Crown Shy

[Sneakeater]

I absolutely agree with you that ingredient quality around here is MUCH higher than it was 20 or 30 or (if you really want to gag) 40 years ago.

 

I just don't think it's there yet, vis-a-vis more favored places.

[joethefoodie]

Perhaps not. 

 

Europe is a big place. Go check out some of the restaurants in Sonoma, Napa, or San Francisco for that matter, during the summer growing season, and see what you think of the ingredient quality. (At some point, I do have to write up some of our meals there from the first week in August.)

[Rich]

Respectfully disagree Sneak. Had great meals, good meals, not so good meals here, Italy, Spain and France. Best meals in Europe were in Vienna and Lisbon.

 

Quality ingredients exist everywhere. The biggest difference IMO is in preparation and that's a personal judgement. Maybe you enjoy how European chefs handle their ingrediants as opposed to American chefs and that's a legitimate preference.

 

But going to the markets in too many cities to count proved to me - and me alone - that each country has special ingredients and some not so special. For example, France has the best cheese in the world IMO. I think we have the better beef and fish. Veggies are about equal because all depend on unique micro climates.

 

To say Europe has universally better ingredients is myopic IMO. Yes, they have some better than here and some worse - and that can be said about almost any product, food or otherwise.

 

No one area of the world has the best of everything.

[Sneakeater]

I didn't say I didn't have not-so-good meals in France, Spain, and Italy.

 

I said that the ingredient quality of the best restaurants in the N.E. U.S.A. can't touch what you routinely ("routinely" -- NOT "always") get in mid-tier places in those other counties.  Do you dispute that?  Name names, then.

 

And if the ingredient quality in their mid-tier routinely outperforms that of our top, what does that tell you?

[Sneakeater]

Right:  no one area of the world has the best of everything.  We have better baseball and pop music.  They just have a far superior food culture.

[Orik]

And we have three kinds of fish! 

[Rich]

Yes I dispute that, but It's an impossible task to catalogue. I've had tens of thousands of meals here and perhaps a couple of hundred in Europe.

 

I can give you one place here where I can say the ingredient quality was better that anything I've ever had - Blue Hill at Stone Barns.

[Rich]

Just thought of a mid-tier place here that has outstanding ingredients - Petite Crenn in SF.

[Rich]

Right:  no one area of the world has the best of everything.  We have better baseball and pop music.  They just have a far superior food culture.

 

 

Now you're just being silly. Yes, and we had Jerry Lewis too.

 

Food culture does not equal better ingredients - that's a non sequitur. 

[Sneakeater]

I'm limiting this the the Northeast.  California may be different.

 

The stuff at BHSB is great for here, but it isn't as good as the stuff you routinely see in FranceSpainItaly, IMO.  (And what they do with it is fine, but come on.  That place is like a poster boy for a diseased food culture.)

[joethefoodie]

Right:  no one area of the world has the best of everything.  We have better baseball and pop music.  They just have a far superior food culture.

This is different than positing every ingredient there is better than every ingredient here.

[Sneakeater]

Food culture does not equal better ingredients - that's a non sequitur.

Not a total non sequitor.  Much of the reason our ingredients are so lackluster are (a) a lack of concern with food quality (as opposed to shelf life, convenience, transportability, etc.) and (b) an extremely limited palate.

 

(Don't get me wrong:  here in the Northeastern U.S., much of the reason is also geography and climate.)

[Sneakeater]

 

Right:  no one area of the world has the best of everything.  We have better baseball and pop music.  They just have a far superior food culture.

This is different than positing every ingredient there is better than every ingredient here.

 

 

But I'm not saying that, cuz that would be silly.  "Ingredient quality" is a mass, aggregate concept.

[joethefoodie]

 

But I'm not saying that, cuz that would be silly.  "Ingredient quality" is a mass, aggregate concept.

 

 

Is this...

 

And we have three kinds of fish! 

 

Cause I find it kind of silly too.

[Rich]

 

Food culture does not equal better ingredients - that's a non sequitur.

Not a total non sequitor.  Much of the reason our ingredients are so lackluster are (a) a lack of concern with food quality (as opposed to shelf life, convenience, transportability, etc.) and (b) an extremely limited palate.

 

(Don't get me wrong:  here in the Northeastern U.S., much of the reason is also geography and climate.)

 

Again, the generalizations are killing me.

 

We're friends and you're taking me to an expensive meal next November, so I'm going to say we agree to disagree on this topic.

 

ETA - sure everyone knows that at the turn of the 19th-20th Century the best oysters in the world were in the East River - times change!!!