Eat: On the House Archives
Ripert on Escoalar: Natural, All About Portion Control
Earlier today, Radar exposed escoalar or "white tuna" to be a digestively menacing fish, causing the sort of unpleasantries commonly associated with retro diet aide olestra. In defense of escoalar, the reigning king of seafood in United States, Mr. Four Stars, Eric "perhaps you know of my little restaurant, Le Bernardin?" Ripert, checks in:
Dear Eater, >>
On the House: How Global Warming is Screwing Up My Wine Pars (or: Please Start Ordering the Red)
On the House is our regular column written by the owners and operators of the great food and beverage establishments of New York. Today, your proprietor is Mr. William Tigertt of Freemans.
Every year the change of the seasons in the city is marked in myriad of ways from the obvious natural cues of the foliage to the oddly autumnal Spring Fashion Week in Byrant Park. Menu changes in the restaurant world are dictated by the farmers' market and the availability of produce. You want fiddleheads in the dead of winter? Too bad there’s none to be had, and they don’t import them from Peru.
Alcohol consumption as well goes through a tectonic shift with the change in weather. In the warmer months casual white wine make up seventy percent of sales. Then when the mercury drops and the NYC groupthink hive deems it’s proper, the ratio flips on its head, and everyone starts drinking red. The changeover is fast - normally less than a week. If you caught unaware, half of your wine stock can be wiped out over a weekend.
Continue reading "On the House: How Global Warming is Screwing Up My Wine Pars (or: Please Start Ordering the Red)"On the House Special: The Origins of the BLT Empire
On the House is our regular column written by the owners and operators of the great food and beverage establishments of New York. Today, your proprietor is, via his paperwork, Mr. Laurent Tourondel, the LT of the BLT empire of restaurants.
The following concept statement was sent over to us by an undisclosed insider at the Laurent Tourondel empire and we've confirmed its authenticity. Written in 2002, after the close of Cello, it's the first time LT put to paper his plans for BLT Market (initially, it seems, to be called simply "BLT"), the restaurant he just opened in the Ritz Carlton Hotel on Central Park South. Interesting to note, before we dive in, though ultimately he would open a bistro, steakhouse, seafood restaurant and burger joint all first, this similarity this statement bears to the current reality is impressive. Do read especially the empire-focused bit labeled, "Roll-Out Potential." Also, if Tourondel was talking about a market-restaurant hybrid in 2002, he does get credit, at least on paper, for getting out in front of places like Borough Food & Wine and Market Table.
Chronicles of El Chod: 'Kobe Club is Not Closing Ever'
For most restaurateurs, even the very best ones, we have On the House, our regular feature written by the owners and operators of our city's finest establishments. For Jeffrey Chodrow (below), however, a man who needs an introduction like vibrator needs an owners manual, we have Chronicles of El Chod. Now and then he or his chief spokesperson, Karine Bakhoum, checks in with us to clarify something, say hello, what have you. These are our stories of those stories.
Late yesterday, El Chod himself phoned to tell us to get our heads out of our asses (our words) in regards to Eater Hospice resident Kobe Club. First of all, a promise to us: "Kobe Club is not closing, ever." Next, a scoop: "Not only is Kobe Club not closing, but we're opening more of them, first in Miami."
Now, onto more mundane matters. About that Hospice update, in which 1) our correspondent suggested Kobe seems to be a ghost town and 2) El Chod was overheard at Sarabeth's talking to someone about keeping costs down for needed Kobe Club repairs. Again, he kindly asks us to shut down our crazy train. Regarding the first, Kobe Club did 102 covers on Saturday night (if you're doing the turns math, the place has a capacity around 80). So, there. Plus, it's a later kind of scene, El Chod suggests, and it's quite possible our tipster went early (it's possible, this is true). Second, regarding the convo, wrong again: the Chodorow was eating with his lovely wife and was on the phone with his designers. Here's the thing: there is an issue with the stingray bar top currently installed at the restaurant. Just didn't hold up. "When you experiment with new materials, sometimes the solutions aren't that easy," says El Chod. Now on order is not the cheap stuff, but this stuff (click "stingray parquet"), which promises to be more durable. While repairs are being made, there is a temporary covering on the bar. So, that's that. And now, please excuse us while we return to our regularly scheduled Deathwatching of Kobe Club.
· Eater Hospice: Kobe Club Downgraded to Critical Condition [~E~]
· Deathwatch: Kobe Club [~E~]
Why I Hate Food Bloggers By Mario Batali #01
Restaurateurs are slowly starting to go on the record with hatred for the food blogs (example), citing a slew of sneaky and unscrupulous, often self-serving, tendencies that make dealing with bloggers impossible. While we've never considered Eater a food blog per se -- we're a restaurant blog -- Mario Batali certainly has. And he's not happy with us or food blogs in general. Because Mario will always be a hero of ours, like us or not, we've asked Molto Mario to do his venting here. Ladies and gentlemen, introducing the very latest in food blogger hating technology, Why I Hate Food Bloggers, By Mr. Mario Batali.
I do not really HATE anything or anybody, it takes too much energy to hate, and I would rather dog someone/thing sotto voce to the large audience than spend a lot of time hating them/it. But blogs live by different rules. Many of the anonymous authors who vent on blogs rant their snarky vituperatives from behind the smoky curtain of the web. This allows them a peculiar and nasty vocabulary that seems to be taken as truth by virtue of the fact that it has been printed somewhere. Unfortunately, this also allows untruths, lies and malicious and personally driven dreck to be quoted as fact. Even a savvy blog like the one you are reading now has strangely superseded truly responsible journalism. It is much more immediate and can skip a lot of the ponderous setup necessary in a news article. It cuts right to the heart of a matter, often disputing it as though real research has taken place.
On the House: Why We Need the Table Back
On the House is our regular column written by the owners and operators of the great food and beverage establishments of New York. Today, your proprietor is Mr. William Tigertt of Freemans.
After multiple Eater complaints department entries about the early seating crunch and then the whole Gordon Ramsay time limit, I felt like I should address this topic.
The basic scenario is a large party comes in for an early dinner reservation at say 6:30 and the guests are told that the restaurant needs the table back by 9:00. The dinner progresses, the clock ticks, and the dinners are shooed out to the bar with coffees in hand and petit fours crumbs still hanging from their chins. Everyone is pissed off and multiple vows to never again patronize Restaurant X are sworn.
So let’s talk about first seating reservations. There is fault to on both sides of this issue.
On The House: Momofuku Ko, The Full Reveal
On the House is our regular column written by the owners and operators of the great food and beverage establishments of New York. Today, your proprietor is Mr. David Chang of Momofuku Noodle Bar and Momofuku Ssam Bar.
So, yes, we’re opening another restaurant.
It seems that somebody on the staff got ruffied at one of the Beard afterparties and let it slip: Momofuku Noodle Bar is changing into something else. Something called Momofuku Ko, which all you attentive students of Japanese will recognize as “sewing circle.”
Why try to keep it under our hats and reopen like a bunch of silent ninjas in the night?
Because if we – me, Quino, all the guys in the crew – have learned anything, it’s that we’re terrible at opening restaurants and really good at making mistakes. We’re okay with that – learning from our mistakes has helped us grow as cooks and restaurant operators – but it’s harder to change and learn and grow when you’re constantly under a microscope.
Also, too much in the restaurant business is about hype right now. (I know we are lucky in that department and, trust me, we are thankful for the opportunities the attention has afforded us.) But chefs are not rock stars and are not cool. Restaurant openings are not movie premieres. All the bullshit distracts from the real task at hand – cooking – and from the food, which is what we’re in it for.
So how about this: I’ll tell you every boring detail of everything that’s happening with Momofuku and then we’ll all be quiet about it for a while? Deal? Pinky swear? Okay:
On The House: The Full Comp
On the House is our regular column written by the owners and operators of the great food and beverage establishments of New York. Today, your proprietor is Mr. David Chang of Momofuku Noodle Bar and Momofuku Ssam Bar.
There’s a place in every restaurant where important intra-operation messages are posted. Some use good old cork bulletin boards; others employ fancy dry erase technology. At Ssam Bar we use the basement door: it’s where we post notices telling the staff to stop drinking all the expensive booze, where photos of blacklisted bloggers go up, where there's a reminder of the cobra kai, the Momofuku way: “Strike First, Strike Hard, Show No Mercy”. The real eye sore is the list of upcoming events where I will have to stand behind a 6-foot table and repeat the name of a dish a thousand times to people who aren’t listening anyway.
Kevin, AM chef at Noodle Bar, regularly takes it upon himself to make sure the staff is up to the minute with Momofuku-wide policies in his basement door missives. Then he posts shit like this:
On The House: Vodka Ads Give Me a Hangover
On the House is our weekly column written by the owners and operators of the great food and beverage establishments of New York. Your resident proprietor is William Tigertt of Freemans. Today, Mr. Tigertt, in addition to being his usual articulate self, goes fully off the handle and notes to us by way of preface, "Here’s my piece on the brilliance of vodka marketing. I feel like I have a moral duty to start calling these people out."
Just How Stupid Do You Think We Are? A Marketing Guide to Pravda Vodka.
The marketing of super premium vodkas has reached a new low. In an over crowded category flooded with look-alike products after the runaway success of Grey Goose and club bottle service we’ve final hit rock bottom. The Pravda Vodka advertisement in this Sunday’s New York Time Magazine represents the worst of the worst in spirits adverting. I’m continually baffled how large liquor distributors target the most sophisticated, educated, and affluent demographics with such knuckle-scrapping apishness. So let’s just break it down and let the marketers speak for themselves:
On The House: The Super Soigné
On the House is our regular column written by the owners and operators of the great food and beverage establishments of New York. Today, your proprietor is Mr. David Chang of Momofuku Noodle Bar and Momofuku Ssam Bar.
Soigné. It’s about the only French word I understand.
You hear it repeatedly behind the scenes in certain restaurants…for servers, it basically means make sure that the guests have everything they need. For cooks, soigné = make it perfect.
When you have a really important diner – an influential food critic, a chef you admire, anyone the higher ups deem to be important – the soigné level rises to something absurd like “super soigné.” Anything short of culinary perfection means certain death for a cook.
"...right before service was over, somebody realized that the servers had mixed up the soigné table with a regular table..." >>On The House: Welcome to New Hollywood, Part II
On the House is our weekly column written by the owners and operators of the great food and beverage establishments of New York. Your resident proprietor is William Tigertt of Freemans.Yesterday, Part I of Welcome to New Hollywood; Today, Part II.
A few factors seem to be accelerating the movie trend. Dining as entertainment is nothing new, but now that big New York players have gotten a taste of the big casino action in Vegas, it’s hard to return to smaller food focused venues where many of them earned their stripes. The current NYC movie blockbuster restaurant boom is actually an “echo boom” of the high-end dining land grab in Vegas that started in the late nineties. Many of the top restaurant working professionals -- restaurateurs, chefs, sous chefs, sommeliers, and even servers -- were lured out to the dessert by fat pay checks only to be drawn back to the Big Apple years later, burnt out by the cultural void of Nevada. You only have to browse some resumes on StarChefs.com to see the common Vegas-and-back-again career path.
On The House: Welcome to New Hollywood, Part I
On the House is our weekly column written by the owners and operators of the great food and beverage establishments of New York. Your resident proprietor is William Tigertt of Freemans.Today, Part I of Welcome to New Hollywood; tomorrow, Part II.
The New York City dining scene and Hollywood have never had more in common. Both of these coastal industries are expensive, risky ventures where only the best financed insiders call the shots and make big money. Like the rise of the Hollywood studio system in the early twenties and thirties the dining landscape in NYC is in the middle of tectonic shift. With the costs of New York City real estate, labor, and goods skyrocketing – the mid ground for restaurants is drying up. Right now in Manhattan with a few noted exceptions, the most successful new concepts are all mega-extravagance blockbusters, or down and dirty indie gourmet street food. Leases, funding, and personnel for anything in the middle are a tough sell.
Restaurant groups and well established restaurateurs with half a dozen properties under their belt are the new movie moguls.
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