Donde Dinner? - 85 Avenue A

Donde Dinner? wants to make your next dining experience an adventure. So, every Friday, we pick a restaurant and post its address for you. The catch is, that's all the information you get. No name, no type of cuisine, and no Googling. But first, here's last week's address:

285 Grand Avenue = Marietta

This week's restaurant follows typical Donde Dinner? fashion. Price, quality, and accessibility have all been taken into account. You won't be waiting at the bar for two hours with $15 cocktails and you never have to worry about a dress code. Just hop on the train, or your feet, or your bike, and head to:

85 Avenue A (map)

Maybe Tipping is a City in China Afterall

A lot has been written recently on the notion of tipping in restaurants. Should it stay or should it go? A few big names took to Twitter two months ago in an open discussion on the matter. There, Danny Meyer wrote that he "Considered eliminating tipping years ago," but didn't at his servers' request. David Chang also tweeted that he was "kicking around the idea at Momofuku of figuring out how to increase prices removing tips w/o revolt." In lieu of a review today, Pete Wells addresses the same question, Leaving a Tip: A Custom in Need of Changing?

Wells suggests three techniques for those seeking better service in restaurants: "1. Become very famous; 2. Spend $1,000 or more on wine every time you go out; 3. Keep going to the same restaurant until you get V.I.P. treatment; if that doesn’t work, pick another place." The critic goes on to explain his approach to tipping, but ultimately has this to say: "I could go on against tipping, but let’s leave it at this: it is irrational, outdated, ineffective, confusing, prone to abuse and sometimes discriminatory." But Wells also looks to adjust the system in a manner that would benefit both diner and server, "The people who take care of us in restaurants deserve a better system, and so do we."

There is a lot to be considered if the tradition of tipping is removed from restaurants. Servers are individuals, and they bring their personalities to the experience. With that comes their ability to convey the restaurateur's vision in a unique way that is all their own. Menu knowledge and efficiency are other reasons, but this isn't a discussion on whether or not servers deserve tips. However, applying a fixed-rate to every server in New York City is like enforcing a dress code. You take away the server's sense of self, their identity, and the modicum with which they measure their ability to do their job. A server with three weeks experience in a diner knows a great deal less - not just about service, but the industry as a whole - than a veteran server at Peter Luger or Le Grenouille.

Minimum wage for food service workers in New York is $5 an hour. Let's say for example a 30-hour workweek brings in $900. One hundred and fifty of that is hourly wages, making the difference (earned in tips) $750. If tipping is eliminated, $25 needs to be tacked on to the hourly wage to make up for the $750 - making it $30 an hour. That's all well and good (great) for the server, but consider the restaurateur here. If a restaurant employs 10 servers on a given night, and those servers work an 8-hour shift, the house goes from paying $400 to $2,400. In order for a restaurant to make up for the $2,000 difference, and not offend their clientele, it would be an incredibly challenging task.

Tipping allows restaurateurs to open restaurants with less capital. Consider the added cost to open a restaurant if you had to pay servers $20 or $25 an hour. If a restaurant opens and needs to hire 10 servers, that's $50/hour labor cost. If the restaurant has to pay the same 10 servers $20/hour, the hourly wage jumps to $200. The added capital is enough to thwart any reasonable soul from opening a restaurant.

From a servers point-of-view, some shifts are more desirable than others. Senior servers at restaurants earn the best schedules and work the busiest days. What's the incentive to work weekends (the busiest restaurant days) if servers make an hourly wage? In other words, why work twice as hard serving at least double the amount of people on Saturday if you're going to make the same working half as hard on Mondays?

A number of restaurants have abolished tipping and operate with implemented service fees. In New York, Per Se, Atera, and Brooklyn Fare work this way. Our concern with this model is that those restaurants are the type of places you rarely eat at more than once. When it costs two or three hundred dollars a person to eat out, it's easy to take a percentage of that ticket price and bleed it out to the service staff. It's also easy to do when the staff (Per Se excluded) doesn't consist of back waiters, runners, polishers, and baristas - all of whom share in a server's tips on a nightly basis.

Sure, working a service fee/surcharge into a restaurant's business model is an effort to make things consistent. It's subtle and nicely presented, but really no different than servers automatically adding gratuity to every check before they present it to the guest. Let's just make the fine print at the bottom of every menu read, "Gratuity may be added to parties of 1 or more."

Donde Dinner? - 285 Grand Avenue

Donde Dinner? wants to make your next dining experience an adventure. So, every Friday, we pick a restaurant and post its address for you. The catch is, that's all the information you get. No name, no type of cuisine, and no Googling. But first, here's last week's address:

46-63 Metropolitan Avenue = Bun-Ker Vietnamese

This week's restaurant follows typical Donde Dinner? fashion. Price, quality, and accessibility have all been taken into account. You won't be waiting at the bar for two hours with $15 cocktails and you never have to worry about a dress code. Just hop on the train, or your feet, or your bike, and head to:

 285 Grand Avenue (map)

Betony and the Midtown Artery

[daniel krieger for the ny times]If you're a chef or restaurateur and you're after three stars from the New York Times, your best bet is to head north of 42nd Street. There has been recent talk of a downtown discovery, but certain restaurateurs aren't into the casual approach that thrives below 14th Street. Take Eamon Rockey and Bryce Shuman, the General Manager and Executive Chef, respectively, of Midtown newcomer Betony. The restaurant opened on West 57th Street earlier this year and, today, Pete Wells awards it three stars.

Shuman, Rockey, and Luke Wohlers (the restaurant's wine director) are all veterans of Eleven Madison Park. "As you’d imagine," Wells writes, "The two restaurants bear a family resemblance." This appears in many guises, notably service, in what Wells calls "E.M.P. ESP” – when servers know what you need before you do. And the food? Wells finds, "Traces of Mr. Humm’s style, minus the party tricks, show up in Mr. Shuman’s cooking, especially in the way that the signs of hard work have been tucked out of sight." The critic loves nearly everything he at in his visits to Betony and comments briefly on the decor. "But what would most help that dining room right now is a crowd," he writes. "Betony deserves it."

The guys behind Betony could have modeled their restaurant after the two-star template and opened a refined-yet-casual concept anywhere. The fact that they chose West 57th Street was a sign that they were taking a different approach. Midtown spaces are bigger and rents are higher. It results in a smaller margine of error and the need to raise menu prices. Part of the reason downtown has seen an explosing in smart, well-executed, delicious, and affordable food comes down to rent. The difference between $17,000/month and $37,000/month isn't just twenty grand, but maybe be the difference in a $17 fish entree and a $37 fish entree.

That's not to say Wells hasn't awarded downtown restaurants three stars (Kyo Ya, Carbone, Atera), just that the difference between a three star restaurant downtown and one uptown is itself significant. An artery runs through midtown dining and beats to the rhythm of a particular aesthetic. There's a slower pace, sprawling and grandiose rooms, and a certain elegance that comes with dining north of 42nd Street. Not everywhere of course, but restaurants that could flirt with three stars, or Times recognition in any sense, are at a caliber all their own compared to restaurants downtown with the same three star rating. [NYTimes]

Harvey Cedar's Clambar, aka No Cell Phones, on Long Beach Island

We call it No Cell Phones. Of course, that's not the real name of the place, but a printout tapped to the wall reads, "No Cell Phones." A hard-working, fast-shucking woman is quick to enforce the rule, so don't tempt her. Another sign tapped above the register inside reveals more about the lady in charge. It reads, "Nel Lally, Seafood Diva." Lally presides over a place called Harvey Cedar's Clambar on Centre Street in Beach Haven, New Jersey.

Beach Haven is a borough of Ocean County. It's one of the few parcels of land that make up Long Beach Island, a sprawling, flat, north-to-south slice of land just east of mainland New Jersey. We spent last weekend there. We'd been before, and each time we go we make it a point to visit Lally and occupy a few of the 30 barstools that line the old U-shaped wooden bar.

The menu is exactly what you want in a seaside, beach town eatery. Good, simple, no frills food prepared well, seasoned properly, and cooked perfectly. Picky eaters get chicken fingers and fries. Everyone else gets everything else. Here's what we had.

Click to read more ...

Eat the Weeks; Aug 12th - Aug 23rd

We check out the first New York satellite of California-based Umami Burger | Pete Wells gives Costata two stars and we ponder if three were feasible had the restaurant been White's 1st or 2nd | Donde Dinner? - 76 Avenue B | Pete Wells awards one star to the Pines in Gowanus | Donde Dinner? 46-63 Metropolitan Avenue

Donde Dinner? - 46-63 Metropolitan Avenue

Donde Dinner? wants to make your next dining experience an adventure. So, every Friday, we pick a restaurant and post its address for you. The catch is, that's all the information you get. No name, no type of cuisine, and no Googling. But first, here's last week's address:

76 Avenue B = Oda House

This week's restaurant follows typical Donde Dinner? fashion. Price, quality, and accessibility have all been taken into account. You won't be waiting at the bar for two hours with $15 cocktails and you never have to worry about a dress code. Just hop on the train, or your feet, or your bike, and head to:

46-63 Metropolitan Avenue (map*)

*this one's for the cyclists, re: not the easiest place to get to.

Go Wanus Go, One Star for the Pines

We had a sneaking suspicion Pete Wells was going to review the Pines this week. With recent reviews of Costata, ABC Cocina, Uncle Boons, Alder, Lafayette, and Carbone, the Times critic has just about exhausted the white-hot (at least three-months-old) hits of late.

When Wells wrote about Danny Bowien's Mission Chinese Food on Orchard Street, he wove a Led Zepplin theme throughout the review. For the Pines, a looser, louder restaurant in a less-polished part of town, he goes for Television and the punk/new wave era of late 70s CBGB.

"None of my five meals at the Pines since its opening late last summer in the Gowanus section of Brooklyn has been in the “just awful” category," Wells writes of his early visits, "But two were so frustrating I swore I’d never return." "Three months later," he continues, "I was back. That night, the Pines and its chef, Angelo Romano, were in control of their chords and the tempo from start to finish."

Wells writes that chef Angelo Romano, "has a discerning eye for prime ingredients, but isn’t always as discerning about his ideas." Wells cites a few dishes that didn't work and calls out some early service blunders. Many of those kinds have been worked out, and a few of the restaurant's initial policies, i.e. cash only and no reservations, have since been changed, making a meal at the Pines that much more approachable. Wells awards one star.

Wells ate at the Pines five times and gave the restaurant almost a full year before filing his review (the restaurant opened on September 19th, 2012). This much time, and this many visits, have become a rarity it today's media driven food world, but the critic saw potential and wanted to give the young team time to get their Gowanus Canal sea legs.

In our opinion, each of our meals at the Pines have been two-star worthy. Romano's food, along with his knowledge and deft execution of unique ingredients, breathes a breath of fresh air into the city's foodmosphere. There's no doubt the one star is a bright one, and while two seems to be the trend, the solitary star gives Romano plenty of room to grow - which, according to an interview Romano did last week, sounds like it will be happening sooner than later. When asked, "What's next for you?" Romano's responsed, "We have a few projects we're working on this year that I can't really talk about yet. They're all Brooklyn-based." [NYTimes] [VV]