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A special thank you to Stormbreath for their assistance with the styling.
I highly recommend the Veal You.
Ambrose SanFran / Discussion
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This is the discussion related to the wiki page Ambrose SanFran.
every ambrose goi format just sort of reads the same :/ once you've read one menu of wacky magic gourmet dishes, you've pretty much read them all. the article was fine, but it's just not different enough from the others to get my upvote.
EDIT: also i didn't notice until i saw tawny's comment but yeah i hate the thing where the username shows up it is Maximally Tacky and there's like maybe one time it's been done well.
I just think there isn't enough weirdness here, I don't really know how to describe it. The veal you is the only hing that stands out to me, everything else is just kinda "meh".
Thank you for the feedback. I dialed it back from a much larger menu into this tasting course, but I may have cut out what you were after in doing so. You've given me something to think about, thanks.
Honestly, I feel the exact opposite; the veal was the only thing that felt plausibly non-anomalous.
Now, if they harvested it thirty minutes after you eat it, though…
The Ambrose format was stale the moment the second restaurant list was posted, and has failed to get better since. Every time I see an Ambrose format, I know I'm just going to read a list of goofy-sounding dishes that reference better articles and are capped off by uninteresting reviews. Other GOI formats are thematically consistent with their group but manage to innovate within the confines of their format to tell interesting stories; Ambrose's format simply parrots itself over and over again. Something needs to change.
I will second this, and also add some more specific advice for anyone aspiring to salvage this format: the review sections of these pages is always a huge missed opportunity. The reviews are its one opportunity for any real storytelling or idea-making, and where the details established in the menu itself can actually pay off in any way. The reviews are where you should tell me exactly why I care about any of this. They never do. They may do a great job of mimicking actual review comments on a real website, but those are generally about as fun or interesting of a read as the back of a medicine bottle. None of them (and I just checked) go any deeper than "this menu item that says it does a weird thing did a weird thing to me, and it was [good|bad]."
Just for example, let's say you have a review that's a long, many-paragraph rant from some guy who ate a food that made him remember all these sad traumatic life experiences like losing his wife, and then oh my goodness what a surprise it turns out to be Alto Clef or something. That took me about two seconds to come up with and it's awful, but I think it's still stronger than any Ambrose page I've seen yet. It at least would tell me why the food matters to literally anything outside Ambrose GOI format pages.
Edit: one more thing, you used that trick where you make people's wikidot usernames show up for one of the reviews. This is always annoying and disrupting and never as cool as you think it is.
I appreciate the expansion on your idea. Since your feedback was conceptual, I'll leave it at that other than to say your time to pull that idea out was a worthwhile read.
I think it's worth noting — as the person who effectively made the format — that my intent was always that the reviews would always be where the real narrative draw of the format was, rather than the menu itself. The menu is fluff: the reviews are the meat.
I also wrote a guide for the format which apparently I never added, which covers a lot of these points. I'll get Proasek's permission and do so.
Also not a fan of the snowclone of the London menu with a minor color swap.
can I get some nice "no signatures on my forum"
sigma-9 css machine broke
understandable have a nice day
maybe its just me or im going insane, but i see my own username for this site. also +1
As a fellow connoisseur of fine dining, seeing Ambrose really excited me on a personal level.
Unfortunately, this particular article feels very generic, lacking character and authenticity. Specifically, this menu does not feel like a San Francisco restaurant. Californian haute cuisine has its own internationally recognized distinctive style. Some components include simplicity and emphasis on fresh ingredients, with lots of green on the plate. Indeed one derisive take on it is chef David Chang's notorious dismissal of Bay Area cuisine as "figs on a plate". The Bay Area played fundamental roles in shaping the farm-to-table movement, and "millennial" luxuries such as uni toast and avocados. Dishes like fried mozzarella sticks and linguine seem out of place in this context. And mixing American, Italian, Mediterranean, and Japanese all in one place betrays a lack of singular vision. It would have been nice to see some nods to the regional culture rather than using San Francisco as a fungible location.
Could a restaurant like this exist in San Francisco? It's very diverse, so why not. Is this what comes to my mind when someone says a restaurant in San Francisco? Not really.
I do like the concept of anomalous restaurants, however, and would definitely encourage you to continue the thread. And I definitely don't expect you to be a restaurant nerd like me, but I thought my two cents could prove edifying.
Even as someone who loves the Ambrose menu format, I do have to agree. Too many read more like "casual dining but it hurts you" as opposed to actual fine cuisine with anomalous ingredients. That makes sense considering most of our economic levels here, but it does make for a reduced article.
Hey, a new branch! Looks great and I'm happy there's movement in the GOI.
I have to be honest though, the format's a tad generic. To be specific, the menu is too similar to the London one. Remember this is just my impression, but the London menu dealt with formal fine dining with wine options, and I think that goes well with the London aesthetic. The SanFran menu though feels more casual and family oriented and I can't help but feel the disconnect.
I'm not really well informed on the SanFran meal scene, so I'll skip on that, I would just like to emphasize that dishes from the previous entries heavily reflected the culture of each anomalous location.
Finally, I have to talk about the reviews, that is to say, the reviews wrap-up the story on Ambrose formats. I like that you have some anomalous effects with the customers, but as the fifth entry, the format and the content was lacking for me. As of the third entry, the Dark Web has been used for reviews, but it's not a rule or anything, but the thing is, the reviews for SanFran is exactly the same for Temecula, and the box with the Username thing has the same amount of star rating. My advice (completely up to you) is to use the Dark Web format for lore consistency, and add some more meat in the reviews.
Early trust is akin to apathy. Doubt, like all poisons, can be a tonic.
Votes don't help the author, so I've vowed to always leave a comment with mine, at the very least whenever I rate an article negatively. If you feel the same, help out by leaving critique with more of your votes. Comment follows:
Part of the fun of the Ambrose format is the uniqueness of the presentation. This one is a ripoff of London. It's a -1 solely for that.
If you update the CSS, please reach out and let me know. I'll be happy to take another look.
/forum/t-11359954/ambrose-sanfran#post-
page revision: 2, last edited: 15 Jan 2023 15:06
