Do Chang and Bloomfield look like The Burger King?

Late to the party on this one, but I needed the art, obvously. Thanks, as always, to Penny Pascal for the Peerless Photoshopping. I went back to dig this out of the drafts thanks to the single greatest thing on the Internet this week. A tumblr of dumb stuff from Yelp is like a car that runs on piss, in terms of the availability of material, but  a couple of posts in particular point to the ish w/ the NYT article. (Worth noting, perhaps, that it ran in the NY/Region section, not chez Wells.):

At a pea-size Lower East Side bistro known for its fries, the admonition is spelled out on a chalkboard: No ketchup. At a popular gastropub in the West Village, customers cannot have the burger with any cheese other than Roquefort.<snip>

New York has spawned a breed of hard-line restaurants and cafes that are saying no. No to pouring takeout espressos, or grinding more than a pound of coffee at a time. No to taming the intensity of a magma-spicy dish. And most of all, no to the 21st-century conviction that everything can be accessorized to the customer’s taste.

This jawn caught my eye b/c of the weird conflation of purist and puritan: "This coterie of food purists — or puritans, perhaps — is hardly limited to New York." If you happen to be interested in food, and have a day job studying the Puritans, running across this kind of thing is an occupational hazard. If anything, the strict adherence to certain rules and forms sounds more like what you might find at Archbishop Laud's steakhouse than at a Puritan service. The dude above, betubs, is Cotton Mather, who lived not far from where Todd English got his start. 

So, when left to their own devices, let's look at the choices these diners make:

I was happy they accommodated my order of making the cod without encrusting it in chorizo and to cook it in very little oil. Overall the meal was a little bland but that could be my fault for ordering on the healthier side.

Yep. Or! 

Third, the coffee is not strong enough. Granted, I had decaf, but it tasted more watered down coffee than actual coffee.

Yeah. What chef worth her kniferoll would not want to see her restaurant as a space in which to collaborate with such visionaries? Chang, quoted in the article, gets at the heart of the ish: 

People just assume that every restaurant should be for everyone — I could understand that if we were in a town with, like, 20 restaurants,” said David Chang, whose small empire of Momofuku restaurants is known for refusing to make substitutions or provide vegetarian options. “Instead of trying to make a menu that’s for everyone, let’s make a menu that works best for what we want to do.”
He added, “The customer is not always right.”

My day job is fessering, not cheffing, but the customer is always right delusion permeates in a similar way. One can think of feeding somone, or teaching someone as providing a service, in which case the customer is always right idea makes some sense. But if you see what's provided as a product, a meal or an education, it does not make sense to allow the diner or the student to hold the anchovies from their  lit survey, or the Milton from their salad. If you are paying money to eat at a specific restaurant, doesn't it make sense to let the restaurant pursue its notion of excellence? 

April Bloomfield, who at the Spotted Pig serves burgers with or without Roquefort but refuses to substitute a different cheese, said too many deviations could overwhelm the kitchen. “I just wanted a good burger that was solid and tasty and consistent,” she said.

There are approximately eleventy bajillion restaurants within ten blocks of the Spotted Pig that will put Cheddar, American, Gouda, or whatever on your burger. Which is what makes the Spotted Pig burger compelling.  Chang and Bloomfield may or may not hold forth on burger toppings and veggie substitutions while wearing a red leather suit open to the navel, but she would do well to emulate the spirit of these wise words:

Comments

[wholesale jerseys]

If this is the new normal in Detroit, Schwartz is fine with that."We have some good players," Schwartz said. "We don't need to just sneak out onto the field and then sneak away. They're good players. We can embrace that. ...

[replica jewelry]

Its interesting. I would like to know more about this…I really wanted to know how this works can you please help me out…….Thanks for sharing.hrtdh