Sneakeater

I don't know about New Jersey, but my understanding is that, at least in New York, it's illegal for a restaurant to permit you to open a bottle of wine WITHOUT a corkage fee. Now obviously that law isn't universally observed by restaurants, and the authorities never enforce it against them. But you and I have already disagreed about laws that restaurants regularly fail to follow and that are never enforced against them.

What's interesting about the (excellent) Bonterra is how completely different it is from a Condrieau. To me bigger than the difference between a white Burgundy and a typical California chardonnay.

This is America, emw. You can do whatever you want.

Wait a minute! We Downstaters don't NEED Garbage Plates! We've got this: http://www.gothamist.com/archives/2007/01/...ito_gothami.php (You know what? I've actually EATEN one of those. Years ago, in Jackson Heights. I think I must have supressed the memory until I read that post.)

I can't speak to makers, but Condrieau (a region in the Rhone) produces what is to me one of the great whites in the world. Frankly, just about ALL the ones I've had have been good-to-great.

Daniel, what you may be missing -- and what will make you laugh your anti-puritanical laugh even harder -- is that here in New York, until this recent "sealed bag" law was passed, it was ILLEGAL to take the remnants of a bottle of wine out of a restaurant. (I'm not saying it never happened, of course -- but then again I've seen underaged guests accompanied by adults served wine also.) So to us, this actually represents an ADVANCE. What makes a provincial lifetime New Yorker laugh about this thread is all the concern about driving your wine home from the restaurant. I don't even have a car. And I'll bet that if you took a poll, something like 5% or less of the guests drive to and from the restaurants I frequent.

Just to say one more thing, one of the early menu items at WD-50 was a block of pate de foie gras topped with anchovies and dusted with cocoa (I hope I'm remembering it right). I thought it was weird. No other word for it. It was one of my favorite things on that early menu. But weird was still what I thought it was.

I know that you won't take this the wrong way, docsconz, and I hope no one else does either, but this sort of shows how much in our own world we are. I think that if you took a random sampling of people in my law office -- generally sophisticated urbanites, but not foodies -- and gave them the desserts at Varietal (or the desserts Will Goldfarb made at Cru), they'd call them "weird". Not "unusual", but "weird". They might go on to like them, or some of them. But they'd STILL think them weird. I think you have to be very very involved in cuisine to be immediately accepting of -- or, to keep up the theme here, not to be weirded out by -- the things Chef Kahn comes up with. And I do NOT in any way mean that as a criticism of Chef Kahn or his work.

I don't know. I found them to be weird. And I LIKED some of them.

Don't forget the lime chicken soup.

OK, sorry, they dropped the "y" and the "e" as well.

As the author of the "rose period" and "disjointed menu" observations: OF COURSE everything I say is my own personal opinion. Who could read it otherwise? I don't buy this requirement of bland "it's only my opinion" writing. I have my opinion. I'll state it. If anyone has a different opinion, they'll state that. I thought everyone understood that's how boards like this work. So yeah, if I say the disjointed menu bothers me, and you LIKE the disjointed menu, then you can say you disagree with me. Fine. But don't try to tell me I don't have a right to express my opinion because others may disagree. What's the point of having an opinion, then? I think the attitudes being expressed here are EXACTLY the kind of chef worship that Frank Bruni rather exaggeratedly wrote against. These guys aren't gods above our criticism (and neither is Picasso). I resent the implication that they are.

I think its full name is now "Ye Waverly Inn", actually.

I hate it when the wine doesn't arrive until after the food. Which is all too often. How can you order the wine until everybody's decided what they're having?

See. This is exactly how I felt when I started drinking absinthe. But I think the problem was that I underestimated the need to dilute it. That stuff is seriously high-alcohol.

Wait. I know. It's Charlie Watts.

Ricky Gervais? Oh, I know. Tony Blair will be available soon!

If you could easily get in to buy the real thing.

So, just to be clear, you're saying that the tasting menu at the Bar features bar-sized portions?

They were out of turkey.

"Quesadillas Antiquas", with Oaxacan cheese and -- not huitlacoche, which they didn't have -- stewed vegetables. They were the best thing we had. Stewed pork with mole coloradito and rice and beans. As I said, I thought the mole tasted slightly burnt (in a way I didn't find in Oaxaca). The beans were very good -- nice and spicy. The tortillas were superior to what you'd expect. On the whole, it just wasn't that good, though. I can see why Habeas Brulee thought the pork was too dry, but I was actually surprised by its quality compared to what you get in most cheap Mexican places.

Yeah, but Broadway plays have long preview periods -- something Bruni has explicitly criticized a restaurant for trying.

I'm not talking about service problems. That's remediable. I'm talking about the disjunction between the savory menu and the dessert menu, which I find problematical. I'm also talking about the fact that I don't find the savory menu all that compelling. I think your reference to Picasso shows where the "chef as artist" comparison breaks down. Chefs are artists in a sense, but restaurants are commercial enterprises serving consumers. If you're going to compare them to painters, then, you have to discuss painters in the context of the people who buy their work. If I were alive at the time and didn't like Picasso's "rose period," maybe I'd have stopped buying his paintings until he modified his style to something I liked more. I certainly would never feel any obligation to buy a work I didn't like by an artist I do like, just because I admire the artist. OK, let me modify that a little. There have certainly been cases of patrons buyings works they didn't particularly like just to keep supporting, financially, artists they favored. But I'm not going to go to restaurants on that basis. Finally, in the end, you seem to be saying people are beyond criticism just if they're serious. I don't buy that. I can admire someone's seriousness, but still find their work unsatisfying. And I think I have every right to say so.

Ate here last night with h. du bois. I, too, thought the mole (in my case Coloradito) tasted burnt. To an extent I didn't find in Oaxaca. So perhaps this isn't the Oaxacan restaurant of our dreams. This is stepping on h.'s line, but one funny thing was that, as soon as we sat down, the waitress made it a point to rush over and inform us that they were out of rottisserie chicken. So imagine our surprise to learn that they were out of (or didn't have in the first place) just about everything else we ordered, as well. I wonder why she chose the chicken to emphasize. (I understand opening-month jitters, and I also understand that perhaps the initial menu -- which I understand was still being tweaked -- was optimistic in terms of what they can actually procure. I relate that anecdote because I thought it was funny -- not really to criticize this restaurant.)

I agree with your implicit point that predicting success or failure is sort of beside the point. It's really in the nature of gossip-mongering or "inside baseball". What really matters is whether we think restaurants work. That said, while I also agree that it's good for places to try to do something different, that doesn't mean they get a free pass if what they're trying doesn't work. I have problems with Varietal. (Not serious problems -- I don't hate it or anything and may well go back yet a third time -- but problems.) I don't think it's an answer to those problems to say the place is doing it on purpose. I've assumed that -- but it doesn't put them beyond criticism if I think their concept is flawed. And my opinion of whether it "works" or not has nothing to do with whether it turns out to be financially successful.