I had dinner last weekend at the “soft opening” of a buzzy new restaurant, where a pedigreed chef offers an ambitious menu at a price of nearly $40 per entree.
It was more soft than opening.
The bartender, asked for a cocktail, spilled rail liquors into a glass with abandon.
The duck arrived so bloody it appeared to have gone from pond to plate without pausing before a heat source. The quail was foul, and the waiter — there was only one — did not know whether they had wines by the bottle or what they might cost.
“This,” one of my dining companions said, “is how John Kelly must feel every day.”
Precisely. The White House chief of staff is the maitre d’ at a restaurant opening gone horribly wrong. The dishes are coming out ill-timed and half-baked, if they come out at all. The chef clearly has no idea how to cook, and all he seems to do is yell — at servers, line cooks, investors and, particularly, restaurant reviewers. The chef has paranoid hypotheses about other restaurateurs sabotaging him. The tables are mostly empty, and the few loyal patrons are queasy.