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I tend agree. I mean, any Mario Batali restaurant is going to be capable of delivering a great meal, at times.My point about Michelin is that either they're reliable or they're not. If the stars given to Vong and Jewel Bako prove that the Michelin guys are nuts, then they don't suddenly get smart when they give out a rating that Frank agrees with, like Del Posto or Dressler. Either they're incompetent, and the ratings he agrees with are just a fortuitous coincidence. Or they're good at what they do, and the ratings he disagrees with are due to a legitimate critical difference of opinion. Cipriani is the kind of restaurant where Bruni probably could have made multiple visits—indeed, it could have been all of his visits—without being recognized. The place is well off the foodie radar, hadn't been reviewed since 1991, and had no reason to think it would be reviewed now. And a POOR rating wasn't going to hurt their business very much.

Bruni didn't hesitate to point that out when last year's Michelin ratings were announced. It provided a degree of vindication for a rating that some readers thought was too generous. But the funny thing is that people take will pot-shots at the Michelin ratings, and yet, cite them with approval when it suits their purpose.

The majority of NY restaurants are theme restaurants, and the majority of New Yorkers—not just B&T and tourists—think these restaurants are good. Some of them are good. As I recall, places like Asia de Cuba and China Grill got reasonably favorable reviews when they opened. Of course, they're running on autopilot now. Several of Chodorow's new projects are variations on the steakhouse format, but if the last few years have proved anything in New York, it's that the saturation point on steakhouses hasn't yet been reached. More than any other, it's the format that almost never fails. Some of the other projects have serious chefs doing the real creative work, such as Tom Valenti and Zak Pelaccio, with Chodorow just providing the bankroll. He seems to have a knack for getting these guys to work with him, despite his famous failures with Rocco DiSpirito and Alain Ducasse. Chodorow has, in fact, had quite a few failures in New York. Besides the DiSpirito and Ducasse debacles, there's also Caviar & Banana, and Wild Salmon is something like the 3rd occupant of its location in 5 years. Eater put Kobe Club on deathwatch, and is constantly reminding us that you can get a table there (even a table for 8) anytime you want. I suspect Kobe Club is failing, and Chod just doesn't want to admit it. But he has a large enough global empire that he can afford a failure or two, and there may be some loss leaders (like Kobe Club) that he is carrying. Having such a diversified portfolio allows you to do that.

On the whole, he has generally gone easy on the Italian genre—for instance, giving Del Posto a much more favorable write-up than most other critics did, and giving Morandi one star despite a review that sounded like zero. And of course, there's a boatload of earnest neighborhood Italian places that got two stars from him. Well, he likes earnest neighborhood places in general, but Italian ones especially. If you take the average across all of Bruni's reviews, he's neither harsher nor softer than the typical critic. He has dished out some delicious takedowns, and nearly all of his zero-star reviews are entertaining (as long as you're not the restauranteur being written about). But he can also be a real softie when he loves a place. For some reason, it is always easy to write memorably about failure, but to describe why something is excellent requires rare talent.

This was Bruni's second POOR; Ninja was the first. It's hard to say which one was worse; they were both pretty bad.Ninja survived getting pummeled by Bruni, and I suspect Cipriani will do the same.

It depends on your expectations. When Café Gray was new, Steven Shaw kept reminding us that it was not a reincrnation of Lespinasse, and shouldn't be judged as such.If you think of Grayz as a bar that serves food, then you might be impressed. The service and ambiance are a cut above other such establishments. If you are looking for a full-service restaurant, you might be disappointed. Just as Café Gray was not as good as Lespinasse, Grayz is not as good as Café Gray.

On the Tailor thread, there was a mildly off-topic tangent about how long the critics typically will wait before reviewing. Bruni's norm is at least three months (occasionally less), but but critics these days are usually less patient. To Bruni's credit, he is usually the last of the major reviewers to weigh in. Today, Adam Platt reviews Allen & Delancey, which has been open for six weeks, awarding two stars. I can't really complain that Platt has rushed it, because in his version of the star system, two is the realistic max for a place like A&D. You can't really say that more time would have resulted in a more favorable rating. Come to think of it, when was the last time Adam Platt gave three stars to anything? My sense is that, despite working on a five-star scale (one more than Bruni), he gives three stars less often. Can anyone support or refute that?

Since he doesn't disclose his dining diary, we don't have a sense (and probably never will) to what extent those early visits color his view. Bruni has, on multiple occasions, reviewed restaurants after less than three months, but that's not the norm, and among major critics he is usually the last to weigh in. Of course, a review after exactly three months will necessarily be based on multiple visits inside of that window.

Oh, I saw potential too. But I'm not sure whether the pro reviewers take that into account. Most of the time, they seem to review what the restaurant is, not what it could be. Usually, "not gushing or wanting to rush back" translates to a one-star review (or its equivalent).

I think it was a big mistake to draw so much attention to themselves, and then to open with the menu in such a fragmentary state, which left a number of the early reviewers underwhelmed. The question now is whether Bruni and Platt are still giving the restaurant time, or if they've more-or-less formed their impressions based on the beta-version, which really wasn't ready to be reviewed.

When/where did she do that?

I have to figure that if the demand continues at this torrid pace, the offer will be extended to other nights.

Mr. Cutlets ridicules the premise of this thread on Grub Street.

If your premise is that NYC residents are lazy and Jerseyphobic, it's an awfully weak argument if a single Indian restaurant an hour away is the best you can come up with. Most of the other examples given thus far are of the "cheap eats" variety. I don't think I'm lazy because I decline to rent a car and travel 2 hours roundtrip so that I can have a terrific $8 bowl of noodles somewhere.

Yes, among those I've tried (which is about 80% of them), it is by far the most clearly erroneous.

I don't!

There's one thing missing from FG's hypothesis: a compelling list of restaurants. I'm not yet saying they don't exist, but so far there is an absence of data to support his premise. The first example he gave, Mitsuwa Marketplace, is mainly a market, not a restaurant. I'm not suggesting that Markets are irrelevant, but my main food interest is as a diner. I'm not missing out on Mitsuwa because I'm lazy, but because I don't want what they're selling. Among restaurants cited, most are of the "cheap eats" variety. Let's assume I can get there, eat, and get back in 4 hours. A 4-hour Zipcar rental is around $45 plus tolls. Are any of these places so good that they justify an approximately $50 premium (not counting the value of travel time) to go eat there? Another way of asking is: if these places were in Manhattan, but the cost of dinner for two was $25pp higher than they are now, would these places be popular? I suspect not. Even among foodies, there are degrees of insanity. At one extreme are nutcases like Jim Leff, who will miss his plane to try out an airport taco stand. Jim Leff would absolutely spend the fifty bucks so that he could have the sliders at White Manna in Hackensack. I'm not lazy, but I need a bit more to entice me than that.

The phrase "dumbed down" is normally used in relation to a starting point. Pamplona's starting point was the unsuccessful Ureña. Pamplona isn't a "dumbed down" Bar Room, any more than it's a "dumbed down" Le Bernardin.

Bruni gives a rationale only about 5% of the time. From the occasional bread-crumbs he leaves behind, you could not explain his ratings without a lot of imagination. And even the bread-crumbs he does leave might not be the entire explanation. And yes, of course Bruni categorizes restaurants. He does it all the time; he just didn't do it in this particular review.

That's very kind of you. I must say that this was one of the harder calls I've made, and even after posting I kept tossing it back and forth in my head. From the menu alone, I can't see any rational basis for stating that Pamplona is below the level of the many casual restaurants that have earned two stars from Frank Bruni. If it's "dumbed down," that's only in relation to Pamplona's predecessor, Ureña.Obviously, it comes down to execution. Based on one visit, I was more enthuisiastic about Pamplona than Little Owl. If I paid as many visits as Bruni does, I might have a different opinion. I've not gotten around to Casa Mono (the difficulty of getting in seemed too daunting). I agree that Pamplona isn't quite in Bar Room's class, but nevertheless, I would have given Bar Room two stars, not three.

Bruni tends to reserve his zero-star reviews for commercialized, over-produced disasters. (Freemans was the odd exception.) A restaurant like Pamplona, if he hates it that much, he simply does not review. Also, he filed a zero-star review on Wakiya just five weeks ago, and he tends to do only a few of those per year.So the only realistic outcomes are one star or two. Bruni loved the food at Urena. His enthusiasm seemed very close to the three-star level, with the rating heavily affected by the ugly ambiance and some service glitches. Once Bruni forms an attachment for a particular chef's food, he tends to keep liking it, and he has given two stars to plenty of earnest neighborhood places with a husband and wife in the kitchen. Given that background, I think Pamplona has a real shot at two stars. The only question is whether, in dumbing down the original concept, the former Urena has sunk so far that it's now only average. In that case, it will get one star.

Yeah, it seems pretty close. RM and Honmura An have closed; Bar Room, Eleven Madison Park and Felidia have three stars, but aren't listed.

The reputation of the food is that it is mediocre and grossly overpriced (except for the Beef Wellington, their signature dish). A few months ago, a new chef was brought in—someone with a legit. background. But there have been no reviews since then, so you're definitely taking your chances. However, it is a beautiful room, and to folks with middle-brow tastes it could very well seem like a special night out.

I might be perceived to have a conflict of interest...but that issue doesn't bother me as much. A weighting by influence would give Frank Bruni a 50% score, Adam Platt 30%, and perhaps 20% to divide among the others. With Bruni having that much dominance, Eater might as well just print Bruni's rating, and forget everyone else's.For me, the stranger thing is how the reviews are somehow converted into numerical scores. On my blog, I awarded two stars each to Pamplona, Tailor, and BLT Market. Somehow, those ratings have been converted into scores of 58, 55, and 53 apiece—how it was done utterly eludes me. Of course, the method is even more opaque where a particular critic doesn't award stars. There's also a "wild card" vote. In one case, the score for Pamplona is pulled way down because some chowhounder really panned the place.

I've never gotten the sense that Bruni was worried about the outcry that would ensue after his ratings came out, have you? ← I kind of wonder if he didn't with Ssam Bar. it reads like a three star review. ← But this happens all the time: people will say that the rating awarded to a restaurant is higher or lower than the tone of the review.One fairly common scenario is where he's over-the-moon about a fairly casual place, but imposes a de facto two-star ceiling. Ssam Bar is far from being the only example of that. In 3½ years on the job, the Bar Room is the only restaurant that was allowed to pierce the two-star ceiling, without having most of the standard "trappings" of a standard luxury restaurant. It happens at the other extreme, when he sounds like he practically hated a place, but nevertheless gives a star or even two stars.