Bux

I've not had Wegman's Herme designed pastries, and I've not had enough Herme pastries. I recall a thread here in which the Wegman pastries were mentioned and I believe the poster indicated it was not fair to compare than with the ones you might buy in Herme's own shop in Paris. The are excellent for what they are, but they are not the same quality according to that poster.

Only in America! Not at all, I've mentioned French sardines flavored with lemon.

All good points although I think you over simplify the case from time to time and no more so than here. They do eat a lot of crap cheese in France and more importantly, they've thought processed cheese is fit for kids so long that they've raised at least one generation that grew up think that was cheese and doesn't know much better. I'll take issue with the broad brush you use to paint hypermarches. I've been taken shopping in Lorient, Brittany by a French born chef working in the US on several occaisions. Sometimes it's to the local open air market and sometimes it's to the supermarket. The announcement that we're going shopping was a high until he said we're stopping off at the local Champion hypermarche -- bummer, I thought -- until I got to the charcuterie and fromage service counters. Assuming it got a 10, I'd give Murray's a 7, and that for having more countries represented, but not so high for the quality and condition of the cheeses which included plenty of raw milk fermier artisanal cheese. And that was in a region not at all known for the local cheese. Supermarkets in France successfully compete with our best specialty cheese shops more often than you suggest.

That's always been my understanding. A ristretto is an espresso with less run time resulting in a shorter shot. It's stronger because the first part of the run is stronger than the last part.

Maybe you all overestimate the American public. Having a lemon on hand may be asking too much from consumers who eat their tuna fish from the can or in a sandwich on presliced bread with only the addition of "sandwich spread" that has a refrigerator shelf life twice that of a dog. All I look for when buying tuna fish is that when canned, it be canned in olive oil. I will add that I'm a relatively new convert to that and for years settled for tuna packed in vegetable oil because of the price. The convenience of lemon in the can is not such a bad idea, although it leaves out the option of not having the lemon flavor at times. I've bought canned fish in Brittany -- I think it was sardines -- that were packed with a slice or two of lemon. I seem to recall some other things in the can such as maybe a carrot slice, herbs or capers. The lemon slice was at least half dissolved and I mashed it in with the fish when making salad or sardine "rillettes" as a spread.

It's an old Norman tradition to down a glass of calvados for breakfast. In the sixties we stopped for a morning cup of coffee in a rural area of Normandy. The shelves in this cafe bar were close to bare with the exception of a couple of bags of potato chips and nuts. There wasn't a croissant, roll or baguette to be seen, so I was surprised when the woman who served us asked if there was anything else I wanted. I asked what else she had and she replied "Calvados, cognac et rhum."

From Quoting a post in Cheese Sleaze IICheese Sleaze II. There's rarely a simple answer. Several reasons have been cited here. Cheese doesn't travel all that well. Temperature and storage conditions are often very important, if not critical. The best cheeses are infrequently made in the large factories. The best chevres I've ever had came not from one of Paris' finest affineurs, but from following a handpainting sign and driving up an unpaved road to find a ramshackle cave or garage with a few dozen cheeses. Danielle got to the Calvados question before I did, but the best beverage to have with a Livarot or Pont l'Eveque may be a good cidre bouchée. With luck, both the hard cider and the cheese will be "fermier," that is, produced on a farm by an artisan and the labels will not be found in the US, although I'm not even sure how many fermier cheeses are still being made in Normandy. Certainly the EU is taking steps to put those little goat cheese makers out of business and there's far less really raw milk (lait cru) cheese being made in France today than there used to be twenty years ago. One factor that hasn't been mentioned is that Americans seem to demand a consistent product (at least middlemen seem to think so) and that calls for intervention in a natural process.

I didn't mean to imply it was so healthy that there's a minimum daily requirement.

Oy vey. Interesting reaction. Note: None of my co-workers were vegetarians. Had that been the case, I would have said. BTW. These cookies contain lard. I suspect none of them kept a kosher diet either. Had that been the case, I am sure you would have said "BTW. These cookies contain lard" and they in turn would have replied "oy vey." I suspect it's really a much healthier choice.

Evidently even buttery pie crusts will improve in texture if some lard or "shortening" is included with the butter. I guess all fat is shortening but Crisco is a brand name of what I mean by "shortening." I think we've gone though a time when such hydrongenated oils were considered healthier than lard or butter. I don't think you'll find anyone who's paid attention lately recommending using a hydrogenated trans fatty shortening over lard for health reasons.

Ca L'Isdre deserves a reservation because the food is worth seeking out and because you're likely to find it full whan you arrive, but we also showed up for lunch one day and managed to get a free table. My reaction was a bit like yours as we had been looking for another place that I believe was both more casual and less expensive, but we missed the other place and found ourselves in front of Ca L'Isidre well into lunch time and thought we should go in and try for a table as it was on our list. Although it was a more expensive restaurant than what we were looking for, I thought we got good value for our money. Roast leg or goat and roast young lamb are things that are done well all over Spain. I should imagine they are particulalrly done well here. The chef/owner's daughter is the pastry chef. She had a nice write up in a fashion magazine when we were in Spain a couple of months ago.

Shades of the El Bulli thread. I would recommend Bras to a far winder audience than I would El Bulli perhaps, but it's incredibly subtle food amd my impression is that it won't impress many diners used to the in your face creativity type of wow. We were there the day it opened for the season and there was a service error or two that may have come from internal miscommunication and perhaps I felt there was some element of pretense in the design aspect of the table, but the food was, as Matthew said, "outstanding." Bras is among the most respected of his peers as well.

I don't think Adria sets up any conditions and that he welcomes any diner with an open mind. It's often the diner who's never eaten classic French cuisine or at a three star restaurant who is most able to approach the table with the fewest prejudices of how food should taste.

Kind of amazing that he opened them both at the same time. As Robert Brown posted:

Lemon and asparagus is classic. I commented on the use of candied zest.

The English language has its faults. "Taste" is the sense we use to perceive flavor. In another "sense," "taste" is a word we use to describe our preferences in clothing, books, sex and other things besides food. When I spoke of cultural dependency in regard to taste I was thinking of a few thngs. Gather a few people together and discuss where to eat and you will observe peoples' preferences. Most will be willing to go to an old fashioned American restaurant. Probably an equal number will accept an Italian restaurant. There may, or may not, be a falling off when it comes to a French restaurant, but as you get into Asian foods, the likelihood grows. Suggest an Ethiopian restaurant and the chances of getting negative reaction grows even further. I'm speaking of a random group of Americans and not our sophisticated friends, of course. The phobia things are related but a bit different. I am impressed with the civility with which you make your points, by the way.

In western cuisine, flavor is usually considered the paramount concern. This is not necessarily true for the Chinese or Japanese when appreciating their own cuisines. Taste is subjective and culturally derived. Edit- In western cuisine, flavor is usually considered the paramount concern. This is not necessarily true for the Chinese or Japanese when appreciating their own cuisines. Texture may be as important as flavor, and a lighter less concentrated flavor may be considered preferrable. This is why I say taste is subjective and culturally derived.

Nevertheless, taste is largely subjective and culturaly derived. Nonesense. First, El Bulli is nothing but a restaurant. One need not get involved in whether food is art or not. It is certainly not slanderous to any chef to note that his food can be further appreciated by discussion it with one's tablemates. Such is the food of Adria that it stimulates discussion at the table in a manner I had not yet experienced. Of course that is dependant on the company at the table. If I recall Robert and Jonathan's TDG article, they reached much the same conclusion. The meal stimulates your brain as much as your taste buds and thus stimulates the conversation. For many of us, that enhances the overall dining experience. Sure you don't mean to say that it's superficial to bring a deeper meaning to a craft. Painting is painting, architecture is archtecture and cooking is cooking. An intelluctual discussion of the end result of any of those pursuits is not dependent on calling any of them art. Food is sustenance and architecure is a roof over your head. We've had this discussion before and many generations will have it again. Discussing it here will get us nowhere.

Mention of a Tokyo Atelier de Jöel Robuchon in reviews about the Paris didn't seem to indicate it was also opening in May. Here's the review.

Queuing up for a dinner table, excuse me I mean a seat at the bar, seems so un French and so un Parisian. I mean this is a city where a reservation at a good restaurant means you have the table for the night. I applaud Robuchon for introducing a new dimension or at least new options for hungry Parisians, but I wonder if Parisians will take to standing in line for dinner. The French idolize chefs, but not in the way Americans do and I may have to agree with Joe about the way this place will fit into the Paris dining scene.

Ever watch Tony step off the boat and eat some stuff, that wouldn't even qualify as road kill here. I mean stuff most of us would step on and sweep up. He eats that stuff with relish, or with ketchup or soy sauce. I'm not convinced he finds it all delicious, but I am convinced he finds it fascinating and is enjoying the opportunity set before him. I am also convinced the guy sitting on the stool behind him finds it delicious. When I was fourteen, I knew exactly what food should taste like. I went to friends' houses and their mothers didn't know what food should taste like. Even my own mother got too carried away at times and tried to get me to eat new things, but I knew that if I hadn't had it already, it wasn't going to be delicious. At some point in my life, I was converted. Learning to appreciate new foods was interesting. When I travel, I don't look for the foods I love, I look for the ones I don't know. At opposite points of the globe, people are devouring things that are great delicacies to them, but might taste like shit to the guy at the other point. So I don't much care to hear that something tastes like shit to some guy because it only says maybe he he hasn't learned to appreciate it yet. Not liking the flavor, or not finding the flavor others find in a dish tells me very little about the dish. I'm sure we've all got an aunt or uncle we could sit down in a Thai restaurant and have him proclaim the food looks and tastes like dog shit, but if he had half a brain, he'd understand that somehere on this planet, that's what the people eat and they wouldn't trade it for steak, foie gras and truffles. Eating at El Bulli may seem like dinner on a foreign planet, but every dish that appeared in each of my two dinners, seemed as if it was the end result of a long process of evolutionary development. I though Adira nailed each course. A few were not to my taste. I can learn to develop my taste. The level of expertise and finesse that went into the meals I had, demanded that I learn. At the heart of the matter may be that I saw serious labor intensive cooking and Matthew saw only clever technique. There's one fallacy in that last paragraph, but it's only that Adria keeps reminding you of your home planet by making clever references to the food you knew. Michael Lewis's art analogy isn't unreasonable. One can continue to criticise any number of schools of modern art for not holding to the laws of perspective, or just accept that those artists have changed the course of art history by the number of younger artists they influenced directly and indirectly. Adria's influence is already a fact. He need not leave a signature dish nor need his dishes be immitated for him to have an important place in history. If you don't believe that food has to be interesting as well as tasty, why is it that you don't have the same food every night.

I don't, in fact, know if Adria bared his soul to anyone that night, nor can I confirm El Bulli is not Disneyland--I have not been to Disneyland. I can say I've been very cautious in recommending El Bulli to anyone. I have been since before I ever ate there. From what I had read from Adria's fans and from those puzzled by the food, it was obvious it was not for every diner. I'm sorry Matthew was one of those who probably shoudn't have gone. From the dissappointment expressed, I have to wonder if he read what's been written here about the meals rather than the unimportant part about whether anyone liked his meal or not. A lot of Adria's food is not to "my taste," but I am eager to return a third time because I am impressed by what he is doing. Spencer you seem to also dismiss the fact the Robert Brown is a curmudgeon (and so am I) and he appreciated El Bulli. Even a curmedgeon needs a legitimate cause to raise a legitimate complaint. Assuming the food tasted like shit to Matthew, why do you think, from his review, that the food will taste like shit to you.

That's also where the discrimination comes from. I know a woman who complained about the sexist attitude from the day she started staging at a four star French restaurant in NYC until the day she started making comments such as, "Another woman came in to stage today. I wonder if she'll last the week." Unfortunately most of the women entering didn't have the stamina or the raw determination required. For all that, the last time I looked, that kitchen has been increasingly hiring female cooks. By the way, in suggesting one consider working rather than studying, I'm not denigrating the value of classes or formal training. As in any profession the person under whom you study or work, may be more important than whether it's a classroom or working kitchen. It's also my personal view that any education will be greatly influenced by the the people around you. The value of any school is enhanced by the caliber of the students around you. The same is true of a real kitchen. If the cooks there are excited by their work, you will learn more than if it's just a job to them. It stands to reason that great students follow great men in their filed of interest be in an academic college, culinary school or restaurant, but there's not always a direct correlation.

I suppose it's really a matter of knowing how to enter them on your system assuming there's a difference between PC and Mac. Using a Mac, entering accent marks here is done the same way as when I enter them in a word processor, including Word. There's no special code as in html, or anything. On a Mac: è is "option-`" + "e" à is "option-`" + "a" ë is "option-u" + "e" î is "option-i" + "i" ç is just "option-c" I agree that names read much better, but now that I've posted all this, I should also mention that The accents haven't worked well with the search feature of the site.

Welcome aboard. Enjoy the site. Vancouver is a great food city. I assume from your blog that you're from Vancouver. Lemon zest is the thin outside layer of the lemon peel. It's the part with the bright yellow color. The thick white part between the zest and the juicy part is called the pith and it is to be avoided when utlizing the zest. You can grate the zeat with a very find grater or you can peel julienne strips of zest off the fruit. I'll leave it to Lou to explain how and why she uses candied zest in her recipe.