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Thanks, that's interesting. If I already suspected someone was Bruni, that voice would nail it for me. ← Beyond that, Bruni's photo can be found on the Internet.

I am not sure there is a well established restaurant review template that he is violating. I find his prose mediocre and his judgment dubious, but that's a matter of opinion with which some may disagree. I don't have a problem with his "finding a theme" style, when he manages to find the right one. Last week's Spotted Pig review was pretty reasonable. "My ass was comfortable" is one of his sillier efforts. My understanding is that critics are given a fairly wide berth to cover the beat as they see fit. At some point, management will pull the plug if a critic isn't getting the job done. That hppened with Elvis Mitchell and Herbert Muschamp, although Muschamp was there for years before that finally happened. Many people hated Muschamp's writing, but he was also very provocative. For all I know, Bruni may have a ton of fans, although they don't seem to be on eGullet.

The NY Times restaurant critic has had a regular spot on radio station WQXR for years. I think I remember hearing Mimi Sheraton on the radio, and I certainly heard Bryan Miller. In more recent times, the incumbent has delivered a weekly review on cable TV, although they do hide his face. So the podcast is just one more medium where his voice can be heard.

And that's why I said in another post, that your reviews posted on eGullet are much better written than any of his - you disagreed at the time. After today, I hope you have changed your mind. ← On a straight-up comparison, Bruni's reviews are better than my eGullet posts. If the identical reviews appeared anonymously on eGullet as member posts, we would say they were pretty darned good (although GAF’s are better). However, Bruni is paid to eat and write about it; I am not. His reviews are sold as part of a commercial product; mine are written for free, as a hobby. I also presume he has far more time to polish his prose, since it's his principal occupation. I therefore hold him to a higher standard.

I, for one, do not think that he is a particularly good writer. He has the bare minimum competence for someone in his field; that is all. I find his work cliché-ridden and seldom insightful. Certain favorite words and phrases tend to be repeated a lot. He doesn't get to the point.

Bruni sometimes goes to very long lengths to say something trivial. Take today's example: That's three paragraphs to say: the chairs and banquetts are uncommonly comfortable. That's useful to know, but it merited a sentence or two. When he writes more, it usually signals that the food bored him, and he needed something else to fill up the space.

A copy of the menu is here. It shows: Cold Appetizers: $18-33 Hot Appetizers: $11-23 Soup & Noodles: $12-16 Mains: $23-48 Sushi-Sashimi: $4-10 per piece Maki: $6.00-13.50 Chef's Combination of Sushi/Sashimi/Maki: $30, 100, or $150 Omakase: $120

Like any literary device, irony becomes tiresome when overused. I think quotes work just fine for this purpose, but the Per Se menu has abused the custom, and now it's just a joke.

Frank Bruni is now doing a 1-minute podcast every weekday. It's available as a link from this page, and requires Times Select. Most of them are re-hashes of his columns in the newspaper, although the wording isn't identical. At one minute per day, it's an exercise in speed-talking. The last five Bruni podcasts have been: 1/26: Dani 1/27: The Spotted Pig 1/30: Trader Joe's (even though it doesn't open here for another 3 months) 1/31: My Week as a Waiter, part 1 2/1: My week as a Waiter, part 2 The 1/30 podcast is the only one not based on a recent column. Sometimes the transition from print to audio results in a very different tone. In particular, the two "My Week as a Waiter" podcasts come across as a lot of whining about the behavior of the diners he served. That wasn't the tone of the print piece.

My guess is Manhattan is a very tough place to do business--especially for anything "experimental." Actually, I think you'd stand a better chance of that in Manhattan than in most cities. The trick is finding the right space, at the right price. If word-of-mouth is favorable, there's practically no neighborhood that intrepid diners won't go to. That's how areas that weren't formerly hospitable to fine dining, like the Meatpacking District, the LES, and now Far West Chelsea, have become hot spots. However, if you open in the space that was formerly Le Cirque, there are certain expectations. One cannot completely ignore the history of that space. Their situation is different. JGV is so well known now, he could open just about anything anywhere, and the place would fill up on reputation alone. Obviously failure remains a possibility after the lustre has worn off (V Steakhouse), but people will give him a healthy benefit of the doubt because of who he is. Liebrandt doesn't have that luxury.Keller, of course, was duplicating a model that was already a big hit in Napa. It's not the same thing as creating a concept from scratch. Gray Kunz brought the Lespinasse cachet with him, and he also had the advantage of opening in a highly touted venue, where he caught some of the beneficial glow of the company he was keeping.

I've eaten at Berns a number of times, and I never found ordering by the ounce particularly helpful. It's the same problem at Greek restaurants that serve fish by the pound: you just don't have a good feel for what you're getting.

Critic anonymity is much discussed here on eGullet. Everyone concedes that the critics for major newspapers are going to be frequently recognized—perhaps not every time, but certainly much of the time. In his book Turning the Tables, eGullet's Fat Guy argues reasonably persuasively that there isn't a whole lot the restaurant can do to suddenly improve the place when a critic arrives. They can perhaps do a few things at the margins, and they'll certainly make sure not to assign their trainee waiter to his table, but basically the restaurant is what it is.Careful readers of Mr. Bruni's articles will find plenty of examples where he clearly was not recognized. Usually it shows up in service glitches, which is why it's perhaps appropriate that he went undercover as a server—the one aspect of the restaurant experience where he is probably treated differently than everybody else. Where Bruni gets bad service, it's usually at restaurants that had no reason to expect a forthcoming review from the Times. Most of the "big name" restaurants will recognize him instantly. Certainly they will figure it out when the same guy shows up several times in a matter of weeks with large parties, and places huge orders for ridiculous amounts of food as if money is no object, and with him tasting from everybody else's plate. Bruni's photo is on the Internet, so it's not difficult to find out what he looks like.

For a downscale sibling, craftbar is surprisingly formal-looking. Of course, it is not a formal restaurant as we would traditionally have understood that term. But in an era that has largely jettisoned old notions of fine dining, craftbar seems like an oasis of calm. The booths are comfortable, the tables widely spaced, the décor unambitious but gentle on the eyes. Nowadays, such a space could easily be the home to far more ambitious cooking than craftbar is, in fact, serving. My friend and I could not avoid the comparison to the Café at Country, the downscale sibling of a main dining room that hasn't opened yet. We dined there about ten days ago. It was a miserable experience, not for any fault of the food, but for an ambiance that seemed perversely designed to inflict maximum discomfort. At craftbar, there's proof that an informal sibling need not have tables the size of postage stamps and the noise level of a Wall Street trading floor. The menu comes on a single loose sheet of paper, and it changes daily. I started with the pan-roasted sweetbreads ($15), which came lightly breaded. This dish seemed to exemplify the "Craft" approach—presenting the best ingredients, prepared simply. I found it tasty, but unadventurous. Several reports have praised the veal meatballs with ricotta ($19). Here too was a comfort food featuring impeccable ingredients prepared uncreatively. There were three hefty meatballs in a red sauce with an ample sprinkling of grated cheese. The veal was tender, and obviously a high quality. In less capable hands, it could easily have been overwhelmed by either the sauce or the cheese, but here the piece parts were skillfully balanced. My friend also made uncomplicated choices: a duck liver pâté followed by spaghetti. I tasted a bit of the pate, and found it comparable to the better examples that I've tasted elsewhere. At $15, my sweetbread appetizer was craftbar's most expensive; other starters are in the $8-12 range. At $19, my meatball entrée was craftbar's least expensive; other main courses were in the $25-30 range. If not exactly budget-priced, craftbar is certainly less expensive than its luxury sister restaurant, craft. I wasn't in the mood for a fancy meal last night, but I would certainly look forward to a return visit to try some of craftbar's more adventurous main courses.

Umm, what if it is the only overcooked steak that left that kitchen in the last six months, and the critic won the lottery?Just asking. ← As Mimi Sheraton noted upthread, no critic at a major newspaper reviews a restaurant after just one visit. Over the course of several visits, the critic will find out if that over-cooked dish was an anomaly or a recurring problem.

Two steak-for-4's would be enough to feed a football team. Okay, not quite, but it's certainly more than you need.In my experience at Wolfgang's (which is serving the same cuts of beef), if you order appetizers, steak for 3, and 2-3 sides, three men will not finish everything on the table.

At any respectable newspaper, music critics have musical training. They aren't usually virtuosi, but they are more than just enthusiastic fans. True, it doesn't take much expertise to identify an unmitigated disaster. But restaurant disasters take up only a miniscule percentage of a critic's time. It's in the large gray area between awful and extraordinary where most of his time is spent. The ability to identify and explicate those shades of gray distinguishes a professional critic from a wannabe.

There are many Times writers who have that gravitas that John referred to. I have not yet seen it in very many Frank Bruni pieces, which is probably why the discussion about this article is inextricably linked with Bruni's lack of food-industry experience generally.Bruni's job calls for him to write two restaurant reviews per week (a rated review and the unrated "Diner's Journal"), and a periodic ideas/trends piece called the Critic's Notebook. I don't see any problem with the job having those parameters, but I think that Bruni has largely wasted the bully pulpit that has been handed to him. One or two of Bruni's Critic's Notebook articles have been modestly insightful. This one was not.

It sounds like Gilt's menu is undergoing some refinement. On the website, there is no division of the menu into "Classic" and "Modern" sections. No tasting menu is indicated, only the $92 prix fixe. I believe someone said upthread that the present menu has fewer dishes with supplements than it did before, so perhaps the restaurant is paying attention when critic after critic whines about the cost shakedown. As I see it, Bruni may have done them an enormous favor, since he offered advance notice of what his complaints are likely to be. If the restaurant cares what he thinks, there is still time to make adjustments before the "permanent" review—the one most visitors to the Times site are likely to see for years & years—gets written.Of course, the restaurant may not care what he thinks. ASM said the place was full, so the Bruni piece probably hasn't cost them any business. Indeed, it may actually have been good for business. There's an old saying that there's no such thing as bad publicity; the only bad publicity is none at all. There really is no "etcetera." Until now, WD-50 has had the avant-garde niche pretty much to itself. The question is whether that genre can succeed in a space that was formerly known for conservative haute cuisine.

I agree that a restaurant critic need not have worked in the industry, but I think some expertise is called for, beyond mere enthusiasm for dining out—which is all Frank Bruni seems to bring to the party.

A bit belatedly, I finally got around to reading this book. It's about 200 pages, but goes by quickly. I bought it Thursday night and finished it last night. Curiously, although it's hardcover, the book is shaped like a Zagat Guide, which is a strange design choice. I found it a little unwieldy to hold. Regular readers of this site will find themselves going over a lot of familiar material, as Shaw's views on many of the issues are already very well known. While researching the book, Shaw gained insider access to a number of restaurants, which he shares with us. Wisely, he didn't post that material on eGullet before publication—otherwise, the book would have been pointless. Those passages are the most enjoyable. Where he's questioning the utility of critic anonymity or predicting failure for the New York Michelin Guide, we've heard the song before. Shaw has done most of his writing in short formats, and it shows: the book reads like a series of newspaper feature articles. This structure makes the material easily digestible, but at times it lacks depth. For instance, in the chapter on "The Business of the Restaurant Business," Shaw takes brief tours of projects that are already in progress, but they are only fly-bys. Take Café Gray, for instance. Shaw wants to tell us what it takes to open a new restaurant, but when he first drops by, the space is already under construction. A lot of the formative stages have already happened. And he never gets far enough to tell us how it all turned out after Café Gray opened: What worked? What didn't? Shaw spends several pages on one of his favorite hobby horses: critic anonymity. He believes that restaurant critics should drop the pretense of dining anonymously, since he believes they are usually recognized anyway. He also argues persuasively that the restaurant can't really improve the quality of the food when a critic is in the house, so in that sense anonymity is meaningless. Instead, he argues that critics should develop "ties—close ties—to the community." Shaw believes that those close ties will allow the critic to obtain better information, and ultimately to "promote the best within the industry while exposing the worst." Shaw's own book demonstrates why this will not work, for it is notable that Shaw never criticizes any of the restaurants or restauranteurs whom he had personally interviewed or worked with during his research. To the contrary, he gushes and fawns over them. It is a love-fest. Regular readers of this site will know that Shaw hasn't lost his critical faculties. But in the book, he holds his tongue. He is too indebted to his sources—without whom the book would have been impossible—to confide what he really thinks about what he may have seen or heard. By the way, Shaw doesn't hesitate to criticize those whom he did not work with. He gives an extremely balanced view of the Zagat Guides, both their strengths and methodological flaws. He rightly takes the New York Times to task for selecting amateurs as food critics (both William Grimes and particularly Frank Bruni). He brashly says that "Michelin will, and should, fail to gain traction in the United States." Early indications suggest that he is already being proved wrong on that prediction. But would he have been so harsh had Michelin invited Shaw to a few confidential inspectors' meetings? To the contrary, one must assume that Shaw would have bestowed heaps of praise upon Michelin, just as he did for everyone who helped him on the present volume. Mind you, I am not suggesting that Shaw has done anything wrong here. I would be very happy to receive just one-tenth of the comped meals and insider access that Shaw receives. But I do not suggest that I could write about those restaurants with the same objectivity as a critic who attempts—however imperfectly—to remain detached and anonymous. One can understand Shaw's lack of objectivity about the wonderful resource he co-founded: eGullet. Having already run us through the limitations of Zagat, Michelin, and newspaper reviews, he asks, "Is there another way? I think there is. It's called the Internet." Jaws drop in amazement. There's this undiscovered secret called the Internet, and somehow we missed it! Anyhow, I'm as big a fan of the medium as anybody, but Shaw's discussion of the Internet doesn't have the same detachment—and perhaps it can't—as it does where he's not personally involved. He steers clear of mentioning Chowhound, the one other Internet site that could reasonably be considered a competitor to eGullet. Perhaps that's because, in any rational comparison, Chowhound would invariably come across as inferior, and Shaw could be forgiven for not wanting to gloat. Along the way, Shaw doesn't spare us his opinions, and some are provocative. He appears to be right when he criticizes overly harsh U. S. agricultural regulations that prohibit the manufacture of chesse made from raw (un-pasteurized) milk, even though it is permitted in Europe. He concludes that the purported health risk is insignificant. He strongly believes it is worthwhile to focus your dining on a few good restaurants, so that you'll become a "regular" and get treated like a VIP. One of the book's early chapters explains precisely how to go about doing that. I don't doubt Shaw, since he's done it and I haven't. But for the moment I intend to disregard his advice. Trying new places—his advice in a different chapter—is just too much fun. Some of Shaw's general advice seems trivial. He points out that most restaurants have a menu posted outside, and it's a good idea to read the menu first before deciding whether to eat there. Yet, we shouldn't be afraid to try new things. I think my mother told me all that before I was 10. Shaw advises us to remember to say "please" and "thank you." Those to whom this is a revelation are probably beyond his help. A final chapter on the future of dining takes a fun look at where the restaurant industry has been, and where Shaw thinks it is going. He interviews Jean-Jacques Rachou (La Cote Basque) and Georges Briguet (Le Perigord), two conseratives who turn out to be surprisingly open-minded. He also profiles avant-garde chefs like Ferran Adria of El Bulli and Grant Achatz of Alinea. He argues convincingly that we shouldn't be concerned about global chefs who aren't always present in the kitchens they supervise: all chefs are executives, and are to some extent dependent on work done in their absence. "To my way of thinking...all chefs are absentee chefs," he says. "The only variable I have been able to isolate is the extent of their absence." Less persuasive is his strange definition of authenticity as "being faithful to oneself." Shaw has a tendency toward hyperbole that can be extremely irritating. Nobu Masuhisa's flavors are "seemingly extraterrestrial." Jean-Georges Vongerichten and Gray Kunz "run roughshod over culinary borders with the audacity of international arms dealers." A pizza oven is "ancient...spewing forth sparks, flames, and smoke with reckless abandon." (Can an inanimate object be reckless?) The workers who tend it "look as though they've been working the boiler room of the Titanic." A cheese-making machine "looks like an evil harp." He later tastes the cheeses: "all are at least superlative." The book is written in Shaw's easy conversational style. There are occasional lapses into irrelevance, such as complaints about having to wake up early to do research. My alarm goes off at 5:45am on weekdays—a time not unusual among New Yorkers—so Shaw's complaints about leaving the house at 6:30am don't draw much sympathy from me. The ongoing saga of his choices of shoes, none of which seem to make him comfortable, is a distraction we don't need. But while it may be a mixed bag, there is much here about the restaurant industry from the inside-out, which is precisely what Shaw set out to tell us. I can't imagine anyone more qualified to tell it. One gets the sense that Shaw has far more knowledge to share than made it into this book. I will be very happy to see a sequel.

Braden Keil reports in today's New York Post that Del Posto has been served with an eviction notice for violating its lease. Among the transgressions: taking over basement space that's not in the lease; disabling security cameras; unapproved installation of outdoor lighting; and "the installation of duct work that spills out into unrented retail space next door." The Post wasn't able to reach Batali, but partner Joseph Bastianich says that it would cost $500,000, and the restaurant would need to close for 2½ months, to remedy the problems. The landlord says, "There's been plenty of interest by other restaurants who would like to rent the space... We assume they're going to try to delay the process until they've had a chance to relocate." It sounds like posturing by both sides. Del Posto can't plausibly relocate, and I doubt that the landlord has shopped the space seriously.

No, and I don't think it should. Sure, waiting tables is hard. But then, most of the restaurants he's reviewing are fairly expensive, and the service should reflect that. Their competence and expertise is part of what we're paying for.Bruni seemed to be acknowledging that at the end of his review:

These days, it's a good idea to check if the web address corresponding to your restaurant name is available. It looks like Will Goldfarb doesn't do that. If you enter www.room4dessert.com in your web browser, you are redirected to www.roomfordessertchicago.com, an unrelated establishment in the Windy City.

I rather liked this wisecrack in the summary box at the bottom of Bruni's Spotted Pig review:

Quoting Hamlet, "That is the question." New York already has several big-box Japanese restaurants (Ono, ENJB, Matsuri, Megu). Beyond this, there are the other premium Japanese dining establishments that are smaller, but very well regarded (Masa, Yasuda, Kuruma, Gari, and even Jewel Bako). I'm no expert on the Philly dining scene, but I doubt that Philly has so many restaurants of this type in such a concentrated area. This post on Eater quotes a review of the Philly outposts of Morimoto and Buddakan, concluding that they will not make it in New York: The writer may be giving NYC too much credit—we have our own restaurants that succeed with smoke and mirrors—but the genre into which Morimoto and Buddakan are trying to fit may now be over-saturated.