Can kitchens be happier?

Rene Redzepi of Noma fame wonders if it's possible to for restaurant kitchens to be something other than terrifying dictatorships.

I started cooking in a time when it was common to see my fellow cooks get slapped across the face for making simple mistakes, to see plates fly across a room, crashing into someone who was doing his job too slowly. It wasn’t uncommon for me to be called a worthless cunt or worse. It wasn’t uncommon to reach for a pan only to find that someone had stuck the handle in the fire and then put it back on my station just to mess with me.
 

I watched chefs—mine and others—use bullying and humiliation to wring results out of their cooks. I would think to myself: Why is that necessary? I’ll never be like that.
 

But then I became a chef. I had my own restaurant, with my own money invested, with the weight of all the expectation in the world. And within a few months I started to feel something rumbling inside of me. I could feel it bubbling, bubbling, bubbling. And then one day the lid came flying off. The smallest transgressions sent me into an absolute rage: Why the hell have you not picked the thyme correctly? Why have you overcooked the fish? What is wrong with you? Suddenly I was going crazy about someone’s mise en place or some small thing they said wrong.
 

I've never worked in a restaurant kitchen, but I know many people who have, and I've always been struck by the horrifying stories of chefs dressing down their staff in front of everyone else,ten bordering on physical abuse. How did that become the norm? Is it just an inherited playbook with just one strategy in it? Are the staff not trained properly before getting into the kitchen? Are the expectations unreasonable?

What of other professions where screaming and throwing objects at underlings is the norm? I can think of some technology CEOs and movie directors, many TV show runners, coaches in certain sports...perhaps the popularity of such a management style across all these disparate areas has common roots.

Decoding restaurants

Last year, on the fiftieth anniversary of restaurant desegregation, we celebrated a signifying moment in the long march toward full and equal citizenship for black Americans. But we delude ourselves if we don’t acknowledge that there is a difference between being admitted and being welcomed.
 

The court order that ended desegregation stipulated that every cafe, tavern, Waffle House, and roadside joint must open its doors to all. It did not, could not, stipulate that whites in the South must also open their hearts and minds to all. Welcome was, and is, the final barrier to racial parity.
 

We have witnessed remarkable progress over the past five decades, yes, and we should acknowledge this, too. What seemed fanciful, even utopian, a generation ago is now so commonplace as to not bear any comment at all. We have come to expect and accept black and white in the workplace, on the playing field, in politics, in the military, and we congratulate ourselves on our steady march to racial harmony. But our neighborhoods and our restaurants do not look much different today than they did fifty years ago. That Kingly vision of sitting down at the same table together and breaking bread is as smudgy as it’s ever been.
 

Todd Kliman set out to try to understand why, decades after desegregation, so few restaurants host a mixed clientele of black and white. Of course, the issues is about more than just restaurants. The questions he asks and the theories he uncovers can be pointed at bars, clubs, neighborhoods, and schools.

It was a man named Andy Shallal who helped me to understand the possibilities for a better, more integrated future while also reinforcing the manifold problems of the present. Shallal made me understand that no one ever need say, “keep out.” That a message is embedded in the room, in the menu, in the plates and silverware, in the music, in the color scheme. That a restaurant is a network of codes. It’s a phrase that, yes, has all sorts of overtones and undertones, still, in the South. I’m using it, here, in the semiotic sense—the communication by signs and symbols and patterns.
 

I don’t see coding as inherently malicious. But we need to remember that restaurants have long existed to perpetuate a class of insiders and a class of outsiders, the better to cultivate an air of desirability. Tablecloths, waiters in jackets and ties, soft music—these are all forms of code. They all send a very specific, clear message. That is, they communicate without words (and so without incurring a legal risk or inviting criticism or censure from the public) the policy, the philosophy, the aim of the establishment.
 

Today, there are many more forms of code than the old codes of the aristocracy. Bass-thumping music. Cement floors and lights dangling from the ceiling. Tattooed cooks. But these are still forms of code. They simultaneously send an unmistakable signal to the target audience and repel all those who fall outside that desired group.
 

The same codes are at work in websites and applications, though they often act subconsciously. Color, typography, imagery, layout, and so many other aspects of the user experience make different users feel more welcome than others.

Is your service more welcoming to the old or the young? Women or men? One ethnicity or another? The rich or the poor? The tech savvy or those less so? Those with fast internet access or those without? The visually inclined or the more textually focused? To new users or longtime users? The famous or the not-so-famous? Content creators or consumers?

It's rare the service that is perfectly neutral.

Everything you ever wanted to know about Shanghai soup dumplings

Depending on your culinary persuasions, you may find this piece on xiao long bao (Shanghai soup dumplings) to be overkill or just the type of deep examination this Chinese small dish deserves. As an aficionado of xiao long bao from an early age, I consider this a useful addition to the culinary literature. The piece culminates in the Shanghai Soup Dumpling Index which “applies a quantitative framework to the existing qualitative descriptors of the Shanghai soup dumpling.” If one of you readers is in Shanghai and can pick me up a printed copy, ping me!

Four measurements were collected: the weight of the intact dumpling (g); the weight of the soup (g); the weight of the filling (g); and the thickness of the skin (mm). This data was then calculated with the formula [(Filling + Soup / Thickness of Skin) x100] to assign a score representing the quality of structural engineering, the major challenge in the construction of a xiao long bao that meets the colloquial standards.
 

An analysis of the results combined with directly observed sensory research found xiao long bao with a score of 12.00 or above to demonstrate successful engineering. From a sensory perspective, these samples showed only minor variations, and were classified as Class A. Xiao long bao below this threshold but above a score of 6.75 showed satisfactory engineering and were judged Class B.
 

Author Christopher St. Cavish gives a great overview of just what a xiao long bao is and isn't, and what common variants should be called.

A soup dumpling is basically a balance between two competing forces: a thin-as-possible skin (whose purpose is to transport a meatball and soup, and then get out of the way) and as much filling as possible. There is a debate here as well, over the thickness of the skin, and whether a thicker wrapper represents a lack of technical faculty or a theoretical position on the balance of wheat flavor a dumpling should achieve. I subscribe to the former school of thought. There is no shortage of thick-skinned dumplings in China, filled with pork, even with soup; if you want one like that, don’t eat a xiao long bao. The elegance of a soup dumpling is its poise, the narrow margin that a cook must master to overcome the physics of a hot, wet package that wants to break. Soup dumplings are feminine. Sheng jian bao, a doughy, leavened dumpling that’s tough enough to survive a pan-fry and retain its pork and soup, are masculine. They are built of different stuff.
 

The Shanghai Soup Dumpling Index started with an ulterior motive: as a defense of Taiwanese chain Din Tai Fung. This is another fraught issue in Shanghai that must be addressed up front: the contest between Shanghai’s homegrown Jia Jia Tang Bao (Shop #35; Class A) and Din Tai Fung (Shop #14; Class A), a corporate raider from Taiwan. There wasn’t a clear answer when I started, and I haven’t found once since, but I set out thinking I’d collect a bit of hard proof about skin thickness.
 

Din Tai Fung has a cult following in the United States, but it's become a bit overrated there perhaps because it's actually so hard to find a well-made xiao long bao in most U.S. cities. I've been to the Seattle and Arcadia Din Tai Fung outlets, and they're solid but not spectacular. Really good specimens can be found in other restaurants in New York and in the Eastern parts of Los Angeles, but I've been disappointed, thus far, in San Francisco's offerings. Most have skin that tears too easily, or the flavor isn't the perfect mix of just a bit sweet pork, or there is no soup whatsoever, or the skin is too thick, or some combination thereof.

The outlets in Taipei, including the original, however...they dabble in some real sorcery, because they achieve an impossibly thin skin, just the right amount of soup, and a clean and delicate pork flavor. The thickness of the skin of a xiao long bao matters a great deal, just as the ratio of bun to meat in a hamburger matters. No one wants to eat too much dough relative to the meat and soup, and the impossibly thin skin of Din Tai Fung's achieves, to my mind, an ideal ratio of skin to filling.

I happen to be in Taiwan now, and just this morning I had ten of Din Tai Fung's pork xiao long bao (that's the original recipe and still the best; leave all those truffle and crab and other gimmicky variants for the barbarians). All ten of them had a uniformly thin skin, and not a single one broke as I picked them up with my chopsticks and dipped them in the ginger-vinegar-soy sauce and transferred them to the soup spoon. Not that they should tear open if wrapped properly, but the fact that they didn't still felt like a miracle.

As with many Taiwanese restaurants, the chefs wrapping the xiao long bao worked in a glass-encased kitchen so diners could observe them in action. Each wore a surgical hat and mask and full length aprons or scrubs, all in resplendent white, rendering them visually less as chefs than chemists conducting research with combustible chemicals. Combined with the organized workspaces in the open kitchens, the sensation of watching them was one of cleanliness, delicacy, and precision. My friend, a local, told me it's a coveted position to wrap xiao long bao at Din Tai Fung in Taipei, and that they try to screen for tall, good-looking candidates.

A Din Tai Fung outlet is coming to San Jose. It will be massive at 8,500 square feet with 200 seats, and still you should expect to wait in long lines after it opens, no matter the hour.

The bizarre Yelp top 100 restaurant list

Will Oremus has a good explanation for why Yelp's just released second annual top 100 places to eat in America list is so strange.

Only a handful or restaurants in the world rate three Michelin stars. But more than 40 percent of all Yelp reviews are perfect scores, suggesting that five stars on Yelp entails satisfaction rather than perfection. Average hundreds of reviews of the same establishment, and you’ll find that its overall rating is influenced far more by the number of dissatisfied customers than by how much the five-star reviewers loved it. The best-rated restaurants on Yelp, then, are not so much the most loved as the least hated.

No wonder Yelp’s top 100 restaurants tend to be down-home joints specializing in distinctive cuisines like poke, barbecue, tacos, and hot dogs. Customers know exactly what they’re looking for when they go there, reducing the chances that they’ll order something unfamiliar and end up disliking it. They also know not to expect the world when they pull over at outside a roadside stand on the highway home from Lake Tahoe, or a condominium complex in Hawaii.

Oremus also notes the impact of exogenous factors like weather, neighborhood demographics, and time of year in customer ratings.

Makes sense to me. Of restaurants I love, the only ones that get 5-star average ratings on Yelp are the low-priced, comfort-food types. Most of the higher end eateries I favor have 3.5 to 4 star ratings on Yelp. Trust your gut.

The same applies for books on Amazon. Almost none of my favorite books have an average review of 5-stars on Amazon, and in fact I look on books that have such a high average rating with suspicion. Unlike restaurants, which attract many random samplers, many books are only read and reviewed by true believers, and that selection bias can be death on the signal quality of the average rating.

How Los Angeles came to have the best Chinese Food in America

Having lived in most of the major U.S. cities and sampled their best Chinese food, being Chinese-American, loving Chinese food, having a mom who taught Chinese cooking, having eaten Chinese food in China and Taiwan and Hong Kong, I throw my lot in with this thesis: the best Chinese food in America is in the Eastern suburbs of Los Angeles.

New Yorkers think they know the real thing when it comes to Chinese food. It has been a topic of hot debate. A lot of folks like to cite Flushing, where there are some legitimate regional specialists. But when it comes to quality, it is Los Angeles that reigns supreme—yes, better than Flushing and Vancouver.

“For probably 140 years, the best Chinese food in the U.S. was in San Francisco,” David R. Chan, a Los Angeles attorney and Chinese food hobbyist says. Chan has eaten at more than 6,500 Chinese restaurants since 1951 and has been documenting his progress on a massive spreadsheet, recording the date and address of his visits. Chan’s interest lies in systematics. A third-generation Taishanese-American and one of the first students enrolled at UCLA’s Asian-American program, Chan uses his spreadsheet as a lens to observe the progression of the Chinese diaspora in America. Food after all, is at the apex of Chinese culture.

It wasn’t until the late 1980s that the Bay Area lost its crown, and all the action shifted towards the San Gabriel Valley. “That’s when Chinese food in Los Angeles experienced a major upswing,” says Chan.

If New York is home to the largest population of Chinese-Americans in the States, why, then, does Los Angeles still hold the mantle for best Chinese food? Chef pedigree, regional diversity, and a strong local food community are part of the story.

As I've written before, I think restaurant quality today is largely a supply-side problem, and that applies even more so with an ethnic cuisine like Chinese food in America. For a variety of reasons, if you're a great Chinese chef, living in suburbs like Arcadia, San Gabriel, and Monterey Park is highly desirable.