I mentioned before I’m not talking about fine dining, either. Fine dining is much more specific and easy to define. Most nice restaurants in modern times are not fine dining due to a move away from the “stuffiness” of that format. Like there’s an amazing oyster restaurant in DC that is not remotely fine dining, but it is a nice restaurant. No one is going to cut a tie off you there because that’s literal redneck beer hall shit. But no one is going to expect you to be wearing a jacket a tie, your waiter is going to be dressed in jeans and a nice shirt but not formal, no one is going to scrape your table of crumbs, etc etc.
It’s not so much a sidetrack as a proxy. You’re paying for a chef to go early each morning to the local farmer’s markets and produce sources and hand-pick vegetables. You’re paying for the preparation work- in some cases, in-house pickling and fermenting. You’re paying for the pastry chef to make all the stuff from scratch. You’re paying for them to source specific meats and seafood, and to prepare it properly. And yes, you’re paying to some extent for the space that you’re eating in, and to be part of the patrons who are there.
Price is as good of a proxy for all that as anything else- even though you can edge up to $40 or even $50 a person at Olive Garden if you go all-out, there’s a world of difference that the extra $20-30 per person gets you- different service, different ambiance, definitely a different crowd, and almost absolutely better food. And one other thing- most fine dining places tend to be willing to customize your food if you ask- for example if you have food sensitivities or dislikes, they’ll generally accommodate them. Try doing that at Olive Garden.
But I agree that “fine dining” evokes a certain white tie ambiance that isn’t really very common in today’s high-end restaurants. For example, Uchi in Austin isn’t a coat and tie place, but it’s one of the most well regarded restaurants in the country. And even some of the others are maybe not t-shirts and shorts, but don’t bat an eye if you show up in jeans and a polo.
That’s why I was curious what ‘nice’ equates to; in my mind, ‘nice’ is really the strata of culinarily and service driven restaurants where they’re generally one-off places, or maybe one or two locations, and you go there because you want to specifically eat and experience what they have to offer.
I am not sure what to make of chain fine dining like Cooper’s Hawk; they certainly charge like a fine dining place, but to my mind, they’re basically an upjumped Chili’s. There probably aren’t actual chefs in the kitchen, sourcing is likely done at a corporate level, and so on.
To make it more succinct, signs of a nice restaurant:
- The head chef’s name is on the menu or on the restaurant’s website
- The restaurant accepts reservations
- The restaurant has a wine list
That’s probably your hard and fast three, I think you would struggle to find examples of nice restaurants to the standard I’m talking about that do not do those three things. Additional indicators that aren’t quite as universal:
- Offers tasting menus, if not nightly, occasionally
- Offers À la carte pricing of entrees
- Has a special prixe fixe menu
- Has a real pastry chef
- Has valet parking, particularly if it’s in an inner urban location
I’m reminded of a place I went the last time I was in Florida on vacation that kind of hits the “minimum” for what I’d consider a nice restaurant. Roy’s Bonita Springs, owned by celebrity chef Roy Yamaguchi, he has a few of these, he is not the active chef of any of them. If you look at their menu you’ll see they check off the three “must have” items I mentioned, in that the chef is named on the menu, there’s a wine list, and the restaurant accepts reservations. If you look at the pricing that’s fairly typical of baseline pricing at a “nice” restaurant, in most cases.
I live in the north east, in Maine lobster country. Speaking as a lobster snob, you can’t get a nice lobster dinner that far away from where they live. The animals are fragile, and the taste deteriorates if they aren’t fresh and healthy when they are cooked. Cooked fresh and then frozen is better than the other options for lobster-away-from-lobster-country, but not as good as fresh.
Similarly, we don’t get great crab, since it isn’t harvested near us. I adore crab, and eat a lot of it when visiting the Pacific northwest.
(We can get okay Maryland crab. But it’s better fresher.)
Naw, they are common in urban areas, and many people (including me) go to them because it’s a really nice way to spend the evening. Good ones have excellent and interesting food, and create a nice experience around dining.
If you like food, i recommend you try one sometime.
But getting back to the OP, i think “nice restaurant” is a poor benchmark for “this is affordable” because what people consider to be a nice restaurant varies so much by income.
I disagree in only one respect - I’ve been to a fair amount of what I consider to be “nice restaurants” that do not have the head chef’s name on the menu or website. But they do have a head chef rather than relying on the kitchen managers that chains seem to use.
I agree. I’d say most places have chefs, and those chefs’ reputations are part and parcel of the reputation of the restaurant, but that they don’t necessarily trumpet it on the menus or restaurant title. That sort of thing strikes me as more of an ego sort of thing.
For example, Homewood in Dallas is definitely a “nice” place, and likely has fantastic food and service, if the chef’s previous restaurant (FT33) is any indication.
But you could go to FT33 many times and probably Homewood too, and never hear the name Matt McCallister (the chef who founded and ran FT33, and who founded and runs Homewood. (I never did anyway, except for the server saying “Let me ask Matt” about something one of our party asked)
Same thing at most of them in fact, unless they’re specifically named after the chef, like say… Roy’s.
When I read the above, my thought was that at the point of putting the chef’s name to the restaurant, you’re probably crossing the line from “nice” into fine-dining. But I checked out the Conde Nast best restaurant’s list for Washington DC, and nearly all of them listed the head chef.
I’m sure some of those are fine dining, but the majority struck me from the description as falling into the nice category.
Interesting–I’m curious if in most cases that information might really be on either the menu or website, and you just haven’t tracked it down. It’s one of those weird things I really like to know, so I make an effort to find. I wouldn’t say it’s usually splashy and front and center. The menu I linked to has that location’s chef on it, but it’s not too obnoxiously placed. Note that Roy’s, the head chef is not Roy Yamaguchi, in fact a celebrity chef chain where the actual chef wasn’t listed would potentially be a red flag. The head chef of that location is Alex Johnson as mentioned on the menu.
Edit: Homewood definitely looks like what I’d consider a “nice” restaurant, but it also does show both the head and pastry chef on the restaurant’s web page.
Sure they have an “About” section that talks about them on the website, but I’m just saying that it’s not something that they push in your face- it’s not “Matt McCallister’s Homewood” or “Homewood, a Matt McCallister joint” or anything like that. You have to go looking to find out that it’s one of his restaurants. The menus at FT33 (his prior restaurant didn’t say anything like that) on them at all.
FT33 was definitely a “nice” place(fantastic, if you want my opinion), and I’m betting Homewood is too. Haven’t had a chance to try it; it opened right after the pandemic started, and I’m not quite interested in takeout for my first shot at a restaurant like that.
FWIW I’m totally guessing here, but I think part of the reason the head chef’s name is typically made available relates more to the chefs than to the patrons, if that makes sense? It does relate to the patrons in that it says “we’re proud this person is making our food, and we want you to know who they are.” But I think it’s more about, restaurants of this caliber need to be ran by quality head chefs. A quality head chef has typically received a culinary education and has worked their way up at other nice restaurants as sous chefs and such, or has been a head chef of a previous restaurant. Part of your “career” as such a chef, is going to be where you’ve worked and how well known you are.
While the typical diner going to Annabelle’s in DC might never think about the head chef, a restaurateur opening a competing restaurant in the same Kalorama neighborhood probably will, and that’s someone maybe they’d poach if they could, for example. For the chef, it’s good to have their name out there because unless they are chef-owners, these head chefs tend to move around, often times every 5-8 years so to keep getting jobs at that same “level” or better, it’s good for them to have their names out there.
Conversely, someone of that caliber of chef, may have a hard time accepting the sort of cooking job where the business thinks they should be anonymous, that probably sends a lot of red flags. Again, I’m kinda spitballing here because I’m not in the restaurant industry. I had a friend that was a formally trained chef, he mostly worked country clubs and had a catering business before he got out of the industry. I actually remember even the country clubs he worked at usually had his name buried somewhere, and he was not a celebrity chef or anything like that.
I’m not so sure listing chefs necessarily has anything serious to do with it. This place (a really good burger chain) has the chefs who founded it listed, and it’s anything BUT fine dining, even if it is a chef-driven sort of place.
I think you largely missed what I’ve said. That link is no more an example of what I’m talking about than would be McDonald’s having Ray Kroc or Wendy’s having Dave Thomas on their website. Those guys founded the chain, they are not the head chefs of all those restaurants. In fact the restaurant you linked to likely does not employ “head chefs”, they probably have store managers and maybe a kitchen manager and a front of house shift managers.
FWIW I have yet, in the last 20 minutes of checking, found any nice restaurants I’m familiar with that do not list the head chef either on the menu or somewhere on the website.
NM you already answered.
Ditto
When my brother and I went on a trip in August, the meals we ate in Pittsburgh and New Orleans came to $100 and $120 before the tip, respectively. That was the meal and a beer or two, no appetizer or dessert. We ate at the bar in both places because we had made no reservations and we were there t eat, not for the ambience.
In Chicago we had Thai takeout so it was considerably less and in DC my nephew took us to a couple of his favorite places and it was over $200 for the three of us. That was a couple drinks apiece but still, no appetizer and no dessert.
In Cresson, Pennsylvania the three of us ate for less than $40 but the food was mediocre at best.
Cross-Atlantic differences may be part of the reason, but it’s not at all hard for me to easily find an example.
Out of curiosity, I decided to see if I could quickly find a “nice” New York City restaurant without a named chef. My first thought was the restaurant at the Museum of Modern Art, but that has a named chef, Thomas Allan, and is apparently very nice (mental note to self to remember if I ever make it back to NYC.) Since that didn’t work, I looked at Google results further down. I found this place in about three minutes:
http://www.ilcorsorestaurant.com/home.htm
I’d view that as a bistro, rather than a special occasion place, but it meets my threshold for “nice”. Also, it’s NYC uptown Manhattan prices, but if you’re doing a four-course Italian meal, you’re paying $63 each for the cheapest first three courses, dessert’s not listed, wine starts at $35 for a bottle, and there’s a 20% suggested gratuity.
I don’t need to know the head chef’s name but there needs to be one for a place to be considered “nice.” As opposed to a kitchen manager and a bunch of line cooks.
Here’s one in the US without a specific head chef listed, unless I missed it. And it’s a “nice” place by every metric.