Fine dining isn't dead, you're just doing it wrong
On Per Se, Scarr's, and HAGS
No one cares what I have to say!
But I’m saying it–and I’ll tell in a different essay why you should trust me or care about what I might have to say.
I write long-form pieces. So it’s long. And it’s always gonna be long. Grab a cup of coffee and click off this email to the actual post if you’re reading via email—it’s too long for email and gets cut off like I used to at bars.
This is the first essay from my project view from my seat at the bar. Not a subscriber? Subscribe baby.
Can we start you off with a glass of champagne?
I was in New York. I left my fanciest gowns at home in Minneapolis, my home. The pressing of them during a week trip stresses me out, so I didn’t pack them for this one which sent me across four cities (DC, Philly, NYC, and Kingston) in 12 days. I used to pack a different outfit for every night and then I realized that I kept wearing the same outfits over and over like a comfort.
But now? I was cursing myself for not packing one of my silk dresses on my way to Per Se. It’s an armor.
Fine dining is my life. When I say this to people in the industry, at first, they look at me like I’m an absolute idiot and with time talking to me, I do mostly earn that sentiment. As one of my chef friends said to another chef, “She loves food more than us” As one chef said to me at the pass, “You really do mean this is your life.” I get it. You might not believe that right now, this is my first essay, but I promise you, food is my entire heart. I might have a different, very serious job outside of food, but all day every day in between 10 hours of meetings, I have English muffins rising or bolognese on the stove or I’m writing little dots of these essays. And I don’t regret it–not working in the industry. Because I love the view I have from my seat at the bar.
I’m writing this from a cabin in the woods after a 12 day whirlwind roadtrip bagging stars, finding the best Pav Bhaji in NYC (it’s Adda in Queens) and going to over 15 bakeries in Chinatown looking for an extremely specific version of scallion pastry (122 Meat Market, Beef Cake). Along the way, I hit restaurants I had questions about like: do you deserve three Michelin stars? And who the fuck cares about what I have to say? No one. But: food is what I think about most of the time, in my kitchen or yours, and the greatest joy in my life is a singular purpose: eat food that you can’t find anywhere else in the United States and then tell people about it.
I spend so many hours inside fine dining restaurants. I know how to move in them—and yet, I will never look like I belong in them. Purple and pink hair, covered in tattoos even on my hands, sometimes in a baseball cap (though these aren’t welcome at Per Se), I think part of the reason so many chefs ask me out at their restaurants is because I don’t look like most of the people sitting at their tables—I look (and sometimes act) like them.
But the patrons? There are times when I can feel their eyes on me. And sometimes, I feel front of house eyes on me, too. The stuffier the restaurant, the more likely it is to happen that I have a moment in which I am incredibly aware of my perceived class and sophistication, because some fine dining restaurants are still places where the rich go to keep out the riff raff, even as the riff raff (and I say this so, so fondly) is the one serving them their food.
To get to Per Se, you have to go into a mall, walk by Williams Sonoma, Lululemon, H&M, J Crew, Whole Foods, and Paper Source, like some bougie Applebee’s in a tourist centric mall. Walking past tourists shopping at a Sunglass Hut in New York, I was acutely aware that I am a tourist too in these dining rooms. But every time I land here, it feels the way it does when you touch down in a city you fell in love with and without the kids or the job or the husband who hates the cold, you might have lived in in another life.
And so in a beautiful dress but not my fanciest dress, I stood in front of the door to Per Se in a wild, foolish attempt to feel the crushing weight of food that makes you forget about the cracks in your soul. That’s what I want from food: to make me forget the world for just a minute, to make me feel something new and beautiful, to crush me.
As soon as I sat down, I was offered a glass of champagne not once, not twice, but three times. The third time alcohol almost hit the glass before I could answer the question, “Can we start you off with a glass of champagne?” I moved the glass out of the way. Fuck a table cloth.
One of the cracks in my soul? I’m an alcoholic with a year and a half sober from alcohol and weed and 15 years off narcotics (intravenous morphine). I called the restaurant to remind them not to serve me alcohol when I realized it was not in my notes.
And hey, guys, if you’re going to try to serve me booze three times in five minutes when it should be in my notes and you’re all about service/hospitality, you’re starting off with me being a little bit mad at you. But more than that? It was how the man in charge of my table said, “Sometimes the notes get cut off,” but never, “I’m so sorry.” And look, I know if I didn’t look like the riff raff, he would have said, “I’m so sorry,” but also, serving an alcoholic booze when she called you to ask you not to is a hospitality faux pas that should not happen in a restaurant known for its service.
I stand by that.
Service vs hospitality, and: a detour
I don’t care about service much, but I do pay attention to it. I pay attention to it because other people do and because I’m not sending you into a restaurant with assholes. At Friday Saturday Sunday, I was telling my date about really bad service I got at a restaurant with beautiful food in Seattle.
The service was so bad at this Seattle restaurant that I would never go back (you can’t bring a phone into the dining room and two people were turned away from very, very mild dress code violations–including very nice, very expensive sneakers when this man was wearing a goddamned suit), but I loved the food and told him one of the dishes was my favorite of the year. He said, “How can you enjoy a meal with such bad hospitality?” And I don’t know, I can. The food is the thing for me–I don’t give a shit if you push my table in or give me a new napkin or if you’re hiding biscuits in a fucking gold duck on my table (this is not a joke, it is a real thing).
But, we need a detour. Because I want to write food writing for the average person, not just industry people, because I want average people to have more tools on finding good food than Eater or influencers. So part of this project is I want to teach you what I know.
Here’s the skinny on Per Se for those people reading this who aren’t fine dining snobs or chefs. Per Se got three stars in the first round of Michelin scoring in NYC in 2006 and has maintained them ever since. Three stars is the highest ranking, considered “worthy of a special journey” (i.e. a plane ride across an ocean) to dine there. They are in their 20th year. They have never lost a star. Okay, that’s the gist, so this is considered and awarded as one of the best restaurants in the country–someone is recommending you travel here. And you should judge it based on that.
The menu is also $390 per person (I know) and truffle was $120 or $140 extra, I couldn’t remember but I could see the amount of truffle being added to dishes and because I buy my own truffle and cook with it, I can tell you it was like $30 of the best truffle, if it’s the best truffle. Now if you know nothing about truffle, it’s expensive and rich people love to eat it so it’s on every-fucking-thing and mostly it doesn’t need to be there.
And then wine is extra. And you might be like, ah, wine, like $40 for a bottle, but no–most wine pairings in restaurants like this get closer to $40 a glass.
But, and it’s a big but, my friends, here’s the thing: this is all with dishes from the past repertoire of Per Se. So, again, if you’re not in the know, what does that mean? It means these are dishes that are not the newest dishes happening at Per Se. It’s classics that they are re-showing to you that they have already created (i.e. tested, tested, tested).
The other option is you can pay $890 per person (I am not kidding) to get the new menu and some of the best dishes of all time, because apparently at $390 you don’t get those. And this is before tax. And this is before beverage. And it is twice the cost of the rent on my first studio apartment in Minneapolis. It might be the cost of your rent right now, right? So if you do save up for this meal all year, it should feel like a whole damn apartment. It should feel like a house. It should feel like home. It should feel like life changing, warm, the best food you’ve ever had.
And guys, I’m sorry, it’s just: the food is not anywhere close. I wouldn’t cross an ocean to eat here, I wouldn’t cross the Hudson to eat here (and I love to cross the Hudson for really silly, small things like a chocolate I like). Which, we’ll get back to the food later, but I wouldn’t put Per Se in spitting distance of the top 50 restaurants I ate at last year, even the ones doing similar, boring 2005-esque things.
But back to service. For me me service is asking me three times if I want a glass of champagne because you see the glass is empty and hospitality is knowing I don’t drink.
Service is folding my napkin when I go to the bathroom and hospitality is Billy Sushi (Minneapolis) overhearing my drinking friends say that they want a Diet Coke so bad after watching me have them all night and throwing us Diet Coke to go.
Service is knowing I arrived in a cab and hospitality is Dirt Candy (NYC) hiding me in their kitchen when my date insisted on getting in my cab and physically attempted to block my path.
Service is watching my table to know what is going on and stationing someone right by so close I could touch them and hospitality is Ever (Chicago) in a tiny dining room not making you feel crowded when they come by, but like you’re a guest in their home.
Service makes a meal run. Hospitality makes a memory.
So the service at Per Se I think is excellent–and the hospitality isn’t.
My service team didn’t have my notes when I walked in (obvious by the miss on the alcohol then again when my main service lead said, “And I see you don’t have any restrictions,” which was after the alcohol which is a potential restriction, even though I do eat it in food, and after I got an email confirm on my restrictions). He tried to push me to the pescatarian menu (“I’m vegetarian but I eat caviar, roe, bonito, fish sauce, and gelatin, I know that is so annoying”–this is what I put on my reservation requests word for word most of the time) and he kept pushing it in a way that made me wonder if they didn’t actually have a vegetarian menu prepped.
When someone realized I was writing, the pace of my service changed, the tone of my service changed, and people kept walking behind me in a way that made me feel so uncomfortable and wasn’t happening at the top half of my meal. And here’s the thing, guys, if you change your service when you notice someone is writing? You aren’t proud of your service for the average guest and I’m paying attention to that and then I stop looking at how you’re treating me and start looking at how you’re treating everyone else.
I was so bored at the end of the night (more on the food in a minute) and said I didn’t want a kitchen tour and was asked seven times to do it because this place loves repetition from the menu to the booze pushing to the kitchen tour, so I did it because I was like oh my god does this guy get commission on this? Like I did it because it seemed like a thing I should do. And hey, for anyone reading, I don’t ever, ever, ever want a photo of myself in the kitchen, I just want to eat something that makes me cry.
And look, for most of that in most restaurants? I do not give a shit. But here’s what I can say: there’s better hospitality in America, so much better, I’d say that Per Se’s isn’t even in the middle of the pack and should go back to basics like say reading the notes.
On food
I have nine things to say about the food.
The first is that the teeny, tiny bread was the best part of the meal.
The second is that the hardest working person in that kitchen is the dishwasher.
The third is that the only person I would send here is someone who misses the steakhouses of the nineties and loves to spend money and I mean that seriously.
The fourth is that the Peking celeriac and slaw crepe should have never gotten past concept.
The fifth is that everything was too salty, and I literally complained earlier this year about a pizza not having enough salt, like I want more salt on everything so fucking bad.
The sixth is that the beet was so beautiful and nothing on top of the beet tasted like anything at all (and I love a little fucked up beet dish, let me tell you).
The seventh is that I’ve had better coffee ice cream from Stewarts and better donuts at a Timberwolves game and quantity does not equal quality for dessert.
The eighth is that the broccoli empanada was so greasy I could see the grease marks on my napkin when I touched it and wiped my hands.
And the ninth is a question:
Does this food make any of you feel anything? Because it doesn’t feel like it makes you feel anything and it didn’t make me feel anything. I left full, but not satisfied. I left full, wanting so much more from the talent that I know is in your kitchen–like I want you to unleash the kids in the back on this project and say, “Make a dish that makes you feel something with the best ingredients in the world,” and see what happens. It’s not gonna be a fucking semifreddo. It’s not gonna be a perfectly cracked egg with custard inside (also, you should cut the bit where you tell people about how you make the new kids in the back crack a shit ton of eggs to get that perfect opening and they’re holding their breath all day to make sure they get 15 perfect ones—it tells me a lot about how you treat your kitchen staff).
There’s a rule in writing that if it’s boring to you as a writer, it’s more boring as a reader. I think that’s true of food, too. And if it doesn’t inspire even you, I can feel it: like, what are we doing here in what is supposed to be one of the best restaurants in the world? Why are we recycling old menus for $390? Why are we sending out a plate that when I sent the photo to tweezer chefs and said, “Where am I,” all of them guessed a fast casual place and they all were aghast when I said, “Per fucking Se.”
Back into the night
To get out of Per Se, after my unwanted but forced upon me kitchen tour, I went back out the mall and ran over to Whole Foods to get a bottle of hoisin sauce. I kept tasting it on my walk back to my hotel, trying to understand the hoisin sauce dish I just had. I kept looking at it. I’m confused by it. I’m saddened by it. Because I do not hate awards culture like lots of chefs and industry people do, I think that ranking the best of the best is a standard bearer that used to matter–and sometimes feels like it no longer matters. On the photo of that Peking celeriac on my phone, all of a sudden there was a snowflake. I looked up at the sky, in a winter that has been mostly snowless, and I smiled.
I felt more in that moment than Per Se’s food ever could.
When I got back to my hotel, I changed into sweatpants, a sweatshirt and a baseball cap that says daddy (it keeps men away). There’s a fine dining restaurant that I can go to and get dessert in that outfit and that’s where I’m headed. But also, when I saw Scarr’s on the James Beard Foundation semi finals list (this is food award, for non-foodies), I said out loud, “Scarr’s? Scarr’s?” And because it’s a slice shop that I used to go to for vegan slices but from which I never had a non-vegan one, I said, “Fuck it, let’s go.”
Take two: Scarr’s and HAGS
When I walked into Scarr’s, there are three staff trying to figure out a refund (they can’t) and one staff member who comes up and can. I get a Diet Coke while I wait and my slice went into the oven. I stood by the window and looked out into the night.
A woman in a real fur coat came in and asked for a vegan slice and I love her for that, genuinely. A young couple came in, the girl so excited, also asking for vegan pizza. They were both wearing midwest college hoodies, young enough to still be in college, like a weekend trip for early twenties’ lovers in New York. There was a grizzled man, known by the staff, who got to order wordlessly. And then there was a woman who came in with a tiny dog in a bag. People were sat in the back at the sit down half of the restaurants, but that’s not my bag in a slice shop. Get me in. Get me out.
I have eaten so much pizza that I don’t know what great pizza is anymore and who the fuck cares? When you’re drunk at two in the morning or leaving a fine dining restaurant that served you fake bone marrow that tastes like nothing, you want good enough (solid) pizza that is consistent. Scarr’s? Scarr’s is solid and consistent. Worthy of an award? Not to me. But worthy of a trip across the Hudson? Sure, why not? Eating food other people say is the best is a lot of fun–and the Diet Coke is really cold, you’re gonna love it.
I walked to HAGS in the snow. It felt like New York feels to me whenever I’m there. I spent six years living in Philadelphia and the Hudson Valley and spending large swaths of my time working in the city. I know that I’m not a New Yorker, but I do wear this crown proudly: my friends and exes in New York ask me where to eat before consulting any best of list. Not just because I know what is opening and what is closing, but because I’ve eaten my way through a New York with intentionality and intensity.
You need a Thai breakfast sandwich? I got you, baby. You need a place in Chinatown? I’m on it. You need matcha from a shop not run by a health-focused white lady? Sign me up.
Drop me in New York and I’m going from Queens to Brooklyn to Manhattan with purpose (i.e. eating at 10 slice shops in a day or eating five different versions of Pav Bhaji to find the best). I’ve eaten in most of the Michelin restaurants that allow vegetarian diners (no hate if you don’t, actually, mad respect) and if I run into a street vendor with a line, I stop. So walking from one restaurant to another feels like New York to me. It’s how I move through New York. I never lived here, I never wanted to (look, I am a country girl at heart and am actively looking for someone who wants to open up a little commissary/general store in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, shoot your shot). I only ever wanted to be dropped into the city in tennis shoes and a baseball hat with an evening gown and high heels in my backpack with a mission.
I wasn’t going to eat at HAGS. It made my short list for dinner and I looked at it more than once. I love teeny tiny restaurants with a cute aesthetic. It’s a bit of me, as they say, but I had restaurants I had bigger questions about like: Does Ilis live up to the hype (yes) and What’s going on with three starred restaurants in America? And then, I just have to, any time you put me in this city for a few days, I just have to go to Dirt Candy.
So I didn’t go to HAGS for dinner, but when a friend told me we had to go, I looked at their Instagram page and saw they had a vegan dessert tasting from 9-10pm and I thought, “Huh,” for so many reasons, but the main one was, “I’ve never seen that before,” and I’ve seen most things. So, we went. But I didn’t do the research on the restaurant that I normally do before we go, because I didn’t think I would write about it. I thought it was a nightcap with a friend.
When you walk into HAGS, it feels like your most aesthetic queer friend’s house, because, well, it is. There are heart tap lights on the gold table, pronoun pins that are not just she/her, but include she/they. When I walked in, this is what I noticed: the stemware is hung from the ceiling underneath green velvet curtains, no one is on their phone, and everyone is eating something that looks really good. The music is Frank Ocean. The people look like–feel like–me. Lest we forget: I am in a fine dining restaurant with a hat that says daddy and I am not out of place. I could take someone who loves fine dining here–I could take someone who is afraid of fine dining here.
I really think you should try to get the corner booth when you go to snuggle up with the person you came with and because it means both of you can see into the restaurant, which is my favorite thing to do with someone: watch what is going on around you.
The n/a menu is considered. It includes some of my favorites that I’ve never seen on menus before, including Kally, which I think is putting out some of the best n/a drinks in the country right now. They’re out of it when I come and so I get De Soi Champignon Dreams, which is a mushroom and passionfruit drink that I’ve grown to love so, so, so much.
The first course is cheese (it’s from Rebel in Austin, which is a solid vegan cheese, but I do have to admit that I am deeply loyal to the vegan brie from Bandit, which a chef I went on a date with in Philadelphia responded to me about with it’s vegan?!) and homemade biscotti. My dining companion said it tasted like Thanksgiving. And it does. You get to spread your cheese with this absolutely delightful acorn situation and I don’t hate that the whole dish kind of looks like my hair. The plates look like my house, too, like they literally look like my house (all Gabrielle Silverlight pottery and big swaths of color).
For me, it was the second dish that made me stop and look out at the restaurant. This happens to me sometimes. When something surprises me or I think it’s audacious, I stop and look at the place I’m in more closely. For me it was serving cinnamon toast with dehydrated and rehydrated apple on a dessert tasting menu. I said out loud, “That’s really special,” but inside I was like, “That’s audacity,” and I love audacity. Look–I have to be honest with you, when I’m eating with someone, I don’t write anything down, and so I do not remember everything on this toast, but I can tell you it is special and I can tell you it made me feel something.
And then it was the blood orange cake that when it hit the table and I saw sea buckthorn, that I was like, “Oh fuck, I should have come here for dinner.” I’ve been searching for good blood orange all year. The blood oranges this year, for some reason, at least in my state, are shitty and dry. The taste of my blood orange (with or without beet) is my favorite flavor and so getting it in a cake in a year of blood orange drought delighted me. And the sea buckthorn? It made me smile.
I thought that would be it, right? That’s three courses: a cheese, a cute little toast, a dessert. But you get one more. That night, it was a chocolate cake covered in teeny flowers.
After I had that course, I went to the bathroom. Even if you don’t have to go to the bathroom in a restaurant, you should! They tell you something about the restaurant most of the time.
minibar’s for example looks like a spaceship and has its own soundscape–and they clean it between every guest–I learned something about them from that. Modern Times in Minneapolis is covered in graffiti they never clear off and political stickers–I learned something about them from that. And HAGS? HAGS has fentanyl test strips in a glass jar.
It brought me to tears. I stood there in the bathroom longer than I needed to admiring the jar. It did not even cross my mind that a fine dining restaurant would do that. And it was deeply, immediately, jarringly apparent to me that one restaurant tried to serve me champagne three times and the other was trying to save my life.
My special, special occasion recommendation in Manhattan
So where the hell am I going to send you for the most special meal in New York if not into a three starred restaurant in NYC? I have a recommendation, but only (always, really) for the adventurous.
It’s a bottle of Veuve stuffed into a backpack next to a tin of caviar and a teeny, tiny truffle with a microplane. It’s a little silicone cork. It’s two plastic cups.
It’s picking up a woman at her apartment door and you’re wearing your nicest clothes and she’s in an evening gown and high heels. It’s you telling her to put on tennis shoes, but to keep the dress. It’s asking her, “Do you trust me,” and buddy if she doesn’t trust you, that’s on you, not on me (she’d trust me).
My special occasion meal starts in a slice shop, any slice shop, your favorite slice shop, her favorite slice shop, your grandma’s favorite slice shop, the slice shop somewhere in town she’s never been to before, the worst slice shop you’ve ever been to–I don’t care but it must have garlic knots and they must not give a shit about what you being a little bit of a weirdo (Scarr’s fits this bill, to be honest). It’s getting the slices from a slice shop and standing at the window and whipping out the Veuve. It’s a glass of Veuve standing in front of a slice shop (offer some to the staff, come on now, pay a corkage fee if you gotta), with the woman who you love and it’s breaking out the truffle and grating it on top of the knots in New York slice shop and saying, “Happy birthday,” or, “I love you,” or look, “Will you marry me,” I’d say yes if you did that.
My special occasion meal is running up to HAGS for their walk-in only 9pm-10pm dessert tasting menu and getting there early enough to make sure you get in. Do not fuck that up. It’s sitting next to each other by the heart shaped table light, maybe you do something corny and hand it to her and tell her she has your whole heart, I don’t know. It’s curling into that corner booth and wrapping your legs around her legs. It’s eating four full servings of dessert and that’s mostly your dinner–and let’s be real, that should be most of your dinner.
And then, at the end of the night, it’s running to Koreatown to find a place to do karaoke with just her in a room. It’s you asking her if she wants a bump and she’s like, “What the fuck Joe,” or whatever your name is, “I don’t do cocaine.” But you mean caviar. My special occasion meal is the girl you love doing a bump of caviar off your hand. It’s the two of you scream-singing at each other and you know, making out and laughing in a private karaoke room. And at midnight, you go somewhere, anywhere in Koreatown.
Look: that’s dining fine in America’s greatest city. That’s worth a special journey. That’s worthy of your special occassion. That will make you feel something. And with all of that? You’re still coming out below the cost of Per Se’s standard meal for one person and hey! You had way fewer dishes to wash and even got truffle.
I’d cross the Hudson for a man who does that.
Damn HAGS sounds write up my alley. Also, is the name based on the thing people write in yearbooks? Because if so, I want to go there even more.