Bux

Swedea, thank you for taking the time to comment on how useful you found the discussion here and to include the recommendations for meals you particularly enjoyed and valued. The exchange rate is indeed a hardship on Americans traveling to Europe, but there are in Paris, many restaurants that are still a bargain, or at least they would be in New York at the same price.

Rogilio, welcome to eGullet and thanks for that list. Victor, I have eaten in one starred restaurants that are worth the journey and I have eaten in one star restaurants that had very little distinction. The latter has been particularly true in France. In Spain perhaps, the one star restaurant may be more likely to be under rated. When replying to Eric, my immediate reaction was to question why he thought to distinguish between a Michelin starred restaurant and one that served traditional food, but then I realized my experience actually supports his contention although I don't think of Michelin as ignoring traditional food. I'm beginning to think they are turning their back on traditional food even in France where I've tended to find a creative chef at the one star place. At times I would have preferred some good traditional cuisine and upon leaving the one star restaurant, I've wondered how the food was in the unstarred place with the "boring" menu around the corner. It may be that there are few chefs who cook traditional food and those that do, especially in the French provinces, do so with such disinterest that I'm best avoiding their restaurants. I don't know the answer. My assumption that food is getting worse in France has to be tempered with a realization that perhaps I'm getting more critical. On the other hand, and I realze I'm a bit off topic, I've had exceptional and relatively traditional cuisine at a couple of places in the Loire and both had two stars.

I'm not understanding your point. But to add to your comments regarding rents and restrictions in any given locale, would you agree that the competition, in this case similar restaurants, are equally burdened? Restaurants fail, and succede all over the world, are you saying that NYC is the most difficult of all? woodburner The most difficult of all? Let's just say well above average in terms of difficulty. It looks as if you can speak for me. With the rent and overhead that must be faced with a Manhattan operation, you can't go too many months without a profit unless you've got deep pockets. It will cost a hell of a lot more to ride out any unforeseen problem or downturn in the local economy. It's a high stakes gamble. It's not just the rent, it's the codes, laws and regulations that make the initial investment so costly and the required inspections always make opening day something you can't always plan too far ahead. Exactly, and as far as restaurants failing and succeeding all over, sure they do, but they fail a lot harder when they require the kind of investment required in NYC and they fail when they might ride out a similar problem in an area that required less startup and overhead costs.

This is an interesting statement. Last year there were about three towns in Asturias with Michelin stars. All had single starred restaurants which even Michelin agrees are not ones that merit a detour. What I find interesting however is the assumption that Michelin doesn't award stars to restaurants serving traditional preparations with great skill. I don't have enough knowledge and experience depending on the guide to be consciously aware of the degree of truth in this statement, but I've thought of those places in which I have eaten so far all over Spain. The Michelin guide has led me to some very well prepared regional and traditional food, which is to say that Michelin lists these restaurants. However, as elegant and upscale as the finest tradtional restaurants have been and as excellent as the meal may have been, none of the restaurants featuring traditional preparations in which I've eaten have had a star--so far, and our travels have been fairly extensive geographically.

They have at least one other thing in common, they and their restaurants are not in NYC where rents and restrictions are very significant factors.

Croissants are a special item. I think Ceci-Cela has maintained a very high standard with most of their fruit tarts. Their lemon tarte is good too, although I haven't had that in quite a while.

I've tried to be as objective as I can be about the fact that what one wants to eat, no matter where one is, is a very subjective thing. Relative to a recent request for restaurant recommendations with some degree of focus on eating where the Parisians eat, I'd say that there are many ethnic restaurants that are far more likely to have nothing but Parisian inhabitants eating there. The tourists are searching out the French restaurants in their quest for authenticity.

I share your disdain for places that are overrun with tourists, but Paris is a destination city for visitors well armed with the gleamings of good guide books. And Paris is a city well covered by food guides. There's no escaping tourists and you can miss some excellent restaurants if you focus too much on that. There's a failry wide range of price among the restaurants I know on your list, but I think you can hold to 125 euros for three courses and a decent but inexpensive bottle of wine, with coffee and probably mineral water or an aperatif to boot at the most expensive of those I've mentioned on these pages. I've probably already spoken my piece on those I know and it looks as if you're done your research. The more recently I've eaten in a place, the more reliable my comments would be today.

Oh I don't know about the coffee. One day in Paris and I'm yearning for an Italian or Spanish espresso. I didn't get a chance to fully explore this development the last time I was in Paris, but there are lots of Spanish influences showing up all over and plenty of Jambon Pata Negra. If you're eating like a hip Parisian, you're probably ordering a plate of bellota ham this week.

Croissants seem to have gone downhill in NY again. There was a time when I found the croissants at Ceci-Cela on Spring Street, superior to even good croissants in France. They have slid considerably since. The ones at Pain Quotidien down in Grand Street, although almost twice the price, have been much better, but they have begun to suffer from great inconsistency. The least hint of humidity in the air and the crispness plummets. I'm not sure if they come from a central oven or not. The Grand Street location was a commerical bakery before Pain Quotidien moved in, yet I have the impression, the croissants are delivered to the shop. On the other hand, I've been told their bread seems better than at some other branches. We've very much enjoyed their apple/almond tart. It has a nice dense rustic cookie crumb crust and overall a nice rustic quality. For instance, the apples are unpeeled. It is perhaps, the antithesis of Payard's mousses. I've not tried any of their other cakes or pastries and truthfully, might not have tried the apple/almond tart had it not been recommended to us by someone.

The best advice I could probably give would be to discourage you. In general, high capital investments mean risk, but restaurants have one of the last successful track records of all businesses. Fine restaurants started by someone who's never owned, operated or worked in a restaurant in many capacities must have a failure rate approaching 100%. Before you get a lawyer, get a mental health consultant. All that aside, it's always nice to have a friend who owns a restaurant. So with the caveat that Fat Guy himself has said that I'd make a terrible* restaurant owner, I'm at your service with all the advice you want. *I have absolutely no sense that the customer is always right. In my experience, the customer is wrong about 95% of the time in a good restaurant. To succeed, you will need to placte all those complaining nitwits who come to your restaurant for the wrong reason and do it without letting then know they are nitwits. Wesza offered a comprehensive list of reasons why Manahattan is a particularly risky place in which to invest in a restaurant. There is no 60 mile radius applicable. There are no areas that are underserved and which will support a fine restaurant. Areas that are inaccessible to neighborhoods which house those who will be most likely to frequent a fine restaurant, are already over saturated with fine dining. There is no such thing as a landlord who isn't greedy in NYC and you can blame the tax commissioners who have no trouble answering assessment appeals with a suggestion that a use not permitted by the zoning might bring the rentals necessary to pay your real estate taxes. Your backers could be your biggest liability, especially if they have any say in running the place. You need to question their motives. Sometimes I suspect the number one reason for investing in a restaurant is to launder money. You might not want those people as partners. If they're investing as an investment, you might want to question their sanity. On the other hand, there's a great likelihood that they will expect certain consideration as diners. In a small restaurant, the need to keep a table open for an investor can hurt. What you need are investors who will be interested enough in the success of the place to give up their table at the last minute, not demand a reservation. Brooks has offered good advice here.

It's got to be interesting to any NY diner to learn more about the thoughts and opinions of anyone who's completed a stint as restaurant reviewer for the Times, but apart from his role at the Times, I still don't sense he has enough deep interest in food or respect for cooking to say much. Nevertheless, with the time spent reviewing restaurant for the NY Times behind him, he has the credentials to get more work in that line. Credentials are a valuable commodity. If the guy doing any hiring has to ever justify his decision either to a boss or stockholders, credentials are his best excuse. Picking up on what Fat Guy said earlier--"there's no reason to devote full-length reviews to so many one-star restaurants"--the French GaultMillau guide provides an interesting example. They rate restaurants on a scale of 20, although they only use 10 through 20, and have only used the rating of "20" once. What's important is that the text review of each restaurant varies in length according to the importance of the restaurant and what they have to say about it. Naturally the low teen ratings are usually accompanied by a short paragraph while the highest rated restaurants get considerably longer reviews. Reading reviews of two restaurant both rated as 19, one can often gleam a sense that although the food is equally good at both, it's more interesting at the one with the longer text. It's probably reasonable for the Times to have less to say about a satisfactory restaurant, or even a one star restaurant than a three or four star establishment. It wouldn't be unreasonable for the weekly restaurant review column to vary in the number of restaurants reviewed except for one thing. It's not reasonable for one reviewer to cover more restaurant in a year as thoroughly as is done now. To allow reviews of say a two star and one star restaurant to run simultaneously would require additional staff or a lowering of the number times a restaurant is visited. It may be that a no star place doesn't need to be visited more than once or twice once it's decided a single paragraph will suffice. It may also be that additional restaurant coverage may bring more readers and more advertising and that an additional reviewer could be hired. It could also make sense to combine the under twenty-five dollar reviews in the same column. A restaurant that offered particularly good value might escape the star rating altogether and just get a special icon for its price/quality rapport.

Which is what they do best.

I like the garlic chicken at Dim Sum GoGo, but I think it was even better at Sweet-n-Tart. I really like the flavor and variety of dumplings at Dim Sum GoGo, although I should note in both cases that I haven't been there lately. The sauteed turnip cake at Sweet-n-Tart is also exemplary. Unfortunately a few of my favorite Shanghai dishes were from Shanghai Village on Grand Street, but it disappeared from sight in October. The soup buns were contenders. They had a great Shanghai noodle soup and a dozen other dishes we loved and we were still working our way though the menu. Joe's Ginger is not the favorite that's closest to us. Love the braised bean curd with spinach and meat sauce though I'm not sure it's as good as the one I remember from the related Joe's Shanghai. Funky Broome had a lot of unusual, interesting and good dishes, but the insane noise drove me away eventually.

I find plenty of variety in French cooking. Some of it is light and plenty of it is without duck or cream. I remember a complaint from someone about not being able to find duck on the menu during a short stay in Provence. You will pretty much need to leave the repetoire to get spicey however. My opinion on this is that it depends on how long your stay is in France and how many times you've visited in the past. On the other hand, it's always seemed to me that cous cous is French cooking and Vietnamese is almost French food. Everything is relative.

Economics may play a factor, but the article referred to Canadian slaughter house standards not being met in France. We don't know exactly what standards are not being met and in fact it may only be that there's not a Canadian inspector there to verify a standard. In that case it doesn't matter whether the French standards are higher than the Canadian ones. I am of course, just speculating, but it can also be a case of having different standards or of the French not meeting some dumb standard that is nothing but the result of successful lobbying by a Canadian manufacturer or supplyer of some arcane product. Years ago, it was illegal to sell, or maybe import, beer in anything but brown bottles in Puerto Rico. That was the result of successful efforts by someone whose competitor was going to import Heineken. They made brown bottles for the Heineken beer, but they lost a distictive edge and brand recognition. We'd be foolish to assume all laws are made for the common good or that they are all reasonable.

Actually, her review starts off on very positive notes and continues that way for some time. While I don't have that much faith in her reviews, which is not to say they are a step down for the Times either, considering all of her comments and the relative value of stars, one star is not so far off the mark, and not out of line with her comments. There are too many restaurants in NY that don't reach the heights she describes in this review. No stars is really taken as a warning to avoid unless you're starving. Price has to be some consideration as well as the lower range of stars. Pre-theater prix fixe is $24.95. Restaurant week is coming up. That's when restaurants advertise a $30.04 dinner menu. My guess is that some of those restaurants are no better than Jubiliee 51. I was only sorry to hear about the fries, because I've been to the original Jubilee and loved the fries. In fact, I rarely order anything but mussels and fries there, but I'd give the original a star for those alone.

I assume by note taking, you mean the stagiaires are taking notes on what they're doing or what they're taught. Traditionally, French chefs have withheld secrets, even in their own kitchens. Some time ago, I quoted Carme Ruscalleda, chef at Sant Pau as saying in a magazine interview in Spain, that she thought the openness of the new Spanish chefs was helping spread the new Spanish cuisine all over the country and creating a movement that could not be ignored by the rest of the world. The relevance to this board, I guess, is that French cuisine today, is being influenced by Spanish cuisine as the previous generation of Spanish chefs had been influenced by the French. I'm eager to learn more about the atmosphere in the El Bulli kitchen. I can only hope Louisa will have time and online access. As soon as Louisa learns Catalan, I fully expect her to explain eGullet's importance to Adria and that he will realize the need for her to report regularly to us.

Most of us make spaghetti out of a box. Am I missing something there? Sometimes I make fresh pasta, but it's just different and rarely approaches the quality of the best packaged dry pasta from Italy. Jarred sauces vary, but there's no reason why one couldn't be excellent. Even in my local Italian shop which is one of the best in the US, they sell their own sauces. True it's a small production and sold frozen rather in a sterilized or pasteurized jar, but jarred sauce is not necessarily terrible. I'll agree on that prepackaged grated cheese. It's terrible. It's hard to find the balance using it. It's so stale that it has little taste, but once you use enough to really taste it, it can over power and ruin the sauce with its flavor.

She seems to support corporate America 100%. Wherever possible it appears she uses a prepared shelf stable product loaded with chemicals in lieu of a natural product. It appears as if she will go out of her way to find that product in stores and pay more money than she will for a natural food source. She will combine ingredients in such a way that the last ingredient will cheapen the first ingredient as long as the result is more baroque. "She takes "food" one step down from most frozen prepared foods and what's available at most fast food outlets. If I didn't know better, I'd assume her aim was to offend those who had any taste at all in the hope of drawing outrage in the belief that there's no such thing as bad publicity. Come to think of it, I don't know better. She's the advocate for Corporate America and, in my opinion, offers nothing positive, or at least nothing that will get people thinking about food in a positive way. Her recipes are for the Frankensteins of food, if Comfort Me didn't make that clear when he said "Quick, assemble the unruly mob of villagers, complete with pitchforks and torches."

More information on Are You Really Going To Eat That? at amazon.com or ecookbooks.com Richard, is there any snippet of humor or interest to this discussion you can excerpt or summarize for us as a mini review?

I find it weird that someone in California can make "California Champagne," but that no one in New York State can make "New York State California Champagne." Hell, we can't even make "NYS Napa Valley" wine. I would think the golden rule should apply. If a region can't respect the terrritorial designations of another region, it shouldn't expect anyone to respect its right to local names. On the other hand, there's a clear reason California wine makers should be pushing for the elimination of "Champagne" designation on domestic wine labels. No region producing top quality wines should need to borrow appellations to sell their stuff. The use of names protected in the country of origin is an indication that we don't think of our product as ready to stand on its own in the international market. It's a signal we shouldn't want to send. Not every one in Europe or even in France, celebrates with Champagne. I've been toasted with a host of other beverages including other sparkling wines. Champagne is the big export bubbly in France. There's plenty of Vouvray sparkling wine and Cremant in Alsace. Off hand I can't remember the local bubbly I ordered at Michel Bras as an aperatif, but it was not Champagne and it was proudly offered on the wine list at this three star restaurant that very much celebrates local traditions as well as luxury dining. I tend not to lecture on the subject unless there's already a discussion, but I vote with my wallet. If two wines are equal and competitively priced, I opt for the one that shows respect for its competition and its prospective market.

My guess is also that US slaughter houses pay quite a bit in operating fees to various governmental agencies. I've never been involved in a slaughter house, but every business with which I've been invovled has its share of paperwork, fees and taxes.

To the best of my knowledge, the USDA inspector is paid by the government. Hmm, I've been led to believe the reason we can't get any real Spanish hams is because it doesn't pay for them to have a USDA inspector. There are several scenarios that might make us both right. It could be that there's some sort of permit required before the USDA sends a man there and that there's a minimum fee for the permit that's prohibitive for a small operation, or it could be that the rules are different for foreign slaughter houses. It's one thing to have a local inspector in every domestic slaughter house. It's another to provide one in an overseas slaughter house just because they say they are thinking of exporting a few hams to the US.

A long time ago, some friends invited us over to share some strawberries and whipped cream they brought back from a weekend in the country. They were fine field ripened berries and my jaw dropped when I saw them plop Kewl Whip, or whatever it was called, on them. Whipped cream would have highlighted the berries wonderfully as would even a little thick cream that wasn't whipped. The nondairy product just ruined the berries. It greased the tongue in such a way as to shut out the berry flavor. Nothing is made better with this stuff, it is only made sweeter and I suppose the food glides off your tongue and down your gullet faster unless you gag on it. I scraped off as much of the stuff as I could and sheepishly muttered something about not really being a fan of whipped cream. I blame it, like everything else, on my mother who raised me not to say "I can't eat this shit" when I'm a guest in other people's homes. I am not a healthfood freak or a worshipper of Alice Waters and the Chef's Collaborative. I support science in the kitchen, but Cool Whip is a freak of science. Villagers with pitchforks and torches is an apt image.