@jose.andres G that "Club" TFO of your "Restaurant"

At least I was prepared for The Bazaar last night. In prepping for my visit to Jose Andres L.A. Hotspot, I had searched Al Gore's Information Superhighway and found plenty of reviews: The L.A. Times gave it four-stars, many said the food was outstanding but the service was uneven but the most worrisome thing was the seating issue. There were plenty of horror stories about how people were seated thirty mins, forty-five mins, even an hour and a half AFTER their reservations. And I'm not talking about some post at Yelp where a bunch of wannabe foodies all got aboard the Bitchtrain and tried to one-up each other about how long they had to wait. Just lots of different descriptions of people experiences at The Bazaar with a common thread.

That being said, even though I was braced for a long wait, that didn't make it that much better. Granted, I was in a slightly better place than the couple that were standing in front of us who probably believed the hostess when she told them 'It'd just be a few minutes'. I knew better.

The basic problem is twofold: they're taking reservations they shouldn't actually be taking (i.e. overbooking) and there's no place to sit while you wait you extra 30-60 minutes (for the record, we waited until 10:50 for 10:15 reservations although we did arrive ten minutes early). The latter is the ironically amusing part because the bar area is HUGE – at least as big as the Rojo area we dined at, but the Bar Centro is, currently, one of THE hotspots in L.A., so it was packed with douchebags and tanorexics. Seriously, by the time we finally got a place to sit in the bar area on the outer, outer edge The Hottie had already gone over to talk to the hostess to see how much longer it would be (i.e. 20-30 mins). Now, normally I LIVE for places with eye candy as does The Hottie but, sadly, I was so annoyed that I couldn't even really enjoy the scene (and it IS quite the scene) :*(

The overbooking problem is something they COULD do something about but, apparently, they just don't care. The Bazaar is a new restaurant but it's not THAT new that it shouldn't have simple aspects like reservations figured out by now, so, clearly, they're fine with making reservations they shouldn't be taking and having patrons wait. It also self perpetuates: when people have to wait what they perceive as too long a time for their table they tend to stay at said table for an extra-long time to justify the wait. One might argue that it's a very Euro/Spanish thing to do but, to that, I call bullsh|t. If Keller or Mina opened an “New American Style” restaurant in Spain, they wouldn't expect the patrons to follow U.S. style dining rules and make them show up on time, order quickly and leave promptly. Slow and casual may be the norm in Spain, here it's just bad and, at a restaurant like The Bazaar that has visions of Michelin Stars dancing in it's head, simply inexcusable.

So while I SHOULD be writing about the awesome Cotton Candy Fois Gras, the frozen caprahina drink made tableside with liquid nitrogen or the Tortilla de Patatas “New Way” but, instead, I'm ranting about the craptacular clusterfuck that is The Bazaar's front of the house that took so long to seat us that The Bazaar's back of the house closed on us. Yeap, we never even had a chance to go to the Blanca “formal” part of the restaurant or the Patisserie for desserts. We were still at Rojo (tapas/small plates) when we were informed that the line was shutting down so, if we had any more items we wanted to try that we should get the order in ASAP.

Bottom Line: If THAT'S what passes for four-stars in La-La-Land they must be R-E-A-L-L-Y desperate for places to eat or have the bar set short-bus low. FAIL!

P.S. Still on track for 3 Michelin starred places in one night. /fingerscrossed.