NY Times food critics serve chain restaurants

Ezra Klein sounded off about the NY Times article in which food critics critiqued chain restaurants in suburban New York City. He was put off by their thinly veiled distaste towards mainstream restaurants. While I understand where Ezra is coming from, I think he fails to take into consideration the “surprisingly decent” consensus. They thought the food was pretty good, especially for the cost.

Their central criticism, which is somewhat justifiable in my opinion, focuses on the cultural aspect of these restaurants. Chains seem to process their customers with factory-like efficiency. But that’s usually lost in the faux atmospheres they use to create hype. Some restaurants are more egregious in this respect than others. More on that later.

Every reviewer in the Times article made note that they were handed pagers. “Coasterlike disks” was how one reviewer put it. The culture shock he experienced wasn’t limited to that during his trip to the Outback Stakehouse:

On a recent Saturday night, a companion and I threaded our way through the crowded holding pen beside the host’s station. Table for two? The teenagers staffing the post slid their eyes down the long list of names as though working a particularly difficult problem on an AP statistics test. “Ummm, 70 to 75 minutes,” one finally said. I’m not sure what was more unnerving, the length of the wait or the precision of the estimate.

We were handed one of those coasterlike disks that light up when your table has been called. There were no seats in the bar or waiting area, of course. They had long been snared by people who appeared to have taken up semipermanent residence and were perhaps even having their mail forwarded.

When I’m handed a pager, I feel that they minus well just strip a barcode around my wrist. The restaurants that do that are usually very busy and I’m sure it helps with processing and allows customers to carouse nearby businesses while they wait. Nevertheless, a pager denotes that I’ve left the personal realm where names matter and entered a computer like process where only pager #11 counts. So I feel the Times reviewer is right to stress that impersonal trait chain restaurants share.

But the most telling — yet hidden — shot the reviewer took was aimed at the decor:

A display of boomerangs. Some sports jerseys. Beer signs. Five large TV screens, all playing sports.

That’s where Ezra’s criticism makes sense. These comments could be interpreted as cold and listing the decor as matter of fact. Judging from the first two paragraphs though, I detect an anti-mainstream slant. Setting the boomerangs aside, the reviewer just described the majority of restaurants and bars in America — obviously that’s the problem.

The Times also went to the Cheesecake Factory. I have a special vendetta to resume with the Factory. I’ll post that later today.