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January 28, 2005
Mission Statement
We are two passionate food and wine lovers who believe that full enjoyment of the natural bounties of this world enhances everybody's joie de vivre. For good or for worse, in our times, the locus of dining is a relatively modern institution called the restaurant. As we all know, in recent years, those who are in charge of restaurant kitchens achieved the higher status of "chefs", as opposed to mere "cooks", and the buzz created by media is such that some of these chefs are regarded as the equivalent of cultural ambassadors for their respective countries and regions. This is not necessarily a bad development as higher prestige and promise of wealth is attracting and will continue to attract talented and intelligent individuals to this profession.
The good news is that, the dining scene today in Continental Europe and the States is more exciting than ever. The bad news, on the other hand, is the absence of clear-cut criteria to distinguish true excellence from mediocre performance and nobody feels good when paying small fortunes for the latter. For better or for worse, in the rapidly changing environment of the restaurant scene, the relationship between "price" and "quality" is tenuous at best.
Our driving motivation in creating this blog is to provide a discriminating evaluation of restaurants in different categories/price points to maximize dining value for distinguishing and caring gourmets. Our own serious dining out experiences go back about 20 years, and although we have been privileged to have had countless meals at the very pinnacle of gastronomic temples, we also constantly search out the informal places that excel in simple preparation of high quality ingredients. In addition, one of us has a very deep and far reaching interest in cooking.
We both find the excellence of raw materials and ingredients of all sorts to be one of the most important building blocs of good cooking and a fundamental heritage of Western cultural-gastronomic tradition which is necessary to safeguard. Unfortunately few restaurant critics pay sufficient attention to the quality of ingredients and are far too easily influenced by the use of the so-called luxury ingredients such as truffles and caviar even though they may be of poor quality. In contrast, one purpose of this site is to be evangelical about the quality of raw materials when evaluating individual dishes and to emphasize the essential role of fresh ingredients in cooking.
Clearly gastronomy in general and, restaurant criticism in particular, is not an easy subject. It takes a lifetime to fully understand and appreciate good things and to develop a discriminating palette. The doctrine of ingredients, which is one of the fundamentals in understanding food, has never been documented with sufficient rigor. It would be preposterous to claim that one can learn all there is to learn about good food and ingredients and make absolute statements. On the other hand, as both of us are in a constant and often rewarding search to seek out best ingredients and hidden gems in the world of restaurants, we would like to share our discoveries with the reader. In short, by creating this blog, we want to:
--Document the discoveries made through our constant odyssey in the world of gastronomy.
--Share the knowledge and experience and receive feedback from the readers.
--Adopt a fully independent approach and attempt to develop reliable and rigorous criteria when evaluating restaurants. That is to say that, we will not shy away from criticizing any underperforming star chef or a celebrated restaurant. Conversely, we will extol the virtues of those who labor hard and seek perfection in ingredients and search for their own styles rather than copying other people's creations.
Both of us are excited about the journey on which we are about to embark, and this is a journey without a final destination. It is an odyssey where the process is all that counts, and hopefully interaction and communication will render this process mutually rewarding.
Posted at 09:05 PM | Comments (1)Food rating standards
An important mission of this site is to attempt to develop reliable and rigorous criteria when evaluating restaurants. The standards as published on this page are by no means final and should be seen as a living document. Whenever we feel it to be required, what is written below will be amended, edited or commented on. We will attempt to develop standards that are easy to understand for the readers and that give a true view of how we think food should be rated.
Readers of restaurant reviews, whether they are made by guides or by restaurant critics, are often in the dark as to what standards the reviewer has applied and exactly how the verdict – as this is often how the chef regards it – has been reached. Few guides or restaurant critics – if any - give any deeper explanation of their ratings or what standards they use. Also, restaurant criticism is often highly influenced by the preferred tastes of the reviewer.
We base our ratings of restaurants on the following criteria.
1. What is the quality and rarity of ingredients? - This only targets the quality and not the price of the ingredients. A great dish can be made with inexpensive ingredients of exceptional quality and a poor dish from expensive ingredients of inferior quality. On the other hand, esp. when dining in a multi-starred European restaurant one is entitled to expect at least some rare ingredients on the menu which are not readily available in supermarkets. By rare, we do not necessarily mean very luxurious ingredients like caviar, foie gras, lobster or truffles. Indeed it is better not to serve low grade foie gras or canned truffles. But one expects to find, depending on the season and the region, some rare seafood, shellfish, wild mushrooms, milk fed lamb, etc.
2. How well do preparations respect the used ingredients, how well have the appearance and true flavors of the ingredients been enhanced and with what clarity do the ingredients shine in the preparations? - a chef must not make carrots taste like tomatoes. It may sound trivial but the lack of respect for ingredients is one of the biggest flaws in the cooking even at famous restaurants. When you eat a plate with several vegetables, too often, you won’t be able to taste each of them. One benchmark-example in this respect is a plate like Michel Bras’ Gargouillou, where each vegetable is cooked on its own ensuring that every component in the dish respects the true taste on its own and where the total result is a symphony of tastes that together enhances the impression of the true tastes by offering all those clear tastes of the garden at the same time. It should be pointed out that Bras often uses several “forgotten” or rare vegetables in his Gargouillou. Having said this we want to stress that the chef is by no means obliged to respect the shape or the "raw" tastes of the used ingredients. The chef will have a far-reaching discretion to modify ingredients, both with respect to taste and texture, as long as the result respects the essence of the used ingredients.
3. How much of magic touch of the chef is displayed in the preparations and how well has the chef calibrated and married tastes to achieve greatness? – The magic touch in preparations is often what separates the contenders from the pretenders. The magic touch can often be very subtle elements such as clever seasoning, presentation, temperature control e t c.
4. What is the level of originality? Is it just a copy, has the chef actually tried to take another dish to a new level or is it a completely new approach with little influence of something that has been done before? – Chefs with ambition should strive after originality in their cuisine and try to form their own style. Sometimes it is, even with dishes that at first sight may seem original, easy to find preparations in the culinary history that seem to be the obvious source for inspiration, but it is often difficult to conclude if the chef has used that source or on his own come up with the resulting dish. It is often easy after eating a number of dishes at a given restaurant to determine the level of originality and style of the cuisine.
5. Can the preparation be improved by a higher rating of the above without completely changing the concept of the dish? – Clearly, we will not give perfect scores to dishes that easily could be improved by the use of better ingredients or a better taste calibration for instance.
6. To what extent is the chef able to build a successful flow of the meal? - We think it is important that the chef displays talent to concoct a balanced meal which progresses without repetition and with high notes in terms of achieving, throughout the full course of the meal, a superb textural and flavor balance.
It is worth pointing out that we have no preference for certain type of food whether it is traditional or highly innovative avant-garde cuisine. We feel that regardless of style, the above criteria can be applied. There is a clear trend among certain chefs and writers to stress the importance of the emotions that a dish or an array of dishes brings to the diner. Clearly, this is not unimportant to us, but for discriminating gourmets it is highly difficult to recognize such emotional value in a dish made with inferior ingredients and where there for various reasons is an easily recognizable room for improvement.
There are many guides and food critics that today place the originality of the used technique as one of the primary criteria for judging food regardless of the result. We take a different approach since for us the applied technique adds nothing on its own to a dish and we are not going to give any style points to chefs who use certain techniques just for the sake of it. Chefs focusing on just discovering new techniques and leaving prototype-like food with little culinary interest after them should perhaps get into another line of business.
One of our most substantial criticisms of restaurant critics is that their rating approach is far too guided by whether preparations worked to their palate or not. We try to leave aside taste preferences when judging food. One may not like certain ingredients or find them less delicious than other ingredients but that must not color our ratings. Deliciousness is of course important, but we acknowledge that we all have very different tastes and some tastes take time to acquire, what is delicious to one person is not necessarily delicious to another. In our food ratings we feel it is important to at least partly set aside the personal preferences. We have developed our Gastroville rating system when applying the standards above.
We offer a score rating coupled with a star rating. Our scoring system should not be compared with the scoring chart of other guides. We feel one weakness with most guides’ rating systems is the lack of recognition of the vast difference between what is very good food and what is exceptional food.
4-stars (19-20/20)
Four stars indicate exceptional food that is rare to encounter. It is food that is made with an exceptional attention to ingredient sourcing, respect for seasons, offers sensational taste calibration and magic touch of the chef, careful execution of the cuisine and a high level of originality or style.
20 – A restaurant that always offers exceptional food made with exceptional ingredients, respect of ingredients, respects seasons and serves dishes that offer high level of originality or style. Perfection in other words.
19 – A restaurant where predominantly exceptional food is served but where some inconsistency drag down the rating or where one or more of the criteria offer room for some improvement.
3-stars (17-18/20)
The difference between the four and three star rating is a big step. A three star restaurant is a restaurant that offers outstanding food made with exceptional to outstanding ingredients but where there for example is room for improvement with respect to ingredient sourcing, executions of the preparations or where the originality or style is not clear.
2-stars (15-16/20)
A 2-star rating is an indication of very good to sometimes outstanding food. There is a clear step between two and three stars. It could be restaurants offering outstanding to exceptional ingredients but where there is no enhancement or taste calibration or originality or where there is a lack of magic touch from the chef. For the small informal and inexpensive restaurant lacking the labor of the restaurant with a big brigade, this is a very flattering score. But for the prestigious expensive restaurant with a large kitchen brigade, this score is less flattering. Several restaurants rated as 3-stars by Michelin falls within this rating.
1-star (13-14/20)
A 1-star rating is given to food that is worth exploring and offers culinary interest and enjoyment. Of course this rating is a very good rating for a small restaurant or for a young chef with limited resources. Obviously it is a less impressive rating for an expensive and prestigious restaurant.
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No star
In the non-starred scores, a score between 9-12 offers various degrees of food that is good and enjoyable to eat but where the sourcing of the ingredients or the execution leaves room for significant improvements.
A score below 9 – is given to food that to a varying degree is disagreeable to eat for the real gourmet and should be avoided.
Posted at 07:55 PM | Comments (0)January 20, 2005
L'Ambroisie - Paris (Rating: 19/20)
L’Ambroisie is one of the favourite places for many well known gourmets such as Jacques Chirac, Jean-Pierre Coffe etc and has a very high number of returning guests. Dinner reservations are difficult to obtain with short notice. There is no mystery it remains this way despite fairly high prices since the chef, Bernard Pacaud, consistently serves top quality food made with extraordinary ingredients and often with a magic touch in the dishes that lifts them to a level of greatness rarely seen elsewhere.
Pacaud is one of the most season respecting chefs to be found. Pacaud will never serve any produce that is not in season. There are no canned truffles, no dried morels no South African ceps e t c. This is highly admirable as the vast majority of Europe’s multi-star restaurants often use many ingredients that are not in season to impress the less knowledgeable diner. Furthermore, at l’Ambroisie one can rest assured that only superb truffles, glorious Osetra gold caviar, perfectly fresh fish and exceptional meat will be served.
At many multi-star restaurants the menu changes rarely and even when it does, changes are very subtle. At l’Ambroise changes can be quite significant indicating a change necessary whenever the supply of pristine ingredients requires such changes.
Does Pacaud have a style? It is difficult to describe the style of Pacaud. When hearing people talk about Pacaud the discussions are very focused on traditional cooking and superb seasonal ingredients. But how could his style be described? There is no doubt that Pacaud is very focused on deliciousness and of what is served. This is not a place where the clients are guinea pigs which is the case at many other restaurants. No “prototypes” are served. Presentations are very simple and understated and they do not in any way pretend to be pieces of art. Food at Pacaud is to be savoured and tasted for their tastes and extraordinary ingredients and exceptional taste marriages and taste calibration. It is a place where you eat. Someone who once asked Gagnaire what food he likes to eat himself got the response that “I like Pacaud’s food, you know he with Ambroisie. But he does not like mine.”
But to go a step deeper in his approach, it strikes me that the dishes span different conceptual philosophies, a very large sphere of tastes and great variety of used ingredients. There is a multitude in the cooking which is rather unique. At other top restaurants it is possible to find a pretty clear philosophy, which comes back in most dishes. This is for example the case at Arpege and in a sense even at Gagnaire and absolutely with Ducasse’s food. It is also true for el Bulli although the philosophy there makes little sense to me. But at Pacaud there are on the one hand dishes that are extremely traditional and give a feeling of being perfect and modernized versions of an original from the fifties or sixties, such as his fabulous chicken dish. On the other hand, there are also dishes that feel very modern and creative even today, when some chefs, less interested in the resulting dish, choose the imperfect to try to move cooking forward. I know that Pacaud has said that he does not yet have a style of his own. It may be taken as a very modest comment from the maybe most modest and laid back chef on the top level, but at the same time it does give an explanation of why the seemingly so very different dishes are served at this place. It may also explain why it happens, although quite rare, that dishes, although exceptionally well executed, just feel like less well made assembling of perfect ingredients. Sometimes one can get the feeling that Pacaud creates his dishes from a, perhaps somewhat limited, list of currently available ingredients such as asparagus, morels, chicken, lamb, tomatoes and “new” dishes are really just a different assembly of the listed ingredients plus a sauce variation. I would be surprised to see Pacaud go outside this list and his normally used techniques to find inspiration. This is perhaps the only real criticism that can be levelled against Pacaud.
The most recent meal here was in January 2005. L’Ambroisie had just started to serve the season’s truffles. Truffles have matured late this year but the truffles at l’Ambroisie were the first together with some I had earlier in the week that started to show that deep very pungent, complex and smoky taste of truffles that I adore. They still have some time to go before they are truly exceptional. The day before I ate at Ambroisie I dined at Gagnaire and the truffles were even a week or two behind in maturity. At Ambroisie the truffles had a very dark grey colour close to black, whereas at Gagnaire they were just dark grey. Gagnaire had also just started to serve truffles on the menu because they were later than usual. When he came out to talk he conceded that they had just started to get really good and in another week or two they should be exceptional. He thought the harvest would be quite large and of very good quality this season and that the season would last long.
Let us go back to Ambroisie. As “snacks” we got a slice from a small baguette with finely shaved truffles and radish. An extraordinary amuse followed. It was a carpaccio of scallops that were perfectly cut, not too thick and not to thin so the texture and taste of the super fresh scallops were present. The scallops were perfectly seasoned with sea salt, oil, some barely traceable lemon juice and very tasty small sprigs of different herbs.
First course was poached oysters with watercress purée or cream and gold caviar. It was a new dish for me. I have seen it before but had not tried it. The oysters were just warm but had not lost their raw texture. The watercress purée was extremely powerful in taste. The three tastes were astonishingly calibrated and lifted the dish close to perfection.
After followed the Bresse chicken. It is now stuffed with truffles and served with truffles in various ways. The chicken was as good as usual. I rated the dish a tad lower than usual (usually a perfect dish) because the sauces with the chicken did not have the truffle taste of fresh truffles as it should. Perhaps a very tiny issue but if one has to find something that could be improved then that is it. The chicken was served with finely cut and perfectly cooked oignon blanc enhanced by finely diced truffles and braised salsify. The onion had a superb taste of onion but without any hint of the force or sharpness onions.
The meal ended with the tarte sableé au chocolat, glace à la vanille. The chocolate tart was as good a usual. From a technique point of view it is an exceptionally impressive creation. It is very light but provides a powerful if not rich chocolate taste. I was less impressed with the vanilla taste of the ice cream this time. It was a notch less perfumed than it usually is.
Should you go? Yes I think any serious gourmet need to try this place at least once. Service is very good, the wine list does contain a number of reasonably priced wines, and the dining rooms, and especially the one in the middle is one of the most beautiful dining rooms in the world.
This is not the place to go for those who feel that the way we dine and what we eat at restaurants need to be challenged and changed. Well actually maybe it is the place to go to for all those since Ambrioise provides good evidence that there is no urgent need to change the way we eat or what we eat, but instead that there is a need for the vast majority of chefs to focus more on what ingredients they serve and what they do with them. Once they have sorted that out they can try to reinvent food.
Gastroville rating of l'Ambroisie: 19/20
/MJ
January 15, 2005
About Us
This blog is run by two passionate gourmets, Mikael and Vedat.
ABOUT MIKAEL
According to Mikael’s mother, Mikael’s obsessive food interest started about the same time as he could walk. He started cooking very early in life and cooked dinners in people’s homes when he was an early teenager.
Destined to become a chef he did some basic training in professional kitchens but due to allergy, which later disappeared, he had to give up his plans to work professionally as a chef. He was fortunate enough to at an early age be intoxicated by haute cuisine and has since studied fine dining at various dining temples. Mikael will never be impressed by prestige, stars or luxury settings. Only what is served matters and Mikael could enjoy exceptional food even if it was served on a cardboard.
Mikael has devoted much of his time to studies of truffles, black as well as white, lobsters of all forms, chickens and many other ingredients that has caught his interest. These studies are still carried out and it is likely that they will never finish.
If you go early in the mornings to the markets on the French Riviera, you can often spot Mikael hunting for ultra fresh gamberi’s, rock red mullet, Mediterranean sea bass, langouste, milk-fed lamb, squab from small breeders and fresh vegetables from local farmers.
Mikael likes to eat most great produce the planet has to offer but is especially fond of gamberis from San Remo, Gaulois chicken, telinnes from Camargue, Salers and Simmental beef, pré-salé lamb, Pauillac lamb, courgettes nicois, asparagus from Vaucluse and Valbenga, morels and ceps. He likes to drink Burgundy wines from Roulot, Roumier, Coche-Dury, Comtes-Lafon, Jayer and Lafarge and Rhone wines from Chave and Jamet. Mikael prefers cheeses from affineurs such as Bernard Antony, Hervé Mons and Aleosse.
ABOUT VEDAT
Since early childhood Vedat has taken for granted the abundance and availability of good food on an everyday basis. This was a time when good quality fish, meat and seafood was available for very reasonable prices and before the World Bank (where Vedat has worked in the early 90s) had started to corrupt Turkish agriculture in the name of efficiency. He was also lucky that he grew up with his paternal grandparents. His grandmother, from Konya, was a serious home cook, besides being a beautiful lady who gave importance to aesthetics, and his grandfather, educated in Germany in agriculture, was an entrepreneur who introduced modern farming and food processing to Turkey and would discuss with his only grandson his experiments to cultivate the best fruits and vegetables. The only casualty of these early years is that, because Vedat unwittingly observed the slaughter of chickens in his grandpa’s farm at the tender age of 6, he would never ever taste a chicken again, even if it were a Gaulois chicken cooked by Mikael!
Upon coming to the US for graduate studies Vedat was awed and distressed by two things. First, as he unscientifically observed, Americans ate more chicken than anybody else on earth. Second, and especially in his International House dormitory at Berkeley, in California, getting decent, let alone good food, was as difficult as finding the needle in the haystack. Soon after, Vedat, who is about 5 foot and 8 inches tall weighed about 120 pounds and was on the verge of getting hospitalized.
It is at this point that Chez Panisse came to the rescue and was an eye opener for him in the sense that he had never thought that one could eat great food in restaurants (even to this day, the best of the Turkish cuisine can only be experienced in households). About the same time, Vedat has also discovered the taste of decent Southern Rhone wines that he could afford at Kermit Lynch and he realized the true meaning of a cliché, that the sum is greater than the constituent parts when wine is carefully matched with food.
Next came a half year fellowship in France intended for the study of French Economic Planning, but in practice resulted in the study of dining out at the Michelin starred restaurants, including 30 or so meals at the best restaurant of the time, Robuchon’s Jamin when there still was a 140 FF lunch menu which was equivalent to about $15 given the exchange rate at the time. The rest is, well… history. Once bitten by the lure of exquisite eating and nostalgic for his country and his childhood Vedat developed a fascination, one can also call obsession, with good food. To this day, he is crazy enough to drive to the middle of nowhere in rural places, say Spain, to eat 20 day old lamb from the Churra breed in an asador, or he can scourge the whole Mediterranean in search of the best “langouste”. To him, Michelin stars and luxurious surrounding mean nothing either positive or negative, and instead what is on the plate matters the most—besides good company of course which enriches the dining out experiment. As to what he likes to drink, besides freshly squeezed mandarin juice, Vedat is particularly fond of the silky Burgundies in H Jayer’s style and also Northern Rhones, Barolos and Barbarescos from both old (Giacomo Conterno and Giacosa) and new style (Roberto Voerzio, Sandrone) producers, some old Riojas and Meursaults from the likes of Roulot, Jobard, Coche and Lafon. All this said, he would gladly share with you a ‘45 or ‘47 Ausone if you have a spare bottle or two!
MIKAEL ABOUT VEDAT
Vedat is the most meticulous diner I have ever met. It takes an eternity to order a meal at a restaurant with him. He goes through dish after dish and asks the maitre d’ detailed questions about the provenance and characteristics of the produce of each dish and only stops short of asking if they know what the wild sea bass had been eating before it was caught. He has a relentless desire to discover and enjoy the culinary treasures of the world. His knowledge on ingredients and their preparations in particular and dining in general and the multitude of his “taste reference library” are beyond comprehension.
When he eats one can see he is analyzing every bit and every savor yet at the same time enjoying and taking enormous pleasure from great food like few if any people I have ever met. He is the ultimate gourmet and a true pleasure to dine with.
VEDAT ABOUT MIKAEL
Mikael is the most knowledgeable person about food in general and ingredients in particular that I have ever met. Actually, having read and reread some of his posts in a gastronomic website and having exchanged some emails with him I had dreaded meeting him in person. Somebody that knowledgeable and also Swedish to boot-- the cliché of Scandinavians being detached and aloof—I had started to think that he may be intimidating and not necessarily an ideal dining companion.
How wrong was I! The first impression I had of Mikael is that, when meeting him at Lucas Carton, his eyes were genuinely warm and friendly and his gestures and body language graceful. While about a head taller than me, and I suspect than most people, he is never intimidating, on the contrary. I was actually dumbfounded to learn from him that a common friend had called him a “Swedish teddy bear” as, after meeting him my wife also had told me that he is a cuddly type that will be liked by girls; he is like a “teddy bear” she said.
Even more striking for me than this nice surprise of dining with a pleasant person was the fact that Mikael’s palate turned out to be even more discriminating than I would have imagined. He would look at my langoustines wrapped in vermicelli and exclaim that it was oily and a tad too thick, while I had to taste it and then reach the same conclusions but only after tasting it. Or to give another example, this one at Les Ambassadeurs right after Piege took over the kitchen, he would taste a Comte from Bernard Anthony and learn from the server that it is a 1999, and after a bite he would proclaim that good as it is the cheese is 2000, not 1999. Guess what? Bernard Anthony was dining in the restaurant the same night and came to our table to say hello and corroborated that the restaurant had run out of his 1999 and they were now serving the new vintage. Well, if a man can tell the difference between the two then he will be intimidating as a food critique for many celebrity chefs who normally get away with murder.
I am also dumbfounded by the fact that Mikael can eat an inordinate amount of food and enjoy every bite of it. Our feast at Ambassadeurs has started at 8:30 PM and the same day Mikael had just had lunch of 20 courses or so, specially prepared by Chez Gagnaire which had ended at 5 PM. I do not know how anybody can do this and I am hoping that Mikael will reveal his secret one day in Gastroville.
To contact Mikael and Vedat:
mikael@gastroville.com
vedat@gastroville.com
