Bux

My untrained guess is that it wouldn't be sauteed foie gras, but a terrine or poached foie gras and that there's be no point using a prime slice of grade 'A' foie when it could well be a terrine made from bits and pieces. "C'est normal." I'm hardly an expert on the French language or culture, but I always felt the French use that expression best when they use it to describe the unusual and unexpected. Americans get all excited when the unexpected happens. The French seem to have so much more "savior faire." They understand that the unexpected is always a possibility. When the preacher runs off with a hertofore seemingly faithful wife, devoted mother or four, president of the PTA and pillar of the community, the Frenchman says "C'est normal" to show he's too sophisticated to be surprised at anything.

Couldn't we have a bulletin board where I could leave my phone number for guys like that.

Tommy, when are you going to learn the rules? One of the points I've tried to bring into play here is that if one can honestly say--and I have no doubt we all speak honestly even when using hyperbole--that one has only had one restaurant experience that resulted in a decent meal that wasn't over priced, it may seem as if anyone who compliments the chef is going to look as if he's sucking up and looking for a freebee. I can assure you that such is not always the case. I have met those people who see kissing up to the chef as a reward for special favors and what they have to say about food is less interesting for that kind of relationship.

oh I see, now we're equating not wanting to sit in a kitchen with a hidden hatred for fine dining. makes perfect sense. I'm often critical of those who waste bandwidth by quoting whole posts, but in this case you manage to reduce a rather long post to a single line out of context. First you've substituted "dining" where I used "cooking," then you seem to have negelected to notice that the first two posts were not about the authors of those posts not wanting to sit in a kitchen, but questioning and even derisive of why other diners might choose to do so.

At real football (i.e. where the ball is generally carried or passed ) games he's the guy who kicks souvenir coffee cups into the stands at halftime.

Tony, don't take it personally. Majumdar probably doesn't even consider you a chef. I am however, inclined to agree with your analysis. From the first first few posts in this thread , I got the immediate feeling I was in a group that secretly hated fine cooking and those who took it seriously as well as those who prepared it. Jon Tseng restored my faith in eGullet. It might just be fun to watch a kitchen in action. I believe he meant it might actually increase ones understanding and appreciation of what goes into the preparation of a meal. "Fun" in the way that a movie such as Dinner Rush might be more interesting and illuminating to someone who liked dining in restaurants. I've never dined in a kitchen at a chef's table, although I've shared a bottle of wine with a chef at his private table overlooking his kitchen. Come to think of it, I had my back to the view of the kitchen. I wonder if that was because the chef wanted to see the kitchen or if I was just more focused on the chef and the people I was with than the kitchen. I can think of three reasons why I might not be inclined to seek a table in the kitchen and none of them are over riding, nor do I feel any of them should be someone else's reasons. 1) I really enjoy the social and sociological aspects of a dining room. I enjoy watching the show people eating. I enjoy seeing the food arrive from the kitchen and being served. I enjoy seeing how people dress. Once, in my youth, we were in Paris at the end of a trip with a bit of cash in my pocket. We decided to splurge and try our first starred restaurant in Paris. We called for a last minute reservation and were offered a salon particulair which we accepted, but I regretted not experiencing what I felt was the restaurant. 2) I've been through a number of top kitchens here and in Europe. I've had polite and formal tours of the kitchen before and after meals and I've been in busy kitchens talking to chefs dodging plate and waiters during service. It's been fascinating and if I one's only option to see a kitchen in operation was a meal at the chef's table, I wouldn't dissuade them. 3) I've thought it might be distracting, although as Jon reminded me, I've often craned my neck to see what was going on in an open kitchen. Apparently, I don't really mind the distraction. 4) I've not considered the many positive factors Tony mentions. Here I suppose, those factors are dependent on a personal relationship and thus probably not really germane to the conversation. Having a glass of wine with the chef at his table is not something one can reserve on demand and many of the perqs he describes are not those that come with a kitchen table that can be reserved by anyone. I should add that in spite of the fact that there are more than enough jerks in the trade, most of the chef's I've met are real people and exceptionally decent as well as thrilled to cook for people who really enjoy their food and while a friendship may get me a few more grains of caviar as a garnish, the really close contacts are more likely to get me a surprise dish of tête de veau from a top kichen. Many of the top chefs have down to earth roots they enjoy sharing.

Pork leg is often referred to as fresh ham (or pernil in Puerto Rico). A 3 pounder? That must have been an awfully small pig. I assume this is a slice of hunk of boned meat. Every few years or so, we find an occasion to roast a whole leg which usually runs close to 25 pounds. As I recall, it takes a while to cook. Our pork butcher in Chinatown also sells 2 to 3 pound hunks of leg meat that we might roast. It's kind of lean and care has to be taken not to overcook it and dry it out.

There you go contradicting me again.

Goat and lamb are interchangeable only up to a point. I don't think I've ever seen rare goat. The only time I've seen goat on the menu in NYC has been in a West Indian, Caribbean or Mexican restaurant. Now that I've said that, I'm focused on the difference between a West Indian and Caribbean restaurant. Clearly the West Indies are in the Caribbean, but to me, a West Indian restaurant represents a island where English is the official language and the food culture is strongly influenced by African and East Indian cooking, while a Caribbean island is Spanish speaking and the food is more likely to be influenced by a mix of native, Spanish and African cooking, but with heaviest influence from Spain. I'd look for recipes among those cultures. I had roast kid in Spain recently, but you don't usually see it in France for all the goat cheese they make. Basic cooking methods for goat meat. Cooking with goat. Goat recipes. 28 recipes in all. Goat - the other red meat. 11 more recipes. Year of the goat, Year of the 'kaldereta.' Spicy stew specialty of Central and Northern Luzon. That's just from page one of a google search for "cooking goat." You'll have to wade through the recipes using goat cheese, but there's a gold mine, or at least a goat recipe mine online.

"Robuchon Returns Master chef Joël Robuchon opened his new venture, L'Atelier de Joël Robuchon, in the Hôtel Pont Royal on May 7 ... ... from time to time, Robuchon will prepare some of the dishes that made him a celebrity (such as truffle pie, potato purée, foie gras soup). His appearances will also be from time to time. The other good news is that Robuchon's goal for the menu is chic but not expensive: E 50 is the average bill. Grands crus are offered at cost price, and also by the glass. ..." Readers of English may want to visit Gayot.com to read the complete article. It sounds as if the article was written earlier and updated to include the first sentence, but it's an interesting article. According to Gayot, the restaurant will accept reservations within one hour of arrival, but I've heard that lines have formed before opening times outside on the first few days. Tourists, no doubt.

I don't know if it's fair to tell someone else's stories--they may want to write an autobiography some day--but I know a young American woman who was studying cooking in Paris. She broke part of her eyeglass frame. Fortuantely it was an internationally distrubuted brand and a local shop was able to replace just that part. When she went to pick the glasses up, the optometrist told her his distributor didn't charge him for the part, so there was no charge for the repair--there's still an advantage to be being a student, female and attractive in Paris. Later in the week, she dropped off a cake that had been the day's assignment at school. It's nice to think of that as a way of life one can associate with Paris.

Much of what you say is right on target, or at least I agree 100% (which may cause you to rethink everything you said ). However, I wonder how well Europe, or at least France, has managed to preserve it's traditions and how well it's served by what it still sees as its core culinary culture. Almost every Frenchman I've met in forty some odd years of traveling there has an opinion on food and wine from the first fisherman near Bordeaux, who in the sixties told me that Entre-Deux-Mers was the best wine in the world. I took that with a grain of salt and learned why producers of a good Graves, not to mention le Montrachet could command higher prices for "inferior" wine. I used to meet young French chefs who would tell me that America knows nothing about eating as evidenced by our creation of McDonald's. My rely was that we know everything about business and that McDonald's was growing faster in France than in the states at the time, and that said all I needed to know about French taste. I would toss in the kicker than Loiseau was quoted as saying haute cuisine wouldn't survive without foreign diners. France's confidence as well as its all too rigid tradition has allowed Spanish chefs to capture the imagination of the culinary world. That's still Europe, I know, but El Bulli's manager was pretty forthright in telling us that Adria looked more towards America than to France for influence. All of this, by the way, is coming from a Francophile. I am a booster of French cuisine but for a long time I've seen trouble in the middle and now see it at the top and bottom. If you read John and Karen Hess's The Taste of America, as Jonathan says you will understand that this is not yet America's golden age of food and dining. In some ways, what I've seen as a borrowing from France and Europe, particularly Mediterranean Europe, is a renaissance of cooking here and I see signs of France's declines being reversed as well with regional efforts akin to our small farmers producing heirloom fruits and vegetables.

Yeah. A decade and a half ago, my daughter was staying with a French familiy in Provence. One day her host familty joined with another family and too a few kids to town--town being Avignon. They dropped the kids off at McDo--not at all to make her feel comfortable--while the parents ate elsewhere. When she returned home, she told us how she looked up across the street at Hiely, then a starred restaurant, where she had eaten with us the previous year. It's not a wasteland and the overall experience was good enough for her to try another program the following year and she hit a family where the father's favorite wine was Guigal's La Mouline. I think the point you make is still generally true, but I also think it's less true than we think it is and no matter how true, it's not a black and white situation. The hypermarches in the provinces are wiping out the mom and pop shops, but they also carry a far wider selection than our supermarkets. Traditional markets in the larger towns and cities are still strong and active, but EU regulations are slowly driving out some of the small artisanal producers. This is not to say the traditions we admire in this thread, are lost in Europe, but they don't dominate the way they may have earlier.

I would expect it all to be the same, except for the icing on the bottom. I hope my comments have been helpful, but it should be obvious that "chefette" is a misnomer, she and Lesley are real pro chefs.

Obviously it works for him. I can't say how well it works for his hosts. Watch out for the deals you make, you could be sorry at both ends.

Two things a guest should not do. -1) Leave a hostess guessing. -2) Impose his interests on the hostess' plans for the evening. I'm having smoked salmon, cold cream of cucumber soup, poached skate with capers, a selection of goat cheeses and flan for dessert. My guest arrives with a bottle of cabernet he would like us all to enjoy this evening. I'm being imposed upon if I've planned the meal. If on the other hand, I wait until guests arrive and then look to see what's in the refrigerator that's another story. Never should a guest arrive with an unannounced bottle of wine and expect it to be served. Even our journalist prearranges his participation in the meal.

I'm sure we've all been to the theater or nightclub where someone in the audience thinks he's got something more interesting to say than the guy on stage. It can be just plain rude to tell the host you can plan a more interesting evening than he has. Whatever this guy may do with his close friends, I don't think he's offering helpful advice to a readership that's looking for advice. I'm sure serious wine buffs have developed their own strategies and I hope they can pull them off without offense.

All the time, if you're willing to consider the parallel examples of another society. In fact, I believe a good case can be made that identifying a purveyeor of food stuff is something we are doing to emulate the French. We don't have a label rouge or a certified designation such as poulet de bresse and the name of the purveyor is what we can offer instead. I'd go one further and ask how many diners in France would be willing to order from a wine list that only identified a wine by it's AOC without also listing it's producer or at least a negociant. The French understand the gurantee of a brand name. I though those were as close as I could come, but then I realized that if you order a St. Marcellin in Lyon, you're likely to be told that it comes from la Mere Richard and that's exactly what a restaurant here is doing when it tells you the meat is from Niman Ranch. So I don't think you've identified a difference between us and France, but rather an area in which our chefs and restaurateurs are imitating the French. Let me pick on everyone else as well. Interestingly enough "salade" (greens only) was a separate course between the meat and the cheese for most of the last century in France. It still is in homes, but I can't remember the last time I've seen it offered in a restaurant. Now it's often a one course lunch in a saladier, or evolved into a first course at fine restaurants. I recall one of our early French haute cuisine cookbooks which laid down the rule--cold appetizer at lunch only, appetizer at dinner must be a hot course. I'll not dispute TV dinners as an awful habit, though I won't go out of my way to condemn those who partake. I will however defend grazing as an option. One of the things I am loving about traveling in Spain is the possibility of getting a tasty snack at any time of day and the ability to skip a heavy meal and still go out, meet friends, have a drink and eat some tasty food prepared with pride and care. In Jerez one evening my wife and I nursed a few beers and finos while ordering rounds of what I would describe as snacks, little more than cocktail hors d'oeuvres, each carefully arranged and sauced on a little saucer. We watched locals arrive, meet friends, stay for a different lengths of time and consume different amounts of food and leave. It really seemed so civilized that we had a new appreciation for grazing here in the US. Craft Bar in NYC is an excellent example or would be if a glass of wine or beer cost less then two bucks as it does in Jerez. It might be if they weren't so willing to sell cheese that was past its prime. Unfortunately, I've found you have to know not only what you want, but how it should appear. In France, I've found I could rely on a small cheese monger to pick the cheese for me.Creeper made a lot of good points. Too many to mention, in fact, but I suspect he didn't mean that "If you travel to Japan, you eat sushi" when he said it. One of the interesting things about dining out in Japan, is that the national restaurants take so many different forms that even if you were restricted to Japanese food, you feel are eating different cuisines. One doesn't have sushi in a tempura house, and a restaurant may specialize in serving nothing but eel, prepared one way. I may also have had my best Chinese meal in Tokyo. Sumac expanded on the concept of our diversity, but what she did best, I think, is remind us all that even those who prefer the French style, can take a deep look and see not only what the French have learned from us in the past few decades, but what they can continue to learn. Grill-it speaks of our national heritage of not focusing on our daily meals, sadly this is something that's influencing the French today.

We all make assumptions and read things into articles, but I don't see Janet as being very creative here. I think the author came on a bit too strong and as the article continued, I began to get turned off. I have plenty of friends who know more about wine than I do, but I'd be offended by the suggestion that anyone ask my guests to chip in and buy better wine than I plan on serving. The author starts off with the premise that it makes sense to out host the host in what's an ungracious and most anti-Emily-Post-like suggestion. You brought the gift, but it doesn't hold that you know better than the host what to do with that gift. On rereading this I find the concept that a guest is force-fed anything by the host truly offensive, but maybe I miss the toungue in cheek humor.

I apologize. Apparently I was reading the wrong blurb on the linked page.

Okay Craig, there goes your chance to be invited to my house and my last chance to build a cellar. My understanding is that the customs in the US is different from the ones in France. Wherever there's a conflict between French customs and American customs or etiquette and it involves anything to do with food or wine, I try to play by French rules, when I get to make the rules. In the US, it's very common for the guest to contribute to the dinner and will often bring wine or dessert unannounced. I've had guests say, "well let's open the champagne now," referring to their champagne--I mean the one I mistook as a gift. It doesn't seem to matter what I've served so far or if they brought a brut champange and I think it will be terrible with the dessert. In France, a gift of a bottle of wine is considered a gift and not a participation in hosting. When we go out, I often have to think twice about whether I am going to be served my own wine. More and more, I prefer to opt for flowers. When I get a bottle of wine, I rarely serve it at that dinner. There are always exceptions. If it's a special bottle, I save it for a special occasion. If it's very special, I try to serve it when I have that guest over again. If it's better than what I've served that evening, I'll make a special effort to have that guest over again and enjoy a good wine with him, although it may or may not be the wine he brought. I have no objection to a guest offering to bring the wine for the evening, with the proviso that we discuss it before hand. I've had close friends offer me a list of wines they'd like to try and ask if any would go with the meal and other wines I was planning on serving. I consider that a charming gesture as long as it's not an attempt to take over my party. There are few occasions where I would not be offended by the suggestion that we turn our hors d'oeuvres into a wine tasting party. I can't begin to think of a situation where I've issued invitations to dinner and could have been persuaded to ask my guests to chip in funds to attend. All this center of attraction just because he's been force-fed something I [the author] had no interest in drinking. The article started off really nicely and got better until it reached the point where I hoped he'd learn to arrive empty handed. By the time I finished, it ocurred to me that he might best decline a few invitations as a social gesture. I had to look at the masthead to see where this guy is coming from. Is life in New Jersey so different?

It took a while for you to answer my question, but I guess it took a while for me to ask it. I probably should have also linked to Frank Prial's Echos of Spain in Just a Few Sips in the same section as Amanda Hesser's article as her article was meant to be read in conjunction with a tasting of finos, including manzanillas and amontillados. Real sherries--not the stuff in jugs from California served at graduate student art openings of my youth--is terrific stuff and a bargain. A fino is a wonderful before dinner drink and a bottle of manzanilla at a seaside restaurant in Sanlucar de Barrameda is an excellent accompaniment to a luncheon tasting of many seafoods. I daresay, a bottle at less than ten dollars in a restaurant is an incredible value. Even in Spain, outside Andalucia, Sherry is not as popular as it deserves to be. From what we observed in Madrid and elsewhere, beer and cava, in that order, seem to out sell sherry as an aperitif. It's hard, however to come back from a visit to Andalucia without a renewed interest in sherries. My guess however, is that a fino at bar in NYC is almost always going to be a disappointment. It's rarely fresh and even a newly opened bottle may not offer the taste one expects in Sevilla or Ronda.

I haven't read the unauthorized guide and I don't wish to be seen as defending WS, but can anyone tell me if the high marks follow the advertising or if the advertising follows the high marks. There's always an inclination for businesses to support the media that's rated them well in the past. That's far less questionable than a publication awarding its regular advertisers high marks. There is always a danger of conflict of interest when a publication accepts any advertising and that's most focused when the advertising is from a business that is central to the editorial content pages of the publication. Nevertheless, it's not uncommon for a print publication to let potential advertisers know that their product will be featured in an up coming edition and offer then the chance to capitalize on the publicity with an advertisement. Theoretically, this opporutnity would be offered to those who scored low and no one would know exactly how they scored in advance. I am playing devil's advocate. I'd not bet on WS coming out particularly clean, but readers should note that I'm displaying my own prejudice here. Certainly one could question the merits of the NY Times accepting advertising from the very films it reviews, although I suspect a secret study would find very little relationship between the ads and the best reviews.

As an aside to the credit card discussion, hypermarches in France offer the best prices on fuel. All of the service stations I've seen that are connected to a hypermarche are self service, but have a cashier on duty Monday through Saturday. On Sundays they operate on an unmanned basis. It's a good idea to ensure you are not running low on Friday or Saturday while touring in France if your card doesn't have a French chip. Hypermarches are generally found just outside towns and are usually well advertised with billboards on the roads entering towns.

The 2002 Villa Maria Sauvignon Blanc has a screw cap. It could be the one you saw, but I'll bet you'll see more. Frank Prial has an article Popping Corks: A Sound Bound for Oblivion? in the Dining section of the May 14, 2003 NY Times. He mentions Bonny Doon and offers some other industry news about current and expected use of screw tops. It does seem so unceremonious, but it may make for better drinking.