Wow!

A well written review and enough information to make me never want to visit Gutman's!

goodness gracious, will it ever end?

sounds like a cook straight outta bic(notice i didnt say chef), has a friend with money and they decided they should start a restaurant, HOW FUN! And one has a sister who is a sophmore at Towson majoring in communications, and she is marketing by calling the papers, for a review during the "soft opening".

None has any idea how to design, run, market, or cook it seems.

Maybe a soft opening is determining whether or not they should actually open the place, at all?

I wish they had a more zoomed out picture of the property, because even the picture with the article is pathetic. The door reminds me of a vacant doctors office.

It actually looks a lot worse than that from the street, KwsN.

If you haven't reviewed there yet, EL, we should have a meet up on the night you review, a la Midnight Sun Social.

We can also do the "I am Spartacus" bit if the staff catches on that they are being reviewed...

Count me in. EL

Best part of the article is OMGs top-ten alternate names for Gutmans... I think I'm going to run out now and trademark Burpy Pete's Unctuous Plate!

I just street viewed it on Google Maps. Does it still have no signage?

Oh, and btw, BOOO to Verification boxes, pain in da buttox. I know, I know, it makes your job easier.

zyrtex Schweitzer's? I really have to type that?

@owlmeat

I would eat at oily spatzle as long as it was truffle oil with cave aged emmenthaler.

D@L Flash Mob at Gutmans.

Now, I just need to remember what a flash mob is.

I think the city paper hated it.

Isn't that where we all show up with our polaroids, and take pictures, RoCK?

I assumed that the restaurant was named in honor of Kasper Gutman, the corpulent crook played by Sidney Greenstreet in "The Maltese Falcon." And they'd serve up "the stuff that dreams are made of." Instead, it sounds like there's another black bird in the offing -- and the proprietors are gonna' eat crow.

Ten thousand? We were talking about a lot more money than this.

Yes sir, we were, but this is genuine coin of the realm. With a dollar of this, you can buy ten dollars of talk.

flash mob

btw, all this talk about Gutman's brings to mind Brager Gutman's the clothing store that I think used to be in The Plaza when I was a kid.

Joyce - The name also made me think of Brager Gutmans. When we were kids we shopped there but Mom made us hide the bags in the trunk until dark so the neighbors didn't see the name on the bags. Who elses Mom turned their kids into shopping snobs at about age 7-8?

Joyce W.
Thanks for the flash mob link. Made me smile:-)

If we are going to flash mob Gutman's, we better start practicing our dance moves.

Oh, much like getting someone else’s fortune from a cookie at a Chinese restaurant, I think I got Lissa's CAPTCHA: Marxists Evoy.

I'm more of an anarchist than a Marxist, RoCK. Marxists are too hierarchical and One True Way-y for my taste.

Great...now I'm picturing 20 or so people from D@L doing the Sprockets dancing thing.

KitKat, at least your family went to Brager Gutmans: we were forced to do the same with our Epstein's bags.

The result is being as parsimonious as a Great Depression survivor which almost had me reconsidering my values through the nineties.

(captcha is a kludge to avoid the hard work of actually compiling and integrating the several DB's; iow a cheap cop out)

MrRational - Ohhh, I forgot about Epstein's. That was in the shopping mix also - sneaking all those bags around. Guess Mom never throught about savings Hutzlers-Stewarts bag and transferring the items.

the hard work of actually compiling and integrating the several DB's

Does that mean what I think it means? How would one even do that? Sounds like something that would involve the services of Tony Soprano's trash disposal company.

It might be a corporate shill, but I still prefer this flash mob.

What can I say? I did like it. I shoulda put a ring on it.

El Generalissimo - I almost chose that one too!

captcha -Dear hermit

Laura Lee: The Sun has at least four (perhaps more?) separate database files of known registered users with the same basic set of identifying information but none of which are set up to "talk" with each other.

1) On the paper itself we are recognized as a registered user and that allows us to comment on news articles. (I recently changed that to MrRational btw)
2) We have the several blogs that we participate in and recognize us to some degree (even if some blog owners aren't as enlightened as the wonderful EL and hold back posts for days and even have unstated editing policies for not posting comments at all).
3) There is the participatory anarchy of the Talk Forums but which has the most effective registration control and allows private messaging so comments like this could be between just us two.
4) The Mobbies thing which I didn't participate in because I'd had enough of multiple registrations by then.

All four are largely all the same pool of readers and posters. It is irrational (a pet peeve of mine).

I got gloss on my lips (lips)
A man on my hips (hips)
Hold me tighter than my Dereon jeans
Actin' up (up)
Drinkin' my cup (cup)
I can care less what you think
I need no permission
Did I mention?
Don't pay him any attention
Cause you had your turn (turn)
And now you're gonna learn (learn)
What it really feels like to miss me...

Solange, does Beyonce know you're doing her song?

just for Joyce

I'm looking for a hard headed woman,
One who will take me for myself,
And if I find my hard headed woman,
I won't need nobody else, no, no, no.

I'm looking for a hard headed woman,
One who will make me do my best,
And if I find my hard headed woman
I know the rest of my life will be blessed

captcha
Times kingston

You really won't review a place because it got a bad review somewhere else? Interesting. Says a lot about you.

I was hoping Robert could go and review the food he doesn't eat there.

I don't believe I said that. I would give them a chance to regroup, but I wasn't even saying that. I was just making a little joke about how awful the review made it sound. EL

Joyce: Great minds, hon.

Also, I swear I haven't been practicing the choreography on late work nights.

Promise.

No, really.

I shopped two Brager Gutmans: Lexington & Liberty and Alameda Shopping Center. A friend who did the downtown window displays called it "Brah-jay Goot-mann." What a hoot!

As to Gutman's eatery (I just can't say restaurant after Richard's review), you couldn't pay me to darken the door. Talk about damning with faint praise ... .

Captcha is "Dr debby" -- whee!!

Apologies if I misread the implication. Seemed like you were writing the whole place off. It certainly sounded like an unpleasant experience for the City Paper, but if I were a reviewer, I would avoid others' reviews so it wouldn't influence my experience. I imagine that's tough to do, though.

I don't think I've ever seen you address this: Do you think it's fair to rate a place after just one visit? I'm sure it's for fiscal and time reasons, and there's also probably the thought that 'this dining experience is simply an example of what I experienced', but I often wonder how legitimate that is. Surely, a restaurant's decor doesn't change, and if you order enough dishes you can get an idea of the kitchen. But service can vary so wildly (as can, to some degree, the food), and the variables can be countless. I think of all the places I've been to, and how different the service and food can be from one time to the next.

Just curious about your take on it :)

I have addressed it in an earlier post, although I can't find it. The bottom line is that it's not my decision and not something I can do anything about. The best I can do is try to make it obvious in my reviews that I'm only going once (occasionally twice). One thing's for sure: With the company in Chapter 11, that's not going to change any time soon.

Normally I do avoid other's reviews, but Sam pointed it out to me, and I couldn't resist reading it from his description. I also know reviews like this can be a wake up call and turn a restaurant around. Or not. EL

I just read the City Paper review, and the comments are quite humorous. I wonder what CA&E employees posted them?

I have to agree. Owl Meat is in top form there; don't miss them. EL

Thank you Elizabeth.
B>)

Thank you for the great response...As I said, I hadn't seen it mentioned before, and I'm fascinated by the process.

Have a great weekend

Kenneth, it comes up every 2 months, like clockwork. It is a perennial complaint.

Frankly, I'm not sure two visits is much better than one. To really judge a restaurant, you need multiple people visiting a different times of the day and week over several weeks or months.

Ain't gonna happen.

Kenneth, I tried looking for that post also, but my manual search skills are a little rusty. You might be interested in reading the posts from July 7, 2009 "Top 10 things to Expect When Dining With a Restaurant Critic" and July 14, 2009 "The power of a restaurant critic" for some more insight on how EL does her job.