John Whiting

I'm very curious about something which can probably only be answered anecdotally: How do salaries/work conditions in the "best" restaurants compare with those in the worst fast food joints, which I would expect to be terrible? With so many upmarket establishments now boasting of their local/seasonal/organic ingredients, are there any who make a point of fair trading for their supplies and fair paying of their employees? Any at all? I would think that, ethics aside, it would make a good sales gimmick.

Today's NYT. This is New York, but it could be almost anywhere. No distinction in the article between fine dining and fast food.

John, my apologies. I didn't realize that the {comments} were your own. Perhaps I hit a bad night; but a bad night it certainly was.

I just don't understand why this place continues to be recommended on any grounds other than cheapness and the appearance of terroir-devotion. click

← Bread and wine, obviously. But if it transubstantiated, he'd be in serious trouble.

Do remember that people with sophisticated palates do not necessarily have sophisticated computers and/or broadband. A complex site with high-definition pictures and hi-fi music may come up quickly on the latest equipment, but prospective diners with ancient Macs and slow modems (there still are such people, and some of them eat at good restaurants) will not be kindly disposed towards you after they've waited forever to download info their rigs can't handle.

The answer can be given in a single sentence: The article concentrates on culinary authority coming from the top down; a genuine national cuisine comes from the bottom up. The author(s) should have paid less attention to the high fliers and more to the vast world of ethnic cuisine, both imported and indigenous. EDIT: I've just retrieved the entire article without a sub. This may remain possible for a day or so.

The tricky bit for most of those who worry about where their food is coming from is not paying for the shovel, but acquiring the garden.

Though witty and entertaining, the article is ten years old and bears little relationship to modern food prices and recommended diets. But at the end, he does make the point that American diets are meat-heavy, and therefore expensive, while French and Italian "peasant" recipes use modest quantities of utility meats as a condiment -- a flavoring agent for vegetables, grains and pastas.

That's sad news. I wonder if it's changed hands? To my knowledge, it's been reliable for a good twenty years.

I partly agree - they do not need to be chained to the vicious circle that is part of the hidden cost of cheap food, but they are at the moment, as are many people who are not low income. My 3 stage solution to this problem (and many others) has always been the same:1) Education 2) Education 3) Education ← Just at the moment when education budgets all over the country are being cut to the bone and the bones pulverized. These food programs are invaluable for those who are already plugged into alternative lifestyles; but for the rest, they demand a total rejection of a lifetime's habits, including the probable scorn of their families and friends. By all means, make use of the resources that are available to you, but don't scorn those who are fenced in by custom and necessity.

So many such articles are thinly or thickly disguised demonstrations that the unhealthy poor have only themselves to blame. They remind me of the New Yorker Helen Hokinson cartoon of the matron saying to the beggar, "Why don't you go to Majorca? You can live there for practically nothing."

Ah, Lavendou, once home to a Michelin-starred bouillabaisse which proved an even more negative adventure than yours:

Bux, thanks for this detailed reminder of the Epoisse saga. Your words apply with equal relevence to wine. For me, the elusive "wow" factor in food and drink needn't describe some radically new and expensive perfection, but rather the sensation that occurs when something that's usually ordinary raises your eyebrows. There may be real flaws in the equation, but, most importantly, there is identity. I prefer an uncertain relative excellence to a totally predictable, and therefore boring, perfection. (Perfect is another word for dead.)

The Guardian considers the sad fact that no one wants to take over from Shaun Hill. It could be related to the fact that the ancient building's architecture dictates that it be run by a single chef serving a handful of diners. Unless, of course, Brake Brothers are called in. Rip out the stove and there's plenty of room in the kitchen for a big freezer and a couple of microwaves . . . EDIT: It's going for £550,000. Across the street from us in Hampstead Garden Suburb, a nondescript International Style semi, similar to ours, is going for £100,000 more. Hmmm...

I'm delighted that Anna Maria is still in business; I hope that she is still vigorously rolling out the pasta in the kitchen annex you go through to get to the dining room. This is a genuine everyday trattoria. I recommended it to a frieind from Turin who was studying in Bologna for a couple of weeks and she ate there the whole time. Staying at the nearby University Hotel on a couple of occasions, I did the same. It's that "better standard of ordinariness" I'm always carrying on about.

Good fish and chips require a constant turnover of freshly fried ingredients. Pubs just don't get the orders to maintain it, and so they usually serve partially cooked frozen portions that come to the table as soggy pulp encased in wet limp batter.In any fish and chip establishment, you're best going at busy times when you have to wait. Beware the empty shops with already cooked fish ready to be served from under hot lights. Ask that your fish be freshly cooked. A good way to accomplish this is to ask which fish on their list aren't ready to serve. They can hardly refuse to tell you; if they do, find another chippie.

I posted: Is that not the one? ← My apologies. I read it carelessly. The address I know is 58, rue de la Montagne Ste-Geneviève. It's at the corner of the two streets.

I was not happy with the rather rushed, scatty ambiance and did not find that the food made up for it. I might have thought I'd just struck a bad evening, except that later that year Pudlo Paris gave it one of its rare Ay! Ay! Ay! write-offs.

No one has even speculated as to whether it might be my little favorite just around the corner from the Pantheon. Probably too down market.

I'm delighted to hear John echo so unequivocally my own minute-by-minute chronicle of an hour spent in this depressing place. Here

Several years ago in Versailles, in an ancient resataurant now diseased, the dining room had a row of tables along one wall designated as the smoking area. It was unpleasantly dark, and so no one sat there. The non-smoking area, i.e. the rest of the room, was of course full of smokers. Fortunately, the French exhibit the same indifference in their enforcement of the EU's cheese-making regulations.

Alain Passard gets uncooked beets somewhere. Perhaps the most remarkable single dish I had at l'Arpege was a portion of a beet brought to our table encased in the salt in which it had been baked. The waitress attacked it with a hammer and chisel and the aroma that wafted out when the shell cracked would in itself have been worth the price of the meal. EDIT: The beet was cooked whole, of course. I had a portion of it.

munchymom,Nov 22 2004, 07:22 AM says: It's an uphill battle. Allow me to quote from my posting in the Super Size Me thread:

docsconz, Nov 21 2004, 02:12 PM: Right. When we talk about choice and personal responsibility, we should bear in mind that the greatest volume of instruction that children get, and the most expertly targeted, is from TV commercials. They form children into mutually reenforcing pressure groups against those among them who, from their own or their parents convictions, try to hold out. And when the schools join the conspiracy, the nonconformists haven't a hope in hell. Classroom education, in the words of Marshal MacLuhan, is reduced to "a form of civil defence against media fallout".