Bux

There are few things more rewarding that a well mannered child and it doesn't matter if it's your child, or someone else's if that child is in your company. For all that, I have a lot of trouble with the way manners are taught to most children and no less so for the way they're described here by some. Good manners have very little to do with rules and everything to do with being conscious of others. I also find if strange that one refers to someone with good manners as being well bred. Manners is a matter of behavior and not genetics. We are all responsible for our own manners as well as for that of our children. My objection to rules is several fold. It makes no distinction between social conventions that are meaningless, social conventions that oil social situations and the fine acts that make others comfortable or uncomfortable. It should be easy enough to explain why someone might want to keep one's mouth closed while eating. It's not particularly pleasant to watch the other way. If's far less easy to explain why one shouldn't put one's elbows on the table. In fact, in France, it's quite permissable to put one's elbows on the table and far more so than putting one's hands in one's lap. The latter is seen as very ill mannered. This brings up another issue. By teaching a set or rules that are presented as inviolate and universal, one may be well on the way of making a child intolerant of other cultures and less fit to expand his own horizons by traveling. My child, who's now raising her child, was always encouraged to ask "why?" and only rarely, in emergency situations, required to accept "because that's what we say" as an answer. She was taught few rules, but she was taught to consider how what she was doing at any time might affect others. Raising a child to ask "why?" is not without its risks and the results are often seen as ill mannered and disrespectful, but generally only by those who feel respect comes with a job or title and not something that needs be earned.

It would have been good to have some reference to those things that you feel were unfairly said. The thing about restaurant reviews is that by and large, they're written precisely for people who have not been to the restaurant being revieweds, so who better to review the review than someone who hasn't been there. The review left me puzzled, and less eager to dine at Spice Market than I was before I read it. That's peculiar for a three star review.

I think I've seen maple syrup a few times on French menus. Of course there's Passard's famous egg at Arpège, but the maple flavor was very subtle, almost undetectable to my dull palate. Veyrat served a flight of pots de creme in assorted flavors as one of a few desserts. Diners are asked to guess the flavors. We did very well, guessing almost all (all if you accept anise/licorice/fennel as one taste). Maple syrup was one of the flavors, and apparently the one that most Frenchmen missed. For us it was a no brainer. Here it was in all it's glory as a dessert sweet.

I read the figaroscope.com page to say Camdeborde will be leaving la Régalade in a few weeks and coming to his new spot. An earlier post by John Talbott said that Camdeborde would be at la Régalade until May.

Excuse my ignorace, but I had no idea what a sea-pie was. I'm as lazy as I am ignorant, but curious and fortuantely google is so much more convenient than any library. "Sea pie" covers a lot of ground as a descritption for meat under a crust or in a crust as I discovered, but I managed to find a recipe with layers of crust in the middle as well, so I can imagine yours. None of this is really of note to those who knew more than I did and I assumed it was called a sea-pie because it was food for fishermen at sea, but then I ran across this recipe for cipaille (pronounced 'sea pie'). The page goes on to say "There are also very similar pies are called cipâtes and six-pâtes." I rather suspect the Quebec dish was an attempt to spell "sea-pie" in French and the similar pies are an attempt to make sense of the name in French, but could the name have developed the other way round from six-pâtes to sea-pie?

I'm less shocked at the thought of someone not liking cornichons at all, than by the thought of someone liking them without charctuerie of some kind.

I suspect not. When I was younger and drank wine from the cheapest bottles I could find, I remember running across several brands of California wines that seemed to taste identical across the brand no matter the varietal on the label. I recall bardolinos and valpolicellos that also seemed to have been bottled from the same casks. In the case of the latter it was a matter of the same grapes and the same style of making wine--or maybe the grapes from each district going into the same hopper and the resultant wine being bottled under separate labels in proportion to the tonnage from each district. Intellectually and ethically it didn't really matter, but I always bought a mixed case for variety. Having to choose between two identical wines with different labels was part of growing up and acting decisively I'm assuming this blending exercise is not really using wines with any distinct terroir and there's no criminal loss in that regard. I'm wondering if the resultant blends are really better balanced, or just more to one's taste. At the higher levels of wines, I find most drinkers show some appreciation for most wines. At the bottom level, some personal taste preferences seem to make some wines acceptable to some and not to others.

I'm developing my sense of humor by watching British comedy on PBS. It's a slow process because I usually fall asleep quickly.

My guess is that the Italians and Spaniards were eating tomatoes and peppers before the Aussies were eating dim sum. Maybe before they were eating dim sum in Hong Kong for all I know. For all I know Marco Polo brought dim sum back to Italy where they evolved into ravioli. Hell, I never believed he brought spaghetti back from China. Why would he, they had no tomato sauce.

Both editors seem to be from NY and NY is the only city that has its events featured. I'd say the Aussie article is online because some Americans found it funny.

Browniebaker's quite correct with the exception that copyrights apply internationally. Let's also note that we're talking about "copyright" and not other homonyms. It refers to the rights of the author in regard to his intellectual property. Without the author's permission, no one has the right to use those words. There are limits and exceptions to these rights and I suggest members read The eGullet.com Copyright & Fair Use Policy if the concept is not meaningful or clear. Our own policy goes beyond what the law might require and asks members to adhere to an ethical policy as well as one that is within the law. As eGullet.com has become successful and read not just by foodies, but by journalists, editors, chefs and others prominent in the area of culinary writing, it's been clear to management that we need to enforce the most professional level of respect for intellectual property. It's also something our creative members insist on as well. Browniebaker is also correct in noting that one cannot copyright a list of ingredients any more than one can copyright a dish. What is protected is the text of a recipe. Adapting a recipe by using your own words to describe the process removes the taint of copyright infringement.

I've been to restaurants I couldn't afford and with that in mind, very small disatisfactions have ruined evenings. There's good wisdom in the saying that if you have to ask the price, you can't afford to eat there. If you have a need to be where it's hip when it's hip, you should go with the knowledge that the hip rarely care about the food at all and even less about value.

I didn't mean to imply they were necessarily comparable, although I could see someone preferring either one to the other on subjective grounds. Blue Hill's cooking has more finesse in my opinion and would most certainly be the more likely to get three stars. Still, if all the restaurants in NYC were lumped into only four classifications, it would not be outlandish for these two restaurants to be in the same group. Likewise, I wouldn't be offended or suprised to see Blue Hill lumped in with Cafe Boulud and Gramercy Tavern. My point was that there are three star restaurants where the food is not as interesting nor as well conceived or prepared as at either Blue Hill or Hearth. Of course I've had only one meal at Hearth and while I loved it, I wasn't quite as moved as I was by my first meal at Blue Hill. then again I get more jaded every day. I suppose this is relevant to the review in the Times, rather than to the main topic of this thread.

Once again we may have two countries separated by a common language, or so I fear. Pancetta affumicata is smoked pancetta. I would assume therefore that just pancetta would be unsmoked and as defined in my previous link to the Food Network Encyclopedia definition which is credited to The New Food Lover's Companion, by Tyler Herbst. In any event, all definitions I find on the web say it's cured and not smoked and the pancetta most commonly available in New York, is not smoked. Also, in the U.S., bacon is commonly defined not just by the cut of meat (side of pig), but as being cured and smoked. I suspect unsmoked, or even uncured bacon would be more commonly found in the U.K. than in the U.S.

I think it's quite possible to make a tasting menu out of a selection of tapas, but only if the restaurant is willing to bring the plates out in successive courses. In a typical tasting menu, the courses are smaller than in a regular three course meal and although the amount of food may not be more than one gets in a simpler meal, the cost will be. There's greater kitchen costs as well as serving and dishwashing, so it's not all profit to the owner. Where the food is often scooped from stew pots rather than plated artfully, there may be far less additional overhead and far more profit to the restaurant when a tapa is not much more than an appetizer portion, but priced between an appetizer and a main course. In any event, one should always be prepared to pay more to fill oneself when ordering many small dishes than when eating a regular meal of the same quality. It's fun to graze, but there's something about a well composed meal, presented in courses, that's just not part of sharing small plates. Why, by the way, have we come to accept that smaller plates are ideal for sharing? It seems intuitively perverse to share tastes, rather than larger portions.

I'm pretty well in agreement with you on this. The problem may well be in the fact that the NY Times four star system has been shot so full of holes by recent reviewers that it's become easy enough to justify any rating for any restaurant if you simply need to point to a dozen other places for reference points. The food at Hearth, based on single visits and in my opinion, is considerably better than at Bolo, but no better than at Blue Hill. Four stars should allow for a more exact classification than three stars, but I'm afraid Michelin ratings for all their subjectivity, are a lot better and more reasonable than the NY Times. Here in NY, we've come to accept two stars as a restaurant worth making a reservation to eat at in advance and expect any place worth our time and money to have at least one star. In France most people eat at unstarred restaurants most of the time. My interest in food in the abstract is such that I find it suprising to see a three star review that turns me off from the food. Nevertheless, with the insider information that Gray Kunz is involved in the restaurant, I am interested in experiencing it for myself. Kunz is no god, but over the course of a few meals I've had from his restaurant kitchens, my expectations would be very high. I don't think he's a better chef than Jean-Georges, but possibly because JG has been involved in so many restaurants of varying calibers and Kunz has been more of a myth in recent years, I have a higher expectation as a result of Kunz's invovlement. I'm being somewhat facetious about "insider" information. Kunz's involvement in Spice Market has been widely reported, even in the NY Times. It seems a serious lapse of information transfer to the diner to omit mention in the review. Then again Vongerichten is only mentioned ten times, not counting the number of times he is referred to by pronoun. Anyone care to search and find the record number of times a chef is mentioned in a restaurant review?

That happens far more often than one might expect. Often enough it's the product of limited research, good intentions, but misguided enthusiasm. All too often tourists read lots of guide books and many articles in periodicals. They are more apt to notice the number of times a restaurant is mentioned, than to read deeply what is said. As a result, they wind up at a restaurant that is well liked by many, but totally unsuited for their needs. Mostly it's their own fault for not carefully doing their research, but sometimes the blame can be shared by the reviewers whose own entusiasm leads them to gush about the food rather than offering a good description. Sometimes the disappointment is totally unexpected. Sometime back a culinary journalist mentioned la Régalade to me and I said it's one of my favorite restaurants. I think I actually said it's my favorite restaurant, but that's an overstatement. She went on to tell me that she recommended it highly to a party of Americans with excellent culinary credentials and was rather shocked to hear they disliked their meal and found the food heavy and greasy. Chacun a son goût.

Pancetta is not unlike bacon, but it's not smoked and has a different flavor. We cut it into dice or matchstick pieces and cook greens (spinach, kale, chard, etc.) with it. If it's a fatty cut it can provide grease to cook with, if not you may need to add some oil, but it really provides flavor. It can provide great flavor when making chicken fricassee. It's better than bacon in Coq au Vin as it's closer to what the French would use. We like to cook dried beans with it.

Actually, every dictionary I've found says it's "caramelized," although my guess is that it's pronounced "carmelized" quite commonly.

I also had a bit of trouble with feedback between the three stars I noticed on my way into the restaurant and the "Late Night with David Letterman" T-shirt on the maître d'hôtel. Then I got hung up on the the multcolored description of a set out of blade runner, but was she saying J-G was like a club owner at 66 before he realized he was a sensualist? It was good to have seen the three star rating first, because softened mushrooms, sauce clinging in a light loose layer and "fried stiff" are not the terms that make me salivate the way three stars does. Unlike the eurotrash blogger, I wondered who determined that the soup is eaten with a spoon. I mean who determines that the dish is not from a part of the world where the soup bowl is lifted to the lips? I wondered if Martha Stewart designed the ginger ale with a "perfect" zip. Blood orange mojitos are what I want when I'm dreaming of eating food in Asian streets. A Pattaya "screams with passion fruit but is delicately bubbly." Is that a surprise, is that a place for a "but?" Knowing the food goes better with cocktails than beer or wine is a clincher and I'm convinced it's anything but a three star restaurant. I'm waiting for the correction to appear next Wednesday.

I'd not fault you if you did. Just don't expect me to react with an appraisal and appreciation for the act. . Bux, i didn't post it for your appreciation, i posted it as an example that we all get bad breaks This one was apparently lost in translation from Merkin to British. What I was trying to say, was that I would not appreciate the act that you did not do, if you did it, even though I couldn't fault it if you did. There was nothing about your earlier post that I did not appreciate. Basically, I understood you to be critical of disgusted's posts and I joined in to say that I found disgusted's posts unworth of appreciation or appraisal. I thought I was reinforcing your side on this.

Alas, I have nothing funny to say about this. From the little I've read from the very amusing Mr. Gill, I doubt he's made much of a positive contribution to culinary criticism and it's a pity this thread didn't take an enlightening tack. Where were the other funny bits? Obviously I meant to say "I have nothing funny to say about this, either."

We have a house favorite mushroom soup from an Elizabeth David cookbook that's thickened with bread.

The caul fat is just beautiful and not that easy to come by for those whose meats must come from a supermarket. I find white porcelain to be very nice and I've seen rather small ones that might serve to bake a gift pate/terrine. It's also no unthinkable to use a little round ramekin to make individual terrines. I generally weigh down the terrine as soon as it comes from the oven and remove the weight as soon as it cools. I suspect weighing it down while it's cooking will eliminate the crumbly texture, but it's also possible to weigh it down too heavily and squeeze all the fat and juice out of the meat. Jane Grigson's The Art of Charcuterie is a favorite of mine. I don't know if it's in print. It's a small book without photographs.

Rogelio, I forgot to add that when we were at Tragabuches, I enjoyed it enough to want to return, but then I was also impressed by the Hacienda Del Rosalejo near Arco De La Frontera, in some ways even more, although that was because it was so unexpected and a much more laid back restaurant. If I go that way, it's too tempting to continue in the same direction even though it would be easy to have lunch at Tragabuches and return to Málaga the same day.