May 2002: No Smoking.

                                                                                                                  wattana

Recently, there came to light some uncalled-for name-calling in the pages of one of our most respected journals, Nation’s Restaurant News.

It was all triggered, innocently enough, by Michael O’Neal, a New York City restaurateur who had the nerve—get a load of this—to call for a smoking ban in New York City restaurants because, according to O’Neal, second-stream smoke is a killer. It can cause all kinds of cancers and wouldn’t the city be better off if the mayor called for a smoking ban in all restaurants. Bars, too. Not only would it be a comfort to diners, but also to employees who must navigate second stream smoke between kitchens and tables. You’d have thought O’Neal was advocating capital punishment for pickpockets.


Non-smoker O'Neal taking in the
Yankees from Steinbrenner’s no-smoking
loge in Yankee Stadium.
 

Wasn’t too long after NRN publishes O’Neal’s plan then up jumps foodie James Villas, a nice enough sort who has written some rather harmless stuff about foodservice and dining-out in Town & Country, Food & Wine, Gourmet and a few other magazines. He’s also the author of several books about cooking in the South. He fires off a letter to NRN in which he disagrees with—no: that’s not strong enough: let’s see, he vehemently objects to O’Neal’s suggestions; and cites, as if to underscore his objections, the reams of research that have yet to prove that second stream smoke causes cancer. How about that?

I thought O’Neal’s plan not a bad idea, but not necessarily for the reasons he cited; and I thought Villas’ response a bit silly, a naive reaction to a proposal that warrants, at the very least, a level-headed discussion among experts who, unlike Villas, know what they’re talking about and wherein said discussion they can address and deal with all of the smoking/non-smoking arguments, their ramifications, variations, and implications.

So, what the hell: I decided to enter the discussion as more or less an amicus curae, not taking sides one way or another you understand, but with the idea of merely offering a point of view that had nothing to do with the health issue—giving Villas the benefit of the doubt—but had a lot to do with the pleasures of dining out as opposed to “eating out” which is what some of us do when we stop by fast food joints that, by the way, the last time I checked, almost universally ban smoking in all of their “restaurants.”

No, this is all about the pleasures of eating in restaurants renowned for fine food, wine, and service. As I said, I entered the discussion, snail-mailing a letter to the editor of NRN. It didn’t print my letter; its right, of course: it’s not that I insisted. Yet, I felt it was germane, made sense and deserved exposure. Here it is:

Will someone please tell James Villas to shut up? His argument that second-stream smoke won’t cause bodily harm is quarrelsome, at best. Michael O’Neal and many of his colleagues think second-stream smoke can hurt you; and so long as they do, they have the right to ban smoking from their restaurants and to insist that every other restaurant does, too. Even if Villas is right (I have my doubts as do countless others), as a food and wine writer and publisher of books about cooking and dining out, one must assume he knows that the wafting of puffed, exhaled or merely lingering cigarette, cigar, and pipe smoke in a restaurant disturbs the dining experience. It may not cause cancer, but it sure as hell bothers diners who wish to smell and taste the food they are eating.

Here’s a thought: let’s invite Villas to sit at a booth of his favorite restaurant with three or four or five other people each smoking something and see how he likes it. Or, better yet, let’s arrange to have say, Thomas Keller, serve him one of his degustations in an opium den.

That same journal in which the O’Neal/Villas point-counterpoint took place recently published the findings of a roundtable discussion that talked and talked and talked about what to do about smoking in restaurants—not whether to allow it, but what to do, for Pete’s sake, if it were banned.

Here’s the opening narrative from that discussion: “Some restaurants that want to accommodate smoking as well as nonsmoking patrons are worried that smoking bans will undercut investments in new ventilation systems and other upgrades.” Uh, huh.

Footnote: This essay appeared in the May 2002 Restaurant Report.