Evaluation and comparison of restaurants

[Pan]

(Note: I will preface this post by stating for the record that I have been to Lupa several times but have not been to either A16 or Incanto, and that my remarks below should not be seen in any way to be commenting on those restaurants.)

In the A16 or Incanto?, Which is better? thread in the California forum, eje wrote the following:

Comparing restaurants is tricky business.

Even comparing A16 to Incanto is questionable.  They are different restaurants in very different neighborhoods that succeed at providing different things to different customers.

However, comparing Incanto to one of the Batali restaurants in NY is just silly.

I haven't been to Lupa; but, I have been to Babbo, and I expect that at Babbo they probably have as many cooks on the line on any given night as Incanto has in toto.

In my opinion, you can only judge a restaurant on how well it succeeds at accomplishing the goals it sets for itself and how well it pleases its target clientele.

Isn't that very California of me?

Incanto is a homey, well run Italian restaurant in Noe Valley.  It succeeds at that, and appears to please much of its clientele.

While I do agree there isn't much price difference between Babbo and Incanto, (they are both fairly expensive,) really, you can only judge Incanto against its peer restaurants in San Francisco and try to weigh its relative merit it on that basis.

At the risk of being tedious, I think Incanto does do well when compared with A16, Delfina, and other similar restaurants in San Francisco.

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My first reaction was that I disagree with the premise that it makes no sense to compare restaurants serving somewhat similar cuisine at similar price points in different American cities. But, on the other hand, it does make a certain amount of sense to judge a restaurant only on "how well it succeeds at accomplishing the goals it sets for itself" (I don't care how it pleases its target clientele if it doesn't please me, so as a customer, not someone merely engaged in an evaluation of the bottom-line success of a business, I don't find that a useful criterion). So I would like a discussion of whether and how you all compare restaurants and what criteria you use for comparison, but here are my thoughts:

(1) If and only if you know what a restaurant's goals are can it make sense to judge a restaurant in terms of how well it succeeds at accomplishing those goals. On the other hand, if the goals relate purely to the bottom line and not the quality of the food, that is useless to me. Similarly, if the goals encompass only preventing people from getting sick from the food, they are not sufficient for me to judge a restaurant to be good if it fulfills them. Only if the goals are high enough to satisfy me will I judge a restaurant that meets them to be good or even acceptable.

(2) It is also valid to limit comparisons only to restaurants of similar price or location, and it should go without saying that limiting comparisons to certain cuisines is also a reasonable way to focus one's appraisal. However, on a personal level, it is likely that most of us will compare restaurants that are dissimilar in terms of price, location, and even cuisine, because:

(a) It is inevitable that many of us will compare an experience in one restaurant with a memory of another, even if the two restaurants are half a world away.

(b) For most of us, price vs. perceived value is another part of our evaluation. This presents some difficulties when comparing restaurants in geographic areas that are cheaper or more expensive, overall. In particular, foreign exchange rates can cause a lot of havoc. To an extent, it is necessary to adjust one's sense of value to the prevailing prices in a given area. But it is unlikely that a person who's gotten bhel puris on the streets of Bombay will be able to completely avoid comparing the value of the many times cheaper bhel puri in Bombay vs. the "haute street food" bhel puris on offer in fancy restaurants in New York.

(3) If you do not order the restaurant's specialties or/and do order dishes that are on the menu but do not constitute part of the restaurant's core cuisine, or if you simply don't like tastes that are basic to its cuisine, you may be handicapped in offering judments of the restaurant that will be useful to people who would order specialties or/and do like all the tastes basic to that cuisine, though your criticisms may be helpful to those with tastes or/and diets similar to yours (e.g., no spicy food, no salty food -- you can imagine many more).

I'll flesh out my thinking with a few cases:

When I go to a Malaysian restaurant in New York, I first of all compare it to stalls and cheap restaurants in Malaysia and find it seriously wanting; secondly, I compare it to the best Malaysian food New York has to offer; thirdly, I appraise it according to a personal standard of acceptability (but of course, I'm rating it on all three bases at the same time, not really in three steps). I do make very large allowances for the fact that I'm not in Kuala Lumpur, Ipoh, or even a Malaysian village -- in large part because there is little prospect of my visiting Malaysia again for some time into the indefinite future -- but I do not make any allowances for the lack of sufficiently high goals to meet my standard of acceptability. Making lousy or completely tasteless food that some restaurant owner thinks will appeal to most of the non-Asians it is targetting as its clientele is a way to produce an irate reaction in me, not a figurative pat on their back for meeting their goals.

So taking this further, I could see how a person who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area but will not be likely to visit New York for years into the future could consider a comparison between Incanto and any New York restaurants irrelevant, while a San Franciscan who visits New York x-number of times a year may conclude that a restaurant that costs about as much as Lupa and in his opinion is not as good does not merit his patronage. Whether there may be useful questions about what he ordered at Incanto vs. what you ordered and whether not ordering certain types of specialties overly limits the basis of his analysis from your standpoint is a different issue, though.

Which leads to my next point:

Someone who goes to Grand Sichuan, orders mostly American-Chinese food and finds the Sichuan food inedibly spicy can give an appraisal of the restaurant or make a comparison of its quality with American-Chinese restaurants, but the appraisal and comparison won't be useful to someone who loves Sichuan cuisine and plans on ordering the firiest dishes on the menu. Nevertheless, their appraisal is valid to them, based on their criteria for what they like.

Your comments?

[Sneakeater]

This post will deal solely with the issue of comparing restaurants in different locales.

Having read the thread you reference, I'm not sure I see anything wrong with comparing restaurants in different geographical locations, if they are otherwise similar.

Other than local defensiveness, I don't see any reason not to evaluate an Italian restaurant near San Francisco in comparison to a similar one in New York. When Jams first opened here a couple of decades ago, I certainly wanted to know how it stood up against restaurants in California, not just restaurants in New York.

Of course, you have to be fair about it. But you also have to be honest. So, for example, I think it's only right to acknowledge that even the very best French restaurants in New York (NB: I haven't eaten at ADNY yet) don't measure up to the best French restaurants in Paris. You would then evaluate the New York restaurants against each other (in order to make practical dining choices); but it's always salutary to remember how much better a category of food can be than what's on offer here. That doesn't mean you wouldn't eat in the New York restaurants; only that you take them for what they are.

I'd say the same thing for dim sum. I don't think it's at all tiresome when people freuquently remind us, in dim sum threads, that as good as some places here are, they're not as good as much of what you can get in Hong Kong.

I guess I think this because it squelches complacency, and encourages us to expect more, and hence restauranteurs to try harder. Daniel Boulud has his own aspirations and business model, but I'd rather he know that his work is being compared to the best food of its kind available, not merely to the best available here.

Of course, when I switched from Italian restaurants to Jams, I switched subjects somewhat. Comparisons of non-indiginous restaurants in differnt locales (e.g., the San Francisco Italian restaurant v. the New York one) present a different case than comparisons of "satellite" restaurants with restaurants in the mother country. Again, though -- unless the restaurant is serving some kind of peculiarly local variation on the foreign cuisine (e.g., for all I know, Philadelphia, with its large and long-established Italian community, has developed a unique local Italian-American cuisine that could not fairly be compared to other Italian food) -- I don't see why cross-continental comparisons of restaurants are invalid. If there's a restaurant in San Francisco serving the same type of food as one in New York (and obviously it's got to be more similar than just "Italian"), it would be interesting to me to know that the one in San Francisco is better. Of limited utility, obviously (I'm not going to decide to fly to San Francisco for dinnner one night instead of going to Lupa). But still worth knowing. If nothing else, understanding why knowledgeable people think the San Francisco restaurant is better will help me hone my own responses. And, of course, some of us travel frequently.

Edited February 3, 2006 by Sneakeater (log)

[Sneakeater]

Also, to restate a point I made recently in another thread, it makes sense to judge a restaurant by the extent to which it achieves its aspirations. But only if you discern the aspirations in a "New Criticism" kind of way: from an examination of the restaurant itself, rather than by talking the owners or chef, or trying to psychoanalyze them.

Of course, if you're judging on this basis, you also get to judge the aspirations. A Lettuce-Entertain-You-style campy recreation of a Fifties diner (but with higher-quality raw materials) may succeed very well in doing what it's trying to do -- but many of us would consider what it's trying to do bullshit. There's a good deal of discussion of this in current threads on both the New York and Philadelphia boards about the new NYC branch of Morimoto.

And -- as I noted in that recent post I've adverted to -- there's always the possibility that a restaurant will fail to fully achieve its goals, and still be better than another restaurant that fully attains more modest ones. It may be that the latter restaurant is more satisfying. But it might not objectively be "better".

Of course, that last point raises another question. When you evaluate restaurants, how objective do you try to be? Is it just how much you "liked" or "enjoyed" it? Or do you try to do a more objective analysis? (I personally think that as soon as you're writing for publication -- including even posting on the 'net -- you have to have a strong objective element in your analysis. Which may mean nothing more than not taking your subjective responses for granted, but going on to question, analyze, and try to explain them.)

[ingridsf]

Incanto's website states that the Italian region their restaurant represents is "California," and that they find this to be a valid approach because Italian cuisine is, at heart, based on region.

This was my primary reason for questioning the value of comparing Incanto and Lupa. How do you decide whether an Istrian restaurant trumps a Roman one?

Carry on.

[Pan]

Ingrid, you asked a very good question that I don't consider rhetorical:

"How do you decide whether an Istrian restaurant trumps a Roman one?"

I think it is clearly possible to make such a decision -- for example, along the lines I indicated above (especially price vs. perceived value). Are you suggesting that it's impossible to compare the quality of a particular Roman restaurant with the quality of a particular Istrian restaurant and find the one or the other wanting? Do you never make any such comparisons? What are your criteria for evaluating and comparing restaurants? Supposing you were comparing an Inuit restaurant that served seal blubber with a restaurant with specialties more to your liking...

I think that if we really want to establish the bases of our judgments on food, we have to consider the extreme cases as well as the closer ones. Surely, we all compare and contrast things that are similar as well as things that are wildly different, no?

[Stu-i-moto]

I'll offer some of the best advice I've gotten anywhere, about anything. It came from a man I met when I was traveling in China, who said "Don't compare China to what you know from the United States, but appreciate us for our uniqueness."

New York is not San Francisco is not Paris. That's what makes going to these different places special. So I say don't compare across cities, unless you live in more than one place (in which case, you probably don't have to worry as much about dining because you can afford the best of the best anyway).

That said, while it is a fun academic exercise to think of the perfect approach to analyzing/ comparing restaurants, I have a fairly simple approach that consists of two questions:

- Would I go back?

- Would I recommend this restaurant to a friend?

For me, deciding whether I would go back comes down to:

- Value: how much I pay vs. the quality of the food - this is why a hole in the wall dim sum place can score as highly as a high-end cal cuisine restaurant;

- The execution of the dishes: do the flavors, textures, colors, aromas work well for me or not? Are the ingredients fresh, homemade? Do the flavors marry well together?

- Service: this is usually the difference maker between a good restaurant and a great one.

- I'm low maintenance, so the decor is less important to me than the food & service - although it should be clean.

- Does the chef show some degree of chutzpah (couldn't think of a better word) in putting dishes on the menu that express his/her creativity vs. that sell lots of entrees -

That's about it. Pretty simple, and it works for me.

[Fat Guy]

I think the "judging restaurants on what they set out to achieve" thing can be a very useful tool or it can mark a descent into relativism. It's probably better to rephrase it as "realistic expectations." In other words, you have to know something about a restaurant's fundamentals -- price point, various stylistic aspects, type of cuisine -- and have a basic grasp of what similarly situated restaurants are able to pull off in order to evaluate it in a meaningful way as opposed to some sort of deconstructionist exercise.

The issue of meaningful comparison is related to the issue of expectations. It's challenging to the point of meaninglessness to compare a steakhouse to a Korean Buddhist vegetarian restaurant -- the only reason you'd do it would be as part of a humor piece. Although, if you're in the business of rating restaurants on a 100-point or four-star or whatever scale then you do wind up trying to make such comparisons with a straight face, but it's more at the level of description: these two restaurants, though totally dissimilar, are both very good, very fancy and have excellent service therefore they're both three-star establishments. That being said, I just don't think "How do you decide whether an Istrian restaurant trumps a Roman one?" is a particularly difficult challenge.

I also think it's important, when talking about the theory of evaluating restaurants, to accept that we're not robots and that restaurant criticism is a lot more impressionistic than these multi-tiered, formal reasoning models.

[Chris Amirault]

I'll say it's more impressionistic. If I compare the best meals I've had at restaurants in the last few years -- Korean BBQ and tons of soju with a close friend at Soot Bull Jeep in LA; just two days ago with a bunch of new friends at StudioKitchen in Philadelphia; my five-day-old daughter's first trip out of the house with me and my wife to have dim sum at Lucky Garden in Providence; just me sitting at the bar of Zaytinya in DC -- well, I have very few terms of comparison that aren't impressionistic. Talking about those experiences using categories such as cuisine, price, size, quality of ingredients, service, and so on so utterly misses the point that it's silly.

[Stu-i-moto]

When you follks look at art, do you evaluate it based on what the artist set out to achieve? When you read a book, do you evaluate it based on what the author set out to achieve? No and no - because, unless you know the artist, the author or in this case, the chef/owner, you don't *really* know what they set out to achieve. You love it, you hate it, or you're somewhere in between. I am talking about the experience in its totality, not just the food. And you're also [usually] prett clear on whether you'd go back again or not -

Please tell me people are not this analytical when they go out to eat...the experience of being convivial - isn't that good enough?

[Sneakeater]

If you're not more analytic than that, then I think you have no reason to be writing about it for others -- or even recommending to others.

"Would I go back?" is of no interest whatsoever to anyone other than myself, unless they know why I think that (and can tell that they share my tastes). And I wouldn't automatically recommend every restaurant I'd go back to to every friend I have, but only the ones I think each friend would like.-

Not being analytic is fine as long as you're only making decisions for yourself. But once you enter into discourse on a subject, you're either somewhat analytic or completely useless.

[Pan]

When you follks look at art, do you evaluate it based on what the artist set out to achieve? When you read a book, do you evaluate it based on what the author set out to achieve? No and no - because, unless you know the artist, the author or in this case, the chef/owner, you don't *really* know what they set out to achieve.[...]

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You may be able to figure it out, though, or at least interpret it.

I certainly do analyze and judge a Mondrian using some different criteria from those I use for paintings by, say, Corot, because the artists are trying to do very different things (some of the differences are obvious and some require special knowledge to even be aware of). But maybe that's not a fair analogy, because Mondrian actually wrote descriptions of his intentions in painting. In which case, you can consider some paintings from Picasso's cubist periods or some other type of painting that's obviously different from traditional figurative works. Yes, this type of analysis can be helpful sometimes, and it's a damn sight more informative than "I like that painting; I hate that painting." That level of appraisal is based on naivete'

So going back to our analogy, I think that we can pretty easily determine that a cheap Cantonese dim sum house and a 3-star Michelin French restaurant have pretty different intentions. Both may be great, but there will be clear differences in what they aspire to achieve.

[Pan]

I'll offer some of the best advice I've gotten anywhere, about anything. It came from a man I met when I was traveling in China, who said "Don't compare China to what you know from the United States, but appreciate us for our uniqueness."[...]

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So when you have Chinese food in the US, are you able to completely block out your awareness that the Chinese food you had in China was (presumably) generally a lot better?

[Pan]

[...]New York is not San Francisco is not Paris. That's what makes going to these different places special. So I say don't compare across cities, unless you live in more than one place (in which case, you probably don't  have to worry as much about dining because you can afford the best of the best anyway).[...]

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Side issue, but I don't think your parenthetical assumption is accurate. Many people travel for work, and others are able to afford discounted rount-trip tickets because they avoid hotel bills and stay with friends or relatives. I don't think that people who are homeless and starving are jet-setters, but one doesn't have to be a billionaire or even someone rich enough to be a regular at French Laundry to be able to travel a few times a year.

[Stu-i-moto]

I'll offer some of the best advice I've gotten anywhere, about anything. It came from a man I met when I was traveling in China, who said "Don't compare China to what you know from the United States, but appreciate us for our uniqueness."[...]

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So when you have Chinese food in the US, are you able to completely block out your awareness that the Chinese food you had in China was (presumably) generally a lot better?

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No. But instead of trying to compare all the Chinese food I eat in the U.S. to what I ate in China, I appreciate the Chinese food here for what it is.

[Stu-i-moto]

Not being analytic is fine as long as you're only making decisions for yourself.  But once you enter into discourse on a subject, you're either somewhat analytic or completely useless.

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Strong statement - and at the end of the day, your statements about a restaurant are - your statements. However esoterically or simplistically designed, people still form their own opinions. They may agree with you more or less, but unless your discourse is targeted at people who have identical tastes to you, they end up being as useful as any other method.

The last thing the food industry needs is people like Robert Parker -

[Pan]

I'll offer some of the best advice I've gotten anywhere, about anything. It came from a man I met when I was traveling in China, who said "Don't compare China to what you know from the United States, but appreciate us for our uniqueness."[...]

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So when you have Chinese food in the US, are you able to completely block out your awareness that the Chinese food you had in China was (presumably) generally a lot better?

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No. But instead of trying to compare all the Chinese food I eat in the U.S. to what I ate in China, I appreciate the Chinese food here for what it is.

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Right. But as you admitted, you do that while still being aware of what Chinese food in China is (or was) like. The comparison is there, even if you're doing well in suppressing it, so that you can enjoy what you're eating. Much like my approach toward appraising Malaysian restaurants in New York, I think.

[ingridsf]

Ok, I have to be brief so I'm not even going to try discoursing on relativism and objectivity. Though Richard Rorty's words (I think it was him) apply: "Man only sees those values he is willing to serve."

Meaning, different cities, such as SF and NYC, may have restaurants with similar cuisines but different values. So I am wary -- but not rejecting -- of comparisons if I don't know that the person comparing them takes this into consideration. Some folks groove more on technique, others on ingredient integrity.

In the Incanto/Lupa comparison, I noticed Incanto bills itself as an Italian restaurant that features the seasonal, regional food of California. I just don't see how a NYC restaurant could be doing a superior job of this.

[Stu-i-moto]

Right. But as you admitted, you do that while still being aware of what Chinese food in China is (or was) like. The comparison is there, even if you're doing well in suppressing it, so that you can enjoy what you're eating. Much like my approach toward appraising Malaysian restaurants in New York, I think.

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Well said - yes, I do.

[Sneakeater]

Not being analytic is fine as long as you're only making decisions for yourself.  But once you enter into discourse on a subject, you're either somewhat analytic or completely useless.

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Strong statement - and at the end of the day, your statements about a restaurant are - your statements. However esoterically or simplistically designed, people still form their own opinions. They may agree with you more or less, but unless your discourse is targeted at people who have identical tastes to you, they end up being as useful as any other method.

The last thing the food industry needs is people like Robert Parker -

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But people can't tell if they have identical tastes to yours if all you say is, "I like this; I didn't like that." They need a basis for evaluating your opinion. That basis has to be your analysis, which they can accept or reject.

Also, at least to me, it's simply not interesting to read someone else's unsupported and unanalytic opinions about things. As Pan said, if all someone has to say about an artwork is "I like it" or "I don't like it", I don't want to spend my time reading it.

[Sneakeater]

The last thing the food industry needs is people like Robert Parker -

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I'll also note that you appear to be someone inside the food industry. I think industry people's interests may be different from consumers'. Maybe what I think I need is different from what's in your interest for me to get. (I'm not accusing you of being underhanded or anything; I just mean it's natural for people in a position to be judged to have different feelings about the judging process than those who make use of the judgments.)

Moreover, I'm not really sure what you mean by "a Robert Parker". Certainly, one can support one's opinions analytically without assuming the power of a tyrant.

I just don't see what use a sort of cozy "I like it cuz it makes me feel good" is supposed to be to anyone.

Edited February 6, 2006 by Sneakeater (log)

[Sneakeater]

I'll offer some of the best advice I've gotten anywhere, about anything. It came from a man I met when I was traveling in China, who said "Don't compare China to what you know from the United States, but appreciate us for our uniqueness."[...]

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So when you have Chinese food in the US, are you able to completely block out your awareness that the Chinese food you had in China was (presumably) generally a lot better?

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No. But instead of trying to compare all the Chinese food I eat in the U.S. to what I ate in China, I appreciate the Chinese food here for what it is.

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And you don't think your opinion of American Chinese food is better-informed, and worthy of more respect, than the opinion of someone like me who's never eaten Chinese food in China?

[Pan]

[...]In the Incanto/Lupa comparison, I noticed Incanto bills itself as an Italian restaurant that features the seasonal, regional food of California.  I just don't see how a NYC restaurant could be doing a superior job of this.

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On those narrow grounds, you're right that it's unlikely that a restaurant in New York would rate higher, but I don't think anyone is arguing that Lupa is a better California regional restaurant than Incanto.

In terms of similar cuisines with different values, I would say that each of us has personal values related to our individual tastes. I care what the different values of different cuisines or chefs are only to the extent that they coincide with the bounds of my individual taste. In other words, I basically feel that if it's not good enough, the cook should shut up about his/her values and improve the performance of the kitchen, or simply continue without my patronage. And I'll give you another example: One could postulate that there is such a thing as "Malaysian-American" cuisine, whose values include a lack of hot pepper, excessive sweetness, gloppy sauces, similarity to poor-quality American-Chinese takeout...do you see where this is going? A pox on such values, says me! (Again, I'm using the extremes to make a point about criteria.)

[melkor]

The Incanto/Lupa comparison isn't a reasonable one to begin with - the two restaurants are vastly different. They share little more than the broad category of Italian restaurants and they both offer cured meats. Comparing Incanto to Hearth would be far more apt. To make a direct comparison between two restaurants rather than considering the the class as a whole is a mistake unless the two restaurants are attempting to do the same thing. Incanto is all about using every part of every ingredient - there's no shortage of livers, spleens, sweetbreads, or turnip and radish greens for that matter on the menu at Incanto. The style they are going for is far more rustic than what you'd find at any Roman trattoria which incidentally is what Lupa bills itself as.

[Pan]

Well, would you consider Hearth and Lupa to also be so "vastly different" as to be uncomparable? I find Hearth and Lupa quite similar enough to compare them, specifying differences as well as commonalities between them. (For the record, I've been to Hearth once and Lupa several times and on that basis, I so far prefer Lupa, but not by much, and look forward to going back to both establishments -- with a slight edge in that respect to Hearth, because I've been there fewer times.)

I'd like you to elaborate about the "class as a whole," though. How does one consider the position of a restaurant in its "class as a whole" and write appraisals on that basis that are useful to readers? (This is not a challenge to you, just a question.)

[Edited for clarity.]

Edited February 6, 2006 by Pan (log)

[Fat Guy]

Take a look at both menus:

http://www.luparestaurant.com/menu-dinner.html

http://www.incanto.biz/sample_menu.html

Sure, they're plenty different. But there are plenty of commonalities. More than enough to make an intelligent comparison. Based on the menus, it would be no challenge whatever to write a meaningful piece comparing and contrasting what the two places do.

There's testa and trippa on the Lupa menu, and use of offal is an article of faith for Batali. One restaurant has "Escarole salad with shaved Buddha's hand citron & anchovy" and the other has "Escarole, Walnuts, Red Onion & Pecorino." One has "Ricotta Gnocchi with Sausage & Fennel" and the other has "Handkerchief pasta with rustic pork ragù." I certainly don't agree that Lupa is more refined, based on the menu comparison. If anything, it's Incanto that has the more refined, "gourmet" menu.

And within a certain range, contrasts still do double duty as comparisons. It's overly literal and rigid to say that it's impossible to compare restaurants meaningfully unless they're in the exact same category. For example, you could say that Incanto is California-centric and Lupa is New York-centric, so that's a contrast, but within that contrast are comparisons: Lupa supports the Heritage Breeds program, you see chefs from Batali's restaurants at the Union Square Greenmarket all the time, etc.