Lateralus

Has anyone been to this new restaurant in Steeterville? I have heard great things about this place.

I ate at Sepia last night and I also had an experience similar to ronnie. Very disappionting. I have heard both good and bad reviews and comments about Sepia. The service I thought was ok...better than I heard. The food on the other hand...very forgettable. I sitll can't believe the lamb sausage flatbread.....what was that? The veal breast was so heavy and greasy, no care taking in the cooking of it. The noodles were pasty, and the garnish of cippolini onions, baby carrots, baby beets were obviously an after thought. The only plus of my experience were the prices of apps/ entrees. You can tell the talent in the kitchen....(chef)?

Chefg you are in my thoughts and prayers as well! I was shocked to hear first the diagnosis and then stage 4....wow! God Bless You!

I just ate dinner at Butter. That is all I will say!

I disagree. In my opinion I think the target audience are housewives aged from 30-60. It is so water down, cookie cutter programming it is embarassing to me to see the industry represented in the fasion. With the populartiy of the celebrity chef now a days, the exposure that chefs are recieving, more house holds eating out or entertaing, you would think they would have something that represents a true chef driven program or a program with some kind of integrity. Don't get me wrong there are tolerable shows(Emeril/Mario) on Foodnetwork, but the majority are so bad.

From Project: Forum Topic: The food TV show I'd like to see Once again on eG we are trying to change what Food TV does. In a sense, some changes are promising: There are remarks from their executives that they do not have all the answers and keep trying new things. We need to agree: Their financial support is from advertising. Really, the business they are in is advertising. So, they need to attract an audience that will do well for their advertisers. There is a big problem with TV advertising: For a program with an audience as narrow as is common on Food TV, an advertiser really does not have very good data on what good their advertising expenditure does. Or, the situation is likely as it has long been: The advertisers know that 50% of their ad budget is wasted; they just don't know which 50%. Google gets nearly all of their revenue from advertising and, thus, is also in the advertising business. Advantages of Google include (a) better ad targeting than TV and (b) better information on what ads did for the companies paying the money. That's part of why, financially, Google is doing so well and some old advertiser media efforts are declining. But, I claim that the situation on Food TV should be much better than it is now, that Food TV is making some big mistakes. I claim that US TV has a narrow culture and, thus, has content that is much more narrow than it should be. That is, in US TV, there is a relatively small group of people who, as executives, producers, and directors, control the content. Further, these people have nearly all had their careers in the same system and, thus, adopted essentially the same ideas. This narrow culture has a very narrow foundation in very traditional TV and movies based essentially only on the techniques of formula fiction. The main goal is to grab the audience by the heart, the gut, or lower still, always below the shoulders, never between the ears, mostly by creating for the audience a vicarious escapist fantasy emotional experience (VEFEE), hopefully with passion, pathos, and poignancy, and the main technique for doing so is just drama. Or, if the only tool a person has is a hammer, then they tend to see every problem as a nail. The narrow culture sees all the potential of TV only as different versions of VEFEE drama. The influence of this narrow culture is so strong that, in practice, nearly anything that passes through a motion picture camera must be under the control of this narrow culture. Here is a telling example: Sometimes on late night PBS TV, I saw some programs on high school mathematics and physical science being broadcast so that teachers could record the material and play it in class. I have a solid background in mathematics and physical science, watched these programs, and was just horrified. No high school student trying to learn should ever watch those programs. The programs were mostly filled with fluff intended to be entertaining; for the actual content, it was far too often just wrong, incompetent. The content was just what one would expect from some movie people who had forgotten everything about mathematics and physical science above the fourth grade -- literally. There was no reason at all to put movie people in charge of educational programming for high school students, but, since the programs did have to pass through motion picture cameras, and since the influence of the narrow culture was so strong, all the high school students got was worse on mathematics and physical science than I Love Lucy since at least Lucy didn't actually mislead anyone on mathematics or physical science. Right: Intended to teach high school students mathematics and physical science but, in fact, worse than I Love Lucy -- literally. A serious source of rot in US culture. Since the narrow culture controls even programs on mathematics and physical science for high school students, there is little hope for food and cooking. Net, so far, in practice, in the US, if it passes through a motion picture camera, then nearly always it has to be from the I Love Lucy crowd. Yes, in Jurassic Park, Spielberg got the DNA science okay, but he is a rare exception. News? The same. Food? The same. Sports? The same. Science? The same. That crowd has only a hammer and sees nearly everything as a nail. E.g., science programs are nearly never about the science but all about the drama that can be contrived -- geology becomes the violence of volcanoes, the weather becomes the threat of hurricanes, tornadoes, and global warming, ecology and nature become the rape of nature by evil humans, planetary motion becomes the risk of a "global killer" asteroid, rocket engineering becomes "Will they all be killed in a big explosion?", etc. Endless, pointless, useless, worthless, dra ra ra ra ra ra-ra ra ra-ra ma ma ma ma-ma ma-ma ma-ma Sickening. This situation of this narrow culture is unique in all the world. No other field is so consistently ignorant, oblivious, and incompetent in its content. If airplanes were designed like TV, then they would never get off the ground, but, if such airplanes ever did get off the ground, then that would be a very bad thing. If medical doctors were trained with content like on TV, then no one would go to a hospital no matter how bad the pain. If bridges were designed as on TV, then no one would risk driving across. Highways would fall into canyons; electrical systems would go snap, crackle, and pop; bad food would kill millions of people a year; cars would rarely start, rarely reach their destinations, and fall to pieces spontaneously within a few months; on and on throughout our civilization. For the US educational system, TV drops out somewhere in the fifth grade and gives up on anything more advanced, except for mathematics at the second grade or lower except for sex usually somewhere in high school. In particular, the assumption of the narrow culture that the audience is all below the fifth grade level is just that narrow culture looking at themselves and in wildly strong contradiction to the simple fact that nearly everyone else functioning in our society is far above the fourth grade. Yes, TV wants an audience that dribbles, drools, and drips, has throbbing heart, boiling gut, pulsating groin, and a hard vacuum between the ears, sucks up silly products like a giant street vacuum cleaner, and is awash in money and eager to spend it. Hmm .... For those TV programs on high school mathematics, there was one exception: I got into the middle, of a program on plane geometry, quickly noticed some rare excellence, eagerly watched to the end to see the credits. I did notice a lion by his paw: The main contributor was A. Gleason, long in mathematics at Harvard, with some help from T. Apostol, long in mathematics at Cal Tech. Any high school student interested in plane geometry should rush to see that program and watch it several times. It was excellent, even beautiful, elegant, polished, both simple and powerful, good fun, kept me right on the front of my chair. A crown jewel of civilization. Wonder what Gleason had to do with the TV narrow culture to keep them from ruining his program! What passes through a motion picture camera really can be terrific stuff. Expensive? Not necessarily. One necessary condition is to make absolutely positively totally certain that no one from the narrow culture of old US TV and movies has any role at all in the effort -- maybe an exception for Spielberg. Actually, there is some science programming from England that is okay. Curiously, the world center of drama is better at good content on science than the US which ruins science programming with low grade drama. The problem with US TV, then, is just that narrow culture that somehow has a stranglehold on everything that passes through a motion picture camera. My guess for the reason is intellectual laziness: It takes a little thought to see clearly (A) what is wrong with the old narrow culture and (B) in particular cases, something better. So, in practice, it is just so much easier to pass projects to that narrow culture and forget about it than to buck that system and create a new path. Easy, yes, but it also promises to be increasingly costly; it cannot last. So, TV slowly goes downhill. Eventually, when parts of TV reach bottom, maybe there will start to be some changes, some real content instead of just more brain-dead, below fifth grade, I Love Lucy, VEFEE, formula fiction drama. For food, maybe eventually Food TV will start to consider that it is possible to have programs that are mostly about food. But, at the Web site of Food TV, we can see Food Network (www.foodnetwork.com) is a unique lifestyle network and website that strives to surprise and engage its viewers with likable hosts, personalities, and the variety of things they do with food. While I am interested in food and many things, I have no idea why I would ever want to watch anything like what is described here. I don't care about lifestyle, I don't really want to be surprised or engaged, I have no interest in the "hosts" being "likable" or "personalities". Absurd. Worthless. Nonsense. For me, totally irrelevant, useless, waste of time. I don't get anything from it; it's a half hour or an hour of my time, and I leave with nothing to show for that time. I learn nothing useful, and instead of entertaining it's infuriating. Advertisers, take note. So, I shouldn't watch it. And mostly I don't. Occasionally I can watch some of Alton Brown, look past all the weird camera angles and efforts at novelty and humor and concentrate on the information he has. Sometimes he does have some okay information although too often when he covers something I do know about his information is a bit weak. Food TV has some awesomely good expertise in cooking, but the narrow culture wins out and makes sure that essentially all the value of the expertise is ruined. Apparently the narrow culture is so brain-dead that they are unable in their own minds to see the value in anything except their VEFEE drama and much of anything beyond the fourth grade. So, that narrow culture is just oblivious to everything else that might be on TV. They are like deaf people at an orchestra concert, blind people at an art gallery, or some naughty fourth grade boy in a high school course. Except for variations on their old VEFEE drama, they just don't get it. There is a really good reason US TV was called "the great wasteland". For what Food TV should do? First, they should do the same thing nearly all the rest of TV should do: Kick out the old, brain-dead, narrow culture. Next they should wake up, look around, and see the rest of civilization and notice that there is enormous variety and content there. In particular, and totally beyond the understanding of the brain-dead, narrow culture, there is a very long list of reasons people would want to watch something on TV; some of these reasons are above the fourth grade and above the shoulders. For me, in food, near the top of the list is instructional material so that I can be a better cook, with my hands, in my kitchen, for my table. To me, this is a big thing. Getting VEFEE drama instead of such instruction is sickening, something I deeply, profoundly, bitterly, resent, hate, and despise, something I very much wish I never see again; I feel used, insulted, deceived, lied to, manipulated -- advertisers, take note. I'm not pleased or entertained; I am TORQUED. Yes, the narrow culture will roll their incompetent eyes, believing that anything at all instructional has to be boring, tendentious, pedantic, insulting, pompous, pretentious, offensive, etc. Well, to the brain-dead narrow culture and how little they know, such will have to be their conclusions. But, these conclusions are all totally false. And, the solution is not rock bands, fast-cut video editing, haw-haw, he-he, beauty queens, cleavages, or more from I Love Lucy. There is nothing, nothing at all, wrong with learning something, especially something one could use. Sure, too many producers, in the VEFEE they wanted to create, wanted to use pretense, pomposity, etc., but that garbage was just more sick, useless, worthless, pointless VEFEE. I do complain to my cable TV company and at each opportunity tell them that their Internet service is terrific, their telephone service is okay, but nearly all the content on their cable TV is just awful. When video on the Internet gets a little better, I will drop cable TV service -- I'm looking forward to it. TV really is a "great wasteland", and I hate it. Advertisers take note. E.g., for the most recent Super Bowl, I watched one play. They wouldn't let me see the details of the pass defense at which time I concluded that their coverage was worthless and clicked away and never returned. But, on the Internet, I did watch all the ads. They were much better than the game. I kid you not: I HATE nearly all of TV, yes, including Food TV. And I watch very little of it. Advertisers take note: You are nearly always paying for junk, and I HATE it. I'm not against all of drama; while nearly always I would prefer something informative, a little drama occasionally is okay. But, there is a lot of drama already recorded. Actually, it does appear that the movies made between about 1935 and 1955, from only 21 years and including several years of the Depression and several years of WWII, still are about the best drama anyone knows how to do. Turner Classic Movies (TCM) transmits some of the best 24 hours a day. I have a personal collection of old movies, e.g., all the old Rathbone-Bruce Holmes. I've got plenty of drama. My guess is that nothing will change Food TV, the rest of TV, the narrow culture, or their stranglehold on TV. Typically that is what happens with ossified cultures; they don't change; instead, they just die off. Eventually from some other quite different sources there will be some good content of much greater variety on video, and the old narrow culture and their stranglehold and work will just be set aside. Maybe we can get them jobs dusting camera lenses or mopping the floor from food spills -- finally something somewhat useful. My guess is that the Internet will be the big change. Generally, the Internet is putting some severe financial pressures on old media. In particular, anyone with a digital video camera, personal computer with some video editing software, a good Internet connection, and some good ideas for video content can develop such content and upload it to some video hosting sites that will pay based on number of views. When enough people notice that there is some money to be made here, then we will get a river of new content, some of which will be quite good, and very little of which will be from the old narrow culture. And we will get some means to find the content we like (working on it!). In the meanwhile, I can watch some America's Test Kitchen, Rick Steves, Burt Wolfe, BBC science programs, old Rathbone-Bruce Holmes, or, better yet, get some videos of lectures from Princeton, Xerox PARC, Kavli, etc. The lectures on asymptotic freedom and the strong force were terrific. Given that Intel is promising processors with 80 cores each, it was good to see what Microsoft is doing about concurrency. It was good to see what Google's P. Norvig is doing in machine processing of English. So far, for cooking, the situation is poor. I'm interested in food but am rarely willing to watch anything on it at all on Food TV. This post has been edited by project: Yesterday, 02:25 PM -------------------- What would be the right food and wine to go with R. Strauss's 'Ein Heldenleben'? agbaber Yesterday, 05:20 PM Post #23 participating member Posts: 202 Joined: 29-February 04 From: Atlanta / Boston Member No.: 15,898 project -- that was one of the most thoughtful, well written, and most importantly honest assessments of foodtv (and tv in general) that I have ever read. This was very intesting!

I have begun this post in curiosity of what chefs, food bloggers, egulleter's think about the progress of the chef/ restaurant industry portrayed on food network programming....from a show variety stand point, to its target aduience, personalities, etc.... to other programms on other stations(Bravo: Top Chef, Fine Living: Made to Order/ Opening Soon, Follow that Food, Travel Channel: Taste America, etc....?) I have an idea that I will explain in posts to follow. And I welcome opinions and comments of this idea.

I have to agree with TimH.....immaturity, young cooks, who don't know how to cook is why us "true professionals" watch this show. Watching Marcel look like a complete idiot when he starts talking about molecular gastronomy was priceless, and then when Wylie was the judge...he was crapin' his pants. Maybe being a chef is not made out to be this glamourous profession amde for TV. Sure we cater to stars of film/ music indusry, people who may/ or may not have money?,there is a luxurious element to eating, dining, and the Chef life....but it doesn't belong on TV. Unless it is going to be portrayed in a resptful way to all chefs/ cooks!

Chef Bowles needs his own show....!!!! Maybe he can help get Rachel Ray off Foodnetwork!

You don't need to fortell the future with what to expect from Robuchon..$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$, and pungstick is correct about the location....I know both executive chefs and this is coming form both of them and other management as well!! As far as the Ducasse thing...I got confirmation from a reliable source that it is a go in Trump building with Ducasse. It will be a fine dining place, similar to what Jean-Georges is in NY?

It is defentliy going to be an L'Atelier and it will not be in the Trump building(that is for ducasse, deal is signed with Trump!!!!) $ amount does not matter in Chicago for Robuchon.....it is a universal concept! We all know it will be expensive, great, and worth every penny!

John Mac, I love ya!!!! Miss Ya!! In Miami for the Super Bowl! It is crazy down here!!!

I knew it was only a matter of time. I have been hearing about this for several month. Chicago is a great market for Robuchon and the L'Atlier concept. I believe the location will be the Four Seaons Hotel.

The only reason why there is a forum of discussion for Varietal is becasue of Jordan. Without Jordan, what is this place besides gone? "Labeling" food weird is just such an old expression!!! and quite frankely very annoying!!! They said Atlas was weird, Wd-50, Gilt(Paul not that Lee guy) and look the food is still being eaten and discussed. At the end of the day that is the only thing that matters.

I sure would love to know if they are still looking for a replacement. I live a block away and looking for a catalist onto the chicago dining scene. Any one know if they are still looking for a chef?

Francis is from Gilt and previously of WD-50. He is a very cool cat.

going to pump some iron.....talk to you later today.

I'll take that as a yes!!!

Chef, when you are in Philly do visist DELILA'S?

Can you explaine more in detail about the location you're searching for in NYC. You metion below 23rd street. With your to previous expeiences..Atlas...Gilt they were located in midtown...is your dicision going to based on price point concept being that it will not be so fine dining, and not in an area on NYC that is know for being fine dining(midtown). manybe more easily said...will the concept reflect the location pre se? sorry about spelling it early here Chicago!!

It is almost upon the.......Snack Bar opening!!!!!!!

I'm sure when he is ready to let Philly know, he will do so......in the mean time you have to wait with anticipation!!!!!!!

I telling Philly right now......watch out for this NaFairge cat!!! He is a bad ass chef, and is going to WOW the Philly dining scene!!!! He opens soon!!! I'll be there.....

Does anyone know what is going on at TRU?....I have heard endless rumors about possible new chef/chefs. Just heard Laurnet Gras is now new chef.....?

We are still doing a demo, and currently looking at options for servicing the dinner as well. We will keep everyone posted.