oakapple
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Posts posted by oakapple
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According to Eater.com, even the bar has closed now.
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To clarify, Minetta Tavern has made clear that if you're not a friend of the house, you won't get A RESERVATION any time other than 5:30/10:00 PM. There are tables reserved for walk-ins during more normal times, and I've seen waits vary from a couple of minutes to 45 minutes to 2 hours.
Minetta Tavern is very good for what it is, and I am a fan, but I don't think it's on quite on the level the O.P. was asking for. Then add the high level of uncertainty about when they would be seated, and I would scratch it off the list for a 3-day stay.
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The one's I can get a reservation for a good time (i.e around 8pm) are:
Aldea
Apiary
Blue Water Grill
Cru
Gilt
Jean Georges
Picholine
The Modern
Turquoise
Apiary, Blue Water Grill and Turquoise, whatever their merits, are not in the same class as the others. Cru has recently hired a new chef, and there are no reviews yet, so you would be entering uncharted territory there. Any of the remaining ones could be good choices, and it just depends on what you are looking for.
The one's I can get a reservation for at a bad time (i.e 5:45 or 10pm)
Eleven Madison Park
Daniel
Maialino
Scarpetta
I was desperate to go to EMP - but can only get a 10pm reservation which I feel would be a bit late to enjoy their food properly.
Are any of the 'bad time' reservations SO good that I should just go?
It really depends on how you feel about eating that late. Personally, I would not. Your idea (mentioned in a later post) of trying Eleven Madison Park for lunch might be better, and it's also a lot less money that way. Daniel does not serve lunch, and I am not sure about the other two. I should point out that I had a 10:15 p.m. reservation at Daniel recently, and we weren't seated until almost 11:00.
Spice Market menu looks great....
I have to disagree with the earlier poster. As I understood the original premise, you tried to book Per Se and Babbo, and as those are full, you were looking for comparable substitutes. Even at its best, Spice Market was never in the class of those two places, and by most accounts it has gone way down in the ~6 years since it opened. The Times recently demoted it from three stars to just one.
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I wonder if they also took past performance into account as I think Jen went as far as she could go.
They claim they don't; but over and over again, whenever it was at all close, it seemed the chef with the worst cumulative performance was the one sent home. I think Robin was the only chef who persisted conspicuously longer than she deserved to be there.
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Hi
I'm in NYC in late December and have reserved 3 evenings for really nice meals for my wife and I. Tried Per Se but they're fully booked so I'm on waiting list. Also tried Babbo but they're full too.
Any suggestions for a really nice meal for 2 for these 3 evenings?
Many thanks
Martin
December is one of the toughest months of the year to book on short notice. It's the industry's busiest time, with lots of celebratory dinners.
In lieu of Babbo, try any one of Michael White's restaurants (Convivio, Alto, or Marea). In lieu of Per Se, try The Modern. These are very good places where I think you have a shot at getting in on a few weeks' notice.
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I think the editing was not at all clear on why Jen was sent home. In the broadcast, one of Jen's dishes was criticized as being too salty, one of Bryan's as being underseasoned, Michael had the runny egg and Kevin had the stringy beef. I thought the criticism was pretty balanced. Jen admittedly did not get praised as much as the other chefs.
Doesn't that explain it? In a challenge where all of the chefs made little mistakes, but no one failed completely, someone has to be lowest. If she "did not get praised as much as the other chefs," there's your answer.
Obviously, in a blog, Colicchio and Simmons have the opportunity to give additional reasons that weren't accommodated in the 1½ minutes allotted to the final segment at the end of the show. But clearly, from what you saw on TV, there were ample reasons for her to be the one eliminated, in an admittedly close race.
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Marc, how would you define "mature"? More mature demeanor, it would seem, but I'm not sure what you mean in re cooking.
My sense is that Michael is still experimenting, and learning how far he can go without losing his audience. Obviously he is very good, but if you have to choose, I think Bryan is more consistent.
This, of course, is based solely on what I can infer from the edit, and without actually tasting the food. Which is another way of saying I could be way off base.
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Look, I realize this show is about good television, with cooking skills and creativity taking second place. Still, the television failings tick me off the most. In particular, the editing.
Sometimes the decisions of the judges seem to come out of left field. . . . Has anyone else noticed this, or am I hallucinating?
Well...not quite hallucinating, but I think you are mistaken. In every episode this year, either it was very clear who would be sent home, or it was a close call between two chefs, and one of those two was sent home. During this season, I cannot think of a single elimination that "came out of left field."
The judges have said that their deliberations sometimes take hours. In a show edited down to one hour, obviously a lot gets left out. Clearly they are trying to maximize the drama; this is entertainment, after all. But most of the time, the reasons for their decision are pretty obvious.
I'm curious just how tough Kevin's beef was. Were it not for his vegetable dish and Jen's salt issues he could have gone home. Conversely, if his beef had been even passable I think he would have won the challenge.
That's probably right. Both judges with blogs (Colicchio and Simmons) said that this was the best final four the show has ever had, and that no dish was actually bad. Someone had to lose.
If all 3 were to nail it in the finale who would win? The extremes are Kevin with less is more but great flavors and Mike V with going over the top the other way in terms of trying to be too creative. Bryan seems to be a grown up version of Mike in terms of being creative but not too over the top, yet with more a sense of nailing the flavors more on the lines of Kevin so perhaps, if all 3 nail it he may have the best shot. I wonder if the V boys watched TCM together since he chose the short ribs which were what Chiarello cooked in the TCM finale.
I think we already know that all three don't nail it. There hasn't been an episode yet where at least one of them didn't make at least a minor mistake. Colicchio has said that, in the event of a tie, the chef's performance over the course of the whole season is taken into account. I think that benefits Kevin, because he has won the most challenges. Also, don't discount that Colicchio is the head judge, and Kevin is very much a chef after Colicchio's heart.
If Kevin is the one who screws up, and the Voltaggio brothers tie, then I think Bryan wins, because he was never in the bottom three, and his cooking is more mature.
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I understand the desire to create some tension for the viewer in the episode, but it's too bad when you have to read a blog to find out what was really going on. In the epsiode they indicated problems with everyone's dishes.
Even without reading the blog, it was apparent to me from the comments at Judges' Table that Jen was pretty likely to be going home. In an episode that lacked a massive screw-up or an obviously awful dish, the rules require that someone nevertheless must be selected as the losing chef.
Even if seafood was available, I wonder if Jen chose something else to avoid being dinged for playing it too safe.If that was her reason, then she's a fool. Does anyone say that Eric Ripert is playing it safe for serving an all-seafood menu at Le Bernardin? Even if you confine yourself to that, the opportunities for creativity are limitless.
Totally apropos of nothing...but Gail's décolletage set a new standard. Even my girlfriend (without prompting from me) commented on it.
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Now, if people would stop saying that the show is fixed because the two brothers are in the finale...seriously, do people think that there is going to be a huge ratings jump if two siblings are in the final?
I agree. You don't even need to taste the food, to see that the V brothers and Kevin are operating at a much higher level than the other chefs this season.
Did anyone see seafood at the market? I thought Jen would've naturally gone for that, if it were available. Tom's blog said that the food had to come from a 100 mile radius, which would encompass the Pacific Ocean...or Point Reyes and oysters.I am not sure, but if seafood was available and she didn't grab it, it was a crucial error, but not the first time she's done that.
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Regarding the decision to send Jennifer home, Colicchio has a couple of important points on his blog.
He says that this is the strongest quartet of chefs ever to make it to the final. And he also says that, for the first time, the four best chefs of the season actually made it that far. In past years, there was someone who squeaked through because a more talented chef had unaccountably screwed up in an earlier challenge. Last year, Carla was the one who clearly did not belong there.
With that in mind, Colicchio notes that no one in this challenge actually cooked a bad dish. The rules required a winner and a loser, and someone had to go home for a relatively minor transgression. Jennifer went home because there were clear issues, albeit subtle, with both of her dishes. That wasn't the case with the other three.
I also think it was the fairest result. Jennifer fell apart in the second half of the season. Based on her performance to date, she was clearly the weakest of the four remaining chefs. Colicchio always claims that the judging is one challenge at a time, but if it was close, she was the one who deserved to go.
The finale should be interesting. Bryan is the only chef who was never in the bottom three, all season long; he has given the steadiest performance. Kevin has won the most challenges (4 quickfire, 5 elimination). Michael has been in the top three the most often, though he has won fewer of them than either Bryan or Kevin.
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I dined there a few times. I actually thought that it was quite good—certainly a lot better than its reputation would suggest. As I understand it, the sale is part of a general retrenchment in Ramsay's over-extended empire.
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I think it's normal to engage in post-mortems and "what ifs" over a restaurant that folds, particularly one you had strong feelings about—good or bad.
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What were Masons mistakes???
Sneakeater is absolutely right about over-hyping the opening. Mason all-but admitted that original menu was wrong, which is why it was overhauled.
Have you ever opened a restaurant , with partners?I haven't, but that's irrelevant. I haven't coached football either, but when Notre Dame goes 6–6, I know that something is wrong (they just fired their coach).
Wish him better luck next time....I do wish him better luck next time. As I've stated upthread (more than once, I believe), I liked the place. But there weren't enough of me.
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The neighborhood, of course, does matter: Tailor on the Upper East Side would have been ludicrous.
Sadly, Soho is pretty ludicrous, too, these days. There hasn't been an important new dining destination in that 'hood, other than Boqueria.
That may very well be no more than coincidence. Tailor's bad reviews weren't because it was in Soho; they were because of Mason's mistakes. Given that the bar was consistently busy, there was clearly no inherent obstacle to attracting patronage to that area.
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Well, I have never thought of Kevin as stupid. as long as you have a knowledge of how to do it, it can be done. so I would say it is a risk if kevin is stupid, otherwise not really so much. sous vide is not a kind of cooking that you rely on your senses too much to tell if it is done... if you have the right instructions, it is a no brainer as long as you have some idea of how it works, and any chef of his level should know something about it. We are talking about Kevin here, not what some other top chef contestant has done. she obviously didnt have very good instruction on how to do it.
Several folks have already debunked this so thoroughly that it hardly requires further elaboration.
But one can generalize beyond Kevin this year and Carla last year. Over and over again on Top Chef, when chefs attempt a technique they haven't tried before, it usually turns out badly. This has happened countless times. It's not because they're stupid. It's because anyone improvising with an unfamiliar technique at a time of stress is likely to make mistakes. Kevin's success is one of the rare examples in the six-year history of the show when this has not backfired.
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If the block where a restaurant is located really didn't matter, then I don't think we would have seen The John Dory close. It got mostly good/great reviews and was very busy to start with, yet its eventual closing was also blamed on neighborhood traffic. While a high end restaurant may lure people from further away, something at Tailor's price point and level of ambition is less likely to, unless it's one of a few screaming hot places in town.
I am not saying that the block never matters, only that it didn't matter for this type of place.
The John Dory's problem was not the block, but the neighborhood, and neighborhoods definitely matter. The Dory's economics required a lunch trade, and that area doesn't get much traffic at lunch, because it's too far away from anything else. Any block in that area would have had the same problem.
The avant-garde cuisine served at Tailor, regardless of price point and level of ambition, was never going to be "neighborhood food." It was never going to be a place where people just dropped in on a whim. That's why the block, in this case, did not matter. The people who dine at that kind of restaurant are those who've planned to go there, and once you've made a plan, a block here or there doesn't influence the decision very much.
The neighborhood, of course, does matter: Tailor on the Upper East Side would have been ludicrous.
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Kevin, while I liked him at first, and I dont doubt that his food is good, IS PLAYING IT TOO SAFE! I mean maybe he will win if everyone else screws up, but if jen or one of the V bros nails it in the finale, he will go down.
Bear in mind that Tom Colicchio made his reputation by cooking simple things well. Kevin, in a sense, is a chef after his own heart. And I wouldn't exactly say that Kevin is playing it safe: he cooked sous vide for one of the challenges, despite having minimal experience with the technique. On this show, that is usually a recipe for disaster.
At this point, it would surprise me if Jen wins. If it is at all close, they will consider the arc of the season, and conclude that she has barely squeaked through in too many challenges. I could easily see Kevin or either Voltaggio winning. If they're looking for someone homespun and telegenic, Kevin takes the palm. Of course, he has to deliver on the plate, but he has done that more consistently than anyone else.
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As for the location, while it' wasn't the middle of nowhere, it was a block with essentially no foot traffic/walk-in potential, and that part of Soho is certainly not a neighborhood on the rise in terms of dining. Lethal for a place that depended on a strong bar business as well as regular visitors to the dining room.
That is probably the one explanation we can discount: the bar was the only successful thing at Tailor, and the only part of it that is still open.
When a restaurant becomes known as a dining destination, the block it is on is of relatively little importance. Not just the block, but actually the entire neighborhood where WD~50 is located, was unknown as a dining destination not that long ago. If your restaurant is important enough, people will find it. This was never the type of restaurant, regardless of its location, that was going to do much walk-in business.
In its early days, the dining room at Tailor was reliably full. Restaurants survive when a sufficient quantity of the early visitors are motivated to become regulars, and to recommend it to their friends. Tailor failed because not enough people felt the urge to do so. It didn't help that practically all of the reviews were middling to negative.
The original menu at Tailor was a mistake. It didn't have enough savory courses, and some of the dishes were awfully expensive in relation to the portion sizes. Mason eventually adjusted, but the reviews were in by then. I do agree with an earlier poster that the much-delayed opening and the early hype (fueled by Mason himself) were unhelpful.
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Well, that's the problem with this kind of discussion. Arturo's is a real New York place that locals, people from the regions (New Jersey, et al.), and former locals coming in for their New York pizza fix frequent, along with plenty of tourists (though not as many as Lombardi's, which is much more of a tourist trap in the negative sense). The fact that tourists go somewhere doesn't automatically make it less authentically New York.
For some reason, the word "tourist" is practically always used as a pejorative on these threads, which is why I prefer the less-judgmental word "visitor." Some visitors are extremely keen on finding excellent, but lesser known, dining options. Several of the places mentioned on this thread are very well known. A visitor who does his homework in advance is quite likely to find out about them. Does that make them bad?
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I have nothing against Jen, she is simply the weakest link left.
Maybe, but not because of her cooking. Her main weakness on this show has been self-doubt. She let a couple of bad results spiral her downward instead of using them as a springboard to bounce back up. If she gets her head straight very quickly, the cooking ability is still there. I've been a Jennifer fan since the start of the season, I'm not giving up on her 'til Padma tells her to pack her knives.
Jen is the weakest link because she has the narrowest range of skills and the bad results and the self-doubt she has experienced are a direct results of that inability to cook outside her box.
The OP had it right. A lack of confidence, not a lack of skills, has been her major problem. All of these chefs have limitations. What Kevin does, as Jennifer has not, is to use the skills he has to work each challenge to his own advantage.
I will agree with you if the finals are what they have been in the past, "here's a gazillion dollars, no restrictions, impress us", that will definately benefit Jen. However if the semifinal is the more likely curveball and here's some stress on top of it, she's done.I still predict that the producers do not want an all-male finale, and if it's at all close Jennifer will make it into the final 3. I also think it's to her benefit that the last two episodes were taped months after all of the others. She, more than any other chef, needed some time off to recharge.
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"People! This is drama not cooking. I think Mike I. was thoroughly disliked by the judges. Robin could have gone home for the past three or four weeks, but Mike was such an unmitigated jerk that they kicked him out the door and reminded him on the way out that Robin was staying.
There have been jerks in past seasons who lasted longer than Mike did. He got sent home because he cooked the worst dish in that challenge. The judges may have felt that it was poetic justice, but the competition was decided on the plate. Bear in mind, though, that many of the scenes that make Mike look so bad are things the judges never see until long afterwards.
This Jen thing has been a complete setup. If you watched the teaser for next week carefully you will notice that all of a sudden the wan, desheveled, babbling Jen is gone. She's had her hair done and highlighted, she is speaking coherently and I will predict that seafood will somehow reappear along with a miraculous turnaround.Actually, I thought she did her usual babbling in this episode, and the turnaround (in the quickfire) was short-lived. Of course, she was going to go back to seafood; she would have had to be a complete idiot to keep cooking red meat.
I have not been suprised by Jen's emotional breakdown but rather her total inability to expand her culinary range.That is fairly typical of the show. If you or I were on the show, we would probably do the same: stick with what we know.
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But the "NYC aesthetic," such as it is (and I agree that it exists in some sense) encompasses a range, not just one style. For instance: a small, dimly lit, brick-walled place (like Dell'Anima, Little Owl, and many many others). Or a starker, edgier, but still warm space (Ssam Bar). What they have in common is that they're relaxing and casual, but they take food seriously.
Are you suggesting that relaxing and casual places satisfy the NYC aesthetic, but that formal places do not? And for that matter, are you suggesting that "relaxing and casual" places that take food seriously are a New York invention?
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I think that there IS a New York esthetic. That's why so many people have been turned off by the dining room at SHO -- for not being consistent with it.
Oh, I agree that there is a New York esthetic, but restaurants that emulate it are frequently derided as derivative.
Top Chef - Interest in judges discussion?
in Food Media & Arts
Posted · Edited by oakapple (log)
It isn't just Gail. Everyone who has ever spoken or written about it says that the judging sometimes goes on for hours. If they issued an extended version, it would only make sense for the latter part of the season. And no, I wouldn't sign up for 6 hours of it, but maybe for a well-edited 30 to 60 minutes. Combine that with other stuff that we don't normally see, and you've got a DVD-length show.
What you call fluff is appealing to many viewers. The producers spend a lot of time with focus groups, and the like, figuring out what makes people watch. You'd expect that, given the expense of putting on a show like this.
Mind you, I am not disagreeing that there is plenty of fluff, by my standards. I just realize that my standards aren't the only ones they have to appeal to.