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0:51

Happy cooking. If

0:57

you love food, learning about the world,

0:59

and very silly jokes, you'll love The

1:01

Plate Show, a new comedy podcast for

1:03

kids and families about cultures around the

1:06

world and the foods that are important

1:08

to them. Join Spoonie,

1:10

everyone's favorite talking spoon, and

1:12

her BFF tongs as

1:15

they talk to real kids and celebrity

1:17

chefs about their favorite foods and special

1:19

traditions. Listen and subscribe

1:21

to The Plate Show, wherever you get

1:23

your podcasts. The

1:51

Plate Show is a series of artifacts to help

1:54

listeners make sense of our moment. The

1:56

episode we're sharing with you today is a fun listen, post-pandemic

2:00

moment. Enjoy and we'll see

2:02

you next week. Welcome

2:08

to Critics at Large, a podcast

2:11

from the New Yorker. I'm Alex

2:13

Schwartz. I'm Nomi Fry. And I'm

2:15

Vincent Cunningham. Hello, everyone. Greetings. Hey.

2:17

Good morning. We- Good afternoon.

2:20

Good noon. Yeah. Right

2:22

at noon, we are staff writers at the New

2:24

Yorker and each week we make sense of what's

2:26

happening in the culture right now and

2:28

how we got here. So,

2:32

guys, I just have to ask you, have you

2:34

tried to get a restaurant reservation lately? Please tell

2:36

me about it. I have tried

2:38

and I don't know if this is going

2:40

to ruin our conversation, but I've succeeded.

2:42

Oh, have you- I'm in fact going

2:45

to dinner this very evening with a

2:47

restaurant reservation. How- Is it a hot, hot

2:49

restaurant? Well, I should say, first of all, it's

2:51

a Monday. Let's just keep that in mind. It's

2:53

a Monday. And the reservation is for $4.50. All

2:57

tricks of the trade. It is a

2:59

restaurant that was a bit

3:01

of a hard ticket and I think has

3:04

become easier over the years. Nummy. You

3:07

know, very occasionally I make

3:09

a reservation. I should note that I

3:12

always try to have someone

3:14

else make the reservation because of stress,

3:16

you mean? Yeah. It's just, there's something

3:18

about it. It's like I never bid on eBay because

3:21

there's something about I'm not built

3:24

for the stress of like,

3:27

oh, I'm trying to make a reservation

3:29

and suddenly it's disappeared. You know, it's

3:31

like something seems to be available and

3:33

then suddenly it's gone or like waitlist.

3:35

Will they notify me like down to the

3:37

wire? You know, so I like

3:40

a cowardly, lazy

3:42

person. I usually have

3:45

others make the

3:47

reservation. You guys make me feel like a restaurant

3:49

hype beast. Like I'm always trying to get into places.

3:51

No, I feel like you're really like on it, right?

3:54

Recently I ate at Bangkok Supper Club, which

3:56

is the new restaurant by the people who

3:58

brought us fish cheeks. wonderful southern Thai

4:00

restaurant. And I had to eat there

4:03

at 10 p.m. with my friends in

4:05

order for us to get

4:07

there. It was delicious, it

4:09

was wonderful. We could talk about the masa mankari

4:11

another time. But it was really hard to do.

4:15

And this is kind of exactly what I wanna talk about

4:17

today. It just seems like, and I don't know if this

4:19

is your impression, some point

4:21

between the pandemic and now, the

4:23

experience of going to restaurants become

4:25

this total frenzy, subject to

4:27

market forces but I can't even wrap my head

4:30

around. Online reservations at buzzy

4:32

restaurants, they get snapped up seconds after

4:34

they get released. The tables

4:36

are being swapped like trading cards on

4:38

all kinds of black markets and on

4:40

the dark web. Credit cards

4:42

are offering exclusive access to concierge

4:45

services just to help you get

4:47

into these places. We're at peak

4:49

TikTok restaurant. Something is going

4:51

on right now in the way we think about dining out.

4:53

And so my question is, what

4:55

is it? Why does a good meal at

4:58

a popular place feel like on

5:00

the one hand, such a badge of honor,

5:02

on the other hand, such a scarce resource?

5:04

And what does this moment in the restaurant

5:07

industry tell us about the art, ideas, and

5:09

bourgeois culture of today? All

5:12

good questions. All good questions. Yeah, all good questions.

5:14

This week on Critics at Large, the scene restaurant

5:17

and why we dine out. Wow. Or

5:20

don't. Or don't. Or don't. So

5:22

the other day, and by the other day, I guess I

5:24

mean a couple weeks ago, I went

5:27

to the famous scene

5:29

restaurant Tatiana, that's

5:31

at Lincoln Center. Wow. One

5:33

of my friends, an amazing

5:36

food writer, brought

5:39

me to this restaurant, just included me in

5:41

this party. Did he have juice? He had

5:43

juice. She has so much juice. Oh, she.

5:45

I'm sorry, I'm sorry. The surgeon was a

5:48

woman. Yeah. What? Wow.

5:51

Wow. Yeah. Yeah.

5:54

She had a woman. She had

5:56

a lot of juice, so much juice that I met.

5:58

Chef Kwame. Oh, wow. He sent a bunch

6:00

of stuff to us. It's the first time since

6:02

I was a kid that I ate so much

6:04

that I kind of wanted to throw up. I

6:06

felt very gluttonous. But have you guys just been

6:08

hearing from people about their adventures in restaurant going

6:11

either success stories like mine or otherwise?

6:15

I feel like, yeah, I mean, anecdotally,

6:18

I will say that the way people

6:20

have been talking about

6:22

restaurants and about

6:24

reservations, yeah, kind

6:26

of like the scene of it, rather than talking

6:29

about the food necessarily, right? The

6:32

usage of certain

6:34

types of lingo, for instance, when

6:36

people say forkop in

6:39

regular conversation, or people saying,

6:42

oh, that's a tough table. And these are not

6:45

food people. These are just people like

6:47

us. The inside culture

6:49

has become the culture. Yes, yes,

6:51

yes. The sort of insider-y, yeah,

6:53

conversation lingo is now much more

6:56

widespread. One thing that's changed for

6:58

me, I take a bit of a

7:00

longer view, which has to do

7:02

with, and I know we're gonna talk more

7:04

about this, but the way reservations are made

7:07

from, let's say, the anti-deluvian times

7:09

where you called someone up on

7:11

a telephone, probably one that was

7:13

actually connected to physically a jack

7:15

in your home, and

7:19

spoke to someone and put in a

7:21

request verbally to have a

7:23

table committed to your name. What is

7:25

this, horse named Buggy? I'm trying to tell

7:27

you guys what it was like back in the

7:29

day. It really was like that, if you can

7:32

even imagine, to the current kind of quickest

7:35

finger on the mouse, or scrolling

7:37

on your phone, who can click the

7:40

fastest. And one difference this has made,

7:42

this reservation change has made

7:44

in my life, is the phenomenon of eating when

7:47

you can get the reservation.

7:49

So many restaurants booking 30

7:52

days out, but no more. Oh,

7:54

this random Wednesday at 9.45, a

7:57

reservation is available? All right, I guess I will

7:59

simply gear. My whole week and

8:01

indeed my whole month to

8:03

the fact that that is the time I

8:06

can eat at this certain place And I actually

8:08

have put my foot down recently and said no

8:10

more no more of this Yeah,

8:12

that sort of sense of it is not

8:15

I who is choosing when to dine It

8:18

is being chosen for me. Should I

8:20

choose to accept the mission? Right? Hold on one

8:22

second Yeah, because we have amazing resources in the

8:24

building that we work in. Let's use that. We

8:27

should use them I thought we could invite a

8:29

friend of ours to talk with us Hannah Goldfield

8:31

is a fellow staff writer at the New Yorker

8:34

Covering restaurants and food culture. She's one of

8:36

the magazines food critics. I think she's

8:38

in the office today I heard and maybe she could just help

8:40

us parse some of this stuff. You guys are both pretty good

8:42

friends of hers This is gonna be my

8:44

very good friends. So we're gonna choose the phone

8:46

a friend option We're gonna phone a friend

8:48

when you guys text Hannah right now. Yeah,

8:50

let's text Hannah Hannah

8:56

Come over to the studio Three

8:59

exclamation marks how the

9:01

New Yorker works is you text people and then they show up

9:04

friend There's

9:17

Yeah, we have gear well, we just have Things

9:19

on the moment we've never met How's

9:25

it going, I'm fine we're just kind of

9:28

Talking about the way that reservation culture

9:30

specifically has kind of exploded Is

9:32

that something that you as a professional are

9:35

noticing? What what are we missing here? Yes,

9:38

I am noticing it Hugely,

9:41

I feel like the whole

9:43

landscape has totally changed And

9:46

I have theories and then I

9:49

have some insider Information.

9:51

We love that if there if there were a

9:53

subtitle for this podcast, it would be theories and

9:56

insider information Please I usually work

9:58

on the former and more and

10:00

very weak on the latter. Yeah,

10:02

but you're bringing the juice today. Oh yeah,

10:04

I've got some hard evidence. So what's the

10:06

theory? Let's start with the theory. Wait, but

10:09

before the theory. Yes, I'm sorry. I just

10:11

wanna say, you said that this is something

10:13

that you've been noticing hugely. Yes. Would

10:15

you place that as a post

10:17

pandemic phenomenon? Is it earlier? So

10:19

that's one of my theories. Oh,

10:21

I see. Okay, well, it's definitely,

10:24

at least seemed

10:26

to be a lot harder to make

10:29

a restaurant reservation post pandemic than

10:31

it was pre pandemic. So

10:33

I do think that part of this

10:36

is because people are still

10:38

kind of like crazed

10:40

for restaurants. Right. And

10:42

then I think that my other theory, and

10:45

this is other people have said this to me as well,

10:48

is TikTok. Okay. Like

10:50

there's just so much content and I've been

10:52

really amazed to see that the boost that

10:54

a restaurant seems to get from TikTok is

10:57

much, seems to be much higher than the

10:59

boost a restaurant gets from

11:01

traditional coverage in the

11:03

press. Like if the Times gives the

11:05

restaurant a really great review,

11:08

it'll be harder to get a table. You'll

11:10

see lines, but I've just been, you know,

11:13

on occasion walking around lower Manhattan and suddenly

11:15

I see a really long line outside of

11:17

a restaurant and I'm like,

11:19

what is that? And it's almost, whenever I ask, someone

11:23

will just be like, oh, TikTok. And,

11:27

you know, there are these people who seem

11:30

to be making careers out of

11:32

going to restaurants, filming footage, and

11:34

then it creates like

11:37

a frenzy of people going

11:39

to restaurants. Is it like one of those things where there's like

11:41

a snappy tune in the background or?

11:43

Yeah, there's usually music. There's, it's all,

11:45

there are all of the sort of

11:48

markers of TikTok. There's text,

11:50

there's jump cuts, and

11:52

it's very dynamic and it's hard

11:55

to look away. And then it's

11:57

these really like sensual.

12:00

shots of, you know, like there's the

12:02

first thing that comes to mind is the

12:05

cheese pull and that's become like... What is

12:07

that? It's, you know, cheese being pulled. Like

12:09

like gooey... Gooey melted cheese

12:11

being pulled in such a way

12:13

that I think kind of triggers

12:15

like ASMR, which I know Alex

12:18

has written about in the past. So,

12:20

but cheese pulling, you know, I've been

12:23

to a great number of restaurants, never

12:25

seen a cheese pull. This part

12:27

of the sort of doesn't create another dynamic

12:29

where now restaurants make dishes that

12:31

have these like that occasion,

12:33

these kinds of money shots that people can then like... Yeah,

12:36

exactly. And it's a whole other

12:38

like layer of what used to happen on

12:41

Instagram where it would, you know, things were

12:43

sort of just made to look interesting or

12:45

beautiful or colorful or whatever. And now you

12:47

need this 3D... Right, the movement and the...

12:49

In fact, you need some kind of like

12:51

those, you know, wiggly cakes or like jello

12:54

based things and cheese pulls and everything has

12:56

to... If it doesn't wiggle

12:58

and it doesn't pull, it doesn't fly. Are

13:01

there like specific accounts that you attend

13:03

to? The one that I attend to is the

13:06

one that I think has gotten... I don't know if

13:08

it's gotten the most attention. It's gotten the most attention

13:10

in the things that people that I follow and things

13:12

that I read, which is the VIP list. So tell

13:14

us about it a little bit. Ladies, it's these two

13:16

women and they go

13:18

to restaurants and talk about

13:20

them and they have this

13:22

really like brash... They're young.

13:25

They're young. They're in

13:27

their early 20s, I think, early to mid 20s

13:29

and they use kind of slightly

13:32

dirty language. Everything's

13:35

very sexualized, I would say. And

13:38

can we swear on this podcast? Yes. They'll

13:40

be like this... Like

13:44

the rigatoni sucks. OK,

13:47

you know, I'm so into this that I

13:49

think... They're raspy blondes. They're raspy blondes. Yes.

13:52

I think we're going to try to open one up and

13:54

like just listen to it all together. Oh,

13:56

good idea. Good idea. The

14:00

VIP list. So what you need is one of their like

14:02

nightlife. The food. LA restaurant's worth the hike?

14:04

Yes, this is what you want. ...a city trend.

14:06

Some of y'all are out here catfishing... Some of

14:08

y'all? We decided to

14:10

save you some time and let you

14:13

know which LA spots are actually worth

14:15

the hike. Oh, I want to know.

14:17

First we have El Pessaya, 100% worth

14:19

it. Some of the best pots that

14:21

we've ever had. And where else are

14:23

you going to get white truffle showers?

14:25

Next we have In-N-Out. You will rarely

14:27

get me reading about fast food. But

14:29

the animal style cheeseburger and fries from

14:31

here is a mandatory order every time

14:33

I'm on the West Coast. El

14:35

La Fonte is fucked. This eggplants is life changing.

14:40

And let's just say they know their way around a

14:42

spicy vodka pasta. Next we have anything

14:44

from H-Wish. Okay, so now I know what a

14:46

cheesebull is. There were so many cheesebulls in

14:48

that. I have one question though for you because

14:50

I do like to take the longer view. And

14:53

there was a moment pre-TikTok when I

14:55

did notice that Rezzy entered the scene.

14:57

It became a whole thing. And

15:00

then there developed this Rezzy culture where

15:02

a certain restaurant, I'm thinking of the

15:04

restaurant Lillia in Williamsburg, the Italian restaurant.

15:06

I started hearing about this restaurant. Did

15:08

I think I was the only one? Certainly not.

15:10

But I thought I had a fighting chance. Then

15:14

I realized that every

15:16

single date is blacked out. And

15:19

then I realized, aha, the tables

15:21

are getting released at a certain hour. And

15:24

then I further realized that hour is

15:26

midnight. Now it seems like

15:28

every single restaurant is on Rezzy. Yeah,

15:30

but sometimes you certainly can get a reservation more

15:32

easily. But tell us a little

15:34

bit about Rezzy culture. So I was going to say, I feel

15:36

like this conversation could be broken

15:38

down into part A, which we've already discussed,

15:40

and then part B, which is Rezzy. Rezzy,

15:43

I think, has totally transformed the landscape

15:45

too in so many ways. And this

15:48

is where my hard evidence comes in

15:50

because I now know a little bit

15:52

more about how Rezzy

15:55

works on the back end, on the restaurant, and

15:57

what they can and cannot do. Will you have

15:59

some tips? Well, let me

16:01

just say the game is fixed, you know? It's

16:05

like, depending on the restaurant. But

16:08

yes, there are tips, but also

16:10

there's a lot that you

16:13

just can't control. So, yeah,

16:15

Resi seems to

16:17

have totally taken over as the

16:19

platform for reservations.

16:22

We should talk about what Resi is,

16:24

I guess. There's a lot of software

16:26

that allows restaurants to take reservations, but

16:29

it also helps them figure

16:31

out where to see people and show

16:33

them how tables are expected to turn

16:35

over. I think there's two things

16:37

going on. I think, one,

16:39

if you're not on Resi, you're kind

16:42

of missing a chance to be discovered

16:44

because Resi is like a nice one-stop

16:46

shop. And it

16:48

shows you a map or a list, and it's a

16:50

way, you know, you're like, oh, I want to go

16:52

out to dinner on Friday night with three people. Let's

16:55

see what's available on Resi. So it's not just

16:57

a place to get where you want. It's also

16:59

a system of discovery. Yeah, exactly. You can see

17:01

what's available. So I think... It's like the explore

17:03

page. Exactly. So I think you want to be

17:05

on there for exposure. I think

17:07

it's hard to get people to book tables

17:09

at your restaurant if you're not

17:11

on Resi. But when you said

17:14

before that the game is rigged, it's fixed.

17:16

Right. How is the fixer? So,

17:18

okay. So what my friend told me, and

17:20

this is a person who owns several,

17:23

co-owns several restaurants, which are

17:26

pretty upscale, is

17:28

when those reservations are being released at, say,

17:30

midnight, or some restaurants do it at 10

17:33

a.m. And it's two weeks out

17:35

or four weeks out. What this person

17:37

told me is that they tend to,

17:39

at least at this person's restaurant, they

17:42

release reservations in what

17:45

they described as the shoulders. So

17:48

they're only releasing the reservations at

17:50

5.45 and 9

17:52

p.m. because those are the hardest tables to sell.

17:55

So you think... So when they say that tables are

17:57

being released... Oh, boy. You're

17:59

not. 7pm or 8pm

18:01

reservations are not being released. They're holding

18:03

on to those. Sometimes

18:06

they give them to VIPs,

18:08

people that they know, and then sometimes

18:11

this person told me they save

18:13

them for walk-ins because

18:16

walk-ins tend to turn

18:19

tables faster. Like the kind of person

18:22

who is willing to just show up and wait

18:24

for a table. They're so excited to go to

18:26

the restaurant that they're more likely to kind

18:28

of be in and out. That makes sense.

18:31

If I made a reservation and I waited

18:33

a month ago, I'm not going to do

18:35

a bulk in debt. It's my living room.

18:37

Right, exactly. Yeah, there's a sense of entitlement,

18:40

I think. I work. That

18:42

makes total sense. Yeah, I work. So

18:44

that's nice too because that means you can serve

18:46

more people in an evening. I

18:48

was also told that, you

18:51

know, so on Resi, if you can't get a table, you can

18:54

put what's called a notification, I guess,

18:56

you hit notify and then

18:58

you'll get, if you're lucky, a notification telling

19:00

you that it's become available. Let

19:03

me tell you, I think the notifications are

19:05

a nightmare. They're a nightmare. But the restaurants,

19:07

there's also a feature on Resi that allows

19:09

you to instantly Google someone. So

19:11

they're all looking us up. This

19:15

is fascinating. They think you're someone cool. They

19:17

might bump you to number

19:19

one. What's so interesting to me

19:21

about this is in some sense, restaurants have

19:24

always worked this way. Of course, you had

19:26

to know the maître d' you have to,

19:28

if you were somebody, absolutely there would be

19:30

a way to get you in. And I

19:33

do think something like Resi has given us the

19:35

impression that it's more democratic. Right. I

19:38

have essentially thought that all the other people trying to get the

19:40

reservation at the same time have snapped up the 730 tables,

19:43

leaving me alone with the 545 or 9pm

19:45

option. I'm still,

19:47

I'm scandalized. No finding out, but that's

19:49

not the case. It was never even available. The

19:52

shoulders were released first. So I have this

19:54

strange sense, the shoulders. Now

19:56

that I know that I'm a shoulder, I'm a fan

19:58

of Resi. Yeah, how do I

20:01

deal with that? I mean, I think

20:04

it's the emotional journey of having

20:06

gone from knowing that the game

20:08

is rigged to believing the game

20:10

to be somewhat less rigged,

20:12

to realizing it's more rigged than ever before.

20:14

It's more rigged than ever before because like

20:16

part of the rigging before is you could

20:19

be a person without any connections and

20:21

you could call the restaurant and plead

20:23

your case. And before

20:26

I wrote about restaurants, I

20:28

may have done that from time to time. Oh,

20:30

this is like you call and you say, is

20:32

there anything you can do? This is a really

20:34

special evening and

20:36

someone's birthday. And sometimes you would get someone who

20:39

would say, okay, we'll move

20:41

things around, see what can be done. And now

20:43

a lot of restaurants do not have phone numbers.

20:46

They don't have phone numbers. So maybe as a final question for

20:48

you. Yeah. I guess I

20:50

just wondered what are diners looking for in

20:52

a restaurant and does it have anything to

20:55

do with this issue of scarcity and hype

20:57

that we're talking about? And how much

20:59

does it have to do with food?

21:01

And cheese poles. And cheese poles. I

21:03

mean, I also think if

21:05

I may just interject, I think that people

21:07

want scarcity. I think scarcity, like I had

21:09

seen, did you see this story recently

21:11

about a group of, I

21:13

don't know if they're students, they're definitely in their

21:15

early twenties, who created for one night

21:20

only a steak restaurant, but they had

21:22

hyped it up to the extent they

21:24

had built up a

21:27

reputation for this non-existent restaurant so that

21:29

people who got reservations there felt so

21:31

lucky to get to eat at the best

21:33

steak restaurant in New York. There were fake

21:36

reviews on Yelp. There was everything. And

21:38

then it was some guy in his early twenties

21:40

with no professional cooking experience flinging some steaks. It

21:43

was really like a brilliant performance art piece, I

21:45

think. Yeah, totally. I

21:47

think a lot of people went along with this effort

21:49

or has no closed situation. People want things

21:51

that they feel like they can't have. And then

21:53

people love to get these really hard

21:56

to get reservations and then be like, oh, the food wasn't

21:58

even that good. part

22:00

of it too. They really want to go

22:02

and be like it was so overhyped. But

22:04

yeah I think you're right. I think it's

22:06

scarcity. Scarcity is sexy. I

22:12

don't think there's a better way we're gonna end this interview.

22:15

Scarcity is sexy. Hannah,

22:18

thank you so much for coming. Thank you for having me. In

22:26

a minute we'll talk about a restaurant that offers

22:29

a completely different picture of why we dine out.

22:31

It's called Le Trois

22:33

Gras. Alex, how do

22:35

you say tres? How do you say tres de tres? I'm

22:39

so hot. If you can get a

22:41

little bit of the tres in the

22:43

throat it's very hard. Oh my god.

22:45

I would say tres gras. But you're

22:47

not getting it? Please say it. Tres

22:49

gras. Tres gras. Tres gras. Hey

22:57

it's Francis Lam, host of The Splendid Table.

22:59

And you know I just want to tell

23:01

you that our show is a great place

23:04

to come to for some holiday sanity. We're

23:06

getting cooking help from amazing people this holiday

23:08

season including chef Kristin Kish, Eric Ripert, Avra

23:10

Baron and cookbook authors Jocelyn

23:12

Jalk-Adams, Dan Closie and Amy Phelan. We

23:14

have cooking, eating and gifting ideas for

23:16

anyone. You're gonna have that at your

23:18

table. But listen to The Splendid Table

23:21

for everyone to get your podcasts. Talk

23:23

to you soon. Hey

23:34

everyone. Before we dive back into the conversation

23:36

we wanted to take a quick moment to

23:39

point you to last week's episode because

23:41

it's a really good one if

23:43

we do so ourselves. We talk about Britney

23:45

Spears' new memoir The Woman and Me and

23:47

how the book reframes music that was so

23:49

formative to me and I'm sure too many

23:51

others during my queen years. It's us going

23:54

like slightly trashy mode but smart.

23:56

About one of the most important people in

23:59

our culture. That episode

24:01

is being featured on Spotify right now, so head

24:03

on over there and give it a listen. Now

24:10

we should talk about a film that, by the way, we

24:12

all saw together. Yeah, it was a

24:15

group trip. It was a class trip. Yeah,

24:17

another scarce resource togetherness. It's

24:20

called Menu Plaisir, Les

24:22

Tuagros. It just

24:24

rolls off your tongue. It's like butter. Like

24:27

butter. Yeah, yeah, yeah. By

24:29

the 93-year-old director, Frederick Wiseman. It's an

24:32

incredibly well-made film about

24:34

an incredibly well-run restaurant. Yes,

24:36

yes. And I think it might serve as an extreme

24:39

example of why people like

24:41

us, right, who like art, like

24:45

literature, like

24:47

four-hour documentaries, find

24:50

what we find so irresistible about

24:52

restaurants. Could somebody describe this film for

24:54

me and say the name of it again? Go

24:57

ahead, Alex. It's

24:59

my greatest pleasure. Okay,

25:02

the film is called Menu Plaisir,

25:05

Les Tuagros, and it is

25:07

about a Michelin three-star restaurant owned

25:09

and operated by the same family for four

25:11

generations. So currently, the

25:16

owner, who is depicted in the

25:18

film, Michel, is in the

25:20

process of handing the reins over to his son

25:23

César, who's in the kitchen. So they're

25:25

in central France. They're in the Loire

25:27

region in a town called Oosh, which

25:29

is great to say. That's

25:31

a good... I couldn't say that one. Oosh.

25:34

Mm-hmm. And the film, in classic

25:37

Wiseman fashion, does not feature any talking heads.

25:39

There is no explanation or explication,

25:41

aside from what you get in

25:43

the action of the film, which

25:45

is cooking, going to

25:48

market, preparing new dishes. We

25:51

go and see how cheese is

25:53

made at the local cheese maker,

25:55

or Michel Vittuagros,

25:57

because it's the family name. what

28:02

your perspective on this was, because Weizmann has

28:04

been known in a lot of ways for

28:09

documenting institutions that are civic

28:11

and often involve

28:16

the working class and makes the

28:18

working class seen in a

28:21

lot of ways. And

28:25

this seems like quite a different

28:28

thing. It's about work, but it's about work

28:31

that ultimately serves

28:33

incredibly wealthy people.

28:38

Yeah, but I was just

28:40

wondering what your thinking about

28:43

that was. One

28:45

thing that I... It's so funny. The

28:47

one thing that I question

28:49

in my response to Manu Plazir is how

28:53

honestly annoyed I was when the people started showing up.

28:56

The diners. Yeah. Oh yeah,

28:58

talk about that. There is like a... Just as there

29:00

is an ecosystem that sort of

29:02

occurs between, I don't know, the outdoors

29:05

and the ecology and the inside of a restaurant.

29:07

There is just an ecology

29:09

between the work

29:12

of an artist and the sort of potential

29:15

annoyance of the people who come

29:17

to consume it. The people come...

29:20

There's especially just one guy that I can't stop

29:22

thinking about who was just like sniffing the wine

29:24

in this very interesting way. I feel like

29:26

with that particular one, there's

29:28

something... Weisman's eye is

29:32

a quote unquote objective, but of

29:34

course, an eye

29:37

can never be objective. And I think

29:39

with that guy, the diner, with a

29:41

camera kind of like resting

29:44

on him as he made a kind of big show

29:46

of sniffing the wine and

29:48

smacking his lips and all of

29:50

that is sort of extended, an

29:52

extended moment of all of that. He

29:54

leaned his nose very close to the food

29:56

so that it was basically almost touching, took

29:58

a big whiff and then... removed

30:00

himself and went again. I think I

30:02

had a wish to you when we were at

30:04

Filmform at the 930 a.m.

30:07

screening of this four-hour movie. Talk about the film.

30:09

I wish for you he was

30:13

like Remy the rat from

30:15

Ratatouille Which

30:19

is by the way one of my favorite movies.

30:21

Yeah, if you haven't know it really is I watch it

30:23

I re-watch it on a plane just recently recently

30:27

Over the summer I've seen it several times

30:30

As you know just a just a quick pracie

30:32

for those of us not familiar with the movie

30:35

It's about a rat in Paris

30:38

who Loves

30:40

fine dining and fine cooking and you the

30:42

room a cooking it's an animated film.

30:44

It's an animated. Yes It's our movie. Sorry

30:46

the documentary about documentary And

30:49

he he you know through a series

30:51

of tumultuous turns twists and turns ends

30:54

up being at a fine dining restaurant

30:56

in Paris in the kitchen and

30:59

helps a bumbling kind of intern

31:01

type in the kitchen Become

31:04

a great chef Am

31:07

I still fired you can fire him what?

31:11

Yeah, she made a point of telling you so if

31:13

she rather of you to that effect and find out

31:16

you fired a cook responsible He's a

31:18

garbage boy who made something she liked

31:20

How can we claim to represent the name

31:22

of gusto if we don't uphold his most

31:24

cherished belief and what belief is that? Mademoiselle

31:27

tattoo anyone can cook But

31:31

just to say that that movie

31:33

it's basically about that conundrum of

31:35

like who is fine dining for

31:37

right? Is it for

31:39

the rats quote unquote? You know is

31:41

it can a rat who's like nothing?

31:43

You know less than nothing disgusting vermin,

31:46

etc, etc Enjoy

31:50

Fine dining and you know

31:53

both eating it and cooking it and is it

31:55

for him as well? Is it for everyone quote

31:57

unquote or is it? just

32:00

for the very few, both in

32:02

terms of cooking and dining,

32:05

which I do think is attention in

32:07

the Weissman movie. I

32:09

didn't realize that Ratatouille was a great political text,

32:11

but now I have to think that again.

32:15

It comes full circle. I mean, just anyway. Well,

32:17

what I have to know is, I have the same

32:19

feeling as Yvonne, and what do you think that annoyance

32:21

about the diners was? Well, I think

32:23

what it was, it was

32:27

a kind of, I think for me, a

32:29

sort of sublimated self-centre,

32:33

because the

32:36

big question for me always

32:38

is like, you know, you go to

32:40

the museum, you go to the theater,

32:42

you go to... You

32:44

know, there's a part of me that wants to say,

32:46

you know, I go to restaurants for the same reason

32:49

I do those other things, which is I want to

32:51

be abreast of what the most creative people in our

32:53

world are doing. Be part of the conversation. Be

32:57

a part of the

32:59

conversation, be inspired, be...make

33:01

myself open to the great artistic development of my

33:03

time, and I want to make sure I don't

33:05

miss them on some level. But when

33:07

I go to those places, I notice that the people

33:09

that do that, and I think that... By the way,

33:11

I think that impulse is universal and

33:14

crosses borders of class and race

33:16

and whatever. But then, when

33:18

I go to the places where this happens, it's often

33:21

annoying yuppies. Like me and my

33:23

friends that are there. And the actual

33:25

experience of loving the arts is often different

33:28

than what

33:31

makes us love the arts in the first

33:33

place. So

33:42

what do we really care about? Is it

33:44

the food, or is it the container

33:46

that it comes in? Critics

33:48

at large, from the New Yorker. We'll be back in a minute.

33:58

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34:00

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34:54

podcasts. Just

35:07

to pick up on where we left off, I

35:10

am haunted by this problem. For

35:13

example, I love the visual arts. But

35:16

then anytime I hear about anything about the art

35:18

market, something in me dies, you know? I

35:21

love the movies.

35:25

And then when I hear about the

35:27

sort of cynicism of the streaming services

35:29

that bring our movies to market and

35:31

how many market and global

35:34

and political forces either

35:36

censor or skew the art that I

35:38

get, I feel

35:40

a queasiness, right? It's like pure

35:42

art and the container

35:44

or the sort of delivery vehicle

35:47

for it. I love food

35:49

and I care about chefs and I care about

35:51

the products that they make. And I also cannot

35:53

stand the culture that has come around it and

35:55

made it an experience for annoying

35:57

people, like we saw in the film.

36:00

the Frederick Wiseman movie. So how

36:02

do we balance those two things? And

36:05

what does it mean about like, why

36:07

we actually want to go out and eat? Well, some of it

36:09

is on the creators themselves to balance. I

36:11

mean, we should say that one

36:14

really cool thing that happens in the Frederick

36:16

Wiseman movie is that they have a food

36:18

truck. Like they have a food

36:20

truck and they take it to the center of

36:22

town and they have these, there's a soup, there's

36:24

a sandwich, there's a whole lunch

36:27

that anyone can come and buy. And rather

36:29

than think of this as a perversion of

36:31

the great cuisine that can only be experienced

36:33

in place, it's a good

36:36

democratization of that. The food can

36:38

exist in different forms and can serve

36:40

different purposes. So I think

36:42

that's some of it. There

36:46

is no dining

36:49

without the eater. Is that

36:51

profound or is that obvious? No, I

36:53

think it's profound. There

36:57

is a painting if no one is around to see it.

36:59

Like there is a book if no one's around to read

37:01

it. We talk endlessly about do you write for the reader? Who

37:03

do you have in mind?

37:05

Fine, but you can't keep cooking if

37:08

no one's eating the food. So we

37:10

are this integral part

37:12

of the experience, ha ha. And I

37:14

think one reason why I found

37:16

the incursion of the diners

37:18

too was because in the Wiseman

37:21

movie, we've been in the kitchen. So we've been observing

37:23

the art making and the craft and

37:25

I of course came to totally over

37:27

identify with these chefs who were

37:29

doing things I absolutely cannot do. You know, when

37:32

people who actually come in, who are my real

37:34

avatars actually come in to eat this food, it's

37:36

like, don't ruin it, it's not

37:38

for you. But of course it is for

37:40

them. It's only for them, it's only

37:42

for them. Yeah, like

37:45

we're just getting to this idea of fellow

37:47

people and eating, you know, for instance,

37:49

if I may just take this in a

37:51

certain direction. Yes, please. My ideal eating experience,

37:54

to me there's one word that summons exactly

37:56

what I want and it

37:59

is conviviality. If

38:01

the restaurant is convivial, then

38:04

I am utterly delighted and it has to do with

38:06

many things. It has to do with

38:08

food. It definitely for me has to do with service. Just

38:11

a general sense that my well-being is

38:13

a matter of concern, which

38:15

can be communicated in many different ways and at

38:17

many different levels. I need that.

38:19

A soft hand on the shoulder? I

38:21

don't need the different shoulder. Just

38:25

a sense of, I think I'm just a little bit

38:27

over, maybe not fully, I may come around. I'm a

38:29

little bit over to the excitement of being

38:31

abused in advance. That does not get

38:33

me going anymore. Much like an

38:36

animal destined for slaughter, if it has

38:38

its adrenaline raised, the meat won't be

38:40

as good. If I've had to stress

38:42

out about the reservation and all these

38:44

things in advance... The metaphor is kind

38:46

of twist... Like you see... Right.

38:49

So your... I don't want to go

38:52

in with my cortisol levels elevated from the struggle.

38:54

I don't need to feel this grand drama of

38:56

struggle and triumph. I simply want to feel welcomed.

38:59

I feel my eyes nearly

39:01

filling with... Not quite filling with

39:03

tears, but it's

39:06

on the way. So what is your

39:08

perfect restaurant experience? Well, I

39:10

don't know. I mean, I think it just... When

39:14

I was growing up, we never really

39:16

went to a restaurant. We

39:19

never really ate out. I

39:22

do think that I've come to think about

39:26

going out as

39:29

part of being

39:32

alive in the world and might

39:34

have something to do with what you were saying,

39:37

Alex, of the sort of conviviality,

39:39

fellowship... And

39:42

I love eating. Yeah. So, you

39:44

know... That helps. So yeah.

39:47

So the combination of

39:49

food, drink, and company... That's

39:51

right. Is just important

39:53

to the ecology of life, I

39:56

would say. Yeah. Yeah. For

39:58

me, it's about... feel

40:01

closer to the people that I came in with.

40:04

When I was very, when I was young, when I was maybe, I

40:06

don't know, 11 and 12 and 13, I

40:09

remember we used to live in Washington Heights and

40:12

my mother and I would walk up the hill

40:14

to Fort Washington and go to this Indian

40:16

restaurant whose name I couldn't tell you. And we would just like

40:19

hang out and talk. And I, you know,

40:21

we felt closer to one another when

40:23

it was done. It was about atmosphere, it was about the

40:25

fact that we both loved the food, but it

40:28

was also just about like deepening friendships. Recently, I

40:31

went to a scene LA restaurant

40:33

and I was with three

40:36

of my very close friends, people that I really enjoyed. You

40:38

know, I was there like, and they give you crayons and

40:40

I was there like drawing on the table and like honestly

40:42

like a little bit more tipsy than I needed to be.

40:44

I was gonna get on a plane later that night and

40:47

just enjoying my friends to death. And

40:49

like the food was great, we're talking

40:51

about food, but then also just like

40:53

talking about writing and work

40:56

and our lives and just

40:58

like, I just felt like I was in the

41:00

bosom of my friendships. And

41:04

this issue of like, you know, the

41:07

crossroads of hype and conviviality,

41:10

it brings into question what the art

41:12

of the restaurant actually is. Because I

41:14

tend to think in these perhaps like

41:17

overly binary ways, this sort of like

41:19

duality between the food and then the

41:21

restaurant, the food being the art, the

41:23

restaurant being whatever, the hype vehicle. But

41:25

there is an art of

41:27

hospitality. Absolutely.

41:31

And this is perhaps the, this is maybe

41:33

why it makes it harder for those of

41:35

us who like, you know, love to apply

41:37

textual analysis to works of art. It's like,

41:39

well, yes, you can do a close

41:42

reading of food, but you also, there is another

41:44

thing, perhaps a more abstract thing. It's like, well,

41:46

how does something make you feel special? Or how

41:48

does something make you feel loved

41:51

by your friends or convivial? There

41:53

is a whole, there is a parallel

41:55

art that I think on the

41:57

far end turns into hype and something that we...

42:00

We don't like borders on PR

42:02

and a sort of cheapening. But there is

42:04

a real art of being in

42:07

a place and feeling really good. Yeah,

42:09

and that makes me think about how in

42:11

the past few years we've seen all these

42:13

stories come out about the abuse endured by

42:15

people who work in restaurant kitchens, the

42:18

shouting, the hierarchical culture, the

42:20

egomaniacal chef leading the kitchen. Even

42:23

I'm thinking about a show like The Bear,

42:25

which really dealt with the trauma of working

42:28

in some of these environments. And also restaurant

42:30

kitchens were a major site and continue to

42:32

be a major site of me

42:34

too excavations. There's a

42:36

lot of sexual abuse we've learned that

42:38

goes on in restaurant kitchens. So those

42:40

stories are awful in their own right,

42:42

of course. But for me,

42:45

I think they do really transform

42:47

the experience of being at a

42:49

restaurant. The ambiance of a

42:51

restaurant, go there. Vincent, it's like what you

42:53

were saying, to feel close to people or

42:56

just to shine and be shined on and to

42:58

have the kind of

43:00

experience that is elevated beyond

43:03

what you can get in your own home. So to

43:05

know that someone is abusing someone

43:07

right behind the pass, for

43:10

me, that does put a damper on the experience,

43:13

unless you're a sadist, which, frankly, I am

43:15

not. Yeah, it's like separating the art

43:17

from the artist, right? It's like how can you

43:20

enjoy the rack of lamb, the

43:25

succulent rack of lamb, when you

43:28

know that the chef has been screaming

43:31

into the ear of his underling? Yeah,

43:33

I just think rarely are they so

43:36

connected as they are in the case

43:38

of dining. Because we have all kinds of ways to

43:40

express this. We have the phrase cooking with

43:42

love or cooked with love, indicating

43:44

that the emotions that

43:47

one has while making food will show through in the food

43:49

itself, but even on a less metaphysical

43:51

level than that. Part of the art of

43:53

the restaurant is to create this space for

43:55

people to come and eat in. And so

43:57

it's not just the finished product.

44:00

with the entire atmosphere and the

44:02

feeling of it. And if a

44:04

totally different atmosphere is presiding behind

44:07

the kitchen door, I do think that

44:10

creates definitely more on an ethical

44:12

quandary. It's a little bit like, you

44:14

know, are you in first class on

44:16

the Titanic? Is below you men stripped

44:18

down to their skivvies or thrusting coal

44:20

into the machines to make the engines

44:22

run while you, you know, just

44:25

dine on porcelain plates? No, I don't

44:27

think that's the ideal restaurant experience

44:29

in 2023. You don't want that. No. Right.

44:31

Yeah. Yeah.

44:34

So we've talked about kind of two

44:37

extremes, the sort of extreme

44:39

art experience of the Twagro

44:42

and the perhaps

44:45

disheartening example of the newly

44:47

sort of TikTok fueled resi

44:50

culture. Is

44:52

there, is there an ideal somewhere in between those

44:54

that we could, that we could point to? So

44:57

I just love a

45:00

wonderful neighborhood restaurant.

45:02

And I think the time has come

45:04

to reveal to the listener that we

45:06

three went to just such a restaurant

45:09

last night. Last night. To get there. Just last

45:11

night. Just last night. Yes. We

45:13

socialize outside of this little room.

45:16

And I would have gladly

45:20

made the reservation on resi, but the place

45:22

where we went does not do

45:24

resi. And so I called and spoke to

45:26

a person and that

45:28

was a great experience. But more

45:30

relevantly, I thought we had a great

45:33

time. We had a great time. The food was

45:35

good, not overly fancy.

45:37

The room was

45:41

pleasantly sunken. The booth,

45:44

you know, soft and inviting. I

45:47

sat down and I said, how

45:51

bad can happen here? And

45:54

the ultimate product, the ultimate

45:56

art object that comes out of

45:58

this. We got a picture out of it. We

46:01

did get a picture of the end. You asked

46:03

your nice server to take a picture of you and

46:05

your friends. It was great. It was totally delicious. You

46:07

had a curry and like any other. That's

46:09

what it was called on the menu. That's right. This

46:18

is rich. That's a good news. We

46:21

can go to Le Tog Hall. It's

46:24

Friday. There are reservations available.

46:26

Let's get out of the way. Okay,

46:28

great. So easy. Yeah, don't pop

46:30

the cost of it. Turn the left

46:32

side. Do you think they can accept this?

46:35

Uh, sure. Find

46:37

out. Find out next time. Find out next

46:40

week. This

46:46

has been Critics at Large. Our senior

46:48

producer is Rhianne and Chloe. Alex

46:51

Barish is our consulting editor. Our

46:53

executive producer is Steven Valentino.

46:56

Alexis Quadrado composed our theme music.

46:59

We had engineering help today from Jay

47:25

and Aksan

47:34

Khen, who is also a chef. Our

47:37

weekly course and exercise is Chris. On

47:40

Dinner SOS we offer you cooking advice to make your week a little less

47:42

stressful. So

47:44

I want to share another podcast with

47:47

you that has helped me decompress from the stress of

47:49

everyday life. It's called Meditative Story

47:51

and in each episode you'll hear a different storyteller share a moment

47:53

in their life where everything changed for them. I'm in love with

47:55

cooking from watching her grandmother in her kitchen. My

47:58

favorite part is that the story is scored with

48:00

breathtaking original music and interspersed with

48:02

mindfulness prompts you can engage with

48:04

wherever you may be listening. So

48:07

take a moment to find Meditative Story in

48:10

your podcast app and follow the show.