Spices: For or against?

[Wilfrid]

Flip. Not to mention flop.

Plotnickiism states that members of the elite should have some expertise, not just wads of cash. Is Plotnicki deserting Plotnickiism.

Edit. Cross-posting. But the market often disagrees with the experts.

Edited March 18, 2003 by Wilfrid (log)

[hollywood]

Are you giving people a test for intellect?

De minimus non curat lex.

[Fat Guy]

Fat Guy - That's P-ism. I believe in the smart group of people deciding. The smart people, from what I have seen, have chosen Tabla over Diwan. Why is that wrong? How would you decide who is in your group of elitists? Mine is democratic. All you need is money to get in the group. Are you giving people a test for intellect?

This really speaks for itself. I'm not sure I could increase the entertainment value by commenting, so I'll just rest my case here and move on to other topics.

[Jonathan Day]

Please enlighten us, Steve. How do we identify a member of the Plotnickiist elite? How do we know whom to trust in the quest for good food?

Edited March 18, 2003 by Jonathan Day (log)

[Steve Plotnicki]

Plotnickiism states that members of the elite should have some expertise, not just wads of cash. Is Plotnicki deserting Plotnickiism.

Yes but that is why people are willing to spend their cash.

All of you are a bunch of big shots but everytime I ask anybody here what they spend their cash on, including where they spend large sums of money and why, nobody seems secure enough to answer that question? It's one thing when Wilfrid busts my chops because that is his intent. But when big shots like Jonathan Day do not answer I find it telling. They have the ability to foist all the criticism in the world but in the meanwhile, Jonathan is flying to Spain next week just to eat at El Bulli. I do not see him allocating the time, energy, or cash resources for Thai food, Indian food or a pastrami sandwich. But he seems to have lots of time to go eat food where the amount of technique is oozing out of each individual plate to such an extent that in reality, you go to experience the technique and not the food. And the entire cuisine rests on everything being balanced correctly including spicing. So everybody give me a fucking break.

I am taking a bow now for all of you who are laughing out loud and hopefully I have raised the entertainment value well beyond Fat Guy's expectations.

Edited March 18, 2003 by Steve Plotnicki (log)

[hollywood]

I am taking a bow now for all of you who are laughing out loud and hopefully I have raised the entertainment value well beyond Fat Guy's expectations.

Whew! This was getting too hot for me.

[Jonathan Day]

Steve, I will be sure to inform you next time I order a pastrami sandwich.

[La Niña]

But you still haven't answered his question.

[Stone]

Why does anyone think that rich people have good taste?

[Steve Plotnicki]

No Jonathan. Next time you are going to fly more then 500 miles for a meal that isn't based on French culinary technique at it's core, why don't you let all of us know in advance. I'd like to come and watch you do it.

[Jonathan Day]

What is his question? How much I have spent on which national cuisine? Measured how?

Some of my more expensive gastronomic trips have been to Japan, in part because it costs a lot to get there and because everything is expensive once you are there. Over the years, I've probably spent as much dining out on Chinese and Japanese food as French. In London, we often eat Indian food (I particularly like Kastoori, in Tooting, but eat there less nowadays because the food is laced with "bad" fats. Also Zaika and Rasa Samudra). The trip to El Bulli will be relatively cheap -- discount airfare, one night in hotel, car rental shared with friends.

In France, we tend to eat French food -- that's mostly what is on offer -- except that there are Thai and Cambodian restaurants in our town*. The Thai restaurant is good but hideously expensive. Or we cross the border into Italy.

Most expensive single meal: Japanese, by a large margin.

Next most expensive: French

Most enjoyable meals: cooked at home.

*Edit: the Cambodian restaurant is in the next town.

Edited March 18, 2003 by Jonathan Day (log)

[Jonathan Day]

No Jonathan. Next time you are going to fly more then 500 miles for a meal that isn't based on French culinary technique at it's core, why don't you let all of us know in advance. I'd like to come and watch you do it.

That's easy. El Bulli, as you announced to the world. Week after next.

[Wilfrid]

I did laugh, Steve. The point was well made. It's not as cut and dried as you make out, of course. I rarely travel with the exclusive aim of eating, and when I arrive my priority is usually to eat the best possible example of the local cuisine, French or not. In practice, that often involves something upscale and something from the street, in broad terms. The middle bracket is what to avoid. When I do travel mainly to eat, my destination isn't always France.

Would I spend $200 on a non-French (and non-Japanese meal)? If the need arose, I can imagine doing so. I can imagine an Indian (real Indian) or Turkish or Chinese meal, certainly an Indonesian meal too (ever had an elaborate Rijstaffel?), being that good. I do find it hard to imagine that of some cuisines, I admit. The fact is that, for global economic reasons, you probably don't need to spend that kind of money to get a superb meal in poorer countries.

Edited March 18, 2003 by Wilfrid (log)

[Jonathan Day]

Why does anyone think that rich people have good taste?

As far as I can tell, there's only one person on this thread who has made that assertion. In my experience most rich people don't have particularly good taste.

[La Niña]

Jonathan, that's a silly thing to say. A foolish generalization. Having or not having money has nothing to do with taste. Money simply affords one the opportunity to experience a broader range of things.

[Jonathan Day]

It's an empirical statement: "in my experience". Correlation, not cause.

[La Niña]

It's an empirical statement: "in my experience". Correlation, not cause.

You're hanging out with the wrong rich people.

[Jonathan Day]

You're hanging out with the wrong rich people.

No doubt.

Now, since you pressed me to answer Steve's question, perhaps you would ask him to answer mine -- which I have asked many times, on many threads. In fact Steve has also posed the same question, without answering it.

How do we identify a member of the Plotnickiist elite? How do we know whom to trust in the quest for good food?

Edited March 18, 2003 by Jonathan Day (log)

[La Niña]

How about it, Stevealeh?

[Toby]

Now, since you pressed me to answer Steve's question, perhaps you would ask him to answer mine -- which I have asked many times, on many threads. In fact Steve has also posed the same question, without answering it.

How do we identify a member of the Plotnickiist elite? How do we know whom to trust in the quest for good food?

Jonathan, do you really want to revive the "measure" thread?

[Wilfrid]

I vote for forgetting about the measure thread, the Diwan thread and the spice thread and finding something else to argue about. My head hurts.

[g.johnson]

How about reviving the Relevance of Italian Food thread?

[Pan]

From Steve Plotnicki:

I really do not believe there is a dispute about overspicing. I think there are two camps. Ethnic

You mean traditional (I'd say "authentic").

which "overspices" [my quotation marks, because I disagree with what I consider an ethnocentric assertion but more importantly one from outside my taste as a diner]

and "modernized" [my quotation marks] versions of those cuisines which have toned the spicing down.

You mean Americanized, watered-down versions for wimps who don't like the real stuff and can't eat chili peppers one after the other.

And you present this upscale, "inauthentic," wimpy fusion nonsense as "better" than the traditional cuisine, with all its rich and fragrant flavors? I think you'd do better to go back to your regularly-scheduled trope of French-cuisine worship. That's one cuisine whose traditions you understand and appreciate. Leave the "overspiced" Thai, Malaysian, Indonesian, Mexican, and regional Indian and Chinese cuisines to the rest of us, and have a wonderful time at all those expensive not-for-"natives" places which combine watered-down Thai (etc.) food and so forth with French wine, but don't tell us that the food we love and search out is "inferior," just because your standard for everything is French. Cut that out already, will you?! You're getting on my nerves!

(P.S. I think it's been too long since I've seen you in person. I haven't forgotten that you're a nice guy, even if not always so online. )

[Jonathan Day]

Jonathan, do you really want to revive the "measure" thread?

Toby -- not really.

You can see the next steps: Steve will say that El Bulli is really "French" at heart. Someone else will argue that it's really Spanish. Steve will say that Spanish technique is derived from French.

Not only will we be back to the measure thread, we'll be back to that thread that was going at about the time I joined eGullet, on how France was the fount, origin and pinnacle of Eurocusine, since it was geographically at the heart of Europe.

It's like one of those Indian epics where the universe turns in endless cycles, each bigger than the next.

I'm taking your cue and jumping off this one.

Edited March 18, 2003 by Jonathan Day (log)

[Toby]

It's like one of those Indian epics where the universe turns in endless cycles, each bigger than the next.

See you in a kalpa.