How many chances do you give a top restaurant?

[macrosan]

John, I loved your post, I think your approach is dead right, and I admire your attitude toward what you do and how you do it  :D

But you forgot to answer the question  :(  and now I'm particularly interested in your answer  ;)

[John Whiting]

"But you forgot to answer the question"

When I leave it to the chef and still get a bad meal, that's it. If he can't cook and doesn't know it, there's no hope.

I'd go back to a restaurant where I liked everything except a single course. I probably wouldn't go back to one where I actively disliked the clientelle. I would go back to one where I had to wait a long time if the atmosphere was pleasant and the food freshly prepared and worth waiting for. (Alone, I take a book and ask for a table with a good light.)

If I particularly like a place I'll tear up the schedule. A year ago my wife and I were in New York for four days and went with a short list of restaurants. The first night we went to the front bar section of Gramercy Tavern. The room was so spacious, the foliage so breathtakingly beautiful, the food so good and the service so laid back but discreetly attentive that we went back two more meals in two days. One was in the main dining room, but it was more formal, more conventional, less surprising, and so we went back "home" to the bar. By the time we left New York we were friends with the whole front-of-house staff.

Note: Only then did my wife and I reveal our press cards. Up to that point we were nobody in particular -- just a couple of happy diners.

[tommy]

john, your url in your signature is a bit messed up.  for some reason when you click on it my browser doesn't assume the "www" and it's not translating correctly.

[John Whiting]

Thanks for pointing this out. I don't know what happened; that's not the way I entered it. I'll try to fix it.

[Wilfrid]

Although I agree in theory with what Beachfan and Macrosan have said about keeping up standards despite being fabulously wealthy, I am afraid I lack the moral fibre.  If money was no object, I would swan about in upmarket places just for the hell of it, and would care a lot less if the food was poor.  You would find me reading the paper in the 21 Club over a half-eaten lobster sandwich.  I have been broke and I have been moderately well heeled, and I think I would love being rich.

Flawless meals are very rare indeed, and I never set that standard for a restaurant.  I have had great top end meals at L'Espinasse (Gray Kuntz days), ADNY, Jean-Georges, and so on, but I could pick faults in every one.  That's life, and it gets worse as you become more experienced and more fussy.  If I had to identify meals approaching the "flawless" level, I would point to much simpler, less ambitious, but still enormously enjoyable affairs, often in fairly unknown locations.

Something people haven't addressed much:  I absolutely do think the customer has the ability to take control of and steer a dining experience - by being confident, well-informed, relaxed, politely assertive and generally enthusiastic.  And, as Cabrales has pointed out, dressing the part helps.

I hate complaining, because it tends to mar the evening.  It's almost impossible if one's a guest, and it's tricky if one is dining in a group because some people, rightly or wrongly, will be embarrassed.  My Beloved other half has pointed that out to me repeatedly.  But I will complain if I need to.  I've never thought about it before, but it would take something quite out of the ordinary for me to write a letter rather than deal with it at the time.  

And I'm steering well away from the word "great" too.  A while back I posted a list of what I considered fifty good restaurants in Manhattan.  If one of them attains greatness the night I'm there, lucky me.  I am more worried about getting a good meal than getting a great one, I'm afraid.

[tommy]

That's life, and it gets worse as you become more experienced and more fussy.  

a bit off-topic, but this reminds me of something i've been thinking lately...

i've become very hard to impress.  this is not to say that i've dined at so many of the finest restaurants that i've become numb, but i think that it's just a bit more difficult to impress me now as compared to when i first go into this whole dining trip.  when i think i the best meals i've had, they generally took place a while back and not recently.  it kinda sux actually.

[Wilfrid]

Agreed.  And what really "sux" is that I don't know for sure if those meals were wonderful or whether I was just easier to please.

[John Whiting]

"Agreed.  And what really "sux" is that I don't know for sure if those meals were wonderful or whether I was just easier to please."

As philosophers have pointed out for many centuries, food and sex have a great deal in common.

[jhlurie]

Okay... I finally caught on to this topic.

As someone whose finances originally precluded expensive eating, but whose fortunes have increased enough with time to begin to change that situation, I find the whole discussion about money and forgiveness fascinating.

In my limited experience the tie between money and tolerance is in the opposite direction from that suggested by Beachfan's statement "If I had infinite money for long enough, I might be very tolerant".  Maybe this has more to do with the fact that I've come from no money, but as I get more of it I find that I expect better service with the expenditure of that money instead of being more willing to blow it off.  When I had less, my expectations were also less.

On the "rude" service question... I don't know.  I've gone both ways on this issue--giving the restaurant another try under a different server and swearing it off.  The context of the situation is important... if out of the corner of my eye I notice things which tell me that this treatment is typical, then I won't be back.  Or even worse... if I see someone dressed more stylishly than me being treated significantly better, perhaps that will push my buttons as well. :)

Getting back to economics for a moment... I don't think that my expectations of good service are significantly LESS for a mid-range restaurant than an expensive one.  As per my previous comment, as I get more money I think my expectations rise instead of fall... but that has very little to do with how much money I'm spending.  In a way this is very non-politically correct and perhaps a bit arrogant, but again its more a function of my standards getting higher and I'm simply recognizing the fact that rich people are snooty, and as I get older I'm becoming one of them.  :D

[Beachfan]

You would find me reading the paper in the 21 Club over a half-eaten lobster sandwich

I hate complaining, because it tends to mar the evening.  

1) I will keep the 21 club image in my mind as something to aspire too.  The free and easy approach vs. the demanding one seems more fun.  Thank you for that.

2)  I should say that I point out my disappointment rather than complain.  I do it in a genteel fashion, without any suggestion of what should be done (unless it's truly poorly prepared).  More often than not, the establishment makes it right graciously.

3) On the times you don't complain, is it something you continue to think about or discuss?  That was the case for me, and that's what spoiled the evening -  I really wasn't present for my guests.

[Pan]

I'll try to answer Fat Guy's questions to the extent I can in my limited experience of eating at expensive restaurants:

-- If you had infinite money, would you care more, less, or the same as you do now about imperfections in an expensive restaurant meal?

As a musician and professor, I have no reason to ever expect to be rich; however, if I did have infinite money, I would undoubtedly care somewhat less about imperfections in an expensive restaurant meal. Given my current situation, I can't have expensive meals more than a few times a year, so any bothersome imperfections are magnified. I'm not the fussiest customer in the world, however.

-- Have you ever had a restaurant meal you considered flawless in every regard?

Yes.

> If so, has that experience ever been repeated consistently over time at a single establishment?

Hmmm...Well, I think that my first three meals at JoJo were pretty nearly flawless. By my fourth meal there, unfortunately, they had gone downhill - more in terms of service than anything else, it seemed to me, though it's hard to make firm conclusions about a single meal.

The other flawless meals have been at places I didn't have a chance to return to. Some have reportedly since gone downhill, and one no longer exists. One was at a restaurant between Tarquinia and Tarquinia Lido whose name I don't remember (ask a cab driver when you're there). Another was an absolutely incredible experience at Viognier in San Mateo (it reportedly went way downhill since then). And then there was the delicious early dinner at Cena, a restaurant whose quick departure from the New York scene I very much regretted. I'd have to say I've had other flawless meals at restaurants that were not expensive, including the Khyber Pass and Madras Woodlands in Delhi in 1977. My dim sum breakfast at the train station in Guangzhou in 1987 was pretty damned wonderful, as well.

-- Do you think the customer has the power, within the range of the restaurant's capabilities, to influence the outcome of a meal experience?

Sure. A customer's attitude accounts for a lot. It helps to have a reasonable idea what you want, to ask questions, to be willing to speak up politely, when necessary, and to have a little patience with service when a restaurant is crowded, for example. It also can make a big difference to order food that corresponds to a restaurant's specialties. This might be even more true at cheaper restaurants. It's generally a mistake, for example, to order dishes that are not Shanghainese at a Shanghainese restaurant.

-- If a restaurant messes up, do you complain?

Only if the screwup is really bothersome. I complain if the waiter doesn't come to take my order for 20 minutes (worse: 30 minutes) while I've been trying to get his attention; if I've been waiting 30 minutes for my first course to arrive and wasn't warned it would take that long; if dishes which are supposed to be hot arrive cold; if silverware or cutlery are dirty; if the food is so bad that I can't eat it. It takes something serious like that. If the food tastes funny but I think the taste might be intentional, I may ask the waiter a question about it but will not demand it be sent back forthwith.

> Do you forgive if your complaint is addressed to your satisfaction?

Yes. If I'm satisfied, I couldn't very well hold a grudge, could I?

[John Whiting]

There's one aspect of complaining that we have avoided. Everyone with any familiarity with the restaurant scene knows what can happen to a dish sent back to the kitchen by a dissatisfied customer. What may be in it when it comes back is best left unconsidered, along with whatever had been previously left by scampering rodents.

[cabrales]

Everyone with any familiarity with the restaurant scene knows what can happen to a dish sent back to the kitchen by a dissatisfied customer. What may be in it when it comes back is best left unconsidered . . . .

John Whiting -- While I generally do not send dishes back unless the ingredients are spoiled, I have sufficient confidence in two- and three-Michelin-starred restaurants to believe that replacement dishes would not contain "extraneous" materials. Perhaps that's naivete on my part, but I'd like to believe that, at that level in France, pride and professionalism would prevent the introduction of such materials.

On the general question, alluded to earlier by Wilfrid, as to whether simpler, less ambitious places can offer flawless meals -- "flawless" is obviously an exalted standard (albeit a subjective one). For me, the assessment of whether cuisine is flawless is based on absolute standards (i.e., the ambition of the restaurant and its general "level" are not taken into account).  Likewise for service. Thus, for me, it would be difficult for a less ambitious place to offer a flawless meal because those meals require orchestration and effort on the part of even an ambitious restaurant and do not just come about by happenstance.  ;)