DHagedorn

I don't think any of us disagrees with you on this point. It wasn't your message, but the delivery of it that caused some of us to take umbrage.

Perhaps I did reply too severely, Scottee, but I feel strongly about the subject.

I realize that one pays full price for the seats even when the understudy has taken Ms.Minelli's place for this performance. Nonetheless, a restaurant which charges premium prices while explaining that their kitchen is remains unready for prime time should expect a little blowback.

Restaurateurs expect blowback at all times and blowbackers get blowback sometimes.

There are a couple of problems here, which I don't think Mr. Hagedorn quite understands: 1) A couple of our favorite people (OK, OK--the Dreamy Brown Brothers) have signed on to this venture, so a large percentage of the DR.com community hopes, hopes, hopes this all goes well. However, this has gotten off on a difficult footing by losing its original chef from the git-go; 2) Agragia seems to be hitting the ceiling in price point and therein lies the really big problem--if you aren't ready to open, don't charge those kind of prices; and, 3) Chica Grace, just like all the rest of us, isn't eating on an expense account, like Seitsema, Kliman, and the rest of the PAID food critics. If we are going to have to spend our very own hard-earned money, it has damn have to be worth it.

She has taken a one for team at the present time and I, for one, appreciate her comments. Should she have kept her mouth shut until she had eaten many, many expensive meals? I DON'T THINK SO.

The pros are going to give this place a lot of time and a lot of slack, as they should. However, a heads-up for the rest of us is entirely called for and welcomed.

I think I understand those things. Again, I did NOT suggest that anyone keep his/her mouth shut. I took exception to drawing conclusions too easily and to advising the public notto eat the food at Agraria.

Everyone, especially their owners, wishes restaurants will function perfectly the day they open, but expecting them to do so is naïve. More often than not, restaurants open before they are ready because they have to; they have simply run out of money. They cannot afford to exacerbate the problem by selling their food at a loss; complaints about food should be handled on a case-by-case basis and discounts offered when the management deems it appropriate. After all, restaurateurs are not out to show the public a bad time. They understand that they are completely dependent on the public’s good will.

Unlike any other business, restaurants are subject to a series of mitigating circumstances over which restaurateurs often have little, if any, control. No matter how scrupulously a restaurateur prepares a business plan and timeline, it can be almost invariably guaranteed that he will find himself out of time and money and forced to open before he is ready. No business person sets out to be or thinks he will wind up being undercapitalized; yet, more often than not all of his grand plans for weeks of menu testing, “mock” services, and staff training or months of pre-opening marketing and publicity campaigns generated by flashy publicists go out the window. He may discover while the restaurant is being built that the old iron pipes of the albatross he bought need to be replaced, that the walls he has torn down were filled with asbestos or that the hood system in the kitchen is by code two inches too short to cover all the state-of-the-art equipment he has had to start paying for three weeks ago.

It is not unusual for a restaurateur to have to start paying rent months before the restaurant has opened or to pay the staff he has hired long before he is able to open for fear that he might lose them. It is therefore entirely conceivable that a restaurant opens with a kitchen whose gas has been hooked up only the day before and whose staff has never actually used the $30,000 computer system about which nothing is known for sure except that it will crash three hours into the opening night. The restaurateur often has no choice but to open anyway and start a cash flow pronto or never open his doors at all.

Of course, the dining public does not care about these problems nor should they have to. But if people want restaurants to succeed, they should be willing to make concessions in the early days, including paying full price for their meals. I do NOT mean to say they should pay for something that is unacceptable; I merely suggest that the expected standard in the first months of a restaurant’s existence should not be perfection.

Yeah, that was a little over the top, but so was this:Mr Hagedorn had a very good point - casual dismissals such as this can affect people's livelihoods, and in the case of a brand new restaurant without it's chef, that's not fair - especially when based on one meal.

Thank-you, Heather. When the server told Ms. Grace that the new chef had not yet arrived, he/she was explaining that the restaurant was in a state of transition. I thought that was an honest way to explain why things may not be perfect there.

An overly critical response to an overly critical post. Quelle surprise.

"Sub-par," "pre-prepared," "undercooked," "tasteless," "heat-lamp broiled," "ridiculous," and "overpriced" are serious accusations.

Don, I guess you should now close down the website, David has told all of us who don't work in the restaurant business, or for a print publication that we need to shut the hell up and leave it to the professionals like him. Well David, while I might have agreed with some of what you said, I think that it is apparent that you sir are an ass. There are much better ways of countering what she wrote in her post than to attack the whole idea of people sharing their opinions concerning restaurants on this site or other like it.

I did not attack the idea of people sharing their opinions. After all, I expressed my opinion here and apparently that makes me an ass. I countered what the author said point by point and supported my argument with evidence.

I took exception to representing opinions as facts and then advising the public to boycott a restaurant's food. That is not a suggestion that should be made casually. I think people should expect to accept responsibility for what they say and realize that their comments can affect other people's lives adversely. I will restate my point: if an opinion is published in the form of a review, it is subject to scrutiny. Had the diner merely related her experience, I would not have taken issue with it. Ms. Grace went beyond that; she made generalized conclusions based on one experience.

Despite being new here, I still cannot help but ask myself whether Mr. Hagedorn understands just how petty and unprofessional such a post makes him appear.

I am sorry you think that; however, I think it is serious business to advise people not to buy food at a restaurant and that such a recommendation should not be made lightly.

Last night I went to Agraria, which surprisingly had a table available at 9:00 pm on Saturday night with no reservation. The bar area and dining room are gorgeous. It was a beautiful evening at the Harbor and the open windows from the bar/bistro area onto the patio with a stunning view of the primary fountain at the Georgetown waterfront is amazing. So, for gorgeous seating and people watching - GREAT. However, the only thing that was worth it were the drinks. The sommelier was very cordial and recommended excellent cocktails. I had something called the Cynthia - a lemony martini flavored with Anise, and my dinner companion also had a vodka flavored drink with some shi shi vodka - Hanger 10, with some sort of homemade Tonic. Note: the homemade drinks at Restaurant Eve in Old Town Alexandria surprass Agraria's attempts at uniqueness - that is in terms of taste.

Now, for the food. First - its incredibly overpriced for what you get. Second, the wait staff starts the evening noting that the chef will not start working until July 17th, and that after the 17th - there should be more variety & selection. At first, I didn't quite understand why the wait staff was starting off the evening with such a statement. And then I understood when I started tasting the food. I got the Caesar's salad - comes with fresh anchovies & quail eggs and the Pan-Seared Sallops with creme fraiche & caviar. My dinner companion, the watercress salad with citrus ( also has some shaved fennel) & then the Tagiatelle with fresh Pesto and pine nuts. The Caesar's salad was pre-prepared in a refrigerator - so it was not freshly-made. ( you can tell when the plate is served super cold and "sweating" from the condensation). The dressing was sub-par, at best. the only thing that was redeeming of the salad was the fresh anchovies. Those were excellent. The scallops had not been cooked correctly as there was a crusty brown rim on each of them - from sitting underneath a heating window too long. And then the sauces served witht he scallops - too many of them and too many flavors. There was caviar sprinkled on top of the scallops, and then the sauce base was creme fraiche and some type of pesto. Quite frankly, with all these sauces, there was still very little taste to the entire dish. And by the way - the scallop dish alone costs $29. Ridiculous considering it doesn't taste like anything AND the scallops were not cooked correctly.

Care to know more about my dinner companion's dishes? The watercress salad started off ok - if Agraria would just stick to one type of citrus. Instead, they insert BOTH mandarin orange, as well as sliced of lime. it also included shaved fennel. The overall dressing did not complement the watercress. It doesn't blend together and it sets the palate to different tastes without enjoying one or the other. Then the Tagiatelle was undercooked. Several of the pasta noodles were not Al dente. And from my perspective - there is no need to top off a pesto dish with pine nuts, since pesto sauce already has pine nuts in it.

We did not have dessert.

Overall, the service was friendly and up beat. However, I felt rushed, especially since it was easy to get a table. The plates came out way too fast, tining was off - for instance, salads were already on the table before any fresh bread appeared, and the wait staff asked 2-3 times "Are you finished? Can I take that away for you". I hate that. The wait staff, although friendly, needs some lessons in how to serve and not bother people when they are still finishing their plate.

And for two drinks, two starters, and two mains, we paid $101. Overpriced .

In General - This restaurant has kinks that need to be worked. Most importantly, they need a menu and food that tastes like something. I hope that when the chef shows up - sometime later this month, that I can post something different. But for now, just go for the drinks and the view.

Years ago, writer Dorothy Parker recognized the futility of premature judgments. She responded to a lover apologizing for a hastily concluded performance with the assurance, “Don’t worry; I don’t review rehearsals.”

Ms. Grace, in her comments about Agraria, has reviewed a rehearsal.

This "review" does a tremendous disservice to a restaurant that opened barely a month ago amidst a flurry of well-publicized difficulties. Ms. Grace is certainly entitled to her opinions, but what qualifies her to transform those opinions into facts? After sampling only four dishes, Ms. Grace feels that she has collected sufficient evidence to support the conclusion that the public should not order food at Agraria. In their nascent days, restaurants have enough problems as it is without having someone pass careless public judgments that directly affect their fiscal health and the livelihoods their employees.

The proliferation of the internet has been particularly troublesome for restaurateurs. On foodie blogs and websites, the ability to eat and type is the only qualification necessary to become a Restaurant Critic. Opinions and errors masquerading in the form of reviews regularly pass for factual information which readers then mistake for truth. Online diner reviews have a veneer of authority that casual cocktail party stories about restaurant experiences do not, and restaurateurs are left holding the bag. They have no recourse; even if they had the time to respond to these promulgations, doing so would only open them to more criticism and/or to accusations of excuse-making. And so the public continues to say whatever it wishes without any accountability; they do not have to answer to pesky editors and fact-checkers as real journalists do.

The only hope that restaurant owners have is that someone might come along who calls a diner's comments into question. People who are not journalists but play them online open themselves to scrutiny and must expect to take what they dish out. It is with this in mind that I would like to review Ms. Grace’s comments:

The author does not list any credentials which would suggest that she is an authority on restaurants. The quality of the writing does not instill confidence. Leaving matters of grammar, syntax, and punctuation aside, I will only say that I have learned from experience that a writer’s work improves greatly when the red pencil is taken up in place of the poisoned pen.

“The bar area and dining room are gorgeous.” Why? What do they look like?

“(T)he homemade drinks at Restaurant Eve in Old Town Alexandria surpass Agraria's attempts at uniqueness - that is in terms of taste.” How? Why? How could Ms. Grace make such a sweeping statement after having sampled, at most, two drinks?

“The Caesar's salad was pre-prepared in a refrigerator - so it was not freshly-made. ( you can tell when the plate is served super cold and "sweating" from the condensation).” I do not concur with Ms. Grace’s deductions. The fact that a salad is cold does mean that it was prepared ahead of time. Does Ms. Grace think that restaurants cut and wash lettuce for individual salads to order? Restaurants store salad plates in refrigerators. It is no mystery of science that once a cold plate meets warm air, condensation occurs.

“The dressing was sub-par, at best.” Why? What did it taste like? What makes a dressing “par?”

“The scallops had not been cooked correctly as there was a crusty brown rim on each of them - from sitting underneath a heating window too long.” This is simply incorrect. The brown rim on the scallops indicates that they have been seared. If the dish had been under a heat-lamp long enough for the scallops to “broil,” the scallops would not have browned in a ring.

“And then the sauces served with the scallops - too many of them and too many flavors. There was caviar sprinkled on top of the scallops, and then the sauce base was creme fraiche and some type of pesto. Quite frankly, with all these sauces, there was still very little taste to the entire dish.” Ms. Grace complains of too many flavors and then contradicts herself by saying there was little taste to the dish. It is difficult to believe that caviar and pesto “didn’t taste like anything.”

“And by the way - the scallop dish alone costs $29. Ridiculous considering it doesn't taste like anything AND the scallops were not cooked correctly.” Price is not a function of flavor or degree of doneness. How many scallops were there in the dish? How large were they? What kind of scallops were they? $29 is certainly not out of line for a sea scallop entrée these days, considering that the food cost for the scallops alone could easily be in the $6 range.

“The watercress salad started off ok - if Agraria would just stick to one type of citrus. Instead, they insert BOTH mandarin orange, as well as sliced of lime. it also included shaved fennel. The overall dressing did not complement the watercress. It doesn't blend together and it sets the palate to different tastes without enjoying one or the other.” Since when do orange and lime make a poor combination? Why did the dressing not complement the salad in her opinion? The combination of watercress, orange, lime, and fennel makes perfect sense to me intellectually and there is no compelling evidence here that would suggest otherwise.

“Then the Tagiatelle was undercooked. Several of the pasta noodles were not Al dente.” Does Ms. Grace mean to say that some of the noodles were cooked more than others? That would be a dubious achievement.

“And from my perspective - there is no need to top off a pesto dish with pine nuts, since pesto sauce already has pine nuts in it.” And from my perspective, as a chef, topping a pesto dish with pine nuts is perfectly acceptable; it’s called a garnish.

“We did not have dessert.” In other words, Ms. Grace has not yet researched her subject sufficiently.

“And for two drinks, two starters, and two mains, we paid $101. Overpriced .” I do not know where Ms. Grace has been eating recently, but this sounds like the going rate to me for a restaurant of Agraria’s echelon.

“In General - This restaurant has kinks that need to be worked. Most importantly, they need a menu and food that tastes like something. I hope that when the chef shows up - sometime later this month, that I can post something different. But for now, just go for the drinks and the view.” Of course the restaurant has kinks to work out; it just opened. To say they need food that tastes like something is simply of no value. It is not a criticism; it is an empty statement. Without ever having been to Agraria, I can say with complete confidence that although the food is not to Ms. Grace’s liking, it tastes like something.

Yes, Agraria is open and charging full prices, but that does not mean the public should reject its food based on someone’s questionable opinions. Paying for flawed meals in new restaurants is an investment for which diners should be willing to incur initial losses. It amounts to a leap of faith, a nurturing process of tolerance and patience similar to that which parents undergo while newborn children are learning how to walk.

David Hagedorn