rant: fine dining

[TimeForGuinness]

I understand enjoying a good, well-prepared meal and it's always fun to eat when you don't have to make it. Also fun to try new things, but it's a weird thing when people get elitist about restaurant food. Someone else made something and you gave them money for it. It's not really an accomplishment. I'd think if anything people would get snobby about their own cooking ability. I'm by no means a great cook and I could never just improvise a dish, but the only food pictures I've ever taken are when I've made something difficult. I usually take a picture of the paella I make at Easter, even though so far I haven't been completely satisfied with how it's turned out. Partly it's to have a record of what I did, but mostly just because it takes so damn long to make.

I think it's weird when people get elitist about anything.

[Diddy]

That's a guess $12-15 is where most of their plates run. I wouldn't say its a rip off, your paying for an experience as well as your food. I'm sure the egg is layed by a free range heritage bird on an organic diet. Potatos are probably organic. I'm sure the tuna is flown in fresh overnight. There are people who see a lot of added value in those things. It also raises the input cost up so its probably not priced that bad if that's what your into. If you look at it and see a $15 egg your probably not going there anyway, unless of course mrs Jim tells you you are.

[ghostrunner]

I should say though, it is somewhat helpful when you see photos on Yelp. You can't really tell how good something is, but you can sometimes tell when it's lousy.

[Diddy]

I don't get t either but I don't post a lot on social media anyway. There was an article, might have been linked in this thread not sure where I found it, anyway it found that a meal out at a fine dining resturant takes something like 30 min longer now because of people taking pics and commentng in social media.

[TimeForGuinness]

Ghost, I'm with you. I never photograph food I get at a restaurant. I think it's the new form of hipster elitism. I think I've said this on this board before. 20 years ago it was "I got this available-on-the-Japanese-tour-only 12-inch of Radiohead remixes." Now, the internet has flattened that. Everyone has heard that collection of Radiohead remixes. Everyone has heard the new Rae Sremmurd song the day it hits the web and has an instant opinion. So now, it's food. It's "here's a pic of my $400 meal at Alinea." It cracks me up to no end when someone takes a pic of a cocktail. A cocktail! Brown, with some orange peel as garnish, in a glass. There couldn't be anything less interesting to share, visually. But people think it's important to put it out there with a tag on it saying "Hey, I was at this place tonight!"

Some people like to brag...other people are just looking to have discussions with similar tastes. I guess it comes down to the tone of the person.

Owning an "available-on-the-Japanese-tour-only 12-inch of Radiohead remixes" is pretty neat in my book even if it's out all over the place. Kinda like owning VHS/LD original versions of Star Wars, it's neat. If someone uses that to belittle someone else, well, then they're just an [expletive].

That being said, I've never heard of Rae Sremmurd, so I'll give it a listen.

[jim]

If your meal does this I think it's ok to photograph or video it:

[Diddy]

It's an advertisement. It really doesn't matter how good you are if no one knows who you are. I'm really supprised that someone could be their way through one of those that easily. There is a lot of science and more that goes into being a good chef then just being able to follow a recipe.

You can BS your way through one of those shows if you are a good cook. Those shows require you to cook, challenge-to-challenge. You have to be a good cook.

You can work your way to a certain spot in the restaurant world without being a great cook, a lesser cook than those on reality shows, if you have the very specific skills required for restaurant work, most of them stress- and time management-related. Prepping a station starting at 1pm, being ready for the first guest when you open, tickets firing off, chef yelling at you, dietary restrictions and allergies causing you to change up routine, the dishwasher dropping a pile of hotel pans on the floor, chef yelling at you, servers sending on-the-fly pickups because they forgot to ring something, a million other things. If you can manage that, and execute the dishes the way chef wants them done, you can succeed without being a very good cook.

Maybe I'm giving some of them to much credit, I guess a lot of them do give them most of their ingredients so it's not the same as coming up with a new dish all the time. I don't watch any of toes shows regularly but do from time to time when I'm flipping through the channels.

[33anda3rd]

Owning an "available-on-the-Japanese-tour-only 12-inch of Radiohead remixes" is pretty neat in my book even if it's out all over the place. Kinda like owning VHS/LD original versions of Star Wars, it's neat. If someone uses that to belittle someone else, well, then they're just an [expletive].

I didn't mean people do it to belittle, just to kind of show off a bit. I got this rare record. I have this rare laserdisc. Yeah, same thing, not bad things, just same thing. Instead of showing off a record collection people are showing off places they eat on social media. They're not doing it to belittle, but to prop up their own rep as someone who's interesting.

[33anda3rd]

Maybe I'm giving some of them to much credit, I guess a lot of them do give them most of their ingredients so it's not the same as coming up with a new dish all the time. I don't watch any of toes shows regularly but do from time to time when I'm flipping through the channels.

Even if they don't give them ingredients, there's a skill they have to have. Basics. Can you make mayo? Then you can make aioli, and a million variations--chili aioli, herbed aioli, etc. Can you make a stock? You can make a reduction. Can you cook a steak perfectly? Great. You can compete on these shows.

But can you have 4 salmon entress, 6 duck entrees, 3 veg entrees, four tasting menu courses all in the fire at once with chef yelling "how far out on this?" and you have to tell him exactly that it's gonna be 2 minutes and 15 seconds so he doesn't scream at you for being 30 seconds late meeting a dish from cold side that was done in 2:15 and is now dying in the window? That's a different animal.*

Neither is better than the other. Neither is more or less noble. But like 98% of the the really good cooks on most reality shows--Top Chef is an exception--are not by any means worthy of the label 'chef' because they are not the head of a restaurant kitchen, able to cook great, able to crush hot line on a busy service, and able to oversee the menu, food cost, labor, labor cost, etc. That's what "chef" does. The people on TV are cooks.

*Edited to add this little anecdote.

Before we opened I spent two weeks as an unpaid stage in the kitchen at a Chicago restaurant called Boka. I'd worked on the rooms/revenue/ops side of hotels for years but never in food and beverage. First night at Boka, hey, everyone, meet this guy, he's here to stage, he's opening a restaurant and is staging for experience. Everyone looks at me like "this dingus is gonna be in our way the next couple weeks." They put me on cold side. They had me peel salsify. My hands got stained. After the fact "yeah, stage, you always wear gloves when you peel salsify." The girl on cold line who I was to shadow asks how my knife skills are. "Great!" Ok, mince these chives. After about 15 seconds: "You're [expletive] those things up royally." She takes my knife. Whap whap whap, like a machine, hers are identical. Mine are a mess. An hour later I am nervously trying not to get yelled at and I cut myself and bleed on her station. She looks at me like she wants to murder me and have the dishwasher toss me out in the alley. "Take my [expletive] board to [expletive] dish, get a finger cot on that and get back here." I kept going back for two weeks. I thought about not, after the first week. I'd seen what I came to see, but I stuck it out more to prove to myself I could do it than anything else. It was hard. Really [expletive] hard. Like, the hardest thing I've ever done. Something I'd never want to do 70+ hours/week like many of them do. I don't have the personality for it.

[jim]

I may be bragging but nobody makes a better steak than me. I might not know what stock is, or areola or chilli areola, or a reduction. But steak? Now you are talking my language. The key is hot coals, to flip it only once, and don't jab it while it's on the grill.