“The customer is always right,” goes the slogan. But there’s something screwy about that idea. Do we want our mechanic to defer to our opinion about what that funny rattle in the front end might be? And if we know so much more about how food ought to be cooked and served than the people we’re paying to do both for us, why are we dining out? In this year’s edition of our Dining Showcase, we celebrate places that tell us, ever so politely (sometimes not so politely at all), to sit back, shut up, and enjoy. And how agreeable that can be, whether in a white-tablecloth temple of haute cuisine or in a crowded, noisy greasy spoon where the cook knows everything there is to know about chili. Upscale or downscale, family-style or funky, here’s to the spots that, like Ol’ Blue Eyes, do it “their way.”
