Escoffier and his heirs…

What gets right up my nose about Michael Steinberger’s book Au Revoir to all that, Food Wine and the End of France is its arrogance.

My bet is that France will be around long after the US is absorbed by South America.

But to the food. Steinberger, who writes about wine for Slate, gives a brisk tour d’horizon of French cuisine, touching all the worn-out bases,  Careme, Escoffier, the  rise and fall of cheese and wine and so on.  I think it’s a bit of cheek for an American to mourn the decline in French cooking without mentioning the role Americans have played in it.

Since the end of World War II, European culture has been shaped for the worse by the mighty American dollar and by the  uneducated American tourist. I grew up in Europe and remember how Americans  demanded exactly what they ate at home. Where is the steak, the burgers, the milk…they were quick to denigrate anything different, they sneered at differences in cultures…after all they won the war hadn’t they?

Even today when I read posts about eating in Paris, I hear the same demand. Where can I eat familiar food in Paris?

Steinberger’s journalistic approach misses something significant: food/cooking are shaped by intangibles, the emotions of the cooks and the eaters.

Why France used to be a reliable source of enjoyable meals was because the food and cooking was regional and particular, and because you enjoyed it for what it was, not what it should be. It is sadly ironic that it was a Frenchman, Escoffier who internationalized French cuisine, made it so competitive.   He created an assembly line  that established an international standard of luxe quite divorced from the provenance of the ingredients. A souffle is a marvelous thing but it can be made anywhere, I believe they’re very good in Tokyo.

When they got a taste of the French version of wonderbread, the French couldn’t stop eating it. An American, Dr. Steven Kaplan, saved the baguette for posterity. But why?

Funny isn’t it just as Americans have translated the word terroir, France is moving beyond it . As Steinberger points out the French are  second only to Americans in their affection for McDonalds. Lots of them are happy to exchange the 7/24 drudgery of growing and cooking food for fast food.

What I admire is the way the French have adapted fast food to suit their way of life. Unlike North Americans they don’t drive thru for snacks but come in groups for a sit down lunch or dinner.  Vive La France.

I met my niece Larissa in the bar, and at first she said so what? That’s because she lives in Tribeca and feels she’s going tourist if she makes it to midtown. But she soon softened because this is a Danny Meyers’ resto, cannily designed as a crowd pleaser. The scene is really great, and so is the service. As we were going to the theatre I’d reserved on Open Table and a couple of days before the date, the bar called me in Toronto to confirm. Glad I did because the place fills up fast. Bar food is light and stylish,  good foie gras torchon $20 with duck prosciutto, yes to flounder tartare with asparagus $17, yes to the seared scallops with spiced lobster consomme but no to the strangely heavy warm lamb and goat cheese terrine $15.  We faced the bar. If we faced the other way we would have looked into a frosted screen which separates the bar from the Modern restaurant which overlooks the garden. Found that a bit offputting.

Beginning Wednesday, after years of pleas from French presidents, the European Union will allow member states to drop the value-added tax on restaurant meals to 5.5 percent from 19.6 percent. http://nytimes.com/pages/world/europe/

But is it too late? Fast food joints like McDonalds and sandwich shops which have always been taxed at the lower rate are now so well established that they’re flourishing – even as haute cuisine flounders. The French cafe moreover has been sharply declining – In 1960, France had 200,000 cafes, according to the National Federation of Cafes, Brasseries and Discothèques. Now there are 38,600, with more than 2,000 closing last year alone.

Lower prices for customers? Don’t hold your breath for big drop in this global recession where the travelling gourmet is at a premium.

The late Elizabeth David was the saltiest of food writers, impatient with the world, with others, particularly about the failures of food/cooks. Now Tim Hayward http//guardian.co.uk./life/style/hayward has been given a taste of David’s pungent comments on food writers and cookbooks by the curator of her cookbook collection. Among them…

Inside a copy of The Cooking of Italy (1969) by Waverly Root, much admired US foodwriter,   “Waverley Root is a pitiful phoney.”

On the legendary 1969 French book Ma Gastronomie by Fernand Point, regarded by a generation of chefs as the bible of modern cuisine: “This is a really awful book.”

And in  Ulster Fare, published in 1945 by the Belfast Women’s Institute Club, she found “the most revolting dish ever devised….

Italian salad
1 pint cold cooked macaroni
½ pint cooked or tinned pears
½ pint grated raw carrot
French dressing to moisten
2 heaped tablespoons minced onion
½ pint cooked or minced string beans

Mix the chopped macaroni and vegetables; moisten with French dressing, flavouring with garlic if liked. Serve on a dish lined with lettuce leaves. Decorate with mayonnaise and minced pimento or chives.

Locavores get a fourth of july puff in the  Washington Post. This entirely uncritical story is eco-dogma  unedited.

“The folks at Kitchen Gardeners International might not call it a duty, exactly. But the group — one of the organizations whose efforts led to the planting of a kitchen garden at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. this spring — argues that buying and eating locally bolsters American communities and economies even as it makes for a more healthful diet, all of which might strengthen the nation as a whole.”

You mean stop obsessing about Michael Jackson?

“Choosing food grown close to home could help free the United States from its dependence on foreign producers. For example…most of the garlic used in the United States is grown not on American soil but in China. Buying local garlic would encourage more farmers here to grow it and eventually might allow us to wean ourselves from garlic grown abroad. ”

But how you gonna make folks buy more expensive garlic than the cheapo Chinese?

“Angie Tagtow, a food and society fellow at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy,… points out that foods grown nearby are more likely to have been picked at the moment of peak nutrient value, whereas those from afar  are commonly picked well before they’re ripe so they’ll withstand shipping.

“Between 70 percent and 80 percent of tomatoes harvested in the U.S. are picked green,” she says. “They’re bred not necessarily for flavor or nutrient value but for uniform shape or color and ship-ability.”

Obviously she hasn’t been shopping the markets lately or she would have found excellent foreign imports from The Netherlands among other places. Or maybe she’s not heard about HYDROPONIC TOMATOES which can be controlled for taste and timing and which are now available almost all year round and appear to suffer no damage from shipping..

Advice. Look for excellent hydroponics from Leamington in Canada.

“Tagtow, a registered dietitian and environmental nutrition consultant, adds that many local farmers “provide organic matter back to the soil, to build up the humus and increase the nutrients delivered to the plant.”"

There is NO PROOF WHATSOEVER that organic produce is more nutritious/healthier than conventionally grown produce. Organic produce is however MORE expensive.

“The Locavore freezes what he cannot eat “If frozen when ripe, fruits and vegetables can be just as nutritious as when fresh.”

What a waste of energy and electricity. Why not go to the supermarket and buy excellent frozen veg which work out cheaper all round?

Eric Ripert Big Fish of Le Bernardin

Right after I ate the oysters at Le Bernardin, the waiter brought me a finger bowl. She seemed a little tentative. Would I know what it was for? Famously, a potentate at a state banquet picked up the bowl and drank from it, so Queen Victoria, to make her guest at ease, did the same thing.  First time I’ve ever seen one in a restaurant in yonks, and then I think it was in one of those ancient London hotels.

Le Bernardin is bliss. It’s so unabashedly retro, redolent of a Louis something reception room like those old luxe Parisian restaurants. You are so far from the other tables that you can have a real conversation without having to shout. It doesn’t allow children under twelve – great. On my way there, Jim Poris of Food Arts magazine, said casually  “Say hello to the Bernies for me.” Trouble was there were so many Bernies. The place is packed with waiters.

We are midroom, perfect for people watching. Joe, my companion, is a member of a lunching club. He scores Le Bernardin’s above average with the room more than 60% full.  The customers? Mostly businessmen waiting for the dead cat bounce and a  few golden oldies from the Frog Pond resto circuit.   The youngest people were a couple of Japanese tourists.

We ate the $68 prix fixe. Sublime. The dishes sound and look so simple. One bite reveals complex combinations and intense flavour.  I eat gently curried crab logs  wrapped in thin strips of zucchini,  zucchini panna cotta and then the waiter poured an amazing fragrant crab and shrimp broth flavoured spiked with vadouvan, the upandcoming spice trend. in India (I learn this from Surly Chef)  Vadouvan will often contain onion, garlic, curry leaves, black lentils, mustard seeds, cumin seeds, fenugreek seeds, turmeric, salt and Castor oil, sometimes garbanzo flour and red lentils, then mixed  shaped into balls and left out in the sun until all the moisture is drawn out.

Never  heard of spiced bamboo broth either – but here it is lapping a stack of baby skate wings interleaved with cellophane noodles and wood ear mushrooms. Never tasted anything like it. Never tasted skate before I now realize. Usually I taste browned butter and capers, the pop bistro treatment and enjoy the fish’s mouthfeel, silky and chewy, Now I’m tasting a deepvoiced boisterous fish.

Desserts maintain Everest height. Two irresistible flavours, hazelnut and pistachio. First a hazelnut gianduja cream with brown butter ice cream, a chunk of honeyed banana.  Oh but the pistachio mousse with caramelized white cholocate is surely better? Who cares. We share both.

One last thing. Eric Ripert, the chef, is known for fish brinkmanship. He supports sustainable fish etc but recently served  blue tuna, a flashpoint for ecotarian protest. Now I see he has Escolar on the menu. Escolar is a fatty sort of mackerel which cuts like butter and like all the finest fish, dover sole, turbot,  doesn’t taste fishy at all. It’s often on menus as white tuna or butterfish….it is also called the Exlax fish.  Eleven people were taken to hospital last year from a top restaurant  in Toronto.

I asked the Maitre D’ if he had had any complaints. He shook his head. The portions are hors d’oeuvre sized, the same amount served in sushi restaurants. I have to say I still didn’t try it although it sounded so good.. poached in EVOO, with a light red wine Bearnaise.

The bill was around $200, including a couple of glasses of wine, plus tax (NYC has an 8.25% tax on resto meals, far lower than Toronto)  and tip . About par for a top resto here, says Joe.

The restaurant is nestled among curls and curves of space age design on the third floor of the Armani building on fifth avenue. Open for lunch and dinner, the restaurant is attracting people who dress up to eat out, as they do in Europe, as Armani pointed out a little acerbically, after he’d said Americans overcook pasta.

The chef is Lorenzo Viani, the owner of Ristorante Lorenzo, a one star Michelin resto in Forte dei Marmi on the Mediterannean coast, the favourite beach of the Fiorentini.Dishes include  layers of grilled eggplant and buffalo mozzarella, served with tomato reduction sauce 16.00, sliced herbed crusted yellowfin tuna served in a nettle sauce 28.00, Cioccolato pistachio semifreddo clementine sorbet and chocolate caprese 12.00 . As well, a routine-looking $40 lunch.

Armani opened the restaurant in the depths of the recession. Lousy timing say the cognoscenti. But on a tuesday after one pm, the place was around 50%.

And I guess it’s attracting the A list. As I stepped into the elevator, Angela Lansbury glided out looking around retirement age rather than 83. She was with her manager, a guess again, and talking intently.

I was glad to see her because I had tickets for Blithe Spirit that evening, and when the star is 83, who knows what might happen. It was a hoot to see Broadway’s oddest  theatrical event of the season carried by an octogenarian with an incredible dancing moment.  The show itself has  Broadway’s wellknown fault: a star vehicle in a house far too big for an intimate comedy – so it can make money fast.

Aside from Rupert Everett, the only actor now alive who can carry off Coward and Wilde with style, the cast was a strikeout. It was difficult to hear, the Shubert having the acoustics of the Hummingbird – it takes 30 seconds for a joke to reach the audience and another 30 seconds for the cast to hear the audience reaction which throws the rhythm off, and the seats are raked so you have to keep peering around the folks.

And the folks! They came to see Jessica Fletcher, the kindly sleuth of Murder She Wrote. Who was this cut up  doubling over chairs, kicking up her heels. They tittered nervously.

Why, Lansbury isn’t very nice either. Lansbury is funny because she has a dark side, remember The Manchurian Candidate, which gave an edge to her performances in Mame and Sweeney Todd and now suggests that dotty old Madame Arcati – invited to summon spirits in a genteel village,  has her own personal reasons for causing havoc.  Of course she had nothing to do with anyone else on stage. Pity she wasn’t on more.

Couldn’t get to the promotion Pret a Manger, the British sandwich shop, in Union Square. The line stretched round the block to bag a voucher for one of the 5,000 doggy bags, containing sandwich, brownie, popcorn…..

Missed the Kogi truck too which is trolling the streets serving  kimchi quesadillas, chocolate mousse with a peanut butter center, and caramel popcorn for $4.