The first exterior shot of the Minetta!
You probably don’t need to look at our archive of construction shots to know we’ve been a little obsessed with Minetta Tavern, prompting one commenter to ask, “are you gonna post something every time Keith McNally scratches his balls?” Well, no. Today in the Times, McNally lets everyone know how he feels about this kind of stalking coverage. “Generally the more one reads about a place in advance of eating there the more resistant one is to taking it seriously … It’s like telling a date you’re great in bed before the clothes come off. It leads to nothing but disappointment. (Well it does in my case.)”
On the other hand, McNally kindly let us in to take proper interior photographs. And while Ken Friedman tells the Times that he wanted to discourage bloggers from covering the John Dory, he doesn’t mention that he kept a blog of his own, chronicling the minute details of construction [Update: Friedman tells us that he mentioned the blog to the Times reporter but it didn’t make it into the story]. Of course, we linked to that blog often — so if he was trying to evade coverage, he didn’t do a great job of it. Safe to say, restaurateurs have a love-hate relationship with blogs. What do you think? Do construction and licensing updates, and columns like the Launch, prevent you from truly appreciating or enjoying a restaurant once it opens, or would it dissuade you from going?
Opening Night and Already Old News [NYT]
Read more posts by Daniel Maurer
Filed Under: keith mcnally, ken friedman, minetta tavern, Navel-gazing, the john dory
