A few weeks ago at daybreak when the brain is at its most agile, I realized that the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list or W50B (see “The Society of the Illusionists”), had a polar-opposite: the Slow Food’s guidebook “Osterie d’Italia”.The difference obviously has nothing to do with practicality, as the former directs you to 100 […]
Read moreThe Society of the Illusionists: The World’s 50 Best Restaurants List.
Wrestling with Japan (Beware the Double Stars). Part One: Prelude to a Trip.
Among talented chefs and ardent gastronomes, Japan is a desirous destination, every bit as much as France, Spain and Italy. Also interest in Japanese cuisine has swiftly grown in recent years as seen by the number of Japanese-inspired and Japanese fusion restaurants around the world and the migration of chefs from Japan to Paris and […]
Read moreSmart St. Barth: An overview of the cuisine and more.
“Paradise” is a word that you shouldn’t bandy about, but at least reserve it for a place that is undeniably one, such as St. Barth. The variety of the undulating terrain’s is never monotonous; you can reach the furthest point from wherever you are in 20 to 25 minutes; the ocean views are mesmerizing and […]
Read moreMouthing Off: Form Swallows Function-The Tyranny of Tasting Menus.
Below is an essay I wrote a year and a half ago and posted on Mouthfuls that I am reposting for new readers. I sent it on a lark to the New York Times Op-Ed page and to Edward Behr at the Art of Eating. It went unpublished, but I believe I make an interesting […]
Read moreMan Bites Truffle: Eating and Drinking in Piedmont in Late Fall
This is the first question and answer collaboration with me and Vedat Milor, founder and lead editor of the greatly-respected website Gastromondiale on which this Q & A also appears. We plan to present more discussions that will cover other significant and influential issues affecting gastronomy. Between us, we have observed and indulged in decades […]
Read moreMouthing Off: Let the Dining Room Belong to the Diner
That gastronomy, particularly the fine dining kind, has drastically changed over the past three or four decades is beyond any doubt. One of the more-significant ways is the shift from good and gifted chefs doing the maximum to serve and please their clientele to what is now many “celebrity” chefs increasingly controlling at your expense […]
Read moreBoobtubefood: “Chef’s Table: France”.
Reviewed by Robert Brown Lovely to look at, impossibly delightful to hold, the Netflix mini-series “Chef’s Table: France” has as its primary concern the taste of food which, unlike paintings, prints, movies, photographs and the written word, can’t be grasped and retained, but only implied. It is a misfortune shared with every manifestation of “food […]
Read moreLe Coucou: A Tail of Two Pheasants.
Reviewed by Robert Brown The battlefield of New York restaurants is filled with the remains of foreign adventurism gone awry. Ever since the 1939 New York World’s Fair at which Henri Soulé started Restaurant Le Pavilon, foreign chefs and restaurateurs, most of whom have been from France, have both been eaten up or taken the […]
Read moreMouthing Off: “Let’s Go Back to the Waltz”.
Let’s go back to the waltz Take me back to the waltz Let’s journey back to the past Back when the world wasn’t Turning so fast When the tempo was slow In the long, long ago How I yearn How I long to return To the golden days of the waltz. (Music and lyrics by […]
Read moreEnraging Food: “Real Food/Fake Food” Why You Don’t Know What You’re Eating & What You Can Do About It. By Larry Olmsted.
Reviewed by Robert Brown “Real Food/Fake Food” is a book for militant gastronomes whose author is anything but. I wish the book had been published the last time I dined at Le Bernardin. Then I could have asked my waiter if the rank piece of white tuna I ended up ordering was the unsafe, banned-in-Japan […]
Read moreSophisticated Foodie: Edward Behr’s New Book, “The Food & Wine of France: Eating & Drinking from Champagne to Provence”
Reviewed by Robert Brown In the 700 or so years of the history of culinary books, what publishers call food narratives are mere babies. After eliminating cookbooks, diet and nutrition books and those that politicize food, what you have left pretty much can be called food narratives. The general sub-categories are books about wine; ingredients; […]
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