Robert Brown

I can't help it if you can't see the difference or think clearly. There is a sheepishness that you are failing to discern.

Then they would foist upon you the worst of the worst, the menu surprise.

That's if people know. It doesn't help when restaurants won!t say, be it steak, fish, or whatever.

Dear Mitch, I have an answer, but no computer until Monday or Tuesday. I can't write at length on an iPad. Have a good weekend, Robert

Don't give me none of your lippy.

Libby may well be right. A friends of mine recently brought the restaurant to my attention. I noticed from the on-line menu that none of the descriptions revealed how the chef cooked any of the dishes (not unlike Per Se). I sent an e-mail and pointed out that there were no descriptions of the cooking and then asked "how do your cook your dishes?". This was five days ago. I'm still waiting for an answer. You can learn from that.

Thanks RP for bringing this to everyone's attention. It looks like a place I would like. When my wife gets the urge to go antiques shopping in L'Isle sur-la-Sorgue, we'll dine there.

Serious diners should know that Brooklyn Fare is a "not-sous-vide-friendly" restaurant. Our server emphasized in a proud voice that Cesar doesn't use it. That in itself is a reason to go, as this is cooking with truth, love and beauty.

What I am trying to understand, is whether you just think that stars are always meaningless, or whether you think these stars are more meaningless than other people's. If it's the former, then your beef is not with Michelin, but rather with the whole concept of using stars—a valid concern, but not a criticism of the guide itself. If it's the latter, you haven't really explained what makes their stars worse than others. In the terms that I invoked about the NY MIchelin stars, it's obvious that I am against the use of symbols that try to say everything and end up saying nothing. It doesn

Does FiveThirtyEight have anything to do with the early bird special?

Oakapple, I wouldn't call taking the opening of my post out of context rotten, but it has nothing to do with Pete Wells or the Academy Awards. I'm talking about the guide itself and making the obvious point, when viewed in its entirety, that it is a big waste of time and fails completely as a guidebook. The star ratings are no different than hype words that try to say everything and end up saying nothing, while the text is a bunch of indisciminate or undiscriminating babble that unlike Trap Advisor or Zagat doesn't even allow for reading between the lines. It's at best a bare-bones directory l

It isn't the point I quite had in mind. In the guide for France, there is, or was, an understanding, that restaurants with stars would offer for a year the dishes that the guide listed. It meant that there weren't only destination restaurants, but destination dishes. I am sure that the vast majority of travelling eaters in France went to the best restaurants to order the great dishes associated with that particular restaurants as mentioned in the guide. I don't, or won't, go to tasting menu restaurants unless someone invites me, but if I did would I be assured of getting the restaurants "signa

This Michelin stuff reminds me of the reportage of the art market. Every journalist reports on the four evening sales each May and November ( Modern & Impressionist and Contemporary Art) at Christie's and Sotheby's while ignoring the morning sales of the more than 1000 less-expensive lots that give a much truer picture of the state of the art market. All this babble and Monday-morning quarterbacking about which restaurant earned, kept or lost three stars (or sometimes two stars) hardly gives a picture of the current the New York restaurant situation. I ask, why pay attention? Has anyone st

I covered my bases by saying that they borrow approaches. And by the way, the picture of Michel Bras's famous 'garguille" bears almost no resemblance to the dish at the time he created it, ca. 1995 when I had it a few times. But Adrian, you're right in a general sense because restaurant dining (as your photos imply) is being destroyed with that kind of approach in which it is almost always impossible to know what upper-echelon chef made what dish in which country, let alone which region. I have so much to say on this subject, and one of these days I'll get into it with what would be the longes

It's not like the days when chefs paid homage to each other. These days a chef wouldn't be caught dead making another chef's dish unless he cooks classic food. That's not to say that a chef wouldn't borrow some approach or technique and rework it into something "original". Maybe it's as simple as chefs who don't allow picture or note-taking have a screw loose. As for Cesar, I don't know enough about him to say that. Is he a male Prima Donna, perhaps? Maybe he is one of those people Leslie Stahl gathered for "60 Minutes" who can recall everything they did on any given day and thinks that everyo

I asked servergirl why my friend Bob, who assiduously writes down each dish he has wherever he eats, why he couldn't take notes, she said "It's not allowed". I asked her why, and she said "I don't make the policy". I think anyone who spends several hundred dollars a head ought to at least have the right to grasp and retain the experience. If Cesar not of the Ritz gave you a list of what he served you, that would be fine. For many years I was able to recall every dish I had in my first five meals at a certain restaurant in France. Now I no longer can, even though there were only a handful of di

Ian, missed you by a day. I will chime in as well.

To anyone who has been gastronomizing at the most prestigious and most interesting restaurants as long as I have, the answer is obvious: It's the long, on-going and persistent dilution and debasing of the experience of dining in interesting restaurants.

One time I ate at Alain Chapel with Pierre Gagnaire about a year before Chapel died. Gagnaire didn't want to be bothered being asked for analyses and opinion, or otherwise be put upon by the convives; he just wanted to enjoy the food. On the other hand, I have had some meals with Todd Macdonald, the son of our best eating pals. He does have a really sharp palate. However, I remember reading in an issue of Gault & Millau Magazine in the 1980s that the wife of Jean Lorrain in Joigny put a group of chefs to shame in a wine tasting contest. It would be interesting to be able to determine if a

Anthony, I went to Zenia in Kanazawa, a kaiseki restaurant where there is apparently no problem to book. However, there's a sushi restaurant there called Komatsu Yasuke that you need to reserve at well in advance (two months for us through a friend in Tokyo who had just been there and booked two meals for us) The chef is 83 years old and was able to breeze through the lunch meal, which is the only time he's open. So if you go back, this is the place I would think. I don't have the time to do a real post, but I can mention some places I liked in the next little while.

And by the way, after doing all the research and getting help from my Japanese friends, I had so many memorable meals that I can't wait to go back. Regardless of how he put it, Redzepi's heart is in the right place.

Taste is the word he used.

I've been reading chef recommendation articles for years and usually find them useless. Often the chefs recommend restaurants of friends and former employees. Who is to say anyway that chefs necessarily are good arbiters of other people's cooking? Artists and musicians often have lousy taste in their fields, as do chefs. Also, their opportunity for visits to other restaurants isn't as intense as that of a dedicated amateur. Of course then you get stupid answers such as "all of Japan" when there is lots of bad food there, besides which figuring out where to eat there is a monumental task as I r

Does anyone why Opinionated About has gone silent for five months?

Does anyone why Opinionated About has gone silent for five months?