I think it’s “Symon”?
I ate at his now-closed restaurant Roast a few times. It was pricey but very good. I still remember the maple syrup drizzled bacon brussels sprouts.
My first visit there was when I learned that you can wear jeans to a fancy-ish restaurant.
mmm
We dined a couple of times at Crescent Dragonwagon’s Dairy Hollow House back in the day, and that was quite excellent, though once was Valentine’s Day, and I won some sort of door prize and two little kids in Cupid outfits came and sang to us at the dinner table, which was more than I bargained for. 
I also ate at Shiro Kashiba’s sushi restaurant in Seattle, that was great sushi, but I’m not sure how famous he is outside Seattle.
ETA oh also one of Stephan Pyle’s restaurants, Baby Routh. It was okay.
About a dozen years ago, my (then) wife and I went to New York City. She’s a foodie, so we made it a point to eat at Bobby Flay and Morimoto’s restaurants.
Flay was at his, entertaining a large group; my wife and a girl at a table next to us got up their nerve and went and took a picture with him.
The food at both, as I recall, was good. I like going to nice, high end restaurants, and these were definitely in the mix. But they didn’t stand out as the best food I’d ever had.
I ate - with protest - at Guy Fieri’s restaurant in NYC. This infamously brutal by the NY Times says it better than I could:
I ate at Chicken Guy! in Gatlinburg, TN a year or so ago (I didn’t count it earlier because it’s fast food…) and I thought I was well-run, affordable and tasty. Haven’t eaten at any of his other places.
PBS cooking show hostess Lidia (“Lidia’s Italy”) Bastianich had a place in downtown Pittsburgh for 18 years (closed 2019). My wife and I ate there once; the food was excellent, the service was serviceable, but it was a bit pricey.
I met him at a book signing and was watching him from the line. All indications are he’s as charming and nice in real life as he is on TV. He’s that guy.
There was an episode of Bourdain’s show where he begrudgingly went to a Flay restaurant in Vegas and begrudgingly admitted the food was good. He made it clear he would rather be eating food cooked in a garbage can behind a dump in Bangladesh but he could see why people would go to those restaurants. I loved watching Bourdain while recognizing he was a bit of a hypocrite. He criticized celebrity chef culture while benefiting from it. He even became a judge on shows he despised.
I think the nice restaurants I’ve been to haven’t been pretentious. i.e. I’m not being served frothed essence of beef, given a dish designed with the sole purpose of showing me how pretty they can plate things, or found anything on the menu that was outrageously priced just so they could show me how classy they are. I don’t eat at truly nice restaurants all that often, not even once a year on average, but when I do the food is typically excellent and the service is impeccable. But there’s a point where the experience is simply going to be wasted on me. If you serve me a fine wine that costs $500 a bottle I won’t know the difference from a $20 bottle.
Indeed. To avoid losing any CLE cred I did write Symon, but my autocorrect had different ideas!
Glad to know he’s a genuine nice guy tho!
I’ve eaten at Providence, Michael Cimarust’s two Michelin-starred restaurant in West Hollywood. It was the best meal of my life. Everything was delicious – the most important thing. But it was also clever and unique. Service was awesome. It was as though we were the only guests. No rushing. No impatience. They didn’t sneer at my sister, because she didn’t get the wine pairings (she doesn’t drink).
When we left, we were literally shocked that we’d been there three hours.
I’m very sad that MarK Peel retired, because Campanile was a special occasion go-to for us. Excellent food, great service, and not heart attack inducingly expensive. I will always miss his olive marinated prime rib. So good!
One of the Chopped winners had a restaurant in Venice, so I went for my birthday a number of years ago. It was a spectacular meal. I wanted to try the veal chop because the Chopped judges swooned over it, and it was the best veal chop I’ve ever had. But the red beets tagliolini with Marsala quail ragù resting on a bed of rich Taleggio cheese fondue is what stole our hearts. Good Proseco that our very friendly waiter topped off for us when we’d only ordered by the glass. Wonderful! It was called Ado’s when we went, but they changed their name to Gayot. It’s in cute little Craftsman bungalow.
The right pair of jeans can be worn anywhere.
I have never eaten at a Fieri restaurant. But I like his cookbooks much more than I would have expected. I like Oliver’s too, but obviously writing and cooking are different things. Not sure who Fieri’s clientele is in real life, though OTOH who cares? In fact, I find many celebrity cookbooks are uninteresting - often not stuff I would want to make or eat - and often too heavy on pictures, fluff and self-regard.
I don’t want fawning service, though discreet personal service is nice and talking to the chef is highly welcome. I’m mainly about the food; truly unique ambience is rare (Toronto’s Bar Raval is cool). Even at fancy places lunch is often reasonable. Boulud’s Bistro was one of the nicer Vegas places for food, if it is still in the Venetian.
I’ve eaten in any number of celebrity chef’s restaurants over the years. Mostly in Vegas, but elsewhere as well. Off the top of my pointed little head:
Mesa Grill - Bobby Flay Decent food, decent service.
Bouchon - Thomas Keller Amazing food and service. Eaten there dozens of times, usually for brunch.
Delmonico - Emeril Lagasse My hands down favorite steakhouse in Vegas.
CUT - Wolfgang Puck Did a kobe - wagyu - domestic tasting there once. The domestic won.
Spago - Wolfgang Puck Don’t remember much, but nothing to complain about
Olives - Todd English First time I ever had wild boar.
Buddy V’s - Buddy Velastro (The Cake Boss) One of the worst meals I have ever had.
CHICA - Lorena Garcia Different spin on Latin. Not bad at all.
Scarpetta - Scott Conant Really good upscale Italian.
Carnevino - Mario Batalli Too much emphasis on the inedible parts of an animal for my tastes.
China Poblano - Jose Andres Noodles and tacos from a master.
Bardot Brasserie - Michael Mina Brunch in a couple of weeks.
Beauty & Essex - Chris Santos I was not impressed.
I ate at K-Paul’s in New Orleans. It was good, but hardly the best restaurant meal I ever had. But it was doing the World’s Fair, and word was that food in New Orleans was not at its best. Anyhow I prefer real Cajun food.
As with others I have only ever found myself at celebchefs’ places after they went Big Time and multi-location – in my case, and on descending order of prestigiousness, José Andrés, Flay, and Fieri.
All very fine food and experience, worth the respective ticket, but not something that knocked me flat on my ass or changed my life (though with Fieri I was not expecting that much anyway, tbh).
Like Odesio I don’t go for the experiments. Last thing I want is to drop a whole C-note on one plate where I can’t tell what is it I am supposed to ingest.
And he himself in his later writings would bring it up, that he had become in a way part of the problem himself, a bit bemused at being treated as a “celebrity chef” when his fame came from being someone who wrote about the foodie culture.
He had to have been a good chef or he wouldn’t have had the jobs he had before he began to write. I think some of his criticism was unfair. It’s obvious from watching them that chefs like Bobby Flay or Michael Symon are not just personalities or businessmen, they are really good in a kitchen.
I once had a microwaved sandwich purchased at a Triple J truckstop that sold WD-40, but the food quality and ambience were undeserving of a three-star rating.
If it’s pretentious I probably won’t even consider it because I won’t find anything I like on the menu. I don’t want trendy and/or bizarre ingredients and weird combinations. I have been to many high end restaurants and enjoyed myself a lot. They don’t have to be pretentious to be a good fine dining experience.
They are both Iron Chefs, after all. Bobby was one of the OG American Iron Chefs.
Symon is not only a great cook and a super-nice guy, but he’s a showman as well when he gets peeved. Season 8, Episode 14 of Iron Chef America, for example. His opponent decided to not use sous-chefs. When Michael discovered this (once the show had started) he kicked his sous-chefs out and did it mano a mano. He not only kept up a steady stream of banter with Alton and barbs at his opponent, but he had his dishes plated with enough time left on the clock to grab a bottle of champagne from an on-set cooler, pour a glass for himself and the judges, and kick back to watch his opponent finished his plates. It would have come off as arrogant if Symon wasn’t such a nice guy underneath the “Don’t ever draw on me, bucko!” gesture.
When I typed it, I realized pretentious might not be the best word. I just find spending that amount of coin to create shit somehow excessive and distasteful. When we went to Ever, the bill for 4 of us was over $2000 (tasting menu with wine for 3 - I drank water. The other couple paid.) I’m not sure pretentious is the best word, but that is not a type of consumption I wish to be associated with.
Different people obviously feel differently.
I at the Paula Deen’s Family Kitchen in Nashville, TN with my family. Both the service and food were really good. I would definitely recommend it.