Spike Mendelsohn: D.C. is a "Second-Tier City"
Top Chef alumni/restaurateur Spike Mendelsohn is the subject of a frank interview at Danny Harris' excellent People's District today. Through most of the one-way chat, Mendelsohn talks openly about how the District compares to New York ("H Street and U Street look more like Brooklyn every day") and how the Obama administration was the main reason behind the District's food renaissance. As you can tell, the whole interview comes off as somewhat misguided; so I'm not quite sure how much credence you can lend to the most inflammable portion of the transcript:
With time, I have really come to love this city. New York is over saturated with too many concepts. You may be popular for two weeks, and then there is a new trend. Here, I opened one restaurant, Good Stuff, that developed my entire career. It is nice to be in a second-tier city where you can be a big fish in a small pond.
Emphasis ours. Nichole Remmert at The Hill Is Home took little time to register her complaints with Mendelsohn's comments:
Now onto that “Big Fish” nonsense: I’m sorry, but you,sir, are not a Big Fish in the DC culinary scene. That would elevate you to the status of Jose Andrés, Johnny Monis, Cathal Armstrong, Nicholas Stefanelli or Vikram Sunderam, among many others. Plastering pictures of yourself all over your restaurants and appearing on reality shows may make you a big personality, but that’s about it. [...] Don’t get me wrong - there were certainly no culinary masterpieces happening on that block before Spike’s time (although, Roberto Donna’s Barolo, on the next block was wonderful), but I can’t say that his opening shop has changed that, and proclaiming himself as the Taste Savior of the 300 Block of Pennsylvania SE, is as laughable as the trite names of the sodas at We, the Pizza. I’m always grateful to have more choices in the neighborhood, but I’m equally as happy to pass up Mr. Mendelsohn’s offerings in favor of better food with less “personality.”
Remmert has a point -- Mendelsohn is certainly not the reason for resurgence in the District's dining scene, though he's been a bit player in it. (And, of course, neither is the election of Barack Obama, as the chef rather blindly suggested.) But we're left wondering what, precisely Mendelsohn is going for with his comments: after all, with so many other burger joints in town, what does a burger joint proprietor possibly have to gain by dishing out back-handed compliments to the city that's done little but embrace him?