Is it worth it?

I wrote the following for a Minneapolis restaurant guide earlier this year.  Karen Cooper, mentioned herein, is one of its editors.  For what it's worth, I've upgraded my opinion of Le Colonial somewhat since this appeared.

Is It Worth It?

A number of years ago, when I interviewed for the
position of restaurant critic at Chicago's Lerner
newspaper chain, the then editor asked, "If you went to two restaurants, and were served the identical meal, but at one place it cost $15, and at the other it cost $55, would you rate them the same?"

I got the job, so she must have been satisfied with my answer. The answer I gave, and one I believe any critic worth his or her salt would give, was "It depends...."

I thought of this recently in the ladies' room at Le Titi de Paris, a very nice French restaurant in Arlington Heights, Ill., a northwest suburb of Chicago. As Karen Cooper and I dried our hands, she remarked, "For $20 more a plate, we would have had cloth towels."

If everything were identical, I would never rate a higher-priced restaurant more highly than a low-priced one.  But there's more to a dining experience than food alone, and what makes one restaurant more expensive than another often has little to do with the quality of food in each.  A lot has to do with real estate and amenities and service.

How this translates into a given critic's rating varies from publication to publication.  Some evaluate each restaurant according its own merits, awarding stars according to how well the restaurant lives up to what it's trying to be.  Thus an ethnic storefront can achieve as many points as the most elegant and expensive of dining rooms.  Others have an overall standard that applies to all, leading to lists such as Mobil's Five-Star restaurants, which include only high-end establishments serving French or American food (http://www.mobil.com/consumer/travel/winners).

Lerner's reviews have not, in fact, included a rating scale.  My personal inclination, however, is to judge based on individual merits, with a high emphasis on food, followed by service, and then decor.   Over that is a factor I call _comfort._

I thoroughly enjoyed my last dinner at the lovely Dining Room at the Ritz-Carlton Chicago, where Chef Sarah Stegner's exquisite _cuisine nouvelle_ was presented on the finest china by a bevy of attentive servers.  But I also loved the smoked pork shoulder handed to me on a paper plate across the counter at Box's, a seedy barbecue joint with six tables in an indifferent neighborhood in Rockford, Ill.  The first meal, with accompanying fine wines, cost about $100.  The second, with a can of Coke I served myself from the pop machine in the corner, ran less than $10.  I would recommend both highly, depending on what kind of experience you're in the mood for.

Then there is Blackbird, a fashionable restaurant in the hot new Randolph Street Market district.  Its new American fare is cutting edge, brilliantly executed. But the tables are 4 inches apart, the chairs are unyielding and the unrelieved hard surfaces of the small dining room help to create an awful din.  Despite its good food, Blackbird is one of  the least pleasant dining experiences in Chicago.  It flunks the comfort test.

On the other hand, there's Le Colonial. Le Colonial is a beautiful Vietnamese restaurant on Chicago's trendy and tourist-laden Rush Street.  Its romantic decor features wicker furniture and leafy plants that make you feel like you're dining at the height of French colonialism.   The food is fine, and presented nicely, but it's no tastier than that at my favorite storefront Vietnamese restaurant, Nam Viet in lively Edison Park, and the service is much less friendly.   Le Colonial offers many of the same dishes as Nam Viet, or any of a half dozen places in New Chinatown (around Broadway Avenue and Argyle Street in the somewhat chancy Uptown neighborhood), though its menu is more limited.  Yet it costs three times as much -- more if you count the high price of parking on Rush Street.

I don't recommend Le Colonial, although I've enjoyed my meals there.  The amenities it offers don't seem worth its inflated prices.  I do, however, recommend a similarly decorated and equally expensive Vietnamese restaurant, Pasteur, even though it's outrageously noisy and in a considerably less tony neighborhood, because the food there is really special.

So what makes an expensive restaurant worth it?  First of all the food is absolutely fresh, prepared to order from scratch, using the best ingredients.  The artistry of the chef can be an important factor; restaurant fare isn't home cooking.  A good _demi-glace-_  -- just one ingredient of a sauce -- can take up to three days to make.  One element of a dish can require more than a dozen ingredients and twice that many steps to assemble.  But the cooking can also be simple; in that case the raw materials must be of the absolutely highest quality:  prime, aged meats; the freshest seafood; pristine and exotic vegetables.

The rarity of the ingredients also contributes.  Wild mushrooms, baby lettuces, Asian greens, fresh herbs, imported caviar, perfect raspberries ... none of these come cheap.  In the Midwest, fresh seafood will always come at a premium, because it all must be shipped in by air.  Highly perishable foie gras runs about $80 a pound.  Truffles can cost that for an ounce.  The better the restaurant the more luxury ingredients it will use.

Presentation is also a factor.  In a moderately priced restaurant, the chef may garnish a plate with a piece of parsley.  But in a costly one, each food item will be arranged just so  -- maybe stacked in a tower, maybe spread in a fan -- and any sauce will be applied with precision.  The garnishes will be displayed so that the plate appeals as much to the eye as to the palate.  That kind of presentation comes at a price -- it takes extra work and extra chefs and a bigger and more elaborate kitchen to accomplish.  A diner might employ no more than two short-order cooks to cater to the dinner crowd; a fine-dining restaurant may have as many as a dozen chefs to feed the same number of patrons, not counting the prep cooks who came in early to peel onions and carve vegetables for garnishes.

Appearance also matters when it comes to the dining room.  Who wants to pay high prices to eat in a dive?  A costly restaurant should look expensive.  The dining room should be attractive.  It should have nice china, heavy cutlery, fine glassware, cloth covering the tables and for the napkins.  All of these contribute to your dinner check and increase the comfort level to one of luxury.  The price goes up if the flowers are real and the artwork important.  And Karen is right -- a top-of-the-line establishment will provide cloth towels in the restrooms, increasing its laundry costs and the price of your dinner accordingly.

It goes without saying that the dining room must be arranged comfortably.  The tables won't be too close together.  At premium prices you don't want to feel like you're dining with strangers.  Chairs will be comfortable.  If cigarette smoke is allowed it will be well confined or ventilated. Noise will be regulated -- lively enough to be fun, perhaps, but muted enough that you can converse with your tablemates without straining to be heard.  The physical demands involved in creating such a pleasant space can be expensive, and that cost will be reflected in your dinner check, along with the proprietor's other major expense: the rent.

As the Realtors' saying goes, another thing that
contributes to price is location, location, location. All other things being equal, dinner in a nice, central neighborhood will cost more than dinner in a run-down area or inconvenient location; downtown will usually cost more than the suburbs, simply because the rents are high.  Does it matter to you, as a diner, once you're inside?  Maybe, maybe not.  That's why out-of-the-way eateries can be tremendous bargains.  Zealous, a restaurant in far flung Elmhurst, Ill., run by a protege of the famous Chef Charlie Trotter, just announced that this summer it will relocate to a downtown Chicago location.  I'm betting the prices go up at least by half.

But probably the thing that most contributes to cost and comfort level is service.  It's not uncommon for a fine restaurant to have four servers for every diner.  Good service is worth paying for.  At top restaurants you rarely have to ask for anything; your needs are anticipated.  Silverware appears when it is needed, fresh at every course.  Your water glass is always full.  Your plate is removed, silently, once everyone at your table has finished with the course -- and not before. Waiters don't interrupt your conversation every 10 minutes to ask, "Is everything OK?"  they just make certain it _is_ OK.  And should you require anything, a lifted eyebrow brings an attentive server to your side. The staff is pleasant and friendly, but not so friendly as to be intrusive.

The service actually begins before you get to the
restaurant, with your reservation.  Restaurants that lose reservations lose customers.  At the finest places, you never have to cool your heels in the bar.  Your table will be waiting when you arrive; if it's not, apologies will be abject.  Good service is also personal.  The maitre d' will call you by name.  The best ones recognize their repeat customers, even those who don't visit often.  Regular customers may be honored by a visit from the chef.

In top restaurants, everyone who works there is
well-trained and knowledgeable.  The waitstaff has sampled the fare and is prepared to answer questions about it.  The sommelier knows what wines go well with the menu and will counsel you according to your tastes and what he or she thinks you want to spend, rather than what costs the most.   Should you want something not on the menu, the kitchen will try to produce it.

Above all, each and every staff member will strive to impress you that your pleasure is paramount.  And that, of course, is the most worthwhile luxury of all.

Restaurants mentioned:

Blackbird, 312/715-0708, 619 W. Randolph St., Chicago Box's Bar-B-Q, 815/962-9629, 815 Marchesano Drive, Rockford, Ill. Le Colonial, 312/255-0088, 937 N. Rush St., Chicago The Dining Room at the Ritz-Carlton Chicago, 312/573-5222, 160 E. Pearson St., Chicago Nam Viet, 773/763-0307, 6731 N. Northwest Highway, Chicago Pasteur, 773/878-1061, 5525 N. Broadway Ave., Chicago Le Titi de Paris, 847/506-0222, 1015 W. Dundee Road, Arlington Heights, Ill. Zealous, 630/834-9300, 174 N. York Road, Elmhurst