Foodies Makin' Fast Food (I read all the Yelp reviews for Locol in Oakland...)

Pete Wells reviews that is getting heat:

http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/03/dining/locol-review-oakland-california-pete-wells.html?hpw&rref=food&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0&module=Endslate®ion=SlideShowTopBar&version=EndSlate&action=Click&contentCollection=Food&slideshowTitle=Locol¤tSlide=Endslate&entrySlide=1&pgtype=imageslideshow

https://www.yelp.com/biz/locol-oakland

roy choi responds! http://www.eater.com/2017/1/4/14164622/roy-choi-nyt-review-locol

i don't know why i read about all this. kinda fascinating though. the whole idea of bringing "good" fast food to people. instead of just bringing good inexpensive food that would appeal to anyone? the chicken "nugs" look gross. also, the word "brekkie" should be banned for eternity.

"The Chicken Nugs were served with a creamy green buttermilk sauce (Green Goddess?). The nuggets were more like chicken meatballs. They were fried with a nice light batter. However, the green buttermilk sauce had so much salt and tang in it that it covered up whatever taste the nuggets had. Thank goodness I don't have high blood pressure or else the high salt content in the food would have sent me straight to the ER!

I asked my friends about their food and they all said, you guessed it, SALTY!!!!! Quite a bit of their food went straight to the compost bin."

green goddess and chicken nuggets is not something i crave too often.

I will defer to folks in the East Bay.

also read this the other day about how the future after all the farm to table people go out of business is casual/counter service/hip fast food:

https://www.thrillist.com/eat/nation/american-restaurant-industry-bubble-burst

i have not yet read all the reviews for locol in watts though.

https://www.yelp.com/biz/locol-los-angeles

chili and saltines over rice though, man, there has to be better cheap chili in los angeles. or watts. looks gnarly.

https://www.yelp.com/biz_photos/locol-los-angeles?select=vLe6m3MJOAhAfdEzMQ_jTg

oops, this chili:

https://www.yelp.com/biz_photos/locol-los-angeles?select=vLe6m3MJOAhAfdEzMQ_jTg

in theory, i am all for the idea of better healthier affordable fast or sorta-fast food. which is why god made mexican restaurants.

Locol in Oakland is tasty and very cheap. The nuggets (veggie or chicken) aren't gross, but they're big, so you don't wanna pair them with another meal, and the flavor isn't exactly complex. It's a nugget.

It's also a nice place to visit. There's a huge, wall-sized photograph of an East Oakland dude parked on a little dirt bike. That one picture basically envelopes you and defines the space.

Sure, the food is a little salty and a little greasy, and they could go further than their no-fries compromise in bringing healthier options, but I can spend less than five bucks there and eat something that actually tastes good and get full.

Choi justifiably got some shit from Luke Tsai (EBX's excellent food writer) about basically calling downtown Oakland a food desert, which it isn't in any conceivable way, and Choi walked that back and said he intended to open another Locol in East Oakland, which is, East of like 50th or so, a genuine food desert. I think Choi owns the building that Locol is in? Which makes him just another Oakland land baron imo.

But I never hesitate to eat at Locol when I'm in that specific area, because it feels nice to be inside with the giant photo and the good sound system and those funny cubes on the floor. The staff and patrons are never rude, the place is never loud, and the food is reliable.

Anyway, I don't know Pete Wells because I'm not a stuck-up-my-butt media nerd, but forget Pete Wells. The restaurants on that corner are all yuppie bullshit.

Semmelhack was just looking at his staff -- people he hangs out with on weekends, people whose livelihoods he supplies, some of his closest friends -- and all he could see was the money each one of them was costing him, flashing in front of him like a video-game score. "I knew right then," he says, "we had to shut it all down."

sounds like a douchebag

As for the Locol review, I don't think Choi sees the silver lining yet about how it has the name of his restaurant in people's minds. i know Pete's work, and he's always seemed to have integrity. haven't actually been to Locol. Is Locol’s food delicious? Pete expressed his judgment. Good critics do that, and when the judgment disappoints a restaurant’s team, sometimes they do better

they taste better than mcdonald's but worse than jack in the box. the review is kind of right about the chicken in the chicken sandwich tasting borderline vegan (but that's because it kind of is?)
i suspect the furor over this is less about the appraisals of the food and more about why doesn't this guy also go out of his way to drop zero-star reviews on a mcflurry or a jumbo jack.

tbf a zero star review in the nytimes doesn't mean it's garbage. "Zero is poor, fair or satisfactory."
there were actual recommendations for food in there, and compliments about the ambience, staff, and bakery roll

I remember when that corner had a mediocre burrito place, a chinese place that provoked gastrointestinal problems, and across the street the Hofbrau -- the only thing open after 4pm -- that had the heat lamp rotisserie, and the regular appearance of a giant rat darting out of a rear door. This was about 15 years ago. It was a food desert then.

Then the Hofbrau went out of business, and Luka's Taproom opened. Luka's basically was the initial food gentrifier of that area. It had $13 burgers and super shitty service. They did the belgian fries in a cone thing with the fancy ketchup flight.

That whole block (not the Luka's block), the Locol block, for years was owned by some real estate investment company that pretty much operated on benign neglect. Then someone bought it, jacked up the rents on the existing tenants, and within 2 years almost all of them were priced out. This was a little over 10 years ago. The burrito place moved into a smaller spot, I think. There was a Louisiana Fried Chicken there for quite a while. That place was great. Then it got priced out. Then the fancy office tower on the next block opened and Pandora moved in, and few other businesses, and the upscale restaurants moved in and started doing well.

Anyway, of all the ilxors that would have an informed opinion about that particular block and quality of food, the go to person would be chaki, as he used to work right by there. I almost never eat out, and if I want cheap food in that area I'll go to taco bell, which has a drive thru open until 3am.

Semmelhack was just looking at his staff -- people he hangs out with on weekends, people whose livelihoods he supplies, some of his closest friends -- and all he could see was the money each one of them was costing him, flashing in front of him like a video-game score. "I knew right then," he says, "we had to shut it all down."

this is part and parcel of being a business owner. If you can't reconcile those two things, then you shouldn't be in the business.

That response by Roy Choi is one of the purest examples I've ever seen of bitter passive aggression masquerading as "positivity".

I mean, he technically doesn't call Pete Wells a racist for dissing his restaurant's food, but he does make sure that Wells's sentiments are filed right next to blatantly bigoted ones, e.g. "We all know the food is not as bad as he states. Is it perfect? NO. But it's not as bad as he writes. And all minorities aren't criminals either. And all hoods aren't filled with dangerous people either."

Man, jack in the box is gross af.

If every business owner sees people as flashing numbers then every business owner is an asshole. You can be a human being and also be fiscally responsible.

I don't mind Choi's rhetorical jab. It may not be right, but that doesn't mean it isn't deserved. But my eyes glazed over most of his thing, though.

uh, if you don't see the flashing numbers, then you aren't very fiscally responsible. At best, you have the sense to hire someone or have a partner who does see the costs. The key to being a good employer is to see the flashing numbers and recognize the non-monetary value of your employees, or at least the value of their work.

But it's really nice for someone that's never ran a business or had to manage the finances for one to tell someone who has that they're an asshole. It's always a treat when you are patronizing to me, Bryce.

dude started an "ecosystem" of restaurants based on the success of AQ. oops! no wonder everyone looked like a dollar bill with wings on it.

http://www.mercerrestaurantgroup.com/

http://menustories.com/episodes/aq/

why is it always so sad when people leave up old info on websites? job listings for jobs that no longer exist:

http://www.mercerrestaurantgroup.com/careers/

I'm not patronizing you, Sarah. I'm saying using this rhetoric about people is dehumanizing, and I believe that businesspeople are capable of both looking at the hard realities of numbers AND not using dehumanizing rhetoric at the same time. People are people. A budget is a budget. They have a relationship, but they aren't the same thing.

And I was concurring with shaky' assessment of semmelhack, not calling you an asshole. I was not aware you ran a business as such. I do appreciate you telling me how you feel.

I still think it's arrogant for both you and Shakey who have the luxury of being employees in educational systems and not have to worry about being responsible for managing money and employees to make this judgment.

And unless you didn't actually read my posts, you are being patronizing as fuck.

You seem to be pushing a topsy turvy worldview where teachers are hoity toity pampered elites and being a Brown graduate working in arts non-profit management with accounting as your safety career is some shit-eating salt-of-the-earth calling. You sound really out of touch talking about what a great financial privilege it is to work in public education, and if you followed teacher union news or, you know, the Trump's election and transition, you would realize that nothing is inscribed in stone, not even a public teacher's job security as imagined by every rwnj on twitter ever. I remember when you were moaning about working three hour shifts, which, to be fair, was three more than I was working until I got my job at the school, but please don't lecture me on responsibility and judgment when you are pulling rock n roll Peter Pan shit in your 40s.

And if you want to defend cool boss Semmelhack's rhetoric, which is very clearly paraphrased in the excerpt you and Shakey quoted, then do so, and if you don't, then for the love of god don't quote him, and use those close-reading skills of your own to help you realize that I was writing about Semmelhack's own attitude towards employing and firing his friends and not about the arts non-profit you ran more or less singlehandedly ten plus years ago and which wasn't on my mind in any guise. Reading that same excerpt, I see a guy whose entrepreneurial lifestylism led him to cavalierly employ his friends in the first place, and then forget that those same friends are going to rely on him to eat and not be homeless, and then forget to talk about them as if they were human beings when the thrillist blogger came knocking.

He doesn't say he worried that he wasn't going to be able to pay them, that he was going to have to sit them down and have a hard talk about finances and layoffs. He says he saw all the money they were costing him flashing before him like a videogame score. Maybe, in pursuit of his flimsy, anecdotally-sourced thesis about the restaurant bubble, the thrillist blogger dicked Semmelhack over by eliding everything he said about how guilty and terrible he felt for even thinking that his "friends" were flashing numbers, but I look at this golden boy opening up his exposed-brick seasonal eatery in one of the most expensive real estate markets in the world (and keep in mind that this dude is a Princeton-educated former real estate analyst and therefore basically Satan) and I see a guy who's put up some emotional guards to keep himself from thinking about stuff like that. Whatever hard knocks come, I'm sure this dude can hop in his Tesla and drive to Esalen or Bohemian Grove or wherever and forget about all that ails him while his Guatemalan dishwasher asks the boss at his other job if he can pick up more hours.

This definitely called for you making it extremely personal. Good job.

xp - Uh, dude, you totally crossed the line. I'm sorry but that is such a pathetic dick move to trot out personal details that aren't common knowledge on ilx, because I called you smug. I clearly can't imagine how difficult it is to live on this earth and be as virtuous as you are.

doxxing always a classy response.

a chinese place that provoked gastrointestinal problems

― sarahell, Thursday, January 5, 2017 8:11 PM (yesterday) Bookmark

way to play into stereotypes!