Contrary to what some people believe, after my stint as owner of Primitivo, I love all kinds of restaurants and food – not simply the refined & fancy ones. Just after I’d opened the restaurant, I was invited to friends’ home for dinner; they were uncharacteristically nervous about me coming over – as she explained it, she’d seen a friend that afternoon and had told her “the owner of Primitivo is coming over! What am I going to cook that’s going to be good enough!!!???” Rest assured, I love meatloaf, mac and cheese, peas and rice, and cheeseburgers, not just the fancy stuff. Besides, who wants to eat like that every day? To paraphrase Anthony Bourdain, I love food that is blessedly free of truffle oil, foie gras and other exotic ingredients.
I have been incredibly fortunate to have had the opportunity to eat at some of the world’s great restaurants in Europe and North America. I’ve also had great and memorable meals in mom and pop diners in the Midwest, hole-in-the-wall tapas bars in the Basque country of Spain, seedy-looking joints in Palermo, Sicily, and an amazing patty melt somewhere in upstate New York that I still think of as a sine qua non of my dining life.
For me, the key to any dish is its internal coherence: do the ingredients meld? Can you taste the individual components, but also the way that heat and chemistry combine them into something different? Every oil, spice, seasoning, acid, starch, protein, vegetable and liquid changes and is changed by the other ingredients in the dish – kinda like a gastronomic Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. When trying a dish, I’ll ask: how do the parts work together? Do they fight with each other? Does the chef or cook understand these changes and does he or she use them to their advantage? Comfort food dishes work so well and, I believe, are so comforting because their ingredients work together harmoniously in a way that touches deep places in our psyche relating to home, safety and warmth. As long as a cook understands the ways in which this happens in a dish, and how and where it is appropriate to tweak them, I will probably love it.
In restaurant meals, as opposed to a home dining situation, I look for more adventurousness, but the basic ideas remain the same – do the ingredients work together harmoniously, or do they fight with each other? It is similar to how I judge wine – do the basic components of alcohol, acid, fruit and tannin work well together, or not? In a restaurant, though, it’s not just the dishes, but also the service and atmosphere – how do these things work together? Are they out of whack with each other, or do they meld seamlessly, each reinforcing the impression of the others? If the prices are high and the atmosphere glitzy, but the meals are classic diner comfort food or home cooking served by wisecracking servers in designer uniforms … well, something doesn’t seem right to me. I look for a unified and harmonious look and feel to a restaurant’s service, atmosphere and cooking. I once went into a simple restaurant in Switzerland that had a classic Swiss menu and atmosphere, but also Thai offerings. Huh? There’s a McDonald’s in Bern, Switzerland that opened in a historic building in the city center – and the upstairs dining room has the usual molded plastic tables and chairs, but the ceiling and walls are of hand-painted and carved wood three hundred years old (the building’s façade and upstairs interiors were protected by a historic preservation law).
So when I dine, whether that be at a friend’s house of a restaurant, I don’t judge the meal by some platonic ideal of preparation and presentation: I judge it by its surroundings, and the expectations that it implies. When at a casual get-together at a friend’s house, I’m not going to expect pan-seared skate wing with frenched baby green beans garnished with a citrus compote! Naaaaaah! Grilled flank steak, or a casserole, or a simple pasta dish, or an assemble-it-yourself salad do the trick just fine. On the other hand, if I walk into a new restaurant, and the menu looks ambitious, the staff well-attired and the room appointed just so … well, that’s going to evince certain expectations about the quality of the food and the professionalism of the service. Every restaurant can set its own standards and expectations by virtue of the control the management exerts over the menu, quality of ingredients and preparations, the decorations and appointments, and the training and professionalism of the staff. The hard part, as any restaurateur will tell you, is living up to those expectations – even though they’ve set them themselves! But dear god, it pisses me off when they don't even try! I understand failure far better than sheer laziness. At the end of the day, there’s no-one but themselves to blame for most customers’ dashed expectations.
Of course, some customer expectations are ridiculous. Just after I opened Primitivo, a couple told me that though the meal had been excellent, they didn’t like the experience and wouldn’t come back because they wanted and expected white-glove waiters in tuxedos from a new high-end place. Where they got this idea, I have no clue, as Primitivo was not a precious little jewel box of a restaurant, a type of place that typically makes me want to puke (exception: Danube, NYC). I suggested that they try another restaurant in town that did provide that level of service … they knew it well, they just wanted another place to choose from. In the end, I guess that they were able to overlook this glaring defect of ours, as they became regular and well-liked customers, and decided that they liked not having to dress up for every dinner, after all.
A few winners of the “Have.Their.Shit.Together.” Award:
Veritas, NYC
Mizuna, Denver
The Loop, Manitou Springs, CO
Metropolitan, COS
Esca, NYC
Pierre Gagnaire, Paris
Le Volpi e l'Uva, Florence
Chez Panisse, Berkley
Dal Pescatore, Canetto sull'Oglio
Cy's Drive-In, COS
Some places that could use some work:
Farallon, San Francisco
Tra Vigne, St. Helena
db Bistro Moderne, NYC
Blue Star, COS
Del Posto, NYC
Arpege, Paris
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