A brief, personal dining out crisis
And a peek behind the curtain
A few weeks ago,
looked at me in horror when I told her I’d never let another person book a restaurant reservation for me.1“What?”
“Yeah, that’s my nightmare.”
“... why?”
“I mean, I like doing it. I’m good at it. I’m a control freak. I don’t trust most other people’s taste. Like, what if they book something bad?”
It got me thinking I might have a problem. This was right in the middle of an uptick in the recommendations discourse, which plenty of people I respect have written or spoken about wonderfully. So I decided to try something: Lemme give up control for a bit and see if I can handle it.
A few weeks of letting go
San Francisco
I’ve started embracing this thing I call dumb travel. Even though I love food and dining out, I’m a little exhausted by checking Resy and judging lists and hitting people up for the right dinner move. The strain is surpassing the reward. On a trip to San Francisco last month, I opted out. This felt like a good way to test the waters, since SF’s restaurants tend to disappoint. Fussy, under-seasoned dishes. Stale rooms. A “you’re lucky to be eating here” vibe from the staff. I’m good.
Instead of popping out for an interesting lunch or trying to slide in for a solo meal at a packed new hot spot, I just had my little chicken and rice bowls sent to the office. I followed my colleagues wherever they wanted to go for dinner or drinks. I ordered and ate way healthier than normal, removed from a desire to try as much as possible. At Z & Y, I told friends to order for the table. The food was good. But it was nice just eating whatever arrived, not thinking about it much, and focusing more on the gossip and conversation.
After five days, I hit my limit and relapsed. With one free night before popping down to LA, I took a new coworker to Zuni Cafe for his first time. I picked the place, told him when we were leaving, and ordered for both of us when we got to the table. The bread salad is the only thing I remember eating from that trip. It was worth it.
Los Angeles
The dining out fatigue feels particularly strong in New York, where the waitlists are the longest, the prices are the highest, and the gap between a good and a great meal feels the widest. I think that’s why so many New Yorkers visiting California just want to eat at All Time, much to the annoyance of local friends. When I’m in LA, people get excited to take me to SGV for fried catfish. That’s cool, and I like it. But lately I’ve just wanted to lose myself at this predictable yet reliable Los Feliz oasis. The menu is simple — ceviche, a big salad, pasta, steak, whole fish — but it delivers. With planning turned over to me for a Saturday night three-top, I booked All Time and didn’t bother checking anywhere else.
“How was … All Time?” I could sense a little judgment from the rest of the table at Yang’s Kitchen. A restaurant critic friend had organized this outing. Since I trust him and his employer is paying, it’s easy to cede all control, wait to be told when and where to arrive, and then have food start hitting the table without personally looking at the menu. I gave my standard B+ food, A+ time spiel about All Time in response to quiet nods. At Yang’s, the chicken liver mousse, served with a platter of pickles, herbs and an orange marmalade, was special. The rest of the dinner felt a little meh, not quite easy and comforting and not quite thrilling and interesting. As the meal wrapped up, craving dessert, I checked to see if Quarter Sheets was still open, taunted by Hannah Ziskin’s latest creations on Instagram and ready to bully people into joining me in yet another weak wrangling of dining decision-making. But we were three hours too late.
I read
’s LA list on my way home and thought, “Wow, good list,” because we share a lot of the same favorites. I didn’t screenshot or bookmark any places I hadn’t visited. I didn’t change plans for the next day. I wondered why I even look at lists like these, if I mostly just end up judging and not acting on them. Emily is an exception, since the quality of her writing and her point of view on LA dining is always more valuable than the list itself. But, for everything else that doesn’t reach that standard, why consume the list just to check it against my own?When I got back to New York, a friend told me he’s moving to LA at the end of the week. Then he pulled up Google Maps on his computer, with pinned recommendations from Eater, The Infatuation (yikes), this blog and more sources. I saw what looked like hundreds of bookmarks spread out all over the city and winced, instinctively turned off by a box-checking approach to the same lists everyone uses. But, like, what else is he supposed to do? He hasn’t been to LA before. He doesn’t know the neighborhoods. I, too, wouldn’t just pop into a random Thai restaurant in a Hollywood strip mall under the guise of discovery hoping it’s better than Luv2Eat. I got tempted to give him a few must-visit spots but I held off. Maybe he should find his own, and maybe that will be more enjoyable.
New York
I had one of my favorite meals in a while this week at Café Carmellini. As our four top lingered, waiting to call Ubers and walk to the train, we ran through some of the highlights — the beautiful room, the spaciousness at and in between tables, the impressiveness of the attached hotel, the leisurely service — before mentioning the magical duck-duck-duck tortellini. And that’s when I realized I’ve hit my dining out middle aged crisis. Rather than a Porsche and a hot 24-year-old, it comes with Andrew Carmellini doing a blend of French and Italian food, being treated like an adult and dishes that are rarely 15% more innovative than what’s been served at The Odeon or Ruen Pair for years. This might sound incongruous coming from the one guy left in New York holding onto the, “Actually, Frog Club is good,” take, but here we are.
(We ended up at Café Carmellini because my parents had booked a reservation at what I’m sure is a very good Greek restaurant I’ve yet to try, and I couldn’t help myself from suggesting an alternative. I’m broken in many ways).
As part of this project, I’ve had an uptick in friends and subscribers asking for dinner recs. Here’s how I usually handle that: I ask for the number of people, and a time/neighborhood preference. Then I just book a reservation and send it over. I remember reading a Helen Rosner thing — I can’t find it, I’m sorry Helen — about asking someone, “Who do you want to be tonight?” before giving them a rec. I don’t do that. I’m … interventionist. I’ll cater to what I know about you and your plans for the evening — I’m intervening with your taste in mind, not my own — but I can’t stop myself from just saying, “Here you go. Enjoy.”
(If someone is particularly well versed in the food discourse or the dining scene, then I might send a few options and let them take it from there. But I keep it short. Long lists are terrible. I used to say, “Oh, you have to order this dish,” but I’ve stopped doing that, too. It’s more fun to find the hits yourself, even if someone else got you to the show).
I make recommendations because my recommendations are good. That’s the high-level goal of this project, to get out my opinionated and judgmental recs. But I mostly make recommendations because there a few better highs that delivering a good one. It’s selfish. That small gesture of setting someone up for a memorable night they wouldn’t have otherwise had is a rush. It’s why we like to do it. It’s an act of service, but one that also indulgently services your own status as a person with good taste.
Eat Sunshine
I had one other notable meal in LA. After leaving a friend’s house in Echo Park, I decided to walk the 4.5 miles up Sunset Boulevard to the Cara Hotel. I missed the city and didn’t wanna hurry back in an Uber. I was starving, with no real lunch plan, and eventually hit the old Mh Zh space, where the team from Mini Kabob is now running Mideast Tacos. This hardly counts as discovery. MK is one of the five best restaurants in LA, and their venture into tacos in Silver Lake came with plenty of buzz. But I arrived here unplanned, and that’s something I guess.
I got two tacos — one falafel, one shrimp — and fries. The shrimp was fine, the falafel dry and bland. The fries were great. I had already posted a pic to Instagram before eating. The replies started coming in:
What did you think?
Pretty mid, right?
I’ve heard the burritos are the move there actually
Oh man I’ve got to go
I had a fleeting feeling of disappointment. This is why I do some research before going somewhere, right? Because it’s worth the effort to find a good meal? Or am I just more predisposed to like the meal because it already passed my self-imposed vibe check?
There’s this poem called “Eat Sunshine” at the beginning of Andrew Tarlow and Anna Dunn’s Dinner At The Long Table that I love. It’s a long list of short commands, like:
fail at aioli
never measure
spend your life thinking about dinner
don’t buy food from strangers
set off the smoke alarm
write a menu for every meal, even the small ones
It’s bossy and informed, inspiring and a little too precious, often accurate and occasionally off. Woven throughout the poem are little hints at what the authors are actually saying: This is us. This is how we do things. How we discover and connect and make meaningful memories. Try it. But then, please, seriously, ignore it and do your own thing. Just do that thing mindfully.
It’s the best kind of recommendation.
She has a great Substack, you should check it out.
Have you tried Paris Baguette?
So I made a reservation for knock back next week at an undisclosed restaurant, are you coming?