We have been doing cookschools since 1997, and over that decade we have witnessed interesting changes in nuance with how people respond too, and talk about food. When we started out, there was appreciable reluctance from a significant number of people, to eat anything that was percieved as high in fat, or questions would always be asked about how we could substitute the use of salt.

Salt and butter and cream are some of the cornerstones of Ricks cooking, and he has remained steadfast in his use of them, believing that fat and salt underpin and draw out flavour, and without them, food tastes bland and unsatisfying.

As the years have gone by, less and less people comment negatively ( maybe those people have stopped coming to the classes!), and we've noticed a drop in the trend in the restaurant, where people will order a rich dessert and then want lowfat milk in their coffee. A habit that has always struck me as perverse and contradictory, and has long irritated me excessively!

I have always subscribed to the theory that a little of what you fancy occasionally is not going to do you any harm, and people who treat everything that passes their lips as something to be analysed and fretted about, are turning one of lifes true pleasures into a trial. And I've never been able to see the point in that. This article in Saveur online ( Saveur probably gets my vote for the best, most authoritative food magazine published),  is an interview with Michael Pollan, on precisely that subject, only he discusses the issues alot more eloquently.

There are 2 problems with food at the moment, as I see it. Those that eat processed crap the bulk of the time, and don't have the budget or the inclination to improve their diet; and then those who are so fixated on 'health', that they forget that food is about sustenance and enjoyment.  Food has become something constructed in a laboratory to improve your colesterol. Perhaps his best punchline is: 'if your grandmother wouldn't recognise it as food, I wouldn't eat it" !

Interesting, pertinent reading, that dovetails very comfortably with what we feel and how we approach food. And I am sure underscores part of the popularity of cookschools worldwide, becos people are looking to rediscover a healthy and positive relationship with creating meals again.

Back in 2004 we did two weeks of cookschools in an idyllic farmhouse in rural Tuscany, Italy - Podere Fineri. It was our first trip to Europe ( if you over look the fact that I was born in England, but came out to NZ when I was younger than 2, so have no recollection...), and was therefore a huge experience for us on a number of levels.

Fineri was in the rural countryside just outside the small village of Asciano, that you struggle to locate on most maps. Better known, and about an hours drive away, was the extraordinary hilltop town of Montalcino, around which are grown the sangiovese grapes specific, to the now famous wine, Brunello. Typcially of me, I'd read a novel based in Montalcino to give me a feel for the history of the area. Have just gone looking in my bookcase for that book, but can't find it, which is a shame cos I'd have liked to have passed on the name. It was a great depiction of  the lives of the ordinary people living in the area back thru the ages, caught in the ongoing wars between the dynasties of Siena and Florence.

We spent time in Montalcino with both weeks of cookschools, and once you got beyond the tourist orientated streets, it really tugged at my heart strings. Somewhere I'd like to go back to one day...

Over the last 20 years Brunello has risen to dominance as a great wine - red, and heavy and made 100% from a clone of Sangiovese. Much trumpeted in the American wine media, its become a trophy wine. However - the area that the grapes are grown is quite small, and the grape itself if tempermental, and doesn't lend itself naturally to the smooth, sweeter styles that have become generic thanks to the slavish following of  writers like Robert Parker.  Over time the Italians were presented with the problem of demand in excess to what they could supply, and like any enterprising company they found ways to up their volume levels or smooth out their wines to meet the international palate. Which would have been OK if they had said what they were doing, but they continued to market the wines as true Brunellos,  100% sangiovese, even though  its now been discovered that they contained shiraz, merlot and a number of other grape types.

Some writers continued to write glowing reviews of the wines ( just encouraging me in my opinion, that so much of what is written about wine is pure, unmitigated drivel!), while others got suspicious, and started asking questions. Suffice to say, there is now a government backed full scale investigation going on, in which about 50 of the 100 or so wine producers in the Montalcino area are involved. And its got complicated and nasty, and will end up costing alot of people alot of money.

Have just finished reading an indepth and fascinating blog on the subject, which includes a couple of lovely photos of this gorgeous Tuscan town. ( Don't panic when you hit Italian, scoll down past the introductory bit, to the photo of Jancis Robinson, and you'll pick up English.)

Sad when some peoples malfeasance ends up adversly affecting all those in their orbit, becos everyone ends up been tainted by association.

This is an article, not a book, in the latest Vanity Fair, a magazine I love for its pastiche of articles on all sorts of subjects. Quite often I get to read fascinating detail about one of the great restaurants somewhere in the world, in lots of glorious detail, and this article on La Grenuoille, is a classic example.

A restaurant that was opened in New York in the sixties, and which continues to be run by the son of the  people who set it up. A much loved institution, the article tries to explain why it has survived when so many others haven't,  and gives a delightful discription of what it is that makes it so special.

The story that enchanted me  the most, was when they discovered that the particular lightbulbs that they used in the restaurant were being discontinued, they made a direct plea via contacts to acquire some for future use, and were told that that wouldn't be a problem as long as they were prepared to buy 10,000! So important to the owner was the ambience that the right tone of lightbulb created, ( and something I understand totally as we currently grapple with the white light from the 'eco friendly' bulbs that we should be using, but whose light I just don't like), that he agreed to buy that quantity, and had to hire out a warehouse to store them in. That was back  in the early seventies, and the supply only ran out last year!

There are other delicious nuggets of taste and caring, that for me define what makes a restaurant truly great, and I love that it endures becos enough people understand its specialness to want to go there. It hasn't ossified, it has just got better and better.

An inspiring story....

I lay in bed this morning, at about 5.30am listening to the rain pelting down and wondering whether I needed my head seriously examined. Rhonda and I were planning on heading up to Auckland early to attend a seminar at Taste, but I wasn't feeling fabulous - far from it in fact - and wasn't sure if driving too and from in torrential rain was exactly what I needed.

However. We'd been planning the trip for some time, and it felt a bit like a cop out to pike out over a bit of water, so I was up and ready to depart when Rhonda turned up on our doorstep via the restaurant and the coffee machine. ( One of the many reasons I respect this woman so much is her ability to anticipate need!)

We got to Auckland in what should have been ample time to have another coffee at Gala, just round the corner from the Restaurant Assn building - but the buildup of traffic on the motorway was horrific, and we crawled into Mt Eden, at a seriously slow pace, arriving at the seminar late, after a fracetious time trying to find a carpark!

The seminar was on staff training and was run by Nicola Richards from Monsoon Poon, a pan asian restaurant, which we've eaten at in both Auckland and Wellington, and rate extremely highly. She talked alot about the importance of hiring the right people, of the importance of the induction process, rather than just dropping people in and leaving them to sink or swim; and then about having a system of follow up and measurement of performance, and how to keep staff motivated and postitive about their role in the business.

It was all extremely practical, very positive advice that reminded me very much of Danny Meyers tone when he talked about staff in his fantastic book 'Setting the Table". Monsoon Poon is a large business. Between them the Directors own 4 large hospitality businesses in Auckland and Wellington ( in fact I think Mike Egan is or has just, added another one to that stable in Wellington) - so their business is substantially large than ours. That doesn't mean thought that so much of the philosophy isn't directly transferable. The concept of wanting to train staff to exceed peoples expectations - to install systems that train them in how to achieve that aim, relate to all of us in hospitality, regardless of where we are placed in the market. And I think its seriously important that we in the industry have access to this calibre of advice - becos it inspires us to upskill ourselves to a new level of professionalism, and that has to be good for the industry as a whole. Its a fantastic service that the Restaurant Association offers to us, that I am very grateful for.

We got alot of  mental stuff to chew over - while we headed out for lunch at Tabou, a restaurant I've been reading good things about. Small, intimate and French bistro in style - we had a great lunch there, over a glass of rose Tattinger ( as you do!), and relaxed totally in a professionally run, seamless environment.   Good restaurants have that note of 'je ne sais quoi!', a touch of assuredness that just means you relax and feel cossetted, and that to me is pretty much what it should be about.

We are going to be enlarging our bar area when we do the alterations to the restaurant building next year - its the one aspect of the last round of alterations that we got wrong, and made it too small for the corporates that we get thru. We want to make it larger and more flexible in its use - in the French/Italian manner - where people can sit in lovely surroundings and eat tapas style food.  I knew that Tabou did that sort of thing, which was why I was keen to see how they'd set it up, and Rhonda and I did certainly sit back and analyse, and I'm sure it was patently apparent to the owner that we were in the trade ( an oft heard interchange at Somerset, is me commenting on the fact that people at such and such a table are ' in the trade', becos you can just sort of tell, from the interest people take in the surroundings, the kind of questions they ask. They almost have a certain smell!,) and this lady was one very savy individual who missed nothing.She did however keep her council, and was pleasantly charming throughout.

From there we negotiated our way to St Benedict St to find Kohu Road Icecream- a small artisinal icecream producer that I've been reading good things about recently. Wanted to see how they sold and packaged their icecream, becos we are looking at lifting our production and our range of icecreams up a notch. We would currently sell between 10-50 pottles of licorice icecream ( which is the only flavour we currently have for people to take home), a week,  and we are looking at promoting it more and gearing it up, and adding more flavours. I brought back some of their vanilla and espresso to Tauranga, and they were both excellant icecreams. We were impressed, and in the process, got some good ideas in terms of packaging. I guess it amounts to industrial espionage, but we never intend to be underhand about it. I prefer to look on it as an interchange of information!

And from there, home! We have the big Hospitality Trade show coming up, so Rhonda and I planned what we'd do with the crew when we headed up for that, and I think lunch at Monsoon Poon is now on the agenda while Rick goes to the demonstration with the chef from el bulli.

Home to more rain - and an absolutely dead nite at the restaurant. Have had a chat to the people I know who are in, and now retreated to help Courteney fill in some forms that she needs for next year. Oh - and we may just catch a bit of the Olympics...

We are in the middle of Wine Options for this year - last nite was the second nite in 3 consequtive weeks, when we get together with other teams, at the restaurant on a Monday nite, when we are otherwise closed, and blind taste wines that each team has bought and prepared questions.

Points are tallyed, and we have a nightly winner - amidst much humour and enjoyment. After Options we join all the tables up into one long line, and serve dinner, which is some sort of bistro style, easy meal that people can help themselves too.

These guys are well experienced now at moving tables into place; its not unusual to find one of them behind the bar looking for a wine knive to open a bottle of wine that they've brought to share over dinner, and someone usually heads into the kitchen to help Rhonda, Rick and I get the food to table. All done without missing a conversational beat!

After weeks of trial and error the restaurant kitchen have finally mastered macarons, and we celebrated in fitting style last nite by serving up lots of different flavours that John had been playing around with during the week. I thought they looked fabulous! So fabulous in fact, I had to run over to the house to grab my camera so I could take a pictorial record, and I'm firmly of the opinion that they're as good as any I spyed in patissieres over in France.  We may just have to work on a little more  on uniformity of shape...but you have to concede, they aren't half bad...

We had chili, lime, orange and they were everything I'd hoped they'd be. I think I understand now why Parisians have to eat at least one macaron every day. They certainly could get addictive!

Our team is not especially competitive with the Options, but that is immaterial, becos the good company and good food more than compensate for the fact we're closer to the bottom of the points table than the top. After all, I keep telling people that its not meant to be competitive. Yeah right!