NEW RESERVATIONS: REFLECTIONS on NEWS of a TASTING MENU in the COVID ERA

Dialogue restaurant, Pumpkin Ice Cream Sandwich, from THE BEFORE.

This week, I read that restaurateurs of a fine-dining restaurant in Austin, Texas, planned a novel idea for "service" during our collective state of COVID confinement. They would provide their tasting menu to reserving guests by virtually gathering them from scattered home kitchens to follow along and cook the menu in that "alonetogether" patchwork of screen boxes we've learned to substitute for a shared table.

I figured that the synchronous preparation and enjoyment of the same menu was meant to recoup not only some of the restaurant's revenue but also one of the fine-dining restaurant's profound services to humanity: I mean its ability to enhance civilization by offering a communal aesthetic and social experience that enlivens the senses and expands the imagination. Check and check. (And "Check, please!")

Upon reading this news, I was touched by the resourceful creativity of the restaurateurs. I marveled at their tenacity. I understood that doing anything other than adapting--however imperfectly, however not like it was--under today's dire circumstances might be far worse. Something had to be done, right? Leave it to restaurateurs to find imaginative solutions. I admired these people in Austin trying to make it work.

I also felt depressed. The news of this creative solution only highlighted the loss of what makes me want to visit a restaurant. The transformation of the restaurant into a home-cooking experiment might mean the financial survival of some business models (and I support any effort, really, at this terrible point), but it means losing what I love about restaurants. I love the kitchen staff's cooking and want to experience that, not mine. I love the ambiance. For this reason, I leave my home. I love the privilege of being served by competent, graceful servers. I appreciate what it takes to execute good service, and when I choose to go to a restaurant, especially a fine-dining establishment, I am willing to pay--and tip--well for it.

What can I do to get the restaurants I love back to what I loved about them? So far, all I've managed to do is get lots of takeout, donate whatever I can to the legitimate causes, including some Gofundme pages for specific beloved places, and calling and emailing Congress to fix the sorely lacking PPP bill so that it benefits restaurants. I follow Independent Restaurant Coalition and #saverestaurants (saverestaurants.co) and post what they suggest I post. I applaud my local government's employment of restaurants to help feed seniors and those too much at risk to venture out to get their own food.

If I can do more, I will. I want my beautiful, bountiful restaurants back. I don't want them permanently transformed into home-cooking courses and curbside pickup joints.

Book Release: MAY WE SUGGEST: RESTAURANT MENUS AND THE ART OF PERSUASION

 

Years in the making, it has finally arrived! 

Get yours at your favorite book store or directly via this link: 

https://tinyurl.com/ydz3cyyr

 

We find restaurant menus everywhere. But we know little about how they work. In May We Suggest, I investigate how they try (and sometimes fail) to influence what we buy, how we dine, and how we feel about both. 

In 77 visits to 60 restaurant brands of all types throughout the greater Los Angeles area, I asked: How does a menu’s size, structure, imagery, language, materials, and pricing dictate what we buy or how we compose a meal? Does a fine-dining table menu try to hook us the same way as a signboard over a fast-food counter or a mobile-ordering app? What convinces us that one menu has enough choice and another too much or not enough? Along the way, I show how menus of differing styles operate. I also uncover what rhetoric works when, where, and why. 

You will not find a book about restaurant menus quite like this. I define restaurant menus in an expansive way, considering spoken variants, displays of real food, and digital varieties--not just sheets of paper and signboards. My study draws on an unprecedented range of disciplines, from experience design to behavioral economics. It is also the first book about restaurant menus to explore how, in their efforts to persuade us, menus seldom act alone. I show how they cooperate with restaurant décor, service, and other merchandising devices. 

Dear reader, if you are a restaurant-goer, a restaurateur, or a student of either, join me to find out how it is that, while we order from menus, menus try to order us. Anyone interested in the workings of restaurants, the experience of dining out, the rhetoric of things, and the subject of consumer choice will find the read enlightening and even amusing.

Copyright 2018 Alison Pearlman. All rights reserved.

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THIS HIDDEN PLACE

Vespertine, Los Angeles. Photo by author.

Before my meal at Vespertine, chef Jordan Kahn’s fantastical restaurant in Culver City’s Hayden Tract, I savored anticipating it. In a blog post of July 9, I appreciated the beguiling pre-opening hype. Now, a few days since my visit, I can say that the aftermath is richer still. Some meals you digest mentally long after your stomach does its part.

Partly because I’m still processing the five-hour extravagance, and partly because I have a pressing work deadline and can’t write as in-depth as I’d like, it’s premature for me to speak about my visit. But I feel an urgency to stick up for Vespertine in the face of negative commentary, especially by one Hollywood Reporter critic and a snarky Instagramer, whose conclusions about the place have received outsize attention.

The Hollywood Reporter said Vespertine was “intentionally joyless.” I’ll never know if the staff corrected attitude after that review. All I can say is that every member of Kahn’s team was warm and gracious to me and my companion, and generous and knowledgeable when asked about the food. Never were they cold or overly solicitous.

The Reporter went on to say that the seating in the dining room somberly faced people toward the center of the room and each other. I thought the furniture was smartly designed and configured for privacy and splendid views. Tall, curved booth backings encased the banquette seats, separating the dining parties visually and aurally just enough. The curving backs allowed me to twist inward, better facing my companion, or outward, to take in the restaurant’s spectacular architecture and surrounding industrial park. Through the glass-and-steel grid on three of the building’s four sides, we saw a campus of warehouses, the afterhours and back doors of our “creative economy” and imaginative buildings by Eric Owen Moss for which the area is renowned.

As if it was an undue affront, the Instagramer complained of being berated for taking pictures. That person clearly provoked his or her own bad time by fighting the premise of the restaurant.

If we want to enjoy them, it's best to understand that restaurants exist on a spectrum. At one extreme, we diners are the stars of our dramas, while the restaurant staff and décor play supporting roles. At the other end, we have places like Vespertine, where the restaurant is the main player and the guests take in what should be a unique and worthwhile show. For this, as on a night at the opera, we ought to accept the house terms: in this case, no taking pictures once inside. They do ask nicely.

It’s hard for me, as one who writes about restaurants, to refrain from the photography that helps me remember details or to accept what sometimes seems like an undemocratic restriction of my pictorial “speech.” But, after visiting Vespertine, I understand why the no-photography rule stands. So much delight depends on surprise in every space and moment of the meal that to proliferate images, beyond the teasers the restaurant metes out to press, would deprive future diners of something vital.   

In these early days of the restaurant, I don’t mind being an accomplice, keeping Vespertine a little hidden. That way, others can enjoy the experience as I did. For that reason, I won’t get too detailed when describing the experience, revealing in words what pictures threaten to do. But, to give the restaurant the credit it deserves, I must convey at least in general terms what impressed me most.

At every restaurant, architecture shapes the event of the meal. But the role the Eric Owen Moss building plays at Vespertine is well beyond the norm. Our meal progressed in multiple phases and settings, which took us through every interior floor—even dramatic parts of the building’s exterior.

When I arrived early, I waited in the outdoor garden behind the building and marveled at the manufactured pond along the entrance side. Paved with puzzle pieces of geometric white “rock,” it reminded me of another planet on Star Trek. I admired this scene from my petite concrete chair, among other uniquely proportioned chairs, benches, and tables landscaped over and under by little green hills and stalks of bamboo, giving semi-privacy to anyone there. While I waited for my friend, a swelling abstract soundtrack surrounded me, perfectly calibrated to advance and recede at the rate of my attention. (Here, I was served water and a juice I will only say involved a tree in striking glassware). 

From this vantage point, I could see the party who arrived before me as well as servers ascending and descending stairs suspended from an upper level of the building’s exterior. This foreshadowed our journey to the first phase of our meal and the reason the reservation system asked if anyone in my party had extreme fear of heights.

Once my friend arrived, we were escorted to the ground-floor elevator, which took us to the second, kitchen, floor, where chef Kahn graciously greeted us. From there, a staff member led us up those external stairs to a magical rooftop haven where we enjoyed our first five courses. (If you can choose your reservation hour, time your visit a half hour before the sun sets. The sky up there is at its most royal blue, and the temperature is ideal.) The meal proceeded on another floor, beneath, in the official dining room.

At every point, the building asserted itself. I took to it immediately and remained enraptured by it at every turn. What Eric Owen Moss did to create fluidity between inside and out, to frame views, and give a perpetual sense of openness—with multiple parts of the building visible in every part of the building—was ingenious. Putting the bathroom—and what a bathroom!—at the bottom and rear of the building showed even a sense of humor. After dining at Vespertine, I felt an anthropomorphic affection for the structure. Look at my picture of it, and maybe you can understand that. It even has a human scale.

Kahn’s cuisine and its artful presentation also stand out. I don’t want to say too much. I hope these notes will suffice: Few ingredients take the form you think they will when the servers point them out. Undoubtedly, Chef Kahn uses the full range of contemporary culinary technique and technology, and his artistic sensibility is second to none. I admit that most of the time I didn’t know what I was eating—the staff’s spare introductions, citing approximately three ingredients, served more to cast a poetic spell than to explain what were obviously complex and intricate dishes—and I didn’t care. The thrill of unexpected flavors, textures, temperatures, and weights in the food and its vessels and platforms was great enough for me on a first visit.

Nevertheless, my friend and I did notice certain patterns in the chef’s aesthetic. Over five hours, we had plenty of time to discuss them. Kahn conceived of the food inseparably from the service wares. Dish components lodged in crevices, and hid color-camouflaged among raised or concave surfaces of unique trays. Some adhered to sides of a bowl. Kahn likes vertical plinths and containers that rest on more than one side. We saw well-paced contrasts of color and texture; some like asphalt, others like cream. Kahn switched up cool and warm, temperatures we could taste in the food and feel in the ceramics. Certain vessels not only looked stunning but were functional, their thickness holding heat and cold. If you dine at Vespertine, you’ll spend a lot of time fondling and peering into bowls as if you discovered a stalagmite-filled cave. Food may be horizontal, vertical, tucked, layered.

Kahn is clearly a student of gastrophysics, the multisensory science of how we perceive food and drink. Not every dish came with a metal utensil. Sometimes a spoon was not just a spoon. He overlaid some elements just so their scent could contribute to taste. And he experimented with different weights of the dishes and utensils we held.

Near the end of the meal, before one last visit to the garden for postprandial drinks, we were brought back to the ground floor to pick up a gift from the so-called “table.” I won’t ruin it by telling you what the resinous thing was. In any case, the real gift is what Kahn has brought to the L.A. restaurant scene.

ANTICIPATING VESPERTINE

Vespertine, Los Angeles. Still from trailer on the restaurant's website, vespertine.la.

I read about it. I went to the website. I watched the trailer four times. When the ticketing system finally went live, I made a reservation.

It’s hard for a restaurant to live up to a lot of pre-opening hype. In this case, the hype is for savoring all by itself. It is, at least, by thrill-seeking aesthetes like me.

From the restaurant’s website and advance press, here's my summary of the concept: Vanguard chef Jordan Kahn, whose previous ventures in Los Angeles include Red Medicine and Destroyer, intends to create an ultra-fine-dining experience that departs from today's mainstay of locavore rhetoric and aesthetics radically. He wants diners to feel transported beyond any known place. To banish signs of Earth, he has marshaled a cadre of kindred designers. The website credits Eric Owen Moss for the architecture, musicians This Will Destroy You for the "score," Ryota Aoki for "ceramics," and Jona Sees for "textiles and garments." Kahn's total theater--buzz-killers say, of the absurd--will take diners through many courses and several spaces in the building. Each space will have its own sonic ambiance. Kahn has kept the style of his food semi-veiled. What I've glimpsed seems so alien among existing forms that even a sharp photo of a dish doesn't clarify what it is. No shapes on the "plates" resemble known edibles. Hints of Vespertine's food appear sparingly in press and the trailer.

Oh, the trailer. It's the restaurant’s tone poem. The main mood is part early Alinea, where Kahn once worked, a study in luxury grays, and part otherworldly Björk, whose 2001 album is named Vespertine. It conjures an ambient music video on another planet, where a simple walk along the hills turns up transparent spiny things and geometric white flora. I think these are foretastes of Kahn's cuisine. Scenes follow a wandering waif, half hidden under a hood, who periodically fondles dirt and strange plants. Shots of the restaurant’s building, a wavy postmodern grid in dark glass and red metal, splice in toward the end, suggesting the waif’s destination. Because we never see the ground that it stands on, the structure looks like a floating world.

The branding is novel, and so I’m seduced. I have Vespertine day dreams. In one, I am swaddled in gray felt, placed by a glass wall, and allowed to marvel at sculptures they call food brought by servers in silent slippers. I imagine not moving my own body, but being transported from one room and soundscape to another as the courses of the meal progress.

My cossetting fantasy is no accident. Leading up to the opening, Vespertine has promised a kind of escape. The illusion of placelessness is temporarily unburdening. It suggests relief from a nagging conscience about exploiting Earth's creatures just when other restaurants in Vespertine's class have intensified it. Even today’s most extravagant places remind diners of food shortages and inhumane practices by citing their sustainable methods and virtuous sourcing.

The Vespertine aesthetic also removes the onus of considering labor just as the troubles of restaurant work have confronted diners via new tipping policies and surcharges for employee healthcare. In her GQ preview of Vespertine (June 7, 2017), Marian Bull reported that Kahn trained his servers to seem invisible and charged designer Aoki with making their shoes inaudible.

As long as Kahn’s labor practices really are fair, I don’t think self-effacing service is bad. On the contrary, the commitment to hospitality and fidelity to theatrical concept is admirable and consistent with good craft. Still, there’s no denying that, in Kahn’s dining drama, labor--at least of the physical kind--is a background actor.

Even the chef’s culinary aesthetic, as tentatively revealed, avoids signs of handicraft. You won't find the plate-scattered look of so much contemporary high cuisine, which at least vaguely shows evidence of handling. The glimpses I’ve gotten of Vespertine’s food suggest architectonic objects by way of CAD and the 3-D printer. Here, labor seems purely conceptual.

As with all earnest and ambitious attempts at total theater, Vespertine’s will be vulnerable to parody, camp, and unwitting pops of the proverbial balloon. I don’t see how it’s possible to avoid some glitch in the matrix—like catching the Ronald McDonald you hired for a kid’s birthday taking a cigarette break. There’s bound to be something like a dropped glass or passing glimpse of routine Earth life out the window.

But I respect the extent and courage of Kahn’s imagination, and his willingness to take the financial risk of bringing a grand fiction to life. In recent memory, I've seen no offering like it in Los Angeles--really, and that's saying a lot. The aesthete and the contrarian in me want Kahn to pull this off.

Phase one of my Vespertine experience--making the reservation--has ended. Reserving through a ticketing website is nothing new for venues with high-end tasting menus. But never before have I been asked, as I was in the final screen of the process, if anyone in my party has extreme fear of heights. A message warned that part of the evening will involve traveling to the top of the tower. (I thought I read “tower.” I was in a hurry to fill out the form before the impatient Tock system could boot me out, rescinding my hard-won reservation slot, for a second time.) Yes, I mused, take me to the tower! 

Maybe, like the spaceship I have in mind, it’ll take flight. If not, I'll always remember how good was the hype.

THIS WEEK'S MENU

Gwen restaurant, Los Angeles. Photo by author.

Normally, when we think of a restaurant menu, we picture the list of dishes and drinks. But restaurants may be full of other kinds of menus, which may take unexpected forms. At Gwen in Los Angeles, for example, the food menu gives way, just prior to the service of the meaty main course, to a novel sub-menu: the presentation of a choice of knives. Thus, as the meal progresses, one set of choices yields another.

To be sure, the knife menu at Gwen is a novelty and therefore a conversation piece. As such, it's a neat bit of experiential marketing. Gimmicky, perhaps, but not pretentious because the choice has legitimate weight. Have you ever tried to eat a steak with a knife too light or too dull? If you do, you won't enjoy the steak anywhere near as much as if you'd equipped yourself with a sharp and solid tool. The choice of knife really does matter.

Of course, Gwen could have made this decision for you, providing you with a recommended blade. Why create an unnecessary ritual?

In its defense, I would say that the knife menu isn't just experiential marketing. It's also experiential design. It modifies our experience of the food. By making us mindful of the choice of knife, we become more attentive to the multiple dimensions of artistry behind our culinary pleasure in the restaurant. Even if we don't realize this consciously, we've gained an appreciation for the meal, and the restaurant, as a total work of art. We've picked up on the fact that our experience of the food is affected greatly by the myriad other sensory inputs in its vicinity.

(I wonder, too, whether our awareness of these dynamics makes us more or less or differently affected than we would be if left in the dark. Cognition is powerful, too.)

Those who want to study the effect of our other senses on our sense of taste will enjoy further research into a relatively new field known as gastrophysics. Look into it. Go down the rabbit hole.

http://www.alisonpearlman.com

THIS WEEK'S MENU

Gwen restaurant, Los Angeles. View of open-fire grill at the back wall of the restaurant interior. Photo by author, 2-18-17.

In the main dining room at Gwen restaurant in Hollywood, there's a cunning presentation of choices. It starts with a look at one of the tasting menus. Will you have the three-course or the five? The prices seem low. $85 for the five? A bargain, you think. This can't be all.

It's not. That is just the overture. The tasting menu is the baseline. Then comes a "supplements" list. But it's no mere addendum. It seems more like the main event. The list is as long as the longest tasting menu, and parades a tantalizing selection of eminently distinguished meats. The prices reflect that. Some, like the 80-day dry-aged beef from Creekstone Farms and, of course, the top-tier wagyu, are over twice the cost of the entire five-course tasting menu.

You go for it. "Go big or go home," you toss caution, and half a month's rent, to the wind. Once ensconced in the dining room at Gwen, even before your platter of meat arrives, there's a good chance you'll feel that the splurge is worth it. Why?

The decor has you in a decadent mood. A restaurant menu never had a conspirator so good. See for yourself. The full-length view of ravishing embers, and the platform above it for specialty cuts, continuously jostled into a sequence of stations based on doneness and resting phases, will rile you. The action never gets dull. And you can't miss it. It's the visual anchor, literally the central feature of the restaurant.

Do you have the choice to abstain? Of course. But people say the same about sex.

www.alisonpearlman.com

THIS WEEK'S MENU

Digital menu board at Neri's Restaurant, Koreatown, Los Angeles. Photo by Jamisin Matthews.

Digital menu boards have been slower to launch in the United States than in Europe or Asia. It's unclear to me exactly why. Perhaps there's a cultural dimension relating to differences in taste. Perhaps it has to do with business structures and startup costs. Dear readers, what do you think?

The matter is complicated by the fact that digital systems can vary greatly in capabilities and cost. Some are just TV screens showing a digital file of a static menu. The menu changes only when you revise the digital file. If you go with this cheaper option, you'll get the up-to-date look of a digital menu. But you'll sacrifice some of the fancy dynamics you can get with systems for which you'll pay high startup costs and monthly maintenance fees. These might include moving or rotating images; real-time variable pricing, whereby prices change throughout the day in response to ebbs and flows in consumer demand; and the capacity to change offerings and promotions as often as the weather or current events. As you might guess, the most complex systems are more likely to be adopted by large chain restaurants. They have the budgets to start and sustain them and the impetus to vary menu contents and prices by hour and region.

http://www.alisonpearlman.com

THIS WEEK'S MENU

Cake Monkey, bakery, Los Angeles, 12-31-16

To pick up some mini-cakes for a New Year's Eve celebration, I stopped into Cake Monkey. The bakery is as full of menus--above the counter, on the counter--as it is the sweets they advertise.

As a merchandising effort, this one impressed me the most. The full mini-cake lineup had a heart-warming esprit de corps. Even more savvy was the partnership forged between the cross-sectioned cakes and their corresponding labels.

They are ideal complementaries. Look, for example, at the Black and White Cakewich. The verbal description informs you that "Chocolate Crunchy Pearls" are included. I never would have guessed from a view of the sliced cake itself. Meanwhile, there is nothing in the label that conveyed the cake's moist texture and deep color or the mid-line position and satisfying thickness of that buttercream slab.

Bravi, and Happy New Year, Cake Monkey design team!

http://www.alisonpearlman.com

INTRODUCING "THIS WEEK'S MENU"

The presentation clinches the deal here, doesn't it? To my eye, it's a stunner. At the very least, can you admit this Spicy Chocolate Cake with Avocado Cream, cradled in a green glass that shows off the item's vertical layers and hypes the avocado hue, is an artful effort?

All menus are presentations designed to entice--like this palmed offer from a dessert cart at the now (sadly) closed Rivera restaurant in downtown Los Angeles, like the cart it came from, and like the restaurant housing the cart.

With this post, I present something hopefully appealing to you. It's the start of a new blog series for The Eye in Dining. Under the title This Week's Menu, I'll bring you brief annotations on noteworthy features of restaurant menus I've encountered. I hope it gives you a sense of menus' rhetorical wiles.

Like restaurants themselves, some succeed; others fail. But how they do either is not always "by the book." (There are countless books on restaurant menu design.) As people say, it's complicated.

Alison Pearlman
http://www.alisonpearlman.com

A NEW BOOK IS BORN: ON RESTAURANT MENUS

I promised I would post when I finished my manuscript on restaurant menus. I am a woman of my word. It is complete, at least until an editor gets hold of it....

The book in brief: A thoroughly researched, socially observant, and entertaining firsthand account of how restaurant menus design consumer choice and the experience of a meal.

The work is based on my documentation of 77 encounters with menus at 70 restaurants throughout the greater Los Angeles area, which span all restaurant genres and menu formats. But my insights about menus are not just the product of personal experience. They are enhanced by investigations in a wide range of disciplines, from experience design to behavioral economics. Decoding menus demands a diverse set of tools! 

This book represents the next adventure in a series in which I seek understanding of the social significance and rhetorical wiles of restaurant aesthetics. It started with Smart Casual: The Transformation of Gourmet Restaurant Style in America (University of Chicago, 2013). Check out the description at http://www.alisonpearlman.com

Stay tuned to this blog for updates on the menus book. Other posts about the book may be on Twitter @theeyeindining, Instagram @alisonpearlman, or Facebook under my name.

Cheers, and best wishes for 2017!

Alison Pearlman

PARDON ME WHILE I STUDY THE MENU

Salt's Cure, Los Angeles. Chalkboard menu of April 12, 2014. Photo J. Matthews.

Those of you who have been with this blog since I started it in 2009 know that, from time to time, I've commented on the design of restaurant menus. It was a post entitled "Menu Minimalism" (1-10-09), in fact--a cultural interpretation of the syntactical habit so many gourmet menus then had (and still have) of describing dishes by lists of principal ingredients with only commas between them--that launched The Eye in Dining. Since then, I've penned a couple of commentaries on menus. I didn't plan it this way, but they both deal with questions of size ("Big Menu, Small Menu," posted 6-25-09, and the more recent "Sizing Up the Menu Size" of 7-20-12). 

Lately, things have gotten more serious between me and menus. The more I study restaurants, aesthetically and operationally, the more I see the key role they play. Menus are, after all, much more than lists. They are among the most powerful mediators of restaurant experience. I am now hard at work writing a book about their designs and functions.

My apologies in advance to readers of this blog as I devote the considerable time needed to produce this book. On The Eye in Dining, I hope to share, here and there, related musings and status reports as the project matures. These will take time. Pardon me while I study the menu….

ABOUT FEAST

Exhibition antechamber to the Cut Your Teeth installation by Wolvesmouth + Matthew Bone @ SMMoACarolyn  

In "Feasts and Philosophers," her essay for the exhibition catalog Feast: Radical Hospitality in Contemporary Art (Chicago: David and Alfred Smart Museum, 2013), Carolyn Korsmeyer makes a key distinction between hospitality at home and hospitality presented as art: "Offering up a cup of coffee to a guest is a hospitable act; offering a bite of food as part of an exhibit is a vivid comment upon hospitality....As such, it demands reflection and interpretation--of the gesture and its intent, of the privacy of the sensation and the public nature of the act." In the museum, therefore, objects and actions not only are. They exemplify. 

How is a dinner party in a museum substantially different from a dinner party in a home? Consider the case of Craig Thornton--a.k.a. Wolvesmouth, the underground-dinner-party-chef-turned-cult-hero of the vanguard food world whose richly creative and visually stunning multi-course dinners, served at an undisclosed loft in downtown Los Angeles, have brought Thornton sold-out traveling gigs, a profile in The New Yorker, and made his dinners among the hardest to book. The Santa Monica Museum of Art invited Thornton and artist Matthew Bone for a residency over two weeks in October. Thornton and Bone collaborated on Cut Your Teeth, an installation where they served a series of the sort of multi-course dinners for which Thornton has become known. 

Communal dining table with chandelier made from 7500 coyote teeth.
Diners exploring the installation before taking their seats.

What does Thornton gain by performing his loft dinners in a museum? The cultural prestige associated with art museums is always a temptation. But is there an advantage artistically? 

I haven't been to a dinner at the loft, but I've heard from those who have and, as a member of the Wolvesmouth mailing list, I'm familiar with the basic terms and conditions. In important respects, the dinner party at the museum was similar. The guests were strangers, paying customers, and welcome to bring their own drinks and share them. The meal convened around a communal table. Thornton served a set multi-course tasting menu. 

The diners take their seats, across from a dramatic diorama installation featuring various taxidermic specimens.

Hearing Thornton chat about his residency at intervals throughout the evening, I gathered that the differences he intended between the loft and the museum dinners are largely aesthetic.  

A fine example of taxidermy among various in the life-size diorama installation by Wolvesmouth + Matthew Bone.

I could see them for myself: Cut Your Teeth was an elaborate multi-sensory event. Thornton and Bone, who was present and helping with the dinner service, built an enchanting, and at points humorous, installation. There was a marvelous array of North American taxidermy in a lush, life-size woodsy diorama bathed in the violet light of a concert stage. Predator or prey? Some animals snarled at us, on the attack. Others were poised in flight from us. The animalia trailed on, over the long table setting, where twenty-six diners sat beneath a chandelier made of 7500 dangling coyote teeth; and overhead, in a wave of taxidermied black birds. At the gallery's back wall, a massive video projection of a wolf devouring a carcass in the snowy woods played continuously as we dined in contrastingly refined style.

Venison--pine gelee, blackberry meringue, cauliflower puree, hen of the woods, soil, blackberry beet, purple cabbage.
The sort of painterly presentation for which Wolvesmouth is well known.
We were instructed to eat this first course with our hands. 

My dining companions and I saw the humor in the "wild" way we were supposed to enjoy the first course (pictured above). "Eat with your hands!" The composition of the plate was similarly ironic in this context. As "wild" as a painting by Jackson Pollock. As "wild" as a reference to a Jackson Pollock painting in an art museum. 

Wolvesmouth + Bone in the kitchen prep area between courses.
On the back wall, a continuous video projection of a wolf feasting on a carcass.

Thornton and Bone also curated the event's narrative dimension. The nine-course feast gave the experience the skeletal structure of a conventional tasting menu, but there was much more. Diners were invited to also wander, take photos, talk to the chefs, explore the installation on our own between courses. A smart idea: let people weave their own tales, don't hold them "captive." Let them pace. Stake out their environment. Near the woods, I had an eye-opening conversation about the art and subculture of taxidermy with Bone. Apparently, it's customary to separate the squirrel's front and back sides. I enjoyed my talks with the diner to my left. We went down a rabbit hole pondering how many components are too many on a plate. I never came to a conclusion.

I overheard Thornton saying that this, to experience the dinner just this way, was what they were aiming for. He spoke of creating the conditions for a memorable narrative, one that would engage all senses and yield stories from our interactions with the setting and each other. 

A detail of the kitchen set-up at the back of the gallery.

Speaking of the temporal dimension: a reminder (above) of the organizational skill required to pull off a nine-course feast with the impeccable timing we experienced. Pacing is everything when telling a story.

Course 5 of 9, a knockout beauty:
Pork Belly--squid ink aioli, squid ink sabayon, blue lake, parsley, potato, almond
The taste of unctuous pork belly with crunchy candied almond was as memorable as the visual presentation.

Technically, an iteration of the same event could have taken place somewhere else, not in an art museum. But where else is it the norm for every detail of the environment and the performance to be taken as intentional communication? Where else will the duality of nature and culture be so readily converted into a commentary on that duality? Where else will a feast so easily become about the feast?

DINING AFTER 'SMART CASUAL' PART IV: If You Can't Stand the Heat (or the Meat), Don't Sit Near This Kitchen

 

Counter-side view of open kitchen with wood-burning grill @ Chi SPACCA. April 2013. Photo by author.

To pair with this month’s release of my book, SMART CASUAL: THE TRANSFORMATION OF GOURMET RESTAURANT STYLE IN AMERICA (University of Chicago Press), I reflect in a series of blog posts on “dining after SMART CASUAL.”  Recent encounters with new and notable restaurants in my home city of Los Angeles and media on food fads have got me thinking about how the trends I discuss in SMART CASUAL are faring….

 

"Santa Barbara Spot Prawns" sizzling on the flat-top grill in front of my place setting at the counter. Photo by author.

If Chi SPACCA had opened before I had finished writing Smart Casual--instead, it started taking reservations this February--it might have made a great poster child. It's an intensified version of nearly every trend in gourmet restaurant style I discuss. Open kitchen: check! Kitchen-side dining counter: check! Gourmet plays on traditional dishes that highlight the chef's creativity: vis-a-vis the "rustic Italian" genre, naturally! Nose-to-tail, locavore, sustainable, humanely raised, and house-made-product cuisine: yes, yes, yes, yes, yes! And does it also feed the gourmet duality of ethical virtuosity and self-indulgence? No question.

For this latest restaurant addition to the corner of Highland and Melrose--filling up, Monopoly style, with the properties of Nancy Silverton, Mario Batali, and Joe Bastianich under the "Mozza" imprint--chef machers Nancy Silverton and Matt Molina got behind executive chef Chad Colby's panegyric to the finest in flesh and hearth. To my fiendish delight, they devised a very visceral way to deliver it.

"Tomahawk Pork Chop"--all 42 ounces--on the wood-burning grill, with arm included for scale. Photo by author.

Without question, Chi SPACCA is the blu-ray of open-kitchen dining. Up close and lurid. It's a tiny restaurant. There is a smattering of tables in the space but the real focus is a dining counter where six people can look directly--I mean, smoke-inhalation directly--over a wood-burning grill and a flat-top grill next to it and the cave of a wood-burning oven behind those. From time to time, the middle cook of three behind the counter takes logs of almond wood stacked under the oven and feeds the beast of a grill. Apparently, almond is mild enough to not interfere with foods' flavors. On a cooler side of the counter, another chef composes salads and paper-lined planks of house-made charcuterie. The source of the salumi and terrines, of which the restaurant is justifiably proud, is also, of course, on display: behind a glass-walled refrigerator next to the open oven. 

Single serving of the "Affettati Misti." Photo by author.

The scene of meat meets fire is enhanced by seductive bouts of seasoning and dressing cuts of meat and seafood in large platters or deep pans. When I say "meat," imagine the shapes and sizes of various United States. Look at the picture I posted of the "Tomahawk Pork Chop." I can tell you it's forty-two ounces, but you might not fully grasp the import of that until you compare it to the arm of the towering chef. I included it in my photo for scale.

I've eaten at many a kitchen-side dining counter. By far the majority puts the cooler action of plating dishes right in front of counter-sitting customers. Chi SPACCA has counter diners almost as close to the grills as the chefs, within catching distance of sparks from the fire flying up into the exhaust hood. The chefs and we practically shared the hood as if it were a large umbrella. 

At first, sitting at the counter feels surprisingly HOT. But one gets used to it and settles in as at a campfire. My spellbound experience of the meal in this position was pure hominid: drawn to flame. I'm not surprised that the original setup in this space was for cooking classes, where students could directly observe cooking over heat. Now, in restaurant form, the arrangement is engaging in a similar way. One can watch the cooks season and dress and cook the various cuts of meat and seafood and actually learn something. (Not everything one learns is pleasing, however. For example, I already know that the amount of cream that goes into restaurant mashed potatoes is heart-stopping. But facing the truth stirring in the pan in front of me was still a shock.)

"Beef & Bone Marrow Pie (serves two)" with velvety mashed potatoes. Photo by author.

The cuisine at Chi SPACCA represents the smart-casual trend of chefs appropriating traditional, regional cuisines, and then tweaking them. In this theater, the basic script is rustic Italian, but Colby departs freely from it. In a recent review in the Los Angeles Times (www.latimes.com, 4-5-13), Jonathan Gold pointed out that the beef and bone marrow pie, which I ordered and pictured here, is reminiscent of Australian meat pies (not Italian), yet Colby's version is not exactly like the Australian classic, either. Chi SPACCA varies from tradition in many ways besides, including its creative offerings of salads. 

And then there is the portion sizes. Everything from the custom cuts, as in the "Tomahawk" chop, to the columnar bone rising from the center of the beef and bone marrow pie take the rustic Italian aesthetic and remake it as Flinstonian spectacle. This tendency toward the oversize cut reminds me of the gourmet duality I write about in Smart Casual. On the one hand, we are made to feel virtuous about the fact that the meat is humanely raised, from an organic farm, being thoroughly used (all parts of the animal) throughout the menu, and raised not too far away; on the other, we are happy to consume like Roman emperors.

On the menu of "Contorni" (sides): "Warm Squash Blossoms Ripiene--ricotta & tomato vinaigrette." Photo by author.

We can count on places like Chi SPACCA to give us the most gorgeous expressions of our ethical striving as well as our appetites.

I would be remiss in talking about Chi SPACCA's achievement in stoking these values if I didn't recognize the key role played by contrasting elements in its meat theater. Aesthetic success often relies on a play of contrasts. This is no less true of cuisine than the other arts. In Chi SPACCA's case, the meat would be meaningless without the gorgeous cornucopia of plant matter. Salads and vegetable sides are so stunning and lovingly prepared. Above is a picture of the side dish of warm squash blossoms that I ordered that I would like to remember to look at whenever I'm feeling down.

The two images below show my "Insalata Misticanza." Clearly, this mountain of salad is designed to stand up to the Jurassic chops. Mine was so wondrous on every layer that I had to include two photos of it: the first, of the salad as presented; the second, revealing the interior in a spectrum of colors, textures, and shapes. Let's face it: no pastoral dream is complete without flora and fauna.

"Insalata Misticanza--English Peas, Beets, Carrots, Asparagus & Spring Onions." Photo by author.

The "Insalata Misticanza" half-eaten, showing the many layers of wondrous color, texture, shape. Vibrant and delicious. Photo by author.

DINING AFTER 'SMART CASUAL' PART III: Small Plates, Big Clatter

 

"LOBSTER ROLL green curry, Thai basil" @ Hinoki & the Bird. March 2013. Photo by author.

To pair with this month’s release of my book, SMART CASUAL: THE TRANSFORMATION OF GOURMET RESTAURANT STYLE IN AMERICA (University of Chicago Press), I reflect in a series of blog posts on “dining after Smart Casual.”  Recent encounters with new and notable restaurants in my home city of Los Angeles and media on food fads have got me thinking about how the trends I discuss in SMART CASUAL are faring….

In “The Backlash Against Entrées Rages On” (Eater.com, 3-26-13), Hillary Dixler reports on the further erasure of main courses from trendsetting-restaurant menus and the latest flare-up in the controversy over it.

Those who’ve insisted on the superiority of the tapas-style all-small-plates format include chef Alex Stupak, Bloomberg critic Ryan Sutton and Esquire’s Tom Judot. Other chefs are mentioned as defenders of this position in practice, even if not on Twitter and the like. In the middle of the debate, there are those, such as Los Angeles Times critic Jonathan Gold and Washington Post writer Tom Sietsema. They haven’t been particularly sanguine on the matter, but have still declared the death of the entrée a near fait accompli. Still standing up and fighting for the entrée, against the tide, we find current New York Times critic Pete Wells and former New York Times critic Frank Bruni.

My serving of "KALE Crispy and Raw, Curried Almonds, Pecorino, Red Wine Vinaigrette" @ Hinoki & the Bird. Photo by author.

On the debate that Dixler deflty describes, I have my own view: Notice that no chefs are on the side of the entrée and that the reasoning used by chefs is unique to them. They like small plates because they spur their own creativity and prevent them from getting bored. Witness a tweet Dixler quotes from chef Stupak in response to a question about whether or not his restaurant Empellon is serving entrees: “[N]o longer. I can’t stand them so I’m never cooking them again.” In another tweet quoted by Dixler, the chef stated that small plates “are more fun to work with then [sic] 6-8 ounces of clunky protein.” Apparently, chefs David Myers and Kuniko Yagi of the Los Angeles restaurant I recently visited, poetically named Hinoki & the Bird, agree. Their menu has no entrees but instead novel categories such as "Fun Bites" and "Inspiration."

Meanwhile, those who have strong feelings in the opposite direction, Wells and Bruni, make arguments that represent interests of diners that conflict with chefs’ desire for attention and creative development. They dare to suggest that they, as diners, would like to be satiated by a meal. They entertain the idea of being able, when dining, to relax. As Wells points out, small plates can create stress: “[J]ust as you realize how much you’re enjoying a dish [at a table for four], the person next to you has managed to stab the last forkful.” 

"Sambal Skate Wing" @ Hinoki & the Bird. Photo by author.

The extreme ends of this debate reveal a tug of wills between chefs and diners. Small plates, which arrive piecemeal in more informal situations and in a tight orchestrated succession in more ceremonious cases, constantly interrupt diners to pay attention to chefs. Entrées, in the old-school sense, buy the diner some time to ignore the chef, to put the chef in the background while the diner focuses on their company at the table or—god forbid—ponders matters unrelated to food.

This debate, the power of chefs it represents, is deeply relevant to the story I tell in Smart Casual. The rising economic and taste-making influence of star chefs has resulted in a wide variety of contemporary restaurant features from exhibition kitchens to the elaboration of tasting menus.

This latest kerfuffle over the death of the entrée shows that the power of chefs shows no sign of diminishing. It also reveals that, as with every imposition of will by one faction of a pluralistic society, there’s bound to be a counterpoint.

DINING AFTER 'SMART CASUAL' PART II: Spago Reboot

 

Spago Beverly Hills, view of open kitchen from dining room. March 2013. Photo by author.

To pair with this month’s release of my book, SMART CASUAL: THE TRANSFORMATION OF GOURMET RESTAURANT STYLE IN AMERICA (University of Chicago Press), I reflect in a series of blog posts on “dining after SMART CASUAL.”  Recent encounters with new and notable restaurants in my home city of Los Angeles and media on food fads have got me thinking about how the trends I discuss in SMART CASUAL are faring….

Chef Wolfgang Puck’s original Spago on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles (1982-99) is one of the bedrock examples in my book of “smart-casual” dining. It represents every major transformation in gourmet restaurant style that I find paradigm changing.

Spago mixed elements of “fine” and “casual” dining and broke with the former’s Francophilia—upsetting the definition of fine dining. The original Spago had chairs that looked like they belonged outside on a deck, a provocation to formality. It dressed wait staff in pastel Oxford shirts and aprons, not suits. It put the kitchen proudly on display and spotlit the chefs, not hiding kitchen labor. Culinarily, Puck broke the mold by combining Italian, Chinese, and Japanese ingredients and techniques along with the expected French. In the early eighties, pastas and pizzas were highlights of the menu, and even these came with ingredients, such as smoked salmon and dill cream, not traditionally Italian. 

Tablescape with menu, prior to ordering. Photo by author.

Among the first of the Spagos built after the original Spago was Spago Beverly Hills. Opened in 1997, it was grander in scale and no longer stylistically provocative. But it stayed faithful, as did most of Puck’s subsequent ventures, to Spago’s originally edgy features. The open kitchen remained, albeit sonically buffered behind glass, and there continued to be multicultural touches on the menu, which eventually included dishes influenced by Puck’s Austrian childhood. Beyond that, the place didn’t see major changes for sixteen years.

So when Puck and company declared that Spago Beverly Hills would undergo a complete renovation in setting and menu, over three months starting July 2012, I considered the import. One thing was obvious: Puck and his dining group had assessed that Spago was losing relevance. Puck needed to salvage Spago’s reputation as one of America’s best restaurants and as a cornerstone of the Puck brand. He needed to look around, gauge Spago’s competition, and adapt or die.

What would the results show Puck and company thought needed updating? What would the changes say about Puck’s place in the field of top tables today? 

First course: "Chirashi Sushi": Blue Fin Tuna, Hamachi, Salmon Pearls, Sea Urchin. Photo by author.

The results I found when I dined at Spago this March were enlightening. A sign of their resilience over the last several decades, certain trends Spago helped foster in the first place were further advanced. Not only was the open kitchen behind glass still there. The pristine wall of clear glass in the new design gave an even clearer view of the kitchen. The obscuring overlays of colored glass in the previous design had vanished. 

Second course: Fusi Istriana Pasta with Maine Sweet Shrimp, Fava Beans, Preserved Lemon. Photo by author.

In terms of cuisine, I found the global culinary influences Puck helped proliferate in the 1980s, which his head chef Lee Hefter had continued, accentuated. In ingredients and presentations, the Japanese influence was most pronounced. My first course, “‘Chirashi Sushi’ Blue Fin Tuna, Hamachi, Salmon Pearls, Sea Urchin,” was an elegant version of a familiar Japanese dish served with Japanese-style accoutrements: pointed chopsticks next to an ice-filled round lacquer container set with a shallow rectangular wooden box for the fish and rice. My third course, “A-5 True Japanese ‘Wagyu’ Beef Filet Mignon (Saga Prefecture),” boasted the finest in Japanese ingredients. In keeping with Puck’s global sensibility, however, the steak came with a “bordelaise” sauce.

Third course: A-5 True Japanese Wagyu Beef Filet Mignon (Saga Prefecture). Photo by author.

Some elements of the Spago reboot, however, were a break with Spago’s past. The décor, unchanged in its essential architectural bones, sported a thoroughly remade skin. Its new look reminded me of other currently celebrated dining rooms—including Alinea in Chicago and Benu in San Francisco. In contrast to the folksy figurative paintings and colored glass accents that prevailed before the renovation, Spago’s new interior seemed in tune with a current style of minimalism. I noticed stark interior lines and a muted palette of browns, greys, blacks, and whites. The main dining room offset this simplicity on one side by a wall of all glass showing a neat grid of wine bottles. The opposite wall sparely dispersed black-and-white photographs mounted in light boxes. Adjacent to that was an open interior dining garden fit with a fireplace and a retractable roof. (The wall opposite that gave way to the aforementioned glass-encased open kitchen.)

Staff—some wearing severe black Nehru jackets and slacks, others charcoal vests and subdued off-white dress shirts—were in sync with their subdued and elegant surroundings. So was the menu, a modernistic exercise in tidy left-justified, sans serif one-liners that deferred to the white space of the page. 

Close-up view of the wagyu. Photo by author. Beyond delicious. Still craving it. A-5 is the highest grade.

Further in keeping with trends at top restaurants, I found a menu syntax I named in an earlier blog post (January 2009) as “menu minimalism.” This is a way of listing dishes so that only commas separate the components, and conjunctions—with, and—are dispensed with as unnecessary clutter. For example, to accompany my wagyu steak, I had something described as “Roasted Maitake Mushrooms, Yuzu Citrus, Spring Onions.” (I did find one place where Spago's new menu deviated slightly from this format--an errant with in my second course, "Fusi Istriana Pasta with Main Sweet Shrimp, Fava Beans, Preserved Lemon"--but this seemed accidental in context.) In the 2000s, the modular menu syntax became prevalent in experimental restaurants that could assume a clientele food-savvy enough to leave the details to the chef.

The division of Spago’s new menu by nontraditional terms for courses—namely, “one,” “two,” “three,” and “from the garden”—likewise struck me as an adaptation to the increasing tendency of trendsetting restaurants to get rid of entrées--or, in Spago's case, to pretend dishes on the menu with noticeably larger portions and higher prices aren't what we think they are. The pre-renovation Spago menu listed “main courses” outright.

"From the Garden" to accompany the third course: Roasted Maitake Mushrooms, Yuzu Citrus, Spring Onions. Photo by author.

It’s tempting to see the Spago redesign as a case of yet another aging, yet shrewd, rock star—who once led in the field—now staying current by picking off what the younger innovators are doing. But the reality isn’t so simple here. Even the newer traits I noticed in the design of Spago Beverly Hills have actually already appeared as parts of other Puck-owned restaurants, and well before this renovation.

The most comprehensive precursor to the Spago revision is Cut, a modern take on a steakhouse he opened in the same part of town in 2006. Cut had (and has) every one of the traits the new Spago traded its former glory for. And it had them before Alinea became the number-one US restaurant to watch and while Corey Lee of Benu fame was still chef de cuisine at The French Laundry. Was Cut an imitation of restaurants that opened before it? Perhaps. I can’t be absolutely certain of how much it owes to precedents outside the Puck group.

But one thing is clear: While Puck updated Spago to keep up with today’s best-restaurant Joneses, he has all along been one of those Joneses. Question: What is Puck's place in the field of gourmet restaurant style today? Answer: Chicken and egg.