What's the 'best' restaurant? Depends on who's asking

My sister Jill, a single mom who's looking 40 square in the eye, called from South Jersey a couple of weeks ago to tell me all about her New York adventure. She and a group of galpals left work and kids behind, drove up the Garden State Parkway to New York City and hit the town for a much-deserved Girls' Night Out. They saw a Broadway show, and afterward, treated themselves to dinner at (as she put it) "Molto Mario's new restaurant."

"You ate at Esca?" I asked, as jealous as I was impressed, having been blown away by the food at Mario Batali's Greenwich Village gem, Babbo.

"How was it?"

"It was," she said, pausing for effect, "the worst meal I ever ate in my life."

I sat stunned for a moment, knowing that Batali received a James Beard Award this month as New York's best chef, weighing my sister's words against the praise of restaurant critics nationwide. If I'm to believe my peers, Esca offers Southern Italian-accented seafood worth flying across the country for. In her New York magazine review, Gael Greene claimed she hadn't eaten as well during a winter spent in Italy. Ruth Reichl, editor-in-chief of Gourmet magazine, suggested Esca when I asked her where she'd go if she were me dining alone in New York. ("Show up at 7:45 when everyone leaves for the theater and I'm sure you'll find a place at the bar.") My sister clearly begs to differ. "What was so bad about it?" I asked. I shouldn't have gotten her started.

"Oh my God! You wouldn't have believed it. Debbie and I ordered the salt-crusted sea bass for two. They brought out the whole fish and showed it to us, then took it in the back and cooked it. What did we get? A little piece of white fish served on a huge white plate. There was no color, not even a chive. Just this piece of fish that was so small we picked up the plate and looked underneath for the rest of it! When Debbie realized that's all we were getting — no vegetable, no nothing — she insisted she needed to see some green and ordered a salad: a $9 salad!"

"So, how was the fish?" I asked. "I couldn't even taste it. All I tasted was salt."

I spend a lot of time writing about "the dining experience," but listening to Jill's heartfelt harangue made me consider anew the importance of perceived value. It would be easy to lump my sister and her friends with the rest of the "bridge and tunnel crowd," passing them off as hoi polloi who wouldn't know a terrific fish if it swam up and kissed them. And that would make it easy to conclude that Jill is "wrong" and the critics are "right."

Judging a restaurant is a very personal, very subjective experience, which leads me to believe that, as my granddad used to say: "There are three sides to every story: his, hers and the truth."

The truth is that for professional foodies burned out on architectural wonders disguised as dinner and herbed oils and fruit emulsions that turn a simple piece of seafood into museum-worthy art, a simple fillet of fish, unadorned, may be the culinary equivalent of a clean, well-lighted place.

For hungry moms from Jersey looking for drama and excitement — on Broadway and on their plates — the same seafood scenario may be the fishified equivalent of "Where's the beef?" Right or wrong, it's people like my sister that keep critics like me honest. And it also leads me to ask, not for the first time: Who am I writing for when I'm reviewing a restaurant?

I'd bet that among my readership there are far more people like Jill than there are food fashionistas who get their thrills eating small portions off big, white plates in the hottest chef-driven restaurants in town. And I'm just as certain that many readers would feel a kinship with my mother-in-law, a well-heeled Chicago widow who remembers the Depression Era well. She considers the $9.95 soup-to-nuts dinners served with a "bottomless" basket of warm cinnamon rolls at her favorite restaurant, Ann Sather, the height of indulgence. As if my sister's phone call wasn't enough, I got an earful from her last weekend.

Turns out my husband's cousin thought she'd do her aunts a favor by taking them to lunch. Consulting the Chicago Tribune's dining guide, she chose a three-star restaurant whose name my mother-in-law failed to recall, but whose food, price and ambience made a lasting impression.

I heard all about the lighting ("It was so dark we couldn't read the menu!"), the bread ("something Italian, with that hard crust that always cuts your mouth") and the day's special ("Salmon, which we all ordered — that way we didn't have to worry about reading the menu").

When she began to describe the fish, it was déjà vu all over again: "The salmon was about two inches by three inches and they served it with half a lemon covered with gauze. There was one green bean cut into four pieces and two skinny slices of red pepper. No salad. No soup. And we paid $8 — each! — for some dessert with a fancy name that looked like three eggs: one was chocolate and the others were some kind of pudding. That's not all! Agnes Anne had iced tea, Helen had a cup of coffee and I had water — which I think they charged me for. Guess how much that meal cost. Ninety-five dollars with tax, plus a $13 tip. And we were still hungry when we left!"

Talk about restaurant critiques hitting home.

All of this got me thinking. I spend a lot of time answering requests for restaurant recommendations. Requests such as: "Can you suggest a good place to take my out-of-town relatives/college roommate/first date for dinner?" Or: "It's my 20th wedding anniversary/40th birthday/son's high-school graduation. Any ideas for a great restaurant?"

Answering those questions isn't easy. Not because there's a dearth of worthy options, but because everyone's idea of a "great" dining experience differs.

While I may happily suggest you take your mother-in-law to Canlis, perhaps, like my husband's mom, she'd be much happier at the Wedgwood Broiler.

And that's why, when people ask me for restaurant recommendations, it helps to know a few things about the diners involved. I don't need to know their life story, but a bit about their lifestyle goes a long way. Which is why I had no trouble answering a query for savvy reader Brian Gettmann.

Posing the first of several Q&As we've exchanged since he contacted me last winter, he wrote: "I have Valentine's Day reservations at both Cascadia and Restaurant Zöe. My date and I are both in our mid-20s. We can shop at Mario's and Barney's or go two weeks without a shower while backpacking with equal comfort and enjoyment. Which would you recommend as the better choice when trying to be hip and romantic?"

Though both were appealing options I sent him to Zöe, explaining that "the mood at Cascadia is more Calvin Klein than you'd probably like," and adding "Zöe has lots of attitude and may better befit your age group." By the way, if recent e-mail is any indication, he's now referring to his "date" as his "girlfriend" and a couple weeks ago I was able to steer them to the appropriate venue for a happy schmoozefest involving his parents.

When he's ready to take his girl to New York, I'll recommend Esca and insist they try the salt-crusted sea bass — if only to get another opinion.

Nancy Leson can be reached at 206-464-8838 or nleson@seattletimes.com. More columns at www.seattletimes.com/columnists.