October 30, 2023 Issue

It’s interesting to compare Helen Rosner’s “Tables For Two: The Bazaar by José Andrés,” in this week’s issue, with the version that appears on newyorker.com. The electronic version is richer, more detailed. For example, in the magazine, Rosner writes, 

The theme is unsubtle (a towering portrait of a geisha wearing a comb and a mantilla looms over the bar), and it’s all a little ridiculous in a way that could be fun – if the restaurant didn’t seem to be working so hard to deflate any shred of amusement. This is unfortunate, because playfulness is the most generous lens through which to consider the experience. Take the 0-toro tuna wrapped in poufs of cotton candy (total nonsense, with flavors that fight one another), or the dramatically vertical Japanese coffee siphon employed tableside to infuse a mushroom broth for a bowl of ramen – dishes that foreground spectacle over satiety, presented with monklike sombreness by stone-faced servers.

Here's the newyorker.com version:

Playfulness is the most generous lens through which to consider many of the dishes on the menu, which are intricate, kooky, and not always successful. Cotton Candy O-toro is a small pouf of spun sugar on a stick, in the center of which is a morsel of soy-marinated raw tuna and a confetti of crispy rice. The creation is a riff on Andrés’s famous cotton-candy-wrapped foie gras—a brilliant twist on the traditional pairing of the sweet and the fatty. Andrés débuted the dish in the early two-thousands, at his now-closed D.C. restaurant Café Atlántico. Here, run through a Nipponifying algorithm, it becomes total nonsense, with the one-note sugar of cotton candy fighting against the delicate salinity of the fish rather than balancing it. For a bowl of mushroom ramen, the broth is heated tableside in a Japanese coffee siphon, a complexly vertical contraption that looks like lab equipment and is thrillingly, pointlessly dramatic as a vehicle for soup. It’s impossible to take seriously, but if you engaged with it on the level of silly spectacle it could be a delight—if only any of the nervous-seeming servers, lighting the flame and gazing into the roiling liquid with the sombreness of holy monks, looked as if they were allowed to have fun. 

To me, the newyorker.com version, with all those marvellous extra details, is far superior to the print version. 

Here’s another example. In the print version, Rosner writes,

I was grateful for the relief of the cocktail menu. The drinks are unreservedly exquisite – tight, focussed, and beautifully balanced. Though, like the food, which seems priced for people who never look at prices, they are soberingly expensive, twenty to thirty dollars apiece; a few, made with a jamón iberico-infused mezcal, climb to fifty dollars. For the cost of one ham-kissed glass, you can get a lordly portion of actual meat, sliced tableside, precisely arranged in a vermillion nautilus, streaked with snowy fat. It’s funky and ferocious, the righteous king of aged hams. Such severe simplicity is, itself, a type of spectacle. Not another thing on the menu is its equal.

Here's the newyorker.com version:

I’ve eaten at many José Andrés joints over the years, including the original Bazaar, in Los Angeles, an excellent restaurant that knew how to wield its gimmickry. (Sadly, it closed permanently during the pandemic.) My favorite thing, across the whole Andrésverse, is a cocktail: the Salt Air Margarita, a satiny blend of tequila, orange liqueur, and lime juice, under a dollop of salty foam, like the fading head on a beer. I first encountered the drink a decade ago at China Poblano, Andrés’s dumpling-and-taco parlor in Las Vegas (another, more successful exercise in audacious culinary exchange), and was overjoyed to see it pop up here at home, albeit with a pomegranate twist. Andrés and his team have an uncanny knack for drinks; their love of unexpected infusions and trompe-l’oeil textures are more reliably successful behind the bar than in the kitchen. At the Bazaar, a nonalcoholic concoction called the Firefly was one of the most pleasing zero-proof drinks I’ve had in ages.

Like the food, which seems to be priced for people who have no need to look at prices, the drinks are soberingly expensive, at twenty-five to thirty dollars apiece. A few, made with a pricey mezcal that’s been infused with precious jamón ibérico de bellota, have price tags that can climb to fifty. It seems like a pointless flourish—the star ingredient, to my palate, was undetectable in the Andrés y Cooper, though the drink itself, something like a smoky Negroni, was otherwise excellent. Still, for the price of that one ham-kissed glass, you could get a lordly portion of the actual meat: a leg of jamón ibérico crisscrosses the dining room on a wheeled mahogany cart; flag it down to have a serving sliced tableside, each piece carefully arranged in a spiralling vermillion nautilus, streaked with snowy fat. It’s funky and ferocious, the righteous king of aged hams. Such severe simplicity is, itself, a type of spectacle. Not another thing on the menu is its equal. 

Note how “precisely arranged in a vermillion nautilus, streaked with snowy fat,” in the magazine version, becomes, in the newyorker.com version, “carefully arranged in a spiralling vermillion nautilus, streaked with snowy fat.” Both versions are excellent. But, to me, the addition of “spiralling” in the newyorker.com rendering makes it a shade more vivid.

What's the lesson to be learned from this comparison? Simply this: if you enjoy “Tables For Two,” as I do, it pays to check out the newyorker.com version. It provides a much richer reading experience.