Solid point.
Where’s Shunji or fucking Mori ???
It’s like she read a couple of horrendous top 20 lists for LA and then arrived at her own list.
But who fucking cares ??? I’ve never found her writing to be interesting, elucidating fun or informative. JGold is a decent to good writer even if you disagree with his taste in grub in my utterly worthless opinion.
Then again these comments are stemming from a horrendous writer himself.
Just my beyond worthless 2.5 cents.
Haha true true. This “writer” doesn’t even list a restaurant and instead puts Mozza Group. That’s a tell. Also listing Quinn Emmanuel’s pet sushi restaurant.
These lists are doomed from the beginning - when dealing with different cuisines (and at different price points) there’s too many factors and you have to account for how one judges the criteria for what makes a restaurant “top.” Is it how delicious the food is? Is it the restaurant’s cultural significance? What role does value play? How do you judge a sushi restaurant like Q vs. an allegedly casual bistro like Petit Trois? Mozza Group vs. Tsujita? How about service, the restaurant’s tenure in the industry, ambiance, environment, etc.? Originality of its dishes, uniqueness of the restaurant’s ethos? All these are likely to be factors, but the list’s manifesto of saying that it provides a list “straight up” for those “christened as LA’s best,” “places that shine the brightest,” “not to be missed under any circumstances” only begs the question. Such an attempt to define “best” across such a stretch of different cuisines, price-points, and aims is self-defeating.
Here, you get a smattering of what’s popular, with a democratic view of having something “luxury,” something “hip/trendy/PR darling” something “simple, fresh Californian,” something “exotic/ethnic,” and something “traditional.”
BUT, the public loves this kind of stuff so people can blabber to their less initiated friends about how much of a foodie insider they are when it comes to the hip, hot new joint in town. Of course, every one of these self-proclaiming foodies love to sound authoritative when they declare “this is the best. LA Weekly said so.” Are these lists useful to someone as a starting point about whether he/she stands a fairly good chance of getting at least a pretty good meal for the restaurant’s category (as long as he/she has the right expectations and a fair understanding of the cuisine)? Sure. Are they good for business? Absolutely. But make no mistake - these lists are by no means dispositive or authoritative on the actual question of what’s “best.” Rather, this list would be more appropriately named "20 highly regarded LA places to try". But that headline doesn’t have quite the same catchiness, does it?
The bigger the claim (“these are the best”), the more evidence one must provide, the more definitional groundwork and disclaimers one must lay, the more accurate one must be.
I don’t blame Besha; the hoi polloi eats this stuff up so as long as people want it, restaurant media will keep on feeding it to them. It’s the internet age, people love lists of “bests” and immediate gratification so they can claim to know it all even though they just peeped the wiki (or LA Weekly list on their newsfeed) 3 minutes ago.
Note: I would have absolutely no problem if this list simply declared itself to be the author’s favorites or like I said “20 highly regarded places to try.” I also would have no problem if the list were attempting to nail down “best” across restaurants in the same echelon/niche/price-point/aims.
Hmm, I find her a good read. I loved her piece about Hatchet Hall’s ridiculous wine list.
To be fair, Gold does the exact same thing regarding Mozza. LA will never rid ourselves of the Mozza acclaim. We started it, so its our own burden that we must bear.
i guess that’s why i get my restaurant recommendations from fucking kevin
In my opinion, the best publicists in the city are the the Mozza group’s!
but at least mozza is decent food unlike trois mec which is a fucking joke on you if u ever go…2 oz of protein for a fortune…
I agree with almost all of your points, it’s almost impossible to define best, especially in a city like LA, where a taco from a food truck can be as transcendent as something at Providence.
With that being said, I’ll forever be partial to lists, because an old school J Gold list introduced me to some of the better ethnic spots in the city. From there, I discovered chowhound, rest is history, etc…
At the same time, I just moved to NYC and I’m dying for a list similar to Gold’s. In a city with thousands and thousands of restaurants, there is something so easy about finding a list and being like, all right, this Isaan place will be good, though it may not be revelatory.
So long live lists, as long as we remember to take each of them with a grain of salt.
You can’t convince me that in this city, that pizza is decent.
compared to trois mec their pizza is fucking ambrosia.
but it’s not in my top 10 pizza or restaurant list
but the caramel coppetta with spanish peanuts and marshmallow sauce is
This list by the New York magazine is a pretty good starting point.
Not perfect, nor complete, but it’s a list.
Lists can be helpful as a good starting point, no doubt. As I said, pick nearly any one of these and you have a fairly good chance of having at least a pretty good meal for that type of cuisine, all things considered. It’s for this reason that I said this list would be more appropriately named “20 Highly Regarded LA Restaurants to Try.” Like an Eater list, it can be a helpful (even if not comprehensive or necessarily accurate) starting point to help you wade through the morass of options with some likely semi-competent assistance before settling into your own personal favorites of places that suit your taste.
But once one declares the list to be a ranking of the best restaurants across a broad array of different types of cuisine and echelons (not grouped by category but pitted against one another) then it becomes extremely difficult to justify.
Granted, we can tell that n/naka is a better restaurant than Hometown Buffet, even if they’re different. N/naka’s relative success in its ambitions for the type of cuisine, unique viewpoint for the area (dedicated solely to modern kaiseki), quality and deliciousness, ambiance, factor of excitement, etc. are some of the ways we can ostensibly know that n/naka is indeed a better restaurant than Hometown Buffet. It’s very obvious. Even despite price and one’s perception of value (fwiw, n/naka is not a bad relative value, all things considered, if one is willing to spend that amount on a meal). But how do we justify AOC being 5 places better than n/naka? Is it because Goin is more prolific in the industry? Is it because Mediterranean inflected Californian cuisine is somehow more deserving, delicious, innovative, or has a broader appeal than modern kaiseki? Moreover, how do we justify that Q deserves to be LA’s 7th best restaurant when Mori is not in the top-20? “Best” is exclusive by definition, and any restaurant omitted from this list is deemed not as good as those that made the cut. My question is, “how did they arrive at those conclusions (how did they weigh all the myriad criteria?)” and furthermore, “was their analysis well-informed?”. It would be extremely difficult to justify enumerating how much better one restaurant is than another if both restaurants are very successful at their own cuisines and all the intangibles.
I’m not calling for the immediate extinction or all lists altogether; rather, I’m annoyed by the frequent production of lists claiming to enumerate the “Bests” when 1) they’re sampling from so many different types or restaurants with different aims, and 2) they fail to explain how they could so authoritatively arrive at the conclusion that a place like AOC is exactly 5 spots higher than a place like n/naka. With that said, the amount or critical analysis necessary to justify such an undertaking is entirely impractical. This list quickly becomes a fairly random and unprincipled enumeration of the author’s favorites.
Totally with you on Trois Mec. That place is a fucking joke.
I enjoy these sorts of lists: to see what critics hold in high regard, and quite frankly, to quibble with the results a bit! For the most part, these are places I have enjoyed, some immensely. I do continue to think that Trois Mec (been twice) and Baco Mercat (been once) are prime examples of the Emperor’s new clothes. The SQRL love always alludes me. I have been three times and cannot understand the love fest for thick slabs of burnt toast. And I am big dissenter on Spago post-overhaul. What was once a somewhat dated yet very delicious and pleasant experience is now basically a showroom for displays of class-ism and reconstructive surgery.
If I find anything offensive about this, it is the ranking. How Maude could be considered the best restaurant in Los Angeles is beyond me. I whined and complained enough about my one experience on the “other board” but it just simply doesn’t rank up with the sorts of places it aspires to be like. There was some musing on another thread about Jonathan Gold’s review of Maude and I think I read something completely different. He writes, “An avocado ceviche at Union, using half a dozen varieties from farmers market star J.J.'s Lone Daughter Ranch, said more about the fruit on one plate than Stone did in 10 courses.” I think he was alluding to the fact that the food is rather pretty, but the end result is rather mundane and unremarkable, which I am totally on board with. Maude better than n/naka or Providence? I’m sorry, but Curtis Stone isn’t THAT pretty to hypnotize so.
They probably have the same folks doing their PR work.
y’know, whenever i read this stuff about this restaurant’s “pr” or that restaurants “pr,” it sets me to wondering:
just what is the mechanism at work here? do you think these restaurants are literally paying the reviewer to include them on the list? do you think the editors of the magazines are saying to the author of the list, “put this restaurant on the list, they spend a lot of advertising money here”?
the cheesecake factory probably has a much larger advertising and pr budget than all the restaurants on this list combined. how come they’re not on it?
am i that naive?
No your instincts are probably correct; there’s no bribery here and I would certainly not insinuate anything illegal happening. The mechanism is rubbing shoulders getting facetime at events, participating heavily in the whole food media thing, getting into magazines, tv, and “PR” here is less about mass mailings as it probably is the status of the Celebrity Chef whose name is inextricable from the idea of Mozza. Nothing wrong per se, these are all valid and fair business efforts and methods. It’s simply a case of one being more touted for the whole branded package, so to speak, than for simply the food doing the talking. Think, for example, of the difference in PR / media reputation say, circa 2013, between a place like Gary Danko vs. Saison - where Gary Danko was all Zagat and hotel-magazine esque, while Saison was on another level (the cuisines are entirely different, I’m more talking about the automatic answer to “what’s the best high-end restaurant in SF?”) and quietly letting their cuisine do the talking, then it gaining serious praise among international food cognoscenti like a wildfire. Or think of a place like Eleven Madison Park vs. The Restaurant at Meadowood - you never really see Meadowood so highly ranked in these “lists,” yet EMP is almost universally near the top when it comes to fine-dining in North America. When in reality, Meadowood is scary good (incidentally, I was just there Friday and happened to see Mr. Stone and his lovely wife, speaking of Maude).
Think of the “San Pellegrino 50 World’s Best” list - many deserving places, of course, but also many just as deserving places are curiously absent entirely. PR, especially for international reputation, makes a huge difference. Keep in mind that Mozza has an outpost in Singapore, and Batali is a worldwide celebrity chef with an impressive empire of restaurants. Naturally, his LA restaurants would be included on a big media’s 20-Best list, almost de facto. Curtis Stone has Top-Chef fame, which is perhaps both a blessing and curse when it comes to diners’ expectations. Right, so EMP is #5 in the whole world, Saison and Meadowood not top 50? No Matsukawa? No Kyo-Aji? But of course, Ryugin. Reflecting the San Pellegrino’s largely Western palette, partly, but also PR / media snowball. That is, a good restaurant, with strong PR media relations and facetime, can be included on a list when an equally good or perhaps even better restaurant with no PR will be excluded.
And advertising budget, resources, and efforts are one thing. Cheesecake advertises differently. They do those billboard things on the verso of mall directories. Their audience is different, and so their efforts are different.
Also, it’s not all proactive efforts of the restaurant itself. PR works both ways, and fame snowballs. “PR” is perhaps a misleading term, as it suggests that the business’s marketing is the sole reason for their reputation, when in reality such plays an important, but not comprehensive, role. But when it comes to the actual media rankings, however facetime at events, magazines, etc. is indeed significant.
great question - I have wondered about this too.
Markambrose73’s answer is quite brilliant as well.
And JGolds fucking list will be hitting newsstands on Nov 4.