Sneakeater

To an extent, for the reason explained by FG. (BTW, "casual" service, as I meant it, doesn't mean that the waiters are in jeans. It means that the waiters aren't giving you the full-court press you expect and indeed demand in a place like Bouley.)

No, it's a matter of expectations. This is in the "restaurant" column, not the "strip club" column. You expect that places that are written about there are going to be "restaurants" as we commonly understand them. Differences need to be explicated. As FG said above, just saying the restaurant is in a strip club doesn't convey the full experience, which I think DOES need to be explained to some extent to a general readership (my late wife, for example, wouldn't have had more than the most vague general idea). Also, just because this restaurant is "in" a strip club doesn't necessarily mean that it's integrated (as Robert's is) into what I guess you could call their "strip club" program. It could conceivably have been kept more separate. All that needs to be explained and described in order to convey what this place is about.

OK, question: why do we find this aspect of Bouley Upstairs and Momo-Ssam exciting, while I at least find the stylistic disparity between the main menu and the dessert menu at Varietal troubling? Possible answers: 1. Because there's also a significant qualitative difference between the two menu segments at Varietal. 2. Because Varietal is otherwise a much more traditional-seeming, less casual, place. 3. Because of what I keep referring to as the "improvasitory" quality of the "New Paradigm" restaurants. Maybe someone else can do a better job of explaining what I mean by that. I'm finding it hard.

Yeah. That's really important.

If Bouley and Bouley Upstairs were both free, I would still be more excited about Upstairs, at least in some ways on a daily basis, because of the lack of any dress code, the more casual atmosphere, the more casual service, the faster pace of a meal, etc.

True, but the sex/strip club coverage shouldn't overwhelm the reason the review (very good steaks) and that's what the Times did. ← The thing is, I think it's so odd that it should. To me, the story here is (a) very good steaks in (b) very odd surroundings with ©very high prices. To me, in making a consumer choice, "(b)" and "©" are probably more important, in this case, than "(a)". ← "B & C" are no surprise when dealing with the name Penthouse and strip club. "A" is more of the surprise. ← See, that's your emphasis. To me, I'd say that "(b)" and (to a lesser extent) "©" are a surprise when dealing with "(a)". I guess I just view the thrust (we both obviously can't avoid all these unintentional puns) of this story differently from you.

Maybe it's because I live there, but in no way do I see being located in Brooklyn as being as odd as women I don't know coming up to me during dinner, chatting me up out of nowhere, and asking me to give them money to take their clothes off and gyrate in my lap. Maybe I view being located in Staten Island as being that odd. But not Brooklyn.

It's not unusual behavior for a Strip Club or anything done under the Penthouse name. What's truly unusual is they serve very good food. So the emphasis should have been on the food, not the antics that are done in every strip club in the world. ← In an odd sort of way, I think that approach would have been appropriate in publication directed to afficionados of strip clubs. They would have assumed all the weird strip club stuff, and to them the news would be how good the steak is. But in a general-interest publication, once you get past how good the steak is, the news really is all the weird strip-club stuff. Because that really is so different from what most of us encounter in the places we normally go for good food that it bears emphasis.

True, but the sex/strip club coverage shouldn't overwhelm the reason the review (very good steaks) and that's what the Times did. ← The thing is, I think it's so odd that it should. To me, the story here is (a) very good steaks in (b) very odd surroundings with ©very high prices. To me, in making a consumer choice, "(b)" and "©" are probably more important, in this case, than "(a)".

Great post.

I agree with you. But in this particular case, it seems to me that the scene so far exceeds the food in terms of both interest and impact on the potential consumer that it wouldn't make sense not to focus on the scene. You could argue that therefore this place isn't valid review fodder. And I'd argue back (if you did) that in this case, the presence of a serious chef with a serious food program warrants a review. But it would be both silly and irresponsible to downplay the very odd scene in any account of eating at this place.

Well, yeah, but that isn't what I said, is it? Do you think the Witchel piece could have been run as a review? Absolutely not, right?

Astor.

Not to keep beating a dead nipple, but, with reference to the Alex Witchel article being used as a stick with which to beat Frank Bruni, does anybody think that if Ms. Witchel wrote a feature on visiting Robert's, instead of an interview with its chef, she wouldn't have focused on the exact same things Bruni did (with perhaps a bunch of jokes about being female instead of about being gay)?

You see, the thing is, I think it WOULD be important to say things like that. From what I understand (never been), saying ONLY that the "waitresses" at Hawaiian Tropic Zone were in bikinis would seriously misrepresent what it's like to eat there. And, of course, a strip club is much more extreme than Hawaiian Tropic Zone. I just don't know how you can convey the experience of eating in a strip club without talking about all the stuff Bruni talked about. If he didn't, and I went, under the impression the restaurant was perhaps sort of separate from the club and its activities, I'd feel misled.

Actually, the problem most of us have with Bruni is that he doesn't know dick. About food, anyway.

This is exactly what I've been trying to say. A review of Hawaiian Tropic Zone, for example, that didn't focus on the fact that there are these female "table concierges" in bikinis who chat you up throughout your meal, etc., would be misrepresenting the experience of eating there. Imagine if a review wrote only about the food, and you went, not knowing what the place was like. You'd feel sandbagged.

It isn't closed. It's moved and is a little hidden. It's on First Ave. somewhere around 10th, on the west side of the street. (Someone can give a better address/location than that.) There's also Fernando's Foccacciaria on Union St. in Brooklyn, which my unschooled self always thought was better anyway.

I hate to be in the position of defending Bruni, whom I don't think is a good food critic, but to be fair to him, that's what he's done by and large. I wrote earlier about that New York Magazine list of "power" gays and lesbians that he was on. The only reason I remember Bruni's being on it was that it was such a surprise. Everyone else listed from the Times was what you might call a "professional gay" -- people like Adam Moss, Ben Brantley, Anthony Tommassini, and Herbert Muschamp -- and then there was this guy who was a famously competent political reporter, who to all apperances hadn't made his sexual orientation an issue. Yet, he wasn't hiding it. I found that admirable. And remembered it. As for this piece, though, how could a gay male write a review of a restaurant in a strip club and not deal with issues of his sexual orientation, at least implicitly? It wouldn't be honest.

I'm denser than Pinkberry frozen yoghurt appers to be.

Do a complete search and you'll see that she writes even more about things that aren't food. She's a features writer. (And married to Frank Rich.) (Although not when she started.)

Since sexual orientation and gender identity has become so important in this thread, it should be noted that Alex Witchel isn't a "he". (She's also not really a food writer, but I'll anticipate oakapple in saying that if she cares more about food than the lead restaurant reviewer, you've really got to wonder.)

That's pure journalism. An interview with the chef. It's not a review, and doesn't purport to be. (Which means, in part, that it doesn't have to convey the experience of actually being there.)

DOCTORS? We're gonna start listening to DOCTORS?!!!

I'm probably the wrong person to answer, given that I think The Paradigm doesn't exist, but that never stopped me before.Of the restaurants named on this thread, Bouley Upstairs, Bar Room, and Degustation received their only Times reviews from the main critic. Room 4 Dessert received its only review in $25&U. Momofuku got both, but when it was reviewed in $25&U, it was fundamentally a different restaurant. Bar Room, Degustation, and R4D take reservations; Bouley Upstairs and Ssam Bar do not. Ssam Bar, Degustation, and R4D are physically configured like bars; Bouley Upstairs and Bar Room are not. So what we have here is a random collection of traits, and no matter how you slice it, about half of the so-called Paradigm restaurants are exceptions. ← I think to a large extent you're confusing causes and effects here. You know, it comes back to "common law reasoning". (Maybe you really do have to have been trained as a lawyer to get this.) We have this collection of restaurants in which some of us discern basic similarities. The question is, what makes them similar. It doesn't do to pick out various partial dissimilarities and then say, "see, they have nothing to do with each other." The job -- at least if you buy into the similarity, which I understand you don't -- is to explain why this overlapping, but not identical, set of circumstances contributes to the similarities one discerns, and to try to figure out what the key points of similarity are. (To make one example, I wasn't suggesting that a "$25 and Under" versus a lead review is a characteristic of a "New Paradigm" restaurant. I was using the differences in reviews and promotion to explain why two restaurants that seem to me quite similar in concept have such different "feels", which I ascribe partly to clientele.) I'm going to take an initial shot at it. I think that the key point of the "New Paradigm" is a very highly-developed cuisine -- cooking that could be counted traditional "three" if not "four star", or that at least has apects of it -- in circumstances utterly devoid of surrounding ceremony. Where the act of eating is completely casual -- but the food is highly developed. So, for example, there is no dress code whatseover. Even most "casual" upper-level restaurants (like, say, DavidBurke & Donatella, or the Meyer group) require a level of dress beyond what passes for office casual, at least in my office. At least if you're me, you have to plan ahead and dress up to go to them. But I can always go to Ssam Bar or Bouley Upstairs or Room 4 Dessert or Degustation in whatever I'm wearing. The lack of reservations also plays into this. These restaurants don't require advance planning. You decide to go, and you go. Degustation is an exception here. Even though Room 4 Dessert takes reservations, I don't know anyone who actually makes them. I wonder what percentage of their business is reserved. Another way this plays out is a focus on the food beyond all other factors. I think the visibility of the chefs at all these places contributes to that; and it's one reason that the visible work stations seem to be such a unifying factor. I also think the style of service -- dead serious, but with no ceremony whatseover -- contributes to this. You're not at these places to be pampered. You're there to eat. This is also why price is important here (why Atelier Robuchon, for example, will never fit in this category). It's easy to go to these places, without making a big deal of it, because the cost is bearable. My point being, these are places where you get very fine cooking, but with no sense of occassion whatsoever. It just isn't a big deal. There are contributors to this board who will oppose that -- who say they want a sense of occassion when they dine. But this is filling a different need. You can't do that "occassion" stuff every day. These are places where you can eat at or near the highest level, but easily. Whenever you want. Without having to primp or prep or plan. You only need to be prepared to appreciate the food.