In case you missed it, over the weekend, the New York Post ran an anonymously sourced story breaking down the reasons why the Four Seasons and chef Fabio Trabocchi parted ways after just three months. "Chalk it up," the Post writes, "to taste."

Reporter Carla Spartos paints a generational divide between a modern, fine-dining chef who cooks with (gasp!) lard and the Four Season's Old Guard who just want their crab cakes, out-of-season tomatoes, and low-fat, low-sodium lunch plates. Writes Spartos:

"There were issues with [some longtime] customers," says one restaurant insider. "They complained that the food was not the same. They want grilled fish, steamed vegetables — hospital food."

Brought in to add buzz to the menu and return the restaurant to its former three-star status, Trabocchi may have done too much too soon. While the famous crab cakes were never taken off the menu, classic dishes jockeyed for space with newfangled additions like spaghetti with sea urchin or crab and spicy chilis, much to the dismay of regulars.

"There are customers who have been coming in every day for 30 years — they spend thousands of dollars a week — they name their own salad or steak. It's hard to break that," says the source.

At the Four Seasons, if a regular wants endive and tomatoes out of season, the kitchen runs out to fetch them. It is this sort of high-touch service that has made the landmark a destination for New York's rich and powerful for more than 50 years.

"These people expect good food, but they want their crab cake, they want their salad and their billi bi [creamy mussel soup] — they're not looking for eccentric or imaginative food," says guidebook magnate and Four Seasons regular Tim Zagat.

While Trabocchi made a good impression at his audition, with a non-stop parade of haute dishes, the honeymoon didn't last long with owners Julian Niccolini and Alex Von Bidder. "There was always some complaint that an older person would [say] — too salty, too small, too much, I don't get it," says the restaurant insider.

The Post goes on to suggest that food costs and, even more obliquely, "clashing egos" may have had something to do with the split. Y&H has a more concrete scapegoat: the Four Seasons' owners.

Nothing reported in this story indicates that Trabocchi misled them. He's a chef who comes with a long history of preparing food, from Floriana in London to Maestro in McLean to Fiamma in New York. His style of food, his food costs, his quest for perfection, these are all matters of public record or least easily accessed with a phone call to a former manager, an e-mail to the Ritz-Carlton, or even a text message to Tom Sietsema.

It's called due diligence, and it looks like the Four Seasons did little of it. More damning, perhaps, is that the Four Seasons doesn't even seem to know its own clientele. Did the owners not know what kind of stress this would cause its regulars? Did it not solicit their input and comments on what they would like/not like to see in the future?

It doesn't sound like it. It sounds like the Four Seasons marched blindly forward, picking the biggest brand-name chef available, and then hoping it would work out. The miscalculation has embarrassed all parties involved. And more important, it was so unnecessary. Fabio Trabocchi deserved a better return to the kitchen than this.

Speaking of return, Trabocchi is still talking up a return to D.C.

Food critics don't get much sympathy from the general public, mostly because the general public has no idea how food critics operate, how much they have to eat, and how their doctors fret over their health. (I mostly nod sheepishly when my doc tells me to lose weight; I know it ain't gonna happen.)

So when a fellow food writer told me one of Tom Sietsema's tricks to prevent overindulgence, I was impressed by its simple brilliance. After taking enough bites to render judgment, Sietsema apparently salts his desserts to prevent needless nibbling.

I've never meet Sietsema, so I don't know what he looks like, but others have told me he's fit. This would help explain it—that and a personal fitness trainer, I suspect. But regardless, I wanted to check with the Post dining critic to see if the story was true.

E-mailed Sietsema:

I DO salt my desserts to prevent over-eating. Not always, but often enough. As you know, it's all too easy to keep nibbling and nibbling and nibbling if something is in front of you, no matter how good or bad the dish is.

I asked Sietsema how long he's been practicing his sodium cover-up, who he learned it from, and whether he's ever been tempted by a superior dessert to eat through the salt crust. His response:

I've been salting my sweets for at least a decade or so, and I seem to recall reading that veteran critic Gael Greene did the same. But I can't verify that. (I DO know that she used to suck on chocolate truffles, then spit them into tissue and toss them — her way of enjoying something exquisite, the low-cal way. LOL)

I have not returned to a dessert that I've salted myself. Wish I could give you a funny kicker, but that's the truth.

 

Photo by emdot

Among the subjects are Michael Phelps and his 12,000-calorie diet, Batter Blaster, and the ousting of Gael Greene from New York magazine. But the funniest item may be James Norton's take on "That Darn Penis Restaurant":

It’s difficult to prove, but it seems likely that the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games received roughly equal to or slightly less coverage than Beijing’s now world-infamous Guolizhuang penis restaurant. Not since the premiere of Deep Throat ... what’s that? Rein it in? OK, just the facts. Go to Guolizhuang and order lovingly prepared deer, snake, yak, horse, seal, and/or duck wangs, among others. Eat them. Gain strength! Improve the quality of your skin! And, most important, finally look Andrew Zimmern in the eye and say: “Andrew Zimmern, I have risen to your level.”

For all the good work Greene did during her four decades, I'm afraid I'll always remember her most for having sex with Elvis Presley. Greene led off her 2007 memoir, Insatiable, with the anecdote. Here's the memorable moment in all its sticky, elliptical details:

He didn't seem to be listening. Silently, he took my hand—yes, still gloved—and led me to the bedroom. I was thinking, Oh my God...this is Elvis...I am going to do it with Elvis. I am not going to be coy. I will not make him talk me into it. He didn't ask. I didn't answer. He closed the door, dropped his pants, and lay on the bed—very pale, soft, young—watching me take off my clothes and, yes, at last, my little white gloves. All the way up on the twenty-fourth floor, I could hear the girls chanting on the street below: "We want Elvis. We want Elvis."

And look who has him, I was thinking. As...it...happened. In a feverish heat. Skin on skin. I think it was good. I don't remember the essential details. It was certainly good enough. I know the reality of it was thrilling beyond anything I might have imagined.