John Whiting

My wife and I had the good fortune to be in the front row for his Guild of Food Writers demo three nights ago, which included the pig tails. They were delicious; could have benefitted from a slightly longer cooking, but demos are always a bit rushed. I found the grilled, marinated calf's heart rather tough, its chewability largely dependant on the thinness of the slices. I'm very fond of heart, but prefer a long slow braize which gradually turns resistance to succulence. We'll be back to St John yet again next Saturday night. Quick, Watson, the game's afoot!

All of Charles Shere's 2004 Italian Journals (26 installments so far) are now posted on his website, together with links to photos: http://www.shere.org/Italy2004.html

This correspondence does not leave me with any certainty as to who was in the right, but it does suggest strongly that the management handled the situation inexpertly. If I were they, I would think very carefully in the future about how to respond to "offensive" diners. They are the professionals, and they have much more to lose from any public drama. Unless you deliberately cultivate a macho image, it is embarrassing to lose your cool. I find it impossible to imagine any such situation arrising at the Merchant House -- which, in fact, it didn't, and with the same party. EDIT: A vital "im" was omitted before "possible".

I find it curious that a small group of budding professionals should have approached these two meals with such anticipation and been so delighted with one but turned off by the other – and not the food, but rather the psychological ambience. They may have behaved irritatingly in some fashion – but deliberately, when they had committed so much time and money to the experience? Management should have been able to deal smoothly with such a minor contretemps; presumably the group were not shouting their displeasure and throwing the food about the room. I would venture a guess that they were behaving better than many a high-rolling table of pubescent stockbrokers. Sometimes it's wise to remember, both at table and in post-mortem dissection, that a dinner is only a meal.

Thank you for joining us. Your books are a never-ending source of both enlightenment and chuckles. As in so much of human activity, cooks may do the right thing for the wrong reason. For instance, as you demonstrate so convincingly, “sealing in” the meat juices with high heat does no such thing, but it does create a very tasty carbonised outer layer. This has been done for centuries. Cookery has always been the most pragmatic of technologies; if a technique doesn’t work you know it almost immediately. Is it arguable that the new scientific approach has not so much changed the way that cooks work as accellerated the rate of change? Like the rest of our lives, our cooking methods seem to have undergone a sort of time-lapse photography. New techniques are declared obsolete almost as soon as they are invented, so that an exciting new cuisine is traded in for the next model as quickly as our automobiles. Do you ever wish that those chefs who are at the cutting edge of inventiveness would take the time to refine their techniques and allow us to absorb them before discarding them in favor of the next novelty?

It was with Marc Singer as chef and his wife front-of-house that I had my terrible experience. One member of my party happened to be a prominent Chicago restaurant critic, so they didn't do themselves any favors.

I have serious problems with this place. I went with a friend; one of us had the coq au vin and the other the boeuf bourgignon. They each came in the same thick black sauce, unpleasantly pungent, ladled out of a cauldron. It was obvious that the the meats had been added to each after they were cooked; they had neither the color nor the flavor they would have had if the sauce had been produced by the actual process of cooking the meat. It was rather the effect one gets in inferior Indian restaurants where all the sauces and the meats are cooked separately and then combined to order.

For lunch, there's one of the last of the old working men's cafés, L'Acchiardo, 38 rue Doite, Tel 04 93 85 51 16. Excellent soupe de poisson and entrecote au poivre.

Mine was in fact taken in 2019.

The 19th is not exactly a foodie mecca. La Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie made thoughtful provision for a gourmet restaurant conveniently near its metro stop, of an architectural elegance appropriate to its location. As this photo reveals, it was not a roaring success.

I hesitate to disagree with John, but my one (and only) meal there was not a total success . . . Sorry to hear that. I haven't eaten there but was going on what seemed to be a concensus of reputation. I note that it's now part of a chain.

An old brasserie, well-spoken of and unchanged since 1930, is Au Boeuf Couronné, 188 av Jean-Jaurés, 01 42 39 54 54. Their specialty is steak, but their salmon is said to be excellent. Veritable vegetarians would be less than happy.

You'll find one man's idiosyncratic opinions if you click below in my signature on Whitings Writings.

I tend to listen most carefully to those whose opinions I've learned to trust. With Marlena, for instance, although we report different responses to Le Trumilou, I have agreed with her evaluations so often that I would try without hesitation any place she recommended. As to a report from a stranger, I would be liable to evaluate the prose style as a means of determining trustworthiness. And then there's John Talbott. As soon as I saw his photo I knew that he was infinitely wise and took his every word as gospel.

Le Trumilou The basic cuisine of historic bistros can arouse very personal responses at different times and under different circumstances. Chartier’s does not summon me back; Le Trumilou’s does. The latter is an ancient and simple bar/restaurant on the river behind the Hotel de Ville. A recommendation first reached me from Walter Trampler by way of Simon Bainbridge; musicians, who are often stuck in foreign cities for days at a time, can be diligent seekers-out of bargain gastronomic intelligence. On one of Electric Phoenix’s concert appearances in Paris I guided them there for our first night’s dinner. It was easy walking distance from our hotel and well away from the expensive food factories that line the boulevards. Two large dining rooms with old-fashioned white linen tablecloths flank the bar, where academics and laborers sip their coffee or play the pinball machine. The waiters have been there as long as the furniture, and so have the menus, which offer plats du jour on a weekly rota, including stuffed cabbage, blanquette de veau, potée, and catfish with a garlicky aïoli which could make you persona non grata for the rest of your Paris sojourn. On this occasion I went for their tripe à la mode de caen, a huge bowl of it, properly made. Such dishes are among the reasons I keep returning to France. It’s now almost impossible to cook good tripe in England because it is illegal to sell it unbleached except for animal consumption. There used to be a place in London where you didn’t have to bark for it – the huge Japanese food center in Colindale, North London, where inscrutable Orientals were allowed to purchase their curious foodstuffs. I’m told that it has closed, so it’s back to Le Trumilou or Chez Denise whenever I have an urge for tripe so overpowering that even the London tabloids can’t satisfy it. Set meals are 13,50€ and 16,50€ Le Trumilou, 84, quai de l’Hotel-de-Ville, 4th, Tel 01 42 77 63 98 ################################################## Ma Bourgogne (Maigret's favorite restaurant) is a good lunchtime experience if you stay with the gaspacho, steak tartare and cantal vielle. The latter has come from the same Auvergne mountain supplier for many years, and is good as one gets.

I and three friends had a dinner there which was so baroque that I haven't been able to write it up to my satisfaction. It was a blend of pretentious cuisine, an overworked and incompetant waiter, lack of proper backup from the front of house manager (the chef's wife), a refusal to accept criticism, and rude interference from the occupant of an adjoining table who came to the front desk to take the side of the chef, who, as far as he was concerned, could do no wrong. (One dish which he stoutly defended was breast of wild duck so lightly cooked as to be properly labeled canard tartare.) The meal was not expensive, but the psychological cost was enormous.

The chicken brick method, which I've mentioned before, gets around this problem completely. The thighs end up simmering directly in their own juices, while the breast meat above is still being steamed. It's simply braising within a very small enclosed space. If you want crisp breast skin, a short blast with the lid off accomplishes it, but with a certain loss of juiciness. It's a trade-off. EDIT: As a method of making chicken with forty cloves of garlic, it is unsurpassed. The disadvantage of carving and then cooking further is that the juices have been released.

Try New Englander. England is in fact the opposite of what I described. Having destroyed its own rich culinary tradition, beginning a couple of centuries ago with the Enclosures, it is attempting to build a new tradition out of the many cultures it now includes. This is both its strength and its weakness. It is a strength inasmuch as openness of mind is always an asset, but a weakness because there is not a national base of educated palates who will recognize and expose the fashionable foods created by the unskilled and the ambitious.

Hasn't it always been the case that a country or ethnic group with a long rich tradition of cuisine -- or art, or anything else -- looks on the rest of the world with disinterest, even contempt, until their autonomy and security are in some way threatened?

A magnificent gesture! I wish I'd thought of it!

I'd hesitated to mention Terminus Nord but yes, you can tailor your menu to your wallet. But if time permits, I'd still opt for Chartier for a unique but economical experience on a one-day trip. It's definitely a "foreign country"!

How close is close? Chartier is as cheap as you can get and still be interesting, it's exactly a mile away and it's easy to get from there to the Gare du Nord on the 48 bus.

Or Minotaur to his Labyrinth?

Curious. It's not even in Le Pudlo Paris, which errs on the side of the encyclopaedic. As to their website, Mirabel Osler wisely advised against judging a French restaurant by its interior decoration; perhaps this should also apply to its graphics. EDIT: Had a closer look at the website. It's vulgar in an endearing rather than a cynically commercial way. I'm prepared to give it a go. If they're telling the truth, i.e. that they've been there for seventeen years and that most of their patrons are local, they must be doing something right.

A well-worn favorite of ours for many years has been L'Ecurie.