I’ve never eaten there, and I do think it sounds a little bizarro but… if the food tastes good and the frozen food still requires a level of prep that far exceeds what a good home cook can do and if the restaurants are getting the shipments daily then… I don’t know if I see it being such a big deal.
Who did this surprise?..
Bouchon uses frozen fries. They are pretty tasty. Bouchon also uses procured sausages from some place in SF I believe. Not sure the sausages are frozen but definitely not one of the chef’s creations.
I’ve been twice to the Melrose Place location and once in midtown Manhattan. The food has always tasted consistently “pre-fab”, so this report makes total sense. Not itching to return anytime soon.
Frozen fries don’t bother me. As Serious Eats found, freezing actually improves the texture, and the best fries are double fried anyway imo. I also don’t have a problem with a chef sourcing sausage from somewhere else, as long as it’s a quality product. Based on the Eater article, however, I don’t think that’s what happened here.
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other than those who i describe as the professionally indignant, i expect that the most indignant will be the patrons with wounded vanities. and the pretentious palates will crow about how they could tell (whether they really could or not).
the reality is that “fresh = best tasting” is not true, especially when it comes to sushi neta. naomichi yasuda (who closed up shop in NYC a few years back and moved back to japan) proudly boasts of routinely freezing fish to improve their taste and texture. and if you prefer firm texture in cooked fish, you need to allow it to go through rigor mortis.
as for constituting/re-constituting meals that have been pre-made up to a certain point, a lot of recipes work that way. getting all that prep done at a central location ensures consistency of quality which would be typically more difficult to enforce for a national chain. there’s also a benefit in cost/time effectiveness - i routinely make sofrito in large batches and freeze it. saves me 20-30 minutes every time i make a recipe that uses sofrito as a flavor base.
the hellman’s mayo as the main ingredient in their aioli recipe cracked me up though.
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Except in the Bouchon cookbook, they tell you the exact process of making the french fries. I don’t mind it either, but is this a double standard. I find that in both cases of Bouchon, the ending result is delicious.
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Touche…
Well, as TonyC points out, making things centrally allows for a more consistent product. Making french fries in small batches for your own meal is one thing, I assume making the huge amount of fries that are needed for multiple restaurants is a very different thing.
Hellman’s is our Best Foods, right? I think it’s great, so no complaints from me…
in this case, the issue isn’t how it tastes; aioli by definition is prepared differently than mayo by starting with the garlic - it has always about the garlic with the emulsion being the vehicle. though FWIW, traditional aioli uses olive oil and you should be able to taste the difference vs the canola oil/whatever that’s typically used for mayo
Ahhhh… Thanks for the clarification. I always assumed aioli used a “regular” mayo base.
i spent some time studying french cooking including some time in france, with an emphasis on the cuisine in provence, where aioli is often used to describe a platter of boiled veggies, fish and boiled eggs and aioli is the accompanying sauce. so i suppose i hold a minority purist view about it.
Thomas Keller was always very open about using frozen fries and many other chefs purchase certain ingredients (and name it on the menu) but pretty much only using the microwave in the kitchen (F&O) is a completely different issue (and I doubt that they were open about it)
Capitalism = business owners will do anything for money and customers will buy anything if the marketing is good enough.
If the drinks are strong enough, and the digs are pretty enough, a place could probably serve literal shit and be successful in WeHo/Bev Hills.
if i was goiing to use mayo, i’d use MSG-laden kewpie in the squeeze bottle. david chang of momofuku swears by the stuff. he also uses the cheapie squid brand fish sauce as a umami source.
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So does this mean your stance has changed since this last post?
Here is the thread where we discussed Yasuda:
This part is actually incorrect. Rigor mortis sets in quickly. So how it relates to neta is that you have to let the fish age so the muscles relax and come out of rigor mortis and thus the fish becomes more tender.
i stand by my statements and i do not see any inconsistencies in them.
certain fish are chosen to be frozen to achieve a desired taste and texture. the analogy breaks down if you take it all they way down, but it’s not unlike deliberately aging beef under controlled conditions with a goals which typically include moisture loss, tenderization (sp?) & flavor change. but not everyone cares for aged beef.
leaving fish out to oxidize is not the same thing, unless you really like the smell and flavor of oxidized fish oils. a chacun son gout.
You missed the part in the Yasuda link where they talk about aging fish in cedar paper. Oxidizing/dry curing fish is analogous to your dry aging meat example not freezing.
Below piece was cured for 2 hours prior to serving. Texture was amazingly tender. At Sushi Nakazawa. Possibly the best sushi in the US these days. Not from Yelp in case you’re wondering.
Q Sushi also ages and cures fish before serving. Curing fish is “leaving fish out to oxidize” under controlled conditions.
“Chef Hiro employs varied techniques to coax optimal flavor profiles from the fish, including ageing [sic] (a process called nekaseru), curing, and adjusting temperatures just before serving.”
When you write “oxidization”, are you referring to leaving fish exposed to air at any temperature, or at room temperature?
Oxidization can clearly help develop the flavor of fish. In particular, some Sushi restaurants are now aging refrigerated tuna for weeks, so a generalization that oxidization is bad is incorrect. It may not be what you like, but I’ve had one week aged tuna and it was neither smelly nor oxidized.
Leaving fish out, as you write, is different. Leaving fish out implies warming which is terrible for fish and dumb, which seems to be what you’re implying when you write “oxidization.” That’s not what most people refer to as “oxidization” - that’s called rotting.
Even oily fish like mackerel, in a refrigerator, will not cause it to go bad; it will cause it to dry out, but it will not immediately smell. If that were the case, then all cured smoked fish would smell because you need to develop a pellicle in many instances prior to smoking and that’s done by leaving exposed fish after curing in a refrigerator to dry out. And, no - curing does not create an impenetrable barrier to air. But, that’s not the case. If you eat smoked salmon or lox or any cured or smoked uncooked fish, you’re eating oxidized fish.
But “oxidization”, again, simply means exposure to oxygen. Oxidization in refrigerated or temperature controlled environments for certain periods of time is critical to the maturation of flavor in fish. Kobujime is one example. Kobujime is one method where fish is technically oxidized in a controlled temperature and environment.
In addition, as previously written, for Sushi, fish generally needs to be out of rigor mortis - unless they have gone through Ikejime. For larger fish, this can take days. Larger California Halibut can stay in rigor mortis for well over a week, larger California Yellowtail can stay in rigor mortis for a week. And, during this time, it is getting exposed to some air even if left on the bone, if gutted, so it is getting “oxidized” by definition. It is not going bad.
For what it’s worth, Sushi Yasuda did not close. Yasuda-San did go back to Japan, but the restaurant is still open.
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