Bux

I didn't think you did. Perhaps I read too much into the style of the few critical comments you cited.

We have friends in Margon, and Neffies. We use the markets at Clermont l'Herault and Pezanas when we stay in Margon. Clermont is very near you and has a good market. I think it's on Tuesday, [NB: I stand corrected by Graham Tigg--it's on Wednesday] but I'm not sure about that. Pezenas, closer to us, has it's market on Saturday. We had the 2000 Mas de Daumas Gassac blanc the other night and loved it. It was a bit of a surprise how much we loved it as a previous experience was not as pleasant. I wonder if it was the vintage or a bad bottle. I also understand that this is a wine that changes very much as it ages and develops different characters at different ages.

I rather liked les Grands Marches. It's hardly a destination restaurant, but no one was displeased with the food at the price. Perhaps I was overjoyed that we got a last minute reservation anywhere for a Sunday lunch in Paris and just relieved that it was okay, but I really think it was more than okay. La Belle France sounds nasty rather than unwilling to criticize. Then again I started writing about restaurants in France for a travel agent's newsletter and my only responsibility was to make travel sound appealing. I much prefer to comment on what I like, but then again I'm not paid, so I have that luxury.

As I once said to someone else--and I've become fond of repeating this line--"You recommended the right restaurant to the wrong person." If someone asks for your advice, that's all you can do is give your advice. You have to assume they know and trust your taste, or know how to factor that taste into the recommendation. It helps to know the person to whom you offer the advice as well as it helps to know the person offering the advice. While thnkart didn't tell us much about herself in the opeing post, she did ask "why" we were making our recommendation.

Ajay, our posts crossed last night and I didn't read yours although mine was posted later. You present the other side of the coin and I think I touched on this once before somewhere in a post. When a chef is creative enough, he begins to challenge existing conventions and his food can usually be appreciated best by a diner without preconceptions. So there is a paradox. Diners inexperienced with classic French food might not appreciate the innovation, but might be more open to enjoy the taste, while the old French hand may stumble trying to understand the creativity before allowing the flavor to penetrate his senses. At El Bulli, we found a group of hikers who knew nothing of the three star mystique, but were able to respond directly to the food as a sensory joy. Why am I thinking of l'Astrance as far out? I suppose it's just because it's not traditional or classic food and because it flows from yet another chef and restaurant that's been on the cutting edge (Arpege). Perhaps it's only one thing that sticks in my mind. With a dish of tuna (not served rare as in NYC) there was a fresh uncooked cherry on the plate. It was so out of place. I recall too many savory plates in the American boondocks garnished with a slice of orange or cantelope as if that added class. At l'Astrance, I was curious and popped the fruit in my mouth. Oddly enough, the taste was unlike any cherry I have ever had before. I didn't understand it, but I realized Barbot knew what the sensation would be. Yet I think others at my table just couldn't bring themselves to eat the cherry. It was too much of an afront to their palate. If you had never had French cuisine, you might not know that and that might free you to better enjoy the food. So you are correct in challenging my statement at face value. I have some thoughts on the avocado ravioli with crab meat. The style, or form of the presentation owes a debt to dishes mentioned elsewhere that preceded it and the combination of avocado and seafood salad is almost a cliche even in unsophisticated American restaurants, but for some reason it all seemed very fresh upon presentation. Perhaps it was the grace and elegance with which it was done and which has an immediate appeal not at all dependent on any familiarity with Italian ravioli or nouvelle pineapple ravioli. Thank you for refuting my post as you did.

As I've mentioned, I've loved most of my meals there, but have not been back since it's gotten it's third star. I've heard mixed reports since. The twin chefs now have restaurants in Paris and Avignon and a project in Tokyo. One reliable source reported service so distracting that she couldn't pay attention to what she ate. Nevertheless, it kept it's three stars and as cabrales notes, there's no such thing as a three star restaurant that's not an interesting experience. I don't know what problems a baby would cause for them. How comfortable are you with dining in a reasonably fine restaurant with the baby? I personally don't mind seeing a baby in a restaurant, but I expect the parent to be the one who's inconvenienced if the baby starts to fuss. Assuming you are the sort who will sacrifice your meal for sake of the rest of room's enjoyment I shouldn't see a special problem here. By the way, you might want to check out Graham Tigg's web pages devoted to dining in the Languedoc if you're spending some time in the area.

Thanks for that link. I did a search yesterday and it didn't come up. It seems to me that this name came up on eGullet.com some months ago. “Neurococina” huh? I hope not like in that guy has a lot of nerve serving that. I see on the review from Hola magazine that the restaurant is recommended for: Celebración especial Cena romántica and Compromiso social. I think I understand special celebrations and romantic dinners, but what the hell is a social compromise? Okay, if we get to Catalonia this spring, this has to be worth a look, along with too many other places. There's a nice cluster of good restaurants. More than we can try while passing through.

In general I'd rather read about where to eat, rather than spend my time reading about where not to go. Why waste space trashing places? The concept of traveling anonymously is pretty well discussed in Compromised food critics. Good points are made on both sides, and I'm not at all sure the most important thing about a critic is that he remain anonymous.

He posts here and has his own long standing site devoted to restaurants in France and the UK. Scroll up about halfway to the top to find his post in this thread along with the link to his site. He and I have exchanged messages for quite some time. By sheer coincidence we share a personal favorite restaurant in the Aveyron and missed each other there by two days earlier this month. Welcome to the club. That's another personal favorite, and one that's been well praised here in these pages by others. Some years back I convinced Steven Shaw to alter his itinerary in France to make a stop here and believe I established my credentials with that single recommendation. Only Amat's single star has seemed a bigger flaw in the ratings.

Robert, tell me more about Recamier. We've often stayed around the corner from it and it's been recommended, but we've never managed to eat there. Partially I suspect, because it is as you say, "a restaurant no one mentions." Thnkart, I am not telling you that to truly experience the wonders of French food, you must spend $500.00 on dinner. I will admit that it's getting pretty easy to get a bad meal in Paris these days at cheap restaurants, but depending upon what one thinks of as "wonders," you can do pretty well at all price levels if you're careful. A few years back, with some fabulous reseverations later in the trip at provincial restaurants, we had wonderful meals in three Parisian restaurants. None of these meals cost more than $30-40 per person without wine. They were all very Parisan and I suspect their match could not be found in Tampa, which is not the same thing as saying there might not be better restaurants in Tampa. One restaurant was Philippe Dutourbe, mentioned earlier in this thread. Another was Eric Frechon's eponymous restaurant. He, unfortunately for us, took over the kitchens at the Bristol and you will pay much more for his cooking, although you are likely to get fore gras and caviar now. The last one was one of my favorite all time bistros--La Regalade. It still seems to get good reviews, but we've had two negative reports here in eGullet.com and at least one of those came from a source I trust and respect. It served very hearty and rustic French food--coarse pates, blood sausage, kidneys and that sort of thing. It's what I would call rich food, fatty as well, but I heard that several gourmets with good American credentials found it "greasy" when asked how they liked it after having it recommeded by another American whose food tastes I trust. This brings us back to the earlier questions some posters asked about your taste in food, where else you have eaten or where esle you intend to eat. Many of us know that our tastes are our tastes and that what we like, may not suit everyone else. All restaurant recommendations should come with some caveat. By the way, thanks for sticking with this. While some of us may have been critical of the idea that Paris couldn't have restaurants that are than much better than Tampa's, it would have been quite easy for you to be offended by one or more reactions here. Once I've established that there are incredible restaurants in Paris, I have no reason to convince you that life is not worth living without experiencing one of them. There are dozens of really good restaurants, which may not compare, but which will offer a great meal and even a memorable experience. I think it would be easy to spend over $500 on dinner for two with reasonable wines, although I can't recall doing it and I've had a few splurges. Where are you staying in Paris? The more centrally located, the more likely a restaurant will cater to tourists. The Michelin guide, which many people think of as guide to the expensive Michelin starred restaurants, is also a great guide to the lesser restaurants of France. At any price range and degree of elegance, a restaurant with a listing in Michelin is likely to be a better deal than a neighbor that's unlisted. The GaultMillau guide is a more interesting guide as it has a short text for each restaurant and will enable you to get a better idea of the restaurants listed. Both will show prices as well as list addresses and phone numbers.

Cabrales, I think of "palate" as having at least two aspects. One is clearly educatable and influenced by it's environment. You can develop an appreciation for any kind of food. Maybe some things are natural, but most of us have to develop a taste for olives, or caviar. Maybe if we are brought up eating olives as a child, we don't see it as a learned taste. The other part of "palate" is the ability to discern flavors. Once, when tasting eaux-de-vie, the distiller told us he was convinced women generally had the keener sense of taste. That doesn't mean some men don't have a better sense than some women. My wife has a better sense of taste than I do however our daughter's senses are even better. She can deconstruct a dish and isolate flavors I am barely able to ascertain even after being told they are there. This can be developed to some extent, but you can only work with the natural talent that is there.

Pirate, not so fast. I'm the one who responded to a post on eGullet.com about the superiority of the provinces in terms of both learning about French food and satisfying a craving for good food as well as haute cuisine. For every great restaurant in Paris there are perhaps two in the provinces and for every good restaurant in Paris there are a half dozen in the provinces. The ones in the provinces are usually less expensive, more comfortable and, as often as not, closer to the cutting edge. Nevertheless, St. Ettienne couldn't support Gagnaire, while Paris seems to be able to do that. I don't know Japan very well, but I've been a great fan of northern Spain. Restaurants like Can Fabes, Martin Berasategui and Arzak are as good as any in France. They are also further from French influence than was Giradet, although I don't think either of us can deny that haute cuisine is an international a style as post Bauhaus architecture, and haute cuisine is indebted to France wherever it is cooked or practiced.

I've not eaten there often enough to add much to Steve's comments. I recall a time when it did have a tasting menu and I recall some food that was a bit further out in design, but I don't see what Steve described as a step in the wrong direction. The last meal I had there was a restaurant week special and it was a bargain. I'm sure it didn't represent the full abilities of the place, but it was more than one should have expected at the price. Not that we got out all that cheaply. We were with a friend who's the type who seeks out the restaurant week bargains and then blows the savings on the wine.

I think there was at least one thread that was devoted to Beaune and I know the area has been discussed before, but I won't suggest we always stay on topic and that you'll find all those posts by scrolling the thread titles. It's a pity the search engine seems to be corrupted. I can't remember how long ago it was that we were at La Côte d'Or, assuming you are talking about Loiseau's place in Saulieu. We loved our meal then, but it may have been almost ten years ago.

I've been seeing more than a few references to Bras' book(s) and although some of the posts seem to speak of his new book, I have the impression that they refer to one of the older publications. The new book, which we bought for our son-in-law and delivered before I ever got a good look, is well described by "fantastic." I got a better look at it this weekend. It's a very beautiful publication. It ends with a section devoted to the Aubrac and it's full of small photos interspersed with text. Enlarged to full coffee table sized pages, most of these photos would be spectacular, but reduced as they are, they serve up a more fleeting and ellusive image. They are not restricted to food or even the earth, but convey the "terroir" of the Aubrac in so many thousands words each. Only in their small format, they are a poetic whisper, but that should come as no suprise--Bras' food doesn't shout either. The photographs accompanying the recipes are stunning, but I'm not sure I, as an amateur cook, would find them inspiring or helpful in interpreting the recipes. I recall one particular photo with rectangles of raw lamb surrounded by spices, cooked garnishes and what appeared to be swirls of finished sauces such as might be on a plate for a diner, but this was all laid out in an abstract pattern on an endess white table. I had to review the recipe (this was the French edition) with my daughter to make sure the recipe called for cooking meat and that this abstract tableau was in fact very abstract. I can't begin to match my son-in-law's library, so I'm content to pass on ownership and maintain my nonmaterialistic existence.

I hear something similar, but not quite that. I have friends to whom food is very important, they think about it as much as e-gulleters, but wouldn't ever spend $100 on a meal (and they can afford it if they wanted to). It has to do with the additonal pleasure one enounters as one moves up the quality scale. At the high end, 10% extra quality (however defined) will cost much more than 10% extra price. For me, the extra 10% is almost always worth it. For others it isn't. But I don't think it means that they enjoy their meals less. They just have parameters for enjoyment that are easier to achieve. As someone with relatively limited means (don't we all have relatively limited means) I choose to spend on food and dining in a disproportionate manner. My friends think I'm crazy and in restaurants I sit next to guys whose shoes cost more than the clothes on my back plus all my shoes. The only difference is that I don't say (out loud) that I can't believe their clothes are that much better. I've shopped the racks in places I don't buy and I understand the difference in quality and that it's not all due to the designer label. I also understand why people are connoisseurs in areas in which I choose not to develop my tastes. Moreover, I might not go to a shoe fetish site and say I don't believe the handmade Italian mocs you've just lavished much praise on in several posts are that much better than my Bass loafers. This would probably be a good time to note that I wasn't born with my present taste in food, nor did I learn it from my parents. On my first trips to France I, and later we, sought out the least expensive places in Paris and the countryside. Admittedly those were days when it was next to impossible to get a bad meal in France. Such is not the case today and I am glad to have been able to learn about French food from the bottom up. I fully understand an interest in getting a good, but not great meal in Paris the same way I understand picking up a pair of Mephisto shoes at a bargain price is not a slap in the face of haute couture. What I wish I could recommend is the good traditional bistro offering an excellent meal and mostly frequented by locals. The fact is that lately my interests in even the moderate places has been in those serving more avant garde food, or food so rustic that I am not inclined to recommend it to those unfamiliar with real French food. The kind of dish I've been drawn to lately is blood sausage or andouille and andouillette. Lest anyone say they like Cajun food, this name in France is taken by a large sausage made of stomach and intestines and often quite barn yardy in aroma. Many an American has ordered it in the belief he knew what he was getting.

There are flames, but there are also invitations to be flamed. Why do you find it hard to believe that the best food in the gastronomic capital of the western world is that much better than in Tampa? What I'm really hearing is that food is not all that important to you. Now let me tread on dangerous ground, and you may feel free to blast me, but I have to suggest that l'Astrance is not the best place for you to experience French food as, in my opinion, I think an appreciation of what they are doing requires some familiarity with current trends in haute cuisine as well as some familiarity with the type of restaurant in which the chef learned his metier. Still, I have to agree that it's an excellent buy. You ask if locals eat there. In Tampa that may be the best indication of a good restaurant, but it's clear that you don't understand that some of us fly thousands of miles, not to see the Venus di Milo or the view from the Eiffel Tower (terrible because you can't avoid Sacre Coeur) but to dine in Paris. Paris is the restaurant district of the world.

You're not seriously suggesting that Delouvrier was not left to his own devices in ordering these plates for his restaurant or in choosing to use them when he feels they are appropriate. I would doubt that these plates were produced for any reason but to meet the demands of chefs looking for a plate to suit their needs in serving tasting menus. I am sure Delouvrier matched the porcelain to the portion and not vice versa. I'm not sure where I first ran across them, but they struck me as perfectly suited to use in a tasting menu. If memory serves at all, it may have been in Spain at Berasategui or perhaps Can Fabes. They appeared at Daniel Saturday night in a tasting menu and I can assure you that our meal was most generous. They are ideal for serving risotto as part of a tasting menu. They strike me not as being designed to turn big plates into small ones, but to turn small plates into presentation plates. They are a bit of a fad and perhaps affectation, but they struck me as elegant when I first saw them.

Needless to say from Robert's post, it's a restaurant to which I return. It's not Daniel, where a basic three course meal will run $85 or more with supplements. When Eleven Madison Park is on, it's a great value and when it's off, it's still pretty good and worth the price. I may have mentioned a $20 Jurancon Sec on the list that I've seen for about seventeen dollars in a wine shop. Factor that in to the price and it becomes an even better deal. I've tended not to find any fault with the appetizers which run in the very low teens. I think one could put together a superb tasting menu of three first courses for under thrity five dollars. The desserts we had were all quite satisfying and about ten bucks apiece. I've found minor faults with main courses, but those faults are the kinds of things that others might prefer. Squab cooked rare as I like it, was accompanied by a berry sauce that I found a little too sweet. A lamb dish had too many ingredients for my taste. I was actually rather fascinated that all of the garnishes went well with the lamb and with each other in any combination you could make. I just thought it was too much. That might be exactly the thing that might impress someone else. The final factor, and maybe that figures in Robert's opinion is that sometimes we find overall a meal is more satisfying than the sum of its parts and at other times, the pieces seem great, but the meal seems average. I find the food conservative, but not stodgy. It's a little more riveting and more sophisticated than comfort food, but it's still the kind of food that lets you sit back, relax and enjoy the meal.

Not particularly a side track. I assume that if someone starts a thread entitled Paris Restaurants, they want to hear about interesting Paris restaurants. I don't know the restaurant, but the name keeps popping up on lists of good restaurants even if it doesn't make the short lists of great destination restaurants. I mentioned Bamboche in the 7th. I believe it's closed for lunch, but open for dinner on Saturday. The April 2002 GaultMillau reviews it quite well noting that on the basis of a recent meal, they'd up the rating from 15 to 16.

I'm pretty sure this is Swiss chard.

In htmlspeak "é" is written as "é" which won't work here, unless you mean copy and paste from an html document viewed in a browser. At the bottom of all my windows, I see a message saying "Posting HTML is NOT allowed." It's right below the one that says "No Ballplaying" and above "Keep Off the Grass."

Richard, that was a very interesting post. The mood has already been broken, so allow me to add that when you speak I'm reminded that when someone asks me what goes with rosé wines, or the opposite--what they go with, I'm always inclined to say sunshine and al fresco dining.

ckbklady, I'm afraid nothing is what it used to be. Certainly not language. It appears that all you need are three layers to make a millefeuille these days. Imagine, and all that talk about inflation. There's more poetry than anything else in the new menus, assuming the chef has his artistic license. I was rather amused by the "brandade d'asperges" I had recently. It was, in fact, pureed asparagus with mashed potatoes, or asparagus replacing the cod. Of course it was served with fresh cod just to complete the joke, or to please those who might miss the cod.

As I recall, at those prices, it was good value if it was drinkable and they were more than that. My recollection was of very inexpensive wines that were interesting and about as inexpensive as you'd find at a restaurant of far lower quality. But maybe it's the food talking. When the wines are included as in the tasting menu, they like to cover the label as they pour and ask you to guess the region and cépage. They also like to play those guessing games with the ingredients in the dishes. I don't know if they do that with all diners.