Talk:The French Laundry

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the The French Laundry article.
This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.
New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help.

Article policies

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Archives: 1

This article was nominated for deletion on April 27, 2008. The result of the discussion was speedy keep.

California: San Francisco Bay Area Low‑importance

	California portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject California, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of the U.S. state of California on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.CaliforniaWikipedia:WikiProject CaliforniaTemplate:WikiProject CaliforniaCalifornia articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.
	San Francisco Bay Area portal This article is supported by San Francisco Bay Area task force (assessed as High-importance).

Food and drink: Foodservice / Michelin Guide Low‑importance

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Food and drink, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of food and drink related articles on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Food and drinkWikipedia:WikiProject Food and drinkTemplate:WikiProject Food and drinkFood and drink articles

Low

This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Related taskforces:
/
	This article is supported by the Foodservice task force (assessed as Low-importance).
	This article is supported by the Michelin Guide task force.

Food and Drink task list:

To edit this page, select here

Here are some tasks you can do for WikiProject Food and drink:

Help bring these Top Importance articles currently B Status or below up to GA status: Agaricus bisporus (i.e. mushroom), Beef, Bread, Curry, Drink, Food, Ham and eggs, Soy sauce, Sushi, Yogurt
Bring these Top Importance articles currently at GA status up to FA status: Beer, French cuisine, Sugar
Bring these High Importance articles currently at GA status up to FA status: Apple, Burger King, Fish
Participate in project-related deletion discussions.
Delete unrelated trivia sections found in articles. Please review WP:Trivia and WP:Handling trivia to learn how to do this.
Add the {{WikiProject Food and drink}} project banner to food and drink related articles and content to help bring them to the attention of members. For a complete list of banners for WikiProject Food and drink and its child projects, select here.
Provide photographs and images for Category:Wikipedia requested images of food
Consider joining this project's Assessment task force. List any project ideas in this section

Note: These lists are transcluded from the project's tasks pages.

National Register of Historic Places Low‑importance

	National Register of Historic Places portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject National Register of Historic Places, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of U.S. historic sites listed on the National Register of Historic Places on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.National Register of Historic PlacesWikipedia:WikiProject National Register of Historic PlacesTemplate:WikiProject National Register of Historic PlacesNational Register of Historic Places articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

POV language

As someone else has noted with the cleanup tag, much of this article reads like either a review or an advertisement. I removed some of the unsourced stuff about the wait staff, but other parts are a bit over the top, too. Esrever ^(klaT) 02:24, 13 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

What is wrong with sounding like a review? The better reviews try to be NPOV too: addressing facts and citing qualities that are of interesting to people who want to know more about restaurants. So to begin with, it isn't POV to assume that history, ingredients, price, taste, reservations, etc., etc. are the proper components of a good encyclopedia entry. The thing being described--a restuarant--by its nature calls for an examination of the same points that restaurant reviews cover. What I see is that the facts of the place are that they use exotic ingredients, have fabulous ratings from a vast preponderance of expert raters, they charge high prices, and book their tables far in advance and incredibly quickly. The article I see is an NPOV collection of NPOV facts drawn from POV sources...which is pretty much what encyclopedia writing is all about. KevinCuddeback (talk) 21:53, 23 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Current Cost

Does anyone know how much the FL costs for lunch these days? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 171.64.42.89 (talk • contribs) .

Lunch and dinner are the same price. Last December, for two people, with wine for one person, the total was $671.89, including gratuity and tax. This included an additional $25 option for one entree. EncMstr 00:37, 27 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If this wants to be seen as an unbiased article, the fact that this place is ridiculously expensive should be mentioned. Otherwise it comes across as an ad, as the extreme price is certainly notable. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.4.132.165 (talk) 22:57, 2 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

A critical question

I came across this site as a reference from a salon.com article. Truthfully, I have no experience with fine cuisine or expensivre food but as a novice, I'd be interested to know what it is about a restaurant that justifies such a high price tag and "its good" doesn't seem good enough. If someone good endeavor to provide an explanation for the price it would be greatly appreciated. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Y.Pestis (talk • contribs) 2006-10-10T19:22:50 (UTC).

You're right—"good" wouldn't be enough. If you go to the French Laundry, you know for certain that the food, service and environment are superb, every time. Ever been in a restaurant where the waitress is having an off day? That doesn't happen there. (How? I don't know, but it doesn't.) First of all, the service is top notch, which means every time you want something or have a question, there's someone highly qualified to immediately handle it. That doesn't mean they're fawning or hovering about: it's pretty impressive how they are gone when you don't need them, and they're there when you do. Another aspect is the professionalism and demeanor of the service: they speak at your level, and are ready to educate at length—as though you're their only customer. For example, I saw several parties who had no experience with truffles, so the truffle waiter did a mini-appreciation course on the spot. (Yum.) There's no problem communicating something to one waiter and not having another waiter know about it—they've communicated it amongst themselves seemingly instantly somehow.

The food was extremely fresh, despite ingredients originating all over the world, including the FL's garden outside the door. There were a few dishes which might be found elsewhere, in name anyway. For example, the vegetarian pot pie was anything but ordinary: perfect crust, an exquisite blending of textures, tastes and colors. The portion sizes might seem small, though not in the context of 7 or 9 courses.

Compare a room at Motel 6 versus a Ritz-Carlton. If sleep is all you want, the $300-800 per night difference is not worth it. But if you want to experience the ultimate in amenities, location, well maintained facilities, furnishings, artwork, fresh flowers, and service, ... those aren't at Motel 6. — EncMstr 21:24, 10 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Difference between menus

This quote says there are three different menus, but the tasting menu is mentioned twice in the sections that follow. Is one of those supposed to be the prix fixe?

"There are three menus daily. Each is $240 (as of 2007) including service. One is a prix fixe menu; the second is a tasting menu, and the third is a vegetable tasting menu. During the holiday season, the restaurant may offer special dishes that would not otherwise be on the menu." WLGades 10:05, 5 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

French?

In what way is the cuisine French, beyond the fact that most top-end Western restaurant food is influenced by classic French cuisine, and much of the language is French? I just looked at the current menu: sure, there's foie gras, but there's also sashimi, pork belly, jamon iberico, Asian pear, even granola. Sounds pretty eclectic to me. Tsuguya (talk) 04:31, 12 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Food goes beyond ingredients. Presentation, preparation, style, method, all of these give you a final dish that can be called French. Nukeguy04 (talk)

Damaged in August 2014 earthquake?

I think I saw on the news that this building was damaged by the August 2014 earthquake? ----Another Believer _(Talk) 18:10, 24 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Burglary

I removed this recent addition to the article and put it here:

On December 25th, 2014, the wine room of The French Laundry was burglarized. 76 bottles of wine with an estimated value of $300,000 were stolen in the heist.^[1]

^ Parsons, Russ (December 30, 2014). "Thieves steal over $300,000 worth of wine from French Laundry restaurant". www.latimes.com. Retrieved December 30, 2014.

Time will tell, but I doubt this is appropriately encyclopedic, especially for being sufficiently notable. —EncMstr (talk) 05:56, 31 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Something like this might not make the pages of Britannica, but Wikipedia is not Britannica. It should go back in, and even be fleshed out. The loss is of merit to someone with more than a passing interest in wine.

Rather than get in a stupid edit war that I have no time for, why don't you bring the matter up with whatever "boss" you wiki nitpickers have.Wezelboy (talk) 05:11, 6 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Our "boss" is the policies and guidelines derived from The Five Pillars. Have a look there for a suitable and recognizable guideline-based reason for including the burglary. Simply saying "It should go back in, and even be fleshed out" is not an acceptable reason. The incident might be suitable for List of heists or Biggest wine thefts if those articles existed. That they do not exist is mildly surprising considering the English Wikipedia's scope. —EncMstr (talk) 05:35, 6 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to one external link on The French Laundry. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add {{cbignore}} after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add {{nobots|deny=InternetArchiveBot}} to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:

Added archive https://web.archive.org/20080321093842/http://travel.nytimes.com:80/travel/guides/north-america/united-states/california/napa-valley/restaurant-detail.html?vid=1154654635092 to http://travel.nytimes.com/travel/guides/north-america/united-states/california/napa-valley/restaurant-detail.html?vid=1154654635092

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.

Y An editor has reviewed this edit and fixed any errors that were found.

If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool. checked by —EncMstr (talk) 01:03, 11 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Cheers.—^{cyberbot II}_{Talk to my owner:Online} 15:07, 10 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

COVID and Gavin Newsom

Removed, because per what I believe is a reasonable application of WP:NOTNEWS. I think it's more appropriate on the governor's page. This is a controversy about what Newsom did. Although reading https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/dec/01/san-francisco-mayor-london-breed-french-laundry-coronavirus, it could be possibly inclusion worthy, but not in the amount it was covered in. Graywalls (talk) 06:48, 6 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Agree with removal. It seems particularly relevant to 2021 California gubernatorial recall election, and is covered well there. But not here, per connective trivia guidelines WP:HTRIV. Davidwbaker (talk) 10:32, 6 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I smell bias Politicalwizard2000 (talk) 00:16, 30 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

[1] Parsons, Russ (December 30, 2014). "Thieves steal over $300,000 worth of wine from French Laundry restaurant". www.latimes.com. Retrieved December 30, 2014.

[1]