Maybe another time, Boulud

So far, Daniel Boulud never stopped disappointing me.  First, it was Bar Boulud that sells so-so cold cuts, basically the leftovers that you’re giving to your American customers and that you wouldn’t eat as a Frenchman who knows how real charcuterie tastes like.  And I don’t write about the less than average bread -so essential when you have pâté and ham-, the prices (come on, Daniel, do you really have tax issues to charge that much?), and the horrific music.  Every time, we want to have dinner after a night at the opera, we now go to next-door Café Fiorello, a bit passé but not a trap.

Then, it was the newly opened Bar Pléiades at Hotel Surrey, basically a shoe box -or a boot box- with (as always) bad (and nearly loud) music; a kind of super cheap version of the Hotel Costes records.  So, this time, Daniel was not cooking (because I didn’t eat) but putting his stamp on a new place in Manhattan.  Cautious, I just had wine.  And as my friend Arthur, who paid for the drinks, said: “I didn’t know you could pay $90 for three [bland] glasses of Bordeaux!”  And normally, Life Goes Better With Bordeaux…Yes, I know it’s the posh part of the Upper East Side –so, it’s posh on posh- but it’s not a reason to think that all your customers look like walking Centurion Cards.

The funniest moment -because you can have a laugh in this kind of places- was when a waiter brought chips after we asked at least four times .  So, we received a midgety port glass with at least ten micro chips that would have barely satisfied a kid from Lilliput.  As we say in French: “On va pas s’étouffer”.

I think I have to -yes, I HAVE TO- try Daniel to have a real and definitive opinion on the French man.  Or maybe, I should start by DBGB.  But for the moment,  it’s not going in the right direction.

Two places to brag about

Had I a camera -it’s on its way, I just have to buy it now-, I’d show you where and what I ate during my Christmas break.

I came back to Sfoglia.  I was happy to go back there because I started this blog (or the previous incarnation of this blog) with this restaurant nearly three years ago.  Also, because Sfoglia is one of the Upper East Side’s prime donne. It’s not super easy to eat there and it’s often for a good delicious reason that restaurants are booked weeks ahead.  How many times did we try to book a few days before?  Sfoglia doesn’t need to be on OpenTable and when you call, a feminine voice tells you that no tables are available before the following month unless you’re ready to eat late (like us) at 10.30 PM.  It’s good to be French in New York!

I tend to like these places where the food is simple and subtle. Is it good? For sure, I had nice cheeses and pasta (bad sign: ten days after, I don’t remember how they really tasted).  But I wonder if it was really worth the wait.  And is it worth traveling to the Upper East Side?  I’m not that sure.  New York is filled with -not too many but enough of them- Italian restaurants that serve unsophisticated but delicate food in an almost Italian farm setting (and when the interior designer missed it, you can say “Welcome to Disneyland!”) with their rustic walls and wooden tables: Peasant in the Lower East Side, Il Buco in the East Village…

In Paris, I had the opportunity to have lunch at Le Comptoir St Germain.  It used to be a wine bar where I used to have a glass of Brouilly, rillettes on Poilane bread before going to one on the nearby movie theaters. Yves Camdeborde, famous for his delicious La Régalade (went there a few times), took over the bar and the next-door hotel to create one of the most well-known gastropubs and boutique hotels of Paris.  The wait for a table can be over three months.  Last year, I wanted to go there with my foodie friend Ben but when I tried to book a table early December 2008 for mid-January 2009, the waitress on the other side of the line nearly started to laugh.  Instead, we went Chez Michel and the fact that Robert Parker was having dinner there convinced Ben that I picked a very good place; and the food too in the end.

But a few days ago, back in Paris for the holidays, I was around with a friend and we walked by, looking for a place to have lunch.  There were tables available on the open terrace.  So, we ate in the cold but under a gas burner and with a blanket on our knees.  Christmas was a few days ahead and I chose an octopus salad, to the point, light, well-seasoned.  One complaint: too many black olives but is it a real complaint?  It’s time for me to better plan my next trip to Paris.  La Régalade should be on the list too.  I heard it’s still pretty good even without Camdeborde behind the stove.

The restaurant of the future will look like the restaurant of today

A few weeks ago, The Wall Street Journal published a piece called The Restaurant of the future?. The question mark answered this question by saying no.  The same title without a question mark would have meant yes.

Even if its subtitle -“A new model is changing the dining landscape across the country. The rise of small plates, big bars and hotel restaurants.”- tries to give some kind of an appetizer to the reader, there is not a lot to chew in the article, just the proof that a futuristic title can try to make up for when there are not a lot financial news to report.

The piece does not deal with any kind of restaurant but just with the ones serving fine-dining meals –costing more than $70- and takes The Bazaar in West Hollywood as an example of what the now $7 billion industry could look like in a few years.

Basically, the article asks whether we will eat tapas-like in hotel bars.  For some time now, gourmet restaurants have been located in hotels, places that can afford such low-margin businesses but that benefit from the excellence of the cuisine and the reputation of the chef.  A win-win agreement: marketing vs. no profits (or small losses).

When it comes to what and how we will eat it, I think that it will take some time before we abandon the classic three-course meal format.  Remember in the 80’s when prophets and experts were predicting that we would eat pills in 2000.  Tapas have been around for a long time and other countries haven’t tried to serve their food the Spanish way despite its convivial form.

Also, restaurant patrons are very conservative and molecular gastronomy has a long way to go before it becomes the norm.  There have been controversies –especially in France, Spain, and the UK- around this kind of gastronomy that plays with technique and the chemistry of cooking.  But it seems that this topic only interests specialists (international foodies, PhD’s in chemistry, food critics…) given that molecular restaurants are still a rare species: wd~50 in New York, Alinea in Chicago, and I can’t name any in Paris.  Of course, there are millions of people who would love to have dinner at elBulli every year but very few of them would pay to go to one of is copycats.  And in times during which science is everywhere but not lauded and national concerns (cf. Sarkozy’s National Identity) challenge any form of globalization, I can’t see how a non-locally rooted cuisine will become a worldwide standard.

Why do we go to restaurants?

• To feed ourselves,
• To share moments with relatives, friends, clients, business or sentimental prospects…
• To be in a neutral place,
• To find a solution to our entertaining at home laziness,
• To celebrate,
• To experience/discover food,
• To brag.

These answers are not restrictive and not mutually exclusive but restaurants such as The Bazaar satisfy especially the last two items and these restaurants’ inability (or non-desire) to become larger and blander social environments will prevent them from becoming the new face of fine dining.  Try to go to a place such as The Bazaar or elBulli with your parents/grandparents/friends and you will either (very likely) hear unpleasant comments or be blessed to eat with open-minded people.

Molecular gastronomy -or whatever you want to name it- is not a trend and will remain a niche, in which chefs will create ideas for their fine-dining peers in particular and for the restaurant industry in general; a laboratory with curious and paying guinea pigs.

Top Morons

OK, Kevin blew if off.  He delivered a poor performance on the most important service of his life as Padma said (or would have said) with her soft and sexy voice.  What about every meal, Padma?  Don’t Kevin’s customers  -you know the little people who pay in restaurants!- deserve Kevin’s attention too?  But nearly two weeks after the finale, I still think he should have won.

Having two competing brothers is material for good juicy TV.  But once they reached the final, it was time to stop focusing on the rivalry and to look at the plates.  Both brothers are good technicians; no doubt about it.  But it may be all.  I don’t really understand where their inspiration comes from. The Dining Room’s website is pretty eloquent.  Michael Voltaggio’s “celebrated” style is described as “New American cuisine using classic discipline and modern trends presenting traditional and non-traditional flavors [traditional +non-traditional: what is left?], in new, innovative ways [Stop with the newness, please?]“.  If someone knows what it means besides giant void, shoot me an e-mail.  You don’t go to a restaurant to attend a skillful performance from some trained machines.  Kitchens are filled with impressive technicians who can cook any kind of Bacon Foam on top of a Reconstructed/reconstructed Chicken.  But who cares?  Maybe cooking instructors…When you go to a restaurant, you come for the journey, to discover someone’s universe.  Cooking is rooted in history, places, culture, not culinary class books.

Watching them work, it was obvious that the Voltaggio brothers cooked to impress the judges but not for people, patrons, guys like me they wanted to bring joy to.  The words “giving”, “sharing”, “joy” don’t seem to belong to their vocabulary.  On the contrary, Kevin exudes generosity, pleasure.  I’m sure that when you eat at his place, you’re there to enjoy yourself.  You’re on a trip.  You’re in the South.  You’re sharing his universe.  You’re eating food carefully thought and prepared by a human being, not by a bragging and tattooed robot.

And is there any kind of Top Chef Statement? Apparently, the show’s goal is -of course, and first, to make Bravo richer and- to honor an “aspiring” chef; aspiring, a word that defines more Kevin that the Voltaggio brothers who had already reached a certain state of fame, especially Michael, 30, whose restaurant had already a Michelin star .  Also, there is something I don’t really get.  Are the last three candidates judged on their last performance and on the work they delivered all season?  The last challenge, you will answer, which is totally ridiculous because how can you expect the judges to come with a clean palate after numerous courses served by the finalists?  Whatever…

In the end, it comes to this question: in which restaurant would you like to eat?  Kevin’s.  No doubt.

If the Porky’s…

…were to write a book, it would be This Is Why You’re Fat.

And if it’s not enough, there is a blog clogging your arteries just by looking at it: thisiswhyyourefat.com/

Veggie? Not today!

Had you asked me a year ago if, one day, I would become a vegetarian, I would have laughed loud, very loud.  Ask me the same question today and you will hear less confidence in my voice.  It’s not because of Jonathan Safran Foer’s book; a book that is on my shopping list on Amazon, so soon on my night table and maybe -in 2011- in my hands.  But first, I want to read The Jungle, Too big to fail, Nudge, Le sorcier de l’Elysée and a bunch of other books.

If I won’t stop eating meat because I love a good steak.  I think that my personal consumption will decline over the coming years even if it is already moderate.  I have some meat as a protein in my salad (when I have one for lunch but nowadays, I prefer to have soups).  I rarely eat meat twice a day.  I haven’t gone to a fast-food in years unless I really need to use their bathrooms.  Ok, ok, I have regularly two or three slices of ham when I eat at home. I don’t know if it’ a lot (or not) but it seems balanced.

The more I read about our agricultural model, the more I think that something is screwed with it.  I don’t like millenarists -don’t look for this word in the dictionary, it’s a neologism-, prophets, and fortune-tellers.  But I think that the way we eat and we produce our food is not sustainable.  For example, there is an interesting article in the Forbes’s November 30th’s issue about Pat Brown, a Stanford University biochemist, who professes (in a nutshell) that being vegetarian helps fight global warming.

The one thing I’m convinced of is that the price of meat will increase.  Will people keep on eating meat the way they currently do and devote a bigger part of their personal income, or will they curb their consumption and find proteins elsewhere?  I’m not able to answer to this question –I have forgotten my crystal ball- but I can try to demonstrate why meat will be more expensive in the future.

First, I see a set of structural elements for more expensive meat fueled by an increase of demand.

• Price of commodities will rise again (remember summer of 2007!) and some have already started (corn, oil, wheat).  Future commodities output will not probably be able to keep up with the expected population growth on Earth.   The price of meat will follow this trend as animals are mainly fed with corn and you need oil to transform animals into meat and then to deliver the meat to your local supermarket.  I don’t even mention water that is going to be scarcer, more expensive.  Thank you, global warming!
• Also, a growing middle class in developing countries is an aggravating factor.  The more this group of people is expanding, the more they adopt Western habits and eat more meat.  China and India are still considered developing countries according to the IMF but I wonder how much time it will last. A recent trip to Shanghai and Beijing made me see that these cities were more on the New York’s side than on the Timbuktu’s one.

There is also a more wishful/virtuous set of reasons.

• Governments gathered in Copenhagen for the Climate Change Conference will have to face that livestock has a negative impact on global warning: 9% of human-caused carbon dioxide emissions, 37% of human-caused methane –basically, animals farting_, and 65% of human-caused nitrous oxide.  All of these numbers are mentioned in Forbes piece and are originally produced by the Food & Agriculture Organizations at the United Nations.  If farmers escape taxes this time, I doubt they will do the next time governments meet.

• Will Barack Obama do the same as Teddy Roosevelt when the latter read Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle (or when someone read it for him)?  After the book was published in 1906, President Roosevelt sent people to do surprise visits in slaughterhouses in Chicago and these people confirmed what the book described.  The same year, the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act were passed. Who will give The Omnivore’s Dilemma or Fast Food Nation to Barack Obama for Christmas? Michelle?  Malia? Sasha?  It may be a long shot but if the US government decides to act and impose stricter regulation on slaughterhouses and CAFOs, costs will likely go up and so will the price of meat providing that industrials -and not taxpayers- will be asked to bear the brunt of the costs of the new requirements.  I tend to believe that CAFO’s and slaughterhouse operators have worked hard to trim costs and that there is very little fat left in these operations to save more money.
• In between (because I don’t know whether it’s a good measure), I think that governments will stop subsidizing farmers as they’ve been doing it for decades.  The necessity to reduce huge debts and the ineffectiveness of these policies will push them to look at subsidies differently.  This movement has already started with the reduction of Europe’s Common Agricultural Policy.

In a better world, meat will become like wine in France, a kind of luxury product, meaning a smaller consumption of a better product.

I’m back

Yes, it’s been a while since May but after two years or so of reviewing restaurants I felt that I had reached a stalemate, that I was missing something, that there was something beyond food, that what we eat goes beyond the simple fact of feeding ourselves and gives a greater picture of who we are as individuals and as a society.  Of course (yes, of course!) I already knew it.  I wanted to write my college thesis on Nouvelle Cuisine but going to graduate school made me lazy.  So, I didn’t do anything about it and, shame on me, I didn’t write about it in this blog.

Last May, I also felt that writing this blog was too much of a literary exercise.  I was not using the properties and resources of the web enough.  Now, I’d like this blog to be more open, more immediate, richer, more serious, simpler, more complex, longer, shorter, more fun…in a word, I want this blog to be MORE.

A lot has happened for the past since six months fueling my thoughts, my appetites:

• Great meals, of course (Robuchon again, Father’s Office in Santa Monica, amazing Peking Duck in Beijing, Union Square Café in New York…to name a few of my best experiences);
• Home-cooked meals (not a lot but some): I can be a decent cook, I think;
• Movies: the so-so, to say the least, Julie and Julia, Food, Inc, the boring, ominous, but French Nos enfants nous accuseront…
• TV: who’s gonna win Top Chef?  I hope none of the obnoxious Voltaggio brothers.  More on this this week;
• Studies and research, most of them frightening, particularly the one on French and obesity.  Yes, French women are getting fat and more than men…More on this very soon;
• Books: the still to-be-deciphered Momofuku cookbook, Fast Food Nation…
• And…and…Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s dilemma, a nearly life-changing book, a kind of The catcher in the Rye for foodies.

So, the first decision is, as you can see, to switch from my very comfortable and loved French to more adventurous English.  I’ve been living for nearly five years in New York and a lot of my friends can’t read me because they don’t know enough French (honte à vous!) and most of my French followers contend –or their résumé says- that they’re very comfortable with English.

On my to do list: translate the page in English,  change the features, buy a small camera –and/or even better, a small video recorder to do like François Simon-, find a new name for this blog (ideas? I was thinking of Much more than Food or Beyond Eating), change the URL…

Un soir à l’opera (sans les frères Marx)

Si vous voulez voir une machine hôtelière en parfaite maîtrise de son tempo, venez au Grand Tier Restaurant. En une heure, vous aurez dîné de vos trois plats, pris votre thé/café et payé sans même avoir eu l’impression d’avoir été bousculé.

La décoration a vieilli même si, à la faveur d’une restauration datant d’une vingtaine d’années, elle semble plus récente que celle de l’opéra lui-même. Il y a ces mêmes volumes si bien exploités dans le reste du bâtiment mais qui, ici, passent presque inaperçus. Nous dînons cote à cote sur la banquette et le va-et-vient de la salle s’offre à nous comme un pré-spectacle. Drame décoratif ultime, nous sommes assis sur des banquettes dignes d’habiller une Renault Clio I sans option. Ces années 80 étaient bien aveugles…

Question alimentation: c’est honnête, sans plus. Je commence par une correcte salade de calamars. L’animal se mâche mais ne se mastique pas, contrairement à tout ce que la plupart des restaurants essayent de vous faire avaler. Je reste dans l’univers marin avec des pétoncles body-buildés et agréables. Le saumon de ma camarade ne me fait pas envie. Non que je n’aime pas ce poisson mais il fut injustement dévalué par la démocratisation alimentaire et la présentation du jour le fait ressembler à un carpaccio orange du Bistro Romain. Avant d’aller goûter L’Elisir d’Amore, aimable divertissement de Donizetti, j’avale une tarte au citron; honnête toujours honnête.

Petite précision: il n’est pas possible de dîner au Grand Tier Restaurant si vous ne disposez pas de tickets pour la représentation du soir.

Grand Tier Restaurant

150 W 65th St (dans le Metropolitan Opera)

New York, NY 10023

+1-212-799-3400

www.patinagroup.com/east/grandTierMetOpera/

Paris-Méribel-Paris

Non que nous soyons des modèles de ponctualité, ma camarade et moi, surtout ma camarade d’ailleurs, mais passées les 15 minutes parisiennes, l’attente commence à se faire longue pour des français, de passage à Paris, et élevés à la dure loi de la précision horaire new yorkaise. G. a non-reservé aux Cocottes -car on ne peut pas réserver aux Cocottes- et il est en retard. J’ai atterri le matin et le voyage en classe économique -rebaptisé avec tout ce qu’il faut d’hypocrisie marketing Tempo par Air France- et le vol ne m’a pas donné plus de deux heures pour dormir assis malgré l’absence d’écran individuel qui m’a privé d’impérissables chefs-d’œuvre, que je verrai au retour, comme Agents très spéciaux (remboursez!) et La guerre des miss (où je me rends compte que les intermittents du cinéma français ont des arriérés d’impôts colossaux). Comme nous n’avons pas vraiment le courage de faire la queue aux Cocottes, ni au Café Constant malgré un souvenir d’oeufs mimosa. Nous nous replions sur une des autres constanteries de la rue St Dominique -dont la partie entre les avenues Bosquet et Rapp sera certainement rebaptisée rue Christian Constant à la mort du chef- que nous n’avons pas encore testée, Le Violon d’Ingres. Tant pis pour G. et son porte-monnaie tout tourné vers sa noce en juin, il n’avait pas qu’à faire des longueurs de trop à la piscine de Pontoise. Bizarrement, il reste de la place à la plus chère des adresses…

Je n’ai pas trop réfléchi au fait que les cuisines communiquaient et que la salade Caesar du mois de décembre aux Cocottes serait la même que celle du mois d’avril au Violon d’Ingres, soit une montagne, genre Himalaya plutôt que les Vosges, de salade finement hachée avec ce qu’il faut de tendre poulet et de bacon. Trop de bouffe, presque maniérée, pour un début de dîner que je voulais plus léger. L’andouillette est, parait-il, fameuse. Elle mérite de l’être.

Evidemment, je tends -à me demander si je ne les taille pas moi-même- des verges pour me faire battre. Et je ferais aussi preuve d’une mauvaise foi si je me plaignais de la qualité (et des prix) des plats servis au pied des pistes à Meribel-Mottaret. Personne n’a jamais eu l’intention d’installer un relais gastronomique –mais une vache à lait qui plumerait les skieurs, oui!- dans un lieu où le moindre plat extra brûlant se refroidit en deux secondes même au mois d’avril. Il y a un tout petit plus haut Le grain de sel pour le dîner: soupe à l’oignon sans sel, non que j’en sois accro, de peur que mes artères se cassent comme des spaghetti suivant les conseils de ma maman, et sans goût; le gratin de crozets rattrape ce début de prestation raté. Il y a aussi une crêperie où ils sont aussi gentils qu’ils ne savent pas préparer des galettes.

Le meilleur moment de cette escapade restera ce mariage aux Allues avec un buffet de spécialités savoyardes (diots, matafan…), bien loin de cette noce tignarde il y a quelques années, où durant un week-end de septembre, je m’étais pris pour Jack Nicholson dans Shining, à dormir dans un appartement cage à lapins dans une résidence Pierre & Vacances déserte, à assister à la célébration au fond d’une galerie commerciale années 70 -lieu de la mairie de Tignes- abandonnée à la fin de la saison estivale et à tenter de me sustenter autour un buffet en concurrence frontale avec la riante cuisine d’une aire d’autoroute.

Mon escapade se termine -avant le vol de 19h10- par un japonais rue de Ponthieu. Même si c’est pas bon et que ces yakitori sont à la cuisine japonaise ce que McDonald’s est à celle des Etats-Unis, j’ai une tendresse gourmande pour ces brochettes -quasi-introuvables dans leur version fast-food à New York-, notamment celles au fromage (inodore) coulant.

Misère de la vie corporate américaine

Ce n’était pas un séminaire mais celà ressemblait à un séminaire, ce week-end au Doral Arrowwood de Rye Brook. Tous mes souvenirs de ma vie salariée -et de ces quelques jours avec mes chers collègues dans des grands hôtels vidés de leurs clients pour que nous puissions écouter la sainte parole managériale- sont remontés à la surface: le Club Med d’Opio en septembre (rétrospectivement le meilleur souvenir), Deauville en janvier au Royal Barrière, un Everest de déprime, même pour le grand fan de Proust que je suis; le Sofitel Palm Beach de Djerba en mars ou l’ennui dans le confort mais sans le luxe.L’hiver persiste. J’ai du mal à imaginer qu’un des arbres que je vois de l’autre coté de la baie vitrée du restaurant pourrait retrouver des feuilles dans quelques semaines. Les nuances de gris dominent ces trois jours, à me faire croire que je suis condamné à vivre dans un album de Jean-Jacques Goldman. Pitié ! Toutes les heures et demi, nous sortons de notre salle de réunion accueillis par un buffet géant de friandises sur lesquelles nous nous précipitons pour tenter en vain de dérider la fadeur d’un week-end passé à écouter un gourou en puissance nous expliquer comment mieux vivre en harmonie avec nous-mêmes, et accessoirement le monde. En fait, nous ne cesserons de culpabiliser de nous empiffrer en avalant toutes les cochonneries que déverse cette corne d’abondance de supérette. Déjeuners, dîner (un seul, ouf!), et petits-déjeuners seront passés autour du buffet qui sent le réchauffé comme si les plats revenaient jusqu’à ce qu’ils soient épuisés. Il y a de quoi pleurer devant l’absence de choix derrière l’apparente générosité, l’absence de fraîcheur. Si je ne regardais pas dehors, je ne saurais pas en quelle saison nous sommes tant cette bouffe me semble intemporelle ou servie dans une base scientifique internationale en Terre-Adélie avec comme facétie américaine de la purée aux marshmallows.

Nous nous échappons le samedi soir pour aller dîner à Rye. Une rue: des magasins fermés, deux options pour les fauchés (Starbucks et Cosi) même si cette notion reste toute relative dans ce coin de Westchester, banlieue très chic de New York, là ou ceux qui ne veulent pas vivre à Manhattan, même s’ils y travaillent, s’exilent dès le premier enfant né. Quelques options: une steakhouse comme dans la grande ville, d’ailleurs il s’agit d’une annexe; deux italiens; un bar à huîtres. Il reste le train et Grand Central à moins d’une heure pour le grand frisson. Nous choisirons le Water Moon, restaurant pan-asiatique, noté 25 au Zagat par une bande d’amputés du palais. Non que ce soit réellement mauvais mais -jouons les snobs- pour ce résultat (25 sur 30!) à Manhattan, vous avez un restaurant qui vous souffle dans les bronches et vous fait décoller du tatami. J’ai partagé un grand plateau de sushi et de sashimi, ensemble décent mais on retrouve la même qualité dans une barquette de supermarché haut de gamme.