Last licks: 100 ways to leave your restaurant
Last week's food and restaurant news, with perspective
A different era in eating: Doyers Street, 1909
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Grimes releases Appetite City: William Grimes is a longtime contributor and former restaurant critic for The New York Times, the author of several books—he turned a short-lived visit from a chicken in his Queens backyard into a tome called My Fine Feathered Friend—and a kind of learned man-about-town. His newest book is Appetite City, a culinary history of New York from a time before the word “restaurant” existed in the common vernacular to the present. A New York Times review of the book sounds promising, particularly the coverage of turn-of-the-century hedonism:
In prose and photographs, Grimes eloquently conveys the glories and excesses of the vanished belle époque: the enormous and gaudy lobster palaces frequented by the likes of Diamond Jim Brady, the infamous “dinner on horseback” at Sherry’s in 1903, the sprawling summer roof garden above the Hotel Astor, where couples promenaded for hours down illuminated walkways, past waterfalls and grottoes, pausing at the buffet set out on a nine-ton block of ice, listening to music from one of three orchestras.
Might this excess be the spiritual ancestor to the Meatpacking District’s drunk brunch?
Cantonese curveball: Current New York Times restaurant critic Sam Sifton threw a curveball and reviewed Imperial Palace in Flushing (13613 37th Ave, 718-939-3501), a Cantonese spot that’s renowned for Dungeness crab. He gave the restaurant one star—not too shabby for a place boasting major neon signage—and included the following line:
Crab is the restaurant’s calling card. But a series of meals taken there over the last few months say more: The Palace is riding high, at the zenith of Cantonese cooking in New York City.
But wait? How could a restaurant at “the zenith of Cantonese cooking” only receive one star? Does one star denote a good restaurant, or simply a passable one? Tough questions all, and enough to cue the hand-wringing among concerned Times readers. In a Diner’s Journal post titled “The Morning After”, Sifton quasi-clarified:
One star is GOOD, brothers and sisters. (Except when it isn’t.) One star from The Times generally indicates a restaurant in which you’ll have a good meal — a restaurant in which the price, location, service, ambiance, quality and consistency add up to a verdict. And that is: One star. Good restaurant!
100 errors: And not to make this round-up too Times-centric, but anyone who has ever worked in the service industry should read restaurateur Bruce Buschel’s “One Hundred Things Restaurant Staffers Should Never Do.” The first 50 appeared last week, and the second 50 are due in a couple of days. Included among them:
6. Do not lead the witness with, “Bottled water or just tap?” Both are fine. Remain neutral.
21. Never serve anything that looks creepy or runny or wrong.
43. Never mention what your favorite dessert is. It’s irrelevant.
50. Do not turn on the charm when it’s tip time. Be consistent throughout.
The article's comments section looks like a war zone.
