Zagat: Grocery is the 7th best in NY

[mamster]

The food at Jean Georges is better than the food at Grocery. I haven't been to either place, but I'm sure this is true. This points up a problem with the Zagat methodology that has been pointed out time and again.

Grimes doesn't usually strike me as a snob, but listen to his analogy one more time:

By the same token, the perfect three-minute pop song cannot grip the imagination and hold it the way a three-minute polonaise by Chopin can.

A pop song writer is not trying to be Chopin. They are writing different types of music--both within a particular Western musical tradition, to be sure, but Chopin was not trying to write pop songs and pop song writers are not trying to generate polonaises (cauliflower or otherwise).

I assume Jean Georges uses better ingredients than Grocery and prepares them with more finesse, and for that reason it deserves a higher food rating. But many have said that the standard is not simply quality but complexity, subtlety, and so on. If that is so, why wasn't Grimes's article about Peter Luger? Luger's steak is the best in town; this is interesting in and of itself, but there's nothing interesting about Luger's preparation or much of the rest of their food. And yet it consistently gets sky-high Zagat ratings for food. I realize Grocery is the newcomer to the list, but it seems like the more interesting criticism would be directed at Luger (and has been here on eG, to be sure).

How would you rate the food at Grand Sichuan International? It's not haute cuisine by any standard, but I noticed that Jeffrey Steingarten took Fuchsia Dunlop there and she said it compares favorably with good restaurants in Sichuan province. There is no question that some of the best food I've had in New York was at GSI, and I would rank its food on average above Gramery Tavern by any standard. (The service and decor at GT are much better, of course.) I wonder what Grimes would say to that.

Bux, I tend to agree with you when you say:

What strikes me as wrongheaded is the idea that easy to do things done well are as impressive as things that are difficult to do and done expertly. There's an expertise that is required at Jean Georges, or Alain Ducasse that is not required at Grocery and the chef at Grocery understands that well.

But you know what? I'm more impressed by something moderately hard to do and done perfectly than something very hard to do done pretty well. There is something really disappointing about a menu that falls short of its ambitions even ever so slightly. As you say, the point of Michelin is to help you avoid that experience, and it does a better job than Zagat in that respect. We agree as far as that goes.

schaem:

Like it or not there is a "high art" tradition that carries more historic resonance than the "low".

No doubt. But look again at what Grimes said: "capture the imagination". There is little question that people are going to be using the Beatles in analogies in 2060. Pearl Jam, okay, probably not. I don't think music schools should start studying Pearl Jam. I think Chopin offers a lot more to analyze and music students will learn more by playing Chopin than by playing "Evenflow." But, gosh, I'm just not interested in listening to Chopin. It doesn't make me feel perfectly thrilled to be alive the way great rock songs do. I maintain that this is well and good and that for this reason it makes no sense to assign Pearl Jam and Chopin competing star ratings, unless the rating is for historical durability or complexity rather than quality. Instead, review should do what Grimes's reviews do anyway up to the end: explain what type of restaurant (or song) we're talking about, and then discuss how good an example of that type of restaurant or song we have on our hands.

Of course, the readers love ratings, so there you go.

[ExtraMSG]

I don't wanna be an elitist dick, but for those of you appalled by the "Chopin vs. pop song" ananlogy, consider this; Chopin has been dead for over one hundred years. Is anyone going to be using Clay Aiken in an analogy one hundred years from now? Like it or not there is a "high art" tradition that carries more historic resonance than the "low".

You really think so? What was Mozart? What was Dickens? What was Shakespeare? Were they creators of "high" art or "low" art? Were they popular with the masses or only the elites? Who will be remembered better (and whose films), Steven Spielberg or Woody Allen? The creator of "pop" art or "high" art? The creator of films for the masses or the elites? Maybe you argue that it's a matter of the use of the tools at hand and that Spielberg made more "impressive" movies than Allen. Why, then, is Casablanca one of the most respected American films 50 years later, though only a B film not worthy of color at the time? It's not "impressive" in by any objective measure except that people like it.

I think you may suffer from a common delusion that a) what is popular with elites, nobility, or scholars in one generation was and always will be popular with elites, nobility, or scholars in other generations, b) that aesthetic judgments can ever be grounded objectively, whether objectivity based on qualitative or quantitative analyses, c) that we can know now what will be seen as today's "good" art in the future.

Clay Aiken, btw, seems hardly the appropriate comparison. What about Count Basie? What about Duke Ellington? What about Elvis? What about The Beatles? All pop music for their times, bound to become more and more elitist music as new pop music takes their place and they are remembered more as a part of the history of music.

What does this have to do with food? Well, the next generation of chefs (including those at neighborhood restaurants like The Grocery) are going to be carrying on a tradition of Escoffiers, Chapels, and Adrias (and Matsuhisas, lest I sound too Euro-centric). These chefs will certainly enjoy, and even be influenced by, the cuisine of the street (as I'm sure Chopin listened to polkas), but the dialogue of cuisine is carried through a "high", restaurant-based tradition. So all cuisine is not equally relevant, though it may all be tasty.

To food: will Adria's foams be eaten 100 years from now? Keller's salmon "ice cream" cones and other transformations? Achatz' aromas? Might it be imaginable that these "conceptual" or clever inventions will be seen by later critics as a pretentious interlude in culinary history? It's quite imaginable that culinary historians and professionals will look back much more kindly on culinary traditions like Tex-Mex and Italian immigrant foods, or even just pizzas and burritos, than they will foams and aromas, highly strained sauces, skyscraper platings, and squeeze bottle art. What is it that Chez Panisse is doing or the Slow Food movement, if not putting itself squarely as an option to these more "conceptual" culinarians.

PS I love the Grocery, know the owner, and know cooks who have worked there. I also think the best food I eat regularly is prepared by Mexican line cooks after service is over. But to argue that the Zagat abomonation is somehow an anti-elitist revolt and therefore praise-worthy, disregards the importance of well-informed criticism to the health of culture. And to argue that just because you like Pearl Jam better than Chopin makes anyone who argues the cultural, artistic and historical importance of Chopin an elitist is immature and philistine.

To my mind, it's not that Zagat is an anti-elitist revolution, but merely a much better representation of what people like than more elitist publications.

[ExtraMSG]

The fact is that there's no difference between any two things that can be compared unless one is able to appreciate the difference and anyone defending a lack of difference is announcing that he doesn't see the difference. The two possiblities are that he's got a clearer head and recognizes a truth or that he's less of a connoisseur. Nothing that even the chef at Grocery is surprised by his rating, I'm going to believe his loyal customers are not connoisseurs--or that they're playing favorites and voting for the home town boy.

Bux, there's a degree to which you are correct, but of course recognizing a difference isn't the same as indicating a superiority. I can recognize that my American culture is different from the Mexican culture without indicating a superiority. Of course, I may like mine better and thus continue in it, support it, honor it, whatever, while still respecting Mexicans for doing the same. Essentially calling people naive, tasteless morons for rating The Grocery or any other "low" restaurants as well as ADNY or any other haute cuisine restaurant is no different than an American calling a Mexican beaner and sneering at their culture.

[Pan]

I don't know why you think it wouldn't work. Have you checked out Time Out's guides? I used their Paris guide, and it was divided both geographically and between various types of eateries. Start here and navigate through the rest of the site, if you like. In fact, Zagat's also does this, just not in the main body of their guides.

I see your point. Looks like it could work well. But I think this works better in an online format where you can merely click links to go to 'bars' as opposed to 'restaurants.' In book format, where you have to hunt for the section in table of contents, then find the page number where it begins, then leaf through pages of the book to find the right one, etc. this would be more onerous.

It isn't onerous in Time Out's paper format.

[Fat Guy]

Essentially calling people naive, tasteless morons for rating The Grocery or any other "low" restaurants as well as ADNY or any other haute cuisine restaurant is no different than an American calling a Mexican beaner and sneering at their culture.

It's very different for two reasons. The first reason is that, even if the analogy worked, there would be no reason to transfer the racist and cultural-imperialist associations onto a question of taste. Calling a fellow member of one's own culture a tasteless moron for liking a painting, a song, or a restaurant simply doesn't have the same implications as calling someone a tasteless moron for being part of another culture. The second reason is that there's an acutely obvious need for differentiation here and there's only one imaginable way to have it cut. We've already established that it makes no sense to give every restaurant that accomplishes what it sets out to do a 28 -- that what the restaurant sets out to do is also relevant to its place in a rating system. There's no way to avoid the ranking element if you want to have meaningful ratings that communicate more than the totally relativistic non-judgmental standard of internal goal-achievement. Why have a rating system at all, then? What if my goal is to make the worst food, and I achieve it perfectly? Should I get a 30? Of course not. The goal has to be evaluated as well. And once you start evaluating the goal, you have little choice but to assign more and less weight to different goals: to give more credit to those who are fulfilling more ambitious, sophisticated, excellent goals well.

[Bux]

Did Grimes call anyone, or any group of people a moron or morons? I don't recall that and just checked to see that he didn't. By exaggerating his statements I think the argument falls as flat as Grimes' analogies. Admittedly most analogies work better if one accepts the premise they're supposed to prove. In fact they're generally unhelpful and I think a good case has been made that Grimes could have had a stronger article had he not referred to music and musicians. We can debate Grimes' style, his poor use of an analogy that didn't work very well, or what he had to say about the restaurant and the rating. I think Mamster did a good job in separating the issues.

He also coincidently made an interesting point about steak houses. Interesting to me because I have just been looking at (I'd say reading, if my fluency in French were better) an article in the current Nouveua GaultMillau--a French magazine devoted to restaurants, food and wine. There's an article on the thrity best steaks in France--or the names and addresses of the thrity best restaurants in which to get a good steak. The GaultMillau guide to restaurants rates restaurants on a scale of 11 to 20. None of these "best" restaurants gets more than a 15/20 overall, and there is at least one restaurant that scores 11/20, but it's still one of the thirty most recommended places for a steak. When a restaurant that is not trying to compete with the top restaurants, even in the classification of food, it shouldn't be rated as one because it does what it's trying to so so well. It demeans the system.

Anyway, the rating is meaningless unless it comes from those who have eaten at Grocery and either Jean Georges, Daniel, Le Bernardin or Alain Ducasse. A major weakness of Zagat is that their contributors all have a different standard to awarding a three, the highest mark.

[Fat Guy]

Did Grimes call anyone, or any group of people a moron or morons?

Well if he won't do it I will. First of all, Bux, clearly you're a moron. But that's beside the point. The important thing is that everybody except me is a "tasteless moron." Especially those pesky Mexicans. And if you think the Grocery is as good as Daniel, forget about it, even the tasteless morons won't talk to you -- you're basically a disabled tasteless Jewish non-union Mexican moron with unconventional sexual preferences and leftist political opinions working for minimum wage, which we all know is the worst kind of tasteless moron.

[Bux]

[ExtraMSG]

Actually, I wasn't using hyperbole based on what Grimes said. I was exaggerating what I think Bux and Schaem were implying, that those who vote "low" food as tasting as good as "high" food are naive and have little or no taste. They're not worthy of having their votes tallied. I don't think it takes much effort (ie, exaggeration) to take that from the various posts.

Instead of me directing more analogies or defending my previous ones at what you've said, I'll just try to reiterate my argument:

The complaint that is being made is that "low" food -- street food, comfort food, etc -- does not deserve the food ratings they receive that places them near or equal to the food ratings of haute cuisine restaurants. Mind you, this is only the food rating we're talking about since Zagat does not have a rating for a restaurant as a whole. My response is that there is nothing inherent in haute cuisine that makes it clearly deserving of higher ratings for food than "low" food. Any attempt to do so just shows the prejudice of the one making the argument. How food tastes is subjective. Whether some dish has aesthetic value outside of it's taste is also subjective.

My problem is that people are judging the food at The Grocery, and places like it, as less than ADNY, and places like it, a priori. Honestly, and I imagine you already know this, I have not been to The Grocery (nor ADNY) and like Mamster I think that it's very likely that it isn't as good as ADNY. But my reasoning is not based on the type of food that it makes. Like I've said, I think there is bbq, Mexican, Indian, etc, that is every bit as good as anything I've had at any haute cuisine restaurant. Not for "what it is" either. I mean that a) that it tasted as good, b) that I respected it and the effort that went into it as much, and c) that given a last meal before execution (something growingly longed for by those reading this right now?) I would be every bit as likely to choose it over anything else.

My problem isn't with having standards. My problem is assuming that one set of standards is objectively superior to another, especially on a matter of taste. The masses always have a strong case on aesthetics. Afterall, you're saying which do you like better, which affects you more, which do you enjoy. And the masses are saying, "well, all of us, way more than you, enjoy this one". All that can be said in response is "yeah, but we know better". I do not believe that once educated in fine dining and introduced to frog legs with pine needle aroma that a person will or should necessarily prefer or respect that more than a pie from Lou Malnatti's.

If all the Zagat voters had been to The Grocery -- or even a more striking example, The Olive Garden -- and ADNY and had rated it nearly as high or as high would you attack the guide any less? Probably not. You'd just make the attack entirely a matter of the voters having bad taste. Meanwhile, people would still be using Zagat and finding it quite useful at recommending restaurants.

[mamster]

Actually, EMSG, I only partially agree with you. I'd say that someone who thinks Taco Bell has better food than the average taco truck has bad taste. It's okay to think that your taste is better than someone else's--that's what taste is all about. The problem with Zagat is that they provide no way of reconciling people's different tastes other than smashing them all together into an unsavory mush, and the problem with Grimes is that he's not one of the first ten thousand people to notice this, and he riffs off his unclever deduction with analogies dumb enough to turn me off his whole argument.

[ExtraMSG]

Actually, EMSG, I only partially agree with you.

I know we don't entirely agree. I think with your discussion of Pearl Jam vs Chopin you don't go far enough. You get right up to the edge of saying that one can be as good as another and back away.

Like I said, I think it's fine to have standards. It's good even. It might even be necessary. It's one thing to feel someone's taste is bad. That's a natural extension to some degree of having standards. If you didn't think you were right and they were wrong, you'd have different standards. However, feeling that there's something inherently superior about your standards is faulty.

I do know people who like Taco Bell better than taquerias. Of course, Taco Bell isn't their favorite Mexican-American, but that just shows how much more they like that type of Mexican than the other. I even have a Texan friend who is totally willing to argue that traditional Mexican and taqueria Mexican is not only not as good as Mexican-American to him, but inferior to Mexican-American. He can make a strong enough case too (lawyer who has a lot of dining experience). I disagree with him, of course, as you probably know if you'd read any of my taqueria posts on the PNW section.

Are these positions commensurable? Can we find one objective ground to determine which is right? I don't think so. And I don't think we can with haute cusine versus common food (is there a better word?) anymore than we can show that Christianity is superior to Hinduism or that American culture is superior to Mexican culture. It all presupposes too much -- and the primary thing it presupposes is that what we like is better. That's putting the cart before the horse.

[Fat Guy]

It's not essential to settle the question of whether haute cuisine is "better" than non-haute cuisine, nor do we have to allow for any other implied superiority, in order to come to the conclusion that giving the same score to disparate styles of cuisine makes no sense.

What's important is communication. And a system that scores all cuisines on one scale is simply uncommunicative. It says the best potato chip gets the same score as the best French haute cuisine restaurant. Regardless of whether you think on a philosophical level, and even on the level of pure flavor, a perfect potato chip is fully as good as the tasting menu at Daniel, you've got to admit that giving both of them a score of 28 is uncommunicative.

So you can do one of two things: you can separate the scales, or you can create a hierarchy within one scale.

Using the Michelin model, for example, you could say you're going to give three stars to all best-of-kind restaurants, even hot dog stands, but you're going to qualify the ratings. In other words, you're going to say "these are the three-star hot dog stands, and these are the three-star haute-cuisine restaurants." So long as people understand that you're giving a different type of star to a hot dog stand than you are to a haute-cuisine restaurant, nobody has to reach the issue of one being better than the other. People can believe the hot dog stand is better, if they like, and the system will be just as communicative.

Or you can say that you're going to impose a hierarchy of cuisine based on traditional gastronomic notions of the pecking order of cuisines. You say, sorry, we're going to declare that haute cuisine is indeed by definition superior to hot dogs, and that a hot dog stand can have a maximum of zero stars no matter how good it is. Some people aren't comfortable with that kind of stratification, and that's okay. They don't have to agree with it. It's still more communicative than a level-playing-field/relativistic approach. So they can complain if they like but they still benefit from the clarity of the system -- though nobody ever seems to complain when Michelin does it because in the overwhelmingly French-to-French apples-to-apples universe of Michelin it's self-evident that the kind of food they serve at Taillevent ranks higher than the type of food they serve at a brasserie.

I think it's also important to note that in any cultural debate you're going to see similar unresolvable conflict regarding popular taste versus elite taste. You'll always have people arguing that comic books are as worthy as Shakespeare and that people who rank Shakespeare higher than comic books are elitist snobs etc. So be it. Someone has to argue for standards, or there won't be any left to undermine.

[Bux]

Actually, I wasn't using hyperbole based on what Grimes said. I was exaggerating what I think Bux and Schaem were implying, that those who vote "low" food as tasting as good as "high" food are naive and have little or no taste.  They're not worthy of having their votes tallied.  I don't think it takes much effort (ie, exaggeration) to take that from the various posts.

I think it takes tremendous creativity to claim I said, implied or think anything of the sort. I also think it takes balls, clouds the issues and sabotages the discussion. Fat Guy just said "What's important is communication." He said it in relation to communicating information about restaurants using a set of ratings, but I'll also adress the issue in regard to putting words in other people's mouths. Doing so reduces the strength of any argument you put forth regarding communication and that's what the ratings are all about. What does a rating of 28 say about a restaurant and its food?

Instead of me directing more analogies or defending my previous ones at what you've said, I'll just try to reiterate my argument:

Fresh start then.

The complaint that is being made is that "low" food -- street food, comfort food, etc -- does not deserve the food ratings they receive that places them near or equal to the food ratings of haute cuisine restaurants.  Mind you, this is only the food rating we're talking about since Zagat does not have a rating for a restaurant as a whole.  My response is that there is nothing inherent in haute cuisine that makes it clearly deserving of higher ratings for food than "low" food.  Any attempt to do so just shows the prejudice of the one making the argument.  How food tastes is subjective.  Whether some dish has aesthetic value outside of it's taste is also subjective.

It's not an argument, it's your opinion that low food deserves the rating of high food. It's my opinion that high food deserves a higher rating and my argument is that this is for the sole purpose of communicating the fact that it's high food.

My problem is that people are judging the food at The Grocery, and places like it, as less than ADNY, and places like it, a priori.  Honestly, and I imagine you already know this, I have not been to The Grocery (nor ADNY) and like Mamster I think that it's very likely that it isn't as good as ADNY.

Thus I understand that you believe ratings should not be used to separate the good from the better. Perhaps it's just too elitist to have a method of rewarding excellence.

But my reasoning is not based on the type of food that it makes.  Like I've said, I think there is bbq, Mexican, Indian, etc, that is every bit as good as anything I've had at any haute cuisine restaurant.  Not for "what it is" either.  I mean that a) that it tasted as good, b) that I respected it and the effort that went into it as much, and c) that given a last meal before execution (something growingly longed for by those reading this right now?) I would be every bit as likely to choose it over anything else.

So you're using this particular time and place to make a political point unrelated to Grocery or Grimes' article. I think that's dishonest.

My problem isn't with having standards.  My problem is assuming that one set of standards is objectively superior to another, especially on a matter of taste.  The masses always have a strong case on aesthetics.  Afterall, you're saying which do you like better, which affects you more, which do you enjoy.  And the masses are saying, "well, all of us, way more than you, enjoy this one".  All that can be said in response is "yeah, but we know better".  I do not believe that once educated in fine dining and introduced to frog legs with pine needle aroma that a person will or should necessarily prefer or respect that more than a pie from Lou Malnatti's.

Fine, that's your opinion, but I note that within your acceptance of education, there immediately springs forth a reverse snobbism that need to mock haute cuisine. It's unnecessary and self defeating. I don't know that I know anything better than you do, although today, I'm not impressed with your communication skills. All that my education (I'll call it experience, if I might) has done is allow me to know more than I used to know. Forty years ago I might not have valued the difference between Grocery and Le Bernardin. Today I do and can express that sort of difference on a rating scale.

If all the Zagat voters had been to The Grocery -- or even a more striking example, The Olive Garden -- and ADNY and had rated it nearly as high or as high would you attack the guide any less?  Probably not.  You'd just make the attack entirely a matter of the voters having bad taste.  Meanwhile, people would still be using Zagat and finding it quite useful at recommending restaurants.

Perhaps, perhaps not. But once more I see an agenda that's driving your posts and not a response to Grimes' article or what we might have said. You're arguing about what you suppose we'd do in another situation. That's not fair to Grimes and not fair to the readers here. It's not the path to a fresh start I agreed to take with you.

[ExtraMSG]

It's not essential to settle the question of whether haute cuisine is "better" than non-haute cuisine, nor do we have to allow for any other implied superiority, in order to come to the conclusion that giving the same score to disparate styles of cuisine makes no sense.

Agreed. But that's not what a large portion of the criticism has been.

What's important is communication. And a system that scores all cuisines on one scale is simply uncommunicative. It says the best potato chip gets the same score as the best French haute cuisine restaurant. Regardless of whether you think on a philosophical level, and even on the level of pure flavor, a perfect potato chip is fully as good as the tasting menu at Daniel, you've got to admit that giving both of them a score of 28 is uncommunicative.

It depends. For some people, the potato chip will always be superior. For some people, the haute cuisine will always be superior. For some, they will be equal (excluding all else such as price, etc).

Or you can say that you're going to impose a hierarchy of cuisine based on traditional gastronomic notions of the pecking order of cuisines. You say, sorry, we're going to declare that haute cuisine is indeed by definition superior to hot dogs, and that a hot dog stand can have a maximum of zero stars no matter how good it is. Some people aren't comfortable with that kind of stratification, and that's okay. They don't have to agree with it. It's still more communicative than a level-playing-field/relativistic approach. So they can complain if they like but they still benefit from the clarity of the system -- though nobody ever seems to complain when Michelin does it because in the overwhelmingly French-to-French apples-to-apples universe of Michelin it's self-evident that the kind of food they serve at Taillevent ranks higher than the type of food they serve at a brasserie.

I don't have a problem with Michelin. I think for what it does it's useful as well. But talking specifically about Zagat, I think it takes care of your complaints. Sure, the user has to think (oh my). But the information is there. There's more information in Zagat than any other guide I've seen. They'll rate the food, decor, and service separately. Tell you an average meal price, indicate the cuisine, and describe (though sometimes poorly) the type of place it is. Is your complaint merely that it's not organized to your liking? They've even done a lot of the work for you with their sections that break places out by categories.

I think it's also important to note that in any cultural debate you're going to see similar unresolvable conflict regarding popular taste versus elite taste. You'll always have people arguing that comic books are as worthy as Shakespeare and that people who rank Shakespeare higher than comic books are elitist snobs etc. So be it. Someone has to argue for standards, or there won't be any left to undermine.

True. In fact, there will be unresolvable conflict regarding a lot more than popular versus elite tastes. And I've said over and over that standards are fine and good. However, standards are dynamic, remember. There was a time when Shakespeare was the pop art. There was a time when lobster was prison food. My problem is with the cultural arrogance that assumes their standards are self-evident when they're more about the self and less about the evidence.

[ExtraMSG]

It's not an argument, it's your opinion that low food deserves the rating of high food. It's my opinion that high food deserves a higher rating and my argument is that this is for the sole purpose of communicating the fact that it's high food.

I'm not trying to argue which food deserves what ratings. I'm saying that Zagat uses a different set of standards than Mobil or Michelin and that it's useful because of that. Trying to then conform it to a different set of standards is just misguided and will do no more than reduce the variety of voices in food criticism under-representing a segment of the population (possibly a larger segment) that likes "low" food as much or more than "high" food.

Saying that high food deserves higher ratings to communicate that it's high food again puts the cart before the horse. There's a problem in that the terms presuppose something that should probably be questioned (or is questionable). It'd be like naming the Republicans the "winning" party and the Democrats the "losing" party and then saying that you want all elections to result in the "winning" part winning because that's what their name implies.

That does not mean that I think all guidebooks should follow the Zagat model. That would suffer from the same problem. I'm in favor of a variety of ways of approaching food criticism and a variety of standards by which to guide people to food. Then let them choose which one they like best and fine most useful. Personally, I find Zagat more useful sometimes and Michelin styled more useful sometimes.

So you're using this particular time and place to make a political point unrelated to Grocery or Grimes' article. I think that's dishonest.

No, I'm discussing Zagat, the object of Grimes' article. I think there was more than a specific point about The Grocery being made. And this thread quickly moved to Zagat in general rather than Zagat specifically as it related to The Grocery. I don't know what's so political about that. I don't think I've hidden that.

Fine, that's your opinion, but I note that within your acceptance of education, there immediately springs forth a reverse snobbism that need to mock haute cuisine. It's unnecessary and self defeating. I don't know that I know anything better than you do, although today, I'm not impressed with your communication skills. All that my education (I'll call it experience, if I might) has done is allow me to know more than I used to know. Forty years ago I might not have valued the difference between Grocery and Le Bernardin. Today I do and can express that sort of difference on a rating scale.

I think you're confusing my opinion with an imaginary, but arguably valid, example opinion. I'd probably love Trio from everything I've seen. The next time I go to Chicago I will almost certainly go there. But I can empathize with those (my dad, who has eaten at many fine restaurants, eg) who would find it pretentious. I can empathize with those who find Chez Panisse underwhelming, though I loved it. I agree with those who think taqueria food is superior to Tex-Mex. But I'm not so bold as to suppose that my opinion on the subject has objective grounds that nullify any dispute and would invalidate any guidebook, eg, that came to a different conclusion.

Perhaps, perhaps not. But once more I see an agenda that's driving your posts and not a response to Grimes' article or what we might have said. You're arguing about what you suppose we'd do in another situation. That's not fair to Grimes and not fair to the readers here. It's not the path to a fresh start I agreed to take with you.

Again, I read Grimes and many subsequent posts, including yours, as making a broader point about Zagat's rating system. If I was wrong, I apologize.

[mamster]

This is so unfair--I'm trying to be the controversial left-winger but all the ire is turned on ExtraMSG. There is no justice at all.

[Fat Guy]

ExtraMSG (and Mamster too, you commie bastard you), let's assume the relativistic standard. Let's assume that a perfect potato chip and a perfect haute cuisine meal both deserve 30 points. Let's assume there's just too much hubris (nay, Republicanism) involved in saying Daniel inherently deserves more points than Lay's. Fine. Now all you need to do is show me where Zagat states that as its standard, and I'll be convinced that Zagat meets the bare minimum standard of communicativeness that I've argued for above.

The thing is, that's not Zagat's standard. Everybody knows the Grocery's rating is a fluke. Everybody knows it's the result of either an organized campaign or a collective misunderstanding of the scoring system. It's a fluke just as much as it was a fluke when the Soup Nazi got an incredibly high score, etc. Zagat, being a survey, processes information from its participants. Those participants overwhelmingly agree that Daniel inherently outranks Lay's every time on the food score, even on its worst day. Yet if 101 of those participants (I think that's the threshold number) think otherwise, they can put Lay's over the top. That's not merely uncommunicative; that's affirmatively stupid.

I happen to think you're dead wrong when you try to put forth the leveling argument that haute cuisine can't be declared inherently superior. I think there are overwhelmingly compelling arguments demonstrating that haute cuisine has earned its place in the pecking order, and that those are the standards used by virtually all those who are learned, experienced, and knowledgeable about cuisine. And, moreover, that the opinions of those who are learned, experienced, and knowledgeable about cuisine should count more than the opinions of those who are not. But Zagat performs its mission so poorly, we never have to reach that argument. Because within Zagat you can already find both sets of standards -- and a hundred others as well -- being applied inconsistently, generating results that are all over the map, and misleading the consumer in a variety of ways. Zagat is a failure no matter how we come out on the question of culinary relativism.

[slkinsey]

I am still astounded that no one has mentioned the notorious "Zagat Effect" when mentioning the utility of the ratings therein. Among the many interesting things raised in the referenced article, is the following:

Worse, it is a simple but distorting truth that people tend to prefer the restaurants they already frequent—witness the similarity between the Zagat “Traffic Report” and its list of “Most Popular Restaurants.” The circular nature of this process has been well pinpointed by the critic Seymour Britchky: Once you learn to hate a restaurant you never go back, [but] since you do not evaluate a restaurant for Zagat unless you have been there in the past year, those who continue to rate a place are, disproportionately, its admirers—fans—while the opinions of detractors go unrecorded. The New York Times critic William Grimes has labeled this phenomenon “The Zagat Effect,” adding that once a restaurant gets a good rating, “diners flock to it . . . and, convinced that they are eating at a top-flight establishment, cannot bring themselves to believe otherwise.”

The author's a total blowhard, but I think he makes his points.

[mamster]

Great, so I seem to be largely in agreement with William Grimes and Steven Shaw. Somebody poke me in the eye with a satay skewer, please.

You know, this question of a natural pecking order of restaurants, cuisines, ingredients comes up all the time and I don't remember us ever exploring it without it turning into a sandbox battle royale. Maybe I'll try to start a thread on the topic over on general, because, frankly, some days I believe in it and some days I don't.

[Bux]

You know, this question of a natural pecking order of restaurants, ...

I was thinking about ratings a propos this thread and the relationship of these to the fact that there is standard. I am also aware that education in this arena is a matter of becoming aware of the standards and understanding them. I am also aware that progress in any society is often made by the replacement of old worn standards by new ones.

Fat Guy mentioned "standards used by virtually all those who are learned, experienced, and knowledgeable about cuisine." I think it's fairly easy to move back and forth between Zagat numbers and NY Times stars. Four stars would probably be a 28 and 29 rating or maybe even a 27, 28 and 29. The exact pairing does really matter for what I am going to add to this thread and that is, I've heard professional chefs speak of other chefs' yet to be openned restaurants in terms of NY Times' stars. I've heard them ask if someone thought the new restaurant is going to be a three or four star restaurant. Clearly they had no knowledge of how good the food would be. What they were asking about was the proposed style of the restaurant and the type of food it was going to serve. The question was not so much about the ultimate rating as to the intent of the chef. Did he intend to operate a three or four star restaurant at the location. I'm sure Daniel Boulud would be thrilled to get four stars at Cafe Boulud, but he doesn't expect that. It's understood to be aiming at being a perfect three star restaurant and capturing the Daniel audience when it wants a three star experience. This is a standard that works, or works in the presence of a trained readership and critic. It works because it communicates to that audience.

Star systems can also have a bit of flexibility built in to them. The Michelin two and three star restaurants are meant to be destination places. One goes out of the way to eat there. The one star designation is something else. It means a good restaurant in the area, but not one that's worth a detour. Grocery strikes me as that kind of place and those places are usually two stars in the Times. I'm not so much defending a status quo as I am a system that works on many levels. What I don't see in the alternative is a system that communicates information about a restaurant as well.

[Fat Guy]

John Mariani weighs in:

http://pages.prodigy.net/johnmariani/031027/

(Scroll down for the Zagat piece)

[ExtraMSG]

This is so unfair--I'm trying to be the controversial left-winger but all the ire is turned on ExtraMSG. There is no justice at all.

The irony is in most settings I'm used to I'm the most conservative person there.

I happen to think you're dead wrong when you try to put forth the leveling argument that haute cuisine can't be declared inherently superior.

Well, it can be declared. I just don't think it can be proven acontextually. If you start putting criteria like clarity in broths, cheese courses, and uniformly cut vegetables it makes it easy to prove it in a hurry. In one sense what you say is trivially true because the definition of haute cuisine is ultimate in the French culinary tradition. The French culinary tradition has a largely established laundry list of what is required of great food. So some objectivity can be slipped in to show that a dish indeed conforms to that tradition. But that's a relativist's position which I'm entirely comfortable with. To show, however, that haute cuisine is inherently superior to Indian cuisine, though, is a much different endeavor. It's also much different to try to say that one inherently tastes better than the other. But we can disagree.

But Zagat performs its mission so poorly, we never have to reach that argument. Because within Zagat you can already find both sets of standards -- and a hundred others as well -- being applied inconsistently, generating results that are all over the map, and misleading the consumer in a variety of ways. Zagat is a failure no matter how we come out on the question of culinary relativism.

Sure. I think Zagat does have many problems. Never denied that. But with the disadvantages of anarchy or democracy that you note, so comes some advantages.

eg, you'd probably consider it a problem of communication that in the Portland, Oregon, guide (before they stopped producing it) Pearl Bakery scored among the highest marks for food. It's a small bakery very similar to Acme in Berkeley. However, it produces excellent breads which are used in several of the nicer restaurants in town. They serve some simple items such as sandwiches and such. If you were to start building criteria about what should be required for a score above 25 for food, you might put that a tasting menu should be offered, that presentation should be artistic, and that a foie gras course should be offered. (I'm just pulling things out of the air, it doesn't really matter which ones.) On all of these criteria, Pearl Bakery would fail. It could not achieve the score it received.

However, the score they did receive without any criteria other than what people say they like and how much they say they like it relative to other places represents a sincere love of Pearl Bakery's breads. Will someone expecting a 27 food score to translate to a 4 or 5 star dining experience be sorely disappointed? Of course. But I've been saying all along that one must use their noggin when reading Zagat. The truth is, I don't think anyone would be confused into thinking that Pearl Bakery serves the same food that the 3 and 4 star restaurants in Portland serve. But they would rightly see a passion for Pearl Bakery's breads that would not be as apparent if limited by some specific criteria.

I've never said Zagat's way is the best way. I've just said that it's a useful way. I think no guides are all that useful for someone who's lived in a place for very long. I think for the person seeking out fine dining in an American city, Mobil is probably the first guide to look at. I think that for trying to find a decent place in a specific neighborhood or in a specific cuisine (especially ethnic foods or "low" foods) Zagat is the way to go. That makes it much more useful for someone just moving to a town. I think that for keeping up on food in a city, message boards and newspapers are the best bet. At least, that's my experience.

[badthings]

to fan the flames:

Some self-proclaimed "smart mobs" guys reaches this conclusion:

And of course the third (and unpublished) part of the story is the one that really matters: the most important restaurant reviewer in the country was called to revisit an opinion because his earlier work was so at odds with the judgment of an anonymous and distributed group

The problem with democracy is that it perforce includes opinions such as this.

On the other side of the argument, I remember laughing out loud when I read in an old Larousse Gastronomique that "the world's three great cuisines" were French, Chinese, and Moroccan. (I don't know, maybe it's still in there). When one makes absolutist pronouncements, it helps to know what you're talking about.

[ExtraMSG]

I don't remember Iron Chef Morrocco. I have seen a moron Chef Rocco, however.

[badthings]

oh, you mean romeo?