docsconz

Sandy, I am not familiar with Samuelsson's experience in Philly. Was that before or after Aquavit?

One potential reason that there aren't more cocktails covering "meaty" or "umami" savory elements is that that area has historically been covered with wine. It just might be that people with a greater tendency to be drawn to that element tend to be wine drinkers, especially red wine drinkers.

While your statements are largely true, the picture you paint is incomplete. For whatever reasons New Yorkers are a skeptical lot (and people think Missouri is the "Show me" state!). This skepticism is not limited to imports nor is it limited to food. New Yorkers have experienced and seen so much hype over their (our) lifetimes that until something hyped is demonstrated to live up to it, it is subject to said skepticism. Should something live up to the hype, though, it is embraced wholey. Examples include Mark Messier, Pedro Martinez, Per Se, Masa and any successful Broadway show after an out-of-town run. An example of a home-grown restaurant situation with a lot of success behind it that is feeling a lot of the same skepticism is Batali's Del Posto.. New Yorkers react funny sometimes. If we are supposed to like something simply because it has been touted elsewhere or because we are automatically supposed to, we will often react with a "we'll see" attitude. It better live up to its hype or else. If not it gets ridiculed mercilessly. If it does and does so consistently it will feel the love. "If you can make it in new York you can make it anywhere" is the old refrain. Personally, I think this skepticism is healthy - at least for New Yorkers. As far as restaurants transplanted to NYC from other places, I personally would be more curious if the restaurants were not coming totally on the coat-tails of the original. While the food at Per Se is stylistically and in many cases specifically the same as The French Laundry, it did not come in as "The French Laundry". The fact that it has a different name and feel, I believe, has been important in its success. While it has a close relationship to its mother restaurant, it also has its own personality. That may ultimately be true for Morimoto and Buddakan, but just the fact that they have the same names as their mothers gives the impression (true or not) that they will be clone-like and are part of a formula driven program - in essence a chain. At least when Nobu opened here, even though it had a predecessor elsewhere, I believe it opened with a different name than its mother and a totally different feel. That other Nobus opened elsewhere subsequently is a different issue. Sure, plenty of chains have opened in NY and been financially successful for reasons they have been elsewhere, but I can't off the top of my head think of any that have been critically successful. I believe that this one of the strengths of NYC's food scene. To look at it another way, I love the fact that certain cities have their own culinary stars. As much as I love Alinea, I love it in Chicago. If it were to start springing up all over the place and tried to duplicate itself in NYC or elsewhere (e.g. the restaurant clone capitol of the world - Las Vegas) it would lose some of its uniqueness and specialness to me. If Grant Achatz wanted to open a different restaurant in NYC that would be another story and very interesting so long as it did not negatively impact what he is doing at Alinea. Jose Andres has been very successful with this concept in DC and heretofore Batali has been in NYC. They have opened distinct restaurants and managed to maintain not only the excellence of their flagships, but the newer restaurants have also been excellent. Jean-Georges has maintained the excellence of his eponymous flagship, but some of his more recent ventures have encountered various degrees of critical and financial success often with large doses of NY skepticism thrown in.

What else came out of this conference besides the "Manifesto of Ferranismo"? Moby, Thanks for the additional insight and detail.

Alex, Thanks for the photos. Victor, I can see how those reactions would have been the case. It is a lot easier to take the treasure one has for granted. That is not to say that he is unappreciated by his countrymen. Not in the least. You are simply more familiar with him. He is a part of you and a part of a collective revolution in your national gastronomy, albeit a major or even the major one.

Wow and this isn't even part of a reality tv show! I imagine that there is a lot more to this than meets the eye.

For those who were there, What was the energy level in the room when Ferran was speaking? Were people rapt in attention and a buzz in the air or was it more of a ho-hum, here's another speaker atmosphere? I would imagine the former, but it would be interesting to hear if this was, in fact, so. What kind of response did his words elicit from the audience?

Wow, Kathleen, good luck! That should be a fascinating tour, although I imagine you will return home exhausted. While I'm afraid that I cannot give you any specific recommendations, I will suggest that with that kind of itinerary, you stay in a more traditional regional mode and look for subtle differences in preparation and style. I expect that you will eat very well and for not much money. Your dining times are late even for Spain!

The future? As in dominant style of food preparation? I don't think so either nor do I think it is intended to be. It relies too much on creativity and humor in addition to flavor and is probably too technically difficult or labor intensive for mass adoption. I agree with Pedro that this manifesto is simply a concise description of what they are trying to do at El Bulli. By writing it down, I believe that Ferran is laying claim to the concepts, something that neither Gagnaire, Bras or anyone else has done - at least not so concisely or thoroughly. It also appears to be an invitation to others to follow their lead. Whether others do so or not is up to them. Many have already done so, which is what makes this important and interesting. The brevity of the manifesto compared to the books cannot be minimized in its importance in today's world. The books are there to back up the manifesto with evidence that the manifesto is not mere rhetoric, but what the restaurant is actually doing.

This is great thanks. Growing up in Brooklyn I was only ever exposed to the fried knishes, for which I still and always will have a special place in my heart (and stomach).

Whether it is simply a description of his tenets or a call to others to join him IMO doesn't really matter as there are others who are basically using the same or a similar approach and have followed his lead or forged a similar one for themselves. How many people have worked in his kitchen and gone on to their own restaurants and who have they in turn spawned? And then there are those who have never worked at El Bulli, but have still been influenced by developments there. Wherther intended for others to follow or not, the fact that he has put these ideas on paper is significant enough in its own right.

I just wrote out longhand (well, on the computer, but you get my drift) the Gascony daube recipe for my MIL who enjoyed the dish at Christmas, and in writing that up with my revisions and notes, I realized I was doing a few things for her that Paula did not do for me: listing equipment and material needed (the parchment paper for the braise, e.g.); estimating hourly and daily commitments; explaining certain steps in far greater detail; spending a lot of time discussing possible and impossible substitutions. This observation is not meant to be critical. Rather, it supports Elie's point that this book is not a starter book on continental cuisine. Huzzah, I say: I value this book for precisely what it is. I will say that I thought that the review was a bit too glibly clever for its own good, as did Lucy. And if I can get cassoulet down to seven hours, I'll be thrilled! ← Chris, that is why I am a little confused. I thought the review made it clear that the book while excellent isn't for the casual cook. Perhaps that is the conclusion Elie was referring to. The conclusion that I am referring to was the one referencing Paula using eGullet as a testing ground. It isn't clear to me which conclusion Elie is referring to, which is why I am seeking clarification. I am probably just dense. ← I was certainly not refering to the eGullet as testing ground conclusion but rather what Chris mentioned and more specifically her very last sentence in the article: Basically you need to love cooking and the whole process, from sourcing to carefully reading the instructions to eating to get the full benefit of Paula's work. In the end it is "worth it". ← Thanks. As I said, I was just dense.

I just wrote out longhand (well, on the computer, but you get my drift) the Gascony daube recipe for my MIL who enjoyed the dish at Christmas, and in writing that up with my revisions and notes, I realized I was doing a few things for her that Paula did not do for me: listing equipment and material needed (the parchment paper for the braise, e.g.); estimating hourly and daily commitments; explaining certain steps in far greater detail; spending a lot of time discussing possible and impossible substitutions. This observation is not meant to be critical. Rather, it supports Elie's point that this book is not a starter book on continental cuisine. Huzzah, I say: I value this book for precisely what it is. I will say that I thought that the review was a bit too glibly clever for its own good, as did Lucy. And if I can get cassoulet down to seven hours, I'll be thrilled! ← Chris, that is why I am a little confused. I thought the review made it clear that the book while excellent isn't for the casual cook. Perhaps that is the conclusion Elie was referring to. The conclusion that I am referring to was the one referencing Paula using eGullet as a testing ground. It isn't clear to me which conclusion Elie is referring to, which is why I am seeking clarification. I am probably just dense.

Why? Perhaps we are not speaking about the same conclusion?

I myself have been calling it Ferranism for a couple of years, which I think is the term that best describes the movement. But to answer your question, I will once again quote Ferran: "Manifesto in hand, we contacted some friends that have followed our work for a longe time (Bob Noto, Toni Massanés, Jaume Coll, Pau Arenós among others), and each suggested names that, at this time, can serve to start up a debate: postmodern cuisine, transvanguardista cuisine, reformist cuisine, logical cuisine, evolutionist cuisine, etc. In the other hand, there are those who sugget that the most appropriate name is the one coined by the New York Times in 2003 when it published its 14-page story on Spanish gastronomy: "New nouvelle cuisine". I still prefer Ferranism. ← I certainly prefer Ferranism over any of those, although I still like hypermodern as it goes beyond a single individual, however important and influential he may be.

Unfortunately, there is nothing in the article to back up this "conclusion". She may very well be correct, but this article gives me no idea why. Obviously, I was not one of the test cooks, although I would happily have been a "taster"

Thanks for sharing this, Alexandra! His manifesto is not unlike one of his own tasting menus. I heartily ascribe to most of his statements. A couple that I do not fully embrace as stated are numbers 3 & 4. As for number 3, I agree that price is not the issue, although I don't agree that all ingredients necessarily have the same intrinsic value. I believe that what he was trying to say with this statement is along the lines of what he said here on eGullet that is quoted in my sig line below. Yes, a very good sardine is better than a bad lobster, but I still prefer a great lobster to a great sardine. I don't disagree with bringing seafood and vegetables to the fore, but I still love red meat and enjoy whole-cooked birds. As long as a time and place for these pursuits remain, I don't really have a problem with this point though. The bottom line is that I find this manifesto an exciting elucidation of everything I could not myself adequately verbalize about what makes this movement interesting to me. It is absolutely consistent not only with my experience of El Bulli, but other restaurants of its ilk at which I have had the same feeling of excitement - restaurants such as Alinea, Arzak, WD-50 and Moto. As for a name for the movement, did he ever actually suggest one? One that has been bandied about here and I have started using is "hypermodern". Other possibilities, especially with the manifesto could include "Ferranism" or Adriism". Not to take away anything from all the other fine practitioners of this style, but he has been the primary pacesetter and now the one to put it down on paper.

I've only seen a few episodes and haven't seen the Iron Chef lose despite what appeared to me to be losing efforts at least in a few so my impression would be opposite. That clearly is based on a very limited sample though.

I wasn't watching very closely, but I don't recall seeing a Pacojet - just the conventional commercial ice cream machine. Could that have been part of the problem? Maybe bacon doesn't work well without the Paco's smoothing effect. I, too, was surprized that Steingarten didn't love the bacon ice cream. There must have been something wrong with the texture. ← The bacon ice cream I had was made with a Pacojet. Since I didn't see this episode, I had no idea what she did or didn't use. Whatever, she used I imagine that something wasn't right. since there is little not to love about bacon flavor, I would suspect the texture was off. Had she used a Pacojet, they probably would have loved it.

I was very much unimpressed with the tacos at the corner taco stand when I was there in December. I don't even remember the two kinds I had. I agree they are too wet, but they also lacked flavor.

...but is it worth eating again?

I prefer Caputo's on Court Street.

I didn't see it, but have had and enjoyed bacon ice cream before. I'm surprised Steingarten didn't get it, unless it just wasn't very good. The Pacojet is an amazing toy.

Where is it?

Great report, Ron! The meyer lemon was opiatic, huh? You might not want to let people know about that - the restaurant might get shut down and then how would the rest of us get our fix? Seriously, nice report. Schwa is definitely on my short list next time I come to Chicago for my Alinea habit.