Guest blogger: The Dining Room at the Ritz-Carlton’s final act
October 2nd, 2009 by Besha Rodell in Food & Life, RestaurantsEditor’s note: Last night, Thursday October 1st, was the last night of service for the Dining Room at the Ritz-Carlton Buckhead. Long considered one of Atlanta’s best (if not the best) restaurant, the closing marks the end of an era for a certain style of fine dining in our city. It’s hard to know how to cover an event such as this – our friends over at the AJC have done a great job of covering the story from a news and dining angle, and I wanted to look at the event from a different perspective. So I asked Eli Kirshtein, chef at Eno and contestant on the current season of “Top Chef,” to give me some impressions of his meal there last night. He was kind enough to oblige.
-Besha Rodell
The end of an era, for better or worse
By Eli Kirshtein
After sitting in the Dining Room at the Ritz-Carlton and seeing the restaurant take its last few breaths, I felt a weight come off my shoulders. In the bittersweet moments that the restaurant’s final night of operation entailed, I realized that for so long, Atlanta chefs and restaurateurs have been held down by the philosophies of restaurants like the Ritz and Seeger’s.
The chef at the Dining Room was never American, and only in one instance was he not French. While the Ritz in other markets has sometimes tapped local talent pools to source their top level chefs (most notably Ron Siegel in San Francisco), the Atlanta Ritz has always gone on a massive global search to find replacements for its departing chefs, somehow implying there were no chefs in Atlanta with big enough feet to fill the shoes. We’re now in a position where we can proudly say that the best chefs in Atlanta are from Atlanta. Look at Linton Hopkins or Anne Quatrano, the remaining gold standard for Atlanta dining. While Günter and Joel headed for the hills, these homegrown chefs remained steadfast and committed, not only to their vision but the growth of the city. While conversing about the evening, one of my dining companions mentioned how it will be hard to go to more “serious” food cities because for so long we’ve had the ammunition to say, “Hey we have the Ritz!” Now we should proudly put our chin up and say, “Hey we have Eugene!”
As our meal started with an amuse of a chilled melon soup, and carried through some dozen or so courses, I began to realize what’s to be missed about the Ritz. It’s the unyielding desire to go above and beyond. To add one more gift, one more level. From the bread cart (with no less than eight choices) to the legendary chocolate cart with mignardise placed on the table to accompany it. When presenting you with a hardcover copy of the menu at the finish of the meal the restaurant doesn’t just hope for you to remember the experience but gives you a lasting souvenir to help you do so. Eating through the courses, from simple to elaborate, from a basic oyster to a filet wrapped around eel, the attention to detail amazed me. Garnishes in a side spoon put onto a plate at the table, multiple underliners. Every element considered.
The full room for the last evening had an exited air about it. Glancing around I’d say that the average age must have been in the 40’s or 50’s. A sad sight really. No young, energetic food scenesters around; only an older clientele who had been going there for ages and wanted to bid it a fond farewell. Seeing the kitchen staff looking into the dining room, getting teary eyed, was an emotional feeling for me as a cook. I always looked at the Dining Room and its staff as a group fighting the good fight. A group trying to keep practicing a dying craft out of love. Now where can these guys go? From overhearing a few things it seems that a lot of them are leaving town. A shame, seemingly turning their backs on Atlanta.
As Atlanta cooks and chefs we need to look at the Atlanta logo and become the phoenix that rose above the burning city. With the fall of the old guard, it’s now the time to appreciate all the small guys fighting the same good fight, just without the Ritz’s levels of pageantry. The times they may be a changing, and it might not be all that bad.
October 3rd, 2009 at 12:01 am
I want to make a few comments about your blog article about your dinner lastnight at the Dining Room. First about the cooks “turning their backs on Atlanta” is just wrong. Had you come up and asked anyone of us you might of gotten some further details. No cook in the kitchen is even from Atlanta. Each and everyone of us moved here just to work at the Dining Room. The style of food that was there isn’t the same as you’d find anywhere else in the city. That’s why we were there. And as far as the chefs not being from Atlanta, or America. With the exception of Seeger and Joel, who became a large part of Atlanta and it’s cuisine, Bruno was working for the Ritz in Japan, as well as Arnaud running the Dining Room in Naples and being the Executive Chef in Egypt for the Ritz. If anything it’s a quality of the company of promoting people from within that strive for profection. I appreciated your article and your insight on your experience, just some wrong information that is being released to a wide audience.
October 3rd, 2009 at 10:29 am
Are you implying that people in their 40’s and 50’s cannot be ‘energetic food scenesters?’ Being well ensconced in that demographic I can assure you that both my wife and I thoroughly enjoy the local restaurant scene and have yet to shy away from a place due to location or clientele. The food’s the thing.
My guess is that the age of the diners has more to do with the economics than much else. Simply put more people in the age group probably have the funds to pay for a Ritz dinner.
By the way the two chefs most cited in the blog for carrying the torch for Atlanta cuisine, Linton Hopkins and Anne Quatrano are also members of this age group.
October 3rd, 2009 at 2:49 pm
” So I asked Eli Kirshtein, chef at Eno and contestant on the current season of “Top Chef,” to give me some impressions of his meal there last night. He was kind enough to oblige.”
Ya he obliged and spewed a bunch of opinion about “chefs turning their backs” on Atlanta, instead of actually talking about the food.
October 4th, 2009 at 2:17 pm
it won’t be missed by me or anyone i know.
October 4th, 2009 at 4:00 pm
Apparently all you need is a degree from CIA and to have worked for Richard Blais to have a valid culinary opinion in this city. Atlanta has this pride wanting to be a great restaurant city without the restaurants. They want to be seen on TV through “Top Chef” and “Real House Wifes of Atlanta”. They all want to feel important. Sadly PR is king; a faux-hawk and writing “locally grown” on your menu is the key to success. While Eli was merely a year old, Seeger was busting his ass creating what today is the foundation of the Locally Grown farmers markets. He was paving the way. A *GASP* non-Atlantan. A city to this day will demand a green salad and beef tenderloin when not placed on the menu. The final menu, instead of reading the chefs name, should have read- what people in Atlanta will eat- Mushroom soup, Lobster, Tenderloin, Soufflé.
The current Dining Room cooks are in fact turning their backs on Atlanta. They all came from out of state specifically to give Atlanta a chance. One of my first chefs made it clear when I was younger “When you own a restaurant, no matter how great your food is, if its not what the people want, they wont buy it”. Its time for the cooks to move to places where something as simple and delicious as a squab breast won’t be gawked at.
Blaise- Did he do any his training in Atlanta? Is he even from Atlanta? He so proudly announces Thomas Keller, Daniel Boulud, and Ferran Adria. Perhaps because those are some of the best chefs in the world. Whether he worked for them for 2 years or 3 days. That being said, I watch Top Chef every Wed. I root for the Atlanta boys- what remains of them. And I wish Eli the best of luck on the show and at his restaurant.
October 4th, 2009 at 5:06 pm
I think Eli makes some really good points here. If Atlanta is going to be known as a food city it probably needs to be Atlanta food. The Dining Room was amazing, but nothing about that restaurant felt like it had a sense of place. He’s not dissing the restaurant, just saying that times are changing. And they are.
I also appreciate seeing a voice on this blog from within the industry. What I like about Omnivore is it gives a forum to many voices. There have been other guest bloggers, and none of them have worked for Blais! The days of only critics having published opinions are gone, and that’s a very cool thing.
October 5th, 2009 at 11:32 am
What will, or should, be missed about the Dining Room at the Ritz is that it was Atlanta’s only real link to the origin of fine dining.
As far as a sense of place goes the ‘place’ was The Ritz itself. It’s like the King Cole Room at the NY St. Regis; a place and a style of it’s own. In that same vein of being of a place; Eno, while sourcing many of it ingredients locally which is an admirable thing to do, has a menu that itself has little if anything to do with Atlanta or the region culturally speaking. That doesn’t make it any less of a restaurant it’s just a bit of a stretch to claim it as something unique to Atlanta.
October 6th, 2009 at 10:57 am
As soon as I posted my previous comment I realised I may have left the impression that Chef Kirshtein was implying that Eno was an ‘Atlanta’ restaurant. Even the company’s website states that is inspired and aims to bring the European enoteca experience to Atlanta. Any misrepresentation on my part is regetted.