Letter of the Week – An Open Letter to the Overly Ambitious

The trouble with empire-building chefs is, they want the same level of respect and adoration for their tenth restaurant as they got for their first one. – ELV
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Dear ELV,

You used to love my restaurant, but ever since we expanded to multiple locations, you have gone out of your way to ignore us, and, even worse, to diss our operation at every turn. I know you had a bad experience lately, and we know we dropped the ball, but won’t you give us another chance?

Signed,

Eagerly Awaiting Redemption

Dear Overly Eager,

Here is the problem: good restaurants and chefs and owners build up a level of trust, affection and respect with the public and press when they are pouring all their energy into the excellence of their product.

Then, they often get bored, switch gears, seek expansion, try to get rich, or do a variety of things to keep their heads and wallets in the game. When that happens (and it happens much to soon and with alarming frequency with American chefs and restaurateurs) the same level of devotion starts to fade.

What replaces it is a devotion to making money.

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Everybody CUT, Everybody CUT Loose – Foodloose!

I’ve got basically two “bucket lists” I’ve been trying to check off: bang off the Top Ten on the ELV list (I’ll need to find a Three Stooges-esqe way of eating at Guy Savoy and the Robuchon Duo, dropping that much $dosh$ is not in the equation), and the lofty, near Sisyphean task of trying every steakhouse in town, truly a Guinness Book/Ripley’s Believe It or Not worthy feat .

Imagine my luck, then, when I can do two at the same time!  CUT gets the #1 spot in the paperback guide that John, Max, and Al put together, partly because the top ten are in alphabetic order.  Or rather, entirely because of that…  I’ve only been to three of The Ten (and Marche was more of a brunch), but I can see the crowning jewel of Puck’s Vegas menagerie busting the top five.  And of course, how necessary is a steakhouse in a list of Vegas restaurants?

Imagine my luck again! It was Carnevale!  Not specifically relevant, but I just really like clowns, so there were a bunch of these harlequins milling around outside, completely silent and miming.

 
HILARIOUS CLOWNS

As much as I would have liked to continue that surreal air of whatever sick stuff those wacky Rothschilds get up to, the inside of CUT actually played down that feel of exclusivity and pomp.

I know I’m a sucker for that kind of stuff, I mean I’d be thrilled drinking Napoleon’s wine out of Charlemagne’s skull in a Merovingian castle, but I can appreciate it as a power move to forego that.  Comfortable, modern, not TOO loud, and I could see how people would dig some old Stones hit as they dig on their rib eye.  I suppose that’s the one real thing I felt was off kilter though, the music.  It does fit their Beverly Hills location as “the” spot for wheeling and dealing and all that degeneracy media stuff.

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