Carter accused, Niccolini redeemed?, Isabella shrunk, LA food media shuffled, and more...
Family Meal - Friday, August 10th, 2018
Hello Friday,
Apologies in advance for an especially negative Family Meal today. I blame the accused. BUT, if you can manage to stick around till the end, you’ll find a Q&A with cookbook critic Paula Forbes that should be of interest to all of you aspiring food authors. She has her finger on the pulse of the market, and is about to publish a big roundup of the Fall release season. Full disclosure: I’m not a big cookbook guy, but I read her newsletter to keep my eye on trends and who in the restaurant industry is doing what in the book world. Highly recommend.
Let’s get to it…
The Accused – In NYC, “Estela’s Thomas Carter Created a ‘Culture of Fear,’ Staffers Claim.” And Rebecca Flint Marx’s deeply reported exposé on that culture is a must read: “‘It’s such a gray area, because he isn’t someone who texts people late at night or asks for photos,’ Marnie*, a former employee who worked at more than one Matter House restaurant, told Eater. ‘People have always talked about [Mario Batali] and how much of a menace he is, and everyone has always known how [Ken Friedman] is creepy,’ she said. That, she explained, was not Carter, but nonetheless, ‘there’s this real feeling that Thomas does emotional damage to people without having to touch them.’”
That the many allegations – from over 30 former and current employees – detailed in the story do not necessarily rise to a Batali / Friedman level is precisely the reason this article needs to be read and shared.
If you find yourself scoffing at what Carter’s accused of, I have bad news for you about the future.
If you find yourself scoffing at Carter’s denials (“According to a Matter House spokesperson, Carter has ‘never expressed the desire to have sexual relations with guests.’”) we are on the same page.
P.S. Sorry for talking optics here, but what publicist thought responding to accusations item by item was a good idea? “We couldn’t give a pregnant woman a stool because it was a fire hazard”? Shhhhh.
The Step Away – Carter tells Eater, “I apologize to my partner, Ignacio Mattos, and to all our staff members, as well. I am supportive of this movement, and respect those who had the courage to call me out. I will be taking several months away from Matter House restaurants to reflect.”
P.S. In the cookbook roundup below, Paula Forbes said she was excited about the Estela book launch. That was before this news hit. Will ask her if / how this changes things.
The Fallout – In D.C., “Three Mike Isabella restaurants have closed and multiple landlords are suing for unpaid rent in the months following a sexual harassment lawsuit against former Top Chef star and his business partners. Now it appears that Isabella’s biggest, most ambitious venture—mega-food hall Isabella Eatery in Tysons Galleria—is struggling. The sprawling 41,000-square-foot venue has cut menus and staff, and in recent weeks, employees reported checks bouncing. A local real estate broker, speaking anonymously because of the confidential nature of his conversations, tells Washingtonian that the space is being quietly shopped around. ‘We’re not closing, it’s been a slow summer,’ Isabella says in a text message this morning. He says he’s not aware of his space being marketed.” Jessica Sidman has the details.
If you happen to have the original investor deck for Isabella Eatery, please send it my way…
The Expunged – In the NYT, Florence Fabricant wrote up a preview of the new Four Seasons, where Diego Garcia will run the kitchen with pastry chef Bill Yosses and chef de cuisine Brandon Lajes, but made no mention of what the NY Post has called a “cloud over the party”: “[Co-owner Julian Niccolini] pleaded guilty to an assault case involving a woman in 2016…. In the assault case, ‘Naughty Niccolini,’ as he once dubbed himself, was charged with sexual assault for groping a 28-year-old woman’s breasts and buttocks and severely bruising her back at a private party. The felony charge could have landed him in the clink for seven years, but he took a plea bargain in 2016 and pleaded guilty to third-degree misdemeanor assault instead.”
Headline of that NY Post piece: “Will Four Seasons maestro Julian Niccolini survive the #MeToo era?” NYT answer: Why not?
The Profile Treatment – If you need a pick-me-up after all that, Jonathan Kauffman has a great profile of Carmen Elias and her La Mejor Bakery in the Chronicle (that I missed last week). “She learned how to confirm that an ICE officer’s warrant is valid and memorized the emergency number to report violations — 200-1548, she rattles off as proof. Then she made the rounds, sharing that news with her fellow businesses. Not all of them are Latino, but Saudi, Pakistani and Chinese, too. ‘It’s good if they know what to do or what not to do,’ she says.”
The End of an Era – In LA, “Restaurateur Piero Selvaggio has announced that he will close Valentino, his Santa Monica Italian restaurant, at the end of the year. The restaurant, credited with introducing Angelenos to authentic Italian ingredients such as prosciutto, balsamic vinegar and white truffles, opened on Pico Boulevard in 1972.” Details in the LA Times.
For (Fast Casual) Design Fans – Here’s the photo spread for the new Mendocino Farms San Francisco location. Best I could come up with is: It looks like what a fast casual restaurant might look like in a particularly boring version of heaven? Right?
The Media – The LA food media world is in one big shuffle. Per Eater LA, “In an internal memo, [LA Times] executive editor Norm Pearlstine announced that current food editor Amy Scattergood will step down from her position to write about cooking, recipes, and cookbooks, while former deputy Jenn Harris will become the acting editor until the newspaper hires a new food editor. The publication will also hire restaurants critics, answering the question of when the Times would replace Jonathan Gold... In addition, Andrea Chang, an 11-year veteran reporter for the Times, will join the food section from the business pages.”
A lot of moving parts there, especially with Michael Bauer’s position up for grabs to the north. Any guesses who lands where? andrew@thisfamilymeal.com. Will work on a list this weekend…
And that’s it for today. Stay tuned below for an interview with Paula Forbes, and I’ll see you here Tuesday for next Family Meal.
Food media types, let me know your (anonymous) thoughts on the LA shuffle…
And don’t forget to follow me on Twitter, and send tips and/or gifs of that scene in Defending Your Life where he visits Mendocino Farms SF to andrew@thisfamilymeal.com. If you got this as a forward, sign up for yourself! Archives still at thisfamilymeal.com for now.
And now: A Q&A with cookbook critic Paula Forbes of Stained Page News.
Before we get started on the business side of things, I see you’re starting to get some late summer / fall releases in. What are you excited about? What (or who) is going to surprise people this year?
It’s funny, the week that NFL pre-season starts is always the week I start coming home to stacks of fall cookbooks. My mailman is very patient with me, haha.
In terms of restaurant cookbooks this fall, nothing holds a candle to Joe Beef: Surviving the Apocalypse. I have it, I’ve read it cover-to-cover, in my opinion it’s better than the first one. The first one came out at the beginning of my career and lit a serious cookbook fire in me, so that’s not something I say lightly. There are more recipes and the book is more cohesive, more focused. It’s also slightly longer, so you get more of that Quebecois madness. (A good thing.)
Other restaurant books I’m excited about: Bestia, the Contra book (which I haven’t seen yet), Rich Table, Christina Tosi’s cake book, the Noma fermentation book, the Estela* book, the EMILY book.
I run a cookbook newsletter called Stained Page News, and my fall book preview comes out next week. Subscribe if you want more of my very opinionated cookbook takes.
(*Reminder: This answer was given before yesterday’s news broke. I’ll follow up with Paula ASAP.)
Most Family Meal readers are in the industry, and a lot of them are probably thinking about doing their own cookbook at some point. I don’t want to ask you to go through what the process is like from pitch to publish, but maybe you have a good recommendation on where to find that info? And I wonder how you’ve seen that process changing over the years?
For chefs and restarauteurs, hands down start with his super detailed breakdown of cookbook finance that Nick Kokonas wrote. I think there’s a lot of bad information out there about what kind of advance chefs can expect, and Kokonas is very transparent here. The numbers are maybe a little dated now, and keep in mind when you’re reading that post that these numbers are for Alinea, a super hot property. Most restaurants are not going to pull these numbers. But it should still open some eyes.
After that, if you’re still into the idea, there are a number of routes to take. I think most chefs go through their publicists. My best advice going into the process is to have a clear idea of a book concept and a clear idea of what you want to get out of the experience. If money follows, so be it.
What do you think is the biggest mistake professional chefs make when they think about cookbooks?
That a cookbook is going to make them rich. There are plenty of good reasons to write a cookbook, but making money is not one of them. In my opinion, the best reason for a chef to write a cookbook is to promote her restaurant—a cookbook is a great excuse for press to write about you. Particularly national/regional press that might not cover you otherwise. Personally, I think legacy is also a good reason to write a cookbook, so long as the concept is viable. It’s all about managing your expectations. Lots of cookbooks come out every year, they’re not all going to be bestsellers.
As far as accessibility goes, it seems like a lot of professional chefs have to make a choice pretty early on: Do I want to write a cookbook that people can actually cook from, or is this going to be more of an art project? Is there still a market for both?
I’m going to reframe that choice, slightly, but it amounts to the same thing in practice: Do I want to write a cookbook about my restaurant? Or do I want to write a cookbook that focuses on something else? For years publishers have been pushing chefs towards the latter: instead of writing The Northern Italian Restaurant Cookbook, for example, they want you to write Chef Milano’s Guide to Risotto. The latter tends to be more home cook friendly; the former is obviously recipes from the restaurant, so your mileage may vary.
I do think there’s a market for both, but I think the restaurant cookbook works better for higher end restaurants. Places where people want a souvenir. That said, some of the bestselling cookbooks of the past decade-ish have been both. The Franklin Barbecue cookbook is a great example of a book that 1. outlined exactly what they do at the restaurant 2. so that people can actually do it at home and 3. sold like crazy.
Alright, can we get a list of good places for novices to start poking around? Any good “how to” guides you’d recommend? Obviously, they should read a ton of cookbooks, and subscribe to Stained Page News to get a sense of what’s out there. Where else should they look?
I always point people to Dianne Jacobs’ blog, which is more aimed at food bloggers than pros, but does give you a pretty good idea of the process. If you’re serious about it, start looking at cookbooks you like and check the acknowledgments to see which agents represent those authors. Reach out to those agents. Talk to your publicist, if you have one. Start formulating a concept that takes into account why you want to write a book. And when you get a deal, let me know and we’ll break the news in the newsletter.
Thanks much, Paula! That link one more time: Stained Page News.