Vogue Takes Separate, But Equal Route In Advising Normal People How To Eat
Efforts to turn Vogue into Vogue: Proletariat continue at full speed. They're now making serious attempts to cater to the fatties and unfamous. Their latest? How to get Normals into awesome exclusive restaurants they otherwise wouldn't normally get into.
The advice? Sit over there, at the bar, far away from the main dining room, where, you know, anyone can sit. Writes Page Six:
In the fashion bible's much-anticipated September issue, food critic Jeffrey Steingarten suggests readers eat at the bars of some of New York's most exclusive restaurants. "Eating at a restaurant bar will get you into places that would otherwise ridicule your attempt to secure a reservation," Steingarten says of Minetta Tavern, Per Se and the Standard Grill. Also: "You don't need to dress up" to sit at the bar, and "bartenders are more well-mannered" and "faster than waiters."
Achtung! You there, with the size four waist! You can graze at the same restaurants we do. Granted, you will sit far from us, in real estate generally reserved for where we elbow you for drinks before we actually eat, but still! Then again, this could just be an abuse of power by Steingarten in order to clear up resto real estate for his friends, but probably not.
The knowledge that Steingarten's on the PPX list of every restaurant in town that would "ridicule your attempt to secure a reservation" is the service industry's equivalent of "the sky is blue," as is the idea of eating at a bar being easier to secure than a table at a restaurant, even to those in, yes, "flyover country." But you have to praise the good intentions of Vogue: at least they're not straight up just making fun of fat people, unlike, say, the New York Times. Strange, but true.