John Whiting
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Posts posted by John Whiting
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Here's a recipe that's served Chez Merlan:Are members aware of any NYC, London or Paris restaurants that make good use of lemon in such forms?LEMON CHICKEN WITH GARLIC (for 8)
8 chicken legs (thigh and drumstick)
juice and grated rind of 1 lemon
2 tbsp fresh thyme, chopped
80-100 ml olive oil
salt and pepper
1kg baby new potatoes
1 lemon, thinly sliced
12 large cloves garlic, peeled or unpeeled
Preheat oven to 180ºC. In a bowl toss together the chicken, lemon juice and rind, thyme and olive oil. Add the potatoes (may be cracked open) and mix well to coat. Season. Spread the chicken and potatoes out in a large baking tray or dish. Tuck in the lemon slices and garlic cloves and bake for about 50 minutes or more, basting occasionally. (If the chicken browns too quickly, cover the dish with foil.) Serve with a tossed green salad with a mustardy dressing.
That comes from Petra Carter, a lovely food writer who helps Dublin to be so liveable.
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David de Scheemaecker had it when I was there. It sounds Dutch and I thought he said he was Dutch, but you would know better than I!La Colombe Joyeuse, owned by a Belgian, not Dutch proprietor.I'm both glad and sorry to hear that that the village is being discovered. In 1996 it seemed just on the edge -- not exactly sleepy, but not long awake. I did include it in my French travel book, but I'm sure I'm not responsible for its sudden success.
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Amidst all this splendor, a happy echo of modest little La Garde-Freinet. I found it once by accident while looking for an inexpensive hotel well away from the tourist-infested coast. Driving hopelessly along a dark road, we suddenly entered a brightly lit main street with a row of picturesque little shops and cafés and a modest but acceptable hotel. The patron, next door in his own bar, responded to the bell and we ended up in a decent room for a mere 200 francs.
Just along the street was a gay little restaurant with a gay little proprietor who turned out to be Dutch. La Colombe Joyeuse -- the tiny ring which served as its business card still sits on our mantlepiece. A tasty fish soup and a succulent venison stew rounded out the evening more pleasantly than I'd had any hopes for. There are a couple of better restaurants in town, I later learned, but I was happy with what I had. And on a Sunday night, too, when rural France is about as welcoming as a threatened hedgehog.
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Barthes' _Mythologies_ includes essays written between 1954 and 1956 on "Operation Margarine", "Wine and Milk", "Steak and Chips", and "Ornamental Cookery". Most of the essays in this collection appeared in _les Lettres Nouvelles_; they deconstruct icons of popular culture in much the same way that Marshall McLuhan had done in 1951 in his first book, _The Mechanical Bride_You will find that such writers as Roland Barthes and Umberto Eco have written widely on the semiotics of fashion, sport and goodness knows what (have they written about food, I now wonder?). -
Considering the fact that (1) British salaries are lower than on the continent, (2) the price of a decent restaurant meal is higher, and (3) lack of public discrimination makes it possible for a bad expensive restaurant to survive, I find it amazing that British gastronomes with modest incomes eat out at all, apart from the ethnic sanctuaries.
Now, here's an extreme exercise -- I don't suggest doing it, but only want to point out that it's possible. Where in London could you pay a total of 88 pounds and get a meal, including wine and service, which matched the quality and interest of the surprise menu at l'Astrance? You can do it by *leaving* London -- take the 8:30 a.m. bus from Victoria to Paris, which gets in at 5:30 p.m., have dinner at l'Astrance, and return on the overnight bus back to Victoria which leaves at 11:30 p.m. Return fare is 33 pounds, plus 50 pounds for the l'Astrance dinner, comes to 88 pounds (plus the small local transport costs at either end). Or pay a bit more and go by EasyJet.
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We are here involved in communicating about food through a medium which does not directly exercise either our sense of taste or of smell. As a clever New Yorker piece observed a couple of years ago, the internet has returned us to the 18th century short discursive essay. In the words of T.S. Eliot's Sweeney, "I gotta use words when I talk to you."
So we skirt the edges of philosophy without excercising the discipline necessary to formulate a full-fledged system. To use a homely old American phrase, we are, in both a real and a metaphorical sense, cracker-barrel philosophers.
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People say that when they eat chez moi, and my prices are a hell of a lot lower than Rick's!Those who've eaten at Stein's seem generally to be saying 'Go for the simple dishes, they are the best'.
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It is a truism among political journalists that the most effective censorship is self-censorship.
As for Bauer, one of my best friends writes for him regularly. Obviously I can't ask him/her for a public opinion on this question, but I can state positively that he/she is one of my most irrepressibly outspoken friends, often critical of associates, and has never had anything but kind words to say about him.
That, of course, doesn't address the question of whether he should be allowed to be a despot, benevolent or otherwise.
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Russ Parsons writes:
Russ, there's a slight ambiguity here which I'm sure isn't deliberate. Are you saying that the brick wall between advertising and editorial is not only essential, but actually exists? (This isn't meant as a trap question.)the "brick wall" between restaurant and reviewer is an artifice. that said, in response to earlier posts, the "brick wall" between the advertising and editorial sections of a newspaper are not. this is based on my experience as a restaurant critic and food editor at newspapers large and small in the United States (brit mileage may vary).As for the power motivation -- having given up editorial control of one of the country's most influential food sections, perhaps you would be one of the few with sufficient nobility of spirit to reenter the arena of restaurant reviewing with a pure heart.
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Steven, my wife and I went to Gramercy Tavern three times in three days well before you had written your diary of a week spent in its kitchen. My response was that your kitchen experience exactly matched our dining experience -- they were cut from the same cloth. Therefor I would take your word very seriously on any restaurant you chose to write about.
At the same time, I don't trust your judgement on matters of global food policy, partly because your take on BSE does not match either my own on the spot experience or my grasp of the facts as gleaned from those who were most intimately involved. Furthermore, I think it is colored by your political bias as it relates to precautionary policy.
Now -- I say this, not to start a fruitless political argument, but to emphasize that I make an absolute distinction in the way I read your various writings, in the same way I might do if I thought you biased for or against a particular chef. In fact, where restaurants are concerned -- both the merit of their food and the workings of their internal structures -- I would take your word virtually as gospel. Furthermore, I don't see how anyone could read the journal of your week at Gramercy Tavern -- which I regard as a classic -- and still argue that one can write even adequately about the restaurant scene from the vantage point of anonymity. You have made the case for personal knowledge as incontravertable as the roundness of the earth or the wetness of water.
To add a P.S.: I think we have collectively demonstrated that there is no system, structure or procedure that can guarantee a reviewer's integrity. Ultimately one must rely on the discipline which they choose to exert on themselves.
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I feel sorry for those serious British chefs/restaurateurs who realize that, given Britain's superficial food culture, their careers at the zenith are likely to be as lucrative but also as brief as that of a professional boxer. Accordingly they put as high a price tag on their celebrity as they think the market will bear. Any successful British chef who undercharges must be a saint, a naif or an ignoramus.
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That is generally true. (Of course, one can think of the occasional exception.) And the fact that it is generally true says an enormous amount about the differences which still exist between the two cultures. Speaking as an American who has lived in London for half his life, whenever I'm treated really well "back home" in an American restaurant, I feel as though I were visiting some country which is foreign to the US. Sometimes it is an idealized France or Italy; sometimes it is some Oriental tradition of obligation to an unknown stranger; or occasionally it may simply be an echo of old-fashioned southern hospitality. But whatever it is, attentive but relaxed service in which one turns off the clock and allows a transaction which could be concluded in a few minutes to stretch out over a couple of hours is profoundly un-American!For me, in France, there would generally be no circumstance in which I would be asked to make way for other diners and would feel like there was no reasonable way to say no.I could follow that with a smilie, thus passing it off as a joke, but the more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that it's a soundbite with real teeth.
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Why all this fuss about tapioca? To me, it's only poor man's caviar.
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What extraordinary care you've taken in analyzing the experience, and what a sad story. I had a similarly enthusiastic report on the previous year from a friend and food writer whose knowledge and integrity I respect completely.
I am more and more convinced that there is an essential corruption in our society which demands that originality be subsumed into mere novelty.
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There’s a problem with equating restaurant reviewing with music reviewing, particularly if popular music is included. Some might suggest that the latter has passed so completely into the hands of accountants, who demand that musicians be manufactured like objects and the market manipulated to produce a rapid and continuous turnover, that so-called reviews have become merely a measure of commercial success. An equivalent food review would concern itself enthusiastically with minute variations in the narrow range of products offered by the half-dozen corporations who dominate the junk food market.
The luxury restaurant business, corrupt as it may be in certain respects, must still produce a meal which will please a mature adult with a certain degree of discrimination, and who has not been beaten into submission by a repetitive primal beat.
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I am suggesting that, aside from an unfortunate mishap, such a unique loathing would be more likely to be of psychological than of culinary interest. The phrase "have to", which I didn't use, overstates my case.John, just to be clear,are you saying that if a critic or anyone else loathed a restaurant that was generally considered to be excellent then that loathing would have to spring from either one awful experience or irrational reasons which are of no general interest?My apologies. I did say "either or". I'll retreat so far as to qualify with "very likely".
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Of course all this applies even more relevantly to the French café, inasmuch as the English punter will rarely nurse a half-pint through a whole evening, whereas a Frenchman may read his leisurely way through every newspaper on the rack over a single cup of coffee.
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Between loving and loathing there is a continuum within which a fixed and absolute division would be arbitrary and controversial. Anyone who loved one fine restaurant but hated another, both of which were generally so acknowledged, would do so either because of a uniquely unpleasant experience or on grounds so personal and irrational as to be of interest chiefly to their psychiatrist. I don't think that this particular line of enquiry is liable to produce anything more appetising than a tossed salad of split hairs.
If that's a joke -- and it has to be -- it's very funny. More to the point, I would have to go to both of them in the company of Larry Adler, which would now be either paranormal or grotesque.John-The problem is you have to go to L'Astrance and Stringfellows in the same evening. Just make sure you go to L'Astrance first. -
That is a rude response. It's very meaningful to me; I've eaten at both. I would never have chosen the latter, but Larry Adler, who was an old friend, invited us to his 80th birthday party. Food aside, I found it one of the most sordid, sleazy environments I've ever been forced to endure.This is a meaningless comparison. Have you been to Stringfellows? -
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Perhaps he's read _The Culture of Terrorism_.When I was there last year Adría spoke of his interest in Noam Chomsky's writings so who knows a Generative Gastronomy could be the next big thing.
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I love l'Astrance and I loathe Stringfellows, but I feel equally indifferent to all football teams.
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They've an excellent little assortment of wines by the glass.The big variable here being the choice of wines.After three visits in three days, my wife and I slightly preferred the bar to the restaurant -- not that there was anything wrong with the latter, but the organic cathedral-like grandeur of the bar area was at the same time awe-inspiring and welcoming. Returning after the first visit, we felt as though we were coming back to our private club.
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Plus, optionally, ginger and soy sauce.Isn't that really strong chinese mustard just dry english mustard reconstituted with water and sometimes a little vinegar?
Coffee Grinders: Models, Sources, Maintenance/Hygiene
in Coffee & Tea
Posted
I'm still using my Spong No.1 hand grinder, a wedding present over thirty years ago. I've had long discussions with coffee experts who generally agree that the whirling blade variety of so-called grinder poduces irregularly sized grains, with a lot of dust, and also overheats the coffee from friction produced at point of contact.
I once lashed out on an Italian burr grinder; shortly thereafter I got a pound of coffee beans with a stone included. The grinder was a write-off and I went back to the Spong. Since I generally make coffee one cup at a time, the work isn't excessive and the result, with Monmouth Java, is delicious!