Welcome to our weekly recap of Bravo’s Best New Restaurant*, where we share our unapologetically opinionated musings on the ups and downs of dining out. This week, we’re taking a look at episode no. 2: The battle between Miami's The Federal and Austin's Swift's Attic.*
In the restaurant industry, taking risks can pay off in a big way—even borderline-crazy risks like introducing five new dishes on your menu for the first time while you're being filmed for national television. That was the takeaway from the second episode of Bravo's Best New Restaurant, which aired last night.
At first glance, the episode's competitors—The Federal and Swift's Attic—seem pretty similar: both are relatively small restaurants with a focus on small plates and reputations for outstanding service and playful takes on familiar dishes. At The Federal, chef and partner Cesar Zapata's focus on dressed-up comfort food results in creative hits like the Jar o' Duck, which is literally a jar of duck rillette with marshmallow fluff and candied sweet potato. Swift's Attic chef Mat Clouser turns up the whimsy with unusual combos like the charred edamame appetizer sprinkled with Pop Rocks.
So why did The Federal get to claim top honors on last night's episode? Zapata's decision to start serving five new menu items during the episode's stressful "pressure challenge"—in which a rush of diners all come in to eat at once—was aggressive to the point where "it almost backfired," according to judge Jeffrey Zurofsky. (Think about cooking a recipe you've never made before for an important dinner party.) But Zapata's innovative food spawned plenty of awe, and his "phenomenal" buttermilk biscuits were what really showcased his culinary prowess to the judges.
Zurofsky says knowing that Zapata could master something as basic as a biscuit while also producing well-executed modern dishes allowed him to take a no-holds-barred approach to his dining experience. "Roast me a chicken or make me an omelet first, and then I'll trust everything else. That was such a great biscuit that everything else from there opened up for me," he says.
Where Zapata took a (risky) chance, Clouser tried to play it extra-safe during Swift's Attic's pressure challenge by dialing back the seasoning across all of the kitchen's dishes—the result of old memories he recalled from a diner complaining the food was too salty. There weren't any surprises on the Swift's menu, which featured signature dishes like squid fries and pork cheeks, but the judges and several pressure challenge diners noted the lack of seasoning, and judge Maggie Nemser had to send back her edamame because it was undercooked.
"It’s rules 1, 2, and 3: Taste, taste, taste," Zurofsky says of his and Nemser's dining experience at Swift's. "We noticed it because even with something like the edamame dish, when you know those are coming out to our table, [Clouser] at minimum should have picked one out and tried it."
Another reason The Federal won: its calm and cool general manager Ani Meinhold, who is also Zapata's business and life partner. A hospitality pro with stints at luxury establishments like the Four Seasons and the Ritz-Carlton under her belt, Meinhold didn't buckle even when she was faced with unexpected crises.
"At the very beginning of that challenge we had 40 menus, and by the time Maggie and Jeffrey came to sit we were down to one," she recalls of the pressure challenge. "I literally got menus fresh off the printer to present to them, and that was just in the first 45 seconds of the challenge. I should have printed 100 of them."
And although unexpected situations are par for the course at a small operation like The Federal's, some crises—like a really rude server—are beyond anything Meinhold normally expects. On last night's episode, Meinhold had to watch one of her servers be flat-out unpleasant to mystery diner Aldo Lanzillotta, chef and owner of Wvrst in Toronto, who was wearing a hidden camera the whole time.
"I almost died in that chair when I was watching all of that," she says. "I was nothing short of mortified."
Meinhold has since shown that secret camera tape to her current staff as a lesson in what not to do when providing good service. It goes to show how much of a restaurant's non-food operations can affect whether diners leave with a good impression—or a bad one.
Best New Restaurant airs Wednesdays at 10 p.m. on Bravo.