Bux

The Maria Christina has a list of recommended tapas bars with a map of the old city. It really seemes everyone has a list in San Sebastian. If nothing else, it will help you find the ones mentioned on eGullet.

Trust me, you don't want to stay on a web site. Go out and enjoy the town whether you're in a hotel or an apartment. The Maria Christina is undoubtably the hotel closest to the old city, as well as the Barrio Gros acros the river, and is the best and most expensive hotel around. It's still a short and pleasant walk from other hotels that have been recommended such as the De Londres y de Inglaterra and the Niza, each of those is a step down in price respectively. I have stayed as far from downtown as the NH Aránzazu and been willing to make the long walk to the old city. Mrs. B was less eager to do so at the time. Too much has been written about the great restaurants in and around the city, although none are near downtown or near major hotels, that a short repeat of even a little bit would be a disservice. Arzak, Akelarre, Mugaritz,and Berasategui are the four that come to mind first. I wonder if the recent charges against some chefs in regard to making payments to the ETA hare having any effect on the cooking. I'm sorry to bring that up, but it's a concern.

I can sooner support a Frenchman's choice to have turkey than an American's. We generally braise a goose, but we've also clearly told our daughter that we're ready to pass the baton. Our contribution to her renovations was a fine stove that's clearly more up-to-date than ours and much better for the task. The last time we had turkey, it was not at our house and it was a wild turkey which is not a bad bird at all. The event was slightly marred by offers to help cook. It never occurred to me that when I asked someone to strain the deglazing and stock that was to become the sauce, it would be done over the empty sink. Fortunately I noticed early and managed to catch enough of the stock in a pot.

Sometimes people have no realistic idea of what's involved in working in any profession or industry until they actually start working, or at lest until they go to school. At other times people have a very real idea about what they are already doing, yet have an epiphany that radically changes the core of their thinking. You grew up in restaurants. Did you ever cook in those restaurants? Had you ever thought of taking over that restaurant? Did you study and work in France before working in other kitchens or had you already had some kitchen experience by the time you studied in France? You've said that your views on food, and even your life changed dramatically as a result of going to France. Can you go into more detail on that?

Don't read the NY Times. Seriously, the Times is paying for Bruni's judgment and if in his judgment his companion's comments are worth his attention, they're worth yours. If nothing else, Bruni earns his salary by carefully selecting his dining companions and by selecting and editing their comments. Those carefully selected comments are anything but filler. This is Bruni's style of communicating information and opinion about the restaurant and its food. If you don't like his style, why do you want to hear more about what he says? What makes you think he knows more than his companions?

Don't try to take photographs or ask too many questions at Poujauran. After making my purchase, I lifted my camera and set off a red alert. Did they really think I couldn't just take my purchases outside and photograph them if I was on a mission of industrial espionage.

The Puerto Rican recipe I know is a soft custard somewhere between crème anglaise and flan and doesn't use corn starch. It's a custard rather than a pudding, at least in English speaking places that don't call all desserts puddings. It has lots of egg yolks. Unfortunately i don't have a recipe.

I suspect that's true, although I honestly feel it's an irrelevant issue here as I really don't get the objection to including the comments made by companions, who I would assume were selected on their ability to bring something to the table other than just an excuse to order more dishes, anyway.

I've never seen a copy of the job description for a reviewer at the Times, but I doubt it limits the reviewer in that way. At the same time, I'm not convinced Bruni has any friends. I've never met anyone who's claimed to be his friend. Although I don't expect a reviewer to lie about the food, I'd have no problem with a reviewer who invented imaginary dining companions and their conversations in order to give life to his reviews. Okay, I've read below where Michael Ruhlman has dined with him, but even Ruhlman doesn't claim to be a friend, although he did call him a gentleman and I've never seen Ruhlman say that about any of his other acquaintances here. It would be one thing for a reviewer to mention things he's heard from third parties if he wasn't there when they made their comments and if he didn't understand and appreciate the comments in context, but in all the examples you give, he's offering the statements with the distinct sense that he agrees. What he's doing here is treating his erudite dining companions as resources and using all of his resources to write his column. I'm not convinced he isn't putting words in his friends' mouths either, nor do I really care if that's how he can best and most interestingly make his point. The one thing I'm sure of, is that he's making a point that he wants to make and not just repeating something someone said to fill up space. Not only do I not see a problem, but I think it's well within his job description.

Yes, that's the UK title for the same book. In the US it's On Food and Cooking/The Science and Lore of the Kitchen. "History and culture" is "lore," I suppose. Although science is in the driver's seat, there's quite a bit of history and culture. I'd say it's a well rounded scientific presentation. You really don't need to have a head for all the molecular stuff to appreciate it, but the likelihood is that much of the science will have meaning even for those who don't profess to have a mind for science.

Of course there are many ways to write a review and many of them are legitimate. A reviewer needs to find one he’s comfortable with and one that communicates with a great number of readers. Just as we all don’t have the same taste in food or restaurants, we won’t all prefer the same reviewer. I see no problem in including comments made at the table by others. If I were writing reviews I might even include remarks overheard at other tables if I weren’t afraid of appearing to be ill mannered. Paying attention to one’s companions at the table however, is good manners. Anyway, Bruni included one person’s comments on one dish in the Pace review and it appeared he agreed with the comments which meant that the use of the comments was not to round out the review and make it a review by committee. I read it as a convention to liven up the text. As you say, YMMV. Tastes in eating and reading are very subjective, but the differences are very interesting to discuss.

Let me follow up to my last post. A term many of us use to describe some restaurants is "destination restaurant." It's akin to the way Michelin describes two and three star restaurants. A two star restaurant is one that's worth a detour and a three star restaurant is one that's worth a special trip. In France, as many others have noted in other threads, there has traditionally been a single model for a restaurant, so "destination restaurant" is seen as synomymous to the top level of stars. Here in the states, and in other countries as well, we have a wider range of choices and ideals when we dine out. In fact, we don't need to dine. If you accept that dining requires a certain grace and involves a certain service, we have places where we just eat, rather than dine, but the quality of the food is sufficient to make that place in which we eat, a destination place. Katz's is a destination place. A good barbeque place would be a destination, as would a great pizza parlor. That attitude make the star concept confusing to many who don't accept the old school French standard for stars.

We're getting back to the old discussion about whether the music should have an effect on the rating. A four star rating indicates a high degree of perfection in operating a certain type of restaurant. The food itself is the primary, but not sole consideration. The restaurant has to offer a complete experience. It can't just excel in a single product or a single course. You're not operating a four star restaurant if the the desserts are not up to the savory courses and there's no such thing as four star burger place or pasta place, unless you're setting up a separate classification smaler than "restaurant." Where one draws the line between the other star classifications is something else and a matter for the reviewer to balance in his mind. If the appetizers are worth two stars, the main courses three stars and the deserts four stars, the reviewer has to decide if there's an average impression that guides him, or if it's a matter of the weakest link determining the grade. That's part of the reason it's important to read the review. If you're a pasta freak and you know the pasta is pulling the grade up, you're more likely to have have a great meal than the Atkins dieter looking for fish or meat. In a three star restaurant, some diners may have a four star meal while others may experience a two star meal.

I think Pan is correct in pointing out that a review is much more than a consumer's guide rating to be used solely in deciding where to eat. The text of a review should be more important than the stars awarded even in that regard. The heart of any review however, is in the communication of an understanding of the restaurant and its food and a good review should help you make the most of a meal in the restaurant.

Traditions die hard, but I don’t sense that French waiters are what they used to be. In the sixties I remember a team of black suited waiters serving us table side in the provinces. The captain or maitre d’, led the team. Someone else pushed the trolley and there were two waiters to slice and serve whatever was in the pot. Maybe there was even a third to wipe clean the edges of the plate with an impeccably clean towel. There was certainly another whose job it was to pick up whatever dropped to the floor. More often than not, he stood at attention the whole time. I forget whether he was followed or preceded by an observer waiting to inherit a real job. At the tail end was a lad who aspired to someday hope to move up a slot. I don’t know how many of those towards the tail of this parade were actually paid, but most of that team would now be in school getting what we might consider a rudimentary formal academic education. The other fact is the general “youthening” of the population at large, most notably in the important services sector. Whereas I once felt I was in the good hands of sagacious men of learning and wisdom, I now find my life in the hands of surgeons much too young to have learned very much. I’m told nothing has really changed much except my relative perspective.

I suspect this is very true in Madrid, but I wonder if the Asian-Peruvian places have made great inroads into the provinces. I've certainly seen a great change in restaurant offerings in our travels. What I haven't seen is the profusion of bad fast food that I see in France. I don't know if that's because of native conservatism or just the fact that tapas bars have been adequately serving the needs of those who want a snack. Fast Good, Pret a Manger and McDonald's all face competition from the neighborhood bar in Spain. With the exception of "take-out," it doesn't seem as if they really have much to offer to me. Then again, I'm not a native and I'm not the daily customer.

As I've argued many times here, ... ← I'm not sure that qualifies as an argument, as I've not heard anyone take the other side. Oddly enough, it's Michelin's stinginess in Spain that adds to its reliability. The odds of being disappointed with a Michelin listed restaurnant is much greater in France than in Spain. Where Michelin fails, is in informing the foreign diner about the destination restaurants. With the possible exception of Paris, I can't think of a restaurant with one star that deserves a special trip let alone a long detour. I haven't been to El Bohío, but I've heard great things. I don't think I'd ever insist a restaurant was worth three star on the basis on a single meal, but I have no problem stating that Las Rejas and Coque offered impressive meals and are clearly destination restaurants. What they might lack perhaps, in meeeting the needs of the traveling gastronome, is comfortable place to spend the night. That should not affect the number of stars. It does suggest that I take a lot of my important meals at lunch while traveling in Spain and it dictates that I consume less wine with my meal. I've also been known to pull off the road and take a snooze, if I have any distance to go after lunch.

What would be the point of it all? What do you mean by asking how long they would last? Why would they start? All of those guys would last as long as they had to last. The point is that they have no reason to start.

It’s an interesting premise, but I wonder if there wasn’t a slip up somewhere. None of our taste buds are infallible, but it just seems too odd for Payard to describe a milk chocolate as dark chocolate. Was the Dove bar a dark chocolate? I’ve never had a Dove bar, but I doubt any milk chocolate could be mistaken for a dark chocolate by someone as experienced as François. I haven’t had a lot of those bars recently. I’ve kind of sworn off the bars made with real junk and chemicals. If I’m going to eat cholesterol, I want it to come from real butter, not added diglycerides. I enjoy a Crunch bar now and then and my opinion is that Nestlé chocolate bars are much better tasting and textured than Hershey bars, although Hershey makes a premium line that’s better yet. I wonder if freshness affects all those mass produced bars. I suspect it's more of a problem in the ones with cookies or wafers, but I think it affects Crunch bars as well. I remember not liking Cadbury either, but I wouldn’t say it was because it’s like Belgian chocolate. I love fine Belgian chocolate although I understand Payard here. Fine French chocolate is much leaner and a bit more intense than the Belgian stuff. I’m off track here, but Pierre Marcolini makes excellent chocolate that’s sort of halfway between the traditional French and Belgian styles. That’s what I like from Belgium. I fell off the wagon and had a Caramello bar recently. I thought it was sickly sweet and the caramel intensely unnatural tasting. The chocolate itself was fatty but not in a rich way and a bit grainy. If I recall correctly, that's what originally put me off Cadbury bars. The were sort of gummy and grainy. I think Payard liked the Caramello because the caramel masked the chocolate.

My understanding is that whisky also comes from a word meaning water of life. the Ancient Celts practised the art of distilling, and had an expressive name for the fiery liquid they produced - uisge beatha - the water of life. Eaux-de-vie are a favorite around our house. As one might imagine, liquers are not, except when blended into another drink to make an aperitif or cocktail. They appeal to two quite different tastes. The nuances in good eau-de-vie are wonderful. Brandy is actually an eau-de-vie although we usually classify grape eaux-de-vie as brandy and fruit brandies as eaux-de-vie. Fruit brandies should be bone dry, or we are again talking about cordials and liquers. I wonder if eau-de-vie appreciation and a taste for offal meats, and blood sausage go hand in hand.

As a chef and a father, how are you affected by your profession? From what I can tell from reading your comments above and those in response to other questions so far, it appears you enjoy both being a chef and a father, but I also know it's a profession that often keeps you apart from your family at meal times which is when many families tend to bond.

Of course you’re contradicting the thousands of newly wedded husbands who are telling their wives that there’s only one right way to cook a dozen dishes and that’s exactly as their mother made them. Then again if they took your advice, maybe they wouldn't have to sleep on the couch tonight.

More about Harold McGee here. Book talks and signings by Harold McGee in California Bay Area here.

Please join Harold McGee, for an eGullet Q&A the week of November 8, 2004. Harold McGee writes about the chemistry of food and cooking. He fixed on this peculiar vocation after training in two more conventional subjects: physics and astronomy at the California Institute of Technology, and English literature at Yale University, where he wrote a thesis titled “Keats and the Progress of Taste.” After teaching literature and writing for several years at Yale, he decided to practice what he’d been preaching to his students and write a book on the science of everyday life. The result was the publication—five years later—of On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, a 680-page compendium which won the Andre Simon Memorial Fund Book Award and brought feature articles in Time and People magazines and many newspapers. The timing couldn’t have been better: America was just awakening to the diversity of world cuisines, and the book helped satisfy the growing hunger for information about the origins and nature of ingredients and techniques. Along the way, McGee fell in love with the subject, so he was no longer a science writer: he was a food writer. Six years after OFAC, in 1990, he published The Curious Cook: More Kitchen Science and Lore, a slimmer narrative volume detailing his efforts to solve kitchen puzzles (How much oil can you emulsify into a mayonnaise with one egg yolk? [gallons]; Why does frying spatter end up on the inside surface of the cook’s spectacles? [gravity]), and make sense of the modern and ever-changing scientific evidence linking diet and the major scourges of later life, heart disease, cancer, and Alzheimer’s disease. Along the way McGee contributed original research to the scientific journal Nature (“Why whip egg whites in copper bowls?” in vol. 308, 1984, p. 667; “Recipe for safer sauces” in vol. 347, 1990, p. 717), and has written articles and reviews for many publications, including The New York Times, The World Book Encyclopedia, Food & Wine, Fine Cooking, and Health. He has lectured on food chemistry at an unusual range of venues, including the Culinary Institute of America and other professional schools, the Canadian Federation of Chefs and Cooks, the Guild of Food Writers, at universities, the Oxford Symposia on Food, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Denver Natural History Museum and the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. He has appeared on CNN and on National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered,” “Fresh Air,” and “Science Friday,” and was a regular guest on Los Angeles public radio station KCRW-FM. In 1995 he was named to the James Beard Foundation's Who's Who in American Food. A vastly revised and enlarged second edition of On Food and Cooking has just been published by Scribner. You may read the Introduction to the new book here.

I have friends who live not far from Bouzigues. It may be seasonal and I may have been there at the wrong time of year, but I've not found the Mediterranean oysters comparable to those of the north. I've also not found oysters today as flavorful as those I remember from many years ago and I'm told the oyster beds in Brittany are just recovered from the disasters to which they've been subjected. I've also not pursued oysters in Brittany the way we did some thirty or forty years ago. I suspect the fact that we've been there in the summer more recently has had a lot to do with it, as has the appearance of fine cooking in Brittany. In the sixties, I don't think there were places as fine as Roellinger's restaurant in Cancale, or if there were, they had not yet captured my attention. The dollar was strong, mussels were cheap and oysters reasonable enough. Roellinger recommends Michel Daniel as supplier of oysters in Cancale. Michel Daniel has a retail shop at Chez Mazo, 37 quai Kennedy, 35260 Cancale. I don't know that it has facilities for eating oysters on the spot, but I imagine Michel or one of his sons Sébastien or Tony, could advise as they sell to restaurants including Roellinger's. I read your article on Gulf oysters with great interest. I was particularly taken with your comparisons between Gulf oysters and those from northern waters in the states. I will be interested in reading what you have to say about the oysters in Brittany. I trust you'll keep us up to date and maybe post a few immediate reactions here. Keep an eye out for that other specialty, well actually one of many other Breton specialties, andouille.