The LTHForum Great Neighborhood Restaurants awards, which I largely invented, are now in the process of renewing and even re-renewing numerous past designees. Is your pulse pounding yet? Are you on the edge of your seat, waiting to see if Xni-Pec or Barbara Ann’s are still any good?

No, you are not. That’s because the overwhelming likelihood is that every single past designee will be renewed. You are all Top Chefs! The awards were designed, in part, to spur discussion, but at the moment they have the effect of smothering it in tedium, encouraging people to post vague words of support which are rarely rooted in a recent visit (look at the Cafeteria Marianao threads, where GWiv’s 2009 word of support for renewal is practically the first post since Gwiv’s 2007 word of support for renewal) but providing no incentive for anyone to stick their neck out and knock a place based on actual experience, or even question if anyone goes there any more.

I don’t blame anyone for this, but it’s a clear structural problem that is pretty much guaranteed to keep the list bloated up with whatever people were talking about four years ago. And the more foreordained the results are, the less and less likely it is that anyone will say anything interesting to challenge a designee in the future. Clearly a new structure for the renewal process is needed, one that reintroduces some drama into the mix and encourages people to participate, but in the meantime, I have a suggestion for something the judges could do that would surprise everyone, get some press attention and make the awards lively and vital again:

Vote down “Little” Three Happiness.

Could LTHForum actually torpedo the place that gave it its name? By the stated criteria for continued designation as a GNR, yes, absolutely. LTH was always a mixed bag as a restaurant— you could have a very good meal there IF you followed Gwiv’s instructions on how to tell them how to make a good meal, ordered only what he said to order, and doctored it with his chili oil, kept in the fridge there for Friends of Gary. Compare that to Lao Sze Chuan or Sun Wah, the current overwhelming board favorites in the Chinese department, where you practically can’t order something, even randomly, that isn’t wonderful.

Precisely for that reason, it seems obvious from a review of posts in the last two years that Lao Sze Chuan and Sun Wah have taken the place that LTH once held, even among its strongest partisans. Only newbies go there and, usually, are disappointed by the mediocre food they try ordering on their own, leaving them feeling burned and hesitant to use the GNR list in the future. What could make a better statement of how the LTHForum Great Neighborhood Restaurants are a living, constantly evolving and vibrant list than by retiring, with thanks and fond memories which will live on in the form of old posts, a restaurant once beloved but now, in the cold light of day, supplanted by others.

It’s supposed to be good news for us food adventurers when we discover new favorites that make old favorites seem not so good. It’s time for the GNR awards to reflect that constant spirit of discovery and critical reevaluation— not to offer the opinions of 2004, preserved forever.

Mike’s List of GNR Renewal Candidates Which May Be Very Good, But Haven’t Met The Standard of Continued Trial, Discussion And Praise in the Renewal Period of 2007-9:
Barbara Ann’s
White Palace Grill
Ed’s Potsticker House
Fabulous Noodles
“Little” Three Happiness
Cafeteria Marianao
Klas
Riviera
Sabatino’s
Amanacer Tapatio
La Oaxaquena
Deta’s Cafe
Il Mulino
La Pasadita
Xni-Pec