Bux

Is that per person, or is London so much less expensive than Paris. Let me tell you that it adds up a lot faster when they drop flag at 600 euros for two tasting menus at Arpege. At those prices it hardly pays to be married.

I rather enjoyed your post and had a strange kind of sympathy for you as it was clear to me from the original post that you were out of your element. I think your followup should clear the air in regard to the Craig 'n' Andy debate. I think it was a question of the wrong diner in the right restaurant at the wrong time in his life, or the right diner in the wrong restaurant or whatever. I hope something was learned here just from the experience and I hope our members can add to the lesson, although no doubt, it will never become a lesson worth the price. Learning the hard way is no fun. Suffering criticism when you need sympathy is no fun, but you're likely to get more of the first than the latter. For starters it's "palate" as in the roof of your mouth or sense of taste. I'm determined your next post on food will sound more educated whether you become a connoisseur of the food I love or go on to a career of putting down haute cuisine like many reporters in America. Granted, my initial urge is to assume everyone has the same experience I had at CT but it's possible that had I had your meal, my opinion of the restaurant would be different than it was from my meal there. I'm from NY and was just visiting relatives elsewhere in Illinois. By the way, I'd be house bound, if not comatose if I allowed raving lunatics to drive me from public transportation. Mary Lew Retton trained long and hard. She didn't just walk into a gym and excel. Your challenge was to learn about haute cuisine of this sort, not to walk into CT and get a great meal. Your comments about the guide books are amusing, but they are also a clue, you didn't have any fluency in reading them. From the moment you enter the restaurant I sense your "projection"more than anything else. You felt you were out of your element and suspected they could tell and you imagined how they would treat you. I understand all that. Dining well is neither a spectator sport nor passive activity. Bellinis are not a wise start if budget is a concern. Bellinis in lieu of wine with dinner is not going to be seen as a sophisticated move nor clue the staff that you are her for the enjoyment of the food. Lots of sophisticated connoisseurs order cocktails and Bellinis, but it you want to send a signal to the waitstaff, and indirectly to the kitchen, that you are there not for a night out, but for the food, order wine with dinner, not a cocktail. The Bellinis were a signal that money was not an issue. Cocktails raise the tab and don't contribute to the enjoyment of haute cuisine the way wine does. Following cocktails with a disinterest in wine sends the signal that your interest in food is minimal, at worst, or that you're unknowledgeable, at best. Nevertheless, I think you projected a far worse attitude than just acting like a couple of kids with a bit of money to burn that evening and that you never gave them or the food a chance. Better luck next time. I mean that sincerely. I don't like people to have bad restaurant experiences. It's not good for restaurants or the people that enjoy them. I'd say that luck should have much less to do with happiness in a restaurant than it did in your case and my advice is to choose your restaurants more wisely with your interests and budget in mind and to learn slowly about food that intrigues you, but which you don't understand. Had you been to an Ethiopian or Indian restaurant and the host or waiter behaved in some manner you found peculiar, I'll bet you might not have been so eager to make fun of him behind his back. Your use of the word "alien" was probably good. The two of you had an experience in an alien environment.

Actually, for one paricular French chef (in Washington DC?) is was easy to dismiss Adria's food as shit after eating there. After reading Tony's rather eloquent post, I think very few people are going to accept the idea that Adria intends, or succeeds, in serving crap to his guests. It's unfair perhaps, for me to berate a chef or his opinions, if he's never going to post here and I suspect said chef is not a likely eGullet member because I see no evidence of an interest in thinking about food or cooking beyond that which he already excels in doing. I've had bad meals from chefs who seem to be trying to emulate Adria. I've had meals that were most unsuccessful and still left me curious as to what the chef might eventually accomplish. I have a hard time with conservatism that's blindly defensive. Tony's post may not be the best or most definitive post on Adria, but it's one of the most compelling for dealing with both the simplicity of Adria's concerns with the underlying metaphsyical aspect of recreating the world. I think it's fair to express the opinion that cherries in ham fat tastes like shit, but only so long as one makes it clear that one knows it's really not shit. I don't know if French chef knows the difference, or if he just can't explain it as well as Bourdain, but I have a need to put down statements I feel encourage people to limit their outlook and a similar reaction in the other direction when I read perceptive posts like this one. By the way, I think it's "espardenyas" in Catalan and "espardeñas" in Spanish, but I have a terrible memory and am consequently a terrible speller. We had a long and informative discussion on this subject, but the information therein is overshadowed by my memory of "sea cucumbers" at El Bulli and Can Fabes. Sometimes eating is better than talking about food.

Clearly, it's not simply the best chefs, but those invovled with new restaurants or with those who have brought something new to an existing restaurant. After one meal each at Atelier and Oceana, I have no problem with anyone or any article bringing positive attention to Gabriel Kreuther or Cornelius Gallagher. I've always like Tom Valenti's cooking and am eager to try Cesca. Are there chefs of equal talent around town who haven't been involved in a new project? Sure.

What a bunch of cynics. It's not about kickbacks and nepotism. It's about what sells magazines. It has some value if it brings attention to the deserving chefs. If the public thinks this is a definitive list, then we're poorly served, but get what we deserve.

I thought it came out as fwahgra, rhyming with viagra, on Iron Chef. I think it took a couple of shows for me to understand they were speaking of a traditional French specialty and not some unfamiliar Japanese product. I suspect the people who order "frog wah" may be affected by Iron Chef. Then again they may have lived on Lawn Guyland. There's a poetic appeal to "frog wah" or at least to the way it starts. "Engorged goose or duck liver ... that's ninety percent fat" has got to drive up the sales. I have an American friend who spends much of his year in the company of those whose native language is French and who speak no English. For a decade or more he's spent at least a few months a year in rural France and his friends and neighbors are mostly French. Of course all the merchants he deals with are French. He still manages to order a couple of wines whose names start with something that comes out as "poolly." So how is it handled at the restaurant? Restaurant staff should have two conflicting responsibilties here. One is not to embarrass the clientele and the other is to help him not embarrass himself elsewhere. So I'm hosting a table of eight and you (or the waiter and captain) are hoping for a nice tip. I order the foy grass. It's possible someone in the party already knows better. Do you save the host the embarrassment of repeating his error, or do you ignore it? Do you use his pronounciation to make him feel comfortable and allow him the opportunity to say that's just how the sommelier at xxx pronounced it last week, when he's corrected elsewhere. When the suave debonair host says there's glass in his salad, do you take it away and bring one without fleur de sel and let him spread rumors about the time he found ground glass in his salad at the restaurant or do you correct him in front of his friends and guests? Whatever you do, is it the tip, politics, or etiquette that drives your response? Did you intent to write "pronouncin" in the topic title?

Your own focus on getting a meal there when Paris has so many fine restaurants belies that statement. L'Astrance is not the one who's making it hard to reserve, the (too) many people who want to eat there are responsible. It's hard to say how much better off you'd fare having your concierge call. I've heard from one concierge that it is a very difficult reservation to get. You might do much better if you knew a regular or friend of the chef. The problem with concierges is that they send transients who are unlikely to become regulars and most restaurants like to take care of their regulars first. I think this is true all over the world. L'Astrance is also a small restaurant and probably can't afford to keep a table open until the last minute as some restaurants might do. It's a fact that many top restaurants keep a table open for visiting chefs or VIPs. There's one other problem with transient traffic referred by hotel concierges, it seems Americans already have a reputation in some places in Paris as ill mannered people who might be "no shows." We've had this discussion before in relation to getting a reservation at l'Astrance and in general. A small restaurant like l'Astrance, running at its small profit margin, cannot afford no shows. Nor can it afford the tourist who "must" eat at a restaurant he's heard about, but who shows up and orders a salad and dessert. In NYC for instance, the concierge referral is more likely to show up than the local diner and he's likely to be a good tipper. In Paris, he may be a good tipper, but he's not likely to be the best customer for the owner. Nevertheless, a concierge at a good hotel, has generally worked hard at making his contacts and can probably do better than a foreigner calling cold. That said, a concierge was able to book Gagnaire for me and unable to book l'Astrance on one trip. We generally make our own calls, but we have been known to ask for favors from someone in the industry who knows a particular chef from time to time. I'm not sure it will guarantee a reservation (in fact, sometimes it hasn't) but it will get us some recognition and will waylay any fears we are one of those unknowledgeable diners who just eat at name restaurants.

I'm not aware of any. Louisa should have a better idea.

We ate in les Bookinistes several years ago. I think it may even have been the year it opened. I thought the food was quite good and rather inventive at the time. They seemed almost eager to speak English, but I didn't find it touristy. As I said, it was years ago. L'Astrance is a tough reservation to get. A year ago we tried with no luck and this year we gave it a halfhearted try with only a week's notice. No suprise we didn't get a reservation. I would like to go back and someday I'll make the extra effort again. I wish I had a recommendation. In recent visits, we seem to be splitting our time between the low end (under a hundred dollars a couple) and the high end (under a hundred dollars a spoonful--just kidding, almost).

But what would either be without the pressure applied to them? But, if you have to clean the bag, I'm also not sure I see the clear advantage of the bag over a teflon pan for grilling the cheese sandwich. Can you clean the bags in the dishwasher? Why don't you just get the big automatic machine. The grilled cheese sandwich machine is the one at the right. The machine in the foreground served hot dogs. In all fairness to the citizenry of Logroño, I didn't see anyone actually use either machine while the tapas bars in the area were all packed to the brim, but Logroño must have it's share of junkies with the late night munchies. Who the hell would buy a hot dog from a machine when you can get jamon and fried clamari down the street?

I absolutely agree with what you say there and how you express it, with the possible exception that I'd modify the last sentence to note that although any dish served may be perceived as "experimental," it has been thoroughly tested in Adria's kitchen/laboratory and probably perfected. I may have felt an experiment has gone awry, but I never felt lke a guinea pig. Perhaps I should add that at no time in two meals did I ever feel as if I was participating in a fraternity hazing. I think that's the feeling some may have about El Bulli and I feel it's totally misguided.

I've never had a tripe sandwich. It's nice to know there's something out there for me to try if I ever get tired of my current tripe favorites. As if ... I've given up on trying to get a real French andouille, or andouillette in New York, but surely there's some place that serves a good tripe stew in Manhattan outside of Chinatown. My guess is that it might be a neighborhood Italian restaurtant. I'm not looking for a recreation of any particular style I've loved in Europe. I watched a friend consume a bowlful of trip in Cafe Boulud and he declared it the best he's had. I wasn't too jealous at the time as my order was also excellent, but it was a lost opportunity as it's not often on the menu--as in I haven't seen it appear again. So, where do I go in New York for tripe stew?

First no problem with a little disrespectfulness on the board anyway, assuming it's done properly with good intentions. I guess I'm left behind in that I haven't had the sense Adria was at all interested in the taboo. I didn't see the food going in that direction or coming from that direction. I suppose he mixed salty with sweet in a way that was not part of our culinary vocabulary, but I don't think of that as breaking taboos. This is what he does though. He plays with tastes and textures, but always with things that are natural to eat in his culture. He emulsifies things, he freezes them, he explodes them, he liquifies them and he combines flavors, but I havebn't seen him work with nasty things. I think you've been illserved by the comments made by that chef and pointed in the wrong direction. I would not be surprised to find the same items he uses, on the menu in, say, Michel Bras or Georges Blanc. What is surprising is how he uses these foods. Perhaps one of us should make a list of all the foods he's used and see where that leads us.

I still feel Joe's question--would you eat shit if it was served at El Bulli, is just like asking when you stopped beating your wife.

Sam, forgive me. Where did I get the idea you spent some childhood time in the NC woods?

Joe, I wonder if this post has any relevance to El Bulli at all. Nothing I had there in two meals even remotely resembled anything that was inedible. Nothing was unpleasant. Nothing was so weird or strange in a way that made it distasteful. What if Thomas Keller were to serve feces? Would you eat it? Would you ask me what I'd do if Thomas Keller served feces? That's a critical question. Feces would just be unthinkable at either place. Whatever got into your chef's mind. I'm glad I don't have confirmation of your DC chef's name.

This is an interesting subject. I suspect there's less in Adria's cooking than in most of his creative peers. That's if he has peers. So many seem to want to put him out of the competition. He holds a place in Spanish and maybe European cuisine that is further removed from his contemporaries than Ducasse or Robuchon. I'd suggest you will always find some roots in any artist's work, or chef's cooking. I'd also suggest the subject would be more interesting if it included other avant garde chefs, or the whole lot of them. Some interesting things have already been said elsewhere on this board. I'd also have to admit that I don't often get the deconstruction thing as I don't have the familiarity with regional Spanish cuisine. In essence, I often just understand dishes by their satisfaction level and miss the intellectual point. There was a quote from a chef who noted that his food couldn't be appreciated by someone who didn't have his background. There's another subject. I think he's entitled to that attitude, although it's bad business.

Re: your edit There's no logic in saying something stupid and then calling it a demonstration of how silly someone else's point was. As for Sam's statement, all you can really say is that perhaps it's unfortunate that has childhood memories of living in an area of the country where squirrel brains are eaten. Then again I'd hold that it's unreasonable to turn one's nose up at the thought of eating squirrel brains unless one's had them. I doubt you'll ever see me criticizing them as food.

How many times must you call someone pathetic to prove you're not trying to get personal? What was there to discuss? I never implied Spaniards ate rabbit brains. I implied that they ate brains and rabbits and thus the combination was far less alien to Spanish or Catalan food than many of Adria's other dishes. Hey, what's an "interparation?" Remember, no one calls me a "genious." I didn't imply you didn't know what "tocino de cielo" was, but you didn't use the term, you used an English translation and I was trying to clarify the point in my own mind as well as provide information. Given the way you stepped into this thread, I had good reason to ask quite timidly as I did without making assumptions or offering my interpretation. My guess is that many members are unfamilar with the dessert. There's a difference between putting words in the mouth of another poster, interpreting his words and adding supporting information that makes the thread more meaningful to those reading along.

Boris asked earlier about the tradition of eating rabbit kidneys. It's not uncommon to find them stuffing a a loin or other cut of rabbit or appearing as part of a garnish for a rabbit dish. Last year I seem to recall both my wife and I having some such dish in different restaurants in France and also having a similar preparation here in NY. Perhaps it was a fad last year.

There's poverty all over the world and no shortage in parts of western Europe. Spain, however, has missed most of the post war boom in Europe while it was ostracized under Franco. Vserna recently expressed the opinion that a 20th century history of widespread poverty and repression might be the cause for the less liesurely attitude Spaniards have towards dining than their nieghbors to the north.

Perhaps Zagat is on target here, but the fact that it's a popularity contest is precisely why I find their surveys unreliable. It may be that the local Parisians don't partcipate in the Paris Zagat and that as a result it has a rarified group of contributors. I know Paris is not what it was in the sixties when I first visited. It's all too easy to get bad food. Last month there was a pretty little cafe/brasserie on our corner and it was always full at lunch time. One day went in to get a light bite--some croque or salade--and were thoroughly disappointed by what we had, and that was without seeing the waiter drop a basket of bread, pick the pieces off the floor and serve the bread. I used to advise Europeans coming to NY that a full house was not necessarily a sign the food was good. Sadly that's true in Paris as well nowadays. Still, if the confit is good it's worth knowing about. Is it?

I think this addresses my post very well. It would be foolish, if not mean, for me not to mention the bumps to any prospective diner. I don't mean to to deny their existence although I'll argue they're part of the excitement.

May I know if this is a reference to "tocino en cielo?" I'm not sure what you've read about Adria's "bacon from heaven." Whatever dish you're describing would be even better understood if you mentioned that "tocino en cielo?" is a rich custard dessert with no actual connection to pork or pork fat, but the closest relative to the Spanish tocino in American cooking might be fat back. Thus if Adria is making a dish that actually combines pork or bacon with a sweet, there would be a pun that goes at least a layer deeper than your post implies. I suppose the origin of the name of the traditional dessert goes back in time and that someone must have said this is as rich as pure lard, but it tastes like lard that went to heaven and came back.

Mine too, you would think that world famous chefs could spell. Good ears. I can barely see the difference between genius and genious, let alone hear the difference. Your eyes hear better than mine see. Let's look at what we said before you went on to such extremes putting words in my mouth and then absurdly drawing "catfish testicles" into the discussion. This is not logical. I think that you would have to look long and hard to find a tradition of regularly eating rabbit brains in any of the countries you have mentioned. I did not say there was a tradition of eating rabbit brains in Spain, nor did I even make note that one Spanish citizen here seemed to think rabbit brains was not an odd food. All I said was that since brains and rabbits were both widely eaten in Spain, I did not find Adria's use of rabbit brains in a dish a sign he was moving away from his traditions. One is better advised to look at his other dishes for that. The logical point I was making is that there are many instances where Adria combines ingredients further removed from his traditions and that Joe displays too great an unfamiliarity with the food by using rabbit brains as an example. My point is not about Adria's creativity here as much as the value of experience when talking about a restaurant or a chef. I don't understand the need to drag this out in a form that precludes the inquisitive interest in understanding my post. Putting words in another poster's mouth is hardly constructive. I'll write my words and make my points. If they're not clear, to you or to others, I'm open to questions far more than I am to ridicule. As for the members, I trust them to understand my points without your interpretation. Sam gets it. I'm sorry to see you jump into the middle of a thread and go the route of catfish testicles to undermine my post, my points and the discussion at hand.