i'm ryan sutton, the new york food critic for bloomberg news.
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
Sliders Are The Cupcakes of The Burger World.
And the “future of burgers are non-beef burgers.” The Good People at Eater invited me to discuss the importance of burgers in my reviews for Bloomberg News and very real difficulties involved in trying to write a compelling critique about something that we all have very ingrained opinions about.
"The restaurant's website gives diners very little information about what they might be eating. There's no online menu, but there is a warning: `Please understand that there are no substitutions.' No substitutions, even though diners have no idea what the chef will prepare."
San Francisco Chronicle restaurant critic Michael Bauer awarded three out of four stars to Joshua Skenes’ relocated and revamped Saison. He praised the cuisine, but said the $298 per person establishment doesn’t “treat the customer with as much respect as it treats the food.”
I had the good fortune of talking with chef Skenes on Monday during a phone interview for another piece I’m working on. When I asked Skenes about Bauer’s column, the chef kept his comments relatively brief, saying ”With all criticism, there’s something to be learned. We have to take what’s good…and discard the rest for our own sanity. What we’re doing is different. It’s not the norm; it doesn’t fit into a standardized mold for America especially.“
He went on: “We cherish our guests, that’s the most important thing I took away from that review. Without our guests we’re nothing, and no restaurant is.”
t’s really only the press who seem to feel that having a restaurant and a vagina is some kind of bizarre dual ownership situation. Because female chefs get so little press coverage it’s easy for food writers to believe they’re as rare as unicorns, but if they just looked around a little bit they’d find plenty of us out here.
Eater National’s Amy McKeever asks: “What is it like being asked what it’s like being a female chef?,” and Amanda Cohen of Dirt Candy, as always, has an answer. Click through for the full, excellent interviews with Cohen, Momofuku’s Christina Tosi, Stir’s Kristen Kish and others.
Here’s a Tale of Two Carbones: If you’re hungry and decide to Google “Carbone NYC,” the first search result to show up is Carbone #1, a Hells Kitchen spot that hasn’t really come up on the radar of New York’s powerful and fickle culinary cognoscenti. Problem is, New York’s powerful and fickle culinary cognoscenti have been oohing and aahing over Carbone #2, a high-end Greenwich Village red sauce joint brought to us by the boys behind the awesome Torrisi Italian Specialties.
Of course, Google doesn’t appear to realize any of this, which is why Gael Greene, one of the archduchesses of food writing, tweeted that she spent 20 minutes at Carbone #1 last night before the manager informed her she might be in the wrong location.
Now it would be easy to criticize Google and claim that this is an example of what happens when faulty algorithms dictate search results instead of contemporary human relevance. But since Carbone #2 is packed every night and Carbone #1 presumably isn’t, you know what? Maybe there’s something cosmically appropriate about all this. If I were the owner of Carbone #1, I’d be doing a helluva job to try to keep people there.
And if New York City can peaceably accommodate Nomad and The NoMad, there’s enough room in this town for two Carbones. I’m sure of it.
Whales like it when you use their name. I like to get it out there right away. “Hey, Mr. Whale, great to see you again!” This plus eye contact is a magic incantation. They used to say that you shouldn’t try to shake the hand of a Whale, but all the best sommeliers these days are big touchers. Handshakes are passé, though. Hugs are more popular. Pascaline Lepeltier, Carla Rzeszewski, Laura Maniec: they give out hugs like busboys give out tap water. Hell, Mike Madrigale can barely talk to you if he can’t hold your left bicep for emphasis. An arm squeeze from him is like an exclamation point. The way it works nowadays, the sommelier presses flesh first, and then pours second.
Levi Dalton knows a thing or two about pouring wine for rich people; he used to be the beverage director at Masa, America’s most expensive restaurant. His Eater Essay on dealing with Whales is a most wonderful read. Check it out.
Tasting Menus Aren't Eight-Headed Monsters Intent on Stealing Your First-Born Children
Mr. Eric Ripert, in an Eater interview, and Steve Cuozzo, writing for the New York Post, inject some level-headedness into the Vanity Fair-fueled backlash against “tyrannical tasting menus.” Kindly recall that our sister site, The Price Hike, published its own defense of twenty-course meals back in 2012. As we’ve said before, there’s nothing tyrannical about tasting menus. Belarus is tyrannical. Tasting menus are dinner.
Eater gives us the second installment of its excellent “Sandy Chronicles” series, documenting how the owners of Home/Made, Barbarini Alimentari and Almondine struggle to get back on their feet in the aftermath of the biggest storm to hit New York in a generation.
Sadly, we already know the Barbarini people have decided to leave their home on South Street seaport, as Eater reported in December. The restaurant’s GoFundMe campaign is still active and has raised nearly $16,000 toward its $50,000 goal.
lock:
THE BAD DEAL SUPPORTS THIS PUBLIC SERVICE, BROUGHT TO US BY THE UPSTANDING MEN AND WOMEN AT EATER.
Here Are 70 Restaurants That Remained Closed One Month After Superstorm Sandy Struck
Kudos to Eater for this fine piece of public service journalism, and for reminding us that while Sandy devastated the Northeastern United States over a month ago, many good places to eat still haven’t gotten back on their feet.
UPDATE: The Purple Fig is again answering phone calls, as Groupon has notified us (the restaurant’s phone line was not working as of this morning). A reservationist tells us that The Purple Fig will be opening later this week.
Dear Groupon: We’re not necessarily opposed to you helping out restaurants that are having a rough go of it, but The Purple Fig on The Upper West Side appears to be closed, and was apparently already closed by the time you emailed me about this deal earlier today.
The Purple Fig was supposed to re-open on September 7, but the phone line remains disconnected, as My Upper West and Eater.com reported yesterday. I guess you don’t read the blogs, do you, Groupon?
You see here’s the thing. We “journalists” always call the phone numbers we print on our stories right before publication. It’s part of a funny little process we call “fact-checking.” The number you printed on your deal doesn’t work.
We’re gonna go ahead and say that if a restaurant doesn’t come back from vacation, and doesn’t have a phone line, you probably should be selling deals for that venue, because it’s probably closed. And selling a Groupon for a closed restaurant — you know it hombre — that’s a BAD DEAL.
FACT: You can bring a concealed weapon to a Texas restaurant, but it's often illegal to bring your own bottle of wine to a Texas restaurant.
Yeah, it’s a BAD DEAL. Though truth be told we’re generally not fans of bringing our own wines (or guns) into high-end restaurants anyway. Eater’s Talia Baiocchi investigates what Texas restaurants are doing to get around the “wine-from-home-ban.” Maybe they’ll work on guns next.
Ms. Baiocchi also digs into the ”corkage cultures” of Chicago, New York, Los Angeles and elsewhere in this fine piece. She was nice enough to chat with Bad Deal Editor Ryan Sutton for a few comments. Check it out.
This New York restaurant makes you sign a friggin waiver before eating in a pitch black dining room. Yeah, it's a BAD DEAL.
Amanda Kludt and Greg Morabito, the authors of this Eater review, appear to have experienced a panic attack amid all the awfulness at Dans Le Noir. They ate there so we don’t have to. It goes without saying that no one should ever have to sign a waiver before eating at a restaurant, EVER.
DEAR PRICE HIKERS & BAD DEALERS: Thanks for making our first year a most excellent year! As you know, we’re big fans of statistics, so we’ll admit we delayed this anniversary message by a few months until we hit a certain milestone.
Tumblr, unlike Twitter, doesn’t publicly display followers, and we fully support that policy, as it helps everyone focus on creating, reading, and sharing awesome content, instead of encouraging users to boast about analytics and follow the front-runners.
But that all said, we’re humbled to announce that within the last 36 hours, we crossed 10,000 followers for both The Bad Deal & The Price Hike, making us 20,000 strong (Of course, many of you follow BOTH of our blogs, so take that number with a grain of sea salt).
To some, our followership might seem tiny, but we’re pretty gosh darn happy that a growing community finds value in our sometimes silly, sometimes studied musings on food inflation, daily deals, digital cookbooks, and most importantly, consumer price transparency.
For all this, we’d like to send proper thank you’s to:
- Bloomberg News, for being awesome.
- The awesome Tumblr folks, for making the world’s best blogging platform. Seriously.
- The Eater People, for the awesome can of tomatoes they sent me last year, which BETTER BE from San Marzano.
- All our awesome readers. We’re humbled by your loyalty, and we pledge to do our best to fulfill our mission, which is to promote financial literacy through consumer price transparency. Or put more simply, we want to help you better spend your hard-earned money. Mostly at restaurants, but increasingly, elsewhere.
Sincerely,
Ryan Sutton, The Editor.
Gordon Ramsay Charging $135 for "Limited Edition" Meal of Salad, Soup, Steak & Dessert
At the Outback, a meal of soup, salad, steak and dessert would qualify as dinner. At Gordon Ramsay Steakhouse in Las Vegas, it’s a TASTING MENU, and an exclusive one at that — there are apparently only 200 left, reports Eater.com. Please let us know if you sample the menu, because if you do, we’ve got a bridge to sell you. We’re calling this one a BAD DEAL and a STRONG SELL.
Recall that $125 ($10 less) will get you 10 or more courses of two-Michelin-starred fare at Momofuku Ko in New York. (Note: a previous version of this post stated that the Ramsay menu was $125, we were DELIGHTED to find out the price is actually $135). To be fair, a receptionist at the restaurant noted that you get to “keep” the tasting menu, which comes with a signed picture of Gordon Ramsay.
