Fat Guy

It's biased against classics because today's critics don't understand the classics. The classics demand actual knowledge: in the case of French haute-cuisine classics, there are formal standards for determining whether they're good or not, and even latter-day classics require technical evaluation rather than just impressionistic comment. The death of the classics was the greatest thing to happen to clueless restaurant reviewers, because it removed the need for expertise -- it removed even the possibility of expertise -- and it made it nearly impossible to refute anything a reviewer says about food. It allowed people like William Grimes and Frank Bruni to become restaurant reviewers, even though they went into the job knowing less about food than the average food blogger. So you can be sure that most of today's critics will stay as far away from classics as possible, and that whatever they do, rarely, say about classics will be pretty ignorant. I think the same anti-classics trend that exists in criticism pervades the tastes of younger gourmets as well. I mean, you look at Bryan's comment: As mentioned above in the Bouley example: does it make a difference if Union Square Cafe invented that dish? That would certainly make it not unimaginative. That ten thousand other restaurants copied it would make it no less imaginative. If, after it has been copied by ten thousand other restaurants, Union Square Cafe still makes the best example of it, that's saying something. (These are just hypotheticals -- I don't actually know the history of the dish, though I vaguely remember reading something about it in the USC cookbook awhile back).

Totally agree. Sure, as foodies we're required by the Code to say "It's so easy to cook beans!" but nobody has yet come up with a way to magically have beans ready in 5 minutes. Except, somebody has: this dude named Goya. Had a nice chunk of braised brisket left over last week, and it was getting late. I opened a can of kidney beans, diced the brisket, threw in a few other things and spices, and I had chili in about 15 minutes. It was good enough that this week I'm seriously considering braising a brisket solely for the purpose of making brisket chili.

For a couple of years in the late 1990s I had that kind of relationship with a store, but no longer. They dropped the ball.

I actually just made beef stew today for me and my kid, and we had it over egg noodles for dinner. Actually he mostly had it over the floor.

If I need to meet somebody for a glass of wine relatively near my home I use Bar@Etats-Unis, on 81st between Second and Third. Everybody I've brought there -- editors, mostly -- has given really positive feedback. Also, right around the corner on 80th and Third is Taste, in the Eli's complex, which I'll use if I think drinks might or might not turn in to a real dinner. The food is surprisingly good and the space is very comfortable. I wouldn't recommend a subway ride to get to either, but if you're going to be in that area those are two solid choices for both wine and food.

If I'm going to become a devoted customer of a wine shop and use it for most of my purchasing: 1. I want to be able to call the store on the phone, say I need a case of white and a case of red for a party, at X price, give a very brief description of the food, and have a wine delivered that will make my guests say "This is so great!" 2. I want a manager to call me when a terrific wine that I'm going to like comes in. 3. I want the store owner to arrange vineyard visits for me when I travel. 4. I want to believe that my wine has been impeccably handled before I bought it. 5. I want to be able to ask for any wine and have the store bend over backwards to find it and get it for me. 6. I don't want loser reps from mass-market wine distributors standing around the store offering me tastes in specimen cups. The only tastes I want are of good wines, and the only people I want to deal with are ones who know what they're talking about. 7. I want Spiegelau glasses cheap, so I can break as many as I like.

I recently did a TV show about the world's ten most expensive menu items. I assure you, there are plenty of things you can spend a lot of money on. For example, at Norma's at the Parker Meridien, you can get the "Zillion Dollar Lobster Frittata," which comes with ten ounces of Sevruga caviar (and a whole lobster) for $1,000. Says on the menu, "Norma Dares You to Expense This." Also ringing in at $1,000, the "Grand Opulence Sundae" at Serendipity. It's made with Amedei Porcelana chocolate, a Ron Ben Israel-designed gold-covered sugar flower, and Grand Passion Caviar -- a dessert caviar. At Petrossian, it's $7,600 a kilo for the Imperial Special Reserve Persicus Iranian Caviar. Needless to say, you can easily spend all you like on truffles. At Knipschildt Chocolatier, in Conneticut, it's $2600 a pound for truffle truffles (a whole black perigord truffle covered in chocolate). They'll be happy to sell you all you like. You can spend a pretty penny on Kobe beef, on abalone, whatever . . . there are opportunities aplenty for those who want to spend more on food.

I find the whole vodka-hating thing risible. Vodka is a terrific beverage. Yes, it has become more popular than it deserves to be, however that doesn't mean it shouldn't be used at all. I recently had some caviar with vodka and I can't imagine a better accompaniment. It seems to me the thing to have contempt for is not vodka as such, but the super-premium vodka trend. A cheap bottle of Luksusowa, when mixed in a cocktail, is going to be indistinguishable from a super-premium brand. And if you drink vodka straight, you might actually find that Luksusowa is more to your liking than something like Grey Goose or Chopin.

We've got to be at the leading edge of an egg noodle trend. I wonder how they'd be with truffles.

The vegetable plate at Union Square Cafe is not, by the way, an '80s dish, at least I don't think so. As best I can remember, it was adopted after Floyd Cardoz came to Tabla -- a rare example of cross-pollination of recipes within the USHG. I really don't think all that highly of the dish, but it's the vegetarian dish of choice at that place -- though were I a vegetarian I'd stick with the pastas, which tend to be superb.

Nathan, let me say that I agree with much of what you're saying, and in part with the main conclusions of Bruni's review. My issue, in both cases, is with the tone and scope of the claims. I mean, I don't love Union Square Cafe so much. My life would go on just fine without it. I think it's ridiculous that it occupies one of the top two Zagat positions year in year out. Likewise, I stopped going to Gramercy Tavern for about three years because it had slipped (I think I went once during that time), and am only just now going back on account of the transition. But the claim that either is a mediocre restaurant is really hard to accept.

For example, I have recently rediscovered egg noodles. You know, as in Pennsylvania Dutch Egg Noodles, Extra Broad. Not the fancy fresh refrigerated stuff. I'm talking old-school dry egg noodles from the bottom shelf of the pasta aisle. They're awesome, especially with braised meats. Why did I ever stop eating them? I may eat them every day for the rest of my life. Well, maybe not, but the sentiment is real. Your additions to this list?

I believe canned salmon predates canned tuna by about 40 years, but we're talking about a long time ago. By WWI they were both well established. I'm not sure when the trend lines crossed, but certainly during my lifetime canned salmon sales have lagged far behind canned tuna sales.

I think you're viewing this through some particular lenses. It may be that there are some restaurant groups that have more impact than USHG in terms of pure haute cuisine firepower. It may also be that there are some groups that are larger. However, USHG is the envy of every one of those groups. I really think that to say Robuchon's restaurant group "is now more influential and important" than USHG is so wildly inaccurate as to be difficult to discuss.

Nathan: Then you're making the claim that three-star restaurants from the 1980s deserve one star in 2007. I think that claim fails on its face. There may be a certain amount of culinary evolution overall (cuisine, unlike most of the arts, is something that is on an improving trend in the United States) that has shifted the stars one star to the left, but it's hard to see it having the impact you're asserting. In addition, it would apply primarily to restaurants that have either failed to improve at all or that were firmly anchored in short-term trends. Neither is the case with Union Square Cafe. Yes, there are classics on the menu -- that's going to be the case at most restaurants that are in it for the long haul. Jean Georges still has its scallops with raisin-caper emulsion and Daniel still has his potato-crusted fish. So what? It's certainly not the case that the entire Union Square Cafe is an '80s remix. Have you had the crispy lemon-pepper duck with peach-fig chutney and sauteed Greenmarket bok choy? How about the Roman-style roasted Vermont baby lamb with sauteed mushrooms, eggplant and fagioli all'Uccelletto? If wasabi mashed potatoes offend your hip, modern, youthful sensibility you can always have the same superior quality tuna raw, in the yellowfin tuna tartare with salsa verde, spicy aioli, sugar snap pea-radish salad, and potato crostini. Still, I think the old-school tuna dish holds up against any other cooked tuna dish I've had anywhere in the world. It's a great piece of tuna -- needless to say, Union Square Cafe buys enough of this stuff, and has been doing so for long enough, that they can buy at the top of the market -- and the wasabi mashed potatoes are a great accompaniment. What's wrong with that? Just saying wasabi mashed potatoes in a condescending manner doesn't make them bad. They're delicious, as is the marinade on that amazing piece of tuna. And of course, Union Square Cafe has just about the best service of any restaurant, and an amazing wine program, and by the way I totally disagree that it's only populated by fifty-somethings, though as I said before that may be the majority audience as it is at all the best restaurants.

Those who think Union Square Cafe is a one-star restaurant should have a look at the most recent review, from William Grimes, in 1999. If anything, Union Square Cafe has improved a little since then, both in terms of food and service, and its wine list continues to deepen. It's conceivable that Bruni would move it to two stars on the grounds that the rest of the restaurant world has evolved past Union Square Cafe while it has stood relatively still. But one star seems unlikely.

And what might that reason be? You're speaking of these restaurants as though they've been around since the 1950s. But Gramercy Tavern opened in 1994. Its oldest customers have only aged 13 years. In addition, having been to both of those restaurants many more times than you, I can say that there have always been plenty of younger folks dining at them without parents. Not that it matters: young customers are hardly the authorities on restaurant quality they imagine themselves to be. Most of the best restaurants in the city are firmly middle aged with respect to their core demographics. There's no four-star restaurant catering primarily to twenty-somethings, thirty-somethings or even, really, to forty-somethings. All those people are young for a four-star restaurant. No, the twenty-something crowd that flocks to Spice Market and Buddakan is not at Gramercy Tavern. How is that in any way a statement about quality or stars?

One possibility is that our perception of history causes us to regard each Times reviewer as less than his or her predecessors. Another possibility is that each Times reviewer has been less than his or her predecessors. Certainly, the progression from Ruth Reichl to William Grimes to Frank Bruni has been one of consistent decline. I don't think that's a historical perception; I think that's just the way it is. To Grimes's credit, he took the stars more seriously than Reichl, but in all other respects she was a better critic. Bruni, though a good writer, is most certainly the worst Times restaurant critic ever. I'm not sure about the transition from Bryan Miller to Ruth Reichl. A lot of folks thought she was an improvement -- many think she was the best ever.

That he comments on other USHG restaurants is not problematic. It's that his comments are lame. USHG is probably the most important restaurant group in New York City, and therefore North America. So when you go to write about USHG, you need to have your act together. That doesn't mean you cut USHG any slack. Quite the contrary. However, you should make the following choice: You could choose to ignore the common management issue, and just say you're going to treat each restaurant as a distinct entity like any other restaurant. There would certainly be nothing wrong with taking that position. From the standpoint of a consumer-oriented reviewer, that may be the most rational approach. Or, you could choose to treat the group as an oeuvre. That's also a respectable approach, more along the lines of what an arts critic should be doing. But here's the thing: if you're going to start commenting on the oeuvre, you've got to educate yourself. In the case of USHG, that means you eat at all the group's restaurants -- including the subdivisions like Bread Bar, Tavern, Cafe 2 and Terrace 5, and the outliers like Shake Shack and Blue Smoke, and maybe for extra credit you check out the events company Hudson Yards -- and then you sit down and think about what you've learned and try to come up with something meaningful to say. To me, it seems Bruni never made the choice and committed to a path. He makes the weak claim that he has "covered enough Meyer territory over the last two years to be convinced that they’re the standouts," which to me indicates that he doesn't have the ammunition to make a more knowledgeable, authoritative claim. With his limitless budget, there's no excuse for not doing that legwork. And the weakness of his approach shows in every one of his reviews of USHG restaurants. He misses the big stories. He doesn't see the important trend of USHG hiring better and better chefs in a new mold, because he slaps Gramercy Tavern instead of pausing to consider what Mike Anthony's arrival really shows: that USHG is migrating from Michael Romano and Tom Colicchio to Gabriel Kreuther, Daniel Humm and Mike Anthony. He doesn't get the right points of comparison, so he misses the real story about how Bread Bar, Tavern and Bar Room are a different breed of restaurant -- that should have been the comparative review. He doesn't get the USHG culture, doesn't seem to have read Danny Meyer's book -- you would think he'd comment on it, given that it came out recently and is a New York Times bestseller and illuminates much about USHG -- doesn't seem even to understand the basics.

I live inside of the culture and have no trouble seeing American cuisine. First, because I've traveled cross-country so many times on extended trips that focused on eating, it has been vividly apparent that there are many regional cuisines in America. Second, because I read books and follow other media, I know about those cuisines. Again, a good starting point for all this is the Knopf Cooks American series. You can't read even one of the regional books in that series and walk away thinking there's no American regional cuisine any more than you could deny that there's such a thing as Piedmontese or Burgundian cuisine. Some of the books: Dungeness Crabs And Blackberry Cobblers: The Northwest Heritage Cookbook, by Janie Hibler The Florida Cookbook: From Gulf Coast Gumbo to Key Lime Pie, by Jeanne Voltz and Caroline Stuart Savoring the Seasons of the Northern Heartland, by Beth Dooley and Lucia Watson etc.

Two in 2007. Bouley is chronically underrated, and just give the Mike Anthony buzz another few weeks to start getting around.

Bruni gets some central points right in this review: I do think he correctly pegs the hierarchy of USHG restaurants at this moment. That's why it's such a shame that he poisons the review with so many wrong-headed comments and incomplete theories. He could have had a triumphant review just reporting what plenty of folks here already know: that the Bar Room is one of the city's best kept secrets and Eleven Madison is now truly a top restaurant. But he can't let well enough alone.

It's especially petty given that just a few days ago Michael Anthony's new menus were presented at Gramercy Tavern, a piece of information that surely got to Bruni just as it got to every other food writer in the universe. To publish a comment like, "It’s anyone’s guess how it will emerge from its current state of transition, which isn’t pretty," at such a moment is particularly odious.

I don't think, at the serious/fine dining end of things, there's really much competition: it's Food Arts all the way. If you're talking about specific interests, like chocolate or the business side of the industry, there are other publications, but Food Arts is, as they say, "at the restaurant and hotel forefront."

I think this is insightful, and I can only imagine that the Bar Room is doubly confusing to him because its food is much more complex and haute-cuisine-like than most comfort food. At the same time, I'm quite sure Gabriel Kreuther makes a clear distinction in his mind between the kinds of dishes that would be appropriate in the Bar Room and the kinds that would be appropriate in an haute-cuisine restaurant. I can just imagine people now saying to poor chef Kreuther, "Hey, you should make the dining room's food more like the bar room's!"