John Whiting

The few good moderately priced restaurants in central London tend to be ethnic of one sort or another. It would be useful to know what sort of food you *don't* want to eat.

Do you have an address? There's none in the online Yellow Pages, only Christian Constant, caterers.

Food which comes from a central warehouse, however perfectly executed, is as depressing as computer art or propaganda dressed as literature. It becomes dehumanized and predictable and therefor profoundly boring. Manufacturers aim for uniformity, but this is not inevitable. For instance we regularly buy Copella apple juice, squeezed and immediately bottled with only light pasteurization. It must be kept regrigerated. It is indeed mass produced, but the apples come from a wide variety of sources and at different times of the season the juice tastes different, precisely because the pressings are not held over a period of time and blended in order at achieve uniformity. It's not the best apple juice on the market, but it's good, it's reasonably priced and it's honest.

It would probably help those who will offer advice if you were to say whether your interest is in "classical" or "cutting-edge".

John and Karen Hess exposed this practice a quarter-century ago in _The Taste of America_. It was widespread back then in American restaurants. A couple of years ago I met a fellow-diner at an auberge B&B in France who told me that his brother ran a food factory in the southwest of France which supplied frozen dinners to a large number of highly respected restaurants. As the techniques become more sophisticated, the labor costs go up and the clientelle become less discriminating, expect this trend to accellerate. The mortal enemy of the best is not the worst, but the almost-as-good.

All that this website is obligated to do is to please those it set out to reach. If there enough such people to make it viable, then it has achieved its purpose. It is not obliged to speak to those whose primary concern is entertaining clients or children. As for my own preferences, I often find eGullet too upmarket. I'm no longer particularly interested in restaurant meals that cost a bras and a gigot. But there is much useful information here, and so I continue to visit, occasionally offering a comment or a suggestion or even a mild protest, but no longer attempting to convert anyone to my way of thinking. There is indeed snobbery here. But out there is arrogant mediocritizing anti-snobbery which offends me even more.

One of Loyd Grossman's peculiarities is that he spells his first name with only one "l".

There is a pressure on the chef "content to stay in his kitchen and cook" that has never been there before. In previous eras, success at the highest level took place within a narrow stratum of society which did not reach down into the local community. (I assume we're talking here about French cuisine, and so I make no effort to generalize into the wider world.) But when a great chef devotes himself to mass-produced cuisine, he is creating a product which invades every stratum of society. What he invents that comes out of a package is reaching millions of consumers, including the patrons of small local restaurants, and telling them in effect, "This is how it should be." (I am talking about effect, not intention.) The result is that "celebrity" chefs dictate not only what is consumed by the well-to-do in their own restaurants, but what is bought in supermarkets and carried into the home, even in France. Soon a series of commercial norms is established, and the local chef in his kitchen may well feel the hot breath of Robuchon on the back of his neck.

There has always been a dividing line in the arts and crafts between those who are ambitious for reward and recognition and those who want to do the best they can without making a fuss. There is of course a continuum between those extremes. It's not a matter of moral superiority but of temperament. Those chefs who spend their lives in quiet little restaurants with a loyal clientele are not failures, or lazy, but have certain priorities and have chosen a particular life style. Their regular patrons are likely to be people of a similar disposition who dine there regularly, not because they're poor or stingy, but because they too enjoy a quiet (or noisy ) simplicity.

Loyd Grossman comes from Marblehead, Mass. It's a classy place; they talk like that there.

This tells me all I need to know about the "new" Robuchon.

I do think that the best restaurant food is achieved, not when an individual chef decides to open a unique establishment, but when an ethnic community gives rise to dining places where they feed themselves to their own standards and which may then produce ambitious and inventive chefs who are able to enlarge their custom without deserting or destroying their traditions. Those mayfly restaurants which appear as novelties usually go as quickly as they come.

And in the middle of a heat wave! Had you thought of sending this to the Guiness Book of Records? (And what did you manage for breakfast? )

For "highly select" you may substitute "eccentric", "recherché", or simply "old fart".

And there speaks one who knows, and who proves it over and over in the kitchen.

Our kitchen life has been transformed by their thick, truly nonstick stainless steel frying pan with effective heat-dispersal core and tightly fitting lid, about 15" across. It'll do anything.

I wonder who this could have been. I don't remember recommending it within the context of your enquiries. Patricia Wells recommended it years ago, but no one mentions it any more, not even Pudlo. Those who appreciate it are, in my opinion, a highly select minority. My own opinion is set forth in a string of superlatives on my website: http://www.whitings-writings.com/bistro_re...ews/gramond.htm

Some restaurant chains have refused to serve rare steaks because they arrive partially cooked and frozen, thus making a rare steak an impossibility. John & Karen Hess documented this a quarter century ago.

Come on, I'm talking about people who lived and cooked in Mexico for years.

Had a whole pitcher of it last week at Terminus Nord and only asked for "eau de Paris".

I too got sick last week after eating for four days in Paris and I too had steak tartare. But I didn't throw up, which is the most common symptom of food poisoning. Also bear in mind that germs are whizzing around the world at an accellerating pace, and any method of transport other than one's own car exposes the traveller to a lot of infectious people.

Rachel, didn't realize that you were here! Thanks for pointing up, yet again, that upper-class food around the world has always been as complexly interlocking as, say, banking. One need only pay a little attention to the spice trade in the middle ages. I don't quite share your oft-expressed acceptance of mass-produced food, but your continuing analysis of the interlocking interdependence between "peasants" and the multinational food industry faces squarely up to perhaps the most important unresolved paradox of food -- indeed, human -- history.

That would be the one that put a helmet on your head and blew a whistle while you necked those god awful tequillas. hmmmmm, i thought it was really bad mexican, then again I have never tasted good mexican at all so not too sure what a good one would be! Si Señor once did a lunch for the AGM of the Guild of Food Writers, in which they knocked themselves out doing the very best they could -- no comprises with popular taste. It was generally agreed among those several members who knew Mexican rather well that it still wasn't very good.

Rachel Laudan is a great food historian who lives in Mexico. Her essay in the LA Times, "Desperately Seeking Authenticity", deals with the paradoxical and self-contradictory search for authentic Mexican food by Anglos with high ideals and sophisticated palates. http://www.latimes.com/features/food/la-12...eadlines%2Dfood

The most important difference between Indian and Mexican food in Britain is, of course, the fact that there is a very large Indian population but a miniscule Mexican one. So no ethnic substructure.