Breaking Down The Biggest Mistakes From Last Week's Fancy Dinner Draft
We're back to recap another week of Snake Drafting. Let's not waste any time. Here's the biggest mistakes from the Fancy Dinner draft.
- Location Location Location. Timing Timing Timing. I said last week that I should publish the blog week of the draft on a Friday. That was my biggest takeaway and I dropped the ball on the follow up into Tuesday morning. Not great but it's better late than never. Stay with me long enough and we'll get it right. Most important thing is that we get this conversation started on a weekly basis and move upwards from there. Small gains go a long way. That said I'll instantly concede this would hit different on a Friday dump after we've had a couple business days to digest the week's draft. Provided enough space, I'll figure it out.
- Graphic & Poll Controversy (Click for the poll): And provided enough time, people will find a way to ruin something nice like our twitter poll. We're probably in our last weekly news cycle for this hijinks so let's make our time useful. Somebody somewhere is interfering with the independent poll that decides the draft winner. It's obvious fraud. We've lost steam on getting worked up until we're presented with a new voting platform. Then we'll probably complain for a week and then soon enough we'll all forget this ever happened. In the meantime that somebody somewhere is very proud of their intrusive efforts. That in and of itself is immensely pathetic. The worst punishment I could think of is living an entire life as the guy behind this. That would suck.
- Steakhouse vs. Fancy Dinner: A lot of people were very critical that we didn't actually draft a fancy dinner but rather a simple steakhouse dinner. Those people are way too rich to be consuming our content. Go sail a fucking yacht if you're that special. I personally think a steakhouse qualifies just fine as a fancy dinner. You don't need to be exposed to groundbreaking culinary intellectual property to register on the fancy spectrum in my life. Just come with a very large price tag alongside weeks old reservations and you're just fine to me. If that's a weak threshold then I don't want to be strong on fancy dinners.
- Exactly What Is Lobsterscargot?
Probably the most controversial fancy appetizer in the history of regular guys talking fancy appetizers. Nobody saw this coming before the draft started and nobody will forget it long after this draft passes. Just an unbelievable sequence of events that has led tot he public discovery of this Chicago Cut delicacy.
Honestly that looks good enough to fight a close buddy so I can understand Chief and WSD ready to trade blows. What doesn't make sense is how this appetizer isn't a bigger player nationally. Price point aside, literally every single person talking from experience says it's a life-changing experience. Far be it from me to disagree. So why don't more places serve Lobsterscargot? Let's change that.
- No Dessert? No Cocktails? Not this time around which is more about the depth of the Big Draft Board and less about a flashy 5th round in the Fancy Dinner Draft. In other words you can maybe expect a draft that more gets into those specifics at a future date to be determined by draft leadership. Give very, very little in this one draft to get a lot more in some others. That's the long game. For now, I think the Fancy Dinner Experience category slides in nicely and created some good banter. Without it, there's probably no crumb sweeper on the table. That's not a world anyone at a Fancy Dinner wants to live in.
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Speaking of which.
- Is Being A Crumb Guy A Full Time Job? A lot of people say NO but there has to be some fancy ass place where business booms so hard you can have designated crumb sweeper guys roaming the dining room like a pair of ball hawking safeties. Veteran industry guys that rely on instincts and experience to sweep every crumb at all the right moments. French bread. Croutons. Flaky crab cakes. Chunky wedge. Whatever the obstacle, the full time combers are there to spot you a clean cloth and smooth dining surface. To me that's a perfect fancy dining experience provided those guys are full time specialists with health insurance and a 401(k). Otherwise you're just another run-of-the-mill steakhouse making bus boys pull double duty with the crumb comb, (a "cromb").
- Salads Are Tough. I just casually referenced a wedge and thought maybe that's not fancy enough. But truthfully there's really no such thing as a fancy salad that doesn't already involve some other equally fancy ingredient. As a result, it's very hard for salad to stand alone in a fancy dinner draft without incorporating something exotic like caviar or fresh shellfish. So be it. Salad will always play.
Am I taking a garden in the 5th much less the 25th round? No. But I would take the Benihana ginger salad 1st overall if we lived in a world without judgment and/or Benihana even remotely touched the fancy category. Unfortunately it's just expensive and admittedly there's no place. But it's a great salad dressing. Maybe that's a good draft.
I FUCKING HATE FRENCH EVERYTHING
Point is I wouldn't be too caught up in the salads if I were you guys. Honestly put some thought into it and it's a thin category. Soup too. By its very nature soup is a pour person thing. I won't be told otherwise.
- Wagyu Beef, Kobe Beef, Who Gives A Shit. Some people were very upset with us about our knowledge about the wagyu/kobe beef situation. I'm bringing it up here not to apologize but to tell you guys to shut the fuck up. The fact this group intentionally and proactively carved out minutes of a show to have a moderately informed discussion about this kind of meat is an accomplishment in its own right. Celebrate the fact it happened. Don't riddle me with inconsistencies in the US Meat industry vs. foreign markets. Don't educate me on the minutiae. We're on to Cincinnati. I'm already halfway through the ribeye and nobody's said a word about the authenticity of the meat classification.
- Maybe We're Not Fancy Enough. Maybe the biggest mistake is we just don't know fancy as well as some of the experts on the internet. Sorry all you rich assholes had to suffer to that. Must have been exhausting listening to us misappropriate escargot derivatives. Please accept this alternative Snake Draft as a fancy olive branch offering of peace.
Like I said at the beginning: one step at a time. We may not be fancy enough right now but that can all change with enough patience and YouTube subscribers. Until then, thanks for your patience. I'll try to mix this in again on Friday.
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