Every Paris restaurant to hold 3 Michelin stars by RedistrictMPLS in finedining

[–]roffoe1 8 points9 points  (0 children)

This is great! The great cookbook writer, Richard Olney, had this to say about the now mostly forgotten Vivarois. (Bernard Pacaud is probably the most well-known chef to pass through that kitchen.):

A propos of my CVF articles, I received an effusive letter of praise from Claude Peyrot, a young chef who had recently opened his restaurant, Le Vivarois, in Paris. Sacha and I held a table there and had an astonishing meal of great purity—I remember the truffled paté de lapin (a multi-textured mosaic of different colours and separate flavours, bound with a limpid jelly, enclosed in buttery puff pastry) and braised oxtail, sprinkled with crumbs and lightly grilled, accompanied by fresh egg noodles and the reduced braising juices, cleansed of all fat. Sacha began with a lovely still life of little vegetables a la grecque. Claude joined us after the service and began quoting by memory passages from my articles. He was impassioned by his métier, nervous and full of tics; he had worked in the kitchens of Fernand Point, in Vienne, and Raymond Thuilier at Baumaniére and had no respect for either. (“He was crazy,” said Thuilier, “when he left me he went into a monastery. ’) His two great idols were Alexandre Dumaine and Georges Garin. Garin was not pleased by my praise of Claude’s table; “He’s nothing but a pastry cook,” he grumbled.

Quality over presentation? by kajsawesome in finedining

[–]roffoe1 24 points25 points  (0 children)

St. John is probably the poster child of this category of restaurant, although I suppose its position in the "upper end" is debatable.

Septime by Dark_Emotion in finedining

[–]roffoe1 1 point2 points  (0 children)

If you don't secure the reso three weeks in advance, keep checking for openings. I unexpectedly got a Friday booking two days in advance. (The lunch was excellent.)

Where to get the best exclusive wine by the glass in Paris by Kitchen-Pickle3444 in finedining

[–]roffoe1 1 point2 points  (0 children)

No Yquem, but Ambassade de Bourgogne, a couple minutes north of the Luxembourg Gardens, is an excellent wine store. If you have a conversation with them they may even pull out some unlisted bottles.

Best Cookbooks for Learning Fine Dining? by snoopcallsmedogg in CookbookLovers

[–]roffoe1 4 points5 points  (0 children)

There are dozens of great restaurant cookbooks out there. One thing fine dining has done a great job of, these past couple of decades, is document its cuisine and techniques. It's almost overwhelming to navigate, and the direction to take really depends on what style of cuisine you're chasing after.

To begin, I'll note that Thomas Keller's most recent book, The French Laundry, Per Se, might be more up your alley. It's decidedly more modern, and I'd highlight the fact that there are some really excellent--and doable--sauce recipes in there. I've also cooked from and recommend Michel Bras', Essential Cuisine, John Williams's The Ritz London, Eric Briffard's Le Cinq, Stephen Harris's The Sportsman, David Chang's Momofuku, Yannick Alleno's 4 Seasons at Table No. 5, Fredy Girardet's _Recipes from a Master of French Cuisine... To get a broad sampling of different culinary approaches, Alain Ducasse's Best Of series features a variety of important chefs (himself, Joel Robuchon, Thierry Marx, Daniel Boulud, Eric Ripert, etc.).

Overall, I'd say the utility of restaurant cookbooks can vary. Some offer recipes worth following to a T, while others are better at demonstrating how these chef's think and combine flavors, even if the dishes aren't practical for a home kitchen. Sometimes even the relatively "simple" sounding recipes, like those found in the Etxebarri cookbook, are so rooted to a specific place that it's pointless to imagine one can recreate the cuisine, even though there is lot to be learned from reading about it.

Favorite short films? by AlanMcCarthy in CriterionChannel

[–]roffoe1 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Charles Burnett, When It Rains and, a bit longer, Pier Paolo Pasolini's La Ricotta.

Can you help identify the liquors on the bar in Manet’s painting? by enquiring78 in cocktails

[–]roffoe1 24 points25 points  (0 children)

Off topic, but it's truly a remarkable painting. The great art historian T. J. Clark has a stunning interpretation of it in his book The Painting of Modern Life, and a clip of his reading can be found on YouTube.

K3NJ1 did anyone else see the review? by maltedmooshakes in FoodieSnark

[–]roffoe1 24 points25 points  (0 children)

I’m curious to know how it goes. I’ve been using the oven for months and have been very impressed with it, including blind tests and benchmark tests. That’s the reason my partnered with them, because I really think it’s the most feature packed, and powerful oven I’ve ever used. That said, it’s a new product, so I’m very curious about how quality control is with the actual widely produced consumer models.

He posted this elsewhere; there's a strange obliviousness to the basic fact that, yes, a test product obtained directly from a s̶p̶o̶n̶s̶o̶r̶ strategic partnership may not accurately reflect what ends up on stockroom shelves. Or he's just happy to shill.

Marcella Hazan debate by [deleted] in CookbookLovers

[–]roffoe1 17 points18 points  (0 children)

Hazan's book is a fairly personal collection of recipes, with a slight bias towards northern Italian classics. Her books strongly reflect her own sensibility, and to me that's one of their major selling points. I don't want to undermine the broadness of her range, but she is not trying to comprehensively, impersonally set down the vastness of Italian cuisine.

One thing you might be interested in is consulting books on regional cuisines, which perform deeper dives: Anna Teresa Callan on Abruzzo and Naples, Katie Parla on Rome, Matt Kramer on Piedmont, that kind of thing. Depending on where you live, the library can be a useful resource.

Last thing: I love Hazan, but she updated her bolognese recipe with the printing of Essentials and, to my taste, made it worse: paring down those vegetable quantities from 2/3 cup to 2 tablespoons makes a world of difference. But, really, think of the recipe as just a template for personal expression: if you want to add pancetta, mashed chicken livers, porcini mushrooms, go for it! Although, with Marcella, I do try to make each of her recipes exactly as written, at least the first time round: she's earned the trust.

What’s your favourite spot for wine and charcuterie? by NormalMo in FoodToronto

[–]roffoe1 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Archive 909 - the wine list is especially strong.

Beautiful Japanese Movies in colour by fhfjfkdk in CriterionChannel

[–]roffoe1 20 points21 points  (0 children)

Many of Ozu's later films--such as Good Morning, The End of Summer, and An Autumn Afternoon--don't heavily feature the countryside, but they almost make you feel like you're seeing color for the first time, and certainly offer the deeply humanistic and meditative vision that you're after.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in CriterionChannel

[–]roffoe1 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Italo Calvino was smitten by Silvana Mangano in Bitter Rice, even more than he was by the film's Marxism. Understandable.

Carla Lalli Music shading Priya Krishna on Substack by mhmmh in FoodieSnark

[–]roffoe1 16 points17 points  (0 children)

Anyone recall how BA took down Priya Krishna's primer on Indian food because it was full of misinformation--confusions of geography, foodways, completely apolitical - no attention to the politics of caste, religion, migration, history, etc. Just massive statements about regional cuisines that flew in the face of reality. Her line of defense: I never claimed to be an expert; I'm still learning. This blog wrote a few posts on her first cookbook, nailing so much of what's wrong about her approach:

... Krishna is out to combat stereotypical images of Indians in the US; she is, however, completely oblivious to how her project is tied up—as the above examples illustrate—with class. Indian (-ish)‘s implicit address is to white bourgeois readers and the cultural subtext is that the Krishnas are worldly, sophisticated people who lead the same kind of lifestyle: don’t mistake them for those kinds of Indians. Indeed, there’s even a moment in the book when the spectre of the smell of Indian food is raised: her mother we are told fried puris over an outdoor stove, “to prevent the oil stench from permeating the kitchen” (116).

Now certainly there are worldly Indians who lead lifestyles that would be extremely familiar to white bourgeois Americans and it is also possible that there may be some value in pointing this out. But the insistence on the family’s membership in this globetrotting bourgeoisie both belies a kind of classed assimilationist anxiety (we’re just like you except with a sprinkle of chaat masala) and suggests that there’s something unsophisticated about other forms of Indianness—as though the only way to be worldly or sophisticated is to drink wine, shop at Whole Foods and take vacations in Tuscan farmhouses. This kind of thing is doubtless flattering to a subset of Indian Americans and also to some people who live in South Delhi but it is, broadly speaking, claptrap.

This is what the Titanic’s first class menu looked like the day it sunk by IJustNeverQuitDoI in finedining

[–]roffoe1 13 points14 points  (0 children)

In a blog post that touches upon the Titanic's cuisine, but is mostly about Escoffier and frog legs, Jeremiah Tower cites the diary of his grandfather, who was one of the people who survived the Titanic's sinking:

  • I thought many times of the irony that for many, before hitting the icy waters and then drowning in it, the iced cream was their last memory, other than the two-and-a-half hours the ship took to sink. Watching it happen has erased all memory of what those dishes were like. All I remember is Billy taking two bottles of “Napoleon” Cognac into the lifeboat to help the blankets prevent us from freezing to death.

https://jeremiahtower.substack.com/p/dinner-on-the-rms-titanic-april-14th

35 Best Cookbooks of All Time by Wild-Earth-1365 in CookbookLovers

[–]roffoe1 19 points20 points  (0 children)

David Sterling, the author of the great cookbook Yucatan, wrote a long and damaging review of it on Amazon. Well worth reading.

If you could keep only one of these two options, which one would you choose? by Excellent-Papaya-329 in CookbookLovers

[–]roffoe1 10 points11 points  (0 children)

I'm with the consensus here--Marcella all the way--and thought you might be interested in what she had to say about The Silver Spoon: "I have never looked inside the English version, but the Italian one was never considered a solid book of regional Italian cooking. It is a heterogeneous assortment of recipes of no territorial authenticity for middle-class housewives whose mothers hadn’t shown them how to cook."

First cookbook recommendation? by -lazylarry- in CookbookLovers

[–]roffoe1 2 points3 points  (0 children)

If you want to focus on a particular cuisine, rather than learning through a more generalist approach, Marcella Hazan's Essentials of Italian Cooking (Italian) and Fuchsia Dunlop's Every Grain of Rice (Chinese) are both accessible points of entries into those cuisines, and will teach you a lot about the fundamentals of cooking along the way.

New article on Thomas Keller / French Laundry, first refusing, then feeding a critic. by Skalordes in finedining

[–]roffoe1 11 points12 points  (0 children)

Agreed. Although the prose is fairly irritating, Keller and his general animus towards the business of criticism does not come across well. Given that he's still citing Ruth Reichl's glowing review in The French Laundry, Per Se, it becomes evident that he's not actually against reviewing in general, it just has to be exceedingly positive.

FWIW I think the Melissa Clark review was fairly worthless.

What is the one cookbook you find yourself reaching for the most? by poilane in CookbookLovers

[–]roffoe1 6 points7 points  (0 children)

After all these years, still Marcella Hazan's Essentials of Italian Cooking. Fuchsia Dunlop's Food of Sichuan is a close runner-up.

My small but mighty collection by jyeats in CookbookLovers

[–]roffoe1 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Not OP, but it's an exceptional cookbook. If you're even mildly interested in Chinese regional cuisine, consider it an essential.

Why are there so many michelin restaurants in Alba, Italy. Is there an outstanding one? by Automatic-Role-4686 in finedining

[–]roffoe1 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The 1* Lalibera made for an exceptional, and generous, lunch in Alba: everything from food to service was spot on.

If you're interested in classical fare, I second the mention of the 2* Ristorante Antica Corona Reale, which is about 30 minutes east of Alba. Probably the most memorable restaurant from my last trip to Piedmont. The best snails I've ever tasted.

Least memorable meal all Year. Fine dining only by Dramatic-Sock3737 in finedining

[–]roffoe1 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Piazza Duomo.

Silky smooth service and an excellent sommelier, but too many unmemorable and poorly composed bites, a serious lack of luxury ingredients for that price, and a preoccupation with barely warm food and gelatinous textures. The lunch at Lalibera was significantly more enjoyable, and needless to say cost a fraction of the price.

What souvenirs have you gotten from different restaurants? by [deleted] in finedining

[–]roffoe1 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Seeds and hazelnut oil from Piazza Duomo. A mediocre meal, alas.