Fat Guy

People dine in restaurants under assumed names all the time, for many reasons. Sometimes celebrities and politicians want to be treated like royalty; other times they don't want the attention. They also have their tablemates make the reservations when they don't want to be noticed. And restaurants are certainly accustomed to having person X make the reservation while person Y pays -- the bigger the table the greater the chance that the person paying won't be the person who made the reservation. Nor will the restaurant find it scandalous that you "used a friend's reservation." It's not going to poison the relationship or even affect it. Of course, if you already have a relationship with a restaurant, you shouldn't need to buy a reservation. Most restaurants in the category we're talking about will hold back a substantial portion of their prime tables for preferred customers. (Those tables, by the way, are not going to be available to the scalpers.) These reservation scalpers had better have a whole mess of different phone numbers to work with. So long as they do that and are relatively clever about their other procedures, it's not going to be easy for restaurants to catch them.

If you go to a restaurant and order a hamburger, or if somebody says to you "come over for burgers tonight," the overwhelming probability is that you'll be served a ground-beef patty on a soft bun. So, I do think that's the common meaning of the term hamburger. In other words, you're more likely to need to say you want a "hamburger no bun" than you are to need to say you want a "hamburger on a bun" because everybody understands that the default is a patty with a bun. I'd say, most accurately, the patty is a "hamburger patty" and the bun is a "hamburger bun," whereas the sandwich is a "hamburger." Then again the term "hamburger" is also commonly used to refer just to the ground beef itself, as in "Combine 2 lbs. hamburger with 2 cans of red kindey beans . . ."

I recall when I was a kid most grapefruits were white, and occasionally you saw a pink or red one. Now I don't even see white grapefruits in a lot of American stores. Is the color that important to people? As far as I can tell it doesn't affect flavor at all. I've also heard that in Japan they prefer white grapefruits. Any truth to that? What about in other countries?

I just don't think that's going to be as effective as the death penalty, John! Seriously, there's just no reason to think a campaign of disapprobation will have any effect. The closest analogy I can think of is to ticket scalpers. There are some differences, like the fact that scalpers have to lay out cash, and also there's this distinction between licensed ticket brokers/agents and black market scalpers, but fundamentally it's all about selling marked up tickets for admission to one kind of show or another. There has been a whole heck of a lot written about ticket scalping. Economists love to write about the subject because it demonstrates so many principles in play around such a seemingly simple phenomenon. And there have been an incredible number of attempts to stamp out scalping, including through arrests and prosecution. None of it has worked. Really the only thing that works is to capture that market. Licensing and regulating scalpers is one way to approach it. That's only going to work if the licensed industry can provide the same service as the black market. The most effective way to eliminate scalping, though, would be to use demand-based pricing at the outset and then release tickets in bunches over time at an auction price or something along those lines.

Well that's the problem with relying on the honor system in a dishonorable world: people aren't going to behave just because it's the honorable thing to do. When demand exceeds supply, something has to happen. One thing you can do is adjust price until supply and demand even out. Restaurants already do this to some extent: they charge more for dinner than for lunch (sometimes for the exact same food), they have early bird specials, they charge more on holidays. This could of course be extended to charging more for 8pm tables on Friday nights, either through a supplement or higher menu prices or a higher minimum price. Another thing you can do is ration. Restaurants are practicing a form of rationing when they make people jump through hoops to get the reservations in the first place; it's rationing by attrition. They could raise the level of rationing to something a little more egalitarian if they, for example, took all the requests made between X and Y date and then did a random drawing. But of course people would put their names in multiple times, using home, work and cell numbers. There are lots of things you can do. The one thing you can't do -- unless you've been living under a rock -- is be terribly surprised that, if you give something away for less than it can fetch on the open market, somebody else is going to sell it and make money on it instead of you, unless you mobilize the entire law enforcement apparatus of a nation to put a stop to it and enforce it with the death penalty.

Seems it used to be that the Laguiole name on a piece of cutlery meant something. What happened?

I first "met" Bux on 2 February 1998, a little while after I'd started my New York restaurant review website (though I'd seen his posts in newsgroups before then), when he sent me this email message: Bux and I exchanged 2,810 email messages over the next several years, and he always had something to teach me. When we started the eGullet.com website in the summer of 2001, Bux was the obvious choice to lead the France forum. In the four years after that, in addition to amassing a body of 12,211 public posts, Bux provided leadership and vision as eGullet.com grew, evolved and eventually transformed into the eGullet Society for Culinary Arts & Letters -- Bux was a driving force behind nearly everything we are today. Not absolutely everything, though. It's no secret that Bux and the eGullet Society parted on bad terms about a year ago; a serious disagreement over a series of management decisions couldn't be reconciled. This was unfortunate. Bux's departure from the eGullet Society also marked the end of our personal relationship, I'm sad to say. Nevertheless, for almost five years Bux was a foundational influence at the eGullet Society and, before that, eGullet.com, as well as my friend, confidant and culinary mentor for almost a decade.

With sympathy and great sadness, we announce the death of eGullet.com founding affiliate and former eGullet Society manager Robert "Bux" Buxbaum. Active in eG Forums right from the start, Bux offered his insights to many a dining, cooking and travel topic, making his points with passion and commitment. Bux's contribution to the building of the Society, not to mention our online discussions, is incalculable. The family asks that anybody wishing to honor Bux do so by making a contribution to Citymeals-on-Wheels. We invite you to honor Bux's participation in eG Forums, and to share your remembrances of his love and appreciation for food and drink, cooking and eating. Click here.

Since I have no idea who anybody is talking about (and don't understand all the beating around the bush) it's hard to comment, but I don't think it's hard for people to figure this stuff out. I mean, if you look at Oakapple's blog it's obvious that he's trying to do serious restaurant reviews/reports without getting much into the buzz scene. Meanwhile, if you look at, say, Andrea Strong's blog, it has a totally different emphasis. She's writing one thing, he's writing another thing. Big deal. People can tell. It's no greater a difference in style than the difference between the New York Times and Time Out.

Yes but the logical point of comparison for that sort of blogger is not a newspaper of magazine restaurant critic, it's a newspaper or magazine social/gossip/trends page writer. Those people too are easily impressed by openings and such -- it's almost part of the job.

I've long been surprised by how little corruption there seems to be in the culinary blogoshpere. It may be that the costs and benefits just don't line up well enough to encourage any serious corruption. A free meal isn't worth so much that it's going to trigger a blogger, who has invested months or years of effort into a blog, to abandon his senses and integrity. Few if any blogs are important enough to attract actual cash-in-envelope bribes. Restaurants aren't big enough to conduct the kinds of marketing campaigns that record labels do, and gourmets aren't as susceptible to those campaigns as, say, the teens who buy Hillary Duff albums. In addition, most bloggers are relatively up front about their practices -- why shouldn't they be? They're not trying to emulate what the newspaper and magazine reviewers do, with multiple anonymous (supposedly) visits and huge budgets. They're writing about meals they had, regardless of who paid, who got recognized, etc.

I agree that the hotel system is not burdensome. It's a good example of a reasonable system that works to the benefit of both the hotel and the consumer. Restaurants should use it. As with many things that seemed sustainable "forever," the current restaurant reservation system is likely to become more and more tortured until it is wholesale revised. Certainly, 99% or more of the restaurants out there will be just fine with their current procedures (most don't take reservations at all, or only reserve half and save half for walk-ins, etc.), but for the tiny percent of a percent of restaurants that have overbooking and no-show problems, it's just going to get worse going forward (as it has been getting worse for about, I'd estimate, 20 years).

The scarcity of reservations occurs because demand exceeds supply. The free, no-cost-to-cancel, no-enforcement reservations mechanism creates additional headaches, for example it's the main reason why people don't get seated on time (because restaurants have to overbook to compensate).

Many restaurants offer comps all the time. Long before I ever wrote about food online or anywhere else, I had many meals comped after having a bad meal experience and following up by writing a calm, collected letter of complaint. I also received gift certificates as "compensation." I'm not sure if a blogger is any more likely to be comped in this manner than the average customer writing a letter -- indeed, the probability may be lower since the letter will almost definitely get read whereas the blog may or may not be seen by anybody in a position to do anything. There are probably some cynical restaurants that care only about PR and not actual customer satisfaction. I suppose they might go after bloggers while ignoring regular customers. Then there are the proactive comps, as in the same comps that regular food journalists get when a restaurant opens or is trying to promote itself. Restaurants and their publicists were comping online writers in this manner before the word blog even existed. I think they're doing less of it now, because back when there were just a few serious amateur online food writers there was no reason not to include them in the regular media comps. These days, with the proliferation of blogs, restaurants have to make more careful judgments when selecting their invitation lists. (They are often not well equipped to do this, though.)

I don't see it as illegal or unethical at all. It's no different from queuing up for anything that's free, and then selling that item. What I think it does do is expose, in a more obvious way than the no-show problem, the idiocy of the current system high-end restaurants use for offering reservations. It's just unsustainable to offer reservations with a cost-free cancellation policy, a weak confirmation policy and no means of policing. It's no way to run a business. Hotels, airlines and many other services have all come up with superior models. Because hotels are part of the hospitality industry, they probably provide the best models. If restaurants don't improve the system, they'll just leave open opportunities for others to benefit from their foolishness. This isn't a new concept, either. There have over time been several attempts, and it's a pretty standard trick of the trade for private guides who cater to rich tourists. There have also been efforts -- I was involved in one about 7-8 years ago -- to auction prime tables for charity, with the restaurants' cooperation.

While basic gift-wrap or a wine bag makes for a nice enough presentation, I can't help but think there are more interesting ways to present wine gifts.

See to me that just seems to be in the opposite of the blogging spirit. I guess the fear is that if he responded then too many people would pester him.

Does Bruni ever respond directly to the comments (I don't mean referring to them in subsequent blog entries)?

I think everything changed post-WWII. It's not surprising to me to see male boomers and even those born just before the boom (since their formative years would also be post-WWII) have a wide variety of cooking skills.

I don't know if this is current information, but as of a few years ago if you bought your Calphalon at Williams-Sonoma you could get it replaced there without the need for mailing. We did this once and it was a quick and painless transaction.

An online acquaintance just emailed me to alert us to the "Tomorrow in the Times" preview, which touts the restaurant review.

My guess is that there's a simple explanation for the regular day-in-advance heads ups -- someplace we're just missing where the information is previewed. For the days-in-advance alerts, that probably comes in irregularly from various sources in the business who've been alerted to photo shoots etc.

I realize the restaurants always know in advance. But there is no way that Eater could reliably know, every single week, without fail, and at exactly the same time of day, if he were dependent on the restaurants to tell him. Nobody is that well plugged in. ← It used to be you could just listen to WQXR the day before. Is that no longer the case?

Seems like a basic example of the contrarian principle at work. As Jack Lang recently observed, if you like pig's trotters chances are the butcher won't even charge you for them. This applies is all sorts of other contexts, for example if you want to get a reservation at a popular restaurant, usually all you have to do is be willing to dine at 5:30pm on Monday. If you actually prefer to dine at 5:30pm on Monday, that's even better.

Kosher salami aka beef salami, which is more like a beef version of bologna than any variant of salami really, cooks up very nicely. If you've ever had a fried bologna sandwich in the US South, you're familiar with a similar taste and texture. Salami and eggs is usually prepared as an omelette. The salami pieces are cooked in the frying pan until they brown a little, then beaten eggs are added, the mixture is allowed to set, then folded and served. Markk, my father-in-law, who just passed away in his late 70s, was quite an accomplished cook. He had worked in food service as a teen and did all sorts of things in the kitchen. He even made his own gefilte fish. I guess he was an exception, however I think your theory is too narrow. What I've noticed is that older men -- not just Jewish ones either -- are most likely to have cooking skills that are limited to breakfast foods and particularly eggs.