Bux

We've never completely recovered from Prohibition, or from the Puritans who founded New England. I've always thought all places that serve food should be required to served either beer or wine.

I'll buy that.

Jason, better make that October, November and December. ;)

Often the hard part is deciding which restaurants to skip. I note that David Russell writes about bistros with the same enthusiasm as he does about starred restaurants. I understand the concept of the Michelin stars respresenting just how far out of one's way it's worth going for a restaurant, but there are simple bistros whose pleasures I miss as much as the multistarred restaurants if I pass them by. Let me join Shaw (Fat Guy). David, that was a wonderful post even if it makes it hard to plan two days in Beaune.

I appreciate your comments. Lille, and it's surrounding area, have been the one corner of France we've not seen. I suspect we're not alone and from what I've been hearing and reading, it's an oversight on our part. Sorry you didn't have a better restaurant experience, but it reinforces my interest in A L'Huîterie especially as I love seafood. Almost all posts are welcome here, but it's most rewarding to have readers come back after a trip and comment on their experiences, positive or negative.

I would agree about sitting at the bar and that's the bar facing the oysters if there's any doubt. I'm not a fan of anything I've had there except the oysters and the new herring that arrives at the end of May from Holland. I found the New England clam chowder exceptionally rich, but tasteless. Others have loved it.

I think I mentioned a long affair with a bacon or ham and scallion bread from one of the Maria's bakeries in Chinatown. For those who don't know this chain, which I believe is an import from Hong Kong, they're mostly a white bread and bun bakery, although Chinese bread is a bit different from western bread. They also serve some fast food in some of the larger shops. The white bread and buns are not, by any standard, up to supermarket bread, but they have their charms. There are better bakeries of that sort as well. Currently I stick to char shu bao. Dried parsely is pretty nasty stuff. Some herbs dry very well and some are useless.

Let's not call it an "all star" team. I hope Shaw doesn't refer to "Parking Lot Dinner" as dining. Hmm, I guess I have trouble even seeing it as "dinner." At least until we enter Chicago, San Francisco or one of a limited number of cities in this country, I think I'd rather be in the car with Holly. Maybe it's my sense of sport and adventure, but patronizing fast food joints and even chain restaurants of that certain level, always seems like capitulation.

Cake is probably too broad a category to have just one favorite and then again I'm not sure my favorites would be classified as a "cake." We're probably more into tartes and pastries. I've had a Cupcake Cafe wedding cake and it was delicious. Wedding cakes are an art form all unto themselves. There's no reason they should taste as great as they look, but unfortunately many don't look all that good and taste even worse. Needless to say, the great ones are expensive. There was an article in the NY Times about cakes in general, and I guess about birthday cakes and the like, at fine restaurants. It noted that cakes don't plate in the style most restaurant pastry chefs choose for desserts these days. Greenberg's chocolate cake was for years our family choice for birthday cake. Any inscription was preferred in matching chocolate icing. I have a philosophical problem with added color in food, that's only partially related to the phobia of food additives. Our daughter's earliest birthday cakes were usually homemade cakes such as zucchini layer cake liberally frosted with Breyer's vanilla ice cream. As long as none of the kids knew it was zucchini cake, they gobbled it up. Sugar and butter were not on our list of things to be feared as long as they came uncolored.

There's an applicable joke about the new bride whose most important kitchen appliance is her telephone, I suppose, but the need for reliable tools is part of the reason I prefer to eat out when we travel and not rent a house. When we leave NY, the odds are that we'll end up in France. For years my wife has wanted to rent a house. Her best argument is to point at the wonderful markets which are always a sightseeing highlight for me and say "don't you want to shop and cook this stuff?" I realize that one of the reasons I don't, is that I'll have a terrible kitchen at my disposal.

As a city dweller, it's hard to distinguish between bugs. ;)We were in a pretty remote ryokan in the Japan "Alps." We were the first westerners to stay there. I suppose they had old fashioned food. I hope they were not insulted that we did not eat the locusts. When I told the story to a Japanese friend, all that he had to say was that they had "no taste, just crunchy." How about them. In Japan we had chewy dry shrimp that were delicious - sort of a seafood jerky. I've not found any here in Chinatown that compare, but I don't really know how to look. Assuming you like the flavor of fresh shrimp, I don't know why dried shrimp should be repulsive. We buy the little cheap ones and dry them until they're really dry and hard and then pulverize them. We used the ground shrimp as a coating for salmon fillets or steaks and cook them in a hot pan. If the thought is still repulsive, you can use pulverised dry shitake mushrooms.

Friends with a vacation home in France had a visitor who had just completed a diploma course at the Ritz-Escoffier and had grown up with a ktchen she assumed was equipped with no more than the basics. She offered to make dessert for her hosts and while preparing two fruit coulis nonchalently asked where they kept the chinoise (a fine conical sieve). This sent her hosts into a fit of laughter, although they were able to product a sieve.

Let's talk menus and not that thread. Out of hand indeed. ;) I can't walk by a restaurant without reading the menu. Nothing gives such a sense of place as reading local menus when traveling.

I thought Steingarten had eliminated all phobias except bugs. Bon, the only food I couldn't bring myself to eat when I was in Japan, was a plate of fried crickets at breakfast. As my wife noted, perhaps late inthe afternoon with drinks - maybe, but not as an eye opener. I'll tade my bugs for your tomato. Here in the U.S., a tomato is considered so luscious and appealing that it's a word used to describe an attractive woman. You guys are all weird. I've accepted friends' religious and sexual preferences, but these food phobias are harder. I guess I'll have to overcome my intolerance to food phobes. Be careful if you ever get an invitation to dinner though. I'm taking notes. ;)

I saw that post. I noticed the poster could not think of a place in Paris that does that and no one seemed to have a suggestion of another restaurant in France where anyone but a regular would bring his own wine. I'll follow that thread. I also looked the restaurant up in both the Michelin and Gault Millau. It's a very simple restaurant with no stars and only a 13 in GM, but with a positive mention Oddly enough the listed price in both guides was very far apart, although it's not expensive by either guide's prices.

Chacun à son goût. I'll take my Pernod with water, about four or five parts water to one of Pernod and an ice cube or two. I'll take it in the afternoon, or before dinner. As for Preet's cocktail, allow me to paraphrase Fat Guy and make the argument that there are plenty of nasty substances that nonetheless taste great as long as they are not combined together. However, if you can find a bartender willing to make one, I'll buy it for you. I suppose the one condition would be that you not face me as you taste it. ;)

Some time ago the NY Times ran an article about the bargain lunches in London. It advised Americans that they could do so much better at lunch than dinner in London. Unfortuantely I don't have a reference for the article or know if it's online. I suspect it may have been no more than amusing to a Londoner. Anyway I was promted to respond because you wrote: It's interesting that when someone posted an interest in seeing menus for restaurants in Paris, I was the only one to defend the practice as useful. One person said they found menus useless and another attacked the young enquirer as "presumtuous." In this case, however it was the nature of the food and not the price that was sought and that might be a different story.

I'm going back to beer.

What's this about Pernod being nasty stuff?

That has always been an entertaining and amusing subject. If you happen to remember a few charming translations offhand, please start a new topic.

The use of certain terms is always going to be confusing when they appear in a discussion about both French and American restaurants. Entrée is an appropriate place to start. A french dictionary defines the word as entry or entrance and notes that its meaning in terms of cuisine is "first course," yet here in the U.S., "entree" commonly implies the main course so strongly that French chefs who have worked in the U.S. for any time use it to denote the main course of a meal. I suspect that usage is due to the fact that a formal French meal will start well before the first or entry course. There are, of course, the hors d'oeuvres, or those things that are "out of the works," and not part of the actual meal. Nowadays we have tidbits to amuse the mouth or taste buds, possibly before the hors d'oeuvres. Also the fish course which may serve as the entrée to the meal, may be as large and filling as the meat course and Americans were used to smaller appetizers and huge main courses. Anyway it can lead to some confusion if you're not aware of the difference. "Menu," combined with "a la carte" is even more interesting. Here in the states, we order a la carte from the menu. In France, one orders à la carte from the carte or the carte du jour. Le menu is a set meal with set price, although a choice of dishes may be offered for some courses. Although the menus offered may be a good buy, the intent, as often as not, is to provide a chef's selection of courses. Frequently a French restaurant will offer several or many, menus they may differ in nature (seasonal, seafood, vegetarian, etc.) or in price or the number of courses offered. The last two are generally related. The ultimate menu for some gastronomes, in the finest restaurants is often the menu gastronomic. This menu has developed in the hands of the most creative chefs into a style of dining unique unto itself in some ways and not all diners like this style. The individual courses are generally small but numerous. I trust this is of some interest to those going to France for the first time, and of course, subject to correction and additional point.

As you wish, the thread on stocks and broths and demiglace is continued here.P.S. Just in case this link didn't work before, someone moved the continuation to a better place and I just revised the link to take you there. (Edited by Bux at 10:00 pm on Aug. 29, 2001)

We use canned chicken broth for soups and lots of everyday cooking. It's certainly better than water, as long as you watch out for the salt. You can't boil any of it down too much and if you use it to deglaze a pan, go light on the salt before. More often than not there are one or two reduced stocks in the freezer. I find if it's boiled down enough, you can actually take a warm spoon and dig out a piece to use in a sauce or deglazing without defrosting the whole jar. We used to make stock out of old chicken bones stored in the freezer. As you might guess, we got a grey gelatinous broth with little flavor, but we still tend to freeze those bones and add them when we make a stock. I find the carcasses sold in Chinatown still have enough meat on them to make broth, but it helps if they're matched with their weight in some meatier part. Shaw, do you make a white or brown veal stock? We tend to make a chicken stock without browning the meat and a meat stock from bones and meat that have been roasted or browned on top of the stove. We don't much care for turkey and love dark meat. When we do a Thanksgiving dinner, we'll usually stuff and braise a goose. Standard procedure is to buy several pounds of duck wings and make a good brown stock from that to braise the goose. Odds are we'll have some leftover srock when were finished to boil down and freeze. It may be our brown glace for a while. I mentioned poached home made sausages in another thread. At one time we had a great pork stock redolent of the French quatre-épices (cinnamon, nutmeg, clove and white pepper) we used to flavor the sausages. Naturally the cooked sausages just got better and better. It's also good for lightly poaching the pork fillets that are so cheap in Chinatown. Its a great summer cold meat.

I forgot about street pizza. my NYC experiences are pretty forgettable, but in a small town in Gascony I had a slice from the back of a truck with a wood burning oven. In honor of our destination I chose a "Basque" topping of red peppers and chorizo. Sensational break between breakfast and lunch. The mistake was moving on to lunch. Of course there are the impolite snacks. Maybe only a brash American would pick up eclairs and other French pastries obviously designed for eating with a knife and fork at an elegantly set table and scarf them down on the streets of Paris, as I did as a college student. I wish I could eat a bag of eclairs and tartelettes these days without ruining my appetite for the next meal. On the other hand, I can sit longer in a cafe for less money as I've finally learned to nurse a beer.

I've not noticed a lot of people grabbing a coke for breakfast, but I eat most breakfasts at home. I don't get to lot of corporate board rooms as well, although I have to admit I've spent a few afternoons in corporate lawyer's offices which is better than spending them in court. Soft drinks and American coffee are always there. My understanding is that the Coca-Cola for breakfast is most popular in the same region that considers sweetened ice tea or lemonade as the proper lunch and dinner accompanyment. Sweet salad dressings are strange to me as well, but most American recipes for vinaigrette include sugar. (Edited by Bux at 4:33 pm on Aug. 28, 2001)