Via Matta/Radius chef Michael Schlow has a whole list of un-fancy dishes that speak to his internal critic. He still loves those New Jersey restaurants he went to as a bridge-and-tunnel kid; his barometer for Japanese restaurants is “a hole-in-the-wall in Jersey across the mall from the photo shop and the dry cleaner” called Shumi, where they make sashimi so tender, Schlow still swoons. He says that it’s the rice in the sushi or sashimi that really tips him off to the quality of a Japanese restaurant. It should be served room or body temperature, not hot, and have exactly the right texture: not too crunchy or too starchy. “A good Japanese chef makes fresh rice all night long,” Schlow says. At steak houses, he searches for the perfect wedge salad, and uses the side dishes and the steak au poivre as his yardsticks (he uses steak au poivre at French bistros, too). At Szechwan Chinese restaurants, it’s spicy string beans, hot-and-sour soup, and the tenderness of the dumplings. (“Did they buy them frozen or make them in-house?”) Schlow’s big question at Italian restaurants: “Can they make a good bowl of pasta? Italian chefs spend years learning how to make perfect pasta.” At modern French bistros, it’s steak frites, seafood plateau, and frisée-and-lardon salad with poached egg. And at seafood restaurants, Schlow uses fresh oysters with mignonette sauce (if the oysters come only with cocktail sauce, the place is a goner), and a lobster roll.
Lumière chef Michael Leviton says the easy dishes are often the hardest to execute. When he eats out these days, it’s mostly Asian food. His Chinese barometers are salt-and-pepper shrimp and broccoli with garlic sauce. “Simple dishes,” he says, “but not so easy to get a good one — the sauce can be too thin or watery or all gunked up with too much cornstarch.” Thai food is Leviton’s daughter’s favorite, so he’s getting good at judging pad Thai, drunken noodles, and short ribs served with curry and sweet potatoes. “A good one has all the right flavors: rich, hot, sour, and sweet,” he notes. The firmness of the rice is Leviton’s tip-off when eating Japanese, and risotto is his test for Italian restaurants: “It has to have the right combination of creaminess, toothy but not crunchy … not so easy to pull off a good risotto.”
So what’s your personal yardstick when eating out? We need professional food critics to point us to the new and different, sure. But when it comes to our barometer dishes, our own internal critics know instinctively whether the food is four-star or a flop.
