Dining and Distinction: Inedibles on the Table

Makeda, New Brunswick, NJ

2006-05-08T16:57:00.000-04:00

Sometimes, good restaurants don't even have silverware. No, I am not talking about McDonald's (although I always loved Taco Bell and KFC for their sporks). Makeda, an outstanding Ethiopian restaurant in lovely downtown New Brunswick, is one of them. It's a place where you eat with your hands, or more accurately, with the thin, sour Ethiopian bread. It's a place best enjoyed with friends whose hygiene is up to par, although the restaurant does helpfully provide heated wet-naps, not unlike those handed out in economy class on translantic flights. The food is nothing but first class.

In the Times: Dinnerware with Corners

2006-04-28T15:37:00.000-04:00

Not only do we have the upcoming Cooper-Hewitt exhibition on tablewares coming up next week, the Times airs the phenomenon of square plates:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/26/dining/26square.html

Not that anything said in that article is news. Tablesettings reflect aspirations of status? No way!

The Staff Cafeteria, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC

2006-04-19T16:51:00.000-04:00

One can dine very well at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (and, dare I say it, providing a feast for the body as well as for the intellect), although the Café Sabarsky at the Neue Galerie is probably the best museum dining in town. Nevertheless, the Met impresses with dining options that rival the breadth of its collections. For the fancy, there is the Trustee’s Dining Room (to which the great unwashed is not admitted; they can eat in the subterranean Cafeteria). The American Wing Café and the Petrie Court both have lovely views Central Park, while drinks are served on the balcony bar on Friday and Saturday nights. I just wish the drinks were as good as the location.

The staff, too, gets its very own dining room. In retrospect, I realize how very lucky I was—I just didn’t appreciate the staff cafeteria for its glories when I was a Met employee. The staff cafeteria feeds its underpaid staff and not-at-all paid volunteers for a very reasonable price, with options—let me say it again—that rival the breadth of its collections.

Both the public and staff cafeterias are relegated to windowless spaces underground, and the food is mostly the same (although I have a theory that stale baked goods are brought over from the public cafeteria to be sold to the staff). In fact, the casual visitor will never see a lot of the Met, even cursory visits to each gallery would take far more time than the average tourist is willing to spend, but because of the vast, hidden infrastructure supporting the institution. Tunnels connect the various wings of the buildings, several stories descend to house one of the best art history libraries in the world, and the conservation labs have a very charming balcony.

The staff caf’ shines in food quality and price (especially for the Upper East Side), but its décor and table settings are (literally, considering the location) subpar. On the walls are (poor) reproductions of paintings featuring scenes of eating and drinking; one wonders why the Met couldn’t spare some decent, real art to decorate the walls for its employees. I haven’t been back in a while, but in spring 2005, unfunctional napkin dispensers appeared, to dispense napkins not worthy of Moscow in the 1930s. The plasticware is some of the worst I've encountered. Snap! Snap! Snap! No, that is not the sound of Rice Krispie’s, popping and crackling, but the sound of the end of my fork flinging across the table. I am not strongest person, but I continually broke the forks while trying to eat. I’ve never even done that at KFC.

The peanut butter cookies, however, absolve the Museum of all of its sins against design and functionality. And for those, at least, you don’t need any tableware at all.

Cafe Mogador (East Village), NYC

2006-04-19T16:49:00.000-04:00

Cafe Mogador is an extremely tasty Moroccan restaurant (and, unlike many other extremely tasty restaurants here, is actually quite reasonably priced). At first, I thought the name sounded like something evil from Lord of the Rings. It's not, and the food is insanely good.

The food was so good, in fact, that I will not complain at all about the silverware, which, obviously is one of my favorite activities. It was a Sheraton-derived Winco, in other words, completely and utterly unremarkable. If I were still in grad school, I might try to spin some tale of the persistence of classicism, or the co-existence of orientalisms and classicisms. But I'm not, so I won't. I think I'll go read gawker instead.

Culture Wars: Tablescape vs. Set Table

2006-03-21T23:09:00.000-05:00

I watch a lot of Food Network: Not because I particularly like the Food Network, not for a particular love of cooking shows, but because it's the only network (well, the only one aside from CBS and occaision foreign-language programming) that comes in.

Now, Who Wants to Be the Next Food Network Star? is scary enough (although I do wish they'd do an entire series of Morimoto mocking the cooking abilities of mere mortals... I see it now... Morimoto Makes Your Italian Grandmother Cry...mmmmm), but it does not even begin to compare with their mid-afternoon delight, "Semi-Homemade Cooking with Sandra Lee."

Sandra Lee always finishes her show with a presentation of "tablescapes," what otherwise sane Americans might refer to as a table arrangement. Since watching the Foot Network, I have learned the value of "plating" (although silverware always gets short shrift... yes, it is nice when food is pretty and appetizing on the plate, but let's not underestimate the value of the silverware that plays such an integral role in the eating process). Given how much that term is thrown around [Iron Chef America and even the deps on the Who Wants to Be... show got graded on it (after being sliced and diced by Morimoto)], it is apparently a real term with some validity.

Tablescape is not. It is a sign of the decline of civilization (more or less).

A chapter of my dissertation was, in fact, about table settings (specifically, those made for a 1906 exhibition in Vienna). The chapter title also lent the title to this blog (I had extremely good chapter titles, and I am proud to say that there was no punctuation in my title, which was a glorious six words long). I know of what I speak.

At any rate, the proper term for an artfully designed table is "set table," alternately known as a "laid table." (These terms are quite common in German-- particularly etiquette literature-- in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as "gedeckter Tisch" or "gedeckter Tafel").

Now, Sandra Lee's designs are inane and it's rather questionable if she can cook (there's too much Cool Whip and frozen strawberry action, but she does occasionally make tasty-looking, trashy cocktails), but at least in the stupid idea of the tablescape, she draws attention to the importance of properly decorating the table.

In many blogs, she is rightly mocked for her tablescapes. But by even featuring tablescapes, Sandra has drawn attention to the enormous weight issues of design and decorating assume in today's culture. This renewed interest in design has been attributed to many factors: an oversatiated consumer base looking for ways to distinguish itself and a turn to domesticity are two oft-cited factors. This is not new.

The early twentieth-century, particularly in central Europe, was the glory days of the artfully decorated table. It was taken extremely seriously across all levels of society (for upper-class women, it was a diversion like needle-pointing, the lower middle-class used it to express their class aspirations. Reformers emphasized the proper table as useful for imparting proper bourgeois morals and upholding culture).

“The art of decking the table is not so small, as some suppose, and also not generally so widespread, as many would like to claim," Ludwig Hevesi wrote for the Fremden-Blatt, the Viennese newspaper for which he was the art critic. The Fremden-Blatt, moreover, was the official paper of the Habsburg bureaucracy, and as such was read by Emperor Franz Josef and his ministers on a daily basis.

Design mattered very much in Vienna. Yes, there are persuasive arguments that this emphasis on superficial and minor aspects masked the society's inability to tackle monumental issues or produce an art for the ages. But, despite the critics decrying the fact that architecture had been reduced to napkin folding, these objects have endured (and command serious prices on the art market and are appreciated in major museum collections). The Food Network's tablescapes, however, fail to inspire and fail to last.

The difference between the tablescapes of Sandra Lee and the turn-of-the-twentieth-century "set tables" in Vienna is, to my mind, no better, very visible indictment of how low our culture has sunk.

Report from California: Spago

2006-03-21T11:15:00.000-05:00

Spago (yes, Spago) uses Oneida's Astragal as well, also in the 18/10 version (like Artisanal). Cheap-o's.

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2006-02-09T20:34:00.000-05:00

There has been little silverware to write about these days: my days of being wined and dined seem to be over. I even had to cook-- two nights in a row!-- last week for the person who was previously charged with feeding me. Sigh.

I also cannot write about lunchtime silverware, since I work in the middle of nowhere....no, let me rephrase...the margins of nowhere. The Olmsted Center cafeteria does not even have plasticware most of the time. I bought some plastic spoons at a dollar store, but, as bored as I am, they're not really worth writing about.

If I got manicures, I could write about my hands. But I don't, and, quite honestly, my hands aren't all that thrilling. I have a few papercuts.

Georg Jensen beat out Tiffany silver though earlier this week in the cake cutting department. Score one for modernism.

The Modern, NYC

2006-01-26T00:11:00.000-05:00

The Modern is a restaurant of impeccable taste. It advances the mission of the Museum to which it is attached and demonstrates that forward-looking design (which is stylistically rooted in designs a century old and theories of reform that are older still) is fully appropriate for the haute bourgeois table. The Modern—and throughout I speak of the formal dining room—is a glorious celebration of the power of modern art to confer distinction. Just like in Vienna, around 1900 (but that is another, much longer story).

It is not a stretch to suggest that the tables at the Modern have been curated—in fact, many of the place settings, water jugs, coffee creamers and other accoutrements are in either MoMA’s permanent collection (the Museum gets a hefty bit of sponsorship from various Danish cultural authorities, which may—or may not, one shouldn’t be too cynical about these things, because northern design is just better in the end)—be reflected in the tendency towards Scandinavian modern on the tables) or the gift shop (i.e., the Design Store).

My favorite setting came with an amuse bouche, a lovely procession of shrimp presented on WMF Happy Spoons (available at the shop). The coffee service put Starbucks to shame: I don’t sugar my coffee, but the variety and beauty of the sugar presentation almost persuaded me to try, just this once. That is, in fact, the power of good design, and why reformers have very vocally and very adamantly insisted on maintaining certain standards on the table, because the shape of a silverware pattern or the manner of presenting tea alters behavior. “Good design” was never morally neutral, and the Modern, the restaurant, completely embraces the taste-building and educational mission of the Modern, the museum.

One might argue that the Modern is preaching to the converted. Especially at the prices (it was $78 for the 3-course prix fixe, excluding all drinks; coffee is $6, and, at that price, it damn better come with a selection of sugars) involved, those eating at the Modern probably aren’t the ones that need to be coaxed aware from their tv trays. But the reception of much of the modernist table settings throughout the twentieth century and into today documents the tension between advanced design and bourgeois taste. The most popular sterling patterns are not modernist, and most fine dining restaurants shy away from advanced designs, as well, favoring variations on classical English motifs.

But, the Modern is perfectly named. It is modern, not avant-garde, nor is it contemporary (even though some of the objects used were produced within the last decade). It shares this with MoMA itself, which has been criticized as a backwards-looking institution. MoMA not the place people go to see cutting edge contemporary art, particularly in architecture in design. And the Modern is not the place to eat to experience cutting edge design, either. But perhaps herein the Modern could play a role by redesigning its tables to include more radical interpretations for the table, things that get dismissed for being impossible to eat with, and even using modern materials. And I’d certainly book another table the day the Modern puts great plasticware on its tables.

Chance, Carroll Gardens (Smith St.), Brooklyn, NY

2006-01-20T00:18:00.000-05:00

Chance, as the name suggests (not, as I misunderstood on the phone, “Champs,” which is a crappy sports-related restaurant? store? I’m still not sure. There’s probably one in Ohio, however) is a lovely Chinese French restaurant on Smith Street. There’s lots of glossy, Memoirs of a Geisha red, a bar that prompted a good quarter of an hour of discussion (note, here I mean the physical structure of the bar itself, not bar in a more general sense, although the drink menu was quite fine).

At any rate, Chance put some effort into creating something aesthetically distinctive, and, like the food (mmmmmm Peking Duck), it rises far above the neighborhood take-out. The silverware had a naturalist form, like flowing water; the pattern was titled “Rome,” rather inappropriately, but I suppose nobody expected that anyone would be checking out the silverware in so much detail. Fools. Had they more money to spend, I would have suggested the lovely Tiffany & Co. Bamboo pattern (or a cheaper knock-off, Crate & Barrel used to do one, I believe). All Asian restaurants, it seems, serve their food on square plates; Chance is no different. Is there actually anything historically relevant about square plates? If I weren’t so lazy these days, I’d do research. As it is, I don’t see myself hanging out at NYPL to find out. I do see myself eating more green beans at Chance.

Artisanal, NYC

2005-12-29T20:05:00.000-05:00

Someone else said it better than I can: “If cheese is a religion, this is its bustling […] house of worship.” For a girl who once threw the lamest of all lame cheese parties in New Jersey and found the best part about Vienna to be the cheap cheese selection at the local Spar, Artisanal is heavenly.

Artisanal, like every other restaurant in New York, uses a flatware pattern from Oneida. The Astragal service (at Artisanal in 18/10 stainless; it is available in silver, too, which I would have appreciated, but I suppose the price of Artisanal does fall short of being able to demand proper silver) is one of Oneida’s most refined patterns. The patterning has a strong classical influence in the banding on the stem and near the throat; the overall shape of the pattern is classic in the more common sense that it does not deviate from accepted norms. The flatware I used the evening I dined at Artisanal had a lovely oxidation along the bands that enlivened the decoration and made it seem like far better silverware than Oneida usually makes. [I suppose I ought to reveal my own taste in silverware now: Yes, Christofle does make fine silverware for fine dining and I’m rather a fan of certain Tiffany & Co. placesettings, in particular their more bombastic Chrysanthemum and Olympian patterns. If I were to invest serious money—and at this level, yes, it’s serious money—in silverware (which, unfortunately, I will not be doing anytime soon), it would probably go towards Georg Jensen’s Pyramid]. At any rate, Astragal is an excellent fit to the bistro mood of Artisanal: elegant yet not pretentious.

For the fondue (which I rather recklessly ate as an appetizer; unfortunately, I am not nearly as decadent as I would like to be and I had to pass on chocolate fondue for dessert, although should I ever be sentenced to death, I think I know what my final meal might be), Artisanal eschews gimmickry and uses classic, all silver-colored fondue forks. The forks do not have the colored ends seen on many home fondue forks (meant to distinguish the forks of multiple eaters). The reason for this is really quite simple: it is poor taste to leave the fondue fork unattended in the pot. If your fork is in the pot, you should be stirring. That is it. One must always stir the fondue, lest one ends up with a coagulated and kirschy blob of goo. This is part of the contract one signs when one agrees to eat fondue: someone will always stir, someone can eat, and the rest can bide their time, chatting, drinking, or the like. Fondue is one of the most supremely social meals (in the sense that to eat fondue requires adherence to certain rules of eating, despite the informality and easiness of the meal itself). Artisanal wisely does not use fondue forks that would suggest impropriety.

The classic fondue was, by the way, very good.

Applebee's, North Olmsted, Ohio

2005-12-29T19:30:00.000-05:00

The silverware at Applebee’s was surprisingly elegant, considering the location, food, and audience. I had the pleasure of dining at Applebee’s for lunch; the table was preset (with silver rolled in a paper napkin) with a luncheon fork and, rather inexplicably, a steak knife. The steak knife was of no worse quality than that on the table at Peter Luger’s, and the fork was far nicer than at many a fine Manhattan establishment.

Applebee’s selected a daring, three-pronged fork. Debates still rage between three- and four-prongers, with little hope of consensus being reached anytime in the near future. In fin-de-siècle Vienna, Joseph August Lux once argued that the three-pronged model was a more primitive form, seen in peasant households, and therefore the model to be emulated by cultured and sophisticated Europeans in search of an ideal, true form. In this respect, as in so many others, Lux remained in the minority. The three-prong fork, especially when laid next to a heavy, wooden-handled steak knife, does suggest barbarism (rather appropriate after all for someplace like Applebee’s) and recalls the shape of a grill fork. One could spear meat quite excellently with such a fork, although it is perhaps less suited to the chicken pot pie. It did have a satisfyingly elongated bowl, however, and the overall proportions gave it an elegance that is often missing in three-pronged models. Perhaps Lux was right.

The rest of the décor of this Applebee’s, which, I assume, is rather like every Applebee’s everywhere else (I suppose I could go to Times Square to test this theory, but, then again, I suppose I could just as easily get a lobotomy), really falls outside my area of expertise. It is more appealing than TGI Fridays, at least.

Useless Musings on Gorilla Milk in Williamsburg

2005-12-12T23:13:00.000-05:00

I will be quite happy to retitle this, if someone can tell me where it is I ate. To help you out:

It is in Williamsburg.
It has great lobster rolls.
There is sand on the floor.

This last point is an amusing decorative maneuver and is especially nice when it is sub-zero outside for evoking a lovely tropical flair. If only I weren't poor! I'd be sipping mixed drinks in the Maldives! But, alas, I'm in a formerly-scummy-now-filled-with-people-with-stupid-hair part of Brooklyn instead. I will take solace in the fact that there probably aren't any lobster rolls on the Maldives.

As usual, the silverware was completely forgettable and utter crap. (Luckily, you don't need silverware to eat the lobster roll or the fries). In one area, this unnamed gem does excel: in serving up a fine tropical drink. In a coconut. With a lid. The "Gorilla Milk" might be off-putting to a cocktail purist, but it is as fine as the glassware (well, coconut-ware) in which it is served. Banana, chocolate, more booze all combined to give the ultimate in dessert drink pleasure. With a drink like this, who cares if you get sand in your snow boots?

Frankie's 457, Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, NY

2005-12-04T23:56:00.000-05:00

The silverware on the table at Frankie’s 457 is Oneida’s Strauss pattern (in stainless; the pattern—from one of the higher end collections—is also available in silverplate). The Strauss pattern fits well with the food on offer at Frankie’s, which specializes in modernized Italian cooking. The food is comforting and like what one would eat at home every night, if one cooked this well; the Strauss pattern would not be out of place on the table of any of the young, well-to-do, educated Brooklynites that frequent Frankie’s. Although Frankie’s also does take-out, I would much rather eat in the restaurant itself, not just because Frankie’s (mostly) gets its table decoration right, but also for the drink menu.

The modernist impulses of the Strauss pattern come from its unornamented design; the forks and spoons are one smooth, flowing form. This is, of course, a modernist device, which recognizes the nature of the material. The knife, however, does have an articulated throat, which clearly separates the handle from the blade (on the silverplated version, this would make sense: the blade would be stainless, while the handle would be silver. On a stainless pattern this is an affectation and alludes to the nobler version). The overall design of the knife also departs quite significantly from the fork, in silhouette and also in the shape of the terminal end. The fork and spoons are a flattened crescent and quite light, while the knife is more bulbous and hefty. The Strauss knife does not follow the stylistic rules set up by the other pieces in the service. Of course, Oneida—not Frankie’s—is to blame for these design flaws in the flatware.

At Frankie’s all of the antipasti comes in shallow, oblong dishes. You will quickly be out of room on the small tables for two if you order more than two or three of these sides (and even faster if you’ve got multiple drinks, olives, or bread). Luckily, there are separate silverware courses for the sides.

Of the sides, the polenta is not to be missed, although it is not always on the menu (especially at brunch, where it is an excellent compliment to all of the egg dishes). It could use its own silverware. With the fork, it is hard to eat all of it (and you will want every last bite); it seems somehow wrong to eat polenta with a spoon. A polenta spork, perhaps?

Peter Luger Steakhouse (Williamsburg), Brooklyn, NY

2005-12-03T15:25:00.000-05:00

It had been thirteen years since I had had a hamburger. It took the Peter Luger burger to make me think that beef might not be so bad. Here at Dining and Distinction, however, it’s not about the beef, but about all those things that help get beef to mouth. (Therefore, I should mention that the Peter Luger bun is, indeed, fabulous).

I did not actually really put the substantial steak knife to the test. The knife (wooden-handled, serrated, and thus conforming to universal steak knife standards) looks formidable and sharp enough to strike fear into even the most courageous bovine heart. It cut the substantial tomato slices like butter. I still prefer my favorite knife—the Rösle Tomato Knife—but I suppose only pseudo-vegetarians like myself would even suggest that a steak house set its tables with a vegetable knife instead. The fork is Oneida’s New Rim, a pattern that neither inspires nor offends.

A highlight on the Peter Luger table is the gravy boat (with a spoon) full of the restaurant’s own, very tasty steak sauce.

Schnäck, Red Hook, Brooklyn, NY

2005-11-27T14:16:00.000-05:00

Schnäck is a very, very strange place—a place of weird, vaguely foreign accents (suggested not only by the umlaut in the name but a waitstaff that is just a bit off), the feel of being in Balki’s homeland, except with very American comfort food and good beer.

Despite the weird, I’m in Blottovar feel, much of the Schnäck experience is also like being plopped down in some den of hipster-dom (Prague in 1995?): coffee, one time for brunch, came in (mis)matching It’s A Boy! and It’s a Girl! mugs, most likely picked up for a quarter at a stoop sale. A cute trick, if you are 22 and fresh out of college.

While the coffee mugs offend only aesthetically, attempts at introducing an alternative setting fail on the most functional level. The banana split comes in one of those plastic French fry baskets, lined with waxed paper to keep the ice cream and toppings from dripping out. Have you eaten ice cream off of waxed paper with a spoon lately? Probably not. Why don’t we eat ice cream this way more often? Because the waxed paper just slides around, the ice cream drips out all over the table, and one just wants to pick up the sogging paper and lick the ice cream off of it, which would dispense with the need for silverware (which isn’t at all memorable, but then again, comfort food eating silverware rarely is).

The virtues of Schnäck are not in table settings, but in its late hours and cheap food, and, possibly, the beer shakes. Its aesthetic works for what it does. But ice cream is not fried food. Let’s not pretend it is.

Chip Shop (Park Slope), Brooklyn, NY

2005-11-26T15:19:00.000-05:00

There is no particular reason why my inaugural review should focus on the Chip Shop; its silverware has no particular distinction, which, sadly, is the case even at quite decent restaurants throughout New York City. Rather, it is a reflection of my dining habits and my most recent meal (or, better said, the most recent meal taken at a place that had silverware: I did not even see the plasticware at Le Bagel Delight).

For transporting food to mouth, the tinny metal objects mass-produced by Winco and Adware—two brands on the table at Chip Shop—do an adequate job. But they do no more. The Winco fork had a bastardized Sheraton motif, which, I suppose, at least is appropriate in a geographic sense to the food (fish & chips, bangers & mash, shepherd’s pie, and “mushy peas”—seriously, mushy peas are a side on the menu as are, green peas, which, presumably, are a bit firmer). And they would probably lose too much to theft or breakage if all the plates had Charles & Diana on them.

The curry—for this Chip Shop also has a Curry Shop serving fine Anglicized Indian dishes—came in small decorative pots with a whiff of the subcontinent in their decoration, like what you might find, on sale, at Pier 1.

The standard pint glass is really a perfect design, both elegant and utilitatian. Perhaps even John Ruskin might have found beauty in this mass-produced object, so perfectly fitted to purpose. The Chip Shop does not mess with perfection here.

I prefer the décor of the other Chip Shop in Brooklyn Heights (or thereabouts) to the Park Slope location. The interior of the Park Slope spot, when you enter, is incredibly nondescript (not to mention cold, in the winter), although the other room is toasty and has some lovely English kitsch. I would be proud to have the Queen Mum memorial tea towel in my home.