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The thesis, at any rate, is that in the 2007–08 season, there are none of the major openings that typically are associated with 4 stars or the higher end of 3 stars, and the question is why? In referring to this market segment as "formal dining," I may have created an element of confusion, but I will try to clarify. Historically, this market segment is associated with relatively formal and expensive restaurants. Obviously "formality" re-invents itself with the times. Some people go into Jean Georges without a tie, whereas in an earlier age that would have been unthinkable. But in relative terms, there's no denying that JG is fairly close to being as formal as it gets in our era. And this year, for the first time since...when???...no restaurants purporting to be in that class are opening. Perhaps someday a restaurant like Momofuku Ssam Bar will get four stars, and the traditional model will truly be shattered forever. But for now, it hasn't happened. Momofuku Ssam Bar is a two-star restaurant, and it seems that most of this year's high-profile openings are aiming no higher than that level (though Ducasse probably fancies Adour as at least a three-bagger). Most of these restaurants are not merely aiming at more casually-dressed patrons, but they are serving less ambitious food in a more informal setting, and they charging less for it. While there is no law of nature saying that these factors must be correlated, in practice they usually are. The difference in price between Jean Georges and Momofuku Ssam Bar isn't just for reasons of decor, ambiance, and service. David Chang quite simply isn't attempting to serve as ambitious a menu as JG, Gordon Ramsay, or Per Se. Even if a few dishes hit that level—which is arguable—most do not. And that's why Ssam Bar isn't a four-star restaurant.

I am, of course, not oblivious to those clues, despite being a straight guy. But when I look around the room at Momofuku Ssam Bar, I don't seen the same uniform, homogenous, trivially-identifiable crowd you profess to see. Yeah, the guy with flagrantly dyed hair, tattoos on their arms, boots with long stockings, retro rocker hair, etc., is statistically somewhat more likely to be going to certain places than others. But they don't all go there, and not everyone going there looks like that, and most Ssam Bar patrons don't look like that.FG's example put it well. Chelsea is a more gay neighborhood than average, but not every Chelsea resident (or even a majority) is gay, and not all gays live in Chelsea.

But how do you even know that? Do you pick a statistically significant random sample—better yet, a sample chosen by someone else, to eliminate selection bias—make a note of your guess, and then approach the person to find out if you're correct? I would be very surprised if you do. It appears you're simply assuming you have this skill that most of us are skeptical that you, or indeed anyone, would have.

But Nathan, your responses always seem to assume that you can invariably tell—just by looking at them—where people have come from, how they got there, what they do, their likes and dislikes, where else they dine, and so forth. I find that very difficult to believe.

That's right...I think we're placing too much emphasis on dress code. There are certainly at least several dozen restaurants in NYC that we would all agree offer a "formal dining" experience in some sense of the word, but there are only a few that actually claim to have a jacket-and-tie rule (and fewer that will truly enforce it).By the way, I agree with FG that the trend towards informality started much more like the 1920s, and not merely in the 1960s. Whatever Chang may do, it's not a trend unless a few other places start doing it.

I love this quote from the article, in which FG captures my sentiment exactly—but with much more panache: The article talks about four specific openings in which big-name chefs go downmarket: Ducasse, Boulud, Marcus Samuelsson, and Gray Kunz. FG suggests that if Gray Kunz wants to re-establish himself as a top-name chef, he needs to go upscale, not down. Shaw says, "“Who out there could say, ‘Ooh, I can’t wait until Grayz opens’?" Kunz strikes me as a slightly different case, though. Ducasse already has his constellation of Michelin 3-star restaurants; Boulud has Daniel and Cafe Boulud; and Samuelsson has Aquavit. It could be argued that Kunz already went downmarket with Cafe Gray. He doesn't have the same kind of flagship that the other guys do. From the description, Ducasse's Adour sounds more upscale than Cafe Gray, to say nothing of Grayz.

I think that's exactly it, although there are probably quite a few foodies who've tried (and been happy with) both.

Yeah, but $30 is the new $20.

I doubt that the Tallahassee restaurant you're talking about is "relatively cheap" by local standards. Obviously it would be cheap if those prices were replicated in NYC...but they couldn't be. Anyhow, I suggest we confine ourselves to NYC at the moment, as it's the only locale we can all talk about with some personal knowledge of the situation.I'm not saying that "very expensive" necessarily = "formality." But those attributes are very highly correlated. To be sure, Eric Ripert could serve Le Bernardin's cuisine at a restaurant with Red Lobster's atmospherics. It would certainly be cheaper, but it still wouldn't be "cheap" in the absolute sense. People seeking that type of experience generally don't want to have it in a place like Red Lobster, which is why chefs and restauranteurs generally don't offer it that way. I agree with FG that Robuchon is "formal" in most senses of the word, even if not in all of them. I would say the same about Masa. The lack of a dress code is only one factor. And in any event, I don't think you don't have many people walking in there in jeans and sandals, even if the restaurant would permit it.

You could definitely argue that Ssam Bar and Robuchon are two peas in a pod, but as you point out, they are appealing to different clienteles, and the bills for typical meals are in very different zip codes.

I deliberately didn't list GR, because by most accounts it has failed to catch on with New Yorkers—even that small subset of New Yorkers who regularly patronize restaurants in that price range. Well, I don't think it's absurd (or else I wouldn't have said it ), but in any event, one restaurant either way doesn't make much difference.Expensive dining is not growing in NYC, aside from the effects of inflation (mostly due to rents). The restaurants Fabricant listed aren't just less formal than Per Se, Del Posto, and Gordon Ramsay. They are also less expensive. Excluding alcohol, there are very few NYC restaurants where it is "relatively easy" to spend over $400 a person, and there certainly are not a thousand where it's "easy" to spend $150 a person. You have to exclude alcohol, or otherwise you start including places like Otto, where you can have a $400 bottle of wine with a $8 pizza. Having said that, my view of Robuchon is the following: At the moment, there are no other NYC restaurants combining Robuchon's informality at anything near its level of expense. Perhaps there'll eventually be more of them, but for now it's all by itself. As far as industry trends go, you can't do much with a restaurant that has no peer. So you either have to "analogize" it to something more familiar, or you have to just take it out of the analysis altogether. On the basis of its food cost, 99.9% of NYC restaurants are less expensive than Robuchon. While you can walk into Robuchon on the spur of the moment in beach togs, I doubt that that is the norm. I suspect that it is drawing most of its clientele from people who would generally consider the other three and four-star restaurants to be comparable alternatives. While it hardly matters to the analysis, that's the reason why I listed it with all of those others.

You're correct. I meant to suggest that the supposed death of fine dining was forecast as long ago as Miller's tenure, not that he himself had been in that camp.

I'm not sure it depends any more on tourism than it ever did, or that it's peculiar to the high end. I mean, Bubba Gump in Times Square is chock-full of tourists too—on a percentage basis, perhaps even more so. Some of the examples are definitely borderline, but Babbo has tablecloths and many of the traditional trappings, even if the sound track reminds you not to take it too seriously. I felt that any restaurant in Robuchon's price league simply has to be rated in that category. Those informal dining areas (most of them, except for Babbo, with a different menu) can be thought of as separate restaurants that happen to be attached. In a few cases, they're either separately reservable, or indeed non-reservable. At The Modern, of course, that separate restaurant actually carries its own rating. Well, I do agree that the jacket-and-tie requirement is approaching extinction, with no more than a half-dozen places left that claim to require it. (As Frank Bruni reported not long ago, most of those places will still seat you if you show up without the tie.) I put CdA into more of the Tavern on the Green/One if By Land category. Chanterelle and Picholine definitely count, Tocqueville perhaps more marginally.

Florence Fabricant says it all in her annual fall preview article for the Times: The death of formal dining has long been forecast. One finds reviews by Bryan Miller in the 1980s that proclaim the end of the fine-dining era. Yet, while it has surely evolved, it certainly hasn't become extinct. Many restaurants at the four-star and "high three" level are among the town's toughest tables to book, including the most expensive of them all, Per Se. Indeed, Daniel, Jean Georges, Le Bernardin, Gramercy Tavern, The Modern, Country, Eleven Madison Park, Veritas, Cru, Blue Hill at Stone Barns, Babbo, Felidia, Del Posto, L'Atelier de Joel Robuchon, JoJo, Cafe Boulud, and even that grande dame La Grenouille, seem to fill their dining rooms most of the time. To my mind, this suggests that the demand for that kind of experience is far from exhausted.The one opening that might arguably fall in this category is Adour. Fabricant says that, whereas "[Ducasse's] restaurant in the Essex House was gilded, the décor at Adour, which will open in late fall, is merely silver." She adds, "Elaborate plasterwork on moldings and cornices will gleam with silver leaf, and the room’s cloverleaf shape will lend itself to private alcoves. Tony Esnault, who was the last chef at Mr. Ducasse’s Essex House restaurant, will be back." That doesn't sound like a casual restaurant by any measure, even if it doesn't quite match the over-the-top elegance of ADNY. But if Frank Bruni slams it—as I think there is a very good chance he will—there will be another nail in fine dining's coffin. If it is a success, it will perhaps be a reminder that traditional formality isn't dead. The other wild card is Paul Liebrandt, whose plans were too murky to earn a mention from Fabricant, but who is said to be planning a restaurant in that style.

Various reports suggested that the composed dishes are the restaurant's strength, not the sushi, so Bruni seems to have gotten that part right. But as Grub Street pointed out, the place wound up with "the same catchall rating as Franny's."

At restaurants of the caliber you're asking about, you should never feel as if you're being rushed out the door, regardless of the reservation time. I do realize that some of them fail to live up to that, but I think it's the exception, rather than the rule.

There is hardly a restaurant in town that doesn't try to get two turns at most of its tables. Indeed, there are some that strive for three, though generally not the upscale ones, since those meals tend to take longer.So yes, that does mean that at the more popular places, they will be stingy about 8:00 p.m. reservations, since those tables generally can't be turned. If you have your heart set on eating at 8:00 p.m., you should reserve well in advance (though occasionally one can get lucky at the last minute). As Frank Bruni recently noted, there are some places that simply won't give out an 8:00 p.m. table to non-VIPs, but this is not the norm. No upscale restaurant should hurry you out the door, but I agree that one benefit of an 8:30 reservation is that you can be certain the table is yours for the night.

A friend and I had the tasting menu at Gilt a few weeks ago (report here). I took Chris Lee's cuisine to be the kind of extremely sedate, competent, but unchallenging fare that the clientele in that location demanded. It was very well done for what it was, but it was the absolute antithesis of a "foodie adventure."

We were quite dismayed with River Room, and won't be returning anytime soon, even though we live way uptown, and it is convenient for us. Despite the forbidding address, it is actually quite easy to get to, but we found it almost totally deserted on a Friday night. I agree that the view is priceless, and with food to match it could be a hit. Unfortunately, the place proves the rule that great food and a great view seldom go together.

That's right: wine pairings, wines by the glas, wines by the bottle, cocktails, bottled water....everything includes service at an implied 20% rate. You could tip more if you want, but as I recall from my last visit, there wasn't even a tip line when the credit card voucher was presented for signature.

The majority of upscale restaurants are easily reservable the same week, and often the same day, though probably not for a prime-time slot. As noted above, there are many restaurants that are very stingy with the 7:30–8:30 p.m time window, because they can't get two turns at those tables.

Actually, the 9-course tasting menu started out at $150 before tip/tax, and was raised to $175 before tip/tax. Then it was raised to $210 including tip (amounts to 20%). I believe the current price is $225 or $250.

Capital Grille sucks. ← Sucks? I wouldn't say so, and I've been there twice—both when other people suggested it. Everything about Capital Grille feels very "corporate," which is understandable as it's a national chain. In a city full of indigenous steakhouses, there's no good reason to visit places of that ilk (including Morton's, Ruth Chris, Shula's, etc.), not because they suck, but because they're not New York restaurants.

It's worth noting that when Per Se opened, there was a 7-course option that was $135, I believe. Only the 9-course options are offered now. From the beginning, Per Se has taken reservations two months to the day in advance. Those reservations were invariably gone within an hour of when the reservations line opened at 10:00 a.m. every day. As FG noted at the time, if you're charging $150 and selling out instantly, then in economic terms you're charging too little. Even at its significantly higher price Per Se is still sold out most of the time.

I don't think the delays matter that much, except that they're in the hole for a larger up-front investment, and so have less room for error. Almost always, the best time to open a restaurant of a particular type is when there are other successful examples of that same type.Anyway, the arrival of Tailor is somewhat offset by the loss of Room 4 Dessert.