This is a painful generalization. Taste is literally a subjective thing.
Your posts seem to have a level of bias that view food through a pretty classist lens. It takes a certain level of privilege to be able to prepare food in the way that Providence or many of the other Michelin starred restaurants might. Just because they have the time/money/resources to do so does not in any way make them “objectively overwhelmingly superior.” Food made by folks who don’t have those resources can be just as good.
Anajak has an incredible thai omakase on the weekends.
I think the real issue in LA is that too many people don’t want to pay for higher end Chinese, thai, Korean, mexica, Vietnamese etc. “why is this $X when I have been paying $Y for so long in SGV” when they aren’t really the same thing. Hear the argument all the time.
Yup, it’s usually our own people that also complains about the price. Alvin Cailan once said that (regarding Filipino food) that the ones that mostly keep Filipino food from being accepted more widely is Filipino people. They’ll complain about the price or that it’s cheaper somewhere else or their mom, dad, or other relatives makes it better.
for example at Lasa, some people were complaining about the food being overpriced, but they didn’t take into account that most everything was made from scratch, even the cheese (kesong puti) was made in house.
Anyways…Chefs, keep upping the price and normalize it for everybody! haha! only slightly joking
Warrior: I want to take back what I said about so many Mexican restaurants on Jonathan Gold’s list making sloppy food. It was too negative. There are lots of Mexican restaurants in LA doing great things. Broken Spanish and Holbox are the two best restaurants in my opinion, but there are several other downscale places with good quality cooking – Chichen Itza, La Azteca Tortilleria, Sonoratown, Guerilla Tacos, 1986 Tacos, Yxta, Coni Seafood, and Mariscos Mi Lindo Nayarit to name a few. I was just reacting to the notion – which I saw in this Eater LA article – that Michelin has a “Eurocentric” view and has “snub[bed]” a long list of restaurants (Mexican, Thai, etc.). I don’t think either accusation is remotely true. I think Michelin would bend over backwards to give a Mexican restaurant a Michelin star if there were any serious candidate here in LA. But we just don’t have the level of high-end restaurants you can find in Mexico City or Guadalajara. For everyday eating here in LA, the Mexican food is outstanding and way better than the French options.
The Michelin guides attempt to minimize subjectivity by having its inspectors write very detailed reports that follow a defined structure.
… her report, which is made in the form of entries in a classification form supplied to all Michelin inspectors. She would list every ingredient in everything she ate, and the specifics of every preparation. She would rate these according to several criteria, including quality of the products, mastery in the cooking, technical accuracy, balance of flavors, and creativity of the chef. … For a restaurant like Jean Georges, filling out the reports would take two to three hours. A Chinese restaurant might take an hour.
No one denies that Michelin favors French and Japanese restaurants. But for you to say that in order for an Italian restaurant to receive a star, it has be to frenchified is just laughably wrong. Just because SF didn’t have any non frenchified Italian restaurants receive a star (I don’t know if this is true or not) does not mean Michelin won’t give stars to Italian restaurants that aren’t frenchified. In this thread, we gave you two examples to prove your theory wrong. OM and Gucci. Bestia not receiving a star has nothing to do w/ the not being frenchified.
I have visited both restaurant pre-pandemic and found SPQR not significantly more “frenchified” than Perbacco but had much better food overall. I can understand why one has a star the other not - and has has nothing to do with who is closer to french cuisine but quality of dishes
It’s been true in SF since Michelin came to town. Not one un-Frenchy Italian place has ever gotten a star.
How much time have you spent in Italy?
SPQR started off in 2007 under Nate Appleman as Roman. After he left, Matthew Accarrino (who had no prior experience in Italian restaurants) took over the menu, eliminated all traces of Rome, Frenchied things up, and since 2013 it’s had one star.
I’m surprised to hear this. My experience at Damian about a year ago was middling at best. I was there with a party of 6, so we tried many dishes, and almost all of them lacked depth. Nothing wowed us. They talked about purposefully keeping the dishes simple and with minimal ingredients, but i’ve been to plenty of restaurants that do that to great effect. Damian was not one of them.
Curious to hear what dishes you liked. I am willing to give it a second chance.
We have gone a couple of times.
I tried and liked most of the dishes on the lighter side of the menu. Ceviche/Tostada types of dishes. My favorite was smoked clam with cucumber. Some of my companions really loved the celery root, I was not a huge fan of that dish. Grilled fish was perfectly cooked each time with great flavor, served with tortilla and accompaniments so that you can make your own tacos was pretty great. In general I thought the preparations were more delicate than I encounter at Broken Spanish or Mirame (both of which I love). The quiet vibe of the indoor seating was nice and the use of fancy wine glasses as well as impeccable service helped the experience. That said, coming from the westside to DTLA can be a chore, and most of my family said that by food quality x distance equation, they would rather go to Mirame (which is 10 min easy drive for us) by a long shot.
