If you want old-timey foods, go to just about any of Wisconsin’s “supper clubs.” Their menus haven’t changed since the 1960’s, and people like it that way.
The supper club thing seems exclusive to Wisconsin and maybe a few bordering states, and I found it really weird. Everyone was always telling me about the great one in their hometown, but when you go they are all the same. Old people drinking brandy old-fashioneds at the bar and a menu featuring fried fish and mediocre steaks. It’s a cultural thing, I guess.
But is it the chicken or the egg? Are these items not on the menu because people do not order them or do people not order them because they are not on the menu?
Both. Generally, restaurants change their menus to reflect sales trends and to increase profits. When sales of an item begin to drop off, a restaurant may remove the item from the menu, leaving the customers that did order it unable to do so.
Actually lobster thermador is around dressed up in a different name(Lobster Savannah) with pimentos, mushrooms, and green pepper. One of the very best can be had at here, a fine 2lb monster.Locke-Ober’s in Boston
There are a lot of recipes that have been around for decades without losing popularity. While evolving tastes can’t be excluded, I think it’s less a question of what people want to order and more how labor intensive all of the above are. I’m sure it’s a pain in the ass for a restaurant to do table site flambeing etc.
I mean really, do you actually base what you should eat on the year it was invented?
There are many popular dishes today that are harder to prepare than lobster thermidor, beef Wellington and crepes Suzette. Dishes go in and out of style not because of when they were invented or difficulty of preparation but because of fads, generational changes, lifestyle changes and a whole bunch of other things. For example, the sudden popularity of nouvelle cuisine in the seventies meant that high-end restaurants abandoned flour-based sauces and embraced reductions. A current trend is for high-end restaurants to cure their own meats (i.e. make their own hams, salamis, etc. from scratch), which takes expertise, special equipment and time - the places that do this are not trying to simplify their preparations.
Generally, the dishes that stay popular for decades are not served at fancy restaurants. You wouldn’t find hamburgers or fried chicken on the menu at say, The French Laundry, unless the chef were trying to make some sort of retro statement. The dishes that go out of style are usually the ones served at high-end restaurants. A trendy place would no more serve last year’s fad than would a fashion icon wear last year’s styles.
I wasn’t suggesting the food industry is immune to fads, I was disputing amblydoper’s contention that dishes (like Beef Wellington) are rare because they were invented some time ago. In the same post, he mentions Hollandaise sauce which has been around since the 17th or 18th century. According to amblydoper’s reasoning, Hollaindaise sauce should have disappeared off menus long ago but of couse, it’s pretty ubiquitous.
Yeah, there’s a restaurant called Lucille’s on Camp Bowie in FW. I’ve gone a couple of times, but I generally found their food to be too trendy for my taste and also waaaaay too greasy. I did order the Reuben on one occasion…and it seemed like it had been deep fried. I took a couple of bites but I just couldn’t eat any more. Maybe it was just a case of an inexperienced cook, so I’ll give it another try, since someone else has had a good experience.
First and last time I’ve seen beef wellington was on a cruise 17 years ago. It was fantastic. I was hoping they would have it on the recent cruise I went on, but sadly not.
Sort of related to the subject, I used to like Monte Cristos. But now I find too many places don’t get the concept. Just because the sandwich is dipped in egg batter and fried, doesn’t make it a serving of french toast. I do not want a ham, turkey, and swiss cheese sandwich served with powdered sugar and artificial maple syrup.
And as long as I’m complaining like an old fogey, I want all diners to stop serving open faced sandwiches. A sandwich is supposed to have a slice of bread on the bottom and the top (I’m pretty sure that’s in the Constitution). Otherwise it’s just a meal on a slice of bread that you can’t pick up and eat. Fortunately, that trend either seems to be passing or maybe it was just a local thing in downstate NY.
Fire Mountain is owned by Old Country Buffet. I can’t get there often because the only one “close” is actually over an hour away near my grandparents, and they like OCB better. But anyway, the commercials and coupons for the chains mention both of them.
I’ve seen steak Diane on a menu within the past month, but can’t remember where.
A few years ago I had my last Parker House roll – at, well, the Parker House hotel in Boston. Don’t see them many other places . . . .
To go back to haute French stuff you don’t see much of, when was the last time you saw or ordered:
Pot au feu (not necessarily haute, I know);
Veal kidneys (might have a chance at coming back with the recent interest in organ meats, but I doubt they’d be done with the old Frenchy sauce);
Dover sole; or
Pike quenelles (yeah, I really don’t need that one to come back).
Finished with an ile flotant.
Most of that stuff, I didn’t see even last time I was in France (didn’t look very hard admittedly).
Yes, I miss these classic dishes. I did have Steak Diane recently…at the Cheesecake Factory, of all places, and it was quite good!
I would also mention Duck a’l’ orange-that was a nice dish, if a bit sweet.
Beef Wellington: I haven’t seen it in years.
Sorry, I wasn’t trying to say that those dishes were “old,” just that they are old-style. Hollandiase is one of the 5 mother sauces that collectively are one of the foundations that the culinary arts are built on. Beef wellington is merely a preperation of beef en croute (that goes nicely with hollandiase, actually), not a fundamental cooking method. You can do much more with hollandiase as a starting point then you can with beef wellington.
And speaking of mother sauces, 4 of them remain in common use today, though they are hardly the basis of all sauces, as they were in the past. No one makes Espagnole these days, yet hollandiase, veloute, bechemel and tomato sauces are still used as they have been for decades. We have added purees and reductions to the mix, but the basic concepts apply to them as well: You start with a basic recipe or procedure, and you build on it to suit your needs.
Complexity and time have nothing to do with a culinary technique or recipe falling out of fashion. Modern veal glace requires hours of careful reduction (90% reduction), while traditional demi glace is little more then a reduced, roux thickened stock (about 50% reduction). I could make Diane sauce out of either one, but it would still be the same old, tired “Steak Diane.”
I regularly used to order this just to startle the other diners, usually a fairly spectacular conflagration. Followed by flambéed pears in chocolate sauce - more of the same.
With regard to Lobster Thermidor, a former girlfriend asked what the similarity was between that and oral sex?
Great thread!! I was totally unaware of Steak Diane… but after this thread and a quick hit on Youtube Gordon R just showed me something interesting to try.
What we really need is a comeback of Graham Kerr… the “Galloping Gourmet”. And not the post heart attack healthy one… the early one of my childhood who had my dad dripping everything in butter and cream!!