Yet another Ted's press release: Franck's

A few weeks ago, ted wrote this panegyrical review about Franck's and his
chef Franck Peissel, who use to lead the now defunct and failed "L'avenue Bistro" in Sugarhouse. The article was written a mere two weeks after Franck's opening, and although the restaurant is barely established at the time of this posting, Ted could not find a single flaw about his experience. What follows is a copy of the email I sent to Ted. This letter was published in the city weekly, however was completely re-written by the editor (see published text at end of this post):

"Dearest Ted,

So you lived in NYC???? glad to find out about it.... I guess you were not involved with food matters then.... Had you truly been close to the food business, you would know that any REAL, PROFESSIONAL food writer, like Frank Bruni from the New York Times, Michael Bauer from the San Francisco Chronicle or closer to home Mary Malouf from the Salt Lake Tribune would never dare touch a new restaurant within 3 month of its opening date. If you knew the last thing about operating a restaurant, then you would know that any new business needs at least this long to develop its systems and work out the kinks. However, according to your review of Franck's, the restaurant, only after a few weeks of operation, can do no wrong, operating at perfection. In fact, you compare Franck to Anthony Bourdain and credit Franck, along with Anthony with launching the American French Bistro/Brasserie phenomenon.

Why is it that you always begin your reviews by trying to give yourself credibility, by name-dropping food cities and culinary celebrities? Also, from your article Franck-ophilia, you lead one to believe that you are on Aaron Ferer's payroll. If I recall your review of L'Avenue, it was just as glowing without a single critique. In fact, I think you voted it "Best French Restaurant" in Salt Lake Magazine's bogus Dinning Awards. Instead of objectively crediting L'Avenue's closure on mediocre food , inept service and poor management, you blame it on George Bush.... how utterly absurd. Why is it then that the Paris Bistro has not only survived but has thrived, opening 2 months prior to L'Avenue, in late 2001, located a mere 5 blocks away?

Was the justification of L'Avenue's closure in this current review just to save face because back then it was also the best thing since sliced bread as you are now touting Franck's? Are you worried about your credibility? Well, a restaurant review should not read like an internal press release unless you are moonlighting as Aaron Ferer's publicist. Give it up Ted! How much did your get for this travesty of a review and while we are on the subject, what did Bill White pay for his press release?
Mr. Vatel."

This is what Ted responded:
"Vatel,

I don't know you. Apparently you think you know me. My only response to your anger is to wonder when kindness went out of
your life?

Ted"

My goodness what a verbose response! Was my email angry??? Or was it brutally objective? Anyway, I sent this back to Ted:

"Dear Ted...

You are right... I do not have the pleasure to know you personally, yet like a lot of other SLC weekly reader I feel as though I do know you through your articles.

The tone of my letter was not angry, nor was it unkind. Since when is it unkind to react to a newspaper article? Did I hit some sore spots? Do you feel personally attacked? Is it so wrong for me to not share your opinions when it comes to eating at the same restaurants you eat at? Is it so wrong for me to draw patterns and inconsistencies in your weekly column over the last five years or so???

The fact is, dear Ted, As far as I know, nobody else in SLC has had the gumption to call you on your blatantly subjective glowing critiques of some restaurants and completely uninformed, inaccurate and misconstrued critiques of others. This is the very root of restaurant mediocrity in this state - you reward it!!!! and you do not appreciate being reviewed yourself.
Quel dommage.....
Kind regards,
Mr. Vatel."

Never heard from Ted again by way of email but he wrote the following in his next column: "

Despite the occasional embarrassments that go along with sharing part of one’s life in public—dinnertime, at least—when it comes to food and drink and the restaurants that serve them, I hope I’ve gotten it mostly right. Although as I like to say when it comes to restaurant experiences: Your mileage may vary. That’s certainly the case with the misguided fellow who recently accused me in a shotgun blast e-mail of being on the payroll of local restaurateurs—oh, how I wish! I can handle the vitriol; it comes with this job. But it’s an injustice to hardworking, honest, professional restaurateurs to suggest that they need to buy positive reviews. So save the misplaced anger and venom for important stuff like unjust wars, hungry children, bigotry, the sad state of health care in this country and a lack of a cure for AIDS. We’re just writing about food and wine here."

Indeed, Ted, we are just writing about food and wine here. What do unjust wars and Aids have to do with the food industry in SLC? We are both critiquing restaurants and I am reviewing your reviews.... Can't you put up with an opininion that differs from yours? "Misguided", I don't think so Ted.

Here is the transformed text of my letter that was published in the city weekly:

Speaking Franckly

So Ted Scheffler lived in New York City? Glad to find out about it. I guess he was not involved with food matters then. Had he truly been close to the food business, he would know that any real, professional food writer would never dare touch a new restaurant within three months of its opening date.

If Scheffler knew the first thing about operating a restaurant, then he would know that any new business needs at least this long to develop its systems and work out the kinks. However, according to his review of Franck’s [“Franck-ophilia,” May 18, City Weekly], the restaurant—after only a few weeks of operation—can do no wrong. It’s operating at perfection. In fact, he compares Franck Peissel to Anthony Bourdain and credits Peissel, along with Bourdain, for launching the American French-bistro/brasserie phenomenon.

Why is it that Scheffler always begins his reviews by trying to give himself credibility—by name-dropping food cities and culinary celebrities? To read the article, one might think he was on Aaron Ferer’s payroll. If I recall your review of L’Avenue, it was just as glowing without a single critique. Instead of objectively crediting L’Avenue’s closure on mediocre food, inept service and poor management, he blamed it on George W. Bush. How utterly absurd.

Was the justification of L’Avenue’s closure in this current review just to save face because back then it was also the best thing since sliced bread as you are now touting Franck’s? Are you worried about your credibility? Well, a restaurant review should not read like an internal press release, unless you are moonlighting as Aaron Ferer’s publicist. Give it up, Ted! How much did your get for this travesty of a review?

—Mr Vatel., Salt Lake City

Ted Sheffler

Ted Scheffler has been writing food columns in Salt Lake City for decades. Since the vast majority of his readers and followers is uneducated, nobody has ever had the nerves to critique the food critic... It is time, ladies and gentlemen, to start exposing Ted for his columns look more like paid-for press releases than objective dinning reviews...

One of the Utah restaurateurs Ted praises the most is Bill White and his Park City Dinning Empire (Grappa, Chimayo, Washo, Windy Ridge, Ghidotti's).... a few weeks after Ghidotti's openened, Ted wrote this glowing review:

"Whenever I embark on reviewing a new Bill White operation—he’s the owner of some of Park City’s best restaurants: Grappa, Chimayo, Wahso and Windy Ridge Café & Bakery—I’m predisposed, perhaps unfairly, to believe that this time he finally bit off more than he can chew and overextended himself. So far, I’ve been proved wrong every time. I’ve yet to meet a restaurant of his that I haven’t loved.

A couple months ago, White opened his fifth Summit County restaurant: Ghidotti’s in the Redstone Center at Kimball Junction. I didn’t know what to expect, although I’d heard that White had strayed from his original conception of Ghidotti’s. Two years or so ago, White told me of his idea for a new Italian restaurant at Kimball Junction. It would be a family-friendly place, with red-checkered tablecloths, candles in wicker Chianti bottles, and low-cost meals featuring Italian-American pasta dishes and pizzas. If I remember right, White had just returned from Chicago, where he was pricing and evaluating pizza ovens for his new restaurant, named Ghidotti’s for his mother’s family name. It sounded like Ghidotti’s would be sort of a mix between Buca di Beppo and The Old Spaghetti Factory.

Fast-forward to September 2005 and my first visit to White’s new restaurant: “Looks OK from the outside,” I thought. “Being next to a cinema complex must be good for business, if not for parking.” So far, I was not too impressed, though.

And then I walked into Ghidotti’s. Mama Mia! No red checkered tablecloths. No pizza ovens. No cheap, kitschy Chianti bottles on the tables. Obviously, White had shifted gears since we’d first spoke about his plans for Ghidotti’s.

“I’m not sure quite what happened,” White says today with a grin. “It started with a chandelier …”

That’s the way White creates his restaurants: He might literally envision a restaurant designed around a single lamp, a pair of salt-and-pepper shakers, or a work of art. In this case, it was a chandelier obsession that led White to abandon his original notion of what Ghidotti’s would be and to create a restaurant that is visually on a par with the best of Las Vegas. Walking into Ghidotti’s is akin to strolling into any number of big-time Vegas eateries like Picasso or Olives—and not really comparable to anything that exists in Utah.

The restaurant is a successful attempt to blend Old World Roman architecture with the comfortable feel of a sunny Mediterranean villa in a 10,000-foot space. Jamie Catley and his Kent Construction, Inc. (who built Wahso and Chimayo) must have had their hands full with White’s constantly evolving notions of what a Park City Italian-American restaurant should look and feel like. The end result features 20-foot ceilings, gorgeous wall hangings large enough to carpet an average living room and—as always—the attention to detail (just check out the cutlery) that White’s restaurants are renowned for. It’s one of the most stunning restaurants I’ve ever seen.

Your first thought entering Ghidotti’s will be, “Wow! What a gorgeous place!” Your second thought will be, “Wow! This is going to be expensive!” But that’s the Ghidotti’s curve ball: Dining in luxury doesn’t mean having to pay Vegas prices for dinner. In fact, the menu prices are pretty much on a par with the aforementioned Buca di Beppo. Most pasta main dishes and entrees range from $12.95 to $16.95, and only two veal dishes and filet mignon even puncture the $20 mark. I’ve simply never been to such a beautiful restaurant with such affordable prices.

White said he formed the concept of Ghidotti’s “in an effort to revive my mother’s cooking traditions that I grew up with.” The result is a menu filled with Italian comfort food like spaghetti with meatballs (killer meatballs, by the way), veal scaloppini, shrimp scampi, clams Casino, fettuccine Alfredo and my Ghidotti’s favorite, beef braciola. White’s beef braciola ($19.95) is made with top round that he braises in wine and tomatoes, garlic and herbs for at least four hours until it’s so tender you can eat it with a spoon. The braciola is then served with a rich, rustic sauce in a hot Al-Clad saucepan—a very nice touch. It’s like being served a meal on a $150 dinner plate. With the rich braciola flavors, I’d suggest ordering a side of hearty rigatoni Bolognese. Pasta “sides” like polenta, spaghetti or ravioli marinara, linguine with white clam sauce, and fettuccine Alfredo are available for $4.95.

The hearts of palm salad at Ghidotti’s is a steal at $7.95, and plenty for two to share as an appetizer. A crispy plate of calamari fritti (fried calamari) comes with a lovely lemon and caper aioli ($7.95). Unfortunately, those capers also show up in the beef carpaccio at Ghidotti’s, ultimately resulting in an over-salty dish. The thinly sliced raw beef is wonderful, topped with arugula, thin slices of red onion and shaved Parmesan cheese. But those capers—along with salty cheese and the onion, which also has a salty affect—combined with a heavy dose of table salt from the kitchen, had me reaching for the water glass. A bit of quality control can easily remedy that problem.

As you’d expect in any of White’s restaurants, service at Ghidotti’s is top-notch, led by a managerial staff that includes pros like Josh Jensen and Alain Viny. The wine program (see Grapevine) is fabulous, and the chicken Vesuvio is completely addicting.

So once again I’m forced to admit that Bill White knows exactly what he’s doing. Not only did he not overextend himself with Ghidotti’s, but I think he’s created what will ultimately be the most successful piece of his growing restaurant empire. Discover it for yourself while you can still get a table."

Now you decide.... Food critique or press release? For your information, Ted, Billy's Mom is NOT from Italy but from Michigan.... And Bill, when he started out in Utah, used to cook pasta using jars of Prego marinara sauce....

Anyway.... a few weeks later, the Salt Lake tribune came up with this review on Ghidotti's:

Upon walking into 7-month-old Ghidotti's Italian Restaurant in the Redstone Village at Kimball Junction, I immediately began to expect great things. The grandiose décor, with its Corinthian columns, chandeliers, tasseled drapery and wrought-iron accents, all but hollers, "You are about to have the meal of your life."
Instead, the food, and particularly the service, turned me into a skeptic; the décor that once impressed felt more like an old Caesars Palace restaurant than a new fine dining establishment.
The first warning sign revealed itself when someone arrived with focaccia squares and said, "Let's get some bread in your bellies." Dinner was going to be interesting.
Ghidotti's is the newest restaurant for Bill White Enterprises. (Others include Grappa, Chimayo, Wahso, Windy Ridge Café and Windy Ridge Bakery.) The menu is divided into appetizers, soups, salads, pastas and entrees. There's also a seven-item kids menu.
Appetizer standouts include hearty Tuscan white bean soup ($4.95) and an ample portion of mostly crunchy calamari fritti ($7.95) surrounding a hollowed-out lemon filled with lemon-caper aioli. A just-warm polenta triangle ($7.95) with tomato sauce and pesto layers and resting in a rich mushroom-marsala sauce also succeeds.
Dish temperature turned out to be a systemic problem. An eggplant cake appetizer ($8.95), more napoleon than cake, sandwiched two hot and crunchy eggplant discs between pesto-mascarpone and cold sun-dried tomatoes. Six cooked littleneck clams on the half shell ($9.95), topped with pancetta, spinach, roasted red bell pepper and fontina cheese and sitting in a beurre blanc sauce, were tepid but the flavors intermingled well.
At one drawn-out, 3 1/2 -hour dining experience, we could attribute our cold entrees to a breakdown in service. Our food was delivered to a pit stop only to wait several minutes before getting to our table. Veal scaloppine Milanese ($24.95) arrived as two depressing, soggy brown discs; six plump, lukewarm house-made ravioli ($16.95) came nestled in a simplistic marinara; and anemic fennel-seared sea scallops ($25.95) surrounding gluey, unseasoned butternut squash risotto were just plain inedible. (Another visit proved the scallop and risotto dish to be much better, aside from wilted-by-overhead-heat spinach and arugula.) Only the airline chicken breast ($21.95), with the first wing joint still attached, remained juicy despite its delayed arrival to our table.
Other menu items just disappointed.
Gnocchi gratin ($7.95) was a sad specimen of gloppy mozzarella smothering decent gnocchi dressed in that house marinara. Mediterranean calamari salad ($8.95) showed up cold and overdressed, the mixed greens smothered under two cups of a mix of yellow and red bell peppers, red onion, capers, tender calamari and jalapeño. The heat was surprising; what's Mediterranean about a jalapeño?
Another downer, a copious and crispy Caesar salad ($7.95) was underdressed, lacking that classic garlic-anchovy-lemon bite. A salad of red grape halves, Gorgonzola, pears and toasted almonds ($8.95) was beyond chilled and left me thinking the medley had been pre-made and put in the fridge, just waiting to receive a topping of lightly dressed mixed greens before it was served.
Some dishes, however, could succeed with minor adjustments.
Mamma's chicken soup ($4.95) could have used less oregano, unless I got the last of it one evening. An appealing hearts of palm salad ($7.95) was marred by overly acidic dressing. Grilled salmon picatta ($21.95) was overcooked and pan-seared Chilean sea bass ($29.95) was expertly seared and flake-tender, but my better judgment told me to discourage my dining companion from ordering the endangered fish, really a Patagonian toothfish. (Snag a Park Record, Salt Lake City Weekly or upcoming Salt Lake magazine and clip the two-for-one entree coupon.)
Desserts were mainly uninspired. The sabayon ($7), the best of the desserts I sampled, was poured lusciously over strawberries, raspberries, blackberries and blueberries. Other desserts include chocolate mousse torte ($8); cannoli ($8) with Amarena cherries; gelato for two ($13), five indiscernible flavors in house-made waffle cones; grainy tiramisu ($8), though artfully presented in a cup made of chocolate; and an ice cream sandwich ($6), a square of vanilla ice cream encased in dry chocolate-dipped wafer cookies.
Ghidotti's best attribute is its wine list. The restaurant invested in a costly Cruvinet system, which preserves and dispenses wines, allowing the restaurant to offer an entire page of wines by 5-ounce glasses and by 2-ounce "tastes." Only one of several tastes I sampled over the course of two visits was oxidized, but it was quickly changed out. The red-heavy list also has many interesting Italian bottles from lesser-known regions such as Sicily, Apulia, Veneto and Trentino-Alto Adige.
Service was the most unsettling part of both meals. Rather than the choreography that is supposed to take place - with plates arriving, being cleared, silverware being replaced, plates being cleared, water glasses being filled throughout - it was all over the map.
On one visit, at one point there were 15 glasses, many of them empty, for our table of four. Silverware was replaced just once rather than between each of three courses and I was briefly silverware-less for a course on two separate nights. Service was much better on a subsequent visit, but silverware replacement and fulfilling simple requests still were problems.
The substandard service and underwhelming food makes Ghidotti's a place I would not recommend in its current state.
The restaurant is about to debut its spring menu, replacing all but one of the appetizers and trading out several other menu items.
Dish temperatures can be corrected. Proper training is possible. If these two things are remedied, then the next time I dine at Ghidotti's, I won't be compelled to expect a visit from a Keno girl while Ol' Blue Eyes sings a sultry tune over the sound system...
Lesli J. Neilson is a Tribune restaurant reviewer. Contact her at lneilson@sltrib.com. Send comments about this review to livingeditor@ sltrib.com.

Overall rating: (Average)
Food: (Below Average
Mood: (Above Average)
Service: (Below Average)

Finally a real food writer in town !!!! Now, how can two professional food columnists have such a dramatically different experience? Could it be that one really does her job objectively while the other is being paid for his "review"???

Welcome to White Paradise

I am your host, my name is Mister V.... I came here to Utah about a century ago it seems.... Back then, culture, good food and good restaurants were scarce.Things are better nowadays, but barely so. I did manage to stay here however because it is a beautiful state after all and life is quite affordable here. It is very close to civilization (L.A. , San Francisco, Seattle are only a short plane ride away), The snow is great indeed, and the landscapes of Utah are unique and breathtaking... Sadly however, one does not live on landscapes, snow and beauty alone..... When it comes to its people, Utah is a haven for white trash, uneducated, self righteous, mediocre and very bland populace. The vast majority of Utahns grazes at fast food or chain restaurants and disses real, hard working restaurants that try to bring food culture and seasonality to the dinning public. The main purpose of this blog is to denounce and expose biased and bought out food critics in Salt Lake City, and of course, review all kinds of eating establishments... Enjoy!!!