Bux

I haven't been in Normandy lately except for a couple of days a few years ago on our way back from a wedding in Brittany. We took a path back to Paris that led us through Giverny and Monet's gardens. What I remember most about Norman food when we were first there in the 60's was the cream sauces. In general, one sees fewer sauces of this kind in France. I wonder how that's changed in Normandy. Rich fatty cow's milk cheeses are what I associate with Normandy besides apples, cidre and Calvados. Mort Rosenblum assures us, in his article, that there's still a great supply of rich unpasteurized cheese. That may be true at the artisanal fromager's in Trouville, I hope it's true throughout Normandy. I know the world is seeing tons of pasteurized camemberts and I believe it's one of those French cheeses that's escaped rigid AOC type laws. It may come from all over France, if I'm not mistaken.The most famous dish from Normandy may be Tripes à la mode de Caen.

I don't know what Bouley's policy is on this, but it's always realistic for a restaurant to require that all diners at the table get the tasting menu and it's a common policy. To a great extent, it's simply a matter of logistics and timing of service. If two people order three courses and three order the tasting menu, it's like serving two separate tables, with the added inconvenience of coordinating the service, in spite of the fact that the two groups will be eating at different paces. I believe this was the subject of a thread on eGullet not all that long ago.

I'm not so sure I'm agreeing or disagreeing with you, but authenticity may be in the mind of the beholder. ADNY may be an authentic recreation of the experience of eating in a Michelin three-star restaurant in Paris, but the majority of three star restaurants in Paris are not cooking authentic French food which I would have to define as French food cooked in the first half of the twentieth century or as codified by Escoffier. Fusion food is really a dated term. Few talented chefs are trying to fuse anything. They've all been working with soy sauce, lemon grass, balsamic vinegar, etc.--ingredients as locally available as tomatoes were to Italians at the turn of the century--long enough to have absorbed them into a personal cooking style. An authentic NY restaurant may well be one where the chef has his own style. Basically, I've seen this same trend trickling well down to the bistro level in Paris and even the provinces of France, so it's hardly just NYC. It's not even a trend in world capitals. For the past half dozen years we've been traveling and eating in Spain with an eye towards neuva cocina. From Galica to Alicante and from Catalunya to Andalusia, we've been feasting on food that is distinctly Spanish, but hardly traditional. I'm not sure you can define authentic French or Spanish cuisine without tying it to a region and a period in time. Edit to add: Casa Momo seems not to offer authentic Spanish food, but at the same time, it's not any less authentic than many of the best restaurants in which we've dined in Spain.

The 'stuff' mixed into this ice cream is done in front of you on a chilled slab. You look at a buffet of mix-ins that include chopped cookies, candy bars, sprinkles, and other flavors. You choose your base flavor and with two giant paddles, the gunk is literally spackled about on the cold marble before being scooped into said cup or cone. Kind of the Benihana's of ice cream.

As it appears you wanted to post in the Texas forum, and thought you had posted in the Texas forum, I've moved the thread to the Texas forum, so there's no need to repost, but my post may explain the last two posts.

I liked Arqua until I made the mistake of ordering calves' liver there some time ago. I made the same mistake in Bianca the other night. It's been a long time since I've had decent liver in a moderately or inexpensively priced Italian restaurant. For 18 euros in a bistro in Paris I had superb calves' liver. A thick slab cooked pink as it should be. I've never had liver that good. I should probably refrain from ordering liver again until I get to Paris. When I tried to explain how I wanted it, the waiter looked at me and said "rosé." I nodded and it was perfect. I seem to recall having good calves liver, actually very good liver, in Le Zinc, downtown. How's the calves' liver at Landmarc? They promote it as a speciality. Years ago, it seemed to be a standard refrain of old time restaurant reviews. You can tell how good (or bad) a restaurant is just by ordering the calves' liver (or the roast chicken, take your choice). It's probably still a truism for me.

A chef's management abilities are likely to be unrelated to his cooking abilities, but I'll bet they're not unrelated to the reputation of his restaurant. I would think it would be almost impossible for a restaurant to turn out sufficient quanitities of top notch food to rise to the level of world class without a chef who had both cooking talent and management ability. Once at the top, the chef should be able to step away from the stove more often than from the management if he wants the restaurant to stay at the top. I'll take that one step further, the meaning of chef is "chief," not cook. Although "chef de brigade" has come to shortened to "chef" and to mean cook in English, it refers to the person in charge of a kitchen crew. Julia Child, "The French Chef," was never really a chef and that's not the meaning of which we speak when talking about restaurants.

So I guess the high prices we pay at some of these restaurants are not for the marquee chefs but for the debt service on the loan? Supply and demand set the maximum prices a restaurant can charge. No restaurant is going to survive if its debt service is so high that it can't be covered by what it can charge for the food and no restaurateur is going to lower his prices just because he's got a low overhead. As hathor said, it's a business. The new restaurant with the multimillion dollar debt can't charge more than its competition. The $12 million price tag is a metaphor for many things. Just as bank will be more eager to lend the money to a celebrity chef, a hotel will be even far more eager to lower its rent for a star chef, because his name is a draw for the hotel. it's just easier for a celebrity chef to open a new restaurant under his name than it is for a new kid to do the same, although the new kid may actually be the one who is responsible for the success or failure of the celebrity restaurant. Sophisticated diners will eventually know who's in the kitchen and his name may mean as much to them as the name on the marquee. It's a vicious circle. Of course it matters who's in the kitchen, it just doesn't always matter if you know his, or her, name or not. Robert Brown mentioned Blue Hill in NY and the dependence on its two chefs, Mike and Dan. Mike is now upstate in their suburban offshoot and because it's a new and larger place, Dan is often there as well. Juan was in the kitchen while Mike and Dan were in Westchester the last time I was there. Service was a bit rough for a few minutes when we were first seated--it was Sunday, the manager's night off and I suspect some of the regular staff may be serving at the new place--but the food was right up there with the best of nights. Get to know Juan. His resume is excellent and he's up to the job. Everyone can be replaced, including the marquee chef, it it's the food you're after. The other guys are just not as bankable as the celebrity chef. The job of an educated diner is find out where the food is and not where the celebrity is that night.

It's one thing to hear theories of what a chef is or should be from a diner with romantic ideas of what goes on, or should be going on in the kitchen at a great restaurant. It's another to hear from the back of the house. What Exotic Mushroom describes is what I've heard to be standard operating procedure at many if not most great restaurants. I don't doubt that there are chefs who need to be in the kitchen at all times for one reason of another, but for many, if not most, great chefs, it's not necessary. With a reasonably large and complex kitchen, if you haven't trained your staff to produce your food when you're not there, they probably can't do it when you are and you're not getting four star reviews. For all that, there is someone in charge who is responsible. That person may, or may not have the creative ability of the chef and if he has it, he may have to keep it in check, but he has the discipline, technical command and respect from the brigade, necessary to do the job. In few of the really good restaurants in NY (3 and 4 stars) do I expect the chef to close the restaurant. Are there cooks or chefs with four star (what the NY Times would call tops) kitchen experience who disagree with what Exotic Mushroom says here? It coincides with what I've heard from other cooks and speaks far more strongly to me than what others interpolate from other professions or from the tableside view of a restaurant. This is a good question. My guess is that it varies from restaurant to restaurant and from chef to chef, but it's still an interesting question.

One can always do more and one can always think they should have done more, but I found that photograph with the single leaf at the bottom so evocative of a cuisine of unforced finesse. It also brought to mind the image of the finished product in a way that neither an empty mold or a filled on would have. The leaf in the mold brought a dimension to the photograph. As usual, your log is working on many levels. One need not be interested in dieting to follow it or crave what you are cooking. Tête de veau is not a dish for which I have any personal nostalgia either. It's one I enjoy on occasion, perhaps precisely because it's not from my childhood or history and it is thus transporting, but it's also not something I'd crave in large portions or night after night. I suppose it would keep for a few days and be reheat-able, but your solution is interesting. Apparently this gels at refrigerator temperature--no surprise--and you are freezing it to keep, but not to serve frozen. Let us know about the texture after it's defrosted. I suspect it will be fine. We've never cooked tête de veau, but some years back Mrs. B made a great pot of tripe and we had some left over. It's even possible we made it for a dinner party and it didn't go over as big as we had hoped it would. What I remember is taking the leftovers out of the refrigerator and noticing that it had set. We unmolded it and had a dome of jellied tripe. We cut a slice and it was so good that we heated the rest and poured it into a rectangular terrine to set and enjoyed it sliced with cornichons. I suspect your tête de veau would have worked as well cut in large chunks. Come to think of it, isn't that what head cheese is? Of course those terrines are going to be great.

There's a wonderful reminder built in to Ben's post that we should take every rave and every pan with a grain of salt and not consider a post relating the experience of one meal as anything like a review of a restaurant.

First, I think it's too limiting to say exactly what a chef should be. In my experience the great breakthoughs in many fields have come from someone outside the field. The chef who most fits the dominant or preferred mold may well be the one who's least able to bring a truly new and dynamic spark to cooking. As for one's vision, a composer can ask an orchestra to make his vision a reality and an archtitect needs a contractor for the same purpose. There are often fields in which one man's vision requires a staff to bring it to fruition. There's no question that two different teams working on the same sheet music and instructions, architectural plans or recipe books will produce slightly different things. In the complex kitchen of a haute cuisine restaurant this is true whether the chef is there or not, but yes, a professional sous chef can be trained to excecute Keller's menus and vision. That's what a restaurant kitchen does every day. Neither the menu nor vision changes very much in a week and while even control freak chefs like to elicit feedback from underlings, there's limited room for creative input on a day to day basis. No one is talking about Keller taking a year off withoug checking up on his two restaurants.

The problem I'm having here is that many are assuming there has to be an answer to the question. Robert comes closer to expressing the non-absolute. He starts off with good evidence to support a conclusion, but then presents contrary evidence and says it depends. It depends on a lot of things, most particularly on the chef. Take two brilliant chefs, or at least two different chefs running brilliant restaurants. One may have the capacity to stay in his kitchen improving his craft and his art and refining his food. Under him a succession of sous chefs come and go. Some go on to careers of their own. The other chef, also a chef/owner of one of the two best restaurants in the world, feels at an impasse after five or ten years in his kitchen. He's got a great talent, but he feels constrained and needs to grow in another way. It's his internal urge. He's found his restaurant hums with little or no involvement on his part, the machine is so well oiled and his staff so talented and disciplined. His sous chef of many years is where he was ten years ago just before he went out on his own, but times have changed. A million dollars won't open the same kind of restaurant. It takes twelve million and a bank won't lend an unknown sous chef that kind of money. They will lend that kind of money to the chef with the name of one of the two best restaurants in the world however. He takes out the loan and starts a second restaurant. he gives his sous chef a decent raise and puts him in charge of one of the two restaurants. Maybe he even hired the sous chef from the other great restaurant in the world because that guy also can't raise enough capital to go it alone and he figures with two restaurants, the chef/owner has to relinquish some authority and his chance to make a name is better here than it was staying back at the other place. We've now got three restaurants. One has a full time chef/owner who's one of the top two chefs in the world and two have a full time owner but part time chef who's one of the two best chefs in the world plus full time chefs who have been worthy sous chefs to the worlds two best chefs. Of the three restaurants, which has the heaviest talent at the top and which is going to serve the best food. My guess is that the two restaurants with sous chefs who have been elevated are going to be the more exciting restaurants. It's a fiction of course, but it's a situation that could well describe how Ducasse, Keller, Boulud, Vongerichten, Savoy etc. are operating. Still I only present it as one reasonable plausible option. In my fairy tale, I present the secondary chefs as ready and able to be chefs and that's precisely what's happening where a chef is running more than one successful restaurant, his second in command and in residence is a fully qualified chef in his own right. I don't know who's cooking at Bouchon in Las Vegas, but that doesn't prove Keller is spread thin. It's a bistro, a second label if you will and if it affects Keller's reputation in any way, it doesn't affect the meal you will have at Per Se.

What's great about the review is exactly what's bad about it. She didn't finish the job and there's that great big gaping hole in the number of stars now owned by Masa. Neither the restaurant nor the review fit neatly in the NY Times pigeonholes and that doesn't make me unhappy. Of course something important is missing. The stars are important. The sinking of the Titanic important. Important is not always good. I wondered how many people felt she was implying Bruni would soon review Masa. When reading Hesser's review I almost felt we should expect Bruni's review next week. What a terrible thing it would be to allow one restaurant to take two of the 52 reviews a year, but what a wonderful way for the dining public to compare two reviewers. Wouldn't it be great to be able to read an out going critic's review in conjunction to one by the new reviewer? I doubt it will actually happen however. It's just another perverse idea like the one that says awarding stars tends to pander to the mass market diner's tastes and that it's just nice to make the public deal with a review without them once in a while, even when the review clearly states the number of stars.

JMayer, perhaps you've hit the nail on the head in your last post without realizing it. I would not happily pay as much to dine at Keller's restaurant in Las Vegas (didn't even realize he had one) or at Bouchon in Yountville (Is his LV restaurant a branch of his bistro in Yountville? If so, it isn't pretending to be a chef driven restaurant at all.) as I would at the French Laundry or Per Se. I would go so far to say that I would not pay as much even if I knew Keller was at one of the first two and not at either of his top two restaurants. I don't know your favorite restaurant or its chef so neither you nor he should take what I say in this regard as personal, but I know guys who are third in command in restaurants such as Per Se and the French Laundry and who could cook circles around 99% of the chefs in this country with their eyes closed and one hand tied behind their back. The exectutive chef, chef de partie, sous chef or whatever the hell a chef/owner wants to call his man in charge of the actual kitchen on a day to day basis in a top kitchen in NY such as AD/NY, Per Se, Daniel, etc. is far more talented than you can imagine and he's got $65,000 stoves and a brigade of talented people working under him. Some of those talented people are breaking their balls not for the meager salary, but for a recommendation or that chance to stage in France that can only come from pleasing a guy like Boulud or Keller, while most restaurants are making do at the lower levels with whoever they can hire at minimal wages. There are few restaurants who can command that kind of discipline from the bottom of the kitchen. Some of my best meals at Daniel in NY have come on days the chef is out of town. Why, because the entire staff knows that when Daniel returns, he will hear every complaint from every regular customer and the shit will fly from the exectutive chef downwards. I use Daniel as an example only because I used to know when he was in town. Plenty of fools go to celebrity chef restaurants for the chef, but gastronomes go for the food and yes, I'd say those who appreciate food are going to go to the best restaurants regardless of where the "chef" is, because in many celebrity chef restaurants, the "chef" is not the chef and that's understood by the people who understand. PS. I've googled Las Vegas and Bouchon and see that indeed Keller's "restaurant in Las Vegas" is a Bouchon. The hotel web site itself makes no bones about the fact that this is Keller's take on a Lyon bistro, and not his gastronomic restaurant. One must understand the difference to be an educated diner. In Yountville, where the original Bouchon exists practically in the shadow of the French Laundry, no one expects to get the same food at both, nor pay the same prices. My apologies for the length of my reply. Had I realized you were somehow implying Per Se and Bouchon were equally trading on the Keller name, I might have been able to dismiss that implication quicker.

It seems to me that she was getting paid by the NY Times who should determine what her job was. I recall Ruth Reichl's lament about having to award stars. She didn't want to do it, but the Times required her to do it. My hat's off to Ms. Hesser for breaking the mold, although I have to assume it was with the permission of the NY Times. Amanda's review made it clear that she felt the experience of dining at the sushi bar was a four star experience, but that dining at a table was not and she defined the difference between a four star experience and a three star one as a matter of being transported or not. I've not been a fan of her reviews. I've been a fairly vocal critic, but I need to be fair, at least in my own eyes. In what way would it have been more professional for her to have chosen either three or four stars for Masa? It was totally professional for her to express the opinion she offered with the supporting review. I thought it was most professional to have acknowledged that a three star rating would have been unfair to the chef and that a four star review may be misleading to diners, especially as the number of stars are bandied about without the full text of the review. If it was unprofessional, it would have been because she didn't do what she was paid to do for the NY Times, but it was a service to the potential diner. I don't think criticism should come from the ranks of diners on this issue. It was anything but a cop out on her public responsibility.

Proof enough that I stayed sober enough to get the point. Rogellio was the tour guide, or ring leader, of our foray of the Cava Baja in Madrid last month, beginning with patatas bravas at Brava, the bar that lays claim to originating the recipe. A key point of Rogelio's post is inherent in this statement--"you can have pinchos as tapas." Tapas are not so much a kind of food, but a gestalt or way of eating.

Caviar, but what a waste if the intent is to get everyone plastered. Any salt, fat and protein should work. Canapés with rillettes or brandade. I've made brandade without potatoes (okay maybe technically it was just cod puree) but offhand I can't think of a base for the canapé. I've also made salmon "rillettes" on cucumber slices. The recipe was cooked salmon and smoked salmon combined with (whoops) butter, capers, minced shallots and fine herbes. Clearly, the Dr. Montignac régime is an obstacle course for me.

Actually it's (American) English for small plates at big prices. In Spain, the prices can be exceptionally reasonable for tapas. Of course if you're eating toothpick skewer by toothpick skewer, you're going to pay far more to fill yourself up, but in general and in the non touristy bars, the smaller plates are priced in proportion to the larger ones. I don't want to accuse American purveyors of tapas as being ripoff artists, I suspect the prices can be justified by rents and overhead costs. Nevertheless, unless you can go into a nice bar and have a glass of a good fino or manzanilla for a couple of bucks and a snack for not much more, the style with which tapas serve us is not going be authentically Spanish. Adapting authentic or traditional tapas to a party at home however, is a very useful idea. They can make a great buffet or cocktail party food. They're great hors d'oeuvres and appetizers as well for a dinner party.

That's true about a lot of bad food in small portions at large prices abusing the good name of tapas, but have you tried Batali's Casa Mono? It's too crowded and the price of two small plates might be a bit more than you'd pay if it was one large plate, but the food is excellent. It's not necessarily authentically Spanish, but it's within a legitimate range of sensibility. It's a range I exten for quality of that sort. Jaleo in Washington is different, maybe more authentic, and a superb choice. the food is more authentic than the service as the service in waiter service at tables and there's no other bar around the corner to try next.

I have never been a great fan of Sangria, but it is an authentic drink. I have seen it made by the glassful in one or two Spanish bars, but I've not seen it ordered very often. It's hardly the first drink of choice anywhere that I've seen. I supsect that varies from region to region and from bar to bar. A caña, or small draft beer would probably be as common an order as anything, but in the south a fino sherry or even more likely a manzanilla might be at least as common. Red wine is very common and white wine probably not much less common. In Madrid, I've been to tapas bars that were also wine bars with nice selections of wines by the glass. In San Sebastian, a common order is a thurrito or zurrito, which is literally a dribble of beer--maybe a half inch in a wide glass. It allows one to sample a great number of tapas on a pub crawl in a town the has more great tapas bars than one can manage in one night. One doesn't see loud or rowdy drunks in good tapas bars. I believe tapas are a life style although the style itself may be different in each part of Spain. The idea of tapas as a life style hit us quite strongly one evening as we were sitting on barstools at a corner bar/cafe in Jerez. We lingered for a while because the place was so well situated for people watching and had excellent little plates of food that were generally presented with some flair and decoration--squiggle os sauce from a squirt bottle a la nouvelle cuisine. It was remarkable to watch people meet after work or shopping, have a drink and a croquetta or slice of jamon talk and then separate to go home. Couples met other couples. Families joined, or met other families. It was a chance for a stolen moment of social interaction without having to devote a whole night to it.

Not long ago, someone asked about outdoor markets in San Sebastian and the Basque region and I believe it was vserna who said these were uncommon in Spain. They are quite common in France where most small towns have a market day in which farmers and vendors set up stalls or sell from their vans. They have become increasingly popular in the U.S., although they are quite different from the ones in France. In France you are likely to find not only food, but clothing and hardware sold by itinerant peddlers. It's a continuation of a long tradition of a sparsely populated rural society. In the U.S., it's more about getting fresh farm produce and artisanal food products into the heart of the city. To that extent, what's happening in Barcelona is more like we have than what's in neighboring France. It's interesting that this market is more about artisanal product--sausages, cheese, baked goods, etc.--than it is about raw produce. It's hard for the artisan to compete in today's industrialized world. By providing direct access to the consumer, the premium that must be paid for such artisanal food stuffs is reduced to a more reasonal level. Even in France, some of the best things in the market have been the very non-commerical cheeses. These products while already becoming rare are further forced off the market by new E.U. regulations.

I have seen portions much larger than what she describes as a racion presented as tapas they are to be shared, but she qualifies it as "general" rule. Other than that, she does credit to her reputation by leaving the definition of "what is a tapa" wide open and going for the "way of life" as defining. Smart woman, and I suggest that was written some time ago before more recent changes and developments. She's managed to hold her position of definitive authority precisely because she didn't try to be too defining. A wise authority always knows when to punt.

Where are the analogy police when you need them? I would think a live meal in a restaurant would compare better to a live theatrical performance than to the cinema. In either case, the director's presence during your performance is not necessary and you should not necessarily be aware of whether he's in the house or not once he's instructed the staff and set the standard for performance. In the case of the presence of a chef in a restaurant at the time you are eating, it matters if you care and it doesn't matter if you don't. What be interesting would be to know why you care. Would you prefer to have the chef present the night you're having dinner, or would you prefer to have the best meal the kitchen has ever sent out. Let's assume the two are not neccessarily going to happen on the same night. Which night would you prefer to be at the restaurant? If, of course, you believe the food is always going to be better when the chef is in residence then the question is not about his presence, but about the quality of the food. I don't believe the chef need be there for the food to be at its best--at least not in all restaurants and my dining experience had borne this out. I would caution that each restaurant operates under different constrictions and need be approached on its own in this regard and that a general attitude would not serve well.

Whew, and I mean that in the best sense. I might have asked for more paragraph breaks, but there's nothing I would have liked to see left out. It's too much for me to respond to any particular part. I suspect we could start a dozen or more serious threads in reply. I know that as I read your "notes," I kept thinking of threads all over these boards to which I'd like to quote lines or paragraphs of your post. You've done us all a great service here again.