John Whiting

Cap Ferrat's best experience on a fine day is the path around its circumference. Rough, unmarked, unpretentious. The friendly man in jeans you meet walking his dog could probably buy you several times over out of petty cash and not notice it.

Au contraire, I use the very latest edition!

Les Pages Jeunes online still give the address as 41 etc. It may well be at the corner of rue d'lEperon; why the new Pudlo has changed their entry, I don't know. The entry in the Guide Gastronomique de Paris 1953 reads: After half a century, even the telephone number is the same, with the extra numbers that have accumulated.

A dozen years ago, I and a troup of half-a-dozen musicians ate there very well and also with great pleasure, which are by no means synonymous. I had a plateau de fruits de mer for two, all to myself, making it my entire meal -- nothing before, nothing after. I sometimes do this with bouillabaisse when it's served for a minimum of two.

Next week we're hoping to experience the roast chicken at Allard in Paris, which has apparently been memorable for at least half a century. If it actually tastes better than what we regularly produce with Sheepdrove organic birds cooked in a chicken brick, it will be the first time ever.

A question. (I'm not sure where to put it without starting a new thread, which it doesn't merit.) Has Allard in the 6th moved to new quarters? The latest Pudlo gives the address as 1, rue de l'Eperon, not 41, St-Andres-des-Arts, where it has been for all eternity. Does anyone know if this in fact a change of venue, and whether it has affected their roast chicken? Answers by Tuesday would be greatly appreciated.

Really? you must very lucky then. A good friend of mine works for a search engine consultancy, and the odds for coming up as often you do without specialist help are very long. very lucky indeed. I know nothing of how these things work, but my own website was built for me by a computer programmer friend who had never built a website before. He learned as he went along and did a minimal amount of registering, metalinking and whatever. That was a couple of years ago. An "I'm feeling lucky" Google search on Paris bistros usually (though not always) jumps straight into the middle of my website; an ordinary search brings up around 37/8,000 hits, with my site always getting two listings on page 1, usually the first two. I must be getting a certain amount of traffic, but I've no idea how much; I don't have a counter and I'm not selling anything. Once in a while someone writes and says "thanks".

Ben, I count myself fortunate that my own experience fell between your two.

Thank you, Robert. You've encapsulated the difference between a marriage and an orgy.

If only! I sent the Guardian article to one of Britain's most eminent Chinese chefs and cookery writers and received the following reply:

The sad fact is that Gordon Ramsay could make reliable specialist cooks out of just about any collection of cretins with minimal muscular coordination -- that's what chefs had to do before cooking became high fashion -- but it wouldn't be "reality" TV. The better they got, the more boring it would become for TV channel hoppers. An evening in a properly run kitchen with a smoothly coordinated staff would be, for the ignorant, about as exciting as watching paint dry.

What a responsibility! I'm vastly relieved.

A great favorite of mine in the 17th is the venerable Caves Petrissans, 30 bis, av. Niel, tel 01 42 27 52 03. An incredible wine list and a very traditional menu. The place is always packed with regulars. EDIT: nearest Metro is Pereire.

Do you know Andy Smith, editor of the U of I Food Series which he launched with a reprint of John and Karen Hess's The Taste of America? He's a good friend, a fine scholar, an imaginative editor and has a constant twinkle in his eye, both literal and metaphorical. Email me if you'd like more info. Are you by any chance the John Talbott who reviewed a couple of books on the French intellectual elite for NYRB in the 70s? If so, I hope you can be persuaded to review in these pages at much greater length, starting with the book presently under discussion. (Or even if not.)

Or (see posts above) A New Beginning.

Vraiment!! Carry on! Yours is a wonderful thread! I would follow it even if it were a guide to adding weight rather than subtracting it.

My observation was far from idle. It's a depressing fact that at the very most only ten percent of dieters are ultimately successful. No one has been able to explain this away by any argument except the innate moral corruption of the human race, a position I'm not prepared to take just yet. One unfortunate fact not often acknowledged is that when people get fat, new fat cells are formed which in subsequent dieting are not lost but merely starved. This makes it even easier to regain weight than to put on virgin pounds. I've been fighting this battle for over seventy years and count myself lucky that I'm officially just below the edge of obesity (at least according to the current vacillating orthodoxy). EDIT: But this is no more than a footnote to your extravagantly illustrated epic. If one must diet anywhere, France is the place to do it!

Your photos are so delicious as to make the food itself almost superfluous! Now, that would be a very effective diet indeed. Montignac participated in one of the panels at Raymond Blanc's American Food Revolution event and I went to his press conference that afternoon. On both occasions he was an uninterruptable monologist, ignoring both questions and comments (even at a round table with less than a dozen people). His books are so dense with detail that they demand a cult-like dedication. He told us at great length that he was the best-selling author in several East European countries. However, the diet itself is sound and much easier to follow than his line of reasoning. It is in fact in the tradition of moderate low-carb diets than started with Banting in the 19th century, and it is very close to Barry Grove's Eat Fat, Grow Thin At his press conference he generously acknowledged Atkins' research contributions to the tradition. If you are ultimately and permanently successful, you will belong to that small minority, variously estimated at between one and ten percent, who do not put back everything they have lost.

What's really a bum trip is when you try to buy something you've sampled and they tell you it's just somebody's throwaway lunch.

I thank whatever gods may be that I've been able to transfer my addiction from the execrable series itself to the eGullet thread. It's more informative, much wittier, and you can turn it on and off at will.

That's very interesting. We live in Hampstead Garden Suburb, only a couple of miles from the Finchley Road station. Next on our list . . .

Anyone who's done military service knows that it becomes unnatural not to use the f-word. Soldier giving evidence in court: "I was in the park with my f.ing girl friend. We were feeling f.ing horny, so we lay down under a f.ing tree -- and then m'lord, we had intercourse."

Here's the last time we went that route.

If one is entertained. If not, not.

Perhaps he's read Kitchen Confidential!