This is one of my favorite weeks of the year, as summer spontaneity transitions into a fall that’s deliberately full. I lose myself in July and August. There’s the heat and ease and carousel of contacts on endless vacations. Weeks flit away, weekends are at least 2.5 days long. Dining rooms are slow, quiet, shrugging. California produce is too enticing to ignore. Olive oil, lemon and salt are the beginning and end of most flavor profiles.
The moment that always snaps me out of it: the New York Film Festival pre-sale and a rapidly filling calendar of events in and around Lincoln Center.
NYFF is magical. I love the planning, mapping out which films to hit when, who to invite, where to grab dinner before or after. There’s the rush of a highly anticipated premiere knocking out a packed room in Alice Tully Hall. A surprise screening in Walter Reade sitting in your head for days. The perfect New York weather. And the long, postgame conversations across subway rides and Ubers and 9:15pm reservations.
Some movie years are better than others. But NYFF always delivers calendar-circling anticipation, like I’m having for Sentimental Value, No Other Choice and The Secret Agent in October. Typically it’s the same high I get looking ahead to a dinner reservation at a spot that just might be transcendent and transporting.
I’ve got two saved lists on Resy I flip between for instances like this. One long scroll of everywhere in a city I might want to eat, and then one tight set of more desirable though certainly less easy to book locations. I’m passively aware that the limited supply ups the desire. tolerating those shallow instincts.
Yet as I crawled Resy to fill out my upcoming New York stint, I felt one big sprawl of meh. Same for when I clicked over to OpenTable or Dorsia. I’m in a restaurant rut. Unable to quite crack what’s going on, it’s also contributed to my only real stretch of writer’s block since launching this thing. (I don’t believe in publishing if you don’t have anything to say). So I’ve spent the past few days trying to figure it out.
About a year ago, I wrote this essay titled You don’t have to eat at all these restaurants, running through what peak reservations had done to me in 2024. Here’s where I landed;
I’m back in Los Angeles after spending the week in San Francisco. Before the trip, I instinctively poked around to see if anything new and interesting had opened up since my last visit. But then I stopped and pivoted plans. On Monday I joined a couple friends for a perfect evening at Chez Panisse. On Tuesday I slid into the bar at Verjus for a few snacks and an unforgettable pain perdu. On Wednesday I ordered all of my usual staples at Rintaro. On Thursday I ended up at a diner crushing chicken fingers and fries. And on Friday, back in LA, I popped into Stir Crazy since it was conveniently on the way to How Long Gone live. These were quiet, easy and delightful comforts. Getting in required zero hassle. Next time I’m in town, I might hit the exact same lineup. And that’s probably how I’ll approach a lot of 2025.
Reservation supply has not eased in 2025, but my own demand isn’t there in the same way, especially in New York and Los Angeles. I’m sitting around perfectly good tables with great friends, feeling a pervasive … curmudgeonliness. Like:
The lovely folks at the newly remodeled Anajak Thai moving an indoor OpenTable booking to a street-adjacent four top outside. (OpenTable clients are regularly guilty of this in a way I have little patience for. Spending more than $100 per person to eat outside is basically surchaging yourself for delivery). When the waiter walked over and asked what we thought of the new space, I peered inside through the window then rolled my eyes.
A well-meaning friend at a large tech company inviting me to an event at RVR and then pivoting us to Great White at the last minute due to a scheduling snafu.
Totally fine DC meals at Minetta Tavern and Dogon, with, like, B food and B- energy in the room.
Some bright Mexican seafood at Damian’s bar on a Friday night in a packed yet ho-hum room that felt like a poor knock off of eating at Cosme in 2015.
These are relatively silly complaints and problems. But this extended stretch of a specific kind of meal that appeals to restaurant obsessives — the kind where you lose yourself in the vibe and the company and the food for hours — becoming more expensive, harder to book, and much more rare was inevitably going to drive a malaise.
It’s not just me. Read through this trend round up of New York Times food writers following the release of their new 50 best restaurants in America list. There are these grumbles about what there’s too much of:
“Rise of tech venture capitalist and billionaire-backed restaurants. Diners dressing down at tasting menus (i.e. flip-flops and sweatpants at a $500 tasting menu).”
“Everything is a wine bar-steakhouse-tasting menu.”
“Meal pacing dictated solely by the kitchen, rather than diners”
“Gummy worms as cocktail garnishes. Gummy sharks are fine if the cocktail is shark-related.”
“The exact same Epcot-ified French bistro menu in every city.”
And what’s lacking:
“I’d love to see more courage. I get it: Margins are already slim, and there’s no room for error. But more restaurants this year compared with the previous year played it safe, especially when it came to introducing a new cuisine type or flavor profiles to an audience that might be unaccustomed. I’d welcome more funk, heat and spice on menus that are already halfway there on those fronts.”
“Bolder, more imaginative seasoning of dishes. More really good neighborhood places.”
“Simple foods broken down and made perfect, like a lamb shawarma with housemade pita, pickles and toum or pasta with butter and Parmesan.”
And, finally, these two haymaker from Tejal Rao:
Less of: Menus that might as well be written by A.I. Kids’ menus disguised as grown-up menus. Luxury ingredients standing in for creativity and skill. Dishes made more for the camera than to be eaten. Desserts that are very expensive, but somehow feel like an afterthought. Restaurants making so much of an effort to cater to what people already know, and like that their personality disappears and they become entirely generic.
More of: More investment in restaurants that take risks and believe in their own point of view. More restaurants that aren’t built to be replicated or scaled. More excellent vegetable cookery. More room for walk-ins. More trust in diners.
Food publications often do these trend roundups, but they rarely feel so existential. Something is up. To drill down further, the core issue is some kind of whiplash I’m also feeling that goes like this:
Treat me like an adult and do the simple things well.
But, like, please surprise me. Be ambitious. Have a distinct point of view.
Can’t I just get into a beautiful room full of hot people where I can have a martini and fries and feel good?
Don’t overdo it, though, because if the economics force every restaurant into being Hillstoned that’s so boring and I’ll stay at home. Shake it up.
Wait, wait, you shook it up too much and now it’s a TikTok hotspot. Fuck.
Okay. What if it were just 15% easier to slide in last minute somewhere special with two people at the bar?
With three-and-a-half months left in the year, the number of show-stopping American meals on my hit list is smaller than usual, especially first-time experiences. Lei was wonderful, chaotic fun. Penny and Le Veau d’Or remain sensational. Borgo and Crevette do the “I’m an adult here” thing well. Kabawa is a masterpiece. Fedora is cool. The new wave classics, while difficult to get into, still hit. There’s a lot to like in New York, even if little about the fall slate excites me, private clubs are taking over and playing the reservation game for this long makes you want to tap out for a while.
And then there’s LA, where the front-runner for restaurant year was described in that same NYT article by Tejal as, “Smart, scrappy and slightly eccentric, and the staff seems to understand hospitality on a really intuitive level.”
I could see on the iPad at Baby Bistro this Friday that there was a “seven visits” next to my name. That’s maybe an undercount, missing a couple drop-ins and patio hangs. Since it opened in May, if I’m not cooking at home, I’m probably here. It keeps breaking through my lull because of what Tejal described above, and because:
Chef Miles Thompson’ food blends creativity, hyper-seasonality and comfort in a way that’s very LA. Some dishes are bold, big and shocking. Others are subtle, slow burns. Even though the menu evolves, I can recount every item that’s been in rotation. The cucumbers and squid, the chopped salad, the fish collars, those fucking beans that were around for a week. There are lots of vegetables and seafood and in-depth sauces. It’s how I like to eat.
There’s so much care, but there’s no pandering.
The hospitality really is that good, starting with wine director Andy Schwartz and extending to every member of the staff, all of whom might drop by your table for a bit over the course of a night. Inside of this little converted home, you feel welcome and whisked away. It’s the place I look at my phone the least.
Have you seen how beautiful the windows are here?
The small menu always gets me. Five savory dishes, one dessert, a special or two. The ability to mix, match and double up. It’s a delight. (Do you know how many people I’ve sent “here’s what to order and what to avoid” texts to above Crevette?).
The four-glass, $50 wine pairing is genius.
Until this week, it was relatively easy to book. (With the NYT praise, it’s become Resy red-walled. They deserve it.)
Whenever I walk out of a meal at Baby Bistro, I’ll chat with Andy about how they’re doing and plan a quick return. He’ll give me an update on the upcoming menu changes. It’s sweet, and gives me something to look forward to. But this week I’ve been wondering why I need that quick evolution so badly — why my broken restaurant brain keeps needing the allure of something new to stay interested.
I still don’t fully know, but at least I’m back in the game. See ya at Lincoln Center.
