Zagat

Something that I'm not sure that my dad took so seriously.

You know, his main job was being an editor of Bon Appetit magazine and editing the Zagat guide and doing all that stuff.

And this kind of...

And the CBS.

That was the most important award an American chef could win in the US.

Then Worlds 50 Michelin started creeping in, and you had this blip, don't forget that blip where the Zagat guide was one of the most important also.

That was short-lived because that was run by one person, Tim Zagat.

And yes, the Zagat guide had other people going, but Tim would go to every restaurant, and Dan Barber talked about this when he was on the podcast before.

He talked about Tim Zagat coming in to a restaurant he worked at when he was working for Bouley, and it was so important to be in that Zagat guide.

I know because Le Bernardin was number one in the Zagat guide during part of the time I was there, and we popped champagne every time that guide came out.

[laughs] It was super exciting.

Then the Zagat guide kinda went away.

I don't know how, it was probably like 10 years ago, but not that long ago.

I think Zagat gave Pittsburgh like the best food city in the country.

So like a lot of these provincial places have great, great food nowadays.

But as I was telling you, when I went to Nebraska, I mean, this is when I was on tour with a band called, This was in like 2000, like around that era.

They'll say Micheline.

Did you read the, did you read the knockoff of Zagat? I can't say it, but it's, it is pronounced similar to it.

Yeah, it's pth.

It told you where not to eat.

So we support that kind of tourism and others who want to stay for a short period.

But there's been a lot of public press about tourism in Armenia, not just out of the Armenians, but there have been, I think, Zagat's and Forbes and a couple other major trades have talked about tourism in Armenia.

And certainly your magazine would play into that.

It was sort of a rhetorical question, but it would seem like there's been – a worldwide recognition of this country to go visit and see what's happening there.

We've never been there.

I don't need Zagat guide for that.

We don't know.

DK, okay.

He tells a really interesting fact in this conversation today.

He says that the Zagat survey, which predated sort of online ratings, they used to ask people when they were posting a review what their favourite restaurant was, what their favourite restaurant for food was, for service, for decor.

And he said there was a strange thing where his restaurants, Union Square Cafe, for example, was regarded as 10th best for service, 12th best for food, 65th best for decor, but was regarded as the third best restaurant.

And he said he realised something.

But then when I moved to New York and the food was really good, this was in the 1980s, the places didn't seem to be very nice to you.

And I just asked myself, whoever wrote the rule that the food would taste worse if you went to a place where people were on your side? And I just started tugging at this meaning of hospitality.

And it finally dawned on me, back in the old days, meaning pre-internet, we had something called the Zagat Survey.

It was a paper and pencil opportunity for New Yorkers to weigh in on what they thought of all the meals they had had that previous year.