Recommendations

The Daily Diningologist

April 8, 2019. The lack of entries lately is because I am working on something like an investigative report. It likely won’t appear for four months or so. In the meantime, I will write here as I encounter anything adventuresome or conceptual and post some writings with titles. Because there are noteworthy aspects to restaurant and […]

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Recommendations

You, Too, Could Become a Michelin Inspector

In today’s on-line deluge of restaurant scores and rankings, the uniqueness of the Michelin Guides is supposedly their mythic inspection regime. Hardly a month goes by without someone, usually the young international director of the guides Gwendal Poullennec, reminding the restaurant world of some international army of full-time anonymous inspectors blanketing the Michelin Guide universe. […]

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Recommendations

A Jonathan Gold Repository: Where to Dig For More Nuggets.

City of Gold. Laura Gabbert’s 2015 documentary  about Jonathan Gold: This is accessible on several platforms. It is much more enjoyable than any of the chef puff pieces you see on Netflix since Jonathan Gold’s story is so much more encompassing and interesting than someone making food and running a restaurant. The LA Weekly reviews mostly […]

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Restaurant Review

Japan Journey Journal Part 2. Restaurant Yanagiya: Revered Country Cuisine Sketched In Charcoal.

If you’re gourmand enough, the food gods will smile upon you and leadeth you into temptation of any restaurant you wish to enter, which often means the ones you think you may never be able to enter. Most notable among these in the fairly recent past are Jamin–later to become Restaurant Robuchon– in the late 1980s and early 1990s (Those old enough may remember the Parisian restaurant anti-American boycott at the time); Restaurant Girardet outside of Lausanne, especially after Morley Safer did a segment for“60 Minutes” about it more than 30 years ago; and more recently elBulli, Can Roca. Noma, Osteria Francescana and Alinea.

Japan is loaded with difficult-to-book restaurants, particularly some of the sushi and kaiseki ones in Tokyo. In planning my recent trip to Japan, a provincial restaurant named Yanagia caught my eye because of its sky-high Tabelog score.

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Recommendations

Feeding Off Each Other: Brandon Granier & Robert Brown Discuss Les Maisons de Bricourt–Olivier & Jane Roellinger’s Brittany Seafood Haven

We welcome, or welcome back, readers of “Restaurant Politics” after a hiatus during which we contributed to Gastromondiale. By we, I mean myself and Brandon Granier, who is not only an ardent, highly active international restaurant-goer, but possessor of a first-rate mind and an abundance of intellectual curiosity. (For a more detailed description of our […]

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Complaints Dept.

Jörg Zipprick: “Why the Beautiful Has Replaced the Good”

Regarded in Western Europe, and increasingly so in China, as one of the relatively-few independent-minded, outspoken gastronomic writers and critics, Jörg Zipprick is unafraid of tackling controversial subjects and resisting selling out or writing either thinly-disguised or blatant PR. He has created a large repertoire of praise-worthy, widely-read books and articles. Because he writes mostly […]

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