Bux

Everyone is of course financially motivated to some degree or another, but you may be interested to know, if you didn't already, that Adria has some interest in the NH Group of hotels. The website says that he has "joined them" and also that he is consultant to the group. I had heard that he actually has some financial stake in the company. Perhaps others could confirm one way of another. This is in no way intended as a criticism of Adria, but mentioned just to contextualise Spencers comment. I hadn't heard that he actually has any financial stake in the corporation, but that he was a consultant. I've commented on what he's doing with NH in a few threads a while back in the Spain board. Much of his consulting, at least as I understand it, hasn't been in terms of the food and menus but more a conceptual nature about how people use hotels and the integration of restaurants and hotels. We tried to check a couple of places that arose out of his relationship with NH when we were in Madrid, but crossed signals and a short stay there left us short of the mark. Who knows, it may well be that Adria makes his mark as a chef, but his money as an idea/think tank consultant. The world's a funny place and Adria's inventive food has established him as an idea man in Spain. A side effect of his relationship with the hotel chain is to bring them some publicity. Mrs. B's reaction was that it they're hip enough to hire Adria as a consultant, they're worth checking out. She wouldn't have told a client to stay in an NH hotel because Adria works for them, but it piqued her curiosity enough to plan on staying in several of their hotels in Andalucia last month. Although none of them showed any influence of Adria, they were all reasonable buys at their respective price points. Publicity is a strange thing. One of these days, we will also get to see what Adria is doing for them, although I did get a menu from one of the new restaurants that arose from his collaboration and the menu looked quite ordinary. Then again we were sent an English menu. It's amazing how much food loses in translation. In an attempt to make the dishes comprehensible to foreigners, they often take the local flavor out of the translation. I'm off on a tangent. Sorry I just picked up on this message. I will try and learn more about Adria's relationship with NH and report back somewhere on this site.

One of the best ways you can brown bag your dinner leaving from NY is to pick up some cold appetizers at a Shanghai restaurant. So much the better if you can smuggle on some wooden or plastic chopsticks. Not sure if they're legal carry on or not. The funny thing about utensil/weapons on board is that Air France gave us plastic knives. The forks had plastic handles but metal tines. My guess is that someone could do more damage with those times than with a standard issue metal dinner/butter knife. I should watch what I say here. It may come home to haunt me and I may find myself using a rubber spoon to eat my airline meal. Maybe sandwiches are the way to go for the airlines. No utensils at all. Or maybe some astronaut food, like an artificial milk shake with a day's worth of nutrition in a pouch you squeeze into your gullet. The sad thing is that even that wouldn't make me nostaligic for most airline meals.

I'll bet if we had a code for everyone's id according to what they drink, we'd be able to zero in on whose restaurant and cooking advice we'd care to take very quickly. People drink some strange things.

I am going to guess that US cards will continue to work in the UK just as they've worked in France. In fact, unless France has made changes in their chip, US cards may work in the UK as well as FRench ones. The last I heard was that the French and UK chip technology was incompatible. Can someone in the UK confirm that?

I drink a lot of water and generally a glass or two of wine. The longer, the better the meal (or wine) them more wine I'll drink. I've been known to have a beer now and then. With certain foods I prefer beer.

From another thread This is a great site for anyone trying to find a location, address or phone number in France. There are street maps and, in Paris, photographs of the buildings. Often views up and down the streets and across the street. Of course you have to have preselected your restaurants.

I recall some discussions on rec.travel.europe some time ago about the UK and French cards. At the time they were designed to different specifications. Here's what I said earlier. I suppose I don't drive the way I did when I was younger, but I've not had a great problem passing on country roads driving diesel cars. As the roads get better in Europe--I've been driving there since 1964, actually earlier if you count a Vespa--a full sized car becomes a more interesting proposition for the highway, although they are a real drawback in medieval towns, city centers and many tourist sites when you're negotiating narrow lanes and looking for a parking spot. Generally I've been happy enough with a compact diesel if I can get one. A Renault Megane of the equivalent Peugeot are fine with me. I'm actually less pleased when I'm offered a larger car at the same price. Smaller than that is a problem in terms of speed and pickup for me. Your millage (and acceleration) may vary.

I suspect we're influenced greatly by the size of the popuation when we think of china as large. "It ... has the largest population of any country in the world. ... More than one-fifth of mankind is of Chinese nationality. The great majority of the population is Chinese (Han), and thus China is often characterized as an ethnically homogeneous country; but few countries have as wide a variety of indigenous peoples as does China. Even among the Han there are cultural and linguistic differences between regions; for example, the only point of linguistic commonality between two individuals from different parts of China may be the written Chinese language." From Pan's first link.

We've enjoyed several meals at Jaleo with kids younger than your daughter who had a severely limited interest in trying anything. With someone more willing to try things, it should be even better. The small plate tapas thing enables you to try a lot more things. Sorry I don't know how to get there by Metro, although that's how we got there. We were staying with relative in suburbs of Virginia and they rightly decided it was smart to park at a station out there and take the Metro into D.C. I recall a couple of trips to D.C. way back when our daughter was younger. They were immensely enjoyable. Of course this is almost ancient history, but one of the things that still sticks in my mind was that the food in museums was so much better than what I've found in N.Y. That may not be true today, but the absence of iceberg lettuce and appearance of wonderful greens in salads was almost impressive then. Isit a sign of an obsession when you notice the lettuce more than the Mercury space capsule or Ryders and Homers?

You're not thinking someday you'll be invited to the Kraft ® James Beard House someday? Universities have long sold their libraries as well as athletic fields and the pros have followed suit with ballparks, albeit with considerably less conflict of interest. My guess is that the industry circles the wagons about issues like this one. Part of it is due to some natural sense of self defense, part is do to not wanting to bite the hand that may feed them and part is probably a genuine belief that the organization does enough good for the industry to overlook any abuses. It does offer scholarship and it does offer a chance for chefs and restaurants to be seen in NYC. The questions are is it worth the price and even if it is, could it do better. I once had the opportunity to have a meal there that featured a dish I had not too long before in the restaurant that was providing the meal. By no stretch of the imagination was it quite the same dish for many reasons including ingredients and the inability to produce the same preparation in the Beard kitchen. I've never quite understood why a New Yorker would want to buy a meal cooked there by a chef with his own restaurant in NY. In addition, I've always rather assumed that when an out of town chef cooks there, I'm not going to experience his food at it's best. Is that chef best served by my pleading ignorance of his food when the subject comes up, or by my commenting on how he prepared a meal under less than ideal conditions. That's been my dilemma regarding the meals there. On the other hand, since the money's going to a good cause, I should have no regrets. Whoops, thats where we came in, isn't it.

The inauspicious Mei Lai Wah, is probably not a place I'd have bothered to try without a recommendation. It's a wonderful anachronism among all the neon and glitz of the current bubble tea houses. Just being there instills a nostalgia for a time and place I never knew. Enough so that I kept one eye on the door to allay any fears I had entered the twilight zone. I had a big steamed bun--or is that a steamed "big bun?"--along with a baked char shui bao. I did not order coffee and really dislike coffee as a drink with food. I don't even like coffee with breakfast. Coffee as breakfast is fine, but anything more than a bun or croissant and hold my coffee. I especially dislike coffee with my dessert. I also wasn't offered the hot sauce. I must have looked like a tourist. I enjoyed the big bun with it's mixed stuffing, but it is a little bland and there's a lot of steamed bread. Those pork and cabbage buns I used to get on Canal Street had thin walls of dough and a crusty bottom as well as a very moist stuffing from all the cabbage. Speaking of crust, the baked buns had a nice crust and were not squishy like most baked bao. They were also far less sweet than the average bao. Manna on Grand Street has more filling but I'm not sure which I prefer. Rather than try the steamed char shu bao, I walked over to the dumpling place on Mulberry across from the park where I had the most disappointing reheated leathery dumplings ever.

I trust you don't mean that the way it could sound, as punctuated, either. Welcome, I enjoyed that post for all if offered about your corner of China. John Lurie wisely points out that China is much larger than the US. I'm not even sure it's all that much more ulturally cohesive. It may be in the large cities, but I'll bet regional differences in the rural areas are considerable. It's interesting to learn thart donkey meat is common. My reputable source on Italian food tells me that donkey meat is traditionally a part of authentic Bologna from the city of that name. On rare occasion, I'll find dried sausages with donkey's meat in France, but I've never noticed the meat for sale fresh anywhere in Europe. I think this is an almost universal truth overlooked by many. Eating in a restaurant frequented by locals, is not the same as eating in a home.

Bear in mind that even at some of the more popular little bistrots, you may need a reservation, especially at dinner. La Regalade comes to mind immediately.

I'd be curious to hear updates on Leon de Lyon. It's been a favorite of ours over a long period, but I hear some reports that it's slipping. It would be great to hear that it's not, but useful to hear an opinion either way. We also had a great meal at la Rotunde a few years ago. Philippe Gauvreau, the chef, is apparently a fan of NYC where he ran the marathon one year.

I didn't reply to chaste_nosferatu's post because I really wanted to see what he had to say for himself, but since this thread has taken this turn, I'll put my two cents in as well. First, I think his post does come off as more than a bit pompous and certainly seems to fly in the face of good netiquette. On the face of it, he seems to have arrived saying no one here knows what they are talking about and then takes what seems to be a you need me more than I need you attitude. I wondered why anyone would bother to do that and I reread the post several time and then several more times trying to slant the intonation and I've come to suspect that I and most of you have not given him a chance to make himself clear. Let's just accept his post as saying, I'm living in China and have close friends who are chefs here and that perhaps I can be of service in getting some answers. chaste_nosferatu, you, on the other hand, should understand that we have professionals here as well as those whose ties to China are quite alive. China is also a very large country and a country with a large population and areas whose local cultures and cuisines vary considerably. Chinese cuisine is also world famous and it's chefs have spreak the food worldwide. Chinese people themselves have established communities all over the world and the food and culture of many of these communities, particularly in SE Asia, may be seen by many as just another unique Chinese culture as that of one part of china is from another.

In a recent Spanish Elle magazine, Carmen Ruscalleda, a two star Catalan chef, spoke about the willingness of Spanish chefs to share their secrets and how it's contributing to the dynamic changes in Spanish restaurant cooking today. I don't know if this is applicable to Martin Berasategui and since I don't read Spanish, my interpretation of the article is rather dependant on the snippets thrown out by my wife as she was reading it. Nevertheless, it's probably an exciting time to be working in a top Spanish kitchen and a great opportunity. Working for a chef in his kitchen is certainly going to show you a different side of him than eating in his restaurant and socializing with him, but a sous chef from a top NY restaurant in which Martin had eaten when he visited NY, found him quite hospitable and generous with his time and information when said sous was in Martin's restaurant for a meal.

It didn't occur to me to mention that at C'Amelot, there may also be no choice, although sometimes there is an alternate for one or more courses. Philippe Dutourbe offered a real tasting menu of five courses with no choice, although they will often be able to accommodate a real allergy. One of the things a modern restaurant has to offer it's patrons is the luxury of choice. It goes without say that such an offering increases the likelihood that there will be waste. The overhead costs of running a restaurant will always be reflected in the prices charged. Sometimes a restaurant can afford to offer an incredible bargain by not offering qa choice, but the diner needs to be able to accommdate himself to that situation in order to benefit from the bargain.

The original post asked I read as you're paying to eat in a restaurant, not paying extra to sit in the kitchen. I suppose the practice and the cost varies considerably. In some restaurants there is no separate charge, but there may be a minimum, so it's economical to take the table for a party of eight, but perhaps an extravagant splurge for a couple. Then again some people drink more expensive wines than I do. I suppose the question is two part. Why would anyone want to sit at a chef's table - and - why would anyone pay a surcharge. Maybe it has more parts as there's quite a difference between what are called chef's or kitchen tables from restaurant to restaurant. In many cases it's really no different from dining in a private room with the exception that it has a view of the kitchen. I suppose the ultimate chef's table would have a curtain you could draw to snub the chef.

Sorry Basildog, watching myself cook just seems kind of creepy. Especially in public.

Are they staying in SF or touring the wine country? The French Laundry is in Yountville in Napa County and I very difficult reservation to get as well as one of the more expensive meals in the area.

If nothing else, this thead has brought back an old memory of a diner open 24 hours a day that I used to frequent in the wee hours of the night. It couldn't have been the food that drew me there as I don't recall going there when anyplace else in town was open, but I liked to watch the cook make burgers and reheat apple turnovers on the grill. The fascination with watching your food being made is not limited to star chefs. Here's an open question. If you go to a diner and take a seat at the counter, would you choose one in front of where you could watch someone cooking.

Was that Benihana, where your table was the chef's table? It's just that those star chefs can't be bothered to come to your table.

El nino, welcome to eGullet. I think we'd all understand a possible reluctance to share any problems he had with the chef's attitude, but is there any chance you could get your son to post some of his thoughts about his stage at Berasategui? Has he worked in any other kitchens in Spain or France? Generally speaking, a cook's life is hard and hardest yet on the bottom of the ladder. We've had discussions elsewhere on eGullet about kitchen practices that would not be gotten away with in any other profession. and that's here in the US. In Europe an apprentice may be treated much worse. The business about the beard is a bit surprising because I know several French chefs in NYC who have had goatees, but I've also met cooks who think joining the Marines would be good preparation for life in the kitchen. When you say your son liked his stage, I assume that means he thought he got a lot out of it, rather than that he had a good time although I suppose there's some reward with working with the best and having co-workers with the same passion.

sorry just wanted to highlight this S Thanks for that, Simon. As I generally skip Bux's posts, I missed this. Bux, could you support this assertion? Support my intuition?

I've been meaning to talk to you about that. Actually you can't highlight text to quote, but you can highlight the text you don't need and delete it in the lower reply window where the quote appears. It's also possible to use the "quote" button above the reply box to quote any text you want to paste into your reply from off the site or another message. Just be aware that the latter method doesn't get the name of the original poster included.