Bux

Bux, would you mind expanding on your thoughts along these lines? I don't quite see what you're getting at. Expand beyond my analogies. Perhaps I'd say what Adria is quoted as saying in Adrian Searle's column in the Guardian, to which Lizzie referred us.--"Gastronomy is not the same thing as hunger."

A few thoughts--some extraneous to the discussion. Here we are in the France board, in a thread entitled "Gastronomy in France in Flux?" and the focus of our conversation quickly turns to Spain and Adria. Can I take that as a "yes?" Analogies suck. No one has ever made a point well in this site using one and it seems we're all safe from tommy's analogy police here in the France board. Nevertheless, it would seem that food--a basic necessity--might better be lumped in with shelter and clothing, rather than art and music. Not all building is architecture and not all clothing is designer clothiing or haute couture. Not all food is haute cuisine, or perhaps in the US we might say that all food is cooking, but only some is "cuisine." Of course fishermen's sandals, peasant blouses and dungarees can become fashion statements and Adria can incorporate pork rinds and pop rocks in his cuisine. No matter what happens in Roses, we will not stop eating. How much of an affect do we all think Robuchon has had on the mashed potatoes eaten by the typical American diner? I have ordered second generation seafood "capuccino" soup before I even heard of Adria and his foam. Savory ice creams are already pervasive in western cuisine. This is a larger jump in the evolution of haute cuisine, but it's already filtering down. Is the effect negative or positive? At his point it only seems to display one's prejudices to make that sort of judgement. As with any major shift, the net effect may depend as much on the ability of the chefs who embrace the new style as the strength of the style.

You guys posted while I wasn't looking. Somehow I missed this thread and have been feeling guilty about not writing up a meal I thought was quite exceptional. It was interesting to read the reports. In a way I find it easy to overlook commenting on Cafe Boulud as I have found it so incredibly dependable. I expect it to deliver not only a flawless meal, but one that I also find thrilling to eat. I never sense an attempt to be trendy or an overt creativity that lapses into oddness, yet there are always a few things that gently push the envelope just enough to be eye openers without losing that declicious quality that I mentioned as central to the food that comes out of the kitchen. The ravioli was just that sort of dish for me that evening. I usually don't order pasta in a French restaurant as a starter either, but I spoke with Andrew (the chef) on the phone earlier and although I neglected to ask what he recommended, he said he was excited by the specials he was working on. Of the specials offered, the wild mushroom, summer truffle ravioli had the most appeal. As I recall there was also some corn in the dish and tomatoes that were cooked, but not to the point of being a sauce. It was very much not a pasta in sauce. It resembled a ravioli apierto I had in Italy in that although the ravioli were stuffed and closed, the filling inside was of loose pieces as was the sauce outside. Unlike a traditional Italian pasta dish, this one seemed to offer a series of tastes, all good, that varied as I devoured the dish and made it more exciting to eat. For a main course I had the duck breast which was attractively presented in rare slices that sort of leaned on one another to provide a little mound or structure. An onion custard with baked fig on top were balanced, in composition and flavor, with some braised bitter greens on the other side of the duck. No surprise here. It was super and satisfying. I also had the Cilantro Flan Wrapped in Caramelized Pineapple Cactus Pear Sorbet. I found all of the flavors surprisingly and pleasingly subtle. I can only hope everyone else's dessert was as well served by the wine. I was particularly impressed with the wrapping of the flan with soft and supple slices of pineapple. Remy the dessert chef, opened the restaurant with Daniel's staff, but stayed behind when Andrew took over the helm and the rest of the chef level pretty much went on to the new Daniel. A few notes on the other wines. We had a Savennieres with the appetizers. It was $49.00. I think there are a few on the list. With main courses we had a JL Chave St. Joseph 'Offerus' for $69.00. I forget the year on each and can't remember which producer was responsible for the Savennieres. There are a few on the list, as I recall. This is not an inexpensive restaurant. Wilfrid gave a before tip cost of about $120 person, but at about $47 a head for a share of four bottles of wine, there's room to economize. On the other hand the food will also support much finer wines if you care to go that route. I agree with Wilfrid that it's money well spent. I found the room a bit noisy, but trying to converse across a round table for six, makes it far more noticeable than it might be at a table for two or four. Service is excellent and very professional, but tables are quite close together and this necessitates an occasional reach across the table. In conjunction with the quality of the food and the general professionalism, I don't find that objectionable, but I mention it for those who expect haute luxury here. To a great extent it's a convivial neighborhood restaurant, but the neighborhood is NY's high rent district.

I think something is being lost in the communication. When I spoke of "fatback" I was speaking of something that, with the exception of the rind, is 100% fat--no meat at all. The salt pork I have run across may vary from all fat to streaky belly, but usually it's been all fat. The cut I see in Chinatown here in NYC, is treaky belly and often quite lean, for that cut. It's always a good quarter to half fat and still quite a rich cut after braising.

Supermarkets have neither replaced nor supplanted butcher shops. They've just run them out of business. In NYC, fresh fat back is still available from specialty butchers, but not supermarkets. If there are real old fashioned butchers near you, that's where I'd go. You might be able to get away with blanching salt pork fat. It's also not been my experience that salt pork is heavily smoked, so you may be able to use to salt pork fat as is and compensate by using less salt in your recipe. For that you'd have to cook a bit of the mixture before adding the salt.

While I've ceded point that satisfaction at the table may be very different than satisfaction in the art gallery or concert hall, I haven't meant to suggest that people walk away from table at El Bulli unsatisfied or in need of radical debriefing. My wife just pased by and noted that I was writing about El Bulli. Her comment was that she was ready to eat there again and wished she could eat there several times in a single month. She added that next time, she'd like to go there alone, so she could just sit back and enjoy the food without having to discuss each dish right then and there. I think I've already mentioned my first lunch at El Bulli and how we met some members of a luxury hiking and biking tour who were also dining there. The ones we met and talked to on the veranda of the restaurant were not followers of the Michelin stars. The tour company just happened to take them to first rate places to eat and stay. Neither Adria, nor Ducasse were important figures to them. To a man (and woman) these well to do, but outdoorsy folk, loved their meal. Don't make the mistake of thinking Adria can't punch right thorough to your pleasure center.

I don't know if there were any people who liked Matisse or Parker, but didn't find them satisfying as you're correct in noting that satisfaction in those fields is just plain different than it is when eating. The operative words for the Costa Brava are "for among other things." Having recently returned from the Costa Brava, I can say that none of the two or three star restaurants have inns attached, nor does the most intriguing one star. This has been discussed elsewhere as has the fact that the tradition of gourmet driving tours has a rich tradition in France, but it is non existent in Spain. This may be why Gagnaire, Bras and Veyrat get more press in the US than Adria, Berasategui or Arzak. France is on the road map. Spain is not. Far more telling is that Adria has managed to get gastronomes to beat a path to his door over a tortuous road. I don't know how long Arzak had three stars in San Sebastian, but although he is friends with some of the top French and Italian chefs, I suspect his restaurant was all but unknown to Americans although his creativity is of an earlier era and his food exceptionally satisfying. I don't know how easy it would be to get a table in The French Laundry if it were in Kansas City, or if it would have ever gotten off the ground there. I know that Adria is at the end of a rioad out of Roses, which is not exactly a place I'd care to stop for anything but Adrias' food. El Celler de Can Roca, a two star restaurant in a residential suburb of Girona, was full on a Saturday night. A week before we arrived, we were unable to change our reservation from dinner to lunch because lunch was full as well. On a weekday afternoon, Sant Pau, in Sant Pol de Mer, a two star restaurant a block away from the Mediterranean, was practicaly empty. Both of these places are very creative, but temper the menu with very satisfying dishes. Spanish restaurants seem to work on a different model and in a far different economy. We've often dined in empty restaurants in the middle of the week. Ducasse is a big fan of Adria and the number of young chefs who come through El Bulli is bound to have an effect on how people dine.

I think this is key. Tomorrow I may have more to say on the subject, but I think it's worth adding that when Matisse began to paint like Matisse and When Charlie Parker began to play like Charlie Parker, an awful lot of people didn't find satisfaction in their expression. Later generations weaned on their works, get great satisfaction from them. The question remains as to whether the first to appreciate the work got a sense of satisfaction and if so, what kind of satisfaction. There's a satisfaction from seeing and hearing the beauty of a familiar esthetic or sound and another satisfaction to be derived from exposure to a new and exciting form of an art. It may be that most people cannot resolve excitement of this kind with the term "satisfaction." If that's the case, I may have to rephrase my point. It's meant to be in line with what you said.

I understand, just as I understood their international list of restaurants was also a UKcentric view--or more accurately one that seems to give more importance to home boys. From the magazine's perspective it seems that the talent looms larger, than that of more distant restaurants.

I'm a bit reluctant to say much about Blumenthal on the basis of one meal, albeit a meal I enjoyed very much with the possible exception that I found the main course of sweetbreads just too sweet--but I could say that about savory dishes from Ferran Adria and Martin Berasategui as well. Nevertheless, I don't believe he was dependant on t he Spanish chefs for his ideas or talent, or that Conticini and Blumenthal need be directly compared on levels of talent and avant gardism to appreciate either. It appears that along with whatever faults one finds in the magazine or this particular article, the lack of earlier focus on Conticini, may just be one more sign of a provincial focus on it's own market. I think we've seen that before, perhaps notably in the world's best restaurants article, which, by the way, seemed to imply that the food served was not the most important thing about a restaurant.

I'm not so sure that's exactly what he means as I read his post on his visit to El Bulli. It sounded as if he found most of it satisfying on several levels. In terms of marketing and success in the market place, it may not be any signature dish or even an indetifiable technique that will let Adria make his mark, and maybe his fortune. Who knows what drives Adria beyond the basic need to experiment and create. In the meantime he is selling his talents to others and branching out. I'm not sure about his arrangement in the place outside Seville. Originally he was to have just installed a chef there, but now it appears as if he may have taken over the whole hotel. In the meantime he has several contracts with NH Hotels as an idea man and as a operator of restaurants or snack bars. We are just not recognizing that "creativity" can be a product as much as salmon with sorrel sauce. People go to Adria for what they haven't had before anywhere, the way they went to Troisgros for sorrel sauce. Troisgros could only feed so many and others could easily copy his recipe for their own profit. It is so much harder to copy Adria's creativity and sell it in your restaurant or to hotel chains. Thus one could say Adria has a product that he doesn't need to copyright to protect. And what if El Bulli produces food that no one wants to eat every night? Does it matter to his success as long as his restaurant is full every night? Consider that it's not full of people that haven't ever had his food, or that he will run out of customers either, for if the restaurant is not the sort where you'd eat every night, or even every week, it is the place people come back to on some regular basis even if yearly or biannually. El Bulli and Adria are not well know in the US beyond a limited circle of gastronomes and young chefs--likely the most influential group anyway--but they are much better known in Spain and even in France. We haven't elevated chefs to quite the position they are in France where they share the headlines with football players. Our friends live in a small village. When we show up with them at a favorite cafe in the nearby town of Pezenas, the owner of a cafe with no gastronomic pretentions, greets them by saying he's heard that they've been to El Bulli twice in two weeks in a sort of half mock and half serious tribute. How many bartenders in my neighborhood or yours would know, or give a damn, if either of us went to Ducasse or El Bulli twice in two nights? Adria has a kind of penetration that may be greater than previous three star chefs, even in France. The effect of their penetration remains to be seen. Every penetration does not produce offspring, which I guess is your point and one well taken.

Try the blue cheese with a good sweet white wine next time. Preferably one with a little acidty and not a flabby sweet wine. Sauternes, Jurnacon Moelleux or Coteaux du Layon would all work without being disgusting.

I use a lot of ten cent words when I post on the net.

Perhaps I'm being uncharitable and perhaps my criticism should be directed towards the WSJ or its editors. In any event it was not personally critical of Ms. McLaughlan, but of the article as it appeared. Maybe the WSJ should have allocated just a little more space for such an important topic. Maybe I could use an editor.

I found the article a little vague and a little lose with the facts. I have a problem with things like that because they tend not to raise consciousness as much as they leave people confused about the problem Are we tending towards stricter controls on listeriosis, unpasturized cheeses or the use of place and product names that are controlled elsewhere? Possibly yes on the first, definitely yes and no on the second and I'm confused on the third. Louis, at DiPalo tells me a crack down on listeriosis has just begun last week and that the price of prosciutto is likely to rise as a new policy of inspecting every ham has been instituted. One can never be sure of the intent of this policy. Is it to reduce risk of listeriosis, or to limit import of foreign meat? There is certainly a campaign to eliminate all raw milk cheese, both imported and domestic, here in the US and a similar campaign in the European Community. On the other hand, the agricultural inspectors at the points of entry into the US, no longer seem concerned about small quantities of cheese you bring in for personal consumption as they are not a general health risk in the way contaminated meat might be. It seemed a little muddy in spots. Sort of the same clarity and depth with which the subject might be covered on the five o'clock news. My best shot is the confusion added to the general store of knowledge in terms of camembert. In France, it is often made from pasturized milk for local consumption. One has to shop in the better stores to buy the raw milk variety. The name is not subject to the controls one might expect. Unilke brie and many other cheeses, camembert can be made most anywhere in France and thus it's far harder to complain that camembert from Vermont is also not camembert. A recent issue of The Art of Eating concluded that there may currently be no source of raw milk Epoisses. Although little of it may be heated to the temperature required by pasturization, all of the current supply is heated to some degree to kill germs. The caption under the photograph states that "true brie is moldier." Can anyone verify that? I may know what's meant, but if you've ever seen a piece of pasturized brie left in the back of my refirgerator, you'd understand it's moldier than blue cheese in France. Clearly if there's a ban on beef from Argentina and beef is being shipped from Argentina to the US via Australia, Ms. McLaughlan has missed the far more important story. Chilean sea bass is not sea bass and as noted, a million fish are confusingly named to appeal to the ignorant consumer as are fruits and vegetables for the purpose of sales appeal. I think this is a different issue and the article starts to confuse apples and bananas with oranges. Do vegetarians eat beefsteak tomatoes? Are the little round limes from outside Florida so different? The limes we find in Puerto Rico, where they are known as limons can be yellow or light green but generally lighter in color than Persian limes. The difference in color between the juices is less great, but so much of commercial dessert in the US is phoney that this is the least of the misleading labeling, in my opinion. I believe she's just plain wrong on the balsamic vinegar issue and gives misleading information. She confuses "traditizionale" balsamic with ordinary commerical imitations without offering the reader one clue about finding what she considers the real stuff. I assume she's dead on about the wasabi because I know nothing about it. I fear the general public will assume she's dead on about the other stuff they inow nothing about and that's why I think the article is not helpful in raising awareness. I don't think you can battle ignorance by offering half truths. But this is the WSJ. People tell me they find the food coverage good there, but when I'm led to a story, I find it no more helpful than the lower middle level of the NY Times. --- Fish cheeks, by the way, are a delicacy possibly even greater than scallops and not likely to be sold as scallops. As far as truth in advertising goes in food terms, I suppose the vendors of skate scallops might point the finger at those who proffer veal scallops and scalloped potatoes on the public. Of course they'd need to sell them as "skate scallops" and not as scallops first.

For that opportunity I am indebted to you. From Robert's post last night which began with " Steve Shaw, I’ll give your question a shot," I've found this thread intriguing and positive. I find my self agreeing with almost all of the observations made, if not always with the conclusions. I have, at several points, felt like I've arrived at an interesting party with my mouth sealed as I looked at the right hand side of my screen and saw the length of the thread to go before I could get a word in edgewise. I don't know where to begin. Robert made some insightful and provocative statements. This doesn't sum up his post, but I think it's key to how I regard much of the conversation that follows. Chef's such as Adria and Gagnaire are changing the nature of dining out as much as they are challenging our palate. Adria in particular, is a social revolutionary as much as a culinary one. I've mentioned elsewhere that he has been collaborating with NH Hotels in Spain, not so much about what people will eat in their restaurants, but how they might eat. The earlier chefs, even the ones who broke with classicism, were serving variations on the classics and establishing new classics. Entering the realm of analogies with their slippery slopes and thin ice, I'd compare them if not to the Royal Shakespeare Company, than to a repertory company with an avant garde director, bent on lending a new interpretation to the classics. Adria sems far less interested in pleasing the cultured tastes of an educated palate than he is in having you respond directly to his inventive foods and approaches to cooking and serving. At the same time, he clearly displays an understanding of the classic palate and classic dishes with his intellectual deconstruction that may or may not speak to the diner at another level. For this reason he is sometimes more appreciated by the diner with an open mind and an uneducated, and therefore unencumbered, palate at one pole and by the most sophisticated diners at the other end of the spectrum of diners. Both Lizzie and Robert got it, at least as well as I did, but Robert says El Bulli "is not the restaurant I would necessarily want to dine in on a regular basis" as if that's a fault. There is avant garde art I would not want hanging in my dining room and avant garde music I would not like to hear every night and avant garde theater I would not care to attend every night, but all of those will thrill me no end when I see or hear them. So it is with El Bulli. I am not exactly sure why the simple meal at a very simple traditional seafood restaurant by the beach in Barcelona was so satisfying after, and in contrast to, a meal at El Bulli the night before, but I suspect it was not because the meal at El Bulli was lacking. Rather I suspect it had to do with the human need for contrast and because Adria's performance left my tastebuds in a state of excitement. I can't recall ever following a three star meal that left me so open to appreciate a bistro the next day in that way. Some credit I guess has to go to Catalan traditional cooking, but part of the problem is that classic French cooking has just been home cooking raised to the nth degree until lately. Adria is special in a way that chefs have not tried to be before. None of this is to say that he will produce classics or that his is not just of the moment and transitory, but if that's the case, how lucky we are to be here at this moment. To judge creativity and the avant garde by the classic standard may be to miss the whole point of creativity--which in my view is to change the standards by which the Johns and Janes compare things.

I recall seeing a bread in Zito's window that acutely resembled the Parisi pepper/lard bread. It was so much of a resemblance that I assumed he was selling the Parisi bread. In any even, I've found the Parisi lard bread has undergone two great changes since I first discovered it in the early seventies. It used to be a flakey bread and I mean that in the good sense. It was a bit like a croissant in texture, but coarser. I assumed it was made in layers with fat between the layers. At some point closer to today than the when I first ate this bread it became a stodgier loaf of bread and lost it's great individual quality and finesse. Then even more recently, the switched the meat. It may still have some prosciutto chopped, I assume, from the ends of a real ham, but now it seems loaded with some sort of thinly sliced cold cut--salame, or some such thing. I find it disappointing now. No one has mentioned the "pizza bianca" at Sullivan Street. I guess its like a thin foccacia more than a blind pizza, but when's got lots of olive oil and rosemary and some chewiness to it, I love it. It's a great base for making home made mock pizzas. Topped with sauteed onions or onion marmalade with Romano cheese put under the boiler or in a hot overn for a few minutes it's great with aperatifs. Various cheeses and vegetables work as well. It's also good plain.

We ate at Loiseau's Cote d'Or too long ago to offer reliable advice. I think it was in 95. He had full control of his sensibilities and techniques at the time. The meal was excellent. I don't recall if this was just before or after he got his third star. In any event, the third star did not seem unreasonable to me at the time. It was in the middle of winter. As I recall we ran into two snow storms driving up from the Bas Languedoc and there was snow piled high in the town of Saulieu. Thus it was no great surprise to find the dining room far from full. We had a tour of the recently renovated and considerably enlarged premises. In addition to new large dining rooms, there were new and more expensive guest suites. I should imagine that he was in heavy debt to banks for those renovations. I have no idea of the terms of his loans, but I suspect they were based on a long term payback. He would not be the only inn keeper to suffer from the cost of over estimating the potential return from renovations as well as the ability of the market to sustain itself. Years ago, Veyrat threatened to quit his place altogether if his creditors didn't make it easier for him. Amat lost his own restaurant to backers, apparently as a result of not getting back his second star. That was most unfortunate as I've run across many who felt he deserved two stars and haven't run into anyone who was disappointed in the food there. I would have liked to return there a third time. I'd like to eat at Loiseau again based on my previous meal there.

Rye bread needs to be subdivided. There's good old NY Jewish rye (as well as pumpernickel and corn bread of the same genre--all less commonly found and rarely as good as it was) and then there's siegle--rye bread in the French style (which is really new to NYC). I particularly like Pain Quotidien's version of the latter, although they now make it in a small loaf and this is the one sort of bread in which my main interest is in the middle, not the crust. In texture, and to a degree in taste, this is much like their whole wheat bread and a really excellent dense bread. I wouldn't overlook their walnut bread without raisins, this is a versatile bread. It's also dense and good with honey or with cheese as well as just buttered. Balthazar also makes an excellent rye that's nowhere as dense, but well flavored. It may have greater appeal because it's less dense. It's the darker of the two breads served in the restaurant. They were out of the siegle one day, but had a black olive siegle, which was terrific, but watch out for pieces of pit. That may be a problem with all black olive breads. I don't know why. I know that Sullivan Street Bakery stopped making black olive bread, because it has a problem with pits. Fat Guy, I wouldn't necessarily make the distinction you do about where a bakery or chain originated. Whatever is available in any market is what you can get in that market and as products improve, so such the standards by which the market selects it's bread. I am not fond of chain operations just because they make travel so much less interesting, but when you live someplace, you welcome any product or service that's an improvement. I welcome Pain Quotidian in my neighborhood, but I'm disappointed when I'm shopping in Lyon and find it the most appealing boulangerie in sight.

Olive oils are very much like wine. There are many factors that go into the taste besides the soil. For starters there's the olive itself. Just as different olives have a different taste, so will their oils. Where I buy my oil, I have tasted several different varietal bottlings. One Sicilian farm bottles at least two single variety oils and a blend. One of the varietals is incredibly fruity. The other is almost as fruit, but has a far more pronounced pepper bite. The differences in the olive oils of one country can be so great that it may be as hard to define the national characteristic of the oil as the wines of that country. Has France been mentioned as an olive oil producer? I guess so, as Plotnicki mentioned importing French oil. I think many of the north African and middle eastern countries make olive oil. I guess they make olive oil wherever they grow olives. That includes California. I believe I've seen oils from Lebanon and other Middle eastern countries in Kalustyan on Lexington and 28th Street in NYC.

I suppose so. The spelling in the kitchen is usually worse than on the Internet. It's not always so good in the front of the house either. I've seem some great typos on menus.

You started your restaurant career in your father's "Le Grandgousier" restaurant in Brighton. Was it, as the name suggests, a French restaurant? It appears that your career has been spent learning and then practicing your trade in the UK, with the brief exception of Chez Panisse which is not a French restaurant. How many of the restaurants, particularly the ones you found most defining in your career, served French food? I ask in all naivety as I'm on the other side of the pond, but I also ask with an eye toward your comments in response to a question about traditional French food. I get the sense that in spite of the fact that UK ingredients and skills today are top notch, and that contemporary diners in London are knowledgeable and discriminating, the food you cook and that of much of the best restaurants in London and the rest of the UK, is based on the traditions imported by Careme, Escoffier and others from France. One review notes that "pate de foie de volaille; salade Lyonnaise; marmite Dieppoise; tete de veau; sauce ravigote" and the like are typical offerings at Racine. (By the way, could you post a typical menu here, or a link too one online?) I'm curious. Did you ever consider working or studying in France? About Chez Panisse, did your experience there have any discerable effect on your cooking? What did you think about food in Calfornia in 1987? I would have advised you too to France, but in retrospect I think you may have made the much wiser choice. Care to comment?

Thanks for the news. It's great to have stuff like that posted here early. It's a significant step down in some ways, but it's also an opportunity to build a restaurant and reputation as well as perhaps an opportunity for a better life style. As a lifelong city dweller, I nonetheless understand quite well why one might prefer Gordes to Paris. How old is Del Burgo and does he have a familiy?

One wonders what the restaurant was like pre Adria and why he didn't rename the restaurant in his image.

French Bulldog? If anything, Enlgish bulldog would be closer. Sorry, I missed your reply. It's bouledogue." I've always found that amusing. I've since come to learn that a dogue is not just any kind of bog, but a mastiff. Boule is a ball or bowl and apparently plays no part in the name of the breed.