"Looking around the deafening dining room's banquettes full of overengineered outfits, lamenting the apparent extinction of the under-$10 glass of wine, Eren and I admitted to each other that neither one of us was into this. At all. The restaurant, the name of which I've forgotten, is long gone, but at that moment in time, it was marketed everywhere as cool. But cool, when it comes to dining out, is visceral, and this did not strike either of us as cool, just loud and overpriced."
"I left New York for Berlin in 2014, and when my husband and I want a good steak, we head to an affordable steakhouse on an unremarkable street lined with Plattenbau, social housing built by the former German Democratic Republic. The restaurant is always a little too bright, nobody is carrying a logo bag, and the place does a great filet mignon and fries."
Preferences favor ordinary, tasty, untrendy restaurants over marketed, loud, overpriced hotspots. A noisy, overhyped NoHo restaurant marketed as cool felt neither comfortable nor affordable. Two diners preferred secret-feeling, plainly visible spots with mediocre lighting and frumpy decor that nonetheless served satisfying food. As age increased, attraction to visiting supposedly hot places diminished. In Berlin, an affordable steakhouse on a Plattenbau-lined street provides consistent filet mignon and fries. In New York, a bar-grill-sushi place on the Upper West Side serves as a reliable fallback. Younger crowds might label such places “mid.”
Read at Slate Magazine
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