It’s mentioned; “Mr. B’s Menu offers authentic Creole food prepared by longtime Executive Chef Michelle McRaney. Chef McRaney uses only the freshest, local ingredients available. Our menus are seasonal and are updated often. The links below are sample menus.”
Right, to be clear I am not saying that a nice restaurant has a well-known celebrity chef, who has a photo you see when you walk in or etc. It may be buried deep in marketing materials or a small and easily missed line in a menu or etc. But what it signifies is that the restaurant has a head chef, a head chef is a professional you have hired to build a menu and to run your kitchen. If you want to keep them anonymous, it raises questions: why would a good head chef work somewhere they can’t advertise and help build their reputation, and why would you bother hiring a head chef in the first place?
FWIW @Wrenching_Spanners it took some doing but in searching through a lot of online images for Il Corso, I find a menu pic noting their head chef is someone named Camillo Bassani. So at least in your example, they do have a named (publicly) head chef.
https://goo.gl/maps/tnwKJJUG9PDCgUXx5
Additionally, your example from London has a head chef named in promotional materials as well–Roxanne Lange.
I’m not quite saying you can’t find any nice restaurant that doesn’t make note of who its head chef is, but at least so far you have not done so, which I think demonstrates maybe my point has some merit. There is actually little reason to employ a professional head chef if you aren’t at least going to mention their name somewhere. Some examples where I could see this being done would be casinos, resorts, cruise ships and the like. “Captive audience” situations. Maybe the kitchens that do room service in high end hotels, also.
In fact this restaurant may be one of the worst examples of not naming the chef–it names the founder above the restaurant’s name on its home page, and even (unusually) lists their entire roster of sous chefs and managers:
Where are you seeing that? It’s not on the main page, the “About” or the team bios page.
Either way, my point was not that nice places don’t have chefs, or don’t list who they are. I’m saying that generally speaking, they don’t always trumpet them, and plenty of nice places have rather anonymous head chefs.
I’m in agreement though, that nice places do have to have actual chefs in charge of the kitchen, not just a kitchen manager.
Actually… after some googling based on @Dewey_Finn’s page, it turns out that Chef McRaney actually passed away this last summer, so it’s entirely possible that they haven’t named a replacement yet.
Note I never said “trumpet”, I said the “head chef’s name is on the menu or on the restaurant’s website.” But honestly that’s probably a little too strict, probably a better statement of the rule is “they have a head chef whose name is publicly known for purposes of making it known they have a head chef.” Like I said, I have a weird thing where, when I go to a new nice restaurant, I like to see who the head chef is–so I’m fairly experienced in finding where they list it and thus noticed the trend almost everywhere that is a nice restaurant does this.
But for “normal” diners, the more common place you will see the head chef is in the local newspaper’s review of the restaurant, the critic will all but always mention the head chef’s name.
That seems likely given the pandemic and the fact they list a full roster of other chefs, I think from what I can tell the owner of this restaurant has cooking experience as well, so maybe they’ve been filling in during covid until such time as they can find someone.
From a friend in the UK catering industry, the whole thing has gone a little daft over here- the chain sushi place he used to work at had both a ‘head chef’ and an ‘executive chef’… This in a place with over 100% annual staff turnover.
Those in the industry who care probably keep track of who’s to watch and where they are (no-one gossips quite like chefs), but job title inflation has made it a bit of a farce, and the ‘head chef’ could be some twit straight out of catering school.
Possibly why it’s not such a big thing to state over this side of the pond, unless they are genuinely well-known.
My wife and I had 2 martinis and 2 appetizers between us at the start of a date last weekend. The cost was around $70 with tip. It was a pretty high end place but was basically seat yourself cocktail hour for urban professionals. It was nice. If we would have stayed for dinner it would have still been a nice place.
They have a named executive chef that designs the menu for multiple food serving areas throughout the complex (It’s a historic hotel with a few bars and restaurants with different levels of casual). The chef is not being paid to be extremely creative but deliver a good classic combination of satisfaction and value.
They’re also part of a larger group (the Brennan family restaurants) which operate several other New Orleans restaurants (Brennan’s, Commander’s Palace, etc…) as well as Brennan’s Houston.
I guess what I was getting at is that nobody’s going to Antoine’s in New Orleans because Rich Lee is the head chef (incidentally, I couldn’t find his name on the website, had to google it). But they do definitely expect there to be an actual, culinary school-trained head chef for sure.
I’ve actually eaten at Commander’s Palace, many years ago, I remember it being good. New Orleans is a top tier food city in the U.S.
I’ve eaten at Mr. B’s myself - it was terrific.
New Orleans is awesome for food and drink. I love it. NYC, SF & Chicago round out the big 4 food cities. Then probably LA?
I’d imagine that after New Orleans, NYC, SF and Chicago, there’s probably a much larger second tier of comparable cities- Houston, Boston, Miami, LA, Dallas, Charleston, Portland, Nashville, Austin, Savannah, Seattle, Sonoma, Napa, etc…
I’ve even seen Orlando in the 2nd tier group. Probably legit. I think your list of 2nd tier food cities is pretty solid.
When I hear nice restaurant, I think any independent place that emphasizes either traditional or new prestige foods, puts some effort into decor, and doesn’t have televisions or loud music playing. You don’t have to be expensive to qualify, but like others said, being expensive tends to be a side effect of achieving these rather than a bar that has to be crossed before you can be “nice”. I’d say the minimum restaurants that qualify when I hear the term “nice restaurant” is Carrabba’s and Outback. The two times I’ve been to outback it was quiet enough that I was able to focus on my friends instead of having to talk over a game or music or rowdy customers, and the food wasn’t bad either.
If I say nice restaurant, I mean all of the above except Carrabba’s and Outback. I don’t think that enough other people share my exact views to trust that they would be able to differentiate them from Applebee’s or Chili’s (even though the latter’s food isn’t bad, the atmosphere just isn’t like I’d expect in a “nice” restaurant.)
If Las Vegas isn’t on your list, the list is weak. The city isn’t just buffets and chains. It has some of the best restaurants in the country.
Lotus of Siam, for example.
So probably like Orlando, the great restaurants are outweighed by the mediocre, chains and crap but the great ones do exist.
As Vegas has grown up, so has the culinary scene. It now has more celebrity chefs than you can shake a stick at; the most master sommeliers of any city in the U.S.; and the best access to the rarest ingredients in the world.
I’ve eaten at 8 of those listed. All were stellar.