Renewals 2018

The surveys summarizing the GNR renewals are now complete. Currently there are 148 GNRs. Here's how I propose we split it up based on the voting.

Remove places with fewer than 5 votes for "Still a GNR". 11 total.
Cajun Connection
La Quebrada (California)
La Quebrada (Aurora)
Lao Sze Chuan (Downers Grove)
Cho Jung
Alegria's
Inovasi
Mana Food Bar
New Asia
Rip's Tavern
Sol de Mexico

Discuss places with 5-9 votes for "Still a GNR" with at least one vote for "No Longer Great". 13 total.
Izakaya Mita
La Quebrada (Cicero)
Podhalanka
Taqueria Los Gallos #2
Lao Sze Chuan (Archer)
Pastoral (Lake St)
Burt's Place
Cafe Orchid
Marie's Pizza & Liquors
Maxwell Street Market
Monti's
Pastoral (Broadway Ave)
Violet Hour

Also, in a couple instances the question of new ownership was raised. My preference is to leave those places be for now until there has been enough time to see if the new owners can figure things out.

Please review the proposed changes above and comment as you deem appropriate.

-Onur, for the GNRs

I'm a little concerned that we're switching from an active-no to a lack of active-yes for elimination. Previously, places that nobody cared about that were GNRs stayed as GNRs.

The case I'm thinking of in particular is Inovasi: there aren't a lot of posts on it, but there are several positive posts in the last year. I was there last fall, and it was still delicious. I'd still steer someone there if they're looking for fine dine in the Lake Forest area. I'm kind of baffled at the "No longer" and "Never was" voters, since there isn't a negative mention of it anywhere on the main thread.

Marie's is the best even if the pizza isn't! It bleeds Chicago, just like Vito and Nicks.

Joel it's a good concern and something I'd like to hear from more people about. In the case of Inovasi, there were 3 votes for "still a gnr", 3 votes for "no longer great", and 3 votes for "never a gnr". I didn't consider this one that close of a call for that reason.

I agree with Joel’s concerns.

I recall being reassured that I wouldn’t need to write a post about places I go and the food is still great but the removals gives me pause.

pairs4life wrote:I agree with Joel’s concerns.

I recall being reassured that I wouldn’t need to write a post about places I go and the food is still great but the removals gives me pause.

Yeah, seeing this play out, I also have the same concerns . . . concerns I didn't foresee when the plan was initially presented.

=R=

Unfortunately Inovasi is sort of hit with a double whammy: It's got few "Yes" votes, and as many "Never Was" and "Isn't Anymore" votes. It's those "No" votes that really kill it, and the recent posts don't fit with that at all.

Frankly, I'm not sure how useful the 'never was' option is. Given how we've handled renewals for the last several cycles, this opens the door to an entirely new way of doing things.

=R=

ronnie_suburban wrote:Yeah, seeing this play out, I also have the same concerns . . . concerns I didn't foresee when the plan was initially presented.=R=

I have concerns as well. Just to pick two, Rip's has 39 never visited as it is located deep in butt-F Egypt territory, which should be taken into consideration in the overall and is, in my opinion, a solid GNR and Marie's, old-school, quirky with terrific thin crust pizza, a full fledged GNR if there ever was one.

Looking at LTH GNR's from a strictly quantitative viewpoint seems seems a sterile perspective.

G Wiv wrote:I have concerns as well. Just to pick two, Rip's has 39 never visited as it is located deep in butt-F Egypt territory, which should be taken into consideration in the overall and is, in my opinion, a solid GNR

Just to add a data point, Rip's has zero "No longer Great" and zero "Never a GNR"

Rip's has 39 never visited as it is located deep in butt-F Egypt territory

A two-hour drive southwest of the Loop, yes, but another four hours' drive north of little Egypt, and why that territory or any place else deserves the "butt-F" label is beyond me, and obviously it's not a label that's going to help motivate anyone to make the trip. The Chicagocentrism of the board is, or is not, depending on your perspective, worthy of a separate discussion, but if "never visited" votes are going to count against existing GNRs that you need a car to get to, we should prepare to say goodbye to Stop 50 and Well's Brothers, among others, and we might consider discussing why we even spend time discussing any place "Beyond Chicagoland."

Katie wrote:and why that territory or any place else deserves the "butt-F" label is beyond me

I should have simply stated 41.3825° N, 89.2190° W rather than attempt to interject humor into the discussion.

I appreciate the feedback. I expected there would be some aspects of this process that would make some uncomfortable and I hope after the dust settles we can all discuss ways to improve the process for next time. One of the best parts of doing it this way has been the huge number of people that have had a chance to participate. 61 different LTHers participated in the surveys.

At this stage, I would like to focus on discussing the GNRs rather than the process. Please review the list at the top and comment on what you think should or should not be a GNR. The intention was never to use the surveys blindly. The results were just a starting point for the discussion that will take place in this thread.

-Onur, for the GNRs

I'm interested in the choices made on other votes for the "no longer" or "never was" - for instance how does that combine with the person making those choices with how recently the person visited? For instance, did they say no longer but haven't been in a year? Or never was and then also never visited?

Reading through the above, I'm going to assume we are to comment on all renewals, regardless of number of upvotes. I make an annual visit to Cajun Connection, and can vouch that the food, ambience and service remains consistent with years past. Still a GNR.

I think the biggest question we have to address is what to do about places that aren't being visited very often by LTHers. In the past we kept places unless there was a clear downhill alert. If no one is visiting, how will we ever know if a place is going downhill or not? If others feel that we should try to keep places with few visits if we have no clear reason to remove them, then please speak up. Personally, I think few posts and survey results indicating that very few are visiting is reason enough to remove a GNR.

As for the use of the surveys, I think many are hesitant are to speak up, in particular if what they have to say is negative. If someone voted for "No Longer GNR", that is meaningful to me. Should that person have to write a post describing why they feel that way? Not in my opinion. I don't see this as sterile, rather I see it as a way to bring new voices into the conversation.

Most of my opinions were captured in the surveys, but I'd like discuss a couple places.

Alegria's - I think the place is still great and I haven't noticed any change since the name change. I wonder if the soft support was a result of people not realizing the name changed.

Maxwell Street - I'm on the record as thinking that Maxwell Street is no longer destination dining for Mexican food. I love the atmosphere but I am consistently frustrated by the food. This is a weird one since the experience from week to week can vary so much.

Lao Sze Chuan - I think the place is no longer special. The food has declined and the rest of the Chinese food scene has upped its game big time.

Let me speak to the restaurants I've been to, first:

Alegria's - Maybe I hadn't been by the time I filled out the survey, but I went in December and the place was definitely GNR quality and feel. I also agree that their name is super confusing.

Pastoral - Haven't had sandwiches from there, but I went to the shop on Lake as recently as two weeks ago and from a cheese shop perspective, the folks are super helpful and the selection is excellent. Been to the other locations less frequently but they seem of similar quality to me.

Podhalanka - Haven't been myself recently at all, but my girlfriend lives blocks away and eats there on a roughly weekly basis. She loves the ambiance, and the pirogi and soups get rave remarks too.

Burt's Place - Haven't been since the ownership change, but I'm just not a huge fan of the style in general, both Pequod's and Burt's. Would not have been a GNR were I dictator of GNRs, but I can definitely see the appeal that it has to others.

Lao Sze Chuan - I haven't been in a good four years or so but I was never really too impressed with it, even it its supposed hey-day. The ownership issues probably have not spelled good things, either.

As for places I have not been, I'd love to make it to Monti's, Violet Hour and Izakaya Mita's.

To comment on the process, some voters on the Baseball Hall of Fame see themselves as either "big hall" or "small hall" people, and have accordingly set their standards. I view myself as a big hall person, and accordingly am a "big GNR list" person. Because of this, I have often found myself disagreeing with the number of restaurants cut by the renewal process in the past, and would sort of see cutting up to 24 GNRs as a bit of a shame.

To me, the GNR list is sort of like my cheatsheet to any neighborhood in the greater Chicago area, so keeping restaurants which are, perhaps, a bit off the beaten path of the "Chicago foodie hivemind" is one of the best aspects of it, so I'd like to protect that if possible.

I do have to say that I definitely appreciate this more open process as well as more analysis on data. Having good data such as this is never a bad thing, in my mind, but any number of conclusions can be drawn from seemingly objective data, depending on who is interpreting it. For those who are "lack of an active-yes" people rather than "active-no" people, to use Joel's terminology (I tend to agree, for the record), perhaps a starting point of, say, 33% negative responses (such as no longer/never GNR) to positive responses would make more sense.

Anyways, I'll think more on this, but for now, I am still confident in this process to come up with decisions I can agree with, and that this is only a starting point for the eventual GNR/no GNR decision we're all so invested in.

turkob wrote:Alegria's - I think the place is still great and I haven't noticed any change since the name change. I wonder if the soft support was a result of people not realizing the name changed.

Lao Sze Chuan - I think the place is no longer special. The food has declined and the rest of the Chinese food scene has upped its game big time.

Alegria's– I don't get in there as regularly as I did when I lived down the block. It changed ownership shortly after I moved, though in one or two visits since I haven't noticed much of a change in the food. All my friends in the hood still love it.

LSC– still in our rotation. We have this time-tested order that is always consistent and includes dishes I haven't found anywhere else (house special pot herb & sole fish soup with sour pickle.) No slippage in our favorites, ever. All said though, there are a lot of newer, exciting options out there (I'm not a fan of Sze Chuan cuisine though.) And LSC hardly needs any bump in promotion from our humble list. So I don't really care what happens here.

turkob wrote:If others feel that we should try to keep places with few visits if we have no clear reason to remove them, then please speak up.

Yes, absolutely.

turkob wrote:Personally, I think few posts and survey results indicating that very few are visiting is reason enough to remove a GNR.

I couldn't disagree more with this sentiment.

Thanks,

=R=

For the public record: I've been to New Asia, Sol de Mexico, La Quebrada Cicero, Marie's, Monti's, and Violet Hour all in the past year, in some cases after a few years away. I'm in favor of all remaining on the list, and a few of these visits were since we voted, so I hope they align with what I submitted.

VH food was actually better than I remembered and drinks were strong and a reasonable value with the extra carafe topoff for many. As with Sol de Mexico, the competition has just gotten so much stronger in a formerly sparsely populated type-landscape that I think it's easy to forget how solid they are. At Monti's, the Rocky and the Roasted Pork Loin were exactly the umami-bombs as on my initial visit. Not that this strictly matters here, but their ratings elsewhere on the web reflect that consistency, so the absence of LTH posts is not necessarily the place falling off a cliff.

LSC is a tricky one. I still go and really haven't noticed a drop-off vs. the late years of the Hu Period. The best dishes are the same, including the boiled beef and sole, "special" hot and sour with chili oil, cilantro, and peanuts, rib in mashed rice, and the shrimp in mayo for those who like that prep. Chicken crack had been widely variable (in my experience) and because of the hit-and-miss of fryer temp and amount of sugar added I just don't go that route much. Ma po tofu I guess is down a notch - not as crispy and not as much pork, blank stares at the "x $ of" requests and no handfuls of numbing peppercorns. The place is still iconic and busy, and I'm not truly sure how much administrative sin should play into the list mechanism (though in the same breath I have issues I just can't overcome with Sun Wah).

Using the changed status for renewals gives life to the fear I had some time ago of needing to go back to a thread and continuously comment that the food is still good.

Earnestly, I don’t think the no longer a GNR/never was a GNR is appropriate.

Removal should require negative postings on the thread— the downhill alert or more than an ability to check a box.

I could certainly see doing that for 1 or 2 beloved GNRs that I simply do not get, but I didn’t because nothing about what they were doing had changed.


We did have that recently with a former GNR and that status was removed ( and many folks still enjoy meals there and it has received other recent awards so that one is fine).

I echo Ronnie’s sentiments above.

ronnie_suburban wrote:

turkob wrote:Personally, I think few posts and survey results indicating that very few are visiting is reason enough to remove a GNR.

I couldn't disagree more with this sentiment.
=R=

My question on this statement goes hand-in-hand with the big vs little hall analogy made above as well.

Viewing this objectively, it seems as though a false positive (GNR status without merit) is the only negative outcome that the GNR process can produce. Leading somebody to believe they would be getting something great, to only have them betrayed, wastes the person's money and meal, but also errodes trust in the GNR recognition.

By having a tighter list, tolerant of false negatives (good places, but just not quite sufficient for formal recognition), you avoid the most clear potential for a negative outcome.

I'm just curious whether people feel that the "big hall" would dilute the recognition to those at the very top. A tight list also protects the field, in that the almost-good-enough have less subjective judgment calls to complain about.

I don't really see this situation through the 'big hall/small hall' lens. Since there will always be some reasonable and subjective disagreements between our members about what "true GNRs" or "top GNRs" are, it's probably most productive to just leave that discussion on the side of the road somewhere. It's a vortex and I don't believe, especially in the case of older that places, that fewer posts necessarily indicate anything significant about their worthiness.

My feeling is that we have a tremendously useful list of places and short of some content posted in our forums indicating that a place should be considered for removal, it should remain on that list. If subsequent reports bear out that it doesn't belong there, we can cross that bridge when we come to it. The consequences of taking this approach are small . . . someone gets a bad meal (which can be very quickly remedied via a "kuhdo"). Imo, that's a very reasonable, low-stakes price to pay for erring on the side on the side caution and inclusion.

=R=

The only category that I dont understand is "never was." It doesnt seem like the purpose here is to rehash the original award, but to decide if a place is still deserving of it. I also dont think that a restaurant should lose the award based solely on the survey, unless there have been a number of specific comments discussing the decline. Those with poor survey results should certainly be flagged, and maybe a discussion can be started on the restaurant's main thread (or on a new one) to hear more specifics about peoples issues, and then after a certain time it can be thrown back to the gnr committee for a decision.

-Will

ronnie_suburban wrote:My feeling is that we have a tremendously useful list of places and short of some content posted in our forums indicating that a place should be removed, it should remain on that list. If subsequent reports bear out that it doesn't belong there, we can cross that bridge when we come to it.
. . . Imo, that's a very reasonable, low-stakes price to pay for erring on the side of caution and inclusion.

Point well taken. Given the title of this topic, I suppose the true false positive could be construed as the removal/non-renewal without specific articulable cause for doing so.

The only potential problem with placing the burden on dissatisfied customers to non-anonymously specify their complaints is that it renders the surveys somewhat meaningless. I guess the negative survey results can be a form of #MeToo empowerment to come forward as not the only one.

I rarely post unless I have something to add to the discussion as me too posts seem more like clutter than useful information. We eat at Cafe Orchid at least once every four to six weeks, usually for lunch. It chugs along nicely but really does nothing calling for a fresh post. My survey response was still a GNR, which I reiterate here.

Within the surveys I offered no opinion unless I had eaten at a restaurant in the last 12 months. Quite a few restaurants were in the have eaten there but not in the last 12 months category and produced the reaction that we should go back soon. Our list of restaurants new and old that we want to try or go to again keeps growing notwithstanding closings and greatly exceeds our time and calorie budgets.

Oddly, Friday, today, and tomorrow I am eating at former GNRs.

A couple people have questioned why we have "Never a GNR" as an option. I'd like to explain my reasoning. Without that option people would have to choose between "Still a GNR", "No longer a GNR" and "No Opinion". However, if someone felt that a GNR was never deserving in the first place, they may be compelled to choose "No longer a GNR" when that doesn't really capture their opinion. As many are expressing, the primary objective of renewals is to determine which GNRs have gone downhill to the point where they should be removed from the list. I felt that by including the option of "Never a GNR" it actually strengthened the votes for "No longer a GNR".

As I have said, the intention is not to use the surveys blindly. It appears that many feel that we should not use lack of support as a justification for removal. I have no problem with this though this remains an open topic so hopefully more will express their opinion. We definitely do not want to rehash old debates. Fundamentally, if a GNR is still doing what it's always done, then it should stay a GNR.

turkob wrote:Fundamentally, if a GNR is still doing what it's always done, then it should stay a GNR.

Thanks turkob for all the work you're putting into this and I agree 100% with you that "never a GNR" should be an option. However, for that reason, I disagree with this entirely for the exact same reason I agree with your larger point.

I have two reasons for liking the "never a GNR" option, both related to the simple proposition that it is important the list of GNRs accurately reflect the current thinking of the entire board (or at least of those who participate in the discussions).

First, the makeup of the board constantly changes, which has two related ramifications. One, it means that there are plenty of people who had no real opportunity to voice their opinion at the time of nomination or renewal. And because the GNR list is supposed to be a current representative of the board's collective thinking, those people ought to be able to say the old collective was wrong. Two, to the extent a GNR was conferred or renewed due to folks who have since stopped posting and/or reading the site, in any renewal discussion, longtime active members who can't vote "never was" are effectively overruled by those people who are no longer here simply because they "lost" the first debate years ago.

Second, keeping "never a GNR" as an option keeps a healthy check on the entire process. To the extent that there are GNRs that have that status because a small group of vocal people pushed for it, including the "never was" opinion in the review/renewal discussion allows a healthy ongoing debate that will help ensure the list of GNRs accurately reflects what the collective whole thinks.

turkob wrote:As for the use of the surveys, I think many are hesitant are to speak up, in particular if what they have to say is negative. If someone voted for "No Longer GNR", that is meaningful to me. Should that person have to write a post describing why they feel that way? Not in my opinion. I don't see this as sterile, rather I see it as a way to bring new voices into the conversation.

I wanted to see the data aggregated differently. I DO wonder if someone votes "No Longer GNR" and also votes that they haven't been there in a year - what are they basing that on?