So I just want to say that I have been in serious debate of what to do with my blog. I know people love it and check in daily and I realize that that is adorable and reassuring but I am becoming pretty bored with it. And I am sorry if my readers are getting annoyed that I haven't posted in nearly two weeks. And Hot Boy Friday was forgotten about. But, I also think blogs are sorta over, no offense! And I live in NYC and feel that I don't spend enough time out and about doing things. After reading this article, I felt for the first time to blog, so maybe that is a good thing. Maybe I just needed (or need) a break. For what the future holds, I can't not tell !
You May Kiss the Chef’s Napkin Ring - New York Times.
It’s not just the unsavory dinner times — “We’d be delighted to seat you at 4:45 or 11:30!” — that the voice on the other end of the line trills. It’s the rules laid out, the threats:
Call to confirm your reservation precisely 36 hours in advance, or else. Call if you’re running more than 12 minutes 45 seconds late, or else.
The blessed night at last arrives, and so do you, and you’re immediately made to feel you should kneel in gratitude and supplication. Just inside the restaurant’s door, displayed like a religious icon, is the chef’s book, bearing the chef’s visage. It lets you know you’re in the presence of holiness. It lets you know you can spend another $34.95 on your way out.
You spend plenty before then. Servers muscle you toward a 47-course tasting menu, replete with shochu and grappa pairings, telling you it’s the only way to appreciate fully what “Chef” (no pesky, plebeian “the” needed) can do.
It’s crucial that you appreciate fully, so each dish comes with a disquisition on its origin and proper consumption.
Chef got the eggs from an old lady with cataracts upstate. Chef foraged for the mushrooms in a thicket near the Tappan Zee. Chef counsels a bite from the ramekin on the left, then a sip from the shot glass on the right, then a palate-clearing curtsy.
I exaggerate, of course, but only about the details. Not about the climate around too many upscale restaurants these days. Not about an unmistakable, unsettling shift in the balance of power between self-regarding restaurants and self-effacing diners.
Once they were lucky to have us. Now we’re lucky to have them. They don’t meet us on our terms. We meet them on theirs.
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