Old Dining vs. New Dining

[robert brown]

Just as avarice and ambition have altered many aspects of cultural life, so have they changed the nature of the enjoyment of food. In the nearly 30 years that I have taken eating out seriously, I can finally see that this period can be divided into old dining and new dining. Old dining to a person of my age and experience was practiced in America’s large cities, London, Paris, the French provinces, and to a lesser degree in other European countries and in luxury hotels throughout much of the rest of the world. When I began my explorations of the talents of great chefs, the notion of “bacchanalia” still existed in certain restaurants. It was rooted in the concept that eating was a no-holds-barred personal festival of the kind one took part in on ocean liners, at big-city hotel buffets, and as a guest in resort hotels. The food at this time was mostly classic French, and the idea that a chef had to prove his mettle by inventing dishes consistently and constantly was all but non-existent. In post-war France, however, it was quite different. That generation of chefs (Fernand Point, Raymond Oliver, Alexandre Dumain, Andre Pic, Marius Bise, Charles Barrier, and others) put a certain emphasis on creating new or novel dishes. However, it was the next generation of chefs, the apprentices of some of the aforementioned, that made dining in France chic and artful. These “Nouvelle Cuisine” chefs combined innovation that often created genuine and permanent culinary classics with a respect for classicism and a desire to make dining in their restaurants an exercise in experiencing all that it could be. These elements were manifested in large kitchen brigades; a dozen or more dining room employees who were trained in what was for them a permanent profession; large wine lists replete with great vintage wines reaching back decades; a mind-boggling number of cheeses and desserts; a willingness more often than not to go to great lengths to accommodate their clients (most vividly seen in being willing and able to make almost any seasonal dish on the spot from the restaurant’s historic repertoire, or at least do so with a days or two’s short notice); and , what turns out to be most significant, a large choice sometimes amounting to a few dozen, of a la carte dishes.

In even the early days of “La Nouvelle Cuisine”, a fixed or limited-choice menu existed. However, it did so for two exemplary reasons: either to present in a package the dishes that represented the chef’s best-known dishes, or to allow clients to visit the restaurant to dine well in an economical way. One of the real joys, however, of dining in the great restaurants of France in those days was to confront the large choice of a la carte dishes and put together with the maitre d’hotel (or on rare occasions, the chef) the most interesting and harmonious meal as possible or, especially if there were four or more of you, to order a large number of dishes in full portion (and of an entire part of an animal or sea creature, if not the entire critter itself) that you could pass around the table, thus taking a good custom-designed survey or measure of the chef’s talent.

Around 1990, an active and astute diner would have started to notice a change in the way significant restaurants began to conduct themselves. Most important, it was a change that not only “world-class” restaurants adapted, but thousands of restaurants with the new-found ambitions that resulted from “chefdom” becoming at minimum a respectable circle to be a member of. Even in a decade of restaurant mania, at least in the English-speaking countries, and quiescent inflation (maybe not so much with unusual produce and wine, but certainly with labor, construction, and fixtures and fittings), restaurants began offering less and charging more. A large brigade of dining room personnel that were well-trained and often middle-age veterans of the profession was replaced by younger people of strength and stamina and not thoroughly or professionally trained; kitchen brigades of two to three dozen members were cut in size by half or more; seatings became shorter as they became more numerous; various not-meant-for-cooking “profit centers” within restaurants developed that were designed to result in heftier tabs; i.e. the better or more interesting wines were marked up, often unconscionably; restaurants began charging for cheese according to how many pieces you selected; certain luxury foods came with hefty surcharges, most notably truffles—now no longer limited to the white ones from Italy (and other countries) in the fall, but the always-available black “truffes d’ete” priced as if they were white; and bottled water, which some restaurateurs like to make a “thing” over, even became exploited at the diner’s expense (as well-documented by eGullet contributors).

In the days of the Old Dining, a restaurant was almost a loss leader for its owner-chef. If he ran it as a break-even proposition or even at a tolerable loss, it was nonetheless his home base and public face that allowed him to engage in related ventures that brought home the relatively easy money that supported his restaurant. Now, however, a restaurant is supposed to (as a medium for investors) be an establishment that makes money in and of itself and provide some of the necessary investment capital for an ever-growing empire of enterprises. Some chefs are exceptions and remain rooted to their restaurants, but many others hand off the everyday operations to others, usually less gifted. For people like me and you; i.e. the clientele, we are the ones watching the fun and value of interesting dining diminish universally, and at our expense.

Slowly but steadily dining is becoming identical to taking the “demi-pension” at the seaside hotel. The menu or the card exists not as a tool for deciding the nature of your meal, but to tell you what it is you will be served--take it or leave it. I predict the end of the a la carte dish within the next decade. Already you can begin to see chef-restaurateurs trying to dissuade their patrons from going to it by making the price of a la carte dishes very high and the price of “le menu” cheap in relation. Chefs these days want to know exactly how much of what food to buy and prepare as much as possible before the restaurant opens.

I know that among some of the people I eat with, there is a newfound respect by some for the traditional restaurant on one hand, and a great enthusiasm by others for paragon establishments of the New Dining such as L’Astrance in Paris and Blue Hill in New York. Eating in these latter two restaurants does give you a quick trip through the current culinary minds of their chefs and some of the tastes they give you are quite remarkable. (It also appears that only a literal handful of chefs are successful in this format) Yet, they are little more than tastes. Eating this way for me is in the end unsatisfying. I can never get the perfect meal and all-consuming gustatory sensations I used to get from repeated “hits” of succulent flavors that comes from the whole “schmeer”. Eating in these kinds of restaurants is never more than pleasant. They are mechanical; they sedate the desire for culinary self- indulgence; everyone is made to eat the same; one’s hands are tied, and the “supremacy of the chef” rules over and smothers the autonomy of the diner. They represent, conceptually speaking, the on-going shrinking and diminishing of the experience of “grande cuisine.”

Look hard and pay enough money, and you can still eat in a manner similar to the ways of the Old Dining. Hurry up, though, as these establishments and their days are numbered.

[LaNiña]

Thanks for such a post. But it makes me oh so sad.

[Wilfrid]

That is a wonderful post, Robert. You allude to a couple of things I have tried, rather ineptly, to bring out from time to time - I have in mind the urge to innovate rather than perfect the existing repertoire, and the emphasis on ingenuity rather than satisfaction in a lot of modern tasting menus.

But you said it better than that, and you've said a lot more besides. This deserves further pondering.

I share Nina's sentiment, because 1990 was about the time I became able to afford good dining on something like a regular basis.

[Fat Guy]

Are you all familiar with Steve Klc's excellent Food Arts piece on dessert carts?

[Steve Klc]

Here's how that article from May 2001--Vive les golden oldies-- opened:

Once just a haute holdover, dessert carts roll back into relevance

“When La Cote Basque moved to its new location and abandoned its dessert cart in favor of plated desserts, it was a sad day for New York City” says online restaurant critic and sometimes Food Arts contributor Steven Shaw. Who among us cannot recall a cart wheeled to the table overflowing with desserts? It’s only been 15 years since the dessert cart or trolley, also referred to as les chariot des desserts, or gueridon, was the most prevalent form of dessert presentation. Most of us have long since been seduced by the glamour of a new vehicle—the plated dessert—but lately I’ve wondered whether that form hasn't begun to fade? Are too many pastry chefs copying too few creative and original presentation ideas? Are plated desserts becoming less interesting and more disconnected from the savory cuisine that precedes them? For example, you might find eclectic cuisine and homestyle American desserts on the same menu. If so, why shouldn't the dessert trolley roll back into view, with its undeniably nostalgic charm, as a potential remedy for the sameness of the modern restaurant experience.

I then built the case for the cart's current and continued viability--with discussion of chef-owner Jean-Michel Bergougnoux at L'Absinthe (who once was responsible for creating all the desserts on the Troigros trolley in Roanne, France,) pastry chef Eric Bedoucha at Bayard's, who employs the trolley at lunch and pastry chef Robert Bennett, under Georges Perrier at Le Bec-Fin, where one triple-decked trolley was never enough.

Then Jacques Torres helped me make the case why carts fell out of favor:

Given these ongoing success stories, one might be tempted to wonder why the dessert cart fell out of favor in the first place? Perhaps, as with anything repeated too often and with too little reconsideration, it had gone stale. Pastry can’t help but evolve, right? Master pastry chef Jacques Torres, formerly of Le Cirque 2000 and now the chocolatier/co-owner of Jacques Torres Chocolate in Brooklyn, thinks this decline came mainly because one could not guide the palate and sequence of flavors with a dessert cart or buffet. “You’d lose the control and the excitement of plated desserts,” Torres says. “Compared to a great plated dessert, with contrasting temperatures and textures, anything on the trolley lacked drama in the mouth.” The demise of the cart also proved inevitable for practical reasons. “Restaurants are too much of a business now and space is expensive,” adds Torres. “Tables have to be so close together, how could a cart pass by?"

Then I made the case for what would have to change for a real revival to take place, after talking to a few older hotel and restaurant pastry chefs from the late 70's and early eighties, including Francis Lorenzini--who now is professor of pastry arts at New York City Technical College but for 15 years produced the dessert trolley at New York City's famed four-star restaurant Le Cygne. He transitioned them to plated desserts in '86 and then shifted La Caravelle over from dessert buffet to plated desserts in '89.

My final graph:

Maybe the biggest reason to reconsider dessert presentation is also the least complicated. "I don't want every restaurant to be the same," implores Shaw, who as a restaurant critic eats more than his fair share of meals out. "It's nice to go to a place that has a dessert cart and serves old-style cakes and tarts. If nothing else, it's a welcome change of pace."

[Jinmyo]

Robert, as so often, a very fine and lucid post. Thank you.

Special K, thank you for the precis of your article. This was from before I subscribed so I had missed it.

[Jonathan Day]

There is a lot to reflect on in these posts. I will mention two themes that come to mind.

The first is what some economists call the principle of obliquity: that pursuit of profit as a primary (or even a highly visible) goal is often detrimental to the long-run performance of a business -- i.e. that the best way to sustainable long-term performance (including profitability) is to focus on other goals: customer satisfaction, or quality, or a continued flow of innovative products. Hence Johnson and Johnson, the pharma company, in its "Credo" puts profit below its responsibility to doctors, patients, employees, management, and their local communities. And in the 1982 Tylenol crisis, J&J swiftly recalled all tablets from the entire US market, even though the deaths occurred only in the Chicago area, and mounted a huge communication programme to alert the public.

But J&J is rare amongst corporate giants. More and more companies are focused on the bottom line as a goal in itself rather than as a way of keeping score. And this is not just happening in giant firms, but also in restaurants. As Robert says, there is more attention to table-turning, to charging for bread, cheese, and the like, and to operating a generally stingy policy. I have had many delicious meals in the "new dining" restaurants, but rarely feel that these are places to which I want to return again and again.

Some of the discussions on loyalty in eGullet (and in Leslie Brenner's book on Daniel) suggest that this, too, has taken on a transactional quality: the restaurant isn't generous to you unless you are a "VIP". To become a VIP (short of being a movie star or well-known billionaire) you have to endure multiple sittings at 5 pm, 10:30 pm, and so on, carefully timed so that the tables can be turned at the appropriate moment. Eventually, having "paid your dues", you become known to the restaurant and get treated in a more civil way. And in any event, reservations are so hard to come by that it's unlikely most customers will ever become loyal. Hence the customers who do come through must be charged high prices.

The best of the "old dining" was different. There was a sense of generosity from the start. If customer loyalty developed, that was a bonus for both customer and restaurant.

The second theme is related. It is that a growing number of restaurants are owned by outside investors. There is a fine line between Diageo owning Burger King and "Dinex" owning the growing number of Daniel restaurants. Economic theory suggests that human capital businesses (of which a restaurant is a prime example) are better owned by their employees. The experience of professional services firms (law, consulting, advertising) is telling. Once there are outside investors, there is an inevitable slide toward formulaic work, predictability and a degree of diversification so that earnings are more regular.

Oddly enough, one restaurant that exemplifies both the obliquity principle (seek goals other than profit) and the employee ownership principle is Chez Panisse. And CP has a fixed menu...and according to interviews with Alice Waters this was done in part to minimise waste. Yet as far as I can tell CP is not hugely profitable, nor have they tried to turn it into a chain or show any sign of selling out.

Robert, I would be curious to know whether you would classify Chez Panisse as "old dining" or "new dining". On the surface, it's "new": no dessert cart, fixed menu. From the few times I've eaten there, it has the generosity of "old" dining.

[macrosan]

Look hard and pay enough money, and you can still eat in a manner similar to the ways of the Old Dining. Hurry up, though, as these establishments and their days are numbered.

Fascinating post, Robert, and very thought-provoking. I found myself nodding in agreement right up to the very last sentence

"Look hard enough" has always been a requirement in the process of finding excellence, in restaurants as much as any other service or product. As it happens, the pursuit of excellence is of itself a rewarding pastime, certainly for eGulleteers.

But the days of excellence, or of "Old Dining", are never numbered. In fact, old dining will thrive on its growing scarcity. It will become even more excellent as it becomes scarcer, and as the uncommitted pretenders fall into the "new dining" paradigm. Those people, like yourself, who crave that experience will actually become more committed to seeking it out as it becomes scarcer. Of course you will have to pay the price, and of course "old dining" will move even further out of the financial reach of many.

In time, after that industry segment has re-established itself in terms of culture and purpose and skills, it will grow again become more widely available. This is all a part of a cycle, and the process of retrenchment followed by regrowth finally creates something much stronger, and I believe in this case better. I suppose I'm just another Darwinian foodie.

[robert brown]

Macrosan, thank you so much for reading and responding positively to my post. I hope you are right about a return to the old ways of the chef-restaurateurs. I am grateful that there is no one so far, and that includes you, who has accuse me of sour grapes and indulging in pipe dreams. I think if serious diners become more aware of recent gastronomic history and take an interest in maximizing serious dining, perhaps a backlash can develop. Right now, however, that kind of dining just seems as if it is getting more and more elusive as I see more chefs following the L'Astrance model than, say, the Troisgros one. There are serious economic and personal impediment to the latter, I am afraid, in at least a public way.

JD, I scrolled backwards and read your post after Macrosan's. I will comment on it later as it is a marvelous one.

Steve, Steve, Wilfrid, Nina, and Jin. Thank you for the positive responses as well and the discussion of the dessert cart. I will try to reply about that as well.

[Robert Schonfeld]

I suppose I'm just another Darwinian foodie.

At a talk I once attended by Dany Meyer, he made the point repeatedly that he felt himself not to be in the restaurant business, but in the hospitality business. The quality of the food is always meant to be as high as possible, but it remains his goal to deliver to *every* customer a complete experience that will leave that customer happy and anxious to return.

As it is not infrequently necessary to have the obvious explained to me, this was a revelation. My own first requirement when going out to eat is that it be a complete experience. The reservation, the greeting, the room, the table, the service, the food, the departure (another memorable Meyer line is "Write a great last chapter".); all of these things add up to a rewarding experience. It all has to fit together, whether it's that Thai place in Queens, or ADNY.

So here was someone who seemed to think, and to run a restaurant business, exactly along the lines that most appealed to me. My observation, in the form of a question is this: could it be that Meyer is the foremost practitioner of The New Old Dining, a Darwinian adaptation to the marketplace that is a synthesis of some past practices with some new ideas?

[Fat Guy]

Of course.

Boy you really do need to have the obvious explained to you.

[Robert Schonfeld]

So, rather than regretting the imminent loss of a species (which is not to say we shouldn't enjoy it while we can), might we not instead see the glass as half full and celebrate the emergence of a new one?

[Gavin Jones]

Yes, Old dining: Dinosaurs

New New dining: (focus on P&L) - Reptiles

New Old dining (Alice Waters tendency) - Mammals

[macrosan]

Yes RobertS, that is exactly what I believe. It has been said in many other threads from many perspectives that haute cuisine is not enough, it must of necessity be accompanied by fine cutlery and linen, fine service, even fine dress. I think one of the Steves asked the rhetorical question on another thread "Who would want to eat an Alain Ducasse meal sitting on an egg-carton in a parking lot?" or something along those lines.

Danny Meyer is right. Fine dining is a total experience. The balance between the element of that experience will change over time with public taste, and with the experience of restaurateurs. I would hesitate even to talk in terms of the relative importance of the individual elements of the overall experience, ie is the food most important, or the service, etc.

I am confident that a slow process of evolution will ensure not only that fine dining, or "old dining" will survive, but that it will also continue to change sufficiently to maintain a freshness of experience for those who wish it.

[Wilfrid]

I am concerned, as I think Robert Brown is, that the baby may be thrown out with the bathwater. Example: a wonderful established repertoire of dishes gets consigned to history along with stuffy maitre d's and evening dress.

I wish I had time to elaborate, but I am still giving a course in elementary reasoning over on the Expensive/Cheap thread.

[LaNiña]

I am concerned, as I think Robert Brown is, that the baby may be thrown out with the bathwater.  Example: a wonderful established repertoire of dishes gets consigned to history along with stuffy maitre d's and evening dress. 

I wish I had time to elaborate, but I am still giving a course in elementary reasoning over on the Expensive/Cheap thread.

Yes, Wilfrid, good point. This is one of the reasons I keep going back to Le Perigord (the restaurant, I mean). I want those places to stay.

[Robert Schonfeld]

I wish I had time to elaborate, but I am still giving a course in elementary reasoning over on the Expensive/Cheap thread.

May I suggest banging your head against a wall until you can no longer feel the pain, Wilfrid. It worked for me.

[Robert Schonfeld]

I am concerned, as I think Robert Brown is, that the baby may be thrown out with the bathwater.  Example: a wonderful established repertoire of dishes gets consigned to history along with stuffy maitre d's and evening dress. 

Agreed. We should cherish the best of the dinosaurs while they last, and we should look for dinosaurish signs in new places (examples?) Unfortunately, evolution will have its way in the end.

[Gavin Jones]

I wish I had time to elaborate, but I am still giving a course in elementary reasoning over on the Expensive/Cheap thread.

I think some of the participants should ask for their money back.

[macrosan]

Yes, but the point is that will evolve into better dinosaurs for the future

[Jaymes]

I miss "old dining" and, in particular, its elegant, knowledgeable, gracious career waiters.

There is still quite a bit of that going on in New Orleans, however. Although as previous posters have said, it seems to be fading fast.

[Bux]

Life, one might say, should be like a good meal with one constantly taking sips from the glass and having it refilled. Of course analogies suck and one might argue that the quality of the wine is at least as important as how full the glass is. Things, as Marcosan has suggested, go in cycles. This is not at all the same as going in circles. The only constant is change and as we cycle we pick up and discard so when we come to the top again, we are in a different place. Lest you envision a series of loops with an x and y axis, I suggest we may all see different points of the loop as "top."

As things, be they restaurants, foods, fashions or whatever, become familiar they tend to become both comfortable and boring. There will always be those who are bored first. In general they will become the avant garde for some cause. As things become boring and enuogh people become jaded, the new will arise. For example, the plated dessert will begin to replace the chariot. Outside factors such as economics will often hasten or deter change. Not all new ideas or customs will survive or become the standard, but as the middle people latch onto an idea, it will prevail and as that happens, the conservative element opposing change will be joined by members of the old avant garde who have a tendency to become jaded quickly and by those who have abandoned the old just long enough to become nostalgic.

To stay with the plated desserts for a moment, I tend to feel that they are more interesting, when well done, than a barrage of unrelated deserts on a trolley. Yet, after not seeing a dessert trolley for years--perhaps more than a decade--I was I was delighted with the prospect when I met up with it again. It brought back many fine memories of old fashioned eating and good memories of excellent and seeminly unlimited dessert choices. A half dozen years ago, I might have been less joyful and thought the restaurant was just too staid and didn't understand that times have changed. What we want is variety and change in our life. For young people there's always something new. For those of Robert's and my generation, the new is more often than not going to often appear as a reincarantion of the old, or the old--if we can still find it.

Robert, is thought provoking--and I could ask no more from those who post here than to provoke my thoughts on food and dining--when he says:

Slowly but steadily dining is becoming identical to taking the “demi-pension” at the seaside hotel. The menu or the card exists not as a tool for deciding the nature of your meal, but to tell you what it is you will be served--take it or leave it. I predict the end of the a la carte dish within the next decade. Already you can begin to see chef-restaurateurs trying to dissuade their patrons from going to it by making the price of a la carte dishes very high and the price of “le menu” cheap in relation. Chefs these days want to know exactly how much of what food to buy and prepare as much as possible before the restaurant opens.

but he is not above extolling the virtues of El Bulli which is the epitome of a place that says "take it or leave it" and where the a la carte dish no longer exists. We are all fickle. I want my plated desert as well as the opportunity to eat my cake from the trolley. I am a great fan of Blue Hill and l'Astance and likely to leave each with a satisfied smile on my face, but I am increasing enjoying finding remants of the old style and although I went to Catalunya in seach of the new cuisine, I found myself as much in love with the traditional restaurants as with the creative ones. I also loved the ones inbetween. There's too much good eating to really worry about style. I think I feel the same way about arguing whether French food is better than Italian or Chinese, or whether Norman food is better than Burgundian or Provencal food. It's all interesting to discuss, but none of it will get in the way of my enjoying as wide a range of table pleasures as I can manage. Let me close by saying that I don't think Robert was worrying about style, but offering us abstract intellectual food for thought.

Where is Luchow's when we need it?

And I don't mean to imply that this all hasn't been said as well in fewer words when Klc quoted Shaw.

Maybe the biggest reason to reconsider dessert presentation is also the least complicated. "I don't want every restaurant to be the same," implores Shaw, who as a restaurant critic eats more than his fair share of meals out. "It's nice to go to a place that has a dessert cart and serves old-style cakes and tarts. If nothing else, it's a welcome change of pace."

[Wilfrid]

Ooh, I haven't been to Le Perigord in ages. Good idea, Nina.

[Orik]

If restaurants want to make a profit they should cook the books, everyone else is. Sorry, had to say that.

Great post robert. Thank you.

[Fat Guy]

And I don't mean to imply that this all hasn't been said as well in fewer words when Klc quoted Shaw.

That should probably be illegal.