[nowIamone]

Trendy is a great dining experiance, but our strong point is great basics. Right now (height of our summer tourist season) we have a King crab cocktail. It's generous, good crab, and attacticely served. It well outsell all of the trendy things I put together. Halibut with necterine salsa, will never outsell my beer battered, deep fried; the bistro steak special with the balsmic reduction and stack of of sauteed crispy onion rings never, out sells my signature bone in rib steak. I laughing say "that my customers like to have the specials to read, before they order their usual."

[chrose]

Originally Posted by nowIamone

I laughing say "that my customers like to have the specials to read, before they order their usual."

Nicely said, that makes me feel better! I guess you're right that when the dust settles all we really want is comfort food. That and the basics will never go out of style.

[oldschool1982]

LOL. I'm definitely not one to hold it against anyone for evolving, creating something abstract or trying something new and I will definitely step outside the box myself sometimes but....
"I believe you should dance with the one that brung ya".

I could make comment on some of the things I've seen and tasted but then again the username kinda says it all.

Hey Kuan! One of my favorites. I've served Steak Dianne at every place I've run that served high quality steaks. Always a great seller.

[cliveb]

And someone was saying to me last week:
" You know, the very BEST vegetables just have salt, pepper and melted butter"...!

[diane]

I never knew anyone who didn't want to sit down to a Sunday Roast lunch or dinner. How old fashioned is That. Or a 'ladle all you want' casserole bursting with veg and meat and gravy. And crusty bread for mopping. Colcannon and corned beef with sweet mustard. Yorkshire Pudding with roast beef. A sirloin on a very large plate, or eye fillet, surrounded with roast veg. of all sorts, yorkies, a dish of peas. Pan gravy in a thermos jug and some horseradish.

I like the 'old fashioned food', I don't like foams and stacks, and jiggery pokery. The idea of several Small courses is attractive for a now and then thing, though. Some of what people call cutting edge is just down right silly IMHO.

[diane]

And I am delighted to see beetroot making a comeback, prepeared any way.

[Mikeb]

Originally Posted by diane

And I am delighted to see beetroot making a comeback, prepeared any way.

As far as I'm concerned beetroot never went 'out' of style. Guess it depends who you ask. It's just another part of the new 'trend' - as French chefs run out of new ideas they look to eastern cuisines and steal some of the ideas... Look at many cutting edge menus and you'll see plenty of middle eastern and north african spices, as well as other food preparations.

The other day I was reading an article in the NYT online talking about how 'sour' is the new flavour trend... I don't know how it can be a trend if it's one of the key flavours of many world cuisines. I know in Ukrainian cuisine (what I grew up on) sour is a very important flavour. (beetroot is also a staple vegetable - see above paragraph)

While I do like some of the ideas of modern cuisine, overall I think it's more flash than substance. Over-reduced sauces (a big pet peeve of mine), stacks to the moon, melon soup, salads with fruits in them, foams (although I do like them if they have the consistency of chantilly cream, I just can't stand the ones with no substance whatsoever), and especially orbs made from alginate and CaCl - I think these kinds of things are going to be relegated to the 'silly fad' section of history.

The good points of modern cuisine - lighter sauces, smaller portions, a new appreciation for technique, and my favourite - using vegetable purées as a liaison for sauces (although it seems this is falling back out of favour - now alginates, guar and xanthum gums are taking over...).

Give me a bowl of borshch, a plate of vareniky, roast chicken with pan juice and kasha or holubsti with vegetables anyday and I'll be happy (and some raspberry soup for dessert). I can honestly say that nothing I've had in any restaurant can compare to my grandmother's cooking (thankfully she left behind her best recipes), and that even my own cooking is better than I've had in most restaurants save a few - of course I've also cooked in the best restaurants, cooked dinners for magazine and newsaper reviews (never a bad review yet)... End of story - it's funny, everything that I've seen and been through in my life both professional and personal makes me feel old - not to mention talking like some older guy about the 'kids' today... (speaking of which...)

[foodpump]

Nope, beet salad, dressed simply with oil and vinegar, maybe some chopped parsley, accompanied by sliced cold poached beef tongue, a vinaigrete with lots of chopped capers and sour cornichons. Oh, and a cold beer....

[Mikeb]

Originally Posted by kuan

I swear if I go back to work it would be as a line cook. I barely know how to make a foam but these days when I look at menus I see a dizzying array of ingredients just for one dish, and people are serving more and more courses these days!

I used to be confident that I could go in and be comfortable in almost any kitchen. Now I'm not so sure! I mean as an example, how do I handle beef cheeks and where do I even get them, and served with salpicon of something, two purees, and two different reductions, and crispy something wafer?

I guess technically I can do it, but man, the amount of "stuff" that goes on a plate these days takes 2-3 times as much preptime as the stuff I'm used to doing. Whatever happened to Steak Diane? Anyone feel the same way sometimes?

Personally I feel that the intricate preparations have had a very bad effect not only on food quality, but also on the economics of running a restaurant and the industry in whole. You need more cooks to do less - and honestly, theres not much difference in taste - in fact, as preparations get too intense often cooks forget to make it taste good. Also, since you've got more cooks, each one has less chance to learn, some get lazy, you rely on apprentices more and more, details get missed, etc...

Also, as you staff more cooks, economics dictates that you need to pay them less - you lose your staff, people quit the industry, and you've got a situation like you do up here (Calgary) - restaurants are actually closing not because of a lack of customers, but because they can't find cooks. As a last-ditch attempt many restaurants are also paying new cooks double the wage they would have made only 2 years ago, throwing signing bonuses out there (I never thought I would see the day), but still the industry is hurting for staff. The restaurant I've worked at for the last year and a half needed to simplify the menu considerably because of a lack of cooks (staff is half as big as when I started), but honestly, the food still tastes as good as ever (just less complexity). I remember reading of the Troisgros brothers running their restaurant single-handedly with only a few apprentices, or Tetsuya Wakuda in Aussie-land cooking by himself in his restaurant (in the beginning anyway), that is a far cry from the 20+ cooks many top restaurants now staff to 'keep up'...

Your example of beefcheeks is a good one, but I happen to like them Treat them as you would any other braising meat. I've actually had the pleasure of making dishes with over 10 components on each (that's right, TEN components - six pans from my section alone), do 50 of those in a night (not even including other courses) with only 3 cooks (only 2 on hotline), and you'll want to shoot yourself (don't even want to know how the sommelier felt about that either). Nothing worse than running out of pans in a 25 cover evening service... While complexity is impressive to some, flavour still remains the goal.

[Mikeb]

Originally Posted by foodpump

Nope, beet salad, dressed simply with oil and vinegar, maybe some chopped parsley, accompanied by sliced cold poached beef tongue, a vinaigrete with lots of chopped capers and sour cornichons. Oh, and a cold beer....

Sounds good to me.

[jaunDiego]

Man, look...food need not be complicated. Your guests have no idea what you have gone through to bring them a delicious dish. why break your own b*lls for nothing? Just make your food taste good! Unless they are watching you cook their food, just do waht you do well without the scrutiny of uneducated eyes. "Feed the pigs", man!

[dano1]

Originally Posted by jaunDiego

Man, look...food need not be complicated. Your guests have no idea what you have gone through to bring them a delicious dish. why break your own b*lls for nothing? Just make your food taste good! Unless they are watching you cook their food, just do waht you do well without the scrutiny of uneducated eyes. "Feed the pigs", man!

very classy...where do you work?

[bandregg]

Everyone can learn new techniques given time to study and practice them. I would suggest that given training on new equipment like freezing griddles and frozen nitrogen baths a cook who can make perfect scrambled eggs or hollandaise from memory won't have any problems. In the case of most of these new skills it's really a matter of mastering the equipment.
As to multi-course dinners served with a few bites of each dish, a good friend of mine ate at WD-50 while doing some research for his new restaurant. Afterward we were talking on the phone and he said, "You know, I'm eating a cold roast chicken sandwich right now. Left over from last night's dinner. And it's really good. It may be better than what I ate in New York, because you know, sometimes you just want more of something that tastes good, and I can make another chicken sandwich."

[diane]

I heard on tv the other night that 75% of Americans have an outdoor grill, and 44% said their favourite grill food was steak. Speaks volumes doesn't it.

[Steve A]

There are classics, trends and fads. Eventually one moves from one category to another or drops off the face of the earth only to be "refound" by someone else.

Just my 2¢.

Ciao,