GM kickbacks, English comebacks, Tower cokebacks, and more...
GM kickbacks, English comebacks, Tower cokebacks, and more...
Family Meal - Friday, April 14th, 2023
Hello Friday,
Dusting off cobwebs and playing a bit of catchup after a week and a half of no Family Meal due to holidays both personal and official.
Let’s get to it…
The Stub Hub – Yet another restaurant reservation scalper site is having its moment in the media. This time it’s “Appointment Trader,” with a bit of a profile in the NYT from Christina Morales. Maybe the headline for guests is reservations at Rao’s, but the paragraph I flinched at was: “Appointment Trader even allows users to bid on reservations that don’t exist yet. Those reservation slots can be created by restaurant managers, who often have the power to find room for powerful customers. Managers can then pocket the bid, [founder Jonas Frey said.”
What could go wrong?
P.S.: I don’t want to give Mr. Frey a ton of free clicks, but you really should check out the website just for fun. It’s… a lot.
P.P.S.: I say scalping, but legally Morales says, “New York’s scalping law is particularly strict, but several lawyers said its language applies only to tickets, mostly in the sports and entertainment industries.”
The Comeback – “Celebrity chef Todd English briefly returned to the New York City restaurant scene — as the partner at the restaurant that opened late February, Pappas Taverna in Greenwich Village, which claimed to be the revival of the ‘first Greek restaurant ever in NYC’ — until the partnership dissolved less than a month after opening.” Story on the ole one-month-in “creative differences” via Melissa McCart in Eater.
Some Sad News – “Mimi Sheraton, the food writer and restaurant critic who chronicled culinary scenes in New York and around the world with a discriminating palate and deft prose that captured the nuances of haute cuisine and plumbed the mysteries of chicken soup, died [last] Thursday in Manhattan. She was 97.” Robert D. McFadden has a full obituary in the NYT.
Current NYT critic Pete Wells also had his take, pinning the weird pretend-we-all-don’t-know-you’re-the-local-restaurant-critic shtick on Sheraton’s disguise game.
And there were many other tributes and obits. But… for me, in this modern moment, there is no better memory (or worse?) than just scrolling a wild, late life Twitter feed.
Third to last tweet (2 years ago) Sheraton was discussing space travel: “I'd be interested going up only when I could land on a planet for lunch at its most famous restaurant.”
Perfect.
Some Sad News Too – In LA, “Joshua Ulmer, a rising-star pastry chef who wove Latin-heritage ingredients with French technique for Enrique Olvera’s restaurant group, died March 29 at the age of 25. His sudden passing immediately reverberated among the restaurant community in Los Angeles and beyond, with many high-profile voices lamenting the loss on social media. The cause of death was not disclosed.” Obituary via Stephanie Breijo in the LA Times.
For Design Fans – I love it when someone repurposes a commonplace kitchen object as a centerpiece design element. For instance, The Pearl Club in Chicago has taken the humble LED-lit whisk, hung it from the ceiling, and voila: Some kinda pendant.
And last but not least: The Key – Welcome to Substack, Jeremiah Tower! I have read arguments for various groups being responsible for the rise of celebrity chefs or “American food.” And I have read Tower write about kitchen cocaine before. But I’m not sure I’ve read him put those two things together and give credit where credit is due on a grand scale like he does in the debut paragraph of his debut newsletter:
“It was cocaine that became the fuel for the energy that changed the way America dines, and for the high-profile and all-consuming peripatetic schedules that launched the superstar chefs.”
And that’s it for today!
I will see paying subscribers back here Tuesday, and everyone else on Friday for next Family Meal.
And don’t forget to follow me on Twitter and Instagram, and send tips and/or high-profile and all-consuming peripatetic schedules to andrew@thisfamilymeal.com. If you like Family Meal and want to keep it going, please chip in here. If you got this as a forward, sign up for yourself!