Chewing the Fat: The Zagat Guides' Tim and Nina Zagat

Give me one sentence to describe this year's D.C. dining guide, and then explain what you mean.

TZ: Better than ever at a better value.

There has been a very modest change in the price level of the whole city, looking at over 1,100 restaurants. Yet the number of good new restaurants is very significant and the range of diversity is better than ever. It’s not just in Washington. It is an ongoing revolution in food in America. Part of it is the celebritization of chefs, the professionalization of chefs, and more and more culinary schools in the United States.

You talk about celebritization. D.C. has been getting a lot of notice from big name chefs like Art Smith, Eric Ripert and others. Do you think this is the result of D.C. coming into some level of prominence or celebrity chefs trying to extend their fiefdoms?

TZ: This is a phenomenon going on in city after city. Washington may be getting a little bit more. Everyone was brought to Las Vegas because casinos wanted to use food as an attraction. Take the chefs, they’re all going into multiple cities. Jean Georges Vongerichten, he’s in 15 cities. They’re going into so many different operations. They are no longer simply chefs; they’re restaurant operators.

So do you think that some of it is also just celebrity chefs and their desires to put their names out, or are there just a lot more young chefs coming out that are professionally trained?

TZ: They attract a lot of younger chefs to work for them. And they have to be able to provide the younger chefs jobs, otherwise they can go somewhere else. More of the chefs are from the upper or upper-middle classes; they have aspirations to be more than a chef. They’re not looking to be in the kitchen for their entire lives. They’re interested in running a business. But they can’t be in more than one restaurant at the same time. If they think they can do it and cut corners, they’ll be out of business. The restaurants are not going to do well just because the name on the door is famous. It’ll help get people there the first time, but then when you go and find that the food is lousy you’ll be quick to tell your ten best friends.

Three restaurants saw significant movement in the latest Zagat Guide. Komi moved from #23 to #3, L’Auberge Provençale from #29 to #4, and CityZen from #15 to #5. What would you attribute that to?

TZ: At Komi they've changed a lot of things. They've taken out seats. They've moved to a more extensive tasting menu. They've made a concerted effort to be a more high-end restaurant. Incidentally it's also gone up in price, but I think they've done an extraordinary job. Not only going after, but achieving what they're trying to do.

NZ: With CityZen, the chef keeps getting better and better. There's uniform recognition that the chef [Eric Ziebold] is very talented and has great training talent and training. With L'Auberge Provencale, they have a new chef de cuisine. They also have more local and organic produce, some of which they raise themselves, as well as a lighter and brighter menu.

TZ: Every time there's a significant move where numbers change there's always an explanation. When a restaurant drops a couple points in a rating, it always indicates something happened.

Tim, you used to live in D.C. What were your favorite places back then?

TZ: I just remember one - El Bodegon at 17th and R St. It was a Spanish place. It was there for a million years; they probably closed down about five years ago. I thought it was a very sexy place. They used to squeeze this bag of wine, squirt it into your mouth. Girls seemed to like that. So if they liked it, I liked it. It was a city where you mostly entertained at home. And there were really relatively few good restaurants.

The Washington Post reviewer, Tom Sietsema has added a noise level rating to his review. Michael Bauer of the San Francisco Chronicle also wrote about this topic recently. D.C. Zagat respondents indicated that after service, noise was a problem. How have you factored that into the guide?

TZ: I told Sietsema he should do that. Michael Bauer carries a noise meter whenever he is reviewing restaurants, and I think people really do care about noise. There is a problem you run into when you say a restaurant is noisy. For instance, a restaurant might be dead quiet at 6 p.m. and 11 p.m., but noisy from 8 to 10 p.m. You almost have to say by the hour how noisy is it. We indicate that a restaurant is noisy wherever there are a lot of comments about it. We have an index of quiet conversation. If a restaurant is quiet, it’s quiet all night long. If you want to have a quiet restaurant, we have a way of addressing that question. I think it’s a smart thing for Sietsema to do, but he needs to say what time he’s arriving and how loud or quiet it is.

I’ve noticed that a number of the restaurants with the highest food ratings haven’t changed positions too much over the last 10 years. Why do you think this happens?

TZ: The public thinks they’re holding their own. If they change a lot, it’s usually got a reason. If a restaurant is doing the same job it was last year. If the survey works the way it should it should stay pretty much where it was.

I’ll tell you one thing that is true of any guide. You and all of your readers have restaurants they visit all the time. And the best way you can test our guide or any guide is to look up those places. You’re there once a week - winter, summer, and fall. You know that restaurant the best, better than any restaurant guide ever will. And if the guide is accurate and fair, it will match your opinion and you will trust it. If you find the guide is not, you should throw it out.

I’m willing to submit the guide to that test, but it should be your judgment and not mine. I’m self-interested to say it’s a great guide, etc. But you have a way of testing it for yourself. When something becomes a brand, it becomes so powerful that when you find that you disagree with it, you think I must have hit it on a bad night.

I have a friend who goes through the book and won’t eat at any place ranked lower than 24 for food. How do you feel about using the Guide this way? How would you suggest using the Guide?

TZ: That’s a perfectly legitimate way. I tend to want to go places with a fairly high food rating. The guide is designed to help you make intelligent decisions. It’s premised on the idea that you are looking for different things in different ways. If you’re taking children out, they need a place where they can run around and spill their Coke on the floor, so a low décor rating may be in order. My kids had a few Chinese and Japanese restaurants that they loved, but they were very simple kinds of dumps. They loved them.

NZ: I always looked for places that had high food ratings and low décor ratings that were reasonably priced. So if they got tired and they didn’t behave the way you wished they had, you wouldn’t be embarrassed.

TZ: Our guides are trying to help you make decisions for yourself.