Many writers who cover food and restaurants dwell in such a dream world, they manage to annoy even when you agree with them.
This month’s Vanity Fair launched an incendiary, dual-pronged assault on tasting menus. Under the headline “Tyranny — It’s What’s for Dinner,” Corby Kummer condemned four- to five-hour meals in an article as repetitive as some of the chefs’ ego-trip offerings.
At places like Eleven Madison Park and Per Se, Kummer wrote, “the diner is essentially strapped into a chair and expected to . . . consume dozens of dishes.”
VF Editor Graydon Carter gave the story even more fuel: his front-of-the-book column blasted lesser chefs who “want to take full control of the dining experience by lashing diners to their seats and force-feeding them just as the big boys do.”
The one-two punch set off a blogosphere and Twitterverse frenzy. Grub Street, the food site of New York magazine, put up a “Tyrannical Tasting Menu Index.” Chefs all over town, including Mario Batali and Paul Liebrandt, weighed in with their two cents.
Now, I’m no fan of marathon tastings myself. And the self-importance of many chefs is as obnoxious as Kummer states.
But Batali correctly pointed out that nobody forces anybody to eat in a particular restaurant: If you don’t want a prolonged tasting menu, go somewhere else.
It’s a howler for Vanity Fair to mouth off on restaurant “tyranny” when the places that Carter co-owns typically practice the worst tyranny of all: making reservations difficult, if not impossible, for those without connections. (Call his new Beatrice Inn, and a recording in a weird accent steers you to an e-mail address too unintelligible to discern.)
As for the length of meals: Four-hour dinners have always been the norm in pricey “fine dining” establishments — from the old haute-French ilk to today’s less formal Del Posto or The NoMad, for example, where if you score a table for four at 8 p.m., it’s pretty much yours for the rest of the evening.
Sure, Kummer is right on about how chefs not in the league of Thomas Keller are doing tasting menus mainly to “show off and control costs at the same time.”
But you could argue that 20 courses in four hours gives you more bang for your buck than four courses in four hours — the norm at old-school spots where the pace is as stately as the tablecloths are white.
Kummer grumbles that Per Se is full of tourists. Well, of what great, world-renowned restaurant in any city is this not true?
If Vanity Fair wanted to make a telling point about tasting menus, it could have differentiated between those at conventionally configured restaurants (i.e., with tables) and those precious, media-darling joints where all or nearly all customers sit at a counter.
New York has at least five of the latter — Masa, Momofuku Ko, Chef’s Table at Brooklyn Fare, Atera and Blanca. I’ve had extraordinary meals at several of them and others merely very good; Atera’s “foraged” items did begin looking and tasting alike after a while.
For my money, no matter how fine the food may be, worshipping at the chef’s altar is inimical to the fun of dining out, which includes socializing with those at your table and ogling those at others.
My first exposure to counter dining was at Woolworth’s, the old chain store. After being ignored for 20 minutes, I politely begged the lady behind the counter for water and a menu.
“I only have two hands,” came the whip-crack reply. Today’s $200-a-head (and up!) counter eateries can give me the same helpless feeling.
Of course, as Batali said, I don’t have to go there. And neither, if you can withstand the hype, do you.