Washington DC As A World-Class Dining Town

[chefbrendis]

I've followed this thread for some time and have been very interested in what everyone has to say. I think that yes DC is worthy of being promoted and we are a significant food town, but comparisons to NY or San Francisco are moot.

To quote Meatballs, "It just doesn't matter".

Listen, everytime we as people with vested interest in the perceptions of our dear home city as it compares to someplace else get involved in the disagreement over whether we are better or worse than NY it marginalizes us. Is there some award for being the best food city? No. Does it matter if there was? No. And even so, cooking, eating and drinking for awards is not the way I believe most chefs here work. We cook for ourselves and our guests, our families and our friends.

What does it matter if we're the place for ethnic restaurants, we have some other fantastic places to eat as well. I can go to any corner of our city, or the immediate suburbs and have meals ranging from fantastic to not so hot it is the same as everywhere else. F The Chronicle

In the end it comes down to confidence. In reviews here online or in papers across the world the best critiques begin with the perception that a chef is cooking with confidence, when a restaurant is fulfilling its promise with a serious commitment to what they are doing, not the place around the corner. When we begin to compare instead of believing in what we do wholeheartedly we marginalize ourselves. Chefs don't cook so they can be compared to other chefs, chefs cook because they have something to add to the dialogue of great food. I for one don't care whether we"re better than somebody else's town, this is our town and we own it, no person or publication can take that away from us. Eat for DC eat in DC, Cook for DC, the people who lament the fact that we don't have x or y like San Francisco does or that we don't have superstar Neighboorhood joints like NY they can go hang. We have DC its OURS and nobody can take it. When we believe confidently in our cioty and its restaurants and restaurant professionals, that's when our own perceptions change and this keeping up with the Joneses bullshit can end.

Recognition is validating and great but our perception of ourselves is what matters most.

[Fred]

Chefbrendis-

"Chefs don't cook so they can be compared to other chefs, chefs cook because they have something to add to the dialogue of great food."

That is RIGHT on the money....well said.

[MarketStEl]

If I could back up Chef Brendis further on his point...

Philadelphia has eternally labored in the shadow of New York City. After the national capital decamped for the banks of the Potomac and all the money and much of the port trade moved up to New York, this city has borne a massive municipal inferiority complex.

One of the areas in which that complex has dissipated completely over the past few years is the realm of dining. I will grant that Philadelphia has a local culinary history on which it could build a fine dining tradition--the reason the best-selling brand of cream cheese in the country is named for the city is because in the late 19th century, when it was introduced, the city had a strong association with good cooking on which the manufacturer wished to capitalize--but even so, for much of the 20th century, the city's restaurant scene was, to put it mildly, undistinguished.

The people responsible for removing the "un" prefix were not looking over their shoulder at Manhattan as they opened quirky, inventive, personality-filled restaurants like the Knave of Hearts (RIP), Friday Saturday Sunday and the Astral Plane (the latter two still going strong three decades out). They were simply creating the kind of places they themselves would like to eat out in, and they found a clientele who agreed with their vision. Having been shown the way by these pioneers, others began following their own visions to create other restaurants that soon fed off their collective energy, and before you know it, a Great Restaurant Town emerged without anyone invoking or inviting comparisons to New York. Those came later, after Philadelphia's reputation was established in its own right.

The same process is under way in Washington, with positive results for both the restaurant community and Washington diners. I would submit that one reason for the later start (as I stated in a slightly different fashion above) is that the city has only rather recently (relatively speaking) become a "metropolitan center" with a local identity distinct from that of its chief employer and a population large and sophisticated enough to demand the best urban life can offer. But what Washingtonians have done in such a short time is impressive indeed, and again, nobody is asking--or ought to ask--whether this is as good as or better than New York, or San Francisco, or even Philadelphia. It should rise or fall on its own merits.