Meteora - The Gaffe of Kahn II

Oh, my. I just can’t wrap my head around it, it all sounds so freaking pretentious. But friends invited us to go next week, and we want to see our friends, so…I hope we get a good meal. And if not, I hope we at least get a good laugh out of it all. I’ve never been to any of Kahn’s restaurants, so I’ll admit to being curious as hell.

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This quote from the article really hits it on the head:

Meteora is an extension of Kahn’s years-long argument that dinner out should be discussed in the same terms as a night at the theater, or an exhibition of modern art. He and his team go to incredible lengths to create an all-encompassing experience, as memorable and transportive as a walk through a gallery, as transitory as dance, art meant to be observed, considered, and then digested. Some will find the food miraculous, simultaneously foreign and familiar in an eye-opening way, and perhaps some will find it a little too far out.

If you enjoy those kinds of experiences, going to Meteora at least once will be worth your time. If you simply want a nice meal out and delicious food, I would not recommend it right now. It will not consistently deliver that. There are other places that cost less and can deliver a reliably good dining experience. However it is a unique perspective on dining and food that I found intellectually and experientially stimulating.

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Amazing how that also works…

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ad infinitum. His food has always been interesting sometimes very good but rarely great. To me it’s always been the first draft of something great but that somehow never gets refined.

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Note the date! A Thrillist article from the future!

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unverified max lands on meteora

https://www.instagram.com/stories/highlights/17959159696926573/

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What a shitshow! But nevertheless we should all go and form our own opinions.

Four of us (two couples) just went there and actually had a good time. Maybe Max was there on an off night, but for us it was not a shitshow. Definitely some sort of show, though. I don’t have time to go into detail now, but while there were no eye-rolling epiphanies :roll_eyes:, we found most of our food to be decent to quite good, even when we didn’t understand the reason behind some of the combinations. The individual elements were generally tasty, and it was fun to try mixing and matching. The ambiance (other than incense) was comfortable, though I should state that we were at the early seating, with a secluded corner table in the main room under an open skylight, so we could see what we were eating, and at that hour the jungle-drum soundtrack wasn’t very loud (it became obtrusive and annoying by the time we left). It was the culinary equivalent of suspending disbelief for a movie, and I was happy that I was able to experience our dinner with a sense of child-like enjoyment rather than adult cynicism. Okay, the incense was WTF-level obnoxious. And the beverage program IS a shitshow–offensively poor QPR, and I hope they fix that. I wouldn’t rush back there right away, but I wouldn’t mind taking a new-to-LA visitor just to see how they react, and I’ll be interested to see if and how the place evolves. I guess YMMV. Go with a sense of fun, and form your own opinion; just make sure you go someplace else for cocktails first! Pro tip: I always carry sea salt in my purse, comes in handy sometimes. :wink:

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I agree. I know it isn’t a popular sentiment around here, but I actually liked the food at both Meteora and Vespertine. (I say that somewhat begrudgingly—when I went to Vespertine, I didn’t want to like it because everything about the ordeal seemed so pretentious and over-the-top, but I couldn’t deny the food was very good.)

At Meteora (and Vespertine), all the stuff beyond the food isn’t really my speed (the décor, the descriptions on the menu, the incense, and so on), but I will give credit to Jordan Kahn for the quality of the food. Everything we got was good to very good.

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funnily enough so does unverified max

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But is it Himalayan salt? Or Hawaiian lava? :slight_smile:

Does he? Funny!

For me, it’s Maldon. For unverified max, maybe whatever Salt Bae uses?

Edit: I looked it up. What do you know, Salt Bae uses Maldon, “as many as five giant buckets of Maldon every week.” Isn’t Google fun?

so they had three dishes and left?

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these guys are the worst. they are so bad at what they do, it’s astonishing.

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They also mentioned that they had the wildflower porridge bread and the morels, though these weren’t listed in the final Food Rundown at the end, for some reason.

I guess anyone can create a website and post opinions & pictures.
I assume when they started it was just them and Eater, so they gained traction just based on availability.

I trust their reviews as much as I trust a one year old with a flamethrower.

Anyone remember their Angler review?

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To be fair ‘pretentious and bland’ isn’t really a ‘hot take’ Jordan Kahn prefers to season his food with things besides salt. Sometimes it works often it doesn’t

Four. Sounds like they might have ordered more if they hadn’t all been bad.

Going in a couple weeks, hear they use stemless thick wine glasses!!?