Bux

I certainly didn't mean any offense and I'm glad you didn't take any. I worry that this sort of question might be taken offensively, but the risk is weighed against the possibility of an answer. I agree that GT is among the most unintimidating of the great restaurants in NY. I recommend it to most visitors because it's a real NY place and an original. It's the finest restaurant in the city (food and service) where a jacket is neither demanded, requested or even suggested. Whatever your problem is, I have found that many people I know have the same problem and these people include those who make my yearly income as a Christmas bonus and who generally have considerably more money to spend than I do. It's not a particularly economic problem. However, it would be disingenuous for me to say, I don't understand it at all. Considering the rebellious and anti-establishment nature I've displayed most of my life, not to mention my natural disinclination to either earn or spend money, I'm often surprised that I am so comfortable in luxury restaurants. In truth it's the food that has seduced me.

I've checked a few usual sources in Chinatown and have not found duck hearts for sale. Chicken hearts and pig (or pork) hearts are both easily found.

Before I offer any more humbel (sic) opinions, I will configure my interactive spell checker to work with Explorer and risk the crashes I expect will ensue. The other thing about coffee, is that for me, it's always a beverage apart from the food of a meal. It can be taken by itself at any time of the day, but except at breakfast, it follows any and all real food including dessert for me. In the US, it's often the beverage with the meal for many people. I recall an Air France stewardess rather befuddled by a request for coffee as a meal was being served. She was evidently prepared for Coca-Cola in lieu of wine, but not coffee. I also recall a gentleman asking for coffee at the beginning of a meal in a top NY French restaurant. For me it was as striking as if he had come in wearing a beanie with a propeller. Obviously, for him, it was natural.

I'm always reluctant to reply to messages about Daniel Boulud's restaurants. My complex relationships to him, his restaurants, to those who work for him, as well as those who have worked with him, cause some people to believe I may be incapable of impartiallity. Nevertheless, my reluctance rarely overcomes my curiosity. Could you describe the stuffiness you find at Daniel and is it different from the stuffiness you find at Lespinasse, Le Bernardin or Jean Georges, or do you not find the others stuffy? I"m very curious as I have friends who find all these restaurants off-putting, but the explanations have little to do with the restaurants in particular. As often as not, it's a perception that stuffy is defined as what you find at the most expensive restaurants. This is not meant as a personal criticism or attack, but as an attempt to further understand how people react to the top handful of restaurants in NYC. I've recently had a similar exchange with someone about the French Laundry in Napa Valley. I was left with the impression that it was a snobbish restaurant because it was an expensive restaurant and all this was exchanged in a newgroup where wines costing several hundreds of dollars at retail are discussed all the time. I've eaten many a meal at Daniel at both the old and new locations. My first meals were well before I met the chef and long before I knew anyone working there. The new location seems a very expensive, but also a very democratic national institution while the old place seemed very much an upper east side enclave, yet I found even the old place very welcoming and gracious. I haven't seen the menu, except on the web, and I haven't seen the wine list. I assume there are some reasonably priced bottles of wine as well as the 蹢 ones. Maybe not. In the past couple of years I've found my wine bill has doubled (from ภ to over ฮ) at neighborhood places as well as better restaurants. The ŪX bottle seems to be well on it's way out. I think I've still seen some reasonable examples on the Gramercy Tavern menu.

Ruby, I'm tempted to suggest you develop a taste for espresso, it's always made to order and, in my not so humbel opinion, just a better beverage. However I'm most struck by the restaurant quote that the coffee is made fresh every morning. A while back I was reading a post about pasta in one of the usenet restaurant newsgroups. The gist of the post was about a complaint similar to yours, but about the pasta in some mediocre Italian restaurant, possible a local chain. At any rate the punchline delivered with a straight face by the manager was that they cooked their pasta fresh every day.

I have so many problems with the writing and editing of articles in the Dining In/Out section of the NY Times, that I rarely read any of the articles very closely. That the "paper of record" has as great an ability to influence its readers as it does to report on trends is something to think about. I don't know if Ms. Schrambling has made much of a point other than the fact that the great chefs with classic training have technique and depth on which to rely when cooking or creating and that the young flash in the pans do not and that the latter's short repetoire leaves them out of breath (or is is breadth?) way before the finish line. Boulud, Valenti and Heffernan have some enlightening things to say and they all have shown some inclination to produce good old down home cooking, even if it is French down home cooking in some instances. Even at Daniel that temple of refined haute cuisine, there's usually been some earthy classic, if redefined, on the menu and a regular diner might find himself offered tête de veau if he's managed to convey the right impression about his love for food. The only constant is shift. Of course a change in the economy will create changes in the way people eat and especially in the way they eat out. I suspect the world economy is not far behind us and many of the restaurants hardest hit in Manhattan are the destination restaurants on many tourist's must list. I doubt that the top restaurants in Paris will not feel the impact of reduced travel as well.

I'm old enough to have seen the tide turn. Most fruits seem to be bred for looks and ability to be shipped without blemish. Sweet is only one of the tastes lost, but I won't carry on an off-topic rant right here and now. ;)

Robert, I assume that wasn't salmon blood in the sauce. The classic, or traditional civet, made with furred game is thickened with the blood of the animal. Hare is actually the most traditional animal. In nouvelle cuisine the term is often used in more creative ways. Someone once reported seeing civet de homard on a menu in France, with the accompanying translation "lobster stew of furred game." Blood sausages and black puddings are another use of blood in cooking. All of this predates Passard's birth by generations and probably centuries if it doesn't predate recorded history. The question might be "Was Passard the first to use animal blood in a fish dish?" Do you remember what he called his dish.

It's a question of balance. As for the chicken and egg question, my earlier reference to a soft shell crab dish was about a level of sweetness comparable to dessert and not the unneccessary but still subtle use of sugars in packaged foods. Admittedly I tend to avoid packaged foods, but as noted earlier in some thread, we use canned chicken broth as a staple. Still manfacturers of food product wouldn't add sugar if they didn't have reason to believe it helps sell the product. It does lead to a vicious circle.It's the diet soda mention that really caught my attention. As the "pick me up" in colas is the caffeine anyway, diet cola might make as much sense as black coffee.

True and even in an earlier time one might question how the French, who gave us such "classics" as Duck a l'orange, could say that Americans liked sweet things with meat. However, the difference really was about the way the fruit and it's natural sugars are used in combination the meat and other ingredients. It's one thing to use fruit as a foil and another to let the fruit overwhelm and worse yet to add additional sugar as if the fruit were dessert and the higlight of the dish.

Depending on where you are coming from, even the oysters may not be a draw. Nevertheless I recommend them and recommend you sit at the oyster bar as table service is not much better than the cooking the--sometimes esteeemed chower included, and apart form the ceiling, what decor? Perhaps you should point your brother to this group. ;)

I'm sorry to hear of any decline in the Flo brasseries as they are now owners of what remains of many of the best braseries. It doesn't surprise me that things decline under a corporate management but I wonder how many of those brasseries would have survived on their own. It must be six or more years ago that we ate at the Vivienne and enjoyed it very much. Not great cuisine, but good brasserie food. More recently, La Coupole's renovation redered it totally unappealing to us after we had known it so well in the sixties. At the same time, we had a wonderful lunch at Les Grandes Marches just this summer. Short review on this page. It's also owned and operated by the Flo group.

I'm tempted to say there's not a #### of a lot of classical French food in the contemporary French kitchens of New York today. I would be careful to note that the food found in the fine French restaurants of NY may owe its success to the kitchen's knowledge of classical French cuisine and its ability to produce the same. My knee jerk reaction is to dismiss all combinations that resemble truf and surf. Admittedly, in real life, I selectively turn off what may appear to be reflex reactions. If I respect the chef, I allow him to serve not only fish and meat, but fruit on the same plate. Over a decade ago, in an act I thought was perverse although supported by an exchange rate of ten francs to the dollar, I ordered a cold foie gras and langoustine terrine in Paris. It was unbelievably rich and quite excellent. It was all part of my education in foie gras. To travel in the Dordogne at 9-10 francs to the dollar is an experience of a lifetime.

Both of those places exhibit a "scene" that would make you think twice about going at anytime but the "right" time. It's usually a surprise that the food is good enough to warrant a visit when it's empty. I've only been to Patis when it was noisy and noisier. ;)

If anything, I think the noise level at Pastis is louder at peak times. Pastis may come closer to having a typical clientele. It's a younger group as a whole from what I've seem. Balthazar's diners seem to cover a wider range.

I've had a problem grinding "dry" shitakes and the ones I've had have been pretty dry. The best I could do was to push them through a sieve. It was actually more a question of abrading them on the mesh and having the powder fall through. I'm not sure there's not a better or easier way and I wouldn't treat this as a response from a chef. I had the same, or even harder time trying to grind dried shrimp. In their case, I was able to dry them further with better results. I've not done it a second time.

Kind of hard for me to say if I'd like the meat preparations or not. I am still a fan of classic French cooking when well done and Delouvrier can do it very well. I'm not at all sure a dish of tuna and red meat is a French classic combination however. I assume the tuna was rare and also hardly classic in terms of French food.

It goes without saying I should think, that hitting an ice cream parlor after an Asian meal is not the same as having an Asian dessert, not matter what the flavors. ;)

Jason--But not, I trust, to chocolate covered pretzles. As I kid I enjoyed vanilla ice cream with salty pretzles. I should try it again. There seemed to be a rash of desserts highlighted with salt in NYC recently.

But one populated by eaters as well as cooks. Knowing it's hard, doesn't make it taste any worse. I find this sort of knowlege invaluable in appreciating food from a consumer's perspective. It's evident however, that many food writers, and worse yet editors, find this sort of information irrelevent or just uninteresting. There is something inacessible on first bite about an intensely bitter solid French chocolate, that makes the eater sit up and take notice. It tends to command some respect, although inaccessibility is hardly the benchmark, or at least it shouldn't be, of "ultimate." As long as chocolate remains an art, or perhaps as long as it is ingested orally, there will be some disagreement even among professionals about what's really the ultimate. Most of us will enjoy the research more than coming to any conclusion. I suppose that's the thought I've first heard applied to the question of which is better, Burgundy or Bordeaux. Personally I might choose a Rhone and maybe I should sut up before it's known that I've been opting for fruit desserts more often these days. ;) Thanks for the info. Wish it came boxed with bonbons to illustrate every point.

Jean Georges, of course. I'd echo your sentiments about Picholine and Cafe des Artistes, although I haven't been to either in a while.

I was afraid of that. ;)The combination of caviar and sugar touches on the subject of sweet and salty. A friend of mine who was born in the US, but has lived and worked in Paris for decades once mentioned that he thought the combination of salt and sugar was an alien taste to the French, but not to Americans. Ketchup was his prime example as I recall. Chinese and Japanese recipes frequently use sugar and salt in the same dish. I'm not sure this is true about French tastes, but it merits consideration. Offhand, the first contradictions that come to mind are the wonderful salt butter caramels of Brittany and the use of salt butter in Breton pastries. I think contemporary cooks and chefs are far less resistant to new ideas and becoming quicker to adapr new tools and methods if they can be proven to produce the same results. I suspect there's much less "it has to be done that way, becase that's how we've always done it."

What I tried to express was that gobbling chocolate is like chugging wine (or some liquid). Actually few wines are made for chugging, but some are made for easy quaffing. Others derserve sipping, but can be chugged. Still others demand sipping. From my limited experience many good chocolates deserve the sort of tasting that is precluded by gobbling, but some French chocolates I've had are just too intense to gobble. They not only deserve, but demand slow appreciation. I'm weak on my definitions here, but some of the most intense chocoates I can remember are the simple palets from Bernachon, which I recall as being just chocolate. Perhaps these are not the ultimate example of the chocolatier's métier, but they seem like such a pure form that they stick in my impressionable mind. It's also been a while since I've tasted these. We were in Lyon this past winter, but didn't get a chance to do all the things we wanted to do. My reference to cream and butter in chocolates and a resultant short shelf life was based on the (mis?)understanding that in the best Belgian and Swiss chocolates, the cream is fresh and uncooked and therefore more perishable. I could be very wrong on this. Keep talking. If I don't learn about chocolate, I'll at least learn enough to ask the right questions.

That reminds me of the young woman who was checking my hand luggage on a flight from Paris to Brittany. She came across a couple of bottles of red wine (Zinfandels from California, for those interested) and couldn't help smiling and telling me it would be easy for me to find wine in France.

In the heart of NY's Chinatown you have the choice of Hagen Daz of the Chinatown Ice Cream Factory. Not sure if the latter has such great ice cream, but they've got great flavors. Tea, tropical fruits and such