oakapple

My guess is that the CG people are still negotiating behind-the-scenes with the mall owner for a rent concession, and the restaurant's demise isn't 100% certain. If it were truly done-for, there would be no reason to deny the rumors—as they are still doing. Restaurants in their final weeks sometimes actually see an uptick in business, as people realize that something unique is about to disappear.I wouldn't worry about someone just hired there. Whatever may happen to the restaurant, it was a first-class Michelin-starred place. There are always places hiring, and it won't harm anyone to have CG on their resume. Kunz still has Grayz, and I assume he still wants to have a Michelin-starred restaurant in his portfolio. If CG closes in the TWC, it will give Kunz the chance at a do-over. No one disputes that the food there was excellent. The restaurant was done in by exorbitant rents and the dumbest interior design of the decade.

I think the Momofukus are also "see and be seen" spots, but for a much different crowd. It's easy to forget, but Le Cirque was once not just a pickup spot, but at the pinnacle of the culinary world for a certain type of food. Where the analogy breaks down is that Le Cirque was always intended to be that kind of place, whereas the Momofukus have evolved into it gradually. But realistically, the Momofukus are no longer just "neighborhood spots that happen to be awesome." Part of the difference is that the chef-customer interaction is at the core of sushi dining. One would not train as a sushi chef without learning this. But all of the Ko chefs are classically trained, and this paradigm is as unusual for them as it is for everyone dining there.

Hyperbole.You haven't eaten much at Ssam Bar. On those two criteria--inventiveness and deliciousness--I would put my top, say, 6 or 7 Ssam Bar dishes over the past year and a half up against any restaurant I've ever eaten at.... On the other hand, I really can't claim any representative experience outside of the US. So I'll amend my statement to "but very likely no restaurant in America does." ← Even as modified, I can't imagine that there's a representative percentage of restaurants all over the USA where you have the same depth of experience as at Ssam Bar. It's just not humanly possible.

I had this thought too, as I was looking at the photos. It strikes me as easily correctable. There are restaurants in town where the bar stools are so comfortable that you want to take one home to your living room. Heck, just 12 more of the ones Ducasse has at Adour would do the trick (obviously not with the same upholstery).

If the ideas are marginally more elegant, and the best dishes are better than anything that's come out of Ssam Bar, then how can you say it fails to eclipse Ssam Bar in terms of straight-up inventiveness and deliciousness? Hyperbole.

Yes, but having received two stars at Ssam Bar, to get the identical rating at Ko would be a disappointment to all concerned. I just don't think there can be any doubt about that.

It's hard to know what David Chang is "swinging for" (unlike Mario Batali, he's not stupid enough to say). But it's pretty apparent that three stars is the floor. I mean, if he puts in an $85 prix fixe, serves only 24 covers a night, and gets the same rating as Ssam Bar, then something's wrong. I'm not saying Bruni couldn't do it (he can do anything), but it would be akin to Gordon Ramsay getting two stars.Nobody knows what a four-star restaurant is any more, because there hasn't been a new one in such a long time. Sometime in May, Bruni will set a record for the longest interval without a new four-star restaurant being crowned. (That's per Leonard Kim; he looked it up. You can find the post somewhere on the Bruni & Beyond thread.) My guess is that Bruni, who has built his whole oeuvre on the alleged irrelevance of traditional luxury dining, is just dying to make news by awarding four stars to a restaurant that breaks the old paradigm. Ruth Reichl wanted to do it too, but she couldn't. Bruni, like Reichl, has enough integrity that he won't do it willy-nilly. But you can be sure he's thinking about it. I suspect the Ko review will be beyond May in any case, simply because of the difficulty of getting in the requisite number of anonymous visits.

Sounds like it's pretty hard to say, given Nathan's points.

A non-regular visiting Ssam Bar would probably be hard-pressed to duplicate a "Ko-like" experience, because there's just no way of telling on that rambling menu which dishes are their best creations.It sounds like Ko is marginally better than the Ssam Bar meal that you know enough to order perfectly, but quite a bit better than the Ssam Bar meal ordered by someone without specialist knowledge.

I understand they don't take reservations. To get a table without waiting a ridiculous amount of time, what time would you have to show up on a Saturday night?

If you pick and choose your dishes at Ssam Bar, do you get food that (in totality) is as good? Not as good? Better?

It's hard for me to see how the experimental reservations policy at one highly unusual restaurant, out of 20,000 in just one city, will have such alarming consequences.

Maybe it's because eGullet members are only a small percentage of those that do get in.

I have now realized that he has a much more hard-line view than I had thought. And I do strongly disagree with it.At lesser extremes, he has useful points that we could all learn from.

I think Steven's view was merely that it would be commercially advisable (in his view) for restaurants to offer this perk, not that those who fail to do so are violating etiquette. Several of Steven's points got jumbled in the course of some heated rhetoric.In his book, he argues that at most restaurants these perks are readily available, if you know they exist and how to ask for them. This is useful information that might come in handy one day. I doesn't harm anyone to know that restaurants work this way. I can't make use of the information right now, but perhaps someday I will. He goes on to suggest that everyone who cares about dining would be better off cultivating such a relationship with just few restaurants, and I think he is wrong to suggest that this strategy has such universal appeal. In fairness, whenever any restauranteur tries something new, there are those who say, "It'll never work." And if it doesn't work, there's a tendency to gloat about having been proved right, and to say, "I told you so."There is much that Chang says that I don't believe. If he is saying that the system is totally egalitarian, while actually holding seats back for VIPs, then he is a hypocrite. If it simply turns out that the system doesn't work, and he changes it later on, then he's not a hypocrite; he's just learning from his mistakes.

However, I believe that you cancel the same way as you book: online. And any cancellation is immediately available to get snapped up. Eater asked Chang HQ about this, and they said that cancellations usually disappear within 10 minutes.

That's part of what I meant by it "depending on the circumstances." You've set up a false dichotomy. A restaurant that in all sincerity treats its regulars like "friends" may nevertheless have a profit motive. And a place with a profit motive—that is, almost every place—isn't being Machiavellian; it's just being run intelligently. Steven's use of the word "pushover" probably wasn't sensible. The fact is, you do recognize that places are treating you differently as a result of your repeat patronage. I cannot imagine that this is irrelevant to how you allocate your resources, even if you do so sub-consciously.I do agree with you that Chang's reservation system at Ko might be the right one for his business model, at this moment. But I am sure that he is taking care of his best customers in other ways, even if the reservation system works the way he claims (and it very well may not).

I really think you're reading Steven's posts the wrong way. No one has more of a joie de vivre about dining than he does. He doesn't go in anywhere with a chip on his shoulder. He is just talking about how the industry works, from the perspective of someone who's studied it professionally.You referred to that glass of champagne as a "nice gesture". It confirms what he is saying. Businesses do recognize their regulars, and treat them differently. How this plays out will vary with circumstances. If a place you patronized regularly treated you like an absolute stranger, how could it not influence your eagerness to bring them future business?

I think Fat Guy is entirely correct about customer expectations. And I think all of us to a certain extent, whether we are consciously aware of it or not, expect some something extra in exchange for our regular patronage—especially in situations where we have other options available. Until David Chang comes forward with another of his Delphic pronouncements, we can only guess what he's thinking. "Fuck the regulars" is probably not it. Equally unlikely is, "My restaurant is so fucking special that it doesn't matter how difficult I make it for people to dine there." (Forgive the four-letter words, but that's how Chang talks.) So I'm assuming that it's sheer practicality. With only 12 seats, he simply couldn't cater to Momofuku regulars and VIPs without saying "no" a very high percentage of the time. So he has a lot less hassle, and substantially the identical outcome, by saying "no" all the time. But he will cater to them in other ways (comped courses, comped drinks, invitations to 'special events', and so forth), while still being able to claim with a straight face that, at least as far as reservations go, the system is completely egalitarian.

It occurs to me that this might be unmanageable. Let's suppose Chang has 24 seats a night (allowing for multiple seatings), and that he holds 8 of them open for regulars and VIPs.The trouble is, he could easily have 50 people a day with a reasonable claim on those 8 seats. However he prioritizes them, he's going to be saying no to the majority in any case. I realize that all restauranteurs need to set priorities, but has there ever been a 12-seat restaurant with this kind of early demand?

I think there's also a lot of Chang-worship here: he thought of it, so it must be good. I think the three possibilities are something different:1) The "Momofuku chic" becomes self-sustaining, thanks to glowing four-star reviews. Two years from now, we'll still be talking about the 10:00 a.m. daily ritual, sustained by those who still haven't gotten in, and the regulars who feel that the clicking game is part of the allure. 2) The buzz dies down to normal levels, which means that people can get in fairly easily, without having to be ready to pounce at precisely 10:00. Whether Chang treats his regulars differently will become irrelevant, because getting into Ssam Bar will no longer be a big deal. 3) Chang admits that he screwed up, issues a mea culpa, and the rules change. All of this assumes that the claims of egalitarianism are true, which they may very well not be.

There's at least one more way in which the comparison is totally irrelevant.When a regular calls a restaurant at the last minute for a table, the restaurant is only too happy to accommodate them (if they possibly can). Indeed, many restaurants deliberately set seats aside for just that reason. When a regular calls an airline at the last minute for a seat, they are "rewarded" by paying a higher price than they would have paid for a seat reserved long in advance. When a regular calls a restaurant to change their reservation time, the restaurant is only too happy to accommodate them (if they possibly can). When a regular calls an airline, they are "rewarded" by paying a change fee, ranging from $25-100.

I am totally not getting why this is offered only 1 day a week.

I'm a little unsure whether you're stating a philosophy, or whether you're stating how you believe the industry actually operates. The restaurant business isn't a horse race, and a restaurant that comes out of the gate slowly isn't inevitably "left behind". If that were true, there would be no Momofuku Ssam Bar today. You may have misunderstood me. I have never heard of a restauranteur actually saying the words you have in quotes. I was suggesting, rather, that in the early days there is sometimes a crush of people eager to try the Next New Thing, and therefore as a practical matter it may not matter terribly that the reservation system isn't yet working perfectly. This is not the same thing as saying that the restaurant doesn't care whether it works.

I think the acid test, if there is any, comes long past day one.Early on, there's a heavy crush of people eager to try The Next Big Thing. It doesn't matter if there are some potential customers who are offended by the sloppy service, because the restaurant has more guests than it can accommodate anyway. The challenge doesn't come until after the initial furore has died down, which can take days or years, depending on the restaurants. There's much in your analogy that is relevant. But one huge distinction is the large number of airline routes that are monopolies, or near-monopolies. There are a lot of times when you're stuck with one airline—even one you hate. That just doesn't happen with restaurants.