BR wrote:Huh? Darren, I'm not sure who your post is directed to or exactly what you are saying, but your quotations are incorrect and you're attributing the quotes to the wrong people. See my post above.

Sorry about that - I've fixed my post.

Habibi wrote:But Steve, it has everything to do with "ethnic" - you practically said so yourself when discussing your views on Mexican and French cuisine.

The best thing I've ever eaten was falafel from a hole in the wall in Ramallah, Palestine. It was brown and long, looking something like an Arabic turd. It was likely made from cheap, dried chickpeas imported from Turkey. Three cost me about 25 cents U.S., which is actually quite expensive (blame it on an "occupation tax").

But it was the best thing I've ever eaten, not only because it was expertly spiced and fried, served fresh, but also because it distilled generations of historical memory, blood, spit, occupation and resistance, and indeed, my own experience with my heritage, into a single bite. It was built upon a whole lot more than mere culinary expertise.

It was certainly better, in my view, than anything I ate at Alinea last year.

Ok, so what's your conclusion? I don't see the point of this example.

Steve Plotnicki wrote:Habibi - I believe you about that falafal. But what you are offering is simply not empirical evidence. There are dozens of reasons why you loved that falafal that range from they used the best chickpeas in the world to make it to you were exceptionally hungry and in a really good mood that date. In order to offer meaningfull proof, you would have to go behind you own taste buds and offers objective reasons why it was the best thing you ever ate.

Here's my objective evidence at its most cynical: Arabic food is better than French food. It tastes better, uses more spices and has a richer history. When the French were eating bugs in caves, the Arabs were feasting on roast lamb with rice and saffron.

Darren72 wrote:

BR wrote:Let's just talk ingredients: more expensive, artisanal ingredients do not necessarily lead to a more flavorful, better tasting product or one with a better texture, and all of these considerations need to be taken into consideration. You may prefer more expensive cheeses to taste on their own, but how are they when baked, both in terms of flavor and texture? Does that better tasting and more expensive cheese clash with the spinach or pumpkin flavor when combined. Does a less expensive (and perhaps lesser quality) cheese melt better, wheras the higher quality cheese leads to an unpleasant, grainy texture? Does the artisanal cheese just have too high a fat ratio for the finished dish? It's not all about the individual cost/taste of each single ingredient and in my opinion you're approaching your food analysis with tunnel vision.

Recall how this whole thing started: why are many restaurants bad? One answer is because they use low-quality ingredients.

As much as you'd like to "prove him wrong," you can't do it by turning around the logic by saying that all low-quality ingredients are bad.

A implies B does not mean B implies A.

Hmmm... not sure where I say that low-quality ingredients are bad. Do you?

Steve Plotnicki wrote:Habibi - I believe you about that falafal. But what you are offering is simply not empirical evidence. There are dozens of reasons why you loved that falafal that range from they used the best chickpeas in the world to make it to you were exceptionally hungry and in a really good mood that date. In order to offer meaningfull proof, you would have to go behind you own taste buds and offers objective reasons why it was the best thing you ever ate.

Help me to understand here, Steve... not that I disagree, but when you say mole from scratch is better than mole from a package, how is that any more objective or empirical? There may be reasons behind your taste preferences, but in the end, everything comes down to subjective taste preferences. One can certainly argue that somebody has bad taste (another long subject), but in the end, it's still taste. Could you explain how your assessment of food is empirical while the assessment of those who disagree with you here is subjective?

Darren72 wrote:

Habibi wrote:But Steve, it has everything to do with "ethnic" - you practically said so yourself when discussing your views on Mexican and French cuisine.

The best thing I've ever eaten was falafel from a hole in the wall in Ramallah, Palestine. It was brown and long, looking something like an Arabic turd. It was likely made from cheap, dried chickpeas imported from Turkey. Three cost me about 25 cents U.S., which is actually quite expensive (blame it on an "occupation tax").

But it was the best thing I've ever eaten, not only because it was expertly spiced and fried, served fresh, but also because it distilled generations of historical memory, blood, spit, occupation and resistance, and indeed, my own experience with my heritage, into a single bite. It was built upon a whole lot more than mere culinary expertise.

It was certainly better, in my view, than anything I ate at Alinea last year.

Ok, so what's your conclusion? I don't see the point of this example.

The point is that so-called "objectivity" or emperically deductible "facts" have nothing to do with the quality of food as one experiences it. Whether he knows it or not, Steve doesn't think French food is better than Mexican food because the French "understand" their ingredients and technique better, he simply likes it better for a variety of subjective reasons.

Habibi (and this responds to Dom as well) - If you want to limit a conversarion about food, art, music etc., to subjective preferences, then be my guest. But if you are not willing to admit that Picasso's hang in the Art Institute of Chicago, and paitings by numbers do not, you can't have an informed discussion on the topic of art. Sure, there is no scientific proof that a Picasso is better than painting by numbers. But there are so many data points about a Picasso that one can draw inferences from - like how every museum wants to hang them; what they cost to buy; how many books have been written about them; how they have become part of the curriculum at art schools and universitites, that an obdurate reality has shaped around its value. But can you tell me what art school teches painting by the numbers?

This is true in food as well. I can take you into Barnes & Noble today and we can pick up any number of Mexican cookbooks that explain how to make your own mole. But we will find none that suggest you should use a packaged mole mix as a starterr. Maybe Rachel Ray or Martha Stewart might but no serious cookbook writer would make that suggestion.

Why do you think that is?

Steve Plotnicki wrote:I was one of the people who had lunch with Vital Info at Spoon. While my meal was perfectly fine (the mudfish soup ws the best dish I thought), it did remind me of the following story. Suvir Saran, the chef at the Indian restaurant Devi in New York City, and an accomplished French chef, once told me the following story. I had asked him what he thought about the ethnic category of Indian restaurants. He responded by telling me a story about how he used to do consulting for a number of Indian restaurants, but he quit because they made every dish using the same 5 sauces. Even worse, the sauces were made with a spice mix base that they purchased from a supplier. He went onto say that pretty much every cheap eats Indian restaurant in the city used the same base to make their sauces, and that this type of uniformaty, plus relying on ingredients that were less than stellar, soured him on neighborhood ethnic restaurants.

Since he told me that story, I can't eat at an ethnic restaurant without submitting it to his test. And like with every other ethnic restaurant I eat at, regardless of the specif ic ethnicity, they uniformally fail this test. In fact the attributes that Suvir outlined are what makes them inexpensive in the first place. If someone had to make fresh spice mixtures out of expensive spices every day your curry couldn't cost $12.99. So while dishes at Spoon like the raw shrimp with spicy sauce were good, you will find the very same sauce on other dishes.

Steve Plotnicki wrote:

BR wrote:And what troubles me is not that you offered your opinion that you did not love your meal at Spoon, but that you made an assertion of fact about Spoon Thai - i.e., that they only or largely use ready made and commercially available sauces/pastes, and that they cut corners, and you do not offer any evidence to support this assertion. That is irresponsible.

Actually if you read carefully I merely offered my opinion. I never said I was certain about it in terms of viewing physical evidence.

Steve Plotnicki wrote:Habibi - I believe you about that falafal. But what you are offering is simply not empirical evidence. There are dozens of reasons why you loved that falafal that range from they used the best chickpeas in the world to make it to you were exceptionally hungry and in a really good mood that date. In order to offer meaningfull proof, you would have to go behind you own taste buds and offers objective reasons why it was the best thing you ever ate.

Steve, you started this entire discussion without empirical evidence - you relied solely upon your taste buds, lack of hunger or bad mood for your conclusions about Spoon Thai.

Steve Plotnicki wrote:Habibi (and this responds to Dom as well) - If you want to limit a conversarion about food, art, music etc., to subjective preferences, then be my guest.

Not what I suggested at all. Perhaps that wasn't clear. Let me rephrase/restate.

Habibi wrote:But it was the best thing I've ever eaten, not only because it was expertly spiced and fried, served fresh, but also because it distilled generations of historical memory, blood, spit, occupation and resistance, and indeed, my own experience with my heritage, into a single bite. It was built upon a whole lot more than mere culinary expertise.

Expertly spiced.
Expertly fried.
Served fresh.
Distillation of history (a narrative, if you will).

Are these not empirical facts (the food was prepared in this manner) leading to a subjective conclusion (and for these reasons, I liked it)? If so, how does it differ from the manner in which you reach your conclusions?

That assumes that my taste buds haven't been calibrated to objective evidence. And once you add in the business dynamics of cheap eats places, it creates a scenario where in large part I am likely correct.

Two different typres of subjectivity are going on in this discussion:

1. The underlying ingredients must be great because I loved eating that thing

2. Based on my prior knowledge about how restaurants like this one work, and my own experience at eating at them, here is my conclusion.

Let me tell the following story to demonstrate the phenomenon of taking shortcuts goes on at all sorts of restaurants. I have owned a business in the UK since 1989 so I travel there a lot. One of the things I like to eat there is fish. I mean the entire country is surrounded by cold water so the fish isn't bad. But for some reason that I could never understand, the fish in the U.K. simply isn;t as good as the fish in France and Spain, even though they are on the same body of water as the UK. So for the past 22 years, I just figured that the UK sourced inferior product to what you are served in other countries. But I recently found out the following from a local chef. The top UK resetaurants buy their fish pre-skinned by the wholesaler. And we are taling about restaurants that have Michelin stars. Why do they do that? Because it is cheaper to buy it preskinned then it is to hire someone to skin the fish every day. The persom who told me this story (a chef), asked the wholesaler to ship him fish with the skin on so he can skin it himself. And guess what, voila, the quality now competes with what the fish you find in France and Spain.

Restaurants are businesses and businesses are quick to take shortcuts when it helps them make more money. That's the reality of eating out. All I am trying to do is point those dynamics out when I think they are there. I am not trying to demean an entire category of dining. But I would like people to understand these things so they are in a position to demand a higher level of excellence from the restaurants they eat at.

Habbi - Those are all subjective conclusions not based on empirical evidence. What type of chickpea flour they use, how it is milled, what type of oil they use to fry it in, what the temperature of the oil is, do they fry them once or double fry them at two different temperatures etc.,, those are factual things that have nothing to do with any conclusion that you have reached.

Expertly spiced.
Expertly fried.
Served fresh.
Distillation of history (a narrative, if you will).

Are these not empirical facts?

Maybe, but its also irrefutable that these falafel were about as cookie cutter as you can get - made the same way, every time, with no creative variation. The chickpeas were undoubtedly the cheapest they could find and likely transported to Palestine from far away. The atmosphere of the place serving them was certainly dingy, and some of our health-obsessed contributors would likely fear contracting typhoid from just looking at the place too long. I may have gotten heartburn after I ate them. But really, this was the best falafel ever. Better than any falafel in Tel Aviv or New York, regardless of the provenance of ingredients, creativity in preparation or atmosphere and service. Why? Because of the reasons I listed above. Because I love Palestinian culture, not because I can rattle off ten reasons why its better than Israeli or American culture.

I'm sorry, Steve, I still don't understand. At this point, Habibi has stated more simple facts about the falafel than you have about any of the dishes you've mentioned in this thread (though if I'm mistaken, please point out where). Is it that your assessment process is fundamentally different, or is it that you simply haven't fully shared your assessment process, or that Habibi's palate isn't calibrated to objective evidence like yours?

Habibi - Your assumptions are not factually based. Those are all conclusions based on what you percieved you tasted without you having specific knowledge about what the falafal place does to create its product. In order for that assumption to have merit, you have to go behind the scenes to find out if they did anything different than other falafal places.

I tell this story all of the time. I have been eating tacos from the same cart since 1994. I tried many other carts and the tacos were never as good. I tried to figure out why and I realized the following. The reason the tacos are better than the tacos at the other carts is the women who runs the cart never makes more than 20 minutes worth of food at a time. So if you order a tacos de pollo, it hasn't been sitting around for more than 20 minutes and it tastes fresh and moist. But if I walk two blocks to a different cart, they have pollo that has been sitting around since the morning. Other than that difference, the basic ingredients they use are exactly the same. But one cart takes a higher degree of care than the other cart and that's what makes it better.

So it isn't better because I like it more. Rather, I like it more because there is something that is factual and concrete going on that makes it better.

It's the same with Chicago hot dogs no? Lots of places use Vienna Beef but some places are better than others. Do you think it's magic that makes that difference or is one hot dog stand doing something slightly different than the others, and that's why it's better?

I could be way off here, but it appears to me like there are two completely different perspectives at work here: on the one hand there are the folks (I include myself in this camp) who taste something and think, "This dish is great!" Steve, on the other hand, thinks, "This dish is great...but could it be better? If yes, how? If no, who else makes it better?"

I'm not saying either view is right or wrong; Steve's view may eventually lead him to find the very ideal (in his opinion, of course) of every category/dish. My view, on the other hand, might not lead me to culinary nirvana, but generally keeps me pleased most of the time.

A guaranteed baseline of satisfaction now, or the potential for ultimate satisfaction at some point down the road? That's my take on the thread thus far.

Steve Plotnicki wrote:I tell this story all of the time. I have been eating tacos from the same cart since 1994. I tried many other carts and the tacos were never as good. I tried to figure out why and I realized the following. The reason the tacos are better than the tacos at the other carts is the women who runs the cart never makes more than 20 minutes worth of food at a time. So if you order a tacos de pollo, it hasn't been sitting around for more than 20 minutes and it tastes fresh and moist. But if I walk two blocks to a different cart, they have pollo that has been sitting around since the morning. Other than that difference, the basic ingredients they use are exactly the same. But one cart takes a higher degree of care than the other cart and that's what makes it better.

So it isn't better because I like it more. Rather, I like it more because there is something that is factual and concrete going on that makes it better.

So if somebody concludes that they prefer the chicken that sat around because the steaming improved the flavor in their opinion, would that be any less objective? And is it that the people you disagree with aren't being objective, or have simply reached different conclusions based on the same objective evidence?

Habibi wrote:

Expertly spiced.
Expertly fried.
Served fresh.
Distillation of history (a narrative, if you will).

Are these not empirical facts?

Maybe, but its also irrefutable that these falafel were about as cookie cutter as you can get - made the same way, every time, with no creative variation. The chickpeas were undoubtedly the cheapest they could find and likely transported to Palestine from far away. The atmosphere of the place serving them was certainly dingy, and some of our health-obsessed contributors would likely fear contracting typhoid from just looking at the place too long. I may have gotten heartburn after I ate them. But really, this was the best falafel ever. Better than any falafel in Tel Aviv or New York, regardless of the provenance of ingredients, creativity in preparation or atmosphere and service. Why? Because of the reasons I listed above. Because I love Palestinian culture, not because I can rattle off ten reasons why its better than Israeli or American culture.

At the risk of delving into Orientalism, and the culinary minefield: It's not even a matter of loving the culture: it's that the food is prepared by people with a cultural tradition of knowing how the food is supposed to taste because the people that eat it might have experience making their own, or know family/people that do and expect it to be prepared a particular way. Uncreative or not, there's things like knowing when to pull the felafel from the fryer, having pita that may have been baked in a commercial bakery but is fresher than the run of the mill pita with preservatives from a supermarket, whether or not you soak the chickpeas, what tahini you use, etc. Besides, having eaten felafel in Tel Aviv, I can tell you that even Israelis knows that dried chickpeas make the best felafel and hummus:-). The garbanzo beans that we use here in the States just don't taste right if you've had the real thing, no matter how relatively cheap or expensive they are.

Having said that, I come from as Ashkenazic Jewish a background as they come, and the one of the best breakfasts I've ever had was when I bought a baguette with a zaatar mix in the Old City. I'm sure that this was hardly "artisan flour", likely prepared with commercial yeast, and the furthest thing from a slow-cook process. And the zaatar was probably heavily salted and cut with cheaper herbs, and certainly not prepared that day. However, the combination completely fit the place I was at, and blended together perfectly. Skill is part of it, but ultimately it's about synergy and rightness. And if it were an artisan baguette, the combinations of flavors would have been off, and we'd have wound up with a salty piece of bread. It's all balance.

Dmnkly wrote:

Steve Plotnicki wrote:So if somebody concludes that they prefer the chicken that sat around because the steaming improved the flavor in their opinion, would that be any less objective? And is it that the people you disagree with aren't being objective, or have simply reached different conclusions based on the same objective evidence?

Dom - No that would not be objective. Opinions are not objective, they are subjective. But some opinions are informed, others are not. Someone who preferred chicken that was sitting around for 6 hours over chicken that was sitting around for 20 minutes, providing that every other factor was equal, would have an uninformed opinion because they wouldn't be able to taste the difference.

SDrucker - You are 100% right. Synergy has a lot to do with how we percieve things. But it doesn't change the facts about what was in that bread, And I would bet that if you went back to that same place in Israel on a different day when you were in a different mood, I doubt you would be able to recreate that magic unless there was something concrete to hang your tastebuds on.

Steve Plotnicki wrote:Habibi - Your assumptions are not factually based. Those are all conclusions based on what you percieved you tasted without you having specific knowledge about what the falafal place does to create its product. In order for that assumption to have merit, you have to go behind the scenes to find out if they did anything different than other falafal places.

Well my celebrity chef friend Osama Saddam Mubarak told me those things were true so they must be.

Steve Plotnicki wrote:Dom - No that would not be objective. Opinions are not objective, they are subjective. But some opinions are informed, others are not. Someone who preferred chicken that was sitting around for 6 hours over chicken that was sitting around for 20 minutes, providing that every other factor was equal, would be evidence of an uninformed opinion.

So if two people try two versions of a dish and both are truly, truly objective, it is impossible for them to disagree on which is better?

Of course it would be possible for them to disagree. In fact the entirety of the markets for food, film, art etc. are based on that disagreement. But in order to be part of the disagreement, the item in question has to have all of the objective elements that are necessary to quakify for the discussion.

Let's say you and I were having dinner at Pizzeria Bianco and the person at the next table told us that he prefers Domino's to Bianco. We wouldn't take him seriously because Domino's does not meet the objective criteria that is necesssry to make that comparison. But if the person next to us told us he prefers Great Lake, then we might consider what he has to say. The difference between these two examples are things that are factual (what kind of flour they use etc,) and are not based in opinion (what I like more.)

Steve Plotnicki wrote:Of course it would be impossible for them to disagree. In fact the entirety of the markets for food, film, art etc. are based on that disagreement. But in order to be part of the disagreement, the item in question has to have all of the objective elements that are necessary to quakify for the discussion.

Allow me to clarify. In your taco example, you believe the freshness makes for a better taco. The other person believes that the lengthy steaming as the chicken sits makes for a better taco. You're both working from the same set of facts. Neither of you knows anything the other doesn't. Why is your conclusion objective and his isn't?

Come on Dom. In this instance the lengthy steaming leads to a dried out taco. If it didn't I wouldn't be able to draw the distinction between the two.

Steve Plotnicki wrote:Habibi - I believe you about that falafal. But what you are offering is simply not empirical evidence. There are dozens of reasons why you loved that falafal that range from they used the best chickpeas in the world to make it to you were exceptionally hungry and in a really good mood that date. In order to offer meaningfull proof, you would have to go behind you own taste buds and offers objective reasons why it was the best thing you ever ate.

Yes, clearly, there are dozens of reasons why people have "peak" food experiences. And dozens of reasons why they do not. Context, history, knowledge, expectation, and nostalgia-even biases- play into the experience. That is just my point about your upthread generalizations about so-called "ethnic" restaurants. However doggedly you assert objectivity as your goal, your expectations play into your experience. It's just not possible to truly disentangle them, however great the effort one puts into it. I admit that I "love" Spoon Thai, and I once "loved" Patty's. Perhaps my greatest loves of all have been Buffalo's Crown Candy, which brought me to tears, my first glass of vintage Krug at Jean Banchet's, and my first taste of a black walnut eaten on a cold day at Green City Market. These are whole experiences. My goal should be to capture the whole experience, including its affective elements, and to portray it honestly as such. Clarifying why I enjoyed something can take many tangents, and I regularly indulge in that. Ask anyone who reads my longer posts.

Steve Plotnicki wrote:Let's say you and I were having dinner at Pizzeria Bianco and the person at the next table told us that he prefers Domino's to Bianco. We wouldn't take him seriously because Domino's does not meet the objective criteria that is necesssry to make that comparison. But if the person next to us told us he prefers Great Lake, then we might consider what he has to say. The difference between these two examples are things that are factual (what kind of flour they use etc,) and are not based in opinion (what I like more.)

Counterpoint: Hot Doug's versus McDonald's french fries.
On one hand, a hand-made product with premium ingredients (duck fat) and a pretty good-sized variation in quality from fry to fry and serving to serving.
On the other, an industrial product made to exacting specifications with mostly foolproof results based on years of experimentation and standards in purchasing and production.

I know people who prefer McD's fries, and they are entitled to their opinion although I have a very different one.
By scientific principles, McD's is the higher quality, due to consistency, although HD's would be of higher grade.

Steve Plotnicki wrote:Come on Dom. In this instance the lengthy steaming leads to a dried out taco. If it didn't I wouldn't be able to draw the distinction between the two.

That may be, but it doesn't answer the question!

As you say, let's assume it leads to dried out chicken. You believe the freshness makes for a better taco. The other person believes that the meat drying out somewhat makes for a better taco. You both have the same set of facts. Neither of you knows anything the other doesn't. Why is your assessment objective and his isn't?

(For the record, I doubt I'd disagree with you on which is the better taco. But I'm trying to understand how your assessment is more objective than that other person's.)

You have raised the issue of context. Funny enough, Gary Fine and I were discussing this at dinner last night. There is no way to scientifically prove that moist tacos are better than dried out tacos, other than that close to 100% of the people with informed opinions prefer the moist ones. That statistic turns the issue into what I will argue is an objective reality. So once the argument is tethered to that standard, you can now determine what qualities make the moist taco better.

Does that make sense?

Steve Plotnicki wrote:You have raised the issue of context. Funny enough, Gary Fine and I were discussing this at dinner last night. There is no way to scientifically prove that moist tacos are better than dried out tacos, other than that close to 100% of the people with informed opinions prefer the moist ones. That statistic turns the issue into what I will argue is an objective reality. So once the argument is tethered to that standard, you can now determine what qualities make the moist taco better.

Does that make sense?

Yes, that makes sense. So in this instance, it's not that the other person isn't being objective, it's that his objective standards do not conform to the objective standards almost unanimously agreed to by those who are informed... do I have that correct?

No it's that he or she doesn't have the capacity (which could be for a myriad of reasons) to determine what the proper standards should be. So there is informed disagreement and there is uninformed disagreement. Your example doesn't rely on a factual basis for the conclusion it reached so I am assuming it is an uninformed conclusion.

Let me flip it around. Salami that has been dried properly is usually better than salami that is freshly made. That's why they hang salamis. So how would we describe someone who prefers the salami when it's moist? It;'s possible that he is making a good argument, and it is possible that he has bad taste. You would need to know more about how he reached his conclusion before making that determination.

Steve Plotnicki wrote:No it's that he or she doesn't have the capacity (which could be for a myriad of reasons) to determine what the proper standards should be.

So it's impossible to apply improper standards objectively?

Even if "dry chicken = better taco" is an improper standard, certainly it is possible to objectively determine which are dry and which are not, correct?

I completely understand that you believe his standards are lousy, but how are they not objective? How is his conclusion not based on empirical evidence?

Steve - the subtext here, and I understood it as soon as I finished reading your first post, is that certain cuisines are objectively inferior to others for reasons we can empirically determine. I can't argue with you that a moist taco isn't better than one that is dried out. I can't tell you that better ingredients and greater care in preparation don't make better food. Those things are all true.

What is not true is that French cuisine is better than Mexican or Arab cuisine because it has achieved a greater level of academic discourse with itself or because its techniques better capture and convey the "purity" of its ingredients. Those views are built from decrepit, Euro-centric positions that have for centuries dismissed the "other" as savage and banal, incapable of creative or intellectual thought.

But this is where the love comes in - if you want to defend French food and technique, don't do it from a position of false, self-serving "universalism" (which is really just a cover for Euro-centrism). Do it because you love French cuisine, technique and culinary history, because you are obsessed with it.