Fat Guy

It's possible to have a minimalist three-star restaurant (Craft), or even hypothetically a four-star one (for example if Ambroisie came to New York it could easily carry a four-star rating), but those places are pushing a relatively cerebral concept of minimalism that goes beyond the apparent a la carte formula. There's an approach, a method, behind what Craft does. It has been expressed in words by the chef -- he has stated the concept as bringing the soloists out of the orchestra -- but more importantly it's apparent in the cuisine. At BLT Steak there's no unifying theme of that sort, just a lot of good stuff prepared in mostly minimal ways. The whole steakhouse concept distraction has, I think, limited Tourondel in his ability to create a more compelling unifying theme for the menu and the cuisine. So I think, without reference to the luxury aspects, the place is fundamentally a two-star concept. And this is no insult: I'm quite certain that if you asked Tourondel what kind of concept he was attempting to create, he would tell you two stars. Four-star-caliber chefs often purposefully create excellent three- and two-star concepts. Ducasse, Jean-Georges, and others do it all the time. I suppose there's always the hope that you'll hit a home run with the Times and get an extra star, but it's not always good to be rated higher than your concept -- two-star places can be tremendously profitable, customers don't expect to spend as long at their tables, they're more likely to drop in without long-term planning, they're more likely to eat there every day . . . Anchored by a two-star concept, I think Tourondel went ahead with a two-star implementation -- a very high two-star implementation -- on most other fronts. The quantity of waitstaff, the casualness of the presentations, etc. So I think BLT Steak is, through and through, a two-star restaurant in the best sense of the rating. I don't think this is a place where we're looking at a disconnect between cuisine and luxuriousness that forces us to consider pulling the star rating one way or the other to compensate. Of course, as we've discussed before, the failure of the Times, from the beginning of the Reichl era through the present (with temporary relief from Grimes before he slipped into star incoherence), to clearly articulate the star system and maintain some sort of consistency, has made it a lot more difficult for restaurateurs and customers to read the system in a meaningful way. So, for example, it's insane to have BLT Steak carrying two stars if Spice Market is carrying three. It's equally insane to have BLT Steak carrying two stars if Asiate is carrying one. In a more reliable star universe it would probably be three stars for Asiate, two stars for BLT Steak, one star for Spice Market, and no insult intended to any of those establishments. So it hurts a bit to say BLT Steak should be a two-star, because the three-star Spice Market review is weighing so heavily on the conversation, but I'm not working from that frame of reference. If Spice Market is really a three-star, then BLT Steak is a four-star. But of course that would be nonsensical.

Absolutely. The Times review was dead-on accurate in virtually every respect.

So, to answer the question nobody asked today: in terms of the assessments of the food that have appeared in print thus far, I find myself in almost complete agreement with the Hesser and Le Draoulec reviews. Their impressions of specific items are pretty much in line with my own, and the overall assessment of Laurent Tourondel's cuisine is on the money: the guy is exceptionally talented. The place is a big winner. We began with an immense seafood platter, a three-tiered Brobdingnagian affair laden with oysters, clams, shrimp, crab claws, lobster, scallops, mussels, and periwinkles. I think this thing retails for $95, or maybe ours was the $95-plus version (we were blessedly not paying). Notably, every single thing on it was first rate, which is rarely the case with such platters, and the three accompanying sauces were a cut or three above the norm. Actually, we didn't begin with that, because there's quite a lot of amuse-type stuff that comes out before you eat any of the food you actually ordered -- this is all well documented in the reviews so I'll spare you a repeat. Other winners among the starters: tuna tartare with soy-lime dressing, the foie gras BLT, and the crabcake. Not much to say about any of these other than that they were of superb quality, and that the Tourondel touches (the soy-lime dressing, the addition of foie to a BLT, and the celery mayonnaise under the crabcake) provided unfussy counterpoint in the best tradition of the chef's dishes at Cello. These three items together would make a terrific meal, come to think of it. All the proteins were cooked exactly on the mark -- a basic hurdle that 99% of restaurants, and especially steakhouses, are pathetically unable to leap -- and some were at the absolute top quality level I've experienced. The veal chop, well, if you don't think this veal chop is ridiculously good then you either don't like veal or you're fucking nuts. The black cod -- it was a special but seems to be sort of a permanent one, and if I recall correctly it tastes just like the dish as it was served at Cello -- is, again, just as good as can be, though the portion is rather small. An aside here on the portion sizes: they are all small by the standards of steakhouses. The New York Strip, for example, is priced at $36 and weighs in at 12 ounces. Obviously, 12 ounces of boneless, 100% edible, USDA Prime dry-aged steak is more than any human really needs to eat. But served alone on a plate (as the meat and fish items at BLT Steak are) it looks small compared to what you'd get at almost any New York steakhouse. I haven't done a highly detailed comparison, but a random flip-through of various notes I have lying around here indicates that it's more typical to see a 16 ounce steak at a low-$30s price tag. The black cod portion, well, I'd be extremely surprised to hear it's more than 6 ounces. And I'm not one to grouse about portion sizes, but if you go the route of the steakhouse you get into a situation where you bring the portion size issue into focus because you're very much selling food in the style of a commodity: weights and measures are often explicitly stated on the menu, as they are at BLT Steak. At a typical fine-dining restaurant, portion size is less of a concern because what you're paying for is much more the artistry of the chef than the actual commodities. At Cello, for example, very few experienced diners would have thought to complain about portion sizes, because the uniqueness of the cuisine de-commoditized it. Whereas I predict that at BLT steak there will be a whole heck of a lot of complaints regarding the sizes of some of the protein portions and almost all the side dishes, especially since BLT Steak has not offered a Craft-like selling proposition. At Craft, the excuse for high prices and small portions is the quality of product and purity of preparation. It seems to me this is the pitch BLT Steak needs to start making, especially since it's actually true. Anyway, to get back to the proteins, the salmon was also beautifully cooked and a very nice piece of fish. And the steak was good, but just not on par with what the better steakhouses are offering -- and it's statements like "not on par with what the better steakhouses are offering," which I was making in my internal dialog at the restaurant, that got me into the realization that calling BLT Steak a steakhouse is a misnomer. It's not a steakhouse in any way. It's not "a steakhouse in an Hermès scarf." (Le Draoulec) It's not "A Steakhouse With a Soft Touch." (Hesser) It's not "the Modern American Steakhouse." (BLT Web site) Laurent Tourondel may have wanted to open a steakhouse, and he may have started down that path, but it became clear to me that his training and artistry ultimately sent him in a different direction. (To me, he's a four-star chef, as I always felt Cello was carrying the wrong rating at three stars.) And then of course it was a very small jump to the realization that it's much closer in spirit to Craft than to any steakhouse. It lacks the full-on family-style approach and minimalism of Craft, but it's in that category. And in that category, it kicks some ass. Whereas it may very well be a marketing problem to push this place as a steakhouse, because what happens when a customer enters BLT Steak with steakhouse expectations? And what happens when media come along and want to do steakhouse roundups? They're just not going to rate this place very highly, because they're just going to come in and try the steak and say it's run-of-the-mill by the standards of the better steakhouses, which are the only ones that really count as far as media are concerned. In other words, if you're a steakhouse and everything on your menu is better than your steak, you have put yourself in an oddly confining box. And it would suck to be stuck in that box, because if I didn't make it clear already I want to say it as loudly as possible: the food at this place is great. Not to mention it's attractive, the servers are pros, the bar staff has talent, the wine choices are solid . . . in other words it's a terrific restaurant that has been miscategorized. Even with a great steak on the menu, it wouldn't make sense to think of this place as a steakhouse. Luckily, though, the restaurant seems to have attracted a clientele that has figured most of this out. So what do I know? Still, with BLT Fish on the way, a Craft-like sales pitch makes even more sense. Indeed, given the heavy fish content of the BLT Steak menu and the inevitability of offering steaks and chops at BLT Fish, why aren't these places just BLT Uptown and BLT Downtown, or whatever? The Lilliputian (can you use Lilliputian and Brobdingnagian in the same post?) side dishes were perhaps the most enjoyable thing about the meal, which is saying a lot given that there were already so many highlights and I was completely stuffed before the entree course arrived: again it's a demonstration of what a talented chef can do to some tired old dishes like creamed spinach. The carrots are buttery on account of, well, on account of a lot of butter -- and that's good as far as I'm concerned. My favorite side was peas-with-bacon. Oh, no, maybe it was the hen-of-the-woods mushrooms. Or maybe the parmesan gnocchi . . . Hesser is right on about the chocolate tart: best in New York. Best I've had at least.

"Masa is a curiously refracted experience, one that changes in subtle ways depending on where you dine, what time you dine, and even who you’re dining with." And that makes it different from every other restaurant in the universe how?

About half way through my meal last night, after wrestling with my perceptions for an hour or so, it occurred to me that BLT Steak simply is not a steakhouse. BLT Steak is actually an a la carte restaurant along the lines of Craft, where you can build a meal out of superb products minimally altered and expertly prepared. Once I sorted that out, I was able to enjoy my meal thoroughly. Because everything I tried (and I tried a ton of stuff) was amazingly good . . . except for the steak which was, as Amanda Hesser correctly observed in her review, just good. And I see now in Bond Girl's topic subtitle that she's all over the Craft angle. Great minds think alike! More later.

Yeah, if you want to get beat up at the playground.

Sorry about that. There's some confusion about the March 27, 2002 article (our fault, not yours). It is actually about Philippe Vongerichten, a manager at the restaurant and the chef's brother. As far as I can tell, there is only one unambiguous reference to an in-person meeting.

There only seems to be one article in which she gives an account of a face-to-face meeting. That is consistent with Vongerichten's claim that he only met her once. As for not remembering what she looks like . . . whatever. Andy, thanks very much for that rundown. We appreciate the work you and the "research department" put into it, and also the non-judgmental presentation.

I totally want to know the answer to this question.

"Fat Guy Eats Hot Dogs on TV" Must be a slow news day.

I wouldn't use the past tense there. The permanently steep learning curve is exactly what appeals to me about writing. If the learning curve ever flattens out, I'll be moving on to my next profession. So my advice to the new critic is to embrace learning as part of the project. I don't mind a critic who has a lot to learn, so long as he knows that's the case. Journalists often learn about entire areas of human endeavor for the sake of writing one article. They ask a lot of questions, they do research, they have other people read their drafts, etc. -- in the case of a restaurant reviewer, that could mean finding a Chinese-food expert to accompany you to a Chinese restaurant in order to bring you up to speed, doing some background reading for context, or asking an experienced editor or fellow writer for some advice on a draft. What worries me is a critic who doesn't know what he doesn't know. No pun intended . . .

Moby, I'll give the short answer now and then we'll give a long answer when we write this up formally. If all you're trying to do is essentially poach something but not have it come in direct contact with water, you should be able to wrap it in plastic and throw it in a pot of water in order to achieve that result. If you want to do anything more than that, you'll need some dedicated equipment. The issue is that there are quite a few applications grouped together under the heading "sous vide." Some of them can be accomplished quite well with plastic wrap and a pot of water on a stove -- no vacuum or special equipment. Others would be riotously impossible. As you move up the ladder of equipment your options increase, as does the ease of achieving a given desired result. The vacuum has a preservative effect, preventing bacterial growth (essential in long cooking at low temperatures) and oxidation (critical for, among other things, the appearance of food). It also enhances marinating. And there are a number of other ways in which food behaves differently under vacuum conditions, especially when it comes to the interactions between ingredients. One telling demonstration is to put a piece of meat and a small amount of oil into a vacuum pouch. When the air is removed and the pouch is sealed, the small amount of oil instantly and uniformly gets distributed to coat the entire surface of the piece of meat. It's quite fun to witness. Likewise, if you put a very small amount of an herb -- like a tiny piece of thyme -- in a vacuum pouch with a piece of meat and cook it sous vide for many hours, that little piece of thyme will quite intensely flavor the meat. The list goes on and on. We'll talk about many more applications in June.

Surely it's no coincidence that over time cast-iron pans that are used regularly become smoother, and that everybody prefers old cast-iron. The reason my 100-or-so-year-old Griswold square skillet is my favorite doesn't appear to have anything to do with the romance of ancient seasoning -- I've scoured and reseasoned that thing plenty of times -- but, rather, is because of its surface texture, which is decidedly velvety compared to my newer pans. So hey, if I can get a new pan with a smooth interior, sign me up.

Advice for the NYTimes's New Restaurant Critic: If you ever post on eGullet, please stay on topic. Thanks.

Thermapen is a good product, at least according to many professionals I know, but it's an instant-read thermometer. That's not particularly useful to most home cooks, who benefit more from thermometers with probes that can be left in the oven and readouts that remain outside. A good thermometer of that sort is going to cost you $150.

Al Sawyer, whom I've written about in Food & Wine magazine and here on eGullet, is a former salesman for the Bon Secour Seafood Company and the owner of King Neptune's in Gulf Shores. It's a terrific, super-casual place to get Royal Red shrimp, oysters, and all manner of local seafood. Since I wrote those pieces, Sawyer has also opened Gulf Bay Seafood Grill. Though by no means fancy, Gulf Bay is somewhat more upscale and restaurant-ish than King Neptune's, and the menu is a bit more diverse. Sawyer has done a smart menu of seafood basics augmented by some recipes that he collected over the years. Particularly interesting is his sweet-potato-encrusted grouper and his various tuna dishes. Al and "the boys" (how he refers to his top cooks and managers) have a small semi-commercial fishing boat that brings in a good deal of both restaurants' products, and his purchasing connections from the Bon Secour days are as good can be. I believe Gulf Bay is technically in Orange Beach, which is part of the Gulf Shores/Orange Beach contiguous region. Calypso Joe's is another fun seafood place, where they happen to have hermit crab races. A useful place in the area is Gulf Shores Bistro and Bakery, which has very good sandwich-type items. I'll second FistFullaRoux's vote for Lambert's, which is shall we say an experience. Gulf Shores/Orange Beach doesn't have a tremendous fine-dining culture, so I would stay away from that end of things. But as NeroW points out you are only a short drive from Pensacola. So if you want to have a big night out you can go to Jackson's, which is a national-caliber fine-dining place with a terrific chef named Irv Miller, and if you spend a day in Pensacola you can also do the Hopkins Boarding House for breakfast or lunch, and maybe the Pensacola Fish House. And that's just a partial list of great stuff in Pensacola.

I had a 5:30 reservation on a Thursday and the "even exchange" concept was presented to me as though I had to take another 5:30 reservation on a Thursday. That worked fine for me, but I hope those who had 7:30pm reservations on a Saturday were given first crack at other 7:30pm reservations on a Saturday. Not that I'm clear on the math here, because it seems they're somehow going to manage to rebook two months of reservations into one month without turning tables, but I'm sure there's an explanation.

Doc did they give you an "even exchange"?

Hannah, can you deconstruct my assessment above? I want to make sure I've got it right, or know I've got it wrong.

We don't have to agree on whether or not Julia Child is a giant, and for what reasons, to agree on the following: Julia Child lacks the kind of relevance among Gen-Xers that she had among Baby Boomers. And I think, had she evolved more, she would have had more relevance. Instead, as Mamster's Daily Gullet interview with Julia Child reveals, she is stuck in an antiquated mindset: she developed her style at a time when ingredients sucked, and has allowed that to limit her ability to adjust to modern haute cuisine sensibilities about ingredients. The entire French chef community moved beyond that old mindset and into Nouvelle Cuisine and beyond, leaving Julia Child as the standard bearer for a certain place and time. As that time becomes more a part of history than everyday life, Julia Child's influence is bound to continue declining. I wish she had gone the route of evolution.

Even then, Ruth, it's very difficult to maintain a precise temperature in the water bath for, say, 36 hours. There are plenty of instances in sous vide cooking where +/- 2 degrees will make a huge difference in the final product. So if your water bath is fluctuating between 139 and 143 degrees, you won't get the desired result in a recipe where the point is to keep the item at 141 degrees the whole time. That's why restaurants that are deep into sous vide cooking tend to use steam ovens, which can maintain temperature within .1 degree indefinitely. Or they use dedicated laboratory-style water baths with special circulating pumps, so that the water temperature gets maintained throughout the bath rather than through bottom-up heating on a stovetop.

I'm always confident that, when purchasing CAB, I'm going to get a piece of meat that is "high choice." The sum total of everything CAB does (limits on breeds, special inspection standards, etc.) means that -- according to the company and confirmed by my experience -- a piece of CAB Choice beef is going to be from the top 35% of the USDA Choice range. The USDA Choice range is far too big a range to be meaningful, because it includes beef that could pass undetected at a good steakhouse and beef that's pretty mediocre. So CAB is a guarantee of a certain standard, whereas randomly selected supermarket beef could be worse or could be better -- but there's no way to tell. I think what you'll find is that CAB (with the exception of the CAB Prime program for steakhouses) is an upper-middle market beef brand. In other words, it's not an indication that you're getting the best, but it's an indication that you're getting much better than average.

Bravo, Kats. It's great to hear that Minibar is as magical to those who make it happen as it is to so many of us who have experienced it as diners. Thanks for posting.

To use the example of Escoffier, assuming he still lived and ran restaurants today at age 160, does anybody think he'd still be serving the dishes from Le Guide Culinaire? Peach Melba? Of course not. During his lifetime, he continued to write and to expand his horizons, he always displayed an interest in new technologies (he was a pioneer of canning and preservation), and he was acutely aware of the need for progress. One hopes he would have, by now, written 10 more canonical texts, each more authoritative than the last, that his most recent works, from the 1990s, would have been about fusion cooking and Spanish cuisine, and that right now he'd be working on sous vide, turbo-chef, flash-bake, induction, and profi-whip techniques.

Last week we finally managed to catch up with Doug Psaltis, and we spent a few hours going over various sous vide techniques, tips, and tricks. In the end, though, I was of the opinion that we were going to need some more instruction before being able to create a tutorial that would be useful to eGullet. Thus, we are planning, in June, to do a sous vide menu project: Doug, Nathan, and I are trying to coordinate our schedules such that we can, on some successive dates, do all the processing and cooking for a five-course menu of dishes -- from cold to hot, savory to sweet -- illustrating different sous vide methods. So, it will be a while, but we hope to have something nice for eGullet in June.