Most people would not want to go to a restaurant where he or she would not feel comfortable, which ranges from places that are way too loud to those where an attitude of snobbism reigns. Yet many people do. The loud restaurants are now legion, usually by design, so as to give the evening a sense of excitement and razzle dazzle. Indeed, some chef-owners deliberately want the piped-in music to blast the glassware off the table. Many such places may well have good food, but so often they are simply more a restaurant-of-the-moment that the media have declared “hot.” The food hardly matters to the crowd, mostly on the young side, who care more about seeing and being seen.
        This applies just as readily to the extreme opposite: a restaurant where the restaurateur believes you should feel privileged to dine at his or her establishment and passes that information off to a staff paid to act more like gatekeepers than captains and waiters. Fortunately, even before Covid, this kind of behavior had pretty much faded away, even at those temples of French haute cuisine where there really was a Siberia, as well as places like ‘21’ Club (now closed), whose doorman was once quoted about newcomers, “Why should I be nice to these people, when I don’t know them?” Most of those places are now gone.
        Today, rare is the snooty maître d’ who puts you in your place rather than your seat; long gone are the Louis XV trappings that were dated the day they went up; and though it still goes on, bribing the head waiter for a “good table” is the surest way to get you marked as a patsy.
        Still, many people are intimidated at the thought of going to a truly fine dining restaurant in fear that they may be made to feel ill at ease and discomfited. Such people ignorantly contend that “nobody wants to eat at those places anymore,” when in fact, both pre-Covid and after, those dining rooms are always packed.  Indeed, the chances of getting a snub are higher at an expensive steakhouse with a big expense account clientele than at a stunning French or Italian restaurant that may only serve 100 people each night.
        There will always be those people who, simply, feel ill at ease dining “fancy.” Correction: Americans who feel intimidated by posh décor and menus with unfamiliar fare. French men and women may prefer their local bistro or Italians their neighborhood trattoria, but will not feel out of place in a high-end dining room. The reason is simple: They were raised with basic ideas of manners, dress and taste, whereas many Americans are not. The days of required, even requested, jackets and ties for men are, sadly, gone, because so many men bristle at the thought of buttoning their shirt or throwing on a jacket. Unfortunately, this translates into showing up at a high-end restaurant wearing jeans, t-shirt and sneakers on the moronic rationale that “clothes don’t make the food taste better,” which is like saying that wearing shorts and a tank top to a funeral doesn’t make the honoree any less dead.
        These same men also seem obtuse to women’s appreciation of men in a suit and tie, especially since most women tend to dress up to go out to dinner. It’s more an insult to these women than it is to the restaurant. Put another way, who doesn’t like to see a man appropriately well dressed? Wearing a t-shirt and shorts to a pizzeria or crab shack is perfectly appropriate; wearing the same at an upscale restaurant of any kind is not.
        So, too, Americans who were not brought up to act appropriately in a restaurant never will. Not too long ago, people would exit church on Sunday and have lunch at a nice local restaurant wearing their Sunday best. Parents would choose the outfit their children would wear for a meal out, which was always a special time. The idea of a grown man wearing a baseball cap in a restaurant would have been shocking—a trend that began when California casual chic turned into Adam Sandler slovenliness.
        Children were also taught basic manners at the table, to say “please” and “thank you” to service staff, where to place their napkin when leaving the table, which fork to use for seafood: Little things, really, that don’t make the food taste better but make the whole experience far more appealing and comfortable for everybody.
        Way too many Americans become terrified at the prospect of de-boning their own fish, sipping the wine when first poured, consulting a sommelier or even making a cordial complaint about a dish or service out of fear of being wrong. And, if one is so easily intimidated by such small things, of course, one will feel uncomfortable and blame it on the restaurant as being “too fussy,” when it is not so at all.
        Too many Americans—male and female—also believe that speaking very, very loudly in some way makes them more interesting. In ultra-loud restaurants such braying adds and builds on the in-house noise. I swear that if the same exact restaurant in America with a cacophonous decibel level were transported to anywhere in France, Spain, Italy or Belgium, the decibel level would be half as high because European people do not scream in the dining room.
        There’s no doubt that the restrictions on going out during Covid and the consequent decrease in people dining at an upscale restaurant have loosened everyone up, just as many insist they will never surrender their sweatpants for slacks to go back to the office. Suit yourself, but by allowing yourself to feel awkward you do yourself no favors and are missing some wonderful meals in fine restaurants.

The Acclaimed Eleven Madison Park

Restaurant Is Going Vegan. But $335 Is A Lot Of Lettuce—For Lettuce

By John Mariani

         A few years ago Daniel Humm, chef-owner of the much praised New York restaurant Eleven Madison Park, had his waitstaff perform card tricks at the table, a frivolity that was soon abandoned after criticism that it was a bit twee, if not downright silly. Now he has announced that upon re-opening the restaurant the menu will be 99.99% vegan, the exception being honey and milk for tea and coffee. Bees, you see, make honey.
        The price won’t change: $335 (including tip but without drinks or wine), which in the past got you an 11-course meal that included dishes like dry-aged veal with bone marrow; a soft egg with farro, corn and frogs’ legs; suckling pig with blackberries; and a New England clambake dumped on a brown paper mat. Now, though Humm has not released his new vegan menu, all those dishes will be banished.
        "The current food system is simply not sustainable, in so many ways,” Humm told The New York Times, an extreme generalization for a chef who all his working life purchased the finest meats, seafood and dairy products available from sustainable farms. “I wanted everyone who comes into contact with Eleven Madison Park to become a part of doing good,” Humm said, which is a real slap in the face of anyone who might dare eat a burger or butter their bread.
        Eleven Madison Park has shape-shifted often since it was originally opened by restaurateur Danny Meyer in 1998 and sold to Humm and a partner (with whom he later split) in 2006, and, owing to his tremendous talent and creativity, managed to wow the critics—the restaurant has three Michelin stars and four from the Times—and a public willing to pay top dollar for a four-hour meal of the most sumptuous luxury backed by an extraordinary wine list. So odds are being taken on whether going total vegan—not just vegetarian—will actually draw enough people who once would have paid $335 for foie gras and caviar but who might wince at that price for peas and carrots.
       Humm is betting on a trend many chefs have picked up on by offering alternative vegetarian menus alongside their meat and seafood menu, which makes capital sense, whether it’s Alain Ducasse at the Plaza-Athenée and Alain Passard at L’Arpège in Paris or Massimo Bottura at Osteria Francescana in Modena, Italy. But few have attempted to go total vegan.
       At the very least Humm’s commitment is based on some tricky dynamics. For starters, why serve honey and milk for tea and coffee when there are perfectly decent non-animal substitutes? Also, many vehement vegans believe that wine is anathema because many wines are filtered through skins containing animal products and others with egg white, which sinks impurities to the bottom of the barrels. How does he justify a wine list of such dimensions as he now has when it’s impossible to know which wines have been thus treated? And since so many vegetables, like asparagus and artichokes, are notoriously difficult to match with wines, it becomes a big question whether anyone is going to pop for a $5,000 red Burgundy that will go with anything on the menu. Is any wine lover going to order a $500 oak-rich, high tannin California Cabernet with a dish of arugula and rutabagas? And, since it is very much a vegan proclivity to shed leather shoes and accessories, will Humm and his staff follow suit?
     Business-wise, one has to wonder if a company executive is going to invite a big out-of-town client to a vegan restaurant, unless everyone at the table is vegan. I’m sure there are many who would happily enjoy the adventure of such a meal, but the number of eager vegans is not close to the number of vegetarians, who may eat some seafood or have no problem with cheese-rich lasagna.
       Humm is not being so sanctimonious as to accuse those who continue to eat hamburgers of having moral failings; in fact, he is being remarkably disingenuous, because, at his London restaurant Davies and Brook, he continues to serve a chicken burger with truffled mayo and cheddar cheese, a seafood plateau of shellfish, and a dry-aged ribeye steak. I don’t doubt his commitment but I wonder if he has hopped on an extremist bandwagon, and, as bandwagons like la nouvelle cuisine, the Mediterranean Diet and molecular cuisine have passed on by, I wonder if Eleven Madison Park will become a significant beacon or a snapshot of the current era, when Americans are being made to feel guilty about taking pleasure in all kinds of food. Or as Chris Rock once put it, “People are starving all over the world. What do you mean, ‘red meat will kill you?’ Don't eat no red meat? No, don't eat no green meat. If you lucky enough to get your hands on a steak, bite the shit out of it!”

        A few weeks ago I wrote that Italian wine laws, which began in 1966 to make sense of all the grapes and regions of the country, had become so suspiciously generous in awarding the highest appellation of DOCG (denominazione di origine controllata garantita), guaranteeing the wine in the bottle was among the finest in its region, that it has become almost meaningless as a guide. I noted that DOCG started out with only five wines, among which was Tuscany’s Brunello di Montalcino, at a time when there were only a handful of producers making it according to a 100-year-old tradition of viniculture. Yet, today there are more than 200 producers in Tuscany pumping out Brunello.
        While that creates considerable doubt as to how many of them could be guaranteed superior wines, it is worth taking a look at what some of the best are doing with this wine long known for its ability to age 50 years or more in the bottle. Indeed, back in 1976 at the estate of Biondi-Santi, whose progenitor created the Brunello using 100% Sangiovese grapes, I tasted an example that was a 75 years old, and I was amazed by its excellence and freshness.  The same cannot be said for most of today’s Brunellos—and I’m not going to live long enough to find out—but, as in everything, not least the global wine world, Brunellos have evolved, and the best of them do indeed deserve their DOCG and recognition as among the finest wines of the world.
        The 2016 vintage, though only four years old and just released this year, is a good starting point with which to examine the array of Brunellos out there, some of which are now reaching alcohol levels rarely seen but increasingly problematic as global warming affects the vineyards and grapes. Corte Pavone at 15% is edging into the zone of no return, I’m afraid, and too many from 2016 are already at 14.5%.
        The basics of Brunello are as follows: It is made from the Sangiovese grape, which is not at all a rarity and not exclusive to Tuscany, but that’s where it grows best. It has other names: Morellino, Prugnolo, Nielluccio and, in Algeria, Toustain. Sangiovese Grosso is the clone used for Brunello, though decades ago few Tuscan vineyard owners knew exactly what they were planting or harvesting.
        At the beginning of the 19th century Sangiovese Grosso (also called Sangioveto and once called Brunello) was pretty much limited to Tuscany and Romagna, and not all over Tuscany in any case. Today there are 102 different clones registered in the Italian National Registry. When Biondi-Santi began producing Brunellos, the tannins took a long while to release their grip, but, after a decade or more, the wines came into a magnificent, elegant harmony of fruit, acid and tannins.
        The 1997 vintage, which was declared a “vintage of the century,” went through a dumb period after about ten years in the bottle, but finally emerged as a bold, sumptuous wine in the old style. Wines from 2001 can still take more age, while 2004 is a classic; 2006 was fruit forward and now more than ready to drink, while 2010 promises a long life. Current rules decree that Brunellos must age in barrel for two years and at least four months in bottle, which is quite a short minimum. Still, they are not released until four years after harvest, and riservas five.
         The 2016 has great vivacity even now, and there were a few I recently sampled that I wished I’d waited a while to taste. Brunellos made around and north of the town of Montalcino, where it is warm but dry, tend to be a bit lighter, while fleshier examples come from south and southeast of the town.
         In 2008 a scandal broke, which the press called “Brunellopoli,” in which the government accused several major producers of adulterating their wines with foreign and domestic varieties. U.S. importers blocked any Brunellos without an approved “100% Sangiovese” label. In the end not much happened but a rap on the hand. But it brought into focus what many other non-Brunello Tuscan producers had been doing with pride: blending varietals like Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot to make a distinctive wine that did not meet the standards of the DOCG appellation but that nevertheless, as single-estate wines, did very well in the market.
        What to look for in Brunello for 2016? There are some always dependable, often prestigious names, including Biondi-Santi, Barbi-Colombini, Il Poggione, Vostanti, Col d’Orcia, Lisini, and Mastrojanni. Of newer producers I like Val di Suga, whose first vintage was in 1977, it has 14.5% alcohol but shows well for its cherry fruit; Cava d’Onice is now restrained but shows real promise five years from now; Ridolfi is a pleasure right now. Some have not yet been shipped to the U.S., and the riservas will not be here until next year.
        Right now there is so much discounting going on in wine stores that a wine that may listed at $60 may now be found for $45, and there are plenty of Brunellos selling in the $35 range, which is the price of a fine Chianti Classico. 

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