rlalasz

It does sound like a good story, but I'm otherwise engaged. And of course, when I was talking about backstory in the piece, I was talking about how the waitstaff describes it...

I don't know, and not exactly. I've been clear that the dishes were excellent, although monotonally rich. The other people at my table (all omnivores) got the same service, and reacted to it similarly. One is a professional food critic. There was no "thesis" to the piece. A few people are willfully misreading the article. It contained a personal history, mini-reviews of five restaurant experiences, more restaurants, and a coda. Obviously, during the trajectory of the piece, I find a couple of restaurants that do right by me; there's movement to my thinking. Did the majority disappoint me? Pretty much. Is Eve's tasting menu a sustainable option for a vegetarian over the course of several months? I didn't think so, but I'm willing to let others judge whether my description suits their tastes.

Nada on the valium. This has gone pretty much as I expected. But I expect you'll get another angry phone call from Mr. Kliman about your opinion that being published in Washingtonian is "languishing in obscurity."

The scope of the article wasn't to make change. Its publication might make change--who knows? The point of the piece, as many of us are tired of making, was not to pull out every stop to get the best possible meal. It was to take the temperature of the typical vegetarian's dining experience in DC. Something about that seems to bother a few people--perhaps the idea that such a diner should actually be given voice... Correct me if I'm wrong, but you've found exactly two "holes" (the matusake and the description of Eve), both of which I've parried above, both of which a reader not disposed to defend these chefs at all costs would have accepted as an accurate description of my experience.

Sorry, I actually had to work a full day with concentration and couldn't respond to the discussion until now. People are not reading carefully what I wrote about Eve. Eve represents that they have a meatless tasting menu--they assure you of that when you make a reservation. What they have is meatless options for every tasting menu course--not the same thing. My previous experiences of tasting menus is that they have a logic, a throughline. This menu didn't, perhaps because it wasn't really a menu, just a collection of options--I don't know, so I chose not to speculate on it in the piece. By contrast, 2941's light tasting menu courses commented on and led onto each other. So did Komi's veggie plate. They felt like journeys, or as I said in the piece, linked short stories. A far more pleasant experience. The presentation---its ceremoniousness, dare I say its officiousness--was a separate issue, although I certainly disliked that style and prefer service that doesn't take itself quite so solemnly. (CityZen and 2941 were far better on that score.) Details like that are fair game for such a piece which was, of course, not a brief devoted to one thesis as you seem to insist on wanting, but very personal in tone and therefore full of spiky detail. Hardly a hatchet job. Why does the failed matsutake speak more to my ability to taste and describe than to the kitchen's ability to plan and execute an interesting dish--simply because it was matsutake, and simply because a top-line chef made it? And why do you assume it would've been any better had I sent it back? The absurd conclusion of this logic is that, because very few of us have the abilities or sensitivities of Eric Ziebold, very few of us has the option of not enjoying a dish he prepares, and anyone who doesn't immediately doesn't know what he's talking about. Anonymity just doesn't count for the moment as a journalist, especially one who'd like to write about food in the future. Making a complaint post facto at some restaurants warrants scrutiny by a manager. Maybe they'd like to take a name, an address; maybe they look at a credit card receipt. I was on the job, and my job, as Waitman keeps pointing out very nicely, was to replicate and describe an average diner's experience. It was not to get the best possible experience so as to put the restaurant in the best possible light.

The thing I didn't include on my website (which is in the print version) is a sidebar of my survival guide, my places to get what I want. Zaytinya made it. Indique didn't, but could have. I don't have a file of the sidebar handy, so you'll have to read the piece. I probably live near you, because I frequent Layalina, Bangkok 54, Thai Square, Thai Noy, Restaurant Abi, and Myanmar, among many others in Arlington and Fairfax. So of course there are plenty of places that I enjoy. The pretext of the piece--the reason it got to run in a service-oriented magazine--was that there are two new veggie-friendly restaurants (Vegetate and Viridian) as well as some new vegetarian tasting menus around town (CityZen, Eve, 2941) that are used as selling points by these restaurants. These are not ethnic restaurants in the common sense of the word, although of course everything has its own ethnic markers. And the frame of the piece was: I don't want to eat Thai or Salvadoran or Vietnamese all the time. I'd like to eat well at some of the places--not all of them, I know that's impossible--but some of the places people are talking about all the time and that pubs such as Washingtonian praise. I can already eat at many of these places--there are often things on the menu, or an established tradition of a veg offering off-menu--but do the dishes I'm served stand up to the buzz and the critical discourse about the rest of the menu? Too often not. The issues at Atlantico were both service and the portabello, which was ordinary, which has always been ordinary in my experience there. My wife loves their scallops, so I'm happy to oblige: a situation quite common for vegetarians. A lot of people are getting the tone of the piece, but some are not. I had hoped it would be whimsical and wistful, but also rigorous in its food descriptions. It certainly wasn't intended as a strident call to arms. More like the request that some are saying I should make in person.

I'm sorry, but you're distorting what I wrote. I never wrote we should be "supplicating and submissive." I wrote that that's often the posture of people who don't have much on offer to them at these places--an understandable attitude. As I also posted earlier, I didn't just dine at a few top restaurants. I dined at close to 25 for the piece, and have been dining for a decade here. If the issue is veracity, I suggest you try your own suggestions for three months and report back on your results and satisfaction. The idea of speaking up more is not a bad one--and in fact, that's what the article just did, to over 100,000 people. But I have no illusions that a restaurant-by-restaurant crusade of one (or 100) will solve the issue.

You make some thoughtful points. But when I travel, I generally find more variety for me in other cities (NYC and SF and LA, of course, but also Chicago, Philly, Portland, Milwaukee--Milwaukee, for crying out loud) than I do here. As someone suggested earlier, perhaps it's the extreme expense account culture here that's holding things back.

We haven't established at all that good vegetarian entrees can be swapped in for the present mediocre ones only at great economic risk. I wish a restauranteur would attempt to demonstrate that during this discussion. For instance, Ceiba told me Jeff Tunks makes a point of changing their veg entree every season. They only have one on any single menu, but Tunks' attitude alone better disposes me and I'd suspect many other vegetarians toward Ceiba, regardless of what I think of their swiss chard relleno. (Not great, but not bad, for the record.) It's a nice gesture that builds goodwill (as well as the client base) and clearly won't break them. More restaurants should consider it. As for victimization. I was using a figure of speech. But the piece--I keep returning to the piece, probably because I wrote it, but also because it stands on its own as a document of experience, an experience that other veggies here and that I've talked with ratify emphatically. It is tiresome and disspiriting to be forced into the role of supplicant--which, let's face it, is what you are when you're always asking kitchens to make something special for you, or praying that the ravioli is somehow more interesting than the last 50 you've had. And it's especially tiresome when you encounter restaurants such as Komi, where your food is great, and you wonder why it can't be that way more often elsewhere. After almost 100 points on this topic, I'm still wondering.

You just fell right through the ice there, my friend.

I'd like to share your optimism that all we need to do is ask. Placing the onus completely on vegetarians, though, does smack of blaming the victim. Again, we're avoiding the obvious: Why would chefs with estimable reputations risk putting a mediocre dish on their menus just because it's meatless? Isn't it a bit of chicken and egg--the vegetarian meals are poor, so vegheads go elsewhere, or only to these places under duress? (Again, sorry for the mixed-animal metaphor.) I guess to eat well at the places everybody's buzzing about, we have to start a movement. And to think somebody was mocking me earlier when I talked about a right to dine. I was commenting on the recent boomlet in foie gras manifestations on area menus, not on foie gras as traditional fare. Sorry for the confusion. Perhaps I should stick to my team.

I was using "pacing" in another sense--that of variance, rhythm, and logic, one course leading into another. I expected to spend a long time at Eve. What I had hoped for was more of the sense of interplay that I got with Komi's vegetable plate. As I said in the piece.

No, it's not disingenuous at all. Criticism engages the object, not the creator--at least not on an interpersonal level. Perhaps complaining to the restaurant will get you a better meal. But why aren't the restaurants serving better vegetarian meals in the first place? One point about the piece was not to give the venues every opportunity to put their best foot forward, but to capture a typical experience, as well as my experience.

For the piece, I generally confined myself to places that had at least one (and, except in the case of 2941, had only one) veg entree already on menu. But I've previously been to many high-end restaurants here without veg menu entrees, so I felt I understood that experience well. I didn't want to play gotcha. For reasons I hope are understandable (to maintain my anonymity and to replicate a typical vegetarian's experience at these restaurants--i.e., supplicating and submissive), I didn't complain.

Isn't what other chefs are doing the real engine for culinary change (vide the miniburger), not consumer's verbal demands? (For example: the foie gras craze. Consumers didn't suddenly start asking their servers: "Hey, some foie gras next time, OK?") And if nobody's going to cook interesting veg dishes, how will people go crazy over them? Which brings up something else I touch on the piece: that interesting veg cooking is going on all over the country, but the example doesn't seem to be penetrating DC culinary consciousness. Why not? The miniburger faces none of the obstacles vegetarian food faces: a pervasive, creative indifference to and/or lack of training in creating meatless dishes, plus a fear of the unknown based in the industry's overall razor-thin profit margins. The miniburger (cute, fun, retro) was almost predestined to be a hit. Still, although I think your cascade scenario is optimistic, I'm willing to flap the butterfly's wings by mentioning seeking out chefs and mentioning my disappointment every single time I encounter a boring veg meal...sigh. I'll be doing it a lot.