American Madness

Let me say upfront that I think the location is very nice, the decor is beautiful and the staff is extremely pleasant. But the entrees I had there (September 25) were completely tasteless, and I don’t say that to be hyperbolic. I really mean that they had no taste.

A world-traveling businessman friend of mine was in town and wanted to have some exceptional New American cuisine. Perry St. was recommended by another friend (not much of a friend, apparently!), and I was exceptionally embarrassed when the restaurant failed to live up to ANY reasonable standard of excellence with regard to its food.

The presentation was fine, but each entree had no taste. NO TASTE. It was like eating unseasoned tofu that had been made up by some genius to have the exact texture of the Rabbit and Bass we thought we had ordered. The sauces on these dishes were overpowering and did not rescue the blandness of the flesh.

TO BE FAIR, it was pretty clear from our waitor that the restaurant was known for its meat, but neither my guest nor I wanted to eat beef, so we chose unwisely. Our appetizers were: a Sashimi seviche doused with so much gross citrus dressing that the snapper had no taste; Tuna (sushi grade, but not especially fresh) covered in something crunchy (this was the most tasty item on the menu, only diminished by the sauce around it, which was basically the kind of thick Russian dressing I like a lot better with a kosher turkey sandwich).

DESSERT: The coffee was weak, but good. The chocolate mousse was OK.

For $170+, we could have done better. MUCH better. This place needs to bring the cusine up to snuff with the decor. I can not believe Jean Georges is behind this place.

UPDATE!
Someone has responded to my review on Citysearch.

“I gotta tell ya, I am very confused by the friedlander review,” writes mobetta123.

I gotta tell you, Mobetta123 (Mo Betta’ 123 ?!), you don’t fool me with your attempt at a casual rebuttal! The review, to me, sounds apologist and too-knowing.

“…we had the tuna, the sashimi and the mozzarella–all totally delicious. Then we had the rabbit, the bass and the arctic char. Everything was cooked and seasoned perfectly. I mean totally perfectly.”

Really? I suppose the sauce was perfect. It was a perfect Russian dressing on the tuna! But, really, who writes this way? And how many people did you have with you? If you were worried about my review, but went anyway, why would you have ordered the exact dishes I panned? Especially when the staff, in my experience, had recommended the meat dishes in particular?

The review continues:

“And the sauces really made the food jump off the plate. They are not timid french style sauces, in fact, they kinda had the kick of a thai or vietnamese sauce, but there wasnt too much on the plate and they were complex and captivating.”

Please. I’ve gone back and read Bruni’s review from the NYTimes and I know he and the restaurant have some sort of Thai sauce in mind, but between the idea and the execution stretches a chasm of taste. And for the kicker, you say the sauces were “complex and captivating.” Jean-Georges, is that you? I think I’ll leave it to the reader to figure out how authentic “complex and captivating” is coming from a New York diner.

The value of attention data comes from the fact that it tells companies something about a customer, which they can use to more effectively interact with that customer. However, attention data will always be rough in comparison to what we the customers know about ourselves. Attention data is only based on discrete actions and does not tell the whole story. This is why websites that use attention data to target content and ads often get it so comically wrong.

The interesting thing is that the value of all this attention data simply drops through the floor as soon as there is an effective way for customers to easily share their interests directly with companies and each other. When each individual is in control of their personal interest profile, it becomes less necessary to track personal data and try to intuit what users want. A user can state very clearly what she wants and more importantly what she doesn’t want. This should be the future of targeted marketing.

The New York Times has done it again!

I’m inclined to let readers search for Waldo in this article (Behind That Sense of Job Insecurity), but I might as well just say it myself.

The article begins by stating what it tells us is an oft-repeated (but suspect) truism, that “JOBS today seem as long-lasting as the petals of a flower.”

But this truism could be mistaken! Labor economists, the article says, have detected “a seemingly counterintuitive trend. During the last few decades, job stability and job tenure for the typical worker don’t seem to have changed much, if at all.”

The article is an anti-trend piece, pointing out an apparent contradiction between reality and the conventional wisdom that life-long employement is a thing of the past.

But the article goes on to quote data regarding workers “between the ages of 58 and 62 conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and other research groups at intervals from 1969 to 2002.”

Granted, this is interesting, but it says NOTHING about the likelihood of me, a 28 year old, working multiple jobs during my career, which is what I believe the other trend stories (the one’s this article seems to be debunking) have asserted.

To give the author the benefit of the doubt, I’d have to know that he really believes someone out there is alleging how tough boomers have had it job-stability-wise versus their parents. If so, the article would have to say: “There have been a lot of stories claiming that by the time the American worker has reached 58 to 62, he’s tended to work more jobs over the past 30-odd years, than had his parents. But we can show this isn’t so….”

I defy the Times to produce a glut of recent articles making any such allegation. The articles I’ve read quote current data showing that if you entered the workforce in the past 15 years, you’re probably going to work far more jobs than had previous generations.

One could debase the above argument if one had data on 18 to 33-year-old workers. But the NYTimes article does not cite any of that data. If the average 33-year-old worker in 2006 had worked a mere 1.3 jobs and said, when asked, that he expected his current job would last him his entire career, that would go far towards shattering the notion that the average young worker can not depend on consistent lifetime employment at one or only a few employers.

That would knock down the argument that the article seems to want to challenge when it states as its opening line “JOBS today seem as long-lasting as the petals of a flower.” By “jobs today” I would hope they are talking about jobs now being worked. Unless we are playing games with the temporal nature of time, I take “today” to mean today, and not to mean “all the todays of workers who are now 58 to 62, as measured over the past 30-odd years.”

And don’t forget to read to the end, where the fuzzy anecdotal conclusion (the obligatory “on the other hand” section) subtly points out the fallacy of the previous data by stating that newer workers face rockier careers. “CLEARLY, in today’s economy, workers have to prepare for the possibility that their jobs won’t last as long as they once expected,” says the piece.

CLEARLY! Well, then what is the article about? And, if this is clear, prove it! Again, where’s the data for younger workers! We’re instead shown a comparison between the career of someone who is 58 to 62 in 1969 (meaning they were 20 in 1927). We’re told this old soul enjoyed only slightly more job stability than the seed of his loins who, at 58 to 62 years old, were interviewed in 2002, and who therefore were 20 as recently as 1964!

Well, if I ever see a story claiming that the youngest baby boomers have had less job stability than their parents, I’ll know it’s wrong. Until then, I’ll continue to give the benefit of the doubt to articles I keep reading about the likelihood that I will work more jobs in my lifetime than my parents have in theirs. At least these articles quote current data about current employment trends.

I’ve posted this review to Citysearch, but they initially rejected it because I described the restaurant’s staff as acting so stiff that they might have had poles up their you-know-whats. Apparently, that was too explicit for the Edwardian keepers of Citysearch. Here’s the review, in case they decide not to publish even the toned-down version:

Sascha
55 Gansevoort St
New York, NY 10014

SERVICE: stuffy and weird. The front desk sends you to a hostess who sends you to a waiter, etc. Everyone acts like central casting version of Edwardian butlers: cold and condescending. AND YET, for all this pretense, there’s no tablecloth and I noticed that the silver (plated silver, I suppose) was peeling off the coffee urn! And this was but a few weeks after the opening!

WINE LIST: how about 1 or 2 bottles or glasses priced for someone who doesn’t want to spend $60? Most good restaurants have at least one $25 bottle. Not here. The only cheap bottle on the menu is a half-bottle.

FOOD: completely mediocre. The bread is great, but it’s not enough to carry the rest of the meal. The main courses are surprisingly bland given owner Sascha Lyon’s reputation. The ribs are fatty and tough, the pasta dish I had was covered in far too much mozarella (it had to be taken off and cut up into pieces, and cutting it was like cutting a steak) and the dish was pretty tasteless. The deserts are overdone (too rich, too thick…they dull the palate) and lack subtlety.

For the quality, everything is overpriced. Close your eyes and pay attention to your tongue, and clearly we’re talking Applebys, folks.

Radio Shack sent emails to 400 workers notifying them that their jobs had been eliminated. “The work force reduction notification is currently in progress,” read an e-mail delivered Tuesday morning. “Unfortunately, your position is one that has been eliminated.”

Firing staff by email takes the image of the soulless corporation to a whole new level. I’ll never buy anything from Radio Shack again. The crappy electronics that they sell can be had just about anywhere these days. The sentiment seems to be universal. This is a total public relations mess created out of shear stupidity.

Derrick D’Souza, a management professor at the University of North Texas, told AP that he had never heard of such a large number of employees being informed of their termination electronically. He said employees could see it as dehumanizing. “If I put myself in their shoes, I’d say, ‘Didn’t they have a few minutes to tell me?’” D’Souza said.

Steven Muslin writes in CNET’s workplace blog, “Perhaps it’s just a normal progression of the medium: We search for jobs online, apply for them via e-mail, use company intranets to change our benefits packages, and even use the Internet to work from home. Is there really any reason to see your boss anymore? Certainly not to get fired. Not anymore. Not if you work for Radio Shack.”

I liked this quote from the Drudge reports comments, “These people are gutless. Being laid off or fired or whatever is not easy, and it shouldn’t be easy for the people doing it, they should have to face the people they are firing.” That pretty much sums it up.

This page was brought to you by:

Do you need a dedicated hosting server? Web hosting companies strive to create the best web hosting experiences for their customers. No matter what size business you have, there is an exchange server hosting out there for you! For a dedicated web host that won’t let you down, sign online today!