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The most unique topping that I have heard of (haven't tried it myself yet) is Joan roca's "Tierra", which is basically distilled Catalunyan "earth", the theory being to mimic one of the best wine pairings with oysters, a classic one of steely, minerally Chablis.

I concur. It is useful even if you don't speak Italian. Though perhaps a bit dated, Fred Plotkin's Italy for the Gourmet Traveler is still likely to be quite useful for the traditional cuisines of Italy.

These are rather large assumptions, but let us say that for now your assumptions are indeed the case. Given that the operators are trying to make money and have been successful selling the few reservations that they have set aside and have found a formula for getting those reservations in the first place (probably by snatching them up at the earliest time they become available), why is reasonable to assume that they wouldn't expand the practice and gobble up all the reservations? This would leave people no choice but to pay a fee for this "service" (one that I never asked for nor wanted) and if they then failed to sell the reservations, a much higher no-show list for the restaurants. The only winner is once again the middle-man, who had nothing to lose by providing this "service." Their risk is essentially nil.

Speaking of mango salsa, southwestern food and Santa Fe style became big nationally in the late 80's. I remember my first trip to Santa Fe in the late 80's and having seared tuna with mango salsa at the Coyote Cafe. That was a revelation at the time and one of the dishes that sticks out in my memory that I can pinpoint where and when i first had it and my reaction - loved it!. One thing this topic illustrates is that though some things were familiar to some prior to the 80's, many achieved national prominence in the 80's. The 80's proved to be a great culinary awakening for the United States as more people began exploring more and varied cuisines. Though it may have started prior to the 80's fusion cuisine became a popular catchword in that decade. One of my favorites from the early to mid-80's in NYC was La Maison Japonais, a French-Japanese fusion restaurant. I believe this was also when Norman Van Aken began popularizing a fusion of cuisines of the Americas down in Florida.

Nah. I still have a lot of nostalgia for 80's music. While I still like it, with a few exceptions I don't have any particular predilections for 80's food.

At least we were consistent!

I think that it is considerably different. The way you proposed is indeed a service and not different than American Express Platinum Concierge except that the AE service is built into the cost of the card. The service as it stands is based on speculation and can prevent others seeking reservations in their own names from getting them. If someone preferred using an assumed name for the reservation they could do so the way you outlined but would not be obligated to. Everything would be above-board.

David, you would be one of the people I would be asking the question of! It has been a year and a half since I have had the pleasure of dining in Paris and unfortunately none of those are within my personal experience. Nevertheless, I will follow this topic with interest.

Interesting critique and the first of its kind that I have heard or read for this restaurant. It would seem that it was either an unlucky aberration on the part of the restaurant, a new style of dessert for the restaurant or a disconnect between dessert sweetness expectations between you, your party and the restaurant. My own experience at J-G with desserts has been that I thought they were superb and in line with the style of the rest of the cuisine. Just to get a better gauge, how sweet do you generally prefer your desserts to be?

How about fondue? Got my first kiss from my wife because of a fondue.

← I'm surprised that some of these are that old and that some aren't older than they are! I loved Snapple back then before it was sold. I don't know if it changed or I changed. Maybe both.

Chimichangas! Frozen Margaritas! The Sushi Explosion! I had my first date with my wife because she had never had sushi before (1983).

My niece recently got fired from a job as a pastry cook at a well-known NYC restaurant because she asked if it might be possible to have one of either Thanksgiving, Christmas or New Year's Day off like the new person got and that was already for a job for which she barely got paid a living wage. I seriously don't know how the industry does as well in performance as it does.

Louisa Chu is also involved as well. I'm upset that my available PBS stations aren't carrying it.

I will eat raw oysters with mignonette and other relatively unobtrusive accompaniments (not cocktail sauce though - why bother?), but my favorite way, like Daniel is just with a squirt of lemon. Like Sheena, I like to chew them too.

Salivating I am! The first time I ever had cochinillo I can remember vividly. It was during my first trip to Spain in 1974 at Casa Botin in Madrid. During a school trip one of the group leaders, a Jesuit priest, treated a small group of us to dinner there. The cochinillo was a revelation, one of those culinary experiences that I will never forget.

I will add some more photos anyway Panelists in Spanish Flavors, American Kitchens:Appetites for Change who were not previously identified in photos associated with the text above: Karen McNeil Nancy Harmon Jenkins Dr. Tim Ryan Gabino Sotelino Top: David Rosengarten. Below: Anya Von Bremzen, Clark Wolf and Clara Maria Gonzalez de Amezua. Norman Van Aken Richard Wolffe Video tribute to R.W. "Johnny" Apple

You're right, way off base. It's this he uses: Volcano Vaporizer More usually seen in the coffee-shops of Amsterdam, seriously! ← Louisa Chu has done a nice piece on this device and another on Chow.com. I was referring to Alexandra's question when I made my statement.

I see so many wrong things with the statement above, I hardly know where to begin. So maybe I won't begin. This specific post opened a huge can of worms and suddenly this specific topic - the 2007 edition of the Madrid Fusión - has veered off topic. Shouldn't this discussion of whether Ferran, Heston et al. deserve all their accolades or whether they've been "raised to genius status by a hungry media with nobody better to praise", doesn't this argument belong somewhere else? By the way, Zoticus, keep in mind that long before it was hard to book a table at El Bulli or at TFD these two guys were wowing customers with their tasty and innovative food. The high praise from the media came YEARS later. I can tell you that in Heston's case, it only became tough to book a table at TFD after he won the Best Restaurant in the World award from Restaurant Magazine, in 2005. I speak from experience. To say you've oversimplified the whole debate is an understatement. Sure, some people dislike their cooking. There isn't one restaurant in the world that can please all tastes. There will always be diners that don't like this or that, and that's normal. And as a food writer myself, I find it very tiring and insulting when perceived evils of the (food) world are blamed on "the media", or, as you call it, "the hungry media". Now... with that off my chest, back to the Madrid Fusion. I've read things that I found very hard to understand: - How did Seiji Yamamoto (Ryugin, Tokyo) "stamp" a bar code on a sauce?? I know he used squid ink, but still... And how did he "read" this bar code, which apparently contained the list of ingredients used in the sauce? Puzzling. - I understand Arzak (who referred to himself as the old rocker of cooking) extracted vapors from herbs and called this a "volcano of aromas". How did he inject this volcano eruption into the meats? - How did Heston reproduce the aroma from a candyshop? And what was the purpose of the candies he gave out to the crowd? ← Alexandra, thank you for bringing this back to the main focus of this topic. I would love to read the answers to your questions. Of the three I imagine that Arzak uses a pressure/vacuum device similar to Aduriz, though I might be way off-base.

Really new and really delicious is great. And the kind of thing a lucky diner may run across about once every five or ten years. Robuchon's sea urchin with quail egg - new and great. David Burke's sea urchin with quail egg - not new but still great. More commonly - I find "new" simply for the sake of "new" (in terms of cuisines I know something about) - where the food isn't even as good as a home-grilled burger. The best I can say about most of it (not all - but most) is "interesting" - faint praise indeed. It's like watching figure skating IMO. I don't give extra credit to a skater who attempts a quadruple jump but misses it badly. OTOH - there are diners who would never go to a restaurant that serves a perfect poached dover sole with a perfect buerre blanc sauce - because it's "so terribly old fashioned". Not that they've ever had this dish before - or had it prepared perfectly - it's just not trendy. What's the point of having something terrific if you're not in the vanguard? This is a silly way to look at dining IMO. Much like saying that reading Dickens isn't worthwhile because so many people have already read his books. If indeed the food at the London is anywhere near as good as that at RHR - it shouldn't be dismissed simply because it isn't "avant garde". That's why I've had much better luck recently defining "new" as something *I* don't know anything about - even if it's been around for a long time. That's one reason we really enjoyed our dining in Japan - and one reason I picked Germany for our next trip. What does it matter if tons of people have had a perfected delicious dish at a great restaurant before me - if it's my first time? Since there are many more cuisines I don't know about than ones I do - and many more excellent restaurants that I haven't been to than ones I've dined at - I suspect I won't run out of "new things" for a long time. Robyn ← I agree with this post completely on a personal level. Whether or not someone is adding something "new" to the lexicon, the end product at this level needs to be truly outstanding. If it is truly outstanding and "new" or innovative then the chef gets "extra points" for creativity. On the other hand if something is not new or innovative, but the quality is markedly above what others are able to produce that should garner "extra points" as well. While clearly producing a fine product, it is not clear to me from what I have read as well as from my experience at The London Bar (admittedly not the main restaurant and so offer no personal opinion on the main restaurant), that the food is superior to what is already available in New York. When a chef comes to a place like NYC with the hype and hoopla of an Alain Ducasse or a Gordon Ramsey, New Yorkers expect to be "wowed" using either definition. Ducasse eventually developed a clientele that was. GR may or may not, though I suspect that if their business model is up to snuff they will not suffer on the bottom line even if the restaurant is not the darling of the critics or the NY Forum.

No, it is not what we are saying. What is clear though is that some of the so called experts that have claimed for instance the Fat Duck to be the best restaurant in the world hardly have the qualification to make the call. If we would make a parallel to wine critics it would be like accepting that someone is an important authority on Bordeaux wines after having only tasted a dozen classed growths, each on one or a few occasions without really having any knowledge of the grape varieties used by each producer. It is not food criticism to be taken seriously. It is marketing, admittedly very successful. Pedro, I know you had (many) non-pedestrian ingredients and possibly some stunning ones at el bulli last summer. I did not. The meal I had there could be criticised from a large number of reasons, pedestrian and/or average quality ingredients being one. ← I agree that any individual labeling anything as "the best in the world" is engaging in unsupportable hyperbole no matter their experience. It is more reasonable, however, for people to consider and call something "the best" within their experience and according to specific criteria. It may be even more reasonable to avoid labeling any restaurant as "the best" on even a personal scale as any individual's experience(s) are snapshot(s) in time of a fluid medium. That possibility of change over time allows nothing more than a comparison of specific experiences at varying times. As such I prefer compare and occasionally rank my specific restaurant experiences over time similar to what you do at Gastroville. These specific snapshots in time do contribute to my list of what I consider "favorite" restaurants to which I wish to return for additional experiences. Note that by considering a restaurant a "favorite' doesn't mean that it is necessarily the "best". Alinea has provided me with a collection of some of the finest meals that I have had and as a result is currently my favorite restaurant in the US. If I were to return tomorrow it may or may not live up to my previous experiences and expectations. It may even exceed them. While it is my current favorite and I have dined fairly extensively throughout the US, there certainly are plenty of worthy restaurants that I have yet to experience that could potentially supplant it. By the same token, I have had but one meal so far at El Bulli. To date it was the most outstanding meal of my experience and as such has placed itself as my favorite restaurant in the world. Is it the best? I certainly wouldn't presume to make that claim. From that one experience though I am attuned to the potential that restaurant has to offer to me on any given night. Whether subsequent experiences can match, exceed or fall short is yet to be determined. No matter what happens though that one experience will always be one of the culinary, no one of the highlights of my life even if it should someday be supplanted by another culinary experience as "my favorite." If anyone really cares enough to see what made it so special to me they can find my report in the topic in the Spain forum.

I believe that you missed the point of my analogy entirely. It doesn't matter whether you , me or anyone else considers cooking to be an art form, The point was that I laid out an example of something that was roundly rejected by the "experts" of the time that subsequently came to be considered as the epitome of painting by many and ironically is still held to be such by many of a conservative bent. The parallels are interesting. I will not continue this particular arm of the discussion further. I believe that taste is a subjective element. The value of newspaper food journalism, sites like eGullet and blogs like Gastroville is that with enough content and experience one can gauge the value of opinions of others and correlate them to one's own for better or worse. Vedat and milla, I value your opinions, even if I don't fully share all of them. That you don't fully share mine is also clear. One thing we definitely have in common is a passion for food.

I can't say that i am surprised. elBulli is more financially accessible than it could be because of outside business ventures that help keep the price at the restaurant down.

Closed minds. ← ... or reactionaries, or conservatives or some other formulation of 'not getting it'. But without resorting to insult, the polemic raised by the gastronomic avant garde is not so easily explained away. My own feeling is that chefs like Adria and Blumenthal have outmaneuvered the established authorities and that diners are predisposed to enthuse about their food given the prestige conferred upon them by scoring a table, but that also they are bombarded with psuedo-scientific reasons why they should enjoy such food. The privilege of critiquing their own work is unprecedented in any creative endeavour and one should raise the suspicions of anyone trained to be critically minded about such things. Despite its obvious privileges the fact that the culinary avant garde still remains to many a dubious movement suggests that the burden of its defence lies with its defenders and not with its critics. So I say to you, if Adria et al are producing such good food, why is it that so many rational and informed individuals say they are not? ← Not meant to be insulting, but I do think that so much has to do with attitudes and approaches to life not that I would or could define what they are. I do think that you have greatly oversimplified your argument. First, rational, intelligent and educated people can and do disagree about many things. This is no different than any other area. The impressionist art movement in France was initially treated the same way, but now is the epitome of conservative taste. That "many" still consider vanguard cooking a "dubious" movement doesn't surprise me. Many of those who do, though certainly not all, are very set in their world views or have their own particular agendas. To others it is simply not to their taste or style. That is fine. There is nothing wrong with that. What I don't get is the insistent need to denigrate the movement by some. As for being enamored because of the "prestige of scoring a table," I can't speak for others, but I have been disappointed by many a "prestigious" restaurant from either stylistic bent despite initial excitement at dining there. As for continuing to defend the vanguard, I will stop here for now. It is clear that we will not sway each others point of view and we are in danger of running in circles. I am quite content that I can enjoy an excellent restaurant whatever its label.

Closed minds.