Bux

Without some inside knowledge it's hard to know why a chef leaves. We may get a clue when we see how the restaurant changes under the new chef. Sometimes a restaurant can't draw a crowd inspite of good food. Should they decide to downscale the food, the chef may get fired, or he may just leave seeing no future for himself in such an operation. How was the traffic at Compass? Was it crowded? Of course we don't know if he's got something lined up just because it isn't public yet.

Thanks, I missed that. I think it's worth repeating here anyway as someone planning on dining there based on your experience with Annis' cooking, might be disappointed to learn he's not there.

Elsewhere I noted that Florence Fabricant reported in today's NY Times Dining section that Neil Annis left Compass. The bigger news is that Alex Lee is leaving Daniel. Alex had been with Daniel Boulud since before the original Daniel was opened. Alex has been Daniel's right hand man throughout and held the position of executive chef. He's taking the position of executive chef at a country club in Westbury. I suspect the hours will be better and it's much closer to where he and his family live. I believe Alex was the last of the original crew to still be in the Daniel Kitchen full time. In a way it seems like the end of an era, but many chefs have gone through the kitchen and Alex' tenure was remarkably long for a top NY restaurant. Thus I suspect it will have less effect on the food than it might seem. Daniel himself is always reinventing his food and has always managed to assemble and train a talented team. Still it will be intersting to hear reports of meals.

Fat Guy, I hope you've PMed Felonius and alerted him to your question. From reading his posts elsewhere we may have an inkling of his answer, but it would be interesting to read what he has to say after another year and a half in New York. It's not so much if or where he's found his place as a regular, but the trials and tribulations that may be interesting.

In today's Dining section of the NY Times, Florence Fabricant reports that Neil Annis has left Compass.

YES, that is the case at a university where you would want to be with your intellectual equals or superiors, but cooking school is skill and labour, brains and intellect have nothing to do with it - As for the practical skills, you could also find a class full of ambitious young chefs to be who just don't care about turning or fluting just as much as you could have a mix... I still say it's not right to put people in boxes... If someone thinks brains and intellect have nothing to do with cooking, we know different chefs and we're eating in different restaurants. The top schools, no matter what they teach, are the top schools only as long as they can attract a dedicated staff of teachers and a student body that is at least as dedicated to learning than the staff is to teaching. If your fellow student body is not stimulating, you're missing the better part of going to school and I don't care if it's an academic school or a trade school. The one thing I'll add is that the very best academic schools take the brightest students without asking them to make a committment to going into teaching or research. I don't see why culinary schools should be different in that regard as long as all students adhere to a professional standard in the classroom.

Robert covered the major reasons. I wonder how many of our members could arrange their schedules or afford to be at El Bulli that evening. There are reasons someone may not want to take a reservation offered by a stranger and even better reasons why a stranger might not want to offer his reservation to a stranger on a message board. I don't know cocktail and I have no reason to assume this not on the up and up. However, I would advise both cocktail and the member who takes the reservation to be sure the reservation is changed to the new name. Cocktail should protect himself against the abuse of his good name, and the taker should guard against the possibility the reservation is not honored. Whoever takes the reservation should call the restaurant to be sure his name is on the list.

My understanding of schools such as le Cordon Bleu, is that they offer a range of programs from some pretty basic stuff aimed at the home cook, or "housewife" if that term is permitted, to the Grand Diplome designed to get a cook started on a professional career. As I further understand it, there is no fork in the road to culinary enlightenment -- there's no point at which someone can say I want more knowledge, but I want it suited to an amateur. If you want more knowledge you prodeed on the professional path. If so, I see no reason why anyone should be denied the right to continue as long as they can keep up and not hold the class back. I think it's artificial to make too many distinctions too early in anyone's life. It's all well and good that la Varenne has courses for recipe writing, but if it's cooking one wants to learn, recipe writing is not the issue. My general philosophy is that great innovators in any profession often come from either outside the profession or from those in the profession who have followed a rather atypical path. For that reason, I am rarely in favor of pigeonholing anyone too quickly. I have no studies to back this up, but my intuition suggests that someone who can really cook well at a professional level may develop a knack for writing recipes clearly and accurately, assuming that person has an intellect that lends itself to this talent. I doubt that someone trained in writing recipes will develop cooking skills as quickly or as well from the writing lessons, no matter their talents. I don't disagree that an amateur is taking up the space a professional may want or need, but who is to say where either of these people will be in ten years.

Armagnac comes from the northern center of Gascony. Goose and goose foie gras probably most typify the area. So does duck, especially duck confit, and duck foie gras. It's an area of hearty eating. We should add pates and sausages of both pork and the two water birds as well as stews and hearty soups. Cassoulet comes from a neighboring region and might be a good one pot meal, though probably not at this time of year. Maybe a selection of cold pates would be preferable, accompanied by cornichon pickles (which are not at all like gherkins). Galantine of duck could be spectacular. It's a lot of work, but it enables you to streetch a duck carcasse with pork forcemeat and perhaps mushrooms to serve more people. Julia Child has instructions in the first volume of Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Boning a duck involves some skill although I hear it is easier than boning a chicken. Cognac comes from the Charente area which is famous for its butter. There's not that much that distinguishes the cuisine. Oysters and mussels from the coast are favorites. The food resembles that of Bordeaux where people pay more attention to the wine, it seems.

It would be pointless to be unbiased about any establishment that's proven itself to you in so many ways, and it would be a disservice to us.

Are you talking about the cuisine that should be offered with the cognac and armagnac or the local cuisine from the area in which these brandies are distilled? Although both are vaguely in the southwest of France, neither would recognize the other as being in quite the same area. Actually if one had to draw the line, the Charente (cognac) might be in the northwest. In their respective areas, they are not considered beverages to be consumed with food. They are digestifs to sipped after dinner or at odd hours.

Joe, I've been told that many of the small cafes, bars and bistrots of Paris are owned and operated by Auvergnats. The Auvergne is a rural area and was rather impoverished. To a great extent this may apply to the Aveyron as well. There were few towns and fewer still those that could support a restaurant. Lyon is and was a big city with some prosperity that goes along with the commerce of a big bourgeois city. It had restaurants and a clientele that could make the restaurateurs prosperous at home. There was little need for them to export their restaurants. On the other hand, there was poverty enough in the Auvergne to drive poor farmers off the land and into the cities looking for work. Then as now, in cities all over the world, it is the role of immigrants to do the work the locals do not, and to work harder to establish oneself with very little capital. All over the world, immigrants establish themselves by opening restaurants with little or no professional experience in cooking or restaurant management. With dad in the kitchen, mom at the cash register and the kids waiting tables, they make it by working 18 hour days as hard as they might have done at home, but with some hope of income. The Auvergnats opened restaurants in Paris not because they were experienced in operating restaurants at home, but because there was no business at home. The Lyonnaise stayed where they were fat and comfortable. Edit: Re-reading my post, I seem a bit bombastic. It is of course conjecture based on what I do know, but it is not likely to be the whole story. The history of the world is complex and there are many threads that make up the whole cloth.

I suspect it's going to be too complicated for anyone to offer a precise origin. Presumably that type of restaurant predates the use of the name "bistrot.' It seems to be that "bistro" was the American spelling of the French word "bistrot," but nowadays "bistro" is considered by many the modern and hipper spelling to use in Paris -- or so I'm told. Then again, I've also read that "bistro" was the first form to appear. Fresh_a's story may be apocryphal. I've repeated it myself as gospel a number of times. It's certainly the popular tale, although I've head "Russian soldiers" rather the "Cossacks," if that makes any difference. Working against this often repeated story is the fact that the word doesn't seem to be recorded anywhere until 1884. It's not that likely that an earlier use wouldn't have been found if the word was in popular use. To many, linguists in particular, this sounds much like a reverse engineered etymology. We've had this discussion on eGullet before and I hate to repeat what's been said, and fear I may leave some things out. I could not find it in the France board, perhaps it's buried in some thread with a misleading topic or perhaps it was on another board. Patricia Wells, in Bistro Cooking, has the following to say:"Some suggest the word comes from 'bistrouille' or 'bistouille' which in the north of France refers to a mixture of coffee and eau-de-vie, or to a poor quality of eau-de-vie, both drinks one might find at a 'bistro.' Going one step further, we have the verb 'bistrouiller,' which refers to the preparation of an ersatz wine made with water, alcohol, and other products, which of course might be passed off as wine in a low-quality 'bistro.'" Jim Scott, writing in North County Times said: "Our rub today is the French bistro, or bistrot ---- both are correct, with bistro first appearing in 1884, followed by bistrot in 1892. The origin of the word is uncertain, but the most popular and romantic hypothesis is that it came from the Russian bystro (meaning quickly), introduced by Cossacks during the 1814 occupation of Paris as they shouted for faster service in cafes. However, this picturesque interpretation is discounted by most lexicographers. They say that the word bistro probably came from Parisian argot meaning "proprietor of a tavern." Another less dreamy version is that bistro comes from the root bistre, meaning a somber and smokey place. I like the Russian version the best. Whatever its origins, by 1901 the meaning had evolved into that of a local small cafe, pouring local wines ---- usually from carafes into water glasses ---- and serving modest foodstuffs made from local produce. Typical offerings were pates, cheeses and soups, along with daily specialties. Never expensive." I too like the Russian version for its color, but I am beginning to doubt it more and more. None of this brings us closer to the definition of "bistro" nor much closer to its eact origin. That latter may be impossible as the bistro itself must have evolved over the last century, even if not as fast as it has in the last generation. For me personally, any historical image of French food dates to the period between the first and second world war. Is it a sign of my age, or do others find that period to be one of great significance? Perhaps no one knows better what a French bistro should look like than Jean-Luc Perrier, an "antique dealer specialised in design and decoration of bistros !" In my search I found something I coudn't help but include here. From Bistro - Sharon O/Connor a review by Stanley Eichelbaum: "Sharon O’Connor’s 'Bistro' is an ambitious and engaging cookbook that covers all the bases with enthusiasm, charm and an acknowledged passion for French bistro cooking. O’Connor tells of being “hopelessly smitten” with her subject matter, and proceeds to unfurl it with sixty-eight recipes by the chefs of seventeen Paris bistros and three more in Quebec, New York and the Napa Valley. The two American bistros - the smash-hit Balthazar in Manhattan’s SoHo, and the more recent arrival, Bouchon, in Yountville - are so authentic they seem like transplants from France. In an unusual innovation, O’Connor provides mood music for the home cook who might need it in the form of a CD that accompanies the book. O’Connor is a musician (founder of the San Francisco String Quartet) as well as a cookbook author, and has turned out eleven previous works in her menu-and-music series." If nothing else it solidifies my notion that most people can't tell a brasserie from a bistro although they are two entirely different types of establishments that flourished between the wars. Balthazar is the perfect ersatz brasserie setting although the food is a combination of brasserie, bistro and several American restaurant styles.

We have such disdain for "canned goods" in favor of "fresh" this country. The Spanish seem to prize quality canned goods. Some time ago, Amanda Hesser had an interesting article in the NY Times that featured a tapas bar in Barcelona that was known for its tapas that came from tins. When I met him a few years ago, he feigned the inability to speak English. Now I wonder what he and Mrs. B. talked about. I think we're privileged to have this report here and there's no need to apologize for being coy. Assuming the worst -- that you're only posting to shill for the show or the article -- I think you did a great job. I'll make no silly pronouncement such as "Now we're going to see the real Adria," but I suspect we will see another side to the one generally portrayed by the media.

Of course most of us have come to know derivative second and third had versions, if we've come to know it at all other than by reading about it, and those who haven't come to know it are not likely to understand that what Adria is doing now is a generation beyond what he was doing. With luck more people will come to understand what he's doing and not just associate certain words and techniques with his cooking. With a TV show devoted to s single visit, you are going to be hampered in an attempt to show the process of the progress and not just the process of the meal you are eating. What I sense from this post is that Adria and Albert will be shown as food lovers and not as crazy scientists, or at least not just as crazy scientists. In spite of the fact that I have found some of the dishes elusive, I think Adria's love of "good food' is in his work. Those who don't find that apparent may be likely to be those who over intellectualize the food rather than those who are unsophisticated.

I don't know where to jump in on this discussion. I'm not a professional cook and I never went to culinary school. I also know the Cordon Bleu runs many classes and not all are designed for professionals, but professionals sometimes get their start in less professional classes and amateurs often take professional courses. Someone else asked about majoring in history without the intent of becoming an historian and Lesley earlier spoke of cooking as a blue collar vocation. A few years ago the top position in a New York City restaurant with a well earned three stars had a Yale graduate running the pastry kitchen. When she left, she was replaced by someone who had graduated from Princeton. Dan Barber and Mike Anthony, of Blue Hill in NYC, were both rather accomplished scholars in college as I understand it. As someone else noted all people are entitled to all the education they can absorb. I remember going to college at a time when many of my classmates argued that women shouldn't be allowed in Engineering or Architecture colleges as they would get married and not make it a career. In today's society, it's often hard to predetermine where one's career will turn in the future. I also think labels such as white and blue collar are out dated. I can only speak from hearsay, but I have the impression that most professional culinary skills are developed and perfected on the job in the profession anyway.

I stopped at two and before I got to midtown.

Blue Hill is most curiously missing from that list. While I don't dine much on the UWS, Ouest seems a distinct omission. It looks like a random list, perhaps it is.

I was wondering what sort of "farmer's" market they operated. It's not that brokers don't have something to offer, but in NY the Union Square greenmarket has a waiting list for spots and just about everything has to be sold by the people who grew, raised or made it. If you bake, you don't have to grow your own wheat and if you have a stand, you're also allowed to sell your neighbor's stuff. So the vegetable guy may also have a neighbor's eggs to offer.

It's not just the freshness, the buffalo mozzarella has a higher water content than fresh cow mozazarella. There are those pizza makers who insist that fresh mozzarella of any kind is not the best for use on a pizza. I'd tent to disagree. I've had excellent pizzas made from what appears to be fresh mossarella, but not buffalo mozzarella. There was an article in the NY Times about the best places to get slices of pizza in NYC. Granted the very best pizza is not sold by the slice, but it was interesting most of the pizza makers did not use fresh mozzarella and were quite outspoken about that. One or two of them did. One of the shops is not far from me and I've had both their fresh mozzarella slice and their regular. They are different, but I can't say one is better than the other. Although I wouldn't bother to make a salad of cryopac mozzarella and tomatoes with extra vigin olive oil, I didn't find the not so fresh cheese made an inferior pizza.

A separate discussion about the appropriateness of amateur cooks studying in professional culinary acadamies has been moved to it's own thread.

Painful is watching Austrians and Germans eating spaghetti with a knife and fork. Sipping from the finger bowl and eating the banana with the peel (yes we wash our bananas before we offer them to guests, just in case) to make a guest feel at home is, of course, a disservice to the guest, who's denised the opportunity to learn and almost ensured of embarrassing himself again. It's a shame our sense of etiquette isn't more helpful to others, but when was the last time any of us went up to a stranger and told him his fly was unzipped rather than let him go to that job interview, or meeting with his future mother-in-law that way.

The Beaux Arts, a restaurant across the street from the Ecole des Beaux Arts was a restaurant that formed my idea of French food as much as any other. Both Liebling and Root were known to have eaten there and it seemed to play a role in the formation of their tastes as well as mine. My first visit was in '59 or '60 and I returned a few times with my wife in the mid and late sixties to enjoy the food and selections of house wines in carafe. I don't recall when we first returned to a disappointing meal, but we were surprised to see it mentioned not so long ago in the NY Times, even with the admonition that it was not what it once was. It's one thing to drink in a bar once frequented by famous poets, or a cafe where the philosophers met, but it seems quite pointless to eat in a restaurant that was once frequented by connoisseurs if the food is longer recommendable.

"Japanese fish sauce" drew a blank when I heard it and it made me focus in the wrong direction. I will bet that was dashi -- Japanese all purpose stock traditionally made from shaved dried bonito and kelp, although frequently made from an instant mix.

It's not rude to put your elbows on the table. At least I don't find it rude if you do. If you find my rude to put my elbows on the table, well that's just rude of you.