Should You Wait A Year To Visit A New Restaurant?

[Sneakeater]

In his EGCI Q&A on "How To Dine", Fat Guy said the following:

My feeling is that unless you're rich or a member of the food press, you should generally avoid newly opened restaurants. By newly opened I mean less than a year old. It really does take a full year or more for most restaurants to hit their strides -- and a lot of them don't even last the year, so you'll be none the worse for having stayed away.

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I'm not sure I agree, and would love to know what others think.

FG may be right that the best restaurants don't hit their strides for a year. But there are risks in waiting that long. FG seems to assume that if a restaurant closes (or changes) before a year has passed, you're just as well for having missed it. I may be wrong, but I think I detect a further assumption that if a restaurant closes (or changes) within its first year, that means it was unworthy of your patronage to begin with. I tentatively disagree with the first assumption, and strongly disagree with the second (if that was in fact his assumption).

Here in New York, at least, the restaurant market is pretty tumultuous. A lot of worthy-seeming places don't last the year -- but that doesn't mean they were bad, or that you wouldn't have wanted to try them. They just fail to find a clientele for one reason or another. First example, Bistro du Vent under Laurent Gras. Not an earthshaking place, but good enough for its price, to my mind -- and unique enough in its category -- that I would have been sorry to have missed it. But probably because of its location, it never found its clientele, and now it's closed. For another example, I have a strong suspicion that Alex Urena's newish restaurant Urena may not last the year. It doesn't seem like it's the best place in New York, but it certainly seems like it's providing a unique style of food that's worth experiencing.

Note that both those places are restaurants that serve food that you can't get elsewhere. There are no ready substitutes for either Laurent Gras's take on bistro classics, or Alex Urena's contemporary Spanish cooking. Both chefs will probably be back. But Gras will probably go back to haute cuisine. And who knows if Urena will be given as free a hand as he has given himself at this place?

An even bigger risk than worthy-seeming places closing is their modifying their formats for one reason or another. The most glaring recent example here in New York is Gilt, which got rid of Chef Paul Liebrandt when his "avant-garde" cuisine failed to find a clientele at that location and price point. My meal at Gilt was not flawless, but I would have been very sorry to have missed it. And I feel sorry for those who missed out on the chance.

Or take the example of THOR, where Chef Kurt Gutenbrunner left of his own accord within a year of opening, despite the restaurant's success, to avoid distraction from his core projects. Now it's being run by his sous chef, and who knows the extent to which it will deteriorate? (Even though Gutenbrunner presumably wasn't cooking there every night, he was still in charge of the menu.) I liked THOR a lot, and I would have missed out on a lot of enjoyment had I missed it.

Another problem is restaurants changing their formats over the first year to something less idiosyncratic but perhaps more commercially feasible. For example, the New York restaurant Maremma. Now you might think its original "cowboy Tuscan" concept was stupid, or you might think it was interesting. But I would have liked to try it, and I'm sorry I waited now that Maremma has switched to being a normal Tuscan place. It might even be better now -- but I'm sorry to have missed out on the original quirky concept.

Similarly, I understand that Scott Conant's Alto has slightly minimized the Austrian influences in its Sudtyrolian cuisine, becoming slightly more standard Italian. Again, if that's so (and my understanding might be incorrect), it might even make Alto a better restaurant in the end -- but I'm sorry I missed the chance to try what it originally was doing.

I guess Fat Guy's point is that, with finite time and money, it's better to concentrate on surer bets. But I think you miss out on some rewards if you're not willing to take risks.

What do you all think?

Edited August 29, 2006 by Sneakeater (log)

[purplewiz]

What do you all think?

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I think that if I waited a year to try new restaurants around here, I wouldn't eat at many new restaurants at all. Good or not, most new places here that aren't chains don't make it a year, and I'd rather take the risk and have a couple of months of new, good, interesting food.

Marcia.

[docsconz]

Great topic! I tend to agree with you. Without first year or early patronage no new restaurant would ever get to one year. Besides, if it is a place or a chef I am interested in, I want to get a sense of it. I will be more likely to cut a new restaurant some slack and not expect perfection unless the opening has been particularly haughty and full of attitude like Del Posto was.

[jsmeeker]

Interesting.

I had actually thought about bringing up this subject after reading Steven's comments. In that thread, I posted that I was going to break that rule. (and I did, and it was worth it)

In a way, I can understand where he is coming from when he says to wait a bit. Maybe a year is a bit too long, though. Maybe it better applies to restuarants opened by chefs that aleady have a prove track record or opened by large restaurant groups that have a good track record? I dunno. Steven will need to clarify.

However, I don't think it's a great rule, especially for a new place opened by "local" guy/gal/family. A chef starting out on his own with his (or her) own place, not backed by a big restaurant group. If we are all encouraged to stay away and we DO stay away, it might fail. I may miss out on something good.

[Jenny McClure]

I am not too experienced in the restaurant scene in New York, but in some other cities that I have experience, some restaurants, most often the trendy, seem to be at their best at the begining and then seem to go down hill as they become complacent in the fact that people will come as it's the "hot" place to be. Sometimes even waiting a couple of hours just to get a table.

[Sneakeater]

Also, not all restaurants take a year to hit their stride. Some -- especially ones in chef-owned empires -- open strong and deteriorate rather quickly, as management turns its attention elsewhere.

For example, Jean-Georges Vongerichten's Spice Market went from inconsistent-but-interesting-and-quite-good-at-its-best to nearly inedible within about a year.

I don't taste it myself (I think it's about as good as ever), but some have claimed that JGV's newest New York restaurant, Perry Street, is starting to slip as it enters its second year.

Now maybe it wouldn't have been such a big deal to have missed out on Spice Market when it was good. But OTOH, I had at least one good meal there. If I'd waited a year to go, and my second meal there had been my first, I'd have had only a completely unacceptable experience there, instead of one rather good one and one completely unacceptable one. Not a big loss, but a loss.

Edited August 29, 2006 by Sneakeater (log)

[Sneakeater]

Funny that I posted that last post while Jenny was posting hers. With that kind of convergence, we must be right.

[chiantiglace]

I dont think that should be a "rule". If some people feel that is necessary in their opinion than I have no problem with your guidelines on how, when and where to eat.

I sub-conciously wait a decent amound of time to try out a new place. I usually wait to hear some good reviews of it before waisting money, but that is only because I have limited time and money. If time and money were not a factor, neither would waiting a year be.

I do reccomend continuously revisiting a place after it first opens. Maybe every 6 months to see if they have improved or declined. I use to eat out with my father a lot when I was in high school, starting to learn the restaurant life thoroughly. We ate at a couple places that were not up to par, but even as synical as my father can be towards service and dining, he would always give a place another shot if coaxed.

For example, There is a place just down the street from my old house that we went to back when I was in ninth grade. I was sub-par to what we were expecting. The bar was magnificent, the appearance, everything out front was great. But when the food came, it was not so. They had been open for about 3 months. We privately tore it apart verbally, paid the check and left unsatisfied, but not unhappy.

We went there again a year and a half later, after the chef had left. Unfortunately this was probably a very bad time to go because the soux chef that stepped up was obviously not up to the task. She changed the menu the way she saw fit, and turned "not so great" food into an embarassment. I still remember ordering the duck that had been salted probably 6 times before being served to me. Sadly I like things heavily salted, and I could not eat it. I forgot what my father had, but I remember it being of lesser quality than the first. This time we left a little upset they we waisted our time.

Finally a new chef came in and did a complete overhaul on the joint. I am not going to get into the details, but since his arrival/good leaving/soux chef rising (current chef) it has been one of my favorite places to eat back home.

So I can understand why Steven would say wait a year, but even though I did not exactly have the greatest meals in the early years, I appreciate what the place has been through getting it right. And quite honestly I think I like the place better now than if I had waited for it to be the way it is now, because they didnt quit until they got it right.

So, I say be daring, especially if it appears to be a place you'd like to return to regularly.

[Fat Guy]

If time and money were not a factor, neither would waiting a year be.

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To me, that's the crux of it. The choice of where to eat is zero sum: you have a finite number of nice meals out per year, and any time you choose to dine at one restaurant, you're also choosing not to dine at any other restaurant for that meal. You also -- unless you're well-to-do or in some way subsidized -- have a finite number of dining dollars and every meal choice represents an allocation of those dollars. So, in the first place, when I choose a place to dine and I'm paying out of my own limited funds I always have to ask questions like, "This meal was good, interesting and worthwhile, but was it a better choice than Jean Georges at the same price?" There are enough restaurants in New York City where I know I'll always have a superb experience that it's hard for me to justify dropping hundreds of dollars on a meal that could easily suck.

I understand all the exceptions that, in my opinion, prove the rule. Those of us who make allowances in order to support avant garde cuisine or other worthy (to us) causes are making a choice, and I respect that choice (and make it too). I also recommend lunch, Restaurant Week, etc., as low risk ways to try new places -- you get a taste. And of course, if every one of your extreme gourmet friends, or everyone in the eGullet Society, is saying the place is great, you should go. But that's not the predominant scenario. Most people are just really into trying what's new, for the sake of trying what's new. And I think that leads to a lot of bad choices.

I especially think that arguments like "If we don't support new restaurants, they won't survive" are specious. Or, at least, they apply equally to all restaurants. If everybody stopped going to Jean Georges and instead always supported new restaurants, there would be no Jean Georges. New restaurants have an audience. There are plenty of people to whom risking a few hundred dollars is no big deal, and there are plenty of people who have corporate and otherwise subsidized dining budgets. Let them be the primary supporters of new, untested restaurants.

[Sneakeater]

I see your point, but what about Gilt? Would you be just as happy to have missed it? And that's not a case of "supporting the avant-garde" out of principle. It's a case of trying something because you think you might like it and will certainly find it interesting. Is there a risk it might suck? Yes. I guess I don't adjudge avoiding that risk to be as crucial as you do.

Let's look at this passage:

So, in the first place, when I choose a place to dine and I'm paying out of my own limited funds I always have to ask questions like, "This meal was good, interesting and worthwhile, but was it a better choice than Jean Georges at the same price?" There are enough restaurants in New York City where I know I'll always have a superb experience that it's hard for me to justify dropping hundreds of dollars on a meal that could easily suck.

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Now, I could just as easily say, "I love Beethoven's Seventh. There is no piece of music in the world that I am ever going to love more than Beethoven's Seventh. So all I should listen to is Beethoven's Seventh." But the fact of the matter is, I frequent performances of new music that I think it will be interesting. Not because I have made a decision to "support new music" out of principle, but because I get a charge out of living in my own time, and most of this stuff disappears after its initial performances. So it's now or never. And I don't demand that each new piece be a masterpiece that I am sure will "last". To be frank, I don't even think in those terms. Posterity can take care of itself; and as for me, I don't demand a constant barrage of potential classics, but only that I be compelled or diverted for a period of time.

One difference, of course, is that concert tickets can be (although not necessarily) substantially cheaper than a meal at a top-level (or top-level manque) restaurant. So you're right that a lot depends on the value you place on each dollar. But I still think that your approach, while avoiding disappointments, also deprives you of the chance to experience too many worthy things you might otherwise be forced to miss.

[Fat Guy]

I see your point, but what about Gilt?  Would you be just as happy to have missed it? 

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I did miss it.

I like Paul's cooking a lot, but it wasn't worth $500 to me to see if the new concept was going to work. Nobody was telling me "You have to go to Gilt, it's awesome!" I might have readjusted my thinking if that had been the case, and certainly I'd have been happy to accept a magazine assignment that required eating there, but while I feel a little regret at not having eaten there I don't feel $500 worth of regret.

I don't think the music analogy is particularly compelling, for quite a few reasons, chief among them that music doesn't get better after a year, but also because if anything the analogy should be between a restaurant and an orchestra. The dishes are the individual peices of music -- some old, some new. And you're damn right I don't spend my concert dollars on seeing untested orchestras perform!

[Sneakeater]

And of course another point to make is that it's not like Jean Georges and Gilt were equivalent experiences. Gilt was not a replacement for Jean Georges, and Jean Georges was not a replacement for Gilt. (I'm sure there's an economics term for what I'm trying to say, but I'm too much of an economics retard to know it.) So if you missed out on Gilt because you decided to hedge your bets and go to Jean Georges (yet again) instead, it isn't like you had "the same thing but better". You had a different thing that may very well have been better (but you can't know till you've tried the new thing), but is nevertheless not a replacement for what you missed, which you have now missed forever.

Now you might say, "what's so important about having eaten at Gilt?" I guess I think that if you're interested in food (and that's the audience we have here), you'd be interested in seeing what someone like Paul Liebrandt is doing. You might say it's best to wait until a place like Gilt "takes" (the way Alinea has in Chicago) -- but you've also argued cogently elsewhere why a restaurant like that might never catch on in New York. So why should we deprive ourselves of fleeting opportunities?

Edited August 29, 2006 by Sneakeater (log)

[Sneakeater]

And you're damn right I don't spend my concert dollars on seeing untested orchestras perform!

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So that's a difference. You might wait until Thirteenth Blackbird are in their fifth season and have been covered with critical accolades, and I might go to see them in their first season, just because what they seem to be trying to do looks interesting.

You know, I took your approach to the Encores! series at City Center. I waited until the third season to subscribe, when the positive critical reception had become overwhelming. But it had seemed interesting to me from the start -- and I've got to tell you, in retrospect, I'm really sorry to have missed those first two seasons.

(I'll also note -- and this is perhaps a more fundamental point -- that, if you're interested in new pieces, you frequently have to go hear untested ensembles, because that's frequently the only way to hear those pieces. Sure, this is only done by people who are really interested in music. But this forum is directed at people who are really interested in food.)

Edited August 29, 2006 by Sneakeater (log)

[Fat Guy]

I don't think the person who dines at 100 different restaurants is necessarily any more interested in food than the one who dines at one great restaurant 100 times. Good restaurants are ever-changing, and your 100th meal is likely to be a lot more interesting than you first (because you'll get better and better treatment, access to off-menu items, etc. each time you return). But of course that's not what I'm advocating. What I'm saying is that if you have 100 meals out, it's a better bet to have -- just as an example -- 10 meals each at 9 places you think are awesome, proven and reliable, plus 10 meals out at carefully selected new places that show a lot of promise than it is to have 90 meals at 90 new places and 10 meals at places you know are going to be good. Not only will you eat better overall, but also you'll achieve the benefits of being a regular at the places where you repeat.

[Sneakeater]

I'm (genuinely) sorry for misunderstanding, but I thought your position was more absolute.

[Fat Guy]

(I'll also note -- and this is perhaps a more fundamental point -- that, if you're interested in new pieces, you frequently have to go hear untested ensembles, because that's frequently the only way to hear those pieces.  Sure, this is only done by people who are really interested in music.  But this forum is directed at people who are really interested in food.)

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If you're trying to argue that I'm not really interested in food, you may be making the least persuasive argument ever to hit the screen around here!

[Sneakeater]

Don't think I don't understand that.

That's why I was surprised at what I misunderstood to be the absolutist version of your advice.

Edited August 29, 2006 by Sneakeater (log)

[munchymom]

Do you make an exception for new restaurants opened by a trusted owner? The owner of one of our favorite restaurants here in Charlotte opened a new restaurant in our neighborhood - we were there less than a month after it opened. Both places are in the $150-200 total bill range (for dinner for two with drinks, tax and tip) - we have a dinner at that level maybe six times a year, so we do choose with some care and usually stick to a tried-and-true - but we had a really strong feeling that we would like the new place, and it was great. (Also, some of the service staff had come from the other restaurant, and they recognized us.)

[Fat Guy]

I have a similar situation with Danny Meyer's restaurants here in New York. I tend to go to them early. I'm not sure I'm making the right culinary choice, though. I go early because I'm a fan, because I want to be involved early and because I want to support what I consider to be a worthy organization. Also, because my chosen profession is culinary journalism, I have to stay on top of new places more than I would otherwise. But a year later, at every Danny Meyer restaurant ever to open, the food and service are always a lot better.

Two recent examples are Blue Smoke and the Modern. When Blue Smoke opened, I liked it, but it was full of problems -- so much so that a year later they were chasing down customers they had alienated early on and asking for another chance. Now, Blue Smoke is quite good -- I think one has a far better experience there today than at the beginning. The Modern was really good when it opened, but having watched it for a year or so now I can say with confidence that it is an order of magnitude better today than when it opened, both in terms of food and service. There are a lot of reasons one might want to go to a newly opened restaurant, but in the overwhelming majority of cases a great meal isn't one of those reasons.

[Pan]

How do you all feel about visiting new inexpensive restaurants? I went to Madras Cafe about a week after it opened and have been a much-appreciated regular ever since. I've never regretted it. I also was an early customer at Grand Sichuan St. Marks, but that hardly counts because I had had long and delicious experience at their Midtown and Chelsea branches.

[Sneakeater]

(I'll also note -- and this is perhaps a more fundamental point -- that, if you're interested in new pieces, you frequently have to go hear untested ensembles, because that's frequently the only way to hear those pieces.  Sure, this is only done by people who are really interested in music.  But this forum is directed at people who are really interested in food.)

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If you're trying to argue that I'm not really interested in food, you may be making the least persuasive argument ever to hit the screen around here!

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Ya know, I can see how the comment you responded to came out wrong.

Obviously, it would be absurd to question your interest in food.

I was (or meant to be) questioning whether your advice (as I then understood it) was really as applicable to the hardcore types who habituate boards like this as to the law associates or general reading public to whom I assume it was initially addressed. I wasn't sure if even you thought it was. I now understand that you do. Although I still question whether it is.

Edited August 30, 2006 by Sneakeater (log)

[Simon_S]

waisting money...waisted our time.

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I'm not normally one to point out irrelevant spelling errors, but I have to say I thought this was particularly fitting. As one who is trying to lose some weight around my midriff, restaurant meals that aren't up to scratch are a particular disappointment. A common phrase shared between my girlfriend and I is "all of the calories, none of the enjoyment!"

May I propose a new verb: "to waist", that works in exactly this context. If I go to a new restaurant and experience a disappointing meal, I most definitely think I have "waisted" my time and money.

Si

PS As regards the issue at hand, my feeling is a year may sometimes be too long. I think the best advice is to go to whatever restaurants interest you, but if the restaurant is relatively recently opened, temper your expectations accordingly. Try to focus on the good aspects of the meal rather than dwelling on the bad, in the hope that the bad will be ironed out in due course.

[chiantiglace]

one day I will be able to process whats in my head onto the keyboard without screwing up.

That day is no where near today, so, accept my appologies.

[Simon_S]

That day is no where near today, so, accept my appologies.

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I can assure you, apologies are definitely not required!

Please accept *my* apologies for bringing this thread off-topic.

Si

[docsconz]

PS As regards the issue at hand, my feeling is a year may sometimes be too long. I think the best advice is to go to whatever restaurants interest you, but if the restaurant is relatively recently opened, temper your expectations accordingly. Try to focus on the good aspects of the meal rather than dwelling on the bad, in the hope that the bad will be ironed out in due course.

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I think this is a good adjunct to Fat Guy's rule, which I think as he expanded upon above makes more sense as there rae times when going to a new restaurant is very attractive.