John Whiting

I came to that conclusion two years ago.

An amusing issue, but a pale shadow of The Cook's Room: A Celebration of the Heart of the Home, London, Macdonald Illustrated, 1991. This magnificent photographic and textual exploration of kitchens all over the world was edited by the late Alan Davidson, with individual chapters by a galaxy of star cookery writers and historians, including Geraldene Holt, Terence Conran, Maria José Sevilla, Diana Kennedy, M.F.K. Fisher, Erizabeth Lambert Ortiz, Richard Hosking, Sri Owen and twenty-three other experts on the various countries and cuisines included. No celebrity chefs or costumed dogs, I'm afraid. It was too good to stay in print but there are lots of used copies available through Amazon at very reasonable prices. If you want to preserve your copy of the Telegraph Mag as a graphic example of how far we've come in thirteen years, it's just the right size to slip inside the cover.

Given the ignorance of certain foreign tourists, together with their indignation when confronted with the unfamiliar, I can understand a French waiter's erring on the side of caution. More often than not, the question is likely to be appropriate.

There's an age-old tradition in America that it's safe to lie about things that no one knows about.

That's very bad news. Their Paris-based publications have often been distinguished, such as their Paris Walks, which called on the expertise of a remarkable stable of talents and authorities. I wonder where they went wrong -- or was there not enough demand for the best that they were capable of?

An exquisitely aristocratic diatribe and, for non-francophones, well worth retrieving from the NYT website before it starts costing money.

It's about to have me as well, though that may not necessarily be a recommendation. She's the editor of the Time Out Paris Eating and Drinking, which I've often found useful, though it doesn't come out as often as it should.

Britain has something in common with most of America: there is no foundation of a gastronomic culture learned at home and shared with one's peers, and so those with a bit of money to spare are open to suggestion, which usually comes in the form of the loudest hype to which they're exposed. In London and a handful of other British connurbations, there are enough discriminating diners to support a certain number of good restaurants, especially those that serve a knowledgable ethnic community; but there are so many gimmicky establishments that flutter for a while like showy butterflies that if you're particular, you must excercise caution. My own affection is for those Paris bistros that are so integrated into the community they serve that you can feel the taught threads going out the doors and windows, being twitched at the other end by the loyal patrons who keep the establishment firmly on course.

In pre-revolution France, a would-be Bourgeois Gentilhomme could hire a corps of music, dance, fencing, philosophy and fashion masters to remake his public image. In today’s world of resolutely down-market celebrity, Molière's plot would be greatly simplified: Monsieur Jourdain would form a TV production company and put himself totally in the hands of the director.

Yes, that's it; couldn't remember the name. In the tours I did of BC, Wash and Ore, I was hardly aware of crossing the borders.

What did you think? It bought a wistful smile to sommelier Josh Clark's face who said that it was the sort of bottle he would open when watching the hockey. ← I had the good fortune to be given the last third of the bottle to take home with me. Lacking both the opportunity and the enthusiasm for hockey, I pared it with an excellent extra mature cheddar. It was a happy marriage.

What struck me most favorably about the whole occasion was its lack of commerciality and hard sell – “laid back” is the operative phrase. Ingo Grady of Mission Hill, for instance, spoke as generously of the wines of his fellow-vintners as of his own. My own lasting impression of British Columbia, gleaned from several visits over a couple of decades, is of a somewhat bolshie region with its own distinctive attitudes. (It’s been suggested that Oregon, Washington and B.C. together would make a rather good country.) There’s a diversity-within-unity that is well exemplified in the amazing ecological spectrum of climates and soils along the length of the Okanagan Valley. The varying skills of the vintners are equally diverse, having received their training in Germany, New Zealand, France and elsewhere. When I innocently asked if they had any technicians from Davis (the Great Unifier), I was hotly told, “Not Davis – they invented phyloxera!” I loved it. The result of all this jealously guarded independence was a range of wines that I would love to see a master of wine identify collectively as to region in a blind tasting. The thing they had most in common was that they were all distinguished wines, of an excellence in which comparative merit became a question of primus inter pares. One might argue about which circle of heaven they should occupy, but there was no question as to whether they should be admitted through the pearly gates. Finally, I must agree with Andy that the Blue Mountain Pinot Noir was a revelation, whose rich complexity came through even after our generous imbibing and minimal use of the spittoons. A French somalier asked to identify it might be covered in confusion. My only difference from the consensus was over the other distinguished Blue Mountain, the method champagnoise. I found it a bit thin and anemic. (I mention this only to demonstrate that my general praise is not born of mere diplomacy. ) Finally, my thanks to Andy for his imagination and persistence in putting this together.

Did you see the article on the Potluck in Gastronomica a couple of years ago? It costs money to retrieve it from their archives, but if you're interested I can send it to you privately. There's a bit more, not included in the article, in my history of Chez Panisse.

In Berkeley, California, up to at least the early 60s, there was a butcher who specialized in horse meat "for animal consumption". Curiously, it was butchered into the same cuts as for humans. I used to buy their steaks regularly; they were delicious and dirt cheap.

Have eaten there several times, including a magnificent truffle luncheon served for twenty-five guests of the Salon International du Livre Gourmand. A French truffle expert sitting next to me estimated that the chef must have disposed of a couple of kilos. It was the only occasion on which, by the end of the meal, I didn't want any more.It's also a very decent Logis hotel, with reasonable rates. It was cheaper still when we stayed overnight in their parking lot in our campervan, which they let us do without even a raised eyebrow.

I have bad news for you: in the long run it doesn't work. (See my home page.)

Indeed, there are a number of French chefs who could carry out such a project, and as a living rather than a dead museum. But how many besides Alice would have even considered trying to do it with miniscule workspace, only ninety covers and no roof?!

I've found Time Out Paris Eating and Drinking very useful in the past, and there's a new edition due out any moment. Their reviews are just long enough to get an idea of the ambiance as well as the cuisine, and written in such a way that you can usually tell whether the bias of the reviewer corresponds to your own. John T's leads and summaries are as useful and up-to-date as any you'll find, but difficult to access in situ unless you're equipped with laptop and wi-fi. My own website is by no means encyclopaedic, but it's just been updated and is the first hit you get from about 80,000 if you Google Paris Bistros -- or click below. (I've finally mastered Dreamweaver to the point where I can update and expand the site myself, so I'm no longer "reliant on the kindness of strangers". )

Here's a passage on the subject that was part of my history, but which I edited out as no longer relevant. The info largely comes from the Gopnik New Yorker article already cited. (I could place it temporarily on mywebsite in its entirety, with a private URL here, but I doubt if that would meet uGullet's stringent copyright rules.) [Let those who will be responsible for the culinary banalities of London's Millennium Dome read this and slink away in disgrace.]But there are problems to be solved before Alice's vision can become a reality. The space allotted, though affording a pleasant view, has limited capabilities. “Where do the employees wash their hands?” Alice wonders. “Where are the umbrellas for the rainy days? It's only ninety covers, which is even fewer than Chez Panisse. It's really more of a tearoom size than anything else. I worry that the space is too small to express what we'd like to express.”

I come late to this thread. The reason that the Louvre restaurant project was dropped, as I understand it, was that there was no space to provide a work area that Alice considered large enough to service the dining area. Anyone who's not quite certain just what Chez Panisse was and is about can take a look at my brief history (read and approved by Alice), first written about four years ago and in the process of being updated. It's just gone up on my website but is not yet indexed.

Our eating is being inexorably altered in much the same ways as our listening, our reading, our travelling and every other aspect of our lives. Carlo Petrini has showed us, in his Slow Food model, how to invent expandable social structures which bring together like-minded people wishing to preserve threatened traditions. They won't change the world, but they can create functioning time/space capsules within which the inexorable can at least be held back for a few moments. In the quasi-optimistic words of Ezra Pound, "two or three about the temples were enough to keep alive the old religions".

I hope that the followers of culinary fashion won't try to set up a spurious rivalry between Tom Conran and Fergus Henderson. [EDIT: I wasn't, of course, referring to Suzi's valid comment above.] Tom's mother is of course Caroline Conran, whose translations/editions of the great nouvelle cuisine chefs introduced them to British readers. I quote the following from private correspondence, with her permission:

John Vidal reports from Porto Alegre

A recent NYT article noted that the US government are no longer producing detailed statistics on the agricultural labor force, namely because it is now so preponderantly composed of illegal immigrants as to be extremely embarrassing. It's ironic that in most countries anti-immigrant sentiment runs highest when the economy is most dependent on their ubiquitous cheap labor.

The former look better on your resume than the latter. It's also a different kind of learning experience. For whatever it is worth, many take a lesser salalry to work in a special restaurant for a year of two while they're still learning the trade. ← My question wasn't "why" but "whether". I'm asking, not just about ambitious chefs on the way up, but also those who are working more or less at the level at which they expect to continue. Put it another way: are there restaurants which publicly pride themselves on the care they take with their suppliers and their staff as well as with their ingredients?