"The transubstantiation of the turnip"
August 21, 2015 9:03 AM Subscribe

Four scathing restaurant reviews (Per Se, Eleven Madison Park, Chef's Table, and Masa) for the price of one! Or for the price of $3569.63, to be more accurate. In which Harper's intrepid restaurant critic gleefully excoriates to the dreams and excesses of New York’s most fashionable eateries.
posted by c'mon sea legs (212 comments total) 46 users marked this as a favorite

There's a little bit of Amis in this review. I've already marked up a printout and sent it on.
posted by boo_radley at 9:12 AM on August 21, 2015 [2 favorites]

This food is not designed to be eaten, an incidental process. It is designed to make your business rival claw his eyes out.

I am enjoying this a great deal.
posted by sandettie light vessel automatic at 9:14 AM on August 21, 2015 [12 favorites]

the food is so overtended and overdressed I am amazed it has not developed the ability to scream in your face, walk off by itself, and sulk in its room.

Angry restaurant critics are the best.
posted by teponaztli at 9:26 AM on August 21, 2015 [33 favorites]

I would have gone less with the Animal Farm jokes and more with Watership Down, but that's just a matter of person preference and because I have seen the warren and it is covered with blood.
posted by maxsparber at 9:28 AM on August 21, 2015 [6 favorites]

The killer line, for me: "Presently, as if we were not amazed enough by the transubstantiation of the turnip, they bring a golden, inflated pig’s bladder in a dish, as a cat might bring in a dead bird — look, a bladder, see how much urine a pig can store in itself!"
posted by c'mon sea legs at 9:30 AM on August 21, 2015 [26 favorites]

In other news David Chang just opened a fucking killer fried chicken sandwich joint where you can get a world-class sandwich for like 8 dollars. By all means waste your money, just know that the peasants can have nice things sometimes too.
posted by thsmchnekllsfascists at 9:30 AM on August 21, 2015 [15 favorites]

It is not, to me, food, because it owes more to obsession than to love. It is not, psychologically, nourishing. It is weaponized food, food tortured and contorted beyond what is reasonable; food taken to its illogical conclusion; food not to feed yourself but to thwart other people.

Right on the money.
posted by ryanshepard at 9:33 AM on August 21, 2015 [33 favorites]

I love it. Nothing as bracing as cutting review, beautifully crafted: "Through Itself is such a preposterous restaurant, I wonder if a whole civilization has gone mad and it has been sent as an omen to tell us of the end of the world — not in word, as is usual, but in salad."

Yes, it has.
posted by feste at 9:35 AM on August 21, 2015 [6 favorites]

So I'm not adept at reading tone. But, when the writer of this masturbatory spill called the food at the second place "pretentious", she was going for irony, right?

This is like hate-fucking in review form.
posted by dios at 9:37 AM on August 21, 2015 [16 favorites]

This is like hate-fucking in review form.

You just made me love it more.
posted by maxsparber at 9:40 AM on August 21, 2015 [32 favorites]

Huh, "Animal Farm in Orwell, Vermont" is not a joke but a real farm. I'm looking from satire to reality, and from reality to satire, and from satire to reality again, but already it's impossible to say which is which.
posted by moonmilk at 9:42 AM on August 21, 2015 [40 favorites]

I didn't think it was possible for an angry review to actually put me on the side of a restaurant that charges hundreds of dollars for a meal of precious, tiny plates, but this one did. The writer is entirely too smug and self-congratulatory. Sort of like the chefs who create these kinds of menus.

(Also, the couple of times she points out that a menu was weirdly capitalized, she was referring to things written in title case, which may be "weird" if you're not used to seeing it on a menu, but it's also really common.)
posted by mudpuppie at 9:42 AM on August 21, 2015 [13 favorites]

Pig bladder dish is a riff on a classic french dish poulet en vessie.

Even Chang would laugh at you for saying a fuku chicken sandwich is somehow equivalent to these places - and I like the fuku sandwich.
posted by JPD at 9:45 AM on August 21, 2015 [3 favorites]

dios: "This is like hate-fucking in review form."

"like"? That's almost hate-fucking in review form itself, dios.

Many of these sentences are finely polished and beautifully set: "when you can wow no more, go shed. "
posted by boo_radley at 9:45 AM on August 21, 2015

I think this is really the best line:

My companion made the booking in her own name. This was, in retrospect, an error. She was promptly asked by the Masa receptionist: “Are they celebrating anything special that night?” Masa customers do not use telephones; drugged by the strange air of the Manhattan super-restaurant, I begin to think: is it possible they do not have hands?

Obviously there's absolutely nobody in the world who would dial their own telephone to book a $1,700 dinner, so the reservationists just assume it's an assistant calling.
posted by zachlipton at 9:46 AM on August 21, 2015 [13 favorites]

Also it's "Brooklyn Fare" not "Chef's Table"
posted by JPD at 9:46 AM on August 21, 2015

mudpuppie: "which may be "weird" if you're not used to seeing it on a menu, but it's also really common."

Dishes are not Titled. They may have Names, but it would be Silly to Consider them Titles.
posted by boo_radley at 9:47 AM on August 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

Per Se and EMP pretty explicitly have a few titled dishes.
posted by JPD at 9:48 AM on August 21, 2015

I loved this, and having had the "experience" at similar places, agree and applaud her reviews.
posted by dejah420 at 9:50 AM on August 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

As a lifelong turnip hater, this was a highlight:

The chef should not have bothered. It is entirely revolting, and the most grievous result of the cult of chef I have yet witnessed. Could no one have told him, “Don’t bother with the turnip course, you’re wasting your time, it’s a turnip”?
posted by Laura in Canada at 9:50 AM on August 21, 2015 [10 favorites]

I've eaten at precisely one expensive/pretentious/foodie/snout-to-tail restaurant in my life and when I read this piece a few days ago I realized I wasn't the only one who felt like this about food like that. One thing I remember saying to my wife was, "I thought I was going to be able to get through my entire life without having to eat head cheese. I guess I was wrong."

I know a lot of people thought this was over-the-top hate-fuck writing, and of course, it was; however, that is a kind of comedic writing I enjoy.
posted by kozad at 9:50 AM on August 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

Eh, I ate at one of these places once. The portions were small and I can't see myself spending the money to ever go back, but the food was, you know, tasty.
posted by prize bull octorok at 9:51 AM on August 21, 2015 [3 favorites]

What awful writing, trying so embarrassingly hard as to become pretty much unreadable.
posted by Cosine at 9:52 AM on August 21, 2015 [6 favorites]

One of these I'm gonna eat at Alinea... probably the only place I could see myself doing that kind of splurge. And just once.
posted by kmz at 9:52 AM on August 21, 2015

ha! I eat at restaurants like this* and I generally enjoy doing so**; I also laughed out loud at points in this review. My take home is that I am a terrible person, however you cut it.

*OK, not in New York so maybe there's a layer of pretension I'm missing.
** I'm a vegetarian too so am the picky client at these places.
posted by AFII at 9:54 AM on August 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

In a way, these food items aren't all that different from the medieval meals went to great lengths to combine as many expensive ingredients as possible just to prove you could afford it all. Back then it was lemons from North Africa, cinnamon from (what is now) Sri Lanka, dates from the Arabian Peninsula, all combined in weird dishes resembling more familiar food but falling short; today it's dry-aged duck, rabbits from Marin County, and Russian caviar.

Food is a vehicle for culture, and everything we eat, even godawful Soylent (you can't escape it just because it's slurry), says something about us; I think it's fun to read a horrified account of the peak of modern culinary culture. I'll never be able to experience it myself, and it's so much easier to know I'd hate what I'm missing than to think it really is the most divine stuff you can consume. Besides that, there's so much artifice built up around it, I don't know if I'd love the food itself or just the knowledge that I was eating it; maybe the sense of self-loathing I'd get from knowing this is what makes me enjoy these reviews so much.
posted by teponaztli at 9:54 AM on August 21, 2015 [11 favorites]

What awful writing, trying so embarrassingly hard as to become pretty much unreadable.

Agreed. However on a previous AskMe we traded a whole bunch of snarky reviews of awful restaurants that were way more fun to read. Have a gander.

Meanwhile I'm off to Wendy's for a Baconator just as a fuck-you to Keller and all he represents.
posted by JoeZydeco at 9:56 AM on August 21, 2015 [4 favorites]

Do you mean a fuku?
posted by Naberius at 10:00 AM on August 21, 2015 [3 favorites]

Also it's "Brooklyn Fare" not "Chef's Table"

It's Chef's Table at Brooklyn Fare, as she notes.
posted by ryanshepard at 10:00 AM on August 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

"It is not, to me, food, because it owes more to obsession than to love. It is not, psychologically, nourishing. It is weaponized food, food tortured and contorted beyond what is reasonable; food taken to its illogical conclusion; food not to feed yourself but to thwart other people."

This encapsulates all the feelings I've ever had about the swankiest restaurants I've been to. Also, I'm definitely overdue to reread Garlic and Sapphires.
posted by Catenation at 10:04 AM on August 21, 2015

For whatever reason, British food criticism delights in snide take-down pieces. This one wasn't even particularly well written. I've eaten at both Per Se and Eleven Madison Park, and dinner at Per Se in particular was one of my peak culinary experiences.
posted by slkinsey at 10:07 AM on August 21, 2015 [3 favorites]

This seems a little bit like going to the opera and complaining about the overwrought acting.

Like, yeah, it's baroque and decadent, that's the point. I'm not sure there is any restaurant like this in the entire world that the author wouldn't have hated.

In fact, she really couldn't afford to enjoy any of it, because that's a lot to expense to the magazine if you aren't going to be able to write the snide article you pitched.
posted by vogon_poet at 10:10 AM on August 21, 2015 [9 favorites]

This is one of those situations where I enjoy the decadent over-the-top thing and I also enjoy snarky criticism of the decadent over-the-top thing.

For example, I love Burning Man, but I also find snarky criticism of Burning Man to be delightful (and often spot-on). I love high fashion, but a good takedown of high fashion culture can be refreshing and fun to read.

I love reading about and thinking about modern "luxury" cuisine (though I can't afford to eat it), but I also loved this article. In conclusion, land of contrasts and all that.
posted by mai at 10:12 AM on August 21, 2015 [33 favorites]

he really couldn't afford to enjoy any of it

Tanya Gold is a lady-person, I believe.
posted by sandettie light vessel automatic at 10:13 AM on August 21, 2015 [5 favorites]

I ate the Tapas course (without the drink pairing) at Next and gained two pounds! It was because everything was so incredibly salty I practically retained all of the water in Lake Michigan. It was interesting and a few courses were good but on the whole it was not as good as the price or hype. Also I hope nobody who ate there during the Tapas menu had problems with high blood pressure.

Our dessert came in tree.
posted by srboisvert at 10:13 AM on August 21, 2015

Tanya Gold is a lady-person, I believe.

Yeah, I went to verify that and fixed it about a minute ago.
posted by vogon_poet at 10:15 AM on August 21, 2015

Eh, I ate at one of these places once. The portions were small and I can't see myself spending the money to ever go back, but the food was, you know, tasty.

Dude, they will stuff you at Per Se. Lunch cost $1,000 without liquor, but like.

I eat alot. I eat a stunning amount, not just for someone my size, but period. On my mother's family, I have generations of ancestors who were starving-ass Chinese peasants who got an egg once a year and beef once in a lifestime. I am the kind of person where, I show up to a buffet, and I do a lap around the room to survey the land, like my momma trained me. One time, an old dude saw how much was on my plate and blurted out, "Are you going to eat all that?" I didn't have the heart to tell him true, I had ham, and fried chicken, and gravy, and potato gratin, and green beans, and pasta salad, and it was only my third plate.

And yeah. The fullest I have ever been, in my entire life, was at Per Se.

We went for a very, very special meal, and I still remember, like, five main, listed courses in, after caviar and duck and foie gras and God knows how many little amuse bouches and special bread courses and palette cleanser sorbets and compliments-of-the-house snacks, and we're like, oh God, thank the Lord, we only have two dessert courses left -- annnnd they brought out a box of truffles. Like, we're talkign 20 pieces of chocoalte, and the lady who was taking care of us was, I swear to God, fully willing to put down all 20 pieces down on our tables if we wanted them to.

I think we managed two apiece. And there was further dessert. And more dessert. And they packed us home with a little snack of tiny muffins or whatever to eat later that night, beautifully wrapped with a little ribbon.

That shit hurt. I didn't eat a real meal until 24 hours, and it was the greatest food experience of my life.
posted by joyceanmachine at 10:15 AM on August 21, 2015 [61 favorites]

I've never been to any of the restaurants reviewed, but I've had meals from restaurants that are doing maybe a little too clever for its own good modernist cooking with titles. There's a certain ridiculous element to it, but the food is often actually pretty clever or at least interesting. Complaining that it's not psychologically nourishing and therefore not "food" is missing the point; you can do different things with food beyond beyond being psychologically nourishing. I had a dish once that consisted of salt water foam with a "sand" made of corn meal and little bits of shellfish and seaweed. The result wasn't something that I'd want for my last meal (although someone I was eating with genuinely loved it), but it was so much like sticking your head in the ocean and taking a bite that it was remarkable. That was worth eating for that experience (especially since I wasn't paying).

There's a certain ridiculousness to the whole experience, sure, and it can be fun to point that out, but this article missed the mark for me.

In other news David Chang just opened a fucking killer fried chicken sandwich joint where you can get a world-class sandwich for like 8 dollars. By all means waste your money, just know that the peasants can have nice things sometimes too.

And yet the DC Momofuku languishes. Get your shit together, Chang.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 10:15 AM on August 21, 2015 [2 favorites]

New York really is a theme park for the rich. Think I'll have a dirty water dog.
posted by monospace at 10:17 AM on August 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

Probably a minority opinion, but the author is trying way too hard to be funny. They aren't funny.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 10:18 AM on August 21, 2015 [4 favorites]

For those who find the whole thing nasty and overwritten -- and especially for those of you who realize how shoddily fact-checked it is -- I bring you Eater editor Helen Rosner's superb fisking.
posted by babelfish at 10:19 AM on August 21, 2015 [30 favorites]

Dude, they will stuff you at Per Se.

Exactly. I was fortunate enough to get the super soigné treatment because of reasons. But, yea, we had to literally (not figuratively literally but actually literally) entreat them to stop bringing us food. And I should hasten to point out that I can eat a lot of food.
posted by slkinsey at 10:20 AM on August 21, 2015

I enjoyed reading this almost as much as I enjoyed DFW's cruise ship piece and the fact that so many people here hate it only makes me cherish it more.
posted by poffin boffin at 10:24 AM on August 21, 2015 [34 favorites]

also i ate at 11 madison like 9 years ago and shamefully cannot remember a single thing we had except for all the seafood courses, my portions of which i forced my dining companion to eat surreptitiously behind his napkin rather than make a public fuss about food allergies.
posted by poffin boffin at 10:25 AM on August 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

For those who find the whole thing nasty and overwritten -- and especially for those of you who realize how shoddily fact-checked it is -- I bring you Eater editor Helen Rosner's superb fisking.

I think a lot of us like it specifically because of how nasty and overwritten it is.

I had a splitting migraine last night, the kind that makes you honestly want to die, and for whatever reason my normal impulse to be fair, to avoid nastiness and smug condescension - to be nice - has completely flown out the window. I don't care if the facts are wrong; I don't even care if the whole thing is made up, or if it was an excuse to expense thousands of dollars on three meals. I hate these fucking fancy restaurants that charge more than I could ever afford, that redefine food for a select few in ways I'll never be able to experience.

For whatever reason, I've had it, and today I'm completely happy to embrace that hate, however shoddy the presentation may be on close examination.
posted by teponaztli at 10:27 AM on August 21, 2015 [8 favorites]

"Boy, the food at this place is really terrible."
"Yeah, I know; and such small portions."
posted by blue_beetle at 10:31 AM on August 21, 2015 [8 favorites]

babelfish: "I bring you Eater editor Helen Rosner's superb fisking."

What a WELL ACTUALLY piece of writing. Helen reads like she wants to be fully engaged in the BDSM-dining experience of emotionally disengaged lecture-and-display serving. It would just be better if she took her weirdo gamergate-style HIGHLIGHTED PARAGRAPHS and wrote BUT I LIKE PER SE beneath each one.

And she doesn't know her latin, either, so why criticize somebody about translations?
posted by boo_radley at 10:32 AM on August 21, 2015 [11 favorites]

But all of the things that are wrong about these restaurants--the pretension, the over-wroughtness of it all, snootiness, efforts to be inaccessible, lack of self-awareness, the attempts to be the ones that define what excellence is--are exactly what this article is. That's why the whole thing feels like irony or performance art.

Per se : local favorite restaurant :: this article : zagat review
posted by dios at 10:34 AM on August 21, 2015 [7 favorites]

teponaztli, it's not just that the review is terribly written on closer examination.

There is actually some fairly nasty stuff about lololol homeless people, in the article, plus some rather racist stuff abotu Masa and magically mystical and mysterious Oriental-type folks working there. It's frankly disappointing that Harper published something like it. The link that babelfish has above highlights both of these things nicely.
posted by joyceanmachine at 10:35 AM on August 21, 2015 [3 favorites]

feels like irony

I just can't see a British writer deploying irony.
posted by sandettie light vessel automatic at 10:36 AM on August 21, 2015 [25 favorites]

I started out really disliking this review cycle/essay on the modern failings of mankind but it really grew on me. My husband and I like to get dressed up and go out to fancy restaurants and splurge lots and lots of money on a few courses and some wine, and it's interesting to see some of my darker feelings about modern restaurant culture crystallized.
posted by muddgirl at 10:37 AM on August 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

Looking at photos of Per Se, yeah... it looks like the lobby of a Marriott or an airport lounge, combined with a stuffy 1970s white-tablecloth restaurant.

Also, withholding tips? That's seriously terrible behavior (not that the patrons of a place like Per Se will care).

Look.... When Harpers' London food critic finds your restaurant to be absurdly pretentious, maybe you might want to dial things back a bit?

Also, I definitely giggled at "Ths Keyser Söze of squid"
posted by schmod at 10:41 AM on August 21, 2015 [2 favorites]

Irony requires intent, though. And it's not clear that there is intent here to use irony, British or not. It far more reads like a hate-fuck. It reads as if the assignment was to take these places down before she got there. I cannot imagine a scenario in which this person would have made this trip and done anything close to a glowing review. She clearly set out to hate fuck these restaurants and what (she perceives) they represent.

I suppose one could do a clever job of skewering the pretension of Per se in a very ironic way by utilizing over-the-top pretension in the writing. That is not this.
posted by dios at 10:42 AM on August 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

"Through itself" is an acceptable translation of per se.

I mean, fisk like the devil, but if you're going to call people on getting stuff wrong, stones and glass whatevers.
posted by maxsparber at 10:43 AM on August 21, 2015 [2 favorites]

And yet the DC Momofuku languishes.

Huh. I hadn't heard about this.... *googles* ..... oh, right. Of course it's going to be in CityCenter. Might as well put up a big banner around that entire block that says "THIS PLACE WAS NOT BUILT FOR THE LIKES OF YOU."
posted by schmod at 10:43 AM on August 21, 2015

From babelfish's storify link:

Maybe the reason your social encounters are unsuccessful is because you are awful

made me snort. And pretty much summed up my feelings on the original article.
posted by jaguar at 10:44 AM on August 21, 2015 [3 favorites]

It reads as if the assignment was to take these places down before she got there.

There is exactly zero chance that this is not true.
posted by Cosine at 10:45 AM on August 21, 2015 [4 favorites]

I've eaten at Per se a few times, out of my own pocket, going mostly by myself, and once with family. Multiple dishes are literally the best and most memorable Western foods I've ever tasted.

Except that I thought the food was made better on the times that I went alone. I can think of a bunch of totally different reasons as to why, but to this very day I am left with an open question as to why a diner should leave feeling that the cooking at this level can sometimes be inconsistent.
posted by polymodus at 10:48 AM on August 21, 2015 [2 favorites]

High End Magazine Writers and High End Restauranteurs goin' at it! Who do I root for? Can I simultaneously hold four opposing hemispheres of delight and disgust in my head at one time? This is like some Game of Thrones scene where two child-murderers are dueling with swords and you sort of support both of the causes they're fighting for and you can't decide if you want them to shake hands and join forces or simultaneously disembowel each other. Life was simpler when the acidic over-the-top takedown genre was relegated to counterculture zines printed at Kinko's and the Fearless Iconoclast vs The Man framing was crystal clear.
posted by prize bull octorok at 10:48 AM on August 21, 2015 [8 favorites]

What's funny is that the folks reminding us that restaurants can serve purposes other or above mere nourishment seem rankled that restaurant reviews can serve purposes other than or above the mere assessment of food.
posted by sandettie light vessel automatic at 10:48 AM on August 21, 2015 [29 favorites]

maxsparber: ""Through itself" is an acceptable translation of per se."

I know! That's what I said!
posted by boo_radley at 10:50 AM on August 21, 2015

There are a zillion places to go to get "psychologically nourishing" food. Places like this aren't offering that so much as Art Food. I never did understand Art but I understand many people do; nevertheless I found the article amusing enough to chuckle out loud at parts (although I agree it was a bit on the over-wrought side).
posted by Greg_Ace at 10:51 AM on August 21, 2015

tbh if i paid $1700 of anyone's money for me and one other person to eat fish i would hope to write a review like this but my real dream would be something like the actual cannibal shia leboeuf dancers. with papier-mache fish heads.
posted by poffin boffin at 10:52 AM on August 21, 2015 [4 favorites]

Who is doing that? Who are these folks to whom you are referring?

Whoever keeps saying hate fuck.
posted by maxsparber at 10:52 AM on August 21, 2015

Stop saying hate fuck!
posted by boo_radley at 10:53 AM on August 21, 2015 [2 favorites]

haaaaaaaate
posted by maxsparber at 10:55 AM on August 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

It's not just "artsy-fartsy Art" though. Specifically, Through Itself did once dish me the platonic ideal of a scallop, and I mean that to compliment the restaurant. But of course, I say it notwithstanding that the thing these restaurants do is enabled by capitalism and fetishization effects that this article gives plenty of examples of.
posted by polymodus at 10:55 AM on August 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

fuck
posted by maxsparber at 10:55 AM on August 21, 2015 [5 favorites]

I keep switching between this thread and the Franzen one and losing track of which one I'm reading.
posted by rtha at 10:57 AM on August 21, 2015 [11 favorites]

There is actually some fairly nasty stuff about lololol homeless people, in the article, plus some rather racist stuff abotu Masa and magically mystical and mysterious Oriental-type folks working there.

I didn't read any of it that way. I don't know Brooklyn. I assumed homeless people and poverty were mentioned to highlight the absurdity of gentrification that would place a three-Michelin-starred restaurant in a rapidly changing neighborhood. Maybe that is not the case, and I unwittingly enjoyed someone's laugh at the expense of other peoples' misfortune.

I don't know anything about Masa. I assumed that the writing about Masa was intended to skewer the seriousness of his reputation. It may very well be that I was so bitter about all of this, so wanted to imagine that rich people are deluding themselves into enjoying themselves when they spend thousands of dollars on a single meal, that I too quickly answered my own question about whether or not her description was racist by assuming it was a subversion. Maybe I was being generous with her in a way that gave acceptance to racism, and that's an awful thought.

I did get the sense that the author is probably not someone I would want to be around. Maybe that should have clued me in to what I was overlooking, that this was a work of bad journalism by a horrible person, and inexcusable. But I let it slide, and maybe I shouldn't have. At the very least, nothing can prevent me from resenting everything these restaurants stand for. It's probably not rational. I most likely feel this way because I love food, and this is a dimension of food that is forever out of my reach; I suppose that's not a place where clear, thoughtful reflection comes from.
posted by teponaztli at 10:58 AM on August 21, 2015 [2 favorites]

I like my fancy meals the way I like my writing--needlessly baroque, preposterous, borderline offensive and consistently riding the edge of self-satire. Or to put another way, I adore absolutely everything about this article.
posted by thivaia at 10:59 AM on August 21, 2015 [16 favorites]

I was surprised by Helen Rosner's response to this/these reviews, and not just because I found it absurd and funny. It wasn't too long ago she wrote this, in defense of Pete Wells' smackdown on Guy Fieri's joint:

"So what happens, as with Guy's American Kitchen, when the restaurant is zeitgeist? When the man whose name is above the door itself is both a part of and a shaper of popular culture? This is the golden, shining moment any critic lives for: This isn't the restaurant as a place to get dinner, this is the restaurant as culture, as a microcosm of the decisions that we make as a population about our priorities and our desires. Wells rose to the occasion, blazing righteous fire and never once throwing a punch that wasn't deserved. That's exactly what we want--and need -- our critics to do."
posted by Lisitasan at 11:00 AM on August 21, 2015 [4 favorites]

>Who is doing that? Who are these folks to whom you are referring?
Whoever keeps saying hate fuck.
posted by maxsparber at 12:52 PM on August 2

Well, I'm the one who said hate-fuck, so if this is referring to me, then I'm not sure how I am one of the "folks reminding us that restaurants can serve purposes other or above mere nourishment." Pretty sure I didn't say that at all, which is why I thought that was a pretty transparent snarky torching of a strawman. In fact, I didn't say one supportive thing about these restaurants. I was just critical of this wank by the writer, just as I would be critical of the wank that is that radish dish. Maybe I am just anti-wank.
posted by dios at 11:03 AM on August 21, 2015

I WAS JUST TEASING JEEZ
posted by maxsparber at 11:05 AM on August 21, 2015

joy has been forbidden
posted by poffin boffin at 11:06 AM on August 21, 2015 [13 favorites]

I didn't love this, mostly because the actual and specifics critique of the food were few, although I did love this paragraph:

It is ragingly tasteless. One tiny dish of salmon, black rye, and pickled cucumber is, we are told, “inspired by immigrants.” Were they very tiny immigrants? Our main waiter — an efficient woman with a calmly quizzical face, who manages the spiel without once acknowledging its absurdity — repeats it with no intonation but with a twist: “based on the immigrant experience.” Only a person with limited access to immigrants would design a paean to their native cuisine — in this case, Ashkenazi Jewish — within a $640.02 meal (service included) and expect anything other than appalled laughter, or a burp of shame. This is the anti-intellectualism — and pretension — of this particular age of excess..
posted by latkes at 11:12 AM on August 21, 2015 [6 favorites]

I did get the sense that the author is probably not someone I would want to be around.

"I have plenty of friends I don't like." --Violet Crawley, Dowager Countess of Grantham
posted by gimonca at 11:21 AM on August 21, 2015 [5 favorites]

I bring you Eater editor Helen Rosner's superb fisking.

She seems pretty wrong about a lot of things as well: the labor law finding that awarded employees 500,000 seems pretty straightforward. The "homeless person" bit is about gentrification of Brooklyn, and the comment about the subway trip is about the mood of the diners (from Manhattan, apparently), waiting at their communal table for foodnot the critic. Saying that 11 Madison Park was built by insurers and is a strange space is not contradicted by saying that the building wasn't intended to be a restaurant.

I could go on, but an editor who apparently misses the entire point of an article and tweets about it at length (minus punctuation) and then POSTS THAT AS AN ARTICLE is seriously not worth my time. I love good food, but when you eat it in an atmosphere of stilted self-important money worshipping strangeness, it's entirely worth making fun of.
posted by oneirodynia at 11:23 AM on August 21, 2015 [15 favorites]

... and no, butter in a quenelle shape is not a quenelle, which is a poached dumpling, of sorts. Sheesh. I'm closing that tab of idiocy now.
posted by oneirodynia at 11:26 AM on August 21, 2015 [3 favorites]

It is not, to me, food, because it owes more to obsession than to love. It is not, psychologically, nourishing. It is weaponized food, food tortured and contorted beyond what is reasonable; food taken to its illogical conclusion; food not to feed yourself but to thwart other people.

Or, as I think of it, "Stunt Food".
posted by mikelieman at 11:29 AM on August 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

No, that's fine dining done poorly. Truly great fine dining isn't like that. It's not stunt food. The EMP bagel thing is stunt food.
posted by JPD at 11:33 AM on August 21, 2015

Butter in the shape of a quenelle is a quenelle of butter. The word refers to both the shape and the dish the shape is named after.
posted by Small Dollar at 11:33 AM on August 21, 2015 [7 favorites]

I work at another tasting menu in NY. I remember Tanya coming in to eat. She told me that same story about BK Fare (about scratching her back on the wall). She must have decided she didn't hate us enough to include in the piece.
posted by [tk] at 11:33 AM on August 21, 2015 [6 favorites]

Traditionally, [quenelle] refers to a delicate dumpling made with ingredients of ground or minced meat, poultry, fish or vegetables, which has been seasoned and bound with a paste made with the use of breadcrumbs, eggs, egg yolks, fat, flour, rice or cream.... As times have changed and the term has been applied to additional foods, the Quenelle has become a word associated with a shape, not an ingredient. The shape is formed into an smooth oval similar to a football or a three-sided eliptical shape that is used to make a pleasing presentation for the semi-soft foods being served.

posted by jaguar at 11:34 AM on August 21, 2015 [2 favorites]

Yeah, a lot of that "fisking" (hey, i learned a knew word today!) just seemed like the tweeter didn't really get a lot of the jokes. Or really was reading generously at all. What is the point of doing something like that? Is she a fan of the restaurants and was defending them by attacking the article? Was she trying to increase her own writerly reputation by beating the original author at her own game, smug snark? All of it is flabbergasting to me.
I mean, it's Harpers, what do you expect? Why this article? Why now? Many issues of Harpers have stuff like this, they've got to do something to break up the brilliant and soul-crushing investigative journalism, and the New Yorker already used cartoons.
posted by wyndham at 11:35 AM on August 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

I was wondering if the quenelle thing was because calling the shape a quenelle was an Americanism?
posted by JPD at 11:36 AM on August 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

Actually, what did bother me about Rosner's response was that it substituted one form of nastiness for another, making it unacceptable to loathe Per Se, but perfectly alright to say "maybe your social encounters are unsuccessful because you're an awful person." I enjoyed Gold's snark at the expense of the restaurants, but it never felt personal, and this does.

Maybe I'm giving her a double standard, but even when Gold talks about monotone deliveries from wait staff it's about what they're being forced to recite, not that they're stupid. The only thing directed at people is at the chefs, and even then more in the sense of how far it's all gone, not that they're awful people.

Also, the whole thing about the little girl was obviously the standard joke about how British people don't confront other people, even if they're little girls. I mean, that much was clear, right? Why else would she mention being British?
posted by teponaztli at 11:37 AM on August 21, 2015 [9 favorites]

So she liked Blanca? ( just a guess but why would she review atera in that timeframe)
posted by JPD at 11:38 AM on August 21, 2015

good guess! yeah, or she couldn't find enough things to hate about us.
posted by [tk] at 11:40 AM on August 21, 2015

Or maybe more reviews are coming!!
posted by a fiendish thingy at 11:41 AM on August 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

joy has been forbidden

Please back the Kickstarter for my new high end restaurant (the name of which is just a diacritical mark that changes weekly), the signature dish will be the waiter brings you a deconstructed peasant vegetable and whispers harshly, "I forbid you to enjoy this," as he sets it on your table.
posted by prize bull octorok at 11:44 AM on August 21, 2015 [26 favorites]

Up next: modern art, crazy, right?! My six year old could paint that!
posted by kmz at 11:55 AM on August 21, 2015 [9 favorites]

A beet is promised, but not forthcoming.
41-
posted by boo_radley at 11:56 AM on August 21, 2015 [16 favorites]

A brace of coneys
Three hot dogs, served dans eau.
22-
posted by boo_radley at 12:00 PM on August 21, 2015 [10 favorites]

didn't feel useful at all unless your goal was just to express how much your resent something just for existing.

And it worked perfectly! It was exactly what I needed the morning after an agonizing migraine.
posted by teponaztli at 12:11 PM on August 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

Reads thread, eats plate of beans.
posted by urbanwhaleshark at 12:17 PM on August 21, 2015 [4 favorites]

moonmilk: Huh, "Animal Farm in Orwell, Vermont" is not a joke but a real farm. I'm looking from satire to reality, and from reality to satire, and from satire to reality again, but already it's impossible to say which is which.

I'm sure it's gauche to defend a farm in the next town over from my family's farm, but I don't see anything in that site that approaches the tone of the nonsense skewered in this piece. Yes, there are a couple of overly earnest lines on the "About" page and one or two of the photographs are twee and instagrammy, but on balance it seems like a nice representation of people trying to make a quality, labor-intensive product and find a market for it.

Farming is hard, yo. Especially farming on a small, sustainable scale in the current agricultural economy. If folks find that they need to put an old-timey filter on their photos to help them sell butter I'm ok with that. My family has been dairying (well, grain, then sheep, then dairy since the 1850s or so) on the same land at a similar scale for 225 years, selling through local creameries and then bigger co-ops like Cabot. I hate that the produce of family farms seems like a luxury good, but right now the alternative seems to be not having family farms at all.
posted by GodricVT at 12:30 PM on August 21, 2015 [7 favorites]

Nothing wrong with the farm itself! Just the name. Kind of like naming a restaurant Sophie's Choice.
posted by moonmilk at 12:34 PM on August 21, 2015 [3 favorites]

Huh. I didn't know Harper's was still publishing.
posted by aught at 12:44 PM on August 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

*heh* You're right moonmilk, that's a bit much, and definitely raises questions about exactly how earnest they are.
posted by GodricVT at 12:59 PM on August 21, 2015

Huh. I didn't know Harper's was still publishing.

I think that's not uncommon. The October 2013 issue ran 2,500-word letter from the publisher arguing that despite appearances Harper's is still relevant, and not going away anytime soon. (Of course this was only read by its readers...)
posted by paper chromatographologist at 1:04 PM on August 21, 2015

Noting that I seem to be behind a paywall, so this is a comment on scathing reviews in general...

Once a year I do some review writing for a web site that tries to review every single show in New York's Fringe Festival. The editor has drilled it into us all that he only wants constructive criticism from us - but ye gods, there have been a couple shows I've seen where I have desperately wanted to go full-on Dorothy Parker on people's ass. I've usually coped with it by taking a friend aside and telling them the review that I really want to write to get it out of my system, then taking a deep breath and writing my more measured review. (Last night I ran into one of the other reviewers at a bar and let him vent his wish-I-could review to me; I feel like I was paying it forward.)
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 1:06 PM on August 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

A great thing about not being in a major city like NY is that if my wife and I go to a nice place that has a chef with various awards and needs reservations way in advance, and we get appetizers, entrees, a bottle of wine and dessert, it's like $200 and I can think "wow, pricey meal ... yikes" and then not feel that bad about it. I haven't been any place as expensive as Per Se but I would imagine my ability to enjoy food would top out at a certain level. If I was spending that much and anything was remotely flawed I'd be super uptight about it. Also a big burger and fries with beer is about the most food I can possibly eat. If I go beyond that, it's up all night with a stomach ache for me. If I shelled out $1000+ and ended up not feeling so hot I'd be pissed.

But ... sometime before I die I will probably go someplace ridiculous and I'll do my best to be open-minded. I realize these places aren't for normals. I do agree that the article is as silly in its own way as the lifestyle restaurants it's skewering.
posted by freecellwizard at 1:08 PM on August 21, 2015

This article is horrrrrrrrible. My god. This woman can only write the Guy's American Kitchen & Bar of jokes.

Are people who don't like excessively "fancy" food the same as people who turn their nose up at difficult novels and complex musical arrangements? Can we collectively agree to ignore their opinions? Goodness gracious.

Feel free to criticize the snideness, stuffiness, insane prices and self-importance of people who can't see the forest for the trees... but criticizing the food itself on the grounds that you don't like people who take food seriously is meaningless. What's the fucking point? I mean, feel free to go to Japan and laugh at all the sushi chefs who are excellent at their craft as well, why not.

I mean, go ahead and write about how you don't like the orchestra because they all wear suits and it's expensive and you can't understand any of the music anyway, but... it really doesn't need to be published.
posted by easter queen at 1:36 PM on August 21, 2015 [4 favorites]

Also what the fuck did you scream for? Are you kidding me, lady? Are you really shocked that everyone turned to look at you when you screamed? For chrissakes.

Yoda eyes. Oh god.
posted by easter queen at 1:44 PM on August 21, 2015 [2 favorites]

The reviews of the reviewer have been far more enlightening. The piece, however, was incredibly entertaining.
posted by Dark Messiah at 1:47 PM on August 21, 2015 [2 favorites]

idk i think maybe when a sharp piece of metal unexpectedly gouges a bloody wound in your flesh it is okay to react.
posted by poffin boffin at 1:48 PM on August 21, 2015 [10 favorites]

A brace of coneys
Three hot dogs, served dans eau.

Wouldn't a brace be two?
posted by TedW at 1:51 PM on August 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

I can't think of a time when I've been physically injured that I've actually, uh, screamed. Let alone a time when I have screamed and been taken aback when people subsequently look at me!! Gasp! Those swine!

Maybe she screamed, but I'm led to believe by the rest of the piece that it was just bad writing. Maybe she doesn't know what a scream is.
posted by easter queen at 1:54 PM on August 21, 2015

man if I got cut bad at one of these restaurants I'd totally try to leverage it into getting an extra spoonful of truffle foam or whatever
posted by prize bull octorok at 1:58 PM on August 21, 2015 [9 favorites]

but criticizing the food itself on the grounds that you don't like people who take food seriously is meaningless.

The writer criticised some of the food, but here's a selection of quotes where she actually liked the food, so I'm not sure if your argument holds much water.

"But I can tell you that the cornet of salmon — world famous in canapé circles — is crisp and light and I enjoyed it"

"the lamb is good"

"The Hudson Valley Foie Gras (“Seared with Brussels Sprouts and Smoked Eel”) is divine; the Widow’s Hole Oysters (“Hot and Cold with Apple and Black Chestnuts”) are excellent"

"I ate a procession of tiny and exquisite pieces of fish and seafood"

"a wondrous, sweet green cake that shed green dust on the counter, like a fleeting dream"

She's a writer having fun, taking the mickey out of some pretentious restaurants and liking and hating some of the food.

The outrage is bizarre.
posted by urbanwhaleshark at 2:02 PM on August 21, 2015 [23 favorites]

criticizing the food itself on the grounds that you don't like people who take food seriously is meaningless. What's the fucking point

She does say some of it was good. Just, er, not all of it.

Anyway, I didn't think this was about food so much as it was about restaurants.
posted by teponaztli at 2:02 PM on August 21, 2015 [2 favorites]

truffle foam or whatever

excuse me it was MUSHROOM DUST
posted by poffin boffin at 2:07 PM on August 21, 2015 [2 favorites]

She's a writer having fun, taking the mickey out of some pretentious restaurants and liking and hating some of the food. The outrage is bizarre.

That was my reading of it too. Nor did I consider the writing "terrible"; it struck me as a specific, particularly "British" style that I've encountered before.

Anyway, it's fascinating to see all the different reads people get out of the article, and the reactions to it.
posted by Greg_Ace at 2:18 PM on August 21, 2015 [3 favorites]

TedW: "A brace of coneys
Three hot dogs, served dans eau.

Wouldn't a brace be two?"

Yes. Two coneys are indeed brought to the table.
posted by boo_radley at 2:26 PM on August 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

I should have been specific about the fact that her weirdness about turnips and small food and restraint is what is so freaking irritating here. I mean, "the food was delicious, but it was SO DUMB!! Who are these assholes sitting next to me eating it??" OK, whatever.
posted by easter queen at 2:35 PM on August 21, 2015

Peoples' reactions to this seem to be based on how seriously they took it as food criticism. I thought it was a fun read; I didn't really think it was intended to be a serious article about the state of the modern restaurant, or the quality of food at famous places. It was sarcastic and snotty and fun, a guilty-pleasure complaint about the conventions and weirdness surrounding exclusive, ostensibly wonderful things, written by someone prepared to get the least possible enjoyment out of them.

I can certainly understand objections to the tone, but I mean, there must be at least some level on which we can all agree there's something inherently weird about paying hundreds of dollars for turnips and pig's bladder, and the unspoken acceptance that this is not only normal, but preferable to most other experiences. I thought that was what this was all about.
posted by teponaztli at 2:39 PM on August 21, 2015 [2 favorites]

If I shelled out $1000+ and ended up not feeling so hot I'd be pissed.

sometime before I die I will probably go someplace ridiculous and I'll do my best to be open-minded.

Not that I'm like, some, super-fancy eater of fancy shit who has eaten at hundreds of places with five thousand stars each who can tell you exactly what the San Pellegrino list gets wrong, and there are so totally people at Metafilter who can speak to this way better and way more authoritatively than I can -- but, like, I've eaten at a fair number of fancy restaurants like you describe going to. Mr. Machine and I don't live in one of the super-huge metro areas, but we live in one with a decent food scene that gets a fair amount of national press, and we're obnoxious yuppies, so we eat out a lot, to the point where $200 is a fancy dinner out, but not, y'know. Super-remarkable.

Per Se just blows all those other places out of the water. I've never eaten at another three-star Michelin place and can't afford to make it a habit on the reg in the future, but it's probably more accurate to think of places like Per Se not just as, like, a bunch of tasty food, but more like going to seeing an incredible performance put on by some of the best people at those jobs in the world?

Because the food is really super-amazing and mind-bendingly good and probably some of the most wonderful things you will ever put in your mouth, but Per Se is noted for their service, and eating there redefined for me just how good service could be, y'know? Their labor practices may be shitty, but oh my God, I never knew I could feel so comfy in a place that beautiful. We clearly weren't the kind of people who eat at Per Se all the time, so I was a little worried about feeling out of place or getting the bad table with the awkward server who is still being trained, like has happened to us multiple times at two star Michelins?

And yet, shit was magical. We were so well taken care of. Nothing was ever awkward. Nothing was weird. Everything was perfect. I ate more than I have ever eaten at a Lancaster smorgasbord (i.e., the place where I load up my plate with ham AND fried chicken AND gravy AND pasta salad AND cheesy potatoes AND go back four times with adjustments in the proportions of those things that appeared on my plate AND hit the dessert bar and hit it hard, because old man doubter, this is how I roll.) And yet, I somehow managed to feel like the classiest person in the world, rolling out of Per Se with my souvenir menu and tasty, just-in-case, maybe-you'll-be-hungry-on-the-ride-home snacks.

In the end, we spent a shitload of money for food, and I deffo ate so much I was uncomfortable -- but it was kinda how I would've spent a shitload of money and been tired and back-achy and needing down time after seeing the Royal Shakespeare Company do Hamlet, or going to see the Vienna Philharmonic live. Except that, y'know, instead of being with hundreds or maybe even thousands of other people, we got to see these incredible professionals do their work for an audience of, like, 30 people or whatever who were in Per Se that day.

Man, I want to put some Oysters and Pearls in my face RIGHT NOW.
posted by joyceanmachine at 2:41 PM on August 21, 2015 [11 favorites]

Looking down at your nose at people who don't "understand" music or "understand" food or "understand" a "dining experience" in the right way is despicably elitist. And if you're one of those people you're probably the most responsible for this article existing and, frankly, I'm glad it annoyed you.
posted by urbanwhaleshark at 2:52 PM on August 21, 2015 [2 favorites]

Others in this thread have said as much, but: it's easily possible for the same person to wholly appreciate a meal at Per Se, say, and simultaneously find the linked review a fun read. If you don't like the way Gold writes, or the way Gold is, there are several other people writing about restaurants whose approaches may mesh better with your tastes.
posted by sandettie light vessel automatic at 2:52 PM on August 21, 2015 [3 favorites]

$8 for a chicken sandwich is approaching the absurd. $1700 for sushi .... Ha ha ha.

Folks chiming in to defend these dining experiences may need to reassess their priorities in life.
posted by mygoditsbob at 3:02 PM on August 21, 2015

the Quenelle has become a word associated with a shape, not an ingredient. The shape is formed into an smooth oval similar to a football or a three-sided eliptical shape that is used to make a pleasing presentation for the semi-soft foods being served.

That doesn't make saying a pat of butter is "shaped like a quenelle" wrong, you know, any more than saying "shaped like a cube". In fact, it's much clearer to say that than "two pats of butter, one shaped like a tiny horse* and a quenelle." To some people, that would mean two pats of butter of varied shapes AND a steamed fish blob. I mean, if I said I was having a quenelle for lunch, would anyone assume it was a pat of butter or Cool Whip? Why is it so hard for an editor to understand this writing? Really, her idiotic tweets are nit-picky foofaraw. I would have loved a good snarky rebuttal to a snarky review of the posh resto-industrial complex, but that was not it.

*sorry, don't remember what it actually was and not looking now. Oh wait, a beehive?
posted by oneirodynia at 3:04 PM on August 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

Are people who don't like excessively "fancy" food the same as people who turn their nose up at difficult novels and complex musical arrangements? Can we collectively agree to ignore their opinions?

Based on the threads here about literary fiction, I'm gonna say no.
posted by escabeche at 3:08 PM on August 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

Looking down at your nose at people who don't "understand" music or "understand" food or "understand" a "dining experience" in the right way is despicably elitist

Yeah, it's sooooo elitist to enjoy art and not immediately dismiss it out of hand. Because you don't want to be one of "those" "elitist" "art-loving" "art" "lovers." All I'm saying is if you liked the damn food, maybe don't turn your nose up at all the other people around you, enjoying the same damn food? The lady is an asshole.

It's not about not enjoying in the right way... it's about being so smug that you can do something unquestionably elite and delightful and both enjoy it and also intimate that you are so much better than everyone else who would enjoy it, because you're cool and they're drool or whatever.
posted by easter queen at 3:09 PM on August 21, 2015 [4 favorites]

Based on the threads here about literary fiction, I'm gonna say no.

It is true, MeFi loves their genre food.
posted by easter queen at 3:09 PM on August 21, 2015 [2 favorites]

I will own that it's very decent of folks here to take a stand on behalf of these struggling little eateries in the face of that insincere writer lady.
posted by sandettie light vessel automatic at 3:15 PM on August 21, 2015 [8 favorites]

I think a lot of the people who are outraged by this writer perhaps don't have the joyous experience of reading British food critics often. Or are unfamiliar with the British cadence and word choices,especially regarding restaurant criticism.

Also, people who have had the privilege of dining in $500 a plate restaurants don't want to feel like they have to justify their enjoyment, ergo, this critic must be wrong about all the things.

But the vitriol about the article is almost as absurd as quibbling about quenelles.
posted by dejah420 at 3:42 PM on August 21, 2015 [7 favorites]

I have to tell you that I regularly dine like this 4 times a year or so, once a month before we had kids, and not only am I not bothered by this article I actually kind of agree with a lot of it.
posted by JPD at 3:48 PM on August 21, 2015

Metafilter: Quibbling about quenelles
posted by Greg_Ace at 3:54 PM on August 21, 2015 [3 favorites]

the quenelle schism is my favourite part of this thread. who knew there was so much quenelle orthodoxy on mefi.
posted by poffin boffin at 3:58 PM on August 21, 2015 [5 favorites]

the mefi coat of arms should be party dog rampant sinister on field azure; it its party paws party dog is clutching a quenelle
posted by poffin boffin at 4:01 PM on August 21, 2015 [8 favorites]

Gold writes for the Spectator, and this is extremely Spectator-esque prose. It's not just English style; it's its own thing, really.

I laughed, but then, I'm an academic, so perhaps my pretentiousness meter is on a different scale...
posted by thomas j wise at 4:01 PM on August 21, 2015 [3 favorites]

It is absolutely English in the way that always raises my hackles, so I will totally own that. It's not that I don't "get" the style, I just absolutely detest the style.
posted by jaguar at 4:14 PM on August 21, 2015 [2 favorites]

I'm familiar with the style and find this piece hackish and unfunny. There are plenty of British writers who are very very funny... unfortunately, not this lady.

It's not necessarily about defending the poor suffering restaurants... it is about being extremely annoyed with the idea that anything that is too low OR high culture for the middle-class is an automatic target for lazy derision, regardless of merit.
posted by easter queen at 4:22 PM on August 21, 2015

Also all the "jokes" are pretentious references or awful uses of defamiliarization, i.e. the untalented writer's crutch. Arghhh.
posted by easter queen at 4:28 PM on August 21, 2015

Ehh, I laughed.
posted by Greg_Ace at 4:40 PM on August 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

For her next act, I think she needs to do a scene by scene dissection of how stupid and sloppily-made Citizen Kane is.

I have been on Wall Street for 17 years. Some people I know are among the most indulged and, ultimately, jaded diners you could possibly imagine. Others have extraordinarily discriminating tastes, informed by eating at many if not most of the best restaurants in the world.

I have never heard anyone describe a meal at Per Se in terms other than bliss. People who go there first on someone else's expense account, invariably go back on their own dime. I once heard an IT temp who made $20 an hour describe his thousand dollar dinner bill as well worth it.

11 Madison Park is more of a regular business or family occasion restaurant then an ultra special event place like Per Se, but I have never heard (or from my own experience had) a complaint about it, and it's a restaurant that a lot of people have been to many times.

Chef's Table, being a hard reservation, relatively new, poorly configured for groups, and in Brooklyn, is quite a bit more obscure, but uniformly adored by the people who have been there.

Masa is probably the most controversial restaurant on this list. Omakase sushi dining is not everyone's favorite experience, and the price is brutal even for people of great wealth or generous expense accounts. But even with all that, everyone who goes seems to really like the fish.
posted by MattD at 4:55 PM on August 21, 2015

the untalented writer's crutch

What does all this say about those of us who did enjoy it?

I'm totally fine with people not liking it, and I completely understand why people wouldn't, but can we leave it at a difference of opinion? We're all pretty clearly divided here.
posted by teponaztli at 5:21 PM on August 21, 2015 [3 favorites]

no, we who enjoyed it must forever walk while ringing a bell before us for we are lepers, outcast and unclean. there is no longer a place for us in society.
posted by poffin boffin at 5:41 PM on August 21, 2015 [11 favorites]

We shall make our own society!
posted by urbanwhaleshark at 5:51 PM on August 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

New society journal, day 4:
The crab cakes arrived cut in half in a red, sticky-sweet vinegar sauce, looking for all the world like the victim of a violent and cruel murder. For the victim's sake, I hoped the death had been quick and painless, but with my first bite of tired meat and stale breadcrumb I knew the end had been drawn-out and painful.

The bacalao was passable.

posted by teponaztli at 6:11 PM on August 21, 2015 [4 favorites]

Huh. I hadn't heard about this.... *googles* ..... oh, right. Of course it's going to be in CityCenter. Might as well put up a big banner around that entire block that says "THIS PLACE WAS NOT BUILT FOR THE LIKES OF YOU."

The most expensive entree at the NYC location is like 20 dollars.
posted by thsmchnekllsfascists at 6:28 PM on August 21, 2015

11 Madison Park is more of a regular business or family occasion restaurant then an ultra special event place like Per Se, but I have never heard (or from my own experience had) a complaint about it

I ate there on someone else's dime, and it was very good, but no better than other very good restaurants I've eaten at where the entrees were $25-40, and definitely not as good as the very best fine-dining places I've eaten (which were one-star Michelin, not three). If I'd spent $225 of my own money to eat there, I would have had at least a little bit of a complaint.
posted by escabeche at 6:35 PM on August 21, 2015

Gold writes for the Spectator, and this is extremely Spectator-esque prose.

Yes, it is. Clever, a few good jokes, slightly racist.
posted by betweenthebars at 6:55 PM on August 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

Irony requires intent, though. And it's not clear that there is intent here to use irony,

It really, really, really is.

Also irony doesn't require intent.

But it's still totally obvious.
posted by howfar at 7:24 PM on August 21, 2015 [2 favorites]

What do you need, a smirk track?
posted by howfar at 7:26 PM on August 21, 2015 [8 favorites]

thsmchnekllsfascists: "The most expensive entree at the NYC location is like 20 dollars."

If that's the case, cool.

But this is a development that was known for turning Apple away for not being sufficiently "upmarket."

For an uncool city like DC, a thing like CityCenter is a bit of a shock. Gladly, we largely seem to be ignoring it (and, amazingly, we've recently gotten a few promising reports that our population growth is healthy and rents are under control), but CityCenter feels like a bit of the cancer that's befallen London, Vancouver, and New York is trying to take root in my downtown. It's disquieting.
posted by schmod at 7:27 PM on August 21, 2015

Things I've Learned From This Thread: 1)Quibbles About Quenelles is a wonderful album title. 2) Smirk Track is an excellent band name.
posted by thivaia at 7:43 PM on August 21, 2015 [2 favorites]

I saw Smirk Track at the Eagles Club in, like, 1995--they opened for Galaxie 500.
posted by sandettie light vessel automatic at 7:45 PM on August 21, 2015 [3 favorites]

What do you need, a smirk track?
posted by howfar at 8:26 PM on August 21

I am stealing that joke.
posted by Trochanter at 7:49 PM on August 21, 2015 [4 favorites]

"I have never found servility quite so threatening."

I'm going to remember that line after the revolution.
posted by helpthebear at 7:57 PM on August 21, 2015 [2 favorites]

Chang had price points from the pork bun at like 5 bucks to the Ko tasting that costs 175/person.

Eleven Madison Park used to be as MattD describes it but over the last 6-7 years it moved much more towards being a peer of per se. Know it's firmly pointed at the gastrotourist crowd with almost a scripted experience all the way down
posted by JPD at 8:18 PM on August 21, 2015

It's Chef's Table at Brooklyn Fare, as she notes.

And I'm here to tell you that when people shorten the name it's "Brooklyn Fare" not "Chef's Table"
posted by JPD at 8:23 PM on August 21, 2015

MattD: "I have been on Wall Street for 17 years.( ... )
I have never heard anyone describe a meal at Per Se in terms other than bliss."

Their earlier entrees were a little too "nouveau rich" for me, but when Bouchon cafe opened on 83rd street, I think they really came into their own, commercially and gastronomically. The whole menu has a clear, crisp concept, and a sheen of consommé really gives the brunches a big boost. He's been compared to Jacques Pepin, but I think Tom has a far more bitter, cynical sense of cuisine.
posted by boo_radley at 9:27 PM on August 21, 2015

I always get angry when these articles hit MeFi, because the userbase descends into this preening snobbery-by-pretending-not-to-snob.

These restaurants, the ones that are endlessly trying to be creative, are doing something that is difficult to understand: they are appreciating food as a creative endeavour being on par with dance, music, writing--with the soul-deep arts of the human mind. They are trying to grope for the idea that what one eats can be something more than delicious fuel; it can be something that excites, that enrages, that makes connections. And, yeah, that includes an inside language and a barrier to entry--the very same as any other artforms humanity engages in.

That doesn't necessarily make it silly, or pretentious, or luxury-only (many of the techniques researched and discovered in these kitchens have trickled out to your neighbourhood eatery, and to the fast food we all eat). Yes, it is expensive. Most of that is the incredible amount of labour that goes into these dishes. People who don't cook professionally generally have either this incredibly romanticized notion of how food is produced in a professional kitchen and unreasonably lionize those of us who work there, or they extend how their own kitchen at home works and wonder why it's so hard to get X right now the way Cousin D used to make it, it's so easy.

The reality is that it's neither of those. The reality is that we occupy a weird space halfway between technician and artisan. Some of us are the anointed ones who are weirdly perfect all the time and are equally strong everywhere. Most of us are not. We are people who love to cook and drink and swear and romanticizing the life we lead is to ignore the very real cost in broken relationships, in gnawing loneliness (the rest of the world occupies a very different time zone), in burns and destroyed knees and everything else we go through to make sure you get your grilled octopus with sorrel pesto and puree of smoked celeriac.

But what most of you see us as is hired grunts who just make food it's only food why all the fuss it's just food. We're engaging in a seriously shitty work environment so that you can have a pleasant time, and it would be really nice if we could get a little more respect for what it's actually like. That chef you see profiled on some cooking channel? Never heard of her before? Most likely she's spending the entire shoot worrying like fuck about what's going on in her restaurant while she's away. And she's going back the moment the cameras turn off, still caked in horrible TV makeup, to work the dinner service so that you can get the dishes that she has conceived of as saying something exactly the way she wants you to get them.

Because what she's doing, what every single chef on the planet who has complete control of their kitchen is doing, is saying "I have come up with a thing that I think is delicious. I have mobilized somewhere between three and twenty people to bring this thing to you and hope that you find it delicious too." When you are running a kitchen, you are on every single plate. You are saying 'share my memories of spending summers in Provence when I was a kid,' or 'this is how my grandmother cooked,' or 'I think it would be really interesting to go outside of tradition and make you something that's not what you would recognize as food and you can appreciate it with parts of your brain that aren't directly connected to your tastebuds.'

So like... maybe, before posting the usual reactionary comment of how silly this food is, take a moment to consider that someone is sweating bullets the whole time they conceive of a dish and serve it, and that many many many someones are devoted to making that work. Food in this arena is not like pulling into Chipotle and getting a burrito--it's more like going to a concert or a play. And it needs to be evaluated on the same premises, not based on 'traditional' food or being full or whatever. It's a qualitatively different experience. Please respect those of us who are trying to create that experience for you before reflexively kneejerking against it. Please?
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 10:37 PM on August 21, 2015 [23 favorites]

Good grief. The pearl-clutching (oysters and pears clutching?) in this thread are just too much. Surely the business of making food as art and elevating cooking to a higher plane is not so serious that we can't also find it funny*. Hell, I've been the butt of more than a few jokes and I find the most graceful way out of the situation is to have a laugh and agree that maybe I am a little self-important.

Try this: Read a few paragraphs as though a member of the Conehead family was dining. Or Dwight Schrute. It doesn't really matter- the point is that this is an alien culture which exalts turnips and tiny morsels of lamb from the final resting place of heroic and virtuous souls.** If you hate the style or don't find it funny plain and simple, fair enough. But let's not act like it's criminal to have the very audacity to poke fun at our own food culture, even at these exalted heights.

*Aside from the oh so very british notes of racism found therein.
**If you find this suggestion condescending, I would say the same is true of the suggestion that by finding Gold's piece funny, I equate the wrapping of a Chipotle burrito to a tasting menu at Per Se.
posted by Lisitasan at 4:19 AM on August 22, 2015 [1 favorite]

Three hot dogs, served dans eau.

I believe the more accurate term is "dans eau sale."
posted by mediareport at 4:44 AM on August 22, 2015 [2 favorites]

Lisitisan's comment about Helen Rosner's previous opinion of the role of critics is worth highlighting again:

This isn't the restaurant as a place to get dinner, this is the restaurant as culture, as a microcosm of the decisions that we make as a population about our priorities and our desires. Wells rose to the occasion, blazing righteous fire and never once throwing a punch that wasn't deserved. That's exactly what we want--and need -- our critics to do."

Also, Gold's brief description of Per Se's abuse of the private party "service fee" was spot on.
posted by mediareport at 5:00 AM on August 22, 2015

And I'm here to tell you that when people shorten the name it's "Brooklyn Fare" not "Chef's Table"

Also! No one ever calls Per Se "Through Itself". But Gold refers to Per Se as "Through Itself" during her whole review. She needs a fact-checker, obvi.
posted by grouse at 5:03 AM on August 22, 2015 [3 favorites]

Also! No one ever calls Per Se "Through Itself". But Gold refers to Per Se as "Through Itself" during her whole review. She needs a fact-checker, obvi.

My guess is she checked her facts and realised that she could annoy a hell of a lot of people by taking the piss out of the name (she was right). She could have been more blatant and called Per Se "Up Itself" but that would have been less funny imo.
posted by urbanwhaleshark at 6:18 AM on August 22, 2015 [3 favorites]

Good grief. The pearl-clutching (oysters and pears clutching?) in this thread are just too much. Surely the business of making food as art and elevating cooking to a higher plane is not so serious that we can't also find it funny

Of course it can be funny. Achatz and Adria in particular on record as indulging in whimsical ideas, things that will make guests laugh. There's even funny stuff in this thread that takes the piss rather nicely.

Most of what's being said here, though, and in the article, is "my kid could paint that" said of a Jackson Pollock. It's reverse snobbery based on a refusal to engage with food like this on its own terms.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 8:26 AM on August 22, 2015 [1 favorite]

My guess is she checked her facts and realised that she could annoy a hell of a lot of people by taking the piss out of the name (she was right).

LOL Latin
posted by How the runs scored at 9:03 AM on August 22, 2015

"my kid could paint that" said of a Jackson Pollock.

See, this is what I find disrespectful. That I am a child and you (or the chef) are the artist and I couldn't possibly understand what it means to "engage with food like this on its own terms" whatever that means.

It's brilliant you having a gift for making lovely food, I don't - I'm an idiot in the kitchen, I curdle milk by looking at it - and I appreciate that there are people like you out there creating these delicious morsels. I'm not an artist either, but the whole infantalising and othering of people (not directed at you per se) who don't understand the art or the message of the food is really disappointing.

All I ask is that you don't treat me like a moron because I'm not in-step with your ideology. Because I will laugh at you. And then pity you. Like I do Scientologists.

On reverse snobbery: I am one of the common people. But I don't shun or denigrate those whose ability surpasses mine. Unless, or course, their arrogance overtakes their skill and then its game over as far as a conversation goes.
posted by urbanwhaleshark at 9:19 AM on August 22, 2015 [2 favorites]

What engaging with it means us understanding that there's more going on than just food.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:24 AM on August 22, 2015

As to the article and the restaurants, I'm currently too het up about the class war to not hate the whole thing.

Thousand dollar a plate meals are about more than art. They are about exclusion.

I was about half-way through "Hannibal," the third Lecter book by Thomas Harris, at the part where he's talking about buying the fragrant soap or the perfume or whatever, when I really started to rebel about the refined nose, the refined palate, the refined eye.
posted by Trochanter at 9:40 AM on August 22, 2015 [1 favorite]

I didn't get too much of a sense of "my kid could paint that" from the comments here, and certainly not the article. I grew up with a couple people who ended up becoming chefs, and it's probably the most insane, hard work I can imagine. It is, of course, not just food - that much goes without saying. It is high art in every sense, with great care taken to perfect it on every sensory level.

Still, with any kind of high art form, there's a certain cultural dimension to it that's weird on some level, especially as it gets more and more inaccessible at higher echelons. With both art and haute cuisine it helps to have an understanding and appreciation of the elements and progression of styles and culture; anyone can take the time to read about how certain art styles function within the art world, and you can take time to read about how certain culinary styles function, but with the latter you must be able to pay huge sums of money to actually experience it. That is frustrating, especially if you care about food, because you are completely shut out of the experience past a certain point.

Yes, of course reading about art is not the same as seeing it in person, but at least you can get a rough sense. I cannot get that with food. What comes across as "my kid could paint that" is, at least in my case, a frustration that something I find interesting and fascinating is Not For Me. And I resent the thought that I should be deferential to this art form, because it is Not For Me.

It's culture as much as it is food, and I'm interested in the culture around foodways. I think it's the exclusivity of it all that everyone hates, the sense that if you don't appreciate it it's because you've never experience an $800 dinner. There's something insane about spending that much money for a pig's bladder, even if you understand how much craft went into it. And I would love to see what an inspired chef could do to a turnip, but I'll never know, no matter how much I read about it, no matter how much I care, because I can't afford the hundreds of dollars it costs to do it. On an artistic level, yes, I would love to experience this someday. But on a practical level, on a cultural level, I resent the thought that I should be expected to save up hundreds and hundreds of dollars just to be able to take part in the conversation.
posted by teponaztli at 10:00 AM on August 22, 2015 [11 favorites]

Thousand dollar a plate meals are about more than art. They are about exclusion.

Yup. I love food. I have grown it. I cook it. I eat it. I delight in artfully crafted dishes. I read cookbooks for fun. I sometimes go out to fancy restaurants. But there is a certain "price point" at which the conspicuous consumption overshadows the artistic process of food production and it is impossible to pretend that the food-making is an artistic end unto itself.
posted by latkes at 11:06 AM on August 22, 2015 [8 favorites]

Let's be clear here. It is not "a thousand of dollars a plate" to eat at a restaurant Per Se. The price is about three hundred bucks a person, inclusive of service. Wine is likely to cost another hundred bucks, although of course you can spend a lot less or a lot more. So let's say four hundred bucks. For this you get a dinner that lasts all evening, a staggering number of courses, inventive dishes using the very best ingredients prepared and served by some of the very best people in the business. All this for more or less the same amount of money you would spend on premium seats to see "Hamilton" on Broadway. Meanwhile, it's not like these restaurateurs are rolling in profit from their restaurants. It costs a lot of money to provide that experience. Some people won't think it's worth it, and that's fine. Some people don't think it's worth that kind of money to get great seats for the opera or a play or a football game or a rock show. Others do.
posted by slkinsey at 11:49 AM on August 22, 2015 [4 favorites]

Why Is This Critic So Obsessed with Capitalization or Lack Thereof
posted by speicus at 12:27 PM on August 22, 2015

Some people don't think it's worth that kind of money to get great seats for the opera or a play or a football game or a rock show.

Can I walk into Per Se and get some cheaper seats at the back and still have the same food as I can if I sat in the better seats? Because I can if I go to the opera or a football game or a rock show.
posted by urbanwhaleshark at 12:40 PM on August 22, 2015 [3 favorites]

On one hand, people are aware that the pig bladder thing is a classic preparation, right?

On the other hand, celery root en vessie? Ergh. Gack. Ptui.

Making fun of the pig's bladder just for being what it is makes it sound as though the author is lacking the background to write the article.

But the dish itself does, in fact, sound awful to me.

Regarding prices: a check of Eleven Madison Park's website says the tasting menu there is $225 per person. For comparison, you can get poulet de Bresse en vessie at L'Auberge du Pont de Collonges as a part of their Menu Grande Tradition Classique for €255 per person. Roughly the same ballpark.

Of course, Paul Bocuse would have a proper, moist, seasoned chicken in his pig's bladder, and still has his name attached to one of the most famous restaurants in France.

My personal take? Dunno. I haven't eaten at either place. These prices are about one-and-a-half times the most I've ever spent on a meal for myself. If Paul Bocuse himself were cooking? I could be talked into it. Somebody else? I'm hesitating a bit.

Or, you could spend about the same amount of money on Vikings-Packers tickets (although as others have pointed out, there are cheaper seats available for that).
posted by gimonca at 6:27 PM on August 22, 2015

Pig's Bladder on YouTube.
posted by gimonca at 6:47 PM on August 22, 2015

Making fun of the pig's bladder just for being what it is makes it sound as though the author is lacking the background to write the article.

Oh FFS.
posted by Greg_Ace at 7:08 PM on August 22, 2015 [3 favorites]

I stand by that line. At best, it's a "proud to be stupid" attitude that the author slipped into. More likely, there's just homework there that was never done.
posted by gimonca at 7:21 PM on August 22, 2015

More likely, there's just homework there that was never done.

True, but not necessarily on the part of the author.
posted by Greg_Ace at 10:04 PM on August 22, 2015 [1 favorite]

I used to subscribe to Harper's, but I dropped it when it just became excessively smug and self-satisfied. This review seems to show not much has changed.

Although, admittedly, it's snarkier than I associate with Lapham.
posted by Chrysostom at 11:07 PM on August 22, 2015

What the view at one of these kind of places looks like from the other side.
posted by How the runs scored at 5:46 AM on August 23, 2015 [2 favorites]

I envy the mentality that can experience a restaurant like this without feeling self-loathing. I wish I could walk into a restaurant like this after passing homeless people, have a meal, pass homeless people in leaving, and then think "that was a really great experience."

You could make that argument about any decision you make. There's homeless people everywhere. Right this very moment you could be helping a homeless person but instead you're reading and writing comments about an article about expensive restaurants on a website.
posted by ultraviolet catastrophe at 7:53 AM on August 23, 2015 [2 favorites]

Rough justice, a typical Per Se tab of $1,000 per couple is going to generate about $250 in state and local taxes (sales, liquor, income, corporate, occupational), and two-thirds of that recycles into social services (welfare, education, overpaid-vs-private-sector low-skill government jobs). That $175 being non-deductible is equivalent to a $350 charitable contribution for a typical 50%-marginal-federal-state-and-local-tax-rate Per Se couple.
posted by MattD at 9:17 AM on August 23, 2015

Trickle on us. Trickle all over us. O rich master.
posted by Trochanter at 10:03 AM on August 23, 2015 [2 favorites]

at the part where he's talking about buying the fragrant soap or the perfume or whatever

it's really nice soap though, according to someone i know who is definitely not me who may have bought it in a crazed fit of hannibal madness
posted by poffin boffin at 1:58 PM on August 23, 2015

the best thing is that i could so plausibly pretend it was the whelk and everyone would say "yes that is clearly the truth"
posted by poffin boffin at 1:59 PM on August 23, 2015 [2 favorites]

And what of the huge number of people whose livelihoods depend on working there? Restaurants at that level employ double or triple the number of people your middle of the road restaurant does, from dishwashers to servers to chefs.

Seriously, dinner at places like Per Se and Alinea and EMP and so on are between 200-300 per person. Not a grand. A couple hundred. Which, yes, is out of the range of many people--so are great seats at hockey games. Or Superbowl tickets. Or, for that matter, computers.

So maybe, just maybe, before going on at length about how this is a ridiculous thing to do, take a moment to consider how much you spend on your wardrobe, your car, your computer, your artisanal beer handcrafted using only the tears of hipsters for water, all the luxuries that you take for granted that by definition most of the rest of the world doesn't get. These meals aren't expensive for the sake of being expensive, that's reserved for stunt bullshit like the $20K martini with an engagement ring as garnish. They are expensive because they take a huge number of people to make them happen. And those people need to be paid. Handcrafting is expensive.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 3:40 PM on August 23, 2015 [2 favorites]

I think all conspicuous consumption, from box seats at a sports game to luxury cars to the stupid Apple product I'm ostentatiously advertising every time I take it out in public, are, in fact, stupid bullshit that are about a culture of class enequality. And it's not just about my displaying my social class with my over-priced purchases. One thing all these have in common with super fancy restaurants is that some asshole is getting rich selling these things. Great that they also employ some underpaid staff too (although lots of people can and have made thoughtful arguments against this kind of thinking) but these places are made not just so a great chef can express his (and they are generally his) artistic talents, but so that some celebrity chef or non-chef investor can make money.
posted by latkes at 4:59 PM on August 23, 2015 [1 favorite]

oh have u never had a root veg in a pigs pisssack??? *shakes head*

Any case, arguing for en vessie is like saying "oh, the chicken is much better when it's rotisseried b/y actual spit dogs. The bladder does not impart flavor; it's the medieval equivalent of poaching. Modern cookery has done away with the need to shovel one thing up the Nile delta of another thing's micturative canal.
posted by boo_radley at 5:05 PM on August 23, 2015 [1 favorite]

Sent from my iphone
posted by Trochanter at 5:06 PM on August 23, 2015 [2 favorites]

Yeah that wasn't my best comment form wise. To be fair in dining at insolentia, and they have these amazeballs dormice in aspic that I'm loving.
posted by boo_radley at 5:11 PM on August 23, 2015

lark's tongues ftw
posted by Trochanter at 5:17 PM on August 23, 2015

One thing all these have in common with super fancy restaurants is that some asshole is getting rich selling these things

I don't think you know how the economics work in restaurants. elBulli, 275 Euro pp when it was open, lost half a million Euro per year. Alinea just barely breaks even at ~$225 pp.

these places are made not just so a great chef can express his (and they are generally his) artistic talents, but so that some celebrity chef or non-chef investor can make money.

No, sorry, you really do not understand how creative restaurants work. EMP and Masa and Per Se and the Laundry and noma and and and are not so that some investor can make money, because restaurant margins are razor thin anyway. Double or triple the number of people you need working both FOH and BOH and yeah, sorry, but these restaurants are not gilding someone's bank account to the extent you think they are.

Yes, there are ridiculously overpriced restaurants that do do that thing. The restaurants named in this article, and the restaurants which occupy the same style of cooking, don't.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 5:20 PM on August 23, 2015

Price point wrong on the pheasant tear ducts.
posted by Trochanter at 7:18 PM on August 23, 2015

>>Some people don't think it's worth that kind of money to get great seats for the opera or a play or a football game or a rock show.

Can I walk into Per Se and get some cheaper seats at the back and still have the same food as I can if I sat in the better seats? Because I can if I go to the opera or a football game or a rock show.

If you don't think sitting in the tenth row on the 50 yard line or in a luxury box at a football game, or sitting in a parterre box at the opera, etc. doesn't offer a fundamentally different experience from sitting in the cheap seats in the back where you have to use binoculars, it suggests that you have never sat in the good seats. The experience you get in the cheap seats is a version of what they're getting in the good seats, but it is by no means the same thing. It's like saying that instead of going to Peter Luger you can go to Sizzler, pay less and get the same thing since both serve steak.

The culinary equivalent to sitting in the cheap seats at a concert or sporting event this would be going to one of Keller's more casual and significantly less expensive restaurants such as Bouchon or ad hoc.
posted by slkinsey at 7:36 PM on August 23, 2015 [2 favorites]

I get that the owners and investors at my local, very high quality, $80/person or so restaurant are not getting rich. I hope that some are earning a living wage. But I just got wondering after the push back, and although I'm not sure how to reliably look this up, it seems like Thomas Keller in particular is worth about 30 million dollars. Once you are turning your one, amazing, several-hundred-per-plate restaurant into a string of restaurants, books, celebrity appearances, etc, you're out of the auteure realm and into the realm of corporate branding.
posted by latkes at 6:48 AM on August 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

Yeah, the people making the most money off of Per Se are probably the landlords.

This WSJ article about the service fee settlement says Per Se claimed its servers made, on average, $116,000 a year. One or two salaries could skew that, of course, so I'd prefer to see the lower end server salaries, but I dunno about the poor-mouthing here. The idea that these high-end luxury experiences are operating on "razor-thin margins" seems to me on-its-face ridiculous.
posted by mediareport at 7:53 AM on August 24, 2015

In other words, I'd love a cite for this:

Alinea just barely breaks even
posted by mediareport at 7:56 AM on August 24, 2015

The make that much because they get a percentage of the meal, and I'm not sure why it's problematic that people at literally the apex of their chosen profession make 116k a year living in the most expensive city in the US.

Per Se is a bad example as Keller's loss leader is The French Laundry. He basically got paid by the Time-Warner Center landlord to open up and got the capital invested in the space for free.

The best argument for the nonviable economics of these places is that the last de novo unsubsidized 3 star Michelin restaurant to open and survive in NYC is Daniel which opened almost twenty years ago. The other attempts that have mostly failed were subsidized spaces in hotels. An extremely wealthy friend of mine had seen business plans from very high name Chef's who want to open places like this and he had told me the business models as proposed are completely non viable - mostly due to space costs.
posted by JPD at 8:16 AM on August 24, 2015 [2 favorites]

To clarify, I don't think it's problematic at all that servers at places like Per Se can make a decent living in New York. Just adding info I found interesting in that WSJ piece.
posted by mediareport at 8:48 AM on August 24, 2015

You experience a special rush when your job is to project an aura of warmth and hospitality while maintaining an almost clinical emotional distance. It’s the thrill of the con.
posted by boo_radley at 9:22 AM on August 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

latkes : I get that the owners and investors at my local, very high quality, $80/person or so restaurant are not getting rich. I hope that some are earning a living wage. But I just got wondering after the push back, and although I'm not sure how to reliably look this up, it seems like Thomas Keller in particular is worth about 30 million dollars. Once you are turning your one, amazing, several-hundred-per-plate restaurant into a string of restaurants, books, celebrity appearances, etc, you're out of the auteure realm and into the realm of corporate branding.

This may be the case. And, for example, I'm quite sure that Mario Batali is pulling down quite a bit of cash. But the point is that they're not necessarily making all that money from their highest-end restaurants. Looking at Batali, for example, his casual spots like Otto and Lupa are likely to have better profit margins than his fine dining spots like Del Posto and Babbo.

Meanwhile, $30MM is a lot of money. But not such an incredible sum for a guy who has ownership stakes in ten restaurants; owns an olive oil company; markets lines of porcelain, silver and knives; and has five cookbooks in print. I know people who retired after a career spent entirely in academia worth in the neighborhood of $10MM, in a large measure due to a lifetime of saving. So if it's true that Keller is worth $30MM, that certainly doesn't sound outrageous. But he didn't make that money out of just one restaurant. It's also worth noting that he is one of the most prominent chef-restaurateurs in the world today.

mediareport : This WSJ article about the service fee settlement says Per Se claimed its servers made, on average, $116,000 a year. One or two salaries could skew that, of course, so I'd prefer to see the lower end server salaries, but I dunno about the poor-mouthing here. The idea that these high-end luxury experiences are operating on "razor-thin margins" seems to me on-its-face ridiculous.

Did it not occur that part of the reason the restaurant's profits aren't higher is precisely because they are paying servers amounts like this? According to this guy, "net profit margins at restaurants nationwide average just 4 percent." And keep in mind that profit margins at fine dining restaurants are lower than for other kinds of restaurants.

Meanwhile, I'm not sure what's so outrageous about front-of-house staff making north of $100K a year. As others have pointed out, they are at the very pinnacle of their field, and it is an extremely demanding and difficult job. Besides, here in NYC it's not impossible to make $100K as a temp if you know what you're doing and you're great at what you do.
posted by slkinsey at 12:29 PM on August 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

I'm not worried about servers getting 100k/year. That's amazing if they do - not even that amazing in somewhere expensive like SF or NY. Right on. But starting to make excuses about 30 million dollars being some kind of reasonable amount of money - that's silly. A net worth of 8.4 million puts you in the 1%. It's like some kind of Stockholm Syndrome the way we defend the rich.
posted by latkes at 1:46 PM on August 24, 2015

ok so Keller needs to stop cooking and isn't allowed to reap the rewards of being one of the best chefs on the planet, gotcha
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 2:20 PM on August 24, 2015

Who is making excuses? How much do you think is a reasonable net worth for someone who owns ten restaurants? Meanwhile, it's not like he made his fortune -- most of which undoubtedly rests in the value of the businesses he built -- by investing his daddy's money. He worked like a slave for years and years in the restaurant industry, including one failed restaurant, got a lucky break on a property in California which he beg, borrowed and scraped to buy, proceeded to work like a slave to make that into one of the top destination restaurants in the world, then leveraged that success to start several more restaurants, etc. Far from being some kind of culinary oligarch, if anything Thomas Keller is an industry leader in compensating employees at his restaurants.
posted by slkinsey at 2:47 PM on August 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

but like it's just pretentious overwrought food so it's not like he deserves any of that
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 2:51 PM on August 24, 2015

Well, we're just going to go in circles, but suffice to say while I don't think Keller is some big bad guy, I also think making 30 million dollars from selling food branding to the uber rich (and ripping off his employees in the process - see aforementioned law suit) is not such a faultless life-path that he is above criticism, and I'm confused why people rush to defend anyone this rich, especially someone who stays rich by coddling other rich people. It's not landmines, but he's not some paragon of virtue either, nor is he Michelangelo.

There are thousands of incredibly hard working and talented chefs out there who don't own Per Se. My hat goes off to them!
posted by latkes at 3:58 PM on August 24, 2015

And how many of them cycled through the kitchens of the Laundry and Per Se etc?

Keller is not perfect by any means, fine. The problem here that so many people are demonstrating so effusively is this notion that there's some cutoff line where it's okay to be a chef, and after that you're a wanker, and it's ludicrous. He has ground his fingers to the bone for his entire career, he has launched the careers of many other chefs (e.g. Achatz at Alinea), he has pushed cuisine forward. He's an artist. It's what he does. The arbitray cutoff point of "this is okay" and "this is bad" is a pile of crap, and it's nothing more than the reverse snobbery both I and helmutdog (two of the only people in this thread who actually have professional cooking experience) have a serious problem with.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 4:14 PM on August 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

Among the many ways that haute cuisine is like fine art is the fact that it is expensive and thus primarily consumed by the wealthy. This doesn't, in my view, make all fine art and haute cuisine "part of the problem with inequaliy in society" or successful fine artists and fine dining chef-restaurateurs some combination of stooges and exploiters of the ultra rich. Things just aren't that simple. Chefs are not morally obligated to open pizzerias and sandwich shops for the masses and more than fine artists are morally obligated to create $5 earrings and cheap posters.

More to the point, latkes, you are meaningfully wrong if you assume that Keller makes his living catering to the super-rich. He made his reputation at French Laundry, which is certainly not a cheap restaurant but is most certainly well within the means of a middle class person who would rather spend money on a night of fine dining than great seats to the Giants game or a case of Maker's Mark or the latest iPhone or a weekend In Vegas or whatever. Indeed I know plenty of middle class people and even those for whom membership in the middle class is a stretch who have done exactly that. So who are you to tell them how they should spend their money? Meanwhile a fine dining restaurant has the greatest chance of failure compared to any other kind of restaurant. And moreover, most of Thomas Keller's wealth comes from middlebrow-or-lower restaurants like Bouchon. It's like you somehow think it's immoral of Keller to have succeeded in fine dining, and can't imagine that anyone who isn't wiping his ass with hundred dollar bills would ever eat at Per Se or French Laundry or restaurants like them.
posted by slkinsey at 4:40 PM on August 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

Yup, I know what French Laundry is. (And thinking about them raises a nice local counter-example of Alice Waters.) But Thomas Keller is not especially bad or especially good. My point is that Per Se is a perfectly reasonably target for scorn. That's the point of the original post.

Keller is extremely rich (upper 1%). Patrons of Per Se are extremely rich (speaking, statistically, of the great majority of their patrons). Clearly, they craft some amazing food. But amazing food, like other other amazing craft and art, is not solely found in these enclaves of the super-rich. So yes, I'm all for celebrating his chops (although sounds like he's retired from literal chopping - which, hey, that's great for him!). But I'm also all for calling out the role super expensive chain restaurants may play in our massively class divided society. That, again, is the point of the article. I don't automatically denigrate food-making by denigrating Per Se. And no art, no matter how good, is above critique when it exists in a context (as everything does).

That's my whole argument. I see you disagree with it, which, hey, that's fine. Moral philosophers much have spent their whole lives arguing about these issues so I don't expect us to come to consensus.
posted by latkes at 5:52 PM on August 24, 2015

My point is that Per Se is a perfectly reasonably target for scorn.

And your point is wrong. Yes, great food exists everywhere. Great food the way they make it is only possible to make with a massive investment in labour. Do you know how many people work in kitchens like Per Se? elBulli had 60 + people working in the kitchen every single night. That costs money.

What you are saying is that some art is okay, and some isn't, based solely on cost. Please try applying that to literally every other human endeavour and maybe you'll see why you're getting such pushback on something you really clearly don't know all that much about. It's okay to not know much about it--I know fuckall about ballet, for example. And I don't criticize ballet precisely because I don't know how much goes into it.

You may not automatically denigrate food-making as a whole, and you are denigrating the idea of food as art. That hits some of us extremely personally so, as I've been asking in general over and over in this thread, please educate yourself about what we do before heaping your scorn upon it.

And Alice Waters isn't so great a counterexample as you might think. She's very good at promoting herself and a specific brand message, and she's extremely well off.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 6:17 PM on August 24, 2015

You could make that argument about any decision you make. There's homeless people everywhere. Right this very moment you could be helping a homeless person but instead you're reading and writing comments about an article about expensive restaurants on a website.

I was not making an argument, I was being sincere, I actually do wish I could comfortably enjoy a restaurant at this level. The emotional reaction is what it is, I recognize it's not rational. The article resonates with me because I feel I can relate to the underlying emotion, the sense of absurdity. I imagine most people would experience that feeling with respect to some things. Maybe bejeweled toilet seats. Maybe using hundred dollar bills as napkins. Maybe making sculptures out of medical supplies.
posted by cheburashka at 8:44 PM on August 24, 2015

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