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How does ADNY compare to Lespinasse at its height?

We skipped dessert, although there's a strong selection of single-malt whiskies, from which we sampled.

Last night, I paid my first visit to this iconic New York restaurant. You could eat for a month at restaurants helmed by chefs who trained under Gotham's Alfred Portale. After twenty years, Portale still delivers one of the most satisfying dining experiences you can have in this city. On a Wednesday night, Gotham was packed. I started with the Gingerbread Crusted Foie Gras ($24), which was probably the best foie gras dish I've had. Who else would have thought of putting such a humble ingredient as gingerbread on foie gras? It was ingenious. It was really tough to choose an entrée, as every item on the menu sounded good. I chose the Rack of Lamb ($39), which I suppose is a boring choice, but when in doubt the lamb will never disappoint. It came with two generous double-cut chops, mind-blowingly tender, and a potato puree that was a bit underwhelming. Portale's trademark is that he plates dishes vertically, so it was no surprise to have the chops delivered with the bones pointed upward, leaning against a potato tower. Service was impeccable. This struck me right at the beginning, when I took the plastic stirring stick out of my vodka & tonic, and laid it on the table. It can't have taken more than 30 seconds for someone to notice this, and come take the little stick off the table. My only complaint is the bread—a fist-sized wad of dough that seemed to have been baked many hours before. The crust had long since turned to concrete. If Kentucky Fried Chicken can turn out fresh, warm bread, why can't a three-star restaurant? Gotham Bar & Grill is at 12 E. 12th St, between 5th Avenue and University Place. The current menu is available at their website.

Several people have mentioned ADNY's $320 truffle menu. Why are truffles so expensive?

I think Sri might have been at best three stars, not four, if its service and ambiance (it's both—not just ambiance) were "top-shelf." However, even this is far from assured. I have several reasons for this: 1) Practically nobody on this board, except for Rich, thinks Sri is serving four-star food. 2) Although Bruni was certainly enthusiastic about the food, he did point out some negatives that would appear to disqualify it from four-star status (disappointing seafood, "cloying" desserts sold in prepackaged containers). Some of Bruni's praise comes with implied limitations ("Sripraphai dutifully performs the requisite paces for a Thai restaurant in New York"). It would be unprecedented to find such comments in a four-star review. 3) Sri doesn't serve alcohol, and I'm sure there has never been a four-star restaurant that was BYOB. Obviously Bruni could redefine the star system to eliminate this as a requirement, but there's no evidence he has done so yet. 4) I suspect that the most a restaurant has ever been docked for service/ambiance is one star. Although the Times doesn't give separate ratings for food, service, and ambiance, the reviews are generally more about the food. If a restaurant were ever docked two stars for service and ambiance, these factors would have to be mind-bogglingly awful, and no such complaints were found in the Bruni review. 5) Lastly, and this is a subtle point (which I owe to Fat Guy), we don't really know that Babbo would be four stars if it corrected the service/ambiance issues Bruni referred to. Bruni never quite said that. He implied it, but that's a lot different than actually writing the four-star review. I should also point out that reviews are often written against a backdrop of expectations. V Steakhouse was expected to be a high-end dining experience, and it was priced that way. Bruni had to write a rather negative review to justify awarding "only" one star. Never mind whether you actually believe V deserved that rating. Any critic will "go negative" when he's explaining a rating that's lower than what was generally expected. You'll find other one-star ratings from Bruni that are fairly enthusiastic, simply because the restaurant is performing comfortably and is priced appropriately at that level. For Sripraphai, expectations were the opposite—based on its prices, you'd expect it to be reviewed in the $25-and-under column. Rather than inferring that it's a four-star restaurant that has been docked two stars for service and ambiance, I'd infer that it's at best a one-star restaurant that has been awarded a bonus star for food that Bruni considered mind-blowingly good for the price.

Rich is referring to the Babbo review. Like much of what Bruni writes, his choice of words was inelegant, and he will probably never live it down. Nevertheless, I am quite sure that Bruni was not saying that. He said the music was "emblematic" of a host of reasons (which he went on to itemize) why Babbo is not four stars. It is all of those reasons, and not just the music, that take Babbo out of four-star territory. The incompetence of the present critic is an entirely different matter than the system itself, which actually used to mean something. On the other hand, Bruni has not yet debased the three and four-star categories, so we have half a system left. I entirely agree. Frank, are you listening? I fail to see how it's a disservice to the restaurant. They are no doubt delighted.

To retain four-star status, Bouley didn't need to match Per Se and ADNY, as most people agree those two restaurants are in a category unto themselves. The real question with Bouley was whether it was still performing comparably to the other four-stars: Daniel, Le Bernardin, and Jean Georges. Bruni answered that question in the negative. Fat Guy wondered whether Per Se and ADNY can learn anything from each other. I'm wondering whether we will see more restaurants in this category. Usually, success breeds imitation. The demand clearly exists, but at this price level there is no room for error.

A few thoughts on Bruni's "friends"...... He seems to use this term indiscriminately for his dining companions (aside from the occasion when he mentioned his brother). My guess is that sometimes they are friends, and other times they're just acquaintances or colleagues. As far as I know, most NYT food critics regularly take companions with them to meals. Bruni is the only one, as far as I can recall, who mentions them in almost every review. Many of these references are filler, and contribute very little to our understanding of the restaurant. Now, if a dining companion has made a particularly witty or insightful comment that brilliantly captures the experience, I have no objection if Bruni credits the comment to a friend rather than taking credit for himself. In fact, he should give credit where it is due. The trouble is, most of these comments just aren't all that that interesting. On the other hand, I wouldn't say Bruni is writing a review by committee. The opinions are all his own. Even a highly opinionated writer can quote others, where the quotes help to make the desired point. These quotes generally don't do that, or they don't do it very well.

It got 2* from the Times, and based on my experience there, it arguably deserved 3.

Not exactly. National political polls are random samples. However, the reputable pollsters normalize their samples before reporting a result. For example, if they reach a higher percentage of housewives than usual (e.g., because a high percentage of men were watching the Yankee game last night, and didn't come to the phone), they adjust the result to reduce the influence of that subset of the sample. You are correct that the Zagat respondents are self-selected, and this introduces some biases. You are correct about the 1-2-3 system, but not about the conclusion you draw from it. Since Zagat voters vote 1-2-3, it turns out that 20 is an "average" rating in their system. I suspect that many Zagat readers don't understand this. Since the published ratings are on a 1-30 scale, people might assume that 15 is average, which it isn't. Once you understand that 20 is average, the ratings start to make pretty good sense. The 1-2-3 system doesn't have anything to do with disproportionately high or low ratings in case of small sample sizes. Regardless of the sample size, the average restaurant is 20, rather than 15. With small sample sizes, there might be a danger of ballot-stuffing, although if you look at the actual guide it's hard to find many cases where this appears to have happened. (This does not mean that one necessarily agrees with the numbers in every case—only that ballot-stuffing isn't necessarily the reason for them.)

Pan, I'm not suggesting that all Times readers are rich. For that matter, even the affluent do not eat every meal at Veritas and Cru. But the reality is that the Times is covering something like 2% of the $25-and-under restaurants. It's almost a random event when they happen to publish a review in that category that you can really use. It doesn't help that probably half of the $25-and-under reviews are of $25-50 restaurants. My comment is about the Times's institutional limitations. I don't disagree that Asimov is a better reviewer than Sietsema.

Actually, it's quite clear how the raters assign the points: they do whatever they please. It's definitely not the Michelin system, and one could write a book about the methodological problems. What's amazing is that, despite these problems, the guide is generally dependable. There are some mistakes, but guides written by professional critics have mistakes too. And remember, all polling—even if it follows the most scrupulously correct statistical methodology—is subject to sampling error. I would estimate that, 90-95% of the time, a Zagat rating is within +/- 2 points of its "correct" rating. That isn't too bad, and there's probably no methodology that would do significantly better.

But if you look at the actual ratings, they're generally defensible. You don't have some dinky trattoria getting rated 27, with Jean Georges rated 22. In general, the restaurants with very high Zagat ratings are the restaurants we think of as being among New York's best. We may quibble with some of the ratings here & there, but we do that even when they're assigned by professional critics at the Times.

I haven't been to Cru yet, but based on other reviews and Bruni's earlier DJ column, I expected three stars. I agree that this is one of Bruni's better reviews. It is mainly about the food, and his friends aren't mentioned. It seems Bruni's best reviews have come where the food was unquestionably terrific. Where the food is less compelling (to him), Bruni gets distracted and starts tossing in irrelevant things.

Steve Cuozzo of the New York Post weighs in with a 2 1/2 star review titled Cru Has a Clue. Like Bruni, Cuozzo is headed for three stars till poor Will Goldfarb's desserts spoil the party: This can't be a happy day in the Goldfarb household.

This is an idea that would no doubt please the foodies, but I'm sure the Times has no intention of doing it. They're spending on food reviews what they want to spend. My own suggestion is that the Times should admit that $25-and-under is a fiction, and raise the ceiling to about $50. There would then be two critics, one covering the $25-50 range, and the other covering the over $50 range. Both categories would be eligible for stars. I don't believe the Times should bother covering the truly budget restaurants — not because they're unimportant, but because I think the local papers are better equipped to cover them. Likewise, I don't think the Times should review outer borough restaurants merely because the critic wants to give out some free publicity. The Times should cover those places if they reasonably qualify as dining destinations (i.e., they're more than just neighborhood places).

I don't see where you get "travesty" from that. Of the top eight restaurants mentioned, there are two four-star and six three-star places (per the NYT). While that might not be my own list of the top eight—or yours—it's not a travesty. A travesty would be Olive Garden #1, Ruby Tuesday #2, and TGI Friday's #3.

How would you like the reservations process to work? Aside from changing the music, I'm not understanding what the problem is, other than popularity.

I'm a little confused at the moment. I checked the Zagat website, and as Jaybert indicated, Per Se has scored 29-29-29. If indeed this is unprecedented (and I believe it is), then I do not see how a list of Zagat's top eight could exclude Per Se.

Katy Sparks departed earlier this year, and I'm not aware they've even announced a new executive chef. I would wait awhile.

I wonder who was the last NYT restaurant critic who actually did impact the food and restaurant industry in a very positive manner.

This was probably the most pointless review Bruni has published. It confirmed that writing about food doesn't come naturally to him. Given the opportunity to write about a "scene" — with food merely a footnote — that's what he did. Zero-star reviews in the Times are rare. It's not because the city has very few zero-star restaurants; it's because such restaurants are generally not worth writing about. I mean, when you have only 52 reviews per year, why spend the paper's money on 4-5 visits to a 20-year-old restaurant that most people have forgotten about, only to publish a review that says, "Don't bother"?

What did you find reasonable about that?

The Times critics practically never discuss the rating directly. Hence, Bruni didn't tell us how close V came to two stars, or precisely which of his complaints was the most important in the decision to award just one. However, the standard blurb that defines the stars says that price is taken into account. As I interpreted it — and I stress that this is only interpretation — V was punished for a number of failures that he considered inexcusable for the price. Stone also wrote: I thought that this was also a factor in Bruni's review of V. (Again, I am reading tea leaves.) There is not much that's innovative in V's entrées. It's a steak place, and Manhattan has great steakhouses in abundance. Where V attempted to innovate, Bruni considered the results unimpressive. Now, whether they actually are unimpressive is a matter of critical judgment; some have agreed with this, others have not. But I agree with Bruni's apparent rationale that if a steakhouse is serving merely acceptable steak, coupled with funky apps and desserts that miss as often as they score, one star is the correct rating.

In my view, any restaurant the Times reviews needs to be of interest to more than the residents & workers in its immediate neighborhood. This does not necessarily require universal interest (a test probably no restaurant could pass), but a few blocks' radius isn't enough. Whether this restaurant has passed that test is an open question.