In which restaurants and with which chefs would you like to be confined?

I saw that in a French newsletter this morning, actually maybe it’s interesting to ask this question among us.

If, by a terrible coincidence, you were to be confined to a chef, where would you like it to be?

  1. Confined to restaurant(s), which chef(s) do you like to be staying with (stars Michelin, your bistrot across the street, or exotic resort)?

  2. Or at the chef’s own home(s), which one(s) you want to be?

No answer for staying at your own home please! (We need some fantasy! :yum:)

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The French Laundry with Thomas Keller, or at his home. That works too.

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I’m going for a local bistro - the Lime Tree. It’s seasonal, generally local, food cooked entirely in keeping with its North European location. It’s not the “best” restaurant we regularly visit, nor even our favourite one. But, if I’m confined there and have to eat their food, then this would be it. This is the last review I wrote for HO - not a perfect meal but certainly nice enough.

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For restaurants, I will choose chef can cook Japanese and French or French food with a Japanese touch. My first choice will be Shinichi Sato, but the restaurant passage 53 is closed for months until further notice. New three star chef this year Kei Kobayashi would do the job.

As to stay at chef’s home, I will choose to stay at Stephen Jégo’s home. He is the chef of l’Ami Jean, besides being a good chef, he seems human, he is fighting for the restauranteurs now to get compensation from the insurance companies. Another choice is the chef of Quinsou, Antonin Bonnet, a French bistrot (my review), he is a gardener, he can make good bread, he can cook Korean as it’s the origin of his wife.

Dibs on Bobby Flay.

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I’m staying local . . . Mark Vetri. Who can resist Italian? High-end meat and fish, mid-level pastas, pizzas? I could eat for weeks without being bored.

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Interesting to see most of us choose a chef close to home. Nobody wants to go aboard, for example.

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If I’m going to be confined then Raymond Blancs Le Manoir in Oxfordshire. Beautiful setting, comfortable rooms and gardens ful of produce. I’ve not been but the food is supposed to be wonderful. Also Raymond comes across as a fairly amenable chap.

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There were reservations available at the French Laundry just a few weeks ago, just days before Bay Area counties shut restaurants down! That was a serious harbinger of things to come. Now we get the lunch menu for Ad Hoc by email every day.

I have to say the whole idea of such a confinement ruins my appetite.

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Yeah, I now eat to live vs live to eat. Right now I’m waiting for a delivery of a cheesesteak and fries. It will arrive with gloves, a mask and maybe even a gown :crazy_face:

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Sequined?

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Although at one point, 3 weeks ago when husband announced his colleague was probably getting Covid, one early thinking flashed in my mind. When now that we would probably get it and a chance of dying. I didn’t eat in a 3-star restaurant yet. :laughing:

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Ooooo, if I really get my choice of live-in chefs and can go international, i’d pick James Henry from Paris’ Le Passage and Bones. With days off filled by Giovanni Passerini.

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Food is wonderful. We’ve been twice - once for lunch. Second trip was a two night stay for my 65th. Just a fab experience. And the breakfast rates as one of my top 2 hotel brekkies of all time (the other is a hotel in Mallorca.

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I choose Jacques Pepin’s home in CT and in my home, Cassie Piuma from Sarma in Cambridge (MA).
But I can’t decide which would be my first choice.

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Oooh, good choice!

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I had trouble making up my mind but Ina Garten’s latest instagram sealed it for me.

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Difficult question …

However, I would select Three Michelin Starred Chef Joan Roca.

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I may have mentioned it on here before that my MIL is French. Well she used to work at The French Chamber of Commerce and has met Raymond Blanc a few times. Apparently he invited her and the FIL to La Maison as his guest . She declined as it’s not really her thing. Couldn’t believe it when she told the missus and me.
FWIW my best hotel breakfast was at The Grand Oberoi in Calcutta. Amazing buffet and cooked to order. Service was great. It was mango season and we commented how great they were. We were given a box of mangoes when we checked out.

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Jean Georges Vongerichten in his eponymous NYC restaurant, or at Topping Rose House, the Bridgehampton hotel restaurant he took over last year. Or maybe Suviche in Los Cabos One & Only .

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