Fat Guy

Elie, I think a review serves several functions. Some of those functions, particularly the idea of "consumer protection," are probably best served by anonymity -- although of course anonymity is not a reality in the world of restaurant reviewing; it is simply a pretense. But other functions, and I would argue more important ones, are not well served by anonymity, distance, etc. Those are mostly the informational functions -- the ones that give reviews depth, richness and interest and make them more than Michelin blurbs or Consumer Reports ratings. No, one does not have to be friends with the chef in order to evaluate the chef's food -- it's not relevant whether you like the chef or not. But talking to the chef, having a full appreciation of the overall restaurant concept and in general having enough connectedness to the industry not to be out of touch -- these things help, and as I've mentioned before you can plainly see it in the end product if you go and do a side-by-side reading of reviews by reviewers who favor the different approaches. You can also see its analogs in every area of criticism: the better informed "insider" critics generally just have more to offer. There are dangers and pitfalls to be avoided when you encounter your sources, but that's something to be dealt with -- not something to run away from.

I suppose that's how Paul de Man and Jacques Derrida would write restaurant reviews -- nothing but the dining experience! -- but for everyone else context is important. The more a journalist can do to provide context, the better. Cutting oneself off from the creators of restaurant experiences is simply irrational as a research tool. A fact-checking phone call at arms length is not going to yield the same richness of information as an ongoing relationship. This is not "buddying up." It's the job. I'm sure there are some critics who do it for personal gratification, just as there are reporters of all kinds who love the job only because it brings them close to celebrities. But for the good critics, it's just not a consideration. If anything, its a source of discomfort because they always have to be prepared to turn on their "buddies." And the proof is in the proverbial pudding. In my opinion, many of the best critics in recent memory have been the ones who engaged the industry they cover. David Rosengarten's reviews in Gourmet were markedly superior to those of his successors. Thomas Matthews at Wine Spectator has been one of the leading advocates of non-anonymous reviewing and is a critic par excellence. (While he is certainly entitled to his opinion, it is presumptuous of Mr. Yardley to claim to speak on behalf of all experienced journalists, when many of the best, most experienced critics so plainly disagree). Bryan Miller and Ruth Reichl had more involvement with the industry than William Grimes and Frank Bruni -- would anybody care to argue that the latter two are the better critics?

In the book, I call this "how to become a regular on your first visit." You don't have to dine out often to do it, just like you don't have to buy a car every day in order to be an intelligent buyer of a new car -- you can dine out once a year, buy a car once a decade, and still do very well. You just have to know how. I've tried to do my part by writing a book that shows people how to do exactly that. Those who wish to rail against this state of affairs are free to do so, but they're going to run into the brick wall of reality.

Restaurant critics for major newspapers dine like kings no matter what. The difference between a critic like Ruth Reichl who strives for anonymity and a critic like David Rosengarten or Thomas Matthews who rejects anonymity is that the former will be recognized and given the restaurant's best treatment 90% of the time whereas the latter will be recognized and given the restaurant's best treatment 99% of the time. So there is no significant personal motivation, in terms of getting better treatment, for not being incognito. You get plenty either way. The Ruth Reichl story, relayed above, is incomplete. Let us remember that after a time she returned to Le Cirque and tried the yokel disguise again. She received great treatment, and gave the restaurant four stars. She assumed, irrationally, that Le Cirque had suddenly become a restaurant that treats everyone like royalty, rather than using Occam's razor and concluding, logically (and truthfully according to all the back channel talk I've heard), that she had been identified. So all this attempted anonymity turned into a big game that served nobody's interests. If anything, it is a greater challenge, personally, to be engaged with the industry than it is to keep the industry at arm's length. When reporters spend weeks on the campaign bus, or are embedded with troops, it requires a strong sense of journalistic fidelity -- and a willingness to make enemies -- to write stories that are critical of the campaign or the military. But that's what good journalists do. Restaurant critics -- the ones that are good journalists at least -- can do exactly the same. Or they can watch the bus through binoculars and write irrelevant, out-of-touch stories.

By not teaching the "dumpy, middle-aged tourists" how to dine, critics are ignoring them. It's as though they're sending people to buy cars without any information on how to negotiate an advantageous price. Of course, restaurants that treat their non-VIPs like dirt should be subject to the disapprobation of all. But that's a rare occurrence -- Le Cirque (now shuttered) was a throwback. The rigid hierarchical treatment was part of Le Cirque's nature. Most high-quality modern restaurants have a completely different orientation. Critics, by treating every restaurant like a potential Le Cirque dinosaur in waiting, ignore the present reality at most restaurants.

Didn't know anything about it. Spoke with Johnny at Jean Georges a couple of months ago and he didn't mention it. Looking forward to it, though. He's a real talent. Both Jean Georges and Nougatine have some of the best desserts in town.

Sure, plenty of New Yorkers eat twenty-one meals a week out, but very few eat ten of them in restaurants with stars. I guess there's a population of super-eaters out there who can handle the quantity, but the number of people who can do that and write well about it has got to be pretty small. When I was writing weekly reviews and had the support of a well-funded publisher, I was doing four to five serious fine-dining meals a week. That's fun, assuming you never catch a cold or never find yourself not "in the mood" -- because you've got to go out and eat anyway, and write about it. But double that load and keep doing it for a couple of hundred weeks in a row, with your only breaks coming when you go to other countries on "vacation" and do the same thing there instead? Forget about it. You're no longer a food lover turned pro. You're some sort of thing hooked up to a metropolis-size feeding machine.

You were fully aware of what kind of experience you were getting. You weren't fooled into believing in a false baseline. It's so easy for any experienced diner to grasp that, it's a wonder so many people assume working critics won't be able to sort it out. But what, truly, was the nature of the difference anyway? I've dined at Bouley and Bouley Bakery 30-40 times. I've experienced the full range of meals there, from the meal served to an unrecognized, clueless college student to the kinds of meals they were serving to VIPs at the height of Bouley Bakery's prowess. What I experienced, as a VIP, was more food, off-menu dishes, bigger portions of luxury garnishes, etc. This is standard in any fine restaurant: if you let the kitchen cook for you, you have a different experience. It's not a scandal; it's part and parcel of fine dining. But if I had the ocean herbal broth from the menu it was the same ocean herbal broth whether I was a stranger or a regular. One of the core messages of Turning the Tables, however, is that anybody with a modicum of desire can become a regular easily. Simply being polite and expressing keen interest in the menu at the outset can often get you on the radar as someone the kitchen wants to cook for and the waitstaff wants to please. Since it is obvious that restaurant consumers have a variety of different experiences when they dine out, why should restaurant reviewers represent the least involved customers? Since I don't plan on being an average customer in any restaurant for longer than one meal, I don't really care what the average customer gets. I want to know what you get when you're a regular. Nonetheless, when visiting a restaurant, it is no great challenge to ascertain the baseline. You order from the menu. You look around at similar plates. You use your brain. It's not rocket science.

Claiborne was food editor and critic for approximately 400 years, but the position was different back then. If you look at the old reviews, they're relatively simple, short and matter-of-fact. They aren't all of fine-dining restaurants (the $25 and Under column didn't exist). I can't imagine Claiborne was dining out on the same schedule adhered to by the latter-day critics, from Mimi Sheraton forward. The restaurant scene was totally different as well. Although Claiborne invented the system, Mimi Sheraton deserves credit for developing the system into the one with which we're familiar today. She was relentless and tireless. Few humans can keep up with her, even today. She set the bar high.

I imagine the Times position is marginally more exhausting than at any other paper: dining out ten times a week in an ultra-competitive market, writing the main bar review and Diner's Journal every week, Critic's Notebook every month, occasional travel and other features, the weekly radio and TV appearances, participation in multimedia/interactive/online efforts, co-editing the annual restaurant guide, getting beaten up in the press, always knowing you can parlay your credential into a much easier and/or higher-paying job . . . . While there are plenty of hard-working journalists out there, I bet there's not another food-writing position that's as physically and intellectually relentless as the Times position. I'm sure, for a lover of dining, it's a thrill for a time, but I doubt it's more than a medium-term assignment for anyone.

Cheerwine isn't really a Dr. Pepper competitor, though, is it? In the past, I've just noticed that in the Southeast, especially Georgia and the Carolinas, the Pibb product from Coca-Cola often occupies Dr. Pepper's spot on the soda fountain. Or at least it did back when I spent a summer at Wake Forest in the 1980s.

1. I hope Varmint is keeping that gigantic RedHook beer banner, to hang in his office. 2. I see Dr. Pepper under the table, but no Mr. Pibb. What's up with that? Isn't North Carolina Mr. Pibb territory? 3. The tee-shirt looks great, especially accessorized with Mikimoto pearls.

If interim critics Marian Burros and Amanda Hesser are to be counted then both Frank Prial and Eric Asimov -- who have acted as interim/substitute fine dining critics -- need to be counted as well.

If you're making repeated trips to the garbage can, or you're continuously pulling a garbage can out of and putting it back into a cabinet, you're wasting time. If Ms. Ray is teaching people not to do that, she's providing a valuable service. Of course, it doesn't have to be a bowl. I use whatever I can use: the clear plastic box from the cherry tomatoes, the blue plastic bin that the mushrooms come in, etc. I usually prep whatever item is in a good waste receptacle first, so I can use that for the rest of the stuff. If there's no ready receptacle, I use deli and Chinese-food takeout containers. Occasionally, I use a bowl. For larger amounts of prep, I pull a garbage can right up to the counter and put it on a chair so it's at counter height. Also, some kitchen tasks are best performed over the garbage can, bowl, sink or other receptacle. Peeling cucumbers, carrots or anything like that -- do it directly into the trash. In New York City there is no composting program that I know of, so that's not an issue for me. Those who wish to compost and have the ability to do so, however, should be able to use two receptacles instead of one. Sink disposals are nice but they won't accommodate everything, so when I've used them (they're not terribly common in New York City apartment buildings) I've found they don't save me from needing a place for garbage anyway.

I'm not sure there's any difference from the server's perspective between a dollar of wages and a dollar of (declared) tips -- they pay FICA and all that stuff on both. From the restaurant's perspective, however, I think there are a few more taxes on income than on service charges -- though I'd defer to a restaurant accountant on that one.

Rob, I think the "seats only six" issue may be a big part of the reason for Minibar's relative lack of presence. I wouldn't say it goes unmentioned -- Jose has been mentioned several times in outlets like the New York Times and the major food magazines. Rather, the coverage doesn't really seem to get Jose's significance. He is also punished a bit, I think, for daring to be commercial and for operating multiple wildly successful upper-middle-market restaurants. In terms of public acceptance, however, I'm just not sure how one can expect a restaurant with six seats to generate all that much buzz outside of the hardcore foodie subculture. I'm sure someday Jose will open a whole restaurant serving Minibar-style food. When that happens, I hope the media and public reactions will be different. However, it should be noted that right now the Latino Dim Sum weekend lunch offers many items that are the same or stylistically similar to those served at Minibar, but in the whole restaurant. There's also a chef's tasting menu that offers some of those items.

42 states, plus DC and Puerto Rico, either allow the tip credit or have a lower minimum wage for tipped employees. Eight states do not allow the tip credit. The tip credit, however, is not so much about the wages of servers. It does affect wages, but it doesn't make the difference between over and under an annualized income based on the hourly minimum wage. Waiting tables is not a minimum wage job. I don't know of any full-time server in any state who is making anything close to as low as minimum wage -- even in a chain diner, it's a much higher paying job than that, at least that's the case with my friends who worked at places like Denny's and Friendly's in Vermont when I was in college. And of course at top urban restaurants $60,000+ is common and $100,000+ can happen. (If you live in a state where the minimum wage is $5.15, and you work 50 weeks a year for 40 hours a week, your gross income will be $10,300). Rather, the issue with the tip credit is that it's a thinly veiled subsidy for restaurateurs. Restaurants, unlike most every other type of business (save for in a few other tipped industries), are allowed to have customers pay substitute wages to their employees so they don't have to pay real wages. Of course, this issue exists absent the tip credit as well. It's inherent in the tipping system. But the tip credit makes it worse.

In The Jerk there are several references to pizza in a cup, e.g., "this is the best pizza in a cup ever. This guy is unbelievable. He ran the old Cup 'o Pizza guy out of business. People come from all over to eat this."

On account of the need to travel with an entourage (wife + newborn infant + bulldog), we'll be touring by van, so we're going to focus on the easily drivable (from New York) Northeast, Middle Atlantic and Southeast states. I'll submit those tour event dates to the eG Calendar team as soon as they're available.

It's bizarre, Rich, because you work on the book for so long, and then you sit around for a year and a half while it's edited and produced, and by the time it comes out you've lived with it for so long and read so many drafts that you never want to see the damn thing again! But yes, it's very exciting. I just hope somebody buys it!

It wasn't something I intended when I was writing it, but quite a few advance readers have mentioned that reading the book made them hungry, as in, "You bastard! The book made me hungry!" Then again, most of the advance readers were people who are always hungry anyway.

The nice things about Yardley's review are that 1) they ran it in the Style section (this has been the big challenge in promoting the book: getting it out of the cookbook ghetto and into mainstream reviews and news pages), 2) he reviewed it seriously and at length, and 3) the good news/bad news structure really forces people to read to the end, where they find out that the bad news is pretty minor -- at least, from the standpoint of whether or not one should buy the book, it's irrelevant; it's just a disagreement. I'm glad we're generating controversy over the reviewer anonymity issue. We've now had Wine Spectator's reviewer supporting the book, the Washington Post critic attacking on that point (in an unnecessarily dismissive manner, I think, but what can you do?), and the New Yorker covering the issue while not particularly taking sides. So, I can't really complain about the media coverage the book has been getting.

I'll be there, doing several events in October. They'll all be posted on the eG Calendar (as are some events already, with more to come).

Maybe it's like when stores charge $9.99 instead of $10 because they know some customers will fall for it.

Percentages don't mean much unless we know what they're percentages of. Nineteen percent of a billion is more than twenty percent of a thousand. I wonder which restaurant has higher check averages, more covers per server, etc.