Comments on: Not Wrong Doesn’t Equal Right

By: Miracles?

Miracles? — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 13:04:24 +0000

[…] or later I was bound to get around to the place, and recently did. It is, for me, a truism that an absentee chef generally leads to a lack of consistency and/or quality. Not always, sometimes the sous chef, or […]

By: NYC Nutshell Redux

NYC Nutshell Redux — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 12:22:37 +0000

[…] mentioned before my thoughts about chefs who try to run multiple restaurants – I have no problem with chefs making money, turning themselves into brand names, going for […]

By: SaltShaker » Blog Archive » Spice, Spice Baby

SaltShaker » Blog Archive » Spice, Spice Baby — Sun, 18 Jun 2006 10:58:39 +0000

[…] New York – After meandering on for two posts about the inadequacies of Spice Market I felt obligated to offer at minimum, one alternative where you could experience what I’m talking about in terms of quality, balance, and the use of spices in a way that makes sense. At least to my palate. Hopefully, by the time I leave in a few days, I can offer more than one, but when my friend Tom suggested meeting for lunch at the Bread Bar at Tabla, 11 Madison, in the Flatiron district, I jumped at the chance. […]

By: dan

dan — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 11:47:35 +0000

That doesn’t seem out of line. On the other hand, dinner at the NY Alain Ducasse can set you back several hundred dollars per person. I got taken to one dinner there about two years ago – a wine dinner, six courses, with matched wines from a producer in Slovenia (who supplied the wine for the dinner) – the tab (which thankfully I didn’t have to pay) was $500 per person.

By: ksternberg

ksternberg — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 00:32:27 +0000

I had dinner in Paris at a fairly new Alain Ducasse restaurant very close to Notre Dame. The place was packed with Parisians, from the looks of it. I enjoyed my meal very much, but it didn’t send me off to space. The prices, though, were très reasonable, with most main courses under 25 Euros, so that’s something to factor in.

By: dan

dan — Tue, 13 Jun 2006 21:36:44 +0000

You should definitely check out the article in the NY Times that Mark Bittman wrote if you have access. I don’t necessarily have a problem with a chef overseeing multiple restaurants. But it depends on the style. For example, I don’t think Olives, at least the one here in Manhattan, strives to be a 3-star/4-star restaurant. It’s solid, dependable, moderately interesting Italian inspired food – but it’s a cookie-cutter formula. I think you can do that with a formula style if you manage it carefully and hire good staff. Likewise, on the higher end, you could look at something like the Bastianich-Batali “empire”. Lidia Bastianich isn’t trying to oversee the kitchens in each of her restaurants. She’s hired good quality chefs to run each restaurant, and to put their own signature stamp on them within a certain parameter of quality and general style. And on the Batali side, he is almost always to be found at Babbo, his flagship. The other restaurants are each run by “proteges”, but they’ve been given free rein to put their own imprint on the menu, and while the restaurants, like Otto, Lupa, and Esca, fall under the group’s ownership, credit is given solidly for each of the individual head chefs at their respective venues.

The flip side seems to be folk like Jean-Georges, Tom Colicchio, Alain Ducasse, who somehow seem to think that they can control the product at multiple venues without the level of staff and/or daily supervision on their own part. It’s simply not do-able. I think also, Jean-Georges is trying for something that the others aren’t – although Tom has several venues, with different quality levels, they are all based on the same type of cooking and menu; Alain’s restaurants are formulaic in that they are high-end French based on a common core of recipes. Jean-Georges has everything from haut-French to casual Vietnamese, Thai, Chinese, and more – reflected in the opening statement on his website “A cuisine to fit every taste.” Not possible from my point of view.

Interestingly, tonight is one of my best friend’s birthdays and he arranged a dinner at Spice Market. So I get to return and give it another shot. This time we’re going in as a “known entity”, since one of the folks we are dining with, who arranged the reservation, is a personal friend of J-G’s and he knows we’re coming. I’ll be interested to see the difference!