking mountains with caves.

Well, this thread has 699 hits already. Is that such a small number?

Of course!

Do you want to take a poll on that? Sure, I find this site entertaining, but I come here to receive and share information at least as much as to entertain myself. Most of that information is about restaurants where I might want to eat and such-like, but it's still information I can use. And I'm certainly interested in topics like the one we're talking about in this thread, but I lack expertise to contribute original content in this area, just as I lack expertise in the techniques a French chef has to master before going out on his/her own - another fascinating topic on these boards. So I read about these things and think about them, but don't say too much (I hope). What I do know about is the restaurants I eat at and such-like, so that's the information I can share.

Yes, but there were also important avant gardistes who weren't part of a movement (other than what we could broadly call "Modernism"). Bartok, for example. Or Varese. Both influential but not heads of a school.

Do you ever compromise on, say, rural India?

Nice pics, Varmint. I'm glad you had a wonderful time on your 40th.

Very interesting and stimulating posts, Jonathan and Robert. It does seem as if Chef Adria has developed criteria for what we could reasonably call avant garde cuisine. I hope Chef Achatz comments on this thread.

Perhaps, but one of those men is twisting the definition. To really be part of the avant garde, there should be some following of some sort. You must, to some extent, be a leader or history will not credit you as anything but an oddity or outsider. Fundamentally, that's precisely what the avant gardistes - especially the more extreme ones - were: Oddities and outsiders. A few of them also inspired movements and, in some cases, sooner or later had large followings. Others were never well-known and are considered mere footnotes to history nowadays. But again, I must strongly dissent from the notion that the definition of "avant garde" includes either a judgment of the artist's high quality or the degree of following perhaps unexpectedly attained by someone who was expressly breaking with convention in order to express his/her personality and ego. There has to be a criterion for what makes something avant garde that's independent of its high or low quality and its degree of following, or we should discard the term.

Steven, do you ever go on her treks? And does she ever get tired of them?

Very glad my suggestions were helpful.

Count me as unconvinced that the reading, listening, and viewing public is uninterested in "hard news" about food. Do you think people want safe food and water? Damn straight they do! Do you think people would be concerned with scarcity of food and water? Damn straight they would! Do you think that it bugs people to know that their food costs way more than market value because our government is subsidizing farmers not to grow crops? Do you think people want some reliable guidance (if possible) on what is healthy and unhealthy for them? Do they want to know when there are critical health violations in supermarkets and restaurants? Might they be interested in the working conditions of migrant laborers? (Many were interested in the 1970s.) Do they want to know how changes in climate may affect the price and availability of things to eat and drink? Etc., etc. I think we'd all concede that people often like to escape from the travails of daily life, but I don't understand the assumption some of you are making that "hard" news stories on food will fall flat most of the time.

Somehow, I've never much liked hamburgers, so I guess I'm out. Have fun!

I agree with Tommy. Cheap is less than $15 or so. We have to make more categories than cheap, moderate, and high-end. How about cheap, inexpensive, moderate, expensive, very expensive? OK, he's right that it's time for a new thread, too...