oakapple

Given these rules: nowhere.

Actually, there are a number of surprising choices that suggest exactly the opposite. For instance, would someone "phoning it in" have come up with a star for Kyo Ya—a restaurant all of the major critics ignored? I have no idea whether Kyo Ya deserves its star, since I've never been there. I am just pointing out that it's clearly not a choice that someone "phoning it in" would have come up with. I happen to agree with you about Yasuda and Soto. But I would venture a guess that if anybody made a similar list with 42 restaurants on it (that's the number of places with stars this year), there'd be a number of them that some people take issue with. It's funny to read the Eater thread, where various people opine on which missing or included restaurants invalidate the list. For Mimi Sheraton, it's La Grenouille. For another, it's Union Square Café; still another says Chanterelle. Well, it seems like that they're being held to that standard. Because most of the chatter on here is why this or that restaurant wasn't included, or why a place like Jewel Bako still is. Maybe they just don't have the resources to keep up with world's penultimate culinary destination, 2nd only to Tokyo.... ← I thought you were talking about which places are listed, not which ones have stars. We tend to focus on the places with stars, but the restaurants listed (without stars) is much, much longer. And that list is much more volatile, with restaurants coming on and being dropped every year. I mean, it's pretty obvious that they've got a good-size staff doing this, and not just replicating the foodie consensus.

I can't speak to what a French person thinks of the Guide, but Michelin has a decades-long track record there. It has been in New York for only four years. It would be quite surprising if Michelin were able to become the go-to guide for New Yorkers, given Zagat's long head start and the perception that the Guide is written by non-natives.

Also, it's Michelin's position that just being listed in the guide is an honor. Whereas Bruni sometimes covers places to tell you they're bad, Michelin does not. There are also many restaurants in the Guide that the Times has either never reviewed, or where the reviews are so many years old that they're practically meaningless.

They're not comprehensive, but who is?

I think the Michelin ratings are considerably more reliable than those handed out by Frank Bruni over the least 4+ years. It's worth noting that the two you specifically disagree with (Del Posto and Momofuku Ko) got extremely favorable reviews from Bruni.The other good thing about Michelin—though I'm not saying it's perfect—is the ability to revise its ratings every year. Gilt and Gordon Ramsay are still carrying the same ridiculous NYT two-star ratings that Bruni gave them under different chefs. A Voce is still carrying three NYT stars that are meaningless now that Carmellini is gone. No, I don't think that any New Yorker relies primarily on the Michelin guide. But many restaurants, especially high-end restaurants, increasingly get a high percentage of their business from foreign visitors, who take the Michelin ratings far more seriously than any others.

This is incorrect. The introductory price was indeed $300, but it was $350 by the time Frank Bruni awarded four stars in late 2004, and it has been over $400 for quite a while now. It was $450, not $475, when I dined there a couple of weeks ago. Whether or not you believe it's worth that much, the increase has been slow and steady, not all at once. The omakase at Kurumazushi is in a similar zip code, and from what I've heard, you'll pay as much or more for comparable quality in Japan. That is simply what it costs. There is caviar served as part of the meal, though I am not sure if it's osetra.

I've put up a blog post showing the complete four-year history of the Michelin restaurant ratings in New York. The big winners are Masa (promoted to ***) and Gilt (promoted to **). Both Adour and Momofuku Ko got ** in their first year of eligibility. Four restaurants got one star in their first year: Allen & Delancey, Eighty One, Insieme and Kyo Ya, the latter a restaurant that most critics missed. Alto was promoted to one star after a chef change. Public was promoted to one star for no good reason I can think of. Fiamma got back the star it temporarily lost when Michael White left. The clear demotions were Babbo, Dévi, Kurumazushi and Vong, the latter long overdue. Bouley lost its stars because it's moving, and A Voce lost a star due to Carmellini's departure. Eleven Madison Park remains the most perplexing omission.

I'd strongly recommend browsing the Momofuku Ssäm Bar and Momofuku Ko threads. In brief, the argument is that Ssäm Bar serves three-star food in an environment that, in every other way, entirely demolishes the established expectations for a restaurant of that quality, i.e., patrons sit on stools, reservations aren't taken. Ko takes it even a step further, serving a $100 set menu ($160 at lunch), accepting reservations only on the Internet, and (like Ssäm Bar) forcing patrons to sit on bar stools in a highly pared down environment. There's also Momofuku Noodle Bar, which is similar to Ssäm Bar in some respects, but even more informal. There's no question that the Momofukus have been the path-breaking restaurants over the last two years. But I don't buy the argument that Greene committed an error by omitting them, given that she didn't name any restaurant that opened after the 1990s. I gather she was listing places whose reputations had had a considerable period of time to settle—something that is simply not true of the Momofukus, however important they may ultimately be judged to have been.

What's funny is that Ko is still the toughest ticket in town, and when a couple of cancellations show up—almost always taken in a short time—people worry that it's not doing well enough.

I don't think it's that bad a list. She makes clear that "social importance" is one of her criteria, which is how she justifies Windows on the World. She does not try to argue that it had any culinary importance. Not having been there at the time, I have no idea if the claims she makes for it are accurate. She justifies Shun Lee Dynasty based on what it achieved at the time. Several folks on another food board seem to acknowledge that Shun Lee was indeed a trailblazer back in the 1970s, however much it may have slipped since then. Odeon seems to me the most dubious of her selections. If you want to talk about the TriBeCa renaissance, Montrachet is more important. If you want to talk about Keith McNally, Balthazar is more important. But I say that having not been present when any of them burst on the scene. And that's a critical point. Every restaurant she lists opened more than five years ago, and most of them a whole lot more than that. In that context, the omission of the Momofukus makes complete sense. Ssam Bar as we know it is only 2 years old. Nothing else she lists is anywhere near that recent. Ten years from now, we'll see if the Momofuku phenomenon seems as important as it does now.

Is a menu available somewhere?

I doubt the stock market mess has anthing to do with it: Le Bernardin isn't half-empty at 8:30.The problem is that Benoit, in its early days, quickly acquired a reputation for being uneven. Reviews were terrible. I'll grant that a lot of the critics really don't like French food, but the compaints were so widespread that I have to conclude there was some truth to them. The Ducasse team may well have cleaned things up, but you don't get a second chance to make a first impression.

The star dies with the restaurant. Of course, a chef who has previously shown the knack for acquiring a star has a better-than-average chance of getting one at his next place, but it still needs to be earned.

In each of the last two years, the NY Michelin Guide has given stars to restaurants that were new since the previous guide was published. At least in New York, there seems to be no obstacle to being starred (or even multi-starred) after less than one year in existence. Actually, I would take it even further. I think the only newly-starred restaurants in NY (leaving aside the first guide) have received their stars the first year they were eligible. In NY, I don't think there's a precedent yet for a restaurant more than a year old receiving a star for the first time. It technically belongs to the establishment, but if the chef leaves the star may be withdrawn, or if it's a multi-star establishment they take a star away. There's not much to go on in NY, as the guide is so new, but that's the usual practice in Europe.

It's not Ben anymore.

Most of us know that Michael's is not worth our time, but Bruni doesn't write his reviews just for people who are already knowledgeable about the food scene. I'll admit he wastes an awful lot of reviewing slots, but I accept that part of his job is to deliver the occasional smackdown of iconic restaurants past their prime. If Ruth Reichl gave it two stars, that was probably an error significant enough to be worth correcting.

How are they staffing the restaurant now? From dinner six days a week, they've progressed to dinner seven days and lunch three days. The key guys (Serpico, Chang) clearly can't be present at every service. Is there any difference depending on who's present?

Tourist or no-tourist, this is simply not a typical lunch anywhere in the world that I'm aware of. But he has a small enough space and a loud enough buzz that I suspect he could keep this format going for a good long time—certainly for many months. As for the long-term plan, I haven't a clue.

Right, because you "didn't get it," it was somehow really worth the $1000? The emperor's new clothes theory - I think you got it perfectly...and so did they. ← There's an "if" in my post. I am not conceding that it was worth $1,000—I don't think it was. I'm just saying that if it was, the reasons are beyond my ability to perceive, bearing in mind that I don't have many data points to compare it to. For the most part, I trust my instincts. Rather than say the restaurant is fleecing its customers, I'm leaving open the door that maybe—maybe—there's something in it that I'm not seeing. Bottles of wine are a similar story. There are plenty of places in town that sell $1,000 wine bottles. I can't really explain the allure that makes a not-that-old bottle of wine worth $1,000 or more, but enough smart people buy them that I can accept there's something going on there that's beyond my appreciation.

The lack of comfort is so easily fixable. I wonder why they don't do it. I mean, there's no reason why wooden backless stools could not become cushioned stools with backs.

That must certainly be true. Even on an evening when it was raining in sheets, the sushi bar was almost full (I did not take note of the tables). It's a small place, and I guess there are always enough people who want to come in and drop a grand or two.Mind you, I can swing $1,000 for dinner on occasion. But I just never saw the signal that if a newcomer to the restaurant said "omakase," without more, this would be their default offering. We also felt that if this was better than Yasuda, the reason for it must be something that we're not sophisticated enough to perceive.

On Saturday night, I took a friend to Kurumazushi for her birthday. The fish here is obviously very good, but I didn't think the overall experience was as good as Yasuda, which I tried a couple of years ago. I will probably return to Yasuda at some point, but I can't imagine going back to Kurumazushi, unless someone else is paying. I didn't bring a camera or take notes, but our meal was quite similar to the one docsconz photographed four years ago. We loved the fatty tuna—how could you not?—and a few other things. Other courses, started tasting the same after a while. If the fish here was better than Yasuda, it was too subtle for my friend and me to perceive. The Yasuda omakase actually seemed to have more variety. Then, there is the small matter of price. Except it's not so small a matter. I was prepared for the omakase to cost somewhere around $150–200 a head. We weren't shown a menu or asked about our budget, so I just figured it would be in that general range. Silly me. The bill arrived, and it was $1,005 for two. Back out the sales tax and subtract the sake ($150), and it appears we were charged $387 apiece for the food. That sake, by the way, wasn't a splurge either, by this restaurant's standards. I believe I saw only one bottle less than the $150 I spent. A thousand bucks is awful lot to charge somebody without giving any kind of notice of what you're in for. As best I can recall, it's the most I have ever paid for a meal for two. Even on a straight-up basis, I think I liked Yasuda a little more. When you consider that the bill for one at Yasuda was just $107 two years ago, it's not hard to decide which is better.

A number of us visited about 6–8 weeks ago, and it was unanimous that the quality had declined after the opening months. I remember several "wow" dishes that made the two-star rating defensible, at least in BruniLand, but by the time we re-visited none of those dishes were available, and nothing that replaced them was as memorable.

Interesting comment today from Frank Bruni: