Bux

In Valencia, we stayed at the Astoria Palace a couple of months ago. It was quite nice and centrally located for sightseeing. The hotel is air conditioned, but in August, you might want to stay at the beach. Unfortunately, I'm not aware of any. Ca'Sento is definitely a place worth going out of your way for lunch or dinner. It struck me as a rather strange place for the restaurant, but it gave us the chance to walk off lunch by taking a route through an area still under construction with mega apartment structures on our way to see Calatrava's [Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciencies, in the park they constructed on the old river bed after the river was rerouted. It's quite an interesting development. There was not much shade along the way and as much as I noticed that in May, it may be overbearing in August, but you can drive, take a cab or a bus. The cathedral was closed when we were able to get there and we never made it to see the Valencian primitive art in the Fine Arts Museum, so I can't tell you about either, but the Mercado Central is well worth a visit for the space. Unfortunately a pigeon problem has resulted in a net across the space. I think Rogelio has posted elsewhere with suggestions of other places to eat in Valencia and I believe Victor has as well. Our other meals were tapas, augmented by meat and fish pies from a bakery--all enjoyable and nothing to avoid, but no place worth recommending either. I rather liked Valencia as a city. The cental area has a nice scale.

I think a few of us, myself included, may have left confusing posts or at least posts subject to misinterpretation on this issue.

El Celler de Can Roca--an excellent choice. It would be a pity to be in Girona and not dine there. It too is likely to require reserving, but I doubt it is booked through the season as is El Bulli. We were there about two years ago. I suspect we booked about a month in advance and I know they were fully booked when we dined there on a Saturday night. It has been well recommended on the Spain forum.

It is more the tourist look than the American look. I suspect that if one is in an area with heavy tourism coming for a particular country, one might learn equate the dress with the country. For me, socks and sandals, as worn by the busload of German pensioners dropped off at a Spanish monestary, never screams American. My French friends are far more likely to wear sandals with socks than my American friends as well. I'll swear it's a very European look.

Or wherever. Personal choice in brands is not an issue. My point was to note that what might be considered a down market brand in the US, seems to be sold rather up market in France, not to endorse the brand or to propose chinos in five fork and spoon restaurants. I'm a rather casual person, but rarely find myself under dressed in top restaurants. Most people's dress prejudices are far too authoritatively expressed. As MysticMilt has so well expressed, there's a big difference between dining at a top restaurant in Paris and going to the Musée Rodin or having a beer at a cafe in a residential neighborhood in Paris. This conversation seems to drift back and forth. Outside of Paris there are fewer and fewer restaurants where the French seem obligated to wear a tie. In Paris that obligation seems faltering as well. The American tourist who bothers to seek out these restaurants is usually not the most casually dressed one in my experience. The look that seems least respectful to a restaurant is the dark jacket and slacks, and white shirt without a tie.

Who are all these people and why do they think they can presume to tell us what to wear is the question that keeps coming to mind. One doesn't have to read carefully to find contradictions and some very questionably subjective advice. Some of the sure ways to spot an American will more often than not get you an German or a Scandinavian. One thing to bear in mind is that differences in dress between social or economic groups within a country are as great as those between two EU members, more so perhaps. Dress in rural areas is quite different than what is worn in urban areas. Dress in any particular restaurant may be dependent on very local conditions in the neighborhood. I'd only add that I wouldn't be upset to be spotted as an American. I don't think I've ever wanted to pass as a European since my college days. At that time, it did seem to make it easier to meet American coeds. Then again they didn't have a clue. Since then it's had little appeal. The one thing we want to tell restaurateurs is that we've come a long way to eat here and that puts the burden on them to have made it worth our while. I'm afraid that's of little use in Paris only because it's not a unique situation, but elsewhere in France and Spain at least, we find we often get special attention as we eat with some enthusiasm and respect. We also tend not to be the sharpest or shlumpiest dressed diners wherever we are. I wear khakis or chinos a lot, all over the world, though I wouldn't pay the price I see Dockers selling for in France.

Having looked at Velo News, I prefer letour.com although you need to hit refresh on the letour site. I also seem to lose the last half hour or so on Velo News or are they that far behind. I could swear they were up to date a few minutes ago, but now their latest entry is forty minutes behind letour.com. Letour.com also offers maps, profiles of the course and all sorts of other windows. In many of those remote rural roads, I should imagine the spectators are rather isolated and stuck in place. There would be a need to bring one's own sustenance. Those traveling in campers or caravans have a decided comfort advantage.

All the information you want about the tour can be found here: http://www.letour.com/2004/us/index.html Go to stage 20 (pull down menu under the date) and then to the route (right hand side of the black bar). Depending upon the average speed, the Tour should arrive in Paris (quai de Bercy) at about 4 PM. About ten minutes later they should be at the place de la Concorde. They make about eight or nine passes of the Champs-Elysées. The race should be over around 5:15 to 5:45 or thereabouts according to plans.

I prefer to chop or mince the meat using a food processor. Some people seem to feel that the heat of the fast moving blade has a negative effect on the flavor. Others, myself included believe the cleaner cut of the processor balde more closely approximates hand chopped meat and that pushing meat through a grinder has a negative affect on the texture. It's just not as sharp a cut on a grinder and someone in this thread has noted problems with the fat. In any event, the meat should be cubed first. I have used ground pork I've bought at the butcher shop, but I prefer to chop my own for several reasons. I get a better piece of meat; I can adjust the proportion of fat to lean; and I often want to combine other kinds of meat or poultry with the pork and pork fat. I prefer to buy very lean pork and make up the fat with fresh fat back which I freeze and cut into small pieces if I want it well distributed. You can make great really fine sausages as well as excellent rough cut country sausages, but the more control you take, the greater the variety you can make. One third fat is about the right amount for me. Sometimes I use less as when using some rich meat, such as liver, in the mix, or more when using game that is very lean. We use the KA grinder attachment to stuff the casings, but it's not ideal as it's a bit tricky to operate without the cutting disc in place. Nevertheless, we used to use it to grind meat and we have one, so we use it. You might want to take a look at something like this stuffer. Be sure it comes with a stuffing funnel for the casing. I found many suppliers on the net, and I'm not sure this is the least expensive model or supplier. You might want to google further. I've never used one of these, but it looks as if it would be ideal and allow a smoother filling of the casing than a stuffer. That may depend on the volume of the gadget and how much air gets caught between pushes. I'd like to hear from anyone who's used one. I thought this was a good reference page for those starting out. It has some good information that is not recipe specific. The obvious problems for beginners are sausages that are too lean, or too fatty, sausages that are stuffed so tightly they burst when being cooked and sausages with air pockets. you can grill, saute or poach sausages. It's best to let them sit for a day for the seasonings to blend and it's often convenient to poach the sausages and then reheat and brown them on a grill or in a pan another day. This allows you to prepare them further in advance and have less cooking time just before dinner. A really good sausage is as good as pate when eaten cold as well.

I have a question I should have originally asked Pedro. Gastronomic names often lose in translation. How does one refer to "Spanish Sauce" in Castellano and how is it made? Is this the same as the French sauce espagnole?

That's advice that men and women need to understand. It's often how you carry the clothes you wear as much as the clothes themselves. While the French have their slobs just as any nation, there is a class of Parisians who wear clothes very well. You might find them at top restaurants, but actually, as in any major destination city, the destination restaurants are likely to have a high proportion of tourists.

The clean and relatively quiet electric commuter train runs right behind Sant Pau's back yard garden and the station is a block away. As I recall, there's a beach just the other side of the tracks. I don't know if there's any public place to shower and change, but it should be an easy and pleasant commute from downtown Barcelona. From Jordi's web site it appears CincSentits is not open on Sunday and open for lunch on Monday and dinners from Tuesday through Saturday.

When you come back, I hope you tell us what you had to eat. We're a bunch of philistines. We don't know much about art, but we know we like to eat.

This is often a problem with "ethnic" restaurants. In NY Chinese restaurants, or at least those in Chinatown, one can never be sure what, if any help, one can get from a waiter unless one is familiar with the restaurant. Some waiters speak very little English and communication may be limited to pointing at the menu. Others may or may not speak much English but are convinced, often by their own experiences with Caucasian diners, that we won't like certain dishes and warn us about them and sometimes almost flatly refuse to take our order unless we insist. Other waiters however, have dealt with enough adventurous gastronomes to get involved and enthusiastically suggest certain less common dishes. It helps to develop a relationship over time.

Oh yes, what do you wear? My wife would not feel out of place in a dark pants suit and has herself begun to travel without a dress. I assume you're younger than we are. That may be a factor in your choice of clothing.

Relax. I trust you're kidding about the dinner suit for men. If not, I suggest you stop watching black and white movies from between the wars. It's a very elegant restaurant, (the number of Michelin forks and spoons are more indicative of elegance than the number of stars which relate more to the food) but it's just a restaurant and only dinner. Black tie would not be pretentious if you had someplace else to go before or after dinner, but if you're not in a party of similarly dressed people, you're likely to stand out and be uncomfortable. I rarely travel with a suit and have never felt uncomfortable in a blazer and dressy slacks even at a three star, four fork and spoon restaurant in Paris, although I have never dined at Taillevant. Within more recent visits, I think every man at Ducasse/Plaza Athenée had a tie, but there were a few sports jackets that I would not have described as dressy. At Arpège there was one guy in a t-shirt and jacket, his date in a sporty tank top. He was British and I suppose I should have known who he was. The staff seemed to know him. Arpège is one level less dressy by Michelin standards with only four forks and spoons. At that level I'm comfortable with a tweed jacket or corduroy slacks with a blazer. One taxi driver asked me if I was a professor. I said I was an artist and writer and asked why he asked. He said it was the corduroy trousers. It seems they are the mark of an intellectual. Paris being what Paris is, you are what you wear. Corduroy trousers will mark you as an intellectual, at least under circumstances, and while intellectuals are highly respected by the average Parisian, what they wear will be sufficient for classification. Stone's questions are astute. What Americans consider a top notch French restaurant, and what's appropriate to wear there, seems to vary considerably--largely by geography. At le Bec Fin n Philadelphia, for instance, I found a much more conservatively formal group than I might at Daniel or Jean Georges in New York. I'm not sure if that was indicative of a difference in local standards or if New York City restaurants tend to benefit from a greater number of visitors from even less formal parts of the US.

Renting a car seems to have become an option. I'm not all that surprised. We've run into this before on the Spain forum in other areas. Local travel by public tranportation doesn't seem easy to arrange. Is that what you found?

I'd find the appearance of sushi and pan-Asian foods in Chinese restaurants peculiar if the same thing weren't happening here in NY. I still find it peculiar in NY. Much of it has to do not with cornering the market for Caucasian diners, but meeting the demand and taste of the local ethnic Chinese population, or perhaps of the local ethnic Asian population. NY's Chinatown if not exactly an Asian melting pot, has long had markets carrying products from all over Asia. Even the larger supermarkets in Chinatown have take out sushi. They also sell milk, cheese and sliced bread.

I think 300 € will buy a three course meal at any restaurant in Paris. Longer tasting menus may run more, as will a focus on the most expensive ingredients. The Ducasse fella--Chef Jean-Francois Piege--is at les Ambassadeurs in the Crillion hotel. Louisa thinks highly of him and of the cuisine at les Ambassadeurs. Let us know how it is if you go there. It's only one star and very expensive, but I would expect an increase in the rating next year and prices are not going to decrease if that's the case. In fact going this year may be a smart move.

Here in NYC, there are Chinese restaurants that are very reliable for noodle soups and even dumplings, but border on dreadful when it comes to other dishes. Sometimes it's more important to know how to use a restaurant than just to know if it's good or bad. This is one of the big arguments against rating restaurants by the numbers. Sometimes a restaurant specializes in one dish, or one type of dish and that where you want to go when you want that dish and where you don't want to go when you want anything else. Not about Chinese food, but Mrs. B recommended the lobster with rice at a restaurant in Barcelona to a collegue. The collegue returned and said she wasn't very pleased with the paella she ordered there. Mrs. B responded by saying that she told her to get the arroz caldoso. Once we dined at a very crowded restaurant in a beach resort in France. I assumed the crowds were validation of the food. I was wrong and rather unhappy with what I ordered, but it wasn't until then that I realized almost no one was eating prepared fish. All that people were eating were raw oysters and clams.

The brasseries come to my mind on Sundays.

I've seen monkfish liver in markets in Europe. I know I've seen it in Spain, but possibly it was only in Galicia. I'm not sure. I wondered if it was traditionally eaten anywhere in Spain. I've not seen it on any restaurant menu, but surely no fish monger is going to get wealthy selling to Japanese restaurants and housewives in Galicia. I've seen monkfish liver in Brittany as well, but never on a French menu in France.

I find the upper & middle classes fascinating. They make for richly rewarding soiciological observation. The don't necessarily eat any better, but when they do eat well, that food is often very interesting.

I know you've mentioned this post in the Spain forum and I've added a clickable link, but for logistical information about getting around in Spain, it's probably better to ask directly in that forum. We've been in La Rioja a couple of times, staying a day or two for the food, or for sightseeing, but I don't know the area well. We had a car both times and I wonder how easy it might be to get around by public transportation, or if there's any public transportation. There must be some buses, but I'm not going to guess it's going to be easy to get around without a car. Then again, although I don't own a car in New York, I usually have one at my disposal whenever I'm not in a large city in Europe. The only thing worse for us than not having a car in rural Spain is having one in a large city. Logroño is no competition for San Sebastian in terms of tapas, but it does have a lively bunch of tapas bars in its old section. I can say I'd make the trip, especially without a car, just for that. The best meal we've had in the area was at Echaurren in Ezcaray. I wouldn't expect to get there without a car, though I think I saw a bus stop at the edge of town.

That's interesting because I find eating in restaurants of all kinds, both home and abroad, to offer sociological experiences, and that white tablecloth restaurants offer their own kind of sociological experiences that are as fascinating as any.