Fat Guy

I thought this was a weak review, which is too bad because when a four-star restaurant is being demoted we deserve a more compelling treatment. Once you separate out all the gossip and nitpicking, the case he makes against the food is unconvincing and seems mostly to reveal a haute cuisine knowledge gap on the reviewer's part. More detailed analysis pertaining to the actual restaurant seems to fit better on the Bouley topic in the New York forum so that's where I've made the bulk of my comments.

There is no apology for reality. It just is. Every restaurant in the world, no matter how good, can have an off night. However much we wish otherwise, to believe anything else would be to live in denial. Of course, when dining at the highest levels, no consumer should accept less than an excellent meal. Consumers don't take statistical samples; they pay to eat and they deserve the best. But critics are not consumers. They make multiple visits to restaurants for the purpose of providing consumers with a variety of types of information, and they do so by comparison to other restaurants. While a bad meal cannot be overlooked by a critic, a single screwup should likewise not necessarily destroy a restaurant's rating. You can be sure that at every Michelin three-star restaurant, at least one of the inspectors has had a sub-par meal. Yet those restaurants maintain their ratings based on the overwhelming ratio of good to bad and the heights they reach when they are performing at their best. Or because of politics and letter-writing campaigns, but that's a different issue.

Demotion of a four-star restaurant is a major step, and there are quite a few problems with the way Frank Bruni went about it with respect to Bouley. Without a four-star review to anchor his rhetoric about “Bouley as a whole does not create or sustain the kind of rapture that the very best restaurants do,” the statement sounds more like ass-covering than criticism. Who could dispute it? The whole review seems more concerned with itself than with the restaurant under consideration. Much energy is spent in what comes across as a calculated effort to undermine Bouley's credibility and nitpick the cuisine just enough to justify the demotion. There is historical perspective presented in the review, but not of a culinary sort: here Frank Bruni betrays a degree of inexperience that places him in an inferior posture to the chef he is judging. Without such a body of experience, his attempts to demean Bouley -- “the default centerpiece of his frustrated ambitions” (without so much as a mention of Danube)-- say more about the critic's inability to make his case about the food than about the restaurant's inability to serve it well. I too found the reference to the Red Cross incident to be more character assassination than restaurant reviewing. And what restaurant in New York isn't constantly experiencing staff turnover, especially a restaurant like Bouley that is a culinary academy unto itself? The actual food commentary is thinner than any spa cuisine sauce. Let's count the actual instances in which the review criticizes the cuisine: There is the spa cuisine swipe made in reference to the chicken dish. There is the complaint that the flavor of Wagyu beef is “muddled” by the “funky, idiosyncratic flavor of Asian celery.” There is the claim that “The Parmesan dressing that accompanied a nicely cooked piece of skate overwhelmed it.” And there is the pronouncement that “The pairing of citrus dressing with a seafood carpaccio (scallops, in this case) is a tired, uninspired concept.” That's four actual objections to food in a 1000-word review. And they are hardly compelling objections. Are we now to believe that four-star restaurants aren't allowed to dress seafood carpaccio with citrus dressing? Does Le Bernardin now need to rush to remove its “Lemon-Splashed Slivers of Scallops” from its menu for fear that it will be judged tired and uninspired? How about, was it a good dish? I'd love to see how he'd review a restaurant like Ambroisie, and how is he going to wrap his mind around Ducasse's cuisine, where there is so much emphasis on refinement of the tired, uninspired classics? Do we learn anything more from the critique of Bouley's beef than that Frank Bruni doesn't like Asian celery? And having had Bouley's chicken about a million times, I've got to say I think he totally missed to point of that dish: it's supposed to be a minimalist, lightly sauced composition that emphasizes the excellence of the product and Bouley's mastery of sous vide cooking, of which he has long been the leading American practitioner, having taught the technique to a generation of young American chefs. Taken as a group, the comments about the cuisine, both positive and negative, suggest that we may have a reviewer on our hands who isn't all that familiar with haute cuisine. (Vanilla is a surprising flavor with seafood? Not in this quarter-century.) Does Bouley deserve a demotion to three stars? Maybe. But not like this. Frank Bruni is going to be with us for a good long time. He needs to consider that it might be wise to slow down a bit. There's no way to travel back in time in order to acquire experience of dining at Bouley over the past few years, but there was no rush to get this review to press: more visits to Bouley over a longer period of time going forward would have given a firmer basis for comparison. Being “one of the most celebrated American chefs of the last quarter century” doesn't buy you a get-out-of-jail-free card, but it should give a still-wet-behind-the-ears critic the impetus to conduct a more thorough investigation. As a reference point, the William Grimes review of Bouley Bakery does a good job justifying the highs of the restaurant. If you can get William Grimes that excited, I think the question of "can you create rapture?" is settled. Bouley is and has long been a restaurant of extremes. There are lows that match the highs Grimes wrote about. But Frank Bruni seems to have missed both the highs and the lows. His review of Bouley makes it sound middle-of-the-road, and that's just not the Bouley I know.

New York's unique enthusiasm for all things is what makes New York great! And let's not forget that there is a significant expat-Southerner population in New York City. All you need to do is hang out for awhile at Brother Jimmy's, where the signs on the wall read "God was a Tarheel" and such, and you can meet plenty of Southerners homesick for real barbecue (not that they exactly get it at BJ's). Not that it should come as a suprise: most groups and subgroups from around the nation and the world are represented in New York. That demographic reality is perhaps the single clearest defining cultural trait of New York City, so it's no wonder each group wants to bring its home to New York and it's wonderful that New Yorkers are constantly and excitedly embracing every culture under the sun. If that ever stops, New York will cease to be what it is.

I too enjoyed the dish very much, although I'm sure I'd enjoy a non-curry variant as well. Has it ever been established that Pacaud uses curry powder? I wouldn't be surprised if he roasts and grinds his own spices. Ambroisie is one of the greatest restaurants I've ever had the pleasure to experience. It was not without its faults, but overall I'd rather return there than to almost any other three-star I've visited, so I think I understand Moby's reaction. There is tremendous power in Pacaud's approach to cuisine, enough to overshadow the occasional flaw.

For the same reason North Carolinians shouldn't mark French, Asian, New American, and dozens of other cuisines and products down as things they enjoy elsewhere and go about their business, limiting themselves to barbecue and fried fish!

I'll place my bet on Picholine. They always have one seasonal risotto on the menu and every time I've had it it has been delicious -- a cut above most of what passes for risotto around town.

It could easily be argued that Calvin Trillin has done more to popularize the barbecue culture nationwide than any other writer. Among other things, he was the leading champion of Arthur Bryant, and has written so many articles on barbecue that I lost count a decade ago. Steingarten too has written at length about barbecue and judges barbecue competitions. Colman Andrews' magazine engages in much barbecue advocacy under its "savor a world of authentic cuisine" mission. But what all three panelists have in common, even more so than niche barbecue knowledge, is that they sit at the apex of the food media pyramid. It would be virtually impossible to assemble a panel with three bigger names on it. And I was glad to have Colman on the barbeculture panel because he presented a broader perspective than the rest of the panelists -- which is exactly why you might want to have the editor of a major national food publication on such a panel.

I found that much of the most rewarding eating in Singapore was at the hawker centers. I think you're going to enjoy yourself. How much time do you have remaining, and how much freedom do you have to make requests? In other words, are you looking for any recommendations or is your itinerary locked in such that we should all just sit back and listen to your reports?

Usually the best way to get a current menu from any restaurant is to ask the reservationist to fax it to you. Most Web sites, even the ones that are frequently updated, lag behind what you can get via fax.

There's a whole set of techniques that falls under the sous vide heading. Restaurants that cook this way have largely moved away from water and are using steam ovens, which are much more precise. And there are all sorts of questions of what you seal into the plastic with the main ingredient in order to flavor it. I'll be interested to hear the results of the corned beef experiment, but chances are a corned beef brisket that has been seasoned with a lengthy braise in mind is not a great candidate for cooking in a sealed environment. The vacuum pouch tends to amplify flavors, and sometimes there can be too much of a good thing. Also, some of the greatest benefits from sous vide cooking come when you cook at the desired final temperature of the product for many, may hours, rather than doing what is essentially boil-in-bag cooking.

Chicago will never be the same!

I have no idea what his level of New York City dining experience is. In his past two reviews, though, I recall him making statements about dining overall that imply long-term familiarity with the New York dining scene. He has not always been Rome bureau chief, and it's not as though the Rome bureau chief isn't allowed to dine in New York once in awhile. The point being, there is only so much that we can conclude from his former job title. There are quite a few factors in play here, and there are rules, exceptions to the rules, and exceptions to the exceptions, but I think I'll avoid turning this into a thread about anonymity. Still, rest assured VIPs get more drinks spilled on them than any other category of customer. When waiters get nervous, they screw up. Anyone can get a VIP meal by becoming a VIP, which happens as soon as you eat at a restaurant a few times. It's also worth remembering that, at most top restaurants, the average customer is a repeat customer, not a newcomer, so it becomes a bit more difficult to pin down exactly who Joe Diner is. Still, none of this is an issue if you order from the menu -- at that point, all the kitchen can do is work to insure that you get a good example of the dish. Given the availability of funds to visit a restaurant half a dozen times, my preference would always be to order the basic menu items, the tasting menus, and one or two off-menu VIP-tasting meals. This exposes you to the full range of the kitchen's abilities and allows you to present a review covering all those facets of a chef's expression

Sometime in the mid-1990s, when Vegetarian Times did this as its cover story, I played around with the technique. In my opinion it does require some adaptation of recipes. It works best if you start with a wetter-than-average casserole, cook covered for awhile so the retained steam cooks the noodles, and then cook uncovered to release the steam and brown the top -- your overall cooking time will be a little longer. I think this works better than using no-boil noodles, which are pre-cooked and then dehydrated at the factory. The process seems to affect texture adversely. But skyflyer, I think almost undoubtedly the texture you're referring to comes from using fresh pasta sheets.

It's a simple matter for restaurants to filter their drinking water. Except in the worst locales, filtered tap water is quite acceptable. In New York, where the underlying water is from a spring you could easily use as a bottled-water source, I prefer it to most of the restaurant-popular brands of bottled water such as Evian. And I almost always prefer filtered tap water to any bottled water that comes in plastic bottles. Despite advances in plastics technology, I can taste the packaging. But of course restaurants -- most of them, at least -- don't want to filter their tap water because they want to sell bottled water. It's a great little profit center, with probably the highest markup (easily in excess of 600% and sometimes closer to 1,200%) of any product in the establishment. And Americans, at least, drink a lot of water. A single bottle of water seems to be plenty for a table of 2 Europeans, whereas I could easily drink 3 liters myself in the course of an extended meal. You should never be afraid to ask for tap water, and if you experience the slightest bit of resistance you should take that complaint to the management immediately. There's nothing wrong with trying to sell bottled water or anything else, but once the customer's decision is made that should be the end of the matter. The example from the Independent is interesting, because it was in London that I too experienced my first-ever (and still only) instance of being flat-out refused tap water in a restaurant, and it wasn't even a fancy restaurant. I still can't believe it happened. It certainly is amazing how expensive bottled water is in the US, both in stores and in restaurants. Then again, in most of the US you get free refills on your coffee and soft drinks. I guess it's mostly a matter of what the market will bear. I applaud Charlie Trotter's in Chicago for its water policy. When I visited, there was no charge for bottled water; it was simply served as a matter of course. You're already paying a hundred and whatever dollars for the menu, so why should you be nickled-and-dimed for water?

Assuming Frank Bruni is with-it enough and has dined at Bouley enough times over a long enough period of time to embrace the consensus of experienced New York diners, he will conclude as so many others have that Bouley at its best is every bit a four-star restaurant and that Bouley at its worst is clearly not. He will also conclude that, while every restaurant in the world no matter how great can have bad days, Bouley has historically had a higher percentage of bad days than any other restaurant at that level. The question then becomes what is the role of consistency in a restaurant review? When you think about the number of visits critics make to restaurants -- even New York Times critics, with their virtually unlimited budgets -- it's never a statistically significant sample. Even 3, 5, or 8 visits can only tell you so much about the consistency level of a restaurant that does hundreds of covers a night and tens of thousands of covers a year. That's why you have so many people who have been to Bouley once or a handful of times and will offer such divergent testimony: my one meal there was awesome, my one meal there was terrible, my two meals there were flawless, one of my three meals there was disappointing. Indeed, one hears this about most every restaurant. The Times critic, likewise, tends only to take a snapshot. All those visits occur during a short period of time. When you get up to numbers like 30+, which is probably how many times I've been to Bouley in its various incarnations, you're looking at history rather than any sort of current snapshot. Which introduces a sub-question: should four-star restaurants be held up to historical standards or should they be reviewed for how they're performing during the month when the reviewer makes the visits? By asking those and related questions, a picture of fundamental randomness starts to come into focus. Especially for the reviews based on 3 visits, the random occurrence of 1 bad visit can totally change the review. And that just happens, even at the best restaurants in the world. This also dovetails with the anonymity issue: a restaurant that performs inconsistently can usually behave consistently when the presence of a VIP customer demands it. Presumably Frank Bruni is now recognized at most of his meals (if you keep an ear to the ground you can find out where he has been eating, as several people on this thread have already demonstrated), so he will experience more consistent results than the first-time customer. He will get the highest level of consistency a restaurant can provide. He might, then, only get 1 true random experience (his first) before the restaurant's mechanisms kick in. So even in the course of 5 or 8 visits, only 1 represents the true odds, and that's truly meaningless. Even if he isn't recognized as a critic, he will likely be recognized as a repeat customer after visit number 2 -- the staff may think he's Mr. Smith not Mr. Bruni but he'll still be treated very well as a repeat client (although at Bouley you never know). Given that restaurants are so heavily oriented towards repeat business, and that so many of the most educated consumers especially in the local market are more interested in long-term relationships with restaurants than they are with trying every new place, should the critic be trying to write about the meal the first-time visitor will get or should he be focusing on what a restaurant is capable of? A single-critic system has a lot of advantages, but judging consistency is not one of them. To judge consistency, a team system like Michelin or even Zagat is far more effective. To the extent one can find enough opinions collected online, that too is a more reliable measure of consistency than anything a single critic can provide. The size of the sample is so much higher, there's really no comparison. So I think it's easy to say that lack of consistency is a reasonable basis for loss of a star, but it's much harder to figure out a fair way for a single critic to apply that standard. And if that is the case, perhaps critics shouldn't devote so much effort to measuring what they're not equipped to measure, and should focus instead on what restaurants are capable of at their best. After all, chopjwu12 makes a compelling point: it strains credibility to put Bouley and Spice Market in the same category, or even Bouley and Babbo for that matter.

The http://www.bouleyrestaurants.com/ main site is working as is the Danube site, but the Bouley restaurant site isn't responding.

I'm not sure I can agree with the "transporting" view of four stars. I'm transported by plenty of food that shouldn't even get one star: pastrami at Katz's, pizza at Sally's, hot dogs at the Super Duper Weenie, Thai food at Sripra-whatever, burgers at White Manna, oysters at Bowen's Island, barbecue all over the South, fish camp in Gastonia, etc.

I think you have to go with the El Bulli book, no matter what's actually in the two books. The international culinary community, at the top level, has established that the El Bulli book is part of the cultural literacy of cooking today. No such honor has yet been bestowed on the Spoon book (the Grand Livres, maybe, but not Spoon). At the same time, I imagine a working chef at a non-avant-garde restaurant might get more usable ideas from Spoon than from El Bulli, although I haven't spent enough time with the El Bulli book to be certain of that.

There's only one way to credit a restaurant with four star food, and that's by giving it four stars. Anything less is simply not official. It has the status of what in the law would be called dicta -- comments made by judges that are not actually part of a ruling and are therefore not accorded the status of precedent. When Frank Bruni gives a restaurant four stars, we will know what he means by four-star food. As long as he's just speculating, all we have are hints. And I think if you consider that the review isn't really about Babbo but is, rather, a statement of general principles, it becomes more an issue of focus and purpose. He's opening the door to Japanese and Italian restaurants being four-star restaurants. He doesn't think Babbo makes the cut, especially for non-food reasons, but he thinks the food is good enough to pose a four-star challenge. He can believe that without necessarily being forced to conclude that Babbo actually does serve four-star food. The review doesn't actually require any sort of meditation on what four-star food is, because again to draw a parallel to the law he doesn't need to reach that issue in order to render his judgment. Whether or not Frank Bruni would, if asked point blank, say "Babbo absolutely deserves four stars save for its decor," is perhaps a question that can be answered by Frank Bruni. It is not absolutely answered in the review. He leaves himself too much wiggle room in terms of the way he constructs the sentences, his use of "emblematic," etc., for us to conclude that he was making an unequivocal claim. Moreover, if he would say "Babbo absolutely deserves four stars save for its decor," we would still have to take it with a grain of salt until such time as we get to read a four-star review, particularly of an Italian restaurant. Likewise, I happen to think he would be wrong to say "Babbo absolutely deserves four stars save for its decor." Of course he has the power to award any restaurant any number of stars he wants to award it, but that doesn't make him right.

Frank Bruni chose to focus on questions of setting when he explained why Babbo is clearly not a four-star restaurant. This does not necessarily lead to the conclusion that Babbo's cuisine served in a nicer setting would have or should have received four stars from Frank Bruni. I agree with his reasons for not giving Babbo four stars, but do not agree that those are the only reasons. There are food reasons as well. Having categorically denied Babbo entry into the four star club, the discussion of the cuisine and the whole thrust of the reviewer's thinking went in a certain direction. There's no telling how it would have gone had Babbo not disqualified itself on a non-food basis. There's a big difference between saying "This three-star chef is as talented as any four-star chef and is serving some awesome four-star-quality stuff!" and actually awarding four stars. Of course, Frank Bruni may be offering a new view of the meaning of four-star cuisine that rejects the notions of refinement, complexity, and luxury that have traditionally informed the discussion and replaces them with a just-plain-delicious standard. This would, ironically, have the effect of making the four-star rating only about service, decor, and such because a four-star restaurant would simply be a three-star restaurant with better service and a nicer space.

The white guy working at Mitchell's on Sunday was YOU?

Not just Manhattan. Becco's deal is great by national standards as well. That's why the Becco offshoots (aka "Lidia's") have been so well received in Kansas City and Pittsburgh.

Here's Becco's whole list of $20 wine selections: http://www.beccoparty.com/beccoparty/list/...les/20list.html

The thing is, when you're talking to a liberal Manhattan audience, probably half of which is Jewish, you don't meet much resistance to the notion that blacks invented barbecue and the white racists stole it from them. In an audience wherein the most conservative people are looked at as commies by national standards, the sentiment tends to be, "Well, it's no big surprise to us that the white people in the South stole barbecue from the blacks. That's what those rednecks do with everything." I imagine when you give that lecture in Mississippi it's controversial; I didn't feel it was controversial to the New York audience. So, okay, the whites stole barbecue from the blacks, just like they stole the rest of popular culture from the blacks. This is conventional wisdom where I live. But it would be absurd to conclude that, as a result of that invention, there is some sort of current "ownership" of barbecue culture. There is historical ownership of a sort, but who owns it today? That to me is the more interesting question, and ultimately the more controversial one. And good commie that I am, I say it belongs to The People aka everyone.