New York

[Malik]

Good point, about you living in New York, it's all right there. I wonder what a Parisian would answer.

I'd suspect most Parisians would pick a city in France, either the one they're from originally, or Paris itself, or Lyons. The French are often surprised to hear that there is good food to be had outside of France...

Large international cities are just that, international, and most eaters could do well in any of them.  Frankly, when I'm in New York I crave thin-crust pizza. Now, about service...

Good point about international cities, I have noticed that a lot of large cities in the world have made huge progress in the last 5 or 10 years on the food front. In Canada for example, the food scene is much more vibrant nowadays in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal. I've travelled in South America a little bit, and Buenos Aires and Santiago are nothing to sneer about either. I think we're witnessing an explosion in the quality of restaurants across the world, I'm not sure if it's due to globalization or not, but things are definitely improving all over.

[Schneier]

Internationally, it's harder to say.

That's my feeling, too. I think it's a complex question, and I'm not sure what's the best way to develop criteria with which we could answer it.

Internationally, I would rank New York above many cities simply because of the international cuisine available. What other country has the wealth of choices that you find in NY or SF? Not London or Paris. Not Tokyo. (And what other cities are in the running?)

Bruce

[Rachel Perlow]

This conversation brought to mind an episode of the British show, "Chef!" -- the one where Gareth goes to Lyon to represent England in a big international cooking competition. Towards the end of the episode he grumbles as he "only" receives second place in Category A, third place in Category B, and second place in Category C. Meanwhile various countries recieve first prizes, and he hardly notices. He is flabergasted when he receives the Grand Prize as best overall (because he was awarded a prize in every category we are to presume).

This is what NYC is like. Yes, it might not have the best French food in the world, obviously Paris gets first prize there, but it gets 2nd or 3rd place. Hmm, for Chinese food outside of China, maybe San Francisco gets 1st place, but NYC gets 2nd. Same with Japanese, Korean, Lebanese, Italian, etc. The pinnacle of a particular fare might not be available in NYC, but there's a very good to excellent example of almost every cuisine you can think of in the Big Apple. You go to another place in the world and are amazed by the local cuisine, but you may get tired of it after less than a week -- but where else to go?

It is for it's breadth, the diversity and the quality of this variety that NYC is the most interesting and possibly the best place to eat in the world.

[Fat Guy]

I think that's an exceptionally solid analysis, and I'd add that there are a few categories in which New York probably is best-in-the-world. I'll make a list.

[Pan]

Rachel, your example from "Chef!" is good, and I don't disagree with your premise about the breadth of tasty offerings available here, but surely you've overstated your case. New York gets 2nd or 3rd place in French food, after Paris? Is that really possible, when there are cities like Lyon, Orleans, and so forth? New York gets 2nd place in Chinese food outside China, when I know from personal experience or consensus that you can get fantastic Chinese food in Kuala Lumpur, Ipoh, Penang, Bangkok, Singapore, Vancouver, and Toronto? I love New York, and much good food is to be had here, but comparing the breadth and general quality of Chinese food in New York to what's available from top to bottom in Kuala Lumpur or Ipoh is pretty laughable. Maybe it's time for you to consider a trip to Southeast Asia; lots of friendly people there, including some extremely knowledgeable eGulleteers.

[BigboyDan]

(The quality of French food drops like a boulder off a canyon wall outside France's borders.)

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This conversation brought to mind an episode of the British show, "Chef!" -- the one where Gareth goes to Lyon to represent England in a big international cooking competition. Towards the end of the episdoe he grumbles as he receives second place it Category A, third place in Category B, and second place in Category C. Meanwhile various countries recieve first prizes, and he hardly notices. He is flabergasted when he receives the Grand Prize as best overall (because he was awarded a prize in every category we are to presume).

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One needs to question the point of the competition, re:

I might ask what has NY offered the rest of the world of its cuisine? Little Italy style Italian? Frankly, I've eaten better New York Italian in New Jersey lately. Delis? Cheesecake? What else? Exactly what is NY food? Lesser interpretations of others' cuisines? Paris takes from others and makes something even better. It's one thing to have 183 examples of ethnic foods, but another to invent, re-invent, and cultivate one of its own. (New Orleans Cajun/Creole, Austin for BBQ ) As mentioned in another thread, New York needs a kick at the top; only two 2004 Mobil five stars? Trickle down theory works in the restaurant biz.

edited for typos

Edited October 25, 2003 by BigboyDan (log)

[Rachel Perlow]

Oh sure, I know I'm playing it up a little. And of course, I meant French outside of France, not Paris. Italian outside of Italy. The examples you cited may have better Chinese, but do they all also have Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, Thai, etc., as well as French, Italian, Etheopean, Indian, etc. That's the thing -- so those Asian cities have better Asian food, they don't have everything else too.

[Fat Guy]

To expand Rachel's point, Pan, what I think is the case is that you can say New York has top-3 Chinese food outside Asia; top-3 French food outside Europe; etc.

[Fat Guy]

I might ask what has NY offered the rest of the world of its cuisine?

Why don't you ask Alain Ducasse where he gets his new ideas, for starters.

[Pan]

To expand Rachel's point, Pan, what I think is the case is that you can say New York has top-3 Chinese food outside Asia; top-3 French food outside Europe; etc.

Are you sure that New York's Chinese fits into 3rd place among, say, Vancouver, Toronto, San Francisco, and Los Angeles?

[Fat Guy]

Yes, I think the Chinese food in New York is significantly better than in any of those cities, save for Vancouver, which is even with New York or perhaps somewhat better (though quite different). But I'm no expert on Chinese food. My evaluation is pretty impressionistic. Certainly, there isn't a single Sichuan restaurant in any of those cities that competes favorably with what we have available here. Ditto for Shanghai cuisine. Now if you want to get into Hong Kong style places -- the mega-seafood and dim-sum operations -- you've got some stuff in Vancouver that New York can't match. You'd have to break it down along various lines and, again, weight the values. And New York, unlike all those other cities, has made a huge leap forward in the quality of its Chinese food just in the past 10 years, in several categories.

[BigboyDan]

I know where Alain Ducasse gets his new ideas to make money. "Ka-freakin'- ching!"

[Fat Guy]

I know where Alain Ducasse gets his new ideas to make money.  "Ka-freakin'- ching!"

Not just Alain Ducasse. It was stated earlier in this topic that people don't come from around the world just to eat at New York restaurants. And that's true for normal people -- they come here for New York, and the food is a bonus. Whereas, people really do go to France just to eat. But there's a very important group of non-normal people that comes to New York just to eat, and that group is called most-of-the-best-chefs-in-the-world.

I think you may be underestimating the amount of culinary creativity that the rest of the world has been deriving from New York in the past 20 years. If you talk to chefs around the world, especially Michelin three-star chefs, it is a given that New York is a critically important restaurant city both in terms of quality and creativity. Probably the most significant culinary trend of the 80s and 90s was fusion, and that trend was spearheaded not in the Old World but in the New, and especially right here in New York. France is still catching up. It's actually still considered news in France that you can incorporate Asian ingredients into French cooking. Patricia Wells wrote about Asian-French fusion in April in the IHT, citing it as the big new trend. Can you imagine someone writing that about New York? We don't even talk about fusion anymore -- it's so five-minutes-ago. And on another very important front, the eyes of the world's pastry chefs are on the US as well.

[robert brown]

Fat Guy, I don't buy those arguments at all. As I wrote on this site over a year ago, the first overt introduction of Asian ingredients in French cooking occurred as a result of a Gault-Millau sponsored trip in the late '70s of several leading French chefs such as Michel Guerard, Pierre Troisgros and Louis Outhier to Asia ( I seem to recall Thailand and Hong Kong among one or two others) to cook together with local chefs and to familiarize themselves with techniques, prepartions and ingredients. Only Outhier overtly was affected by this and, as many of us know, his apprentice Jean-Georges adapted it and, more than anyone, introduced fusion here in New York. Thus, I would say that if French and other foreign chefs come over here to see how Americans cook, it's because they want to learn how to run a restaurant business and cater to the new generation of eaters who have not been exposed to really fine French cooking and are more taken in by gimmickry. Otherwise, a well-trained chef from France can cook circles around just about any American one. My hunch is that French chefs come here because they love visiting New York and other American cities and to decide if they want to join the culinary brain-drain that has run from France to the USA. Did Patricia Wells say that America was responsible for the trend in France of Asian-French fusion? Or are the chefs going to Japan, Thailand and, Hong Kong to learn at the source?

[Fat Guy]

I don't know, Robert. Some French chefs may have gone to Asia and learned about some ingredients, but if they did they dropped the ball. If that is indeed the scenario, then the ball got picked up and carried here, by Jean-Georges and hundreds of other chefs. I think it's safe to say that the fusion movement took place here, and that throughout it France wasn't involved in any serious way and is now playing catch-up. But I'm not sure as a historical matter you can tie fusion in the US 100% to some trip a few French chefs took. Certainly that has nothing to do with Nobu. Fusion was a natural fit and, I think, an inevitability for the US because it's what America is all about. The availability of immigrant cuisines and ingredients created preconditions and allowed the movement to spread like wildfire. Consumer tastes, also, were prepared for it. Whereas, in France, a few chefs moved towards fusion but they remained curiosities or at least exceptions.

And yes, I certainly think French chefs are traveling to Asia to learn, just as the American chefs did. But they've also been traveling here to learn, and their impetus to go to Asia to learn may very well be connected to what they've seen here. That may not reconcile with what your palate tells you about New York's cuisine, but I really don't think your view is the prevailing view among the world's top chefs. They take cuisine in New York very seriously. They wouldn't say it if they didn't mean it, and they say it all the time -- pick any three-star chef in Paris at random and ask if they think New York is an important culinary city on every level. The answer will most likely be a resounding yes.

[BigboyDan]

"...it's so five-minutes-ago". Glad that I didn't hold my breath:

http://www.asiainnyc.org/2_4_featurefood.html

What's important to French chefs are the articles in New York periodicals either lauding or panning their wares, and the tourists who read them.

Look, NY is an amazing place to eat, just not a place to eat anything really amazing. Except pizza.

[Fat Guy]

Here's the link to that Patricia Wells piece.

http://www.iht.com/articles/94341.html

What is influencing the great chefs of France? Asia, Asia and Asia. It's impossible to dine in restaurants large or small, expensive or bargain, without coming upon fare that is wrapped Asian-style, seasoned with herbs and spices with an Asian accent or filled with such nontraditional French ingredients as papaya, mango, fresh ginger or Japanese seaweed.

I just think you could have written that about New York a decade ago, but she wrote it about Paris in 2003. If you wrote it today people would say you're hopelessly behind the times. She goes on to confirm that the ubiquity of fusion is what's new in France. The specific review, as Robert indicated, refers to the chef's trip to Thailand.

[Fat Guy]

"...it's so five-minutes-ago". Glad that I didn't hold my breath:

http://www.asiainnyc.org/2_4_featurefood.html

Holding your breath for two years is rather difficult. I'm not sure what your point is. Is it that an outdated article on the Asia Society Web site (the article is dated 2001, and is based on even more outdated information -- not to mention a lack of familiarity with the subject matter) somehow demonstrates that we haven't had ubiquitous fusion in New York for the past decade whereas the French palate and chefs are just now waking up to it?

What's important to French chefs are the articles in New York periodicals either lauding or panning their wares, and the tourists who read them.

You've asked them? I'm not sure where you're getting this information, but it goes against what I've heard in conversations with dozens of French chefs ranging from Ducasse to Conticini to both Lorains and plenty of people in between. They're coming here to see what's happening with food in New York, they're impressed by it, and in some cases they're letting it inspire them. I'm not sure what you'd call Spoon, but I think it's a restaurant inspired by America, being run by France's pre-eminent chef.

Look, NY is an amazing place to eat, just not a place to eat anything really amazing.

If you can't find anything amazing to eat in New York other than pizza, you should probably give up on eating.

[BigboyDan]

Spoon is marketing. Fun. Marketing IS what NY does best. Fusion is gimmicktry - here, there, Paris, everywhere. Duck confit tamales. Sheesh.

I talk to French chefs all the time, I used to be one. They are aware of what happens in the US, in the same way that the NBA is aware of the French basketball league.

There are Tex-Mex restaurants in Paris, makes me laugh everytime I go into one. Seeing those French youths in Levis and cowboy hats pulling up on their motor-scooters, with James Dean sneers, eating duck confit tamales...

Choose from a hundred different places:

http://www.guideameriquelatine.com/rest/rest.html

edited for typo

Edited October 25, 2003 by BigboyDan (log)

[Fat Guy]

Spoon is marketing. Fun. Marketing IS what NY does best. Fusion is gimmicktry - here, there, Paris, everywhere. Duck confit tamales. Sheesh. What is not, at its base, fusion in NY?

What is not, at its base, fusion everywhere? Do you think French cuisine was cut from whole cloth at a certain point in time and has remained fixed ever since? Where do you think chocolate comes from? Coffee? Potatoes? Tomatoes? Spices? Much of classic French technique? Fusion is not a gimmick. Fusion is one of the essential processes by which cuisine evolves.

Let's recap some of the contentions you've made so far:

- New York has contributed nothing to cuisine besides deli and cheesecake.

- There is nothing really amazing to eat in New York.

- Fusion is a gimmick.

Every one of those statements is patently ridiculous. I'm not sure whether you mean them or not, nor am I sure which would be worse. But suffice it to say if you gathered all the Michelin three-star chefs in a room and you made those three statements you would be laughed out of the room, resoundingly.

Nobody is suggesting that France isn't the culinary leader in the realm of French cuisine. But it's not the leader in any other realm, and French cuisine is only a small part of the picture -- and getting smaller every day. To paint the picture as a stark contrast of French excellence against American mediocrity is an indefensible approach. Find me one chef with even one Michelin star who has eaten around New York and who will agree with the three statements above, and I'll be happy to continue this part of the conversation.

[BigboyDan]

"New York has contributed nothing to cuisine besides deli and cheesecake."

That I did not say.

"... American mediocrity..."

That I did not say either.

"Fusion is a gimmick."

That I did say.

Fusion is not evolution. Just the opposite. Fusion is mating a horse with a donkey.

[SWoodyWhite]

Marketing IS what NY does best.

Not being a New Yorker, but coming from the left coast and having spent some time observing NYC from a distance, I find this comment simplistic. NYC isn't about marketing, but about taking materials from other areas, reworking them into a more accessable form, and then marketing them well.

Take another form New York City is known to specialize in, the theater. While some new plays get their start in NYC, a great many others are brought in from outside NYC, often with a refining process taking place before the play gets to NYC. The works of August Wilson serve as a good example, where they are usually presented in the Seattle theaters first, then travel down to Los Angeles, and finally reach the theaters of NYC. The play Metamorphosis added a step at the front, starting in Chicago before following the typical Wilson route.

Similarly, the latest Stephen Sondheim musical, Bounce, first opened in Chicago, and has moved to Washington D.C. in a revised form, with an appearance in NYC still unconfirmed. These aren't cases of plays being taken "on the road" before coming to Broadway, but of plays that evolve en route, with Broadway a desired goal but not a scheduled one.

The same can be said about cuisine. NYC has little in the way of cuisine that originated there. Unlike Paris, it is a blank canvas where traditions can either be embraced or used as guidelines. Does this mean that the cuisines that make their way to NYC are exactly the same as can be found at their points of origin? No, the tastes end up changed, much as light is through a lens, where in this case the lens is the comparison not with the cuisine itself but with the multitude of other cuisines available. But it is in the refining process that the different cuisines become part of NYC, capturing the spectrum and at the same time blending them all together as a whole.

The marketing process comes much later, and then only as a means of selling the refined product back to the world at large.

[Pan]

"Fusion is a gimmick."

That I did say.

Fusion is not evolution. Just the opposite. Fusion is mating a horse with a donkey.

So what do you have against mules, eh?

[SethG]

Unless I missed it, no one's mentioned tall food. Tall food, now that's a gimmick!

But it's a New York contribution, baby! Bada-bing!

[Fat Guy]

Another interesting trend analysis from Patricia Wells, from last year:

It’s the modern Parisian restaurant : a clean, contemporary look, cozy chairs, and a menu that might be called many things: fusion, unstructured, Franco/Japanese/Italian. Gone is the French insistence on a traditional first course, main course, cheese and/or dessert. What freedom! Go ahead, break the rules, order two first course, and nothing else! Or just go for two pastas, or, gosh why not just cheese and dessert? Anything can happen at these places. And while Americans have pretty much been ordering this way for a very long time, this is true innovation for the French.

http://www.patriciawells.com/reviews/iht/2002/0103.htm

Certainly, Robuchon's new Atelier also reflects this trend. When you think about the fact that both Ducasse and Robuchon are doing restaurants that nod to the New World rather than the Old, it's pretty telling. I suppose it's convenient just to say they're doing it for money, but does anybody believe either one of these guys does restaurants just for money at this point in his career path?

While I certainly think, as I've said a million times, that Paris is dominant with regard to French cuisine, I also think it's a given that New York has a significant number of excellent contemporary French restaurants where you can get world-class food. And, again, the second you look beyond the small culinary subdivision called French cuisine, Paris is revealed as completely and utterly boring compared to New York. Look at what's happening in New York right now -- all you have to do is flip through the first few pages of Zagat to see that there is no Paris equivalent of this kind of diverse and exciting activity. Look at the new Lever House restaurant, look at Mix, Schiller's, 'Cesca, Atelier, WD-50, Fiamma, even Otto for that matter. There's never been a project in Paris -- and there probably will never be one -- that approaches the ambition of the Time Warner complex project: Gray Kunz, Jean-Georges Vongerichten, Thomas Keller, and Masa Takayama will all have significant ultra-modern luxe restaurants under one roof, and perhaps Charlie Trotter as well. The Spice Market from Vongerichten and Kunz, Steve Hanson's Vento Trattoria, Ono from Jeffrey Chodorow, Lucy from Phil Suarez, and and Riingo from Marcus Samuelsson -- what's happening in Paris to compare to this? While 300 important restaurant openings will happen in New York in 2004, what will happen in Paris? Most likely, 50 more French restaurants will open and France's global culinary mind-share will continue its long, slow contraction.

On another front, twenty or even ten years ago there was only one direction of the flow of culinary education: from France to here. But now it is totally commonplace to see, in good New York restaurants, stagiares from Michelin two- and three-star restaurants in France, and from French culinary schools.