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I'll echo what FG said: there is no shortage of "reviewable" restaurants. My perception is that so-called "fancy" restaurants have not declined in any greater proportion to the fraction of the dining scene they occupied previously. In any era, those restaurants were in the minority. Of course, what constitutes "fancy" has changed. La Grenouille was once one of many of a similar kind; it's now the last bastion of its species.The Times has responded by taking its main reviewing position downscale. In relation to his predecessors, Frank Bruni has reviewed a much higher proportion of restaurants that would formerly have been considered $25 & Under places. I have never gotten the sense that he was under budget pressure to do so. He went where his interests lay. The real trend is that print is dying, and it's carrying printed restaurant reviews down with it. If a newspaper is going to make cuts at the margin, restaurant reviews become an obvious candidate. It's a much more expensive position to maintain, because the meals have to be reimbursed. Film critics go to press screenings, book reviewers get pre-release copies for free, and music critics get press passes, but restaurant critics have to pay. Even before this development, the Times critic had outsize importance. Most restauranteurs felt that Bruni's review was more crucial than the others put together. Whether that was true or not, they certainly perceived it that way.

Here's Bruni on the reasons he did not review Marea: He has said elsewhere that he didn't want to be seen as exiting with a big cymbal crash. After he had determined that there was no way Marea could get four stars (an easy call, IMO), he figured that one big splash in his final month (i.e., 4* at EMP) was enough. I would not presume that skipping Marea was an act of kindness towards a restaurant destined to get two stars. Although opinions of this place haven't all been rapturous, Alan Richman (among others) thought it deserved four stars. I could quite easily imagine it getting the trifecta from Bruni.

You could argue, though, that the amount of information available is still better than it was ten years ago, notwithstanding this loss. And Freeman is going to continue writing basically the same reviews on her website.

I think it's pretty likely there will be.

Shlomo Kashy is the new chef at the Café at Country. Florence Fabricant has the story. She also confirms that the upstairs dining room (the former "Country") is now used only for private parties.

The last time I was there, the Dining Room at Country was closed. Geoffrey Zakarian announced it would eventually re-open it as Country Steak, a plan that seems to be on hiatus right now. The ground-floor rooms, originally the Café at Country, were re-christened just plain Country, serving a menu a tad above generic hotel food — acceptable, but nothing worth going out of one's way for.

I'd say she has a brilliant career ahead of her.

I'm guessing that they might've given him the benefit of the doubt on that one, since it was the last dish of a 4-course meal, and probably sat there too long. Perhaps the flavors and idea were there, but not the final execution, and the rest of the food more than made up for that. ← As mentioned upthread, sometimes they sit at judges' table for hours, of which a few snippets make it onto the show. The editing can make it appear closer than it really was.

Editing can emphasize or de-emphasize certain events. It doesn't create things that never happened (not on this show, anyway). The things we saw MC do, are things that he did. They aren't pretty.

Scenery.

Besides that, one of the food blogs ran a spoiler about 2 months ago.

Based on this recommendation, I booked The French last Friday evening for my friend's birthday dinner. Some may find it stuffy, old-fashioned, and unoriginal, but for this type of meal it's exactly what we were looking for.When the food isn't innovative, it needs to be impeccably prepared, and that's exactly what happened. I had a beet and goat cheese salad and pork belly; she had a terrine and fillet of cod—simple things, but difficult to do really well. We didn't taste each other's dishes, but she seemed as pleased as I was. We didn't order desserts, but as it was her birthday, the restaurant presented a panna cotta to share, for which I was not charged. The service, elegant though it was, had some flaws. One dish on the short menu wasn't available, because "it wasn't ready yet," a bizarre explanation for a restaurant that doesn't open until 7:00 p.m. The wine list isn't lengthy, and it looked like it hadn't been reprinted in some time. Sure enough, the first wine I picked wasn't in stock. After dinner, my friend asked for some Calvados, and they didn't have that either, though we were happy with a single-malt whiskey that we selected instead. Dinner for two with a bottle of wine and a round of after-dinner drinks was about £97 before tip, and while that may be expensive by Manchester standards, it was less than I would pay in New York for a meal of comparable quality.

I do give him "credit" for Tabla, in a weak sense, because I am confident that he visited every restaurant that had three stars from his predecessors, likely more than once, and the decision not to re-review them amounted to a de facto endorsement of the existing ratings. There was no reason to re-review Blue Smoke, as there has been no intervening event that would invalidate Asimov's review, and it is not the kind of place that "demands" a review every so often, the way a 3 or 4-star place does.The EMP review that should not have been written was the first one. It still had the same chef as when his predecessor reviewed it (Kerry Heffernan), and he kept the rating the same (two stars). The second review made perfect sense: a new chef and a higher rating. And I don't have any issue with the third, given the premise that it had improved to the point where it deserved four stars. By the way, this was not the first time a Times critic reviewed three restaurants during his or her tenure. Believe it or not, Mimi Sheraton reviewed Sammy's Roumanian (a far less important restaurant) three times. There were probably other times it happened. Sheraton and Miller routinely reviewed two restaurants a week, which offered a much greater opportunity for spot checks of existing places. For what it's worth, these are the restaurants I know of that had three stars from a prior critic, and that Bruni did not re-review: Aquavit Chanterelle Craft JoJo Gotham Bar & Grill Kurumazushi La Grenouille Nobu and Next Door Nobu (but he did give 3* to Nobu 57) Sushi Yasuda (but he did give it an unstarred re-visit in Dining Briefs) Tabla Veritas (probably his worst omission) I am not counting Sammy's Roumanian, which I suppose is technically a three-star restaurant, as that was Mimi Sheraton's final rating, and it was never reviewed again. However, the Times no longer displays that rating on their website, so clearly they do not stand by it, as they do for all of the other places.

If you erase The Modern from the picture, Bruni has basically gotten it right, or at least arguably right. If you strike The Modern and the Bar Room from the list, what you've got there is the same rank order I myself would assign to those restaurants. If USC deserves three stars, it's nevertheless at the lower end of three; if EMP doesn't deserve four, it's nevertheless at the higher end of three.So we're left with The Modern, which is the most egregious error of his tenure, and the one most likely to be promptly altered by his successor. If I were Sam Sifton, my first review would be to take a star away from the Bar Room and give it to The Modern. I don't expect Sifton to do that, but I don't expect him to remain silent about the place for long.

I couldn't agree more. And not only for tasting menus, if there are other options. ← I don't think "value" should influence the rating at any level. Prices can change in a heartbeat; indeed, there have been several occasions when a restaurant jacked up its prices almost immediately after getting a glowing review from Bruni that complimented the establishment on offering such a great "value." I don't think that's possible. Every one of the current four-stars, with the possible exception of Masa, has received scathing reviews from people whose opinions I respect. Even the best restaurants disappoint sometimes. The rest of us, unlike Bruni, do not continue to invest in repeat visits to expensive places we don't like. If our first impression is poor, it becomes our lasting impression.

Be wary of under-estimating the competition. What you're describing is "steakhouses that suck." There are some of those, but there are also good specialized steakhouses where not just the meat, but most of everything else, is pretty good or great, within the context of their defined mission.Creative steakhouses, for lack of a better term, face a problem. People come to these establishments with settled expectations. You defy them at your peril. In my view, only BLT Steak/Prime has really nailed it. V Steakhouse failed, and its replacement, Porter House, seems to be just hanging on. Same story with Jeffrey Chodorow's Empire Cut. I'm fond of Quality Meats, but it is off the radar and was never reviewed in the Times. These are the places you should study, not just for what worked, but also for what didn't. It's interesting that you mention "Craftsteak" as your model and "terrible prices" your bane, because Craftsteak is a good deal more expensive than a traditional steakhouse. (Craftsteak also started out as a failure, but it improved.) Steakhouses cannot get around the high cost of their signature ingredient, the expense of warehousing beef as it ages, and the amount of waste the aging process produces. If your plan is to source the expensive artisanal meats that Craftsteak does, then this is going to be a pricey restaurant. There is no way around it.

How much clearer does he have to be? Of course, I have only quoted the paragraphs in which Bruni explicitly mentions things that have improved since his last review. He mentions many others that, to my recollection, weren't on the menu last time I was there (over a year ago). Bearing in mind that the stars are a continuum, it you believed that EMP was already at the upper end of three stars, it might not have needed much to push it over the edge. I do acknowledge an artificiality to the timing: if he weren't giving up the job next week, would this review have appeared now?

It seems to me the review is full of evidence (assuming you believe it) that the restaurant has taken a big leap forward.Now, I could understand saying that you simply believe Bruni is capable of making discerning judgments about food on this level. I could also understand saying that you've had multiple contemporaneous visits, and you simply didn't find it as good as he did. But the review, taken on its terms, makes the case pretty strongly. It's "true to itself," and it is broadly consistent with the levels of rapture Bruni found at the five other restaurants to which he awarded four stars. (The others, of course, weren't promotions, so the context there was different.)

I'd be curious to hear about those extraordinary Atlanta restaurants no one has heard of. But in any case, whatever you may think of EMP, it is still just one of six four-star restaurants. One review, even an erroneous one, isn't the End of the World. I thought the review explained pretty clearly what he thought had changed since the last time he reviewed it. If you've dined there recently and disagree with him, I can respect that. But he certainly did explain himself. Based on one review???? What he did to ADNY was a crime. But having demoted it, there simply wasn't enough time for a re-review under Chef Esnault before the place announced it was closing.Bruni reviewed EMP three times. The first one was pointless, as there had been no chef change, and he awarded the same two stars the restaurant had before. The second review made perfect sense, as Chef Humm had taken over, and he believed the restaurant took a quantum leap forward. As for the third review...well, if you're Frank Bruni and you believe EMP is worthy of four stars, isn't it your job to say so? Obviously, when he wrote the second review he didn't know that was going to happen.

As Sneakeater mentioned, Frank Bruni will be reviewing Marea, unless there is some kind of culinary earthquake between now and August 19.It will be interesting, though, to see how Sifton begins. Bruni's first review was Babbo, and it was more about setting a tone for his tenure, since there was clearly no particular reason why Batali's restaurant needed a re-review at that time.

I've been to BHSB several times, and each visit has been stellar. Which reminds me...I really need to get back there. Blue Hill in the Village has never impressed me nearly as much.

Restaurants miss critics all the time. In this week's review of Union Square Cafe, Frank Bruni mentioned a recent visit, where his party sat down and was then ignored for 40 minutes. Now, Danny Meyer is one of the city's savvyest restauranteurs, his places have received multiple reviews from Bruni, and they've had 5 years to learn what he looks like. Yet they missed him. If Union Square Cafe can miss Bruni, you've got to figure that it can happen just about anywhere.

I believe I read somewhere that they were ditching the tablecloths. Obviously they're an extra expense, and certain critics and diners actually think less of a place for having them.

Well...that's part of the problem with the B&T label. Its meaning is totally dependent on the biases of the person uttering it.

That was the gist of Bruni's review, but the man has to earn a paycheck, and now wasn't the time to be opening a Café Boulud redux.