Ruiz gone, Bon Appétit delivers, DC Bibs, and more...

Family Meal - Tuesday, September 24th, 2019

Hello Tuesday,

Let’s get to it…

First, Some Sad News – From NYC on Sunday, via Instagram: “On behalf of the La Cubana family, with heavy hearts, we are deeply saddened to share the passing of our beloved Executive Chef Carl Ruiz.” Ruiz was 44. Mariel Padilla has a brief obituary in the NYT, and Eater’s Stefanie Tuder collected social media tributes from fellow Food Network personalities Guy Fieri, Alex Guarnaschelli, and more, here.

The Delivery Wars – Big news today at that funky little intersection between food media money and restaurant money, via press release: “Bon Appétit Opens Virtual Restaurant in Chicago...Bon Appétit the award-winning food lifestyle brand announced today the launch of Bon Appétit, Delivered, a virtual restaurant featuring dishes curated by the Bon Appétit Test Kitchen. The delivery-only concept is available exclusively in Chicago through Grubhub…. The virtual storefront is operated by Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises (LEYE), a multi-concept restaurant group based in Chicago.”

Interesting... Bon Appétit came under fire recently because their editor-at-large was involved in a restaurant that made their Hot 10 longlist. Now the BA “lifestyle brand” itself owns a restaurant, and is in direct competition with anyone else that delivers within the same Chicago radius. Then there’s the matter of at least indirect ties to LEYE restaurants across the country. Right?

And then there’s the question of Grubhub, which has sponsored a lot of BA content in the past. Here’s one of the follow-up q’s I sent BA’s spokesperson last night: “In her newsletter this week, Eater EIC Amanda Kludt announced she has decided to stop using all third party delivery apps and singled out Grubhub for a number of seemingly shady [alleged] business strategies like tying a restaurant's in-app position to the size of commissions paid, setting up separate phone numbers to charge restaurants added commissions (sometimes without a sale), partnering with Yelp to promote those numbers, and buying up tens of thousands of restaurant domain names to charge further commissions without the knowledge of the restaurants. Does Bon Appétit share any of these concerns? Why or why not?”

Will let you know what they say.

Awards Season – Press release: “The selection for the Michelin Guide Washington, D.C. 2020 Bib Gourmands has been announced, featuring a grand total of 44 restaurants. Up from 39 in 2019, this year’s addition features 10 new restaurants.” Namespotting from Eater DC’s Gabe Hiatt: “Bad Saint, Doi Moi, and Maydan were all conspicuously absent… meaning all are still in the running to receive Michelin stars.”

The Critics – Don’t usually include reviews here, but this Soleil Ho take on Le Colonial in the SF Chronicle is well worth a read. First, because as Pete Wells puts it, “This review takes a place that would be very easy to dismiss snidely, and instead dismisses it thoughtfully, with great insight.” And second, because (alongside all the brown and blackface still going around), it serves as a great reminder that we’re one month from Halloween, and there’s time yet to save your friends, colleagues, staff, clients, business, and reputation from an “edgy” costume mistake. “What are you going to be?” is a dull, harmless question until someone on the team says, “[Stereotype]!”.

The Media – Bit of a scoop: Eater has hired its new Features Editor. Rebecca Flint Marx (personal website here) starts next week. Marx is a French Culinary Institute grad who readers in SF will know as the author of several big pieces, including 2016 exposé “The Trouble with the Michaels” about then Chronicle critic Michael Bauer and his boyfriend, Michael Murphy. She won a Beard award two years before that for detailing the complex relationship chefs have with Yelp, and is also responsible for last summer’s Eater NY report, “Estela’s Thomas Carter Created a ‘Culture of Fear,’ Staffers Claim.” Follow her @EdibleComplex; fear her if you must.

And quick award note: “San Francisco Chronicle wine critic Esther Mobley was named feature wine writer of the year Thursday in the Louis Roederer International Wine Writers Awards, a prestigious international competition.”

The (Book) Deal – Eater is out with a helpful little Q&A this week for all of you dreaming of that sweet sweet cookbook $$$ (inevitably followed by Netflix money, ipso facto). Key quote from lawyer Jasmine Moy in conversation with Sonia Chopra, under improbable subheading “The Upshot”: “Cookbooks aren’t ventures anyone should head into half-heartedly and certainly not if your end goal is seeing extra (or any!) dollars in your pocket.” Which reminds me of my favorite piece in the cookbooks-are-hard genre: Brooks Headley in Bon Appétit circa 2017, six months past due on the Superiority Burger book, “How Not to Write a Cookbook.” Good luck!

The 2.0 – News from New Noma via this week’s René Redzepi blog post:“I am happy to share, and grateful to [investor Marc Blazer], that he has now helped us engineer a way for me and the team to own our own business, by selling [Overture Holding’s] shares to us. This will be the first time that I will become majority owner of this project.” Flashback to this 2013 headline in Eater: “René Redzepi Becomes Majority Owner of Noma.” (Probably the result of a miscommunication surrounding the difference between being the largest vs the majority shareholder, but also… perfect. Everything’s 2.0.)

For Design Fans – Been reading about the opening of Tao Group’s characteristically over the top Cathédrale Restaurant in the Moxy Hotel Manhattan, but haven’t seen any great independent photography, so we’re going to have to go to the source (official website). It’s a massive, theatrical space (including huge, hanging show curtains) with a lot going on (“Save The Robots” in neon, a minor scarf of birds), but I got distracted by the Martha and the Vandellas Fillmore posters in the, ahem, “Poster Room,” and now I can’t stop humming the intro to Dancing in the Streets. You’re welcome.

And Last and Least? – It’s incredible how stories that hinge on the power of lists and awards can exist in such a perfect quantum state of both serious and ridiculous at the same time. Case in point, this morning’s AFP headline in the Guardian: “French chef sues Michelin guide, accusing them of cheese mix-up. Marc Veyrat’s La Maison des Bois lost its third star after, he says, an inspector suspected cheddar in a souffle.” Tragi-parody at its finest.

And that’s it for today. It doesn’t matter what you wore, just as long as you were here.

I’ll see you here Friday for next Family Meal.

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