Bux

What you'll rarely see in print, or even hear out loud are the comments made by others in the restaurant industry to the effect that Bouley was the only one who received any funds from the Red Cross and who was reimbursed in any way for the use of his facilities. As R Washburn says, the rescue feeding was a buisness venture for one NYC restaurant. Restaurants all over the city opened their kitchens and donated their provisions to prepare food for the rescue workers. Staff from those restaurants worked without pay in those restaurants, out in Queens and on the relief food boat. My understanding is that fee paid to Boulley for the use of his restaurant was a multiple of the number cited by R Washburn. The issue is not the misuse of funds, but simply getting some funds where others got none. Does this kind of rumor belong in eGullet. Ordinarily I'd say no, but perhaps it needs to appear to counter the same sort of rumor that everything was cleared up in a NY Post retraction. I had mixed emotions about seeing the issue raised in the review. It's a legitimate issue for the public, but I don't think it belonged as an innuendo in that review. All that it seems to prove is that Bruni is talking to people. I haven't eaten in Bouley in a long time. I can't comment on the accuracy of the food criticism or that of the service. Certainly the the compliment for the deftness of the waiter in grabbing the bottle is a very left handed one. In a four star restaurant one expects not to have the need to pour one's own wine and I'm strongly of the opinion that once the diner has reached for the bottle, the staff should only take notice of its omission and leave well enough alone. Grimes is a good writer, but he never convinced me he was moved by food. I felt he reversed engineered too many of his reviews supplying the kind of comments that would complete the review. I suspect he lost my faith early and never quite regained them. His periodic put downs of chefs and restaurants outside his reviews left me even less of a fan or believer. I am even less enthusiastic about Grimes' ability to see the light at the end of the tunnel as I felt he was writing that next review at the same time and the tunnel was of his own design. I continue to feel that Grimes' four star review of Daniel was part and parcel of the same disingenutity that enabled him to write the three star review. Although Grimes, in his second review expresses satisfaction with the change in food as if his words were the inspiration, the most severely panned dish in the first review was never changed and continued to appear and be popular with diners. It was not mentioned in the second review. I don't know Bruni yet, but a comparison to Grimes is not likely to be of consequence. This review troubled me for the reasons evidenced in Pan and chopjwu12's posts. I felt for the staff who expected a four star review and would have liked to have seen some empathy and appreciation for their efforts. Call me soft hearted and admittedly this is more in understanding of chop's disappointment than it is a criticism of the review.

hmm, sounds like emperor's new clothes to me if something is perfect & you can't tell that its perfect what's the point and does it matter. I never said you couldn't tell when it's perfect. What I said was that when nearly perfect the flaws are more obvious by comparison. An analogy might be made to climbing a tall mountain whose steepness is more evident at the pinnacle. After climbing 98% of the mountain, one might be most discouraged and more aware of how hard it is to complete the climb, or how much higher the mountain top appears as you near it, but when one reached the top, it would be obvious. For all that, the climb almost to the top, would still be an accomplishment and the near perfect, but obviously flawed dish may still be far more impressive than a perfect dish cooks to less exacting standards. As in figure skating and gymnastics, one gets points for difficulty as well as execution. On a more philosophical level, there's no doubt that much that is considered an accomplishment by cognoscenti, is seen as the emperor's new clothes by others even when perfect.

According to the information on the Visite link Margaret provided, a one day pass good for zones 1-5 (CDG is in zone 5) 16,75 euros. I interpret that to mean a one day card is only good until the end of the day you started using it, but you might want to make further inquiries A two day pass is 26,65 euros for the same 1-5 zones. The Roissybus is 8,20 euros one way and therefore not economically advantageous even for a single round trip and certainly not for two trips.

I wish you luck and I wish Jordi the same. I've reached the age where I forget things too and my wife has reached the age where it's just as well that I don't remember how old she is.

I was there four years ago and quite impressed at the time. I was less familiar with the current state of fine dining in Spain and perhaps more easily impressed. My sense of the meal was that the restaurant would have had three stars in France. While I agree that the meal was in ways like a French meal, it was like a French meal as a meal in Burgundy is like a meal in meal in Normandy. While Spain is not France, Catalunya is an historic entity whose borders stretch across the Pyrenees into France. There are provincial cultural ties that are as strong as current political boundries. It's also a fact that top haute cuisine restaurants have a tendency to lose their local character. One finds balsamic vinegar in Alsace and Serrano ham in Paris. I deplore the loss of regional foods even in three star restaurants, yet I understand that more and more, one gets the chef's food, not the food of the region in such restaurants. The sommelier's advice was good. He spoke to us almost exclusively in Spanish. I don't speak Spanish, but my wife is fluent in Spanish, if not Castillian, and carried on most of the conversation, translating for me at times. He also spent some time patiently answering questions about Spanish dessert wines, although after both red and white wines, I was not interesting in ordering a dessert wine before driving back to Barcelona. Four years is a long time in the restaurant business. I have returned to restaurants in a shorter period of time not to recognize the food or service.

Are you referring to the damge from the collapse of the towers, or the Red Cross funds?

Of course this is all supposition, only Raisa knows her problem, but I've assumed her stay is for one night as the hotel was described as a layover hotel. The question seems to be whether the one day pass is good until midnight of the day it's first used, or for 24 hours from first use. If it's used in the afternoon of day one, will it still be valid for the morning of day two?

I have always purchased carnets when we're in Paris. There have always been two of us, which tends to mean it's more likley we'll have fewer leftover tickets as we're only buying five rides, not ten, at a time. The few times I've tried to calculate which would be best for us, the carnet always beat any card, but most of the time we've found it's just too damn much trouble to attempt to do the computations based on second guessing our trips. We walk a lot as well and generally have too much luggage to consider metro or RER as transportation from CDG.

I was probably the one who alluded to a funeral parlor. Of course I meant it in the best way. That was a few years back and I've been assured the mood has lightened up. My visit was also a Saturday lunch which is almost guaranteed to be all tourists. It's easy to see how Ambroisie would impress some people greatly and bore others. It is also the kind of cuisine that when nearly perfect, will seem more flawed than most other cooking no matter how sloppy.

Regarding the Feuillantine de Queues de Langoustine aux graines de sésame, sauce curry, it's doubtful that Pacaud will find a replacement without curry powder. This dish seems to be almost a signature dish of his. In any event it was on the menu years ago when we ate there. I have also been a great defender of the dish as it was served that day. It was in fact, the highlight of an altogether lovely lunch. I have no way of knowing if the curry powder was any more or less uncooked on the day you had lunch. I felt it was thoroughly cooked and added a sublimely rich flavor to the sauce--a flavor that complimented both the langoustines and the spinach. Peter Hoffman of the Savor restaurant in NYC, was outspokenly critical of Pacuad's use of curry in that dish. I, on the other hand, find Hoffman's food all too eclectic for my taste. It may be that Hoffman is true to the foreign background of the spices and flavorings he uses, but that in the end they don't meld on my plate or in my meal, while Pacaud totally sublimates the foreignness into his classic French style. There's a long history of this kind of incorporation of foreign foods into French foods with the resulting dominance of the French style. I wonder how much one's own history with curry affects how one receives the taste when used as the classic French chefs do. I have more familiarity with curry as a flavoring in American and Food, than I have experience with eating Indian food and thus no fixed conception of how it should be used in a dish.

How much wine is 10 cl? BEAUTIFUL pasta, by the way. Goodness! There are 75cl (750ml) in a typical bottle of wine. If it helps, 10cl is the same as 3.3814023 fluid ounces. It may be more graphic to understand that if you share one bottle among 7 or 8 diners, it's about what you'd get as your share.

I think it was your regular super market charcoal, Bux. They don't pack it into briquets here like they do back home. Briquets provide a long cooking time. That's their only virtue. They don't smell very good and I suspect they impart that odor to the food. People blame it on the lighter fluid they use to start the fire, but I think the smell is built into the briquet. Real charcoal is far better for flavor. I'm not at all sure what those corn cobs were called now that I think of it, but they were a disaster.

I'm sure I'm repeating something that was said here before, maybe I was the one who said it, but Passard has said he had nothing agianst red meat, it's just that he feels he can't get the quality he wants to cook. I don't know if it's really harder to get good lamb or beef than it is to get good fish, but that's what he's been quoted as saying.

Has Paris always had its share of bad restaurants that were trendy. It seems to me that it didn't back in the sixties, of did I really hang around with such a dull crowd that they only cared about the food. In truth I had very few friends in Paris and was not very branché, but I have it on very good authority that even the little restaurants were not so bad back then and that it's not just that my taste buds have matured.

What kinds of cheeses were they? Pedro has mentioned olive oil with Manchego cheese and I've seen the combination of cheese and quince paste quite commonly in Spain and not so rarely in New York. I have also seen French goat cheese served with olive oil and fresh cheeses served with salt and pepper. I don't know if we've discussed this before on eGullet, but I've had the sense that cheese in Spain has traditionally been a snack and tapas food rather than a last course before cheese [read dessert as Pedro suggests below] or in lieu of cheese [read dessert as Pedro suggests below]. This seems to be a more recent import from Spain. Can any of our Spanish members refute or support that. Edited:

I don't necessarily agree with Whiting, but I understand his comment all too well. The ubiquity of it has really diminished my enjoyment of it. There's a bit of the "oh no, not that flavor again," that has all but made me defensive about ordering a dish with balsamic vinegar in the description or using it at home. I'm a bit tired of seeing it on NY menus, but have even less interest in seeing in on menus in France and Spain. Experiencing the same fads worldwide just seems to suck part of the enjoyment out of travel. I suppose I'd not feel that way about running into balsamic vinegar in Italy though. The best we've ever bought is maybe 8 to 12 year old Giusti. We currently have a quarter liter bottle of something else that someone brought as a present. I happen to like a simple white wine vinegar, but my wife finds them all too sharp and otherwise tasteless. I'm not even sure if we have one on the shelf right now. The vinegar of choice lately has been from Jerez. Pickings are slim and we use whatever brand we find when we're running low. Right now that's a L'Estornell brand that advertises "Reserva" and Solera" on the label. It's made from the Palomino Fino grape. I liked the previous one better, but now forget the brand. Since we haven't found that great a selection in NY, on our last trip to Spain, we picked up a selection of vinegars. One bottle came from a supermarket. The other two from a specialty olive oil shop in an upscale neighborhood in Madrid. The selection of olive oils is great in NY and we already had too many oils at home. Without a tasting, we based on selection on the names of wine makers we knew. One was a Lustau Jerez Solera 1/24. The other two are from Alvear, a wine maker in Montilla, north of Cordoba where they make sherry-like wines. One bottle from Alvear says Vinagre de Solera, the other Vinagre de Pedro Ximénez semi-seco Solera 10. It will be a while before either gets opened although I suppose I will have at least two open at the same time to make some comparison. We also have a bottle of Chinese black vinegar in the house, but we use that almost exclusively for a dipping sauce for Chinese dumplings which we buy frozen at one of several butcher shops near us in Chinatown.

Be aware than in some areas of the US, bbq and grilling are not synonymous. It's a regional thing. I have a limited experience with grilling in France as our friends have a small grill on their terrace in the Langudoc. Normally they are lucky enough to grill over sarments, or the stalks from the vineyards that are pruned each year. These are thin and burn quickly so the window of opportunity to cook is small between full flames and ashes. Once, someone made the mistake of buying what I seem to recall as being labelled as charbon vert or green charcoal. It was, as I also recall, made from corn cobs and must have required some special technique to use as fuel for cooking food. All we go was lots of smoke. I wonder if this is your light and fluffy charcoal.

Thank you for a most welcome first post. We look forward to your continued participation here and of course, in other forums on this site. I will be the first to agree that the Michelin Guia Roja has never misled me to a restaurant I didn't enjoy. Its faults seem to be of omission and of not recognizing some real talent properly or not soon enough. The far more physically clumsy Campsa guide is a good counter balance.

Ladurée's versions are the classic, perhaps the standard, for the craft of macarons. Pierre Hermé, who was, I believe pastry chef at Ladurée and Fauchon prior to opening his own shop on the rue Bonaparte, has applied a new level of creativity and pushed the envelope of what could be done in the name of macaron. The best chocolate macaron I've ever had has been at Hévin. I've no really had enough macarons to make any definitive statements of relative quality. In fact, I've not nearly had enough macarons.

Hey Simon, how are you doing there? I always keep hoping we'll hear more from you. Sue, it's nice to see you here too. Has everyone read the Santi Santamaria Gastronomic Declaration thread started by Pedro in the Media and News forum? While Santamaria has never aimed at being the most wildly creative chef in Spain, I found the declaration rather reactionary in nature. Is he reacting to what he may see as too much creativity for creativity's sake?

Rough work, but someone has to do it. If it can't be me, I'm glad it's you.

I see CincSentits has been open for over a month. How is it going? Have any of our members had the opportunity to dine there yet?

I have seen that precooked boil in bag paella I've described above, in Catalunya, but not in the Pais Vasco. A testament to Basque chefs perhaps.

My first question would have been is this a product sold and used in Spain, or one that is manufactured for overseas sales. Alex didn't find it in Cantabria. I'd be less surprised if he couldn't find it in Valencia. At one of the panel discussions that was part of the recent barbecue party in NY recently, one of the panelists discussing the great variety of regional sauces and barbecue styles in the south, noted that these differences seem not to be appreciated by all Americans and that to some of us, barbecue was a flavor. You can, in fact, buy barbecue flavored potato chips. You can also buy pizza flavored chips. Is there a paella flavored potato chip in the wings? Would purists demand a rice cracker? I've had excellent arroz caldoso in Burgos and Barcelona. I suspect it may be native to certain parts of Spain, but it seems to be almost as ubiquitous as paella. Given a choice between that sort of dish and paella outside of Valencia or Alicante, I'd opt for the arroz caldoso on the assumption that it's the one the tourist is least likely to order and thus more likely to be properly cooked. If nothing else, I've yet to see restaurants advertising that they serve a particular brand of cryovac heat and serve arroz caldoso, as I've seen with paella. Paella, of a sort and likely a sort a purist will not accept, is sold all over France. I've seen large pans kept hot in hypermarchés in the southwest of France where prepared paella is sold in take out containers. Do you see that Portugal, Spain's other neighbor?

Fairly or not, that may define Portugal for me until I have the chance to get there.