Bux

Better (in Spain). Were it not for andouille, I'd be tempted to say the French can't hold a candle to the Spaniards when it comes to cured meat.

My guess is that Tony doesn't think of himself that way now, and that probably has a lot to do with why he's more likely to grow on a viewer and Rocco, unfortunately, gets on one's nerves as the show grows longer. it's not a simple matter of selling out or following a script. Lord knows Tony has had more than his share of bad lines--I don't know if he or his producers were responsible--and much of what you see on Cook's Tour is obviously prearranged if not staged, but in the end, when the cameras go home, you feel like you'd like to have a beer with him and ask a few questions. When you've finished watching The Restaurant you may be a little embarrassed and hope Rocca didn't catch you watching and that when you do meet him, it will be under better circumstances.

No argument and it's far more apparent if one spends some time in a single region, especially some reasons. Much of Spain is very conservative. I don't know Asturias, but I hear it's quite conservative. In Galicia, in a restaurant recommended to us as one with a creative chef, we found mostly traditional foods. We ordered a carpaccio of raw fish, which I would have considered contemporary in NY or Paris, but certainly not creative in either city. Its appearance here in a provincial city was striking. The waiter said it was on the menu for a decade, but it's only been in the last year that locals have come to ordering it. In another restaurant we saw sea urchin on a "creative" menu. The waiter said it's commonly eaten in Asturias, but in Galicia, we don't eat it. As for the disconnect between high and low in France and Spain, I think there's a different kind of disconnect, but France is losing the interest for artisanal quality food stuffs on a daily basis and McDonald's seem to have a greater toehold in the French provinces than in rural Spain. At the top, no one is more appreciative of quality than those willing to pay the price for bellotta quality jabugo jamon. It's nevertheless getting more and more difficult to generalize about either country.

Our dinner was dammed good too, but, as I indicated, it didn't come as near Can Fabes as we would have hoped it might. It easily merits the star Michelin has given it, but I was measuring it against Can Fabes and other opinions that it was Madrid's best restaurant. As I've only eaten in Santceloni and La Broche in Madrid--and we didn't have a tasting menu at the latter as my wife was not up to par that night--I can't really offer much opinion about how the top restaurants in Madrid might rank. Sorry if I came across as denigrating Santceloni. I suspect few people will ever run across the need to decide between Santceloni or Sant Celoni on any given night, but I was only offering an opinion relative to Santamaria's two restaurants and it should be understood that Can Fabes holds a position of incredible esteem for us. I take no issue with your implication that eGullet is not paying just attention to the traditional food of Spain, especially when and where it's excellently executed. One of the things I've mentioned in several threads is that the attraction of Spain for us, is hardly just the creative restaurants, or even the starred restaurants, but the regional and usually hearty foods that provide dimension to our travels as well as relief to what might otherwise become a string of fussy dinners. The curiosity I have about experiencing the work of the most creative chefs is almost an addiction, and understandably, in that light, a curse. Many of the meals and foods that conspire to draw me back to Spain were consumed in out of the way places that we discovered through personal recommendations and dumb luck. As a long standing francophile, I'm intrigued that I'm often luckier in Spain than in France these days.

Speaking of assaying the effects of the show outside eGullet--well someone raised that issue and another sent a questionaire to his friends--Mark, have you noticed an increase in sales for Coors light, or been subliminally influenced to recommend a Coors light? Now there's an image I find amusing. I tend to agree with you. I think he's being paid enough to risk losing his previous reputation. That's a pretty good salary for one just changing careers. Two million bucks beats a midlife crisis as motive. Every post here increases his value to NBC.

That's a good start. Pasteurization is why the cream isn't creme fraîche in the first place, but that Ultra stuff is really a crime. I wonder if the difference between the three will have as much to do with the brand as well as the product. I suspect that using three different brands of sour cream or buttermilk wouldn't produce three different tastes as well, assuming you could distinguish between the tastes of the original products.

That used to be the case. The buttermilk we find in our supermarkets today is not the by-product of hand-churned butter. The buttermilk in your grocer's dairy case is made commercially by adding a lactic acid bacteria culture to pasteurized skim or non-fat milk. At least that's what sladeums link says.

When I first started visiting France, I did not find a lot of English speaking staff, even in the few one star restaurants I visited. My experience is that Spaniards today are generally less likely to speak English than Frenchmen, especially in remote areas. I think it's also true that the Spanish have not tried to develop international gastronomic tourism as have the French or at least that they are far behind the French in that regard. An inability to speak English to guests is definitely going to hamper that kind of tourism. Your post is a useful warning to many would be tourists of potential pitfalls. I'm not disputing that. I'm only saying that there are rewards for those who persevere and that the Spanish don't owe anyone else the right to know what's going on if they don't speak the language. I've said that about the French for forty years and Pedro would have similar problems in UK or the US if he asked for a menu in Spanish orFrench instead of English.

When I said English speaking, I meant any and all people and any and all English. The rationale works the other way. How hard is it to learn a few words of Spanish, just enough to be sure you don't starve in Spain. In fact, France is closer, so I'd expect then to be prepared to explain things in French first. If you were Japanese would you be as adamant about having someone speak just a few words to ensure a basic translation. That may be an unfair comparison as English is a more universal language, and in fact, a Japanese friend of mine once complained that he had a hard time in Spain because no one spoke English. He travels all over the world depending oh his English, which is remarkable. If you've heard him speak English, you might wonder how he gets by in NY or London. I don't think Asturia really sees a lot of foreign tourists and I suspect, are happy enough without it. It's our problem. Spain is one of the least multilingual countries although that's not really true when you realize that in large parts of Spain, Castillian is becoming a second language. In Barcelona my wife asked for a tourist menu for me and I got one in Spanish. She got one in the native Catalan. I can, at times, do better with a Catalan menu than a Spanish one. Be thankful they're still willing to take your order in Castillian in the Pais Vasco. It's also unfair for either of us to compare the situation to London or New York, which are both melting pots, with Gijon where Gallegos (correct word?) and Madrileños are probably considered foreigners. But you're right in warning prospective gastronomes that the hinterlands are hard to crack.

Tony, I think you've hit another reason why Spain hasn't really become the new France. This may come as a shock to many who regard the French as chauvinists who would sooner be poked in the eye than speak English, but it's harder to find English speaking people in Spain than in France in general and in tourist places. The one thing Spanish and French menus share is that I've never seen one where the food sounds anywhere nearly as appealing when it's translated into English, even when it's accurately done. In Sevilla, our charming server, who I am sure was not Spanish and insisted on speaking to us in English, handed me a dessert menu in English. I took one look and it all sounded so boring that I said I'd skip dessert. My wife asked her to bring a Spanish menu. I could hardly decide which dessert to pick first. I have also seen the enormous English menus in restaurants that bear little resemblance to what's on the Spanish menus. It's either an old menu, or it's the one size fits all seasons. They're out of a third of the stuff and a third of the seasonal menu isn't represented at all. You can't accuse the Spanish of going out of their way to compromise to cater to the tourist, expect when they go way out of their way to pander to them for a quick euro and when you've been there, you're happy to deal with the other and hope it doesn't change and that you learn to crack the restaurant language as you may have with French. At least that's my case, although Mrs. B's first language was Spanish, so I can be a bit more relaxed than most of us. I also fear that the sloppy translations may also be a product of many years of tourism and legions, particularly of anglos, who clearly communicated the fact that they didn't really like to eat or care what they were eating if it wasn't what they ate at home. The parts of Spain that interest me most and which I find most rewarding are very often those parts where one is least likely to hear English. I'm glad you mentioned rushed service however. We've felt that in the past in Spain, but on our last trip to Madrid and Andalucia, it was particularly annoying. In two weeks there seemed to be only one or two meals that weren't rushed. One was a hopelessly understaffed place with two young and untrained waitresses. That was an almost painful reminder of the other extreme. Even in fine restaurants, courses arrived and waiters stood holding the dishes as the plates from our previous course were cleared.

All things are pretentious to the uninitiated. It's probably pretentious to assume one can tell what's pretentious if you're not the person doing it. Foreign customs are the most pretentious of course. I fully understand the problem people have with using their wine to clean the glasses. I hate it when the orchestra tunes up on my time. I mean after all shouldn't they come to the concert hall prepared to play? If the truth be told, I find the whole tasting ritual a bit obnoxious. Shouldn't a fine restaurant assure the diner that he won't have to taste off-tastes at any time during the eveing. It would be easy enough for the sommelier to taste the wine first and reject it for the diner if it's in less than perfect condition. I've seen a situation where the host tasted and approved a wine. After the entire table was served, the sommelier snuck a sip on the way to his station and came running back to recover all the glasses because he thought the wine was off. Cool, except for the embarrassment of the poor host. (It was some years ago at a venerable three star restaurant in France.) That's never happened to me, although a waiter has signaled me that he thought the cork had a off-smell when he opened a bottle and my wife has rejected a wine that I approved, but there were extenuating circumstances. The wine actually began to taste stranger after it was poured. The sommelier was unclear what was wrong. It certainly wasn't corky, but it wasn't right either. He came back later to tell us that whatever was wrong with it, was quickly getting worse. I find it pretentious for Babbo to rinse the glasses with my wine, but that's only because it's a three star restaurant and it's pretentious for a three star restaurant to assume they can offer better service than a four star restaurant. -- That's a joke, for those who are humor challenged or find sarcasm online to be pretentious. I don't have a strong opinion on the subject of doing this other than to note that it's rough going against local customs.

You do what you do and we'll do what we do. We'll meet here and take over the world.

I wouldn't be surprised if you added "El Bulli" and got a few more pages.

I had one dinner at his earlier restaurant. I thought it was very good and and remarkable bargain. There seemed to be enough finesse for me to want to see what he could do at the Bristol, but we haven't spent enough time in Paris to do all we have wanted to do or eat in all the restaurants in which we wanted to eat.

We're also looking forward to your report on Akelare. It's seemed to me that taxis in Spain are less expensive than in France or the US, but it's all relative. I've not taken a taxi for a distance as great as Lasarte is from Donostia. As we're likely to have a car, I would drive at lunch and take a taxi if at dinner. I'm glad to get a clue as to lunch time and dinner time. I find they seem to be moving earlier, at least in the international places. Recently we've made efforts to arrive at ten for dinner in Spain and found most people already seated and eating. In Madrid we had a two o'clock lunch reservation and arrived a few minutes early to find the restaurant all locked up. We returned at ten after two and the restaurant was open. Some years back we had a one o'clock reservation at Arzak. We arrived late at around 1:30. There was but one couple in the room and they were not Spaniards. At four o'clock, it seemed people were still arriving for lunch. We'll probably be planning on making 1:30 lunch reservations and 9:30 dinner reservations in the Pais Vasco. Thanks. I can tell you we saw only one or two signs for Martin when we were there three years ago. I wonder if the signs have been installed since. I wonder if they were in response to our comments about getting very lost.

Yeah, but she couldn't tell the difference between a Mitsubishi and an Mercedes. Can I trust her.

I'm sure a large glass of PX was merited by four desserts. Thanks for this reminder about the size of some tasting menus. Mrs. B. is absolutely putting her foot down about any plans I have to expect us to take two in a row without a 36 hour separation. It's clear I may have to restrict the cava or PX as well on some days. Casa Gerardo, in Prendes, appears to be open for lunch only except for Friday and Saturday evenings, but I can't imagine going to bed at two in the morning on a full stomach anyway. Did you find that many or most restaurants did their biggest business in the afternoon? Is Asturias the next, ... um, well it appears as if cocina nueva is becoming less centralized, but vserna has already said that. It makes picking an area to visit a bit more difficult decision and it means you can't come back from two or three trips as an expert. Worse yet, the tables to which I want to return, are becoming not only numerous, but scattered in Spain. As for a one star restaurant being one of Spain's best, it's been proposed by a few people here that Michelin seems to be holding back on the stars in Spain. Las Rejas in Las Pedroneras was a one star that compared favorably with two star restaurants in France for us. It may have been a little less elegant an installation, but I could not fault the ambience or service and the food was exceptional. It was also remotely located, perhaps far more so than Prendes. Spain is full of bleached northern European and American tourists looking for sun and a few art museums, but generally clueless and disinterested when it comes to the food. I find a smattering of isolated articles in glossy magazines, but even the food magazines tend to focus on the regional attractions with food taking second place. Maybe that's true of France as well. Hardcore gastronomes are perceived as a small market. It's probably an accurate perception.

It appeared to me as if several people have been voted off the island, declared the weakest link and been made to cry. "We" didn't really have a say in the other "reality" shows either. Rocco, of course, is not one of the contestants, or is he the big loser? He's the guy who came in with a pretty sterling reputation.

Suzanne, I've said much the same as you are saying about those articles, and I've been annoyed by a few other journalistic instances where she thought she was the voice of experience in areas where she just wasn't. Let's hope that's behind her. I think she's suffered as a food writer by the lack of good mentoring. We can blame it on her editors, or on her willingness to believe she was better equiped than she was, but we've been through all this before and it's time for us to move on and look at what she's been doing since those "god-awful articles." I'm glad to hear the book is more uplifting than the articles. I can't say as I will likely pick it up after reading many of the articles in the Times, but I'll read her new stuff with some hope.

Who knows what really happened or if wages were withheld to create tension and two wrongs don't make a right, but it you don't get paid on Friday, you're no longer obligated to work on Saturday or give two weeks notice. A job is not just about an employee's obligations. There's been all this talk about payroll and the need for outside payroll management companies vs. the ability of an accountant to handle the job on a permanent or temporary roll, but it's also possible to just give the staff fifty cents on the payroll dollar on account and work the rest of the check out in a week or two so they can pay their rent. It's not like there aren't millions of dollars floating around in everyone's face.

Now that you mention it, it's a lot deeper than just using one's imagination to fill in between the lines. Some people use their full powers of imagination while they're looking at something. They bring all their prejudices to the site and it so colors their vision that they leave with them intact no matter the experience. Of course that doesn't apply to you or me--or to anyone here. I often have the impression many people travel just to confirm their prejudices and reinforce the sense that their lifestyle, government, diet, plumbing, etc. is the best in the world. Unfortunately, I also get the sense my countrymen and yours are the worst in this regard. I hope it's only because they're the ones whose conversations I can eavesdrop.

I was thinking I could do a pretty good surface level survey in a month or less. I expect to be there for maybe five days. No matter what, we will devote at least as much time to Donostia as we will to Paris.

I've only had bouillabaisse in Marseille twice. Once in the sixties and then again a couple of years ago. Both seemed authentic enough in their own way. In each case, the fish and broth were served separately and served at the table, rather than plated in the kitchen, but the dish was always cooked in the kitchen and my understand was that's how it's done. I can't recall reading a description of it being cooked tableside and don't see it as advantageous. I'm sure you must have come upon that understanding from something you read and wonder what it was. Then again, we all have a tendancy to fill in the blanks as we read, at least all of us with some degree of imagination. It's possible you pictured it as being cooked tableside and then never read anything that said it wasn't. It's not so unusual to find things are not the way we've always pictured them once we actually get there.

Salmorejo, welcome to eGullet. It would be great to hear more from you. I'm not sure how much we can help you. It is very difficult to export meat products to the USA in the best of times, in the past few years, the US authorities have become even more concerned about the possibility of importing any disease that will affect the animals here and with outbreaks of hoof and mouth disease in Europe, they have been known to stop almost all imports from time to time. The first requirement by the US, is that there must be a United States Department of Agriculture representative at the slaughterhouse where the pigs are killed. His job is to see that all of the other requirements are met and I would not be surprised to learn that some of the requirements seem to make no sense. Generally speaking it's not going to be worth the expense unless you are a very large operation. It was not until recently that real Italian prosciutto was allowed into the US. I hear that real Spanish hams will be arriving in a year or so. So it is possible to export to the USA. Nevertheless, the laws are so complex and subject to change at any time, that it's not a job easily tackled without agents and advisors. It's also too complex a subject to really get definitive answers for on a board such as this. As far as slicing hams, sausages and lomo, I'm of the opinion that these should be sliced at the last moment or as close it as possible, at the retail store if not the home, but not when they are shipped from the point of origin, if quality is really important. It is not practical for me to keep a whole cured ham at home, but I like to buy it at a store where they slice it for me when I am there. In many parts of the USA, people do not have access to such a store and presliced vacuum packed ham is their only option. I don't know if you will get much more help here. Perhaps someone will have a good lead for you to go to for better information. Nevertheless, your English is very good and I hope you stay around to tell us more about Spanish foods.

What's the scoop on the Grupo Berasategui restaurants in Donostia? Are they pale imitations of Martin in Lasarte or do they hold their own in some special way? If the latter, do they rate high enough on any scale to merit inclusion in a gastronomic tour of Guipúzcoa? How much time would one have to spend in Donostia before Kukuarri or Kursaal got place your dance card? If one stayed at the NH Aránzazu, would it be crazy not to eat at least one meal at Kursaal? Having had just one meal each at Arzak (before Juan Maria semi-retired) and Martin on one night stands in the area we'd like to come back and explore Donostia in depth, but there is a surfeit of choices that is maddening. Picking just one restaurant was a chore, but picking just a few to skip is proving to be even worse, and I find myself feeling as if I miss a place if I only eat in the first rank of starred restaurants. It's like rereading a glossy food magazine or seeing a travelog.