Eat: Eater Editorial Dept. Archives

The Gutter: When is A Bowling Alley Not a Bowling Alley?

Like all the good hipster Brooklynites have done, we've been anticipating The Gutter, "the first bowling alley to open in Brooklyn in 50 years," hotly. (It opens to the public tomorrow.) A new bowling alley made to feel old school by the able proprietors of Barcade? Eater: IN. Though deathtrappy, too, it also sounds right. Save for the pain-inducing trip to Brooklyn, what could be bad about this? But, now, here's a question: How many lanes doth a bowling alley make?

Continue reading "The Gutter: When is A Bowling Alley Not a Bowling Alley?"

FW: Call Back to Confirm? WTF?

From: [an eater]
Date: Wednesday, March 21, 2007
To: eater complaints dept.
Subject: Call Back to Confirm? WTF?
______

Something has started happening that really pissed me off. I'll make a reservation at a nice restaurant, and they'll tell me I have to call them back to confirm it a day before? WTF? Didn't I just call you to make the reservation? Obviously I want to eat there. If an establishment feels the need to have reservations confirmed, shouldn't the onus be on them? Isn't that what normally happens?

This particular time concerns Sushi Sasabune. I made a reservation for about a month from now for four people. When I scoffed at the idea of calling them back, they told me four people was a "large party." This never happened when I made reservations for the Los Angeles outpost. Perhaps you could all shed some light on this situation.

Thanks.

Eater Complaints Dept.

FW: Waverly OUT

From: [an eater]
Date: Tuesday, January 30, 2007
To: eater complaints dept.
Subject: Waverly OUT
______

I am a NYC restaurant professional and would ordinarily never deign to impugn another operator, as I know how tough getting it right can be, however my experience at The Waverly Inn on Fri, Jan 19 was so infuriating that I am compelled to write in. My girlfriend and I met my friend and his wife for dinner. I know the chef, so I am admittedly biased -- that said, the food was in fact fabulous. Kumamotos fresh and delicious, crab cakes meaty, short ribs tender and flavorful, pork chop moist and great, etc.,etc. THAT said, the service and overall experience was unforgivably AWFUL. No real greeting at the door, other than looks of contempt, no offer to check coats (no coatroom apparently) no mention of when our table might be ready. The hostess was so aloof that after she took our name and grabbed menus and silently walked past us, we all shrugged and followed her into the dining room, only to have her turn on her heels and usher us back into the bar area. Apparently she was not intending to seat us after all.

Where Jay-Z's Maybach fits into this story is ahead. >>

Staying Afloat 101: The Case of Paradou and Jefferson

There is nothing easy about keeping a restaurant open in NY. In fact, the only task more daunting than keeping a mega-restaurant like Del Posto afloat is staying out of the red if yours is a small venue with mostly good food in a neighborhood filled with bigger players with richer PR, marketing, design and food budgets. And yet, with a little self-promotion and a lot of pluck it can be done.

Meatpacking underdog Paradou is celebrating its 5th Anniversary this year. "Knock on wood, we're enjoying the best October ever," reports Vadim, one of the owners. Yet, they are surrounded on all sides by more robust dining options. (If you think economic laws of supply and demand are at play here, given the neighborhood, look no further than Meet and Bivio, and soon Sascha, none of which couldn't get the job done, despite the fact that Pastis run-off alone could have kept them going for all of time.) So what is their secret sauce?

Continue reading "Staying Afloat 101: The Case of Paradou and Jefferson"

On First Impressions (An Eater PSA)

There is a saying at Eater that goes something like, It's Just Food. There is another one, equally important, that relates to first impressions and the importance of them. To wit, have a read through these three rants that have arrived over the last week or two and ask yourself, could these 'not going back' verdicts have been finessed into 'shows potential' reports with better out of the gate experiences? As you'll see, the answer is quite clearly, YES.

1) let me tell you a story: i arrive at a voce on time for an eight pm resy. at eight thirty "dante" is telling me it will be just a moment. at eight forty five he is "setting my table". still no glasses of wine offered to me. no apologies. At nine he is seating me, the asshole. we order an unbelievably overpriced bottle of kent rasmussin chard. we order the carne crudo which was good, duck meatballs were ok, the lamb shank tortellini was decent, the grandmas ravioli was good but nothing i can't get from the frozen section at citarella. "dante" apologized for the wait and offered dessert on the house. we ordered tiramisu. was it on the house? no, it cost us ten dollars. did i balk? no, i have honor sir. the crowd? thirty five to fifty five, very weak, most appeared to be employees of the nearby csfb office. the woman next to us on a date with her trainer was dressed like a hooker. should have gone to peasant. 170.00, i feel violated.

2) I tried going to Cheeks Bakery in Williamsburg this morning. Although the store hours sign claims that it opens at 8, by 8:20, it was still not open. When I knocked on the window to inquire, the person inside gave me the "just one minute" gesture, which turned out to be misleading as she did not open the store a minute later. I ended up leaving without ever going in. How terrible when people don't open on time!

Finally, the first impression mother lode.

Continue reading "On First Impressions (An Eater PSA)"

On Writing Restaurant Review Headlines: What are we missing?

Is there a difficulty to writing review headlines that we're missing?
· Hello 'Moto [URBANDADDY]
· Hello Moto [NYM]
· Sascha Opens, 'Lyon's Den' headline officially taxed [~E~]

NYC Restaurants vs. NYC DOH, Sous Vide Edition

It would be foolish to suggest that the NYC Department of Health is trying to ruin our fair city's status as an international food capital. Or that they're in cahoots with the State Liquor Authority to do so. It does seem like a stretch. But on the other hand, restaurateurs and agencies are butting heads with an increased frequency of late. This, in light of the fact that great chefs, especially those not yet sitting at the top of an empire, are having a tough enough time finding and keeping an affordable lease, makes for a dicey situation.

The latest point of contention: sous vide practices. (Lightening fast primer, for the kids in the back who are uninitiated: French for "under vacuum," sous vide is a technique of cooking food in vacuum sealed bags in water at highly controlled, and often comparatively low, temperatures. Keller's a fan; 'nuff said. Further reading here.) As the Times reported today, the DOH has been making unannounced and somewhat impulsive visits to some of our top restaurants and slapping fines on them for using sous vide equipment. This is all well and good except that there are no regulations on the books regarding the use of sous vide equipment. From Dana Bowen's A1 report:

The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene has quelled the sous vide revolution, for the moment. In the past few weeks inspectors have told some chefs to throw out shrink-wrapped food, forbidden them to use the equipment used to make it and told them to stop cooking and storing food sous vide until they have a government-approved plan for it.

In some cases, inspectors are handing out fines, which start at $300 per offense. The department's actions seem to represent the first time a city agency has singled out the technique, and how chefs use it...

"It's wholly ironic, because the goals of the chefs using these techniques for cleaner, healthier, better tasting food, and the goals of the health department are one and the same," said Dan Barber, chef of Blue Hill in Manhattan and Stone Barns in Tarrytown. "A complete restriction of any use of sous vide would feel like we were going back 10 years."

To be fair, the city is saying that it has to establish acceptable guidelines in cooperation with chefs like Keller and Bouley to ensure that the codes are reasonable. But, isn't it somewhat asinine to go after sous vide-ing restaurants, of all places, for exactly the reason Barber identifies? Does the city not have anything better to do? Plus, isn't the city, slapping venues with fines for offenses not on the books, just begging to be named as defendant in a class action suit?

Mayor Bloomberg, perhaps you want to step in here before some of your regular haunts take your favorite dishes off their menus.

We appreciate the city's efforts to keep our food safe. Really we do. Hopefully, though, while the DOH develops a set of codes, the chefs that make NY a world-class food destination will be allowed to resume doing that thing they do and the inspectors can pick fights with Improper personal hygiene practices and poor food-worker health offenders.

Also, to those of you with a reservation at Blue Hill in the next week or two: tough break.
· With City Inspectors in Kitchen, Chefs Can't Cook in a Vacuum [NYT]

RESY CONTEST: Closing Night at 71 Clinton

As you've heard, 71 Clinton will close its doors for good after dinner service this coming Saturday. Since we imagine you'll want to be on hand for this special night, Eater is giving away an 8:30 table for two on Saturday to the person or team who best answers this question:

Confined to the Lower East Side only, how would you spend $250 on food and drink on a Thursday night?

Specificity, precision, and originality will be awarded. Bonus points for venues of which we are unaware (good luck). As always, the Eater Editorial Dept. reserves the right to be highly subjective in choosing a winner. Any entry containing the phrase "it's not technically on the Lower East Side, but..." will be subject to automatic disqualification.

Contest will run until 2:00 PM on Friday and a winner will be announced shortly thereafter. Entries accepted here.
· 71 Clinton to Close [~E~]
· IMterview: Last Days of 71 Clinton [~E~]

Big Red Lands: Winners and Losers

In our continuing coverage of the release of the Michelin Red Book NYC, be bring you the early word on winners and losers. The books start to circulate this evening, after which time we hope to be bringing you further analysis. If it is straight coverage you're looking for, you can find it here and just about every which way you turn as well.

Winner: La Goulue chef Antoine Camin, who, if he has any sense, has already resigned his post on Madison to open a place of his own.

Loser: Residents of the West Village, who will now have to wait even longer -- alongside French and Japanese tourists -- for The Spotted Pig's very few tables.

Winner: Kenneth A. Himmel, the restaurant czar at The Mall, who made the right choice when he sent Michelin a check for $5 mil last February.

Loser: Daniel Boulud, the only French chef whose Zagat 28 and four Times stars did not translate into three Michelins.

Winner: Mario Batali. Because he hedged his bet ahead of time by telling NYM that it didn't mater that much to him, he can keep his head high today. But more importantly, now that Michelin has fired at the Times, calling into question the legitimacy of two Times 4-starers (Daniel and Masa), what better a place for the Times to fire back with than Babbo and/or Del Posto? Eater odds makers say it's 2-1 that Molto Mario gets four stars from the Times before this time next year.

Loser: Michelin, for lacking the foresight and diplomacy to 3-star a venue like WD-50 or Masa, if only to keep people from saying the books skews too French to matter.

Winner: Alain Ducasse, Mr. Nine Stars himself. In his social circles, 9 Michelins is something to write home about and for this we congratulate him.

Loser: Alain Ducasse, who now has to spend '06 in NY. While his new chef Tony Esnault started in April, with plenty of time for Team Michelin to review Tony's cuisine, there is a question as to whether those Michelin stars are Tony's or his predecessor Christian Delouvrier's. You can be sure AD himself will be spending a good amount of time in the ADNY kitchen, watching his new chef's every knife stroke and keeping close guard of his Michelin stars.

Winner: Tim and Nina Zagat, whose guide was used as an authority today in the Times alongside Michelin and the Times itself. This does more to legitimize their system than anything that's been written about the survey in the last five years.

Winner: Jean Georges, who, with 5 stars (just under 10% of all NY Michelin stars), has more than anyone else in the city.

Loser: Danny Meyer, whose lock on American fare in NY translated into a mere two stars, one for The Modern and one for Grammercy Tavern.

Winner: Michelin three-star chefs Gordan Ramsay and Joel Robuchon, who were both smart enough to wait on their NY venues, ensuring zero high profile disappointment in Michelin NYC year one.

Fork This?

The Post is all over this GQ "Best Cities on Earth (To Eat In)" article, which conspicuously leaves out both Paris and NY. (We'll try to have the article for your viewing pleasure shortly.) Our man Cuoz' (left; post sedatives), for example, is practically foaming at the mouth over it. Observe:

This grotesque take on Gotham's food scene appears in this month's GQ magazine feature "The 4 Best Cities on Earth (To Eat In)," a cockamamie compendium that snubs such culinary backwaters as New York, Paris and Barcelona in favor of Piedmont, Bangkok, Los Angeles and Madrid.

To come up with such an off-balance list, the GQ people must have spent too much time eating in their notoriously garlic-deprived Conde Nast cafeteria - or in the fast-food cesspool outside their Times Square offices.

Cockamamie Compendium. Give 'em hell, Steve.

Now -- and here's where the situation spoils slightly -- the side bar to this rant lists some of the "reasons" "why we rock." The Post, exhibiting the editorial sense of a Eater's left pinky toe, names the totally boring and excruciating Time Warner Center as a reason that NY rocks. The Norma's Zillion Dollar Frittata is, apparently, another. An unmitigated embarrassment for us all.

There are, indeed, plenty of reasons why our restaurant scene is among the best in the world. (So many, in fact, that we were just going to let GQ have its fun.) However, none of them are listed in the Post today. Before this gets totally out of hand and GQ uses the Post's list as follow-up evidence, let's put together a real list. We'll go first:

In NY, Batali delivers. Lend a hand, won't you?
· Fork You, GQ [NY Post]
· Why We Rock [NY Post]

Thrillist Reviews Keens: A Return to the Classics (We Hope)

Our friends at Thrillist, who made us funnel Olde E before suggesting that we use the phrase "best email newsletter on earth, by far" to tag them, will run a review of Keens Steakhouse tomorrow. They'll call it, "the first call you should make when you're craving the fruits of the slaughter."

In that charmingly reckless Thrill-speak of theirs, they’ll go on to say:

The juicy prime rib is cut almost as thick as Star Jones' blazers. Some people also rave about the house special mutton chop, but unless you're prepping to play the Sheriff of Nottingham at next month's Renaissance Fair, mutton chops are totally inappropriate and stupid.

Though we happen to think the Keens' mutton chop is extremely tasty, we cannot help but give the kids a bit of credit for going against the publicist-manufactured grain with this and many other of their venue choices. In the short time they’ve been in the electronic mailer game, we’ve gotten both a rave review of Raoul's and an introduction to Jeremy's, where they start pouring drinks at 8 am. This sort of variety and versatility is, to us, extremely refreshing.

We do hope this will jump start a renewed focus on NY classics. Bruni, much to his credit, is already on board, having written about places like One If By Land, Two If By Sea and Periyali in the last year. To you other folks writing those big, splashy reviews: we know at least one of you is dying to expense a couple of meals at '21'. If it's just a matter of getting a table, we can help.
· Thrillist

At Long Last, a Review of Per Se

Moira Hodgson reviews Per Se for the Observer this week and somewhat ceremoniously awards it -- get this -- four stars.

Kind readers, just let us handle this one, 'K? Cover your ears for a quick sec while we talk to Moira, will ya?

Moira, love. We know you'd been waiting patiently; that you'd spent two months training your palate for the experience. We know you needed a way to put it on your expense report. But maybe you missed the fact that everyone and their mothers have reviewed Per Se.

Can you think of a single good reason why all of these people, many who have by now been to Per Se and seen for themselves its goodness, would care to hear -- yet again -- that Per Se is the greatest restaurant in the history of the world?

We don't want to make it a whole to-do, Hodg, but please don't let this kind of editorial atrocity happen again. We've got Bruni to massage guys like Keller. We need you to cover newer, far more original fare.

· Two Months of Waiting Yields Five Hours in Foodie Heaven [NYO]

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