Clark Wolf's Rants, Raves, Diatribes...and a few other Thoughts

Not My Cuppa Joe: A Bastianich Bust-Up

Joe Bastianich needs to lose a couple of stars – one at least to The New York Times and maybe one back to those nice folks with the tires.

Joe, son of the beloved Lidia and partner to gregarious and gifted Mario Batali, has written a book. That’s his right and I’m guessing, the result of a good sized advance. But it’s filled with the kind of banal vulgarities and score-settling that is not only sadly tiresome but more importantly, a breach of the sort of social contract that is reserved for the very top of our industry.

I would always trust – as we do when we put our fork to our mouth – the likes of Daniel Boulud, Thomas Keller, David Kinch, Eric Ripert and a few more, without hesitation. It’s a critical connection to all who feed us, but especially at the top level of the business and craft, it should be inviolate and quietly restrained. Joe is clearly not, to my mind, an advocate of what we often call the Hospitality Industry. He’s a vendor and a success, but this isn’t a quiz. The industry is a delicious social interaction that Joe has now soured.

Back when Joe and Mario opened Babbo they made a calculated decision to offer top notch food and world class service in a more casual environment (read: rock-and-roll music at the bar). The result was a glowing and money-in-the-bank three star review. It was a choice — and a very good one, too.

Perfect star ratings from Michelin, The New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle and other publications suggest that a restaurant is excellent, brilliant and more than the sum of its parts. Sadly, for me, Joe has rendered himself to be a slightly grim, bitter and vulgar fancy tavern keeper.

It’s his right and his business, but it’s also our right to tiptoe quietly past his doorstep and pop in somewhere more truly welcoming.

Full article here

 

Stop Calling Yourself an Expert, Food Consultant Pleads

It would be tempting to call Clark Wolf an expert in expertise if the restaurant consultant wasn't so wary of how food writers have cheapened the term.

Wolf, who next week is moderating a New York University Fales Library panel on knowledge and influence in the culinary sphere, says contemporary critics and bloggers are too quick to assign the "expert" label to themselves and others.

"It's OK to be a lover, devotee, whatever, just don't call them experts," Wolf says of enthusiastic eaters who visit every Thai restaurant in their hometowns or learn to make cheese at home.

The complication for serious food writers who aspire to earn expert status - and the clout that accompanies it - is there's no step-by-step guide to attain the insight, track record, culinary experiences, trustworthiness and vision of Ruth Reichl, Michael Bauer or Jonathan Gold, writers with spots on Wolf's very short list of legitimate experts. Food scholars, unlike sommeliers, can't take tests to prove their worth.

"I almost want an author to be dead," Wolf says, noting it takes a lifetime to eat enough meals to write intelligently about food and another lifetime to assess the writing's lasting value.

Since it's very difficult to pry a restaurant review from a deceased critic, I asked Wolf how much expertise a living writer should have to acquire before his or her opinions can be considered authoritative. My friend Daniel Vaughn -- a barbecue blogger who writes for Texas Monthly and is working on Prophets of Smoked Meat, one of the first three books to be published by Anthony Bourdain's Ecco imprint - recently criticized the Today Show for bestowing the title of "Texas barbecue expert" on a young woman who spent three days in the state. Wolf agrees that's asinine - but also questions Vaughn's credentials.

"I don't care what he says at all," Wolf says. "He's working on a book with a guy who's a careerist, opportunist sideshow. If his book stands up in five years, call me back."

According to Wolf, a barbecue expert should have logged time working a pit. And since "context is everything," a Texas barbecue expert should be familiar with South Carolina barbecue traditions, among others. That's why Calvin Trillin is a barbecue expert in Wolf's estimation (a claim that would ruffle Robb Walsh, author of the Legends of Texas Barbecue Cookbook.)

Vaughn points out the majority of pit masters who participated in last year's Texas Monthly BBQ Festival, a gathering of the state's most talented barbecue producers, haven't sampled barbecue outside of Texas.

"Do I know everything there is to know about Texas barbecue? Of course not," says Vaughn, who's visited more than 400 joints statewide. "At this point I know enough about Texas barbecue to be a one-man panel discussion, but I'm still curious enough to keep learning."

Wolf says he applauds the effort.

"(Vaughn) is a fairly experience barbecue investigator," he says. Like other writers intent on becoming true experts, he adds, "he needs to keep eating, keep traveling."

Full article here

 

Hungry Money and Mario

There’s no doubt that the oft-beloved Mario Batali made a Rick Perry-like blunder when he put an evil couple of faces on some very bad behavior by some very big and sometimes faceless companies. Banks are not Hitler and Stalin.

But this whole kerfuffle brings up some truly difficult issues for anyone who wants to own one or more high-end restaurants.

I’m all for capitalist success. I help people build businesses, for goodness sake, and I’m happy for people to be successful. That’s why it’s frustrating when we have an economic mess like the one we’re in and systemically flawed publicly traded and tax-payer supported institutions aren’t more carefully regulated and punished — and rewarded — for specific behavior.

When a restaurant caters to folks with pots of money — or anyone at all — you simply have to have the good manners to leave your opinions at the door. Lead by example. Use organic and sustainable foods if you can. Impose your values on some Masters of the Universe palatably. Maybe change a few minds and hearts at the table, or with a fork. Use the seductive powers at your disposal for the better. There are plenty of good people with money.  And plenty of people with money who may well do good.

It’s a little easier out here in the West where pots of cash have been made by high techie wunderkind billionaires who roll up on their Vespas to have major meals and let us all dip into some world class wines.  They’re rolling in it because they’re creating new possibilities, whole new industries, and along the way have helped get a lot of us out of suits and ties at so-called fancy restaurants.  They’re likeable for a lot of reasons.  It’s tougher in New York when some of the people in the dining room might be Bernie Madoffs in training, or just hyped up barbarians selling questionable “financial opportunities” and celebrating the demise of competitors.

We in the food — and yes, hospitality — world simply have to speak another language. When making strong statements, it’s important to be specific and careful. I know how easy it is to toss off a catchy, bitchy, mean snap but now that chefs have reached daytime TV notoriety, the game has simply changed.

Tell people what you’re FOR and how it might be good for them and everyone. Hitler is not a helpful food group.

I forgive Mario — and those angry Wall Streeters would do well to do so, too. He was just expressing the frustration of many about the excesses of the few. Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt and an emotional and philosophical bail-out.

C’mon guys. You want great food don’t you? Otherwise, why have all that money?! Don’t punish yourselves by punishing him. Bankers should not advocate boycotts of any kind. That’s a very last resort kind of thing that should rarely, if ever, be trotted out. Like comparing someone to Hitler.

Full article here

Cursing the stars

Josh Sens rails against his own restaurant ratings

Greetings, dear reader, and welcome to another issue of the Prairie Home Companion of city magazines, where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the restaurants are above average. See for yourself in our dining listings—a catalog of pizzerias, taquerias, and bistros; of sushi bars, burger joints, and brasseries. From A16 to Zuni Café, we cover scores of restaurants around the region, and if our restaurant ratings are to be believed, only a rare few in the past decade have deserved a single star. As the man mainly responsible for assigning these grades, I wish I could say this makes me proud. Instead, reviewing my reviews leaves me uneasy, which means one thing: I’ve got a bit of explaining to do.

I’ll start with the quick cop-out, the pat disclaimer: I don’t care for restaurant stars. I regard them as crude instruments ill suited to the function we assign them, blunt tools that dull the nuance of opinion, battering subjective musings into hardened “facts.” As a dining public, we turn to stars as shortcuts, but they do us all a disservice, misleading readers and, often, mistreating chefs.Pretending that they represent an equitable standard, we sprinkle them on restaurants that offer $170 tasting menus and ones that sell $2 tacos, as if one star system alone could ever guide us faithfully through a dining universe so vast and varied.

Add to these flaws the fact that stars can carry a force strong enough to spin a restaurant off its axis, and you’ve got a clear imbalance in our foodreviewing culture, in which the glare of symbols outshines the subtleties of the written word. That bugs me.

I felt this about stars long before I became a restaurant critic, having spent part of my childhood gazing up at their distorted glow. When I was growing up, my cousin David Waltuck was the chef and co-owner of a New York restaurant, Chanterelle, that was notable enough to draw more than one review from the New York Times. All these years later, I can’t tell you what the writeups said, but I still recall the bylines and the stars That hung beneath them: four from Bryan Miller; two on his revisit; then four from Ruth Reichl; then three from William Grimes. Clearly restaurants have their ups and downs. But so do critics.Their tastes shift along with their moods. The fiction propagated by a fixed star system is that when a rating drops, only the restaurant deserves the blame. Either way, the impact of the stars is real. When Chanterelle lost theirs, the phone stopped ringing at the same frenetic pace.

The Times and its rating system were on my mind nine years ago when I was hired to do the job I do today. In a meeting with my bosses to discuss the ground rules, I voiced my thoughts on stars.

“I don’t like them, either,” my editor confessed.“Great,” I replied. “Can we get rid of them?” She shook her head. Michelin has been using stars to sell tires since 1926, and the practice has since become standard for restaurant critics. And now that Yelp and other user-review sites have turned the power of the stars over to anyone within range of a keyboard, stars will be with us until the Milky Way burns itself out. My task, my editor told me, was to arrange them in coherent patterns, to make sure that they aligned with my opinions. I had only a faint inkling then of how tricky that would be.

One indication came a few months in, when I wrote a tepid review of Campton Place, back when Daniel Humm was in the kitchen. After crossing the last t, I did the math our system called for to calculate the stars. I assigned a number rating to each of five categories: food quality, variety, service, ambience, and value.Given that I’d found the waitstaff stiff, the setting Stuffy, and the food overwrought, albeit varied, basic math suggested that the prospects weren’t good. Throw in the fact that the prices were as high as any in the city, and it all added up to a “below average” rating, which, in our calibrations, is not a star but the faint outline of one. (Don’t bother looking for this icon in our pages; it’s the Comet Kohoutek of our celestial symbols, showing up roughly once every 50,000 years.)

That’s what the numbers said, anyway. But was Campton Place really below average? Or merely something less than it set out to be? This question gave me pause, and all the more when I flipped through our listings and saw two-star noodle shops and barbecue shacks. Sure, they served good grub, but the intentions of their cooking hardly matched the grand ambitions of Campton Place. So whatever my motive—not wanting to seem harsh, lingering self-doubt, the absence of any more-fruitful ideas—I bumped the restaurant’s rating to two stars.

In the weeks that followed, I received mountains of feedback. Not from the chef, but from loyal patrons of the restaurant, who questioned my ethics, my IQ, my taste. The irony: If anyone took issue with anything I’d written, they didn’t say so.According to their missives, they were outraged at the stars, which, according to our key, meant the restaurant was “very good” and thus were far more generous than anything I’d said. (I should note that Humm has since gone on to work at Eleven Madison Park in Manhattan, where the New York Times has awarded him four stars for his work. Maybe those readers were right after all.)

Looking back, I realize that Campton Place marked the start of a shift in my unconscious practice that put me on the path toward star inflation. Instead of standing by the below-average rating and its original meaning, I shied away from it, bowing to the perception that it was Anton Ego–cruel. In retrospect, it isn’t hard to see the bind this put me in. Whereas four-star restaurants are as rare as unicorns (perfection, after all, is elusive), one-star, or “good,” restaurants are as common as ground squirrels in a city with such a vibrant dining culture. By making one-star ratings a last resort, I limited myself to a narrow middle ground. The result, all these years later: a Gathering of stars so tightly clustered in the center, you need access to the Hale telescope at Palomar Mountain to tell them apart.

As time went by and this nagging problem made itself increasingly apparent, I tried to resolve it through food writer sleight of hand: the half-star increment, the restaurant critic’s version of Spinal Tap’s “go to 11” amp. Two and a half stars became a kind of catchall fallback, one I applied to everything from Comstock Saloon, a boozy North Beach hitching post where I liked the bar food, to Fifth Floor, a luxe hotel restaurant toward which I felt lukewarm. What I’d hoped was that half stars would help me convey nuance, shades of culinary gray. But their ultimate effect was, at least in my mind, to underscore the arbitrariness of symbols.

A reminder of this came last year when I reviewed Quince, after its relocation to Jackson Square. I thought it was a good restaurant, a very good restaurant, beautiful to look at, brimming with ambition, and I composed what I regarded as a fairly fawning write-up: more Paula Abdul than Simon Cowell. Then I gave it a grade of two and a half stars, the midpoint between “very good” and “excellent.” Once again, my inbox was flooded with indignant feedback, the bulk of it focused on my final rating. Even those respondents who parsed the review itself left me with the impression that it wasn’t the words but the stars that really rankled. I can’t prove this, but I feel it strongly, especially since I dug a copy of the review out of my files: Rereading it now, I think it comes across as something close to hagiography.

But that’s the thing with stars. Taken out of context, as they so frequently are, they defy interpretation, yet manage so easily to flatter or offend.And, as with real stars in the sky, people often notice them long after they’re gone.

So vexed have I become with this small part of my job, I’ve turned more than once to outside help. One memorable suggestion came from Clark Wolf, the veteran restaurant consultant, who Recommended that I use my time productively by building a bridge and getting over myself.

“I hate to break it to you, but people aren’t paying that kind of attention to what you write,” Wolf told me. “You think they have the time for that?You think you’re going to get some kind of literary prize for this? Give the restaurant the number of stars you think it deserves and get on with it. And if you can’t handle doing that, find another job.”

Full article here

Artisan Infidels Retreat: Olive Garden pulls fishy pasta promo

 

A few thoughtful eyebrows shot skyward recently when television channel surfing landed me on a truly upsetting (to me) promotion for Olive Garden’s new (new, NEW) “Artisan Ravioli.” An oxymoron if there ever was one.

They pulled the promo and won’t respond to questions about it, and even the PR company “declined the opportunity” to answer the simplest and most softball questions. The entire promo — and all discussion, or responses to questions about it — have suddenly gone missing. Poof!

Yeah, well, it’s a little like when I jokingly called French fries so good they must be line caught and grass fed.

It’s fine to revel in the latest resonant word or phrase, but maybe this time the ‘ol wind up struck out — or at least struck the wrong nerve.

Haven’t we as a country evolved in our food — and particularly Italian food — knowledge enough to know when a little romanticizing has finally gone too far?

The abuse of the recently embraced and lovely term “artisan” follows what can only be called the pummeling of the term “heirloom.” Organic farm raised salmon also comes to mind.

At least with the term “sustainable” there’s an active conversation about what this might mean. But with “artisan,” even Olive Garden thought they could pull a fast on a Slow Food. But maybe not.

In a world where Conservatives can be against conservation and Progressives look for old fashioned civility can we really expect more?

I’m just glad we realize that the word “fresh” can never be previously frozen.

Full article here

I Want It My Way! What’s the right give and take for restaurants?

A journalist asked if I had any classic examples of restaurants that were intensely particular about how and with what they served certain foods – like the bagel place that refuses to toast, the spot selling fries that doesn’t allow ketchup or the so-called gastropub that serves a burger with blue cheese, no matter what.

The snappy story ended up on the front page of the New York Times on Saturday indicating just how top of mind this occasional but regular cultural struggle can feel.

The chestnut I proffered was of San Francisco’s very own Poodle Dog – a hot spot and society watering hole for something like a century. It got a complete, loving and expensive ($3.5 million, I seem to recall) facelift, only to go down quickly in flames, metaphorically and financially, which was in some large part attributed to the chef’s absolute refusal to put or allow salt and pepper anywhere in or near the dining room. He promised, through well trained staff and slightly beleaguered PR folks, that he’d achieved perfect seasoning in the kitchen. Many of us tipped our hats to his brilliance and proceeded to eat elsewhere.

But in these gently recovering still tough times, it’s not always easy to decide where to draw the line. Some tension or exclusivity can create and maintain the sort of dynamic that restaurants need to pull and sustain a crowd.  New Yorkers do love to try to get what it appears they can’t have, and – as I’ve always said – if you give customers everything they want, they’ll take your car, your dog and maybe your boyfriend.

But what’s the right give –and withhold?  Swan Oyster Depot keeps tight and tingly by having just 11 seats, Zuni Café makes you wait 48 minutes to get a whole roasted chicken, Rosso Pizzeria and Wine Bar in Santa Rosa bids you farewell by not serving any desserts at all. These all seems to work perfectly well for them.

I once helped alter a client mix at a beautiful spot on Lake Tahoe by simply removing the Budweiser and starting the beer choices at about $5.  It worked perfectly. The average check jumped and business boomed.

So how does a smart restaurateur make these critical choices?  Everyone loves a little rebellion, a little cheeky – especially if their target market is the slightly rock ‘n roll edgy of passionate foodists (many on tight budgets) that are at the forefront of a lot of restaurant development today. For example, I really do love that sign on the window of New York’s Zucco:  “Le French Diner – No Bud, no ketchup, no reservations, no Zagat” (!!).  But it’s not for nothing that they call this the hospitality business.  Remember, the number one reason people go to restaurants is to feel better.

So make us frown, then smile, then firmly seduce us into happy submission. And make sure not to give us indigestion.

Full article here

BBC The World Tonight Interview

 
I was quoted in a front page New York Times piece the other day about the move towards denying special requests in restaurants.  It's the chef's way or nothing.  You can read the article here.

The BBC picked up on the story and tracked me down at my cabin in the woods in Sonoma for an interview.

Tease at :45 and nice four minute segment at the 25 minute mark.

BBC audio player here

Pull Over, I’m Hungry!: Santa Rosa’s food truck controversy

 

Are food trucks good – or bad – for competition?  Bricks and mortar restaurateurs periodically get their knickers in a tart twist about the mobile food business parked out front, so it’s only fair to look at it from a purely business perspective.

Restaurant folks are deeply entrepreneurial and adaptive.  They screamed bloody murder when faced with impending no-smoking laws, then figured out how to make new, larger profits from smoke-free bar rooms.

They’re also delightfully mouthy and often make very good copy for the ever growing coterie of writers on food; professional and otherwise.

Food trucks are hot copy. New ideas and ancient offerings come fast and furiously, fueling tweets probably best reserved for international uprisings.  But hey, culture that tastes this good is worth a nibble.

History and common sense tell us that clusters of food businesses breed healthy competition and more general success.  The term “Restaurant Row” happened for a reason, and casual offerings next to more formal ones just bring more customers looking for more choices — perhaps not today, but often in the surprisingly near future.

Recently, up my way in Sonoma County, there was a bit of a dust up when the local town elders promoted what they call “Munch Mondays” in a city parking lot, designed to build downtown activity in Santa Rosa.

It’s done alright so far – it actually reminded me about eating downtown, which I’ve done twice recently at brick and mortar restaurants, and had never done on a Monday.

A loud complaint came in the form of a letter to the editor from a beleaguered server who complained that “three servers, two bus boys, three cooks, a hostess and a manager [waited] by the window for somebody to come in,” while these drive-by eateries stole their business.

I’ll tell you who’s ruining that woman’s restaurant business. It’s about who was scheduled to work on a Monday in January in the bricks and mortar biz, not about who scheduled the trucks.

I salute the city council, urge them to keep it up, maybe rent a truck to offer in rotation to these established local restaurants so that they can try new foods, meet new customers and promote their best instincts, which should always include lively competition.

Full article here

Time Is Now

By Clark Wolf

I was amused and upset a while back when the local daily saw fit to give major headline news coverage to a newly opened organic farm in Rutherford. This is news? Well, OK. As I used to say, if it weren't for Sonoma County, Napa couldn't cook lunch! So the addition of a thoughtfully tended plot amid the moguls and monoculture certainly adds something valuable. Now, Napa County agricultural commissioner Dave Whitmer, with support from the local Farm Bureau as well as grape growers, vintners and something called the Napa Local Food Group, are all talking about ways to rebalance the mix even more by highlighting the near ubiquity of kitchen gardens on winery lands, often only used for staff meals and special events. Many folks think it might be a great idea to grow and sell more of those colorful fruits and veggies at farm stands along the vinery-cultural highway.But here's the rub: Are Round Up-tidied pathways going to lead us towards something good to eat?

This is a fascinating moment for food in America. A half-billion factory farm eggs had to be scrambled because they were salmonella-infested. Beef producers are fighting common-sense safety regulations while questionable patties are recalled for the wrong sort of E. coli. Organic strawberries have finally been certified as definitely more nutritious.

It's certainly all a good conversation and a worthy battle for what we eat. We've finally managed to put food at the top of our "To Know and to Do" lists where it belongs, but just how far will trendy, hipster farmers, gossipy food bloggers and TV-ready chefs take us? Do we have the will and the time to really dig in—go ahead and embrace the expression—and calm down? Does the current economy give us much of a choice?

The answer is in the action, and the time is certainly now. A major cultural recalibration is in full swing, and this year's harvest season is more precious and profound than many before, with a clear road map to what lies ahead. Savor every berry. Hug a farmer twice, and maybe get some chickens for the backyard. Celebrate every meal with dear family and real friends. And perhaps even help demystify nature for a few folks here and there.

Full article here

Three things a restaurant needs to succeed

I’ve eaten at Ma Peche, David Chang’s new mid-town installation, and I have to say, the food we had was delicious.

Perfectly poached calamari, tender and well dressed, a molten trio of ribs, crisp grilled trout and rice noodles with pork ragout.

So why was I so cranky?

As a consultant it’s my job to see when something becomes more than the sum of its parts, where critical mass turns into an ongoing, viable food business.

For a place to work it needs three big, basic things:

Something needs to get you there – a chef, the location, the owner, the kind of food, a friend tells you, a good review.  You need to be drawn.

Then, when you go, something has to happen.  Life is so full and busy that, whatever the experience, it needs to resonate, meet a need, spark or create a memory, something.

And then, finally, that something needs to be good, and good enough to bring you back.  If anything is off kilter enough to make you uncomfortable, you may not know or remember why but somewhere a little voice inside says, “nah.”

That’s how I felt at a mid-town hotel restaurant that doesn’t take reservations – even and especially at lunch – or serve dessert.  I’d love that food somewhere; at a storefront across the same street, in a plaza or a roof top, or on a funky rumpled urban side street.

Maybe it’s not for me.  Maybe it’s for people who work within a block or are visiting from out of town and want to try Chang’s collaborative take on Vietnamese food in a safe, clean place with friendly staff and an easy walk to MoMa.

Maybe it’s just too random, like his other places, relying on pretty good food, personal notoriety and the cultural swirl to propel it along.  Maybe it will evolve and adapt.  Maybe it’s a business. Maybe not.

Full article here