There is a particular category of chef who has worked at Le Bernardin and Per Se and then chosen to spend their career making excellent casual food accessible to a broader room. Max Robbins, Culinary Director for Lettuce Entertain You in Chicago, is that chef. His falafel was not a fine-dining falafel. It was a better falafel.
Robbins ran a two-stage grind: coarse first pass on the soaked chickpeas to build texture, then a second pass on half the batch for structure, recombined before forming. This created a mix with both air pockets and cohesion — falafel that wouldn't fall apart in the oil but would shatter at the bite. He seasoned aggressively with cumin and white pepper, understanding that deep frying mutes aromatics by about thirty percent.
The Le Bernardin and Per Se pedigree matters here not as credentialism but as calibration — a cook who has been trained to that standard knows exactly how much seasoning disappears in a fryer.
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