I disagree about the simplicity thing - the best meals I’ve ever had have been molecular gastronomy ones, and those are decidedly not simple.
See, I find molecular gastronomy to be the biggest waste of time, space and money since nouvelle cuisine.
De gustibus non est disputandum. Literally. 
You eat food made out of molecules?! :eek:
Gawd, you probably drink drinks that contains chemicals too :eek:
I haven’t had the heart to shell out money for molecular gastronomy, but the few people that I know who have had nothing but good things to report. My brother saves up his money every year or two (he’s just got a normal mid-five-figure salary) to treat himself and his wife to Alinea. They both grew up with very working class food and neither have what I would term snooty tastes. Hell, today we were talking about the Whopperito and how excited we were to try the new Cheetos chicken fries from Burger King when they come out. But I digress. This is his one big treat, where dinner for two with wine is about $700, and he finds it worthwhile enough to return. He’s been there three or four times now, as well as to Achatz’s other (non-molecular) restaurants. I think molecular gastronomy is one of those things that is just easy to make fun of but a really interesting experience for food lovers. I have literally never talked to anyone who went to Alinea or Moto or whatnot and came out disappointed with the food or didn’t know what the hype was all about. Then again, a certain type of person will be attracted to those restaurants. I really would love to go, and I know I would love it, but I just feel guilty parting with a couple hundred dollars without wine for a tasting menu. I’m just a cheap bastard that way.
My taste buds max out at about Wolfgang Puck/Emeril Legasse level. I look at the menus at Joël Rubuchon’s place in Vegas and just wince. I’m sure I could find something to eat there, but it won’t be easy. Ditto Guy Savoy’s place. OTOH, Wolfie and Emeril offer great food that I don’t have to wince while ordering. There are limits to the “weird shit” I’m willing to try. Oh, well. Good for them that likes it. I’ll gladly drop $400.00 at Delmonico because I know we’ll get a meal and drinks that will live in our memories forever.
Indian restaurant food is usually terrible, but the stuff you get in people’s homes can be quite good (and is usually very different from the restaurant fare. For that matter, that’s probably true of most cuisines).
I’m not fond of Japanese food, either. Too much use of vinegar for my taste, and some combining of sweet and savory that just doesn’t work for me.
So, not a waste at all, then? I liked nouvelle, too.
Ethiopian food. Apparently I’m not the only one.
Terrible jokes aside, the only cuisine I have had where I can safely say, “Not gonna go for that again” is Afghan. It’s gently reminiscent of Indian food, but missing a certain something. Also, what the hell, who drinks savory cucumber yogurt?
I’ve got a better one…
Young Prince Alfonso got lost in the mountains while hunting. Eventually, he reached the hut of a poor man who lived there, who let him in, fed him from his own poor soup and pointed him in the direction of the nearest town. Later he’d ask the cooks at court for that soup, but it was never good enough, so eventually he sent for the poor man.
When the man heard what he’d been called to do, he couldn’t stop himself from laughing, “ah, my lord, but while I brought the soup to the table, you brought the sauce! Ain’t no better sauce than hunger, and when you reached my house you were plenty hungry.”
Alfonso apologized both to the man and to his cooks, and went on to be known as the Wise One.
Rather than start a new thread, I’ll ask here: What dish in a typical American Chinese restaurant most closely resembles ‘authentic’ Chinese cuisine?
There are several Chinese cuisines. American Chinese tends to be of Hong Kong/Cantonese derivation. Maybe the roast pork or fried rice?
Nm
Saying “Chinese food” is like saying “European food”. It covers a huge range of culinary traditions.
From Sichuan cuisine, kung pao chicken tends to be pretty well translated. Ma po tofu is usually reasonably authentic as well. A lot of places get sweet and sour eggplant and spicy green beans right as well. Dan dan noodles are also good, if they are on the menu. If you find a tofu-veggie soup that’s just tofu and greens, that’s authentic as well, but it’s more like a palate cleanser at the end of a meal than what we think of as a soup course.
I find a lot of the best Sichuan restaurants restaurants here have a mix of authentic dishes and Americanized dishes on the menu. If you know what to order, you can get a real-thing meal, but if you don’t know what you are looking at, it looks like an ordinary Chinese restaurant.
Blasphemy!!!
Most of the ones I’ve seen, especially around here, say they ‘specialize’ in more than one cuisine (usually Hunan, Sichuan, and Cantonese) so it would be really hard for me to narrow it down also. I just figured pretty much all typical American Chinese places did that.
You win!
One more story from The Passionate Epicure, though:
The title character’s cook, a kindly, plump, middle-aged woman, dies suddenly, and he must find a replacement. Now in those days (fin-de-siecle 19th century rural France) part of the employment deal was that a lonely gentleman’s cook also share the pleasures of her bedroom.
One of the applicants is a perky pneumatic young blonde who makes his stainless-steel whisk stand to attention, if you know what I mean. He gives her a fresh chicken and directs her to his kitchen, hoping and praying that she has some culinary talent.
Needless to say, she provides him with an inedible bird. With an unhappy sigh, he dismisses her, and employs another kindly plump middle-aged woman.
It was a bit of an attack on the sexual appetite of the average Frenchman but, hey, some things are just MORE important.
Same and I don’t even care for the brats. Or the wursts. And potato salad is supposed to be cold!
heh if you go to a reunion or gathering in my fam …that debate will go for weeks…
They got to the point that theres a separate table for various potato salads going by ingredients cooking style and cook …
Boiled beef? Not likely.