Bux

Only in France would this be considered a dieter's market basket. By the way, the radishes look wonderful. I can almost taste the butter and the salt.

Right, and check those mushrooms as well. I know Carman and she's an ethical woman, but part of her ethic would have been to use immoral mushrooms if she could have found any. I assumed the topic was in homage to the slogan painted on the front doors of Carman's truck. Holly would know best.

I didn't want to suggest how long we might keep home made mayonnaise in the refrigerator, lest someone else suffer for our bad habits. Our son-in-law who's a chef and whose food safety standards come from work in Michelin three star and NY Times four star kitchens in France and NY, just shakes his head when he looks into our refrigerator. At the same time, like most Frenchmen, he doesn't understand why American's keep their eggs in a refrigerator. On the other hand, salmonella hasn't been the widespread problem it is here. In an old thread on eGullet it was suggest that refrigerating eggs has a disastrous effect on flavor and it may be one reason why eggs seem to taste so much better in France. If refrigerating eggs is detrimental to their flavor, I suggest cooking or pasteurizing them is also going to change the taste and not for the better. Recipes for a sauce made from hard boiled eggs and oil appeared in American newspapers and magazines after salmonella became a great concern. We seem to be backing away from the fear as we take a good look at the real odds, but the concern should be there and we should clean up our poultry raising standards.

I hope, you, John, or another of our Parisan residents can get to the bottom of this and let us know what Yves' relationship is to the restaurant and what, if any, his other plans are for the fall. By the way Pierre, welcome to eGullet.

We've had this discussion in a thread on la Régalade a few months ago. Has there been any news since?

I'm going to take that back, or at least a bit. We've been spending too much time in Paris and not enough in the provinces. There's really no comparing prices in Paris with those in the provinces where your three star euro or dollar seems to go a lot further, if not quite as far as it does in Spain.

Truthfully, we haven't had any homemade mayonnaise around in a while, which also means we haven't had any mayonnaise around the house. There are no commercial brands that really compare. Wait there was one that was acceptable, but it had a short shelf life. We've been tending to make tuna salad with olive oil and vinegar, that's all, but I do miss it on the occasional cold steak or roast beef sandwich. I think Alton Brown is erring on the side of safety, both your health and his bank account. These days with rampant salmonela, I'm almost surprised anyone is suggesting making mayonnaise at all for fear of a lawsuit. That said, the shelf life is short when compared to the intert (dead) stuff in the supermarket jar. In addition to preservatives, my understanding is that the egg yolks are pasturized in the commerical stuff. It's just not the same product as you can make at home. I find most of it so sweet that the amount of sugar must act as a preservative. Make it in small batches and learn to throw out what you don't use in a reasonable time frame.

I thought they were very good, but I haven't had a thin crust pizza like that for some time and don't have much of a yardstick for comparison. It's not fair to compare them against the chewier crust of regular NY pizze. There's too much subjectivity there and for those who have a decided preference for thin, the news alone should be enough. I don't think they're a destination restaurant, but I think many would be glad for the opportunity to check them out. I'll go back.

Now that I've returned to the web page for that guide, it is a bit odd. It says "aparcacoches" on the English language page and that the restaurant is closed "Jueves y Sunday night." It does tend to make me worry about how well they check their information.

An address, phone number and a bit of information that may, or may not, be up to date at this link - Garabatu. Ditto - Chocolateria San Gines.

That's interesting. In what way does it show a different Adria or at least a different view of him? I guess I've read so damn much about him by now that successive posts tend to tell me more about the poster than about Adria. Most of what I've read may well have been on eGullet, but if eGullet still has the power to develop Adria in a more rounded way, we're doing something right.

A wise decision. Seriously, Cooks Tour was one of the more interesting and enjoyable shows on TV. Certain among the best of the food shows, but they always ran the danger of appealing to those who wanted to see Tony Bourdain, rather than learn more about the things at hand that intersted him. The balance was off in some of those shows for me. There was too often some frustration of not getting enough of the subject. With Adria as the subject, even at an hour, I suspect the conflict would have been greater. I think it would be easy to feed Adria to the sharks that see him as less of a cook than a crazed scientist. I'd even fear that would be the result of a half hearted attempt to do him justice, but with lots of laughs thrown in to appeal to a wide audience. I haven't always gotten every dish Adria's sent out, but both my meals there were compelling. They were rivoting experiences and joyful. I've been looking forward to this feature from the earliest comments you've made here on your visit to El Bulli. The QuickTime clips are excellent and I hope they foretell of a great presentation. Thanks for posting what seems to be an answer to my last post.

I took a brief look at that site, and although it's merely a first impression, it appears to be a marvelous site.

If memory serves, the price has gone up about 50% in five or six years. Add the drop in the dollar to that and it's less the bargain than it was a half decade ago for Americans. In terms of three star restaurants, the price is low compared to France and high compared to the rest of Spain. It is nevertheless, a value meal, if not the bargain it once was and that's just on comparative value without considering supply and demand. I'm sure Adria could raise prices and still keep the place full. My guess is that his prices will continue to rise until they are at least at par with three star places in France. Between our first and second meal, two years apart, I noticed a tendancy to recommend more expensive wines, but as evidenced by Neal's post, they still tend to recommend wines well below the price of the least expensive wines on a French three star list. This seems to be a trait shared by most Spanish restaurants. Wines in Spain seem less expensive than in France at retail as well. I'm not surprised to see a car with French plates loading cases of wine into the trunk in the north of Spain. Proximity to the French border will no doubt help keep prices in Catalunya and the Basque area rising. The French seem more willing to pay a higher price for dinner. The best of these restaurants are catering to an international trade just as the best restaurants in France have been doing for generations. The Spanish, or at least some of them, are also showing an inclination towards appreciating haute cuisine and food requiring a high degree of technology and my assumption is that restaurant prices in Spain will continue to rise. Enjoy it all now.

Lucy, your mother makes an excellent point you might consider if you'd not like to be alarmed. On the other hand, it makes the unlikely assumption that he had any choice in the matter.

"Threaten" seems an unnecessary way of looking at the way Adria's food challenges the diner. For all that the diner is challenged, I've witnessed very ordinary folk who weren't obsessed with food or obsessed with creativity, take to the food with an immediate joy and pleasure. Perhaps some of us are too locked up and protective of our life styles. Adria does challenge not only what we eat, but how we eat, at El Bulli. That's true, but I don't think there's anything threatening about it. I'd be curious to know how the show differs, not from what's on FoodTV now, but from the general approach and feeling of Cook's Tour as previously shown on FoodTV. More cerebral could be fascinating although as I mentioned above, it's possible to approach Adria's food on an immediate level and get a lot out of it. It will be a pity if this doesn't get exposure quickly.

I don't know if this will get lost here, or if everyone who eats pizza reads this thread religiously. There's a brand new little place with a brand new wood burning brick oven on the corner of Mott and Kenmare. They specialize in very thin crust small (10"-12"?) pizzas. I think it opened last week without much fanfare. L'asso, 192 Mott Street, 212.219.2353. A margherita is $10 and one with a heap of San Daniele prosciutto is $15. There are other combinations, some of which I found peculiar, but you never know until you try it. There are some salads, antipasti, pasta and a few main courses as well, but I assume the pizze are what they expect to bring in the trade. It's a very different pizza than the one served at Lombardi around the corner, but I'd bet a lot of the people waiting on line there might enjoy the pizze at L'asso where there was no line.

That's interesting. I've always assumed one's name had to match one on a list to use that number successfully. That number will often work up to a few hours before dinner, but there comes a time when have to call the restaurant directly and by then the best they're likely to offer is an invitation to stop by and see how long the wait is. What works well is if there's a huge blizzard that day and if you live a few blocks away. Tourists may trudge in, but many uptowners just decide to call in for food rather than suffer getting there through the snow. That's probably true at many places, especially destination places that draw from outside their immediate neighborhood. That's also interesting. I haven't noticed if Sunday brunch is as crowded as I thought it was. Then again, contrary to what I've posted, we once walked in for an early dinner and were seated right away. Our problem is that even an early dinner for us is well after the rush usually begins. We've also waited three quarters of an hour at the bar for a table in the bar--where I believe they don't take reservations. Most of the time we just peek in and see enough people waiting for a table and don't bother.

I don't think I'm in a rush to go for the first time. If they have that attitude, fuck 'em. Every New Yorker has a story. I'm told there's a story for every light on Broadway or something like that. Most of then are lies told to prove how tough we are. There's often a crowd around the hostess' desk, people with reservations who are drinking at the bar seem to appear out of nowhere and it's easy enough to feel you've been snubbed, especially if you're insecure. The place is usually packed and rarely are reservations spaced out enough to guarantee a seat at your appointed time. That sucks. If if sucks bad enough to ruin your evening, it's not your kind of place. I've watched people I thought were behind me, get seated ahead of me and I've watched people I was sure were ahead of me, still standing when I was seated. I've been seated all over the place with no apparent sense of anything other than first come first served. I have the feeling certain baquettes are reserved for VIPs, but I've been sat there too.

Sorry but Hesser is wrong. The best meal is brunch and I think it's served on both Saturday and Sunday and it's better than either lunch or breakfast. It is, or course, less French than breakfast or lunch, although the boudin noire and eggs are superb and not exactly all-American either. Otherwise I think she got it right. I probably disagree on some of the favorite dishes and those best left unordered. The vegetable plate is probably best left unordered if you can eat fish or meat in any form. The confit de canard is not the best I've ever had, but it's far better than the last one I had in a brasserie in France and a good value. I've had good tartes or pies from the bakery, but the Pavlova is the dessert I'd recommend. I'll bet I'm repeating myself from some old post. I am sorry she reviewed it. It will just bring it back up on people's minds and make it all that much harder to get a table. For me, the biggest fault is that I can't walk in without a reservation--not even at lunch. I suppose one can do that at odd hours, but dinner seems to start at five and I don't tend to see empty tables until after nine on an early night. If I didn't know the chefs, I wouldn't recommend this place at all and hope traffic would fall of so I could use it as the neighborhood place I'd like to have at my disposal.

Rogelio, it took me a few menus to comprehend what was meant by "foie" and that it means two different things in Spanish and French and nothing in English. It probably makes no sense that we don't call it "fat liver" or that you don't call it "higado gordo" but that's the way it is and just one of the things that makes reading any menu in a translated form rather scary.

Oh. To me, "necktie"=bowtie; "long tie" is the kind that goes straight down, starting at the neck. Maybe that's an idiosyncratic usage of mine. Very idiosyncratic. A bow is but a less common form of necktie.

Some diners' interests appear to lie more in the area of appreciation of excellent raw materials that are minimally processed. Ferran Adria's cooking is that of intervention and manipulation. The manipulation is such that the final product that appears on the table may no longer be recognizable to the diner. An appreciation that this may be desireable is a necessity if one is have any chance of enjoying the meal. It seems apparent that this is the direction in which Adria is going and we can expect more of it until such time as a different aspect of cooking might appeal to him. Perhaps Adria represents the triumph of the chef over his materials. Perhaps that's of no appeal to some. I'm reminded of a comment attributed to Gertrude Stein in defense of her habit of collecting art. Some might question the very idea that this was questionable, but such is the way people's ideas vary. She said that she likes to collect the work of men, the way other people like to collect the work of oysters. She was referring to pearls and by association, jewels. Some people favor restaurants that provide the rarest and most pristine materials, while others are more interested in the chef's handiwork. I don't think we should forgive the use of second rate quality in supposedly fine restaurant, but the choice of ignoring rare materials is a decision that can easily be justified in many ways on many levels, assuming one has an open mind as to what fine food may be. I have another thought on fine dining in Spain beyond El Bulli and on the nature of ingredients chosen. Pig rarely finds its way to the haute cuisine tables of France except as in forcemeat, or occasionally as ham. During our last trip in Spain, we composed several menus entirely of seafood and fish, but when we took the tasting menu, or left the composition of our meal up to the chef, we had roast suckling pig as a highlight everytime except once when we had pork cheeks.

When a Spaniard refers to foie, he usually means foie gras. Castellano: foie Français: foie gras English: foie gras Castellano: higado Français: foie English: liver

I don't know what populism has to do with this. While populism is not likely to endorse rampant use of caviar or truffles, let alone percebes, it is far less likely to endorse creativity. The Emperor's New Clothes is a tale with a populist's moral--if it's not understood thought a child's innocent eyes, it's a fake. Whatever you may say about Adria, he's not a populist chef. "Fresh without taste" is an interesting observation. Small is yet another observation and the relationship is odd. I recall the story, about a resort hotel, with the punchline that went "the food was awful, and such small portions." Small portions might indicated an attempt at cost saving, but Adria's tasting menus are always composed of small portions. Fat Guy is not a fan of tasting menus, I am, but none of this is relevant to the prejudices and experiences of your anonymous friend. Without knowing his prejudices, his comments add little to what I already know and like about El Bulli. How did he know they were fresh? Fresh seafood in Catalunya is usually very tasty. Are we to really believe Adria has gone out of his way find tasteless specimens? The paucity of seafood in the menu is another thing, but without knowing what was there, I'm missing key information that would enable me to make an educated comment. Perhaps Adria just assumes everyone who wants unadorned perfect seafood will go to Rafa's. Really all I get is that your friend is someone who won't enjoy El Bulli. I'm sorry he took up a cover that might have gone appreciated. Not all great food is meant for all great diners. I needn't disparage your friend to relish Adria's work. Minority opinions needn't be taken or left. They just are. The appreciation of food is such a relative thing and quite subjective. Talk about "creativity" is quite different than talk about creativity. There's a disparaging effect of putting creativity in quotation marks. Clearly there's no common ground to discuss creativity if it's disparaged on one side. Creativity is not unlike fresh truffles in that when it's gone, it's no longer a commodity. On that I will agree, but I will also enjoy it while it's in season and not refuse to recognize it's value because someday it may run out. What I do not agree on is the need to assume disparaging intentions of the chef or predict what he will do in the future, let alone judge him by that prejudice. If your friend believe the creativity has dried up, that's another thing and it would require an understanding that it was once there. It is one thing to champion that which one understands and loves. If it's a true appreciation, it will not require, or even lead to disparaging that in which others find value. Vmilor, have you been to El Bulli recently? I am curious about your perceptions and observations about the changing food as opposed to just the way the menu reads and the odd reaction of anonymous friends.