Bux

The problem with coffee is not that it's marked up so much, but that it's that it's rarely so well made. I really enjoy a good espresso after dinner and getting more of it is not my goal. As often as not, part of the problem is that whoever makes the coffee seems to believe a longer weaker coffee is better than an shorter better espresso.

Great news all around, including the upbeat news of traveling with an infant and eating well. Thanks for the good addresses to add to our archive.

The purpose of this forum is to talk about the food of France and not just to praise it. Ruth's point is well taken. For years food in America has been limited by the rush to chefdom and one's own restaurant by American culinary school graduates. Few of them were willing to pay their dues as the French did and consequently many American chefs build a repetoire of creative dishes based on far less than perfect technique and discipline. The French, on the other hand, had all the technique one could use, but their training was so stiffling that they couldn't use it creatively. The Spanish are proving to be naturals -- incredibly disciplined but ready to be inspired by what they know rather than hemmed it by it. Dining in Spain can be spotty, but it can also be rewarding in a way that can't be beat in France or the US. I don't write off either France or the US however, food is becoming universal and the talented chefs will always surprise us wherever they are. It's as easy for a Californian to travel to Barcelona to develop his skills as it was a half century ago for a young man from Lyon to go to Paris. Meanwhile little of the classical French training has lost its value if applied creatively.

Change is inevitable. Change and progress are not synonymous. It's not quite reasonable for any of us to expect the same food or the the same restaurants we knew two generations ago. We are nevertheless disappointed when we don't find the relative quality. Sometimes the relative quality is absolutely not as good. Haute cuisine aside for the moment, even if it means following John Whiting rather than Alain Ducasse, there's little that's more satisfying than excellent provisions that are simply, but well, prepared. I don't have the exact figures at hand, but I recall the impact it had on me to read of the phenomenal decline in the percentage of Frenchmen involved in agriculture of any sort. In remarkably short time, France has gone from being an agricultural country living off the land to an industrial country with its population living in cities. France imports snails and frog's legs. The food stuffs available to the proprietors of little country restaurants may not come from local farms as often as they did. That the farmer's sons and daughters are lured to offices and factories where the work is easier and the pay is better should not be much of a surprise, but it's disappointing to see how well the general population has taken the results in stride. Cars, TVs and washing machines compete for the Frenchman's earnings and those cheaper foods start to have their appeal. Sadly from a gastronomic point, other activities compete for the Frenchman's, or maybe the French housewife's, time as well and the convenience foods start to have an appeal as well. Meals have begun to take a back seat in France and I'm not sure Ducasse is addressing that aspect when he focuses on chefs, but he's a restauranteur. Perhaps any focus on better food will payoff across the line. I don't know. France has a great history in regard to food. It's a shame to see it falter to the point where "where serendipity can still come up trumps," when we can remember a time when good meals were expected ubiquitously.

Lissome was a very fabulous host. Thank you Lissome.

Right Phaelon, there's a great markup on tea, water and softdrinks. My range of liquids with food is pretty much limited to beer, wine and water -- usually tap water. What's the markup on a bottle of beer that doesn't warrant aging and far fewer overhead costs than wine? A "good" bottle of beer can had in the grocery store in NY for a buck and a half or less. $4.50 would be 300% and that's not considered a rip off. Wine, now that we examine the alternative, may be the bargain. Tip your sommelier.

I think this may have already been spotted and mentioned in another thread -- "Ferran (sic) Adria."

I stand corrected on the proper English table etiquette. Then there is really no excuse for the odd way we eat, or at least we can't blame it on the English. Perhaps it's a revolutionary thing. "We don't eat like that because the British do" It's hard to believe Jefferson didn't convert all of Virginia to French habits. It requires a bit more dexterity to hold your chopsticks far from the "food end," but it is far more delicate and elegant looking if you master the art.

This is a remarkably sophisticated group, in my pompous opinion. I'm pleased to see such overwhelming support for the better French way of eating over the English/American table utensil circus. Even those without the required dexterity to make the switch seem to recognize the superiority of the French manner. I wonder if Fat Guy is correct in his belief that change in American table manners is in the wind. I seem to see most discussions on the subject of keeping one's fork in one's left hand ending up with a derisive chorus of Americans. If nothing else, many people take the very idea of a change, or an appeal to reason, in regard to the etiquette they have been taught by their mothers as a direct attack on the poor woman whose honor they have pledged to defend beyond all reason. That the subject can be discussed rationally with room for subjective feelings is a credit to eGullet.

I don't know about that advice. That seems like giving another kid an excuse to beat your kids up. You know - the ones in the family car with the bumper sticker that says "My kid could beat up your honor student". The ideal is to raise your kid so he or she doesn't really care about the opinions of idiots and to be able to convince other kids that they can't beat your kid up, or that if they do, they will live to regret it for the rest of their life and maybe some time to come. All this while avoiding make him/her a bully.

Table manners are supposed to make sense? Indeed, all manners are supposed to make sense of some sort. Most had some practical origin and it's enlightening when you find ettiquette experts who actually suggest a change in ettiquette so good manners actually make sense again.

To be reasonable, although it doesn't seem to occur to anyone that god invented message boards for that purpose, it's not a black and while thing. It's always possible to find something somewhere that is better today than it ever was in spite of any downward trend and every plunge seems to acquire some grassroots movement that brings hope. I think Root was a realist and a reporter. When we traveled in France in the sixties, we looked for, and found, the regional dishes Root mentions in restaurants. Today, you are likely to have a much harder time finding many of the dishes that once typified a region's cuisine. On the other had, you will have no trouble finding crèpes and pizza all over France. In Brittany, every second crèperie seems to have put in a pizza oven. Of course as I bemoan the loss of provincial character in rural France, with some hypocrisy as a New Yorker who prizes the number of different ethic cuisines to which I have access at home, gastronomic choice may well be something the provincials have always longed for and deserve no less than I do. Good food and traditional food are two different things. John may continue to be delighted with what he finds in Paris, and so do I mostly, but my guess is that both of us do a lot more research these days than we might have done in 1963, two generations ago.

I have little or no interest in iced tea. I've just never developed a taste for it, except for Mugi Cha, which I believe is either barley or buckwheat tea. We had it in Japan. When the weather was hot, it seemed to replace green tea as the welcoming drink in Japanese inns. We've bought it here in NY's Chinatown and when my wife brews a pot, I will have some. I like iced coffee and I like it made with espresso and milk, although I never have milk in hot coffee. I don't make iced coffee very often, but when I do, I like to make coffee ice cubes, so the drink is not diluted as the ice melts. Does anyone make their iced tea with tea ice cubes?

I eat with my fork in my left hand and my knife in my right hand. So does my wife, although I'm not sure she always did or started to after we traveled in Europe. At any rate we brought our daughter up to eat that way. I was not aware of any problems she had at camp or any other time. However, she did marry a Frenchman. The odd thing is that I am a lefty, at least most of the time. I write with my left hand and I think that's what establishes one as a lefty. I play ball as a righty in any sport that matters -- baseball, tennis, etc. I have greater dexterity using my left hand, but greater strength with my right hand and thus sometimes I do things as a righty and other times as a lefty. Although I claim greater dexterity with my left hand, I am comfortable using a mouse with either hand and have switched back on forth when I've had wrist problems. Back at the dining table, I've always traced the use of my left hand to hold a fork to my lefthandedness, but I have not been able to figure out why right handed people keep changing hands to cut the meat. No one ever gave me a hard time about the way I ate at camp, although I didn't know it was the european way at the time. I just thought it was the left handed way.

I enjoy a good lager beer, but to hear that Bud is big in England means that the English are losing both their style and taste. For a while now, I have thought French food is healthiest at the top -- haute cuisine -- but these are the very places that are kept busy by tourism. The French often feel they are born with a gene for discriminating taste, but so few of them go out of their way for good food these days. A generation of parents content to treat their kids to McDonald's hasn't done anything to raise a new generation of connoisseurs. I'm being cynical and it's not universally bleak, but the decline is quite evident to someone with over 40 years of intermittent experience watching the French eat and cook. Reading Waverly Root and A.J. Liebling is almost painful for the when you think of the changes. I think of John Whiting, a sometime contributor here and lover of bistro food, has spoken of the number of charming little restaurants around France that are run by ex-pats from showhere else. They are run by people with a love of the past that was France and while they may keep that part of France's past alive, it's a sort of unnatural life that no longer has organic ties to the culture. Ducasse can import young chefs to the provinces and have them feed his guests and paying customers, but can he get the provincial population to support his picks back home? I wonder if he's even addressing the problem or just attending to a symptom.

Ducasse is no dummy, or at least he's not got his head in the French sand. He gets around and sees what's happening. Hes also smart enough to understand that part of the problem is not just the loss of gastro-tourism, but the fact that the French caring less about good food. What I find somewhat questionable is to feature the cooking of young unknown chefs in his three star restaurant. Sure he can invite "invite Paris-based food critics among paying diners to sample the guest chefs' work." French food critics love a free meal, but will there be diners willing to pay three star prices for the work of unknown chefs? And will Michelin recognize the talent as three star cooking? If the restaurant doesn't lose a star featuring this food, will the country restaurants to which these chefs return at the end of their two week period, get more stars?

I disappointed to hear that here. One would expect such a food obsessed group to have adventurous tastes, particularly when it's served family style so one may sample just a bite without the personal embarrassment of leaving it over. Order some weird stuff for our visitor. Easy for me to say, I can't make it.

Nothing would please me more than to be able to drink better wines with many of the restaurant meals I eat, but I'm seeing ten to fifteen dollar wines selling for Forty dollars or more all over Manhattan. I've always assumed there's some waste when wine is sold by the glass rather than by the bottle and that it's an additional service, so I expect to pay about one quarter of the bottle price, for the glass assuming it's not a tasting size glass. My guess is that that $8.50 a glass is not out of line with what other upscale restaurants are charging for that quality of wine. I'm perfectly willing to object and protest, but it's not fair to single out one restaurant. At most restaurants of a certain quality, there are no bargains at the low end. The mark ups in terms of percentage are unconsionable. I understand there are minimum cost involved in serving any wine, but it penalizes the wine drinker with a budget and lets the teatotaler off. I've always felt cover charges are a reasonable way of sharing the overhead cost, but I wouldn't suggest a restauranteur try that no matter how much he lowered his wine prices. In the end, it's not about fairness, but about what the market will allow. As long as reviewers note the prices for the food and do not include the price of a reasonable bottle of wine in an average cost and as long as diners make decisions based on the menu prices, restaurants will cut food costs and gouge wine costs in response to what is really consumer demand. Some of Danny Meyer's restaurants have exceptional bargains at the low end and it's been a factor in my enjoyment of meals at Union Square Cafe and Eleven Madison Park where the food prices are quite fair as well for food of high quality.

A few hours too late. After Andy broke the NY date, my option was picked up on a rebound. It's a pity, I've always has a curiosity about the midwest. See you on Friday.

Zinfandel is a red grape. Most red wine grapes have white juice. The red color comes from the skins. If you separate the juice from the skins immediately you can get a white wine. If you do it sooner than later, you can get a rosé. If you let the wine sit with the skins, you can extract the color as well as other properties from the skins. I don't mean this to be a wine lecture because I'm not the expert to give it, but it's simpistic to just say that white zinfandel is a rushed product designed to be made cheaply. It is, (almost all the time) but lots of Champagne is also made from red grapes and it's not a cheaply made product. Some people detest zinfandel, and some love it, but generally speaking, those who love red zinfandel tend to dismiss white zinfandel, while those who buy white zinfandel aren't even aware that red exists.

According to the website, you need to buy the card for 345,60 euros to get that rate. Which is still a good rate, considering how expensive the regular prices on some of these places are. But you got it for free? Apparently applying while staying in a Parador has its advantages. As I read these messages and the Parador web site. These are two different cards. The card for sale on the web site is a prepaid card. It has blackouts and limitations, but it's good for five nights at Paradors. "The gift [card] is the opportunity to stay at any of the Paradores for up to five nights for 69.12 euros plus the 7pct VAT." The final cost appears to be the same -- if you use all five nights. It's a great advantage to be able to use just one, two, three or four nights and not lose a prepaid portion. Unfortunately, I don't see a way to become an "amigo" via the web site. The problem here is that the card is sent to your home address and valid only through the year. Thus you have to make a second trip to avail yourself of the rewards. Nevertheless there's no charge to join and worth doing should you ever find yourself at a Parador.The 5 Night Cards being sold apparently have surcharges and blackouts and may not be such a great deal. You'd have to plan your itinerary carefully to see if the savings were worth the constrictions. The Paradors are excellent and some are worth seeing just for the historical buidling they occupy, but some are remote or not neccessarily the best place to stay in a town or area. While the Spanish government has made an effort to see that the Paradors all serve representative regional foods, previous posters on this site have indicated they feel the Paradors do not have a good repuation for their cuisine.

It's always hard to determine exactly how truthful people are being when they say things like that. I certainly believe there is some truth to it, but having received another star, I don't know why one would feel obliged to do any more. The star is presumably awarded for what you have accomplished and not for what Michelin thinks you have promised to do in the future. On the other had, I do believe there are increased pressures to perform at each incremental rise. If you're fully booked and currently making a decent profit, the additional star will just keep you busy answering the phone with reservation requests you can't honor. The new business will crowd out your old customers and it's the regulars whose business you want, not the tourists. The regulars are dependable, while the tourists who present a trade that is infrequent, or may never return no matter how good the food is, are far more trouble to serve.

Me too. I guess I just had too much faith in you to believe my first post would ruin the suspense for everyone else.

The only delay in checking a bag is that you have to wait for it to be unloaded at the baggage carrousel. That's going to add anywhere from 10 - 45 minutes. Well maybe not 45 minutes, but it seems as if I've had to wait hours for my baggage to show up. Of course the longer you have to wait for your bag, the longer the line will be when you get to customs and immigration. However the airlines are stricter about carry ons these days. Not checking bags may not be as easy as it used to be.

Gourmet was a favorite of ours in the sixties. It's slid considerably since then. I think it's better under Ruth Reichl, just not better enough yet.