Bux

You could ask. Oh, yes, I'm reading. Are you taking attendence? Will there be a quiz?

Wasn't Raymond Sokolov a restaurant review er for a while?

I agree that the subject of rising star has become a boring topic. It's really no longer news. Spain is an exciting country to visit in terms of gastronomy, but so are many countries that have never challenged France for the limelight. It's always been interesting to compare the food in France with that of Italy and there's no end to the positive discussions that may be had, but once the argument turns to which cuisine is better, the discussion turns personal and ultimately unrewarding. There's limited value in assigning a rank to the national cuisines. Each is worth of attention or it's not. Spain has arrived as a star. France is still a star as well. The one issue I see as worthy of discussion is why Spain still hasn't attracted the same level of attention by anglophone gastrotravelers as France has--or has it? Posts here run higher on the France board than the Spain board, though that's hardly a scientific study of any real merit. I believe I know what Doc means when he posts about the difference between Gagnaire and Adrià, though I'd not like to put words in his mouth. I sense a sharpness about the individual flavors in an Adrià dish even as they combine in my mouth. From Gagnaire, I have the recollection, right or wrong, of a merging of original tastes to produce a new compound flavor. In reaction to the description of Adrià's spherical olive as the essence of oliveness, one very astute and erudite critic asked if anyone found that lacking in the original olive. It isn't, but I don't know that this makes Adrià's product any less remarkable. My guess is that if I were to eat Adrià's olive spheres and real olives every day for a month or so, I wouldn't want to see either for a while and that it would be the real olive I would crave first. It may be that Adrià's olives are such a topical food that they will disappear altogether in time. That doesn't make them any less significant for me, right now.

Just to be clear, I didn't mean to imply that haute cuisine in France isn't what it used to be in quality. The decline I've sensed is in the middle range and lower middle range, but that's come back in the 90s or even earlier to a great degree. There was a time it was hard to get a bad meal in France. That's less true today, although I will admit I'm far less easily impressed today than I was in the 60s.

I think steak houses pride themselves on having guests leave with a doggy bag.

I've been back up to Stone Barns since my last post in the thread. I thought I posted about the meal, but I don't see the post in this thread, so I guess I haven't. Perhaps, I recall e-mailing my comments to Dan Barber. Shortly before we went up there to meet some friend who live in Westchester County for dinner, a French born friend, who's been a sous chef in a NY Times four star restaurant after working in a Michelin three star restaurant in France, dined at Stone Barns for the first time. He told me he thought the restaurant was operating on the level of a Michelin three star restaurant. I take what chefs say about each other with a grain of salt, sometimes they're catty and sometimes they're generous. In this case however, the opinion comes from someone I rely on to be straight with me. My own prejudice is that it lacks the formality I associate with three star dining in France, which is not a bad thing. In fact that's probably related to the fact that I often prefer my meals at two star restaurants to those at four star restaurants. I think the kitchen is turning out food that's unsurpassed at least in New York City. The two short comings for us were that service that evening was exceptionally slow--we started dinner early and barely caught the last train back to Manhattan (that I even have to commute by the NY Central line is a shortcoming that's not their fault)--and while I like the rolls, I don't find them to be the equal of the rest of the food. I'm not sure if the length of time between courses was affected by the catered party that evening. I believe the same kitchen serves both the restaurant and events. It's also possible we got the slow end of the service simply because we were so deeply engaged in conversation with old friends we hadn't seen in a while and we had to appear as the table that could best keep itself occupied between courses. It wasn't as if we ever inquired about a delay or anything and we were having an extended tasting that doesn't appear on the menu. I won't go into details, but one of the things that most impressed me was the Berkshire pork. Oddly enough I learned that this particular pork came from a pig that wasn't raised on the Stone Barns farm. It may sound even odder that I took this as a good sign, but I did so because later in the evening (yes we almost missed the last train, but we didn't miss a tour of the kitchen and a chance to talk with Mike Anthony) I learned that they trade their livestock with other farmers to see the results other farmers are getting with the same breed. There's an edge to the food here that goes beyond just having a dynamic kitchen or access to the best and freshest product. There's a symbiotic relationship between the kitchen and a dynamic farm. If the food is as good as any I've had in NYC, Stone Barns surely has the advantage of the grounds. I also don't know of a more understatedly elegant restaurant interior that supports the notion of top level dining.

I've been disappointed in recent visits to Funky Broome. It definitely seemed to have changed hands some time ago. Am I wrong about that? I will have to give it another try.

I was paraphrasing Robuchon and don't have the exact quote. In any event, the operative words are probably "as we know it," rather than "haute cuisine." I believe at the time he was referring to the style of four star Michelin restaurants and their dependence on a large staff of underpaid workers, apprentices and stagiaires. The cost of operating such a restaurant where the staff out numbers the diners is getting harder to accomplish each day. I'm not sure I can articulate exactly how I enter a restaurant and suspect it varies to a degree at each restaurant and from the first contact, it's a matter of responding to any leads I get from the restaurant. I imagine that's not really much different from the way most people act. I do enter a recommended, or fine, restaurant with trust and an assumption I'm going to be well cared for. Why not? If it's the case, it's precisely the attitude that will make my host want to take even better care for me. If it's not the case, and the owner, or chef, are out to get as much as they can and give as little as they can get away with, I'm lost anyway. That said, on my last visit to Paris, I had more disappointments than ever before. (Poor planning may well have taken it's toll, while a morbid curiosity about restaurants I suspected were over rated added to the problem. I can be my own worst enemy in that regard.) While I've expressed a sense that food in France is improving lately, I don't feel it's anywhere near what it was thirty to forty years ago. At the same time, I don't ascribe any particular greed to this. I'm certainly not going to fault workers for wanting to earn a better salary, and that's put a burden on owners who fear clients won't pay more. A 19% tax on restaurant meals certainly doesn't help French restaurants compete in value with those in Spain or the US. Robert can better tell us about Italy.

Robert, yes of course the times change in ways we wish they wouldn't and some of the changes have a domino effect that ultimately makes it impossible to maintain certain aspects of what we like. Whether one feels Robuchon's recent restaurants are an intelligent response to changing conditions, or simply a way to cash in on his fame and make a quicker buck, it's hard to argue with the premise of his statement a few years ago that haute cuisine as we knew it, are dead. The technology, or lack of technology, that made Point and Dumaine's locations so valuable have changed, but they are not the major reasons the cuisine of la Pyramid or la Cote d'Or won't be replicated. Perhaps we've been at the wrong points in regard to tasting menus and surprise menus. While each of those has contributed some of my best meals in the past couple of years, I have no doubt unscrupulous restaurateurs will use them for abuse of an unsuspecting clientele. They are however, in my opinion any more suspect than a dozen other things. I'd have greater fear of a new restaurant representing itself as serving old fashioned haute cuisine. In the end, we will only know what we like after we've had it. To some extent, we rely on guides when traveling or choosing restaurants to visit for the first time. They are no infallible sources be they Michelin, Campsa, Gambero Rosso or eGullet Society members. Even among members whose opinions and taste I respect, there are differences in opinion of restaurants. You and I have diametrically opposed views of one restaurant near San Sebastian as I recall. Kichpig, I often share your view of not wanting to work when I eat out. Perhaps I'm just lazy, but I'd prefer to eat where I can trust the chef to take good care of me. That said, it's always going to happen at a strange restaurant and sometimes I have to work to get the best meal out of a restaurant and do it in a way that seems in line with what Robert tends to do more often. A couple of my best meals this past year were neither a tasting or surprise menu, nor leaving it in the hands of the chef, not completely under my control by ordering a la carte. In a couple of cases, my menu was decided after some negotiation with the waiter and the chef. I don't know if Robert would have arrived at the same menu under those circumstances, but I think he would have approved of the process. The two meals that come to mind were had in Madrid and Valencia, so I'll leave off the details as off topic to this thread.

I will be the first to agree that elBulli is a bargain even in light of rapidly rising prices. In truth, they could double their price and still turn away diners. Prices at elBulli seem to defy supply and demand economics in our favor. I have also known reliable gastronomes who were displeased at Gagnaire. I might even be able to make solid arguments why his philosophy and direction are "wrong," but I liked the way my food tasted. I take photographs of meals when I travel, but would rarely think of taking a camera to a restaurant at home where I am known. I realize there's some hypocrisy in that, and it's hard for me to be too critical of a chef's restrictions on camera's in the dining room. I'm not at all sure that just the appearance of a camera in a fine restaurant may not be off putting to other diners and not support the atmosphere of fine dining. I'll allow Gagnaire iconoclasm on that issue the way I respect no mobile phone rules in other restaurants.

It may be that e-mail is not the most reliable way to contact them. There was a problem with our reservation as if our last e-mail was either not read or received. I felt it as just one of those things and dismissed it. The problem was resolved quickly and graciously. I've never seen an empty table at peak service times, so I don't know that I would say it suffers from people not choosing to eat there. It's worth a hassle to dine there, but it shouldn't be a hassle to contact a restaurant. I trust you will make them aware of your problems and I'd be surprised if they don't do what they can to improve whatever the situation is that's causing the problem. I will say that service in the restaurant is impeccable and indicates they are aiming at attending to their clients' needs.

That's not the Pedro I know then.

I could swear there was a fore leg and a hind leg on the platter.

I've sensed there is a considerable difference in attitude between top kitchens in France and Spain. French chefs are known to value secrecy a bit more, while the Spanish gastronomic star is rising on the openess of it's creative forces. In one French bakery I was almost attacked by the sales person as I tried to take a picture of the wares. It was all so silly as it was so easy for me to take my purchases outside and do a much better job of photographing them if industrial espionage was on my mind. Haute cuisine in France is just so much more expensive than comparable food in Spain. Of course prices in Paris as just so much higher than those in the provinces. I don't find it fair to compare prices in Paris off the Champs Elysee with those in Cala Montjoi, but part of the reason I am more apt to be in Spain eating than France is that the food is often both more interesting and cheaper. That you didn't like Gagnaire's food has little to do with its pricing. Chefs have some of the finest food sensibilities around, but professionals in any field can often be very conservative in their tastes and threatened by too much creativity. I've had two meals at Gagnaire. I was thrilled by the first and very pleased with the second, but I'm always careful about recommending it to strangers. Some people may love it, others may hate it and nether reaction necessarily surprises me unless I know the person.

Please note that we've removed a number of off topic posts from this thread. This forum is for discussion of food and restaurants in Western Canada. Posts on meals eaten in other parts of the world need to be made in the applicable forum. Each regional forum is dedicated to the discussion of food and restaurants in that particular region. Social gossip and stories of personal incidents are largely off topic in all the regional forums. At Arne's request, we've done some housekeeping in this thread. Please cooperate and see to it that Arne can enjoy his vacation and that he doesn't have to worry about a lot of unnecessary work to do when he returns.

Reviewing this thread, I can't help but notice that after Chef Metcalf posted that Can Roca was closed and therefore not a consideration for him, nothing else was said about the restaurant. I fear that may send the wrong impression to anyone doing a search on Girona while looking for a good restaurant. There are only a few reasons why anyone in, or near, Girona would not be eating at Can Roca. Foremost of course, is simply that it's closed. Next would be that one can't get a reservation. Both of those are good reasons, but I'd certainly consider rearranging my visit in either case if possible. The only other reason I can think of would have to be that the person in question just didn't want to eat in a great restaurant, though it's a position that's hard for me to understand. Can Roca is a great restaurant. In my humble opinion, but an opinion shared by others in this forum, it's under rated by Michelin with two stars. I'd say it offers as good a meal as you can get in terms of food, service and general pleasure. In terms of ambience, there are some more opulent settings, some marble halls in Paris for example, but there's truly nothing lacking in the way of sophistication or refinement in the design of the interior, which I found surprisingly urbane the first time we were there. A thread on El Celler de Can Roca is here.

One might add that nouvelle cuisine added the contemporary style of plating where an esthetic effect is achieved in the kitchen by the chef. Some of my earliest memories of fine dining in Burgundy, in particular, are of tableside service where perhaps a fowl is carved and plated by the waiter right at one's table. Who's to balme for dishes flambeed at your table and was it such a bad think or had it just become a cliché. I'm of the opinion that even the best food and dining needs a shake up every now and then or it stagnates. Is Adrià's use of the Teppannitro (photo here) to prepare dessert at the table, an innovation, or a return to the tradition of Crepes Suzette. Were crepes flambeed at the table as bad as they were later seen by gastronomes, or do we just become tired of anything we allow to become a cliché? At any rate, Jonathan makes a convincing argument that in some ways tasting menus may be seen as a return to the traditions of Escoffier and his times. Change is perhaps the only constant. Fashions, customs and tastes may run in cycles, but each cycle is different enough. I don't embrace change for its own sake, but sometimes change is a relief if not an improvement. I don't dismiss Robert's looking to assure himself that he's not missing a local specialty and particularly not one of the chef's specialties. Often enough, they don't appear on a surprise or tasting menu, although in Spain, at least recently, it seems as if every avant garde chef has roast suckling pig on his tasting menu and invariably, it's a knock out dish of great simplicity. Tasting menus to fool the eye or pocketbook of tourists may not have the chef's best food, although I've not generally detected a mercenary attitude at any restaurant deserving of the term "great." At the same time, tasting menus meant to attract the local gentry who have eaten the chef's specialties many times, tend to skip those dishes for which the chef is already known. While I am most often willing to put myself in the chef's hands, I have eschewed the tasting menu for selections from the carte. Generally, I'll pay more for three à la carte selections than for a six course tasting menu. The tasting menu is often an economical one in spite of its expense. At the same time, budget considerations are rarely the reason one eats at a great and grand restaurant.

I'm still rather a neophyte when it comes to an understanding and appreciation of Spanish food, expecially the many regional cuisines. I've had some very young lamb in various parts of Spain including chops from an animal whose size was indeterminate to me, but whose chops were certainly far smaller than any I've encountered in the US. In France, I may have had lamb chops from as young a lamb as I've had chops in Spain, but nothing has compared to the one time I had suckling, or baby, lamb in Burgos, 120 kilometers northeast of Valladolid in Castilla y León. My distinct memory was of having half a lamb on a platter and that it was not too much meat for two people who had already shared a salad composed of several lettuce varieties and a lobster and rice dish. It was certaily the smallest lamb we had ever had and it sounds even younger than the one Pedro had. It was a few years ago. In fact it was on a trip that predates the eGullet forums.

As I recall, it was the noise that most left me with no desire to repeat the experience. In regard to the inauthenticity which is usually a very subjective thing, we found it inauthentic in regard to food we knew well and inauthentic in a way that didn' timprove it for us. Noise is also subjective. There are noisy restaurants we frequent, but not with others as it's one thing to carry on a conversation with the person in front of you at a small table, but another more difficult thing to converse with someone at an opposite corner of a table.

I find this depressing to some degree. It's largely what drove us from steak houses and into the arms of French restaurants forty years ago. I recall my wife attempting to negotiate smaller courses at the old Daniel over ten years ago, and our appetites haven't increased over the years. I've very much enjoyed the food during a couple meals at BLT Steak, but it's a style I find more extravagant than Ducasse, Per Se, Daniel, le Bernardin, etc. If I don't have room for dessert at the end of my meal, I feel there's something inherently flawed in the meal. Faced with a giant slab of meat hanging over the edge of a large plate, makes me uncomfortable. Perhaps it's no surprise I enjoy tasting menus of many courses, especially when they leave room for dessert(s). I'm not sure why I share this, except perhaps to warn those whose preferences are different to question my recommendations. I've heard good reports from BLT Prime. Someday, I'm sure I'll enjoy a good meal there but leave muttering something about "wasteful," like an old codger. I was a fan of Cello. It catered well to my preferred style of dining and I miss it, but in a way, I'm pleased Tournadel has brought his talent to a style of restaurant that pleases many New Yorkers.

It's been a few years, so I can't offer too accurate a recommendation for the food at Legrande, but I distinctly remember being pleased with the plates we had. I just can't recall if it was a good value or simply fair value, but it's a good place for a snack or light lunch. No doubt the wine and the service added to the pleasure. The food selection is smaller than the wine selection, but no less well chosen.

La Tupina comes to mind immediately.

Teflon's clean bill of health is no longer taken for granted and I have to wonder about leaching from plastic materials used in all forms of cooking and food preparation. The material most common to baby bottles a generation or so ago has been shown to be questionable. For all the protections we assume from science, industry and the governmental agencies involved, health and safety information often comes late in the day. The material in some cling wrap, especially that used in professional kitchens has been shown to be questionable in terms of leaching and relationship to causing cancer. Whether you choose not to worry because it's a drop in the bucket amongst all the contaminants in our food, water and air, or whether you do worry about what you can control that may prove to be the camel-back breaking straw, ignoring the question is not the solution. We need to approach this aspect with an open mind. In terms of flavor released in cooking, no one who has ever enjoyed a dish en papillote should support the idea that the cook needs to smell the goodness of the dish before it's served to the diner.

You should not wonder. The odds are very good that a fine restaurant will discourage tour groups and that tour group operators will not ordinarily look for great restaurants. The reasons are many and complex. I discount of course, those gastronomic tours that do visit excellent restaurants, but they rarely do so in large groups. Tours of large groups tend to gravitate towards restaurants that can deal better with quantity than quality. Restaurants that can attract a clientele that is local and do repeat business with a local clientele do not want the disuption of a tour group that is apt to deter local trade. Travelers who enjoy good food and traveling in a group so often talk about leaving the group for their better meals. That said, the first time I dined at elBullli, there was a tour group of perhaps a dozen bicyclists and hikers dining there. There was no tour bus however. The diners all cycled or hiked the seven kilomoeters back to Rosas and the organizers were one of those few exceptional luxury small group tour companies. I would add that there are destinations restaurants in the heart of destination cities such as Paris. What might distinguish them from other restaurants in the same area is not the distance of a trip or detour, but how far in advance of a dinner one would be willing to reserve.

I take it you had a certain trust in these establishments. ← Normally, one develops trust in a restaurant over time, but with judicious research and the recommendations of people I know and trust, I frequently enter a restaurant new to me in a foreign land with enough trust to commit myself to a long menu often filled with surprise dishes. The actual dish may be a surprise because it has a fanciful name whose ingredients cannot be deciphered by reading Escoffier, because it is written in a language I don't know or simply because it is meant to be a surprise by chef. The meals are not always overwhelming successes, but they are so successful, and so often successful, that I am encouraged to continue on a more regular basis. This site is an excellent source of good information in that regard, although it should never be forgotten that taste is very subjective and what pleases one diner may not please another although they are both connoisseurs of good food. Perhaps it can be assumed I am open to a great variety of foods, tastes and styles of cooking and that the potential for a new and excellent food experience surpasses the normal fear of the unknown for me. At one point in my life devoted to good food, I found myself narrowing my focus towards a clear definition of the best way to eat and cook. At some later point, I found my pleasures increased to a greater degree by expanding my horizons. I am less envious of those who have had a meal I haven't or can't have, than I am of those who can better appreciate any meal I have eaten. Just as I find wisdom in the old response "I need to do more research" in response to the question or whether Burgundy or Bordeaux is the better wine, I find I need to do more research before I can determine the "best way to dine." I trust I have not yet found the best meal of my life.