This is 'Hall'. An exceedingly intricate NYC establishment that seems formed around a concept reliably associated with the Japan bar scene- a half-hidden gem where a person in the know can stop in and hide out for a while, discreetly and unobtrusively relishing the environment and ambiance with a fantastic cocktail and something to eat. It's an experience I often create for my clients, and one I wish I could afford to experience myself.
It's run by Hiroki Odo, whose flagship restaurant has two Michelin Stars. I'd expect a deliberate, measured style, with appropriate subtlety. Though looking at the 'menu' of the restaurant 'odo' I admit to finding it uninspiring. For someone like me, whose expertise in the relevant niches is comparable to the chef's, it reads as exhaustingly vague, and much more a listing of how many courses there are than anything meant to pique the interest or tempt the appetite. A terrible habit of many modern Very Expensive Establishments, and one I'd like to see Michelin criticize more aggressively.
'Hall' on the other hand looks lovely. It's got style and poise. The menu is small. The food, wine, and liquor lists are short but nicely and precisely chosen. The cocktails aren't numerous, but as the focus they look beautifully balanced and well structured, with something that will catch the eye and interest of almost any cocktail afficionado irrespective of their personal taste in drinks. It might well work.
Except then he went and did an interview with Eater and they tipped his hand like a bunch of chumps.
Successful high-end operations tend to need subsidies. Investors no longer understand the concepts and goals of community or social capital- they just want cash. (This isn't news, even if it bears repeating: Everything about modern investment is both wrong and backwards.)
So every fancy restaurant benefits from having a reliable money maker to help hold it up. This one is well disguised in a lot of ways unless you know what to look for, but they went ahead and blurted it out so I'll give some more detail.
Behold the most lucrative con in modern restaurants: the Wagyu burger.
What makes Wagyu so expensive? Treatment of the beef that results in incredibly dense and flavorful marbling. The texture and flavor are everything, and that comes from the meat's natural state.
What does making beef into a burger do? It grinds the meat, mixing the protein and fat into an emulsified patty. What happens when you cook it? You get a pockmarked texture that's harder to sear, and fat leaks out- a lot faster than if you'd left the meat whole.
Both of those do serious damage to expensive beef, and Wagyu is no exception. But... Wagyu has a certain cachet. People associate it with quality and a premium price. Here's the tricky bit though- as long as the fat percentage is the same, there's no appreciable difference between A5 and, say, USDA Select in texture once ground. Not in texture, not in flavor, not in anything noteworthy at all.
So how much of a burger needs to be Wagyu to be labeled as such? Well... there's no fixed required minimum to meet truth-in-advertising laws, so it could be a drop in the bucket. Easy as can be to make $25 burgers when you're paying for a dollar worth of Wagyu fat and trim mixed with a pile of more standard beef.
A little extrapolation later... this blundering interview by Eater might have accidentally torpedoed a couple promising restaurants and potentially a chef's career.
Greeeeat work, guys. Keep it up. Sigh.
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