I wish they replayed that episode (they tend to stay away from the Amanda era and defunct restaurants). It was the restaurant who asked him that question. On the show, I think he stated it as "have you ever dined out before?" but he told me they had specifically asked about fine dining. To get this back on Terragusto, they have a similar spiel; it's like going to Medieval Times or Fogo de Chao. Just because they have a special process and experience (Mike G. rule) doesn't mean they have to be overbearing. The right way to do this is as at Moto, with a minimum of fuss and pleasant self-deconstruction.

Darren72 wrote:The restaurant is BYOB, which is great, but they also do not have wine glasses. So you have to either bring your own stemware or drink out of tumblers. I would much rather pay a corkage fee and avoid having to bring my own stemware, but this isn't an option.

The first time I ate there, the waiter said that drinking wine out of tumblers is the traditional way to drink in Italy. Well, yes and no. Simple wines are drank out of tumblers in Italy. Many Italians (especially older ones) add some water to their jug of wine. These aren't practices to be emulated with decent wine served with the quality of food at Terra Gusto.

I hate it when Italian restaurants use this tired old cop-out as a way to try to justify not spending any money on wine glasses!

My experience with Terragusto is that the place has average food with lousy service and an atmosphere that's so loud you can't hear yourself think. This last part is supposedly a design objective these days. I've heard it explained two ways: first, "it's what the young people like"; and second, "it's to encourage turning the table to maximize the number of diners per night". While I haven't been a young person in about 20 years (I'm 48 now), I don't remember liking this type of atmosphere back then either.

Needless to say, I won't be back.

John

JLenart wrote:"Have you experienced fine dining before?"

Oh what fun I would have showing them how little I knew about fine dining that evening. Either that, or I could play the "I know more about fine dining than you do" game, where I would point out in no uncertain terms ever minor error or miststep all evening long.

It makes me smile just thinking about it.

If one is in a restaurant and someone that works there actually asks such a question - "Have you experienced fine dining before?" - I believe the correct response is "No, but I have dined here before."

I am posting this because a long-time customer & loyal friend has been bugging me for a month to sign up & respond to some of the inaccuracies being spun into deeper & deeper fiction. I have been the Chef & Managing Partner at Terragusto since we opened early in 2006 and as a professional, I do not participate in the exchange of subjective interpretations of restaurant experiences, and as a veteran I ignore both critics & praise alike and just focus on doing what I do best - food. My integrity & passion do not change based on the whims of the few. I have made this one exception based on the loyal nature of my patron.

My customer was upset because she was trying to gather a small group of fellow LTH members for an evening at my reataurant & 2 of them turned her down because of inaccurate information. She was very unhappy by the responses when she tried to point out the inaccuracies & insisted that I correct the misinformation.

The easiest one first - we DO NOT require any deposit to eat at Terragusto unless you "buy out" the entire restauarant. Secondly, I will always seat a customer if I am able - we book tables every 30 minutes so even if we appear slow, our little place usually fills in less than an hour with reservations and I don't believe anyone can eat a proper meal in less than 1 hour. In fact we allow every diner at least 2 hours to enjoy their experience, even though few take as long as that. I have been told by many a well meaning fellow restauranteur that we could "really pack 'em in" if we didn't take reservations and just went to the "cattle call" seating.

For any other questions, quick and easy answers can usually be found on our website terragustocafe.com. (since you're already on-line)

Now if you will indulge me... When we opened our 30 seat mom & pop neighborhood joint we decided to focus on the food to call attention to our passionate support of local, sustainable agriculture in the hopes that you would support it too. We have endeavored to recreate the simple trattoria experience of Italy - high quality repast without the frills of the big city ristorante. Hence, our version of the opposite of fine dining - waitstaff in jeans, no fancy art, no intimidating wine list, no stemware, no table linens, eclectic music that changes often, no fancy anything really. Just a focus on producing the best food we can in a casual atmosphere. We do ask that you listen to our 1-2 minute spiel about what sets us apart from the "red sauce" shops and if that ultimately makes or breaks your experience you're too snooty for us and will end up elsewhere anyway.

We have met with a fair amount of success and grown up quickly. The manager who helped up us open was let go for not understanding that we strive to provide the opposite of my pretentious Spiaggia & Trattoria No. 10 background. Now my wife & I handle all the FOH management, and I can assure you we are anything but haughty. In actuality, I feel like I spend all day every day apologizing for our success as the reservations continue to flood in for farther & farther into the future and the list of last minute callers & wait-list hopefuls grows and grows. Each week we honestly turn away one guest for every guest we can seat and that number unfortunately continues to grow to my great distress.

I am gratified & puzzled that our little shop elicits so many hours of on-line dialogue when we have never pitched a story to a publication or even paid for advertising. Our business has really grown very organically - friends bring in friends who bring in friends. The Check Please effect has dried up to a trickle over the year since the 3 crazy weeks after our episode first aired last October. Almost every night is booked, and I know and recognize most of the names on the sheet as regulars who are bringing in friends or relatives.

If I may offer one tidbit - even though blogs by nature are built on opinion rather than facts, to prevent the on-line dialogue from verging on pontification, it might help if at least one person in each discussion used the telephone or some other out-moded resource to check the quasi-"facts" so as not to appear too foolish when the real facts do finally come out.

Thank You for your time - I will not visit this site or post again, so please come talk to me at the shop - have at it.

theo wrote:I do not participate in the exchange of subjective interpretations of restaurant experiences, and as a veteran I ignore both critics & praise alike and just focus on doing what I do best - food.

that's an interesting philosophy except perhaps that nobody cares what you do or don't do when you're out of business for not listening to your customers... is the subjective nature of sites like this supposed to somehow make them not valid critiques? ...and I would think any chef would welcome criticism and not ignore it. i don't know who you are.. perhaps i'm mis-interpreting what you're writing, and i haven't really read over the whole thread where someone was complaining about your restaurant... but based off of what you just wrote here you sound like you're full of yourself. not that i feel the need to be pardoned, since you're not reading this anyway.

Theo

Thanks for posting this - it's a reasonable and well-reasoned explanation for what has been expressed up-thread. While it may not satisfy everyone, I'm most saddened by your comment that "I have no plans to visit this site or post again" - I think you'd be a welcome addition to the LTH community.

dddane wrote:

theo wrote:I do not participate in the exchange of subjective interpretations of restaurant experiences, and as a veteran I ignore both critics & praise alike and just focus on doing what I do best - food.

that's an interesting philosophy except perhaps that nobody cares what you do or don't do when you're out of business for not listening to your customers... is the subjective nature of sites like this supposed to somehow make them not valid critiques? ...and I would think any chef would welcome criticism and not ignore it. i don't know who you are.. perhaps i'm mis-interpreting what you're writing, and i haven't really read over the whole thread where someone was complaining about your restaurant... but based off of what you just wrote here you sound like you're full of yourself. not that i feel the need to be pardoned, since you're not reading this anyway.

I believe Theo's infelicitous use of the word "subjective" may be unintentionally misleading. Many critiques of food can be very subjective (e.g., "best in Chicago," "delicious," "good"), but what Theo objects to (in large part) is the presentation of invalid or unsubstantiated information as though it were fact. This position is blurred by his more-difficult-to-understand practice of ignoring all criticism, whether positive or negative.

theo wrote:The easiest one first - we DO NOT require any deposit to eat at Terragusto unless you "buy out" the entire restaurant.

A question. When Theo makes this categorical statement, is he saying that Terragusto never required deposits to hold ordinary reservations, or only that Terragusto doesn't do that now? I don't know the facts on that (never made a reservation there myself, only know what I remember reading here).

Even if the policy once existed and no longer exists, that's valuable information to have. But just so the historical record is accurate, I'd like to know if the notion that it once existed is a fallacy.

There's one piece of serious misinformation at the top of the thread (I wonder how closely the date correlates with the dismissal of an employee he mentions) but it also gets called bull on pretty quickly, so I don't think anyone reading this is taking it very seriously. Everything else is people's actual experiences, such as they are, and I certainly stand by whatever I've said about Terragusto as being subjective (what isn't?) but entirely honest about how I feel-- I liked the pastas a lot, the bolognese was one of the best things I had last year, but would have largely steered clear of the entrees as not being nearly so good a value. However, I can't get into the place with my family on the spur of the moment, so I don't try. There's no rancor in that; I knew why they have the policies they have before he explained it; it's just a fact.

There was an interesting discussion at Michael Ruhlmann's blog about why chefs hate bloggers. Here's what I posted:

I think chefs are mostly complaining about a creature that doesn't exist. The anonymous blogger who writes a fictitious slam, has no track record yet somehow has a zillion readers? That's a contradiction in terms, like the opening night of an old favorite restaurant. Yes, the anonymous slammer on a site like Yelp may get the readers-- but nobody looks at Yelp and gives total credence to a single review, especially from someone who never posted before. If someone has readers on their blog, then by definition they have a track record which means their new review is built on the credibility of many other reviews. And it seems safe to say they're not going to piddle away a good rep to grind one axe.

I help moderate LTHForum in Chicago and I can tell you that people are very attuned to the track record of posters. If someone comes on and registers today and slams a place, then everyone knows to assume a high probability of it being a hit job. Where if someone with thousands of posts and a record of what their likes, dislikes, level of intelligence and discernment, etc. all are, slams it, people tend to take it seriously because they know that person to have demonstrated their level of quality and credibility. And that's nothing like the straw blogger Batali or others rail against.

I too suspect, like folks above, that one of the things chefs don't like is that they do, in fact, know who many of the "anonymous" reviewers are, and in smaller markets many of the reviewers are probably in the tank for local restaurateurs, serving as community boosters, so bloggers/posters on food boards upset the cozy little world by representing the actual undercover voice of the customer. If that scares you, you deserve to be scared.

Oh, and one more thing. Yes, a blogger/food board poster probably only tries a place once. But on a food board, they'll almost certainly NOT be the only one writing about a place. I'll stack the visits of ten or twenty different LTHForum users against the two or three visits of Phil Vettel or Dennis Ray Wheaton any time, when it comes to giving a restaurant a fair shake, trying its full menu, and seeing how it performs on different nights over time.

Overall, I'd call this thread and the other a far fairer and more accurate picture of TerraGusto, virtues and flaws, than any single reviewer could provide.

Mike G wrote:Overall, I'd call this thread and the other a far fairer and more accurate picture of TerraGusto, virtues and flaws, than any single reviewer could provide.

I believe this is correct. The challenge is that to get the most complete picture of a place, you need to read most of the posts in the thread. This is an approach to learning about restaurants that I believe is alien to many, who prefer their information bite-sized and easy to digest. That is not in any way to contradict your observation, Mike, just that the usability of this information presents challenges that may deter the average reader from the full benefit of the spectrum of viewpoints presented here.

I am posting this because a long-time customer & loyal friend has been bugging me for a month to sign up & respond to some of the inaccuracies being spun into deeper & deeper fiction. I have been the Chef & Managing Partner at Terragusto since we opened early in 2006 and as a professional, I do not participate in the exchange of subjective interpretations of restaurant experiences, and as a veteran I ignore both critics & praise alike and just focus on doing what I do best - food. My integrity & passion do not change based on the whims of the few. I have made this one exception based on the loyal nature of my patron.

My customer was upset because she was trying to gather a small group of fellow LTH members for an evening at my reataurant & 2 of them turned her down because of inaccurate information. She was very unhappy by the responses when she tried to point out the inaccuracies & insisted that I correct the misinformation.

From reading upthread, I wonder why this loyal customer was not replying on this board with her personal experiences. I didn't find the trail of this frustrated soul trying to make any corrections by highlighting her delighted experiences.

Sounds a little fishy. If this was designed to make us a defensive, I guess it didn't work.

Regards,

Cathy2 wrote:From reading upthread, I wonder why this loyal customer was not replying on this board with her personal experiences. I didn't find the trail of this frustrated soul trying to make any corrections by highlighting her delighted experiences.

Insightful, C2.

Theo has taken a risk responding to this thread; it's very hard to defend your own place, and continuing a discussion that begins on a negative track can be self-defeating. Perhaps that's why he vowed never to read this forum again, which I kind of understand but which I also find kind of obnoxious (I recently had a very unpleasant experience with an acquaintance who, angered by something I said, emailed to tell me I was a schumck and then announced that he was blocking all my emails, which struck me as a strategy designed to tick me off even more).

My kids do something similar, with fingers in both ears and their eyes shut.

David Hammond wrote:(I recently had a very unpleasant experience with an acquaintance who, angered by something I said, emailed to tell me I was a schumck and then announced that he was blocking all my emails, which struck me as a strategy designed to tick me off even more).

In my defense, I did this to all the moderators, not just you.

cilantro wrote:

David Hammond wrote:(I recently had a very unpleasant experience with an acquaintance who, angered by something I said, emailed to tell me I was a schumck and then announced that he was blocking all my emails, which struck me as a strategy designed to tick me off even more).

In my defense, I did this to all the moderators, not just you.

kind of a pompous response by chef/managing partner theo. If I was planning on going to this restaurant in the past, I wouldnt go now based on his attitude.

By ignoring praise or criticism you are negecting yourself of valuable knowledge regarding what you may be doing right, or wrong, and sending the message that you dont care what others think, and its your way or the highway. Not a sound business plan, or a good way to run a restaurant that depends on serving customers, and what they want.

just my humble opinion

jimswside wrote:kind of a pompous response by chef/managing partner theo. If I was planning on going to this restaurant in the past, I wouldnt go now based on his attitude.

By ignoring praise or criticism you are negecting yourself of valuable knowledge regarding what you may be doing right, or wrong, and sending the message that you dont care what others think, and its your way or the highway. Not a sound business plan, or a good way to run a restaurant that depends on serving customers, and what they want.

just my humble opinion

Still, in a sense, I tend to agree with Gertrude Stein who said, "Artists don't need criticism. They need encouragement." Of course, Stein was probably referring to the guys hanging in her living room, Picasso, Braque, etc., for whom arrogance was hard-fought and deserved.

david,

I somewhat agree, but I am not sure if theo is on the level of Picasso, or others at the top of their art.

On the other hand I believe we can all still learn something by listening instead of shutting others out no matter how much we think we know. Especially in a service based industry where customer feedback plays such a major role in success, and failure.

like I said above just my humble opinion about this subject.

"Artists don't need criticism. They need encouragement."

But sometimes gallery owners need to know why they're not making the sale.

I have a few responses to the above.

1) The whole "I won't be back to read or respond to future posts" thing is an infantile way of getting the last word in. Some people have a need to do this.

2)I didn't really find Theo's post arrogant, however just saying that criticism is subjective doesn't neccesarilly make it so.

3) Theo doesn't seem to realize that he is in a service business. It's not all about the food, and frankly when a group of experienced diners mention something good or bad about the service at an establishment over numerous iterations, the comments to hold some water. Simply saying "I have never listened to critisism" is like saying "I don't care what my paying customers think as long as they keep paying". Well Theo, if you ignore what your patrons say long enough it will come back to haunt you. Sure your business is great right now but it will eventually dwindle with an attitude like yours.

Like most, I have had mixed feeling about Terragusto since it opened. On the one hand, no one in Chicago makes better pasta. Most of the time, that would be more than enough to make me want to come back over and over again.

However, there's consistently been something - and the something changes - that detracts from the overall experience and makes the place less than welcoming. First there was the opening manager, who Theo has thankfully let go. That guy would stare at the reservation book for a good 60 seconds with a pained look on his face as he responded to your request for a 2-top. Then he'd say something like, "I guess I can fit you in this time." He alone was enough to keep me away for awhile.

Then there's the 1-2 minute speech about traditional Italian dining at the beginning of every meal. Three times I tried my best to cut the server off and explain that I knew what I wanted. But they persisted as if the speech itself were more important than my satisfied dining experience. Put a paragraph on the menu about it, or have some cards on the table explaining it. Maybe it's more about the framing. If they just did as Theo suggested - explain how Terragusto works differently than others instead of lecturing me about Italian tradition, I'd see less pretension in the whole thing. In addition to pretension, I always see the spiel as a thinly veiled attempt to upsell. Like the well-trained waitress at Chili's who tells me I can make my neon green margarita a "jumbo" for just an extra 2 dollars!

Call me "too snooty" if you want, but it's just really annoying and I start my meal hoping the server will just go away.

Then, unfortunately, he or she often really does go away - for a very long time. Water glasses don't get refilled. Wine glasses and corkscrews aren't brought over. I wish they'd put that 1-2 minutes to more productive use!

Perhaps I'm also too snooty to understand Theo's vision of "the opposite of fine dining," because I just don't like Terragusto's dining room. It's cold and loud - in desperate need of some more fabric to balance out the aesthetics. Table linens wouldn't turn the place into Le Bernardin, and you don't have to make me feel like Hans Christian Andersen's Emperor just because I bring my own wine glasses. Sometimes militant attempts to avoid haughtiness become haughty themselves.

I'm a bit of a glutton for punishment, as I've been to Terragusto 6-7 times and will be back in the future. The pasta is that good.

jimswside wrote:kind of a pompous response by chef/managing partner theo. If I was planning on going to this restaurant in the past, I wouldnt go now based on his attitude.

It's very difficult to judge someone's heart or attitude from reading typed words which can be interpreted in so many different ways. In a way, this particular thread almost reminds me of the play Oleanna, with everyone trying to read between the lines. In any event, I appreciate that Theo took the time and effort to address certain criticisms thrown at Terragusto. If he didn't care about his food, his restaurant and his customers, he would not have wasted the time posting his statement.

You know, one thing that sort of stuck with me about this as being particularly interesting is the thing about the two-minute spiel being a requirement for eating there, and if you can't handle this (commercial? Culinary equivalent of a time-share pitch or a chat with Jehovah's Witnesses?) then you're being a snot.

Sure, once in a great great while I go to a place where someone's doing something so novel that it's not a bad thing to get the basic approach explained to me. But sheesh, this is a neighborhood Italian restaurant. I know how to eat Italian food, I know how to order primi and secondi, I know I'm not getting Rosebud-sized portions. I find it pretty pretentious to have to a statement of Chef's art read to me beforehand-- and if you're having a problem with people expecting a Rosebud experience here, which I suppose they do from time to time, then there are other ways to handle it. You can put that stuff on the menu as an intro preamble, you can design the menu to help guide people through it, the servers can help people in a less obtrusive fashion, but God, don't make me sit through a sales pitch. I'm already eating there!

jimswside wrote:By ignoring praise or criticism you are negecting yourself of valuable knowledge regarding what you may be doing right, or wrong, and sending the message that you dont care what others think, and its your way or the highway. Not a sound business plan, or a good way to run a restaurant that depends on serving customers, and what they want.

Let me put a slightly more positive spin on Theo's claim to ignore all commentary. We all find ourselves in situations now and then in which we're bombarded with unsolicited advice (I'm planning a wedding now and am in the thick of it.). You can't please everyone and you can't take everyone's advice. You try to pick out the most useful information. Inevitably, sometimes you want to say "Thank you for trying to help, but I've already thought this through and this is what I want to do".

I suspect most restaurant owners (especially owners of newer restaurants and restaurants trying to be a little outside the norm) get tons of unsolicited advice, many of which takes the form of "Can you be more normal?" -- and I put my suggestion that Terra Gusto offer proper stemware in this category. I imagine Charlie Trotter could tell stories about the early days when people told him to offer a la carte options.

So, when Theo says that he ignores praise and criticism alike, part of me agrees with jimswside that he is tempting fate and it will be hard to sustain a business that does not give customers what they want. But part of me says that this really isn't what Theo meant. He meant that he has a different idea about what to provide, has already thought about the potential for customer backlash, and is willing to give his idea a go.

What what it's worth, my own views are similar to Mike G's, perhaps a little more positive:

Mike G wrote:I liked the pastas a lot, the bolognese was one of the best things I had last year, but would have largely steered clear of the entrees as not being nearly so good a value. However, I can't get into the place with my family on the spur of the moment, so I don't try.

I go a little further and say that I love the pastas. I'm usually too full after antipasti and pasta to try one of the meat entrees. The brunch is fantastic. Walking in without a reservation, however, is generally only feasible for an early weekday meal. I live three blocks from the restaurant and part of the attraction for me is that it truly is my neighborhood restaurant (or one of them).

darren,

I can see your point about being bombarded with unsolicited advise, I know as a first time parent we get tons of well meaning unsolicited advise from seemingly everyone who has ever had a baby regarding how to take care of our baby. I have to filter this advise perhaps in the same way as the chef/managing partner does.

like I said above good point, that I didnt think about.

Mike G wrote:Sure, once in a great great while I go to a place where someone's doing something so novel that it's not a bad thing to get the basic approach explained to me. But sheesh, this is a neighborhood Italian restaurant. I know how to eat Italian food, I know how to order primi and secondi, I know I'm not getting Rosebud-sized portions.

What's more, you've been there before and have already heard the speech!

How interesting!

Chef/owners should respond more often. I respect Theo for coming on here to defend his business, but I do wish he would be more open to some of the more constructive criticisms that have been voiced.

On the whole pre-meal speech, I didn't really have that much of a problem with it. I certainly don't need to hear it again, but I can understand why they're doing at least part of it:

I know how to eat Italian food, I know how to order primi and secondi, I know I'm not getting Rosebud-sized portions.

See, you (and basically everyone on this board) are not most people. I think there are plenty of people out there who expect "Rosebud-sized portions" when they go out for Italian ("red sauce" being their definition of what all Italian food is). So, maybe the pre-game speech is a bit heavy handed, but it may be an effort by the restaurant to set expectations appropriately.

Yeah, but it sounds like they're like a DVD-- you can't skip to the menu, you have to sit through the warning every time.

I live pretty close and have yet to try Terragusto. After reading the note by Theo, I don't think I'm going to give it a whirl. The reason is this quote:

"as a veteran I ignore both critics & praise alike and just focus on doing what I do best - food."

The problem I have with that statement is that a restaurant is more than food. While food is most definitely the most important thing, bad service can destroy a meal. If I owned a restaurant I would be scouring a website such as this for feedback. Shoot, I'd also read metromix and yelp. If one goes out of his/her way to post about a restaurant on a food webiste, that person obviously is fairly interested in food/dining. As an owner I would want to know if my host was snotty. I'd want to know if customers were turned away with a nasty attitude (be it improper perception from the customer, or if it really happened). How could an owner not want to hear that and make adjustments? I can understand taking advice on food prep w/ a grain of salt as that can be very subjective. Service is not quite as subjective. Most everyone knows when they are being treated improperly.

In this very thread, I've written in a number of times in defense of the food (Mike G. seems to agree that the bolognese is about as good as it gets), and in confoundment with the service. That is the theme of the thread, an opinion held by a score of intelligent, experienced, and earnest people. Some have probably wanted their message to reach the restaurant. Others have only wanted to inform their fellow diners. One can argue about which is a more caring aim; I find both extremely valuable.

Only a very cursory review of this and other threads on Terragusto would yield a reading of "these incorrectly-informed people are dumping on my restaurant." A more nuanced and accurate understanding would be "these people love good food and most of what goes on at my restaurant, care enough to be frustrated by it, and would bring others to it if we just cut some of the apparent pomposity of the service."

Theo, there seems to be a very positive, constructive, and even profitable takeaway of the second understanding, if you're willing to brook debate.