ADNY (Alain Ducasse @ Essex House)

[Ron Johnson]

Fatguy:

Well what do you think now in light of today's review by Grimes.  I mean he essentially has done exactly what you predicted would happen.

Are you the restaurant version of Nostradamus?  I was thinking about playing the lotto this week . . .

[macrosan]

Sadly, I haven't yet had a chance to visit ADNY, but I have of course followed the media debate :) The problem in that debate is exemplified by Steven's oxymoronic phrase "the food intelligentsia".

There is nothing intellectual about gastronomy except in the minds of media people who wish to elevate their own status. Food is about art, and culture, and hedonism (and to a limited extent science and technology). The people I want to tell me about food are those who understand the art and the culture etc, and/or who enjoy good food in the way I do, and who can express that understanding and enjoyment.

I do not heed self-serving highbrows writing at the rate of 6 adjectives per noun, with no word of less than 4 syllables, trying to out-perform their rivals' invective, who are more interested in winning a Pulitzer Prize than informing me whether or not I should try eating at a particular restaurant.

[Fat Guy]

Ron, I can't take too much credit for that prediction, because it was so obvious that there were only two possible outcomes: 1) The Ducasse haters would put him out of business, or 2) they would claim to have saved him.

[Bux]

Ron, are you familiar with the two reviews Grimes wrote of Daniel? Admittedly there was some fine tuning of the lighting as well as curtains and other decor elements between the two reviews, but Grimes would have the reader believe there was a significant change in the food in response to the original three star review that enabled him to award four stars later. I found the food changed very little although that's within the context of a chef who's always trying new things. Most telling was how Grimes made no mention of a dish he brutally panned without mercy in the first review but which had stayed on the menu all along. I doubt Daniel's serious clientele cared what Grimes wrote when it came time to make reservations or order dinner.

I have less experience with Ducasse, but there probalby was more change there. My one visit was well after it opened, but not recently. It is Ducasse's first restaurant in NY, although he had plenty of experience feeding New Yorkers in Monte Carlo and Paris. If anything, I suppose he was too exuberant about making his NY restaurant special and some of his showmanship was excessive, but those people whose opinion I respect in terms of food and restaurants all reported the makings of a great restaurant and all were impressed even at the beginning.

If you want to know if I think Grimes has had his own agenda at times, especially when dealing with the elite restaurants he doesn't understand, the answer is yes.

Marcosan, I find something intellectual about all art and we seem to agree that food may be art at times. I think an intellectual will write a better review than a non-intellectual, all other things being equal. However, I will totally agree with any claim that a person who understands and enjoys food with a passion will likely write a better review than someone who lacks this passion. Given two reviewers with equal passion, I would expect the better review from the more intellectual of the two.

[861728]

Hey Steven, I seem to recall you quibbling with the cheese selection at ADNY. Is it better now?

[Fat Guy]

I haven't sampled the cheese selection at Ducasse recently. On my last two visits, I skipped it because I was paying with my own money and it seemed an unnecessary expense given how difficult it is just to eat your way through the standard meal there -- and given that the cheese selection had been the weak link previously.

I should put that in context, though. When the restaurant opened, the cheese course was plated. There were maybe four cheeses of Fairway quality (good, but in no way extraordinary) and you got one of them arranged prettily with some garnishes. Shortly after that, the restaurant switched to a cheese trolley. That was in many ways a big improvement. The cheese selection remained small, but more attention was paid to affinage. In addition, some of the Ducasse brilliance started to make itself felt in the accompaniments.

I would say that, based on my last tasting several months ago, the Ducasse cheese presentation is as good as what you'd get at Lespinasse, Jean Georges, or Daniel. That is to say, not particularly impressive but good by the low standards New York has set for itself. Certainly, we're not talking Picholine here, and we're not talking about anything that would pass muster in a two-star restaurant in France. Whether that has changed recently, I couldn't say.

[robert brown]

Steven: By invoking 'affinage" in a USA setting you bring up an interesting conceptual question to which I have yet to find the answer. To me "affinage" signifies the ageing of cheese until it reaches a certain state. With Parmesan, for example, it may mean keeping it in the producers' cellars for many months or even up to two years. In a 'cave d'affinage" of a cheese seller in France, it can mean the ageing of young raw-millk cheese in which the "sub-atomic particles" (microbes, enzymes, etc.)are still evolving until the cheese shop owner or the wholesaler wants certain ones in a certain state and then delivers them or puts them out for sale. But what does "affinage" mean at Artisinal, Picholine, the Ducasse,etc? Does it mean more than storing them so that they don't go bad in a hurry? I can see that certain cheeses here will change depending on how they are stored, but what are the differences between this kind of change ( after they have been "played out" microbe/enzyme-wise) and the change young raw-milk cheeses in France undergo? I would imagine it is ageing to a desireable state vs. here in NYC where it woujld be more on the way to spoilage. Let me know if you don't understand the question in its entirety.

[Fat Guy]

I'm using the term affinage to refer to intentional aging under controlled circumstances -- as opposed to the inescapable laws of physics dictating that cheese ages one second per second no matter what you do (provided you don't approach the speed of light), and also as opposed to mere refrigeration for preservation -- after the cheese has left the manufacturer. I suppose this would more correctly be called "additional affinage."

As for what it means here in the USA, at most restaurants it means, as you imply, they stick it in the refrigerator so it doesn't rot. At some restaurants where there is more ambition, such as at Gramercy Tavern, they find a slightly less cool part of the refrigeration unit and they hold the cheeses until they seem to be at or close to their peak of flavor (as defined mostly by American standards, which favor less ripe cheeses than I do). I assume Ducasse handles it this way as well. Of course these places also purchase from good suppliers, where there may have been some additional affinage as well. At Artisanal or Picholine, they are in my opinion doing totally legitimate affinage under precise temperature and humidity controlled circumstances (at Artisanal there are five temperature zones in the cave) for specified periods of time. There are too many cheeses, so they can't keep track of them all as effectively as they should, but it's the closest thing we have in America to serious affinage at a restaurant.

As for the micro-cellular stuff, of course it's more active in a young raw milk cheese. There are very few such cheeses in existence, even in France. To distinguish between raw and unpasteurized: Most every cheese made in France is heated at least somewhat, and cultured artificially. There are just a few exceptions, very few of which appear on the actual cheese carts of Michelin three star restaurants. I was surprised when reading the most recent Art of Eating on Burgundy to learn that almost no Epoisses is made from raw milk and that Ed Behr likes the non-raw better.

Any cheese will change with time, and when left under controlled circumstances it will change for the better up to a point. But still, the younger and more active a cheese is at the microscopic level, the more (and more quickly) it will change when aged extra.

[Bux]

Affinage simply means refining and implies improving by refinement. As long as the cheese is held and improves, even if just by virtue of getting older, I think affinage is a justifiable term.

I was also surprised by Behr's article on Epoisses, although given what I've been reading about the EU regulations it probably shouldn't come as such a surprise. Behr did seem to favor a cheese that was made from heated milk, but if I recall correctly, he hoped his favorite producer would someday be making a raw milk version again. He also noted that the cheesemonger he most respected in the region favored another Epoisse that was made from raw milk. Behr was clearly in favor of raw milk. It's only one factor, but one Behr seems to think is essential for the very best possible cheese. I'd like to look forward to the day America makes better cheese than the French, but not because the French handicap themselves.

[robert brown]

It's because of this dad-gum site that I have the latest "Art of Eating" in one of the piles of unread "Gourmet"s ,New Yorkers", Tanzers, " Wine Spectators" Saturday FTs" and "Conde-Nast Travelers". I assume Behr mentions Berthaud making people sick with their raw-milk Epoisses or something like that?

I'm not sure I got my question completely answered, though I do appreciate what the two of your wrote. It seems to me that a "maitre affineur" does somewhat more than the people working for Brennan, primarily turning the cheeses and also moistening them. (I've never watched an "affineur" in action or asked to be shown a cheese cave, however). But I don't see that a heck of a lot more can be done to cheeses that come into the country or from our own cheesemakers; and something different has to happen to raw-milk cheeses that are young and still evolving from an inedibly soft to varying stages of ripeness and eatability: again the availability of tasty cheese in varying stages. Perhaps my question is highly technical and requires a microbiologist to answer. Steven, in your "Salon" piece I think you talk about dead cheeses or cheeses tasting that way.

Last week I started to go through my copy of "French Cheeses", the book with the Robuchon introduction and written by a Japanese, and noticed how many of the cheeses were raw milk ones aged under 60 days. There were lots. Bux, I hope we live long enough. Then I may hit 100.

(Edited by robert brown at 3:19 pm on Dec. 20, 2001)

[Fat Guy]

In that case, I guess I thought I understood your question but didn't actually understand it. Perhaps through continued rephrasing you'll get it through my thick skull, eventually.

Also, let me just reemphasize the difference between raw and unpasteurized. Most discussions of cheese pasteurization equate the two terms, when in fact there are three categories of cheese: Raw, unpasteurized, and pasteurized. Unpasteurized includes raw, but not all unpasteurized cheeses are from raw milk.

Raw milk is milk that has never been heated above the temperature of a cow's stomach. It is extremely rare to find cheeses made from raw milk, even in France. However, you can put "lait cru" or "unpasteurized" on a cheese label so long as it has not been pasteurized. Pasteurization occurs when cheese is brought to certain temperatures for certain amounts of time (it is a sliding scale, I believe, and I can provide the chart if anybody is interested). In the large range between pasteurization temperature and cow-stomach temperature there is plenty of room for cooking your milk. Most cheeses selling themselves as unpasteurized fall into this category.

Also, when you look in these French cheese books, and also the Jenkins book, they often list cheeses as raw when in reality only a miniscule percentage of the production of that particular cheese is made from raw milk.

Now, what was your question anyway?

[Bux]

I assume Behr mentions Berthaud making people sick with their raw-milk Epoisses or something like that?

Or something like that. I shouldn't even be repeating the rumor. According to Behr, the lysteriosis that killed two people came not from époisses produced by Berthaut or any of the other legitimate and local cheesemakers, but from cheese made in a new plant that used milk from outside the delimited area. Ironically enough, the same day the courts ruled that this plant had been illegally using the name Epoisses, the lysteriosis was traced to the plant and the good name of Epoisses was tainted in the news. The plant was closed. Three people went to jail for manslaughter. It is unknown if the milk was heated or pasteurized or when the contamination occurred. All Epoisses came under greater scrutiny and Berthaut under this pressure decided to heat his milk. Behr goes on to complain about the sterility.

Boy are we off topic and it's a pity as those interested in the subject may not find this thread. For what it's worth, lysteriosis outbreaks occur in the US in pasturized milk cheeses.

[robert brown]

I thought we made a cheese thread a few months ago. Why not move all of it there? Has anyone tried the Berthaud cheese washed in Chablis? I had some in France, so maybe they don't export it. Maybe that would satisfy the Epoisses fans since I think the two cheeses are similar. I forget the name, though.

My wife got the impression that Grimes ate his meal(s) at the Ducasse in the room reserved for regulars. Anyone get the same impression?

(Edited by robert brown at 6:09 pm on Dec. 20, 2001)

[Fat Guy]

My understanding is that Mr. Grimes ate one of his several Ducasse re-review meals in the "Fishbowl," which is one of the two private rooms available. It's a room with a large marble table that can seat maybe 12 guests, and it has sliding glass doors that face onto the kitchen. One does not have to be a regular to dine in there. All one needs is enough money.

My assumption is that he did a few anonymous visits in the regular dining room (I'm sure he was recognized on arrival, but he most likely made the reservations under assumed names or had friends make them), and then, when he was pretty sure he was going to go with a four-star rating, he reserved the private room and gave the chef an opportunity to pull out all the stops.

[Steve Plotnicki]

I have only eaten at Ducasse one time, for the morel mushroom menu. I had a very good , but not great meal. But regardless of the quality, I competely understood why the reviews were so critical of them when they first opened.

The biggest gripe I had, and what I think all the professional criticism really comes down to when you sum it all up is that the place doesn't have a New York feel to it. It's sort of a generic version of a 3 star restaurant that Ducasse unpacked from a bag and set up in NYC. Nothing about the place speaks NY to you. You could walk out of there and be in any city in the world.

It gives that effect for a number of reasons. One, the number of people it sits. Ducasse is sized like l'Ambroisie or Gagniere, etc. Here the restaurants are sized like Jean-Georges or Daniel. And this issue has far more to do with the number of people, it has to do with the rhythm of the place. It's a single seating restaurant. New York is a town where they turn the table 3 times in a night if they can.

All of the affectations it had, like the fussiness of the pens or the ridiculous choices in water were just filler to eat up the clock. People just don't spend that much time on food here. So they needed diversions. The exact same critics who panned those types of eccentricities  could laud them if they were done in a remote place in the Auvergne where they served you the meal of your life.

And I think they had marketing problems too. Ducasse never seemed accessable the way Daniel or Jean-Georges are. They are more than chefs, they are personalities who became part of the local fabric. Ducasse never attained, or even tried to attain a personality as being part of the city. He was always the outsider.

And then there is the food. Somewhat too fussy for this town. But even more problematic, it was of high technique, well executed, but it didn't have much soul. The soul or the personality of a place means so much to its success. I mean how much did Pasta Primavera capture the imagination of New Yorkers? Luxururious and seemingly dietetic was exactly what the ladies who lunched needed to eat in those days in order to be able to spread its reputation beyond this city. Was Jean-Georges Goat Cheese/Potato dish any different? What is it exactly that we go to Ducasse for other than 3 star treatment? In NYC 3 stars means about as fussy as the old Lutece, not Tour d'Argent.

The day after I ate there, I was in Kitchen Arts & Letters and one of the sous chefs happened to walk in and the staff of the shop knowing I ate there the night before introduced me. So the person asked me what I thought and I paused and then said, "it was good but it was like being at a 3 star chain restaurant." And the person looked at me and raised their eyebrows and said "exactly."

I've been meaning to go back because I did enjoy myself although it was frighteningly expensive. But the right occassion hasn't come up because I associate the experience with going to a place like Boyer. Not like going to Daniel or J-G where I'd feel alot more comfortable picking up the phone at the last minute to try an get a table.

[Fat Guy]

If those are the reasons the reviews were so critical, the reviews should have said so. Instead, they mostly criticized the prices, Ducasse's arrogance, the fact that he's not in the kitchen enough (a criticism that applies just as much to Jean-Georges Vongerichten), etc. They wrote things like:

Dante, have we got news for you: There's now a new circle of ####. At Alain Ducasse at the Essex House, you'll see grownups spitting food into napkins, you'll bite into bread so burned you'd think Freddy Krueger were running the kitchen, and you'll experience the thrill of frogs legs and chicken wings fighting their way down your gullet like a kung fu master. (Fortune magazine)

This was not well-intentioned criticism making the point that Ducasse feels generic, or not like New York, or too much like a three-star restaurant in France. For months, there was not a single favorable review -- and hardly a single favorable word -- in the mainstream media. This is unacceptable, given that no matter what you think about the pens it's hard to avoid the conclusion that this is one of the best restaurants in America.

It was a collective decision to try to destroy Ducasse, and it failed.

[Steve Plotnicki]

"<i>Instead, they mostly criticized the prices, Ducasse's arrogance, the fact that he's not in the kitchen enough (a criticism that applies just as much to Jean-Georges Vongerichten), etc.</i>"

Steve - I think I pretty much said the same thing. It's priced like a restaurant in Paris. When I was there the morel menu cost 赀 or you could have had the seafood menu for 趚. The tasting menu at Jean-Georges last week cost me 贓. Ducasse thought he could charge French prices, not New York prices. So they nailed him for it. His arrogance really goes to the same exact point. When you decide to charge 50% more than J-G for a meal, it better taste 50% better. I think you would have the vast majority of people saying that Ducasse charges 50% more for a less enjoyable experience than you have at J-G or Daniel. And as for J-G not being in the kitchen that's now. Not when he was building his reputation at Jojo. Or even when he first opened J-G.

If you come to a new town, have a snooty installation and charge snootier prices to go with it, and you don't have Wolgang Puck's personality to overcome those obstacles, and your food isn't that original or drop dead delicious, or something we've never seen before, you are a dead duck. The critics like nothing better than to be able to wield their power against someone who doesn't seem like they are going to be a permanent fixture.

Ducasse thought he could come to this town and open a French restaurant. And I don't mean a place that serves French food, I mean the French dining experience. He didn't do it in a humble way either. It was like, this is going to be something we don't have here. Well d'uh? Didn't he realize we don't have it here because we choose not to?

You know there's a place in this town for Ducasse. But somehow he needs to make the restaurnt seem like it's an outgrowth of our culture, not just an export from France.  He is trying to do that by featuring dishes using indiginous ingredients like soft shell crabs. But you can't overcome the cultural divide by just throwing American ingredients on a plate, even if they are delicious. Your customers need to feel that you've spent the requisite time in the states working with soft shells so that they think <i>you really understand them</i>. You know how the old saying goes. Understand my crabs and you'll understand me.

[Bux]

Truthfully, I don't understand the perspective of criticizing a restaurant because it brings something new to a city rather than rehashes and refines the existing traditions. If anything, the tradition of NYC is to accept the alien in stride and not shut itself off from new outside influences. Most of those early critical articles--and a whole lot of them were not reviews in the sense that they were reports of a single meal and published as human interest, not food pieces--were not aimed at entertaining the discriminating food audience in the first place.

[Fat Guy]

Steve, I have no idea what the majority of people would say, and it wouldn't matter to me anyway (and it shouldn't matter to any educated gourmet), but I'd say without reservation that Ducasse offers a meal experience that is an order of magnitude superior to what Jean Georges or any other restaurant in New York offers.

I don't know how you can measure whether one thing is 50% better than another, and I reject that math anyway (cost rises geometrically, not arithmetically, at the margins of luxury goods), but certainly the single sitting alone (as opposed to 2-3 sittings at Jean Georges and the others) would justify the price differential. But Ducasse also offers service that blows everyone else out of the water, and food that is Michelin three-star worthy. I'm not sure anybody else does that.

Regardless, I'm just not sure I understand your point. This seems an odd time to be an apologist for the early criticism of Ducasse. The critics have generally reversed themselves. Ducasse now has four New York Times stars and the restaurant is becoming more and more widely regarded as the best in America. So were they wrong then, or are they wrong now? Or has Ducasse changed? Certainly, he hasn't changed with respect to his ingredients. He made a big show of featuring American ingredients upon his arrival here, timing the opening of the restaurant to coincide with the publication of his book on American ingredients. Was eliminating the pens and knives really all he had to do to change people's impression of the restaurant? That seems beyond silly.

What is your evidence that he was arrogant? Certainly the press reports portrayed him that way, but what did he actually do? He doesn't need a New York restaurant for his reputation or ego. He already had two three-star restaurants in Europe. As far as I'm concerned, he did us a favor. But beyond that, I see no way in which the arrogance of a chef is relevant to restaurant criticism.

[Steve Klc]

If arrogance of a chef were relevant to restaurant criticism, we'd have a whole lot of poorly reviewed restaurants serving amazing food, 85% of them French.

And Bux hits it exactly on the head about those early "human interest" pieces--undoubtedly written by more than a few food writers wishing to extend their reach, influence and self-importance--and egged on by editors in search of buzz or furthering of an agenda.  How can one argue with a single meal report at a brand new restaurant--it's virtually incontrovertible.

What will be perhaps more interesting is if and when Ferran Adria opens a restaurant in New York--and to compare the critical response to that Ducasse experienced.  Worldwide, it is still Ducasse and Adria, Adria and Ducasse for number one.  

[robert brown]

Steve, how do you know if it's not Bras and Veyrat, Veyrat and Bras for number one?

(Edited by robert brown at 11:12 pm on Dec. 22, 2001)

[Bux]

how do you know if it's not Bras and Veyrat, Veyrat and Bras for number one?

It's intuitive. It's a lot like knowing what art is or isn't. ;)

Seriously, this gets back to the best chef thread in more ways than one. It's not unrelated to the tree falling in the forest. Being Numero Uno is not necessarily the same as being the best cook. Bras or Veyrat may be the connoiseur diner's choice, but Ducasse and Adria seem to have the attention of the profession right now. While I am ready to argue about who was the best candidate for president, mayor, etc. I'm in no position to argue about who's occupying the offices. Of course the chef thing is less clear cut.

[Fat Guy]

It's funny to think of Ducasse as the popular choice, rather than the connoisseur's choice, but that may actually be correct. But I think when we say popular with regard to Ducasse we mean popular among a very small audience of gourmets and those who dine at the highest levels with great frequency, with a smaller even more hardcore gourmet audience within that audience perhaps favoring an Adria or a Gagnaire or some other highly inventive chef. Ducasse, inventive he ain't, at least not in the sense of post-modern deconstructed and reconstructed cuisine. He's about doing it right, not doing it differently. He is an innovator with regard to technique, but his technique innovations are geared towards achieving exact temperatures, doneness, and other types of uniformity. His ingredients are the best, but he's not plunging foie gras into liquid nitrogen or whatever.

[Bux]

Not so much the popular choice as the professional's choice, not that I can speak for the professionals. Neither do I have sufficient experience with his food to speak about it with authority, but I sense he reaches a level beyond criticism. It's right, it's faultless, it's not "creative," but it's also never banal in any way. It can be breathtaking. It's simple like a high wire act. All you have to do is walk from one end of the wire to the other. It's not an inventive act.

But it's more than the food. Ducasse is in Paris and the other two are in the sticks. That leaves me groping for a reason why Adria is the major competition for number one, but he's at the other extreme in terms of creativity as well. No disrespect for Bras. I haven't eaten his food. It's a priority for the spring. Veyrat? I've never had a better meal than at his hands. He can take roots and wild flowers that no one else uses and the meal tastes as if the flavor combinations have all been worked out over a thousand years of trial and error. In the end, it's still probably Ducasse and maybe because he's main stream and I'm left explaining that Adria is the competition because he's so far out of the mainstream. In the end, it's probably a gut reaction and I'm susceptible to what I read and what I hear as well as what I eat.

(Edited by Bux at 12:53 am on Dec. 23, 2001)

[Steve Plotnicki]

Steven Shaw - I'm no apologist for the early criticism of Ducasse. I wasn't a Ducasse fan to begin with so I didn't pay much attention to it myself.  My one meal in Monte Carlo about 8 years ago was as mediocre a 3 star meal as I ever had. Those were the years when Ducasse was trying to pass off Italian food as Haute Cuisine and it was a huge success with the press. We went to dinner expecting that he revolutionized the stuff and we were served the same truffle risotto and roast veal chop for two that you can get in about 25 places on the Upper East Side.

Despite my first experience, I had tried to go back to Monte Carlo a number of times. I have probably been in the South of France 15 trimes since then and I'd figure I'd give it another shot. But I could never get a consensus on going because no matter who else we were with, everyone had their own bad to mediocre experience there and they weren't interested in going back. This malaise towards Ducasse extended to Paris where I have never even had the desire to go.

But when he was opening here I figured I'd give it a shot. Reservations were extremely difficult to get and people were calling me asking how I was going to manage to get one. But then one day the mail came and it was a letter from Ducasse inviting me to make a reservation. And that's what I did. It was June I think, and I made a reservation for my wife's birthday in September. In the interim the place opened and a number of my friends who are knowledgable about food went. To a person the reviews were all the same. Mediocre food, crazy prices and a ridiculous experience.

So we cancelled our reservation and went to Daniel instead.

Still I had an urge to go. My gut told me that it couldn't be as bad as what people were saying. And when I got an advertisment for the Morel dinner in the mail the following March, I decided we should take the plunge.

To me Ducasse is the French Charlie Trotter. Amongst the most famous of chefs but known for....... I can't quite figure it out. He certainly offers a luxurious experience. And the cooking is certainly refined. And the service when we went was splendid. Better than any other service you can get in NY. But like I said earlier, it didn't feel like it was New York.

Look if you want to divorce a restaurant from the local culture it resides in, you can look at Ducasse one way. If you don't think that is possible (and I'm in this group), you look at it another way. To say that it is the best of it's kind in the U.S. and the rest is forgiven misses the point. Being the best is irrelevent if people don't want to go there because it has asked diners to reorient their view of what a NYC restaurant is.

If you are going to ask people to do that, you better have thought through a winning formula. Ducasse didn't.

Whether it was the fact that the decor felt like you were in Monte Carlo and not NY, or the pricing, or the fussy service, or the affectations like the pens and the water, or just the simple mistakes the kitchen and waitstaff made, it all added up to bad vibes.

Now I have no idea exactly why the critics have resolved their difficulties. It is most probably a combination of Ducasse making certain adjustments and their getting used to the place. I would tend to agree with you that Ducasse offers an experience that is superior to a place like Jean-Georges. But I think he offers food that is less delicious than J-G's. It just has more technique applied to it.