Took my son to Sanyuu West in Chelsea for his 11th birthday. At $78 pp a very decent omakase with a couple of premium gems (otoro with caviar and gold leaf, and charred salmon with foie gras and truffles).
Dinner experience was greatly enhanced by the commentary of a budding restaurant critic.
AbcV
Havenât been in a while, but returned yesterday with a friend.
Forgot how good this place is, especially considering than vegetarian and vegan are not my favored nations.
Not a bad dish on the menu. Lettuce rolls were a standout. Nothing felt repetitive.
Dessert was very impressive. I would swing by just for one of these. The frangipane tart was absolutely scrumptious: rich and salty, but balanced. The forest strawberries - perfectly ripe and syrupy and herbed (micro basil and sesame sorbet).
The wine offering is lacking.
Yoshino, NYC
I was fortunate to be treated by my daughter Danielle (with Sake selection by my son).
This was truly an unreal experience. The chef was amazing and most certainly loved his job. Maybe even a little bit of ham from time to time but it all makes for an amazing experience and a birthday dinner that will be hard to surpass in the balance of my life on earth. The dishes just kept coming but the showstopper was an egg custard with grated imported Italian bottarga that I didnât want to end. Additional images available, just ask.
more pics
https://www.pobega.com/yoshino
What amazing Birthday gift. I think Yoshino might possibly be the best restaurant in the U.S.
surprised this hasnât been mentioned:
pretty straightforward; any 3rd party site that lists reservations for sale that doesnât have a direct relationship with the restaurant violates the law.
Wow! Who lobbied our spiritual leaders to pass a bill like that so quickly? I wasnât under the impression Manhattan restaurants cared so much? I assume restaurants arenât hurt by this bill (the sought after seats still get filled) and there will be greater migration to a Dorsia type partnership (guaranteeing a minimum spend = a reservation)?
it was added to an existing bill that dealt with food delivery platforms.
for the very small number of restaurants this affects, yes, the correct way to handle is essentially surge pricing for certain tables.
by âcorrectâ i mean transparent to the diner and controlled in a manner desired by the restaurant, as they see fit.
This would have been really helpful a couple weeks ago when I was trying to snag an Atomix and Tatiana reservation! haha
this law wonât make it easier to get those reservations. it merely attempts to outlaw middleman economics that donât provide value to the restaurant.
this law is pro-restaurant. and itâs anti- a very tiny subset of diner willing to pay premium fees to a 3rd party, which no one cares about.
what this should result in is better tooling for restaurants to capture this themselves. itâs kinda weird that resy and opentable donât have this as a feature, especially given the fact they would make a few % on it. I suppose that while this issue dominates food blogs, etc., the totality of the problem is limited to a few dozen restaurants at best. So not a priority.
Had an extraordinary culinary day in NYC. We started the day at 10 a.m. with Japanese breakfast at Odo.
https://www.instagram.com/p/C79lAijBz3-/
We followed this with some day drinking and snacks at Parcelle which is just a lovely place to meet people at odd hours on Saturday as they are open from 1:00 on.
Dinner was at Ilis to celebrate a friends Birthday. I suggested this spot so I was a bit nervous. Well they delivered. Everyone in our group loved it! It is our third meal here and it is now officially in our rotation. The wine list and wine team is excellent, one of the best in the city.
We followed Ilis with the most difficult reservation in NYC a reservation for Pizza at Chrissys! BOOM! Wow did this live up to the hype! It immediately rose with a bullet to #2 on my NYC area pizza ranking!
Up next is the Fox Face Birthday party at 4âŚno rest for the wicked!
It will also help with the problem of massive cancellations from the people who try to sell reservations and then cancel 24 hours before which is a royal pain for restaurants.
Yes I agree itâs pro-restaurant.
Through that specific problem has been somewhat mitigated by cancelation fees. Not a perfect solution of course. No call, no show predates the reservation scalping era.
its gotta make it a BIT easier right? if thereâs nowhere for people with bots to sell the reservations they procure that way, it makes it a bit easier Iâd think? I mean the Tatiana and Atomix reservations are gone faster than itâs even possible to refresh the page. I canât imagine all of those went to people who actually showed up those nights. how many people build bots for their own reservations? genuinely curious
only if by âa bitâ you mean some statistical possibility but effectively the same. the demand far outstrips the supply and iâm not at all convinced this law can come close to preventing all sales. i mean, anyone can make a reservation and list it on a private telegram group for sale. thereâs no practical way to police this nor should any resources be spent thereon.
creating a bot to attempt to grab a reservation is trivial - if you donât have the technical knowledge yourself, you can find someone to do it for maybe a few hundred dollars. it might suck, but given the insignificant barrier to entry, we should assume there are many doing it (there are). the effect is just hammering a website that isnât meant to handle this use case with immense traffic.
atomix is a special case because itâs on tock - so the economics are changed slightly.
even if we assume for this argument that 100% of the bots and scalpers immediately leave the market, that still leaves every single motivated diner thatâs on the app as soon as they need to be for the seat. there arenât that many seats for these top places so itâs kind of a lottery with very long odds getting somewhat shorter, maybe.
a quick glance at dorsia didnât show tatiana on there.
for the very small handful that have this problem, it seems their best strategy is to just charge more for some / all tables.
Before bots were here, it was often doable - not the impossible task you outline above. Some restaurants would be difficult, the Per Se of the world. But not a situation where the Raoul or Bad Romans of the world were $300 covers.
these are two very different issues:
bots making it difficult to get to get popular tables; and (though related)
platforms / outlets selling reservations for money.
the factors that lead to the above are just an increased demand for certain experiences. why? who knows - social media? an increased premium on experiences? doesnât matter
but technology allowed the market to step in and creat various ways to capitalize on that demand. recall that when resy first launched, it was all about charging for reservations - this was in 2014!
bots are just a newer method that scales for more people than having a black card and getting your concierge to do it. the best tables were always hard to get.
this isnât new, just the methods and perhaps the attention drawn.
I guess the genie is out of the bottle and there is no putting it back
Boom!
Penny
NYT Criticâs Pick | â
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| American, Seafood | $$$ | 90 East 10th Street (Third Avenue), East Village
Fantastic news for them!
A little late, but not too late especially with the vast wilderness of NYC dining. Brainstorming for an anniversary dinner spot while weâll be in town on July 2nd.
Current leader is Chambers as a little more of a casual ish spot. Good food and a âgood vibeâ is the type weâre going for since weâre closing on a house a week later.
