White People Dine Finely, But What About Black People . . . ?

The New York Times notes that fine dining establishments are almost exclusively patronized by white people:

With summer drawing to a close New York diners will soon begin their fall migration back to the city’s top restaurants. But if they fly to pattern, only a few blacks, at most, will join the flock.

That helps explain why at Chanterelle one night, I almost became my own worst nightmare. The sight of a black couple strolling in struck me as so bizarre that I swiveled in my seat, bug-eyed, to trail them through all that creamy quiet. I say “almost” because my husband put an end to it with a merciful hiss: “Stop staring.”

Whoa! What kind of condescending, clueless Times piece is this? Don’t worry, writer Diane Cardwell is black! And this is a first-person account! Phew:

Well, yes, I was staring, but not just because they were black. Suddenly, for a change, I was not the only black customer in the room.

Still, is this sort of inquiry “asking the tough questions” or is it just . . . weird? Observations like steakhouses are more integrated than Nobu and Babbo, both of which are still more integrated than, say, Chanterelle? I say “weird”:

All those lobsters in pumpkin-seed-fenugreek broth, for example, have not drawn a strong black following. “That kind of chichi food doesn’t have long roots in the African-American community,” [president of the Multicultural Food Service and Hospitality Alliance] Mr. [Gerald] Fernandez said.

But they may soon sprout. One night at a gala at Chelsea Market for the Black Culinarian Alliance, a racially mixed crowd sipped fine wine and nibbled elaborate hors d’oeuvres and specialty cheeses, enjoying an event billed as bridging the cultural divide among different ethnic groups and their cuisines.

Well, now that we’ve gotten that out of the way . . .