eatchicago wrote:What qualifies them to post on this forum!!!!!!??????

The same sense of entitlement that empowers each of us.

David Hammond wrote:

eatchicago wrote:What qualifies them to post on this forum!!!!!!??????

The same sense of entitlement that empowers each of us.

Yeah, but I have a bachelor's degree in entitlement.

eatchicago wrote:

David Hammond wrote:

eatchicago wrote:What qualifies them to post on this forum!!!!!!??????

The same sense of entitlement that empowers each of us.

Yeah, but I have a bachelor's degree in entitlement.

But where did you go to school? University of Westfield?

I think without sites like LTH and Yelp most restaurants would simply close. It is mind boggling how they survived before the advent of internet and foodie blogs. They should be thanking LTH and Yelp for their existance not dissing them since their survival directly depends on these blogs.

foodmex wrote:It is mind boggling how they survived before the advent of internet and foodie blogs.

Well, back in those days, there were such things as newspapers and magazines. They were printed on paper, but, surprisingly, people read them.

Hey all,

Sorry, I'm a little late to this party. I've followed LTH Forum closely for years before registering. It's been an invaluable tool to me as a Chicago eater/drinker, as someone who covered restaurants and bars on the editorial side, and now as an owner of a PR firm representing bars and restaurants.

Charlie McKenna at Lillie's Q is also probably the least "internet" technologically savvy person under 35 years old I've ever met (no Facebook, no Twitter, pretty much no previous knowledge of LTH Forum before opening, knowing about the "wide spread-ness" of food blogs, etc), and him throwing around the term "blogger" was just him using an all-encompassing term. It's pretty clear to a decent number of you LTH-ers here that Charlie is interested in opinions and criticisms regarding his food -- and he's made some tweaks based on those opinions and criticisms.

Don't know exactly what drew me back after so much time, but since the thread is still active, I will reply to some posters' points.

Aschie30:

I personally wouldn't group Bill Kim and Graham Elliot Bowles or Urban Belly and Graham Elliot in the same categories. With all due respect to Bill Kim, I had never heard of him prior to his opening UB.

Bill Kim was the Chef de Cuisine at Charlie Trotter's, worked at Bouley, and was Executive Chef of Le Lan. Whether you knew it or not, he did indeed have a national presence.

I just don't see a concierge recommending that tourists use their time and money to schlep out to UB, which is not located close to public transportation and in a strip mall.

Well, two years on, I can say with certainty that concierges do recommend Urban Belly, quite a bit, and tourists have no problem making their way out there in taxis. Even Steve Plotnicki has been there.

With all due respect to this chef, the fact that this particular chef doesn't know LTH exists doesn't really mean or prove anything.

I would mention that this has been the case at every restaurant I have worked in Chicago. Even chefs of GNR restaurants have been hard pressed to remember what LTH is, when I remind them that so-and-so from LTH is coming in. (sorry)

Again, that your chef focuses on professional reviews and/or traditional press is simply the result of conditioning, mindset, age and/or the focus of his personal business. But I have to strongly disagree that "this is not going to change significantly in the near future." It has changed. That's why in part the Tribune has a food blog.

I was speaking of a certain clientele for whom the internet and food blogging is irrelevant with that comment, not chefs. This is generally customers of means over 30 (not 60 by a long shot). But if you're thinking of age as a factor, what would you say if I told you this chef was in his thirties? As to the Trib blog, that's updated how often and gets how many hits a day? There are very few commenters. That's not a great example.

Maybe, now, this chef is justifiably sitting pretty as his customers are blissfully ignorant of food forums and blogs, but that isn't going to last.

Well, it's going to last at least another decade or two. Chefs are very insular and resistant to change. With the recession, many chefs have looked into social media, but social media can cut both ways.

KennyZ:

How could you possibly know that? Either (A) you've talked to them about LTH, in which case they do now know about it; or (B) you have no idea whether or not they know about LTH.

I have mentioned threads on LTH to coworkers and our chef because they discussed our restaurant. I was definitely the one who brought LTH to the attention of those people. It has been the same at many other restaurants, according to friends in the industry. Sorry, I know it's hard to hear, but LTH is still not well known.

What a shame to let something get to you that much - to the point where you let it become "incredibly frustrating" - if the effect is so minor, anyway. Obviously - as your contradictory quotes reveal - the effect on these guys is not all that minor.

Kenny, you're so very interested in snark and personal attacks, it's a wonder you even stop to read posts before you comment on them. I wrote the effect of food blogs on a certain segment of restaurants is minor, as far as driving or affecting business or operations. It's always a problem when your business is denigrated, very often falsely, in public, on sites where such remarks stay up (virtually) forever. There is a big difference.

I was trying to make the point that things are not changing as fast as many here think, that the restaurant industry is not mostly driven by food blogs or crowd-sourced review sites or forums as of yet, not that chefs are completely oblivious to them. LTH is, simply, not making or breaking any restaurant. Posts by kel and Amata I think had it dead on as to what chefs are about. As I said, LTH or Yelp is very helpful to bringing attention to neighborhood places, but for name chefs, the attention from such sites can seem more harmful than helpful (can anyone blame them; after all, people are reviewing restaurants that aren't even open, like Grahamwich; and I won't rehash all the Yelp pay-for-play drama). Reacting to the original story with quotes such as this stevez one:

Bill, Bill, Bill. Speaking as one of those people with cameras that put you on the map, you're not doing yourself any favors.

and other comments claiming this site has brought Urban Belly and Graham Elliot a "significant amount of business" while threatening never to go back and "I think without sites like LTH and Yelp most restaurants would simply close. It is mind boggling how they survived before the advent of internet and foodie blogs. They should be thanking LTH and Yelp for their existance not dissing them since their survival directly depends on these blogs."...well if people can't see the problem someone might have with such statements, there's not much more I can add.

AndrewR wrote:KennyZ...I have mentioned threads on LTH to coworkers and our chef because they discussed our restaurant. I was definitely the one who brought LTH to the attention of those people. It has been the same at many other restaurants, according to friends in the industry. Sorry, I know it's hard to hear, but LTH is still not well known.

Good of you and your friends in the industry to be working so hard to change that at the places you work. Nice to hear from you again.

AndrewR wrote:Don't know exactly what drew me back after so much time, but since the thread is still active, I will reply to some posters' points.

Wow, Andrew, the thing is when you respond to comments after two years, some things change, and some things stay the same, a lot of things are irrelevant. I'll try to briefly respond to some of your comments, as it makes for interesting discussion, especially after the resounding thud that Michelin guide has made on this town.

aschie30 wrote:I personally wouldn't group Bill Kim and Graham Elliot Bowles or Urban Belly and Graham Elliot in the same categories. With all due respect to Bill Kim, I had never heard of him prior to his opening UB.

AndrewR wrote:Bill Kim was the Chef de Cuisine at Charlie Trotter's, worked at Bouley, and was Executive Chef of Le Lan. Whether you knew it or not, he did indeed have a national presence.

aschie30 wrote:I just don't see a concierge recommending that tourists use their time and money to schlep out to UB, which is not located close to public transportation and in a strip mall.

AndrewR wrote:Well, two years on, I can say with certainty that concierges do recommend Urban Belly, quite a bit, and tourists have no problem making their way out there in taxis. Even Steve Plotnicki has been there.

I still disagree that two years ago, prior to opening his restaurants, Bill Kim had a "national presence." Even today there is probably only a handful of Chefs in Chicago who could claim to have a national presence, and I still wouldn't count Bill Kim as one of them. (No disrespect to Bill, but we're still flyover country here.) Having said that, two years later, it would not surprise me at all to learn that concierges recommend Urban Belly. Bill Kim has now made a local name for himself, and Urban Belly has been open long enough, and gained enough of a solid reputation, that recommending it makes sense. I don't know how relevant all of this is, though, to this discussion today, such that it merits comment two years later.

aschie30 wrote:With all due respect to this chef, the fact that this particular chef doesn't know LTH exists doesn't really mean or prove anything.

AndrewR wrote:I would mention that this has been the case at every restaurant I have worked in Chicago. Even chefs of GNR restaurants have been hard pressed to remember what LTH is, when I remind them that so-and-so from LTH is coming in. (sorry)

I believe you, again, not a point that I think was really up for debate. I don't think LTH is so important that every chef must know about it. My point was, and still is, that non-traditional media will continue to make more of an impact on how people dine, and if chefs/restaurateurs want to build their customer base, they have to do more than vie for Vettel's three-stars, and a write-up in the Trib. I think that point couldn't have been made better this last Michelin go-round. Now that the books have hit the stores, they're already outdated, and Yelp -- a reviewing site -- stole Michelin's thunder. Sure, there will always be some people who value Michelin and don't read blogs, or discussion boards, but I think you will see the numbers of those who read Vettel & Michelin v. Yelp, blogs and discussion boards, continue to invert in the future.

aschie30 wrote:Again, that your chef focuses on professional reviews and/or traditional press is simply the result of conditioning, mindset, age and/or the focus of his personal business. But I have to strongly disagree that "this is not going to change significantly in the near future." It has changed. That's why in part the Tribune has a food blog.

AndrewR wrote:I was speaking of a certain clientele for whom the internet and food blogging is irrelevant with that comment, not chefs. This is generally customers of means over 30 (not 60 by a long shot). But if you're thinking of age as a factor, what would you say if I told you this chef was in his thirties? As to the Trib blog, that's updated how often and gets how many hits a day? There are very few commenters. That's not a great example.

Again, I think the numbers are inverting, even anecdotally for me, amongst people who two years ago, wouldn't pay attention to anything but what Vettel wrote, and are now trolling blogs and boards, because they feel left out when all of their friends have been to a popular restaurant that they've never heard about because it's talked about in other forums (discussion boards, Twitter, etc.) but gets little or no coverage by the Trib proper.

aschie30 wrote:Maybe, now, this chef is justifiably sitting pretty as his customers are blissfully ignorant of food forums and blogs, but that isn't going to last.

AndrewR wrote:Well, it's going to last at least another decade or two. Chefs are very insular and resistant to change. With the recession, many chefs have looked into social media, but social media can cut both ways.

Any media can cut both ways. It's nice to use the recession as a perfect little excuse for why Chefs have moved out of their comfort zones, but they've moved out of their comfort zones because they've had to. Many restaurants, like BOKA Group, work the social media in many ways that maybe even their Chefs don't realize. I work in the legal profession, possibly the slowest, most archaic profession out there, and even the legal field has moved into alternative means, including the social media, of reaching their clients. Looking at the number of Chefs who have created Twitter accounts in the past two years alone is a strong indication of the direction that this industry is going. (Even Chefs like Nahabedian and Kahan, who have poo-pooed discussion boards, are strong presences on Twitter.) And this extends beyond traditional media -- it also goes to publicity -- publicists for restaurants are becoming obsolete in the face of social media. If a restaurant thinks it can blissfully ignore these drastic changes, which are impacting every sector of our economy, for the next decade or two, good luck to them, but my hunch is that their restaurant won't be around too long. (There are certainly some exceptions to this general precept, but anything that didn't receive two or three Michelin stars (or 4 Vettel stars), will die out as soon as its average clientele become too old to go to their restaurants. If the average age of a restaurant's clientele is high, then its days are numbered accordingly, unless the restaurant takes steps to build a younger client base, which will have to be through alternative means.)

Andrew, your post kind of makes me wonder, 'If LTH has so little influence on the dining scene, why respond at all (two years after the fact)?' I don't think that LTH is the be-all-end-all full of culinary royalty that makes-or-breaks restaurants. But it is generally a very thoughtful, well-spoken community of people who care a lot about food. I've been many restaurants/stores that are very pleased with the attention they've gotten from LTH (Semiramis has framed copies of LTH posts on the walls, Katy's displays their sign prominently, Jim Graziano is familiar with the LTHers who visit his store, to name a few) so I don't think this site has been ignored by the restaurant community. And the site gets a lot of hits. For every person who posts, there are lots of lurkers (I have family and friends who visit the site frequently for recommendations). So, I think some establishments would be well-served to pay attention to the constructive advice offered here (and people hand out lots more kuhdos than dings). We've even had restaurant folk respond to descriptions of bad experience in a thoughtful, respectful way (Carrie Nahabedian comes to mind, I know there are others). Food for thought...
Anyway, you'll probably get a few bites at the attempt to get under our skin with the LTH:Yelp analogy; not from me, though.

Edited once for grammer (not sayin' it's perfect, now...)...make that twice

aschie30 wrote:especially after the resounding thud that Michelin guide has made on this town.

"Resounding thud"? Perhaps on this board. Definitely not to the many diners and restaurant workers for whom Michelin makes a significant difference. Michelin is important in driving tourist business. You'd be shocked to hear how many out-of-towners come to our restaurant just from Zagat alone. In the past, restaurants that received a Michelin star saw an average of a 10-18% increase in business. That's nothing to shrug off.

aschie30 wrote:I still disagree that two years ago, prior to opening his restaurants, Bill Kim had a "national presence." Even today there is probably only a handful of Chefs in Chicago who could claim to have a national presence, and I still wouldn't count Bill Kim as one of them. (No disrespect to Bill, but we're still flyover country here.) Having said that, two years later, it would not surprise me at all to learn that concierges recommend Urban Belly. Bill Kim has now made a local name for himself, and Urban Belly has been open long enough, and gained enough of a solid reputation, that recommending it makes sense. I don't know how relevant all of this is, though, to this discussion today, such that it merits comment two years later.

I mentioned the national presence with reference to the kind of media attention Kim got upon the opening of Urban Belly, which was intensive in major media outlets. It's very self-defeating and provincial to claim that Kim wasn't known nationally and that Chicago is just "flyover country" based on your personal experience, which is limited to your own knowledge. Chicago isn't exactly included in "flyover country" and has received national attention for its restaurant scene for many years now. I would beg to differ, from my experience reading national media and in the restaurant industry, that Urban Belly became well-known simply through grassroots efforts locally - it was a hit right off the bat due to a combination of old-fashioned PR and traditional word-of-mouth based on the chef's reputation (how else did people at LTH hear about it before its opening?).

I only commented on this post so much later because I was here looking at the Michelin and L2O threads and saw this thread was still active. I saw misreadings of my post I wanted to correct, and so I did.

aschie30 wrote:My point was, and still is, that non-traditional media will continue to make more of an impact on how people dine, and if chefs/restaurateurs want to build their customer base, they have to do more than vie for Vettel's three-stars, and a write-up in the Trib. I think that point couldn't have been made better this last Michelin go-round. Now that the books have hit the stores, they're already outdated, and Yelp -- a reviewing site -- stole Michelin's thunder.

I don't disagree with your point, but I do think you're exaggerating the Michelin/Yelp situation with your characterization here. The listing of two restaurants in transition during printing are now outdated. That doesn't negate the entire guide. Yelp itself didn't do anything to Michelin, a guy (not very active on Yelp) who got a guide early posted the Michelin list on Yelp. Thinking about it, if I got the guide early and wanted to post it myself, I would only have two choices really - here and Yelp - because of the forums. This incident doesn't exemplify a greater shift in influence or a shift from print to internet no matter how much people active in food blogging/forums want it to be.

aschie30 wrote:Again, I think the numbers are inverting, even anecdotally for me, amongst people who two years ago, wouldn't pay attention to anything but what Vettel wrote, and are now trolling blogs and boards, because they feel left out when all of their friends have been to a popular restaurant that they've never heard about because it's talked about in other forums (discussion boards, Twitter, etc.) but gets little or no coverage by the Trib proper.

That's right, anecdotally, for you. Yes, things are changing, but I think even you would agree you run in circles that are ahead of the general population as far as food is concerned.

aschie30 wrote:If a restaurant thinks it can blissfully ignore these drastic changes, which are impacting every sector of our economy, for the next decade or two, good luck to them, but my hunch is that their restaurant won't be around too long. (There are certainly some exceptions to this general precept, but anything that didn't receive two or three Michelin stars (or 4 Vettel stars), will die out as soon as its average clientele become too old to go to their restaurants. If the average age of a restaurant's clientele is high, then its days are numbered accordingly, unless the restaurant takes steps to build a younger client base, which will have to be through alternative means.)

I never said restaurants are ignoring or should ignore the power of the internet. My initial point here was to answer several people who I felt exaggerated LTH's influence on certain restaurants and the dining scene as a whole. I feel some people here have an inflated sense of power (ie, discussions and agreements that LTHers are the "influencers," etc.) and need to get some perspective. I certainly didn't come here to bait anyone.

I do enjoy coming to LTH from time to time to see what you all are saying about certain local restaurant issues, and I feel LTH has a lot to offer, particularly to neighborhood places you champion, but the thing I come away with is this sense of insularity and cliquishness. New posters and posters who offer a different perspective are almost always vehemently challenged, being called everything from a shill to a liar, as I was when I first posted. I feel there are some here who would love if people in the industry would never post, so they could keep up their own blinkered ideas about restaurants. But I feel people in the industry can offer a valuable perspective here, which is what I wanted to do when I first came on. I wanted to explain certain things so people wouldn't feel so angry/slighted/offended by certain restaurant practices, and so people would have a better understanding of how restaurants work. But some people here didn't want to hear that, at all, and smacked me down. I knew I wasn't welcome. That obviously has not changed.

AndrewR wrote:I feel there are some here who would love if people in the industry would never post, so they could keep up their own blinkered ideas about restaurants. But I feel people in the industry can offer a valuable perspective here, which is what I wanted to do when I first came on. I wanted to explain certain things so people wouldn't feel so angry/slighted/offended by certain restaurant practices, and so people would have a better understanding of how restaurants work. But some people here didn't want to hear that, at all, and smacked me down. I knew I wasn't welcome. That obviously has not changed.

When we started LTH years ago, I advocated vigorously for a Professional Forum for chefs and others to come and talk about restaurant issues that are invisible to many diners. I still feel very strongly that this perspective adds immeasurably to the conversation, and I'm sorry if you felt unwelcome. It's true that sometimes, perhaps too frequently, new posters take heat for not knowing the rules, being taken for shills, or simply expressing opinions that are outside the norms of the community. It's unfortunate, but it happens.

AndrewR wrote:But some people here didn't want to hear that, at all, and smacked me down. I knew I wasn't welcome. That obviously has not changed.

I just went back and looked at your early posts and the engaged, respectful responses that ensued (with perhaps but one very minor, unnecessary snark from yours truly). It's hard to understand how any of it made you feel as if you were "smacked down". Likewise, the responses today have hardly been smackdown worthy.

AndrewR wrote:I do enjoy coming to LTH from time to time to see what you all are saying about certain local restaurant issues, and I feel LTH has a lot to offer, particularly to neighborhood places you champion, but the thing I come away with is this sense of insularity and cliquishness. New posters and posters who offer a different perspective are almost always vehemently challenged, being called everything from a shill to a liar, as I was when I first posted. I feel there are some here who would love if people in the industry would never post, so they could keep up their own blinkered ideas about restaurants. But I feel people in the industry can offer a valuable perspective here, which is what I wanted to do when I first came on. I wanted to explain certain things so people wouldn't feel so angry/slighted/offended by certain restaurant practices, and so people would have a better understanding of how restaurants work. But some people here didn't want to hear that, at all, and smacked me down. I knew I wasn't welcome. That obviously has not changed.

Whoa, before you delve too far into martyrdom, I actually agree with you about the insular nature of LTH (not so much about the unwelcoming nature of the site, although I acknowledge that your experience may have colored you). Especially over the past two years, I think LTH has become more insular, and -- dare I say it -- a tad out of touch. Certain restaurants are golden and untouchable, certain posters' opinions about restaurants cause them to be instant sensations, whether or not they deserve it, and there is overall not enough reflection -- lately -- about whether the places that LTH denigrates or ignores really deserve it, and whether the places it supports deserve it either. I'm not lambasting the site, but it is certainly not infallible, but neither is Michelin or Vettel, the old standards.

aschie30 wrote:especially after the resounding thud that Michelin guide has made on this town

AndrewR wrote:"Resounding thud"? Perhaps on this board. Definitely not to the many diners and restaurant workers for whom Michelin makes a significant difference. Michelin is important in driving tourist business. You'd be shocked to hear how many out-of-towners come to our restaurant just from Zagat alone. In the past, restaurants that received a Michelin star saw an average of a 10-18% increase in business. That's nothing to shrug off.

What I mean by "resounding thud," is that, in all, the Michelin announcements were . . . anticlimactic (in part because of the leak, in part because of the truncated nature of the list, in part because of the predictability of the list in general). And now we will inevitably begin the process of forgetting almost all of them except Alinea and L2O. (By the way, if you're still unconvinced about the flyover country status afforded Chicago, just compare the size of the initial Michelin list of Chicago to much smaller San Francisco.) I don't disagree with you at all about the impact Michelin can have, or begrudge any restaurant or chef their Michelin star(s). If anything, I think the Michelin process shed greater light on my point above -- how we, whether we're LTH or Michelin, are evaluating restaurants; what points do we emphasize too much, not give enough emphasis, etc. I remarked on another thread that more than several Michelin winners were failed GNRs (or Bibs). Go figure. But the great thing of having multiple sources of information -- as opposed to just Vettel for locals, and Michelin for tourists -- is that the multiple viewpoints shed light on whether one source is skewed one way, and another another way; so you can disregard or give more weight accordingly.

I guess, at this point, I'm not sure what your beef is. I don't think anyone really believes that LTH is this all-powerful vehicle that can make or break a restaurant; and in this country, neither can Michelin. So what? That still doesn't mean that the old forms of information are quickly being crowded out by the new forms of media, even if there still exist folks who only read a paper copy of the dining section of the Tribune when the restaurants reviews are published on Thursday.

AndrewR wrote:I do enjoy coming to LTH from time to time to see what you all are saying about certain local restaurant issues, and I feel LTH has a lot to offer, particularly to neighborhood places you champion, but the thing I come away with is this sense of insularity and cliquishness. New posters and posters who offer a different perspective are almost always vehemently challenged, being called everything from a shill to a liar, as I was when I first posted. I feel there are some here who would love if people in the industry would never post, so they could keep up their own blinkered ideas about restaurants.

I don't buy this at all. Industry professionals without an ax to grind are treated with great reverence here, especially if they bring something interesting to the "table."

teatpuller wrote:

AndrewR wrote:I do enjoy coming to LTH from time to time to see what you all are saying about certain local restaurant issues, and I feel LTH has a lot to offer, particularly to neighborhood places you champion, but the thing I come away with is this sense of insularity and cliquishness. New posters and posters who offer a different perspective are almost always vehemently challenged, being called everything from a shill to a liar, as I was when I first posted. I feel there are some here who would love if people in the industry would never post, so they could keep up their own blinkered ideas about restaurants.

I don't buy this at all. Industry professionals without an ax to grind are treated with great reverence here, especially if they bring something interesting to the "table."

I think this may be the crux of it, AndrewR. As somebody who has been, perhaps, less than welcoming on occasion to a newcomer, it's because oftentimes those in the industry come in swinging rather than discussing. It's hard not to be unwelcoming when an industry insider's first post is dripping with condescension. But my experience is that industry folk who are interesting in engaging and discussing rather than venting are, as teatpuller suggests, usually very warmly welcomed.

Tweet from GEB just now reminded me of this thread. Mea Culpa or just delicious irony?

https://twitter.com/#!/grahamelliot

graham elliot @grahamelliot
Bloggers/foodies with cameras! Dinner tomorrow for 2 in exchange for posting pics of new menu. One lucky winner. #BlatantShillOpportunity

Ahem...I think customers are actually the ones who decide whether a restaurant makes it or not. However since of late, due to foodie sites such as Yelp and LTH, the authors of these forums are under the impression that they actually control the market, so much so that they are now above the tradional venues such as the trib, which they themselves have become irrevelant.
Fortunately customers know better than the whole lot, including those weird inspectors from France, thus some "great" restaurants close and other "dumps" go for years and years.
Actually the more "critics" become full of themselves the less impact they have over the restaurant scene.

Always wanted to comment on this thread:

Graham: ... Why this obsession with food online? You don't see people blogging about their new shoes in the same way.

o Mr. E, little you know of the blogsphere (even in '08):
http://seaofshoes.typepad.com/
http://dirtonyournewshoes.blogspot.com/
http://www.superficialgirls.com/
http://www.vivalablonda.com/

Not that I read women's shoe blogs. Really.