Thursday, December 04, 2008
Death Watch Portland: Lucier
I would have said this after my first time dining a few months ago at Lucier, the overblown temple to someone's ego in the South Waterfront district. If you want to see how people can piss away $4+million, check it out. On second thought, don't, because your money is so better spent elsewhere....anywhere! I just read this post on Portland Food and Drink that links to Oregonian food critic Karen Brooks' review of Lucier where she gives it a generous C-.
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3 comments:
Have I died and gone to bizarre world where no one has ever
dined in Paris or NYC to know what good food really is? Evidently. The
quintessential example of this ignorance is Karen Brooks’ article about Lucier
in the very same printing of the Oregonian wherein Lucier is tauted as receiving the only
4-diamond AAA award for a restaurant in the entire state of Oregon. The entire state! And the chef recently cooked at the esteemed James Beard Foundation. Could it be that
the “keep Portland weird” press is not on par with the times? It seems that if you’re going to
write a glowing review about a Portland restaurant, it has to be a small, bistro-like restaurant where the chefs are
dowsed in tattoos as they bare their arms in t-shirts and grease, or you have
to run down a rabbit hole to find a restaurant buried in a basement. It seems
as though the Portland press isn’t ready for something that is actually nice. God forbid there be any flavor or plate design, not to mention, killer
brigade service which any, and I mean any New Yorker would die, die, die for!
And don’t forget about free valet parking. Right, forget that, especially if
it’s free! Seems like Portland press would rather hike 6 blocks after circling the blocks forever and a day
just so they’re hungry enough not to enjoy beautiful and complex textures and
flavors instead of the same old hunk of meet that’s overly sauced with wine
reduction. God forbid Portlanders actually get something good like foie gras
with pineapple gastrique. That’d just ruin everything!!!
The absurdity continues: It’s utterly bizarre that people actually want a nice
place that is locally owned to fail. I actually read that on someone’s blog.
And why, I wonder? Because we need to “keep Portland weird?” Wow. I thought when I moved
here 10 years ago that people were nice and that people actually liked different people. I mean, that is
actually why I moved here. Evidently, I was wrong there too. Seems like they
all just want people to look and act like your typical SE-er, tattooed,
grunged, and gnarly, not that there’s anything wrong with that. Heck, I love that.
But is that all we want to populate our streets and our restaurants? Do we
really just want to go to the same place with the same people over and over and
over again. Karen Brooks and her ilk do. Count me out. I’m headed back to enjoy
a beautiful meal at Lucier…
First off I welcome all comments, so please don't take this the wrong way and I'd love to hear other thoughts. From someone who has dined in Paris, NYC, and any number of other places with great restaurants, I think you're missing the point of Brooks review, and my comments. I think what Portlanders, myself included, really want is well executed food. I don't mind paying the price, but if you're charging what Lucier is, you'd better be throwing down some exceptional food. Just because something has foie gras doesn't mean we all have to be automatically impressed. Same goes for free valet parking. They're parking my car so I have to love it? Are you kidding?? Your comment that people want a locally owned place to fail is just, as you put it, "utterly bizarre". That is as ludicrous as it sounds. I would love every restaurant to make it as long as they are making it worth my while to show up, and frankly Lucier hasn't risen to that level. Talk about "keeping it weird", just because something has an AAA 4-Diamond, that doesn't mean a hell of a lot. So did The London Grill, Salishan, and Genoa last year, and I'm guessing most of us could name any number of restaurants that are more deserving than those.
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