DISHING IT

MIMI SHERATON on America's ten most overrated restaurants

Every contest has to have ground rules, and this one, which took place over the past year, was no exception. Since I was the only judge, I determined the criteria for making this list of the ten most overrated restaurants in the land. To qualify, an establishment had to be, first of all, currently touted. That meant that I ruled out all those old famous, popular restaurants where the food has not been taken seriously for years, such as "21" in New York, Chasen's in Los Angeles, and Antoine's in New Orleans. Most of the eligible restaurants have chefs and/or owners who are media darlings and are well praised by local and national critics in both consumer and trade magazines. Many of these culinary superstars happily leave their restaurants to cook on television shows, or at gourmet dinners, or in the kitchen of Craig Claiborne, the New York Times food editor, whenever he decides to celebrate himself with a party.

Not all overrated restaurants are created equal. They fall into two categories. The first group includes eateries so awful that I felt like checking the menu to be sure I was in the right place. In this group are Le Lion D'or and Germaine's in Washington, Ambria in Chicago, Foumou's Ovens and Ernie's in San Francisco, Bernard's in Los Angeles, and An American Place in New York.

In the second group are those establishments that can indeed serve some very good food, but also serve much that ranges from poor to merely passable, and whose average in quality sinks far below reasonable expectations, considering their prices and their renown. Included here are the Quilted Giraffe in New York, Le Bee-Fin in Philadelphia, and K-Paul's in New Orleans.

To compile the list below, I visited most candidate restaurants twice, usually with three other people. I made exceptions in cases where I had been to a place in the past if I found that this latest visit corroborated my former opinion. The ratings are based largely on the food, but I also took into consideration the efficiency of the service and the tone of the setting—all part of the total experience of dining out. The order that follows is geographic, going from east to west, and in no way implies relative standings.

AN AMERICAN PLACE

New York City

1

When chef-proprietor Lawrence P. Forgione was at the River Cafe in Brooklyn, his work showed promise. Unfortunately, that promise has not come to fruition. He appears to go on making the same dismal mistakes as ever here in his year-and-a-half-old place in Manhattan. The darling of the "new American cuisine" set, Forgione has a weakness for overly sweet seasonings, especially molasses, which he puts on otherwise nicely done grilled duck breasts. I had rare chicken so tough it fought back and salmon that was also revoltingly undercooked. There are fine native ingredients on his menu, but frequently in combinations that are unnecessarily complex. His Albemarle Sound pinebark soup tasted as though it had been simmered with a bouquet garni of tar paper. A tomato broth with vegetables tasted like little more than canned tomatoes, and on two occasions the duck sausage did not seem fresh. Oils in some of the salad dressings had a musty flavor, and fishy golden American caviar marred a delicate, fine mousse of three smoked fish. The partridge with com kernels was one of the better main courses. The pepper-flecked brioche bread is delicious, and the lobster bisque and black-bean soup are also very good. Desserts are as uneven as the other courses, and the assortment of bland American cheeses, especially the chevre and the Brie, leaves everything to be desired. And so it goes, at fortyeight dollars per dinner, in a room that is cramped, noisy, and inadequately ventilated. The legend at the bottom of the menu, from the Great Endorser, James A. Beard, described as "Friend and Mentor," reads, "The truth is, one must be inspired to cook. For, You Know, we always learn from others and end up teaching ourselves." What that's all about is as hard to fathom as the reason for his strange use of capital letters.

THE QUILTED GIRAFFE

New York City

2

I guess I have never quite been able to trust proprietor Barry Wine's palate since the day he served a fillet of herring garnished with bananas and raspberries. Every time I start to think that he has come a long way from that gastronomic aberration, he has a similar lapse. On a recent visit I was served slices of tuna fish, grilled rare, on a potato pancake that needed more cooking. The combination was meaningless because there is no flavor liaison between the two ingredients, bfot even the horseradish cream sauce helped. It was fine with the tuna but hopeless with the potato. There are a few very good dishes here, among them "beggar's purses," or tiny crepe pouches filled with caviar (one of the few instances when warm caviar is acceptable), and the sweetbreads steamed in cabbage packets. But good is a long way from great, and the batting average of Wine and his head chef, Noel Comess, in no way justifies the accolades they have garnered. The soups I had here were generally awful, from a lobster-and-marlin concoction that tasted like salty fish water to a lobster-and-fish creation that was zapped by an acidic flavoring of lime juice and rind. An onion sauce with hot vinegar overpowered the mild-flavored veal medallions it was served on and caused a throat-clutching reflex. Lamb with Chinese mustard is consistently good, but the freshness of the calf's liver is a sometime thing. The kitchen's forte is desserts; the only failure in that department was an overly strong ginger custard with raspberries. The most outstanding dessert is the hot chocolate souffle nestling a scoop of espresso ice cream, topped with soft whipped cream. In general, Wine specializes in food that is meant to be tasted, not eaten, and I always come away feeling full but unsatisfied, the way I do after a cocktail party at which I have had too many canapes. Dinner here is seventy dollars a person, and several items are ten dollars extra. At such prices, good is not good enough.

3

LE BEC-FIN

Philadelphia

This is one of those restaurants that have seatings only at six or nine, otherwise known as too early or too late. Ask if it would be permissible for one guest to arrive at 6:30 and you get a long, stem lecture about the necessity of relinquishing the table so that it can be reset for the second sitting. If a dinner here cost fifteen dollars, such tactics would be understandable. At $62.50, I say let Georges Perrier, the owner, deal with it. Soporific lighting reveals a corny, ashes-of-roses dining room in a style one hopes is Louis the Last. Dishes in all courses alternate evenly between good and mediocre. A salade tiede of quail and greens arrived completely froide. Fist-size quenelles of pike oozed water because they had not been drained, and so diluted a nice, coral sauce Nantua. An inspired terrine of lobster was canceled out by a bland salad of sweetbreads. The warm duck pate was lusty and rich, but a sticky sweet sauce clogged with nuts and raisins neutralized the flavor. The lovely combination of turbot and wild mushrooms could not be better, whereas the soggy layering of salmon and spinach in puff pastry could hardly be worse. Overcooked duck breast was as tough as properly cooked lamb, and sweet mint ruined otherwise decent lamb noisettes. The kidneys seemed anything but fresh, although the breast of pheasant and veal with mushrooms were fine. Sherbets and ice creams were the only exceptional desserts; the cakes and pastries were heavy and stodgy.

4

LE LION D'OR

Washington, D.C.

Through the years, I have made at least six visits to this restaurant, and I have never once been able to account for the critical praise it continues to earn. The dining room is overly opulent and depressing, the walls covered with fabric that needs changing, and a pervasive air of tackiness is not dispelled by the slambam service. The beautiful-looking noodles with black truffles in a goldenbrown sauce were disappointing; neither the brown sauce nor the truffles had any flavor whatsoever, and the noodles needed salt. A terrine of duck was too cold and therefore bland and greasy; another of fish in a sprightly green sauce was far better. A chokingly dry slice of salmon could hardly be swallowed, but a mousse-filled trout with champagne sauce recalled the superb version featured at the long-gone Chez Garin in Paris. Here, too, kidneys were unpleasantly acidic, and a fig-laden sauce wiped out the flavor of the duck it accompanied. The tarragon on the lamb was bitter, as if it had been scorched—if that's possible. The rabbit in a mustard sauce was commendable, and the raspberry souffle was total perfection. Maybe one should order that, go somewhere else for the rest of the meal, and then return when the dessert is ready.

5

GERMAINE'S

Washington, D.C.

"Have I come to the right Germaine's? Could there be two? Surely the high praise for this woebegone Pan-Asian restaurant is a put-on," I tell myself each time I return. Could it be that the media connections of the owners, Vietnamese Germaine Loc Swanson and her husband, who used to be a Life photographer, explain the success of the place? Many say it has a handsome setting, but to me the decor suggests a pleasantly bright employee dining room of a large insurance company. Appetizers appear so rapidly I suspect they are at least partially cooked in advance, and most dishes are limp, bland, and totally devoid of distinction. All the fried food tastes as if the oil has been used before or was overheated. The soups are thin and watery, and nothing marked "spicy" really is. Sates are sometimes tender and savory, other tunes as chewy as beef jerky. There are a few recommendable dishes, but this is a long way for most of us to go for chicken with basil, lemongrass spareribs, and the Korean pickled cabbage, kimchi. The distracted, sometimes rude staff doesn't help matters.

6

K-PAUL'S LOUISIANA KITCHEN

New Orleans

This is the headquarters of the monumental Cajun chef-owner, Paul Prudhomme, the press agent's largerthan-life dream come true. To give him his due, Prudhomme did reawaken pride in cooking in a city where indifferent interpretations of native specialties had long been the rule. But a lot has happened since Prudhomme and his wife, Kay Hinrichs, opened their naive, casual, and inexpensive luncheonette on Chartres Street in the French Quarter. Now dinner with a drink and tip can run to thirty-five dollars a person, but still they do not accept reservations, and the napkins are paper, and tables must be shared with strangers. If you stand in the line that forms out in the hot sun at 5:30, you will hear a recitation of rules by a lady manager who has all the charm of a prison matron. She warns people waiting with children that they should check the menu in the window, as nothing special will be prepared—not exactly my idea of what southern hospitality is all about. Once inside, you are rushed with your drink orders, and then the food appears, some of it very good, much of it only fair. The breads are intriguing, especially the cheese bread with jalapeno peppers. The famed blackened redfish—a hard cast of scorched spices drying and overpowering a gentle fillet of fish—is a travesty. But the blackened prime rib is something else again, for in this case the thick, rare steak oozes juices that mellow the spicy crust. Musty and mushy, the roast duck tastes as if it has been reheated, and its stuffing is a pasty mass. Rarely have I encountered so innocuous an interpretation of shrimp etouffee, the typical Cajun soup-stew. Broiled flounder with seafood was better, although the huge amount of rich stuffing cloyed. A seafood gumbo outshone one of chicken and andouille sausage. Fried nuggets of crabmeat, billed as "popcorn," with a sherry-sweetened sauce, was a wanton waste of that great local shellfish. The frogs' legs encrusted with garlic and the rabbit (both as sausage and as tenderloin in mustard sauce) are closer to what one would expect from a celebrated chef. Not so the merely passable desserts.

7

AMBRIA

Chicago

Ambria is usually ranked among the top restaurants in the Windy City, and last year it was voted among the "best of the best" by readers of Chicago magazine. It's hard to know why. It has no more distinction than an overambitious eating place in a chain hotel. The reproduction Art Nouveau dining room is handsome, but it sometimes reeks of what might be furniture wax, and the staff is inanely sassy. Amid such pretensions to elegance, a captain who talks to guests with his hands thrust under the waistband of his trousers and whose manner alternates between "Gee whiz" and "Would madam like..." is a little hard to stomach. So were dishes such as the liver, which was searingly bitter (when I sent it back, the chef agreed and removed it from the check); the ghastly gazpacho with lobster and a shimmer of ice-gold grease on top; the sweet dressing on a salade du marche; and a concoction of lobster, shrimp, and scallops heated to an awful jellylike consistency. Saddle or rack of lamb seems to be the only dependable dish, and too many others fall into the category of what-do-you-think-this-is? The desserts are as lackluster as the rest of the food.

GHASTLY gazpacho with lobster had a shimmer of ice-gold grease on top... .Albemarle Sound pine-bark soup tasted as though it had been simmered with a bouquet garni of tar paper... .And the artichoke-and-hazelnut soup was so sweet it tasted like hot ice cream.

8

FOURNOU'S OVENS

San Francisco

This dining room trimmed with tile, wood, and wrought iron is so handsome that one wishes it lived up to its reputation. Surely it is the darling of such food-establishment bigwigs as Julia Child and James Beard, and surely, therefore, they must get food and attention not accorded ordinary mortals. Based on two recent meals I had here, I could count the good dishes on the fingers of one hand: snails lidded with pastry, steak au poivre, roast beef with horseradish sauce, praline-ice-cream pie, and chocolate cake with whipped cream. Otherwise, the sky-high prices are totally unjustified for such abjectly disappointing dishes as the artichokeand-hazelnut soup, so sweet it tasted like hot ice cream; the limp and fishy crayfish in shallot butter; the mess of a duck dish that tasted as if it had been reheated and then complicated with a sauce of kumquats and green peppercorns; the bitter crab bisque; and the dry, tasteless roast chicken with tarragon. Roquefort cheese overpowered a salad of enoki mushrooms and shrimp, and an overly reduced sauce did the same to a fillet of beef. The staff is confused, surly, and smart-ass, as evidenced by a remark made by a captain when one of my guests skidded and fell going down the precariously slippery tile steps: "If he does that three more times, he'll match my record."

9

ERNIE'S

San Francisco

Decorated in a red-plush, fake-Victorian style I always think of as early Belle Watling, this is among the golden oldies of overrated eateries, but word is out that there is a brand-new order in the kitchen and that things are looking up. Certainly the menu has changed, but the new-style dishes match the old for inept preparation and poor seasoning. If one had to eat here, the safe bet would be lamb chops. Otherwise you might make the mistake of choosing the rubbery boudin of salmon filled with a decent crayfish mousse but awash in watery sauce Nantua, or the totally tasteless confit of duck with ginger, or, worst of all, the pigeon nestled in cabbage so overcooked it had the characteristic boardinghouse smell. Billed as a main course, the sweetbreads with sea-urchin sauce came in an appetizer-size portion and, inexplicably, without the slightest hint of any oursin flavor. The greens in the salad had not been dried, so they watered the dressing, and it was impossible to guess what flavored the two sauces on a pate of leeks and vegetables. Slightly better choices were the large ravioli with shrimp in basil sauce, and a hot lobster pate with a mild orange sauce. The apples in the tarte Tatin were overcooked and mushy but had a nicely caramelized top glaze, and a socalled hot orange souffle in an orange was flat, watery, and about as appealing as hot orange juice.

10

BERNARD'S

Los Angeles

If consistency alone merited a prize in this contest, Bernard's would be the winner hands down. For years this has been perhaps the worst well-rated restaurant in the country. Set in the restored Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles, Bernard's can be relied upon for its complicated, fancy dishes prepared without a soup^on of finesse. Right from such appetizers as the fatty, salty "duck ham" and the flat, insipid marmite of pigeon through the terrible bacon-accented escalope of salmon and the tough marinated breast of duck with good green lentils to the disgracefully dry slices of dessert, the meals border on disaster. Here and there are a few acceptable choices, such as the fricassee of quail, the braised pigs' feet stuffed with snails (ghastly-sounding, but pretty good), and the veal rib eye baked en papillote with truffles, but that is hardly enough to win the extraordinary kudos accorded this gloomy dining room. Christian Millau, the French restaurant critic, has written that he would like to be served a meal from Bernard's on his deathbed, which, I suppose, could make one happy to leave this world forever.