I still remember the time more than fifty years ago when I first had lobster thermidor. I didn’t know food could taste so good; it started me on what has been a lifelong quest for outstanding food. But it has been more than 20 years since I have seen lobster thermidor on a menu. If I ask for it anyway, most waiters seem to have never head of it. When I talk to the chefs, they tell me that lobster thermidor is so labor intensive and expensive to prepare that pricing it for the menu results in an item so expensive that noone would order it. I truly feel sorry for anyone who has never tasted it. I was thinking about this the other day and I got to wondering: what other foods or dishes are no longer available because of cost or scarcity? Any suggestions?
I remember watching Rear Window - Grace Kelly in brought Jimmy Stewart ‘take-out’ Lobster Thermidore in a metal contraption.
I think in the next generation’s lifetime, seafood in general will be so scarce that it will be too expensive for the average person to buy. Oysters will be a thing of the past, like the passenger pigeon.
Beef Wellington (or anything Wellington, I once had a Salmon Wellington that was the food of the Gods) is pretty damn scarce. I can’t recall the last time I saw it on the menu anywhere.
This is a real pity.
Dishes fall out of favor because of changes in fashion, not because of expense or difficulty of preparation (which is another form of expense). There are items on the menus of high-end restaurants that are far more expensive to prepare than lobster thermidor would be. The real reason this dish is rarely available is that it’s out of style (which is different from being good).
I don’t remember ever seeing Beef Wellington on a menu. Restaurants don’t seem to offer consomme any more. How about duck a l’orange? Crepe Suzette?
I just did a search and found that Warren’s Lobster House in Kittery, Maine has it on the menu and declares it to be the “house specialty”.
Road trip?
Recipe for it is actually fairly simple, if you already know how to make it, and make certain base sauces.
Actually no shit real Hollandaise Sauce is actually pretty easy to make, but you rarely see anything other than bottled sauce used, but I can whipoff a hollandaise in about 5 minutes. Hell, I used to make it while out camping for my household, in the form of crepes benedict [roll scrambled egg, bits of bacon in crepes, top with hollandaise and more bacon crumbles]
I would think that if a decent jarred thermidor base sauce was produced, and you could convince Rachel Ray or one of the other celebrity chefs to get behind the project you could make a revival of the dish. You might be able to do it as a fancy brunch dish of lobster meat in thermidor sauce over crepes or something. Many people don’t want to look at a half lobster, with one plaintive eye staring back as if the poor seabug were asking ‘what did i ever do to you …?’
I’ve had various kinds of seafood thermidor here in Panama within the last few years, even in restaurants out in the hinterlands. And it wasn’t all that expensive either (and was very very good). Maybe they take some shortcuts, but I don’t think expense is the reason thermidor dishes aren’t on the menu in the US.
I think it is seen as one of those stodgy 1950s recipes and out of fashion.
There is such a cult of new in the current batch of celebrity chefs.
Wonder if you could get Tony Bourdain to do a few shows on classic recipes that still kick ass.
After all, how much new cuisine and the laboratory food craze can you put up with. I for one am tired of hearing about molecular cuisine and processes that take a lab to do and want stuff I can possibly cook in my own home.
Peking Duck. To make it authentically you have to use specially raised ducks and the cooking process takes about a day and a half.
There are restaurants that will make it but they will want a couple days’ advance notice.
There’s a restaurant near me that serves traditional Peking Duck (including the presentation) but there’s no need for advance notice. It’s out of this world, in a completely different league than the duck from your ordinary Chinese place.
My vote is for Steak Diane. Fantastic plus there’s fire involved.
I thought the 21 Club in New York still made it but I just looked at the menu and it doesn’t seem to be there anymore. I guess it joins Lobster Thermidor and Beef Wellington in the extinct food category.
Heck, try to find a Reuben sandwich in any place other than a few sandwich specialty shops. The Reuben has fallen out of fashion. When I was a teen, my grandmother and I used to love to go to one of the department store cafeterias (something else that’s fallen out of fashion) and get Reubens.
Dishes, preparation methods, and even ingredients go in and out of style. There was a time when just about every restaurant offered a chicken Caesar salad, and now they’re all offering some kind of blackened fish. For a while, cilantro was in just about every dish, and now it’s anise and black pepper. And it sucks if you think that cilantro tastes like soap, or if you can’t eat pepper.
Turtle soup was one of the most popular dishes among the nabobs of the Gilded Age. Even in 1971, it was still one of the gourmet products canned and sold by the Bon Vivant company of botulism fame.
Try to find it today!
It’s my mums 67th birthday next week, I asked her what she wanted, her response? A three course dinner.
Excellent! No Problem at all…what do you want?
Well she is dithering and mulling and the big birthday dinner is fast approaching and still no decision. In an effort to try and pin her down to SOMETHING I asked her what was the best dinner she ever had. Her answer was "hmmm I’m not sure’. GRRRRRRRR I will just have to feed her what I THINK she will like (and hope her guests will too!).
But just for record the best meal I EVER ate was Lobster Thermidor at the Sydney Hilton in 1985 (It was followed by chocolate dipped balls of Creme deMonthe ice cream served admidst a flurry of dry ice. Ahhhhh the 80’s!).
Lobster Thermidor may have vanished from menus but it lives on in my memory!
This was made on Gordon Ramsay’s Hell’s Kitchen show last week, but the menu was for a special dinner commemorating a fiftieth wedding anniversary, and featuring dishes served at the couple’s original wedding reception. (At least one of the contestants had no idea how to make it.) So it’s clearly an older, out-of-fashion dish.
There are a bunch of things, like oysters or lobster, that were peasant food once but are now pricy, expensive luxuries. So they’re still available, but the perception of them has changed.
The Reuben is alive and well in my part of the country. It’s very much a staple at most places that are open for lunch.
They’re not scarce in my area of Tennessee. They have reubens in the vending machine where I work and they’re decent enough for what they are. I’ve also seen them on menus often enough.
Alive and well in the MidWest… you can even get one at Arby’s.
Two;
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Chinese dish called “Crispy Shrimp With Walnuts”. The way it’s supposed to be made is shrimp dipped in egg-white/cornstarch and flash-fried (which gives it a crispy coating), served with steamed broccoli, walnuts that have been rolled in sugar and fried until the sugar is almost burnt and served with a spicy brownish sauce. Nowdays, if you can find it, it’s heavily battered shrimp served with a hot mayo, soy and orange-juice (barf!) sauce with raw walnuts. It’s disgusting.
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A real monte cristo sandwich–it’s not supposed to be deep-fried. It’s essentially french toast with the meat and stuff in between and grilled. Nowdays, it’s battered and deep-fat-fried. Bleh
Honest-to-goodness, bone-in Chicken Kiev. The waiter would protect your good clothing with a white napkin and skillfully make the first cut for you. Anything I order or buy in the store today is some kind of machine-made lump with oily “butter” inside.
Once in a blue moon I make my own and I can certainly understand why restaurants have taken an easier route.
The other day I was at a parade in a small town and I sat on the curb and looked at the tops of the storefronts across the street. Every one of them was different and showcased the expertise of the bricklayer who put his trademark skills there to last for over a century.
He did that all with his hands, skill and patience. And what was left behind still stood with pride. No wonder our best restaurant experiences live in our memories. They are tributes to a time when excellence trumped expedience.