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macrosan

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Everything posted by macrosan

  1. The world isn't going to be fed by Niman Ranch and the line-caught salmon industry! The world isn't going to be fed by Tesco and the net-caight cod industry either !
  2. I too find the questions strangely phrased. No, "consumers" don't have any such need. Some people will want to consider provenance, others won't. It's not a question of "should". Cruel rearing practices are generally designed to produce an improvement in the meat, unless you believe that they are gratuitous. Foei gras and veal are the two meats most supposed to involve cruel practice, and in each case for the specific purpose of producing meat in a form which is considered desirable. So if we assume, for the moment, that milk feeding and penning of calves is cruel, and that form of rearing is what gives veal its desirable characteristics, then cruelty de facto does affect the dining experience. The same situation occurs with rearing of fowl. Many battery-reared chickens are bred and raised to produce hugely fat chickens with a high meat to bone ratio, and a high white to dark meat ratio. Tender white meat has become desirable in the market. But then my own preference is for game birds, with tougher and darker meat. Desirability is a marketing led phenomenon in many cases, and the desirability for veal may also lessen with time. If you're asking whether a diner should take into account rearing methods when deciding whether or not to order certain meats, then my answer would be yes. Of course, as we have discussed many times here, there is not universal agreement on the subject of what actually does represent cruelty to animals.
  3. I've been to Babbo I think six times, and Lupa twice. There is no way that Lupa is 1/3 the price for an equivalent meal. More like 2/3 I think. I found Lupa to be acceptable but no more on both the food and the service front (I went once for lunch and once for dinner). I would describe Lupa as a good place to go for a quick, casula meal, and Babbo as more of a destination restaurant. I do agree that some of the quirky service things they do at Babbo are pretentious, and probably designed to generate an artificial USP or else to intimidate the customers I've never had a tasting menu at Babbo, but there have been some adverse comments about the wine pairings. I will keep a watching brief on Babbo. I would hate to lose it as one of my favorite restaurants in New York, but it's for them to prove, and keep proving, that I should keep them there
  4. Posting exciting and valuable, lurking better than nothing
  5. We went in early May, I think (about a week before it became Fleur). My guess is Wareing was absent when we were at Petrus, and if the food we had was any indication of what Fleur is now like in his absence, then I won't be going to Fleur. If it was any indication of the sort of food that the staff he trains turn out, then I'm not surprised at the diffident reaction to the food at the Savoy. Then what does he think is his contribution to Savoy and Fleur ? If he's working full-time at Petrus (which he will absolutely need to do to get one star, let alone three) how will he be able to "oversee and choose staff" at Savoy or Fleur ? How will he be able to expend time on designing the menu ? And so on and so on.
  6. This issue of whether a chef's past reputation and name are adequate to support a restaurant in his absence has been discussed at length here at eGullet. I have always felt that it is dishonest, but now more importantly I am starting to think that it is the route to commercial failure. The Savoy seems to be getting "nice place, conveyor belt food" write-ups at eGullet. That is not enough to make me want to eat there. Petrus was a major disappointment last time. That does not encourage me to eat at Fleur or the new Petrus. So Wareing has tripled his number of restaurants and (at least for now) lost at least one customer (I can't believe I'm alone) which doesn't seem a recipe for commercial success.
  7. Well I see what you mean, Andy, but does Marcus ???? My last visit to Petrus a couple of months ago was significantly disappointing. Do we have any indication how much of his time Marcus will be spending at the Berkeley ? I feel I would want to give it a try, but I have to say that I intend to wait a few months to see what others are saying about it first
  8. significant websites? just 2. Seriously, is that right (and I assume you mean Chowhound) ? If so, I'm surprized.
  9. I think that's spot on. I would judge that these two restaurants address pretty much the same market, and their prices are very similar. I've been to Blue Hill only once, and found the service as good as or better than any I've received in any fine dining etablishment (although sadly I wasn't smitten by the style of the food). Blue Hill has been much written about here, and my sense of those reviews is that a very large proportion speak highly of the service at Blue Hill. I haven't observed any falling away of that praise. That is an interesting contrast to Babbo.
  10. M.san only reads one other food website and it was just general speculation. As a matter of interest, how many food websiets are there with a "presence" in the New York area ?
  11. There are other significant food websites? Let's see some links to these similar discussions. Nahhh, try Google.
  12. I have to say that I find this story far from cute. For me, it epitomizes all the worst characteristics of snobbery and disgraceful service in the restaurant business. I would have walked out. So until you "displayed your credentials" you think you were shown respect and due diligence ? In my book, you were shown contempt. I don't believe this in any case. But since servers in France are paid a decent wage and tipping in France is at a much lower rate than in the USA, this would certainly not be true in your French bistro.
  13. There was an Alfred Duckham who owned a butcher's shop in Malpas Street, Newport in the early 1900s. Maybe it was he .....
  14. So at least that proves it was written by someone who has never seen you I can't understand the logic of comments like that (nor why your paper would print it). Incidentally, I can't get a copy of Metro so I haven't seen the review or the letter If a reviewer pans a restaurant, it's perfectly valid for someone to say they're wrong, and give reasons to counter the criticism. For example "Plum's comment that the foie gras was not hot enough is foolish because it is supposed to be served warm" or "I disagree with Plum's description of the decor as tawdry. I found it very pleasant" or "Plum says the service was poor, but I have been twice and found the service excellent". But to criticise a review by assigning some perceived but unproven motivation to the reviewer, or simply presenting a personal insult to the reviewer, seems to me entirely idiotic.
  15. You know, whatever the hypothetical causes of a hypothetical fundamental problem, the chickens will come home to roost. (At this point I really regret the temporary absence of my avatar ) Here we are at one food website, possibly hundreds of people ranging from regular to potential customers of Babbo, spending a great deal of time talking about whether or not there is a fundamental service problem, and thereby making judgements as to whether or not we should go there in the future. You can be sure that the same conversation is taking place on every other significant food website, as well as in conversations between friends. Places like Babbo acquire their reputation by word of mouth, and they lose it the same way. If indeed the management of Babbo allow their restaurant to be seen as providing patchy, and then poor, service, they will be deserted by the clientele they worked so hard and successfully to create over many years. If that happens, they will never get them back, and they will become dependent upon the vagaries of a 'floating' clientele of irregular diners who will run out of the spending power of the current clientele. They will have to push their prices down, and then the food will suffer, which will destroy the vestiges of their hardcore clientele. Mario will pretty soon lose his celebrity TV status, and Babbo will close. That is the power of communication, which simply works so much faster on the web than in the old days of newspaper and TV. That is the capitalist marketplace working at its best, and I think it's great.
  16. I've only ever eaten at the bar. It's one of the most comforatble eating bars I've been to. The food is the same wherever you sit. I agree that the three (?) tables at the front of the restaurant, at the end of the bar, are pretty bad. They're probably OK to sit at, but you can see the staff grimacing as they try to negotiate the customers standing in the bar area with plates of food, and I betcha the staff hate serving those tables. Same problem if a diner wants to go to the rest room. Interestingly, the VIP table is the one at the other end of the bar behind the screen, so I guess that Babbo rates that as the best located table. I've seen upstairs, and I have to say that would be my choice of tables.
  17. I agree with that. There really is no need, nor justification, for people getting hot under the collar over some perceived but unintended slight, and certainly no reason to start personal attacks on Sam. I disagree strongly with some of what Sam said, but if I can't disagree without getting emotionally worked up about it, then I'd be better off not reading at eGullet. I don't know Sam from Luciano Pavarotti, but from what he writes I would deduce that he's an intelligent, reasonable, interesting guy. What more could we want ? He sure beats the hell out of his predecessor
  18. Bravo Felonius, that's a great post
  19. I always hope that the "targets" of our criticism are reading here, but it's more hope than expectation Some restaurants just get slammed once at eGullet and are never mentioned again. That's because no-one here cares too much whether they succeed or not. But the reason that places like Babbo and GT and Blue Hill get regularly criticized is that we do care, we do want them to read and respond. I am reminded of a great line in "Heaven Can Wait" when the baddie, following a nasty comment to Julie Christie, says to her "I hope I didn't upset you" and she replies "I don't know you well enough to be upset by you". That's another way of saying that we always tend to find most fault with the places we love, because we want them to go back to being what they were like when we first loved them Last November I was sitiing at the bar at Babbo after my meal, sipping an espresso, when Joe Bastianich (who was sitting beside me) engaged me in conversation. Really pleasant guy, although I didn't realize it was Bastianich until later. We spoke about football and New York, then he told me about Otto, and its projected opening in a few months. I said to him that I hoped Mario wouldn't take all his good people, and himself, away from Babbo to staff Otto, and Joe replied basically that he would indeed be doing that for as long as it took to get the new place up and running. He was quite straightforward about it. So maybe that has been the problem, and maybe the good staff haven't come back !
  20. This is argument by deflection The fact is that Babbo does not play loud music. The fact is that Babbo is just a pretty regular high-class restaurant in New York. It's "culture" is no different from scores of others. It's style is no different from scores of others. Its market is no different from scores of others. Babbo should provide a certain (pretty high quality) level of service to its customers. As someone already pointed out, that includes making a whole variety of sizes and shapes and colors and cultures of people happy and comfortable, and that includes helping their customers to have the best possible experience of their food and wine, whether they're foodies or oenologists or eccentric billionaires or folks having a celebration of a lifetime. Because high quality service can and does do all of those things. Now I want to refer for the third time to many postings on this board of the last six months, and say that I have detected a growing volume of complaints about the service at Babbo. Most of those complaints are from experienced New York diners, all of them are from experienced diners. Large numbers of the complaints are from regulars at Babbo. So either tell me I'm wrong in my conclusion about the thrust of recent posts here, or else agree with me that there are indications that Babbo's service has been going downhill.
  21. I don't even know where the Midwest is, so I won't get drawn into your local spat over there. But this thread started off trying to discuss an interesting and important question. I do think the exalted person of co-coordinator of the New York Forum should allow it to slip back to that discussion. I'm waiting to hear an explanation of how and why a restaurant of the pretension, standing and price-point of Babbo might deliberately or inadvertently "cater for" a "New York crowd" and not be able to provide high quality service to the "non New York crowd".
  22. Menton, you wouldn't know fallacious reasoning if you tripped over it in a supermarket aisle What I said wasn't any form of reasoning, it was a statement of principle. Of course sex has nothing to do with smoking (unless you indulge in unsafe sex, of course), and I never mentioned or even made an implicit reference to "public places". So your sequitur is in fact a total non sequitur. I repeat my question. Is it reasonable to prohibit smoking in bars ? NOTE for Menton: I ask if it's reasonable to prohibit, not if there is any single reason to prohibit, nor if it is reasonable to control. OK ?) And I repeat that the answer has to depend on an assessment of the harm it does to others NOTE for Menton: That is a reference, which you obviously didn't read, to the rights of non-smokers. OK ?) On balance, I am not satisfied that the level of risk is well enough proven to justify the prohibition. Further, it is clear that non-smokers can avoid a smoking bar (whether they want a drink or a job as a bartender) so in all reasonableness, the conflict should rarely arise.
  23. Now don't get me wrong, Sam, I'll repeat that Babbo is one of my favorite restaurants in New York (although indeed it was once the favorite) and it makes me sad to say that I think this must be plain wrong. If you read the very many posts about Babbo here at eGullet, I'm sure you'll perceive what I described earlier --- a distinct falling off of approval. And the main complaint has related to service. I think I've eaten at Babbo five times in the last two years, every time at the bar. Then only "service" contact I have are the bartenders and the busboys. On my last visit (back in May) I reported a clearly worse experience of service from the bartenders. I would call it totally uninterested and lax service. The previous four times, I found the bartender service to be exceptionally good. Incidentally, I agree with your comments about a 45-minute lateness of arrival, but it sounds as though it just wasn't handled well by the waitstaff. I disagree with your fanciful idea that somehow a restaurant in New York deliberately or inadvertently caters for a New York crowd or an out-of-town crowd. That might be true in Muncie, Indiana (although I doubt it even there) but it is ludicrous to apply such a concept to New York. Restaurants are in the hospitality business, and they should provide service in relation to what they charge. Period.
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