Another possible explanation, as an alternative for all the "failing to scale" scorn shovelers who rushed to post: he started this restaurant, and then had it blow up in popularity before he had the chance to shake out all the bugs.
How Being Named the 'Best New Restaurant in America' Hurt My Business
41–50 of 129 posts
Re: How Being Named the 'Best New Restaurant in America' Hurt My Business
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
>could you possibly stop ripping people off with Eastern European wine that didn't pair with any of your tasting menu?.....Good riddance Perhaps it's my disdain for wine snobs or anyone else that takes ridiculous things seriously, but I find your comment extremely distasteful - especially the quoted part. Unless he is actively misrepresenting the origin or brand of the wine, he isn't "ripping people off". He simply m…
Eh, there are wines that go better with certain dishes than others. If you order a wine on your own and it doesn't go with the food, it's your own damn fault, but on a tasting menu with wine pairings it's 100% understood by the customers that the sommelier has spent some time identifying and selecting good matches for each course. I can't tell from the grandparent comment whether he's grousing about a bad choice he m…
Taste is, by its very definition, subjective. A mismatch between the taste of this commenter's apparently very sensitive palette and that of the menu designer does not qualify as a "rip-off".
Re: How Being Named the 'Best New Restaurant in America' Hurt My Business
#43I started Matasano with two partners, both from NYC, one of whom had taken a break from software security to go to culinary school.
What I heard from them is that stuff like this is also part of the restaurant culture of different cities. The rap on NYC and LA is that they have competitive, take-down cultures (NYC more so than LA).
Re: How Being Named the 'Best New Restaurant in America' Hurt My Business
#44HN is usually pretty good about calling out founders who blame everyone but themselves for failings. This is exactly that, just in a restaurant context. The problem is that Ari thought that Alma's humble origins mattered to people coming in for a good meal such that they would somehow obscure some pretty big problems with the restaurant. I can't imagine ever excusing a product's flaws simply because the founder had d…
Stop ripping people off with Eastern European wine? Really? That's what they did?
Eastern European wine that didn't pair with the food. Agree or disagree on the value of that criticism (never been there, wouldn't know a wine that didn't pair even if I had been), but don't turn the parent's comment into some kind of prejudiced statement about all Eastern European wine.
Re: How Being Named the 'Best New Restaurant in America' Hurt My Business
#45It is so easy to criticize food. This is not different than writing or cinematography. This is the same attack against George Lucas. The Phantom Menance wasn't written for 34 year olds who act like children playing pretend in costumes, its target audience is 7 year olds. And, the movie is about growing up, leaving the protection of the protective mother (although gender roles have changed so now this includes the pro…
The Phantom Menace is objectively a bad film. You want a good film that teaches this to seven year olds? Try Finding Nemo. The Phantom Menace features offensive racial stereotypes, terrible dialog, A poorly-executed subplot about a trade dispute, and characters that I personally could not and cannot identify with. Is it fair to speculate that you were born in 1992, making you the 7 year old you refer to above? Search…
Off topic, but I recently discovered the "anti-cheese" edits to the prequels, and they are a huge improvement to the originals, in my opinion. Among other changes, it removes almost all of the Jar Jar Binks scenes, and replaces all of the racially stereotyped alien accents with alien "languages" and subtitles. Of course, the edits make the movie a bit disjointed, but it was much easier to stomach than the originals. You can find them on youtube if you search "anti-cheese".
Re: How Being Named the 'Best New Restaurant in America' Hurt My Business
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Phantom Menace is objectively a bad film. You want a good film that teaches this to seven year olds? Try Finding Nemo. The Phantom Menace features offensive racial stereotypes, terrible dialog, A poorly-executed subplot about a trade dispute, and characters that I personally could not and cannot identify with. Is it fair to speculate that you were born in 1992, making you the 7 year old you refer to above? Search…
It's also a historic piece of cinematography with a world that feels vast and immersive to its fans. (I'm not one, but I am empathetic enough to imagine how they feel.) Objectively it's not perfect, but every movie means something different to everyone and registers on a different level with each person. So you're free to criticize it and rate it based on how well or poorly it portrays the things you think it stands…
Star Wars is for children and always have been. If a bunch of adults complain that the films don't speak to them, there is something very wrong with their state of maturity.
I wasn't passing judgement on the films whether they were good or bad. I was pointing out like the chef, after Lucas gained popularity, people started to attack him and his films with harsh criticism. Maybe the criticism of the chef is legitimate, maybe is earlier stuff was better than his latter stuff -- I don't know. My point is that criticism is an inevitable part of creativity and people can't make works of art to satisfy criticism because they will crush under the pressure. If the motivation for this chef is the applause, feeling accepted, and getting accolades, he is going to have a nervous breakdown.
This chef, George Lucas, Mark Zuckerberg, and before him Bill Gates can't catch a break from the shit talkers. I'm not passing judgement. But if you base your self esteem on prestige be prepared to have people tear that prestige and your self esteem away with it.
Re: How Being Named the 'Best New Restaurant in America' Hurt My Business
#47Restaurants are hard enough without being compared to restaurants that opened with $10 million and 50+ staff... $50k means you're a neighborhood restaurant, most dive bars and sandwich shops cost more to open...
This is one of the most important points in the comments here.
In LA opening a restaurant with only 50k is irresponsible mathematically. I say this having taken restaurant management courses with the goal of one day opening one myself.
It is true that restaurants are one of the most difficult businesses to start. It takes time to find your groove, and 50k no matter what neighborhood your in is not a lot of time. Most people in this situation would start with a food truck or save more.
Re: How Being Named the 'Best New Restaurant in America' Hurt My Business
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
On your homepage seanmcbeth.com the javascript (or whatever does the animation) is totally choking my Firefox (latest) running on a Mac Pro Desktop (latest). Infact when I tried to write this comment it was literally like 300 baud until I closed your website page. (All of this is to your point and ironically..) Btw it looks cool but if I can't easily scroll your homepage you have lost me as a potential client.
This is indeed a defect, so your criticism wasn't negative or unwarranted :) Filing a defect report is one thing, complaining about the very idea of having an animated background, yelling at me for being a "typical front-end dev, doesn't test in Firefox" or something like that, that's the sort of negative criticism I'm talking about. My point was, even the people who are engaging in dismissive, negative criticism nee…
Hi Sean--I sent you an email related to this issue. Thanks for being so open to feedback! It's one of my favorite qualities for someone to have!
Thanks for getting Taylor Swift stuck in my head for the next hour, by the way! Not the worst problem to have in my book, though! ;)
Re: How Being Named the 'Best New Restaurant in America' Hurt My Business
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think that actually speaks against the story, though. The story is: we started small to do our own thing, then a national review blew us up and we couldn't handle the stress in order to scale the business. A lot of the yelp reviews sound like scaling issues, especially since the great reviews are interspersed with the bad: they were capable of delivering great experiences just not consistently.
The second paragraph says "the restaurant was never, ever full." So it seems like they expected to handle more business, and in fact the lack of business shut them down. Maybe they had problems with the growth, but if they were never full then they really shouldn't have. Restaurants with growth problems need to serve food quickly so they can get people in and out to make room for more people, this restaurant apparent…
The negative reviews could be why it was never full. I wonder if there are consultants in the restaurant business that can help places like this through the wave of people that are more interested in eating at an acclaimed restaurant than trying some small new place that opened up nearby.
Re: How Being Named the 'Best New Restaurant in America' Hurt My Business
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
Eh, there are wines that go better with certain dishes than others. If you order a wine on your own and it doesn't go with the food, it's your own damn fault, but on a tasting menu with wine pairings it's 100% understood by the customers that the sommelier has spent some time identifying and selecting good matches for each course. I can't tell from the grandparent comment whether he's grousing about a bad choice he m…
Taste is, by its very definition, subjective. A mismatch between the taste of this commenter's apparently very sensitive palette and that of the menu designer does not qualify as a "rip-off".
By that logic, nobody should ever leave a bad review because the food was disgusting.