The Perils Of A Young Chef Skipping The Line To Celebrity
Ten-thirty approached and we were only half-way through the menu. Remember how we were told it would end at 10:00? My friend was getting visibly nervous. He had an engagement party that night, which was skipping the majority of to join me, but he promised to be there for the toast at 11:00. I told him it was okay to go, that this dinner was becoming ridiculous, and we hadn’t even been checked up on by the chef or the PR guy once.
A waitress came by to ask how everything was, and my friend, in part to vent our frustrations, and in part to apologize for what he was about to do (leave early), replied, “Everything tastes great! I just wish it wasn’t taking quite so long…”
“Well,” she replied with a forced-sympathetic smile, “It’s taking a long time, but this is eight courses, so…”
I restrained myself from telling her that Per Se serves twelve courses in four hours.
Remember during Top Chef: Seattle Restaurant Wars, when Stefan told off the judges’ table while they were dining, and Gail Simmons and Padma Lakshmi balked at being scolded by staff? At being made to feel stupid? Oh, I realized. This is that.
And speaking of those oh-so-impressive eight courses, you know, a little restraint might have been shown. I’ve been to more modest three- or five-course tasting menus that have little bonus bites between what’s advertised, much to everyone’s delight. At least three of the courses on this menu could have been eliminated from the spread and offered as a treat, rather than reaching for an ambitious eight courses with no relief from the funeral dirge pace.
But, again: pop-ups are risky, and I understood the pitfalls. If this was, indeed, meant to be a coming out party, I was certain the jovial PR schmoozing was still to come, and I’d be charmed by the chef soon enough. All of the food was very good, in spite of some very nit-picky execution errors. (Somewhere along the way I bet myself that the liquid nitrogen dish would come out with the smoke effect long-diffused after how long it was probably going to take to get to my table. I won. My “scallop” dish — it was a mushroom, in keeping with the vegan theme — was so forcefully manhandled on its way to me that it had slid off its precariously plated center and tipped over with its pretty spoon schmear unschmeared. I happily nudged him back into place, but mentally noted that a food critic wouldn’t be so kind. Sloppy, someone would call it.)
No one ever came by to speak with us. No one ever came by to apologize again. No one ever came to thank me for being flexible. It was 11:30 PM when my last dessert course finally dropped. I finished it and left, by myself, with no one but the security guard hired to bounce the front door wishing me a good night, sort of baffled by how utterly unable to do my job I was left by this PR nightmare. We’re a site that covers personalities; I hadn’t exchanged a single word with the chef. I sort of got the feeling this guy I had been emailing with was someone’s “PR rep” like I “associate produced” a movie that one time. (Read: I went to Costco and helped meal-plan craft services. The end.)
“This is everything that’s wrong with the restaurant industry,” my coworker rage-texted in solidarity with me. I remembered her story about meeting Danny Meyer from earlier this week. She had recently introduced herself to him at Union Square Cafe while she was eating there one night, and had what was obviously the industry standard of hospitable experiences.
“He asked if I’d been before, if I’d enjoyed dinner, and specifically asked me what I’d eaten,” she told me, saying she gave a small critique on an appetizer. “And then we fist-bumped.”
But of course that was her experience with Danny Meyer. He runs the hospitality game. He’s been running restaurants for more years than this kid has been alive. Whereas this 20-year-old’s end game was very clearly to get an agent. Was I being too harsh? It was made obvious to me that representation was the priority of the evening from the fifteen minutes of conversation I actually managed with his PR.
But wasn’t this pop-up supposed to be a coming out party for his eventual brick-and-mortar restaurant? In spite of the fact that there was nothing wrong with the food, at no point in the evening did it ever seem to be about the food. It certainly wasn’t about demonstrating a successful restaurant experience. The dining room was completely barren, not so much as an accent alighted on anything. And he had a point of view, he was camera-friendly, and he could cook. So should it have mattered that the “restaurant” aspect of the night totally blew up in his face? I feel like I can’t really cover him as a contender, because I had no sense of his goals. The disconnect between what the night was advertised as being about, and what it turned out to be was so stark.
I can’t help but think that, no matter how awe-inspiring his story might have been, there’s a reason 20-year-olds should either be in culinary school getting their asses kicked, or on a line getting their asses kicked, and not running the show. The absurdity of a 20-year-old with his own restaurant set in as I watched the night I had imagined would be an amazing feat implode. I arrived ready to pounce on this baby chef, along with the rest of the agents in that open kitchen, eager to be the one to “discover” him and formally declare our early support. Something as basic as simple points of service failed him, and devastatingly. But he was already trying to pitch himself to TV execs. It underscored how ill-prepared he was to join the ranks of our most respected subjects, and I, ever-desperate to champion millenials in my own defense, was genuinely disappointed.
