John Whiting

I don't insist that molecular alteration is by any means the most important part of this discussion, but I think one must take it more seriously. We have already reached the point where focus groups who were given real strawberries along with artificial strawberry flavor determined that the fruit "didn't taste like the real thing". I suspect that we're on the cusp of a development that will turn a difference of degree into a difference of kind. And there I'm prepared to leave it -- until some gourmet of the future starts a "Molecular eGullet" website, in which the "e" is the alternative Latin "ex". Could it be because variations on the familiar are more easily remembered than the totally new?

"I don't agree with you -- This is Post Modern cuisine, as it is currently understood in the UK." I think that you exaggerate. Much as you may dislike Blumenthal, this new molecular alteration is the road to making anything taste of anything else whatsoever -- the magic of Adria without any need for skill. We have not yet had a cuisine as totally artificial as computer graphics, but this will be it. In tandem with genetic engineering, it will not only redefine reality but also make *real* reality impossible to identify. Of course the flavor technicians have long been at work, but this is a quantum leap.

Go to this news item in the Globe & Mail website and you will learn of an imminent gastrononomic development which will make this discussion irrelevant and destroy cuisine as we know it. This is not a joke, nor is it hyperbole. http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/GIS.Se...onary+molecules (Note: to access the story John refers to, click "Next Story" once you've gone to this web page)

I'm off to Paris on Tuesday for another week. This time I'll be eating at half a dozen of the bistros most highly spoken of in Le Pudlo Paris, which, I'm told, is the guide that Parisians are most likely to consult. I'm interested in what, if anything, these well-thought-of-bistros have in common. Almost none of them are in the English language guide books, nor are most of them in either Michelin or Gault-Millau. But I'm happy to take the gamble because there are so many Parisians who eat out constantly as a matter of course and who pay attention to what they consume. It's no big deal; more like the level of expertise at playing an instrument that people routinely had a hundred years ago and more. But it provides a foundation of diners who, if they are fed rubbish, know it and will make a noise. That's not precisely on topic. I apologize.

I would prefer to think of myself as hopeful, rather than hopeless; and a classicist rather than a romantic. I find myself increasingly drawn to Bach's preludes, fugues and inventions. Those who earn their living from fine food and wine, whether as producers, salesmen or critics, must necessarily pursue an upward-spiralling complexity and grandiosity. Steingarten's latest book is a case in point -- the exquisite verging on the pretentious. EDIT: Jonathan - I should have added that I was very impressed with your reportage.

One should bear in mind that a certain number of ambitious but (possibly) misguided young people who care little about food see chefing as a road to instant riches. Some of them get financial backing. And some of them, alas, succeed.

The dichotomy that you identify is not, I think, so much a product of what an individual chef might decide, but rather the result of a world ethos in which money is God and marketing is the highest art form. My own response -- and it is private and introspective rather than reformative or campaigning -- is to seek out those chefs who might in another context be identified as "drop-outs"; i.e. those who know exactly how and for whom they want to cook, be it traditional or cutting-edge, and who are content with the small and possibly growing number of like-minded diners who will seek them out and support them. A surprisingly large number of Paris bistros seem to fall into this category. Some become famous, some tick over comfortably, some sink without a trace. But through it all there is a whim of freedom in the air.

Damn! There's so much to say on this ever-fascinating topic. But no time to offer more than the observation that virtually all modern food historians reject the tradition that Catherine de Medici brought the French their haute cuisine from Italy. There's much more interest in what took place around the Mediterranean regions which are now in separate countries but whose borders were once much more permeable.

Wow! Things have happened since I was active here. Let me start by saying that I left, not in a huff or in disgust, but in a panic. When not travelling around France, I've been locked in my study committing journalism. I haven't read all of the above with care, and, with another publication deadline looming, I haven't time to post a considered response. But I will add the thought that, while eating may not be inherently superior to trainspotting, one qualitative measure of an activity is the writing it inspires. By that standard, food -- even more than wine -- has given us an enormous body of literature on a very high level. In fact, the aesthetic pleasures attached to cuisine are one of the great unifying forces across the boundries between disparate civilizations, and some of the best writers in all languages have chosen to explore this cohesive influence. The very fact of "fusion" cookery as practiced for centuries is an indication of the cultural bonding that results when people are able to stop fighting each other and start feeding each other. Someday, I hope, even belicose American politicians will again appreciate the preeminence of the native Iraqui date.

Cabrales, I think that how a restaurant reacted to your not ordering more than you wanted would be a measure of them, not of you. Unless faced with a menu reading "Cheese and/or desert compulsory", follow your own desires.

This is the sort of thing you can get only in eGullet. I miss it.

Who in their right mind would open a restaurant in provincial Britain? http://www.portal.telegraph.co.uk/news/mai...%2Fnchefs24.xml

How can one call a dish "naff" (or passé or over the hill or whatever) which goes back at least to Homer's time? For a history, see http://www.fonduecity.com/fonduehistory.htm (It's part of an advertising website for a restaurant, but the citations are legit.)

It's fascinating to come in late on this thread. Steve and Suvir argue passionately about their respective concepts of "curry", and yet I'm certain that I would eat the products of both their kitchens with great pleasure. I come increasingly to the opinion that, from a culinary standpoint, what a chef says is not so reliable a guide to the excellence of his cuisine as the passion and integrity with which he says it. The finest dishes are not necessarily those which are argued for most logically or convincingly. Jonathan Swift, you may recall, made a very good case for solving the population explosion in Ireland by cooking babies. On my hi-fat/lo-carb diet, chocolate in any form is normally a no-no, but Ackermans of London make a plain chocolate which is 99% cocoa; i.e. no sugar. It allows me to play around with chocolate, eggs and cream in various combinations, providing I'm willing to eat the result unsweetened. As a result, I've developed a positive liking for the bitter aftertaste of unsweeted chocolate. I'm convinced that it's an acquired taste like the tannic finish of a robust red country wine.

For me, tasting menus are in the tradition of the church potluck suppers I grew up with. Nothing makes me happier than a buffet with infinite variety to which I can help myself. Now -- who is going to be the first three-starred genius to come up with the haute-cuisine buffet? Or the haute-cuisine basque banquet, everybody sit down at the same time, where all the dainty tit-bits come on platters?

Cultures have preserved their indigenous cuisine uncorrupted to the degree that their populations do not speak or comprehend (American) English. Think that one over. Edit: Not to imply that there is necessarily a causal relationship.

Thank you both. This is Holy Writ!

See R.W. Apple's write-up in the NYTimes on Stockholm food: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/16/dining/16SWED.html

lizziee, thank you for a stunning report. This sounds like my kind of moderately expensive restaurant -- the sort that is more interested in the food it serves than in its own importance. Modesty is the word that comes to mind.

The only reason to feel jealous is if you are so enamoured of carbs in their various forms, sweet and savory, that you would not be repayed in your imagination with the rich diet of cheese, meat, and cream sauces. I happen to love the latter so much that I can forego pain levain and risotto, which I am very fond of, but which I do not wake up having dreamt about. It's simply a diet which follows my predilections and which therefor requires no will power whatsoever -- of which I have none.

Steve's trip down Memory Lane reminds me that, when we lived in Gledhow Gardens and then Rosary gardens over thirty-five years ago, one of Elizabeth David's favorite London restaurants, La Chantarelle, was just around the corner on the Old Brompton Road. Star of India was going back then, looking exactly as it does now, and in the Good Food Guide. My bank was the Westminster, the So. Kensignton-Onslow Gardens branch. I stayed with it for years after we left the area, until the manager retired. He used to call me in once a year for a financial consultation, which was an hour spent in sad reflection on how the neighborhood had changed for the worse. There was, of course, no charge. Edit: The Society of Authors is in Drayton Gardens. Whenever I go to one of their evening events, my walk from So. Kensington tube station takes me expensively past La Vigneronne. Or rather into it -- I am unable to walk past without buying at least a bottle.

It's all a confitance trick.

Since I last reported in a couple of weeks ago, I've been drinking about a bottle of wine a day, spent five days in Paris eating two full meals a day with the highest fat content I've ever consumed in a comparable period, have spent the last week glued to my computer, writing, and barely getting out of the house -- and have lost another four pounds.

Steve - can't fault it!

jaybee wrote: The word "fault" immediately strikes the wrong note. We all have to work for money unless we're very rich. What I'm talking about is major decisions -- whether they are based on principle or profit.Edit: And almost never are two alternatives "equal in all other respects". Further edit: But all this is far from what Jay began with. I'm off to Paris first thing in the morning, to spend less in a week than Steve and his wife spent in a night. But it's every bit as self-indulgent and therefor in no way morally superior!