Bux

I understand not being hungry all too well. I'm afraid age is a factor in appetite along with quite a few other things. Earlier this month something hit me the day we were leaving for Paris. I nursed part of a Coke down at the airport to settle a very queasy stomach and was far too dizzy to think straight enough about returning home on the spot. I started to recover by the time we landed at CDG. I could not touch the Air France breakfast, but did enjoy a cup of coffee and croissant at the airport. Nevertheless, I have to think twice about all my restaurant experiences and compare my gustatory pleasure with the intellectual ones and wonder if the former might not have been even better if I was in better shape. Part of my problem is that my eyes are always in better shape than my stomach and I chose things such as cassoulet and andouille on which to nurse myself. If you travel often enough, you will eventually experience traveling out of sorts from time to time. My favorite trip to France was made years ago. I frequently ordered more courses than my wife and young daughter put together. They marvelled at my prodigious appetite. Even better, it was a unique trip in that I gained no weight. Months later, undergoing some medical test for what turned out to be an unrelated problem, they discovered that I had some sort of parasitic worm. (The worm, by the way, was likely from some cross contamination with raw freshwater fish and not uncommon in NY State.) I understand Maria Callas once ate a tapeworm as a diet aid. It's not something I'd do or recommend, but I fondly look back on that trip with much joy.

My guess is that daily life in a French kitchen is different from what Bourdain has experienced, although I have not actually read the book. I also have the impression that Bourdain's book does not describe life in a top haute cuisine NY kitchen either. Sometime ago, I enjoyed Burgundy Stars by William Echikson (Little, Brown). It's about Bernard Loiseau and life in his kitchen at La Cote d'Or in Saulieu. The author timely chose to folow Loiseau around the year before he got his third star. It was written and published in English.

What a thread. I'm not sure there's much of substance to add. Robert Brown started it by asking if NYC's claim to being the restaurant capital of the world is self-serving hype or if there's there solid evidence to back it up? To both I would say yes and without much sarcasm note Steve Klc's comments regarding 1) concentration and diversity of media devoted to dining, chefs and gastronomy and 2) competitiveness of chefs within a city and climate of competitiveness for restaurateurs. Since when is hype not a part of the environment of greatness. Wilfrid makes the best case of all. There will be no mutually agreed upon capital and no consensus of opinion on the standards. It does however, seem silly to speak of Lyon, as greater than Paris, when Vonnas or Veyrier-du-Lac would easily beat Lyon on the basis of concentration. I'm also curious about weighing different price ranges when speaking of "greatness." It's much like asking the referees how they scored the fight after a knockout. It should take more than one restaurant to score a knockout in this classification, but a great restaurant city is not about where ฤ will go the farthest. Ducasse is a contender for the greatest restaurant without asking about value. A point on the quality of ingredients. What's available to restaurants sometimes has little to do with what is generally available to the public. There are great restaurant cities and cities in which you will do best if invited to someone's home for dinner. While I've tasted no butter in America that was in the same league as unpasturized artisanal salt better from a small Breton farm, French restaurants proudly feature Maine lobster. I do not agree with Fat Guy that there are no multistarred restaurants in NY besides Ducasse. If the public would pay the price required to occupy a table for the evening, there might be several Michelin quality three star restaurants in NY. I certainly don't see the spread in terms of cuisine. I have to bring up something Fat Guy has alluded to in other threads though. If you eat well at a restaurant the first time you dine there, you are bound to eat so much better the fourth fifth and sixth time. this may make individual recommendations seem out of line.

People are as free to chose their place of employment as they are to choose where to eat. In any event, as bartenders and waiters work in pubs and restaurants, these are their work places.Why an office worker should have privileges not offered to a restaurant worker is beyond me. I do not approve of smoking dogs, but I'll bet the PETA folk outdo me on this one.

First, I do not approve of dogs or babies in places where smoking is allowed. Klc asks a question always in the back of many minds. The French are heavy smokers as a nation. Many great chefs smoke and some very highly respected restaurants in Paris pride themselves on the cigars they offer for sale to their clients. (Michel Bras, by the way, requests his guests not to smoke in the dining room.) I know one chef whose taste buds seemed well above average to me at the time he was a heavy smoker. Nevertheless, he quit upon the urging of a new girlfriend. Sometime after he quit, he said food tasted different. He found that food had a greater depth of flavor and that the flavors were far more complex. It's possible to enjoy food under handicapped conditions, I'm just not sure why anyone would want to do so. I see fewer and fewer people smoking in fine restaurants even in France. I often put up with smoke in bars, cafes and bistros in Paris, but I can deal far more easily with the short potentail health risk and discomfort than I can with the idea that a hundred dollar meal and accompanying wine will be ruined, even to a small degree. I have avoided some fine restaurants because I have been told cigar smoking is encouraged.

Wilfrid, dining out is always a gamble. A blind tasting at an unknown restaurant is a risk--a long shot at best. However, in defense of Margaret, she noted that she had loved not only what she ordered the last time she was there, but found the complimentary courses memorable as well. She understandably felt the chef had earned free rein. I'm wondering if this is a restaurant we know.

Beyond personal preference in decor, I had lunch in NY and dinner in Paris. I believe daylight comes filtered through the shades at lunch in the Essex House and there were wonderful tiny orchids in the windows. I love daylight and favor it over candlelight or any other light. That may have affected my opinion as well. In either case I would go for the food not the room, but then I tend to shy away from restaurants altogether if the room is better than the food. That's not a hard and fast rule either, now that I think of it and L'Huitiere in Lille is a case where I loved the restaurant more than the food, although the food was good. As for coffee and tea, I shall have to develope a taste for tea. I don't recall any really good coffee in a restaurant and not much in cafes either on this past trip. I'd skip coffee next time, but I really find a meal incomplete without it, even when it's mediocre. Klc's recommendation in another thread on another board at eGullet was the motivation for buying a pump driven espresso machine after all our years of complaining about breakfast coffee at home. Now I'm far less satisfied with coffee in restaurants and France is not the home of good esspresso as I once thought it to be. Travel in Italy and Spain really raises expectations.

In general I'm inclined to disagree with all statements made in general. ;) Sometimes we order à la carte, and sometimes we order a menu. Sometimes we get to (have to) choose between several menus of varying size or focus. Sometimes we enter a restaurant exepcting to choose the tasting menu either because of the restaurant of our mood. At other times, the choice becomes obvious after looking at the carte. Robert offers some of the same thinking that goes through our head, except that he has a much lower opinion of NY food than we do. The consideration of cost and the fact that we are able to return often lead us to choose à la carte, even when I know the tasting would be a treat.

Steve (Shaw, not Klc) ;) When did you eat at Ducasse in Paris? The question is whether you ate at the Plaza Athenée or the much more personlized, unique really, rooms of the restaurant left by Joel Robuchon. I'd never been in a more privileged dining environment than the one at Robuchon. At the Plaza Athenée, you enter through the hotel lobby, albeit the lobby of one of Paris' most luxurious and elegant hotels, and into a large hall of a dining room. I found the grey walls gloomier than they were sophisticated. Two tall skinny and very prominent artworks looked more like Calvin Klein ads than anything else. Wrapping the crystal chandeliers in cylinder of mesh, was interesting, but not effective. It's not that I found it unattractive, just that I found flaws. I'm not a big fan of Arman either and have much to overlook at the Essex House as well. Both are really fine enough places in spite of my carping, but I'd adjust the decor, not the food. With one meal at each location, I'm more comfortable offering a discription of my meal than making judgements. I found the service in Paris more formal. To a great extent this mirrors the interests of Parisian diners. At the same time, my insistance on speaking French while I do not have great fluency, is going to keep waiters at arms length. In NY, some of the waiters do not speak French and those tend to be the ones with the less formal style. And it's just style, this is not a value judgement. A third factor may well have nothing to do with the preferences of either New Yorkers or Parisians, but in Paris, many of the tables had Asian clients. I suspect the staff will meet what they feel are the diner's expectations. Service is over the top and sometimes more than I want. Is it really a service to have the waiter actually put my sugar cube in my coffee cup? What if after tasting it, I want a bit more, but he's gone with the sugar? On the whole it's hard to complain about being pampered.

In Euros: half order of Tartufi de Alba et foie gras de canard en ravioli 60.00 Gibiers à plumes de Sologne en chaude et froide 70.00 Agneau du Limousin, façon tian à la "Parisienne 72.00 Chevreuil en noisette, réduction d'une poivrade 77.00 Desserts 25.00 each Espresso 12.00 each Bottle of Chateldon sparkling water 8.00 I splurged on a bottle of Gevry-Chambertin which I did not enjoy in proportion to the price. I should have gone with my first thought of a Rhone. I seem not to be enjoying the Burgundies I've had, or at least not the Cote de Nuits, as much as I think I should lately. This is not to say it was a bad choice, especially with our main courses. We had some conversation with the sommelier about doing two half bottles, choosing a wine that was okay with both courses or just concentrating on the main courses. We opted for the latter. Part of my reaction to several finicky meals as I noted. The trouble with traveling and eating out every night is that sometimes you bounce between restaurants without a good pause. After several days in Paris, my most successful meal was a simple one in a brasserie and that loomed largely in my mind in keeping it simple at Ducasse. Anyway that's 320 Euros or under 跌 for three courses without wine, coffee or bottled water. On the other hand, it's quite easy to eat well, very well, in Paris for much less. A hundred dollars can easily buy three courses of tasty food and a good enough bottle of wine with change to spare. Ducasse is not just about eating well. There's something wonderful about experiencing that level of expertise and precision. I think I prefer the dining room at the Essex House, but I thought the food was "stronger" here. That's a rash judgement and I'll not get a lot of chances to make comparisons.

I've been meaning to set a good example and share my post trip thoughts. Let's start at the top--Ducasse. Whatever anyone says about Ducasse at the Plaza Athenée may say more about the writer than the chef or the restaurant. Elsewhere on eGullet.com, I believe Shaw has said this may not be the restaurant he would recommend to everyone, yet it's a must, or something to that effect. I'm inclined to agree as contradictory as that sounds. An option to order three half dishes, cheese and dessert might have offered a wider view of Ducasse's cooking, but we ordered a simple meal of two courses and dessert. In retrospect, this was so unlike our normal inclination, but I suspect it was very much a reaction to our dissatisfaction with small dishes and tastings earlier in this trip. In addition to some canapés, we were brought an amuse bouche of what we believe was a sort of warm molded savory soft meringue sitting in a bit of lemony sauce. There was a parmesan tuille on top and some herring roe scattered about. Inside was a warm thick egg yolk. We love a good egg in a fine restaurant. This was about the most exquisite egg we've seen. We were fully prepared to rave about this egg for some time to come had our plan not been upset by our the art and craft of our ordered courses, which were of such a high order as to make us re-evaluate the language with which we, or others, have used to describe fine food in the past. To share this meal, you will have to imagine Gibiers à plumes de Sologne en chaude et froide. The froide arrived as five cubes of meat, each about an inch and a half on a side, in the form of a long low slice of terrine. On both flanks of a central block of dark gamy breast meat, there was foie gras "breaded" with minced truffles on four sides. At the ends were white breast cubes--perhaps pheasant or some other less gamy bird. As the meats were all very moist and the dish devoid of all fat save for the foie gras, and as the breast meats all seemed to have been cut from the center of the breast, I have no idea how this was cooked or assembled, except to say it was done with great expertise. Although as often as not, our dishes appeared devoted to the eye, it became clear that taste was the objective in each dish. By the way, as if my cold meats were not enough, the chaude arrived as a bowl of consommé with a julienne of feathered game and a raw egg yolk. Esilda had a half order of Tartufi de Alba et foie gras de canard en ravioli which was really not so small a portion of a very rich dish. Comfort food for the very self indulgent. France has many things to offer in the fall, but game is among the real treats and I continued with Chevreuil en noisette, réduction d'une poivrade relevée de genièvre. How very modest not to mention the still life of roots and fruits, and all sort of vegetable, fruit and fungus glowing in autumnal tones under a glaze of that réduction. At first glance I though it all too much to eat and not sure all were appealing, although I have a wider range of taste for fruit with game, but the fruits were deceptively tart and the vegetables deceptively luscious. Each seemed a counterpoint to one chosen before and try as I might, I couldn't make a bad combination of choices. Before I knew it, I had devoured most of the garnish and forgotten about the meat. Surely the cusinière who plated my dish had spent more time arranging the colors and forms than I spent eating them. My dish was beautiful, but had a rustic woodsy character. Esilda's Agneau du Limousin, façon tian à la "Parisienne was a hard edge construction looking more like a pastry than a savory course. A perfect rectangle of overlapping rosé slices of lamb loin, each offset from the one under it by little more than the eighth inch thickness of the slice, reposed on a bed of finely diced eggplant, tomato, minced black olives, and finally spinach, each in it's own distinct layer. A lamb reduction with black olives and garlic was added at the table. The garlic was pungent and overwhelming if more than a dab of sauce was used for each bite. We chose dessert at the beginning of the meal. I had a melange of stuffed and spiced exotic fruits with banana-coconut and lime sorbets. It was very much what I wanted at the end of the meal. I found it a balance of sweetness with a bit of crisp acidity and spice. Much like my main course garnish, I found each bite offered a treat. I particularly remember a slice of ripe mango folded over a spiced puree of fruit that might well have passed for a raviole. Esilda found her hazelnut variations--crunchy, mellow and iced, more of a chocolate desert than she expected.

We've gone through a few knives. Our first was a hollow ground stainless steel knife with natural wooden handle--beautiful, indestructible. It hasn't been sharp enough to cut much for a very long time, but we keep it as a tool for odd chores. A carbon steel knife sold with the advice that we should never both with a steel, but use a stone regularly, developed an concave spot or two along it's cutting edge all too soon. It's very difficult to do a perfectly even job when sharpening. A knife that doesn't touch the cutting board at all points as it's rocked is about as worthless as one with a dull edge. That one isn't even around for odd jobs. Keeping the curve of the blade is as important as keeping the edge. If you want to use the full blade, it's essential to sharpen all the way to the hilt. None of this is to say I take great care of my knives or that they're always as sharp as they can be. Still I have trouble using other people's knives. Worse yet, is cooking at other people's summer or vacation homes where they bring all their worn out equiment.

Heresy is relative. I can even recall learning that ice cream is not a fit dessert for a fine meal as the cold temperature interferes with digestion or something like that. I'm sure cold numbs one's taste buds as well. Nevertheless, and ice cream is a good example, creamy sweet things taste very good to me when very cold. Perhaps you can explain why I like to eat goat cheese straight from the refrigerator. The creamy ripe part just under the skin of a Boucheron is most appealing when ice cold. It has the texture of the smoothest ice cream. It's only a matter of time before this gets put into one of those fast ice cream freezers and finds its way onto menus served with a bit of ripe fruit or jam.

I barely know Barcelona and have found it's the sort of place in which the tourist needs a good guide to find good food. It can be hit and miss, especially in tourist areas. My best tips have come from a food critic in Madrid. Worse yet, is that more and more restaurants are posting menus in Catalan, although they all have menus in Spanish for the "tourists." I recognize enough food stuffs in Catalan to order things I may like, but not enough to discover things I don't know. Truthfully, I'm not ready for a severed head on my plate.

I suspect Spain deserves its own board, but Barcelona deserves at least it's own thread. My recommendations for Can Majo and Ca l'Isidre can be read in the Spain Trip thread. Our path through the Barrio Chino to Ca l'Isidre seemed pleasant and safe enough by day, although it skirted some depressed neighborhoods and I might have felt differently at night. The restaurant is upscale from the neighborhood and on the other side of the Barrio Chino from the Ramblas. I don't know if Ca l'Isidre is on the tourist track of not, but it seemed to be missing from the Michelin guide and the crowd seemed mostly local when we were there. I'm told it tends to serve real Catalan food. Wilfrid's suggestion of a bar at the market brings back a memory of settling a disagreement with my wife about when we should eat lunch. A short beer and a slice of tortilla changed my mind about needing lunch right away. My initial reaction to tortillas was that they were overcooked omelets and boring. I've long since learned to regard them as an ideal and always welcome snack any time of day at a bar. They are also quite varied in terms of additional ingredients and many bars will have a selection all over Spain I also tend to not want, or be able, to enjoy tapas followed by a full dinner. More often then not while traveling in Spain, we'll have out big meal in the afternoon and hit the tapas bars about nine o'clock or even later and call that our supper. There is a wine bar/tapas bar in the old part of town--La Vinya del Senyor at Plaça de Santa Maria 5 (Metro Jaume I)--with a very varied selection of wines as well as tapas. It was the sort of place where you have to work your way to the bar and speak up to get attention. I've not had an apartment in Barcelona, but I enjoyed shopping for a great market selection of cured meats--dried chorizos, lomo, etc.--to bring to friends in southern France.

Here's my two cents on all this, alhough I don't use our cast iron skillet all that much, or for that matter our old trusty French steel saute pan or crepe pan, but they've been around for years and still get used from time to time. I see nothing wrong with soap and water when you bring it home. I don't know what sort of industrial grease coated it at the factory to keep it from rusting in the store. I heat the pan up well with a layer of oil or shortening. Usually it's vegetable, corn, peanut or canola. I try not to burn the oil and thus tend to heat it up several times for a short period so I don't have to watch it. Afterwards, I'll scrub it with coarse (kosher) salt and a paper towel when still warm. I rarely get it wet after using it and prefer to scrub it with cooking oil and salt again after use. I like to do this when the pan is warm, but not hot. After it's well seasoned, it often cleans up with just a wipe with paper towels, but every now and then I scrub it with salt and hot oil. My aluminum omelet pan gets the same treatment, but I'm not at all sure any aluminum in my diet is as healthy as the iron. (Commercial baking powders probably add more aluminum toomy diet than my omelet pan.) Both pans will leave a grey residue on the paper towel as will the cast iron griddle on my stove, which I rarely use and then only in the winter.

The Avenida Palace is fine, but the Claris is finer. A bit more expensive as well. ;) It may be a few blacks less centrally located, but very well located nevertheless. Don't miss the markets. Mercat de la Boqueria just off La Rambla is the best known, but we happaned to chance upon another that seemed bigger if not better, I believe it was the one on Mallorca and Cassanova.

Steve Klc is prepared to offer a discourse on why salt brings out the flavor in sweet foods, which makes me wonder why we stopped eating pretzels and ice cream as we gew up.

Is there such a thing as an actual dress code in most restaurants these days? I think few restaurants are so rude as to not allow you to be seated if you're neatly attired. I normally go along with the suggested dress code as a sign of respect. If I'm unwilling to heed it, I'm free to go elsewhere, but I've seen some outrageously sloppy dress tolerated in the best restaurants in Manhattan. On the whole restaurants are getting less formal anyway. I was surprised to see how infromally people dressed in Paris earlier this month. In Brussels, we dined at a restaurant that I expected to be pretty dressy and noticed when we arrived that there was a note on the menu and in the window requesting jackets and ties, but noticed at least one diner in a knit shirt and no jacket.

Monkfish liver is probably served in a great many Japanese restaurants. I know it's frequently available at Tomoe Sushi. Look for ankimo if it's not listed under its English name. It's usually served with a ponzu sauce.

As long as there's information being exchanged and someone is going to the source so the rest of us don't have to, I don't think we're beating this to death. English is an often imprecise language and what one person says, may not be exactly what another understands. Definitions aside, I'd expect something different if the menu said "dumplings" than if it said "quenelles." As I noted, my pocket French/English dictionary regards quenelles as meat balls. That's hardly helpful in my mind. My Larousee Gastronomic (1961 edition published in the US) offers only the Anglo-Saxon knyll meaning to pound or grind, as the possible origin. Although commonly made with flour, most of the recipes I see in the Larousse do not seem to use anything but fish (or meat) paste, eggs and seasonings.

Exactly. I took Shaw's "no big deal" comment to mean he thinks he deserves better placement and more column inches. ;)

Dumplings don't have to be coarse, but I guess the word just conures up a heavier image in my mind than the quenelles I have eaten. I think of dumplings as either something in a pasta wrapper as Chinese dumplings, or dumplings that are basically flour and water with egg. English is such an imprecise language and connotations are often stronger than definitions. Besides, I've always suspected some of those prepared quenelles I've seen in Lyon's shop windows are desne as a rock and have little fish in them. So it all depends on whose dumplings and whose quenelles we are eating.

Robert, I'm pretty much in agreement with Fat Guy, or so I believe. There are various way s to complain about a problem. Clearly the waitress was unprofessionally unresponsive and to pursue it with her would have created a fuss. The last thing a good customer (or guest as Fat Guy puts it) wants is to reward the good treatment received in the past with a scene. A phone call from home to the right person, a word in the ear of the maitre d' or someone else on the next visit would be far more effective and a better way to go. Also as Fat Guy noted, if you've received numerous comps in the past, it's pretty petty to complain about one lost dish. As my companion was a vegetarian, he probably ran up a smaller bill than I did and even with this dish, my share of his meal was probably smaller than his share of my meal. I was content to leave it all in his hands. Yvonne, I was floored too, but I suspect it was an untrained waitress (if I recall, she was a bartender called in to help on the floor that night) rather than a disinterest on the part of the kitchen. I think the waitress thought the comment cards relived her of her responsibility. By the way, I think the undercooked fennel was not a major flaw or sign of Mario's culinary weakness, my entire problem was with the waitress' response, or lack thereof.

Have kidneys really disappeared from most French restaurant menus? I suppose they may have, as I've not ordered them in a while and most certainly would if I saw them on the menu. Sweetbreads are pretty common. I'm sure of that. I had wonderful sweetbreads at Craft last night. Balthzar has a great blood sausage that's offered with poached eggs and potatoes for brunch. I don't know when they serve brunch. I've only had it on Sundays. Cafe Boulud once offered a terrific tripe stew on its changing menu and I've actually had tete de veau at one of NYC's fanciest restaurants, but it wasn't on the menu and I doubt it will ever appear there. Duck blood is pretty standard fare at most Dim Sum places in Chinatown, but as often as not, they don't offer it to non-Chinese unless you ask for it.