Fat Guy

Jo-Mel: I'm very interested in the status of women in fine dining over the years. There's still not equality, but I can only imagine what it was like in the old days! And don't even get me started on how restaurants have historically treated ethnic minorities. (By the way, it's not a whole book -- this information is for one chapter in a book about the restaurant business and restaurant culture in general.) Robert: The focus is on the US, but I'm trying not to be provincial so a global context is also important.

I'm looking for some words of wisdom from those who remember what restaurants were like as far back as the 1950s and beyond. Do you have any reminiscences you can share? In particular, if you've been dining out steadily for several decades, what do you think has changed, what do you think has stayed the same, what has come and gone and come back again, what do you miss, and what do you not miss? This is part of the research for my book -- I may quote you, if you don't mind. I've already interviewed several restaurateurs who go back that far, but I'd be interested in hearing some consumer perspectives -- as, I'm sure, would all the baby eGulleters.

Rhea: I can't think of any reason why the difference between those two pots would have a significant effect on your eggs. DR: They're in the water for such a short time, I don't imagine there's much threat of carry-over cooking. However, I also don't know why they wouldn't be poached right away.

Minibar. Having been there, and having re-read Tom's review in light of my own experience, I think he profoundly missed the point of what is in my opinion one of the most important restaurants in North America. Tom has been good to Jose, to be sure, but he fucked up on this review. That being said, I join you in thinking Tom is one of the good guys -- a savvy restaurant reviewer who has his heart in the right place and knows his stuff. I don't dine around DC enough to have a ready database for comparison, but I appreciate a lot of what Tom writes. Certainly, he's one of the only critics I read outside my own city. I also agree that his chat is something to be thankful for, though I personally find live chat to be a poor medium -- it's old-school Internet from the days when producers of Internet content were trying to emulate radio and television. Why create such a limiting structure, where everybody has to tune in at a given time and Tom has no time to think through his answers -- or to write lengthier, reasoned responses to the best questions? A weekly call-in radio program would be better for that. Online, clearly the best technology for meaningful discussion is what we use here, or a variant of it. This sort of technology works very well for Q&A -- it allows people to ask their questions any time, it allows the person answering the questions to answer them at any pace, it captures much of the immediacy of "live" programming, yet it allows for depth that simply can't exist in the real-time format.

Don't worry, Daniel. Nobody suspected that you were saying Sam was in any way insightful.

Sam, you can nail that to the door of the new critic's office.

Since we've already had a hundred or so discussions of the meaning of the star ratings, suffice it to say that -- from a totally non-judgmental perspective, ignoring what should be or what could be -- the stars are emphatically not all about the food. They are a shorthand system for indicating a combination primarily of food quality and level of luxury. In their planning stages, restaurants very carefully consider whether they are aiming to be four, three, two, one, or no-star establishments. The chefs they hire, the amount of money they spend on decor, their ingredients budgets, their wine programs, the number of waitstaff, their prices . . . all these things flow from a conception of being in a certain star catgegory. There's no question in my mind -- and I assume this is obvious to any observer who pays attention to this sort of thing -- that Asiate's creators were attempting to build a three-star restaurant. Of course, that's no guarantee of three stars. Critics are not there simply to convey a restaurant's desired star rating to the public; they need to judge whether a restaurant has delivered. But a restaurant's plan establishes the baseline from which to work, and if a critic can't speak that language then we are left with a failure to communicate. On every front, Asiate has all the trappings of a three-star restaurant. If it doesn't live up to its promise, fine, it gets two stars. But a one-star review of Asiate is an insult. It is the equivalent of saying the restaurant has been a complete failure in almost every way imaginable -- and indeed that seems to be what Hesser (incorrectly) thinks. The Mandarin Oriental's management could have opened a fucking steakhouse on the 35th floor and made money hand over fist. With that view, they could have gotten away with anything. Instead, they chose to make a major investment in a serious restaurant, a decision for which they deserve recognition not ridicule and scorn. The Time Warner Center's opening represents one of the most significant moments in New York's restaurant history. It is a changing of the guard, and a potential renaissance. As Lutece and La Cote Basque shut out their lights, several of the most ambitious restaurants ever are preparing to open. It is absolutely essential that the media -- especially the New York Times -- cover this series of openings with the utmost care and seriousness. No allowances should be made for sub-par performance, but the critics need to comprehend what they're seeing and explain it to their readers. Asiate has taken its lumps, but the Times really needs to get its shit together and appoint a permanent critic for the impending reviews of Per Se, Cafe Gray, Masa, and Rare, not to mention several other key openings around town. These reviews need to be handled well. The Times owes it to the public, the restaurant world, the cause of excellence, and itself.

If you want to see an open-minded veteran restaurant-reviewer's take on Asiate, you'll find some pretty stark contrasts between Hal Rubenstein's review in New York Magazine and Amanda Hesser's effort. Needless to say, I think Rubenstein comes a lot closer to hitting the mark.

Hesser's review is one of the best-written reviews we've seen since Ruth Reichl left the position. Her judgment, however, lags far behind her writing ability. It's unfortunate that a major restaurant like Asiate had to get reviewed by a first-timer who clearly has some unusual notions of what the stars mean, whose tastes are antithetical to what the restaurant is serving, and who appears to be unable to separate herself from those preferences for the purposes of critical evaluation. One star is a completely an utterly indefensible rating for Asiate. JosephB, it gets two stars if it serves steak. The only debate should be between two and three: is Asiate a three-star restaurant that happens to be underperforming and therefore gets two, with a three-star review forthcoming if things improve? Or is it already a three-star (which I think it may very well be)?

There's a brief history of Papaya King on the Papaya King Web site: http://www.papayaking.com/html/history.htm Looks like I was a year off: the business started in 1932 as a tropical fruit stand. Frankfurters apparently got added to the menu in 1939. The site claims FDR and the Beatles ate/drank there.

Papaya King dates to 1931, so it has plenty of historical stature of its own -- though Nedick's predates even Papaya King (1910, I believe). I just barely remember Nedick's stores from the 1970s, but I think Papaya King has a different feel. Gray's, for its part, has pretty much no feel at all. Incidentally I believe at least one Nedick's store opened last year, in Penn Station.

It's ridiculous. The Times should take this opportunity to set the record straight about anonymity in restaurant reviewing, rather than to perpetuate the hoax. I believe we have an existing thread about who the new New York Times critic will be. Can somebody post the link? Thanks.

The latest information I've heard, from a friend who works in one of the other restaurants in the Center, is that Per Se will take 2-3 weeks to reopen.

As juuceman says, and as our hot dog correspondent John (would somebody please PM and e-mail him and alert him to this thread's existence?) has painstakingly investigated, the frankfurters for both Papaya King and Gray's Papaya (Mr. Gray is a former Papaya King employee, I believe) are manufactured by Marathon Enterprises in East Rutherford, New Jersey. This is the same company that makes Sabrett frankfurters, and to the best of the collective knowledge of eGulleters there is no difference between a Sabrett natural casing frankfurter and the frankfurters served at Papaya King and Gray's Papaya. Though many of us would like to be proven wrong on this point (it goes against what so many want to believe), so far the evidence has not been forthcoming. Both Papaya King and Gray's Papaya prepare their frankfurters the same way -- slowly griddled until the casing is crisp -- and they seem to use identical Sabrett buns, and similar if not identical sauerkraut and deli mustard. The main difference on the frankfurter front seems to be that Papaya King is more expensive. Where you will notice a dramatic difference is in the drinks. The bizarrely enjoyable (it really is one of the best accompaniments imaginable for hot dogs) papaya drink at Papaya King is about a thousand times better than the chalky one they peddle at Gray's. There are a number of other items on the menus at all these places, but the classic order is "two with; papaya" which means two frankfurters with sauerkraut (you add your own mustard) and a medium sized papaya drink. Onions are an acceptable addition as well. Beyond that, I make no guarantees. I'm sorry I'm in the Carolinas at the time you're planning to be in New York, otherwise I'd love to take you around to a hot dog place or ten.

As the chief executive, the chef gets the blame for everything, including the desserts if they suck. Show me a restaurant where the chef doesn't have to approve every dessert; show me a restaurant where the pastry chef gets to have approval authority over a single savory course. They're not co-chefs. For better or worse, that's reality. I'd be happy to continue this discussion on a different thread; this one is going to get very long just with Per Se discussion so the NY forum hosting team is asking that posts remain focused on discussion of dining at Per Se.

You might want to try that inquiry on the CA board.

Hey, I'm all for giving credit where credit is due. If you're familiar with my body of writing on eGullet you know I've always been a vigorous advocate for pastry chefs. But I don't believe in giving attention to a pastry chef just for the sake of furthering the cause of pastry chefs -- I don't have that agenda. A pastry chef needs to make an impression. At this point, the only impressions the Per Se pastry kitchen has made on me are: 1) great macarons, 2) an apparently faithful reproduction of one dessert from the French Laundry menu, and 3) an ill-conceived sorbet course. I also tasted a few other items on two occasions and got the impression of a technically accomplished pastry kitchen, which I think I made clear in my earlier post. But I felt no particularly personal stamp of a pastry chef, there was no pastry chef named on the menu I received, there is no attention paid to him in the media kit, he doesn't sign the menus that get sent back to the kitchen, he wasn't on the pastry station during the media party when dozens of journalists were led through the kitchen on tours, they don't introduce you to him or mention him at all when you get a kitchen tour as a customer . . . in short, I have nothing to say about the guy beyond the general impressions I have of the Per Se pastry kitchen. The only way I even learned that he's going to be living in New York was by going on eGullet tonight and reading your post. That's the beauty of eGullet, but still the restaurant really should be broadcasting that information.

I'd love to give more attention to Rouxel. I've made a point of listing his name twice on eGullet, but I don't know much beyond the little bio on the French Laundry Web site. Rouxel is the pastry chef at French Laundry; there seems to be no Benno equivalent listed for the pastry department at Per Se. I assume Rouxel is here in New York now but there's more I'd have to learn before I could write anything intelligible about him. Benno is a different case, because he's been in New York and I've written about him in the past -- I think I was actually the first journalist to ever write about him, as well as the second -- so I have better information on that front.

In order to avoid an inane downtown-versus-uptown debate, I'll just say I disagree with everything you've said and leave it at that.

I totally don't get a suburban vibe from the place -- it feels completely urban to me. It reminds me of an ultra-modern indoor commercial complex in an Asian city like Singapore. Everything feels state-of-the-art, and the vertical orientation and views of Central Park and Columbus Circle make the minimalist composition a wise choice. In some cities, like Singapore and Los Angeles, when they build these commercial complexes they need to create a heavily produced look and feel because they're in the middle of nowhere. They could have junked the Time Warner Center up with self-consciously New-Yorkish crap, or made it into a bullshit village with trolleys or whatever, but they decided to let the city speak for itself: the people, the location, the views -- it all adds up to something that strikes me as a logical modern addition to our city. I'm very glad to have the whole center here, and especially the restaurants.

I think upper tier, back row, north end is also only workable as a two-top. I also don't know what mechanisms, if any, they have to make tables larger or smaller.

It seems to me that it's just like the theater: you want the front row of either the lower or upper tier. The row of tables closer to the window on the lower tier has the best view and doesn't have a bunch of other tables directly looking down on it. On the upper tier, the view is of course better from the tables closer to the window. I suppose if you want privacy, the best place to be is upper tier south end. Either way, the tables on the south end strike me as preferable to the north, because of their distance from that entrance. Then again, my own table preferences aren't always the same as majority preferences.

They didn't use that terminology, but it's probably correct. The Cattlemen's Beef Board has just gone through the process of "recognizing" this cut (it's the main story in their Fall/Winter 2004 newsletter -- Michael Mosner reluctantly let me have his copy) and the technical description is that it's the "butt tender of the veal leg." But that of course doesn't give a name to the bone.

Absolutely. If you're willing to go up to Hunts Point and pay the $3 to enter and park your car (the best parking deal in the city!) most of these places will be happy to do cash-and-carry business with you. They're not particularly well equipped to provide retail-style customer service, but you can call ahead and order whatever the heck you want. Most of their cash-and-carry business is with local folks in the Bronx, but if I ever had a big dinner party and needed really good veal for a dozen people I'd consider putting in a call and making a pickup.

They don't work with sides of veal the way a beef butcher works with sides of beef -- they work with whole carcasses and do the splitting on individual sections later on. So when they count their daily output, they count carcasses not sides. Their daily production varies but I think they said they can do a couple of hundred carcasses if necessary. That's a lot, but it doesn't put them in league with a big industrial veal packer. I think there are places in the Midwest that bang it out in the thousands of carcasses per day and ship it shrink-wrapped to supermarkets all over the country. This is a much more upscale, artisanal, regional, family-run operation. They select each carcass by hand for each customer, and they supply places like Lobel's -- at the absolute top of the market. So while it's a really big company compared to any retail butcher shop, it's not really a mass producer. (I'm answering for Ellen because she's not around at the moment.)