Bux

I suspect that was the only rational assumption she could have made at the time. The act of collecting one's dog's droppings has got to seem like either the most peculiar and disgusting thing in the world, or the most considerate and civil minded action, but there's no middle ground without some cross cultural understanding. Of course this supports my position as a relativist. My friends in the Languedoc pick up after their scottie even when on rural lanes outside their tiny town. They know their neighbors think they are peculiar, but they do get invited to dinner at their neighbor's homes.

Galicia is certainly worth a visit, the only question to be answered is where would you spend the time if you didn't go to Galicia and when would you get as good a chance to take a side trip to Galicia. Our trip took several days to get there and then we spent several days in Galicia. For one thing, my wife traces her family roots to Galica and she had that curiosity going for her. Along the way we got the chance to see some sights in Burgos, Frómista, Palencia, León and Astorga. There's a kind of a gem of an early, really student like, building by Gaudi. It's not at all like his mature work in Barcelona. In June the trip might be more interesting along the coast, however. Madrid, Donostia and Barcelona are quite distant from each other. How are you traveling between them? How would you get to Galicia? If you are going to Barcelona, are you seeing and eating in other places in Catalunya? From Donostia, it might be more reasonable to tour Navarra or La Rioja, than to go all the way to Galicia. Cantabira and Asturias, both of which I have not been to, are probably worth a visit and nearer than Galica.

Although I've not seen it, I'm not surprised to find savory meat dishes with chocolate in the recipe in Spain.

What can I say about Mix that, in the context of this thread, won't be like patting myself on the back for the openess of my objective view. I had a lot of negative criticism about the design, concept, service and I think there's no excuse for any restaurant to serve Nutella to diners paying a good price for good food. Nevertheless, for all my complaints, I enjoyed my meal far more than I have in restaurants that merit little criticism from me, or from my companions at lunch. There's an emphasis on "meriting" criticism, if that makes sense to people. Fat Guy probably summed up my initial reaction in his review before I ever ate there and without naming me. Mix is an odd restaurant for me. I'm far more likely to recommend it, than make a reservation for myself. I'm not likely to suggest it as place to meet friends, but would gladly accept the suggestion to meet there for dinner if someone else suggested it. I respect the restaurant much more than I like it. I have no trouble rising above the affectations that annoy me in order to get at the food. If I ate out as often as Felonius, I might also find a regular place for Mix in my mix. In the meantime, I'm happy to take swipes at those affectations, but if I was being paid an honest price for an honest opinion I couldn't dismiss Mix as some critics have done. There is however, a great tradition for this kind of "review," and it's popularized in literature and movies. There are many arguments against Ducasse and his restaurants that are supportable. A brush off or dismissal of AD/NY or Mix, is not particularly supportable in my humble opinion.

In spite of the poor exchange rate, (from my point of view, not a European's) Paris seems to excel in offereing notable meals at this price. I don't know of places in NY where I can eat so well for the price. It helps these days to have done some research before hand however. the bad meals are there to be had, or avoided if you can. I suspect you did your homework and tried new places with a careful eye.

It is a good way to start and to develop a sense of what goes with what, and I don't mean to imply there are no standards at all when I say the combinations you enjoy are the ones you should make. For one thing the accepted combinations are ones that are enjoyed by many people. Any combination you like is valid for you, but it's often best to understand the commonly accepted pairings when you're seving others. Once we get past the basics, it can get complicated quickly and pat asnwers such as white wine or red wine never get us very far. Often a first choice may be a certain white wine and the second choice may be a red wine rather than a different white wine. Beware of cliches. Although my French is not very good, I often buy copies of certain food and wine magazines when I'm in France. One of the types of articles I get a kick out of, are the ones that ask a panel of reputable food and wine people to select wine pairings for a menu. Rarely do we get a unanimous decision on any course and not infrequently we'll see some great disparity of opinion, but within that disparity, there are also some universals.

The facts of life: A stint in kitchens such as Ducasse or El Bulli is going to be very helpful in getting that next position. EGullet is where one might expect to run into cooks who have worked or are on their way to a stage at El Bulli.

I am continually harping on the affordability of wine in Spain. The entry level prices for wine in almost all the restaurants I've been in, is far below the price of the least expensive bottles in comparable NY restaurants. The mark up on better wines seems so much less than in NY, but that may just be due to the lower retail prices in Spain. Restraurants alo seem far more eager to sell you a bottle of wine that doesn't necessarily compete with the food for attention. For the average diner who's interested in good food, but who isn't yet a connoisseur of Spanish wines, it means he can comfortably spend less on wines and learn about them from the bottom. This also makes better restaurants more affordable to many diners on a budget. By no means do I wish to imply that the sommeliers I've run across aren't ready, willing and able to help you choose a fine bottle of wine that suits your taste, it's just that I haven't experienced much in the way of upselling. There are tremendous cultural ties between Spain and most of it's old colonies. Trade between Spain and latin countries much closer to the US is quite strong. For all that, the Latin American restaurants I've noticed don't seem particularly authentic in Spain. It's possible that I've just not passed by the right restaurants, or that Spanish diners have been too conservative for too long. There's a thread I started about Asian restaurants in Madrid that seems to highlight a new interest in foreign foods. I would think Madrid is also ready for some good Latin American food. I don't know about Barcelona, but I've always felt Barcelona was a much more progressive city than Madrid. It does appear that may be changing. On our last visit to Madrid, I recall passing a place with a Cuban sounding name, only to peruse the menu, which read like a watered down Mexican menu--and I'm from NY, hardly the place to get good Mexican food.

Tommy, please clue us in on how you determined that? I don't know that I'd use "stick up his/her ass" to describe my problem with that assessment, but it didn't lend credence to what followed. The problem with AD/NY may well have been Ducasse's inexperience with a broad spectrum of Americans, particularly with journalists writing for a mass audience. One doesn't have to be a rocket scientist to understand that wasn't the intended audience and that shoudn't have been the one to read if we wanted an appreciation of the restaurant. Bear in mind that when I wrote about Mix here in the NY board, I found what I thought were mistakes and I had plenty of crticism to offer, but I didn't see a need to use the tone I found in the Gourmet review. There's enough substance to the food and to the entire concept, not to overlook the mistakes, but to criticize those mistakes in context and to focus on the substance.

Thanks for sharing that. Welcome to eGullet. You mentioned that it was expensive for Barcelona. Do you remember how much dinner cost? We can find purpple potatoes in NY, but I'm interested in the chocolate alioli. I gather the chocolate was used very subtlly if you couldn't taste it. Over the past few years, I've had several game dishes that used chocolate in the sauce, all of them in France, by the way. In some cases the taste of chocolate was quite pronounced in the sauce. In all cases it's been a delicious success. The Mexicans have been using chocolate with meat for a long time.

It was mentioned in the Restaurants in Dordogne thread. It was a reference to Leslie Brenner's article on the area in the March 2003 issue of Travel and Liesure

That would be a very fair understatement about our meal there. Six years ago, prices were much lower and we drank local whites and reds. At that time, Veyrat's inspiration and experimentation were tied to the local produce and the wild plants of the local Alps, but the results seemed classic. Vmilor describes another sort of food than what he produced then. Clearly, I might be disappointed today, but it's a risk I'd like to take someday.

I'm not particularly a dog person, but I've found that some of my friends' dogs have an endearing personality. I've also experienced a degree of allergic reaction especially while staying in the French home of friends whose dog sleeps by the radiator, during the winter when the windows and doors are generally kept closed. They, by the way will not take their dog to a nice restaurant, but I suppose it's because they've spoiled her at home and she can't be expected to behave as a well brought up French dog should in public. In spite of, or maybe because of all that, I've come to expect dogs in restaurants in France as much as I've come to not expect them here in the US. It's also my experience that what works for the French may not work here and vice versa. Pan has spoken well on this and because it's all part of the experience of learning how people live in different places, it's worth discussing here as long as we can avoid the personal and cultural put downs. As for Starbucks, while in spite of allergic reactions, dogs have not been a problem for me in France, but tobacco smoke has. I'm not sure if the no smoking rule will make Starbucks more appealing or not, but I've found that when we visit Paris in the winter when cafés are sealed from the elements, we tend to take breakfasts at salons du thé as they are invariably less smokey. We do this in spite of the fact that cafés are more suited to my image of "my Paris." We, as humans, are quite adaptable. I will adapt to the smoke, or I will adapt to a revised immediate environment. I suspect the quality of the coffee will be a major factor in my ultimate choice and I have become more demanding about my coffee lately. There are few enough people who really know how to pull a good espresso and those that do, do not work at Starbucks by and large. It's my experience that Starbucks does not make its profit serving espresso either. A Viennese teenager I met the other day, wondered if she could get the hot white chocolate drink she had here, in Vienna and if she could make it at home. Maybe it's not realistic to think Starbucks is going after the traditional café market.

Brilliant would be a fair description of our meal six years ago. Almost all of it was inventive, none of it was shocking and all of it was superbly well prepared. I managed to finish off those extra courses not out of hunger, obligation or politeness, but soley because I just couldn't stop myself from having just another taste until it was gone. The Lutetia has had a one star restaurant for as long as I can remember, but Veyrat would be a feather in its cap.

Busboy, you've got them arranged by geography which according to all tradition means you're correct. Each of the wines and cheeses in your pairing, grew up with each other so to speak and one assumes the foods of any region have developed an affinity for each other. We can also assume the less party line expanation that people learned to associate certain foods with certain wines because that was what was locally available, but either way it makes some sense.

Freckles, I think you make my point. What we want as tourists traveling abroad is not what we want at home everyday and it's not what locals want all the time either. A cup of coffee to go doesn't interfere with anyone's use of a cafe. If you have time and an interest in lingering, you will sit in a cafe in spite of Starbucks. Incidently, Starbucks provides an atmosphere conducive to lingering in most of it's NYC shops. In fact, its uphostered lounge chairs are far more comfortable long term than cafe chairs. I do regret the homogenization of the world and I miss both the little mom and pop shops and the great institutions of unique quality both at home and abroad. What Starbucks doesn't offer is really great espresso, but I'm less and less impressed with espresso in France. I prefer coffee in Italy or Spain anyway.

We had lunch at Veyrat's restaurant outside of Annecy almost six years ago. I was quite prepared to dismiss him and his cooking as overly affected from what I had read. My curiosity and my lack of general acceptance of what's said in most restaurant reviews was enough to get me to go there in spite of the anticipated price and low expectation. As a side note, when a person gets to be a celebrtity chef, he's going to draw lots of criticism from writers whose audience is heavily populated with readers who want to hear that this very expensive food is really the emperor's new clothes. This is a partially why I don't pay much critical attention to what's written about famous chefs in the general media and I count most of what's written in the glossy food magazines as aimed at a general audience except when it's aimed the other way--that is to say, aimed at the top bracket of disposable incomes in an effort to attract advertisers. Okay. The short answer is that we found very little in the way of affectation. We were excited and pleased with our meal and thought it offered good value even at the price. I'll also note that for some reason, Veyrat interrupted our service as we were ordering cheese and decided to send out several more courses on top of all those we had already recieved in our tasting menu. I'm not sure why. Either he just felt we really appreciated his food, or Mrs. B's active note taking made him think she was someone else. Since then, I've heard several reports that he's changed his style and may have gone off the deep end, but I've heard that about other restaurants I've enjoyed and I've heard great reports from people I respect about restaurants I thought were on shaky ground. There's always going to be a lot of subjectivity to taste. Go with your curiosity, if you can afford it. If you're going to regret having a disappointing meal more than possibly missing an exciting one, that's a different story. If price is a concern, and it was for us, you can consider staying in Annecy and dining at Veyrat. We stayed in the Imperial Palace with a wonderful view of the lake. Rates are about half that of Veyrat's Auberge de l'Eridan, and it's the most expensive hotel in Annecy. You can easily cut that cost in half again by staying in a more modest, but comfortable hotel.

Agreed, I'd rather read one intelligently written rave than look at a compliation of scores anyway.

For a novice, I might suggest a place with carts so you can look at the offerings and pick and choose. I've liked Oriental Pearl just north of Canal on Mott Street, but haven't been there for a while.

I was being a bit facetious, as well as covering for your mental condition.

The Mobil guides have always been a bit suspect in my mind. There was a recent thread on eGullet discussing the latest ratings. While unconvincing within areas I knew, they were wildly inconsitent from region to region. It very much seemed to me that they were the result of a dedicated bureaucrats working off a corporate checklist and not the opinions of critics with educated palates. Comments made on the thread citing some of the guidelines, seemed to support this view. Cincinnatti is a good example. While I've never been there, an associate with a trusted palate who dined at the five star restaurant and reported that it couldn't hold a candle to the top places in NYC. It had the style of a fine French restaurant, but not the substance. The serving of any wine isn't really shocking unless one has tasted the wine. Your own comments suggest a Macon Blanc can compete with a Mersault, but I find Bruce's comments on the wine to be fair. I've rarely found wine pairings represent good value except when I've been recognized as a friend of the house. Wine pairing can be very subjective and I appreciate a sommelier's attempt to make an unusual one for me, if he honestly believes it's an interesting one. Nevertheless, for Bruce, the weakness in the pairings at AD/NY was in having two out of four wines not pair well with the food and the price. A couple of weeks ago, I was comped dessert wines at two different restaurants. Sadly they didn't support the desserts we had all that well. Fortunately they were delivered before the desserts arrived and we were able to enjoy them by themselves. Good pairings improve the food, bad pairings can actually detract. And it still has five stars. "Continental," if I may be so bold, doesn't support the image of five star food for me either. This post doesn't help convince me that Mobil is reliable at the level of Ducasse food, although I believe AD/NY has five stars. The service and style of AD/NY does set it apart in NY as do the wine mark ups.

There actually was a fair selection of full bottles under $100. We had a Sancerre for 88 euros and there was a selection of Loires and other wines for less than that. I was just a bit shocked not to find a half bottle of red under 100 euros, although I was looking for something closer to 75 euros and thought 22 euros a bit steep for the glasses we had. Water and coffee was probably less expensive than in a top NY place (I rarely drink bottled water in NY and usually do in Europe, habits die hard.) Beverages--one bottle plus two glasses of wine, one bottle of sparkling water and two espressos--amounted to no more than 20% of the total tab, which is, I think, low. To borrow a phrase, perhaps I should say "Sorry. Overstated." In fact, there were plenty of full bottles of red that were less expensive than the half bottles, but I really didn't want to finish a bottle and I hate to leave over as much as a half bottle of wine. It was an expensive meal, but I speak highly of the food. There was a single sore spot that sticks in my mind, but didn't spoil my evening. Next time I'll see we start a red wine earlier in the meal. PS, having read further down the thread and taken a detour to the AD/NY wine list, I take it all back and thank Alain Passard for his very reasonable wine list. At $22 a glass, I almost feel as if I drank there on a scholarship.

I wonder how many restaurants sell the business and at how much profit or loss. My uneducated guess is that most sales occur when the restaurant goes out of business and is forced to sell the assets at a loss. Is this a fair assumption? How often has a new restaurant evver moved into an old restaurant location without renovating the dining room extensively? I wonder how much kitchen renovation is done as well. Wear and tear on chairs, carpets, tableware, etc, is very high anyway and successful restaurants look shabby rather quickly anyway. It would seem that a good part of the investment much be depreciated and affect the real bottom line, but I don't really know about this.

I think you're going to have a hard time agreeing on the definition of "non-fancy." Daniel Boulud intended his Cafe Boulud to be the non-fancy alternative to Daniel, where locals could come in for dinner in jeans and a sweater. Many of the "locals" sleep in pajamas and a tie, or so I am led to believe, but it's still the non-fancy alternative for some, yet probably fairly high up in the very fancy category overall for Manhattan. Mix is the non-fancy alternative to AD/NY, but probably way too fancy for this list. Lugar's price is probably too fancy, even if it has sawdust on the floor. The tavern room at Gramercy Tavern is certainly the non-fancy side of a restaurant that doesn't have a dress code in the "fancy" side. I've rarely walked out of there without feeling I've had a bargain meal. It is nevertheless, fancier than Katz's where a sandwich will cost more than an appetizer at the tavern. There are restaurants in Chinatown with rather nice atmospheres and attentive service, that are still far less expensive than many informal midtown restaurants, if not as inexpensive as some dive restaurants in Chinatown. I think any attempt at a poll is looking for disaster. Generally speaking I'd rather read one intelligently written rave than look at a compliation of scores anyway.

Speaking from ADPA - for my ADNY brethern - Yes. Not enough. Probably done by some unpaid stagiaire who's doing it for the letter of recommendation. Forget salary. He, or she, is probably figuring out how to hide the quarter round pieces of carrot and potato because he's been told they should all be perfect dice and there should be no waste. Okay, I exaggerate--a bit. I remember the comment of one of my companions at our first meal at El Bulli. It went something along the lines of "that was some fucking labor intensive meal." Not so much at my meal at AD/NY, but at AD/PA there was a dish or two that may have had it beat on that level. If nothing else, Louisa will be well prepared.