THE GURGLING COD

Tour roundup. Or, is this thing even on?

Hola. It has, indeed, been a long time since I have rapped at you here. Apologies. If eating and cooking is an excuse, then ok. As the years and responsibilities increase, it's harder to find the time and the energy to write blog posts, and harder still not to feel as if writing blog posts are more than a charmingly anachronistic quirk, like using a straight razor or having chickens in the back yard. Increasingly, the kind of 500-1,000 word post on a meal or an ingredient or an issue has given way to commentary of 140 characters max or 5,000 words minimum. Times is against both, (Longform is too long! Twitter is too short! Fishwrap is juust right!)  But I digress. 

The 13-14 Please Everyone Tour, in which Fesser and cinetrix drive around like idiots to see friends and family does offer a chance to check in on some food options not present in the back yard. Tack on a bonus lap to Chicago for the big English Professor Stampede, and you get some more choices By chance or predilection, a bunch (almost all, really) fell into a category of new resto I might call Serious Meats & c. We hit Kirkland Tap & Trotter, Worthy Kitchen, and Worthy Burger in New England, and in Chicago we insulated ourselves from the Polar Vortex at Two, Publican, Little Goat, and Trenchermen. 

These spots are all very different one from the other, but collectively, they represent a new step in an ongoing interplay between fine dining and more casual spots. If we've seen in recent years efforts by chef X to "elevate dish y from its humble roots," we now seem to be seeing the opposite, where Beard-winning chefs are opting to do something with more barstools and Formica. KT&T Little Goat are both siblings of top-5 restaurants in their respective towns, and were the most exciting places I visited. Telling that on a short trip, I found a way to make return trips to both of these places. Little Goat is basically like if Steak and Shake died and went to heaven, via Seoul. KT&T is like Valhalla where there is food at River Gods or People's Republic you actually want to eat. Details TK -- in entirely unrelated news, I am on my way to the gym. 

One Star Yelp Reviews of Michelin Starred Restaurants, Alinea Edition

We've had some fun w/ Grant Achatz here over the years, but until we proposed a look at one-star Yelp reviews of Michelin-starred restaurants, but we feel a new sympathy, as research suggests that some of the folks who want to eat at his restaurants are gigantic assholes. One S.S., for instance: 

"Last but not least, the hostess who 'greeted' us on that late night of September 30th 2011 needs to be retrained. Its not polite to look at your guests up and down as if scanning to see if they are suitably dressed. My wife's 6 month old left shoe costs more than she makes in a month and I am certain, is at least as intelligent."

Bask in the whole thing here: 

Simulated liveblog of Ribs n Bibs visit

No video, but look at the image above, and listen to this, while you shake your monitor, and that's pretty much how the first Rib Tip Dinner from Ribs n Bibs in five+ years went down.

Chicagolypse pt. 1 Z&H Deli

Call it the Savage Inequalities Tour 2k11 -- yesterday, the Cod was visiting a public HS in rural SC, getting his school lunch cherry took, and hearing exhortations over the school PA for the students to raise money for the soccer team by eating at Zaxby's. Today, the Cod is a spy in the house of Berwanger, returning to a very different Hyde Park than the one that was there when the Cod was getting his school on there. For one thing, Z&H MarketCafe, where I am currently gruffling: 

 

TENZING NORGAY	4.75
Neuske’s bacon, ham, cheese and organic egg on a croissant or wheat bread

Not mad at it, at all. Never thought I'd see Neuske's bacon on 57th st. 

Name That Chef, REVEALED, Or, WWAGD? OR, Definitely one of the last posts on David Kamp's Trotter piece

Earlier today, I asked you to identify the chef referred to in this quotation: 

"He was once the toast of the culinary world and he just exudes passion and authority."

It is, in fact, not the aforementioned Charlie Trotter,  but none other than Auguste Gusteau, as described by Ratatouille creator Brad Bird. However, the possiblity of confusion suggests something of what distinguishes Trotter from the chefs with more restaurants and more exposure. Gusteau is a Disney version of a French chef -- a betouqued owner-proprietor of one very serious restaurant. His successor, Skinner, is a villain because he wants to extend/dilute the Gusteau brand after Gusteau dies. Like Gusteau, Trotter is perhaps closer to an older and populist notion of what a chef is than the Marios and JGVs of the world? 

Add Trotter, or my kid is a three star Michelin chef

 

 
 
A few more odds and ends on Trotter:

1) Several friends pointed me toward Kamp's post on his NYT piece on Trotter. It offers some useful supplements, in particular: 

The Times article focuses on the extent to which Trotter, whether through stubbornness or the simple passing of time, has been eclipsed by younger, more marketing-savvy chefs. But one conclusion I came to, which didn’t make the article, is that perhaps he is his generation’s version of André Soltner, who ran New York’s Lutèce and couldn’t be bothered with being anything more than the chef-owner of one great restaurant.

2) Another reader points out that this image, which dominates the print version of the Times piece, was taken in 1991 for the New York Times, which did not use color before 1993 in the Sunday sections. I had observerd that "the big B&W pic seems to be laying it on a little thick, considering that it was taken in 1991, when color photography was widely available." It's good know this, though a NYT file foto is not the only way to go to illustrate this article. (See, for instance, the online version, which flips the old B&W and recent color images. It would be interesting to do a study of the layout differences btw the print and online DI/DO -- they frequently feel like different animals.)

3) Yes, I read The Perfectionist. Yes, Trotter has high standards for himself and his crew. However, it seems that not getting three stars in the USA is going to feel different to everyone from Trotter to his dishwashers and purveyors. In France, it seems as if getting into Michelin at all is a big deal. Obvs, three stars are better than two, two are better than one, etc. The notion of a resto being entitled to three stars, to being snubbed if it does not get one, seems to be one that could only come from a country that also retails bumper stickers like the on the right of this graf. I not a Michelin inspector, but in my day job, I do have to do some evaluating, and I see a lot of the sensibility expressed below. In a country that does not have home schooled honor students, getting only two Michelin stars might seem like less of a tragedy. 

Tails and Trotters

A few odds and ends from the aforementioned Trotter piece. 

1) We read that "Alinea, the standard-bearer of technologically forward** cuisine, got three stars, the guide’s highest rating, as did the modernist seafood restaurant L2O."  I'm not familiar w/ L2O,  but the website** and a recent review suggest some molecularity, if not as Adria-besotted as Alinea. And there is that word again. Evidently America's paper of record feels that Myhrvold's anachronistic concoction to describe avant garde (or "technologically forward"*) food as "modernist" is an example they will emulate. 

2) A more striking indication of how the food world is this sentence: "For while the dining room at Trotter’s is rather staid (has anyone suggested stripping off that beige executive-suite wallpaper?), the kitchen remains marvelously, tweetworthily creative, his admirers say." It is a bit awkward, but "tweetworthy" captures an imperative that more and more chefs seem to be beholden to. (The Cod has been guilty on the odd special occasion, but hypocrically disapproves of livetweeting a meal.) 

*"Technologically forward" sounds like an Aibo humping your leg, but that might just be me.  

**The L2O website is almost heroic in its embrace of bad restaurant website design, right down to the Zoolandery background music. 

Is Charlie Trotter the Norma Desmond of the food world?

If being a has-been who never quite lived up to expectations means two Michelin stars and a host of good works, then sign me up. 

It's always nice to see David "United States of Arugula" Kamp in DI/DO, but this was a curious sort of piece. Charlie Trotter raised the bar for dining in Chicago, and still runs this exellent restaurant. And he brings in utes, cooks them nice food, and tries to motivate them. His former employee, Grant Achatz, has three stars, while Trotter has to content himself with two. Even that is a dis:

Alinea, the standard-bearer of technologically forward cuisine, got three stars, the guide’s highest rating, as did the modernist seafood restaurant L2O. The one-star tier was rife with relative newcomers of gonzo-hipster bent like Longman & Eagle, where the menu features a wild-boar sloppy Joe. In between, at a dutiful but unsexy two stars, was Charlie Trotter’s.

Evidently, a lack of bacon trapezes (Alinea) or wild-boar sloppy Joe (gonzo-hipster)* consigns a chef to the unhappy fate of simply running a really good restaurant.  The bigger knock, however, is Trotter's failure to establish a beachhead in NYC, or to thrive in Vegas. Trotter's absence from  Top Chef Masters goes unmentioned here, but seems of a piece with the larger concerns with what Trotter's done since opening the best restaurant in Chicago at the age of 27. 

What strikes me about  Kamp's piece is not any lack of sympathy on his part, but how much the yardsticks for cheffly success have changed. Not that long ago, holding down two Michelin stars in a relatively out of the way part of the dining world would have been something to celebrate. Indeed, a two-Michelin-star chef who screams at his cooks sounds like MFKF's bread and butter. Put Trotter's in France a generation ago, and it's a Thing. Evidently, Trotter's food is very good:

Mr. Trotter is particularly virtuosic with vegetables. A plate arrives bearing what looks like a cross-section of slab bacon, but it’s really a terrine of three separate beet purées — red, golden and chioggia — that have been set in a mold and then sauced with another purée, of horseradish and roasted parsnips: a root-crop tour of the five taste sensations. A porridge of amaranth is enlivened with green cardamom, toasted pistachios and a slice of raw persimmon: a dish at once vaguely South Asian and satisfyingly Moosewood-y. Charlie Trotter’s offers a more traditional Grand Menu, but it’s the Vegetable Menu — an ever-changing, never-boring meatless dégustation — that is his crowning culinary achievement.

I'll take that over a wild-boar Sloppy Joe, thanks. In general, what Kamp describes -- a chef-proprietor with some love from Mr. Bib, who consistently cooks really good food and yells at his staff -- is what used to be the epitome of Chef. Now, lack of an outpost in Dubai, and failure to hobnob with Padma, put you in the also-ran category. Were I Trotter, I might be saying something to myself about how it's the pictures that got small. (Speaking of pictures, in the print ed of the Times, the big B&W pic seems to be laying it on a little thick, considering that it was taken in 1991, when color photography was widely available. Based on available images, the B&W seems like a reach. 

 

*Achewood fans cannot read the words "gonzo" and "restaurant" in the same sentence without recalling the Sani-Taco story arc. 

A saucer of cream for Mariani?

I am on the record as skeptical of Modernist Cuisine, and if I could have only one meal in Chicago for the rest of my life, I'd be heading to 53rd and Dorchester, not Alinea. That said, Mariani's review of Mod Cuiz and the Achatz bio is to book reviewing what this is to hockey:

Which brings me back to the much-hyped Grant Achatz, who on the cover of his fatuous new memoir Life, on the Line, stares out at you like a fey Ethan Hawke, stroking his greasy little goatee before cooking your food, while (according to the cover line) he is "Chasing Greatness, Facing Death, and Redefining the Way We Eat." The first part of that line might better read "Chasing pop culture stardom"; the second refers to his horrifying bout with cancer, from which he is, thank God, now recovered; the third line is completely hollow, because Achatz has had no influence on anyone's cooking at all, unless I'm missing scores of young cooks out there hanging limp bacon from silver clotheslines.

When the punch you pull is that you are glad the author did not die of cancer, you are operating in spheres of nastiness beyond the imagination of most mortals. There is a history of beef, but sheesh.

 

Grant Achatz, The Gurgling Cod likes you just the way you are...

Not quite on the level of persuading JGV to get rid of that silly music on his webpage,  but still. A week or so ago, I wondered if Achatz had allowed the menu at Alinea to stagnate. The response suggested no, which is good to hear. However! Prodded by this question, Achatz is opening a new jawn in Chicago that will change its entire menu every three months. Because Grant Achatz is Prince in a touque. And don't go changin' Grant -- like Bruno says, you're amazing just the way you are:

*I chose this song out of respect for this blog's Billy Joel fatwa, but the technological atavism in this video is bananas.