BF>>    I totally agree! French wine, cheese, cooking et al are highly
 BF>> overestimated and highly overpriced.

 RW> Not in Mexico.

   Maybe not cooking, but surely the wine and the cheese?

 RW> Give Beringer's White Merlot a try. It's a little darker than a Pink
 RW> Chablis, but tastes similar to a White Zinfandel. I usually switch between
 RW> the Merlot and Zinfandel, especially if I'm out and there's no Merlot
 RW> available.

   Thanks a million. I'm always interested in new wine experiences, so your
tips are carefully saved.

 RW> The popularity of Svedish food has waned a bit here. There used to be one
 RW> in a suburb of San Diego that we visited often, but it's not there
 RW> anymore.

   That seems to coincide with what some of my chef friends have told me
lately. The west coast is dead, now it's all about the Big Apple if you
want to open a Swedish restaurant.

 RW> I prefer Mexican to Asian, any day.

   Yeah, well, the term Asian is rather a wide concept here, so I can go
along with that, generally speaking, but if I can pick out just about 10%
of the various "flavours", I insist.

   Have you tried Indonesian cooking? If you want to try the best
Indonesian restaurants in the world, you have to go to -- Amsterdam,
Netherlands! I'm not kidding you, I've tried both the local (with less than
adequate hygiene standards met) and the Dutch versions, and Amsterdam wins
a landslide victory. I assume that any Indonesian restaurant in the US also
must conform to at least minimum health standards if they want to stay
open?

 RW> Nancy is Italian/Spanish vintage and I enjoy her cooking very much. Her
 RW> sphegetti (from a recipe handed down from her father) is the family rage

   Spaghetti is very much the same all over the world, so I guess you mean
the sauce going with it? Then I can understand what you are saying. There
are probably about as many recipes for the typical pasta tomato sauce, as
there are Italians in the world. :)

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