Bux

Location, location and location. Seriously, a neighborhood restaurant is always going to get an edge. I don't know a New Yorker who doesn't value convenience. I think most restaurants understand this and most will make an extra effort to please someone from the neighborhood--if they can spot that person--just because he's likely to return often when he finds a local place he likes. Nevertheless, it's the food that will attract me and it's the food that will keep me coming back. I often think of my father who liked good food, but I wouldn't call him a connoisseur. He liked places where he was known by the owner or waiter and treated with some special attention. Sadly, we didn't enjoy most of each other's favorite places, but I understand that I am not the typical NY diner. Verbena is not the typical NY restaurant either, but I also understand that few restaurants in NY would survive on my business and maybe there aren't enough connoisseurs in NYC to support all of the gastronomic restaurants. In this category I include not only the major luxurious restaurantsm, but the unique bistros as well. A chef in a very expensive restaurant once remarked that he knew the diners in his restaurant that day, might well be eating elswhere tomorrow and happily paying the same price for mediocre to dreadful food. Obviously, one needs to feed a group of diners larger than an ideal core of connoisseurs. For me it will be interesting to see how many answers you get here than do not stress the food and the service necessary to enjoy that food. As an example of necessary service, I hate to see my wine glass empty, but I have no problem pouring my own wine if the bottle is left within reach. Let me also say this is not how it's supposed to work. We're supposed to ask the questions. Let me thank you for breaking the mold and adding to the interest of this Q&A session.

If someone were to leave the table after all the diners had started eating, should they all stop and why or why not. Does it make a difference if a diner leaves before or after the food is served? Speaking of discomfort who would like to return to a dinner table and find oneself in the middle of a conversation having missed the beginning and thus at a loss to contribute most effectively not knowing what's already been said? I assume conversation stops in well bread society when someone leaves the table.

Isn't Mario married to one of the Coach Farm family? Yes. His wife is the daughter of the owner, who was the owner of the Coach leather and handbags company. From time to time you might see her and her kids at the Union Square Greenmarket stand. She's struck me as a very charming woman.

I missed this thread when it started and I've been reluctant to enter this sort of discussion again partially because I thought it went nowhere the last time and partially because I felt a rudeness in the way "etiquette" was defended. I'm sorry Wilfrid is away at this moment, because I thought I made it clear in the other thread that what I introduced as "French" etiquette was how my immediate family and close friends behave at home and in fine restaurants. It had not occurred to me until the other thread that this was not the way most sophisticated people behaved in fine restaurants. Social evolution over time has caused me to abandon most of what my mother taught me and to rely on an intelligent and resonable application of the abstract purpose of most of her rules. This was an easy jump, because her rules were never arbitrary and the understanding was that etiquette's purpose was to make others feel comfortable. So, Fat Guy does not stand alone and while I say that, let me add that he's come far closer to proving that experts support what he's said than the other side has. Nothing could be more impolite than saying might makes right or that we're the majority so we don't need to prove anything, which appears to be the case I see here. That I live a life that borders on middle class establishment is not entirely something that's happened against my will, but I have no trouble being seen as a renegade or for that matter as rude. I should not like to be seen as inconsiderate however and I see a big difference between rude and inconsiderate, although more often than not, one is both if one is either. What troubled me about the other thread was that the action of the table was pronounced correct because it was appreciated by the lady in question. It seem to me that to continue my argument almost required me to disredit her character. I've come to better appreciate the full nature of the silly dance. Had I been away and returned to the table, I would have thanked the group for waiting for me to join them, if they had waited, or thanked them for not embarrassing me by not waiting. That's the nature of etiquette and of consideration--not to make the other party feel uncomfortable. Etiquette would almost always require you to say the other person was correct if we really wanted to carry it to an extreme and it bothered me that people could defend one form of social custom over another so vehementaly in the name of etiquette. It's clearly a breach of etiquette to tell another person he's rude. Is it not? And one last thing, it was rude of Fat Guy to bring this up again.

The answer to your question about getting around at night by train or bus or taxi is critical, or so I would think. I don't have the answer. I fear public transportation north and south might not be nearly as good as I understand it is along the coast. I hope you will hear that I am wrong. If I am correct, you may want to consider staying in Cannes or Nice and using the car to get around by day. That way you will have the option of walking to restaurants.

Cheap bastards rule. How many weeks do you go between washing the sponges in the dishwasher and how often do you rinse the ceramic dish at the edge of the sink? There's no reason for us not to be careful even at the low end. What kind of numbers are we looking for? Has anyone ever measured the bacteria left on a rinsed plate that was cleaned with an infested sponge? Has anyone ever ridden in a subway and eaten a sandwich or a hot dog without washing hands between events. If you do, you're going to die.

Or we could sit around waiting for the revisionist book Bacteria 'R' Good for You. Oh wait, didn't the Times have that article about kids growing up in sterile environments suffering from more allergies later in life? In the meantime let's be sure we enforce the use of plastic cutting boards in restaurants because experiments have shown they can't be cleaned by hot water and detergent and get rid of all wooden boards which the same scientists tell us don't support bacterial life. You know there are bactericidal soaps and detergents which, if commonly and effectively used, could well speed up mutant forms of bacteria that might survive boiling water. Then we could all stop worrying and get on with enjoying our happy, albeit shorter lives. [signed] Confused Skeptic.

I don't think there's any substantial difference between cidre from Normandy and Brittany, but from chauvinism resulting from my daughter's marriage to a Breton, I will categorically state the best cidre comes from Brittany. Astor on Astor Place has had both Norman and Breton cidre in NY. The best cidre I've had in NY was produced by the Manoir du Kinkiz near Quimper in Brittany and bore the appellation Cornouaille Controlée designation. Astor used to carry it. I don't know if they still do. It's a natural brut cidre corked much like a champagne with a wired on mushroom cork. It was a Louis/Dressner Selection and imported by LDM Wines, Inc. or Long Island City, NY. I suppose you could contact them and find out if they still import the cidre and where they distribute it. I'm told there's some decent hard cider produced in NYS, but I haven't tasted it. I was speaking with the owner of Breezy Hill orchards at the Union Square Greenmarket in NYC and she told me they have a cider operation but for legal reasons can't sell alcoholic beverages at the Greenmarket.

In response to both Steve and Cabrales, I have read Matthew's post and interpreted it as wanting to stay in a rented house in one location for a week. Two and three star restaurants were secondary requests and not an essential part of his trip. Thus I have proposed the kind of trip I normally take which is a road trip moving from inn to inn each night. I'm not clear that Matthew wants to cook some, or most, of his own meals, but I find that's usually part of the reason people choose to say in a rental rather than a hotel. Well Matthew, we could still use some more imput.

Lot's of people buy books without pictures. I'm sure those who want a cookbook without having to pay for all the photographs feel may not feel it's a shame. The information is good and from what I have observed, the results of the recipes are terrific. It's not a coffee table book however. I suspect the publishers made a business decision about the market for picture books and cookbooks about Parisian desserts. More likely it's not so much that the pubisher's cheaped out, but that they wanted to bring the book to the market a certain price point. It's a business. In most businesses, owners invest in what they feel they can sell at a profit. Have you seen the Herme cookbooks? It may well be that they've used up the market for glorious dessert photographs. Maybe Dorie would be a good Q&A guest. You could ask her about the publishing business.

I think Hevin has been around too long and has too solid a reputation to be thought of as the new Herme. He's more of a chocolatier than a patissier. I don't have much personal experience with Hevin's stuff but on our last visit to Paris we stumbled upon his shop just south of the Jardins du Luxembourg, and although I had no real appetite I walked in and bought a single chocolate macaron just for the experience. I am left with the desire to try everything he makes. We should have Steve Klc in on this discussion. Then again, he's posted about Hevin, Hermes and Conticini elsewhere on the site, if not on the France board. A search would be in order for anyone wanting valuable opinion on the three.

Michel Bras is not a place I'd consider as a dinner or even a lunch while staying in most of what I consider the "south" of France. There's just too much driving involved not to want an overnight stay at Bras, or in the area for me. Michel Geurard also seems too far north for just dinner from the Basque region. Either of these places and others might be a consideration depending on how you were getting to your final destination if that was not Provence. I've not researched this, but I can't imagine getting to Bras by train, although I'm sure Laguiole must have train service and I suspect taxis could be arranged to the inn which is out of town. Steve Plotnicki's assessment of the differences between Cannes and Nice are similar to mine and probably more up to date. Nice probably has more activities than he gives it credit for having. It the good old days when the airlines were far more generous to travel agents, we spent a long weekend in Nice. With only four days to our trip, we still rented a car for a day to drive along the coast to Antibes and the Picasso museum. That was several years ago and what I remember most about the drive was how little coutryside was left along the Mediterranean. I knew it years before when it was rather undeveloped. Matthew, how are you getting to the south of France and will you have a car along the way, or rent one there? If you are not staying in a city, I think you will need a car.

As I recall, that was in the thread where he offered to lend you enough rope.

That was my assumption, but then one never really knows what's on whose radar. Another thing I've learned from years of participation in online discussions is that when I'm answering someone's question in public, I'm also speaking to a lot of people who don't have the background of the person whose question I'm answering. It's hard to know when I need to fill in some background information and when to stop boring everyone. Anyway, Adria is becoming involved in several projects outside of El Bulli and his name is popping up in other connections. I'm kind of curious to see what his conceptual consulting or collaboration with NH Hotels will bring to fruition. Off hand, I can't think of the project for a food bar in a Barcelona hotel other than it's somethink like "Fast Good," which seemed like an obvious poke at the seriousness of the Slow Food movement as politics.

In terms of price, Saka Gura is like many places where you can graze or "do tapas." Everything looks inexpensive, but the addition can become quite large when you indulge yourself. It's not an elegant high priced place, but it's certainly not a cheap ethnic spot either. Overall, I though it was fair value for the money spent. Although it wasn't similar to any particular restaurant in which I've eaten in Japan, nor were there specifics that were responsible for this, I found it the most authentically Japanese place in which I've eaten in New York. Maybe it's just that it was in a basement of a truly nondescript office building.

Damn, why didn't I ever think of that. This is worth the price of today's log on all by itself. You are our lab guy from now.

This is long. Please bear with me if this subject is of interest. We have become totally reliant on ATMs and credit cards. I can't remember the last time I've used a currency exchange service of any kind. I take that back. It was in mainland China some years back. Hong Kong and Japan had reasonably friendly ATMs. In the past decade or so of traveling in Europe, I've only been in London, France, Spain and Belgium and found ATMs perfectly serviceable, although the Belgian machines were not nearly as easy to find as they were in France or Spain. The last time I had a problem was when my bank was off line in Spain and I had to use a credit card to get a few bucks to eat in a little restaurant that didn't take credit cards. One should never travel with less than twenty dollars of local currency in one's pocket anyway. That was my fault. Those who know me well, should also know that I use my ATM card, not for the incredible convenience, but because it's the least expensive way to get local currency. At one point, every ATM card offered a better rate than every change booth or bank counter in France. Banks have gotten wise to this and have started to add all sorts of charges and surcharges lest they didn't make enough on the first round. Shop around. In the NY area, HSBC offers both credit cards and ATM cards with no surcharges for foreign currency so that all you pay is the 1% over the interbank rate charged by Visa or Cirrus (MasterCard) If you have your own bank and are exchanging millions of dollars a day, you can beat that. Otherwise not. Net banks, without ATMs of their own, often do not charge any fees for ATM use since they don't incur any fees. Many banks will have a fee based on the nature of your account and the minimum balance required. Look for the account that has unlimited foreign ATM use and see if the balance is acceptable. Interest rates are negligible these days, but some banks will let you combine a money market or investment account to meet the minimum balance requirements. Credit Unions usually offer a card with no fees or charges, but you should check each agreement carefully. In addition to the fees, over the past two years most banks have added a "foreign currency conversion 'surcharge.'" You need to understand that when the consumer with a US bank card makes a withdrawal or purchase using an ATM, debit or credit card, Visa or Cirrus (MasterCard) handle the conversion at the interbank rate. For this service, they take 1%. That's very fair and a bargain to the consumer used to over the counter exchanges. Your bank does not deal in the foreign currency. Visa or Cirrus deal only in dollar transactions with them and in euros with the French bank. So why are banks adding a conversion surcharge? I suggest it's because they can get away with if from most account holders who travel aborad only on occasion and who don't see the surcharge on their bills. The surcharge is incorporated into the exchange rate shown on your statement. As the exchange rate fluctuates all the time, most consumers will not pay much attention to the difference between 1.0092, 1.0192, 1.0292 or 1.0392. You withdrew a hundred euros and you knew it would cost a bit more than $100. $103.92 will sound reasonable and you don't know I'm getting charged $101.92 for the same 100 euros. Notice of this surcharge, usually about 2%, (some banks charge more) should be found in the small print of the agreement that comes with the card. Bear in mind that banks lie, possibly though ignorance of what they are doing. Some years back, I received a notice from my bank saying I would be charged a 2% surcharge on my credit card. I called and asked if that would apply to my ATM card as well. I was told "No." I therefore paid for my next trip abroad using my debit card rather than my credit card, losing the interest on the float, but feeling had saved close to 2% of the trip's cost. Subsequently, I realized how dependant I was on my ATM card and opened an account at another bank for the sole purpose of having a back up card. As a lark on my next trip, I withdrew 100 francs in rapid succession from the same ATM using both cards. When I returned home, I checked my statments and found I had been charged exactly 2% more by my old bank. I informed my bank. They said I must be mistaken, they could't imagine how that happened and they sent me twenty dollars for my "trouble." I quickly switched most of my business to the new bank. I found the whole thing rather offensive, but I managed to do some research into this business and Visa was quite up front in telling me that they take 1% for themselves and allow their member banks to have them build in extra points which are credited to the bank. So when your bank tells you that the add nothing to what Visa (or Cirrus) charges, they are technically accurate, but misleading. Cirrus was far more circumspect about what they would tell me over the phone, but it appeared as if they had the same policies. Caveat emptor. If you travel a lot, you may have just saved the cost of membership here. If you travel a lot and live well when you are traveling and this is all news to you, you have saved enough to buy me a good dinner.

For what it's worth, I'm on a Mac and can type accent marks here just as I do in most word processors. I also have a little pull down menu that allows me to access all of the characters in any font using a mouse. I appreciate accurate French orthography, but it's often overkill in an English language message board where few people even use a spell checker. It would be nice to have correct spelling and propper accents, but Steven Shaw has also pointed out the accent marks aren't handled well by our search engine. He has recommended we don't use them. I'm left straddling the fence and my posting history will show an inconsistent pattern, but at least some of my posts are correct and others can be found.

I am more familiar with the the southwest of the Languedoc and Basque Coast myself. That's partially because I have good friends who have a house near Beziers and perhaps also out of a certain perversity. Provence is where everyone goes. There's a joy in escaping the crowds, but there's usually a reason everyone goes to where everyone goes. In terms of food, there's a lot to be said for the two coasts just north of the Pyrenees and that's that they're a short drive from Spain. I never thought I'd ever say something like that. I did not find Spanish food all that interesting on my first visits there although those two areas have always had good food. Nevertheless, I can't see driving from Collioure to Roses or from St. Jean de Luz to San Sebastian and back for dinner. When you get below the starred restaurants, I think the French Basque country has both Spain and the Mediterranean coast north of the Pyrenees beat in terms of food and restaurants. I've found it to have almost beach weather one January and just barely beach weather early in September another year. There's not a lot of heavy duty sightseeing in terms of museums and monuments--there are reasons Provence is so popular. L'Auberge de la Galupe in Urt is one hell of a restaurant even for a two star. I've eaten well enough in one star restaurants in the area and there are many restaurants I haven't tried that are well written about. The Pyrenees are quite low by the Atlantic, but it may still be chilly in the mountains and quite frankly, it may be very much not lively at that time of year. In any event, I've always been a transient tourist moving from hotel to hotel in the region except when we stay with friends in the Languedoc, but Graham would be my point man in that area. He's been a steady visitor and renter, I believe. There are several regulars here who know Provence and the Cote d'Azur or parts of it quite well.

We have always used waxed paper to line pans and molds and to cover the top of foods that are braising, until someone suggested we might be eating the melted wax. Although waxed paper seems to have been the standard for what we were doing, we didn't have a definitive answer and in spite of many years of not having a problem with it, we switched to parchment paper--and have lived to tell our tale,

I started off by using the word custard, but slipped back into flan myself. I think in the US, creme caramel is flan. I suppose it's that the latino influence especially from the Caribbean and Mexico that has added flan to American English.

There is such a degree of subjectivity that there is no perfect recipe. Extra yolks will "enrich" any custard. What we are talking about is a custard. All cream and all yolks will make a very rich dessert that many will find too rich. A flan made with all milk and whole eggs may seem too light to others. There are cultural differences as well. My in-laws all make flan with extra egg yolks that seems too gummy and eggy by comparison to a French creme caramel, but after a diet of latino flans, the French version can seem almost like a diet dessert. I think the one secret is in slow even cooking. It's not just as Suvir said, that you don't want it to boil, but that the custard should not set before all the air has gone out of it. A water bath is highly advisable as may be cooking it at a lower temperature and longer period of time than called for in the recipe. We discovered the calibration was off on our oven when it took so long for the custard to bake, but we also discovered they were so much better for it.

It may be worth noting that the more forks and spoons, the fanicer the restaurant and the higher the price. Red indicates a particularly interesting or lovely decor, but neither the number of forks and spoons nor the color says much of anything about the food. My goal is to find the places with the most stars and least forks. Nevertheless, I've not found a guide book that was totally reliable and some cities just don't have terribly good restaurants. All a guide book can do is point our the best looking ones or the least bad ones. It's a lot easier to find good restaurants in Paris perhaps than in many cities in Spain and not all that reasonable to blame or praise the guides which are merely the messengers of that news. I've always considered that the most favorable position in a restaurant. When I'm seated facing my wife who is seated on the banquette and down the row another couple is seated side by side occupying twice as much linear space and both facing the room, I know they're either more important than I am or pretty lucky. I do tend to agree with those who are impatient about being served. At a highly aticipated meal in a two star restaurant in a small town in France we were ignored for what seemed like an interminable time after we declined to order aperatifs. We did enter the restaurant at about the same time as many other diners, but had we not been dependant on their jitney to drive us back to their inn outside of the town, it might have been more reasonable to leave. Nevertheless, we stewed for a while until they brought menus and started to pay attention to us. From there on, the attention was nonstop and the meal turned out to be one of the more noteworthy meals of all our travels in France and we did have a an excellent table with a view of the garden in what I judged to be the better room. My wife said the latter was because I was wearing a tie and I suppose she was correct. The jackets and ties were in our room and the jeans and sweaters in the other room. When Fat Guy was planning a trip to France I heard he was going to be in the region and I insisted he not allow himself to pass this place by. The moral of my story. I don't know. I'm still learning how to eat, taste food and get the best out of a meal. Empty restaurant still scare me a bit, but I've had lovely meals in the oddest places in empty restaurants and terrible meals in restaurants that are full. Sometimes it's important to know what everyone else is eating. I remember a terrible fish dinner in a packed restaurant in France. It finally downed on me that no one was eating anything that was cooked. They were all having oysters and raw seafood.

Ferran Adria and his brother Alberto operate El Bulli outside of Roses, a resort town of no other distinction in northern Catalonia. They have been causing quite a stir. They've just celebrated the 20th anniversary of the restaurant, but the news has traveled slowly. Nevertheless, none other than Alain Ducasse has sung their praises and there was a big article in the NY Times about two years ago. A search on Adria here would bring a host of threads in which he's been mentioned. A good place to look might be in the Spain board, where there are few posts and several descriptions of meals at El Bulli. Searches on foam and caramel might work as well.

That's a wonderful idea. I have been to HK, albeit but once and briefly, (just about a week including a side trip to the mainland) and enjoyed it tremendously. There was nothing I didn't like, but meals where for us the great draw. Dim sum alone could make my day in HK. Aside from my one disappointment at a restaurant listed by Patricia Wells as one of ther ten best choices in the whole world, we ate extremely well although I don't remember much about desserts or sweets. Patricia Wells revisited the same restaurant a few months after we did and wrote that she herself was so disappointed at how low it had sunk. Old guides and old restaurant reviews are unreliable.