It’s not molecular but still the best…

In Beirut, Raw Materials Meet Magic

ON a balmy Middle Eastern night, our feast was rolling along fabulously on the outdoor roof terrace of Abd el Wahab, a vaulted and marbled Beirut gastropalace, when a flock of birds made a sudden appearance.

They came not from the sky but on a large plate, served by a suited, poker-faced waiter. Their blackened headless carcasses, each barely palm-sized, were soaked in a dark sauce that gave off a tangy aroma. Through wisps of sweet chicha smoke exhaled by boisterous groups at nearby tables, my Lebanese companions explained that the birds are traditionally eaten whole. I was dubious.

Hesitantly, I popped one in my mouth. Tiny bones cracked like toothpicks. In a quick burst, succulent meat mingled with the sweet-sour basting sauce. It was sublime. A miniature Hitchcockian menace had been transformed into an unexpected gastronomic gem.

“What kind of birds are they?” I asked the waiter.

“Small birds,” he said.

Such moments are blissfully common in Lebanon, where even the most bland produce or unlikely meats undergo culinary hocus-pocus and emerge, Cinderella-like, as belles of the ball. Parsley, elsewhere found more often as a throw-away garnish, becomes the basis of that zesty, lemony, tomato-filled, bulgur-sewn refresher known as tabbouleh. Instead of appearing as a flavorless blob, as it often does, eggplant is combined with sesame paste and lemon juice to create tangy moutabal, a dip similar to the better-known baba ghanouj.

And with a rich agricultural bounty packed into the farms, orchards, vineyards and waters of their tiny Mediterranean nation, Lebanese chefs have an impressively vast array of raw materials to valorize.

The upshot is the Middle East’s most ingenious, flavorful cuisine, and by all indicators its popularity is increasingly spreading beyond Lebanon’s narrow borders. Around the world, in cities from Paris to Dubai to Melbourne, the best Middle Eastern restaurants are turning out food from the Land of the Cedars. Flip on a television in the Arabic-speaking world, and you might well find a cooking demonstration by Ramzi Choueiri — better known as Chef Ramzi — a Beiruti who has become perhaps the top culinary celebrity in the Middle East.

With the Lebanese political landscape remarkably calm in 2009, the moment seemed ripe to explore the dynamic, cosmopolitan and multireligious city that was long ago dubbed the Paris of the Middle East. So, like the oenophile to Bordeaux or the pizza nut to Naples, I decided in late September to make a pilgrimage to the source, in search of authenticity and discovery.

Any Beirut dining experience should, and usually does, begin with a feast of mezze, the catch-all term for an array of appetizers that range from grilled chicken livers to exotic bread dips. Just don’t make the common foreigner’s mistake of comparing them to Spanish tapas.

“Mezze is not tapas, because tapas is something you nibble with a drink,” said Kamal Mouzawak, a food journalist and the founder of Souk El-Tayeb, the city’s popular farmers’ market.

He explained that in Lebanese culture, a meal is an intimate experience. “Mezze is food. The concept is sharing,” he said. “You have to be at least five or six people, and you must order at least 15 or 20 plates that you eat together.”

Abd el Wahab

Thus instructed, I booked a table at Abd el Wahab, one of the city’s top destinations for mezze, and recruited some Lebanese dining pals: Rabih, a fashion designer; Ranya, an artist; and Mona, a television producer.

Once we were installed on the terrace, Rabih rattled off a long order. First up: hummus. Call it sacrilege, but I have never been excited by this humdrum dip. But the others insisted, in a flurry of English and French (both of which are widely spoken in Beirut, though Lebanon’s official language is Arabic).

“Hummus is the best barometer of a Lebanese restaurant’s quality,” Ranya explained.

Following her lead, I took a corner of warm bread, rolled it into a cone (a nifty trick for scooping up dips) and tasted. It was excellent: lush, mouth-filling, creamy and flavorful — like an earthy milkshake.

More plates arrived. The zesty tabbouleh, everyone showed me, should be eaten not with a fork, but wrapped in a lettuce leaf. In the moutabal, the sweetness of sesame-laden tahini and the gentle sourness of lemon juice played off each other amid a gorgeously gloppy eggplant purée.

Also in the onslaught were a fine raw kibbeh (a velvety veal tartare), some so-so mekanek (grilled sausages) and, of course, the swarm of delicious, unidentified birds.

Full article: http://travel.nytimes.com/2009/12/27/travel/27choice.html?ref=travel

The Originals

La Grenouille

LA GRENOUILLE turned 47 on Saturday, the last great French restaurant in New York. As on its birth night, there was snow outside the old stable at 3 East 52nd Street, and this made the soft, glittering light of the brocaded interior seem all the more inviting, the flowers towering out of the corners all the more welcoming, the sheer elegance of the place all the more arresting, important, rare.

The decline of great French cooking in New York has been a subject of discussion among the food-obsessed for decades, since at least the closing of Le Pavillon in 1971. In the last decade the talk has turned funereal, with the demise of Lutèce, La Caravelle, La Côte Basque, Lespinasse.

Brasserie cooking survives in New York, even flourishes under old mirrors and subway tile. We will always have steak frites.

But the quiet opulence of the traditional haute cuisine that was first brought to New York by Henri Soulé for the World’s Fair in 1939 and which flourished at his Pavillon and other restaurants in the years that followed? The whole marvelous Tom Wolfe scene of it: blanquette de veau and Beaumes-de-Venise, and ladies in finery beside gentlemen in soft cashmere jackets and rolled silk ties? C’est fini!

A series of recent meals at La Grenouille suggests that isn’t so. Not so long as Charles Masson, who has run it since 1975, greets his customers at the door, quiet and French and welcoming. Not so long as people can take a seat on a scarlet banquette at his restaurant, sit beneath a spray of flowers and eat sumptuous food out of Escoffier. It has been this way since his father, also named Charles, opened the restaurant in 1962 with his wife, Gisèle.

The crowd is amazing. There are city patricians, upscale travelers, romantics celebrating anniversaries, cads with escort-service friends, priests drinking Burgundy and spooning soup past their dog collars. There is jewelry everywhere, evidence of plastic surgery.

There are Thackeray characters come to life in a modern age. Some have spent too much time in the sun, doing nothing much more than turning the pages of a book. Others, eyes darting back and forth, examine the restaurant and chart customers as handicappers do horses at Belmont: Are the flowers less resplendent than in years past? Perhaps, ever so slightly, yes. Is the carpet threadbare? Not in the least, though those waiters may qualify! Is that a daughter or lover in the corner with that old lion? Oh, please. Have the Montrachet to start?

Back in the kitchen, the executive chef, Matthew Tropeano, spoons forcemeat pike into simmering broth. He naps the result with sauce and gives the plates to waiters who have known no other service. They present their customers a paragon of quenelles de brochet in the Lyonnaise style, a textbook example of classic French cuisine.

The dish is executed perfectly, a kind of beige-on-beige masterpiece devoid of irony or deconstructionist camp. (Only those without heart would call it gefilte fish.) It is delicious without being overwhelming, without being much more than ethereal pike, light as mist, buttery rice, a shellfish cream sauce with just a hint of nutmeg, a dab of American caviar. It is wonderful to eat at La Grenouille.

The revelations start early. A waiter brings an amuse-bouche, perhaps more perfunctorily than is currently normal in most New York restaurants. He neither issues a greeting nor attempts to make the action dramatic.

“This is a split pea soup,” he says. The offering is roughly four spoonfuls’ worth. Each is a cloud of magnificent flavor — salt that raises the vegetal from its depths, cream that makes it buoyant. It lingers on the tongue. The tiny dish expands the mind.

It also concentrates its focus. For there will be no lemon grass foam to confuse matters on the menu of La Grenouille this evening, no huckleberry confit or magret sliders.

This is a classic French restaurant (with classically high prices; a three-course prix fixe dinner starts at $95). Its strength is still, as Bryan Miller wrote in The New York Times almost 20 years ago, the excellence of its stocks, the basis of its magnificent sauces.

Full article: http://events.nytimes.com/2009/12/23/dining/reviews/23rest.html?ref=style

Move on from ceviche. A lot is going on in Valparaiso, Chile

Tastes of Newly Fashionable Valparaíso, Chile

ON a July afternoon in the Chilean port city of Valparaíso, in the middle of the South American winter, I sat in the sunlit dining room at La Concepción, drinking a tart-sweet pisco sour and cutting into a perfectly seared and salted piece of grouper.

A meal this good was hard to come by when I first visited Valparaíso, just seven years earlier. Back then, Porteños, as residents are called, made great snacks: fried empanadas stuffed with shrimp and cheese, for example, or the glorious bar dish known as chorrillana, a rock-heavy, grease-slick mess of French fries, sautéed onions, chopped meat and fried egg.

But sit-down meals usually meant stiff service and overcooked meat. I recall smuggling green hot sauce into restaurants to covertly enliven whatever brown dish appeared before me.

Those hot sauce days are over. Unesco made Valparaíso’s historic quarter a World Heritage Site in 2003, and the dining scene has since evolved to match the romantic allure of the city, with its battered cobblestones and crumbling 19th-century mansions.

In its storied days before the construction of the Panama Canal, Valparaíso attracted wealthy European immigrants as the principal port of call for ships rounding Cape Horn. Much later, in the 1950s and ’60s, its decadent night life was legendary. Now Valparaíso, on Chile’s central coast, is becoming fashionable again, attracting Chilean visitors from the nearby capital of Santiago, as well as foreign travelers and expatriates.

During the past six years, about 40 new restaurants have opened in the traveler-friendly hill neighborhoods of Cerro Concepción and Cerro Alegre, according to Carlos Reyes Medel, a Chilean food critic and author of a dining guidebook to the city, “Valparaíso a la Mesa.” Entrepreneurs are lovingly restoring hundred-year-old homes and giving them new life as reasonably priced restaurants and bars, a surge of activity that Mr. Reyes Medel called “a small culinary revolution.”

So this July, determined to experience the city’s changes, I made a circuit of some of the hill neighborhoods’ best restaurants, basing my destinations on Chilean newspaper and magazine articles, Internet food forums and Mr. Reyes Medel’s advice.

My tasting spree — spread over 48 hours and easily accomplished on foot — began with a crisp glass of viognier (1,600 Chilean pesos, about $2.90 at 557 pesos to the dollar) atPoblenou, a tiny, candle-lit spot focusing on Spanish-style tapas, Chilean wine and cocktails. The husband-and-wife owners, Rodrigo Asencio, an architect, and Anke Gerris, who is Dutch, opened the business six years ago on a dark and lonely street.

“Everyone said, ‘No one is going to come here,’ ” Ms. Gerris recalled.

The street is still dark, but these days she sometimes has to turn customers away. It’s easy to see why: wood furniture made by Mr. Asencio, and a fireplace, invite lingering.

But I had reservations at Pasta e Vino, which, like Poblenou, opened in 2003 as a sort of culinary pioneer. It has generated national acclaim ever since.

I found it packed and noisy, even on a dreary winter Thursday, forcing a threesome of young waiters to rush about with baskets of house-made bread. The warehouse-chic dining room — high ceilings, white walls, poured concrete — is in what used to be a dirt-floored corner store.

The owners, Verónica Alfageme, a Chilean raised in the Canary Islands, and Paolo Ercole, an Italian, keep the food as straightforward as the décor. The long menu consists almost entirely of house-made pastas, which on my visit included squid-ink pappardelle tossed with shellfish and white wine, beet gnocchi with butter and herbs, spaghetti carbonara and a decadent duck ravioli in a port-and-prune cream sauce. The priciest entree, a gnocchi topped with black caviar, went for 9,500 pesos.

A delightfully earthy special of artichoke ravioli reflected Ms. Alfageme’s emphasis on cooking with whatever is fresh and seasonal.

“It is entirely what it is,” she told me. “Super, super pure.”

The next morning my search was for pure caffeine. I headed to Café Vinilo, which channels Valparaíso’s bohemian, Old World vibe with frothy cappuccinos, cracked tiles and a communal marble dining counter, a butcher block salvaged from the building’s former life as a carnicería. At night, a young crowd comes for wine and Chilean-influenced bistro fare, and since vinilo means vinyl, the staff plays scratchy old jazz records — actual records — until closing at 2 a.m.

From Café Vinilo, it was on to lunch at La Concepción, opened in late 2005 by an American couple, Jude and Robert Gerrity. They try to use local products, including the meat in the excellent walnut-crusted ostrich (9,800 pesos). The restaurant is in a 19th-century house, and the Gerritys have placed tables in the back garden, which has prime views of container ships far below in Valparaíso’s working port.

Full article: http://travel.nytimes.com/2009/11/08/travel/08journeys.html

And what about Dubai??? Let me know your Christmas hot spot….

Holiday Tables: Bon Appétit to Guten Appetit

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/20/travel/20journeys.html?_r=1&ref=travel

DURING the holiday season, the already difficult task of deciding where to dine in Europe’s major cities becomes Herculean. Many restaurants, especially the more intimate, independently run places, are closed on Dec. 24 and 25; high-end hotel restaurants are more likely to stay open but can be stiff, expensive and full of tourists.

“Although I love Paris 365 days a year,Christmas can be a tricky time to visit,” Beth Marlin, the editor of Paris-Insider.com, wrote in an e-mail message. “The week between Christmas and New Years can be disappointing for tourists who expect everything to be open (museums, restaurants) according to a normal schedule. It is possible to arrive somewhere and find a sign in the window that says ‘Closed until after January 1st.’ ”

That doesn’t mean that tourists should avoid Paris during the holidays. On the contrary, Ms. Marlin writes: “A walk down the Champs-Élysées at night with the trees lit up, or along the Rue du Faubourg St.-Honoré can be downright magical. With the right itinerary, it can be spectacular.”

Sometimes it’s a matter of planning. Take, for example, Le Jules Verne, Alain Ducasse’s restaurant nestled overheard in the Eiffel Tower. While it’s open on Christmas Eve and Christmas, only a few tables are available for lunch on Christmas Day.

Here are suggestions for places to eat in five European cities. Some are open on Christmas Eve, some on Christmas Day, some both. And many are offering special menus. (Call ahead for reservations and to check availability.)

PARIS

Just a skip away from Jules Verne is the well-regarded Au Bon Accueil (14, rue de Monttessuy, 75007; 33-1-4705-4611; www.aubonaccueilparis.com), a modern bistro owned by the restaurateur Jacques Lacipiere. The chef, Naobumi Assaki, turns out precise, elegant food in a friendly setting.

On Dec. 24 and 25, the restaurant will be offering a five-course Christmas lunch menu (60 euros a person, or $87 at $1.45 to the euro, without wine) that brings to mind the sort of fare a food-loving French family might dine on at home, including oysters, chicken with a turnip purée and black truffle jus, a selection of rich French cheeses and a dark-chocolate mille-feuille.

LONDON

The quintessential holiday meal in London is all about mince pies and puddings. Food-obsessed travelers can pick up preordered pies and puddings to go (until late afternoon on Dec. 23) at the widely acclaimed St. John Restaurant (26 St. John Street, EC1M; 44-20-7251-0848; www.stjohnrestaurant.co.uk).

The Christmas Feasting menus being offered by Fergus Henderson, St. John’s pioneering chef, are available only until Dec. 23. But the Butlers Wharf Chop House (36e Shad Thames, SE1; 44-20-7403-3403; www.danddlondon.com) is open on Christmas Eve and for lunch on Christmas Day. Not only does the traditional British restaurant serve up an excellent holiday meal with all the fixings (mince pies included), it’s perched on the Thames and looks out over the Tower Bridge. The three-course meal is £170 for two, or $272 at $1.60 to the pound.

STOCKHOLM

On setting alone, Stockholm’s grand Operakallaren (The Royal Opera House, Karl XII:s torg; 46-8-676-5800; www.eng.operakallaren.se), situated near the banks of the Norrstrom and next to the Royal Palace, is a winner. But when it comes to the Christmas Eve Julbord — a holiday version of the traditional smorgasbord that includes specialties like glazed ham and rice porridge spiked with cinnamon — it’s the dining room of choice for many local families. In fact, according to the restaurant’s chef, Stefano Catenacci, a reservation there for lunch on Christmas Eve is so sought-after that the next opening for a table in the main dining room is in 2011.

Fortunately the Operakallaren has a lot of extra rooms. “We have space left, but not in the main dining room,” Mr. Catenacci said. “There are tables upstairs in the banqueting room, and just yesterday we chose to open up the opera bar, a small room where you sit up to 80 people.” The Julbord at Operakallaren starts at 750 kronor to 980 kronor a person, or about $110 to $140 at 6.95 kronor to the dollar.

ROME

Though fish plays a part in the Swedish Julbord, Christmas Eve in Rome takes it to another level: a seven-course dinner in which each dish contains a different type of seafood.

Jessica Stewart, the Rome manager for Context, a boutique travel company that organizes urban walking tours, recommends Casa Bleve (Via del Teatro Valle, 48-49; 39-06-686-5970; www.casableve.it), a palatial winte bar within the former courtyard of the 16th-century Palazzo Medici Lante della Rovere.

This is the first year that Casa Bleve will be serving its version of the traditional Christmas Eve fish feast (for 145 euros a person), and it sounds like one worth seeking out. Courses include a seared mackerel with buffalo’s milk burrata and roasted tomatoes, an octopus and chanterelle mushroom soup with fried purple potatoes and pasta stuffed with red shrimp on a bed of artichoke cream.

On Christmas Day, when most Roman families are eating leftovers at home, Ms. Stewart suggests booking a table at the popular Hostaria dell’Orso (Via dei Soldati, 25C; 39-06- 6830-1192; www.hdo.it), which is open on Dec. 24 and 25.

MUNICH

Around Christmastime, this Bavarian city becomes a winter wonderland, with its Baroquearchitecture and twinkling markets filled with red-cheeked locals catching up over sausages and mulled wine.

It’s also famous for one of the most decadent and delicious Christmas meals Europe has to offer: the traditional holiday roasted goose, typically served with dumplings and red cabbage. The century-old restaurant Spatenhaus an der Oper (Residenzstrasse 12; 49-89-290-7060), in an elegant historic building overlooking the opera house, will be offering freshly cooked goose on Dec. 24. Try it at lunchtime so you have a chance to walk off those calories. A meal is 24.90 euros a person.

Still hungry on Christmas Day after all that goose? Head to the city’s historic center to join the locals for a glass of beer and weisswurst at a beer hall like the Ratskeller(Marienplatz 8; 49-89-219-9890; www.ratskeller.com) or Weisses Bräuhaus (Tal 7; 49-89-290-1380; www.weisses-brauhaus.de).

An american in Paris.

A Hamburger in Paris

MARKUS EBNER

The recession has made one American staple an export hit: le comfort food. New York restaurants have long been pushing dishes like truffled mac and cheese, and now Paris is woofing down grub Américain. At Hand (39, rue de Richelieu), so called for Have a Nice Day, the owner, Benjamin Tremoulet, a ruggedly handsome dude who always has a bottle of Budweiser in his hand, has brought the spoils of California to the City of Light: “Surfing got me hooked on the culture of great burgers and beers,” he says. With its D.I.Y interior — hanging light bulbs, vintage school chairs and bright red floors — Hand is only a French fry’s throw from the Carrousel du Louvre, so the fashion flock can easily scarf down a snack between runway shows. The editors from Citizen K and Elle, as well as gals like Mademoiselle Agnès, a French television personality, are already fans of Hand’s carrot cake, pecan pie and 10 different kinds of burgers. Our favorite is — bien sûr— the triple cheeseburger with Roquefort, Cheddar and Emmental.

http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/07/a-hamburger-in-paris/?ref=travel

The next big thing

Restaurant of the Future?

A new model is changing the dining landscape across the country. The rise of small plates, big bars and hotel restaurants.

KATY MCLAUGHLIN

The Bazaar by José Andrés, a Beverly Hills, Calif., bar and restaurant, cost more than $12 million to build. It serves no appetizers or entrees: All meals are made up of tapas, and signature items include drinks and canapés dipped in vats of liquid nitrogen. First-time visitors might wander the ground floor of the SLS Hotel looking for the restaurant—and not realize that they are already standing in it. A palm-reader roams the floor, offering predictions.

This restaurant—packed at a time when many others are discounting or closing their doors—may be the future of fine dining.

A tapas-style menu, a hotel location and a major focus on the bar scene are hallmarks of restaurants around the country that are best surviving the economic turmoil of the past year. These components are also likely to be the defining traits of the next generation of high-end restaurants, say many leading restaurateurs, and are already being deployed in cities across the country.

Since opening a little over a year ago, the Bazaar has grossed $13 million, says Sam Nazarian, the chief executive of SBE Entertainment Group, the hospitality company that owns the restaurant and the SLS Hotel. Only 50 restaurants in the country grossed more last year, according to data from Restaurant & Institutions, a trade publication. That makes the restaurant a bright spot for Mr. Nazarian, whose company has recently made significant investments in hotels, several of which carry large debt loads, only to face a steep downturn in the luxury hotel business.

Prime-time reservations in the 417-seat restaurant are hard to land, and Natalie Portman and Salma Hayek are regulars, the restaurant says. David Beckham was there on a recent Sunday night. (Representatives for the celebrities declined to comment or didn’t respond to requests for comment.) Mr. Andrés, the chef, was recently chosen as one of GQ Magazine’s Men of the Year.

Meanwhile, the $8 billion fine-dining business—the category of meals costing $70 and up—has been the hardest-hit sector of the struggling restaurant industry. Nearly every city has lost one of its most famous restaurants in the past two years, from the Striped Bass and Susanna Foo in Philadelphia to D’Amico Cucina in Minneapolis to Boston’s Icarus and New York’s Chanterelle.

In this atmosphere, “a hundred percent of people told us this was crazy before we started,” Mr. Nazarian says. The restaurant is a collection of spaces, with kitchens, tables and lounge chairs spread over 12,500 square feet. A large, dark bar anchoring the space is flanked by two dining areas—one decorated in white, the other in black with red accents—and a pastel-accented dessert area, called the Patisserie. The bar area gets so packed that the ho

tel sometimes puts up a velvet rope at the entrance to the Bazaar to control the crowd.

The menu is Spanish, divided into dishes that are traditional and “modern”—the unusual creations of Mr. Andrés, who in his youth cooked at Spain’s El Bulli, where chef Ferran Adrià pioneered the field of molecular gastronomy. A mobile cart of liquid nitrogen wheels up to tables that order a $20 Brazilian cocktail, which is dipped and instantly frozen in the steaming brew. Another cart offers “Cotton Candy Foie Gras,” a block of rich paté that a waiter twirls in spun sugar. A third cart serves “caviar cones,” fish eggs served in paper-thin pastry cones. The average check at the Bazaar is $96.44 a person.

Here are some of the strategies behind the Bazaar’s success, and a forecast of how they might shape the fine-dining landscape in the near future.

Snacks Replace the Meal

THE BAZAAR: Serves only tapas, or small plates, which can be ordered a la carte or as part of a multicourse menu.

THE FUTURE? Small-plates restaurants have been growing throughout the decade, but in the past year have made a quantum leap in popularity as restaurateurs look for ways to offer customers cheaper food without appearing to discount.

In November, New York’s Tabla restaurant, from restaurateur Danny Meyer, scrapped its mandatory $89 tasting menu in favor of an a la carte menu with many small plates. Popular new small-plates restaurants from top chefs around the country range from Michelle Bernstein’s Sra. Martinez in Miami to Ginger Park, with chef Patricia Yeo, in Boston to Samar by Stephan Pyles in Dallas. Over the past four years, Philadelphia chef Jose Garces has built a small empire of five small-plates restaurants and plans to open three more next year.

The small-plates format is a clever way around consumers’ psychological barriers to restaurant spending. Consumer research shows that patrons order more when individual dishes are priced fairly low, and they don’t spend time adding up the costs. Especially while the economy is soft, many fine-dining restaurants will offer a small-plates menu, either as a bar menu or instead of a traditional menu.

OR A FAD? Tapas are a Spanish tradition but not all food works tapas-style, and some diners will be reluctant to give up the familiar appetizer-entrée-dessert approach to a nice dinner out.

It’s in a Hotel

THE BAZAAR: On the ground floor of the trendy SLS Hotel

THE FUTURE? Hotel restaurants have long been associated with mediocrity, but these days, hotels are among the only investors willing to bankroll big, splashy new restaurants. Restaurateurs say fine dining will largely migrate into hotels, resorts and some commercial developments in the coming years.

Some of the most notable restaurant openings in recent months have been in hotels, including Mr. Meyer’s Maialino, which opened in November at New York’s Gramercy Park Hotel. Chef David Chang, who rose to fame through his Momofuku restaurants, plans to open his first hotel restaurant, Má Pêche, in New York’s Chambers Hotel in the first quarter of next year. Wolfgang Puck’s company is in negotiations to open a restaurant at the Ritz Carlton in downtown Los Angeles.

Three years ago, restaurateur Stephen Starr raised $15 million to build Buddakan and $11 million for Morimoto, both non-hotel restaurants in New York. “Getting that kind of money today for restaurants is impossible. It’ll never happen in our lifetime again,” Mr. Starr says.

OR A FAD? Even marriages between stylish hotels and famous chefs can go wrong. British celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay recently transferred interests in his restaurants in Los Angeles and New York back to the hotels in which they are located, amid rocky performances. Jean-Georges Vongerichten, who has expanded aggressively in hotels around the world, recently separated from the Chambers Hotel in Minneapolis, which chose a local restaurateur, Richard D’Amico, to open a restaurant there instead.

The Bar Is the Focus

THE BAZAAR: The Bazaar’s Bar Centro is located in the middle of the restaurant. About 35% of the Bazaar’s gross sales are from alcohol, easily beating the 25% fine-dining industry standard.

THE FUTURE? All restaurants aspire to high alcohol sales, because the margins are better than on food sales. In the past, fine-dining restaurants relied mainly on selling wine for liquor revenue. But during the recession, many have gambled with their haute images and gotten more aggressive about selling cocktails and beer. Some have ripped out dining room tables to expand their bar areas, and many have launched bar menus. Even the famed New York restaurant Per Se rolled out a lounge menu where diners can order a la carte (the dining room is strictly prix fixe).

OR A FAD? An oversized bar area can strip a high-end restaurant of its classy image—and take the focus off a chef’s handiwork. “Turning into bars is a terrible thing for our industry,” says Joe Bastianich, partner with Mario Batali in 20 restaurants. Many restaurateurs will focus on boosting bar sales as a temporary survival strategy, until the economy picks up.

Rejecting Tradition

THE BAZAAR: With no white tablecloths in the main dining areas—once the ubiquitous symbol of fine dining—and some food served in tin cans, the restaurant keeps things casual, even though the average check is nearly $100.

THE FUTURE? White tablecloths are practically a relic. At City Center, the $8.5 billion Las Vegas development that started opening venues this month, only two restaurants out of 28 currently plan to use white linen. Most restaurateurs say that at least for the next two or three years, they will be opening more casual places.

OR A FAD? As restaurants increasingly go downscale, a handful of restaurateurs see an opportunity to grab the fine-dining spotlight. Mr. Bastianich has eliminated a casual side room off the expensive Del Posto restaurant in New York. The goal: To distinguish Del Posto as more luxurious and special. “It’s our couture line,” Mr. Bastianich says. High-profile openings for next year include Patina Restaurant Group’s restaurant slated for New York’s Lincoln Center, with chef Jonathan Benno, and Twist, a luxurious white-tablecloth restaurant opening at City Center. Of note: Both of these projects were planned well before the recession struck.

The Restaurant Is the Entertainment

THE BAZAAR: Mr. Nazarian first made his name in the hospitality business opening Los Angeles nightclubs, and a nightclub atmosphere permeates the restaurant. Theatrical touches include a palm reader on weekends and a velvet rope on nights when the bar is at capacity.

THE FUTURE? Mr. Chang predicts that in the future, more fine-dining chefs will replace waiters and serve the food themselves, as they do at his Momofuku Ko in New York. D’Amico Kitchen in Minneapolis splashes a live streamed video of the action inside its kitchen on an outside wall. Several restaurants, from Oliveto in Oakland, Calif., to L20 in Chicago, publish elaborate blogs about their ingredients and cooking.

OR A FAD? Restaurateurs see theatricality as increasingly important, but most say they are wary of crossing the line into a nightclub atmosphere. More restaurants will find ways to exploit the public’s interest in food culture with blogs, kitchen visits and face time with chefs, but few will go as far as the Bazaar does.

Wild Cuisine

THE BAZAAR: Half the menu belongs to the category of avant-garde cuisine, or molecular gastronomy, which uses advances in culinary science to create new flavors and textures. Mr. Andrés’s “olive oil bon bon,” for example, looks like a tiny glass sculpture but is in fact olive oil encased in solidified sugar; bite down and it bursts flavorfully in the mouth.

THE FUTURE? Avant-garde cuisine has transformed fine dining in Europe. American avant-garde chefs, from Grant Achatz of Chicago’s Alinea to Wylie Dufresne of WD-50 in New York, are heroes to many young chefs.

OR A FAD? Chefs and food writers have embraced molecular gastronomy as the future, but restaurant history is littered with failed avant-garde restaurants, from Atlanta’s Blais, which lasted six months, to La Broche in Miami, a short-lived outpost of the well-regarded Madrid restaurant.

Restaurateurs predict that molecular gastronomy will keep growing—in the future, every major city might have one place serving it—but that most restaurant fare will remain conventional.

The Open Floor Plan

THE BAZAAR: The restaurant is spread out over 12,500 square feet of hotel lobby, divided into two distinctly designed dining areas, a tasting room, a dessert area, a bar and lounge and a retail shop.

THE FUTURE? Fine-dining restaurants of the future will likely have free-flowing floor plans that are loosely divided into distinct areas, several restaurateurs say. The goal is to get diners to come back more often, offering them a different ambience each time. Many restaurants will eliminate separate private dining rooms, particularly in cities like New York and Los Angeles, where real estate is especially expensive. These rooms were built throughout the decade as corporate dinner parties boomed, but sat empty during a steep decline in corporate entertaining this past year.

OR A FAD? Once the economy bounces back and companies return to spending on dinners and entertainment, many restaurants will court their lucrative business aggressively and again offer private dining rooms.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703558004574582381819140954.html?mod=dist_smartbrief

Hi dude!

One Hundred Things Restaurant Staffers Should Never Do (Part 1)

By Bruce Buschel

 

Herewith is a modest list of dos and don’ts for servers at the seafood restaurant I am building. Veteran waiters, moonlighting actresses, libertarians and baristas will no doubt protest some or most of what follows. They will claim it homogenizes them or stifles their true nature. And yet, if 100 different actors play Hamlet, hitting all the same marks, reciting all the same lines, cannot each one bring something unique to that role?

1. Do not let anyone enter the restaurant without a warm greeting.

2. Do not make a singleton feel bad. Do not say, “Are you waiting for someone?” Ask for a reservation. Ask if he or she would like to sit at the bar.

3. Never refuse to seat three guests because a fourth has not yet arrived.

Check the 100 List at: http://boss.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/29/one-hundred-things-restaurant-staffers-should-never-do-part-one/