Bux

La Côte Basque was the name of a famous restaurant in NYC, that recently closed to reopen as a more casual spot. I'm not sure if it was the inspiration for other restaurants, but at one time it was a symbol of luxury fine dining in NY, as were restaurants named ofter other regions of France opened by chefs from those regions. I don't think it had any more cachet as a place than it did as the name of that particular restaurant. In any event, Côte Basque or Pays Basque would have signified a French restaurant as Pais Vasco would have meant a Spanish restaurant in most of North America. The food at la Côte Basque was never particularly basquaise anyway. It was just the name of a place in France, a place best know to English speaking travelers for the beaches at Biarritz. Le Biarritz, by the way, was the name of another NYC French restaurant, although not as luxurious as la Côte Basque.

For many of us, these are not pictures on a web site, but chefs who have fed us, catered to our needs and who we've met. Pedro Subijana was a gracious host who went out of his way to copy a list of recommended tapas bars for us after we chatted with him.

I don't follow the logic. Of course those who were attracted to her, like my wife and I, were attracted to her precisely because her instructions were, well ... they were instructive and our results were not only rewarding when we cooked from her recipes, but we found that we could rewrite the other recipes that failed us by borrowing the instructions from a similar dish in Julia's cookbooks. None of that, nor the numbers of her fans, will discount the fact we always ran across people who told us Julia's recipes were too complicated. That's not a negative reflection on Julia, it only shows the shortsightedness of many who wouldn't take the time to see that the recipes they were using were incomplete.

The difference between the packaged ingredients I expect Jacques to use and the ones Sandra Lee uses is too great to dismiss. And what they both to and with their chosen ingredients is as far apart as night is to day. The divide between them is not "scratch" and packaged. You've quite me to start your response and then mention disdain in the same post as if to imply I was one who had disdain. Why not quote me when I said: "Jacques is ready and able to accept a greater imperfection in search of good food. There's a great validity in what I think he's trying to do even if it's of lesser interest to me." That hardly suggests disdain.

For those of you who can't wait any longer, you can at least start reading the revised and updated version of On Food and Cooking - The Science and Lore of the Kitchen. Harold McGee and Scribner have graciously agreed to allow us to publish the Introduction to the book here on eGullet.org.

Harold McGee and Scriber, his publisher, have graciously consented to post the introduction to the vastly revised and expanded new edition of On Food and Cooking, here on eGullet.org. INTRODUCTION Cooking and Science, 1984 and 2000 This is the revised and expanded second edition of a book that I first published in 1984, twenty long years ago. In 1984, canola oil and the computer mouse and compact discs were all novelties. So was the idea of inviting cooks to explore the biological and chemical insides of foods. It was a time when a book like this really needed an introduction! Twenty years ago the worlds of science and cooking were neatly compartmentalized. There were the basic sciences, physics and chemistry and biology, delving deep into the nature of matter and life. There was food science, an applied science mainly concerned with understanding the materials and processes of industrial manufacturing. And there was the world of small-scale home and restaurant cooking, traditional crafts that had never attracted much scientific attention. Nor did they really need any. Cooks had been developing their own body of practical knowledge for thousands of years, and had plenty of reliable recipes to work with. I had been fascinated by chemistry and physics when I was growing up, experimented with electroplating and Tesla coils and telescopes, and went to Caltech planning to study astronomy. It wasn’t until after I’d changed directions and moved on to English literature—and had begun to cook—that I first heard of food science. At dinner one evening in 1976 or 1977, a friend from New Orleans wondered aloud why dried beans were such a problematic food, why indulging in red beans and rice had to cost a few hours of sometimes embarrassing discomfort. Interesting question! A few days later, working in the library and needing a break from 19th-century poetry, I remembered it and the answer a biologist friend had dug up (indigestible sugars), thought I would browse in some food books, wandered over to that section, and found shelf after shelf of strange titles. Journal of Food Science. Poultry Science. Cereal Chemistry. I flipped through a few volumes, and among the mostly bewildering pages found hints of answers to other questions that had never occurred to me. Why do eggs solidify when we cook them? Why do fruits turn brown when we cut them? Why is bread dough bouncily alive, and why does bounciness make good bread? Which kinds of dried beans are the worst offenders, and how can a cook tame them? It was great fun to make and share these little discoveries, and I began to think that many people interested in food might enjoy them. Eventually I found time to immerse myself in food science and history and write On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen. As I finished, I realized that cooks more serious than my friends and I might be skeptical about the relevance of cells and molecules to their craft. So I spent much of the introduction trying to bolster my case. I began by quoting an unlikely trio of authorities, Plato, Samuel Johnson, and Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, all of whom suggested that cooking deserves detailed and serious study. I pointed out that a 19th-century German chemist still influences how many people think about cooking meat, and that around the turn of the 20th century, Fannie Farmer began her cookbook with what she called “condensed scientific knowledge” about ingredients. I noted a couple of errors in modern cookbooks by Madeleine Kamman and Julia Child, who were ahead of their time in taking chemistry seriously. And I proposed that science can make cooking more interesting by connecting it with the basic workings of the natural world. A lot has changed in twenty years! It turned out that On Food and Cooking was riding a rising wave of general interest in food, a wave that grew and grew, and knocked down the barriers between science and cooking, especially in the last decade. Science has found its way into the kitchen, and cooking into laboratories and factories. In 2004 food lovers can find the science of cooking just about everywhere. Magazines and newspaper food sections devote regular columns to it, and there are now a number of books that explore it, with Shirley Corriher’s 1997 CookWise remaining unmatched in the way it integrates explanation and recipes. Today many writers go into the technical details of their subjects, especially such intricate things as pastry, chocolate, coffee, beer, and wine. Kitchen science has been the subject of television series aired in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and France. And a number of food molecules and microbes have become familiar figures in the news, both good and bad. Anyone who follows the latest in health and nutrition knows about the benefits of antioxidants and phytoestrogens, the hazards of trans fatty acids, acrylamide, E. coli bacteria, and mad cow disease. Professional cooks have also come to appreciate the value of the scientific approach to their craft. In the first few years after On Food and Cooking appeared, many young cooks told me of their frustration in trying to find out why dishes were prepared a certain way, or why ingredients behave as they do. To their traditionally trained chefs and teachers, understanding food was less important than mastering the tried and true techniques for preparing it. Today it’s clearer that curiosity and understanding make their own contribution to mastery. A number of culinary schools now offer “experimental” courses that investigate the whys of cooking and encourage critical thinking. And several highly regarded chefs, most famously Ferran Adrià in Spain and Heston Blumenthal in England, experiment with industrial and laboratory tools—gelling agents from seaweeds and bacteria, non-sweet sugars, aroma extracts, pressurized gases, liquid nitrogen—to bring new forms of pleasure to the table. As science has gradually percolated into the world of cooking, cooking has been drawn into academic and industrial science. One effective and charming force behind this movement was Nicholas Kurti, a physicist and food lover at the University of Oxford, who lamented in 1969: “I think it is a sad reflection on our civilization that while we can and do measure the temperature in the atmosphere of Venus, we do not know what goes on inside our soufflés.” In 1992, at the age of 84, Nicholas nudged civilization along by organizing an International Workshop on Molecular and Physical Gastronomy at Erice, Sicily, where for the first time professional cooks, basic scientists from universities, and food scientists from industry worked together to advance gastronomy, the making and appreciation of foods of the highest quality. The Erice meeting continues, renamed the “International Workshop on Molecular Gastronomy ‘N. Kurti’ ” in memory of its founder. And over the last decade its focus, the understanding of culinary excellence, has taken on new economic significance. The modern industrial drive to maximize efficiency and minimize costs generally lowered the quality and distinctiveness of food products: they taste much the same, and not very good. Improvements in quality can now mean a competitive advantage; and cooks have always been the world’s experts in the applied science of deliciousness. Today, the French National Institute of Agricultural Research sponsors a group in Molecular Gastronomy at the Collège de France (its leader, Hervé This, directs the Erice workshop); chemist Thorvald Pedersen is the inaugural Professor of Molecular Gastronomy at Denmark’s Royal Veterinary and Agricultural University; and in the United States, the rapidly growing membership of the Research Chefs Association specializes in bringing the chef’s skills and standards to the food industry. So in 2004 there’s no longer any need to explain the premise of this book. Instead, there’s more for the book itself to explain! Twenty years ago, there wasn’t much demand for information about extra-virgin olive oil or balsamic vinegar, farmed salmon or grass-fed beef, cappuccino or white tea, Sichuan pepper or Mexican mole, sake or well-tempered chocolate. Today there’s interest in all these and much more. And so this second edition of On Food and Cooking is substantially longer than the first. I’ve expanded the text by two thirds in order to cover a broader range of ingredients and preparations, and to explore them in greater depth. To make room for new information about foods, I’ve dropped the separate chapters on human physiology, nutrition, and additives. Of the few sections that survive in similar form from the first edition, practically all have been rewritten to reflect fresh information, or my own fresh understanding. This edition gives new emphasis to two particular aspects of food. The first is the diversity of ingredients and the ways in which they’re prepared. These days the easy movement of products and people makes it possible for us to taste foods from all over the world. And traveling back in time through old cookbooks can turn up forgotten but intriguing ideas. I’ve tried throughout to give at least a brief indication of the range of possibilities offered by foods themselves and by different national traditions. The other new emphasis is on the flavors of foods, and sometimes on the particular molecules that create flavor. Flavors are something like chemical chords, composite sensations built up from notes provided by different molecules, some of which are found in many foods. I give the chemical names of flavor molecules when I think that being specific can help us notice flavor relationships and echoes. The names may seem strange and intimidating at first, but they’re just names and they’ll become more familiar. Of course people have made and enjoyed well seasoned dishes for thousands of years with no knowledge of molecules. But a dash of flavor chemistry can help us make fuller use of our senses of taste and smell, and experience more—and find more pleasure—in what we cook and eat. Now a few words about the scientific approach to food and cooking and the organization of this book. Like everything on earth, foods are mixtures of different chemicals, and the qualities that we aim to influence in the kitchen—taste, aroma, texture, color, nutritiousness—are all manifestations of chemical properties. Nearly two hundred years ago, the eminent gastronome Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin lectured his cook on this point, tongue partly in cheek, in The Physiology of Taste: You are a little opinionated, and I have had some trouble in making you understand that the phenomena which take place in your laboratory are nothing other than the execution of the eternal laws of nature, and that certain things which you do without thinking, and only because you have seen others do them, derive nonetheless from the highest scientific principles. The great virtue of the cook’s time-tested, thought-less recipes is that they free us from the distraction of having to guess or experiment or analyze as we prepare a meal. On the other hand, the great virtue of thought and analysis is that they free us from the necessity of following recipes, and help us deal with the unexpected, including the inspiration to try something new. Thoughtful cooking means paying attention to what our senses tell us as we prepare it, connecting that information with past experience and with an understanding of what’s happening to the food’s inner substance, and adjusting the preparation accordingly. To understand what’s happening within a food as we cook it, we need to be familiar with the world of invisibly small molecules and their reactions with each other. That idea may seem daunting. There are a hundred-plus chemical elements, many more combinations of those elements into molecules, and several different forces that rule their behavior. But scientists always simplify reality in order to understand it, and we can do the same. Foods are mostly built out of just four kinds of molecules—water, proteins, carbohydrates, and fats. And their behavior can be pretty well described with a few simple principles. If you know that heat is a manifestation of the movements of molecules, and that sufficiently energetic collisions disrupt the structures of molecules and eventually break them apart, then you’re very close to understanding why heat solidifies eggs and makes foods tastier. Most readers today have at least a vague idea of proteins and fats, molecules and energy, and a vague idea is enough to follow most of the explanations in the first 13 chapters, which cover common foods and ways of preparing them. Chapters 14 and 15 then describe in some detail the molecules and basic chemical processes involved in all cooking; and the Appendix gives a brief refresher course in the basic vocabulary of science. You can refer to these final sections occasionally, to clarify the meaning of pH or protein coagulation as you’re reading about cheese or meat or bread, or else read through them on their own to get a general introduction to the science of cooking. Finally, a request. In this book I’ve sifted through and synthesized a great deal of information, and have tried hard to double-check both facts and my interpretations of them. I’m greatly indebted to the many scientists, historians, linguists, culinary professionals, and food lovers on whose learning I’ve been able to draw. I will also appreciate the help of readers who notice errors that I’ve made and missed, and who let me know so that I can correct them. My thanks in advance. As I finish this revision and think about the endless work of correcting and perfecting, my mind returns to the first Erice workshop and a saying shared by Jean-Pierre Philippe, a chef from Les Mesnuls, near Versailles. The subject of the moment was egg foams. Chef Philippe told us that he had thought he knew everything there was to know about meringues, until one day a phone call distracted him and he left his mixer running for half an hour. Thanks to the excellent result and to other surprises throughout his career, he said, Je sais, je sais que je sais jamais: “I know, I know that I never know.” Food is an infinitely rich subject, and there’s always something about it to understand better, something new to discover, a fresh source of interest, ideas, and delight. Copyright © Harold McGee 2004. From On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, published by Scribner, November 2004. Posted on eGullet.org with the kind permission of the author and publisher. Learn more about Harold McGee here.

Lucy, there may be any number of reasons for the discrepency. All may be valid although some may seem less fair. Well they all may seem less fair since the lotte was apparently better. Odds on the most likely are that that was the last of the foie gras, or perhaps these were regulars and as such had earned some special treatment. It's rare that a restaurant won't go out if its way for a regular client, unless French restaurateurs are not as smart as those in NY. In an otherwise acceptable restaurant, one I had read about here, by the way, I had some particularly joyless lotte, (monkfish in English). I'm generally inclined to let those things slide, but when the waiter asked about my meal, I noted that I thought the lotte was a bit overdone and had a less than ideal texture. I thought it was a nice gesture for the chef to come out and explain to me that the texture came from marinating the fish in red wine overnight. Perhaps it did, and I refrained from asking why then did they do that. First I'm not fluent enough to get deeply into culinary conversations of that sort and secondly, I have to assume the chef, and likely his clientele, appreciate the texture and there's no reason for him to begin catering to the taste of visiting transients. Lucy told me that monkfish is often, if not usually overcooked in Lyon, if not in France, and appreciated less for it's qualties than for the high prices it's now able to command. As consolation, I had a superbly cooked piece of monkfish in Paris at l'Astrance, whose chef has spent time cooking far from France. That dish could have used more sauce, but the fish itself was quite moist, and rather succulent, as it should have been.

Daniel, did you follow up on your plans? As for us, "soon" worked out to nine days. The short answer is that we were favorably impressed. The ambience and atmosphere is perhaps a bit "cool" for us, but the food is very good. It's tasty and interesting. There's some repetition in the herbs or sprouts reappearing in dishes so that it might seem a little boring to go through the whole menu and some diners just might be hungry enough to do that. We were content sharing five small dishes, two of them were very small. I suspect the average diner would have liked three to four dishes per person, although it appeared that we ate and drank more than some people around us. So the place is going to function in different ways to different people. I only hope those who come in and sit for hours with a glass of wine and a plate or two don't keep them from making a profit and staying in business The question is not if the food's worth trying and eating. It is. Of course if you don't like raw fish and seafood, with some herbs, spices and marinades, it's not your kind of place to begin with and if you are adverse to tasting menu portions, you're even less likely to find happiness. We shared plates in spite of their size because things come out rather randomly. It was suggested that we place our order as we'd like each dish to come out, that is order a dish and when it's arrived, order the next round. When we ordered one dish each, we found out they came in succession and not in rapid succession. The pace of delivery along with the size of the dishes will almost ensure you don't overeat and ensure you eat slowly, which is really very healthy. You may however, find yourself thinking about a second bottle of wine before you know it. We had a $35 bottle of wine, 3 small plates @ $9-12 and 2 tiny plates @ $5, and as I said, left with our appetite appeased. I suspect that if all the food were put on one plate, we'd have gobbled it up in ten minutes and wanted more. More importantly, we really enjoyed the food. A single fat marinated sardine (actually I think it was just half a sardine) was a highlight and cost $5. The same for a small plate of white anchovies. I loved the fluke at $12. It was one of the larger plates. Mrs. B thinks fluke is all about the texture and doesn't like it. It is about the texture (and the way it's seasoned) and I like that texture. This was the spiciest dish we had. Horse mackeral--three spoonfuls of it plus some turnip salad--was $9, but I don't know that prices were much higher than at a moderate sushi bar. Quality fish ad seafood are expensive and I thought the treatment of each dish was well conceived and well executed if not speedily delivered to the bar. Did I mention that the room is nothing but a long narrow bar with stools? It's really not useful address for anyone dining with more than one friend. Service may even be too slow to enjoy it alone and we didn't see any singles. Go with someone who hasn't had a hard day at the office because you're going to need to spend some time talking. The music is loud, but not so loud as to prohibit two way conversation and the music was well suited to the place. The lighting is pretty good in that the room doesn't seem bright, but the food is well lit. We didn't have a reservation and were told to wait a minute as the place was all booked, but that there were several covers that should have been showed up by now. The host counted empty seats and then sat us.

Maybe my prejudice is showing, but I hope not. Ms. Lee can show you how to produce inferior food using overly processed products in a half hour that don't taste as good as a simple dish prepared in 20 minutes from fresh local foods. Her shopping will take longer as well. Julia had the need to teach all there is to know about using a knife when telling you to slice onions. (This is in sharp contrast to Martha Stewart who needed to teach you how to make steel before begining to tell you how to make a knife. ) We needed and still need people like Julia, but every cookbook or instructional TV show doesn't need to start with the basics. Jacques' texts on techinque are among the best, and should be on the reference shelf. I think Jacques assumes, you'll either know or learn how to use a knife or won't care if the slices aren't professionally even. Julia lost a lot of people who couldn't get past all the instructions even though they were simple and resulted in a better preparation. Of course it only resulted in a better preparation if it didn't scare you away. Jacques is ready and able to accept a greater imperfection in search of good food. There's a great validity in what I think he's trying to do even if it's of lesser interest to me.

I liked Sokolov and recall being sorry to see him go. Maybe if he stayed longer I'd have grown to be as disappointed with him as the others. Familiarity breeds contempt, or so they say. I've changed over the years, my tastes have changed and my knowledge of food has changed. Each of those critics was writing for a different me at a different time. For me to rate them might be like several different people rating several different restaurants based on visits in different years and maybe under different chefs. I have a hard time choosing between the pigeon and the lobster on any given night and would be reluctant to rate the preparations of each from a given chef on a numerical scale or just against each other. The idea of being asked to do so is often enough to send my off on a tirade bemoaning the value our society places on rating things. There are critics and eGullet members whose opinions I value and whose writing I enjoy reading and a list of one might not resemble a list of the other.

Stiff and schizophrenic, but I've seen as much of that in the states as I have in France. It's not particularly French in my mind. My wines have sat yards away from my table in in coolers or on sideboards in restaurants in France and the US. It's rare to see a wine bottle on the diner's table in a three star restaurant in France or a top restaurant in NY. The problem only arises when the establishment thinks it's fancy enough to do that, but isn't fancy enough to hire sufficient help to pull it off. It's really just the restaurant's attempt to cloak itself in a style whose substance it doesn't really understand. The extreme disfunctional service occured in an otherwise fine two star restaurant I might have awarded three stars for food and none for service even though the chef himself arrived at our table to present the roast lamb cooked in a bread crust. I'm reluctant to mention it again because, as I've already noted, the food was good enough for us to make the return trip. The inn, as I've mentioned, was the Clos des Cimes, and as I've also mentioned, the wine service was exemplery on the second visit. I should note that even on the first visit every aspect of our stay from the welcome, through the attention to detail by the chambermaid to the grace of personal attention at breakfast was in sharp contrast to our table's falling off our sommelier's map. Still, the only reason I even considered not returning was the lack of any recognition let alone apology. I left a scathing note about my wine service while praising all other aspects of our stay and dinner, at checkout and rather espected a personal answer. I didn't get it, but for all that, I was willing to play the odds of it not happening again and was not about to cut off my nose to spite my face. To deny Régis Marcon my future patronage would have meant denying myself his food and it's clearly worth the price he charges or he'd be out of business instead of expanding. Terry agrees on this--Regis Marcon is a thrilling chef in St Bonnet-le-Froid at his place the Clos de Cimes--or I doubt he would have made that comment. All I have to say is that sometimes the worst things happen at the best places in many countries and sometimes even in spite of the best intentions.

Hey, I got into college. I'm a better eater than I was a student. I'm not only a better eater, I take my food more seriously than I ever took my academic studies.

Traditional Basque cuisine has always been highly regarded in Spain, and having a Basque chef was usually enough to get a restaurant anywhere in Spain some attention.

It's difficult to carry on a good conversation this way, unfortunately. Communicating on the Internet is hard enough as is. My French son-in-law bristles far more easier than I do at things he feels are not up to date or just don't make sense. It's sometimes easier to feel entitled to criticize at home. No argument here. And few would disagree that it's not only nicer to have one's wine available before your food, but almost essential to taste it before the food has arrived. As for the pouring of the wine, if a restaurant cannot absolutely guarantee that no glass will empty before the bottle itself is empty, it could just as well leave the damn bottle on the table, in my opinion. Once, having not been served half my white wine--not just before my fish got cold, but not at all as the bottle was discovered half full by the other sommelier as we were finishing our red--I asked our server to leave the red on the table and was told he was not allowed. I have sympathy with your view. I just believe that sort of thing is a defect in the particular restaurant or its service team and not part of the system. I can guess why some places insist on leaving the service to the pros. Many years ago, an underling picked up an almost empty bottle on our table and dumped the dregs into my half full glass. The sommelier noticed from the other end of the room with a look of horror, but we all averted our eyes and avoided a scene. It was not all that expensive a bottle or that much wine anyway. My daughter asked why I let him get away with it, but twelve year olds are like that, and it was clear he hadn't gotten away with anything and would be chastised later. It is a real joy when you see pros in action and every glass is topped off almost sip by sip and yet with an understanding of exactly which diner is not going to want as much. Unfortunately, this makes me feel we've put you on the defensive and that's not really characteristic of the forum where most discussion is very civil and respectful of subjective differences of opinion. Everything you've said is interesting and stimulating. In short we'd welcome your experienced contributions to the forum on an ongoing basis.-- Edit to say: And I see Doc has said as much while I was composing my post.

Rarely is a dish completely void of vegetables, although they may be sublimated.

Miguel, you've been following me around for years taking notes. Ultimately you are correct. That I don't know my left from my right and yet still leave feeling I've played my part well is proof enough. There was an interesting thread a while back though, about how a number of us credit the waiters of our more youthful days for teach us how to eat in France.

Would it be authentic without fresh beurre de bretagne?

That's worth discussing. Even if you ignore the one trip during which I was apparently hosting a parasite that would have accounted for my appetite, on the whole, we've slowed down considerably. We drink much less than we did only a few years ago as well. I'm reminded of the story I've been told of the time the new assistant sommelier in a certain restaurant came into the kitchen with comments about how much wine a certain couple was consuming, only to have the sous chef tell him to treat them well, as they were his in-laws. What I don't remember is whether the assistant sommelier mentioned a table number, or if the sous chef just took it for granted he must be speaking of his in-laws. While it's always nice to be comped extra dishses and get vip hors d'oeuvres, one of the things we've been able to do is get those restaurants at which we're known to do is keep the portions small. Still, I remember the time when on a set menu, a chicken in a rich cream sauce might be folled by roast duck with bearnaise sauce. Things are not necessarily getting worse. I also recall a discussion here that touched on the subject of getting "balanced" meals at the FDs. A point was made that these are not the model of every day cooking nor do most people eat in them every day. They are to a great extent, "show off" cooking and a festive thing. In a way, it's no more reasonable to complain here than it is to complain about a lack of vegetables when having hot dogs at the beach or a ball park. They're just different kinds of special occasions. On the other hand, I think there are FD chefs in France who are paying lots of attention to vegetables and would agree that we're all better off for it.

I think most people think of "inaccuracy" as "mistake," but I understand your meaning if you're suggesting that information may be accurate when posted, but that the information may change which causes already posted information to become inaccurate.

I guess so by the name. Okay, it sounded familiar and you've helped me place it. That was one of the last vestiges of the Italian neighboorhood that used to be that part of Chinatown, and it morphed. Morphed is a good word here if it has any connotations of a science fiction experiement gone awry. I've never been inside and have the urge to cross the street when I walk past it. Now that I know it's one of the 100 best, I'll have to try it. We shold meet there and if I'm late, you should start without me.

He was, and I assume still is, a great technician and I mean that in the most supportive way. That technique is the basis for great food. There's no great food that doesn't rely on great technique. Yet I sensed he was shying away from focusing on technique in that new show. It came through on a subliminal level anyway, except perhaps for the butter flowers which he made look effortless, but on which he didn't dwell. I'm not knocking his show and perhaps it will inspire another generation to take a little effort to make simple tasty food at home.

Straight cash deal huh? Damn, I had it all figured out as a conspiracy to build some interest in "French" food by getting Tony's book banned and then slipping in your Bouchon that's going to stick out of the shelves and poke eyes so they won't remember it's not the hot one. Hell most Americans don't even know what a bouchon is, not that it's not a great metphor for those who do know. "French" still has the potential for cachet. I was reminded of that looking at some "French" postcards at a stall on the quai de Montebello. These were the real thing, sepia tone and all that, not pretty pictures of Paris, (neither the city or Hilton) but even though they were at best, lukewarm next to old issue of Playboy on on the same stand, they were "French." Actually it was all insipid compared to what the two kids were doing on the banks of the Seine below which understandably was far more fascinating to the Japanese tourists than the pretty pictures for sale. Of course, I was interested in watching the Japanese tourists. I digress but that's your fault for playing the "French" card anyway. So it was just a quick cash all American deal? No conspiracy? I've got to stop spending time in Europe, it's affecting my thinking.

Your chances are probably slim and not helped by sounding so vague and naive about his talent and fame. I would expect a professional chef who's truly intersted in great food in this country to be very familiar with Keller's food through reading the press, his cookbook and Soul of a Chef by Michael Ruhlman. I'd call ahead as well, even if it was only to prepare the way for trying at the front door. To my way of thinking calling ahead shows some planning and determination as well as the importance of your quest. Showing up at the front door without a reservation can all too often indicate that it's a last minute decision made becasue you didn't find anything better to do. This is true in life whether you're looking for a job or a reservation. If you've written, called and done all you can before hand, been told "no" and you still show up hat in hand, it may indicate determination. It might also be good to show your knowledge and understanding that Keller isn't there and that Benno is the chef. If nothing else, it will indicate you've been following the news and have had a real interest in the restaurant. Just my opinion.

Wonderful question and I'm not even sure of the answer, but only because it seems so natural when it's done smoothly. I believe food should come from the right and plates removed from the left. Of course there are all sorts of table placements, tables in corners, booths, banquettes, etc., that would preclude that. A really good waiter would handle any situation deftly. It may take too to tango, but one good dancer can often make his, or her, partner appear less clumsy on the floor. I suppose that's basis of Miguel's advise to relax in a really fine restaurant. The less uptight the diner is, the easier it seems to appear to know what you are doing. For every time I may have run up against a restaurant staff member suspected of attempting to show me up, I've had scores who've covered my errors as well as any spin doctor. This may no longer be quite on topic, but the one thing I've found to be true is that if you show the staff some respect and manage to communicate a real interest in the food, you are likely to win over any staff in a fine restaurant. Of course my definition of a really fine restaurant is one that serves really fine food worthy of interest and has a staff dedicated to making those who love good food feel comfortable.

The subject arose in regard to restaurants. Some of the ettiquette of dining applies to eating anywhere I suppose, but the interaction with waiters and sommeliers is a restaurant issue--unless you have a wait staff at home.