Ein Kanon unter aller Kanone

Earlier in the week, my Thuringian coworker let me know that the shambolic attempt at a presentation by one of our colleagues was "unter aller Kanone". Literally, this means "under all cannon [sic]" and represents a German idiom that I wasn't previously familiar with. She mentioned that there was also a pseudo-Latinisation, sub omni canone.

Surprise! The "pseudo-Latin" is actually the original. According to Wikipedia, sub omni canone (more mellifluous in the plural, sub omnibus canonibus) is a consecrated phrase with which doctoral dissertations are rejected (back when they still used to do that regularly). Canon is used here with the sense of "standard" (metaphorically derived from its original meaning of "staff" or "measuring line"). Kanone is probably ultimately of the same origin (cf. Gk. κάννα "reed"), but comes into German through a different route.

This is why we can't have nice places

So Premise has closed after a mere four months in business. Opening a restaurant is, as we all know, always a dicey proposition, even when it's not fine dining and the economy isn't sickly. But based on our visit back in May for monshu's birthday, they seemed to be getting things right. Their barrel-aged negroni, for instance, is what put me on the trail of Carpano Antica style, which is now my favourite vermouth. We didn't love everything we had there, but we loved tasting it, talking about it, trying to discern what about it did or didn't work.

And yet the comments from Reader readers are filled with hate. A lot of it seems triggered by the chef's comment that he had "beaten the neighbourhood" by making it as far along as they had, which the locals seem to be taking extremely personally, as if it were a rude condemnation of their philistinism rather than an accurate assessment of what a difficult neighbourhood it is to sell fine dining in.

For me, his comments echo those of the owner of Pasticceria Natalina, which I thought was hands down the best bakery in the City of Chicago. Yes, her wares were expensive. They were expensive because they were the absolute best they could possibly be. If you're not interested in that, if you're content with "good enough", then that's why we have Swedish Bakery. I don't think I've gotten anything there in more than a year, whereas I used to actively look for excuses to patronise Natalina. But she finally got fed up with customers' constant bitching about her prices and shuttered in the spring. Now it's a froyo hut.

Same with Premise. Before I settled on Purple Pig, I planned on making it my birthday destination this year. Yeah, a restaurant can't survive on locals who visit only twice a year. But I was hoping that it would draw enough custom from outside the neighbourhood to succeed. Because I've seen what you get if you rely only on the locals for your covers: sugary desserts and chain pubs.

That's what's happening here as well. The new owners will be shoveling out the same serviceable food as at their other joints. And apparently they're just fine with that. (One of the comments from elsewhere, "Go to Lady Gregory's, people.") I guess ultimately every neighbourhood gets the shops it deserves.

ETA: A prescient paragraph from the Gapers Block review of Premise:

Locals may complain that Premise is incongruous with the vibe of the dining scene in Andersonville, but their entrance into a neighborhood already full of diverse restaurants bolsters one of the strongest selling points of this city: if you don't want the slim plate of fluke tartare, fine; there's a burger with your name on it only a few storefronts south. Everyone shoots, everyone scores.