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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.

It seemed as if the camera's were on these three, the night they played hookey and didn't go to the hospital. a) Rocco had to know all about it before hand, as it was scripted, but didn't tell his mother. b) NBC knew about it all along, but didn't tell Rocco. c) That scene, perhaps like many others, was "re-enacted" for the cameras after the cooks were fired.

Never had brunch at Eleven Madison Park, but lunch and dinner is good. What's on the menu for brunch?

Cautionary? Can she tell you how she ever got this notion into her head? That she even cites a time period like two weeks ago is most strange. Does she think she read it someplace and that she gets her information quicker than the consulate? My wife is a travel agent and France is a favorite destination for many of her clients. If anyone should be cautious about their advice, it would be her. Nether she nor her associates are advising US tourists bound for France for periods of less than 90 days to get visas. It's not that easy to keep clients these days when travel agents must charge fees for many of their services. You don't stay in business giving out bad advice.

java scrpt error /// If you had the right plug-in, you would be watching a QuickTime movie of Jason in his Mitsubishi, picking up Fat Guy who's standing on the corner drinking a Coor's light in a long neck bottle. As Fat Guy gets in, Jason flashes his platinum AmEx card and says let's go to Rocco's, it's my treat, on the eGullet account.

All of that is true, but I admire your humilty, false or real. I see the attraction of the media opportunity and I think most chefs would have at least considered doing what I expected this show to be, but I don't know what this will enable for Rocco. I don't see the end as in the sense that Cook's Tour enabled you to travel. Was this what it took to open Rocco's? If so, is Rocco's credibility enhanced? I assume not if this was really a tactical misstep. Then again, I understand Rocco got a nice pile of change and a well stuffed bank account is an end in itself. It's also not unlikely that Rocco's Momma's Recipes would outsell Union Pacific, the Cookbook. Nevertheless, I see few parallels between where Rocco can take this and say Cook's Tour. Tell me about the dialogue you had with Ripert though. Was it staged, rehearsed, totally for the cameras or fairly natural? Was it for you or Rocco? Was it poorly edited or did it just feel that way because of the context? The interior design of the restaurant looks as if it were done by the guys who edited that tapes.

Too much talk so far about "real" as if it was a component of "reality tv." What ties this to other reality shows and what all reality tv seems to have in common is that someone, or more than one, gets embarrassed, put down, rejected, or broken in spirit, possibly to the point of tears, and we get to call it entertainment. The public isn't supposed to root for someone to get the million dollars or marry the millionaire, we're supposed to want to see at least one person told they're the weak link, get rejected, voted off the island and sent packing. Shame on the three cooks for the way they lied and shame on Rocco for the way he responded and treated the situation. Shame on us for watching, but the producers understand the the drawing power of disasters.

The Marc Veyrat score, as well as the rationale behind it--well, the meal was absolutely perfect the night we were there (one meal!)--was what triggered my realization they are not able to do a professional job and may not have been doing one for a while. A pity, as I liked the guide as an alternate voice and enjoyed the magazine in spite of my poor French. It's not that a good case couldn't have been made for the organization by region and maybe even by department within each region, but the maps don't read as well--maybe it's the lack of colors--and one needs to have more confidence in the test and ratings to make it worth learning the new system. Will there be a GM for 2004?

That's not the sort of lead we have learned to expect from GaultMillau, but of course there is no Gault and no Millau in GaultMillau, who knows what's up their sleeve and I have come to suspect they are grasping at straws to be noticed. I also have to admit that we had friends returning from France, bring us the 2003 edition and I find it so hard to peruse, that I just don't look at it.

Not precisely on target perhaps, but one of the odder things to happen was when the French Tourist office here in the US decided to install a 900 number. It struck me that if you're trying to sell your country as a tourist destination you don't want to charge people to request your advertising. I don't know if they still have the 900 number or not.

I have a comment and a question here. First, although I was most impressed with the tapas bars in Andalucia and their offerings, particularly in Sevilla and Jerez, I'm not so sure that the Pais Vasco is not the reigning champ of the genre in at least some ways. My question is about the social aspect of tapas bars, and I suspect the answer not only varies from locale to locale, but from bar to bar. It's been a very long while since I've traveled in Spain alone and my observations are just casual observations, but it seems to me that conversations are far more easily struck up in pubs and bars in the US than in Spanish bars. What we've tended to observe in Spanish tapas bars is couples or small groups arriving together or meeting by plan. It also strikes me that any conversations struck up in a tapas bar would more likely be with a small group of people and not have the connotations of Manhattan singles bar--for better or worse. I also find contemporary Spaniards to be quite garrulous and open, but then again my introduction to Spain and Spaniards was at a time when Franco was ruling, so I am sensitive to the change. Whatever the answers are, I am sure Bond Girl will find the Spanish good hosts and good company.

The problem for most of us, is not finding suggestions of where to go and what to eat, but of narrowing down our choices.

Aside from the Bourdain/Ripert My Dinner with André routine, the show really came to a grinding bore of rehashed material. It wasn't funny, it wasn't sad and it wasn't insulting. It was boring.

How well do you know this French woman? It would appear that she's confused or pulling your leg. Are you a journalist or intending to work or do business in France? Get your information from the French Consulate or Embassy, not friends, neighbors or acquaintances.

I've been to Sant Celoni by car, but other people have spoken of going there by train just to dine at Can Fabes. Sant Pau in Sant Pol de Mer is right on a train line from Barcelona. Girona is a town well worth a day of sightseeing and Can Roca is well worth the short taxi ride from the center of town. I would expect Girona to be easily reached by train from Barcelona. Can Fabes may be the most sumptuous, but these are all true multistarred restaurants that cater to gastronomes. I would be surprised to hear of anything but an excellent reception of a single diner at all of them. On the other hand, I can't recall any stuffiness in any of the restaurants I've liked and would recommend in Spain. Maybe some places in Madrid might come across as stuffy--maybe. Galicia is quite interesting, but remote. I don't think the time and expense would be worth trying to include Santiago de Compostela in a trip to Catalunya. Donostia/San Sebastian and Bilboa would be better choices, but a week could be well spent in Barcelona, especially with side trip to Girona.

Nick, to the best of my knowledge, Tony ate there once and it was during the filming. He reported on his meal in the first couple of pages in this thread and long before the show hit the air waves.

Blue Hill is a good comparison in some ways. It's got a $65 tasting menu, a three course meal can be had for not much more than $50 and they share the same real estate values--they're almost back to back. I won't compare the food as the stylistic differences may be far greater than any difference in quality. If you value the style of one over the other to any degree, that's going to make more difference than the quality of either at their best. Consistency and service might. The top of the line cited by Fat guy is really second tier in terms of cost. AD/NY seems to hold the number one spot unchallenged. In terms of cost, gems such as Cafe Boulud and Oceana fall into a point midway between the top of the line and Babbo. The best restaurants in this price range could blow the stock pot lids off most of what appears on so called Top 100 Restaurants in America. Babbo in what I descern as the fourth price point down the scale, still probably qualifies as "expensive" in most restaurant guides, however. There's great dining outside NY in the US, but most visitors to NY have trouble adjusting to what's here and finding exactly where they would enjoy eating and what it's worth relatively or absolutely.

I enjoyed those pieces on eGullet and look forward to the chance to read more. Craig Claiborne didn't set the standard for restaurant reviews for me, he was the standard by the time I started caring much about what I ate. For many of our members he may have retired at the Times well before they took their first bites. I always thought of him as an authority on dining, on eating and on food even, but not particularly on cooking. For all that, I'm surprised he could think of substituting a lean loin for a fatty shoulder. I guess he didn't have our advantage, a local butcher in the south village who, the first time my wife went in and asked for a loin roast, said "You don't want that, it's no good. You want a a nice shoulder for roasting." Comments on his limitation serve to make make his memory more real. He was, as we all are, a product of his times. He arrived at what may have been the nadir of this country's interest in culinary matters. Few people really cared about dining in restaurants and perhaps, with the exception of a few immigrants and maybe fewer yet little old ladies in the south, not too many cared much about cooking.

I've only learned recently of the custom of serving cheese after dessert and it seemed odd then and odder still that it might actually be any savory course after dessert. There are wonderful dessert wines that can finish off a meal, including port with a chocolate dessert. I'm much more inclined to stick with the French on this, but it's hard to argue with local traditions. Local regard for the concept of a "proper" menu varies as well. Americans are far more likely to throw a dinner together with less regard for the composite whole, than are most Europeans and certainly the French, or so my experiences lead me to believe. There has been at least one thread here that focused on learning how to eat at the hands of a French waiter. Many of us were able to relate incidences of being told by a waiter in France that we had ordered poorly and how that waiter improved our meals by making suggestions of a first course that would compliment our main courses for instance rather than letting us, as novice diners in France, choose poorly. There was never a question in the minds of the contributors to that thread that any of the waiters acted out of turn, or didn't know his place. We were all grateful for what we considered an introductory lesson to the art of dining. I have one question for Janet regarding "continuity rules." It would seem to me that having a summery salad followed by a "wintery" stew with root vegetables may well be a bit jarring, but rather than matching the dishes to each other, I would feel the need to match both dishes to the current season. Do you agree or disagree and to what extent?

Girlcook, pedro and anyone else who cares to answer, Who comes to dine at Martin, where do they stay and is there a difference between the lunch clientele and dinner clientele? Its proximity to Donostia would suggest that diners who are not living in the area, probably stay in Donostia. What's the commonest time for people to make dinner reservations and do people generally take a taxi or drive from Donastia? Our one visit so far was lunch on the way from Iruña to Honarribia, two of our stop places on a drive around the Pyrenees that began and ended in Barcelona and included a visit with friends in the Languedoc. It was a lovely trip, but with the retirement of Parra from the Auberge de la Galupe, the action is almost entirely on the Spanish side. The restaurant is exceedingly hard to find. We saw no direction signs and few of the people we stopped in Lasarte, had heard of it.

One thing to note is that it's not really so much that there's no Spanish slaughterhouse that complies with USDA regulations, as much as it is that there's been none willing to spend the money and go to the expense and trouble of having a USDA inspector on the premises. Consider that it's not been demonstrated that there's a market or appreciation here in the US for a ham that's going to cost four times what a prociutto imported from Italy will cost. Importers of prosciutto have reported trouble with importing those hams, even after it was first legalized, because of various problems. So you have to add the not so small possibility that even after complying with USDA slaghterhouse requirements, shipments may be held up for other reasons. It's also not like the product is begging for customers in at home. The serrano hams now sold in the US are not the serrano hams sold in Spain and it's easy to see why.

Santceloni in Madrid is also in a hotel and just a block away from La Broche. It didn't leave anywhere near the same impression on us that Santamaria's primary restaurant, Can Fabes, in Sant Celoni did, but it was certainly a restaurant worthy of notice. I don't know enough about fine restaurants in Madrid to place in any ranking. Santceloni seemed to be a part of the Hotel Hesperia far more than La Broche was a part of its hotel, whose name I can't remember. Santceloni's address, in the Michelin, is at the hotel and the e-mail address is at the hesperia-madrid.com domain. Can Fabes has built a hotel this was supposed to open in July. I don't know how many rooms it has. I don't know his past business model or where his diners came from. I assume many were day trippers from Barcelona, as were we the day we had lunch there, but at lunch some must be tourists on the road, perhaps going to, or coming from Barcelona and there must be some local contingent. It's only a half hour from Barcelona and presumably accessible for dinner as well. It can take me a half hour to get uptown by taxi in Manhattan for a special meal. I don't know that he needed the hotel, but it certainly meets a demand by those who wish to travel as they do in France by having a gastronomic meal and a comfortable room under the same roof, or at least in close proximity so they don't have to drive after a long meal and so they may feel free to imbibe to their heart's content. I wonder if this is going to be a trend. I wonder if vserna, or any of the other Spaniards on eGullet have thoughts on this. The issue of restaurants in the boondocks being attached to hotels, or at least simple inns with bedrooms (I personally have little need for public rooms or faciltities when I spend one night) is of far more interest to me than where restaurants locate themselves in cities. One of the reasons fine restaurants are once again moving to hotels, is that in a competitive market, hotels believe a top restaurant on the premises offers them an advantage and they are in turn willing to sign leases that offer a nice concession to the restaurant in turn.

As Chloe lives in Northern Portugal with her family and that's where her kids are being raised, we should not assume her kids have too great an interest in looking for pizza or fries. On the other hand, if they run into a certain truck with a wood fired oven that makes the rounds of markets in the Gascony/Bearn part of France, a chorizo and red pepper pizza would be as good an introduction as one could get outside of Italy. Maybe not authentic, but delicious. I suppose it depends on whether you travel north or south of the Pyrenees.

We all have a public responsibility. I'm glad to see the Balthazar production manager come here and respond to the charges and I'm even happier to see that Joanne went to the trouble of investigating the problem and then bothering to report to us the corroboration of what was posted by the manager. The Internet is rife with criticism, some very deserved and some less so, but few people take the time to follow up and acknowledge a satisfactory conclusion. That eGullet was able to facilitate all this is particularly rewarding to me.