Shang

[Sneakeater]

I have a strong impression he's been there pretty much continually.

[tan319]

Both Le Bernardin and Masa closed in their original locations, and the chefs moved here permanently.

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Susur Lee seems to be living here now, and he closed Susur to open Shang. I'm not sure that matters, but if anything he has followed the path that earns love for out-of-town chefs. None of which is enough to compensate for a weak restaurant.

Ironically, the other Canadian superstar chef who opened in NYC, Toque's Normand Laprise, was met with praise by at least the Times at Cena. How long did he last even with a 3 star review? Funny how things work out.

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Cena's failure was surely a business issue unrelated to the restaurant's quality or reception. The food was superb, as were the reviews. I think they got customers. I bet they had an untenable financing arrangement or something like that, because all the ingredients for success were there. There have always been amazing restaurants -- not just in New York, but in New York Lespinasse and Cello are good examples, as was Ducasse at the Essex House -- that have up and closed for behind-the-scenes reasons having nothing to do with how good they were.

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I don't mean to drag off of topic but,

I lived across from Cena during it's time and never saw what I would term a "great" evening there.

I had apps and drinks there and dessert numerous times and never saw a crowd there.

I loved the food, vibe, I used to walk by just to gawk at the menu.

It seemed that location was a bit cursed anyways.

During my nine years in NYC I never saw anything really go except maybe Commune right before I left .

I never ate there.

FWIW, I hate to see a new restaurant like Shang take a blow like that,

[LPShanet]

Both Le Bernardin and Masa closed in their original locations, and the chefs moved here permanently.

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Susur Lee seems to be living here now, and he closed Susur to open Shang. I'm not sure that matters, but if anything he has followed the path that earns love for out-of-town chefs.

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My understanding is he closed one of his two Toronto restaurants (Susur, not Lee), and intends to open another one in the space Susur formerly occupied. I also believe that his move here is not permanent, but like anyone he is spending extended time here during the early period.

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Actually, I think it's called Madeline's and I think it's already open.

[LPShanet]

Does anyone have an idea of how much Susur has actually been at and running Shang? Besides Keller and Per Se, the only other non-resident marquee chef that has been successful in NYC is Robuchon. NYC generally doesn't take kindly to "outposts" unlike Las Vegas. In addition to Ducasse, witness Ramsey as another example.

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On the other hand, you could make the argument that the original Nobu, which was nothing if not successful, was an "outpost" of Matsuhisa. Nobu was here some of the time, but still spent a large percentage of his time in LA and left the cooking to (then much less known) Morimoto. After all, every restaurant with a celeb chef's name on it has someone doing the actual cooking.

[GordonCooks]

Does anyone have an idea of how much Susur has actually been at and running Shang? Besides Keller and Per Se, the only other non-resident marquee chef that has been successful in NYC is Robuchon. NYC generally doesn't take kindly to "outposts" unlike Las Vegas. In addition to Ducasse, witness Ramsey as another example.

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He's here no less than 4 days a week and most of time, 5-6.

[oakapple]

Yet another ding from Steve Cuozzo in today's Post:

When I visited Shang in the Thompson LES Hotel last month, I requested an 8:15 booking for four but was told nothing was available until 8:45. I arrived at 8:30 to a mostly empty room. What were they thinking? That was before Shang, where I enjoyed chef Susur Lee's Chinese-based cooking, got panned by others. Did downbeat write-ups teach them humility?

Yesterday at noon, I looked for an 8 p.m. table for four last night on OpenTable.com. The only availabilities were at 6:30 and 9. Finding that hard to believe, I anonymously phoned Shang with the same request. The reservationist said they could do 8:45. Why did I suspect I could show up earlier and not go hungry?

[Fat Guy]

He's here no less than 4 days a week and most of time, 5-6.

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And a lot of weeks 7, is what he told me when I chatted with him for a few minutes at Shang.

On the other hand, you could make the argument that the original Nobu, which was nothing if not successful, was an "outpost" of Matsuhisa.  Nobu was here some of the time, but still spent a large percentage of his time in LA and left the cooking to (then much less known) Morimoto.  After all, every restaurant with a celeb chef's name on it has someone doing the actual cooking.

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Regarding the strand of discussion on whether New Yorkers are biased against out-of-town chefs, I just want to say that I personally am not at all biased against out-of-own chefs. I was Ducasse's most impassioned defender when he opened at the Essex House. You can find a score of posts from me saying Per Se is the best restaurant in New York at the moment (ever since Ducasse at the Essex House closed). I love out-of-town chefs. I hope they all open restaurants here. And I don't care whether they spend one second in their New York kitchens. I just care about what's on the plate.

That being said, Shang is just not a great restaurant.

[weinoo]

That being said, Shang is just not a great restaurant.

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And which seems to be the hardest part for some people to accept.

[oakapple]

I haven't figured out whether New Yorkers "penalize" chefs who open here without relocating, or if chefs who fail to make a full-time commitment have a tendency to fail at the food, too. But it seems to turn out that when the chef does not move here permanently, the result is less often successful.

[Sneakeater]

I also think that, whether or not Fat Guy does, the New York food media as a whole penalize out-of-town chefs, period -- even if they do move here.

I think it's clear Alain Ducasse has caught hell (didn't move here). And so, to take a fairly obscure example, did Tim Love (moved here). I think out-of-town branches pretty clearly face a skepticism in the food media that homegrown restaurants don't.

I think Nobu happened long enough ago to be irrelevant. Then, it was so unusual for a well-regarded out-of-town serious restaurant to open a branch here that people were happy to have it. I think now, people are afraid of New York's turning into Las Vegas (which, come to think of it, didn't exist as a dining concept the way it does now when Nobu opened).

Edited February 25, 2009 by Sneakeater (log)

[oakapple]

This is getting sad. Time Out New York, panned again:

When Canadian chef Susur Lee launched Shang late last year, many of us hoped that that restaurant was finally here. But it turns out that the Hong Kong–born, Toronto-based chef does not cook Chinese food at all. Instead, he practices an extreme brand of fusion featuring a muddle of globe-trotting flavors, covering vast territory, from Jamaica and Thailand to Italy and Japan. It’s all meant as an expression of the Chinese diaspora, according to press materials, but any restaurant requiring a press release to be understood is probably in trouble.

[Sneakeater]

I have to say that I find that clueless.

You could say the exact same thing about Jean-Georges or Grey Kunz and French.

[weinoo]

I think Nobu happened long enough ago to be irrelevant.  Then, it was so unusual for a well-regarded out-of-town serious restaurant to open a branch here that people were happy to have it.

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Don't forget, Nobu was pretty cutting edge back then (there wasn't a heckuva lot of miso-marinated cod) as well as offering really excellent food.

[ulterior epicure]

I have to say that I find that clueless.

You could say the exact same thing about Jean-Georges or Grey Kunz and French.

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I don't agree.

Whereas the French have historically gone globetrotting - conquering foreign lands and incorporating and bringing back their cuisines to their homeland - the Chinese simply have no such history. It is only within the modern times that the "diaspora" of "Kung Pao chicken" and "beef & broccoli" has occurred. It's much more of a one-way street: Chinese outbound, and rarely inbound.

Now, whether or not Susur Lee's "fusion" is extreme, I can't say. I've never eaten his food. But I have his colourful cookbook and, without actually tasting his food, I can only say that it strikes me as being precious and whimsical.

Edited February 25, 2009 by ulterior epicure (log)

[Sneakeater]

True, but this is 2009, not 1009 or 9.

A Chinese chef, living in North America, is entitled to be as globetrotting as a chef of any other nationality.

And people who then abjure the food as "not Chinese" are just being morons, IMO.

[ulterior epicure]

And people who then abjure the food as "not Chinese" are just being morons, IMO.

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Right, right. Agreed.

[Sneakeater]

Oh, I know you agree.

[GordonCooks]

That being said, Shang is just not a great restaurant.

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And which seems to be the hardest part for some people to accept.

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Not really, no one will say the place is running perfect. More astute diners hope he bridges the gap between his potential and his execution. Given a little time, I'm betting he will.

[weinoo]

Not really, no one will say the place is running perfect. More astute diners hope he bridges the gap between his potential and his execution. Given a little time, I'm betting he will.

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Actually, I think I'm a "fairly astute diner," and i don't really care whether he does or not.

[Fat Guy]

I think the big difference is that Vongerichten and Kunz were doing fusion in the early 1990s, when their brands of it were groundbreaking. If two new chefs came on the scene today with fusion concepts like those they'd hardly be noticed. I think Susur Lee, who is a very talented chef but is no Vongerichten or Kunz, may face the same difficulty.

[Sneakeater]

I agree with you about that.

I'm only objecting to the part of the criticism of Lee (not any of yours) that complains that his food is "not Chinese" and "a muddle to understand".

FWIW, I don't think Shang is a great restaurant, either (although like Oakapple I liked it more than you did).

Edited February 25, 2009 by Sneakeater (log)

[GordonCooks]

Not really, no one will say the place is running perfect. More astute diners hope he bridges the gap between his potential and his execution. Given a little time, I'm betting he will.

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Actually, I think I'm a "fairly astute diner," and i don't really care whether he does or not.

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[oakapple]

Not really, no one will say the place is running perfect. More astute diners hope he bridges the gap between his potential and his execution. Given a little time, I'm betting he will.

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Astuteness doesn't figure into it. I think everyone here would like Shang to succeed. Some of us are a bit baffled as to why he took the approach he did. Either he got bad advice, or he got good advice that he ignored. It is exceedingly difficult to recover from reviews this bad, but I hope he will be the exception.

[Dryden]

I think the focus on the muddled nature of the restaurant has to do with a desire to want Shang to be more than it actually is. When the food is great, even if it's origins are confusing, no one really cares too deeply about the disconnect. We very often read about something that boils down to, well, it's not really (insert cuisine/style here), but it is really, really good, so that's ok. The problem at Shang is that nothing is great, so the things that are okay or good need some validation - how do they tie into the theme, how do I justify them as being more than they are? In the early days of WD-50, some things didn't really work, but they made sense in the experimental nature of the restaurant, so you could at least understand how they got there.

Since Shang doesn't define what it really is, so much, it's hard to give anything that justification, which leaves just a bunch of okay or good food, which isn't really saying much. People want it to be Chinese, I think, because there is clearly a void of gourmet high end Chinese in New York.

I really wanted to like Shang. I don't care if a chef is around or not. I went in hoping for great Chinese food, or failing that, at least great food. It wasn't great. It was barely good. I left sad.

[docsconz]

This is an interesting phenomenon. It's my impression that most of the early reviews, while not necessarily raves were more positive. The more recent reviews, however, are more pans, bringing with them a more strident negativity from forums like this. While clearly not perfect, I liked Shang and still see potential there despite its flaws. I asked the question that I did about Susur's presence since he was not there the Saturday night that I was. Given his apparent presence (do we really know that he actually has spent all that time there - rhetorical question), I'm surprised that the restaurant has not improved more than it apparently has.

Masa is another import that has been successful, but then he moved here full-time and that restaurant was and still is his main and only focus. The issue is not with chefs coming from elsewhere, but chefs sending others to create outposts of an empire that remain centered elsewhere. When Nobu Matsuhisa opened Nobu in NY, that concept was still relatively novel. Even at that DeNiro's and Nieporent's involvement provided NYC bloodlines. When Keller opened Per Se, TFL was generally considered the best restaurant in the US and Keller was still seen as a native, even prodigal son, so Per Se has never really been viewed as an outpost. Rather it should have been here all along. . Robuchon is still really the only one who has gotten away with good reviews and a successful outpost in the last ten years.