Inovasi, Chef Connections and the Evolution of LTHForum

Inovasi, Chef Connections and the Evolution of LTHForum

Inovasi – What We Ate

Last Friday night I was invited to dinner at Inovasi by Chef John des Rosiers, who has posted on the Inovasi thread. Reviews of his restaurant have been mixed, tending toward negative. I felt his post was evidence of an interest in hearing from his constituency, and I’d read enough to be interested in what he had to offer at his Lake Bluff restaurant.

As des Rosiers pointed out in the thread, he has changed – and is changing – the menu radically and constantly. He mentioned that he made these changes, in part, because of the input he received on this forum, which is an interesting admission and development. So, how’s the food?

We started out with some “tater tots,” which does play into the trend for upgrading “common foods, like Cantu’s Pirate’s Booty and Bowles’s Cheez Its (now discontinued), and I thought it worked just fine, very rich with Gruyere mixed into the spud, which was a Kennibec (a popular choice at both Kahan’s Publican and Five Guys – it’s just a great potato).



This noodle dish left me kind of cold. It wasn’t bad; I simply was not moved.



This sandwich – confit duck with a duck egg on top – was an off-menu item that the chef tried out on us. There were some moist mint leaves in the bottom (de Rosiers seems to be experimenting with Middle Eastern flavors, which is not a common tangent for higher end restaurants). I liked this one, though the bread was not optimal; I believe it will be changed out for a crunchier, French-type of flakier pastry (note: Monday morning I picked up a Tweet that this dish is now on the menu).



In every good meal, there is a dish that stands out, and for me it was one of the most simple: just watermelon seared in a little olive oil, a sautéed goose liver, microgreens and a sprinkle of balsamic. This, to me, is an instant classic of non-interventionist cuisine: high-quality ingredients, excellent execution, naturally beautiful flavor combinations, elegantly restrained, well-balanced with sweet/rich/bitter/sour. To my mind, a perfect dish, satisfying in many ways. I would have eaten three.



Another off-menu experiment, the goat cheese with melon essence, was not bad but less successful. One of my dining companions said the melon essence tasted like a Jolly Rancher, and the bread was too squishy, but an interesting if not entirely successful effort.



I am still playing with a planned seven-course ice cream dinner , so I’m eager to see what chefs are doing with this classic confection. This dessert is called “Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme,” because those are the herbs used in each scoop of ice cream. I flat-lined on the parsley and thyme, but the sage was just wonderful and the rosemary delightful – fresh, deeply herbaceous. For New Years, 2005, I resolved to eat more sage; desserts like this will help me be a better person



Chef Connection – What We Talked About

After dinner, The Wife and I talked with des Rosiers, and he had several philosophical points about cooking that I found interesting. For instance, he does NOT:

• Write down recipes. Maybe some chefs commit all dishes to memory, but I’m guessing most have a recipe book that is in the kitchen for reference by all cooks as they prepare food. Though des Rosiers didn’t say so, my sense is that this refusal to codify recipes in a sacred text (or even a small box of index cards) is due, in part, to his drive for continual innovation and regular renewal of his menu: his recipes change very frequently. He’s planning on writing a cook book that will not include measurements but that will inform readers about fundamental principles of cooking (kind of like Ruhlman’s Ratios). The idea, as I understand it, is to open up the thinking of home cooks and inspire them to innovate on their own.

• Collaborate. Des Rosiers told us that he is pretty much the source for all his dishes, that he is not opposed to a group process but that he holds the reins and is the person in charge. This element of control is characteristic of all chefs to some degree, but the most innovative chefs seem to maintain maximum control over operations and the guest experience; Achatz is perhaps the clearest example of this, as I will examine in the final installment of Soundbites (running sometime in mid-October).

• Hire many cooking school students or Americans. Echoing the near-legendary letter to young chefs from Mark Mendez , des Rosiers believes (if I may paraphrase) that many young people watch a lot of Food Network, assume Batali stepped off a surfboard straight into Babbo, and don’t understand that most restaurant work is every bit as exhausting as factory work and just as glamorous. “They come out of cooking school knowing NOTHING about how to work in a kitchen,” he says, so he doesn’t hire any. Similarly, his luck with hiring American kids has not been great: “if I hire 10 American guys in my kitchen, by the end of the week, I’ll have 9.5” I mentioned to him Bayless’ potentially inflammatory comment during Nagrant’s superb “Chefs on the Grill” interview to the effect that Mexican kitchen workers are not very creative but are excellent at following directions – that generalization sounds so derogatory that it’s almost difficult for me to key it in, but I’m absolutely certain Bayless made this comment from a place of deep and enduring respect for the Mexican culture, and Des Rosiers agreed to that principle without condescension: he prefers to hire non-American, largely Hispanic kitchen workers because he admires the quality of their work, their willingness to follow his direction, and their no-bullshit dedication to sometimes menial kitchen tasks.

Evolution of LTH – Where We’re Headed (I think)

This connection between the work of the chef and the conversation on this forum is something that the original 13 (or so) apostles who founded LTHForum had discussed from the start. We wanted a place where we could foster a dialogue between the people who prepare our food and those who eat it. We wanted to do what we couldn’t do on Chowhound, which is connect – through online avatars as well as our carbon-based forms – with each other and with food industry professionals. Many of us are delighted that local chefs have contributed their insight to our forum – and that some, like Phillip Foss, actually initiate threads and begin conversations that we hope are as beneficial to their thinking as to ours . This mutually productive exchange is the realization of an original vision that is sometimes lost amidst the understandably more intense discussion of the food in and of itself.

One main motivation for my Soundbites series on WBEZ is that I greatly enjoy the opportunity to intensely communicate for 30-40 minutes with the bright lights of our small and expanding universe, people like Poli, Hammel and others. These people are filled with passionate fire about what they do, and to a person they are people who care about others; I think to be a chef, you need a gigantic ego, but you also, fundamentally, need to have a desire to serve people, give people good food and make them happy. That’s basic, and I want to know more people like that. And so, I’ve cultivated conversations and in some cases relationships with local chefs.

We recently heard the suggestion that GNR winners get the plaque because they’re good buddies with members of the LTH “senior board,” but that is bologna. Now, over the years, it is true that many people on LTH have become friends with many chefs, most of whom do not post on this board: I’m thinking of Robert Adams at Honey 1, Paul Virant of Vie and others. But establishing those connections with chefs was one of the founding principles behind LTH, and as the years have passed, the give-and-take between those in the kitchen and in the dining room have strengthened. I think, as a board, we're headed toward a closer connection with Chicago chefs, and that's a good thing.

At the Shedd premiere of Sky Full of Bacon’s two-part fish series, I chatted with Chef Todd Stein about David Tamarkin’s unsparing review of his new restaurant, Cibo Matto . Stein, with what sounded like hurt in his voice, said it was wrong to write up negative reviews of restaurant in this down economy when so many are struggling, and although I’m not taking that extreme position, I think when talking about places and chefs on LTH, it’s good to remember that these are not gods (no, really, they’re not, I’m convinced of that), but people who want to please and who sometimes feel like failures when they don’t. I pretty much agree with Gertrude Stein that “artists don’t need criticism; they need encouragement.” In my most my reviews of chef-centric restaurants, I don’t pull back if some dish disappoints, but I try to remember that behind the gloss of restaurant, no matter how seemingly glamorous, is a person who wants to make us happy, and there’s no way that urge cannot be a good thing. During my conversation with Des Rosiers, I was struck by not only the characteristic hauteur of a natural born leader but the vulnerability of a server, of a person whose job it is to please; as much as some may be turned off by the former trait (common among chefs and understandable as it is), it’s also important to be sensitive to the latter.

This impulse to make others happy is shared, I think, by most of the people who post on LTHForum. It was clear at our picnic that people went beyond the expected to please others in this community. I’m not saying that one should sugar-coat one’s critique of a restaurant to spare another’s feelings, and there are certainly as many horse’s arses in the hospitality industry as there are in, say, law enforcement or education, but I try to remember when I write a review, whether I know the chef or not, that behind it all there’s more often than not a guy (usually) or a gal who has decided that what they want to do, more than anything else, is put something on the table that will make me feel good. For that, I am grateful.

Does our growing acquaintances with chefs make us more likely to soften the blows of negative reviews? Maybe. But it does so in the same sense that meeting a fellow LTHer at an event makes us less likely to attack that person in a forum discussion.

When I first met Mike Sula of the Chicago Reader, it was in an interview at Little Three Happiness and me, MikeG, GWiv and C2 were talking about how the social component of LTHForum separated us from Chowhound. The main point I made during that discussion was that "It’s harder to be an asshole when people know who you are." I believe the highly productive and civil discourse on this forum is evidence of that statement's validity.

David Hammond wrote:Inovasi, Chef Connections and the Evolution of LTHForum
...
In every good meal, there is a dish that stands out, and for me it was one of the most simple: just watermelon seared in a little olive oil, a sautéed goose liver, microgreens and a sprinkle of balsamic. This, to me, is an instant classic of non-interventionist cuisine: high-quality ingredients, excellent execution, naturally beautiful flavor combinations, elegantly restrained, well-balanced with sweet/rich/bitter/sour. To my mind, a perfect dish, satisfying in many ways. I would have eaten three.
---

(emphasis mine)

Yes, yes, yes. Although the Moto, Alinea, ElBulli folks are pushing interesting boundaries, I stop thinking of it as food and it becomes merely edible art. I'll never insist on whimsy-free cuisine, I've even made a couple of items in the Alinea book, but I can't put that stuff in the same category as the word meal except that I would enter hungry and leave less hungry while having a good time in between.

And on the subject of herbs in your ice cream, several years ago I had an astounding pineapple upside-down cake with rosemary in it (and vanilla ice cream) at Marche. It was a combo I didn't think would work, but it does indeed work well in a sweet environment. If you're evolving toward a poultry or pork ice cream, and a fruit that goes well with those meats (apple, pineapple, pear, quince) would probably benefit from rosemary.

We recently heard the suggestion that GNR winners get the plaque because they’re good buddies with members of the LTH “senior board,” but that is bologna.

I have to say, David, I don't appreciate your misquoting me, nor your disregarding my subsequent clarifications of and apology for the wording of my comment on this subject.

Katie wrote:

We recently heard the suggestion that GNR winners get the plaque because they’re good buddies with members of the LTH “senior board,” but that is bologna.

I have to say, David, I don't appreciate your misquoting me, nor your disregarding my subsequent clarifications of and apology for the wording of my comment on this subject.

No offense intended.

David,

Your opening post was excellent! No truer words have been spoken about the interaction most of us have with chefs/owners, and how it relates to the evolution of LTH.

I think some folks believe that a person posting about a restaurant a number of times is that person "shilling" for the house, with an immediate reduction in the information being given. For me at least, that couldn't be further from the truth. I get to know folks like John des Rosiers and Shin Thompson of Bonsoiree because I think they're great at what they do, they're open to suggestions, and they're nice people. However, these guys will tell you that I'm the first person that will tell them if one of their ideas doesn't work. I don't do it in a way that makes it sound like I know better than them, because I don't. I do it constructively, trying to throw out suggestions that their natural talent can take and build from.

I say what I said in the previous paragraph not to make this about me, but to illustrate a point you make. I think there's a lot of people like me on LTH, who are honest in their postings all the while having an acquaintence with the chef they're posting about. That's what makes this the great board that it is.

All the best,
John

Chef Stein is talking out of both sides of his mouth. Why does he charge $44 for a Tamellini Soave on his wine list at Cibo Matto when a similar bottle can be had for $11.99 at Binny's. So you shouldn't write negative reviews in a down economy, but it's ok to fleece your customers on wine in a down economy? A down economy is precisely when people are looking to spend their money wisely. If a place isn't upholding their end of the bargain, then that should be taken in to consideration. I agree that you should be constructive and not ad hominem in a review, but objective criticism is a meritous thing....even if it's couched in an entertaining wrapper.

I think this is a good conversation, and Dave you're a really good trustworthy reporter. However, I wonder in some ways by des Rosiers inviting you to dinner, are we having more of a conversation about Inovasi then we might otherwise have had, i.e. is the message of Inovasi being amplified because of this invite and connection with a chef? I see you didn't necessarily pull any punches in your assesment of dinner, but did you ever find yourself being really careful or considering saying things differently about the meal if you didn't have that personal connection to this meal? Dialogue with a chef is important, as is eating their food. It's just such a confusing situation. I've been wavering so long as to how a journalist should be interacting with a restaurant, going from the whole take free meals and trust what's in your heart approach to maintaining a strict wall and paying for everything and talking via phone or only in person after a review and a self paid meal.

MJN wrote:I think this is a good conversation, and Dave you're a really good trustworthy reporter. However, I wonder in some ways by des Rosiers inviting you to dinner, are we having more of a conversation about Inovasi then we might otherwise have had, i.e. is the message of Inovasi being amplified because of this invite and connection with a chef?

I write about just about every dinner I have, whether it's from a higher end place like Cibo Matto or Inovasi, or a small hot dog stand in Pilsen. We're half-way through the month and I've already maxed out my Flickr account exclusively with pix of food I've eaten and posted about over the past two weeks. I tend to post a lot about everything I eat, but yes, if I hadn't gone to Inovasi, I wouldn't be talking about it, but I found the experience of dining worthy of discussion, as I did the meta-discussion of how such discussions might proceed.

Knowing a chef will definitely amplify a message. Could you have written so extensively and eloquently on Alinea without having developed some kind of relationship with Achatz? Whether you get a comped Hot Potato/Cold Potato into the deal is almost irrelevant.

I think part of being a professional, which many of us profess to be, involves the ability to gain as much insight into a restaurant as possible -- and that includes the food and the personalities -- and then write about those experiences as honestly as possible. That doesn't mean being brutal or writing with kid gloves. It does mean writing with understanding and sympathy about what worked and what didn't.

When I started this thread, I knew it would raise issues, some of which might be difficult to discuss, but I think that's one of the main values of LTH for me: I can throw ideas out there, get push back, sometimes get support, and generally refine my thinking in the back-and-forth with others in the community. "Chatting" is an unfortunate term for what we're usually doing, and I find a conversation with other LTHers to be a kind of heuristic, a discovery procedure by which I figure out what I actually do think...and, my thoughts on this topic are still evolving.

Oh, and MJN, I have to tell you, des Rosiers is getting a little creeped out by your apparent obsession with his head shot on Twitter.

However, I wonder in some ways by des Rosiers inviting you to dinner, are we having more of a conversation about Inovasi then we might otherwise have had, i.e. is the message of Inovasi being amplified because of this invite and connection with a chef?

Well... yeah. That's pretty much the point of PR, no?

It's the same thing that happens when some State Department official goes on background with a NY Times reporter and flatters him with inside knowledge. It's the same thing when you're at Cannes and you get 20 minutes with Tom Cruise promoting Mission Impossible 4: Wet and Wild.

The saving grace is that generally, they shouldn't be able to steer the end result of the conversation. (Though they often can through other forms of pressure— ask too many Scientology questions and you won't get Tom on the cover, selling magazines.) If they tip the ball into the air, but the game that follows is on the level, nothing wrong with that. It requires you as the reader exercising a certain judgment about when you think what you're reading is too much in bed with its subject... but if you think that's something you only needed to start doing when bloggers and chat boards came along, sheesh. If anything, part of the reason we're seeing chefs take an interest in new citizen media— I said part— is because they've revealed that the reading public is not as interested in what's hot!!!, what the PR industry is selling today, as the mainstream press always assumed they were, and given a chance to decide the editorial mix for themselves, people interested in food are substantially more interested in great little taco joints or how to make this or that than in hot openings. (Compare the length of the carne asada taco threads with the attention paid to one of the year's hot openings, Sunda, which has garnered a whopping 7 posts to date.)

I agree entirely with the other point. I don't believe in needlessly savaging a decent place just for sport, but if a place sucks and charges too much money for what it is, why show it the mercy it isn't showing paying customers? If anything, you not only owe it to your fellow diners, you owe it to better restaurants not to encourage worse ones. If your restaurant rips me off, gives me 50% value, I'm not slamming it for me, I'm slamming it for Mado and every other place that gives 150%.

Mike G wrote:I agree entirely with the other point. I don't believe in needlessly savaging a decent place just for sport, but if a place sucks and charges too much money for what it is, why show it the mercy it isn't showing paying customers? If anything, you not only owe it to your fellow diners, you owe it to better restaurants not to encourage worse ones. If your restaurant rips me off, gives me 50% value, I'm not slamming it for me, I'm slamming it for Mado and every other place that gives 150%.

There are many gradations and degrees to take into account here, but if I feel a restaurant is cynically squeezing patrons, selling low-end crap for high prices and seasoning the basically sorry situation with bad service, I give them my unvarnished, unpretty opinion on LTH, WBEZ, the Reader, wherever I happen to be airing my thoughts that day. However, if I feel a sincere and dedicated chef is hitting a rough spot, and Todd Stein at Cibo Matto may have hit that rough spot recently, then I'm more inclined to ease up on the slamming, especially if the restaurant is relatively new (which happens to be the type of place I usually write about).

The point about Mado is a good one, though my definite preference is to write more about wonderful places than dismal places on the theory that given limited time, readers would rather hear about a great place to go than be warned about a place to avoid, though both kinds of reviews have their place (I prefer the former -- there's a lot of unworthiness out there; just show me the good stuff).

With immense due respect to Hammond and others in this thread, I have real problems with the "chef connections" approach to restaurant reviews. It's not that chef connections are a bad thing, but when professional writers seek to make them, to me those writers become biographers, storytellers, or what John Mariani self describes as "freelance corresepondents". They're no longer restaurant critics in my eyes. Perhaps that's just a semantic differentation that carries little meaning these days, but to me, a pretty strict line should be drawn: if you want to review restaurants rather than write feature stories about chefs, you need to remain as anonymous as possible.

Kennyz wrote:With immense due respect to Hammond and others in this thread, I have real problems with the "chef connections" approach to restaurant reviews. It's not that chef connections are a bad thing, but when professional writers seek to make them, to me those writers become biographers, storytellers, or what John Mariani self describes as "freelance corresepondents". They're no longer restaurant critics in my eyes. Perhaps that's just a semantic differentation that carries little meaning these days, but to me, a pretty strict line should be drawn: if you want to review restaurants rather than write feature stories about chefs, you need to remain as anonymous as possible.

I think it's possible to be a restaurant critic at times and a storyteller at others. I just sent in three reviews today for restaurants where I'm just about 100% certain I was completely anonymous (made reservations under The Wife's name, I didn't wear hat when going to each restaurant, etc.).

Do you completely discount anything said by Steve Dolinsky, who is probably the most recognizable food writer in the Midwest? He would not call himself a "critic," but he seems at times to be providing evaluations of food, decor, etc. Are those evaluations invalidated by his high profile? They're not invalidated for me.

to me, a pretty strict line should be drawn: if you want to review restaurants rather than write feature stories about chefs, you need to remain as anonymous as possible.

Well, the problem with that, of course, is that about 3 people get to have a career doing that, and that number may well dwindle. The rest have to put together a living, or a sideline income more likely, out of whatever assignments they can scrounge up. Even those who guard anonymity (MJN, Sula, for instance) make the choice between anonymity in some cases and feature writing, rather than reviewing, in others. The best they can do is say, once I've interviewed somebody, I can't review their place.

Me personally, I think it's, as our president would say, a false choice. I write about restaurants I like, here, on my blog, occasionally for a publication. I'm not anonymous by choice (although anonymous to the overwhelming majority of the industry, I do not doubt) but then again, I don't hold a position that means anything. If the Tribune endorses a restaurant, some people take that to mean something (more than, one guy with a job there liked it, which is what it means to me). If I endorse it, okay, I'm just this guy, you know, who says he liked it. I bet you can find others of those on the internet too, to balance me out.

Mike & David,

The truth is that I value professional storytellers more than professional reviewers, so I don't mean to imply with my comments that you or anyone else should avoid making chef connections. Though I like Sula, Nagrant, Bruni and others, and I think they often write excellent reviews, I still rarely read their work. No matter how enlightened and eloquent a professional reviewer might be, I prefer reading a larger volume of posts about a place on a site like this, where I might even be able to ask some follow up questions of the non-anonymous reviews. Though no single review here may be as thorough or well-written as the pros', I like filtering through the many opinions, then forming my own. So, be storytellers who also write reviews if you want. I won't call you restaurant crtics, but who cares? I'll be enjoying what you write all the same.

David Hammond wrote:Do you completely discount anything said by Steve Dolinsky, who is probably the most recognizable food writer in the Midwest?

Can't really say I completely discount it, because I don't even recall ever reading anything he's written. I'm sure I've glanced at some article under his pretty face on a restaurant wall, but his opinions about restaurants are completely off my radar.


Kenny

As Mike G would point out, it's a fine distinction, but the fact of the Alinea connection is that I ate there and paid my own money to do so, which I do for the majority of everything I cover (except in the case of a couple of publications to which I am very thankful, I generally don't have a budget as a freelancer) because I anticipated it was worth knowing about and could be important. I did so anonymously and in the first few months they were opened. And while everyone can argue whether I'm truly anonymous or not, I definitely was then, because I was only an LTHer and not a blogger or the "pro" writer I am now.

Achatz didn't know me from anyone. That being said, I took that opportunity to evaluate whether Achatz was awesome or a hype machine in the most objective way I know how. Only once I realized after a couple of visits that I was really inspired by what he does, did I even consider him an interesting subject and approach him months later for the first podcast, and then the subsequent book project.

And even after I did, I wasn't afraid to be critical after that (note I'm not obssessed with des Rosiers picture at all, just obsessed with the idea that he thinks people should take him seriously with such a posed cheesy shot - which is the same principle on which I criticized Achatz in the linked article below)

http://resto.newcity.com/2007/05/03/gla ... -close-up/

Book projects too are a bit of a different animal I think. Although a good book is likely a very objective document, a book released by a restaurant is generally the best representation of its subject. No one buys a restaurant cookbook thinking, hey I hope the restaurant subjectively criticizes itself in this book.

I guess my MO is generally like this. Only in a couple of rare instances have I interviewed or engaged a subject without first eating their food in a personal or publication paid form with attempted anonymity (I don't kid myself that some people haven't spotted me or can). I really see it as the best way I can make a decision about whether I want to cover someone without all the other layers of people, pr, etc getting in the way.

That being said, you and Mike G and even Sula argue strongly and often convincingly that I'm too much of a hard ass on this subject of separation between myself and the people I cover, and it's really made me think a lot about whether I'm being oppressive in my pursuit of this ideal because I respect you so much. I respect so much what Rob and Aliie Levitt do at Mado or what Adam Seger does or Achatz and how they universally respect their craft and their diners that I've done more in depth stuff with them, but not first without knowing what they could do as objectively as possible first. However there is no law that says you can't take free meals or engage chefs personally first and still be effective at finding worthy subjects.

I'm most weary about that group of "journalists" who take many many free meals and as many comps as they can get their hands on and then use weak distinctions about whether they are critics or feature writers or not really food writers to justify the action. Likewise these people rarely ever say anything critical and they engage in mostly self promotion. I'm just afraid of the slippery slope I guess and how I maintain authority and respect if I'm going to the same meals they are, even if the quality of my work is good.

Kennyz, I agree and don't blame you. It's why I stay active on LTH, more data points always better than one. Unless Toby Young is the judge, and then I just defer to his arrogance.

MJN wrote:I guess my MO is generally like this. Only in a couple of rare instances have I interviewed or engaged a subject without first eating their food in a personal or publication paid form with attempted anonymity (I don't kid myself that some people haven't spotted me or can). I really see it as the best way I can make a decision about whether I want to cover someone without all the other layers of people, pr, etc getting in the way.

That is my MO, as well, specifically when I'm writing for print or radio.

Just ribbing about the des Rosiers head shot, but the subject did come up at dinner last week.

David Hammond wrote:

MJN wrote:I guess my MO is generally like this. Only in a couple of rare instances have I interviewed or engaged a subject without first eating their food in a personal or publication paid form with attempted anonymity (I don't kid myself that some people haven't spotted me or can). I really see it as the best way I can make a decision about whether I want to cover someone without all the other layers of people, pr, etc getting in the way.

That is my MO, as well, specifically when I'm writing for print or radio.

Reading this leads me to think that I overstated my case earlier that reviewers and chef connections can’t go hand in hand. I think it's fine, and adds much value to the article, for the reviewer to interview the chef after eating at his/ her restaurant (and - perhaps even better - after writing the "meat" of the review).

Further, I think it's fine - even desirable - for reviewers to make a "chef connection" even while dining at the restaurant for the first time. The caveat is that I want that connection to be made as a lay person rather than as a reviewer. If, by asking questions and expressing interest in the food, the reviewer builds a relationship with the chef, I want to know about it. I want to know because it means that if I’m the type of person that asks questions and expresses interest, I might be able to build that same kind of relationship, which is something I like very much to do in a restaurant. It's a useful data point to know that doing so is possible.

I suppose this is thorny, though, because it might come across - intentionally or not - as sleazy or dishonest. Chefs might be perturbed to find out only after the fact that all those genuine, intelligent, interest-expressing questions you were asking were actually part of the research you were doing for an article.

Observer effect, the Hawthorne studies, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, the Prime Directive. When you observe something, you change it.

The deal here for me has always been, the degree of observation directly correlates with the degree of change. The more walls you take down between you and the chef or kitchen, the more the product and service are shifted from what an average diner would experience. That makes most modern food journalism less and less relevant and more and more offputtingly self-indulgent to me. MJN's attempts to separate the methodology and style of his dining reviews from his excellent local histories are laudable, and the main reason I read him more than most (though, as with Kenny, LTH is my primary source). Sky Full of Bacon, too, is transparent in its goals, focusing on concepts and processes rather than irrelevant insider menus.

LTH for me is an exercise in self-education, maximizing the experience of eating without stripping away the innocence. We seem to know collectively where the lines are between discovery and (oft-futile) exploitation. I like to think these parameters coincide with the commercial equilibrium of what makes restaurants successful.

I can do without the Dolinskian personality cults and national authorities whose contributions frequently seem to get details wrong and which actually have potential to harm to the restaurants being covered. Those explorations seem to have more to do with aggrandizing the journalists for their 'finds' than edifying the reader.

Well, and that's one of the reasons I don't follow the newspaper's model of anonymity as strictly as MJN does (just as I also don't wear the snap-brimmed fedora the Sun-Times requires him to wear or drink the way he does, night after night at Riccardo's). Writing about a place is one thing, even doing an audio podcast is one thing and a half, but moving into someone's life with a video camera, even if only for a few hours, is pretty much Heisenberg in action. There's nothing natural about it.

I see it one way-- I made a video about X because I admire what X does-- but if you want to see it another way-- Mike G can't be trusted on X because he's obviously in the tank for them, well, that's your call. For me anonymity is on its way out because you don't need anonymity for the lone trusted voice when everyone has a voice, and you don't need to require the one voice to have the average person's experience when the average person can now have the special experience because of the knowledge available through things like LTHForum.

Well, sort of. Several people (myself included) recently had an experience at a group of restaurants where we were comped, pretty substantially. One I've written about on my blog (maybe posted here too, I can't remember), leaning toward the negative review side. The other two were new to me. I don't know yet what I think about writing about it. It will be hard to do so without feeling a bit compromised by the hospitality, except in the sense that assuming I have a platform to be compromised may be kind of presumptuous anyway. Ultimately, I guess all I can do is be transparent about the circumstances and trust that readers are, what do you know, intelligent and capable of deciding how much to weigh all that on their own.

Kennyz wrote: Chefs might be perturbed to find out only after the fact that all those genuine, intelligent, interest-expressing questions you were asking were actually part of the research you were doing for an article.

Kind of like Audry Hepburn in Roman Holiday

Since most of us on this board aren't professional critics, I think it all comes down to integrity. The chefs have integrity, and they believe I do as well. As a result, they expect me to be honest with them when I try their dishes. At the same time, I hope that people on this board that read my posts will take the comments at face value and know that there's no hidden agenda. I can't imagine how awful it would be to have a reputation as someone whose comments are untrustworthy.

When I post a bad comment, I try to be factual but not snide or pile on. If I've been able to interact with the chef and given them my opinion, I'll note that in my post and the reaction I got, if I got one. I think for most people on this board, the negatives may appear to be less intense when it's a chef they know, but I like to think that it's only because they were able to have a better dialogue with that chef than they might be able to with a chef that doesn't know them. The comments should always be about helping a chef get better to improve his restaurant. Anyone who posts negatives in a way to try to dissuade people from going to a restaurant, resulting in a chef's failure, really should look inside themselves a little.

John Danza wrote:The comments should always be about helping a chef get better to improve his restaurant.

I think that's a very productive approach.

The best chefs seem to be genuinely interested in hearing what diners think of their food. Paul Virant of Vie, for instance, is always asking "how'd you like it?" and I sense that this is not just a pro forma check-up but a reflection of his genuine concern and his drive to improve wherever he can.

Anyone who posts negatives in a way to try to dissuade people from going to a restaurant, resulting in a chef's failure, really should look inside themselves a little.

If I save you from being ripped off by an ill-thought-out or even cynical dining experience, how is that a bad thing?

I mean, I agree with you that just being mean for mean's sake is wrong, and when I've really gone to town on somebody, it usually hasn't been a person so much as a marketing plan that I'm slamming. (Okay, maybe the Hot Dog Island guy, I did put a voodoo curse on him.)

Look at it this way. A certain restaurant company once had a Spanish restaurant in Wicker Park. I viciously attacked it. It closed. (Cause and effect not implied, but correlation between everything I disliked and its failure intended.) What has been the subsequent result of this failure?

• The space has become one of the gems of the drinking scene, The Violet Hour
• The chef, Andrew Zimmerman, seems to have gone on to a better career at Sepia
• The sous chef, one Rob Levitt, has gone on to a far better career as the chef of Mado

Heck of a trade, if you ask me, Del Toro for all that. Failure can be a beautiful thing.

Mike G wrote:

Anyone who posts negatives in a way to try to dissuade people from going to a restaurant, resulting in a chef's failure, really should look inside themselves a little.

If I save you from being ripped off by an ill-thought-out or even cynical dining experience, how is that a bad thing?

Yes, it is a bad thing if your poor experience happened to be a singular occurence in the history of the restaurant. If I have a bad experience in a restaurant, I'll write it up as such but also look at the experiences others have had to determine if I give them another shot or conclude that the place is beyond redemption.

Do you pound them if you have a bad experience, thinking that they had one bite at the apple to impress you and if they didn't, then too bad?

John, I respectfully disagree with your underlying premise. It doesn't matter if it's my only experience. Because I'm unlikely to be the only person to post on it. There are other people who posted favorably on Del Toro, someone considering the place for themselves would have had quite a range of opinions to choose from. And I'm sensitive to the issue of a bad night, but this wasn't a bad night, this was bad ideas executed badly. I feel confident that superfake preformed potato things full of greasy goo don't get better on other nights. If I'm wrong about that, don't read me at all. (I've been more moderate in my criticism of one of your faves, Bonsoiree, despite my distinctly underwhelming experience there, precisely because I do suspect they just kind of blew it that night, and are probably better on average, based on what people like you say about it.)

But in any case, the real point is that failure is essential to the growth and prosperity of our scene. We have great restaurants because we don't have midsize-town boosterish critics who think everything is addictive and to die for. (Well, we don't only have that kind, anyway.) New things don't grow unless other things die. Sometimes that's the death of somebody's dream and that sucks for them, but helping them by praising them for missing the mark might be killing somebody else's dream who really deserves success. Failure means you have to leave one thing behind, but doing so can be the spur to doing something more interesting on a bigger stage in new ways, and you wind up looking back, thinking that the "failure" was the best thing that could have happened at that point.

Mike G wrote:John, I respectfully disagree with your underlying premise. It doesn't matter if it's my only experience. Because I'm unlikely to be the only person to post on it.

Yep, that ultimately was my point earlier, but I may not have expressed it well. As a reader, I look at the totality of the posts from the recent past and then make my determination as to whether or not to try a place. An example recently for me was HB Home Bistro. Most of the posts were from a few years ago and not very positive. When I tried it recently, I thought it was excellent and posted as such.

You're right however that sometimes the best thing for everyone is to have a place cease to exist. Fake preformed potatos definitely qualify!

Very fine piece in Sun-Times by Chuck Sudo of Chicagoist re: chefs in the Twitterverse -- Twitter's a way of constantly connecting with chefs that we might consider integrating with LTH.

MJN wrote:That being said, you and Mike G and even Sula argue strongly and often convincingly that I'm too much of a hard ass on this subject of separation between myself and the people I cover, and it's really made me think a lot about whether I'm being oppressive in my pursuit of this ideal because I respect you so much.

I have also thought this, somewhat quietly. I thought of you when I read "Tender at the Bone," where Ruth Reichl described a system that needed to be changed: nobody knew what the restaurant was like, nobody could get in more than once in a blue moon, and they looked to the reviewer to direct them. At the time, reviewers had pretty much a monopoly of the only public forum for information on a restaurant. Then there was this huge charade where the restaurant and the reviewer were essentially in cahoots, the reviewer would get a fabulous meal and Joe Nobody would get screwed. That reviewing system needed to change.

That system doesn't exist anymore, though. If you write a review for the Trib, say, and give a glowing report of the restaurant because you were treated better than anyone else, all the other people who had a bad time are going to hop right to it and post as much in the comments section. There is a system of checks and balances in place that didn't exist before - sadly, really only available to those who have access to the internet, or the Twitterverse, or things of that nature, but I suppose even Joe Nobody could access it from, say, the public library.

But I suppose the question you're really asking is: if they know I'm a "reviewer," for lack of a better word, do they do things differently? I think about this whenever I pull out a camera at a restaurant, because I wonder if I'm suddenly changing my experience by taking pictures and posting about it. I like to think that there are so many people like me, now, that maybe it doesn't....

Mhays wrote:But I suppose the question you're really asking is: if they know I'm a "reviewer," for lack of a better word, do they do things differently? I think about this whenever I pull out a camera at a restaurant, because I wonder if I'm suddenly changing my experience by taking pictures and posting about it. I like to think that there are so many people like me, now, that maybe it doesn't....

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By pulling out a camera at dinner you do, in a way, out yourself as someone who is, perhaps, a tad more culinarily inclined. Similarly, I find that if I ask too many probing questions that suggest a knowledge of food ("Is there Asafoetida in this sauce?" or "Are you sure these are Breton Sound oysters -- seem more like Blue Points"?), the chef/servers look at me differently as though to ask, Who is this and should I care? Now, I try to take pix very without notice and ask questions after dinner.

This may be true (it may not be, I've seen groups of giggling college students whip out cell phones and start snapping away at their food in the sidewalk cafe at Chili's - can't imagine that they're culinarily inclined) and obviously, unless in company of other LTHers bristling with telephoto lenses, I don't knock the waiter's hand out of the way in my rush to snap the pic. I guess the next question that arises is: isn't my experience going to be different, not because of my behavior, but because I might know more? Does one need to whip out the proverbial bushel basket and hide that knowledge?

I don't think, in the current economy, a restaurant can treat a customer any differently than a "reviewer." Of course, I'm not really going to the kinds of restaurants that might be able to afford to do so. So the real question is: who changes in this case....the restaurant, or the consumer? Is what we're really saying that you might get a better meal if you're engaged, ask questions, and appear to appreciate the work that's going on in the kitchen? Well, what we're doing then is explaining to Joe Nobody what he needs to do to get a better meal; nothing wrong with that.