Restaurant/Culinary

FOUR OF THE BEST RESTAURANTS IN THE WORLD - AND HOW TO CRACK THEIR RESERVATION CODE

The problem, at one time, was simply knowing the best restaurants. Now, with the success of The Food Network, Top Chef, and Mr. Ramsey's Empire, along with Zagat et. al. everyone wants/needs to dine at the best restaurants in the world. But some of these places only have thirty or so tables. How do you score one?

In its April, 2008 issue, Travel + Leisure Magazine does more then name names - it names numbers. Here are the best ways to crack the reservations "codes".

EL BULLI - Send a fax request eight to twelve months prior to your requested dinner to 34.97. 215 0717. Or, call one day ahead to see if there are cancellations at 34. 97 215 0457. Hint: don;t put a lot of effort into securing reservations in 2008. They are completely booked.

BABBO - Mario Batali's Manhattan outpost of creative and heartwarming Italian cuisine leaves it all up tot he speed of your telephone connection. Call exactly at 10:00 am. one month to the day prior to your requested date. Dial 212 - 777 -0303. Wear kitchen clogs if you can.

L'ASTRANCE - This top tier Paris Restaurant tries to maintain a waiting list. But the best way to secure an actual reservation is to call exactly two months to the day prior to your desired reservation. The call should be made at exactly 10:00 am. Paris time - or the middle of the night for North American foodies. The number to use is 33 1 40 50 84 40

THE FRENCH LAUNDRY - We think FL's Thomas Keller is the top chef in the United States. His Napa dining spot takes calls for reservations at 707 - 944 - 2380. Call several months in advance and always call during the day on weekends.

IS FINE DINING SUSTAINABLE?

One of ther world's most respected culinary pracftitioners, Pierre Gagnaire of the triple Michelin-starred Balzac in Paris, is waging an unusual campaign. He is trying to warn the consumers of fine dining that the environment cannot sustain the demands of a worldwide audience for truly natural food products. Aming ius specific warnings:

01 - Wild fish will disappear in th enext five to ten years. What will remain will be "farmed" fish.

02 - Demand for certain species of fish will soon make

them extinct. The list includes many species of shark and blue fin tuna.

03 - Exotic and in demand fruits and vegetables are getting so hard to find, that there is danger that restaurants without the best sup[pliers may have to close

His bottom line is that suppliers just can;pt cope with the demands of good restaurants.

He predicts large numbers of closings in the years to come along with prices that may double or triple today's top-level menu prices.

TRAVELING ON ONE’S STOMACH

By Richard Bruce Turen

Contributing Editor

Twenty-five years ago, I discovered a five table restaurant located in the back of a one pump deserted gas station just off Highway 1 in Mendocino, California. People would drive up, make their reservation, and then drive away, spreading gravel in their wake, a sign of exultation.

            I was staying at a motel across the street, a Californian out trying to answer a new and burning question. Could any wine from Mendocino seriously challenge the pampered grapes of Napa?

            Sitting on the porch of my motel, I found the old gas station across the street fascinating. I wasn’t into food. Good food was our birthright in San Francisco, where I was living.  You didn’t have to think a lot about it. I had not known anyone who ate brats or sliders, or even McDonald’s, for that matter.

            But everyone knew at least a little bit about wines and even my most beer-centric friends knew the names of a couple of  vineyards they would visit from time to time on the weekends.

            On my second day in Mendocino, I crossed the road, walked to the back of the peeling grey wood frame building, opened the creaking screen door and cajoled the cook into a reservation for the following night.

I had, of course, the best meal of my life. At least the best up to that point. It wasn’t only the sweetbreads, or the way the artichoke  and cherry sauce met the crisp duck and did a dance. it was the smell of the place, the way conversation would stop as a new dish emerged from the tiny kitchen.

The next day, top down, lady friend by my side, Charles Aznavour in the tape player, I drove back north up Highway One along the coast searching for a bookstore. Finding one next to a blanket-weaver’s shop, I left the motor running, ran in, and bought the nicest journal I could find.

When we got home, I wrote down what I could remember about the meal. The little details about what was said by the server, what I remembered of the reactions of other diners, and the colors. I tried to come up with a one sentence description of the place.

That night, as I lay in bed going over the trip and wondering what felt different, I realized that I had changed a bit on this long weekend in the country. I was a foodie. The eccentricities of the grape, and the interplay between small sections of the palate and the external meatus were of declining interest. I knew who I was and I knew, that night, that I was slated to be far more interested in what was on my plate then what happened to occupy my glass as I grew older.

 I was a note-keeper, a journal-saver, a recorder of meals enjoyed and endured.

Years have passed. I managed to move abroad and I took up travel as a trade when I returned to the States. . But the journals continued. I started writing for a newspaper chain and ended up doing a Q and A column. A large number of the questions sent in had to do with restaurant recommendations around the world. “Do you know a place in Reykjavik where we can get a decent ……………….”

One day, I got called in by my editors and was made an offer to help develop a dining guide. That led, rather quickly, to a job as a Restaurant Critic. The food thing was exploding around me.

About fifteen years ago, I started designing culinary/restaurant tours around the world, allowing me to keep those journals filled. But I also started keeping notes on which restaurants and which dishes were being recommended by critics I admired in places like Gourmet, Bon Appétit, the New York Times, Wine Spectator, and as many food-related reads as I could handle.

I traveled to food shows, took friends to Provence, designed restaurant tours to Tuscany, and the Far East. There have been a great many white tablecloth experiences in posh-posh settings over the years. But those are not the ones I remember or necessarily recommend to clients. I’ve done Ducasse and Savoy, tasted Trotter, and experienced Emeril. I try to eat at the world’s best restaurants but, if truth be told, mostly because I keep up a list of the restaurants you “must experience before you die.” I feel I have to do my research. But the best meals, the truly once-in-a-lifetime experiences like the back of the aging Shell station, are almost always, accessible to those who, pointed in the right direction, can seek them out.

The best meal of my life took place with a group of clients in a simple, seafood restaurant in Singapore. There were circular tanks in the center of the restaurant, white tiles, and guys in hip boots with nets who would scoop up whatever fish you pointed at. You would take it to the small cash register, pay, and then offer any cooking instructions you cared to make. Singapore Chili Crab was just one of the highlights.

I remember being invited to have dinner in the Indian crew mess aboard a Princess cruise ship. The warmth of that meal and the endless stream of “first-time evers”, was a great memory as we sat together in a hidden section of the below decks kitchen not far from the ships padded jail cell.

A few Septembers ago, we were doing a cooking lesson with an important and temperamental Tuscan chef in his private kitchen. One of the folks in my group asked why he wasn’t washing the herbs before shoving them into the cavity of the capon on which he appeared to be performing a culinary colonoscopy. The handlebar-mustachioed chef stopped, starred at the inquisitor, and, through our translator, explained “dirt from the ground must be in every dish. It is what gives food its authentic flavor. No chef ever washes fresh herbs.”

I haven’t washed a sprig of Rosemary or Thyme since, a fact, perhaps, I should not reveal to certain readers of this publication who have dined at our home.

The holy trinity of every trip our clients take are transportation, food, and accommodations. Just about a decade ago, we reached a landmark in travel when studies showed that food had become the most expensive single component of the travel experience. Now, of course, fuel prices are pushing up transportation, but, in fact, all sectors are rising rapidly and all are related.

From the agent perspective, I think it is fair to say that we have spent all of our time on two of these sectors and largely ignored our clients needs when it comes to the third.

To a certain extent, we all have to become “foodies”. We are, the portal to the entire vacation experience. And that includes dining approximately three times each day. How many of those meals will be truly memorable, depends in part, on the willingness of the travel provider to take some responsibility for this aspect of the vacation experience.

If your client returns from Paris without ever experiencing the round stone ground, “Miche” from Boulangerie Pollane in the sixth arrondissemont, the ones made in the ancient wood-fired ovens in the basement, have they really been to Paris? If they have not experienced a, still warm from the oven, baguette from Gosselin on the Rue St. Honore, will they ever know the heights to which a simple loaf of bread can aspire?

I think not.

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