Category: Zines

Adventures in Restaurant Service

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Two recent stories in the national food press have given ELV pause.

Both concern the attitudes and arrogance of “hot” restaurants when it comes to serving the public.

One, called Rogue 24 in Washington, D. C. serves 24-course “journey” menus (taking over three hours) and requires its patrons to sign a two-page contract.

The second concerns a service nightmare endured by Alan Richman at a hot New York hipster hangout, which led to a laughable, illogical allegation by the restaurant that he had harassed a waitress by firmly patting her ass during his visit. (ELV will believe Richman goes around swatting waitresses’ asses when he sees Michelle Obama in a porn film.)

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BLUE RIBBON Reviewed in Las Vegas Weekly

ELV note: The following review appears in today’s Las Vegas Weekly, and can be accessed on its website by clicking here, if you want to read it in its original, on-line format. Our staff suggests doing so…but also suggests scrolling down this page to indulge your eyes in some of our tasty snaps.

[nggallery id=1276]I don’t get Blue Ribbon. That doesn’t mean I don’t like it; it just means I don’t groove on its pricey, all-over-the-map menu. I’ve eaten there six times and never had a bad bite, but still can’t explain why it’s so appealing to everyone from fussy food-o-philes to the clippy cloppy heeled set. But wildly popular it is. Raw fish aficionados flock here, carnivores crave it, and women who’ve seen way too much Sex and the City practically use it as a private club. Maybe it all comes down to the fried chicken.

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Have Celebrity Chefs Lost Their Luster?

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Daniel Boulud recently closed his two Vancouver restaurants. Gordon Ramsay has opened and closed outlets from Prague to Los Angeles in the past five years, and some wonder if the whole “celebrity chef” thing has suffered from a surfeit of sensationalism (or “fabulous fatigue” as the New York Times dubbed it). Our friend and colleague Steve Dolinsky weighs in with thoughts on these and other chef/restaurant phenomena (and quite a bit of discussion about the Vegas restaurant scene) in this article in the Montreal Globe and Mail (where Ramsay recently opened to (what sounds like) a collective shrug).

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