Bryan Curtis: ‘My Dinner With Zagat’
Travel Blog • Michael Yessis • 01.30.07 | 8:48 AM ET
Slate’s ‘Middlebrow’ columnist Bryan Curtis spent an evening out in New York City with Tim and Nina Zagat, which he describes as “a bit like sailing the coast of South America with Ferdinand Magellan.” The Zagats are the publishers of some of the most influential dining guides in the United States, and Curtis’s excursion provides much insight into their powers. Their books are everywhere, and when you’re a Zagat, an open table in a crowded restaurant and fawning fellow diners seem the norm.
Consider this moment at Mario Batali’s restaurant Del Posto:
After dinner, Zagat was cornered by a man who was speaking excitably in Italian. Zagat could not quite make out what he was saying, but the gist of it seemed to be that the Italian was involved in the food industry back home, and his life had been touched in some small but important way by the Zagat food guides. Greeting Zagat was an honor on par with meeting the renowned Batali, and the man waved over his friends, and soon a dozen Italians were chirping and smiling at Zagat. Zagat posed for photographs and, when the Italians’ wonderment was exhausted, he handed them all Zagat guides.
And if you’re wondering what Tim Zagat looks like, you’ll appreciate Curtis’s Zagat-like opening line:
Tim Zagat—a “well-built but not portly” man, with “hawk-like features” and the garrulous manner of “a favorite uncle of one of your friends from college”—has the good fortune to work around the corner from the Time Warner Center at 10 Columbus Circle in New York City.
Related on World Hum:
* Jon Stewart on the Zagat Prison Guide
* ‘Nothing Makes Me Laugh as Much as the Zagat Dining Guide for Los Angeles’
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Michael Yessis is the cofounder and coeditor-in-chief of World Hum.
David Baggot 02.23.07 | 12:22 PM ET
Here’s a new story on Zagat that might be worth checking out. Certainly casts Tim Zagat and co. in a different light than the Slate story….
http://www.smartmoney.com/mag/index.cfm?story=march2007-zagat