John Whiting
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Posts posted by John Whiting
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So am I, but historically, fusion cuisine is the only kind there is. When the time scale is slow enough, we scarcely notice. The evidence is in my Oxford Food Symposium paper....I'm still unpleased by what some try to pass as "fusion." -
How about "emeritus", which according to my father, was from the Latin e or ex, meaning out, and meritus, meaning he deserved it?I couldn't decide among "ex", "ageing" or "old". -
Ignoring the sources of ingredients, which involve questions of Third World Poverty and food miles, how we actually prefer our food to be prepared and served is one of the few decisions we make whose outcome harms no one. In many ways, I'm a compulsive moralist, but where cuisine is concerned, I acknowledge no obligation except my own pleasure. The panoply of Paris bistros gives me more joy per euro than any other place I know. If I lived there, I might become bored with it--perhaps after half a century.Only your palate is the judge. What else could be? -
Ex?Two ex-hippies thinking alike.
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That begs the question. Those of us who participate in this forum are conditioned by classical European cuisine in ways we're not even aware of. Oriental tastes (before the Western invasion) differed radically from our own, let alone those of African tribes. To set our taste as the standard, we must inexorably declare our cultural superiority to those who differ from us. (That's an intellectually arguable position, but a highly unfashionable one.)What about "what is not good to eat" for a definition?To bring it closer to home, there are now strong differences as to how thoroughly cooked a bird or a piece of meat should be. I don't like meat that's almost impossible to get off the bone, but many highly regarded chefs serve it that way. They believe that the taste and texture are altered too much by further cooking, and that this is a defect. I don't.
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This immediately runs into the problem of what exactly is too far. There are certain inherited preferences such as a liking for sweetness and a dislike of bitterness, but even these can be set aside. Ultimately, the foundations of taste in food are 100% culturally determined. A quick glance through Calvin W. Schwabe's Unmentionable Cuisine demonstrates that there is no possible combination of ingredients or cooking methods which has not at some time been considered to be not only acceptible, but eminently desireable. This even applies to certain foods that are downright poisonous.Second, some of the young guys play the equivalent of too too far out music, so dissonant and cacaphonal as to be jarring; their stuff pushes the envelope tooooo far ...In music, "unacceptable dissonance" once included Beethoven's late quartets. As for the motets of Gesualdo...
One man's Mede is another man's Persian.
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Are we approaching the moment when chefs, like avant-garde artists, will tell us openly that their creations are not designed to give us pleasure, but to challenge our preconceptions? That their primary purpose is self-expression? That , for the sake of enlightenment, we must accept discomfort, even suffering? The next stage will be hotel rooms with missing windows, cold showers and lumpy beds.I told a chef in Lyon why I was disappointed in a dish of monk fish. He explained the process of marination and cooking that produced the result that left me disappointed, as if knowing how he ruined the fish (in my opinion) would make it right. -
From Authentic? Or Just Expensive? , a paper to be given at the Oxford Food Symposium on September 4th:I think what we're talking about here is dilution, internationalization and a start towards regression to the mean. What we are seeing in these restaurants has similarities to we are seeing in other domains of high leisure, say, "luxury" hotels and resorts or so-called luxury goods where you see Prada and Gucci stores in factory outlets for which such companies are making deliberately inferior goods. It's bringing the so-called good life to, as Bux writes, "a broader middle class."HAUTE cuisine, like haute couture, is a badge of status that has evolved from a sine qua non of human survival. Together they determine the face and figure that the affluent present to the world. Today’s massive shift in culinary emphasis from the vital to the cosmetic has had three interlocking effects: (1) Never before have so many consumers aspired to be gourmets. (2) Gastronomy is now a major industry with a large and prosperous clientele, requiring a complex network of specialist producers and suppliers. (3) This network is globally interactive, so that any country’s most prestigious restaurants are likely to be as ethnically indeterminate as its airline terminals. -
The Emperor's Nouvelle CuisineThe moral of The Emperor's New Clothes is as cynical as it appears to be wise. -
It's much easier to finance research that supports a profitable industry than "negative" research that no one makes any money from. It's called Market Forces Science.Today's New York Times Magazine had two letters to the Editor on Amanda Hesser's article; the latter noting that "since the 1960's" it's been known that containers made of plastic can "leach chemicals into food" and advocating for less harmful plastics. -
I haven't eaten at ze, and I haven't yet been disappointed in a recommendation of John T's. But whatever the quality, I'm becoming increasingly unhappy with elaborate sculptural arrangements on a plate. They seem to be designed for maximum air exposure, so that cold dishes are warm and hot dishes tepid before you're half way through eating them.
Functionally, the best service is hot or cold food served in heated or cooled containers to keep them that way, with only the garnish already dished up. The problem is that food spread out on a large plate looks like a more generous portion. In some restaurants, a closed container of appropriate size would make it more obvious that you're getting a tasting portion for the price of a plat.
Of course, when the portions are that small, they haven't time to change temperature before you've finished eating. I'm reminded of the old restaurant joke:
Waiter: How did you find your steak, sir?
Diner: Easy! I moved a pea and there it was!
EDIT: Of course, if the portions are of what used to be normal size and compactness, the food will keep itself at the correct temperature on a single plate.
In Switzerland, the main dish used to come in a casserole containing two full portions. One was served to you and the other kept hot until you had finished the first. You did not serve yourself, but waited--never for long. If you were able to finish the second helping--each of them generous--you had merely shown yourself to be normal.
The paucity of fat Swiss must have been due to the topography.
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This point is crucial. The moment when the surprise becomes compulsory rather than voluntary is the moment I walk out the door....As the name implies, he wouldn’t tell me since that would remove the element of surprise. -
Some trendy bistros are so considerate as to warn me off by the names they have chosen. This is one of them.
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Winsome Dim Sum?... maybe the restaurant could have been called by some other name which included the words 'dim sum' such as 'eat dim sum' or 'dim sum place'. -
In conjunction with this series, Stein has been quoted as saying some rather stupid things about French wine; but my reaction to the first program was that it was good enough in its own right to be judged--and responded to--on its own merits, rather than digging into the motives and the politics of how and why it was made. It's like a recipe--if it works, I'm not interested in whether the chef also makes something else that's terrible, or happens to be screwing somebody else's wife.
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I'm very fond of this brasserie. It's the sort of "ordinary" French eating place which in any English-speaking country would cause trumpets to sound and cymbals to clash.A bit back, we ate at the quite acceptable and affordable Brasserie de la Paix -
Marlena Spieler enthusiastically recommends Promenades Gourmandes. Paule's web site reads as though it were exactly what you're looking for.Does anyone have any recommendations for accommodation and for a great cooking class that I can take? I would love to attend one that will take me through the market pre-cooking for a tour. -
I would have taken you to be an artist!Perhaps I'm an avant-garde tourist. I know I'm not a rich transient.
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Yes, but at the upper end of the scale. It goes back to the old Italian restaurant joke: Pollo sorpresa--the surprise is, there's no chicken.Wasn't L'Astrance one of the sources of the menu surprise concept? -
I wonder why it is necessary to chemically compound these beverages when winemakers have been producing that genre for years. Cheaper? Volume?
Items that are manufactured rather than grown give the business more total control over the finished product and a bigger profit margin.
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It's increasingly difficult to do so in a culture in which entertainment at the most superficial level pays the piper and calls the tune. Those who are remotely serious about anything (except sport and making money) end up being apologetic about it. Serious about food? That must mean that you're prepared to pay top dollar!If you have unlimited dosh, you can try to ignore the entertainment and concentrate on the food. The rest of us don't have that option. -
Food lovers in Britain have an endless problem. There are a relatively small number of people who want to make good food and a large number who regard food as entertainment. Any place that's good enough to attract the food lovers will ultimately attract the rest, who tend to take over by their sheer numbers plus the depth of their purses.
It's much the same thing that has always happened to artist colonies. First, they attract the artists because they are both picturesque and cheap; then the avant-garde tourists discover them and start hanging around for the ambiance; then rich transients start buying up the property; and finally only the rich can afford to remain. It's the story of Le Baux de Provence, St Paul de Vence, Carmel in California, Provincetown on Cape Cod, and any number of other places I have loved but to which I no longer return.
I don't yet have a problem with the Borough Market. The stalls where I have always bought are still there; I ignore the rest. I go on a Friday at around 11:30, when the tourists haven't arrived and the lunchtime nibblers haven't yet descended from their offices. Practically every stall I want is open or will be by the time I leave. And I get first pick of the crabs.
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I'm not sure whether you're distinguishing between a menu surpise and a menu degustation in which the content is unspecified. One of our favorite restaurants for years has been Restaurant Le Mas in the Hotel de Lorraine, Longuyon, where Gérard Tisserant, in addition to a full carte, offers a menu consisting of a series of small courses based on what the market yielded that day. We once stayed there for a weekend and had the menu on two successive days; the content was totally different, and neither day included a course we didn't like enormously.
Since there are virtually no foods that I inherently dislike, I have never had a problem with no-choice restaurants, starting thirty years ago with Chez Panisse. It bothers me no more than going to someone's house and having to eat what's put in front of me. The most important factor is being able to choose, not the courses, but the cook! There are some whose output I would gobble up no matter what they served, others that I wouldn't trust with a potato salad. If a chef is dishonest, then the greater the selection, the more different ways he can cheat you!
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Rules is popular with tourists, but it's not a rip-off. I ate there fifty years ago and again last month with friends from the US. Our roast beef was excellent. We did not tip the carver, in fact we didn't even see him. The roast was not trundled around to our table; that sounds more like Simpson's. Instead our plates were brought to us with meat to the degree of doneness we had requested. They contained more than we would have dared to ask for.
The bill for four, including two bottles of the decent house Bordeaux and the automatically added gratuity, came to around £200. Worth every penny!
Ze Kitchen Galerie - the good and the bad
in France: Dining
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