oakapple

This sounds an awful lot like an ad hominem argument to me.It is not meant to be. I am merely suggesting that it would be irrational—and should not be regarded as credible—if anyone really said that the mall setting affected their enjoyment of Per Se to any significant degree.What you actually said, was that "the food is not my favorite style, since I find Keller's cuisine goes a little too far in the direction of refinement at the expense of pure flavor." Those are perfectly credible reasons. But if your feelings would have been different by moving Per Se to a different location, I will stand by the statement that it is not credible. (Obviously you have every right to say it, this being a free country & all....) Yeah, but the 4 minutes begin when you reach the restaurant. No one says, "I don't like Le Bernardin because of the block that it is on," even though it is a rather dull block, and you need to walk on that block for at least 4 minutes to get to the restaurant.Well, Per Se's "block" is inside a building, and that building happens to contain a shopping mall, but they've given you a route that, if you choose to use it, bypasses almost all of the commercial activity in that mall. If anyone says that this is a significant (more than 0.1%) drawback of an experience they'd otherwise have enjoyed, I'm sorry, but I don't consider that to be credible.

I've never gotten the sense that Bruni was worried about the outcry that would ensue after his ratings came out, have you?

It appears you agree with me that Bruni has additional criteria that he hasn't admitted to. We only disagree on what those rules are.

When you dine at an expensive Italian restaurant, I would think you're saying to yourself (if only subconsciously), "This is an expensive Italian restaurant. How do I feel about it, compared to other expensive Italian restaurants I've visited?"Bruni, unlike you, knows he's being paid to execute a repetitive task every week. If he's like 99% of people, he has developed some kind of analytical framework for doing so. As I recall, all he said was that "the stars chart ever-increasing degrees of excitement," or something like that, which is not even what the Times's written explanation says. I, for one, have never suggested that that is what the system is, or should be. I hope that no sensible person would propose otherwise. Nevertheless, that is the system we have. All of Frank's 4* reviews, and nearly all of his 3* reviews, have followed the traditional model, or something very much like it. He simply has to have additional "rules" beyond those published or acknowledged, or he could not have arrived at the ratings he did. But what Bruni didn't do was to award three or four stars to Sripraphai or Chang—yet, he seemed to adore their food. To explain this apparent anomaly, you have to conclude there are more rules than the Times's published explanation of the stars.

Most of the time, I've seen no shoppers "gawking" there, though it probably happens sometimes—as it would if Per Se were in a hotel or any other public building. The blue doors have nothing to do with it being in a mall. No one said, "Hmmm...this is in a mall, so we need blue doors that don't open." If the garden really bothers you that much, then we're really speaking a different language. If you took a visitor in the back way and didn't tell them otherwise, they wouldn't really be aware they're in a mall (in the usual sense of the word). Now, Café Gray and Landmarc are something different: you cannot reach them without being very aware that it's an upscale shopping mall—not that that should deter any sensible person. How about 99.99%? If that really taints an experience that someone would otherwise have enjoyed, it says more about the person than the restaurant. Now, if you just don't like Per Se, then obviously the location provides one more excuse to avoid it.

I find this a little difficult to comprehend. You can go in a side entrance, take an elevator, and walk into Per Se. Your exposure to the "mall" lasts a grand total of about 4 minutes; the meal, about 4 hours.

I have no idea whether the system is indeed what you say it is. But it doesn't really matter, because critiques of that system (whether Bruni is following it faithfully or not) are the main topic of this thread.But for the record, I believe I have accurately described the results Bruni has produced. To say whether he used the same thought process to arrive at those results would require us to be a mind-readers. Ninety-five percent of the time, Bruni does not overtly disclose the thought process that produced the rating. The outcome is obvious, but not how he arrived at it. I do think it is obvious that he must, in a sense, be putting restaurants into categories, even if those categories are fluid, imprecise, or subconscious. It's simply unavoidable if you visit restaurants all the time and are trying to create some kind of pecking order among them.

L'Impero put Scott Conant on the culinary map when Eric Asimov awarded 3* in 2002. Alto, which came later, was designed to be more upscale than L'Impero. Anything less than 3* was going to be a major disappointment. Sure enough, Bruni gave 2*, and Eater put Alto on deathwatch. When I visited Alto, I thought it deserved 3*. To be fair, it's my understanding that Conant tweaked the concept quite a bit, so I wasn't sampling the same menu that Bruni did, but some of Bruni's complaints didn't make much sense.Today's reviews rank Alto where it was always intended to be. In recent years, L'Impero has been somewhat off the culinary map, so perhaps 2* is indeed the correct rating. However, as Grub Street notes today, under Bruni the two-star rating is a kind of "limbo". You've got would-be three-star restaurants like L'Impero that are being penalized for poor performance, alongside $25-and-under one-star restaurants like Franny's that are being given a bonus for inexpensive excellence.

He didn't slam it at all. Did you read his review of Wakiya? Wakiya got slammed; this place didn't. In fact, there was quite a bit he liked. The two dishes he admired least were described as "nice" and "pleasant" respectively. His angle was that on a menu with only half-a-dozen each of appetizers and entrées, you want each one of them to be a standout, and some of those at Etats-Unis "didn't fully transport" him.At no point in his review did he actually use the word "Michelin," but it was obviously lingering in the background. If this were one of those family-owned earnest neighborhood places that Bruni had discovered on his own, the two-star review would practically write itself. It's a little better than that. I would actually go out of my way to visit Etats-Unis again. But its Michelin star is hard to explain when you look at some of the places that were passed over. It's a place that deserves attention beyond its neighborhood, but maybe not that much attention.

No one can guarantee you won't have a let-down at Per Se. The fact is, when you spend upwards of $450–500 per head (that's pretty close to the likely price including tax and alcohol), there's not much margin for error.That said, the percentage of disappointed diners, in relation to the total number of reviews posted, is amazingly low. There's no restaurant beloved by everybody, but Per Se has an awfully high batting average. I've been there three times. When I and my wallet are ready, I'll go a fourth. Bear in mind that as Per Se serves a long tasting menu, you're not likely to be sent into orbit by every single dish, but the overall quality level is impressive. If you expect perfection everywhere, it's an awfully high burden for the restaurants to bear. Among luxury restaurants, Per Se has very close to the best, if not the best service in town. If Thomas Keller doesn't care, his staff do a remarkable job of concealing the fact.

That's Eater's guess, which Drew Nieporent continues to vigorously deny. I walk by there fairly regularly, and it's always shut tight as a drum. For a restaurant that's purportedly opening in January (and would surely have to be remodeled), the lack of activity is telling.I'm not saying it can't be true, but it just doesn't look like anything's going on there.

Interesting.... This makes me think the smaller cities -- desperate for good food -- might be better incubators for young and upcoming chefs than highly competitive markets. ← Yes, but the cities in which the above concepts originated weren't exactly "small cities." Buddakan and Morimoto originated in Philadelphia, Gordon Ramsay in London, Craftsteak in Las Vegas, L'Atelier in Paris, Lonesome Dove in either Dallas or Houston, Masa in L.A., and Per Se slightly north of San Francisco. Those are all major international cities.

Yeah, but if you know your own survey is garbage, why write about the one piece of data that is most easily refuted?

I just chose the Eleven Madison Park example because it's easily verifiable. One can dispute whether the food rating should be 25 or 26, but price is factual. If Zagat respondents got the price wrong for a Greek diner in Astoria, maybe it could slip by unnoticed. But the prices for places like EMP can be fact-checked on the web in a few moments.What's even more amusing is that Tim Zagat doesn't realize this, and yet it's well known that he does eat at many of these restaurants. When you write in the Wall Street Journal that the price has gone up only 3 cents since last year, you're implicitly suggesting that you consider this information statistically significant.

The Zagats don't have much credibility in this department. The prices in their survey have always been a joke. After the new book came out, someone noted that they have Eleven Madison Park at $104, which is supposed to be the cost for dinner and one drink, including tip. The cheapest dinner option at EMP is $82. If you have a $10 drink (I don't know if that's even possible), you'd have to leave a skimpy 13% tip to hit $104. These days, the emphasis in most new restaurants is casual, and that could be holding down the Zagat average artificially. But even so, our sense of "what is inexpensive" is obviously rising. These days, if I go into a restaurant where all of the entrées are in the 20s, I think that's practically a bargain. At the same time, it's no longer a shock to find restaurants with multiple entrées above $40. I believe the Times had an article recently about the dawn of the $40 entrée as a regular occurrence.

Consistent with my experience too...but then, this is the kind of restaurant that Bruni usually nails.

Not at all. The weightings just vary depending upon the individual critic (i.e. Bruni clearly weighs price more heavily than some of his predecessors). ← Bruni never said that.

I don't recall any statement by Bruni to that effect. The statements you are quoting are part of the standard "infobox" at the bottom of the reviews, which I believe is unchanged since before Bruni arrived. When asked what the stars meant to him, I believe Bruni said something like "they chart ever-increasing levels of excitement." I am fairly certain he never gave any explanation resembling the one you attribute to him.Now, I do accept that the critic is bound very loosely by what's written in the infobox. But there is very clearly a change of attitude when a new critic takes over, even when there's no change in the infobox. So critics must have additional "rules" (whether published or not, and whether conscious or not) that lead them to their rating decisions. He actually is, to a very considerable extent. All of his four-star awards, and the vast majority of his three-star awards, have hewed to that traditional structure. Bruni's contribution—if you could call it that—is a willingness to considerably relax the traditional structure at the two-star level. He has never yet done it at the four-star level, and at the three-star level he has done it precisely once: The Bar Room at The Modern. To account for the fact that he is still more-or-less following the tradition at the three and four-star levels, you need to assume the existence of additional "rules," beyond those he has publicly admitted.The Michelin folks do a very similar thing. At their one-star level, they are willing to recognize non-traditional places (Spotted Pig), but at their two and three-star levels they insist that the full package be there. Unlike Bruni, they have publicly stated that this is the case. (Sorry...don't have the time to look up the reference, but I know they did say this.)

Classes are only a meme, just like your percentages. I just think my meme is better, because I could imagine an intelligent person arriving at a rating by comparing restaurants to others with similar aspirations, but I couldn't imagine an intelligent person doing it putting percentages into a spreadsheet.

The Times says that the critic considers food, service, and ambiance, with price taken into account. It does not say how, and it does not say that there is a formula with percentages. What on earth would it mean to say that the ambiance at Masa is X% better than the ambiance at Del Posto? To imagine any intelligent person saying so is to instantly recognize the absurdity of the idea.Clearly, with both the Times and Michelin systems, one must presume additional processes and guidelines beyond those that are published, to arrive at the ratings they did. One can only imagine what they are, but a weighing system with percentages is not likely to be employed by anyone.

Bruni has never said he does that, and it would be a most peculiar way of going about it. I'm not going to assume that Bruni does something as inane as that until he says so.Obviously there are significant issues with the NYT and Michelin rating definitions, in relation to the reality. The Times says two stars means "very good," but you read some two-star reviews that sound terrible. Michelin says that two stars are "worth a detour," but what does that mean when all the restaurants in the book are within a few miles of each other?

That's nonsense. Ravioli will remain Italian, no matter how mainstream it is. Bruni has boldly stretched the definition of two-star dining, and I agree with you that this is adventurous on his part, not conservative. I would say that Bruni's tastes are limited, not that they're conservative. This is, perhaps, a topic for the Bruni thread, but I think there's ample evidence of a selection bias on Bruni's part. And it's also particularly evident, not just in what he reviews, but the ratings he gives. If you're saying that you cannot detect that he has any particular preference for Italian restaurants, then we're definitely not speaking the same language.

There's clearly a lack of transparency as to what the stars mean, and how they are awarded. But even without transparency, it's pretty clear they're putting restaurants into "classes," and rating them against similar establishments. That Dressler and The Modern are both at one star can be explained no other way.Frank Bruni does the same; otherwise, the two stars he awarded to both The Little Owl and Le Cirque could not be rationally comprehended. That's just a feature of the system. Whether you think it's a good system or not, those are the rules. Now, if the Michelin folks are putting Jewel Bako, Yasuda and Kuruma in the same class, with JB and Kuruma as the overall best, then that's looney. But it's possible they consider Yasuda and Kuruma to be in the same class (with Kuruma the better of the two), and JB in a different class, which is a defensible way of thinking about them. I realize that some people don't think JB is the best in any class, but it is at least a way of understanding how a sentient being could have come up with these ratings without believing they are complete idiots. But a lot of people get stuck on this point. The first year the book came out, Mario Batali complained that Babbo and The Spotted Pig both got one star. Bear in mind, Batali is an investor in The Spotted Pig, so he's clearly got nothing against the restaurant. Obviously, the inspectors were putting those two establishments in different classes; they weren't suggesting that the two restaurants are equal. Funnily enough, Batali had no complaints the second year, when Del Posto got a deuce.

Yes, but one review in 3½ years on the job doesn't establish him as being overly friendly to that genre.(My original comment was that Bruni has not awarded three stars to any Asian restaurant; he did indeed award four to Masa.)

I'm not so sure the praise for Bruni's Asian-friendliness is warranted. As best I can recall, no Asian restaurant has won three stars from him. Right, but are any even arguably close to deserving? Friendliness is one thing, but outrageous (gratuitous?) star-doling is another... ← If a critic is overly friendly to Asian restaurants, then a generous allocation of stars is what you'd expect. Bruni has not done that. (Some people thought that Dévi was a three-star NYT candidate, by the way; Bruni awarded two.)Meanwhile, Michelin awarded stars to six Asian restaurants (counting Dévi) out of 40 starred restaurants in total. That's 15%, which is not a bad figure. I doubt that Bruni's percentage is significantly higher than that. Whether they starred the right ones is a whole other question.