French Laundry etc.--correction

Dick, Thanks for providing that correction. I'll retract my previously stated outrage over their wine pricing, though they're still on the high side if I'm doing my math correctly ;-) I still doubt that I'll make a special effort to go there, but I wouldn't turn down an invitation! :P

Mark Lipton

One trip there is worth the splurge. Yes, the wine prices are on the high side but so are the food prices.

Salut/Hi Mark Lipton,

le/on Thu, 25 Oct 2007 13:50:50 -0400, tu disais/you said:-

down an invitation! :P

As you know, I've been lucky enough to eat there, and at several other highly regarded places. Ignoring the price - which I know is unrealistic of me - this was the best meal I've ever eaten anywhere. Out of the maybe 8 or

So... if you can wangle an invite - don't hesitate. And at present prices, their menu prices are still lower than those chez Bocuse and Veyrat. Bon appetit Ian La Souvigne - France

turn down an invitation! :P

Ian

at €160 El Bulli is a steal... :-)

Salut/Hi Mike Tommasi,

le/on Sat, 27 Oct 2007 20:52:01 +0200, tu disais/you said:-

Agreed. But not in the way you mean it!! From your notes, and those of Patrick Laget, and especially Levi's comments in the Pink'un I feel that €16 _would_ be stealing for a string of mousses, whips, froths and bubbles.

I'm afraid I've temporarily mislaid the file I scanned from the FT article, which was (IMO) a fascinating critique on modern trends in cooking. Bon appetit Ian La Souvigne - France

I beleive it was a very good meal. In my case it was not the best meal I have had but it was exceptional.

After your posting a couple years back or so, that is when I decided to go. It was worth the trip and I have no regrets for my overpayment for the experience.

I do think that Keller has earned his reputation. Per Se next.

Ian Hoare wrote:

Ian, As you know (I hope) I value your opinion very highly in regards to matters of cooking. However, my perennial dilemma with FL, Per Se, Fat Duck and other top flight restaurants is one that has a close parallel in the world of wine: is that meal really worth to me the cost of 2 meals at or 10 meals at a top notch Thai or Indian or Chinese restaurant where I can BYO? Of course, there is no one answer to that question. To someone such as yourself, clearly the cooking at FL was a revelation that would have been hard to obtain elsewhere (just as Hester Blumenthal's cooking was likewise a revelation -- I still have to try the blowtorch/150° treatment for beef). Having eaten at Charlie Trotter's, Chez Panisse and Manresa, I am not so sure that I can justify that expenditure for myself. Perhaps I have more plebian tastes or just am not as sophisticated in my appreciation of cooking. I can't honestly tell you what I had at Charlie Trotter's for my 40th birthday, but I can remember in vivid detail what I ate at Arun's Thai restaurant in Chicago a year earlier. I also don't buy DRC, Ch. Latour or Trimbach Clos St. Hune despite my confidence that I would love all of them. Instead, I buy wines priced at 1/10 of their value and get plenty of satisfaction from drinking them. Would an aged DRC La Tâche be more impressive than the '88 Dujac Clos de la Roche that I had a few years ago? Quite possibly, but I'll likely never know, unless a wealthy friend or acquaintance decides to treat me to them. Perhaps some day I will find an occasion to spring for FL or DRC, but only time will tell.

Cheers! Mark Lipton

p.s. It's great to see a few posts from you again after all this time. I hope that you can find the time to continue contributing.

I certaily agree on on your statement of value.

Sometimes when I th>> As you know, I've been lucky enough to eat there, and at several other

"Mark Lipton" in news:fg0sl5$49e$ snipped-for-privacy@aioe.org :

It's an issue for many folks; here's my take on it, for many years.

Great wines can cost disproportionately (especially with names well known or, nowadays, "highly scored"). Implicit side message: better value is likely from great wines whose names are not clichés and (especially) don't have high "scores" published by critics.

But does a great wine, at 10 times more expensive than a good one, give 10 times the pleasure? I have enough experience to say almost certainly, no.* However, the more expensive wine may be better, and more fundamentally, _different._ Therefore if you want to experience it, you pay the disproportionate price.

A viable strategy for doing this is to spread your long-term buying budget over different price ranges, buying more of the wines that are better values (or that you like or use often) but occasionally some outrageous ones. So if you plotted a graph of bottles vs. price, it would tail off toward, but not quite, zero at higher prices.

In tasting groups this is even easier, because your total resources aren't spread over time, but over multiple tasters, each paying only the average bottle price. That is yet another reason, if you ever needed one, for co-operative tasting groups.

Cheers -- Max

• A dramatic example of an exception, and these are mostly at the lower rather than upper end of the price scale, appeared in a published blind sparkling-wine tasting by a San Francisco newspaper some 30 years ago (I have it on file). A wine writer recruited volunteer tasters from wine-drinking staff and even passers-by if I recall. They tasted the wines blind and recorded impressions which, like many such tests, were revealing. He set up the tasting to look into the question, "does sparkling wine taste 10x better than sparkling wine?" The product was Moet's Dom Perignon, the was a popular bulk sparkling wine. There were several others. Consensus from these average wine-drinking consumers was no, the expensive wine was MORE than 10 times better than the 10-times-cheaper wine.

Salut/Hi Mark Lipton,

le/on Sat, 27 Oct 2007 22:37:16 -0400, tu disais/you said:-

restaurants is one that has a close parallel

or 10 meals at a top notch Thai or Indian or Chinese restaurant where I can BYO?

I agree 100%. And I think that I probably agree with your decision - for me the FL wouldn't have been viable had I had to pay for myself. I can illustrate that with a practical example. We celebrate our ruby anniversary this year. I wanted to send the year out with a bang and take Jacquie & my brother and SIL to the Fat Duck, because Jacquie missed it last time, when Tony took "us". I'd come to an agreement with Tony that he'd stump up the wines and I'd do the food, but that was still going to cost _serious_ folding money (£80/head). Not an insane price by top class restaurant standards, but WELL more than the St Jacques, where the pair of us are hard put to spend more than €120 including wine for the two of us, and whose desserts we prefer to those at Michel Bras at Laguiole. (***). Anyway, they're shut over Christmas and the New Year, so we had to rethink. Because it falls on a Sunday, that reduced the choice still further, so finally we chose La Trompette, where we've eaten before ans which we loved. However at £35 per head for food - your question is entirely pertinant. Would I prefer to eat twice at La Trompette, or once at the Fat Duck? And I am going to duck the question, by saying that I'll probably go more often to La Trompette, but nevertheless one owes it to oneself to go once to "the best". And for me... the best meal I've ever had was at TFL. So knowing you and your high regard for food and wine, I say "go if ever you can". But I must say that their price increase in the last 3 years (we were there in 2004) is really painful. IIRC it was $150 PLUS 18% service = approx $180. It's now at $240 service compris and a 33% increase in 3 years is going some. But it's fair to compare it with Bocuse whose three menus cost from $180 to $287 or with Marc Veyrat, whose menu you really ought to read!! 18 "creations" for $486. Gulp. Talk about "farfelu".

to try the blowtorch/150°

I'm now doing that regularly, by the way. Always works as well as it did the first time. But roast beef isn't what I would go to HB for, it would be to see what he can do with a "classical" menu.

appreciation of cooking.

I take that point. However, I can maybe remember about 4 of the 12 dishes at The Fat Duck, almost none at Gordon Ramsey's, about 2 at Bras and 6/7 at TFL. And the Fat Duck was the earliest of these.

I have to say that at USA prices (despite USA incomes) I wouldn't either - nor do I at the moment. However my wine buying fund is relatively flush at the moment, and we have a cellar that's pretty well stocked with good value wines. So I'm looking hard at some top 2005s from St Emilion/Pomerol and from Burgundy in the hope that I'll still be able to taste when they are ready, and will be getting some bottles of 2000 Diebolt-Vallois Fleur de Passion Champagne tomorrow to take to the UK!

But I'm lucky in that I HAVE tasted the tops, the Mouton 1959, Ch Pétrus and DRC wines. If I hadn't, I would feel I owed it to myself to try them - perhaps only once.

For a few more days, perhaps. Then we're off to Peru and the Galapagos Is and then to the UK for Christmas and the New Year. Gotta spend our ill gotten gains from the B&B.

Bon appetit Ian La Souvigne - France

"Ian Hoare" wrote .............

Having just spent a week in Melbourne (Australia) celebrating my 60th, and "doing" the restaurant scene, the prices quoted seem to be somewhat on a par.

Two top restaurants (Vue de Monde & Three-One-Two) offer 8/9 course"degustation" menus at $A200 and $A110 per person respectively (service & tax included) with an additional $A100 and $A70) for matching wines.

And (early) seasons greetings Ian & Jacquie - will be interested to hear some of the interesting recipes from the Galapagos.

Yes, I think that it's a dilemma faced by most wine/food lovers of limited means. I realize that many of the people who I chat with wine about are in a different income bracket than my own, but I can't easily justify spending money on a meal that would otherwise go to Andrew's college fund.

This discussion has taken on another dimension, as my mother and I were just discussing plans for celebrating her 80th birthday in December. We're going to go out to Gary Danko's restaurant in SF, which is a fine place to eat (overpriced wine list, though) but frankly not anything that I couldn't get for half the price in many places in France -- perhaps with today's exchange rate that's not as true as it used to be. Would it be preferable to spend twice as much for a meal at FL? Hard to say. Fortunately, in this case, I forced my mother to choose, so I am merely the agent and not the motive force.

Ouch! Yes, as I said, I wouldn't turn down an invitation to the FL, but I'll think long and hard before spending my own hard-won shekels on a meal there.

Lucky you! These days, our wine purchases skew heavily to the early-consumption items: Muscadet, Beaujolais, Maconnais, QbA Riesling, Cotes du Rhone, with occasional splurges for those few producers still worth IMO the expense: Ridge, certain Burgundies, Bdx, a few CdPs, Chablis. My '05 purchases were "limited" to two cases of satellite/Cru Bourgeois purchased en primeur.

Yes, I've got to attend more pre-auction tastings.

Now I am REALLY jealous! There are perhaps no two places higher on my "to visit" list than those two. I wish you bon voyage and do hope to hear something about the food of Peru and the sights of the Galapagos. Give my best to the tortoises and iguanas.

Mark Lipton

Glad to hear the cave is in good shape! :) I've got only a few more 05s to get, some Morgon from Trichard, and (the reason I mention it) some St. Emilion from Haut Rocher. Nice wines and always really good value.

Very exotic! ;) Do stop by for a lunch or so if your heading through the Alencon area...

-E