Bux

You don't have to be Jewish to love fusion cooking.

I wouldn't presume to second guess them. I've been wrong in France. As for my opinion of who I think should be the the first three choices, I've eaten very well lately, but I don't have the resources to keep on top of the contenders even in my most expansive dining periods. From not so recent experience as well as recent experience and hearsay, I'd bet on Per Se, Daniel, ADNY, le Bernadin and Jean Georges as being the best bets that come to mind. I wonder if that's not an agreed upon lot. I haven't been at le Bernardin in a while, which I regret if only to try the desserts (Michael Laiskonis, not to mention the desserts at JG Johnny Iuzinni) but Patricia Well just said (in the IHT) that le Bernardin might be the best seafood restaurant in the world. I no longer regard her as quite the authority I once did, but still that's sit up and notice talk.

...some people (many of whom can be found on this board ) over-idealise it WAY too much. It was a fun show. Lets not go overboard. I plead guilty! But it's a shame ICA will never be able to make people wax idealistic or go overboard. ← I suppose that there are also egos involved. Perhaps more so on the challenger's side than on that of the regular cast of characters whose credits as a media performer are being built far in excess of their credits within the industry, although we all know having a TV show increases demand for reservations. The Iron Chefs can afford losses and most of the challengers gain just by being selected to appear on the show. None of that excuses the show from not convincingly satisfying our idealistic desires to see a fair contest with impartial judging. As an exhibition of culinary talent it would be sufficient to show the chefs at work and to devote more time to comments by a knowledgeable panel. The format of the original was of a contest and it's been continued with the noticeable change of no longer showing the scores of the individual judges, making each judge less responsible for his scores as well as alleviating him of the responsibility of knowing if his score was reported correctly.

I must admit that when I was by an American living and working in Paris many years ago, that it was an essential purchase, I was also told that it's what taxi drivers use to know where they're going. Of course they don't need an edition that fits into a picket.

I'd disagree. NY is not France anymore than Italy or Spain is France, although there are French chefs with restaurants in Spain, they are not the three star restaurants. Keller is an excellent example of chef who epitomizes French standards of cuisine. I regard Michelin and its guides with great skepticism, but I think you're wrong to look at the externals from a postion of being in Paris or L.A. There is nothing at Per Se in the way of "all the other details, machinations, accoutrements, luxuries, etc that "make" a 3 star place" that don't outshine Arpège for instance. Daniel can be criticized for its size and for turning tables. Both of these things may contribute to a an atmosphere that some may find distracting, but I've experienced more distraction from the hustle and bustle of the service team rushing about at Michel Guerard, the epitome of elegant dining in France as well as relaxed atmosphere, to believe that any of this need be a reason for not awarding three stars. How the inspectors and publisher feel is another matter. Michelin's mission is to promote its own guides and tires. If it's going to support French cuisine, it will do so by just minimizing the number of stars awarded as it does in Spain and perhaps a number of other European guides.

It's unreasonable to set a price on interesting, although on the other hand, nothing is interesting if you can't actually afford it. Thus beyond just the subjective nature of what each of us finds interesting is our ability to actually enjoy what a city has to offer. I'm not sure that protection against a bad meal is interesting, although it's reassuring. Is appealing related to interesting? Would it be reasonable to say "I'm interested in not being excited?" I don't know. I'd have thought otherwise, but Pan beat me to it. Perhaps this thread is as much a discussion of what each of us finds interesting, more than it's about the most interesting city. I don't expect us to reach a consensus about the most interesting city if only because I don't think we share a common concept of "interesting." For some, excellence is the most interesting quality and I can relate very well to that standard. I'm never bored with true excellence. Nevertheless, in one way or another, most of us equate interest with variety and diversity at high level of achievement over one style done extrememly well. The idea that tomorrow we can find a meal that's nothing like the one we had last night is interesting and the ability to do that so many days in a row seems to be very important to many people. Thus large cities with a history of immigration often get proposed. I don't know that Barcelona is the most interesting food city, but it offers a variation on the theme I just mentioned. It doesn't offer anywhere near the variety of cuisines that one can find in NY or a host of other cities, but it offers something unique, and I think unique is at the heart of interesting for many at one level or another. It offers a collection of existing restaurants, and perhaps the sense that collection is growing rapidly, with chefs who are not only truly creative in a way that makes most "fusion" food appear to be of limited imagination, but who are actually able to create convincingly new foods. There's an excitement that's layered over an existing native cuisine that's based on fresh market products and incredibly fresh seafood that is, I think, unique to Barcelona, although I'm not sure it's enough to make it the most exciting city in the world, if only because when I'm in Barcelona, I'm more attracted to the restaurants that are anywhere from a half hour to an hour and a half away.

Excellent Dumpling seemed to get a lot of business from the court houses and jail nearby. I used to like it quite a lot many years ago, but it didn't have a discriminating clientele and I felt it was going downhill. I have had the best Shanghai noodles there and they made a terrific bowl of shredded pork and preserved cabbage noodle soup. I have no idea of how well these dishes may have survived. Even in its better days, the fried dumplings had rather heavy wrappers which made them filling and a cheap meal.

Unfortunately, you're right about the target audience, which tends to support my sad comment on what ICA is compared to the original. As others have already mentioned, it was Flay's sous, not anyone from the Armstrong side, who was complaining about the equipment (specifically: weak burners). That is an indiginity to which Sakai, Morimoto, Chen et al would never descend (to say nothing of their assistants). But the rigging of the show is more obvious in other ways, like the off-the-wall scoring, the heavy-handed editing, . . . ← I think you're right in implying that I may be looking for telltale signs of rigging and finding more than there are, precisely because so much of what's been done seems designed to offer the producers some control over the final result.

I suspect the instructor may have confused Point with Bocuse.

Barcelo Hotel Sants is very convenient to the Sants train station, but the train station itself is not all that convenient to the center of town and I recall that many trains, the train from the airport and the train north to the Languedoc and Roussillon area in France also stop at the pl. de Catalunya in the heart of town. I don't know about the long distance AVE. I once stayed at the Barcelo Sants precisely because of its proximity to the station and discovered it was not the advantage I thought it was, even for a one night stay on my way from the airport to Beziers in France.

I hope I'm not overestimating people like us, but with Olive Garden and Red Lobster as sponsors, I suspect we're not the target audience. As for your suspicion, I wonder what would make anyone think it's rigged other than the challenger's equipment not working as well as that of the Iron Chef. This is not the only time the challenger had equipment that didn't seem to function well, IMHO. We've noted the editing and the unwillingness to post the individual judge's scores before.

French children are also far more likely to behave themselves in public when they are with their family. Indeed, French children often seem to lead a stifled childhood, while American kids seem feral by comparison. On the other hand, French children in a school group can seem rather undisciplined, so they seem to find an outlet and of course, there are reasonably well behaved American children who understand the difference between a playground and a formal restaurant. Stereotypes are much too dangerous to depend on. Nudity in French commercials and street posters is rather natural and far less provocatively sexual agressive than our own advertising. You should be warned that one of the standard French channels devotes one night a week to some rather adult programming. It's usually tastefully done, but sometimes bizarre. I think it's 5 and it always seems that no matter when I think it is, it's always another night. Paris has some excellent parks enjoyable by both children and adults. A visit to Paris without spending time in the Jardins des Tuileries and the Jardin du Luxembourg would be incomplete. Of the very recent parks in Paris, I highly recommend each of the following the Alléé on top of the Viaduc des Arts, (12th) Pars de Bercy, (12) Parc de la Villette, (19) with its Science and Industry museum and perhaps above all the Parc André Citroën (15) at the opposite end of Paris. That explains why I've always referred to whatever Paris par Arrondissement book I've had as a "Taride," although I don't find that publisher's name on the last couple of them we've owned. I'm sure the first one we owned must have been published by Taride, or perhaps the one first lent to us by a friend in Paris was a real "Taride." These almost identically titled books, mostly in pocket sized additions are invaluable even for a short stay in Paris. Just find one that seems easy to read and is convenient to carry. I rarely step out on the street without one in my pocket, or in my wife's handbag or backpack. One trip we forgot to pack ours and on arrival I went straight to the Bon Marché which was near our hotel and picked up a cheap paperbound edition for about 5€. I may look like a tourist when I continuously refer to it in order to orient myself in Paris, but the truth is, I feel like a tourist when I don't have it with me. The metros are fun, and the busses very useful to cover some ground and see the street life, but Paris is the walking city par excellence. I would be careful of expecting too much of a kitchen in a rental unit for a number of reasons. Rentals all over the world are notoriously poorly equipped and lacking one thing or another, but Parisian kitchens are often smaller than NY kitchens and less well equipped in general. Parisians eat out a lot more than most people and the French in general are not the cooks Americans think they are. Cooking is a respected professional job in France and almost always has been, particularly in Paris. Much of what a French homemaker will serve is purchased already prepared at the épicerie, traiteur, charcuterie, etc. Those who do cook from scratch, can expect far more service from the butcher and fishmonger however. In any event, you could live on bread and cheese for far longer than you're planning on staying in Paris. I'd certainly make it a point to check out the most highly regarded pastry shops -- at least twice a day. Supplement that with a few prepared salades and perhaps some specialtiy sausages -- boudins noirs et blancs and, if you have the taste, or the curiosity, some andouillettes.

There are some comments about Barcelona in the Chocolate in Madrid thread. In that thread, I said "Barcelona, I understand, was home to the first chocolate factory in Europe (1780)." I'm not at all convinced that information is correct, but I'll repeat it and the link here for your interest and alert you to Vistor's post in that thread. In the groceries in Barcelona thread, Sabrosa mentions an out door market with very pure arisanal chocolate (Xocolata Vall d'Or) made by a collective in deepest darkest Catalunya . You may have already run across these posts, but I thought I'd note them just in case.

My English language edition of the Larousse Gastronomic offers a recipe for brandade that does not include potatoes, but it may be the only one I've seen that doesn't.

I had lunch there last week. (The fish shack ground floor.) It was, as the first poster said, fine. Fine, for what it is, but it was short of being stellar for what it is. It's certainly no Cello, nor does it pretend to be. For it's shortcomings, I enjoyed my lunch, will most likely be back to the ground floor and I'm eagerly looking forward to the upstairs. There was a selection of about nine or ten oysters pretty well split between east and west coast and they were individually priced between $1.75 and $2.65 (Kumamoto) or there abouts. Nice raw bar. Not unreasonably priced and not too ambitious to expect it to be kept fresh but enough variety to make it interesting. Some of the shortcomings in my mind no doubt are just that I'd still rather eat in France or Spain than the US and here's there's a talented French chef with a background in haute cuisine doing his damnedest to pull off a midrange American fish house. He succeeds pretty well, and maybe too well at capturing what I see as shortcomings. For instance, why is my softshelled crab garnished with a deli pickle? The coleslaw works, but the pickle is a lead weight as a garnish for me. More to the point, there's an unnecessary and useless slice of out of season tomato. The softshelled crabs -- the season is just beginning -- were excellent if a bit small. The accompanying fries were less excellent. They're not dismal, but they'd keep me from ordering fish and chips. This place should have fries that compete with places such as Balthazar. As a matter of fact, it's the oysters and fries that get me back to Balthazar and I'd probably be raving about lunch if the fries were first rate at BLT Fish and on a regular basis. I liked the clam chowder, which had lots of chopped clams in it. I suspect given the comments and the range of what's been said, that they're still breaking in the place and that it should keep on improving. The two tops up front are a little close for comfort, especially if the table next to you is a bit loud, but real estate is expensive in NYC.

I'd love to see Regis Marcon's new dining room. Were it not for experiencing the worst wine service I could imagine there, I'd have an even fonder regard for his inn. As it was, the superb cooking was enough to draw us back a second time although I was rather more anxious the second time than I'd care to admit, even to myself. Service however, on the second visit, was flawless, gracious and most endearing. It was everything the food and three star dining deserved. Having had his two most touted specialties à la carte, on the first visit, we had a moderate menu the second time. Thus it would be difficult to comment about any change in the quality of the food. There was a stunning array of amuses the first time and a few less, but still more than one should expect, at the second visit. Those hors d'oeuvres alone set a meal there apart. Truthfully, although it was a nice enough room, I was not a fan of the decor of the dining room, so I'm even more curious about the new room. We've eaten very well on three separate occasions at the Pourcel's Jardin des Sens. At least two of those dinners were strikingly good, but we haven't had the opportunity to dine there since they got the third star and reports have been mixed at best. I suppose there's a great difference between running a single restaurant with two stars and running a far flung operation and possibly taking the home base for granted. GaultMillau successfully carried off a rating system that combined "toques" and numbers. Within each level of "toque" there was a high number an a lower one. On the one hand there seemed to be a smooth progression between 10 and 19, (or 19.5 or 20) while at the same time, at the upper levels, there seemed to be a more distinct break focusing on the toques. The separation of a 17/two toques and an 18/two toques seemed less dramatic than between am 18/two toques and 19/three toques. In much the same way, three stars will be seen as significantly better than 2 stars with "espoir," while two stars with "espoir" will be seen as slightly better than 2 stars without. Hmm, I trust that really won't mean the two stars without "espoir" are really sans espoir. I wonder what the signal will be to the chef, or rather how it will be taken. No one will believe that the message is simply what Michelin says it is in public. Food and dining are changing rapidly, both inside France and outside it's borders. France itself may no longer be France. Last year the NY Times asked if Spain wasn't the new France. It's not surprising that even the most staid of food guides should be changing and questioning it's methods and motives, not that everyone else has beaten them to the punch on that score and I mean "everyone."

It's possible they've been modifying the rules as they go. There's no question but that some of the contestants were told it would be a choice between two ingredients and that it was so reported in the NY Times. Are they not also given a list of staple ingredients that will be on hand? It's my understanding that there's lots of food ready for their use in addition to the main theme ingredient. Nothing so far has convinced me that this show is in the nature of a sporting event rather than an entertainment show. I'm not saying it's run by a script, but it's edited for entertainment value and my guess is that every decision is based on how it will attract viewers. Pro wrestling is my idea of the model.

There are also problems in getting the proper papers to do it legally and may have some problems if you're coming from outside the EU. Nevertheless, enough cooks seem to manage to do it.

Hopefully someone with real knowledge will step in, but I seem to recall Toñi Vincente as being sort of the grande dame of Galician cuisine. I believe she had two daughters who were also chefs with separate restaurants in Pontevedra. Toñi Vincente was where we would have liked to try when we were in Santiago de Compostela some years back. Unfortunately our trip coincided with her vacation. Campsa awarded her two soles in 2004. Casa Marcelo got one, as did Fogón Retiro Da Costinna. Toñi gets the nod in the text as well. They call her "la máxima figura de la cocina moderna en Galicia." On the other hand, Marcelo is "la cabeza visible de la cocina más creativa de Galicia." I suppose she's the grande dame and he's the new generation. We ate and stayed a night out in Don Roberto's restaurant with rooms in San Xulian. Charming people, but I see the restaurant has lost it's Michelin star and it's rather remote. I don't recall any other stars in Santiago back then.

I forget the name of the place just east of New Green Bo. It's a gem. I don't believe it's ever been renovated. The interior is clearly a relic and the steamed buns are the real reason to go. Get the big one. The last time I was there, I would have guessed the guy behind the counter was there when it opened, although I suppose he might not really be old enough unless he started when he was about twelve -- which is a real possibility.

I would always give it a shot and if you're staying at a hotel, it's quite possible your concierge has some leverage.

Adapting quickly under fire is probably important for any chef, but essential for this kind of exhibition. As for the pressure of creating five dishes under those conditions, it's been published in the NY Times and repeated here several times that it's no secret that the parties are told in advance of the two possible "surprise" ingredients. Therefore, they're expected to arrive prepared to cook ten dishes. If you've noticed over the episodes to date, many of the chefs arrive with some pretty esoteric gadgets that would only be useful under limited circumstances. From what I understand they have ample time to rehearse both potential menus.

Worms are very common in many fish. Apparently the ones in saltwater fish are rarely a health problem even if ingested. You all realize there are little things swimming in your drinking water. It's almost amazing that people didn't stop drinking water when Antony van Leeuwenhoek described the organisms he saw swimming around. Perhaps it's that few people had access to a microscope. What we can't actually see bothers us less even after we know about it. The pristine restaurant where we once say a roach is likely not to see us again, while we continue to patronize the dive we have every reason to believe has a dirty kitchen. I'm always impressed by the counter guys with gloves handling the money and then going back to work with the food. Then there are the guys with one glove. One hand for the food and the other for the money as if you could make a sandwich with one hand.

Duck, pork, pork fat, duck or chicken livers, pistachios, salt, pepper, quartre épices or allspice, and a little Madeira.

The short answer is no, not at all and a ham sold as serrano is not likely to be the best Spain has to offer. The best hams come from the Iberico breed of pigs, generally referred to as pata negra for their black hooves. You won't find these in the U.S., at least not yet. I'm not the one to explain many of the differences in ham from the breed of pig to its diet. Bellota quality means the pigs were fed only a diet of acorns and distinguishes the ham made from such pigs. Bellota is the Spanish word for acorn. Various producers have different reputations as well. Here's an interesting article by Arthur Lubow. It's from a commercial site selling Spanish products in the U.S. It's a pretty complete introduction to jamon. Let me just quote two interesting passages. "Chef Andy Nusser, who runs the kitchen at [Mario Batali's] Bar Jamón, says that serrano ham is superior to prosciutto from Parma. However, he readily admits, "Once you taste ibérico, you can't compare it to anything else."" "The acorn-rich diet transforms the fat of jamón ibérico de bellota. Studies from the University of Extremadura indicate that more than half the ham's fat content is monounsaturated (the type that is in olive oil) rather than the artery-clogging saturated kind usually found in animals."