April 8, 2019. The lack of entries lately is because I am working on something like an investigative report. It likely won’t appear for four months or so. In the meantime, I will write here as I encounter anything adventuresome or conceptual and post some writings with titles. Because there are noteworthy aspects to restaurant and […]
Read moreYou, Too, Could Become a Michelin Inspector
In today’s on-line deluge of restaurant scores and rankings, the uniqueness of the Michelin Guides is supposedly their mythic inspection regime. Hardly a month goes by without someone, usually the young international director of the guides Gwendal Poullennec, reminding the restaurant world of some international army of full-time anonymous inspectors blanketing the Michelin Guide universe. […]
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One Part Genius To One Part Hype: Nouvelle Cuisine Française Clarified.
By Jörg Zipprick (This essay originally appeared in the book “Die Erfinder des Guten Geschmacks : Eine Kulturgeschichte der Köch”. (“The Inventors of Good Taste: A Cultural History of the Chef”). Bastei Entertainment. Cologne, 2013. We have edited it lightly in the translation and to bring it up to date.) The term “Nouvelle Cuisine” is […]
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The Poet of the Palate: An Appreciation, Appraisal and Analysis of the Writings of Jonathan Gold
On the continuum of critical writings, restaurant reviews fall somewhere between the Venice Biennale and the toaster ovens in Consumer Reports. When the restaurant culture began to take off in the 1960’s, the review media barely existed, but with the expansion of the restaurant business, reviewing grew likewise. Despite the inevitable hacks and the legions of […]
Read moreA Jonathan Gold Repository: Where to Dig For More Nuggets.
City of Gold. Laura Gabbert’s 2015 documentary about Jonathan Gold: This is accessible on several platforms. It is much more enjoyable than any of the chef puff pieces you see on Netflix since Jonathan Gold’s story is so much more encompassing and interesting than someone making food and running a restaurant. The LA Weekly reviews mostly […]
Read moreTwo Tributes to Bernard Pacaud and L’Ambroisie, Place des Vosges, Paris
(I am always pleased to bring you writings of the Paris-based, German-born gastronomy writer Jöerg Zipprick, who also created and administers La Liste 1000. He also turns out to be my culinary Döppelganger when it comes to taste, preferences and past experiences. He has written the second of our respective tributes to Bernard Pacaud […]
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Japan Journey Journal Part 2. Restaurant Yanagiya: Revered Country Cuisine Sketched In Charcoal.
If you’re gourmand enough, the food gods will smile upon you and leadeth you into temptation of any restaurant you wish to enter, which often means the ones you think you may never be able to enter. Most notable among these in the fairly recent past are Jamin–later to become Restaurant Robuchon– in the late 1980s and early 1990s (Those old enough may remember the Parisian restaurant anti-American boycott at the time); Restaurant Girardet outside of Lausanne, especially after Morley Safer did a segment for“60 Minutes” about it more than 30 years ago; and more recently elBulli, Can Roca. Noma, Osteria Francescana and Alinea.
Japan is loaded with difficult-to-book restaurants, particularly some of the sushi and kaiseki ones in Tokyo. In planning my recent trip to Japan, a provincial restaurant named Yanagia caught my eye because of its sky-high Tabelog score.
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Japan Journey Journal, Part 1: Tokyo Dining, Particularly Sushi, Overall.
What France in the 1980s was and what Spain continues to be since the early 2000s is what Japan is today—a pre-eminent “go to” country for the inveterate gastronomic traveler. The participants are rich Chinese (especially from Hong Kong); well-to-do bloggers; entrepreneurs who board a plane to Tokyo whenever they wish; and chefs searching for […]
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Feeding Off Each Other: Brandon Granier & Robert Brown Discuss Les Maisons de Bricourt–Olivier & Jane Roellinger’s Brittany Seafood Haven
We welcome, or welcome back, readers of “Restaurant Politics” after a hiatus during which we contributed to Gastromondiale. By we, I mean myself and Brandon Granier, who is not only an ardent, highly active international restaurant-goer, but possessor of a first-rate mind and an abundance of intellectual curiosity. (For a more detailed description of our […]
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Remembering the Father of “La Nouvelle Cuisine Francaise”. Christian Millau (1929-2017) By Robert Brown & Jörg Zipprick.
The beginning of my love of dining in France, particularly in the provinces, roughly coincides with the birth of the annual Guide Gault-Millau in 1972. The passing of Christian Millau this August 4th is the definitive end of an era, even though he was in retirement for several years and had sold his publishing company in […]
Read moreBetter Dining Through Chemistry:1 “The End of Pâtisserie as We Know It”. By Jörg Zipprick
What do you call this–mixing additives E 102 (Tartrazine); E 122 (Azorubine); E124 (Ponceau 4R); E 131 (Patent Blue V); E 132 (Indigontine); E 407 (Carrageenan) and E 953 (Isomalt) along with industrial sugars, synthetic dyes, and a lot of fat? The answer for more than two decades is high-end pastry.
Read moreJörg Zipprick: “Why the Beautiful Has Replaced the Good”
Regarded in Western Europe, and increasingly so in China, as one of the relatively-few independent-minded, outspoken gastronomic writers and critics, Jörg Zipprick is unafraid of tackling controversial subjects and resisting selling out or writing either thinly-disguised or blatant PR. He has created a large repertoire of praise-worthy, widely-read books and articles. Because he writes mostly […]
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Diningology 