Bux

I really don't see how "Art" can de discussed out of cultural context with any meaning or intelligence. In terms of food, if there are universals, one might be "Is not ripe fruit "better" than unripened fruit?" We love sugar. That alone should tell us that Bernachon is inferior to Neuhaus, if not Hershey, in terms of natural selection. I think it's difficult, or at least disingenuous, to argue that there is a natural order and then argue that one must be educated to appreciate it in some areas. A rose obviously smells better, but Chateau Palmer needs to be understood? To get back to Michelin for a moment, I'm willing to consider the possibility that it's losing relevance in today's multi-cultural society, but its strength lies in the fact that it compares oranges and generally avoids including examples of apples in the mix. Perhaps its style has worked best in France, because French restaurants have historically adhered to a singular form. The haute cuisine luxury three star restaurant is just a bistro raised to the highest level of the scale. Even the foreign and exotic restaurants of France had adapted to the French restaurant formula. In my early visits to France on a tight budget, I don't think I realized that many of the restaurants I chose were Greek, Balkan and north African restaurants and not really French. I can't specifically comment on how successful the UK Michelin is, but I think I'd be able to accept it on its terms. It's legitimate to attack it for what it is, but it's a different criticism that saying it doesn't do what it does, well. It is all relative. This is not to say that if we are voting, I will cast my vote with Plotnicki for French food and Bernachon chocolates.

What I liked about Plotnicki's post was that it made me more aware of how I might perceive food and eat. Was his post art?

Yes of course, just as soon as I've referrenced my authoritative information sources on this subject. ;)The problem with Parker seems to be obvious. It's not that he's wrong, it's that he's become too powerful an opinion in a field where subjectivity counts and where attention to a single taste is detrimental to those with other tastes if not to the field as a whole. Even his professional critics seem to think he has a keen sense of taste. To attack him on the basis of his personal life seems to admit frustration on the part of those who wish to tear him down. Parker's not the problem, it's his success that is. I think part of what Robert is saying is that American's don't have a great gastronomic history, or at least not one passed from one generation of diner to another. Those guys drinking Petrus in the steakhouse last year, weren't drinking wine the year before. Now they've just cut the big deal and can afford the best without the need to understand it, but with the ability to use a search engine to find the best wine. Unfortunately, wine making is a business and winemakers will be driven by market demand. As one small winemaker in the Rhone said to me when his wine was well rated by Parker, "My bank is very happy."

Tommy, you've pretty well identified why I love restaurants in France. They're almost always very well lit. It's a pleasure to read the menu and see my food. The French are no slouches in the romance and sex departments, but they understand the difference between the dining room and the hotel room. Maybe it's also that they are more comfortable being amorous in broad daylight. I find exceptionally good food both romantic and erotic. What I don't find conducive to either romance or meeting with old friends is a noise level that makes conversation difficult. My wife reasons that restaurants are noisy these days because young people have nothing to say and topics of conversation would be used too early in the evening if dating couples were actually able to hold a conversation. It does appear that dark noisy restaurants are not short on popularity for whatever the reason.

I'm still trying to put a fair assessment, of putting up with 13 courses uncomfortably served in highball/juice glasses in Paris, into a postable form. It was a choice I'd advise against. It made for a peculiar dinner, at best and an annoying one at worst, but I think the food suffered.

For a a heavily and charmingly marketed program, it seems to be a bit low on service between the original marketing and the final classes.

Lyon does seem like the proper place for a discussion of sausages. I don't know where to start or how to answer your questions about cooking blood sausages. We usually heat them up in a frying pan. More often then not, they tend to fall apart when cut. The skins are generally tough. My wife usually doesn't eat the skins. I will if they're crisp. The first two boudins from the French Butcher were cooked in a frying pan and served whole on a plate with mashed potatoes and sauteed onions. The third one was eaten a few days later. That one was sliced about 3/4 thick and cooked on o both faces until warmed through and a bit crusty on both sides. It was eaten out of hand as an hors d'oeuvre snack.

"liverish" "grousy" "I am probably using a bad word to describe it." May I suggest "livery" and "grousish" next time. ;-)

I have unique memories of our meal at le Divellic some 15 years ago. The food was excellent. the service was impeccable except for one flaw, I was handed a menu without prices and thought it was some peculiar affectation. We only found out after dinner that our 12 year old daughter somehow got the menu with prices. What I distinctly recall was that the exchange rate was hovering around 10 francs to the dollar and although we had no plans for a good meal in Paris, after stuffing ourselves on bargain foie gras in the Perigord we decided to hit a starred place in Paris and make the most of the exchange. We picked le Divellic because I had recently read an article about the restaurant with several enticing recipes and we had not had much fish in the Perigord. It was early in September and we were traveling with rather informal summer clothes. Thus I recall going to dinner in a cotton summer jacket and that our twelve year old daughter refused to wear anything but jeans. the temperature had taken a precipitous tumble that morning and every other male in the room was wearing an elegant dark suit, as people did in starred restaurants in the eighties. There were no other children in the dining room. Nevertheless, we were given a wonderful table and with the notable exception of the menu--maybe our daughter looked better able to afford dinner than I did in my cheesey summer suit--service was wonderfully gracious and elegant. Guy Savoy has two Michelin stars. There seems to be widespread agreement that it is under rated. Clearly you've done some homework to narrow your choices down and one man's subjective choices may seem odd to another. In fact, the short list I might make on a Monday, may be very different from one I make on Friday. I am curious to know what you are looking for in this meals. I would understand a reluctance to open yourself to yet more suggestions having already narrowed your choices. For me, where to eat in France is not the problem. It's which places will I have to give up. I sometimes envy those who can put away a grand lunch and dinner on the same day.

I can't speak in relation to Babbo, but the better the restaurant, the more likely I am to take the tasting menu on my first visit. Naturally I have to take someone else's word for the quality on my first visit. When I'm dining with someone in the industry, it seems they're of the same mind set on this. The few times I've dined with a chef at a restaurant where he knew the chef, there was no question but that we'd eat a long menu of whatever the chef chose for us. I suppose that's special, but not so different from putting yourself in the chef's hands by taking a tasting menu, which can often be a surprise menu. There are no hard and fast rules. My mood, my level of appetite and a dozen other things affect my decision and tasting menus vary in scope and concept from restaurant to restaurant. If there was a correct way to go, there'd be no menus in the first place. The one thing that would steer me away from the tasting menu might be the lack of signature dishes on it.

Gee. The taste of liver is what I look for in game. We may be at loggerheads in regard to the semantics of taste. Gamey and livery are sort of synonymous in my mind. Do I have a too limited vocabularly? I've only had grouse once, but I'd kill for it again. I'm a poor shot though.

I've eaten in only one of your choices and that meal was well over a dozen years ago. That's too far back to make a valid recommendation. I will note that David Van Leer, who was the chef at La Bamboche, is now at Le Maxence which would make me choose Le Maxence over the other two. That and a taste of his rillettes de lievre au chocolate or what ever the dish we tasted at the Salon du Chocolate was called. The hint of bitter chocolate or cocoa powder added a depth of flavor and was not at all an assault on my tastebuds. Bitter chocolate with meat goes back to the Mayans, or Aztecs anyway. It's just not too common in western European cooking. Both Guy Savoy and Violin d'Ingres have been of interest to me, but they have different appeal. Savoy is certainly more expensive and I think the clear cut star of the two if price is no object. The only negative thing I've heard about Savoy is that it can be smoky and that includes cigar smoke.

I'm surprised to learn they will mail the tickets. I suppose that's great for those who can't bear the anxiety of not having that ticket in hand. Having gone through the process of booking via a credit card and picking up my tickets in France, I have to say that I trust the SNCF system more than I trust the combinined post offices. I'm also told that they will repsond in English to e-mails sent in English from users of the web site. Needless to say, there's no reason to suffer the excessive surcharge and limited choice offered by Rail Europe. One comment. I know the 33 is the code for France and the 08 the French equivalent of our 800 system-if you are calling from within France, but I thought you dropped the zero after the country code and only use that zero within France. Am I mistaken?

Maybe too far offtopic, but I'm reminded of a toy I bought for my daughter when she was a toddler. Does anyone remember Design Research, a store I would otherwise have fond memories of, on 57th Street. I bought this brightly painted wooden pull toy there. Within a few hours, my daughter managed to pull off a wheel that was attached to the body of the toy with a sharp spiked nail. Luckily I caught her quickly with what had become a lethal weapon in her hand. Rather indignantly I brought the toy back to the shop. The young woman I complained to was eqaully indignant and a lot icier when she told me that their regular clients were more sophisticated and knew how to use this object. I didn't ask if they were sophisticated enough to know not to give toys to babies, or if this pull toy was meant for their adult clientele.

I've not measured the temperature of my coffee as it comes from the machine, but I know the steam produced to foam the milk is in excess of 210 degrees. Shouldn't my antihistamine medicine come with a warning not to operate this machine? Tommy, I want to let you know your dealer is suing you for defamation of charcater.

Okay. I caught the last two episodes of Cooks Tour-Vietnam & France-on TV. The Vietnam show was not without some exotic interest of the background footage and even the little that was about food had some value as frustrating as the general lack of content and dialog was. I thought the France "tour" was about the most vacuous 30 minutes I've witnessed on TV. Did anyone find value, information or entertainment in this segment? Watching two forty year olds set off firecrackers on a deserted beach in the winter and diving for cover in the sand was almost painfully embarrassing, but then I've not watched much in the way of "reality" TV. Amid all the lost opportunity to enlighten the audience, I was struck by the translation of pain aux raisins as "raisin bread." I doubt pain au chocolate would have been translated as anything other than chocolate croissant and certainly not as chocolate bread. Pain aux raisins is a pastry and what we'd call a raisin danish in a non-French bakery in the U.S. It's a petty point perhaps, but I think it's illustrative of the fact that the show makes no attempt to illuminate and every attempt to obfuscate or gloss over the possible content. The dialog was banal from start to finish.

From my reading, it appears that you are expected to end up with eight tablespoons of sauce (1/2 cup) for the final presentation (2 tbs. for each of 4 servings). Working backwards, if you're adding a half cup of butter and a tablespoon. of cream, it would appear that the wine/broth reduction is meant to be little more than a concentrated essence, but I would make sure I had at least two tablespoons of this liquid in addition to the solids and in excess of what might be absorbed by the solids. I'll admit that two tablespoons of sauce seems a bit scant from my memory of the dish at the restaurant. Bear in mind that the solids will absorb some sauce when you strain it and that some sauce will stick to the side of each pot or utensil it comes in contact with, but also that you can't boil it down any further once the sauce is mostly butter. One other caveat about this dish, if the fish oozes any juice or liquid after it is cooked it will thin the sauce on the plate and perhaps diminish the presentation. I think this is almost unavoidable, even in the restaurant. There's an Ask the Chef page on Daniel's site. It promises that Daniel or Executive Chef Alex Lee will try to respond to queries within a week or two by e-mail. I don't know how well the service works. As Daniel Boulud was executive chef at le Cirque before opening his own restaurant, I've always assumed this is the recipe that was also served at le Cirque. I've never asked anyone. It's just my assumption.

It's close to two years since I've been in Key West and this message may be too late to help you, but the best conch fritters we had in the Keys, were on the pier in Key West. Hot, crisp, not greasy and a good amount of conch in the batter. I think they won on all counts. Cold beer and the sunset didn't hurt either.

This post may be seen as a cheap shot to bump the thread back into prominence. One should expect a bunch of food passionate computer literates to have more interest in restaurant web sites and more to say on the subject. I'm also forwarding this URL to a chef who's interested developing a web site for his restaurant. Maybe eGullet has a role to play in telling restaurants what the prospective diner wants in a web site. I can't be the only guy here who uses google to find guides to other cities when I travel and web sites of interesting restaurants, can I?

Bon's Ramen site is running neck and neck with Holly and also deserves support. With Rosie's site and this site, that's four eGullet sites on the list along with a couple of contributors.

Those were gems. How did they ever get the restaurants to participate? Than again, I'll bet those restaurants knew their audience--diners under the influence of the local restaurant reviewer who dined under the influence of martinis.;)

I've just been asked for recommendations for good food at any price. In fact the request was for the best restaurants in Boston. I will refer my friend to this thread, so fire away.

Wilfrid, Just to follow up here because we started here, (which would be more off topic to continue posting here or pick up the conversation in the middle in some more apt board?) we had another of the blood sausages a day of two later and I found that one, much richer and more to my taste. As to flavor and seasoning, they all had a good flavor, but a little pepper wouldn't have hurt. Then again my favorite boudins have been in the Caribbean and the Basque region. We cooked the earlier boudins whole in a frying pan and the last one in slices. I don't see how that would have made the latter richer (greasier). The saucisson sec was excellent, but I'm not sure it was worth the premium price. I'm not unhappy with the commercial sausages I get at DiPalo's and I don't think it was at good as some of the stuff I get at Dom's. I'm reluctant to recommend Dom's (on Lafayette north of Broome) because his product is inconsistent. It's always had a great taste, and primarily it's the taste of the meat as much as the seasonings. It's made in batches and each batch is rather individual. Once we had a saucisson that was almost inedibly salty, but my real reluctance to offer a hearty recommendation may stem from my concerns about a cured raw meat product that varies from batch to batch. It's also a question of attitude. They were enthusiastic friendly when they opened, but I don't think things have gone well as they are less so now, particularly at the butcher counter. The bottom line is that we still go there for a special dry sausage.

Peter you're a gentleman. My sources back up B Edulis about professionals and their recipes. Professional jealousy is one thing but some of the stories border on sheer paranoia. I heard a beauty about a baker who wouldn't come through with a recipe for a book that would offer him some positive publicity of the kind you can't buy. When he finally produced a recipe, some investigation revealed it wasn't the recipe he used. Coincidently, I was practically thrown out of his shop when I innocently tried to take a photograph just a few days before I heard the story. Robert, I have to ask if there's some jealousy in the family. Would there be a purpose to having your wife not bake as good a cake and making her feel she was an inferior cook, at least in this instance. (Okay, I'm a cynic and not such a sweet naive guy after all.) The point about not stressing the obvious is interesting. My wife gave someone her recipe for coconut bread pudding. Shortly thereafter we got a long distance call from the friend who was visiting relatives out of town and trying to make the dish. She wondered if we had left out covering the bread pudding as it cooks in the oven. She went on to express concern that the bread floating in the mild and egg mixture was burning on top. It seems she didn't think "soak" required more than putting the bread into the liquid and she had all this dry bread floating on the suface of the custard.

For the record, Daniel Boulud's recipe for Crisp Paupiette of Sea Bass in a Barolo Sauce. Also for the record, Daniel says, "Paul Bocuse's Rouget en Écailles de Pomme de Terre inspired this exquisite dish of tender fish fillets wrapped in a crisp crust of sliced potatoes." This is sort of a signature dish at Daniel. I read somewhere once that they wanted to remove it from the menu as everyone in the kitchen was bored cooking it, but too many people asked for it even when it was off the menu.