John Whiting

de Groot's famous "Gigot de Mouton de Sept Heures", passed along in _Recipes from the Flowering Hearth_, specifies mutton as the preferred meat for the long slow cooking. But more modern cookbooks tend to avoid it. Does Elizabeth David have any mutton recipes? I've not time at the moment to look it up.

I haven't looked this up in order to be more precise, but mutton is, of course, mature lamb and comes from the French "mouton", which is their generic term for the species. It reminds us that lamb was once most commonly eaten when it was older.

I'll respond in more detail later, but must say quickly that I couldn't possibly agree with you more. You've pushed one of my favorite buttons!

I've privately communicated by PM with spicegirl -- I've no idea who she is -- and urged her not to respond to whatever comes next. Regardless of its motivation, the TROLL ALERT should be observed. I would hope that Nina and I are agreed on this.

Spicegirl - That was a very kind and well-meaning letter, but I fear you don't know enough of the history that lies behind what you write. It would be best for you if you don't respond to the vituperation which will now be heaped on you. I apologize in advance for not coming further to your defence -- it's road that has been travelled before and it leads straight over a cliff.

I note that the Ancient Mariner is back and gunning for another albatross. I vow never to stop by the wayside for another of the Plotter’s labyrinthine logic-chopping monologs. That should give me time to finish writing my novel. That covers all the bases. Roger, over and out.

Steve, thank you for acknowledging your prior editing, which I never would have referred to without your prompting. As to "was/were", I consciously chose the slangy alternative as part of the long sentence's sudden bump down to the ironic. (Those who can write will know what I mean.)

Steven, your Zagat report is a model of how it should be done. That says something very perceptive, which can quite legitimately be read from two opposing viewpoints. An unfairly loaded contrast, inasmuch as Nader's reputation was built on a CR-like exposure of auto defects, even though he didn't have the same elaborate research facilities to back them up. But that's merely the quibbling of a knee-jerk liberal. Thanks for providing a link to your article, which I've wanted to read for some time.

Ah! Now it makes sense. And France! (Anatole, that is.)

With all due respect, I've decided not to spend any more time defending statements once I've made them. It's eGullet's most tedious time-wasting activity. Let the readers decide. It will add hours to all our days.

I wouldn't know without examining their accounts, and then I still wouldn't know. I only know that I found £13.50 to be ludicrous for simple food simply served in a simple ambience. This isn't Henderson-bashing; it's just a statement of fact. I enjoyed the meal (partly because I enjoyed the company), but I wouldn't go back and order it again. During the game season I may well return; I'm sure the mark-up will be much less.My underlying point was that in France -- or especially in Italy -- one would not have to go to a bankers' hideaway and pay toff prices to eat simple well-cooked local food. In St. John's I felt as if I had entered a Watteau landscape -- exquisite but not quite real. But then it's generally quite expensive these days to eat like an authentic peasant.

Exactly. The second half of the sentence is crucial. I'm always surprised at how much information, both objective and subjective, the Time Out guides can pack into a short paragraph. Nor is it the "all things to all men" anonymity of Zagat.My selection of the (approximately) thirty Paris bistros covered in my own web site was based in the first instance on the Paris Time Out Guide, also taking into consideration Jeffrey Steingarten's favorites as listed in Vogue. I ended up actually disliking only two of them, and that may have been as the result of unique experiences which would not be repeated on a second visit. Now, this is not meant to represent the *best* thirty bistros in Paris, only a personal selection arrived at by personal criteria. But I find it illuminating that, for me, the Paris Time Out Guide led me only twice into unpleasant dining. http://www.whitings-writings.com/parbisindex.htm In London I use it regularly as a point of first reference for unfamiliar places in the lower-middle to lower price bracket. I know three of their regular reviewers rather well, and trust their judgement implicitly. (One is the author of a magisterial prize-winning survey of Sezuan food, based on several years residence.) So how do they stack up against eGullet? At the top end I don't know, nor am I likely to find out. Lower down, those restaurants that have been covered here in detail benefit from fifty to a hundred times the column inches to make their exhaustive points; I can't offhand think of any eGullet favorites that received *bad* Time Out reviews. Beyond that, there are dozens if not hundreds of places that eGullet members just haven't got around to mentioning. In summary I would use our own reviews to *include*, but not necessarily to *exclude*. And if I were to have only one source available, it would have to be Time Out.

For whatever they're worth, these were my gastronomic adventures in Cleveland in 1966. I've no idea if these places still exist, or whether they were figments of my fevered imagination. ############################ Cleveland Ohio Tuesday November 5 1996 . . . The only serious retail outlets of any kind in close proximity to my hotel are two good restaurants. One, called Sergio's, is putatively Brazilian and last night was serving as a special the grilled ribs of an exotic Amazonian fish called tambaqui, which purportedly eats nuts and berries (how it gets to them was not revealed). It arrives in Cleveland in frozen chunks, but that's no great sacrifice, since it's a firm, meaty fish like tuna or anglerfish. Served on a bed of spicy rice, quite delicious. Permanently on the menu is "Brazilian style bouillabaisse". Nothing to do with the Provencal variety, but then fish stews of this sort all over the world were born out of whatever didn't sell that day, dressed up with the local seasonings. This one took me back to my childhood in Provincetown, where the local Portuguese fisherman served up strong spicy stews which would have been interchangeable with this Brazilian version. No nouvelle cuisine here; two courses sent me away bursting at the seams. Here in mid-continent the fish, mussels and clams can be faultlessly fresh. But this shouldn't surprise me. A dozen years ago in Austin, Texas, I ate a broiled Maine lobster which had been glowering at me from a tank a few minutes before (no wonder). Too full to finish it, I asked if I could take the claws home to Mary in London and was promptly supplied with a dry-iced doggy bag. Those lobster claws were as well-traveled as Santa Claus. Wednesday November 6 Down a back alley is another serious restaurant which calls itself dismissively, That Place on Bellflower. Here the cuisine is decidedly eclectic, though calling itself "French-inspired". My starter was a broccoli soup consisting of both pureed and chopped broccoli, rich with thick cream and enough strong parmesan to make me wish that I'd ordered a tureen of the stuff. Until my main course arrived, that is, which was a jamboulaya with lots of shrimp, chicken, chorizo sausage, poblanos peppers, mushrooms, peas and almond rice. Another great spicy fish stew - I could eat them every day! It was assertive enough to stand up to a mature '89 Cahors of the old-fashioned black malbec variety, a bargain in any restaurant in the world at twenty dollars. Again, a couple of courses were enough even for a glutton (me). Two stars, one in each eye. A few blocks away was a promising ethnic area called Little Italy, where I went for lunch to Guarino's, "Cleveland's oldest family restaurant", founded in 1918. The bread which arrived must have been left over from opening day, the salad was hunks of iceberg lettuce thrown on a plate and dowsed with cheap oil and vinegar, and the lasagna was about two percentage points better that a frozen package. My glass of Chianti might have been poured in error from the vinegar bottle. So much for family values. ©1996 John Whiting

Make it the fall.

That's another story. There have been words said about Zagat on this site which would make any further comments of mine seem like flattery.

Personally, I think everyone should add that to all their posts. When applicable, of course. I'm giving up emoticons. They're a cheap way of avoiding precision. From now on, if someone reacts personally to a general comment, my unwritten reply, in the words of an old Berkeley friend, is "If the shoe fits, then cram it up your ass!" (That's my last emoticon.)

I'm not going to continue defending myself or my article, but I'd like to point up what is starting to emerge: EGullet is a well-established food site which is making itself more and more worthy of attention, even without internal crises. In fact, it's growing big and complex and interesting enough to become the subject of all kinds of articles: informative, laudatory, satirical, parodic, grateful, condemnatory. It's fair game. Furthermore, its survival depends, not on a constant influx of strangers, but on the continued attention of its members. In other words, it's virtually impregnable. So -- imagine a worst case. Suppose I had set out deliberately to destroy eGullet by holding it up to ridicule. Well, it wouldn't matter. I couldn't damage eGullet even if I were to form a charitable organization for that sole purpose. I'M JUST NOT THAT IMPORTANT! Forget about all this crap and get back to the table.

Joanna's article is also being discussed on the Guild of Food Writers Sparklist. Richard, Earl of Bradford, proprietor of Porters in London, has given me permission to post his highly relevent comments:

Bear in mind that the purport of Joanna's article was not that good restaurants should not be expensive, but that expensive restaurants should be good. Also that *all* restaurants should not be expensive relative to their quality. In other words, that it is more difficult to get a decent meal reasonably in London than in most of Europe. I think that most people who have made the attempt would agree with this.

I've got to butt in long enough to point out that you've got the wrong article. That one was written -- and discussed at length on eGullet -- several months ago. The one now under discussion is not yet on my web site. Edit: I should add that Bux's last post was extremely gracious.

Many thanks for that -- I'm terrible at maths!

On Friday Wilfrid and I lunched at St. John’s. We both ate moderately; my share consisted of the well-known bone marrow with salad as starter and a main course of sautéed kidneys. Vegetables and potatoes must be ordered separately; I had runner beans and Wilfrid had boiled spuds; we shared them both. St. John’s, as everyone knows, is a rather austerely converted warehouse, the style set by Terrence Conran when he created the oyster bar downstairs in the old Michelin building. Like the entire operation, it is tasteful and restrained in every respect save the billing. The kidneys came to £13.50, plus £3 for the beans and another £3 for the potatoes. The beans were like what, during the season, we put on the table every day from our own garden; the simple boiled potatos quite as tasty as what we buy for loose change at our corner shop. As for the kidneys, they were admirable. And so they should be – there’s nothing difficult about sautéeing a kidney, so long as you know when to stop. Mary did it the following night; I thought hers were made slightly more interesting by the addition of a bit of dry mustard to the flour. A portion for two had set me back a quid at the Borough Market. Let’s see, £1 goes into £27 twenty-seven times – that’s a 27,000 percent mark-up. I can hardly wait for the game season. We’ve already applied for a second mortgage.

In the Guardian Weekend Magazine for July 20th, Joanna Blythman, one of the UK’s best food writers, addresses the perennial question: Why does eating out in Britain cost so much? This is not a search for villains, but a considered survey of the various factors – including astronomical start-up costs, behind-the-scenes mass-production technology, and public ignorance and indifference – which make eating out in Britain an expensive game of Russian roulette in which most of the chambers are loaded. http://www.guardian.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4463970,00.html

The kangaroo court is hereby adjourned. Talk amongst yourselves.

I’ve no desire to perpetuate a tempest in a carafe, but a couple of matters should be cleared up. I was not asked to write an essay on the essence of eGullet, but to report on a certain sequence of events. In spite of this, I chose to begin in a positive way rather than going straight to the story with a sensational lead-in, as any proper “tabloid” journalist would have done. I dealt facetiously with what is indeed an ongoing debate between those whose primary interest is in simple domestic cuisine and those for whom eating is an opulent adventure. I went out of my way to point out that the most useful content was liable to be in the low profile boards. Only towards the end did I bring up the recent history about which I had been asked to write in the first place. Furthermore, hearing from behind the scenes that there was about to be a resolution, I persuaded my editor to allow me to hold the final copy until Suvir had returned. It could have been much more deliciously nasty if I had left him in limbo, but that wasn’t the kind of story I wanted to write. Believe me, if a genuine tabloid journalist had taken an interest in this drama, he would have dug out further unsavory details that I chose not to make use of. There are those who privately agree with me and apologize for not going public, thus subjecting themselves to similar abuse. I entirely sympathize and suggest that they keep a low profile. As for the moderators, anyone who gave me any hint of support after the site owner had publicly called for my execution would be invited to join me before the firing squad. In any public debate, the loudest are not necessary the wisest, nor the wisest the loudest.