The Rake Magazine

Tag: La Belle Vie

  • Are Restaurant Critics Obsolete?

    The 2008 James Beard Awards for best
    restaurant, best chef, best cookbook, etc. were announced yesterday, and
    Minnesota got skunked. We had three chefs in the running for Best Chef Midwest
    – Isaac Becker of the 112 Eatery, Tim McKee of La Belle Vie and Solera, and Alex Roberts
    of Restaurant Alma and Brasa, which pretty much guaranteed that none of them would get
    the award. Wisconsin only had one candidate in the race, Adam Siegel of
    Bartolotta’s Lake Park Bistro in Milwaukee, so the cheesehead voting block had
    their way. Needless to say, Rubaiyat in Decorah, IA never had a chance.

    (Speaking of Solera, please join me at the Rake’s monthly World Flavors dinner party, tonight (Monday, June 9) from 6-8 p.m. on the second floor patio at Solera, 900 Hennepin Ave. in downtown Minneapolis. Cost is $40 per person, including an interesting assortment of tapas and three accompanying wines. To see the menu and buy tickets, click here.)

    It’s a pretty safe bet that most of the people who voted for
    Bartolotto’s have never been to the 112 Eatery, and vice versa, but the Awards
    are a tremendous publicity machine for the restaurants involved, and like they
    say, people who enjoy sausages or the law, or restaurant awards, should never
    see any of them being made.

    I used to get these James Beard Award ballots every year,
    and dutifully fill them out, flipping through page after page of restaurants I
    had never been to, and many I had never even heard of. Is
    Canlis in Seattle more deserving of the Outstanding Service award than Vetris
    of Philadelphia? How many people are there on the planet who have actually
    dined at both of these restaurants more than once? Don’t get me started.

    But it did remind me of a topic I have been thinking about,
    which is whether the internet is making professional restaurant critics obsolete.
    Here’s what I am thinking:

    1)
    Professional restaurant critics are very expensive. Back when
    I was at the Star Tribune, my dining expenses often ran to over $1000 a month,
    as I recall, and I would guess my colleague Rick Nelson’s tab was similar. We
    were the envy of our colleagues. We were supposed to visit each restaurant we
    reviewed at least twice, with dining companions, and sample a total of eight
    dinners. Most restaurant critics work for newspapers, and as newspapers enter
    their death spiral and cut staff and budget and newshole, somebody in
    management must be looking at that budget line, and wondering. I predict that
    five years from now, there will be a lot fewer paid critics around.

    2)
    Restaurant critics are an artifact of the gastronomic
    revolution that started around 40 years ago, when most Americans had never
    heard the word pasta. They needed experts, or thought they did, and so people
    like me, (who really weren’t experts, except in relative terms) got jobs as
    critics, which instantly elevated us to the status of experts. But nowadays,
    the public is much more knowledgeable about food, and much more skeptical about
    what they read in the newspaper.

    3)
    We know more than you do, but collectively, you know more than
    we do. As predictors of whether the public will enjoy a particular restaurant,
    experienced professionals like Rick or Dara or myself are much more reliable
    than the average local food blogger. And we know a lot more than the typical
    amateur – we can give you background and detail and insights that will enhance
    your dining experience.

    But now, thanks to the internet
    and the digital revolution, it is possible to aggregate the collective wisdom
    and dining experience of thousands of diners. And as New Yorker magazine writer
    James Surowiecki argues in The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter
    Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies
    and Nations     (which I haven’t actually read), when you put together a
    lot of individual opinions, the crowd often does get it right. A lot of the
    individual comments in the Zagat restaurant guides may be inane, or just plain
    wrong, or based on one atypical experience, but on balance, their thousands of
    reader/reviewers get it right. (By the way, you can help contribute to the
    collective wisdom of the Twin Cities dining community by signing up as a Rake
    Restaurant Rater    .)

    (Confidential to Anonymous: thanks for the spelling correction.)  

  • A Bone to Pick with Andrew Zimmern

    I was going to tell you about my most memorable dining
    experiences of this past year, but that will have to wait until tomorrow. There is more pressing business at hand: Andrew Zimmern’s recent blog post.

    I have only met Andrew – who writes about restaurants for
    Mpls-St.Paul magazine – a couple of times, but he seems like a nice guy. Once,
    when we happened to be dining at the same restaurant, he sent a couple of
    glasses of champagne over to our table
    – a classy gesture. But in a
    recent blog post, Zimmern says some things about my colleague, Ann Bauer, and
    me, that kind of hurt my feelings.

    I don’t mean the
    part where he says that I have a "workmanlike style honed over many years
    churning copy at the Star Tribune." I’m not sure how to return that compliment,
    except to say that Andrew is the perfect restaurant critic for a magazine like
    Mpls-St. Paul.

    No, the part that bothered me is when Andrew wrote that Ann
    needs to get out more, and that The Rake should send us to the restaurants that
    are "really making some noise," like La
    Belle Vie     and Heartland, which have both been around for years. And then
    he suggests that Ann and I need to be "more conversant with the local dining
    scene."

    That’s an interesting suggestion, coming from a guy who
    seems to spend a lot of his time out of town, eating sheep eyeballs on camera.
    I’m a little curious as to how Andrew finds time to check in on "two dozen
    other restaurants in town that are kicking ass every meal period." I’m in town most of the time, eating out
    about five nights a week, – looking for good restaurants that don’t make a lot
    of noise – and I can’t name that many places that are that consistently
    excellent.

    He did confess that he still hasn’t made it yet to Heidi’s,
    Meritage or Nick & Eddie, but I would be curious to know whether he has
    made it to very many of other new restaurants that we have written about in the
    past year: including Saffron (my nominee for the best new restaurant in the
    Twin Cities), the Blackbird Café, the Chindian Café, Pagoda, Keefer Court, Ngon
    Vietnamese Bistro    , Shiraz, Café BonXai, Mysore, the Hyderabad House, and Vinh
    Loi. Some of these have been reviewed by Andrew’s colleagues, but it looks like
    Mr. Zimmern himself isn’t getting out as much as he should. Or maybe he is
    spending too much time at the usual suspects. He did make it to Cafe Ena but wasn’t impressed – I suggest he give it another try.

    I made it to a lot of other very worthwhile restaurants this past
    year: Peninsula, Brasa, the Grand Café, Cosmos, Relax (the former Yummy), Yum!,
    Tanpopo Noodle Shop, Obento-ya, Cave Vin, Tam-Tam’s African Restaurant, Wolfgang Puck’s 20.21,
    First Course, Little Szechuan, Hoa Bien, Evergreen, Vincent, the Colossal Café, North
    Coast    , Kum Gang San, Victor’s 1959 Café, Sapor, Babalu , Cheng Heng and the
    Namaste Café – and I am sure I am forgetting a few.

    I don’t spend a lot of time going back to places like La
    Belle Vie and Heartland, because they have been around for years. And besides,
    I have had some wonderful meals at La Belle Vie, but I have also had moments
    where I have found myself wondering just exactly what the point is. Tim McKee
    and Josh Thoma are very talented chefs, but their menu, with its truffles and
    porcini and Barkham blue and branzino (sea bass, flown in fresh from the
    Mediterranean), doesn’t exactly engage the place where they are. It’s a cuisine
    they could create anywhere, as long as their customers have enough money – but
    maybe that is the point.

    I’m more inclined to restaurants like Heartland, at least in
    theory. I like and admire Lenny Russo, who is a very engaging guy, and has done
    heroic work to support local farmers and promote local and sustainable eating.
    His menus always sound wonderful – how can you resist a dish like Minnesota elk tartare with preserved tomato
    jam, Wisconsin turnip slaw and rosemary-shallot dressing?     In my limited experience, it’s always good,
    but it doesn’t always taste as exquisite as it sounds. Maybe it’s time for another visit, but I
    wish he used more garlic. Or something.

    Zen philosopher Alan
    Watts     warned against eating the menu instead of the meal. That’s good advice.
    Charlie the Tuna had something similar in mind when he made the distinction
    between "good taste" and "tastes good." Lucky for us, our readers just want to know what tastes good.

    Tomorrow: my favorite tastes and restaurants of 2007. I
    promise.