Arpege: dinner and lunch; 2002-2004

[Steve Plotnicki]

Fat Guy - There is no point for me to repeat what I have already said. I don't think what you have expressed is an aesthetic. But if you really think it is, okay I will agree with you. It's an aesthetic. Now that we got that out of the way we can shift the emphasis. I don't find that an acceptable aesthetic for a three star chef to express (solely that is.) I have a different (and more rigorous I believe) standard and I eat at that level for an entirerely different purpose.

But now I can repeat myself. Among people who eat at that level for the same reasons I do, Ducasse fails. His cuisine lacks the things we look for when we go out to dine. And that is what sets him apart from a chef like Robuchon, or others who worked during the height of what I will call the nouvelle cuisine period. They managed to be perfectionsists and they expressed an aesthetic that we found, no make that was, interesting and original. And I find Ducasse, with all his perfection, because of his lack of originality and creativity on the core level, which means, moving his discipline forward on an aesthetic level (using my threshold definition) actually lowered standards by placing the emphasis on the internationalization of cuisine so he could open a chain of luxury restaurants around the world. And if you find taking the heart and soul out of fine dining to be a good thing, or a good aesthetic, be my guest. But when people ask me why the food tastes the same everywhere in the world, I am going to refer them to you.

[Fat Guy]

You say it's an unacceptable approach yet you've completely ignored my arguments for why it is not only acceptable but also the best and the most rigorous. All you said was that my statements were hyperbole. That's hardly an "acceptable" response. Let me know when you get caught up with the argument and we can move on. While you're at it answer my question, which you ignored many posts ago, about where you can go -- if Ducasse is so generic -- to get Ducasse's cuisine outside Ducasse's restaurants. I've dined at pretty much every three- and four-star restaurant in New York and at about half the three-stars in France and I have yet to encounter a meal that reminds me of a meal at Ducasse. Nor have I ever seen a critic write, "My meal at Ducasse was just like the meal I had the day before at X restaurant." Restaurants like Taillevent, Les Crayeres, and Georges Blanc fit your characterization far more than Ducasse does -- they serve many dishes that could be served in the other place. Whereas you can spot a Ducasse plate a mile away. I fail to see how a unique restaurant -- or three restaurants -- can be generic.

As for "Among people who eat at that level for the same reasons I do, Ducasse fails" all you're saying is you don't like it and the people who agree with you don't like it either. Let me know when you're ready to do a better job of explaining away the fact that the most knowledgeable culinary minds on the planet think Ducasse is the world's best chef. So far you've said your opinion and the opinion of people who agree with you is more valid than the consensus of professionals, the consensus of the best critics, the consensus of the marketplace, and the consensus of the subset of people who dine at the most expensive restaurants in the world. That's a pretty strange position for you to take. Surely you realize it comes across as nothing more than self-serving and self-fulfilling.

[Steve Plotnicki]

But I agree that Ducasse is the world's best chef. Just like I think that Wynton Marsalis is the world's best trumpet player. In fact Ducasse is probably the best chef that ever lived. And Wynton is clearly the best trumpet player that ever lived. And like Ducasse's plates, which like you said you can identify as Ducasse, you can tell it's Wynton who is playing a mile away. His tone is magnificent. It's regal. It's the most confident tone that anyone ever brought to trumpet playing. But what does any of that have to do with what makes for a good restaurant or good jazz recordings?

You are the one who always discounts the notion of "soul." You say there is no such thing. That whenever I or anybody else here uses the phrase you dismiss it as our personal preferences hiding behind words. But you couldn't be more wrong about it. There is such a thing as soul. It's what makes Ray Charles sing America better then anyone else. Or it's what makes James Brown better then his contemporaries and timeless. And it's what will make Sucker MC's last into pop music eternity (I figured I had to give myself a plug there.) And it's what makes the Ramone's a better band then groups with 100 times the technical ability. It is an individualized, unique way of applying technique to a set of variables that communicates an aesthetic to someone's core. It isn't exclusively an intelectual exercise. It's an emotional exercise too. But if you want to keep evaluating Ducasse on an intelectual level that is fine with me. But don't go trying to act as if his cooking has been stirring people's emotions. There is absolutely no proof of that either from you or anybody else. In fact, if you look at positive reviews of Ducasse you have offered, both yours and Ms. Wells, it seems that soulfull would be the last way one should describe his cuisine.

But then of course we could get into a discussion of what soulful means. And then you or somebody else could claim that Ducasse has soul. Like people used to claim that Pat Boone sang with more soul then Little Richard. And that wouldn't surprise me either. If eGullet can tolerate a discussion which questions the quality of Montrachet versus St. Veran, and has posters who ask for empirical proof that Montrachet is superior, yes the food that Ducasse offers can be soulful, creative, original and anything else you can think of.

[Bux]

I have enough confidence in your [Frat-Guy's] palate to know that if we were sitting at a table with a bowl of various tomatoes, that there would be very little disagreement as to which one was the best.  

This is precisely where I have the greatest problem with your post in this thread as well as with the general tone of the thread. I have paid much great attention to heirloom tomatoes this summer and have been purchasing them for eating at home. I cannot tell you which tomato is the best. I don't necessarily mean which variety is more apt to offer a better tomato. I have had so many tomatoes that vary in taste and texture that it has been impossible for me to prefer one to the other. Each wonderful specimen just makes the next one more special for it's difference. And so it is with chef's and restaurants. Adria's cooking just makes Ducasse's taste that much better and Ducasse makes Passards' food more interesting and appealing, while that in turn sets me up to enjoy Guerard who in his turn sets me up to appreciate Adria. Or they would, had I enough time and money to eat their food in reasonably rapid succession. These attempts to place every restaurant above or below another is what detracts from what one says about any individual meal.

Let me go back to what Fat Guy said about journeymen reviewers who seem to work as consumer advocates and their counterpart the professional critic who can teach us to understand what's good, creative, excellent, important, enlightening, etc. about someone's work and let us form our own subjective opinions about it's value. I have no desire to put Ducasse above Passard or Gagnaire or to talk anyone into eating at AD/PA over Arpege or Gagnaire, nor do I care what others think about their relative interest or importance. I have great respect for your ability to appreciate what you like and for your prose in explaining that appreciation, but I have little interest in reading your defense of what you don't appreciate as if taste were not subjective. Each stab at Ducasse is often an illumination of your shortcoming in appreciation and not necessarily of his in delivery.

[Steve Plotnicki]

I have had so many tomatoes that vary in taste and texture that it has been impossible for me to prefer one to the other.

Bux - Well you see the green ones that look like plums were the best tomatoes I had this season. And based on serving them at my home on a number of occassions, most people commented about the green ones. And indeed when I had dinner at Daniel, Daniel Boulud was talking about how phenomenol the green tomatoes were as well (I'm sure Toby will fill in the name of the species.) So I don't know what to tell you. Just because you can't or didn't try to tell doesn't mean that the rest of us can't or shouldn't. And it isn't like I tried to either. It's just that they were noticeably different and superior to the point that it was obvious. The yellow tomatoes that were beefsteak like were also terrific. Not quite as distinct tasting as those green one's though. But they had a hell of a lot of flavor. And the small orange cherry tomatoes had some killer acid to them and were sweet as sugar. Those were the three best tasting of the summer to me.

[Steve Plotnicki]

And another thing.

This thread was about Arpege. It wasn't about the relative abilities of Passard versus Ducasse or the worthiness of Arpege versus any of Ducasse's establishments. It was Fat Guy who introduced the competition between the two, and who did so in a way that "dissed" Passard and Arpege. And if you were to give anyone a lecture about fine dining being a relative experience, tell your fellow moderator. But don't chide me and criticize the "stabs" I have taken at Ducasse in the context of a discussion that started and was framed by Fat Guy.

[Toby]

The Best Tomato (an aside)

During the height of the tomato season, a customer at the farmers' market asked me for the best tomato we had. I said, "You mean the best variety?" but she said, "No, the best tomato on the table." Including all the cherry tomatoes in boxes, there were probably 2,000 or more tomatoes on the table. I waved my arm over the table as if it were a ouija board and swooped down and picked one up and said, "This one." So she bought it.

The best tomato I ate this season was a pineapple tomato that we cut open and ate standing around on a very hot day. It was probably the best tomato I ever ate, sweet but complex, luscious and juicy. The next week we tried another one and it was nothing special.

Steve, were the green ones you mentioned sort of striped all the way around, green and yellow stripes? Those are green zebras. The little orange ones are sun gold.

[Fat Guy]

Plotnicki I don't know enough about Jazz to get into that particular analogy with you, but what's your take on Bach? Are you one of those people who thinks of him a "a perfectionist dry cold emotionless genius" or are you moved by his music? I think of the "robo-chef" contingent (those who like Gael Greene have accused Ducasse of being overly intellectual in his approach to cuisine) as being right in there with the "Bach's music is just a bunch of mathematical formulae" theory. But the interesting thing, to me, is that despite the claims often bandied about regarding the mechanical and unemotional nature of both Ducasse's cooking and Bach's music nobody has actually been able to reproduce what either of them has done. There's nobody out there who has written better Bach, which one should be able to do if it's only a matter of math. And nobody has done a better rendition of Ducasse because it's not just a matter of putting together all that practical stuff into a juggernaut of technique, luxury, ingredients, service, and expense. There's something more there.

Ducasse certainly holds his emotional cards close to his chest. He's no extrovert when it comes to telegraphing his feelings through his cuisine. You don't get the restless, tortured vibe that a guy like Gagnaire throws out there. You don't get pure seduction like at Les Crayeres. You get something much less overt, which I'd characterize as very guarded but nonetheless unwavering optimism, idealism, and ambition. You see to me, as I've said before, the quest for excellence is inspiring. We live in a world where excellence is not worshiped as it should be, but rather is something we're asked to be ashamed of. It is a source of persistent frustration for someone like me, who believes in the virtue of excellence -- who believes that excellence is the highest possible goal for mankind. So what I get from Ducasse is a sense of validation and relief because he shows me that he is one of the few people out there willing to pursue excellence so relentlessly.

But it goes beyond that to a unique expression of excellence and its pursuit. Ducasse is no recycler of repertoire. I would appreciate him even if all he could do is create the best rendition of what has come before. But I extol him because he is not satisfied to recreate -- he is a creator. And part of his creation is just doing things better, finding new ingredients, techniques, and ways of presentation that move the ball forward. But it's not so simple as delivering the knockout punch with more and more flavor -- Ducasse very rarely resorts to that, and only when there is a single flavor that demands that treatment as in his white truffle dishes, like the simple poached egg or sea scallop enrobed in slices of truffle, which are definitive for their clarity.

Just as with his emotions, he is conservative about doling out the flavors. He is far more committed to balance than to intensity, as in his slowly cooked squab with the mildest possible choices of "melting" root vegetables, and for this reason his food is sometimes called bland. His contrasts are not stark; they are subtle, as when he pairs slices of sea scallop with a thick vichysoisse and pushes the scallop as tender as possible and the vichysoisse to a level of thickness where you must exercise all your senses to discern where liquid ends and solid begins -- and of this dish I've heard that it has no texture! I think Ducasse's cuisine may not convey the kinds of emotions you're looking for when you look for emotion in food. But he conveys emotions to and triggers emotional reactions in me. If I'm not a good enough writer to convey that to anybody else in a convincing manner, so be it. But since he's a better chef than I am a writer maybe he can convey it through the food.

[Steve Plotnicki]

Toby - That's a funny story. I think they had mild stirpes. You sold seperate baskets of them. Not that I actually sat down with all of the tomatoes and came to a precise conclusion, but on cutting a variety of all the tomatoes and serving them those green suckers stuck out. But you are also correct when you say that different tomatoes were "better" at different points in the season. Towards the end of the season the yellow ones were better because they seemed to be firm when some of the other varietys seemed to get a little watery.

[Fat Guy]

And Plotnicki if you go through this topic and look for the first mention of Ducasse, guess where you'll find it?

"It's like the way I feel about Ducasse. It does everything a three star restaurant is supposed to do but in a superficial way. But I don't deprive them of the fact that it has the look and feel of a three star restaurant. It just doesn't have the necessary wow, either on a sensual or cerebral level, to meet the standard I apply for three star restaurants. It doesn't even do a good job of charming people like Taillevent does to change the focus into the dining experience . There is not a single dish that Ducasee has contributed to the lexicon of haute cuisine." - S. Plotnicki

And yes the green ones were the best of the season.

[Steve Plotnicki]

Fat Guy - That was one of your best posts ever. And I wish I had the time to address all of it. But I have been summoned by Mrs. P for a shopping mission and I shall return later. By then I am sure that Mr. Brown will have posted and some of the heat that I have been taking about explaining aesthetics will be firmly on his shoulders. But if I can comment on one thing you said, whether I am expert in Bach or not (and I'm not so there,) the one thing that is glaring in your comparison to Bach and to Ducasse is the timeframe they worked in. Whether or not you like Bach, and whether or not you find that harmonic possibilities that he codified meaningful or merely a bunch of "mathematica' formulae," it's hard to say that music would have been the same without Bach figuring it all out and writing it all down. But we are 350 years later in time. I don't see what Ducasse is adding of interest other then a refinment of the same techniques that was codified all the other chefs of the 20th century?

And I knew you would agree with me about the tomatoes.

[Fat Guy]

Oh there are a lot of problems with the Bach analogy. One big one is that while both Bach and Ducasse are composer/performers, we have no idea what a Bach performance sounded like and every performance we do hear of Bach represents a hybrid of the composition and the interpretation of the performer, whereas Ducasse is a participant in and supervisor of the performances of his dishes. And I think one reason so many people think of Bach as emotionless is because we're saddled with all these early-20th-Century German performances that really are emotionless. You can give an emotionally empty performance of any piece of music and you can cook any recipe poorly. So yes the analogy sucks.

I wish I could read French well and quickly. I can only read about a page an hour, with a dictionary, badly. But I have been told by people who read and are serious about French cookbooks that Ducasse is a major codifier and that it's probably Escoffier - Ducasse - Next Guy a Century Later when you look at who the big codifiers have been in the history of French cuisine (maybe Robuchon too, but Ducasse seems to have overshadowed Robuchon at this point). Have you seen his Grand livre de Cuisine? There's serious stuff in there, but as I said I've read only a few pages of it. Still it seems encyclopedic. If my take on it is correct, it's a whole school of thought in there, with Ducasse and his five disciples presenting these crazy-detailed technical datasheets on most every type of dish and technique in the modern repertoire and then some. The photos are nice too; there are like 1000 of them. But I do think this is one area where the view of Ducasse's fellow professionals would be dispositive: I think they see him as a Bach-like figure who has pulled together all the post-Escoffier stuff that has maybe been hanging around here and there but hasn't been well understood or documented by any one chef.

On the American side, did you see the Harvesting Excellence book? I wish he had done a better job with it, but I guess he doesn't speak enough English and probably delegated too much. Still it's the kind of codification that, again, you expect from the towering figure in a field. I mean, why the heck didn't any American ever get it together to do this book? This French guy had to come over here in order to figure out all the best stuff. And sure he got most of the information from his buddies like Daniel Boulud and Christian Delouvrier and others -- but he's the guy who put it together in one book (and in one restaurant too) and then moved on to find new and better stuff than anybody in the market had been using (that Arizona beef, the strangled squab, the foie gras shipped in parchment, etc.).

But Ducasse's historical contributions, if I may hazard a guess, will probably be on the restaurateur level as much as on the chef level. What is he up to like a hundred Michelin stars now? I think that kind of achievement is changing and will change forever the way restaurateurs do business. It's not the same as the relatively self-limiting phenomana of Veyrat and Mere Brazier -- Ducasse is a much bigger and categorically different kind of force.

I've lost my train of thought, sorry, but I too am heading out so until later . . .

[Fat Guy]

Oh let me say one thing that I keep forgetting to say but that actually has something to do with Passard. I remember when Passard did that whole thing with announcing his new emphasis on vegetables, which frankly I never understood perhaps because it was a conceptually bogus announcement or perhaps because the media botched the coverage so badly. But the thing I kept thinking when he busted out with it was, hey, wait a second, isn't that Ducasse's thing? This happened at a time when I knew a lot less about Ducasse than know now, but even then I thought of Ducasse as the big vegetable guy, the guy who really broke the mold and started serving a lot of vegetable-only dishes at the three-star level especially in the Monaco joint with his various "these peas were picked last night in the field of a farmer named Pierre and came on a truck with finely tuned shock absorbers that needed no refrigeration because we did all the driving at night when it was cool out and the truck was driven by a virgin" types of claims. I wonder if Passard was at all affected by Ducasse in this regard.

[Steve Plotnicki]

No the main difference between Bach and Ducasse is that Bach invented the harmonic combinations and Ducasse is just refining existing codifications by tweaking the techniques. It lacks the originality and creativity that Bach showed in his time. Adria is the one who is inventing and codifying an entirely new technique these days.

You see to me, as I've said before, the quest for excellence is inspiring. We live in a world where excellence is not worshiped as it should be, but rather is something we're asked to be ashamed of. It is a source of persistent frustration for someone like me, who believes in the virtue of excellence -- who believes that excellence is the highest possible goal for mankind.

Well excellence is fine. Chefs and other professionals in the field value excellence. But what people ultimately value is self-expression. Ducasse can make the perfect chicken with melting root vegetables but it isn't fine if the dish leaves people cold. That he did it perfectly will never be good enough for me. He has to do it with passion. Sure Ducasse is a force in the market and has a body of work that can't be matched by anyone else. But I personally don't see it as having that much impact on the food I eat. And again, it comes back to the notion of signatures. If his chicken with melting root vegetables was copied the world over, I would probably feel differently about him. And without specific instances to point to, there is very much an emperor's new clothes aspect to his work. But maybe he will be like Van Gogh and years from now people will copy his recipes and they will be served all over the world. But I have to tell you I don't see it. And I certainly can't taste it when I go to his restaurants.

And you are right about Ducasse slow cooking the vegetables first. But that also makes the point that he didn't offer an aesthetic around the improvement in technique. Passard did and that is why he got the credit. And I'm sure that it was the same for Bach. I'm sure there were lots of composers at the time who were tinkering with those harmonic combinations. But Bach, like Shakespere, like Louis Armstrong, captured something human in the way he did his codifications that made people feel it in their gut, not just intelctualize them in their brain. And that's why he got the credit. He didn't do the best job of inventing it, he did the best job of presenting it.

[robert brown]

Over what I believe is the most impassioned and intelligent thread in the brief history of e-Gullet, I have spent a few hours just trying to digest it. The differing beliefs of the participants are so tightly held and well articulated that there can be no winners or losers, or no winning and losing positions-- only personal convictions. Of course, I have them too, and if they sneak out, why should it matter? Instead, I have been so mentally stimulated that all I want to do is share a few conceptual thoughts that came into my head simply by dint of reading and re-reading the thread and which I hope will cast some additional light to the several topics that people have brought to the fore.

One concept that came to me since it has in various ways driven certain aspects of the debate is aesthetic distance. As most of you who ever took a philosophy or esthetics course, or simply well-read in certain fields know, (and there is a lot of which I have forgotten since my undergraduate days) aesthetic distance is a term used to indicate the extent to which a person is able to relate to an esthetic object, expression, performance, or, generally speaking, manifestation regardless of the intervening circumstances that have the potential to disrupt, interfere or distort the esthetic response. Thus, the person who recognizes and allows the back-projection behind two people in a 1940s movie “riding” in a car to spoil his-absorption of the narrative in the film would be “under-distanced” or not maintaining aesthetic distance.

After conjuring up the concept of aesthetic distance, I saw immediately how easily applicable it was to fine dining, certainly so to the French three-star variety. (Okay, I have to admit that to a large degree it is shorthand for the non-culinary aspects of dining, but it conveys it in a novel way, especially with all the attention given on the thread to esthetics). I strongly suspect that when restaurateurs in the 1880s through to the Belle Époque were building Maxim’s, Laperouse, La Tour d’Argent, and so forth were not thinking about shortening esthetic distance between the client and the cuisine. However, I am certain that there is much more a conscious effort to do so today, even if that is not the term a restaurateur would think of to call what is the esthetic positioning of the diner towards the cuisine through the use of available ruffles and flourishes, bells and whistles, and whatever non-culinary weapons are in the proverbial arsenal.

One obvious but nonetheless overlooked and interesting aspect to the debate between the adherents of Passard and those of Ducasse is how close the two men and their businesses are to being polar opposites in such key areas as temperament, goals, and how they construct their livelihoods. In terms of meaningful aesthetic distance, Passard does almost everything possible to maintain and lengthen it in the context of a lean and mean restaurant operation, which, as far as I know or can tell, almost completely dominates his everyday life. Ducasse, on the other hand, has a life we all know about: the dozen restaurants he oversees, the books, boutiques, products, and so forth. A visit to any of his three major restaurants is, given the works of art on the walls or the original Empire surroundings, and all that goes with it in terms of service and the culinary and extra-culinary accoutrements alike, an exercise in shortening the aesthetic distance. I have to wonder, therefore, if this vast dichotomy between the two men and their enterprises helps account for the preference of Passard by the well-traveled and experienced (perhaps even somewhat jaded) eaters, on one hand; and the great admiration for Ducasse by those in one form or another earn their livelihood from gastronomy, on the other. And let’s not forget the strictly culinary considerations. I believe that those for whom dining at Passard is paramount can bank on his preparing their meal, and that much of what he makes, while at times idiosyncratic, will be inordinately distinctive. As for those who express deep admiration for Ducasse, Steve Shaw has described perfectly their reasons why (as has Steve P done with Passard) ; but to put it in another way, Ducasse’s cuisine represents the best manifestation of the connecting link to the mainstream of French “haute gastronomie” as it predominated in the last quarter of the 20th century.

Another aspect of the thread that I find interesting is a kind of appeal to authority: that food professionals, be they chefs or critics, somehow know best; and if there is an overwhelming consensus among them, all the better. The first phenomenon one should be aware of is that living practitioners are the least reliable source of recommendations, which is why the truths and the insights they do have usually come out in memoirs and posthumous letters and diaries (often with a many-year embargo), and, of course, they rarely write the definitive histories of whatever art form or profession they represent. As Steve P. wrote above, “What chefs think has nothing to do with what the paying public thinks”. While I would take under consideration in certain circumstances a chef’s recommendation, how forthright and objective is a chef going to be when talking of the restaurants of his colleagues? Furthermore, and maybe even more significant, many chefs are incapable of discussing gastronomy or the experience of a restaurant visit at the same level of insight or open-mindedness as the best culinary writers and the people who post on this site. Without getting into a diatribe about restaurant critics, I think one of the hallmarks of learning how to eat is the ability to dispense eventually with an over-reliance on restaurant critics. (“Restaurant recommenders” is a more suitable name for the profession). In the purview of criticism of restaurants in France, it doesn’t matter how many visits to three-star restaurants Patricia Wells has made. After more than 20 years of doing so, she still cannot write in any evocative or amusing way (as witnessed above by her “description” of Ducasse’s cuisine that gives no tangible indication of what it really is. Compare it to the successful and enlightened one that follows). Of course, we all know the conflicts of interests, the closed clubbiness of the food writing profession, and the lack of “gourmandness” in the soul of most of them. To my mind, the best and most accurate restaurant opinions come from the dedicated, devoted and unencumbered amateur (“amateur” in the classic sense of being a lover).

There are so much more concerns that people have manifested on this thread. However, since I finally realized that if you address too many topics in one post, the replies can end up addressing the ones you don’t deeply care about. Therefore, I will stop here for the time being, even though I have some more to say.

[Fat Guy]

I'm going to go eat some kung pao chicken at Grand Sichuan International Midtown (probably the best-known of Ducasse's signature dishes, widely imitated in Asia minus the induction wok), read your post again later, and respond late tonight if I disagree with anything in it. Actually, I'll respond even if I agree, which I think I might, but I have to go.

[Jonathan Day]

Robert's point about the appeal to authority gets to the heart of this debate.

I have read enough of professional cookery and restaurant review writers to agree that their work is a ladder to climb up and then kick away -- in no small part because of the factions and cliques that develop within the tribe.

And the views of chefs may be valuable but ultimately limited for those in search of a great dining experience, because I suspect that they experience food and service in a very different way. Even the small time I have spent "on the other side of the kitchen door" has changed the way I react to restaurants and food they serve.

So we are left with a question about authority.

At one extreme we find the pure relativism that I, at least, want to avoid: whatever you like is good, whatever I like is good, and there's no point in having a discussion. De gustibus non est disputandum. Let's close down eGullet; each of us can then go to McDonald's, Ducasse, or wherever.

At the other extreme, we have what sometimes reads like a self-defined élite: "my own academy", in Steve Plotnicki's words. Those who are in the know will prefer Passard to Ducasse. How do you know that someone is in this magic circle? Because they prefer Passard to Ducasse.

One reason this discussion is so difficult is that these chefs are working today. "Classics" -- and I think part of what we are struggling with in this and related threads is to understand what makes a culinary classic -- seem much easier to spot at least a few decades, if not centuries, after they are born.

The dictionary (Concise Oxford) defines a "classic" as "of the first class, of avowed excellence." I would offer the following definition for our purposes: a chef who produces classic dishes (or classic dining experiences) is one whose work everyone who would consider her/himself knowledgeable about cuisine must at some point grapple with, someone who has made an immutable contribution to the art. It seems to me that we could adopt such a definition without any criterion about "liking" or enjoying work that is considered classic. I enjoy Stravinsky but struggle to enjoy Schoenberg, but understand why both composers contributed classic works, and why I won't fully appreciate music without some encounter with Schoenberg.

If I understand Steve Plotnicki's point about Ducasse, and if he is right, Ducasse will go into history as a clever and entrepreneurial academician, someone who made a lot of money and opened several high-end restaurants, but didn't fundamentally change the language of cookery.

If Steve Shaw is right, Ducasse's work will ultimately be seen as classic, just as Escoffier and Careme before him forever changed the ways we think about cooking and restaurants. This because of Ducasse's innovations in food preparation, ambition, scale, subtlety, and so on.

We are still left with the question of authority. Rule out chefs and professional restaurant critics. The anonymous inspectors of the Guide Michelin accord Passard and Ducasse equal numbers of stars. While I deeply agree with Robert's claim that "the best and most accurate restaurant opinions come from the dedicated, devoted and unencumbered amateur", this thread has demonstrated several passionate, devoted and presumably unencumbered amateurs holding widely divergent views.

My guess is that the two views are ultimately irreconcilable, and that we have come across two diverging schools. Again, I turn to the Concise Oxford: "band or succession of persons devoted to some cause or principle or agreeing in typical characteristics." A useful device perhaps, for sharing the criteria around which the passionate judgements are being made.

[Fat Guy]

In light of your comments, with which I think I agree on the whole, I'd just like to emphasize that appeals to authority are not my style. I am much happier talking about the thing itself than about what supposed authorities think of it. I find it interesting to examine that aspect of things, and I do sometimes play the role of media critic exactly because I find it interesting, but in the end it's just an explanation and not a justification for anything. In this thread my explanations of Ducasse's standing in the profession should be viewed in light of the specific dialog, in which that standing was an essential part of the discussion because of the particular structure of the argument and of my main interlocutor's background as a champion of authority, expertise, and consensus. But in the end I don't think Ducasse is a great chef because he has held more Michelin stars than anybody in history; I think he holds more Michelin stars than anybody in history because he's a great chef. Ditto for any particular consensus: It follows his greatness; it does not establish it. If I thought he was a bad chef, and he had the same number of stars, I'd see it as a flaw in the Michelin system. A clear critical, professional, or consumer consensus gives me pause and causes me to search harder for explanations and understanding than I would in a vacuum, but ultimately I wouldn't hesitate to break ranks were I to become convinced of an incorrect consensus -- as I was when the critical consensus was temporarily against Ducasse, creating the unlikely situation of the world's greatest chef having only a marginal critic to defend him in the media. Likewise, I think a critic must stand or fall on what that critic says, and not on any credited expertise. The expertise should be evident in what the critic says; it should lend authority by virtue of being a tangible presence in the critic's writing. It's very hard to fake this over the long haul. But I can't see lumping all critics together as relevant or irrelevant, not that you've tried to do that.

I'll touch on the rest of the arguments later.

[Bux]

A green zebra was the single tomato that best embodied all that I hope to find in a tomato. With my eyes closed, it tasted as if it were the reddest tomato I had ever imagined. It was, in terms of taste, the perfect tomato. In terms of taste, it was the classic academic tomato and thus of limited interest to my friends who want to be moved by a tomato. A yellow orange mango tomato changed the way I see tomatoes. It moved me emotionally and intellectually and not just for a brief period. On the other hand, the yellow beefsteak tomatoes aren't particularly interesting.

[Steve Plotnicki]

Robert - To take one aspect of your very impressive post, one of the more rewarding moments of being a wine collector is when you can dispense with the critics. Not that one can do it completely. Unless you are a professional and taste every day, you need some reference point because there is too much information to gather. But if you travel to the regions you like to drink each year, you can pretty much eliminate your reliance on the critics. This is much harder to do with food. There is no way I can taste the food from Hiramatsu without going to have dinner there. This inefficiency make us rely on restaurant critics in a way we don't rely on any other field of criticism other then the movies or theater. We can test drive cars, feel the material of the suit we are buying, sit in the chair we are thinking about, we can even go over to the bookstore and read a few pages from a book we are considering. But a restaurant is one of the few things where you have to actually make a purchase in order to sample the wares. And that is why we are so reliant on restaurant critics. And it's worse in France because there is only one voice which is Patricia Wells. Not that I think she does a bad job, I think she does a good job. But that doesn't leave us with much of a choice if we would like a more in depth opinion then what she usually has to offer.

How do you know that someone is in this magic circle? Because they prefer Passard to Ducasse.

JD - This is essentially correct but it is oversimplfied. There is a reason they would usually choose Passard over Ducasse and that goes to the reasons they like to eat haute cuisine. Your conclusion of different schools of thought gets closest to what makes an academy tick and you would find that the people who prefer Passard all belong to the same school. But as long as you raised it in this context, I am still waiting for someone to explain to me what the Academy of Perfectionism is? To me it sounds like it is really a front for conservatism.

The reason that professionals are not best suited to critique their own fields is because they prioritize things differently then outsiders do. When I eat at Ducasse or Passard, it is only of secondary interest to me how a dish is made. I never get that far if the dish doesn't pass muster to begin with. In fact I am only ever interested in how they made something when I enjoy something so much, and it's qualitites are so unusual that I go out of my way to ask. I can think of a few instances recently where I did that. I asked about my spinach at Arpege and I asked about the way my cod was poached at Blue Hill. Otherwise why something tastes the way it tastes does holds no interest for me. And I can't imagine why any diner would care about it. Especially if it isn't good. And in reality, as Robert B. so succinctly put it, the quest to know can interfere with one's ability to follow the narrative.

In light of your comments, with which I think I agree on the whole, I'd just like to emphasize that appeals to authority are not my style. I am much happier talking about the thing itself than about what supposed authorities think of it.

Fat Guy - I can't quite put my finger on it but there is some inconsistancy in a statement that Ducasse is the top authority on food, as evidenced by his achievements, and then saying that you don't like appeals to authority. It seems to me that in order to really speak of Ducasse's merit as a chef, you have to disepnse with arguments that rely on authorities such as Michelin stars etc. and hold his food up to the light.

This is why I always gravitate to the concept of signature dishes, i.e., lifetime achievements that are recognizable on a single case basis. And I don't look at the entire body of an artist's work. This conversation would be at a much higher level if we actually discussed Ducasse's food, and could hear why you think particular dishes are good? The arguments set forth by those who admire Passard's cuisine are replete on this board and his famous dishes are spoken of and discussed all of the time. Yet there is very little written about Ducasse's actual food other then he made it. In fact I don't know of a single dish of his that is recognizable. And I don't know of any achievement of his that would call for a new codification of the cuisine. Clearly if he had invented something new, whether it be a type of cuisine, a new technique to apply to food, or a new philosophy about food I would have heard of it. I do read a few food articles you know. Exactly what is it that he is codifying? Isn't it codified already? Or is he just rewriting the same old codifications and changing the name of the author?

[schaem]

As a cook I think it is possible to admire both Ducasse and Passard as great practitioners of their art (though on a cook's salary most of the admiration is done from afar). What I, and other people in "the back" admire about Ducasse is the dedication to perfection, the excellence of technique, and,yes, the codification of modern cuisine in his prolific writing. What we admire about Passard (or Gagnaire, a place I've actually eaten at) is the style, the wonder, the astonishment at their bold vision of food. (Though I think you're as likely to be appalled by a dish at PG as blown away, not the case at ADNY I suspect.)

If one sees it as two "schools", perfection and a certain conservatism on one hand, daring and innovation on the other, then the question becomes who has more influence.

American cooks in particular can be easily seduced by the idea of innovaton over everything; it is much easier to "copy" Rothko than Rembrandt. Rothko (Passard, Gagnaire) are certainly schooled in ther art and are true masters, but those who seek to follow them may not be. On the other hand if a young cook seeks to emulate Ducasse's dedication to perfection and truly discipline themselves they may, eventually, become true artists capable of expressing themselves with a complete array of tools.

I am not dismissing the "school" of Passard (L'Arpege tops my list of restaurants to try in Paris) because cuisine must always have innovation, but to dismiss Ducasse as "merely" striving for perfection is dangerous. There are so many young cooks and chefs in NY (trust me) who aspire to innovation, that I fear any dedication to perfection, discipline, and technique may be lost. Maybe this is incidental to the conversation, but as someone who spends more time in kitchens than dining rooms, it is important.

[cabrales]

American cooks in particular can be easily seduced by the idea of innovaton over everything;  it is much easier to "copy" Rothko than Rembrandt . . .

What I think has been missing in this thread so far is the observation that innovation at non-Ducasse places (it's helpful everybody has conceded Ducasse does not meaningfully innovate) is **coupled with**, instead of being at the expense of, perfectionism. It takes discipline and dedication to try and develop, and implement, dishes with innovation.

Separately, I strongly disagree with schaem's observation that innovation is easier to copy. It just might appear to be easy to copy poorly, because, if one copied the less innovative cuisine of Ducasse, diners might just think the cuisine were poor and would not necessarily "connect the dots" as to the chef being copied. In other words, if Ducasse's food were copied poorly, one wouldn't even necessarily be able to identify that the attempted copy was of Ducasse (due to the lack of innovation). However, when an innovative chef is copied, the copier will usually combine ingredients in, obviously, a more innovative or distinctive way and copies will be easier to detect. Like Ken Oringer's lobster with yellow wine. It doesn't take much to figure who might have "inspired" him (see Clio thread under New England forum). Yet a chef like Oringer has executed the resulting dish very poorly. Can members imagine the travesty to emanate from copies executed by less capable chefs?

[Steve Plotnicki]

Cabrales has made the point very well. It isn't that other chefs do not strive to make perfect cuisine, it's that other chefs have not sacrificed innovation for perfection. But when I'm in Paris later this month, I'm going to go to ADPA and order the "Striving for Perfection" menu. It features only perfect things, it's cooked perfectly and it's served perfectly too. And when you leave you feel perfect as well. Because that's the whole point of dining isn't it?

I actually have a more cynical view of this. I believe that when Ducasse set out in business he had great aspirations of building an empire. And I believe that he concluded that the only way he could do that successfully while operating his restaurants at a level sufficient to garner the necessary praise and Michelin stars was to strip his cuisine of any boldness so as to make it manageabale for his surrogate chefs. Because one thing doesn't add up about Ducasse. He was a student of Chapel's, who was an innovative chef. How Ducasse came from that background and went the route of conservatism doesn't make any sense to me.

It just keeps reminding me of Wynton Marsalis. He's a guy who in the span of two months can release a jazz CD and a classical CD. And everyone talks about how prolific he is. But when you listen to the CD's they are just a bunch of technique. The guys doesn't ever say anything new about jazz. But I will say that his albums are "perfect." If one like the type of perfection that has no innovation, creativity or boldness attached to it. But I guess I'm from the school that says that creativity, innovation and boldness are part of something being perfect.

[schaem]

I didn't mean to imply that innovation was easier to copy...successfully. What I meant was that "mind-blowing" food is valued over "perfect" food than some kid just out of the CIA is going to make "Sichuan peppercorn studded veal brains with Sauterne foam, passion fruit coulis and a cabbage sorbet...." and get famous. Meanwhile some poor schlub is contacting farmers who really care about their products and spending 20 years learning how to maximize the flavor of these products to create wonderful tasting food is

going to get ignored. And if you don't believe than you should eat out in New York more often. (sorry, I know this a France thread)

I don't think that Passard is one of these people, I just think that there is a place for conservatism and perfection in fine dining. And I especially think young cooks should respect tradition, discipline, hard work, and perfection before wanting to become the next Ferran Adria. Again, I'm coming at this from a cooks perspective. If I go to Paris I'd rather eat at L'Arpege than Taillevaint (sic?), but that doesn't mean that Passard is "right" and the old guard "wrong". And since I live in NY and not Paris, ADNY is the closest thing I have to "old guard" French tradition. I stagiared in that kitchen and it was a vital experience to me. New York is a better place because of ADNY and that's a good enough argument for me.

[cabrales]

What I meant was that "mind-blowing" food is valued over "perfect" food than some kid just out of the CIA is going to make "Sichuan peppercorn studded veal brains with Sauterne foam, passion fruit coulis and a cabbage sorbet...." and get famous.  Meanwhile some poor schlub  is contacting farmers who really care about their products and spending 20 years learning how to maximize the flavor of these products to create wonderful tasting food is going to get ignored.  And if you don't believe than you should eat out in New York more often. (sorry, I know this a France thread)

schaem -- That less competent chefs (to be clear, with all respect to chefs) are seeking to follow the footsteps of the innovative chefs they admire and/or are otherwise believing that innovation will be noticed by clients is irrelevant to the current dialogue, in my mind. If anything, it shows that the "copying" chefs perceive clients will notice and value innovation, and/or prefer the cuisine of the innovative chefs. If one were a chef intent on copying, wouldn't one at least take into account one's personal preference as one (not necessarily the most important) factor in deciding whom to copy? For example, if one hated the cuisine of a given chef, would one copy that chef's cuisine? Accordingly, the significant copying of innovative chefs, if relevant, supports the appreciation by the "copiers" of those chefs' cuisine. As I noted before, because one doesn't necessarily even know which non-innovative chefs are being attempted to be copied, I am not indicating that innovative chefs are necessarily being copied more. I am merely stating that innovative chefs are copied a great deal.

It's like when one looks at the inexpensive knock-offs of designer bags. Do you see the *least demanded* bags being copied on New York streets (using a New York example again), or does one see Louis Vuitton, Prada, Kate Spade, etc. -- the bags that people want! Of course, the bags are not the genuine article. So can one blame Louis Vuitton for the imitators? Of course not!

I'm glad you speak of New York restaurants, because restaurants that respond to seasonal produce and high quality produce and that produce delicious food are being valued. Take Colin Alevras' Tasting Room -- that is a restaurant that responds very quickly to seasonal availability and where the chef does a lot of shopping for high quality ingredients. Or, more to my interest, Blue Hill. That restaurant is centered around great produce, like Concord grapes. Blue Hill actually shows that the utilization of great ingredients and chefs' caring about that aspect are 100% consistent with innovative and thoughtful cooking.

I also wonder whom schaem was referring to when he/she indicated that "if you don't believe than [spelling] you should eat out in New York more often". Is the generic "you" being referenced, or the you of Steve P or myself, I wonder?

I'm also glad schaem mentioned his work in the ADNY kitchen, which may have informed his perceptions.

I'd like to end this particular post with my subjective belief that Ducasse's food at Plaza Athenee is far from "perfect" in any sense. Below are my observations from earlier this year. The meal described is, sadly, the best meal I have had with Ducasse. It had obvious flaws, from my perspective. So I'd like to emphasize that Ducasse might or might not be striving for perfection, but in my mind his food is quite far from arriving at any such goal:

Below is a description of a good-plus lunch at Plaza Athenee during 2Q 2002.

Araignee de mer decortiquee, jus emulsionne lie de corail (French spider crab removed from the shell, an emulsion jus linked with the coral)

Volaille de Bresse, chapelure de morille, jus/garniture d’ecrevisses (Bresse chicken, morel sauce, jus and garnishments of crayfish)

Fromages (Roquefort)

Caille de brebis, caramel-poivre, miel d’arbousier (ewes' curdle?, caramel-pepper, honey)

               Chassagne Montrachet, Clos de la Truffiere, Niellon 1996

Menthe chocolate infusion –  a special type of mint

The amuse was a piece of slightly-below-room temperature red mullet, with a light-apricot-colored aioli on top.  Nice use of garlic, and not a bad accompaniment in the form of small discs of thin potatoes decorated with diced olives and red peppers.  Around these items was a greenish colored oil that likely contained some of the ingredients of pesto. The amuse displayed Ducasse’s style of Mediterranean-style cooking that, among other things, renders his cuisine less attractive to me. Nonetheless, the amuse was an appropriately-executed dish.  The breads offered were varied, and one was of an unusual shape consisting of several pieces connected in an “unnatural”-looking way.

The spider crab appetizer was very good, but for some over-salting. Even with this problem, it was an attractive dish. The visual appeal of the dish was obvious – there appeared the roundish, cardinal red/orange colored shell of the spider crab (with its eyes, etc. included) on its back.  There was a large volume of light coral-colored emulsion (made with the coral/roe of the crab) filling the entire area above the edges of the shell of the crab.  When one delved below the emulsion, there were abundant amounts of strands of fresh-tasting, flavorful spider crab meat (as noted, oversalted). There was a brownish crab jus mixed in with the spider crab meat, and the resulting mixture was intense and tasty.  The coral emulsion itself was very light, but highly expressive of roe.

The Bresse chicken dish consisted of poularde, instead of poulet (I prefer poularde, which has to meet different requirements than poulet per AOC standards).  It consisted of three main components: (1) the largest component was a breast piece with a layer of grated morels on top of it – this was unduly dry and caused the overall dish to be so-so, (2) three or four curled ecrevisse bodies (small), with their tails on, and (3) a good mixture of cut-up morels integrated with coral-colored ecrevisse sauce and bits of both white and dark meat from Bresse chicken. On top of the mixture in (3) was a whole ecrevisse, orange and stark and dramatic in its presentation (with the head, tail, shell, “whiskers”, etc.) as it “stood guard” on top of the mixture. The overall saucing of the dish was a morel sauce, but added to it (and poured at the table) was a coral-colored ecrevisse sauce. This ecrevisse sauce reminded me of lobster bisque (in a good way).  The color effects as the different components of the saucing ran into one another were appealing.

The caille of brebis was good, and the caramel cold item was rich and tasty.  The honey ice cream was also attractive.  A good combination of desserts, because there was a slight element of saltiness in the caille of brebis that rendered the sugary aspects of the caramel and of the honey ice cream more interesting.

The tea/infusion trolley was nice, and being the recipient of the snipped leaves, etc. left me agreeing with mao and vivin that this was a nice touch (as opposed to my previous position that this was arguably gimmicky).  There were four little plants on the trolley, along with various accoutrements necessary for the preparation of the drinks – romarin (rosemary), thym-citron (a type of thyme perhaps?), menthe chocolate (a special type of mint, with no particular chocolate connotations) and verveine (verbena).  I could not say the mint tasted better than other mint infusions I have had, but I did like the snipping and preparation process for some reason.  The mignardises were appropriate: (1) numerous chocolate macarons and caramel macarons (the latter were not bad), (2) little “churizo” long donuts, in miniature size, that one sometimes finds in NY street fairs, offered with warm chocolate dipping sauce, and (3) other items.  

Decor and Service

The dining room is nice. The classical gold and white backdrop of the old-style room is well-utilized by a Starck pupil who provided very modern and attractive designs. The beautiful large chandeliers are enclosed, from the ceiling down, in very dramatic greyish mesh sections that are conical and long and enclose the chandelier. There are curvy grey partitions used along certain sections of the walls of the room, and also two pictures of young people clad in white on the side of the non-functional mantleplace.  Medium grey chairs, with some apricot chairs. The same color schemes for the carpets. Nice lighting, and a very attractive environment in my view.  Nice touches included the availability of a handbag stool matching the seats in the restaurant. Unappealing touches included the table ornament being a quasi-abstracted bronze (?) depiction of the Tour Eiffel.

 

Service imperfections were (1) the lack of availability of the late 1980's half- bottle of L. Jadot Batard Montrachet I initially chose, (2) the lack of explanation of the amuse until I asked, and (3) the sommelier’s assumption that I would order wine by the glass and his slow provision of the wine list (which was not unreasonably priced for a restaurant of this caliber in certain areas). Overall, the service was very good, with the dining room waiting team being a bit stronger than the sommeliers on that particular day.  

My assessment of Ducasse’s cuisine has improved, from not having liked it (not that I like it a lot . Based on this visit, I would say that I still do not subjectively prefer Ducasse’s cuisine – it’s a bit “in your face” and direct with respect to flavors and lacks the subtlety I prefer. However, the flavors were crisp and distinct (if slightly uncontrolled), and the dishes were generally well-executed.  I now rate Ducasse a bit more highly than before, and I do not think he should be stripped of his third star at Plaza Athenee.

Other Items From The Spring 2002 Menu (Rough Translations)

 

Plaisirs de Table (Pleasures of the Table)

Homard bleu, asperges/caviar, sucs de cuisson reduits (available also in ½ portion) (Lobster, likely from Brittany, asparagus/caviar, reduction of cooking juices)

Specialtes (Specialties)

Langoustines rafraichies, nage reduite, caviar oscietre royal (available also in ½ portion) (Langoustines, reduced nage, special type of oscetra caviar)  

La Carte

Asperges vertes de chez “Blanc”, comte/vin jaune/truffe noire (Green asparagus like at Blanc’s – unlikely to be Georges Blanc and likely to be referring to a producer, comte cheese/yellow wine/black truffle)

Foie gras de canard confit, condiment de fruits epice (Confit of duck foie gras, spiced fruit condiments)

Bar de ligne, mariniere au jus de persil, morilles (Line-caught bass, marinated in a parsley jus, morels)

Sole de petit bateau a la riche (Sole caught from small boats, “a la riche”?)

Turbot de Bretagne a plat, coquillages, sucs au beurre demi-sel (Brittany turbot, various clam-type shellfish, saucing based on semi-salted butter)

Agneau laiton du Limousin marine aux truffes noires (Lamb from Limousin marinated with black truffles)

Pigeonneau desosse, puis farci, jus a l’olive (Pigeonneau ?, then stuffed, olive jus)

Veau d’eleveur en piccata, facon Argenteuil (Veal piccata, Argenteuil method)

Collection “Caviar/Crustaces” (Collection of Caviar/Shellfish)

Trois plats “caviar/crustaces” en demi, fromages et dessert (Three half-portioned dishes “caviar/shellfish”, cheese and dessert)

Menu “Plaisirs de Table”

Trois plats en demi choisis dans “la carte”, fromages et dessert (Three half-portioned dishes chosen from the “La carte” section of the menu, which includes the spider crab dish), cheese and dessert

Dessert

Baba au rhum comme a Monte-Carlo (Baba au rhum as in Monte-Carlo)

Banane a la banane, en feuilles croquantes (Banana dessert, in crunchy leaves/layers)

Choco/menthe en chaud/froid (Chocolate/mint)

Fraises de Plougastel en coupe glacee a la napolitaine (Strawberries from Plougastel)

Vacherin facon contemporain: fraises/fraises des bois, au parfum de thym-citron (Certain cake, contemporary style, with strawberries and wild strawberries, flavored with thyme-lemon)