If you love life, if you love food, go to New York. Plug into the energy, immerse yourself in the complexity and feel the pulse of this magnificent city. Wherever you go there are literally hundreds of opportunities to eat out, all of which could be reached with a frisbee throw (particularly if you've got one of those ones with the hollow middle).
But where to go, what to do, what to eat? This is the classic dilemma when you arrive in a brand new city. Nobody wants to get suckered into a Garfunkels or an Aberdeen steak house kind of mega-tourist experience, but neither does everyone want to unknowingly sample Korean pickled shark eyes while trying to get off the beaten track. So what you do is you look around for points of reference, you read books, blogs, articles and take advice, all in the name of trying to give yourself half a chance of finding the real taste of a city, the flavour of life within a new culture.
For my first trip to New York, I was accompanied by @NZSezGB (obviously), @McMoop and @Chaymondo, as well as another non-twitterer, Phil. We'd all done some research, and each got a pick of a restaurant. For my choice I decided to go with "Blue Smoke" in the Flat-iron district of the city. Why? Well firstly it's owned by Danny Meyer, the service and hospitality guru and author of the best-selling book on the subject, "setting the table". I've read Danny's book a couple of times, and it's the one of the most influencial narratives on modern service there is. Quite frankly, everyone who works in hospitality should read it, and I was keen to see the ideas and concepts in action. Secondly, I quite fancied trying some genuine BBQ grub, cooked in the pit old style, with Kansas city or Louisianna dressing. So here goes.........
Like most places in New York, it's not a dressy up kind of gaff at all. You could quite easily turn up in a Ralph Lauren polo shirt and shorts and you'd not be out of place in any way. If you're @Mcmoop, even your odd socks would only get a passing glance. All that's just as well at Blue Smoke, because when you first walk in there's a huge mirror on the facing wall (maybe 8ft by 6ft) which is smashed. It's not "arty" smashed and coloured in, nor is it "this mirror broke despite being 8 miles from the 9/11 attrocity" smashed (I know because I asked), it's just smashed. Shame, but there it is.
Anyway the much vaunted service. We got the "eyebrows but no smile" on arrival at the seater bloke, and were directed to the bar as we were a few minutes early. At the bar it was all fairly standard stuff, we got what we ordered with nothing added in and nothing taken out. We asked about a couple of different drinks, and like everything else upto this point we got our answers right enough but didn't by any stretch of the imagination have our socks charmed off. Once we got seated though, things did improve and our table server was a good fella. He knew his onions, and finally we got the feeling we were perhaps going to get an experience which came somewhere near matching what was now beginning to look like our unrealistic expectations.
The food was OK, bordering on quite good on occasions. Authentic BBQ though? Well I'm not so sure. Not only was there less smoke in the restaurant than in a working mans club when the racings on, but the kitchen doors were propped wide open and there was next to no smoke in there either. The flavour of the various offerings was no different or better if I'm honest to the "BBQ rack of ribs" you'd get in a good food pub in London. I so much wanted to love it too, I haven't looked forward to a meal as much in ages.
What did we have? Well I had chicken wings to start, and they were very similar but slightly better if I'm honest (which I am) to the ones we serve at the Alex in Wimbledon. They were massive too. Sarah (@NZSezGb) had some calamari which was pretty good as I recall, and the others had some other stuff. For mains, I had a kind of mixed grill thing with some pulled pork and some ribs, there were ribs on other plates and Sarah had some prawns. All of it was fine, not horrible by any stretch but not fantastically great either. For sides we had chips and cheese which is self explanatory, some onion ball thingies which were OK, and some collard greens which were a bit like a combo of curly kale and spring greens.
I think someone had a dessert before we made to leave (I had a beer), and then we asked for a recommendation for a good bar locally. Initially we were directed a bar apparantly called "Churchills" as we are mostly British I suppose, but after we indicated that that wasn't really the sort of thing we had in mind, the manager did come over and give us a better heads up.
All in all I wouldn't deliberately put anyone off going to Blue Smoke. If you like a decent pile of food with a BBQ sauce flavour, as well as a beer in a fairly relaxed atmos', you certainly won't go far wrong. Nothing you order will cause you to want to send it back, nobody in your party will leave hungry. If though you are looking for a bit or reality, a bit of the true flavour of the city or indeed the BBQ experience this restaurant seeks to import, I think you could do better. If you've read "setting the table" and think you are going to be swept off your feet by fantastic service, I would probably give this place the swerve as well. Better to take the lessons from the book and apply them to your own situation than to come to this place in the hope of seeing it all in practice. Like the food, the service is a long way away from being bad enough to either complain about or to write home about, it's on the good side of decent.
I didn't give up on Danny Meyer or his restaurants and philosophy after this one visit (we visited Union Square Cafe afterwards) but I did take a fresh look at what my aspirations were for his eateries. Perhaps that was the problem all along, expectations from my part simply set the bar to an unattainable level. Read the book anyway, it's fantastic. Go to Blue Smoke too if you fancy some BBQ, it's not memorable but you'll not go too far wrong.
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