Bux

Didn't get to Yank Sing, but had memorable dim sum at Ton Kiang on Geary near 23rd Avenue in S.F. It was at least three years ago so I won't attempt to compare it to Dim Sum Go Go. On the whole I'd probably rather be in Hong Kong when I want dim sum, but the best I've had in NY is Dim Sum Go Go.

We also visited the Bistro d’Eygalieres for lunch with confirmed reservations at a hotel in Nimes that evening. There's not much to do or see in Eygalieres and for professional reasons we could not think of cancelling our night's hotel reservations anyway, but I was very impressed with the photo's of the rooms at the Bistro. For the most part I've not been a fan of French hotel decor and often prefer spartan rooms just for the lack of decor. From what I saw these rooms were very tasteful in a restrained but anything but spartan manner. Michelin notes "Ravissantes chambres." By the way, the prices quoted, as long as I have my Michelin open, are 750/850 francs. I am generally not a B&B sort of person, but I agree with the closer identification with the chef/owner. Perhaps in a parallel to the chef making the rounds of the dining room after dinner thread, that identification and closeness would backfire on me if I hated the food. In that case, I'd prefer not to see the chef or his wife at breakfast or when we check out. All this makes me want to spend the night at Eygalieres. The food was good and I recall the chef's wife was very attractive. Of course my wife says I say that about every woman half my age.

That's the sort of comment that might make me jump to pick up a copy and read it. Perhaps with some good luck, we'll get to see more that particular insight from the author here. Anyway, your comments both prepare me for the shortcomings and potential rewards of the book. LML also offers good reason to take a look at this, but I find the last sentence curious. I suppose one might have to be English to understand "curate's eggy," but to find the author is completely wrong in the one situation that's familiar and understood by the reader is to question the value of the parts where he's on unfamilar ground.As for "getting the alcohol thing" or not, it's true that I don't drink as I used to for a number of reasons, but I think I still remember enough of not remembering the night before to get it. I've no doubt, as I noted earlier, that sort of journal can be a good read. What I doubted was that it would also offer a good description of the food as well as the sociability of the culture. These are not value judgements, just areas of interests.

Missed the point or looking for the apreciation of a another level of food? I'm not sure the point of history is to be a defense for repeating history. Nevertheless, I haven't read the book and was merely responding to someone else's comments for more insight as to what I might get out of the book. Every culture has varying ways to be sociable. There's a world of opportunity between the extremes of staying in one's room and ordering room service, and getting blotto with strangers. To some extent, after a certain amount of alcohol, there's little difference between the two. History is a matter of "been there, done that" as well as reading. Nevertheless I suspect many enjoyable books could be written about the middle ground as well as the two poles or behavior. You seem to present a narrow view in your post. I still wonder how illuminating the book might be.

Amen to that and all parallel situations in and out of restaurants. As chefs become executives running major corporations they develop a staff trained to keep the public at bay just as other executives do. As they become so busy, even their staff cannot reach them at times.

I'm always suspicious of groups that might be more interested in self promotion than historical accuracy or cultural preservation, but those are interesting links. I was surprised that Bandol or Cassis, didn't come up on the Star Chef site as the clear first choice concensus of wine to drink just on the basis of geography as well as flavor. Certainly at least along the Mediterranean, I would think a local wine is an absolute first choice for full appreciation of the setting and the fish. White or rosé would both work.

Robert, I am neither for nor against a chef making rounds of the dining room. It some places it feels right, in others it doesn't. I certainly don't mind a chef making a beeline for someone else's table and ignoring mine and I'm happy to see the chef at my table if I know him. It adds to the social interaction. I agree wholeheartedly that it can appear a pompous gesture at times. At other times it can be one of the "extra-food experiences" one enjoys. One of my favorite stories involves a young chef in St. Jean de Luz who is a friend of some people close to us. He came out and sat at our table. We spoke, mostly in English, about his time in New York and about the current state of restaurants in town. At some point a gentleman from across the room got up and approached the chef. He was an American making an extended stay in St. Jean. When he heard us speak English, he just had to get up and tell the chef how much he had enjoyed his dinner and how glad he was that he had run across the restaurant. Had the chef not come out to speak to us, he would never have received the compliment. I don't usually go out of my way to associate myself with American tourists abroad (or truthfully, to disassociate myself either) but I was pleased to find an American enthusiastic about food.

Robert, I think that's a fair answer to my question as well as a notable distinction between two sorts of places. However, I suspect it would not meet Margaret's original qualifications. Moreover, should one be going to Roanne on business or for some private social function away from the Troisgros' restaurant, their comfortable hotel might still be where one would choose to spend the night. It appears to be the best place in town by far. In my day, I've also had some very mediocre meals in hotels where the owner insisted on knowing if we were going to eat there before giving us a room. I believe that practice is illegal now, and probably was then, but no one was looking. I am of course, playing devil's advocate. I share your feelings to a great extent. I do not like to stay in a small hotel with a restaurant unless I plan to eat at the restaurant, even if it's a lesser known restaurant, if it's under the same management.

Of course. It was part of the pleasure of the day and of the trip, but it was apart from the sensory pleasure of the truffle. I would have like met Chef Orsi with, or without the truffle, as we had a mutual acquaintance who had already told him we were dining there.Of course chefs who make the rounds after a meal will spend different amounts of time at different tables--or at least most will. It all depends on what he has to say, and what the diners have to say. A lot will also depend on the circumstances and how busy he is. Probably the most time I've ever spent talking to a chef after a meal was when I first met Daniel Boulud. The circumstances were right. We had just returned from a trip to France. We were with our daughter who is fluent in French and who was very interested in food. It was probably our third or fourth visit and it was still a relatively young restaurant. He was still getting to know his clientele. It was lunch.

I wondered about that as well, but since the Troisgros hotel was the only one I knew from experience it was the only one I felt qualified to question as I recalled it was a real hotel. The categories are not clearly defined and two of my suggestions may, or may not, qualify. I guess it all depends on why one wants a restaurant with rooms, rather than a hotel with a good restaurant.

I see Grimes singles out Dim Sum Go Go for mention as the memorable place to have opened in Chinatown this year. He reports that the original Hong Kong chef has left and doesn't say who's in the kitchen now. There's no implication that the food has suffered since the original chef has departed however. Robert, were you aware of the change? Did you start eating there before the chef left?

How are these stories related to the appreciation of food in those countries. I can well imagine a book devoted to drunken parties in the U.S. and I can imagine it being interesting, but I can't imagine the relationship to food. Or better yet, I can imagine a European coming over and making the rounds of sports bars in NY and then returning home to write a book about dining in NY, but perhaps I'm missing the point of the book.

I see it all now. From Marseille to Golfe-Juan in car with a We brake for Bouillabaisse bumper sticker.

According to one web site the franc will remain legal tender until February 17. You will be able to exchange your francs for euros at banks until June 30. The site includes information about all of the euro countries.

Restaurants come and go and as for bouillabaisse, it may well be a dying art. Much of it is poorly served in touris restaurants, I suspect. The 2001 Michelin names 2 one star restaurants as keepers of the faith. Miramar, on the vieux port, is cited as the "reference." Michel-Brasserie des Catalans, around the point of the southern side of the old port and in a residential neighborhood, is "l'autre 'conservatoire.'" GaultMillau rated Miramar as a 14/20 and does not list Brasserie des Catalans at all. We lunched at Brasserie des Catalans. We did not make the reservations--much of this trip was hastily replanned at the last mimute when our friend in the Languedoc got sick and the British friends we had intended to meet suggested we meet them in Marseille if we still intended to come to France. It's all complicated and a long story. Suffice it to say, they were meeting old friends at this lunch as well and they made the reservation on the basis of past knowledge of the restaurant. The last time I had bouillabaisse in Marseille was in the mid sixties, so it's hard for me to offer any comparative rating to my bouillabaisse. There was a tasty soup and a variety of, I believe, four fishes. I recall that it was served as a single course, which was a disappointment, but it was very good. I don't know why it doesn't get a mention in GM. In 1964, I remember having the soup first and then the fish on a separate plate. The "rules" of bouillabaisse were explained, but I forget them and suspect they vary anyway. As I recall there was the need to include not less than a specific number of fish and that certain fish were required and others accepted. My belief is that crustaceans are not traditional, although always found in haute cuisine versions of this dish. To complete the record, I see Tétou also has one star and that Michelin notes their bouillabaisse as "fameuse," but as you imply, there are probably a lot of places worth trying along the coast between the two. They don't give research grants for that sort of thing, do they?

I don't know how much response we' ll get, but surely bouillabaisse is worth of a thread of its own. I've started a new bouillabaisse thread.

Robert Brown: Bux, I took it on myself to jump from the "Scarcity" thread to here since I am curious to know if you can remember the bouilliabaisse restaurant you went to in Marseilles. Some years ago we went to one Eli Zabar likes the most. It begins with a "B" I think and not on the port. But I don't have my Michelin handy. It would be fun to try and nail down one day the best half dozen or so bouilliabaisse restaurants along the coast. I guess Tetou in Golfe-Juan would get the most mentions. But a year and a half ago the foodie friend we took there trashed it because of what he perceived was the lack of quality of the fish and the purely decorative function of the tiny crabs. Irrespective of that, I believe I read that a liberal use of rascasse is a marker of a serious bouilliabaisse. Coordinator comment: "Here" was the "Small Restaurants" thread, but I decided the subject was worth a thread of it's own. I've quoted Robert Brown's message and started the "Bouillabaisse" thread. (Edited by Bux at 1:03 pm on Dec. 27, 2001)

Sorry, I noted it was around the new year, but didn't say which year. It was just his past January that we visited Lyon. We spent New Year's Eve in the old harbor in Marseille. We skipped all sort of fancy dinners and just roamed the harbor which was set up with more than half dozen international bands and a good display of fireworks. We had a good lunch of bouillabaisse on December 31 and and a more elegant lunch on the first with the same couple we later dined with in Lyon.

There is a weakness here on eGullet.com and an inability to stay on topic or even in the correct board. I sometimes feel I should recheck the Japan board to see what's being said about NYC restaurants. ;) I had venison for my main course and again several days later at Leon de Lyon. I recall them being rather comparable dishes. Our companions, a British couple, had the lobster gratinée and said it was superb. She passed on the foie gras raviloe in favor of some greens, although her fish salad had more fish than salad. The salade was graced with a share of the truffle. After dinner, Orsi's second in command made the rounds of the dining room. It's my understanding that he is taking over the restaurant, although perhaps not right away. He may also be rejuvenating the restaurant. It was our first visit. Orsi himself certainly didn't look ready for retirement. In his whites, he was more the image of an ascetic research scientist than a chef. I have my reservations about the decor of the restaurant which I suppose can be described as overwhelmingly feminine, or French. Mme. Orsi is as svelte as her husband and quite an elegant hostess, although she wears too much perfume for the hostess of a restaurant. I suspect she is responsible for the decor. Not my taste at all, but any subjectivity in the matter was more than overcome by their hospitality. I really enjoyed meeting Orsi and found him exceptionally gracious.

French goat farmers are not going to move to Britain for two reasons. First, the E.U. regulations are equally applicable and Britain is at least as likely to enfore them. Second, it's unlikely that there would be a larger market for the cheese in Britain than there is in France. Of course there's a vast difference between protecting a product by protecting it's name, be it the name of a product (e.g. chocolate) or the name of a region producing the product (e.g. champagne, burgundy, etc.) and enforcing regulations which by nature will degrade the product (e.g. pasturisation of milk for cheese). I don't have any personal experience with Terry's, but the issue is more than just one of personal acquired taste. In Belgium, consumers were guaranteed that any product called chocolate met certain standards. A chocolate flavored bar, or cocoa flavored confection was not the same as a chocolate. The guarantee is no longer in effect. The E.U. has said the manufacturer can substitute less expensive vegetable shortening for cocoa butter and legally label his product as "chocolate," and that the Belgians cannot demand a higher standard for products labeled "chocolate" than any other country in the E.U. Of course chocolatiers can still make finer chocolate and depend upon their brand name and reputation to charge a higher price and consumers can always read the ingredient label. In the case of pasturised milk, the quality product is removed from circulation. Pierre Marcolini will continue to have fancy chocolate boutiques in chic neighborhoods, while a raw milk cheesemonger may one day be required to operate only as a blackmarketeer and I don't look forward to the days of bathtub chevre. ;)

Cabrales, I didn't really answer your question. A little perversity can go a long way, but life without a bit, might be very boring. Or to put it another way, I'd aim to offend both the prudes and perverts.

Perversity is in the eye of the beholder. It's perverse to drink a champagne for the pun in its name, but it's not really perverse to notice the pun and drink the champagne because it tastes good. ;)

My "gastronomic racing luck" story: I had exchanged a few e-mails with a wine maker in one of the Cotes du Rhone Villages and promised to look him up on our drive from Montelimar to the Bas Languedoc where we were to stay with friends for New Year's Eve. The wine maker had been up all night nursing a friend and our visit was short, but lasted long enough for a short walk in the vineyards, where his dog dug up two good sized truffles. He kept the baseball, but insisted we take the golf ball. Unfortuantely our stay with friends was cancelled due to illness which seemed to plague those around us on this trip and we had no kitchen at our disposal. It was quite a few days before we got back to Lyon, where we had an introduction to Pierre Orsi and reservations to dine at his restaurant with some other friends. We called the chef as soon as we arrived in Lyon and quickly brought the truffle over to the restaurant. As we unwrapped it in the kitchen, we could see that it had suffered a bit. He said he'd have his staff clean it up and that we should order his foie gras raviole with truffle sauce that evening. He was standing in the entrance hall when we returned for dinner. The entire conversation had been in French, which may have been more a struggle for him than for me, so I was surprised by his hearty greeting of "It's the truffle man." I've been called a lot of things in my day, but this was one of the few that I wish would have had reason to stick. My wife stopped calling me the truffle man within weeks and no one else seems to have any reason to pick it up. He told us that when the truffle was cleaned up it was in much better shape than we all thought. I'm willing to bet that Orsi's dish would have been one of the memorable dishes of the trip, but under the cover of all that truffle it was an over the top experience. We felt on top of the world that evening. You spend your life reading other people's stories and all of a sudden you're in your own story.

I'm not sure that word should ever be used without quotation marks. Yes, these sections are, as a rule, jokes, but before they existed their was nothing funny about going to the supermarket. Supermarkets in many diverse places seem to have a lot better offerings than they did forty years ago. The application of "gourmet" to seel shoddy imported merchandise is not new. In the sixties, and probably before, "gourmet" gift baskets were full of Swiss cheese products no more worthy of the name cheese than those slices on a Burger King cheeseburger. Peter, when you said "American Practise," I expected you were going to refer to our long standing practice of ripping off place names that signified quality and were protected in Europe. We're not alone or we wouldn't be able to sell imported Finnish Swiss cheese.

Robert, have you read Mort Rosenblum's A Goose in Toulouse? It's a testament to the fact that the French have not changed a bit, as well as documentation of all the little changes that spell the death of Frehnch food and agriculture as we knew it. The Art of Cooking article discussed on the Epoisses thread elswhere on this site shows exactly how the best of them bow to pressure. "In September 1999, the pressure became too great, and Berthaut began to heat all the milk for its cheeses." That's Edward Behr speaking of the monitoring of Epoisses in France.