Like clockwork
I was cringing by the time I finished reading the first paragraph of the latest Houston Press review of Voice at Hotel Icon. I was wrong, Randy was right and it was only a matter of time before he went off like a hand grenade.
The disagreement Randy and I had a few weeks ago was about Robb Walsh and what Randy called his limited palate (there is some creative license there with the exact terminology). I have always liked Walsh’s reviews and had never given much thought about his palate, but it does seem as though he prefers rustic American fare and ethnic food to what’s loosely classified as fine dining. I didn’t argue that Robb Walsh doesn’t have a strong affinity for burger shacks, taco trucks and pho houses, only that I didn’t think he was entirely one dimensional in his coverage.
I still love Walsh’s writing, but maybe Randy has a point. When your experience with a gastronomic restaurant begins and ends with burgers, perhaps you are missing the point.
To be fair, Walsh does seem to like the food at Voice, but what he really likes are the bar snacks. The beef sliders are his favorite. The rest of the review is full of complaints about high prices, small portions and more mentions of hamburgers than seems necessary. To really drive the point home, he suggests that people intent on eating at Voice stop by a nearby convenience store first and grab a $4 cheeseburger before their dinner.
High end dining is a funny business. The very same people who complain about spending more than $60 on a meal in Houston are very likely to go out of town and gladly fork over twice as much in a subpar restaurant like Aqua in San Francisco – enjoying themselves immensely in the process. That visit will be justified by glowing reviews from local critics who play up to the well heeled readership and the Michelin rating of 2 stars. In reality, the food is much better at Voice than at Aqua. Voice just happens to be in a “wrong” city, where critics love a good burger.
I cannot explain why Robb Walsh would form an opinion about Voice based on bar snacks and business lunch boxes, when the restaurant clearly excels at multi-course dinners. The tasting menu at Voice is the best way to experience what Michael Kramer can do at a reasonable price. At $80 for 7 courses (there is also a 5 course option for $65) it’s a relative bargain, when you compare it to restaurants in the same class that charge $100-$130 on the West Coast. A review of that experience would have been the review I would have liked to read, even if it was a hatchet piece.
Before you start down the “people in Texas would never spend that kind of money on a meal” argument, consider this. Harris County is 6th in the country in number of millionaires; close to 100,000 households in all. This economic class spends freely on leisure and entertainment when they travel and many of them are very sophisticated diners. Is it possible that Houston Press readers may be interested in something other than the local greasy spoon? (a rhetorical question, for the most part).
Some photos from a Voice lunch in May. My friend had a rather stellar burger. Oh, the irony…
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5 comments
misha, in planning my recent dinner at voice, my dining companions and i did actually contemplate doing the chef’s tasting menu. when i inquired about the menu with the hostess over the phone, she told me the tasting menu was only served at the chef’s table and would be $100 + an extra $50 pp for the wine pairing. i was willing to go all the way, but one of my friends who attended the grand opening of voice and had been to the bar for munchies twice, said that based on mediocre previous experiences, she was not willing to make the hefty investment.
so i am surprised to hear that there are also 5 and 7 course tastings available and disappointed that these options were not communicated to me. 5 course for $65 is VERY reasonable.
i wonder if the press places limits on how much their reviewers are allowed to spend on a single meal. in walsh’s 4 visits, i don’t understand why he planned to eat only bar snacks on one of them. he went twice for lunch and it seems he only had 1 dinner there but there was no mention of appetizers or desserts, only entrees. perhaps the tasting menu was overbudget?
i was glad to read that voice got only good reviews on its food. i really do respect chef kramer’s talents and the progessive cuisine that he has brought to houston.
p.s. i agree that aqua is very overrated.
These are the same prices I got off their web site a few months ago, so the hostess probably just made a mistake. As several people commented in other places, problems with Voice seem to be in the front of the house. If there was one annoying policy I would love to see changed is one where all the diners have to order the same tasting menu. I am not at all certain that makes things easier on the kitchen, but it really makes things hard on me (cue the tiny violins).
By the way, I am in no way suggesting Voice is perfect. At my lunch the fries were so undercooked they were inedible and my asparagus soup was seasoned to an almost uncomfortable level, while the rest of the food was excellent. Consistency is hard to come by and develops over time, especially at lunch. Add the complexity of having to explain to the valet attendants that you don’t have to pay the full parking rate because you are there for the restaurant (he didn’t buy that) and lunch at Voice becomes downright tedious.
At the same time, I shelled out $50 to park for 90 minutes at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco, so the idea of what’s reasonable really changes when you take that nonsense into account. It could be worse. Hotels make a business out of gouging business travelers. They also subsidize talented chefs and high end restaurant concepts, which don’t always break even right away (or ever), so getting access to the most progressive food has it’s price. You have to assume that going in and get into your “I am on vacation” headspace. Suddenly price sensitivity vanishes.
Being a new restaurant, most of what I focused on at Voice is culinary talent and that is definitely there.
Misha,
You and Randy have really nailed it! You guys are shining lights, beacons in a sense! Your debate was bullseye: Robb’s palate IS limited to burgers and bbq and pho and ethnic SE Asian what nots. Oh yeah, and taco trucks and greasy Mexican fare. The guy is clearly a street food flunky, who can’t appreciate fine dining with a dessert fork. And the evidence you offer, re the Voice review, is right on, overwhelming in a sense: Robb loved the sliders pictured so proudly on the Voice website. And he thought the bar food was great. In fact, he wrote in his sub-head “The food at Voice is fabulous…”, but he was getting ahead of himself there maybe.
But, hey, what made you cringe ‘after reading the first paragraph’ of the Voice review. What was it, Misha?
Was it that the bar food might outshine the entrees? A mention of the lowly burger again? That Robb! He can’t seem to stay focused long enough for good multiple bites of anything except burgers and bbq.
But please, don’t worry about his delight in the bar food. I think your fear is allayed when he writes about the entrees: they are minimalist. Little enough to leave an appetite intact. (Hey did you catch that NY Times article a while back about the death of the entree/main course?. Turns out, this Kramer guy is right up to speed if you agree with it; serve teeny portions, or tasting menus, as you say).
Anyway, great writing!
One thing gets me though, Misha. Bear with me, please. Now, Robb writes a review every week. That’s darn near 52 reviews per year. And he’s been doing it for how many years? Maybe five? Seven? Don’t know, just guessing. So, there are only so many fine dining places in the city, and he can’t just keep going back to the same ones, can he? I mean sure, maybe if he wrote for one of those soft-shelled monthly publications, he could just keep recycling his reviews and saying how this and that fine dining spot was great before, and now it has a great new chef…blah, blah, blah. But who wants to read that? There are already so many ding dong publications that do that: Envy, 002, Houston Modern Luxury, My Table, Icon, HBJ…not to mention blogs like this one that serve as uncritical boosters of the restaurant business. So why would Robb Walsh do the same? Don’t you see a need for a real critic? And if you see that need, shouldn’t he criticize? Which means tells it like he sees it, the way he was treated not when he went with a well-known chef and was fawned over, but like the average joe?
Just some thoughts. I’m tired of writing. I like to cook.
I was cringing because I don’t like being wrong. I disagreed with Randy that Robb Walsh can only write about “street food” and, like clockwork, Walsh reviews Voice and it’s reads like an overture to the almighty hamburger. This happens literally days after our conversation.
I do not think Robb Walsh is a “street food flunky”. One of the best things about his reviews is that he can zero in on the amazing experience you can get eating the most unassuming food in the most unlikely setting. It takes real talent to do that. He has also written quite a bit about finer restaurants. I seem to remember his being a big fan of Bistro Moderne, when it opened.
I just think he missed the mark with Voice and the experience that kind of restaurant can provide. It’s at the opposite side of the dining spectrum than casual dining and Walsh seemed to have missed that in his visits. He might as well have stopped by for the continental breakfast and ordered room service if he really wanted to test the limits of experiencing the irrelevant food that the Voice kitchen is responsible for.
Spending time on bar snacks, two lunches and a rather limited dinner (as it sounds), seems like a really poor way to judge a restaurant that’s focused on culinary trends not commonly found in Houston today. Lighter dishes, subtle flavors, contrast of textures and temperatures, use of new cooking techniques to isolate the flavor of a single premium ingredient, the progression of a multi-course dinner in the form of a tasting menu. Perhaps those things sound like fads, but that’s the experience Walsh missed out on.
There is something really great about the way Voice cooks something as simple as a morel mushroom. It might not fill you up, but it might just be the best morel you have ever had. That experience does not fit into any definition of a traditional 4 course dinner, but that might be precisely the point. It’s really easy to miss all of that when you are pining away for a cheeseburger.
As for your other questions.
1) I definitely see a need for a real critic. We have two of those in Houston and they do not work at Envy, 002, My Table, HBJ or any other publications you listed. I expect them to focus most of their critique on the food. Robb Walsh loved most of the food, but he just couldn’t help but to write an awful lot of words about hamburgers. It’s really hard for me to understand why.
2) I am very interested in reading reviews of restaurants that hired a new chef. Or made a major seasonal change to their menus. There are more changes at Catalan, t’afia and Shade in one season than there are in some Houston restaurants in years. Chefs that go through that much trouble deserve more coverage. The restaurant is the same, but the food is different. Doesn’t that seem more interesting than the musings on the price of iced tea refills?
3) Robb Walsh is a restaurant critic and he absolutely should write as an anonymous diner. He is a professional journalist and he has a code of ethics that I am sure he takes very seriously. I think Robb would have been fawned over quite a bit had he anonymously ordered the tasting menu. I think that’s precisely the experience he missed out on.
4) I am not a restaurant critic and I have a singular interest in getting the best out of every meal. Every time I eat bad good, I feel like it’s an opportunity missed, so I try not to put myself through that. If going to dinner with a well known chef really gets me better food than what most people get, I don’t get terribly heartbroken about it. Having said that, I sincerely doubt great restaurants cook better food for some diners than others. People who work at Voice are professionals too, after all.
Eating out, or ‘dining’ as I suspect you would call it, has many more dimensions than the food. Of the two critics we have here in Houston, one looks down at a plate of food and simply describes it; the other one gets at the whole experience, digresses, and even whines. I’ll take the latter one anyday.
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