Tasting Menus, Snooty Sommeliers and Your Favorite Local Joint

[weinoo]

In a piece near and dear to my heart in this past week's NY Times, Mark Bittman takes on the snooty trappings of not only fancy, high-end restaurants with exorbitant tasting menus, but loud music, uncomfortable chairs and long lines to dine in places just because they're so hip you can't miss them.

Starting off with some humor I can relate to:

It’s become painful...in the “you have to go to synagogue; it’s Yom Kippur” sense, a long, drawn-out affair in which even the obviously beautiful and enjoyable parts...were overwhelmed by the sheer tedium.

Then, who wouldn't love this...

The waiting for the amuse-bouches, which were originally meant to keep you happy while you were waiting...it’s a restaurant and you’re hungry. (Whatever happened to a few pieces of salami and some olives sitting on the table, or a couple of pickles, even?)

Speaking of the above, one of our favorite restaurants in DC (Dino's) has all sorts of snacks ready for you, if you dine at the bar.

Continuing to take 'em down a notch...

It’s not just white-tablecloth restaurants, either. There is the general unpleasantness of the über-hip places that I had once enjoyed and that, like marijuana, I eventually pretended to.

And what likes is right up my alley too...

A place that does something well and doesn’t mess with it. A place where I might get a bowl of pasta with pesto or, God forbid, a steak frites or a hot ginger-laced stir-fry over real rice at a price that doesn’t make me laugh. A place that will make me think I didn’t waste my time leaving the house.

Is he right? Do you have the same complaints as he does? And - do you have a local joint where you can get just what you're looking for?

[ScottyBoy]

Love it. Though I love a fancy pants meal every once in a while my heart is still with the bread basket and butter spots (though be it most likely house baked).

[Mjx]

I've heard those complaints, but I've been really lucky; apart from the occasional long wait, the problems I've most often had from waiters is their desire to tell me about their life, which can be... awkward. I'm sure some waiter must have been rude to me on some occasion, but racking my brain, I come up with no specific recollection.

On the other hand, I have no favourite joint. In Denmark, crap is expensive, and not-crap is usually mind-numbingly expensive; 'good' is sadly elusive (so far I've found two places where I look forward to eating: one is a 45-minute drive--if you're doing 80, which my boyfriend usually is--the other about a one-hour drive, and that's just for simple fish and chips, or a burger, respectively). In NYC, all my favourite places seem to have closed (Ony, NL, a bunch of others).

[patrickamory]

Tasting menus are over. Painfully long waits, painfully long dinners. The endless interruptions and explanations of exactly what is in each dish. At the end it's almost impossible to remember what you've eaten.

I enjoy fine dining very much, but I wholeheartedly emphathize with Bittman on this one. After my last experience at The Modern I have no intention of going back, or going to any restaurant like it. Bring back traditional French service, and please remember that dining out is about more than the food. In the meantime, I'd prefer to eat at Acme or Pok Pok over Per Se any day.

[weinoo]

How can you say tasting menus are over, when places like Eleven Madison, Brooklyn Fare, Atera et. al. are impossible to get into, and offer only tasting menus?

By the way, not that I disagree with you on your final point (and isn't Pok Pok a pain in the ass to get into as well?).

[patrickamory]

I equally dislike the trend toward loud, no-reservations places with uncomfortable seating!

When I say "over" it's slightly tongue-in-cheek... over for me that is.

[PSmith]

How can you say tasting menus are over, when places like Eleven Madison, Brooklyn Fare, Atera et. al. are impossible to get into, and offer only tasting menus?.

Personally I tend to go against the grain. I am an anti-fashionist and anywhere that has a long waiting list, no matter how good the reviews, doesn't get my business.

We have an excellent restaurant within walking distance of our house - I can phone up on a Friday and get a reservation for the weekend. The food is as good as anywhere I could get in town (London) at a third of the price.

In my view, many of the must visit restaurants are very much "The Emporer's new clothes"

[ChrisTaylor]

Heh. To be honest, I mostly accept restaurants as they present themselves. I don't enjoy staff taking things too seriously but mostly, in Australia at least, I don't really encounter that. Even at nice restaurants, Australians seem to mostly be laid back. Polite. And ideally the staff know a thing or two about the food or the wine. But no one is stiff and overly formal. I mean, maybe, as skilled waitstaff, they take cues from the customers: me, I attempt to behave myself (I don't want Keith_W or annachan posting about me in the 'badly behaved dinner companions' thread), but at the same time I go to dinner, as do most--maybe all people--I dine with to enjoy the food and the company of others. I tend to find the detailed descriptions of wine interesting, altho' I probably get more out of the experience--and am more inclined to turn it into a conversation--when the topic is beer or whisk(e)y. I'm not good with social cues and some of the more subtle aspects of communication or anything like that, but I rarely, if ever, feel like a sommelier is giving me a hard time or treating me poorly because I don't know a whole lot about wine. If I'm at a loss, I'm more inclined to ask the sommelier for his or her recommendation. I buy by the glass, so there's not that awkward moment of having to negotiate a price range.

As a 'foodie'--and, really, I fucking hate that word, even if it's a word other people apply to me--I've enjoyed food at cheap and cheerful places, loud and trendy places, degustation-only fine dining options and many restaurants that fall elsewhere on the spectrum of restaurant ... styles. In the past, six, nine months, my favourite meals have been in a little Portuguese place in the inner 'burbs of Harare, out in the courtyard with a can of 2M beer and a fence that's 'decorated' with broken wine bottles (the security system), and some of Melbourne's costlier options. I guess, so much as the atmosphere doesn't make an active effort to annoy me--by being really loud and crowded, say, or with really intrusive service--then I'm mostly interested in the food. It might be a good cheeseburger or a good ten course menu or a good steak--the only medium-rare steak that maybe, at that time, was being served in the country--with a deliciously thick mushroom sauce, but the point is the food has to be good. I don't care if it's popular or cheap or expensive, if being there marks me as a sheep or a trendsetter or a dining rebel, but the food needs to be good. That's what matters most.

So, no, the degustation isn't dead for me. The trendy 'no bookings' place, neither, altho' in the case of the latter I'm inclined to swing by one lunch time when I'm on holidays, sidestepping the need to line up or leave my phone number with some guy at the door or any of that nonsense (if I want to go to a restaurant and eat, I don't care if I have to book--even if it's a couple months in advance--but I really do want to just go in and eat, not have to loiter around the city for a couple hours).

[SylviaLovegren]

How can you say tasting menus are over, when places like Eleven Madison, Brooklyn Fare, Atera et. al. are impossible to get into, and offer only tasting menus?

"No one goes there anymore, it's too crowded." The Great Yogi Berra

[SusieQ]

How can you say tasting menus are over, when places like Eleven Madison, Brooklyn Fare, Atera et. al. are impossible to get into, and offer only tasting menus?

"No one goes there anymore, it's too crowded." The Great Yogi Berra

Thanks for my laugh of the day!

[patrickamory]

Like many of the great Yogi's sayings, there's a grain of truth beneath the absurdity.