Sneakeater

Just to state the painfully obvious, what I think is emerging here is that there are two general ways that "neighborhood place" has been used. One is as an opposite pole from "destination". Reichl seems to use it that way (as does Bruni), and I have have to say it's the way I've always assumed the term was used. The other way, to which Grimes in his wiggly way seems to subscribe, is that "neighborhood place" is more a matter of style than of quality (such that a "neighborhood place" could also be a "destination" -- the way all the places he mentions in the Annisa review Leonard Kim quoted are). I think what we have here is the usual "law v. equity" split. The first way of using the term "neighborhood place" has the advantages of being readily comprehensible (you know what it means), consistent, and easy to apply. It's an evaluative phrase that's easy to understand and also useful (in the sense that, when you call someplace a "neighborhood place" in this sense, you're telling people that you don't think it's worth traveling to). On the other hand, it's reductive -- narrower and more black-and-white than reality. The second way of using the term has the advantages of being more nuanced and also, probably, more accurate. I know what Nathan meant when he called Perry Street a "neighborhood place", and I think it actually spoke to the issue in the context of which he made that assertion (why Perry Street doesn't now, and is unlikely to, have a tasting menu). But it has the problem of being more subjective, unstable, and open to misunderstanding. I'd also note that part of the reason this has even become an issue is the trend noted in Grimes's Annisa review (and also adverted to in the Reichl review of that Cigar Club that Leonard also quoted -- although Reichl uses different terminology). Now there are a lot of casual, unpretentious places with high culinary aspirations. They look and feel like neighborhood places, but the food is good and unique enough to be "worth a journey" in almost anyone's estimation. It may be that this disjunction between food quality and mode of presentation (at least a disjunction by the old traditional standards) has caused some confusion in the use of "neighborhood place" as a term.

While we're waiting (and I know this is more appropriate for the "Bruni and Beyond" thread), I have to say that my wife and I used to joke about how many excuses Bryan Miller seemed to find for revisiting places like Lutece on the Times's nickel.

Welcome to the world of people who have no life.

Thirty years ago. Holy shit. At a certain point in one's life, one's sense of time turns to shit.

I mean, Da Silvano is notable as this celebrity magnet. It's a place that people outside New York have probably heard of. And, when it first opened ten or fifteen or whatever years ago, its food was pretty highly lauded. So a reevaluation doesn't seem out of the question to me. But Red Cat deserves two reviews in five or six years why?

MUCH more bizarre than Da Silvano. Wanna fight?

Wait: you're saying that Grimes reviewed Red Cat (and gave it one star) and then Bruni felt Red Cat was worth RE-REVIEWING? That may be single most bizarre thing he's done.

(Can Leonard Kim get any more awesome as a poster?) Not taking sides, but just observing: Grimes's account of Bouley Bakery would seem to give some credence to Nathan's characterization of Perry Street is "neighborhood place" (which is what started this whole discussion). Of course, it could also be noted that Grimes didn't say Bouley Baker was a neighborhood place, but only that it was like one. (Good thing this is a semantic discussion, so I can say something like that without fear of being laughed out of the thread.)

I think this is really really good.

I can never manage to hold "Room 4 Dessert" and "bad" together in the same thought pattern.

All I meant is that even the old-school, much less ambitious dessert places were at least as much places you'd actually go to as part of an evening out as places you'd merely "stop in on the way home from work". The Village -- to name one neighborhood -- is literally dotted with places like that. So I think that, to many, it's now that they'd go to Room 4 Dessert or Chikalicious during a night out when before they (or members of predecessor generations) might have gone to, say, Rocco's or (a big step up) Lanciani. (I can't tell you how many dates with the woman I eventually married ended up at Lanciani.) The quality may be new, and the level of invention may be new, but the niche arguably isn't that new.

My problem with that is a place like Al Di La. From day one, you couldn't get into it. Not because people were coming from all over the City to go there (they weren't then), but because people were coming from all over the neighborhood to go there. Then, as now, they had a "no resevations" policy. You go there, and either you get lucky, or they know you and sneak you in, or you're willing to wait 45 minutes or an hour or more. Nevertheless, I'd say it was (and remains) a neighborhood place -- even though, on any given night, you could have no reasonable expectation of getting into it. ← To elaborate on this, it sounds sometimes like people are saying that one of the characteristics of a "neighborhood place" is that it isn't wildly successful.

I apologize to Alex, as the foregoing appeared while my last (wordy) post was being composed. We're saying the same thing.

Oddly, I would think that dessert-only restaurants would do better than dessert-centric restaurants. Dessert-only restuarants are easy to understand. There've been places you just go to for dessert -- the million Italian pastry shops in New York, for example -- since time immemorial. Places where you have as many dessert courses as main courses, though, and where they're interspersed througout the meal, may be harder to understand. Just to explain my last post, the existing "new dessert" places in New York -- Chikalicious and Room 4 Dessert -- are very much in the dessert-only mode (although I've heard that Will Goldfarb at Room 4 Dessert intends to start experimenting with some savories). And one of them, Chickalicous, doesn't even aspire to culinary modernity. Room 4 Dessert very much does, but the commentary about it has always centered on how you don't have to understand or appreciate the experimental nature of the cooking there to enjoy the food. In other words, R4D has succeeded, IMO, because it can be appreciated as a high-end dessert place, and not as one of NYC's few proponents of avant-garde cuisine. But even as for dessert-centric places, how different are they, in concept, from Payard on New York's Upper East Side? That's a place run by a famous pastry chef. It has a good bistro menu, which people in fact order from -- but everybody really goes there for the desserts. I guess the avant-gardists would say that these "new" dessert-centric places differ from that model in integrating the dessert courses into meal more than is traditional, and in giving them a bigger role. While I questioned above whether people would have trouble accepting that, maybe the real answer is that this part of the avant-garde program may be the one that will meet the least public resistance. Who's going to complain about having more dessert in a meal? Finally -- and without, I hope, seeming antagonistic -- I thought that Alex's comment about "stop[ping] in on your way home to grab something sweet" sort of misapprehends the way people use, and have always used, these "dessert only" places. These have always been places you stop in for a snack, or after you've eaten at a place where you wouldn't order dessert (say after trying the burgers at Royale, as everyone in New York will now be doing), or at the end of a night that you don't want to end yet. It's not just an urban thing, either. I remember visiting my in-laws once in their North Shore Chicago suburb. A sandwich/dessert shop had newly opened in the suburb's dowtown district. We went in after going to a movie, and it was packed. You could see that there was this tremendous pent-up demand for a convenient place to have some dessert before going home to stretch out a night out. I view these new high-end dessert places as being the dessert equivalent of New York's Pegu Club and Milk & Honey -- places that fill an old niche, but with a new attention to culinary sophistication. Not to take anything away from the people who run these places (which I love), but since it allows them to charge a lot more than the more traditional places did, that's just good marketing.

Only because this thread is subtitled "WARNING: Semantic Discussion", I have to note that it sounds like you're saying that he's PROVED "oakapple's law", not violated it.

My problem with that is a place like Al Di La. From day one, you couldn't get into it. Not because people were coming from all over the City to go there (they weren't then), but because people were coming from all over the neighborhood to go there. Then, as now, they had a "no resevations" policy. You go there, and either you get lucky, or they know you and sneak you in, or you're willing to wait 45 minutes or an hour or more. Nevertheless, I'd say it was (and remains) a neighborhood place -- even though, on any given night, you could have no reasonable expectation of getting into it.

So what do you think makes someplace a "neighborhood place"? (Or, to put it differently, when would a "destination" not also be a "neighborhood place"?)

The simple answer, for me, is that I don't view going to those places as "going out to dinner." It's simply a different part of an evening -- or part of a different evening. I think you could just as well ask about a bar or cocktail lounge, "is it pleasurable to go out to dinner and have drinks only?".

This will continue, if anyone can stomach it, the discussion at what is currently the end of the "Perry Street" thread about we mean when we call a restaurant a "neighborhood place". I think it belongs on the New York board and not the General board because I think such issues are locality-specific. Without recapping the discussion this is split off from (you really should read it if you care about such things), let me start with this question: Are the terms "neighborhood place" and "destination" antithetical and thus mutually exclusive? Or can a single place be both?

So one question -- you have to bear with me; I'm a lawyer and I sort of live for semantic disputes about categorization -- is whether or not "neighborhood place" and "destination" are mutually exclusive. I've always treated them as if they were. Although I can see Nathan's point. (I'd recommend that this be split into its own topic -- except I can't believe anyone cares about it but me.)

I should have made clear that WE don't count. I meant "normal" New Yorkers.

Savoy is an interesting example of a restaurant that almost completely lost its buzz. I recently suggested to a girl that we go there, and she gave me this look like, "Who goes THERE anymore?????????" Which is a bit odd, and sort of a pity, because it's still very good (if not very exciting -- excitingness being a somewhat overvalued factor for a restaurant, IMO). And it is sort of the foundational place for the New Brooklyn Restaurant scene.

zoe, savoy, prune Not to fight about something we all agree is meaningless, but those three places absolutely attract patrons from all over. (Zoe maybe less than the other two.) I'd almost say that Brooklyn is a special case, because other than Luger's and the River Cafe, I don't think there's a single restaurant in the entire borough that people from Manhattan are willing to cross the river for. (Even Saul, which has a Michelin star.) I think that's more a reflection on people in Manhattan than on the Brooklyn restaurants.

On the understanding that this is all just stupid arguing over meaningless semantics, take a place like Little Owl. It opens up, it seems pretty clearly to be designed as a place that caters to the people who live near there. The foodie press/internet picks up on it. "Foreigners" start visiting. The Times gives it two stars. The place explodes. So are we saying that it was a "neighborhood place" when it opened, and then transitioned into a "destination spot" when it got publicized? Or are we saying that it was always a "destination spot", but it took people a short while to find out about it? I think the difference here is that Nathan is saying that Perry Street is a "neighborhood place" in that it seems to have been designed, to some not-insignificant extent, to cater to the neighborhood. Whereas Oakapple and docsconz are saying that it can't be a "neighborhood place" if it's also worth travelling to. Nathan, in other words, is focussing on the feel and function of the restaurant, and what you can infer from that about what market it was intended to serve. Whereas Oakapple and doc are focussing on quality, and whether it's sufficient to attract "outsiders". I think they're also saying that a place of the scale and quality and repute of Perry Street (which had a long pre-opening preview in New York Magazine, for God's sake -- and we all know those things don't happen by themselves) couldn't possibly be a mere "neighborhood" joint. I don't have a horse in this race. So I'm not trying to make a rhetorical point, but merely trying to clarify things, when I ask doc and Oakapple if they think the phrase "overperforming neighborhood place" as applied to places like Little Owl has any meaning?

I don't really know any New Yorker who uses anything other than Zagat's (and the Times's weekly reviews). I think the Michelin Guide was a remarkably plausible (if debatable) list. But I think that it's been largely irrelevant as far as locals are concerned.