John Whiting

Sally Clarke in London still follows that (French) practice, as does Shaun Hill in Ludlow.

I'm greatly relieved that your experience was pleasant, even memorable.

Speaking as an urban intellectual who has spent his life with other urban intellectuals, I have no problems with this. I too would have great difficulty slipping into the life of a French village, not least because I don't speak French. But the three authors I cited were all urban intellectuals who saw that an understanding of village life sheds a useful light on the contemporary urban lifestyle. None of them are preachers; mostly they are story-tellers. They also convey vividly the information that the regional cuisine for which we now pay so generously has largely been a post WWII artifact unaffordable by the preponderance of peasants. (Food historian Rachel Lauden documents this in great detail on the entire world stage.) Much depends on one's use of the word "normal". I don't think it's necessary to instill a feeling of guilt in order to make a child from a prosperous Western family aware of the extraordinarily tiny minority of which he is privileged to be a part, nor how the resources of the rest of the world have made this possible.

I find much of interest in Gopnik's _Paris to the Moon_. His chapter on "The Crisis in French Cooking" is a useful starting point from which to explore modern French cuisine. "The Balzar Wars" is fine reporting, but anyone who can start with the sentence, "The Balzar . . . happens to be the best restaurant in the world.", is not to be trusted. It was never more than a reliable upper-middle-class academic venue where you could eat a predictable meal with predictable people, and after all the high drama, it still is. Gopnik is prepared to bend the facts to fit his story line. His riotously funny attempt to cook a seven-hour leg of lamb for Alice Waters brings Susan Hermann Loomis into the plot as fellow-chef, so that his forgetting that celcius is hotter than fahrenheit necessarily implicates her in the error, which is absurd. Finally at the end he writes, "I have come to suspect that what is called a seven-hour lamb was really meant to be seven-hour mutton." But de Groot's recipe is clearly titled, "Mademoiselle Ray's leg of mutton of the seven hours (Gigot de Mouton de Sept Heures)" and begins, "This can, of course, be prepared with a leg of lamb, but there is rather more of an aromatic flavor in the old flesh of the mutton . . ." As for the heat of the oven, his later instructions are, "Let it cook, as slowly as possible, for 7 hours." Is it possible that both Gopnik and Loomis (a careful culinary scholar), however distracted, had failed to read the recipe? I suspect that, as with many fine story-tellers, the partition was down between his memory and his imagination.

The real missed opportunity, as I see it, was to bring his children to some sort of awareness that the life they lived was not the norm -- that they were living in a very rarified atmosphere indeed. But then, after an enthusiastic initial response to _From Paris to the Moon_, I gradually came to the conclusion that this was an insight which Gopnik himself had not achieved. Unlike Michael S. Saunders (_From Here, You Can't See Paris_), James Bentley (_Life and Food of the Dordogne_), or Peter Graham (_Mourjou_), I can't imagine him slipping easily into the life of a French village. In fact, as in this essay, he seems most at ease when he's dropping names.

Gopnik's condescending tongue-in-cheek report totally misses the atmosphere of this delightful venue. I went unwillingly, dragged along by my wife, and was completely charmed. What Gopnik dismisses as "gravity" is in fact the rare phenomenon of a crowd of individuals and families quietly enjoying themselves in a civilized manner. No screaming brats, no shouting parents, no lager louts. We happily took a couple of free comfortable sunloungers (in Britain you pay for the deck chairs) and watched the passing parade. Then we strolled along to the "rock face" being climbed by intrepid little six- and seven-year-olds, supported by ropes and pulleys handled by supervisors below. We stopped at a cafe and had decent salads at reasonable prices -- no junk food in sight. (In fact no advertising of any sort, except for very discreet labels on some amenities identifying sponsors.) We watched children and adults dash through mazes of gentle overhead showers and "sea spray". As for the "world's oddest sandbox", it was a perfectly sensible way to keep the sand from drifting over the palm-tree-lined promenade.But then, Gopnik would find all this rather down-market. His idea of entertaining his little boy was to treat him and his little girlfriend to cake and hot chocolate at the Ritz -- every week.

We accept a certain "ripeness" in game birds that we would reject in domestic fowl. But there are tricks of the trade to rescue foodstuffs which are ready to flee the kitchen under their own power. Years ago Mary and I bought a duck on the Grimsby market. Her parents in those far-off days did not own a fridge, but their neighbor across the street, Mrs. Broxholme, was happy to give us space until our return to London. Mary’s father warned us that nothing of Mrs. Broxholme’s actually worked, but we were young and foolish. We collected the duck – ominously warm – from the fridge and put it in on the back seat of the Mini. Halfway home the smell began to reach us and we transferred it to the boot. Thirty-five years ago, newly-married couples in straightened circumstances didn’t lightly throw away a duck, and so Mary went to our local butcher on Bute Street, South Kensington, and asked his advice. (In those days, you didn’t have to be a rich Arab to live in South Kensington.) “No problem,” he said breezily. “Give it a good bath in washing-up liquid and then rinse it well – you don’t want bubbles in the sauce!” We took his advice and it worked perfectly. The duck was magnificent, with an opulence born of – shall we say? – maturity. We didn’t ask if this was in fact his own usual practice.

The translation creates a world which is almost as surreal as the destruction of the towers itself.

I should add that Marlebone High Street has become a gourmet haven. Here's a short write-up I did for Fine Food Digest: Marlebone High Street: a gastronomic miracle that didn’t just happen A decade ago London’s Marlebone High Street was sinking into shabby obscurity. There were a couple of traditional old merchants – Maison Sagne, a patisserie which opened in 1926, and Blagden’s, a purpose-built fishmonger’s from the 1890s whose trade had come to consist largely of coley sold to old ladies for their cats. Otherwise, the street was typified by its cheek-by jowl charity shops. Then six years ago Conran opened an épicerie. This was joined by a local Waitrose, followed by a rapid progression of distinguished specialty shops including Divertimenti, Paul, Maison Blanc, Speck and La Fromagerie. Ginger Pig is about to join them. On Sunday there’s a farmers’ market with 30-odd stalls. After you’ve filled up your chic little French shopping cart you can drop in for lunch at Peter Gordon’s Providores. Was all this new development a fortunate accident? Hardly. The whole area belongs to the Howard de Waldon estate, which runs it like a shrewd, attentive lord of the manor. The fine shops are there because they were individually approached and invited to join the community, with financial arrangements open to discussion. Another of those rare landlords who have found that they can do well by doing good.

Went for lunch yesterday with my wife and a couple of friends. Compared with a year ago, there were subtle changes. Aside from the fact that the luncheon price has moved up sharpish from £25.50 to £32, we had the feeling that we were being subjected to an artificially attentive "full treatment". Service last year was entirely satisfactory in detail, but without fuss -- we were treated as equals. This time we felt that we were, well, punters. Just a little too enthusiastic, a little too helpful with the menu without our asking. Empty wine glasses were promptly taken away with a "Would you like another glass?" that was not so much a question as a statement assuming an affirmative response, even after we'd finished the main course. On the plate, the towers were a little higher, the quantities a little smaller, the decoration more mannered and elaborate. All this is not so much an accusation as a regretful observation that Foliage seems to have passed on to a style, an ambience, that is not our incentive for dining out.

It's at 51 Pimlico Road, SW1 8NE, tel 7730 5712, a ten-minute walk from Victoria Station. If your experience coincides with Tony's, please don't hesitate to say so! If you're in London at the moment, email me your address (click on website below) and I'll get a copy of Through Darkest Gaul to you as requested.

While I was editing out my anger, two more responses have appeared which my editing inadvertently makes a nonsense of. My apologies. Curtain down?

There's no point in pursuing this. By now, those who are interested in dining at Hunan will have made up their minds as to whether they might find it to their liking.

Fuchsia [sic] Dunlop is not a fool, nor is she a dupe. Several times I have eaten excellently at Hunan and been thanked by discerning visitors for taking them there. Perhaps Mr. Peng responds negatively to diners whose egos equal his own.

Start with a search in this forum on "Borough Market". It's near London Bridge Station. There are a number of guidebooks to London food shopping, including Jenny Linford's excellent "Food Lovers' London", available from Amazon, either .com or .co.uk. (Jenny also writes the Borough Market's newsletter.)

Some people just send out bad vibes.

For lunch, you could do worse than the October Gallery at 24 Old Gloucester Street. It's very simple -- one meat-based and one vegetarian main course plus one or two deserts. They serve from 12:30, but sometimes start a bit late. I suggest that you try it once; you'll either love it or hate it. I had a sound studio in their basement for over twenty years; it went up and down, but I never tired of it. It's "real" in a way that is rapidly disappearing. (It's closed on Mondays.)

Those of us who are particularly fond of Hunan and Mr. Peng are solidly backed by Fuchsia Dunlop (_Sichuan Cookery_), who first sent me there with a glowing recommendation. Perhaps my fondness for Mr. Peng stems from affectionate memories of Edsel Ford Fong, the head waiter at Sam Wo's in San Francisco. Fong habitually and notoriously abused his guests. I went regularly with a girl friend who was the only caucasian member of the local Chinese orchestra. She would often play her bamboo flute for the entertainment of the other diners. Time went by, we split up, and after a certain number of months I returned to Sam Wo's with my next girl friend. Fong looked at her, looked at me and asked loudly, "What happen to other one?"

If you're in the old town in Nice at lunchtime, L'Acchiardo is about the last of the old-fashioned bar-restaurants. My own account thereof: At almost two-thirty, L’Acciardo is just about to close, but the waitress finds us a table in back near the kitchen. The choice of fish soup is automatic, but the main course is more problematical. There are no fish courses on the menu, strange for a restaurant offering fish soup. After some hesitation I decide on entrecote au poivre, a dish served ad nauseam all over the world with bottled sauce, but worth a gamble at a promising bistro. The soupe de poisson arrives in generous bowls, with the requisite rouille, grated cheese, rounds of dry baguette, and a dish of peeled fresh garlic cloves. —Do you know how to eat it, monsieur? asks the pretty waitress. I haven’t encountered the fresh garlic before, but I make a shrewd guess and, using the dry bread as a grater, scrape the garlic back and forth. I start to drop the crouton into the bowl. —Non, monsieur, you must make ze boat! She takes the bread from my hand , piles on a spoonful of rouille, and then sprinkles the gruyere on top and places it carefully in the bowl. —Voilà, monsieur! You may now go to sea! She is lovely. I am afloat on oceans of desire. She can grate my garlic any time. The flavor is up to the theatrics: a thick, rich soup, with a proper palette of flavors, and a strong garlicky rouille, both fully as good as the best Mary and I make at home. The entrecote is even more surprising. I had specified bleu, and it comes as rare as I could wish, a full half-pound, over half an inch thick, crusty with cracked peppercorns on the outside and translucent in the middle, but tender enough to cut with a fork. The sauce, rich and concentrated, has gone through all the proper stages of deglazing and reducing. Two classic dishes classically prepared and modestly priced. L'Acchiardo, 38 rue Droite, Nice, Tel 04 93 85 51 16

I've never encountered bouillabaisse cooked tableside; it would be awkward and cumbersome, though some tourist-oriented restaurants might attempt it as a gimmick. But you're quite right about the cooking times. The fish should go into the pot in stages, like the vegetables in pot-au-feu. Edit: I like your remarks about tourists. Perhaps the worst are always those whose high salaries in a foreign currency buy so much that they become arrogant. If so, I would expect both Americans and Germans now to be better behaved.

I'm relieved to hear it. Yours is the second recent enthusiastic response. I have not dared to return because my first and only experience was so time-warp magical that I didn't want to risk an anticlimax. My next Paris trip I'll return and take my wife. Sorry this is geographically off-topic, but I couldn't resist.

Rather an extreme claim, but actually, not unreasonable. Dinner there is an annual event I share with an American friend when he comes over. With their superb tea, wine is quite superfluous.

Haven't been there, but the current Pudlo gives it Restaurateurs de l'année status and a long rave notice.

Do you have an address? I note that my question was answered on an earlier thread devoted to Cafe Constant.

For a memorable and incredibly cheap lunch, there's Diwana Bhel Poori on Drummond Street near Euston Station. It was the first of the South Indian vegetarian restaurants in London and has hardly changed in the almost twenty years I've known it. They do a buffet lunch for around ten dollars. Upmarket, I'll also vouch for Foliage. My wife and I are going there again for lunch on Sunday, our 35th wedding anniversary, so obviously we think highly of it. Edit: I have fond memories of Santa Cruz, Aptos and the Cabrillo Music Festival.