Montmartre Review: Chicken and biscuit at Montmartre and a rant
We ate at Montmartre when the weather was still sunny. They have this back yard area that takes you away to another place that’s almost a dream except it’s either full of yuppies or hipsters. These days I can’t tell them apart because even the hipsters have money or maybe it’s just that yuppies have gotten better wardrobe. But all the customers who visit Montmarte on that summer weekend day had the same idea because absolutely NO ONE sat in the dining room. It’s that thing where you feel like you’re at a neighborhood place where the servers are super friendly and the drinks extra strong. However I don’t eat at any single place enough to become a regular and spending money on alcohol just means it’s not being spent on food. I will say that it’s a shame they changed chefs because the food we had at brunch that day was pretty good, at least my dish was. Steph got a salad and I went with fried chicken.
At a place named Montmartre, you figure fried chicken and biscuits wouldn’t really show up, but I think it’s just playing to the common denominator at the brunch scene – douchebags. So, thank you douchenozzles, for letting me enjoy fried chicken at a restaurant named after a Parisian neighborhood. Thatswhatshesaidamiright? Sorry, I don’t know how exactly douchebags talk. The fried chicken was good though, with a nice crisp exterior. Lately I’ve been finding nearly all fried chicken to be lacking in the salt department. Sprinkling some salt on top after it’s fried is OK but the interior of the chicken is often bland.
The awesome part was definitely the biscuit, which had a nice crust on the bottom. Now that NYC has a biscuit bar restaurant, I guess getting a good biscuit is going to be no big deal. I feel like hardly anyone ever serves a shitty biscuit. Even KFC or Popeyes is OK. Fast food biscuits is often dryer than most people would normally like it but even then it’s good. I’m not sure if the new chef at Montmartre, Michael Toscano, will keep the biscuit the same way or if it’ll stay at all. But damn, it was a good biscuit.
The service and food at Montmartre was pretty good. I have no complaints at all. Some people tip 20%, some people do 15%, I just double the tax because you can’t bother me enough to do math on tipping. NYC sales tax in restaurants is 8.875%. But recently I read this post on Freakonomics. They ended up tipping 10% for crazy bad service and the most popular comment is one that’s often touted amongst those in the food industry – inform the manager instead of tipping below 15%. I think anyone who says that, is pretty much in the camp of people who think Jonathan Martin handled things incorrectly with Richi Incognito.
So here’s how it goes… perhaps from the restaurant’s point of view, the best way to receive complaints is in-person, right at the time of poor service/food received. This point of view is completely ignorant on how the customer feels comfortable doing. There are many sports commentators basically saying Martin is a pussy for not punching Incognito’s face. And that’s what most people in the food industry are like basically. So there’s a bunch of ways of communication, but if you the customer don’t do it EXACTLY how I, the restaurant, prefers? Well then you’re doing it wrong. Really!?!?! Someone page Danny Meyer. Is that hospitality?
Perhaps at some point, restaurants should think about finding better ways to receive complaints if they don’t like lower tips with horrendous service. The onus cannot only be on the customer every time. But let’s face it… I know from cataloging restaurant reviews and restaurant websites that restauranteurs can be really fucking stupid about building a website. Like… raised by a wolf type of stupid. If you’ve given free reign to design your website however you want and its confusing as fuck, I can’t imagine how creative a restaurant would be in soliciting feedback from the customer besides essentially saying to those who don’t complain to a manager’s face that those people have no balls. Really? But there are restaurants and restauranteurs that care and maybe at some point you’ll see a feedback loop that’s industry-standard. Until then, I still think if restaurants think they want better feedback, they should go watch Field of Dreams. If you build it, they will come.
Montmartre158 8th Ave.New York, NY 10011646-596-8838
Posted by Danny on November 7, 2013 at 8:49 pm
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