My Waitress Is Funnier Than His Waitress

President Bush made a breakfast visit to Betsy's Pancake House in New Orleans not long ago, and considerable attention was paid to a quip from a waitress, who said, "Mr. President, are you going to turn your back on me?"

By all reports, this howler brought the house down. Supposedly, the room "broke into laughter." The president was charmed. No offense, but by my standards—and those of Betsy's—that wasn't much of a zinger.

Not to be competitive, but when I ate at Betsy's a few months ago, my waitress, Sharon, provided a much better show. Okay, she wasn't under as much pressure. Bush, after all, is president and I'm just a guy looking for a good deal on breakfast, which you can get at Betsy's. There aren't many places where you can find hot chocolate topped with whipped cream for a buck.

Betsy's is not one of those swank New Orleans breakfast emporiums trying to convince tourists that the best way to cure a hangover is with eggs, crabmeat, and cream sauce (burp). It has the kind of sturdy carpeting you see in auto repair shops, chairs that look like office furniture, and glass-topped tables. Many of the employees are relatives of the owner, Elizabeth McDaniel. I went there a couple times, and one day there were seven members of her family working the breakfast shift.

I asked my waitress, Sharon, "What do you have that will impress me?"

She replied, "My electric bill."

Sometimes I do my best work as a straight man.

I countered, "Then why don't you move out of the city, re-locate someplace cheaper?"

"What are you, my ex-husband?" she joked. "If so, you owe me child support."

Sharon and I spent quite a while discussing the multitude of breakfast options. I liked the idea that I could substitute biscuits for toast for only 25 cents extra, but she said they were out of biscuits. (Based on my visits, I would advise future customers not to get their hopes up, because Betsy's is often out of biscuits.)

Sharon finally ordered me to have the waffles with strawberries, whipped cream and butter. From my experience, that's about an average sugar and fat content for breakfast anywhere in the southern half of the United States. The waffles were so good I told Sharon that Betsy's Pancake House should be re-named Betsy's Waffle House, and I was so proud of the insight I wanted to share it with management. I asked Sharon if Betsy was in the kitchen.

"Heck, no," she said, pointing to one of the waitresses. "That little lady over there with the curly hair is Betsy, but she don't want nobody to know. Then everybody would run to her with complaints."

Related: Read Alan Richman's article on New Orleans cuisine, "Yes, We're Open" (GQ, November 2006).

Annals of Confused Politicians

An attempt by concerned councilmen to change the name of the annual Turkey Testicle Festival in Fort Myers Beach, Florida, failed last week. It was voted down.

Two outraged members of the council argued that the name was inappropriate for a family island. They didn't want children hearing such a word.

The kids have to learn sometime. Were it not for testicles, there wouldn't be any families on the island in the first place.

Would You Like a Little Class with That?

This past Saturday, The New York Times ran a front-page story about the routine appearance of $40 entrées on American menus. We're not talking about restaurants in New York, traditionally the industry leader in excesses, but also in saner metropolitan areas. It mentioned that such prices "can be found in restaurants that are merely upscale, where diners wear jeans and tote children." Predictable quotes from outraged customers followed.

The story was thorough, although it failed to note another disturbing phenomenon: the abundance of $50-and-over entrées in Las Vegas. That, of course, is not so much a trend as it is insanity, a kind of mass hysteria that has infiltrated the dining culture there.

The Times story brought to mind a conversation I had recently with Patrick O'Connell, the chef of The Inn at Little Washington, just outside Washington, D.C. I was seated next to him at a party celebrating the 50th anniversary of Bon Appétit magazine and, as is my style, I was complaining. I mentioned the ham-fisted wine service I'd received at the restaurant Per Se in New York, where I had asked about an under-$70 Australian red and the sommelier had told me to have a $205 Australian Pinot Noir instead.

O'Connell said I was the problem, not the restaurant. He said that when I visit a luxury establishment, I should not be thinking about prices. I should place myself in the skilled hands of the staff. In essence, if the Pinot Noir was as excellent as the sommelier thought, my meal would be so greatly enhanced that the difference in price should not be a concern.

He had a point, one that also goes to the heart of rising menu prices. The essential problem is not the cost of entrées, because few of us would mind paying $40 if our entrée was accompanied by commensurate lavishness. In today's eating establishments, luxury barely exists. Ordering a $40 plate of food makes no sense if you're surrounded by slobs in T-shirts, sitting in a cramped space and drinking wine out $8 goblets. That's a waste of money.

In fact, high prices are no longer indicative of anything except the rising cost of construction, rent, and, perhaps, prime beef. Restaurants have become predictably alike. They all cost $7 million to build, dish out $40 slabs of protein, and hustle you out the door. Little about restaurants is classy—or classic—anymore.

The $40 entrée would be more than acceptable if it came with comfortable chairs, spacious tables, roomy surroundings, tolerable noise levels, thoughtful service, and maybe an amuse-bouche or two. Escalating restaurant prices aren't the problem. Our declining restaurant culture is.

Just Another Guy

Last week, at a ceremony to celebrate the opening of the International Culinary Center (a new umbrella group that incorporates New York's venerable French Culinary Institute), a rather ordinary-looking fellow showed up. It was Ferran Adrià. Yes, Elvis was in the building.

If you don't know the name Adrià, it means you're stuck with prehistoric dining habits, chomping coq au vin or beef bourguignon. (Hmmm. Sounds good. Anybody know where I still find those dishes in New York?)

That sort of classicism is finished. Done. It had a good run—a couple hundred years or so. Now Spain is the reigning food capital of the world, and Adrià is the mythical figure behind its emergence.

So when he showed up to give a little speech and presentation, the auditorium at the newly dedicated center was packed. The man who introduced him was José Andrés, a marvelous Washington, D.C., chef who once worked for Adrià. In speaking of Spanish cuisine, he said that a few years ago it was "buried in a sea of piquillo peppers." Now it is the most innovative and admired in the world.

How monumental was the appearance by Adrià? All of us non-Spanish speakers were provided with simultaneous translation—it felt like the United Nations field trip I took when I was a kid.

Adrià is the architect of 21st-century cuisine. He started the foam fad. He liquefies everything. His restaurant, El Bulli, is a place of pilgrimage. Also, his food scares the timid.

His talk seemed designed to prove that he's just another cook. It was comfort chat. He certainly has the look of a guy who can set you at ease. He's a bit chubby, with receding, curly hair. He could be the friendly proprietor of your neighborhood candy store, a fellow who would surely allow you a few lottery tickets on credit.

His primary point was that he was a student of history, not an extremist. He said that almost every dish he prepared had precedents. At one point he called himself "a child of nouvelle cuisine," the French food trend of the seventies and eighties that emphasized lighter sauces, colorful presentations, and appeals to all the senses. He said he loved nothing more than bringing out the pure flavors of perfect ingredients, "clams that taste like clams." He added, "They say El Bulli is high technology. It is not. If it was, why would we have 40 chefs for 40 people (customers)? If it was high technology, we would only use machines."

He said he was present when Jacques Torres, a famous pastry chef and one of the deans of the French Culinary Institute, first made asparagus ice cream, about 20 years ago. "The first time I bring a blender to make asparagus juice," he said, "they look at me like I am from another planet. This is in 1990." He countered criticism that his food is too high-tech by bringing out the cheap plastic syringes he uses to create Parmesan spaghetti. "This is not high technology. C'mon."

It was a very effective presentation in which he succeeded in demystifying himself. Now, if anybody asks me if I know anything about Ferran Adrià, I'll just say he's an everyday guy who is probably home flipping burgers on the grill.

Know Your Cuts of Kobe

Sautéed foie gras from abused ducks has bored me for quite a while. Now I'm wearying of Kobe beef from indulged cows.

Despite the difference in upbringing, the products have much in common. They're too fatty, too extravagant, and too elitist. Even worse, they're monotonous. I'm at the point where the presence of seared foie gras as an appetizer has me doing the unthinkable: turning to the salad selections. I'm not quite at such a desperate point with Kobe (or Wagyu, which is pretty much the same thing).

The other day, at a luncheon, I was served a slice of grilled Australian Wagyu sirloin prepared by an Australian chef, Paul Wilson of the Botanical, a restaurant in Melbourne. The meat couldn't have been more delicious, so I tolerated it. On the side of the plate was a bit of brisket. I come from a brisket family, and I don't know when I've had better.

What we want out of any slab of grilled sirloin, whatever the origin of the meat, is gratifying chewiness giving way to melting tenderness. The Wagyu didn't provide that. As someone at my table said—someone at every table where Wagyu is served is always saying this—"it's like butter." It's steak for people who have lost too many of their teeth.

With brisket we want nothing more than melting tenderness. (Okay, we also want the meat to have soaked up the essence of the liquid in which it's braised, and Wilson's brisket had done so admirably.) When it comes to sumptuousness, Kobe can't be beat. Wilson's brisket was a puddle of richness.

He told me he used the point end of the brisket, which is not uncommon. He said like most Kobe, it was over the top with marbling. He also recommended that meat eaters seek out the tri-tip cut of Kobe. He claimed it cooked up just as well as prime sirloin from a conventional cow, and because it was from a part of the animal not in great demand, it was remarkably inexpensive. (In non-Kobe cows, the tri-tip is often described as extremely flavorful but too lean.)

Most of us have had Kobe beef in burgers by now. The meat is wonderfully soft and rich (although not as juicy as some). I've also had skirt steak made from Kobe that I didn't particularly admire, simply because it was too tender—skirt steak has an admirable chewiness that wasn't present in the Kobe version.

Not every secondary cut of Kobe will be magnificent. It isn't the most versatile form of protein. And I'm afraid that whatever cut you select, the dinner-table conversation will not improve. You'll still hear somebody say, "it's like butter," and that's a very high price to pay.

What It Means to Be an American

In Palm Harbor, Florida, a retired air force lieutenant colonel dining at an Italian restaurant called Angellino's refused to pay for his $15.99 Shrimp & Scallops Verdura, claiming insufficient shrimp and scallops. He sent it back after eating all five of the shrimp and all five of the bay scallops. He was arrested and charged with defrauding the restaurant. He went to trial. The jury found him not guilty.

The colonel explained that he lives by a code of honor learned while flying fighter planes. He said he would have been pleased whether he had he won or lost, because he stood up for his beliefs. I have no doubt of his integrity or that he thought he was right. I bet he was a hell of a pilot.

There's only one word for a man like him: Guilty. He should not have eaten the scallops and the shrimp before sending the dish back.

Just as an aside, it wasn't like he was ripped off by Angellino's. He was there with his girlfriend, who ate an entrée of mussels. They had coffee and dessert. The bill came to $46. Here in New York City, when two people go out for an Italian dinner, we usually refer to $46 as the tip.

When he sent the dish back after eating all the scallops and shrimp plus a little of the pasta and a few bites of vegetables, he demanded it be taken off his bill. The restaurant rightfully refused. He and the manager argued. He finally said he would pay for the seafood but not the pasta or vegetables. The restaurant said this would not do. His offer impressed the jury. Not me.

Nobody gets to go to a restaurant, order a dish, and pay for only that portion of it that he likes. If we could do that, I'd never again spend a nickel on mixed vegetables. What was the colonel thinking? He had two options: (1) Eat it. (2) Send it back untouched—or after one exploratory bite. He argued that the dish hadn't been listed with the pasta dishes on the menu, and what was put before him was mostly pasta. Fine. Send it back. Don't eat the shrimp and the scallops. Not even one.

It's clear that he felt as though he was behaving in a manner that would have been endorsed by our founding fathers (I suspect they didn't much care for pasta, either). The colonel even brought in a fancy New York lawyer to argue his case. What failed here was one of those great American principles the pilot fought for—trial by jury.

We always hear how our jury system has performed inappropriately because of an imbalance of whites or blacks, rich or poor, males or females. I'm guessing this particular jury had a different shortcoming. I'll bet everybody on the jury was a restaurant customer and not one was a restaurant owner.

Michelin Never Gives Up

The Michelin Guide, like some French wine, does not travel well. It is the definitive guide to French restaurants that insists on expanding throughout the world, where it brings inappropriate standards to bear on all manner of cuisine that has little or no resemblance to what it knows well: French food.

It's here in America, apparently to stay. (I don't know why we can't keep it out, maybe by building one of those fences designed to turn back illegal immigrants.) Last year it reviewed the restaurants of New York—and the updated version of that debacle is due out this month. The guide unsurprisingly determined that four New York restaurants where the cooking was French deserved its highest rating of three stars. Last week it reviewed the restaurants of San Francisco (and environs) for the first time. Only one restaurant got three stars, The French Laundry. I'll bet you can guess the style of cooking there.

The only review of special interest in the San Francisco guide was that of Chez Panisse, the iconic Berkeley restaurant of Alice Waters, one of the legendary names in American cuisine. Chez Panisse got one star. At first glance that seems unfair, like a travel magazine giving one star instead of three to the Statue of Liberty.

Chez Panisse is a monument to sustainable agriculture, intelligent dining, and an absence of excesses. Despite the word "chez," it is not about fussiness and it is not French. It is ideological eating.

The Michelin Guide got it right. Chez Panisse is a one-star restaurant, in the best sense of the word.

That in no way diminishes what Chez Panisse represents—faith in freshness and the sensible pursuit of the appetite. It does not value sensuality, gratuitous cream sauces, 12-course prix fixe menus or sterling silver platters bearing boxcars of petit fours. Unsound dining experiences are what most critics, myself included, cherish, and that generally is what is meant by a three-star experience.

If all of us ate the way Alice Waters wished us to eat, we (and our world) would be healthier. If that adds up to one star and not to three, then that's a reflection on our values, not on her restaurant.

The Opiate Eaters

A friend recently sent me a poppy seed strudel, an old-world sweet. I was thrilled. Who doesn't appreciate getting cake in the mail?

I wasn't so sure it really was a strudel. My friend, Eric Levin, called it a strudel. The package called it a strudel. I wasn't so sure, and since I think of myself as an old-world guy, my opinion counts. To me, strudels are defined by multiple sheets of thin dough. This strudel was more like a sweet, eggy, brioche-like cake. The poppy seeds were never in question. There seemed to be millions of them.

It wasn't until I'd started eating and noticed the mess I was making that I asked myself why anybody values poppy seeds. They're hard black specks that look like coffee grounds and stick in your teeth, roll around your kitchen counter, drop into cracks. I don't know any other food item where such a large percentage of an ingredient falls off and remains uneaten.

In America, poppy seeds are commonly found on bagels and muffins, less so in pastries or desserts, although I recently discovered poppy seeds in my sponge cake at the fancy Montage Hotel in Laguna Beach, California. (Orange County just doesn't feel like poppy seed territory.) There they were sparingly sprinkled in the cake, more for effect than flavor.

I called my friend to thank him for the strudel and to ask him if he was as irrationally attached to poppy seeds as I am. He said he was. He is a restaurant reviewer for the New Jersey Monthly, so I trust his judgment. He said he liked the crunch and the absence of sweetness.

To me, they have no taste whatsoever, an absence of everything, although I've heard it said that poppy seeds possess "nuttiness." That's one of those all-purpose culinary words. When nobody can describe a flavor, it's frequently nutty.

To me, poppy seeds aren't nutty. They're nothing. But I love them. Levin said it had to do with the part of the world our families were from—Eastern Europe, not far from Turkey, one of the locales where the Papaver somniferum grow. They're also found in Romania, where one of my grandfathers was born. The Papaver somniferum is the plant that provides us not just with poppy seeds but also with heroin. Eating poppy seeds has been known to cause false positives on drug tests.

Levin said, "We eat the seeds in fattening cakes, other people make dangerous drugs from them. We blow out our bodies with cholesterol. They blow out their brains with heroin."

It's always nice to have a deeper understanding of oneself. I cut myself another slice of strudel. This time I buttered it.

McDanger

McDonald's is thinking of serving breakfast 24 hours a day.

The CEO of McDonald's recently said that friends of his were clamoring for limitless opportunities to devour the "high-quality product that we deliver at breakfast."

I'm not one to bash McDonald's. I say live and let live, assuming that's possible for anyone who eats fast food regularly. I've always believed that if McDonald's sandwiches were prepared carefully, which they are not, they would taste pretty good. Unfortunately, the majority of the company cooks look like juvenile delinquents given their last chance at gainful employment before being shipped off to penal colonies. Nevertheless, I have eaten McDonald's meals that I've enjoyed, a confession I'm not too proud to make.

I've also eaten breakfast at McDonald's. It's prison food.

Take McDonald's Big Breakfast™. The corporation is so proud of this assemblage that they trademarked it, which means that any schlub who opens a roadside diner and tries to sell something he calls a big breakfast will soon be visited by corporate lawyers demanding that he cease and desist. Yes, the word "big," followed by "breakfast," belongs to McDonald's and McDonald's alone, even though it's as generic a term as I can envision. We all thought big oil interests were running this nation. Now we know the big breakfast interests have political clout, too.

McDonald's Big Breakfast™ consists of scrambled eggs, a biscuit, a sausage patty, and hash browns. Every single item has one dominant characteristic: rubberiness. You could bounce them off the floor. I was tempted to do that, not for testing purposes but out of sheer frustration. That's how bad most of them taste.

I have to confess that I didn't mind the biscuit, but that's because I come from the North and have no idea how a biscuit is supposed to taste. I have heard the word "flakiness" used with biscuits, and this biscuit sure didn't have that. Still, it's better than sliced, packaged white bread, and we Northerners are grateful for any upgrade.

The sausage is bland, sweet, and greasy. The eggs, a deadly dry assemblage midway between an omelet and scrambled eggs, do boast a slight egginess. The potato cake appears to be made from army-issue reconstituted potato flakes, although when I called McDonald's customer service, I was assured that the contents were wonderfully fresh.

Breakfast in America is declining rapidly, even though the rest of our restaurant meals seem to be improving. Little could depress me more than the thought of all Americans sitting around eating Big Breakfasts™ 24 hours a day. Then the nice McDonald's customer satisfaction representative made me feel worse. She asked if I'd tried McDonald's Deluxe Breakfast.

"What's that?" I gasped.

"Hotcakes," she added.

Indeed, it's true. Take the Big Breakfast™, add hotcakes and hotcake syrup, and the Big Breakfast™ is promoted to Deluxe Breakfast status. I rushed out to try McDonald's hotcakes. They are beyond comprehension. Think of the floury taste of pancake batter. Now think of that batter transmuted into solid form. McDonald's pancakes do not taste as though they were cooked.

McDonald's has yet to trademark the name Deluxe Breakfast. I would like to think they were turned down. Perhaps our federal government has finally taken a righteous stand against big corporate interests, even if it's only where breakfasts are concerned.

The Man

I took a seat at a long table. Before me were two rows of glasses, one containing red wines from Argentina and one containing red wines from Bordeaux. I'd arrived late to this sit-down tasting, and I didn't know if I was supposed to compare the wines or what I was supposed to do with them. Was this tasting intended to demonstrate a clash of cultures? Maybe it was the opposite, a gentle reminder that all wines are brethren, and European and South American wines can live as one? I didn't care, to tell the truth. Sit-down wine tastings make absolutely no sense to me.

I'd come because the speaker was Michel Rolland, international wine consultant. You might not have heard of him, but I know you've heard of Robert Parker, the legendary wine critic who is often blamed for endorsing wines made in a so-called international style—big, fruity, lots of extract. (He's also criticized for not rallying behind wines that demonstrate the characteristics of the region where they are produced.) Well, Rolland is the man who makes the wines that Parker likes.

Rolland is to wine what Marlon Brando was to film—once he came along, nothing was the same. This was my first opportunity to see him in action, perhaps ask a few questions intended to dazzle him with my oenophilic expertise. I could imagine him looking up ay me, startled, thinking, "I could use a bright fellow like that in my line of work." We wine writers, pretty much overlooked, are forever hoping for a sign that the greatness of our palates has been recognized.

We were at The Union League Club in New York, an organization founded in the 19th century. It likes to take some or all credit for preserving the Union, founding the Red Cross and erecting the Statue of Liberty. To my knowledge, it has made no progress whatsoever in eliminating overly oaked wines. As I sat listening to Rolland speak, I had a disheartening thought: He sounded like every other winemaker, droning on about hectares and grafting and grape varieties. It was malbec this and malbec that, probably because that's the star grape of Argentina.

I lost interest fast and ate all the cheese in the little basket by my seat. The seat next to me was unoccupied, so I ate all the cheese in that little basket, too. I tried to guess the names of the cheeses I was eating but failed. I'm no better at guessing cheeses than I am at guessing wines.

Rolland speaks well, but he looks and talks like a French bureaucrat. At one point he said, "This is a funny story," and I perked up. He proceeded to tell it. Here's a synopsis of that funny story: He was at a winery during the 1985 harvest, watching the just-picked grapes come in. He asked the winemaker where the grapes were from. The winemaker did not know. End of funny story.

I looked around for more cheese.

He made some remarks about micro-oxygenation. In the film Mondovino, Rolland comes off as a bad guy who is pretty much ruining the wine world, partly because he supports micro-oxygenation. There is much controversy about the use of micro-oxygenation and whether or not Rolland advocates it. To tell you the truth, I don't care. Perhaps I am not the bright fellow he is looking for.

He did say of Mondovino, "The movie was so stupid sometimes I have to criticize."

He kept talking, so I moved on to the wines in front of me, even though it wasn't officially tasting time yet. Three were nice: 2005 Clos de Los Siete ($17.99) and 2003 Clos de Los Siete ($17.99) from Argentina, and 2003 Chateau La Garde ($32.00) from Bordeaux. The 2005 Argentine wine had pleasant fruit and seemed a fine value. The 2003 from the same property was much more mature and demonstrated signs of aging. Buy both and conduct a mini-seminar on the aging of wine in your own home. The Chateau La Garde is from Pessac-Leognan, which in my opinion is the only Bordeaux region that produces red wines that are interesting when young. I noted some lovely, smoky, tobacco scents.

I was still hoping to get in a dazzling comment or two. Then I realized every one of the other 50 or so wine-writers in the room had the same idea. They started making seemingly profound statements about malbec and hoping for Rolland to agree with them, which of course he did not. There's only one thing for a man to do under those circumstances: sneak out. During one two-part question, I made for the door, grabbing a slice of Camembert from a basket on the way out. At least I think it was Camembert. I was probably wrong.