The clip arrived with my name and address printed in black ink on a plain sheet of white paper. Attached was a column written by ”Professor” Nick Nickolas for the January issue of Restaurant Hospitality, an industry magazine.
In the article ”Professor” Nickolas rails about his least favorite people in the world, restaurant critics. Nickolas, who owns Nick`s Fishmarket here in Chicago, bestows his professorship upon himself, then tells readers he`ll teach them ”a little lesson” about how newspapers work.
”The only requirement that newspapers have about what they print is that it`s got to be interesting,” Nickolas writes, complete with italics for emphasis. ”Not true. Not factual. Not right. Not nice. Interesting. And that`s it.
”Now take a poor dumb schmuck like me. What do I do? I just run a simple little seafood restaurant in Chicago called Nick`s Fishmarket. I just came to Chicago nine years ago and moved into an area–the Loop–that everybody said was dead and I made it bloom. I just opened a restaurant that everyone said was too expensive to attract crowds and filled it up–twice a day, every day. I just won another award to add to every other award our industry gives out. I just set a standard for seafood variety and freshness that every other restaurant in the city has to meet to play in my league.”
It may surprise some people around Chicago that Nick`s Fishmarket singlehandedly made the Loop bloom. It may surprise some of Nickolas`
competitors, the ones who offer dozens of fresh seafood items that Nickolas doesn`t, that Nick`s Fishmarket sets the standard for variety.
After railing some more about how it isn`t interesting to give Nick`s Fishmarket a great review because such reviews already have been written, eventually Nickolas gets to his real point:
”I recently got a two-star review in a Chicago paper,” he writes. ”You know who else got two stars? A restaurant run by an athlete. This guy opens a restaurant and gets two stars. Give me a break. The guy is a great athlete, but what he knows about restaurants wouldn`t fit in his jockstrap. If that restaurant is still here after the football season, I`ll eat my pigskin. I`m insulted to be in the same group with him.”
Here are the facts. First, Nickolas chooses not to name the critic that insulted him because ”I`m sick of making stars of these jokers.” However, I am the only critic to write a recent two-star (which stands for very good)
review of Nick`s Fishmarket. It appeared in the Chicago Tribune Restaurant Guide, a book published last fall by Academy Chicago.
Second, I also wrote a two-star review of Ditka`s. True, what Mike Ditka knows about restaurants probably wouldn`t fill the piece of clothing to which Nickolas so colorfully refers. However, Ditka ain`t dumb. He hired a veteran restaurateur and club owner, Jimmy Rittenberg, to manage his restaurant.
Third, by my reckoning the football season ended several weeks ago for the Giants and the Broncos and, unfortunately, a bit earlier than that for the Bears.
I stopped by Ditka`s last week. Lo and behold the restaurant was still doing a land office business.
Get some salt and pepper, Nick. You`re gonna need it.
Nickolas`s tirade goes on: The critics ”don`t know what the hell they`re doing. They don`t even deny it. One Chicago jackass writes, `Reviewing restaurants is a subjective business at best.` Damn right. And at worst, it`s a payoff, payola, corruption, and it stinks.”
Nickolas knows very well that Tribune restaurant critics visit anonymously and don`t accept even as much as a free meal, much less payoffs.
Given that I`m the jackass to whom Nickolas refers, I will quote what he left out of his column: the following passages from the book that explain how restaurants as different as Nick`s Fishmarket and Ditka`s can both rate two stars:
”Reviewing restaurants is a subjective business at best. What I like, you may not like at all. What I dislike you may love. That doesn`t really matter as long as I am consistent. You can read my reviews and judge my opinions by your own standards, which will tell you how likely you are to like or dislike a restaurant I review . . . .
”Some confusion inevitably arises when a little neighborhood storefront Thai restaurant gets two stars and a beautiful, sophisticated French restaurant gets only one. How can this be?
”. . . First, on an absolute basis the humble Thai eatery may serve better food than the glitzy French place. Second, the following legend appears with every Tribune review: `This rating reflects the reviewer`s opinion of the food in relation to price compared to similar restaurants in the Chicago area.`
”Therefore, the two-star Thai restaurant is rated in relationship to other Thai restaurants, while the French restaurant competes with other French restaurants. The two do not compete with each other for a rating.”
Neither does Nick`s Fishmarket compete with Ditka`s for its star rating. They compete with other similar restaurants.
On that basis the only seafood house in town to beat Nick`s Fishmarket out is Shaw`s with three stars.
I suspect Nickolas himself sent the anonymously addressed clip of his column hoping he would get a little free publicity. There, you have it,
”Professor”–the truth. So when`s the pigskin tasting?
