Are New York Chefs Too Chicken To Cook In San Francisco?

Ain't nothing wrong with figs on a plate... if you put the figs on a Fornino pizza (mintyfreshflavor's flickr).

When it comes to restaurants, San Francisco and New York have had a long simmering battle over whose cuisine reigns supreme. The battle last heated up when Momofuku's David Chang famously said that "F**kin' every restaurant in San Francisco is just serving figs on a plate. Do something with your food." And now the gauntlet has been thrown down again. San Francisco Chronicle critic Michael Bauer this morning answered a reader's question about why there weren't more New York restaurateurs by the Bay and he basically said our chefs are too chicken to cook in SF.

Maybe he didn't call us chicken in so many words, but he thinks we're just afraid of competition:

Mario Batali, one of New York’s most successful chef/restaurateurs who has places in Las Vegas and Los Angeles and worked for a time in San Francisco , once told me he would never open a restaurant here. The competition is too stiff, he said. It makes sense that chefs would pick the low-hanging fruit, going to cities that have a less formidable dining culture. ... San Francisco has never much cottoned to one-, two- or three-offs. Out-of-towners who have been successful have generally come up with different concepts, such as Wolfgang Puck at Postrio and Drew Nieporent at Rubicon. We’re a little provincial, a little smug about our homegrown talent, and a little less enthralled with big-name chefs who garner fame elsewhere and then bring a concept here.

And for what it is worth, it is true. There are very few New York chefs opening up outposts by the Bay (with at least one notable exception). But maybe the reason isn't so much the competition as it is the cost? Thanks to its worker-friendly laws (mandatory health care for servers, servers must be paid full minimum wage) San Francisco is a very expensive place to run a restaurant. But still, New York chefs? We can't let this insult slide. Before you start plotting the opening for that new outpost in Rockaway, maybe consider one in the Mission? [via Eater]

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By Garth Johnston in Food on July 27, 2011 4:58 PM

Comments [rss]

David

I'm a born and raised New Yorker, but have been living in SF for school the last few years. Both are great cities, but when it comes to the food, I hate to admit it, but SF beats New York. I'm sorry, just being honest! New York has a larger amount of great restaurants, but New York is also 8 million people compared to 900,000 in SF. SF packs the bigger punch! Much bigger punch! In fact SF has 3X the amount of restaurants New York has for its size.

New York is a GREAT food city, but San Francisco truly is America's food city! Going to a excellent restaurant in New York takes a trip! The great restaurant in San Francisco is no further than 5 minutes from where you are! In fact the odds are that great restaurant is no further than a few blocks away.

Fofofofofo

I wish David Change would STFU and just come up with tasty dishes for his underpaid linecooks to make me. Dudes talks as much as a fifteen year old girl.

Akhilleus

Nate Appleman was a superstar in SF and lasted all of 8 months at a "big time" restaurant in NYC. Now he's working at Chipotle. Any questions?

Fofofofofo

He's probably making bank at Chipotle.

Akhilleus

No question but they're paying for whatever residual cachet he has from his SF days

DoctorMemory

(Current SF resident, former NYC resident here.)

It's a fair cop all around, I think. And yeah, a lot of it has to do with the relative sizes of the two cities. NYC has, culturally, world-class everything: food, art, literature, architecture, museums, universities, the whole nine yards. Smaller cities, if they're smart, concentrate on doing a smaller number of things really well. New Orleans does food and music. Boston does constipation and police brutality. Seattle does seafood and heroin. And the bay area does smugness, gayness, tech startups and food-- and we're really the best at all four, thanks much.

On the stratospherically priced high end, NYC and the Bay Area can go more or less toe to toe: it's no accident that Thomas Keller's flagship restaurants are in NYC and here. Which one is better is frankly going to come down to a matter of taste. (If you like old-school high-touch white-collar service, that's an entirely valid choice and you're just not gonna find much of it in CA.) But for an average pick-a-restaurant-at-random night for under $30 a plate, SF is going to consistently win: the competition is fierce, the scrutiny high, and this is where America grows its food. Whether David Chang likes it or not, that barely-adorned fig on your plate was probably hanging from a tree less than 24 hours ago and that makes a difference.

That said: just try finding a decent bagel in this city. It is to laugh, and then cry.

kevd

But NY may just win in the < $10/plate price range; the cuisines-eaten-by-immigrants-from-that-culture-who-live-nearby category. I've never seen anywhere compete with NY in that category.* Though, SF, your Mexican and East Asian is great on that front. Our Mexican is catching up fast, though (thank you recent Mexican immigrants!).

*Actually, LA did pretty well on that one, and i've never been other places that might compete

**We are obviously focusing on very different things, as I probably spent more than $25 per plate about 4 times in the past year.

angry_pickle

NYC has world class marketing.

DoctorMemory

(Although conversely, what New Yorkers call a burrito is a crime against humanity, so it almost balances out.)

kevd

Oh Michael Bauer, you and your city are more than "a little provincial", and you're smug about pretty much everything. Why is San Francisco so insistent on comparing itself to actual cities? It's a perfectly pleasant, if crazily overpriced backwater.

Peanut_Butter

If you are the star at the center of the solar system, why the hell would you travel to an outlying planet?

Dorsey Shaw ★

I always find it amusing when the populace of this "star at the center of the solar system" rave about how totally awesome this place is yet they always want to be somewhere else in the summer and the winter. SF'ers actually enjoy LIVING in their city.

Peanut_Butter

Star to Pluto: "Keep circling."

Peanut_Butter

Oh, Pluto's not a planet anymore. My bad. Star to Neptune: "Keep circling."

gtraindelay

I have a friend who used to keep telling me how much better SF is than New York (she lives in SF). She would go on and on about how her friends are always talking about how this and that is better there than here.

My reply? I live in NY. I don't think, or talk about SF - ever.