Terry Theise on Fine Dining ...

[DonRocks]

Hello everyone,

Terry Theise wrote me this letter a couple of days ago, and I convinced him that it was too "global in scope" to be wasted on just lil' ol me, so he agreed to let me post it on the French forum on eGullet.

Happy reading!

Rocks.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Hey Don,

A few thoughts to share with a friend who dines out in France as often as I do.

First, I have to distinguish between fine-dining restaurants (hereafter “FD”) and just-plain-eating restaurants (hereafter “JPE”).

I think all in all one eats extremely well in the JPEs, much better than at equivalent places in the U.S.. Indeed I wonder if there are equivalent places in the U.S., Jane and Michael Stern notwithstanding. KO and I had an improv dinner on a Sunday night in Pau, just wandering around until we happened into an attractive place, and we ate a truly tasty meal. Two days later in St Jean Pied-de-Port we improvised lunch and had a rockin’ meal, so good we were seriously tempted to forgo the dinner rez we’d made and just tuck into a bunch of courses in this nondescript little café. And I think the most sheerly sensually gorgeous food we ate was at a place in Larrau called Etchimaïte, where the food just made us happy.

The Larrau place was a Michelin “Bib Gourmand” and was a Gault-Millau “heart” (i.e. a favorite of theirs), without pretensions except to freshness, vividness and a kind of honor, as if to pay a natural homage to fresh ingredients and human appetite. Yet all of this with no strictly “culinary” affect – just fabulous cooking.

On the other hand, as well as one can dine in the fine-dinings (FDs), I’m beginning to wonder if, all things being equal, we don’t dine even better at that level over here. I won’t repeat the platitudes about tradition versus innovation, as you know them in your sleep. Nor will I detail the pitfalls inherent in both sensibilities, as again we both know them. But I will observe this: I discern a prevailing assumption of creativity in American FDs which I sometimes yearned for in equivalent FDs in France, whose food was at times rather too neo-classical to really feed, as if it was less a meal to be eaten than a lesson to be learned. Less food qua food than a kind of principle of food.

For the first time I chafed under the rigid service ballet in FDs in France. You sit, and are promptly asked if you wish an aperitif. All well and good. But as you know I’m a guy who likes Champagne with my food, not merely to wash to road-dust from my throat, and there’s always better choices on the list than whatever mundane selection they’re pouring by the glass. So I ask for the list. I get the list. Eventually….and I do mean eventually, someone arrives to take the order, and eventually….and I really do mean eventually, the Champagne arrives, often insufficiently chilled. Their whole ritual is set up inside one single groove, and if you try to vary it you pay with an empty glass for fifteen minutes.

Then there’s the whole matter of the wine pas de deux. Often you won’t get the list at all until after you’ve ordered your food, unless like me you insist on it along with your menus. Sometimes there are gems on these lists and you build your meal around them, as you know. At one hotel-restaurant we stayed and dined in, I asked to take a wine list to our room to study at leisure before dinner, and was refused. “The sommelier doesn’t like the list removed from the restaurant,” I was told.

Usually your wine isn’t poured until its partner-dish is served. That’s if the sommelier is in the vicinity. If (s)he isn’t, woe betide you if you suggest the food-runner fill your glass. Oh no no: only certain people are permitted certain steps in the service ballet. Meanwhile your food steams away enticingly, growing colder by the second while you wait for the proper person to find you and pour your wine.

But god help you if you try and pour your own. Then staff will stampede to your table reprovingly. It’s all part of a know-your-role mentality which places strait-jackets on staff and diner alike. When I consider the easy fluidity of service in great American restaurants (Trotter’s, Per Se) it seems entirely more gracious and welcoming, without any sacrifice of the competencies.

I thought of the numbers of times I’ve ordered wine in American FDs and asked the kitchen to do a menu around the wines, and this would be inconceivable in the French FDs I know, possibly excepting the few at which I’m a “regular”.

In another instance there was a dish on a set-menu I wanted. I didn’t want the whole menu – I don’t like degustation-style dining, as you know – but the attractive dish didn’t appear on the a la carte menu. So naturally I asked. I have never been told “no” to this request in FDs in America, but I was quite definitely refused in this FD in France, with an attitude between perplexity and affront I found incomprehensible. My wife’s a chef, we know how kitchens work, we knew perfectly well it could have been done, but it wasn’t done because….it isn’t done.

Yet in every single FD, including two 3-stars, there were men in the dining room in jeans, sneakers, open-collared casual shirts, none of which I mind in the least, but the almost comical observance of the service niceties was at odds with the anything-goes flouting of the occasion of fine-dining by most of the diners themselves.

We ate some superb food. Regis Marcon is a thrilling chef in St Bonnet-le-Froid at his place the Clos de Cimes. There’s a young man Nicolas le Bec in Lyon whose food scintillated and tingled. There’s a chef at the Chateau de Codignat near Clermont-Ferrand whose food was bright and lively. Yet for each of these there was another whose food seemed devoid of light. Too-tight sauces created opacity, black-holes from which no flavor could emerge. I’ve sometimes walked through rooms of Old Masters in Art museums (or “mvsvms”) and wondered “Didn’t they ever have a bright sunny day in the 14th Century?” and then walked into a room hung with Impressionists where the brilliance was such as to persuade you if the lights went out the paintings would cast their own light. There’s a lot of dark food in some French FDs. And barely a vegetable to be seen.

There’s a 3-star in Puymirol called Aubergade. I don’t want to say mean things about it, because the welcome was completely lovely, the place is sensational, the dining room delightful, and it’s a wonderful place to be. But the food was so rich I thought I’d shit ortolans. There was a vegetable dish on this menu, and a very good one too, not up to Michel Bras, but superb in its own right. Yet is was as if to say “If you want vegetables, OK, we have them here for you inside this cage because we daren’t permit them to creep off into the other food…” And Don, you know me: I like voluptuous food, but one course after another of thick wool socks of flavor – even fabulous flavor – and you crave a pair of sandals.

Which brings me to Michel Bras, the most important restaurant in the world. The best? I’d never try to say. But for me, the most significant. And not only because it was the seminal cuisine of local wild plants and shrubs and herbs. But because it makes the profoundest statement of place of anywhere.

The Aubrac is a very high plateau in almost the dead-center of France. From any direction you approach it, you notice you are climbing climbing climbing and at some point you just stop climbing but you don’t descend. You’re just in this empty rolling upland, and Michel Bras is near the summit of a little hillock, from which there’s a 180-degree view of stupendous vastness. His promotional literature refers to an “Overwhelming sense of space” and you’re certain it’s just PR-fluff….until you’re there, and see it for yourself.

Then there’s the quiet. You feel very near the sky. You hear every inference of wind. You hear the bells of the church of Laguiole, 6 miles away. You watch a cloud-shadow thirty miles away skimming towards you. Cows graze just outside the grounds of the property. Each room is a kind of cabin, with a pebble back-yard, and on one damp day we saw a little ermine come to within eight feet of our room, with a mouse in its teeth and a challenging little “huh!” in every atom of its bearing, as if to say “I’ve got my dinner: what are you eating?” And this sense of hovering over the world inside a little silent penumbral world of your own pervades your senses until everything is nearly unbearably real.

And then you sit down to dinner.

You notice several things. This is not any sort of food you’d get in New York or Paris or Hong Kong or Kuala Lumpur or Los Angeles; this food arises from the Aubrac, the very place you are, the very space and the very light and the very vastness and the very wind and all the things that grow here. Even the wine list eschews all the trophy selections, so if you’re some sort of hot-shot racking up 3-stars and thinking you’re gonna get `59 Mouton from jeroboams, think again.

The food is fabulous, considered merely as food-art: it’s complex and creative and haunting. Yet there’s something else, some way it seems to reach into you at some cellular level. It is consciousness-altering food.

Bras does a dish he calls a “gargillou” (I have to check the spelling) of vegetables, which is a constantly changing composition of veggies and herbs, thirty or more, which is the only food that has ever made me weep. And not for its beauty, or not only for its beauty, but rather for its truth. But I’ve already gone too far. One doesn’t yell about food like this, and I’m given to superlatives when my feelings are stirred. Better to whisper go there. Go there. Even if you read the cookbook you see the photograph of the dish and think “It sure looks good, but c’mon, enough with the woo-woo, it’s just a plate of vegetables”, and maybe you’d even go there and order it and be let down because I’d raised your expectations too high.

Just go there. Arrive as early in the day as you can. If your room’s not ready, stash your bags, gape at the views and go out tromping. Then later you can sit in the glass-enclosed salon looking out at a view of such stirring loneliness you’ll think No one can find me here. Then go into the dining room and order the vegetables, and see what it can mean to be a human being.

Terry

[docsconz]

Fabulous post! Now I know how terry does such a great job with his selections.

My FD experience in France is limited, however, I would say my recent experience in northern Spain is largely different. The service, while still elegant wsa less formal or regimented than as described here. does that jibe with others experiences?

The description of Bras is otherworldly. Can it actually live up to it? I guess I'll have to go there myself.

Thanks.

[bleachboy]

I am in awe. No joke.

[HOOLIGAN]

Makes me want to go back and read Terry's catalogs again. His views on *** service are spot on. His wines are spot on. His meal at M. Bras, spot on, as it mirrored my own. He'd be a good person to add to this forum, cause he's the man.

[Bux]

Fabulous post! Now I know how terry does such a great job with his selections.

My FD experience in France is limited, however, I would say my recent experience in northern Spain is largely different. The service, while still elegant wsa less formal or regimented than as described here. does that jibe with others experiences?

←

The service in Spain is different from the service in France. Of course it varies in both countries from restaurant to restaurant as well and France sets a standard for luxury restaurants the world over. I think it's the interpretation that's different. The restaurants in the north or Spain, the Relais Gourmand restaurants of Spain and those that aspire to international status most attempt to ape French service. Don't ask me why, but Arzak reminded me more of an Austrian restaurant than a French or Spanish restaurant in terms of service. The historical ties of Spain are often not with neighboring France. On the whole I'd agree that Spanish waiters are there to serve the diner, while French waiters are there to serve the great tradition and I think it's clear that Terry doesn't like that. I might quibble with some of his observations, but on the whole they're objective. His reactions however, may be subjective.

It's an interesting post and quite welcome in the forum. It's a pity he's not here to discuss it, but it raises a number of issues worth tackling. Maybe too many for one thread. It's very difficult to compare eating or dining in France to it's counterparts in the US. You can compare Paris to New York perhaps, or a number of other cities to SF, Chicago, DC and some places in the US, but small towns, the hinterlands and areas of lower density are very different. I think it's wrong to say there's no culinary effect in those small bib gourmands and GaultMillau awards hearts across a great spectrum of restaurants. In fact, the thing that makes France so different from the US is the connection between FDs and JPEs. One need only to read John Talbott's digests to understand how carefully the bistros are watched by the food critics and how much attention is paid to reporting on their culinary offerings. We are creating a class of star chefs in the US, just like in France, but in doing so, we're bypassing the stage where the guys who do the cooking for the JPE get a lot of respect as well. The small town artisan chef is a local culinary figure in France.

I find the use of "ballet" to describe the service to be accurate. I have often referred to the interaction between a diner and a waiter as a dance, and it's one that goes poorly if the diner doesn't know how the steps. American service may be less formal because we like it that way, but it's also less formal because Americans don't know the steps and American servers who know the rules, have to improvise so often that there's no point in teaching the new kids on the floor how to dance. The French are a very formal people in any social setting. It's no surprise that dining has evolved into a prescribed ballet, and no greater surprise that it makes some outsiders uncomfortable. I know certain reconstructed Frenchmen who have spent enough time in the US to be impatient when faced with the French pace, but it's a cultural difference and I find it hard to take a "right" or "wrong" stance.

There are some wonderfully creative French chefs, but on the whole, that's not been the national forte in the kitchen. More often than not American chefs are quite agile with new ideas, but they can fall on their face because of a lack of proper discipline and technical training. Given a choice, I'd probably pick Spain, although the truth is I spend my money here, there and the other place.

We could go on and talk about the restaurants named as well. Last month we had a wonderful dinner at Régis Marcon's Clos des Cimes, highlighted by excellent and attentive wine service. A couple of years ago we had a dinner that was perhaps even more superb in terms of the dishes we ordered, but the evening was ruined by atrocious service or should I say lack of wine service. We ate cold food after waiting for wine that sat in our bottle and was never served. Why did I return? Well, for everal reasons including the quality of the food, but I entered the dining room rather tense and it's to the place's credit that I was able to relax. I started by ordering a glass of bubbly as we sat in the lounge enjoying amuses and perusing the menu and the wine list jointly, but I have to agree with Terry here. Had I been shown the wine list before being asked for an aperitif order, I might well have ordered the local house special aperitif that was listed. There are lessons to be learned at FDs that make the next meal more appealing, but that sort of thing can lessen the joy of the first visit which is unfortunate.

[MiguelCardoso]

"The French are a very formal people in any social setting. It's no surprise that dining has evolved into a prescribed ballet, and no greater surprise that it makes some outsiders uncomfortable."

Well said, Bux but, within the specific cultural context, it actually makes diners more comfortable as they too go through their paces, leaving more time for the important business of conviviality. These conventions were designed - and have evolved - to reduce and abbreviate friction and personal idiossincracies, so that exchanges are ritualized and become weightlessly automatic.

It is not a "ballet": what you experience is the result of centuries' experience in trying to please the paying customer. What might seem effete to a newcomer is, in fact, a form of being unobtrusive and even invisible. It's not at all about challenging or provoking: good service is, on the contrary, all about self-effacement. Those questions, queries and recommendations aren't conceived to unsettle the customer: they're tailor-made and proven to reassure and make it easier to order and enjoy.

There's this ridiculous idea that waiters in good restaurants enjoy "showing up" inexperienced customers. Nothing could be further from the truth. Inexperienced customers should just sit back and take it in. It's quite amazing how quickly one learns to play the King - it's easy. Just relax and be difficult!

I'm often dumbfounded by American and British friends of mine who complain about what is - in essence - proper service. The idea is exactly opposite: to find an unobtrusive way to convey your personal quirks and desires. This includes deference - i.e., when you're lucky enough to consult someone who knows more about wine than you'll ever know, you'd be stupid to inhibit his or her suggestions with your own far-flung experiences.

Trust is a crucial element of good restaurants. This often means delegation and the confession of ignorance. No shame there - rather the opposite.

I wonder how many sublime gastronomic experiences have been missed because diners were unable to simply surrender - this is what we pay for, after all - and, for some weird reason, felt that the waiters, rather than serving to the best of their ability, were somehow "putting them to the test".

Everyone's interested in enjoyment and pleasure: it's the only rule. Leaving it to those who know better is very, very easy. You just ask and listen for a short while, with absolute selfishness, and then get on with what matters: that particular occasion; that meal.

The food, however good, should always be secondary and classic European service echoes this fundamental truth.

Edited October 13, 2004 by MiguelCardoso (log)

[KatieLoeb]

Don't ask me why, but Arzak reminded me more of an Austrian restaurant than a French or Spanish restaurant in terms of service.

Bux:

Not sure what you meant by this. I've eaten at several of the nicer restaurants in Austria and didn't really find any common thread in the service other than it was less "formal" than French service but still attentive and professional. Could you clarify what you meant? Now I'm curious if I've missed something patently obvious.

[docsconz]

Could it be the uniforms and/or the emphasis on female waitstaff? I don't really know given that I've never been to Austria.

[KatieLoeb]

Could it be the uniforms and/or the emphasis on female waitstaff? I don't really know given that I've never been to Austria.

←

Actually in the really upscale restaurants in Vienna, I noticed the usual preponderance of male waitstaff. At Florianihof in Weissenkirchen, one of the nicest restaurants in the countryside of the Wachau, there were more female waitstaff, but that is a family owned and operated establishment that's a little more like a really upscale "heuringen", or "wine tavern" for lack of a better phrase.

I think you're just having visions of buxom Bavarian chicks like the St. Pauli girl dancing through your head.

[bleudauvergne]

What a marvelous letter! Don, you are lucky to be getting correspondence of this type. Save them all. Print them and save them.

Then there’s the whole matter of the wine pas de deux. Often you won’t get the list at all until after you’ve ordered your food, unless like me you insist on it along with your menus. Sometimes there are gems on these lists and you build your meal around them, as you know. At one hotel-restaurant we stayed and dined in, I asked to take a wine list to our room to study at leisure before dinner, and was refused. “The sommelier doesn’t like the list removed from the restaurant,” I was told.

About their refusing to give your friend the list outside of the restautant, the first reason I would venture to guess is that their cave didn't compare to a competitor nearby, and they got the message somehow that you were going to choose your restaurant based on the wine list.

There could be many other reasons, though. We recently experienced a FD menu that included wine with each course chosen by the sommelier to match. It was a feature that made our dining experience exceptional, because we simply fell in love with these wines, and our whole experience was perfect. When we got home, we looked them up and found that we could order them from the vigneron for 6-8 euros a bottle. I can say that only once have I ever had a wine experience in a restaurant ever like that. And it was the sommeliers' work that really created it, by choosing these wines to go with the food that was going to raise them from good wines on their own to a part of the dining experience even further elevated by the dishes they were served with. Sometimes the sommeliers do a lot more than maintain a list, so if the restaurant's sommelier was one of the ones that puts a good deal of work into matching and knowing the wines, the list would only be a part of his work. Add French pride to that, and you've got a sommelier refusing to lend the wine list before the meal.

Again such a wonderful letter, with so much in it to discuss. Thank you for sharing that with us, Don.

[Bux]

Lucy, you make excellent points about why a restaurant would be reluctant to let its list out of the dining room, especially when you speak about the sommelier's work. I've discussed putting complete wine lists on restaurant web sites. More than a few restaurants have done this and felt it was something to be featured, but others have noted that that they're leery of allowing it to be used as a research tool. While other restaurateurs and professionals are free to peruse the list at will in the confines of the restaurant and memorize as much as they can, the restaurant is not eager to make the list available for dissection and intimate examination. In fact, they would regard a diner photographing pages of the wine list as industrial espionage. There are restaurants that do not look kindly on diners taking photographs of the plated food for precisely this reason and I have been forbidden to take photographs inside a retail boulangerie in Paris. The clerk was so unpleasant about this, that it's tempered my view of the bakery. Thus I'd agree that it can backfire in some cases, but the diner has to understand the reasons before dismissing a refusal to allow a diner to take the list upstairs, as part of some arcane ritual. As Terry is a major player in the industry, it raises other questions as to why this is not obvious to him even if he dismisses the idea on those grounds. Are restaurateurs and sommeliers in his area just more open about their lists, or are they more trusting of him because they know him well?

[Bux]

Bux:

Not sure what you meant by this.  I've eaten at several of the nicer restaurants in Austria and didn't really find any common thread in the service other than it was less "formal" than French service but still attentive and professional.  Could you clarify what you meant?  Now I'm curious if I've missed something patently obvious.

←

Probably nothing patently obvious at all and just an impression. To be fair, I've spent little time in Austria and less in fine restaurants there. In fact, I prefaced my comment about about being reminded about Austria with the phrase "Don't ask me why." Why do I see more Loden coats in Madrid than Paris? Are they really more common in Madrid? I don't know. As for suggesting you didn't find any common thread in the service, surely you're not suggesting that each of these restaurants could have been in Pennsylvania or France. I'm saying the decor and service touched a certain subjective nerve, and reminded me that both were part of the Hapsburg empire. I may be the only one in the world who had that reaction, although Mrs. B also thought it was a reasonable one at the time. Our limited experience with Austria is mostly a joint one and a pleasant one.

[Bux]

Well said, Bux but, within the specific cultural context, it actually makes diners more comfortable as they too go through their paces, leaving more time for the important business of conviviality.  These conventions were designed - and have evolved - to reduce and abbreviate friction and personal idiossincracies, so that exchanges are ritualized and become weightlessly automatic.

←

Any reply that starts off by telling me I've spoken well deserves a lot of attention.

Lucy has started a new thread about French Dining Rituals. It seems apt to post the results of my attention there so we don't bog this thread down with multiple subthreads. Let's all discuss that aspect there.

[Chef Shogun]

Makes me want to go back and read Terry's catalogs again.

←

Made me want to go read them for the first time! I'm paging through the PDF of the Champagne catalog here at work, and I really like the way this guy thinks so far!

Edit to snicker: Check it out, he said 'whiskey-doucebag'.

Edited October 13, 2004 by Chef Shogun (log)

[DonRocks]

Made me want to go read them for the first time!  I'm paging through the PDF of the Champagne catalog here at work, and I really like the way this guy thinks so far!

←

Terry's catalogs are online here.

[bleachboy]

Terry's catalogs are online here.

And they are GOOD reading indeed! I want to take him up on his offer mentioned in the "German" catalog, "Let us write your order for you". How do I get in touch? It's illegal to ship person-to-person straight into Tennessee, but I'm willing to bet my local Terry Theise merchant would accept a small cash bribe in exchange for receiving a shipment of a few cases.

[John Talbott]

Yet for each of these there was another whose food seemed devoid of light. Too-tight sauces created opacity, black-holes from which no flavor could emerge. ...... There’s a lot of dark food in some French FDs. And barely a vegetable to be seen.

........

There’s a 3-star in Puymirol called Aubergade. I don’t want to say mean things about it, ..... But the food was so rich I thought I’d shit ortolans.

←

Now, these are interesting points. At what point do the fabulous meals at FD's cross the line into "it's just too much and too rich" to bear? Just two weeks ago we had two meals at starred places in Dijon; one we could easily walk away from delighted and satisfied and able to think about dinner at least conceptually; the other, so full of amuse bouches, sorbets, mignardises, caramels, desserts, etc etc etc that it left us too stunned to think straight. And then again, maybe it's just age, because 20 years ago we went through Burgundy eating two of those a day - alas, no more!

I'll soon be posting my notes on the new Pudlowski book "Comment être critique gastronomique et garder la ligne" in which he gives some interesting tips on such like.

[DonRocks]

I heard back from Terry this morning, and he has been following this thread. Here's his reply to me, which he has allowed me to post:

---------------

There were some thoughtful responses here, and I really appreciate how considerately people wrote and how carefully they examined the ideas I propounded.

I have two comments to make. As you know, I lived in Europe for ten years and am back there for 9-10 weeks every year, so I'm not a naïve American thrown off his stride by the formalities of European culture. Indeed I RELISH those formalities in many ways. My wife and I kept trying to reassure each other we weren't becoming ossified old geezers when we disapproved of people sitting in 3-star dining rooms in blue jeans.

Thus I sympathize with the argument that French service rituals have evolved and codified based on a goal to serve diners competently and unobtrusively. I'd only say this: does such evolution STOP when it reaches some (arbitrary) point of fruition? Or does it KEEP evolving to account for changes in cultural mores and behaviors?

I wonder how the rule was written that a dish's wine isn't served UNTIL the dish is served. To me, as a wine-guy, this makes no sense. I want to have a few sips of my wine before the food arrives, to appraise and enjoy it without distraction, and THEN to consider it as it interacts with my food. Surely this desire isn't incompatible with offering proper service.

Similarly I am happy to enjoy unobtrusive service and am very happy when servers notice as if by telepathy that I need more wine in my glass. But what if they don't? What if all the black-coats are on the other side of the dining room while the nearby white-coats are forbidden from handling my wine? I am made to pay for the observance-of-the-niceties by an empty glass. I can't help but conclude this is contrary to all the goals of good service.

You know my restaurant behavior very well Don; you know I love putting servers at their utmost ease, you know I'm there to have the best possible time, you know I'm very willing to let sommelieres suggest wines (and equally willing to keep mum when the wine they suggested wasn't as good as my own choice) and you know I never make unreasonable wishes. I ask in return to be made comfortable, and if that entails a modicum of flexibility from wait-staff then that's what it entails. Sometimes - with emphasis on "sometimes" - French service feels like a very stiff new pair of shoes they won't LET you break in because stiff is how they're Supposed to feel.

Last, I was a guest in the hotel-restaurant whose wine-list I asked to take to my room to study before dinner, and where they wouldn't let me. If a list is serious it warrants at least 10 minutes of perusal, during which time your luckless dining companion is being ignored. So when possible I like to arrive at table with a mental short-list which lets me order my wines in seconds rather than minutes. Anyway, when they told me the somm didn't like lists removed from the dining room I offered to SIT in the empty dining room and read the list. Sometimes people need to ask themselves "What is the EFFECT of the policy?" I mean in the actual world. I'm not insisting people smash centuries of service tradition just because I'm some redneck iconoclast Yank who wants to show them up. I am claiming that in the real world some of these traditions accomplish the opposite of their intent: to provide competent and caring service to the guest.

[Bux]

Now, these are interesting points.  At what point do the fabulous meals at FD's cross the line into "it's just too much and too rich" to bear?  Just two weeks ago we had two meals at starred places in Dijon; one we could easily walk away from delighted and satisfied and able to think about dinner at least conceptually; the other, so full of amuse bouches, sorbets, mignardises, caramels, desserts, etc etc etc that it left us too stunned to think straight.  And then again, maybe it's just age, because 20 years ago we went through Burgundy eating two of those a day -  alas, no more!

←

That's worth discussing. Even if you ignore the one trip during which I was apparently hosting a parasite that would have accounted for my appetite, on the whole, we've slowed down considerably. We drink much less than we did only a few years ago as well. I'm reminded of the story I've been told of the time the new assistant sommelier in a certain restaurant came into the kitchen with comments about how much wine a certain couple was consuming, only to have the sous chef tell him to treat them well, as they were his in-laws. What I don't remember is whether the assistant sommelier mentioned a table number, or if the sous chef just took it for granted he must be speaking of his in-laws.

While it's always nice to be comped extra dishses and get vip hors d'oeuvres, one of the things we've been able to do is get those restaurants at which we're known to do is keep the portions small. Still, I remember the time when on a set menu, a chicken in a rich cream sauce might be folled by roast duck with bearnaise sauce. Things are not necessarily getting worse. I also recall a discussion here that touched on the subject of getting "balanced" meals at the FDs. A point was made that these are not the model of every day cooking nor do most people eat in them every day. They are to a great extent, "show off" cooking and a festive thing. In a way, it's no more reasonable to complain here than it is to complain about a lack of vegetables when having hot dogs at the beach or a ball park. They're just different kinds of special occasions. On the other hand, I think there are FD chefs in France who are paying lots of attention to vegetables and would agree that we're all better off for it.

[bleudauvergne]

A point was made that these are not the model of every day cooking nor do most people eat in them every day. They are to a great extent, "show off" cooking and a festive thing. In a way, it's no more reasonable to complain here than it is to complain about a lack of vegetables when having hot dogs at the beach or a ball park. They're just different kinds of special occasions. On the other hand, I think there are FD chefs in France who are paying lots of attention to vegetables and would agree that we're all better off for it.

←

Bux, if I was served a meal, i.e. ordered a menu and it was delivered course after course completely void of vegetables save a garnish here or there, I would definitely think that it was a poorly planned meal.

[Bux]

Rarely is a dish completely void of vegetables, although they may be sublimated.

[docsconz]

Don, I for one appreciate your being an intermediary for Mr. Theise and you are doing a fine job, but I would love it if he would reply directly. I believe he is qualified to be a member

Seriously, Terry, if you are following this and other discussions, please don't hesitate to join us directly. We appreciate the insights and experience you have expressed here through Don and would love more of them and others without having to put Don through the all the stress of being a go between.

[Bux]

I heard back from Terry this morning, and he has been following this thread.  Here's his reply to me, which he has allowed me to post:

It's difficult to carry on a good conversation this way, unfortunately. Communicating on the Internet is hard enough as is.

---------------

There were some thoughtful  responses here, and I really appreciate how considerately people wrote and how carefully they examined the ideas I propounded.

I have two comments to make. As you know, I lived in Europe for ten years and am back there for 9-10 weeks every year, so I'm not a naïve American thrown off his stride by the formalities of European culture.

My French son-in-law bristles far more easier than I do at things he feels are not up to date or just don't make sense. It's sometimes easier to feel entitled to criticize at home.

I sympathize with the argument that French service rituals have evolved and codified based on a goal to serve diners competently and unobtrusively. I'd only say this: does such evolution STOP when it reaches some (arbitrary) point of fruition? Or does it KEEP evolving to account for changes in cultural mores and behaviors?

No argument here. And few would disagree that it's not only nicer to have one's wine available before your food, but almost essential to taste it before the food has arrived. As for the pouring of the wine, if a restaurant cannot absolutely guarantee that no glass will empty before the bottle itself is empty, it could just as well leave the damn bottle on the table, in my opinion. Once, having not been served half my white wine--not just before my fish got cold, but not at all as the bottle was discovered half full by the other sommelier as we were finishing our red--I asked our server to leave the red on the table and was told he was not allowed. I have sympathy with your view. I just believe that sort of thing is a defect in the particular restaurant or its service team and not part of the system. I can guess why some places insist on leaving the service to the pros. Many years ago, an underling picked up an almost empty bottle on our table and dumped the dregs into my half full glass. The sommelier noticed from the other end of the room with a look of horror, but we all averted our eyes and avoided a scene. It was not all that expensive a bottle or that much wine anyway. My daughter asked why I let him get away with it, but twelve year olds are like that, and it was clear he hadn't gotten away with anything and would be chastised later. It is a real joy when you see pros in action and every glass is topped off almost sip by sip and yet with an understanding of exactly which diner is not going to want as much.

You know my restaurant behavior very well Don;

←

Unfortunately, this makes me feel we've put you on the defensive and that's not really characteristic of the forum where most discussion is very civil and respectful of subjective differences of opinion. Everything you've said is interesting and stimulating. In short we'd welcome your experienced contributions to the forum on an ongoing basis.

--

Edit to say: And I see Doc has said as much while I was composing my post.

Edited October 14, 2004 by Bux (log)

[DonRocks]

Don, I for one appreciate your being an intermediary for Mr. Theise and you are doing a fine job, but I would love it if he would reply directly. I believe he is qualified to be a member

←

Translation: Don, you're a peon; Terry, you're not.

I'm working on him, I'm working on him! He's shy!

Seriously though, Terry may be busy right now, and doesn't have the time for a full-fledged discussion while at the same time wanting to participate.

Terry, maybe you could chime in and post your thoughts on that last sentence?

[docsconz]

Translation:  Don, you're a peon; Terry, you're not. 

←

A peon, Don? I think not!

I would just love to read Terry's thoughts and opinions directly as I do yours. C'mon Terry, don't be shy. We don't bite....at least not hard. Seriously, Terry, if you are reading this, it would be an honor and a pleasure to have you be a part of our community...directly.