Sneakeater

In terms of this list's effect on a place like Franny's, I could imagine that being on the list would have drawn them some customers they wouldn't otherwise have gotten. But I can't imagine anyone who would've gone there anyway staying away because it isn't on this list. And since they're NEVER not packed, I doubt it matters.

Local organic food has ZERO to do with their being fed properly if at all. Jeez, you make it sound like some kind of accidental miracle that I survived to adulthood.

There is NO FUCKING WAY this will be manageable. Maybe in half a year or more -- but not until then.

I call bullshit on fries as a separate course.

New for the "crisis": Late-night (10 to 11 pm) three-course prix fixe dinner at Jean Georges, $58.

Replying To Dave Hatfield It's what you'd call freebies. I don't accept a distinction between them and comps. I don't know in what way New York restaurants aren't generally generous. I do know that if you order fairly extravagantly and evidence interest in and knowledge about what you're being served, you will routinely be given extra dishes and drinks, and find things you ordered not being charged for. Mostly because you're so obviously a customer whose repeat business most restaurants would want. But also because you're simply more fun to serve than other customers might be. Happens to me all the time. If I couldn't post about meals that included comps, I'd have to exclude a substantial portion of my meals out.

Ruth Reichl Mimi Sheraton It's not popular to say this here, but Amanda Hesser And that's just people who've written for The Times.

This is not true. It is precisely because I'm an amateur -- I eat out every night, I am very evidently interested and engaged in what I eat and drink -- that I get comped all the time.

There are several problems with that absolutist position. One is that, as people who frequently eat out, bloggers and foodboard posters frequently get comps for reasons that have nothing to do with their status as reviewers or posters. If I were forbidden to comment on any meal where the kitchen or bar sent me something extra, that would prevent my writing about most of the meals I eat out. And again, for reaons that have nothing to do with any attempt by the restaurant to influence my judgment. It just can't be the rule for unpaid, non-professional commentators.

You would have to be the biggest idiot in the world to open that restaurant in that neighborhood and not welcome kids. Since Zak Pallaccio isn't the biggest idiot in the world, I'd feel pretty assured.

It's embarrassing to have your sexist assumptions uncovered on the internet.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

In at least the eariler days of my going to M&H, the hostess would also take orders. She'd constantly be shuttling between the bars and the tables, conveying patrons' requests and bartenders' recommendations -- although some of the hostesses had a pretty admirable knowledge of different cocktail possibilities themselves. I agree that it makes more sense to have other bartenders doing this, as is now frequently the case.

You never got any of those cute women?

At least I know I can almost always get into the bar at Tailor.

You are very lucky. Pretty much the totality of my parents' drink stash was a bottle of Slivovitz that one of their parents or grandparents had brought with them from the old country. It was aged, all right -- but I'm not sure aging did anything for it. ETA -- Oh, and a bottle of Harvey's Bristol Cream. Also aging.

In the early years of our living together, my wife was working only part-time, and before that had spent her early adulthood working the kind of jobs, like yours, that let you out before 6. I, on the other hand, was working Major Firm Junior Associate hours. She used to get frustrated that I could only go to movies on Friday or Saturday nights. "Nobody goes to the movies then," she'd cry. "It's too crowded. Everybody knows that Monday and Tuesday are movie nights." I used to reply that she was being an aristocrat. Funnily enough, when she got her first full-time law job, everything changed. Suddenly she never wanted to go out during the week anymore. (ETA -- To clarify, I'm not a Junior Associate anymore and now can go out during the week. Just not before 8 or 9 or so.)

Isn't it as simple as you need to do a lot of business to justify having that much inventory?

I was going to apologize for going off-topic with the following response, but thinking about it, it isn't really off-topic. I find this account interesting. Let me contrast it with my own. To hear current cocktail geeks talk, you'd think that prior to Dale's appointment at the Rainbow Bar, cocktails were a complete wasteland in America, and that everybody was thoughtlessly tossing back vodka martinis without any vermouth. That's not the case. As far back as the 80s, I decided for myself I preferred gin to vodka. Not because I thought gin was "retro", but because, as food-and-wine guy, I knew that I preferred ingredients that convey flavors over those that don't. You don't need someone to tell you that a chilled glass of straight vodka isn't a cocktail; anyone with a brain and an interest in food and drink can figure that out for himself. (It may surprise some of you to know that there was an anti-vodka school as far back as the 80s, if not before; it isn't some new invention of the current Cocktail Movement.) Now maybe the period before the current Cocktail Revolution wasn't a great time for the invention of cocktails. But that doesn't mean there were no good cocktails to be had. The old standby classics -- Martinis, Manhattans, Sidecars, etc. -- were all available, and the better hotel bars -- places like the King Cole in the St. Regis or the bar at the Algonquin -- had seasoned bartenders who could prepare excellent renditions of them. Even then, people who had brains in their head and tastebuds in their mouth and who cared about the quality of what they ingested knew the difference between well-made cocktails and poorly-made ones, and knew where to get the good ones. What I'm trying to say is that if you read my pal Nathan's post, it sounds like he was attracted to cocktails almost entirely as a matter of "scene". He drank gin because he thought it was "retro", and then was introduced to quality cocktails by the "cache" of M&H. Well, I'm a lot older than Nathan and have been drinking and caring about cocktails a lot longer than him. And I kind of resent the "scenification" of cocktails. (That really is the large part of my whole resentment at not being able to get into the best cocktail bars anymore.) I -- and a lot of people like me -- didn't come to my appreciation of good cocktails as a "scene" thing. I came to them the same way as I came to my appreciation of good wine: as a culinary thing. And we resent the status-seekers who are making it difficult for us to enjoy something that ought to be easy.

Just to elaborate, how is any of what you describe more of a burden than going to a bar in the East Village (where I don't live), getting told there's an hour wait, leaving, going to another bar in the East Village (where I still don't live), getting told there's an hour wait, leaving, going to a third bar in the East Village (haven't moved there yet), getting told there's an hour wait, and then either going over to the northern edge of Soho, where I know I'll be able to get in, or going home (which is what I usually do at that point)? I understand and even sympathetize with your slightly mocking my irritation at my inability to get into the East Village places, but I really don't appreciate either schlepping to the East Village by myself only to find out I can't stop anywhere for a drink or (even worse) making a date to meet someone in the East Village and then having to wander around like vagabonds looking for a place with room for us. After-work cocktails are supposed to be relaxing, not a replay of the most annoying aspects of your workday. (I understand from Nathan that Young People don't mind wandering around so much, but we Grownups find it intolerable.)

Actually (not that anyone cares), that's what I do.

I should add, FG, that in actuality your Super Bowl argument is nothing at all like Alice Waters's Nike/DVD argument. Your argument defends your own spending choices against attacks by others, whereas Ms. Waters is trying to impose her choices on others. Completely different thing.

I started thinking about why I find that line of argument so offensive. After all, I've made a similar argument many times in the past: whenever somebody says "How can you justify spending hundreds of dollars on a fancy meal?" I argue that plenty of people spend hundreds of dollars on Superbowl tickets. In other words, it's my choice about how to spend my discretionary income. The difference is, when two middle-class people with enough discretionary income to buy Superbowl tickets or eat at Jean Georges are having that debate it makes sense to frame it in terms of a choice about disposable income, but when you're talking about people of very limited means it's a bit much. Yes, even for poor people there are choices about how to spend money. It would be possible, in the abstract, to reduce all discretionary expenditures -- video rentals, sneakers -- to zero, and to wear only hemp sandals from the Salvation Army and to entertain oneself exclusively by playing kick the can and singing show tunes. But it's a bit much to demand that people live that way. You want to demand that economically comfortable people spend more money on food in order to achieve various lofty goals, that's idealistic. You want to demand that poor people spend more money on food in order to achieve those same goals, that's just wrong. ← It always reminds me of Marie Antoinette's reputed response to the news that the poor didn't have any bread.

The difference, though, is that the people who go to Babbo because it's a hot restaurant or they've seen Mario on TV have some idea what they're getting. They're not disrespectful of the entire premise of the restaurant. That seems to me to be different from the problems Serious Cocktail Bars face. Maybe there's nothing that can be done about it. But I do think that for every time I've seen someone as in Daisy's stories enraptured by their first really good cocktail, I've seen maybe five people (including one of the women I took to Pegu last week) who've hated the way their cocktail tasted, were frustrated that they couldn't get the kind of cocktails they were used to, thought it was stupid that other people were paying attention to what they were drinking, and didn't understood why it took so long for their orders to be filled. And yet they keep coming, always more of them. They're like the Vietnamese.