We're Number.......

What’s up with us Americans? What’s up with our obsession with “rankings” and who is “number one”? Every fall and winter, people awake Monday morning to worry about which bunch of college guys won a basketball/football game with another bunch of college guys, and what happened to the “rankings”. Endless haggling over who should be “number one” and why this team is and that team is not. Of course, ultimately it comes down to money (it always does) as placement in say, the tortured BCS games determines how many millions each institution derives from it’s so called student athletes. In basketball, rankings determines the hallowed seeding in the March Madness with everybody wanting to be a Number ONE Seed. Why does somebody have to be the alleged best? It can change by some detail, an injury, a bad call, what’s the big deal? There is no such thing.

And, it isn’t limited to the maligned sports community either. Travel magazines: “the Ten Best Hotels in the World!”; Consumer Reports makes tons of money every month "ranking" garbage disposals; Car magazines routinely award Car of the Year. Everybody gets in on the game. The world of culinary arts is no better. February ’09 Washingtonian Magazine’s cover is devoted to “”100 Very Best Restaurants” a little bubble proclaims “Who’s Number One?”; a late issue of Imbibe: “100 Best Places to Drink Beer in America; cover of the May ’09 Food and Wine: “best recipes from the world’s best cooking teachers” (italics theirs). Last October’s St. Louis magazine (I think I mentioned in a former feeder); “The 35 Best Restaurants in St. Louis” another bubble – “Our Restaurant of the Year”. May '09 Bon Appetit (the Travel Issue (what?)): "Best of the USA" I could go on.

What’s the deal? Is the presumption that the general public is so stupid as to be incapable of deciding by their own tastes what they like? The uneducated rabble will blindly follow whatever “they” recommend as a restaurant or dish and go like sheep? I think it also revolves around the American (?) mentality that everything has to be relegated to a “winner” and a “loser”. Anything but the best or what is deemed number one is not worth considering. Nobody wants to be associated with a loser, so get that list, just find who is number one, don’t think, just buy, eat, go, and by golly you therefore are also a winner. Maybe I’m too old. Hey, Bobby Flay – if you “lose” a throw down, you still make a pretty damn good set of ribs..

So it was with that mentality that I got a breath of fresh air when my latest issue of Saveur arrived. The cover of the “Dining in America” -(not eating, mind you, but dining) features “12 Restaurants that Matter”. Not who’s number one, which one is the best, but places that matter. Is there a difference? I think so. The article begins by explaining that these restaurants were chosen (okay, somebody had to choose) because they have “profoundly influenced the way we think about food.” Some are included because they are enduring landmarks – Commander’s Palace in New Orleans; Pioneers that show us how wonderful locally grown ingredients can taste – Blue Hill at Stone Farms; a thoughtful translation of an indigenous cuisine – Slanted Door in San Francisco. Most of the places I have not heard of (Musso and Frank; Canlis), some I have (Joel Robuchon; Topolobambo). The point is that they did not claim that they were there because they were “the best”, they were there because they matter.

Anyway, I wanted to get that off my chest. “Best” is a relative term, not absolute. We need to settle, and, as a friend of mine used to caution: “we must learn to be content”. To thine own self be true (that was from another friend from another time).

DFD for important places