gleam wrote:I've held my tongue, because, frankly, I enjoyed the meal I had at waterstone. Also, we can't read the Eagle Herald review (subscription only), and the Hunts' Guide blurb doesn't actually say whether the food is good or not.
I was the one who referred to your restaurant as special occassion, and made sure to note that the ingredients were seasonal but not necessarily local. And both, at least within the context of marquette, are true.
Yes, you've got the $19 bistro dishes, and it was smart of you to do that, but in a town where the median household income is about $30,000 a year, compared to about $70,000 for the chicagoland area, $19 a head (be it at the Vierling or the Waterstone) is still special-occassion range.
And I know it can be hard to get local ingredients on your menu, especially in the UP in the winter. And I know you wanted to give people something they couldn't get many other places. But how about throwing on some Minnesota or Michigan or Wisconsin bison, or elk, beef, or lamb? Why are your fish dishes tuna, lobster, and grouper? I think a dedication to Slow Food would involve using, say, the fantastic UP brook trout or whitefish sometimes.
You can use the ingredients everyone else is using and still stand out just by preparing it better. It's not like it's hard to beat the mushy whitefish at the Vierling.
Ed, I appreciate your thoughts. We obviously know that for folks whose median income is $30,000, we would not be more than special occasion. But there is an over 500-physician hospital system, a heavy pharmaceutical base, and a host of professionals our way - in fact, Marquette is the regional hub for such activity. This was the basis of our thinking, and, presumably, this is what probably led our bankers themselves to say we were being wildly conservative - yes, it was their view that we were being too conservative in our projections.
Don't know about the eagle herald - I just googled waterstone restaurant, and it came up. I think the thrust of the Hunt's review is clear.
Here's another one:
http://www.thenorthwind.org/index.php?story=3043&drop=diversions&search=waterstone
There are others. It doesn't matter.
Tuna and Lobster stayed on because it would have been suicide to get rid of them. They were demanded highly. Probably, because noone our way had either treated in this way (lobsters - live and slaughtered here, not "coldwater tails," for example). The other fishes were rotated in on a seasonal basis - i.e., cod, field and sea - cod with a veal stock, red wine/shellfish and clam stock, and sherry vinegar reduction; clams, black trumpet and matsutake mushrooms, and bean medley, in the depths of winter. Halibut with an artichoke-vinaigrette, anchovy-beignets; others.
Given next day air, seasonally optimal and local do have some correlation (see L'Etoile, in Madison, for example - where Odessa Piper shares with Alice Waters primary responsibility for much of what we are discussing here, but, who, nevertheless also combs the world's oceans and fields for the best - on a seasonal basis).
The two local fishes you mention - whitefish and brook trout. I'm not a fan of whitefish, can't get behind it, and, besides, our local supplier sells it almost exclusively to the Vierling, who does, in my opinion, a great job (I've never had "mushy whitefish," Though not a fan of the fish, it is the Vierling's thing and I was glad to try it. I don't use whitefish, because what my palate itself doesn't really work with, I won't put out - I put things on a plate that I am overwhelmingly, sensuously passionate about; it has been the only guide I can know.
Local brook trout was not available on any kind of consistent basis. I did try - I tried like hell - to work with the local fish suppliers, as much as I tried to work with local farmers and ranchers - and, to a business, none of them understood that we needed to be supplied more than a couple of times, literally. The marriage of a restaurant and its suppliers, on the model of Chez Panisse - is just too foreign our way, at least as it stands now. For example, beef- Highland cattlemen out of Escanaba said they would work with us, I set up a meeting to finalize - they said, see you on Thursday - and, I never heard from them again. I called repeatedly. Nothing. Or, as their economies of scale are too low, and as no cow is made up only of flatiron, hanger, and ribeye, they were understandably stuck with what to do with the rest of the animal once I got through. We thought to have an off-site cold room, and dedicated butchery (on the model of Les Halles, N.Y.). But we did what we did with a skeleton crew, and did not have the resources for such an undertaking. But it was all in my mind, to find ways to work with local folks. These are only examples of innumerable other things we tried to do to stay local.
Which I guess, Ed, is partially why I responded to your post - our every desire
was to be local. But it was not always possible. Wherever it was possible, we did it. Sometimes, it was the case where local itself was impossibly costly - on a menu which already ran 45-52% food cost (when 35-40 would have been more tenable), and, knowing the price sensitivity of our guests, we did exhaustive trials of national C.A.B. v. Minnesota export rib - and found no appreciable quality differential; at 1 1/2x to 2x the price, we had to make some decisions.
The other reason I posted, Prices. We believe this was a problem of perception, not reality. It struck my wife and I that we were, on our low end, 3x the cost of
A&W, and close ($3-4) to what the brewpub charges across their entree line. Enough said. I stand by what I said initially - people could easily spend here what they spend at any number of other sit down places. But the perception could never be overcome, and, as the seasonal nadir of February and March hit (with many nights of only 2-6 people), we had no funds left to strengthen our message.
Again, so be it. Waterstone, peace on its ashes. But the above is, in my mind, closer to the actuality of things than what has from time to time said. It is sometimes easier to frame a perception of things, from the outside, than what we who tried this knew from the inside.
Paul