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How Being Named the 'Best New Restaurant in America' Hurt My Business

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Re: How Being Named the 'Best New Restaurant in America' Hurt My Business

#51

Post by everyone »

zappo2938 wrote: post #9

It 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 failed to achieve many basic elements of film. This 7 part review will explain it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxKtZmQgxrI

or just watch this bit here. Which highlights the soap opera style blocking.. goto 1:20:40 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABcXyZn9xjg&index=1&list=PLJ...

Re: How Being Named the 'Best New Restaurant in America' Hurt My Business

#52

Post by brewdad »

downandout wrote: post #28
Gorbzel wrote: post #11

HN 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…

>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…

I see this criticism as one of expectations. If you pair the dish with an Italian, French, or California wine and it flops, it could be considered a matter of differing personal tastes.

If you are going out on a limb and pairing with wine from a nontraditional region or using a uncommon grape, I expect an amazing pairing that could only be accomplished with this more unique wine.

Re: How Being Named the 'Best New Restaurant in America' Hurt My Business

#53

Post by aaronbrethorst »

pault wrote: post #45
aaronbrethorst wrote: post #18

Earlier 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…

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.…

I watched the films in Machete Order[1] with my girlfriend in advance of the premiere of The Force Awakens last week. She hadn't seen any Star Wars movie in 15 years, and the Machete Order worked out quite well. I'd considered watching one of the two hour long "Phantom Edits," but it seemed too difficult to find one of good quality.

Do you have a recommendation on a specific edit?

[1] http://www.nomachetejuggling.com/2011/11/11/the-star-wars-sa...

Re: How Being Named the 'Best New Restaurant in America' Hurt My Business

#54

Post by downandout »

hueving wrote: post #50
downandout wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Any statement, taken to its (il)logical extreme, can be made to seem ridiculous. But no one has accused the food here of being "disgusting". In this case, OP said that he didn't like a wine pairing, and ended his comment with "good riddance". In other words, he was happy to see the livelihood of another human being destroyed because he was unhappy with the specific part of Europe that the wine he was served came from. The Internet exacerbates sociopathic tendencies, and there is no finer example of that than this.

Re: How Being Named the 'Best New Restaurant in America' Hurt My Business

#55

Post by kristopolous »

nols wrote: post #16
wdewind wrote: post #12

Earlier 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…

there's number of tables and then there's number of people working there and how much they can handle.

there can be too many customers with half the tables empty.

Re: How Being Named the 'Best New Restaurant in America' Hurt My Business

#56

Post by crdb »

Seems like an expensive lawsuit was an issue:

June 2015: "If you add another $18,000 a month in legal fees ... we just can't absorb it on our own."

October 2015: "We're still working with the other party to wrap up the lawsuit. But to maintain the restaurant at this point it would just continue to put us in a substantial amount of debt. [...] as small business owners, we won't be able to afford a trial, and we really can’t even afford to go through the proceedings leading up to a trail. The realization was that the only way to bring this all to a close is to dissolve the business and move on"

http://www.grubstreet.com/2015/10/alma-closing-interview.htm..., http://www.grubstreet.com/2015/06/alma-crowd-funding.html

Re: How Being Named the 'Best New Restaurant in America' Hurt My Business

#57

Post by PhasmaFelis »

percept wrote: post #23
golergka wrote: post #21

> Who is he, Stalin? (I'm giving Hitler the day off.) On a completely unrelated note, I'm so glad that western public opinion views this guys on the same level of evil. If only russian public opinion was like that.

Well I should probably be more respectful, in deference to the worldwide audience here. It's not as if Europeans who settled the American continents hesitated to commit genocide, some even using biological weapons when it suited their purpose ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox#Biological_warfare ).

It's generally good to be understanding of other cultures, but that doesn't require you to be polite about history's greatest monsters. Stalin and Hitler each directly and personally ordered the deaths of millions, and did so within living memory. That does stand out even from the horrific history of American colonization.

Re: How Being Named the 'Best New Restaurant in America' Hurt My Business

#58

Post by Animats »

tptacek wrote: post #43

I 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).

"The rap on NYC and LA is that they have competitive, take-down cultures (NYC more so than LA)."

That's why they're better in the arts. In NYC, they tell you if you suck. In LA, they don't call you back if you suck. In SF nobody says anything and you can suck forever. Go to little theater or art openings and this is quite obvious.

Re: How Being Named the 'Best New Restaurant in America' Hurt My Business

#59

Post by PhasmaFelis »

zappo2938 wrote: post #46
striking wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Star Wars is for children and always have been.

That's objectively false, though. Star Wars marketing quite clearly targets both children and adults; much more so than, say, Pixar films, which are marketed solely at children despite arguably being more mature (in the "thoughtful and intelligent" sense, not the "sex and violence" sense) than Star Wars.

You're actually trying to say that adults who like Star Wars are childish, and you're welcome to your opinion. But if you choose to back up your opinion with facts, you need to pick facts that are true. There are many exclusively kid-targeted properties that attract sneering attention from adult fans (mostly TV cartoons, in my experience), but Star Wars doesn't fit.

Re: How Being Named the 'Best New Restaurant in America' Hurt My Business

#60

Post by gyardley »

downandout wrote: post #42
gyardley wrote: post #35

Earlier 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".

Oh, it's possible that the commenter had an unusual palate and he got some perfectly fine pairings that didn't work for him and him alone. Or it's possible that the pairings were selected lackadaisically or to reduce some inventory, and he really did get ripped off - which does happen. It's impossible for either of us to tell.

I am curious, though, why you seem so insistent that it's the commenter at fault, to the point of calling out his 'sociopathic tendencies'. Do you really think there's no way for a restaurant to screw up a wine pairing?

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