Let's Eat Charcoal-Grilled Beef and $40 Seafood Gumbo!
But first: Thoughts on NYT's Carbone review, and why more restaurants should text you. Then: Quick reviews of Strange Delight and Llama Inn
We’re still discounting annual subscriptions by 21 percent. Paid subscribers can scroll to the bottom for a review of great charcoal-grilled skewers and seafood gumbo
Hot Take: Let’s get more texts from restaurants — and fewer emails!
Here’s who texts me these days: Pollsters, greedy dentists, a bougie furniture shop whose $5,000 sectionals take nine months to gestate, a big dermatology group that begs me to leave online reviews, and a restaurant called Market Bistro.
The last place is a gastro pub in Jericho. It texts me on weekends to let me know if the kitchen is doing anything cool. Those messages are among the only useful texts I ever receive. They’re super simple — usually just a few lines. And that’s it.
I like the lo-fi restaurant text. It’s quick and unobtrusive. No photos. No links. It’s an antidote to crappily-formated HTML emails from some fancy restaurant.
Let’s have more of these old-school texts. Let’s have more venues pinging us about neat specials — especially now that so many restaurants refuse to put their menus online, as Rachel Sugar reported last week for the NYT.
Yes, there are alternatives. Superiority Burger regularly posts about daily specials on Instagram. So do Yellow Rose and Bread & Salt. I love those accounts. Thing is, a lot of us are trying to cut down on our Insta time. And the fickle internet gods dictate that we have to regularly “like” these posts, otherwise they disappear from our feed.
I’ve missed a few limited-time dishes this way!
I’d love a text from a good sushi spot. “Shirako is in season and we have it tonight; we’re also doing a new milk sorbet. A few seats left.” Or whatever. That, to me, is more useful than a vague push alert from Instagram — where the digital quicksand sucks me in with videos of Rosalía eating sushi and Border Collies rounding up sheep (the algorithm gets me).
I know, I know. Our home screens are already bombarded with Slacks from our bosses — and big deal papers sending us push notifications about….panda breeding. It’s a lot, but at least a quick text is a guarantee I’ll actually see something. I don’t need to click on it or respond. The words themselves get the job done.
Free Food is back? Maybe!
It’s Saturday, 19 October 2024. Le Veau D’Or bookings are still impossible. The Yankees could win the ALCS tonight. I did a fun podcast with Taste’s Matt Rodbard! And New York weather will be in the high 70s next week, which might tempt you to dine outdoors. Do no such thing. The time for that has come and gone. But you may still enjoy an al fresco cardamom bun or a streetside negroni sbagliato…with prosecco!
Welcome back to Free Food, a column I used to run until my Sutton Engine ran out of steam. This is where I highlight some of the best restaurant and food journalism out there. At the end of the column, I’ll sometimes throw in a quick review, as I do today. So scroll down for quick takes on the (amazing) gumbo at Strange Delight, and the excellent skewers at Llama Inn.
Is Carbone still good? Here’s the NYT verdict…
Major Food Group first opened Carbone as a fine dining riff on old-school Italian American chophouses. That was in 2012. It sold “Goodfellas” nostalgia, cheeky tableside service, free antipasti in the style of Il Mulino, clubby exclusivity in the vein of Rao’s (though you could actually get in), and some really good rigatoni alla vodka.
But you know how this Hollywood story goes. If the first thing works, make sequels. So Carbone debuted in Vegas, Dallas, and Miami. And the New York flagship somehow became an even bigger social magnet after the pandemic. So is Carbone as good it is used to be? It is not. Here’s NYT interim co-critic Priya Krishna on what’s missing; she traveled to all the stateside locations. Spoiler: She finds the maximalist restaurant does its best work in Vegas, a city well-suited for over-the-top affairs. Then again, that style of dining is picking up steam in New York…
Here’s another thing: Krishna also published an on-camera reel alongside her (very good) Carbone column.
Restaurant reviewers tend to be camera shy, but Krishna is an established video host. And in an age when too many people get their dining intel from TikTok — sometimes via influencers who eat for free — it’s cool to see a critic put together a short, 80-second clip that shares the skeptical DNA of her print column.
Yes, there are scores of hard-nosed Carbone clips out there. But if bland, breathlessly positive, or showy takes on the hotspot can hit millions of views, maybe good video journalism should at least be part of the solution too? (related: remember when TikTokers sent everyone to Legasea, a horrible Midtown steakhouse?).
Maybe more critics, including myself, need to rethink preconceptions about anonymity and apply their craft to social vids. You don’t need to be on camera to make an Instagram reel, but there’s something to be said for the forward-facing style of a classic newscast hit. It’s about making a human connection. It’s about trust.
Can we have some conchas, please?
Mahira Rivers profiled Atla’s Conchas! The author makes the East Harlem purveyor of pan dulce sound very tasty, with the signature pastries flaunting crumbly sugar-butter crusts. They come flavored in coffee, raspberry, and pumpkin spice. But:
…The highlight of these sweet rolls wasn’t the whispered notes of spice or the pleasantly contrasting textures, it was the nature of the bread itself — dense but not heavy, tender and fluffy but not unstructured, and bursting with nutty, hearty, whole grain flavor.
Indeed, owners Caroline Anders and Mauricio Martinez use “unadulterated” whole grain flour, derived from whole wheat berries. The venue mills this in house. This is unlike most conchas that Rivera has encountered, “which are typically made with refined wheat and sugar, a remnant of Spanish and French colonial intervention,” she writes.
How do we feel about AI texts? And bot receptionists?
Let’s get back to texting.
SevenRooms, a hospitality technology company, now offers AI-backed text message marketing to consumers. That’s according to a report last week by Expedite, an excellent Substack that covers restaurant technology. Kristin Hawley is the author.
If AI marketing doesn’t sound like your cup of tea, consider this: The SevenRooms service, which allows for personalized texts (say, invitations from the general manager, reservations notices), helped one big group drive $432,000 in revenue to their restaurants over six-months, according to Hawley.
I’ve been skeptical about AI. I’ve not found a good use for ChatGPT. And I’m a little nervous about a startup called Maitre D AI (another Expedite story). It allows restaurants to replace receptionists with voice bots. Those bots can answer calls and take reservations, a nice service when few venues actually pick up their phones (yay!) Cost: $199 per month, well below the minimum wage — a clear threat to an already precarious occupation (boo!)
That all said, if the SevenRooms service can help a small restaurant (without a marketing team) learn more about what diners want and text them individually, maybe that’s a good thing?
Are New York bagels still good?
Charlotte Druckman & Mia have been writing lately about delicious candies — like Skor bars! But earlier this month, Druckman penned a vital missive about the history of New York bagels, adding that this quintessential foodstuff is “on the wane. They’re harder to find; good ones, harder still.” She is correct. The author goes on to write that many specimens of the moment are not unlike “the knock-off designer bags of bagels.” Here’s what she has to say about these spots, like Apollo and Courage:
“Most of these businesses…started out as hobbies when we were all going stir crazy during lockdown and its aftermath, and seeking solace in sourdough. It was easy to look up basic bagel recipes developed for home cooks…But those are not the same recipes that professionals use; they’re work-around quick-fixes for people who don’t have the necessary equipment, space, time, knowledge or skill….
Please do read the whole column, which includes promising news about Lanty Hou and Will Sacks’s Bagel Joint, which she calls a “hope restoring” exception. The farmer’s market spot — known for bagels like gochujang, duck egg, miso, and kasha — will debut a Greenpoint storefront in December!
More briefly….
Here’s Eater’s Robert Sietsema and Melissa McCart on The Corner Store, where Taylor Swift has already dined twice (there’s a disco steak frites au poivre, a real word salad of a meat dish). Matthew Schneier has a few things to say about Ayo Balogun’s Radio Kwara (I loved sister spot Dept of Culture), and LAT critic Bill Addison hangs out in San Francisco for a while and writes: “the region endures as the nation’s fine-dining capital. I know, I know, New York, New York: It has the talent but not the mind-blowing produce.” I’ll come back to that one, Bill!!! ;-)
Where to eat tonight: Llama Inn, Strange Delight
In the spring, Anoop Pillarisetti, Michael Tuiach, and chef Hisham “Ham” El-Waylly opened Strange Delight, a New Orleans seafood spot in Fort Greene. There were raw oysters, broiled oysters, a really big Ramos Gin Fizz, and an epic BBQ shrimp dish inspired by Pascal’s Manale.
But fans of New Orleans surely noticed the absence of a certain signature Louisiana dish: gumbo.
Well, now there’s gumbo. It’s a special that should hang around for a while, the folks at Strange Delight tell me — a nice development since gumbo doesn’t get a ton of representation in New York. The price is $40 and it’s so damn good I considered ordering a second portion the other night.
I was dining alone, lol.