Danny Meyer on the difference between service and hospitality: "Service is delivering on your promise. Hospitality is making people feel good while you're delivering on that promise." Meyer has a new book, Setting the Table, out tomorrow. (via eater)
Megnut reports that Thomas Keller (an In-N-Out fan) may be doing his own burger joint in the Napa area. He must have tired of Danny Meyer crowing about the Shake Shack at all those restauranteur slumber parties. (ps. Shake Shack reopens in 6 days!)
Right around 1985 is when American cuisine took hold in NYC...and with it came other changes. "It can be argued that fine dining finally lost its haughty attitude then, that cloches became less important than customer comment cards. A fascination with classic French cooking was forevermore trumped by an insistence on something lighter, more flexible and less hidebound. The trickle of a simpler sensibility from California became a tide. The glories of the Greenmarket took ineradicable root."
Esquire jumps the gun on the whole end of the year best-of lists thing and names their favorite new restaurants of 2005, with Danny Meyer's The Modern taking the top spot. Worth reading if only for the sidebar item on "wired and tired" dining trends.
More on the question of tipping in restaurants: Danny Meyer cautions Thomas Keller against abolishing tipping while stats show that neither customers nor waiters want the practice to end.
The folks at Danny Meyer's Shake Shack go above and beyond the call of duty. When a birthday party shows up after an erroneously posted closing time, the manager has food sent over for them from the kitchen at Eleven Madison Park. Amazing service.
James Beard Award winners for 2005. Batali is best chef, Per Se is best new restaurant, Danny Meyer is "outstanding restauranteur".
