Fat Guy

Here's the thing. I could see, in theory, a productive Michelin-like effort. It would involve: 1- Selecting a group of expert inspectors with significant dining experience both internationally and in the market in question. 2- Multiple visits by multiple inspectors to each restaurant under consideration. 3- A tabulation process free of agendas, politics, favoritism, etc. 4- A presentation of information that gives customers the benefit of the experts' expertise: best and worst dishes, times to go, various tips for getting the most out of that particular restaurant, reasons why some people might like the place and others might not, an indication of whether the inspectors had uniform reactions or whether it was a love-it-or-hate-it restaurant, perhaps even a glimpse at why some inspectors thought it was good and some didn't. That would be a pretty good book. But we have no reason to believe the inspectors have the relevant expertise (experience, perspective) and therefore no reason to accept their judgments. Secondary epistemic criteria, such as the pabulum printed in the guide, argue against very much expertise. Likewise, the quirky and out-of-touch results indicate that, as a group, the inspectors aren't all that well clued in. In addition, the revelations of the Remy book show that Michelin's inspectors make infrequent visits to the restaurants under review (on average once every 3.5 years, according to him, for the un-starred restaurants) and that especially at the starred level the guide is political rather than based on any sort of attempt at impartiality. Then there's the matter of the information content of the book beyond the symbols, which is essentially zero. For most of Michelin's history, there was no commentary -- just a bunch of codes. This is essentially a religion, where people are asked to place faith in the revealed expertise of anonymous (not just to the restaurants: to the world!) inspectors and the all-mighty Michelin corporation. Later, sentences were added, which contain no particularly useful information -- they're actually laughable. In the US guides, there are more words, but little in the way of useful content. It's just patronizing. The Grub Street blog is right that it reads like a travel advertorial more than a consumers' guide.

Food & Wine is owned by American Express publishing. They must have a content partnership with Yahoo! However, Food & Wine already has content online, so it's hard to see what value Yahoo! adds. All in all, a lame and perfunctory effort by Yahoo!

The model of the tragedy of the commons is a little different than the model of commercial fisheries. In the herdsman example, grass is free. Therefore the way to make more money as a herdsman is to have more sheep. Then the sheep eat the grass and destroy the common resource. Fishing doesn't work that way. In order to catch fish, one must expend tremendous resources. The process is to a large extent self limiting: the harder it gets to catch fish, the more expensive the fish become at market, so people buy less of it. They switch to other fish, especially farmed fish, which are cheaper and more available. There's only so much that can be done to increase the efficiency of catching fish. Eventually it's just not worth going after the remaining ones. The main way a species would get fished to extinction would be if some group of people had a non-rational need for it, such as a religious ceremony, and were willing to pay any price. Otherwise, species won't get fished to extinction but will, rather, get fished to the point of commercial non-viability, which is not the same. Of course, the claim that all fish and seafood species will collapse is ludicrous. If present trends lead to that result, present trends will not continue. For one thing, any fish that can be farmed will be relatively safe because as its numbers decrease in the wild the price of the farmed version will become relatively cheaper. For another thing, fisheries within the control of a nation can be and are regulated. For still another thing, international mechanisms are becoming somewhat more potent, with the high-end consumers (who support the markets for expensive fish -- they don't sell much bluefin tuna in Africa) boycotting and otherwise rejecting endangered species. The available fish and their relative prices will surely change, as they always have, but we are neither going to run out of fish to eat nor run out of fish in the ocean. Dire predictions like this one, calculated to grab headlines, represent the kind of flawed science that demonstrated itself unworthy on hundreds of occasions in the 20th century and before.

I've explained it more times than I have energy to count. All of them, with the French guide being the most credible (though not particularly credible these days) and the American guides being the least credible. So anonymity equals reliability? Shouldn't knowledge enter into the picture? How do you know the Michelin inspectors have any knowledge? We don't know enough about them to make any such judgments, so we have to take it on faith. Why are you so willing to do that? You don't strike me as a person who takes much on faith. Depends where I am. The internet, newspapers, various guidebooks, recommendations of friends . . . never Michelin -- it means nothing to me.

I'd love to see any evidence for that claim. Perhaps you'll find it if you research the mandatory English education programs in Japanese schools. Not that guidebooks speak. I think you'll find that the number of Japanese who can understand written English is about infinity times the number of Americans who can understand written Japanese. Not that you need to understand much of any language to read a Michelin guide, since the Michelin red guides don't really say anything. They're great gifts for space aliens who speak purely mathematical languages and don't care about the reliability of their sources. The point is that the Michelin red guide to New York is neither well informed nor particularly useful especially given all the other information sources out there.

Robyn, you're assuming that your experience with travel in Japan and Germany is indicative of the Japanese and German experience when traveling in New York. True, there isn't so much written in English from a gourmet perspective about restaurants in Germany or Japan (though there's a lot more than none). But there is tons written in German and Japanese about restaurants in New York. Japanese guidebooks to New York, in particular, are legendary for their thoroughness not only with respect to restaurants but also clubs, shopping and everything else about New York. No Japanese traveler needs a Michelin guide to New York. Is it even available in Japanese? In addition, while even highly educated Americans tend to be mono-lingual (or if they have two languages those languages are English and Spanish), average folks in countries like Japan and Germany tend to study English as a second, third or fourth language -- so they're equipped to utilize English-language guidebooks and websites. Do you really think Japanese and German tourists need the Michelin guide to find Per Se or Peter Luger? Nathan and oakapple, why are you hung up on the question of whether an "eGullet consensus list" would be better than the Michelin list? I think it's kind of bizarre to argue that eGullet Society members disagree about restaurants, therefore an eGullet consensus list would be just as bad as Michelin, therefore Michelin's list is, what, good? We offer a totally different kind of resource. What would be really funny, I think, would be Michelin's version of online discussion forums, with rules like "You may write one sentence, unless it's about New York in which case you may write a page, however you are prohibited from imparting any useful information or real opinions except via symbols." Then again, there aren't enough keys on a computer keyboard to communicate in Michelin symbol-speak.

I might disagree with marcus on some points, but I assign far more value to his choices than to Michelin's. For one thing, he's available to explain his reasoning. Michelin asks for faith but offers no credible reasons to take the leap. For another thing, he has both international perspective and long-time experience in the market in question (I'll disagree with marcus about L'Impero as soon as I hear one knowledgeable Italian gourmet say it's a great restaurant). Do the Michelin inspectors? Some of their looney choices indicate that they are, as a group, rather clueless. Of course we don't know who they are. And for still another thing, marcus isn't overreaching: he's offering opinions about what he knows, not trying to be an authority about what he doesn't know.

We could spin off another discussion about this, but I find that a lot of people's morning routines are very important to them on a variety of gastrointestinal and psychological levels. In general, people get more regimented about this stuff as they get older. The average 25-year-old will eat just about any garbage at breakfast time, whereas the average 65-year-old doesn't do all that well with a change in milk type or the addition or subtraction of coffee, prunes, whatever. There's no escaping the reality that some people need a certain breakfast in order to "stay regular," or to avoid acid reflux, or to have enough energy to get through the day. You find conservative breakfast attitudes even among otherwise open-minded gourmets. If you go to Asia, you find that a lot of Americans are happy to eat the local cuisine all afternoon and evening but fall back on Western style breakfasts at their hotels rather than eat nasi lemak first thing in the morning.

According to the restaurant, there is no charge for sauces. The confusion on this point comes about because there was a charge on the early preview menus, but they did away with it. When we spoke last night, one of the things Lomonaco explained to me is that he's personally very price sensitive. While Porter House is by no means a cheap restaurant -- every aspect of the food, space and service requires money -- I get the impression that he has tried to limit the nickeling and diming that can occur in steak places, especially the newer ones. I'll certainly be back -- Ellen and I were talking about taking my mother there soon -- as I consider the Porter House value to be good.

Interesting. I'll have to ask about that.

Where have you read it? The online menu doesn't indicate that.

I'd be pleased to get a list like that from impending house guests -- it's far preferable to the more common refusal to be specific. On the very rare occasion that we have house guests (our apartment is not particularly conducive to it, certainly not ever since we had a baby), we try to say something like "I'm going to the supermarket tomorrow morning to stock the fridge for the week. Let me know what kinds of things you like to have around." But I don't think anybody has ever responded with anything more than, "Oh, whatever, we don't want to be a burden." Please, folks, you're house guests. You're a burden already. So at least let us provide some damn hospitality. When we find ourselves as house guests, we're happy to provide a short list if asked, and if we're not asked we just make sure to bring some stuff and get the rest of what we need when we arrive. Luckily, the average American town now has several supermarkets open 24-hours a day or close to it, so it's pretty easy to do some shopping the first morning before breakfast. Although, I can only think of one time we haven't been asked. For me, the fun part is seeing how people interpret the list. For example, our baby loves bagels -- they're great for teething. We do live in New York, so his bagel baseline is pretty strong. We recently went to stay with our friends, his godparents, and just for kicks we put bagels on the list. I wanted to see how a Southern supermarket bakery did with bagels, but they actually did the opposite of exceeding our expectations and bought Thomas's bagels. We had to do the equivalent of pouring them out into the plant when nobody was looking.

It's probably not helpful to say that the two best food stores in America -- the original Dean & DeLuca and the original Balducci's -- no longer exist. I think among the rest it helps to divide the field into a few categories, even though that's not conducive to picking just one store. But if you don't have categories you're really going to be comparing unlike examples. I mean, there are the places where the food is like art or jewelry or whatever, there are the places that are oriented towards a value proposition, there are places with full grocery inventories and places that avoid fresh produce altogether, etc. I'm not sure you can make a productive comparison between Zingerman's, Central Market, Fairway, Citarella and Eli's, except to say they're all better than the other places that try to be like them.

I don't have any special insight as to what accounts for the successes of some steakhouses over others. For example, I thought the ill-fated V steakhouse was really good. You'd be forgiven for calling that an anti-insight. On the one hand, the market for steakhouses is so saturated I think it's crazy to open a steakhouse; on the other hand, the market has been so receptive to steakhouses I think it may be crazy to open anything but a steakhouse. In any event, I do feel that Michael Lomonaco has hit upon something with Porter House. It exceeded my expectations and I think it may have a bright future. I think it's hard to categorize Porter House using oakapple's two-tiered taxonomy of steakhouses, where all steakhouses are either manly or chick-friendly. I think that may be because, despite its name and the primacy of steaks on the menu, Porter House is not exactly a steakhouse (the taxonomy may also be incomplete). Lomonaco, when I spoke briefly with him, seemed to be in agreement: the phrase he used was "an American grill." It lacks neither masculinity nor chick-friendliness -- it's just a generally welcoming place. Lomonaco doesn't let the steakhouse concept rule him, and he doesn't pander to trends. Porter House has one foot in the past -- there is a bit of a deco supper club feel to the Jeffrey Beers-designed space (the date the martini on the cocktail menu refers to is 1927, and is about half-and-half gin and vermouth, plus house-made bitters and no olive) -- and one foot in modernity, with a nice "casual Friday" feel. This is tracked by the menu, which combines a healthy dose of old-school steaks and chops with contemporary appetizers, salads, sides and a very nice selection of North American seafood (Hudson Valley trout, wild Alaskan salmon, local swordfish from 100+ pound specimens, etc.). By contemporary I don't mean cutting edge or unusual, but rather simply embracing the modern culinary aesthetic: the lobster salad (actually they call it a lobster cocktail but it's not cold lobster in a glass -- it's really a salad) has little pieces of citrus for counterpoint, the absolutely gorgeous diver scallops are topped with crispy (I assume this means deep fried) parsley, the roasted beets are top-of-the-line, greenmarket quality, the roasted mushrooms are wild and diverse with little done to them. Lomonaco is delivering the flavor of a steakhouse without the primitiveness of the genre or the calculated trendiness of too many of the newer players. I think "matching what the other top steakhouses do" is a good description of the quality of the USDA Prime 28-day dry-aged steaks. They're prepared old-school: high heat, quick cooked, plenty of exterior char with a steep slope of doneness towards the center -- the converse of how Craft does its steaks. (Actually I'm sure converse is the wrong word.) Noteworthy, however, is that the New York strip is butchered (in house from the whole short loin) and served on the bone. This, to me, is a major plus: it elevates this New York strip above what a dozen other steakhouses are producing using similar quality meat and similar methods but a boneless cut. I'd characterize the prices as quite reasonable. Just as the $40 entree is becoming a meme, Porter House hasn't got a single entree that's over $39, except the porterhouse for two, but it's less than $40 per person. I should say the beef porterhouse, as there are four other porterhouse or porterhouse-style offerings on the menu: veal, lamb, pork and monkfish. Given the location and view, and Lomonaco's status as an established television chef, and the quality of the food, he surely could get away with charging more. I think you get good value at Porter House. There are several sauces available for the steaks, made to order in small batches. I tried a couple and they were very good, though I preferred my steak unadorned because it was better. As far as I can tell there's no charge for the sauces, which is a relief in this era of radical a la carte pricing. Although, I confess, I didn't see a bill because Lomonaco picked up our tab (how come this couldn't have happened at V instead, where it was much more expensive?). Lomonaco's cooking is mature, unpretentious and really good. The small format of the restaurant (small at least compared to huge joints like Windows on the World and Guastavino's, where Lomonaco has presided) allows his team to cook seriously. He's not trying to show off or do anything outrageous, and that seems to resonate with the clientele -- at least that's my superficial, casual observation based on looking around the room. Wayne Harley Brachman, the pastry chef, is also a veteran and isn't out to prove anything or be self-consciously wild -- his style meshes with Lomonaco's (they have worked together before, as have the other key players: general manager, beverage director, chef de cuisine). When he makes a pie it's a pie and you get a slice of it (he is the author of the book Retro Desserts, which is surely the inspiration for the Porter House dessert menu). The trio of puddings is beautiful and technically superb, especially the Indian (as in Native American) cornmeal pudding, which I might take a crack at reproducing for Thanksgiving this year. I strongly disagree with those who didn't like the pineapple upside-down cake. I loved it, especially the freshness of the pineapples even after baking. There were two bread arrangements placed on our table: first, a plate of flatbreads with fresh ricotta and olive oil, which I thought was terrific (though I added salt -- there is a salt shaker and pepper mill on every table); second, a not-great breadbasket (the white rolls were particularly poor, redeemed only somewhat by a decent olive bread). We shared a half bottle of '04 Hirsch Sonoma Coast pinot noir, which paired beautifully with both my steak and Ellen's salmon (with nicely al dente lobster risotto). Wine list pricing feels a little steep -- it's the one area I wish they'd come down a couple of dollars, or maybe they just need to fill out the lower end selections a little more. The servers we dealt with seemed enthusiastic and friendly. That they were also skilled was a nice bonus, but at this point in a restaurant's development what I really look for is positive attitude because that's the foundation of quality service. Porter House seems to have positive attitude in abundance. There were a lot of media people in the room, and those media people knew about the other media people who had been in -- "Frank has been twice, Cuozzo is writing it up this week, Adam Platt has been in, there's Bob Lape over there . . ." So, expect all the reviews to hit very soon. The restaurant has, by the way, a website with menus and such (wine list too) at: http://www.porterhousenewyork.com/

Chef, I'd love to get some more detailed comments from you on the food press and how it has treated you and your restaurants.

You lose some of the flat bottom surface area if you go from a saute pan to a saucier, so you have to go a bit larger on the saucier in order to compensate (although sauciers are usually measured in volume so you may need to measure the bottom diameter yourself). But if it's going to be your primary saute pan then you really do want the curvature where the sides meet the bottom. Sauciers vary greatly in terms of how steep their sides are, and for an all-purpose pan you want the steepest, straightest possible sides in order to maximize the size of the flat bottom. Try also to get a relatively flat handle that goes out straight in the plane -- in other words one that doesn't angle up very much above the lip of the pan -- and isn't comically long. This will make the pan more useful for oven braising and roasting. I'd steer clear of Dutch oven-type designs because you won't have a long handle to grab -- this makes Dutch ovens of limited utility for sauteing.

A lot of the best Asian restaurants in North America look like that. Especially when you get into the single establishment, operator owned places run by first-generation immigrants you find that exterior (and even interior) aesthetics often just aren't a huge consideration. I've heard variants of this story several times: "We bought an abandoned Kentucky Fried Chicken at a government auction. After paying the bribes to get our uncle, the chef, out of a prison camp back home we only had eleven dollars to renovate the place so we painted it yellow, bought two woks and started serving food on the KFC three-section cardboard trays we found in the storage room. Now we're full every night anyway so why renovate when we can use the money to send our kids to Cornell?"

If I may continue my train of thought, there's an assumption made by owners of Asian restaurants that the average customer is unadventurous. This is assumed even by Asian restaurants from one part of Asia that open in other parts of Asia. It's a stronger assumption in non-Asian countries. And in the United States, the assumption is strongest outside the large coastal cities. (Don't even get me started on the assumptions in Europe.) Anyway . . . I'm just stating that as a piece of information. My personal experience with folks in most places in the United States is that some are conservative eaters and some aren't -- and that eGullet Society members are open-minded eaters and therefore atypical. But I think the adventurous eater in a place like Cleveland (not that there's anyplace like Cleveland), especially the non-Asian adventurous eater, needs to let it be known that he's interested in eating the good stuff. I've been to dozens of Asian restaurants in the middle parts of the US and Canada, and almost all of them operate on two tracks: there's one cuisine being served to the average non-Asian walk-in customer, and another cuisine being served to the insiders. In most cases, it's not all that hard to work your way into the latter group. It just requires a willingness to engage the staff and ask a ton of questions. You should also, in most cases, be prepared to spend more than the $7.95 per entree that's being charged for egg foo yung, pad thai and bibimbap. In other words, getting a recommendation of a good Asian restaurant is only step one. Step two is managing your experience at that restaurant so that you get the best.

(Not exactly. Give me a few more weeks and I'll post about the project.)

I'll add my voice in support of Sun Luck Garden. It's an unassuming but first-rate Chinese restaurant with a brilliant chef, Annie Chiu, who has both Chinese and Western culinary training. I recently spent a day in the kitchen there while doing research on Asian restaurants in the Midwest, and was astounded at the quality of the food. The one thing I'd warn folks about is that it's not the most user-friendly restaurant in the world, at least not from the perspective of the customer who wants to sample interesting food. The menu they hand out has some good options on it but also a lot of generic Chinese-American stuff. Though Sun Luck's renditions of these Chinese-American classics are quite good, the real interest lies in the specials and the theme dinners. You have to take an active role in researching and discussing the options in order to get the best stuff, and it's well worth the effort. The place is quite small, and it's one of these family joints with an entrenched base of regular customers and a lot of unwritten rules (for example the hours of operation are one thing, but all the regulars eat between 6 and 8pm).

I don't think that's what robyn is saying, Nathan. Today, some restaurants in France do open with three stars. Robyn is saying that, back in the day, that wouldn't have happened: new restaurants had to earn their stars one by one. I certainly get the sense that there used to be a slower climb than there is today, though there may have been exceptions then and now. Robyn, I don't think you've accurately characterized what I've said in the past. That any given restaurant, on any given night, can serve a bad meal is simply a fact. Disagreeing about it is like disagreeing on whether people can make mistakes. Of course they can. Nothing is 100% reliable. You don't have to like it to understand that it's true.

In a few posts on this topic, there seems to be some confusion regarding whether certain restaurants are or are not included in the Michelin Guide. To clarify, there is a difference between being awarded a star and being included in the guide. In addition to the three restaurants with three stars, four restaurants with two stars and 32 restaurants with one star, there are 487 non-starred restaurants in the guide. Inclusion in the guide is considered an honor in and of itself.

We've considered it on a few occasions and always decided against it. The Society doesn't take positions on the quality of individual restaurants. We celebrate the diversity of viewpoints among our members. We offer a different kind of knowledge. It doesn't come shrink-wrapped and bite-sized.

From Michelin's latest press release:

On the one hand, every restaurant is unique. On the other hand, no restaurant is unique. Several of us seem to be talking past one another on the uniqueness point. One thing I think we can all agree on, though, is that New York City is unique. Does Michelin "get" New York or not? I think the answer is no -- indeed, I don't think Michelin "gets" anyplace but France and maybe BeNeLux. The rest of the empire seems pretty weak.