oakapple

Let me see if I've got this straight. The place with the identical name, the identical head chef, the identical kitchen, and the identical dining room, is not the place this thread is about? Where would that thread be?"The Emperor Has No Clothes" is an over-worked phrase, but I have to trot it out here. David Chang is accountable for what is produced in that restaurant, at whatever hour it is produced, no matter who is doing the cooking for him. He doesn't have two restaurants in that space, he has one. If lunch sucks, he's accountable. Mimi Sheraton made clear what she ordered, and when she ordered it. She also made clear that she knew the "scene" is at a different time of day. Chang made the strategic decision to serve sucky food at lunch, and a major critic called him on the carpet. That's how the ball bounces.;

Actually, what Mimi did was what most people do. She went to a restaurant that has a lot of positive buzz, and ordered like a normal person. She wasn't impressed, and probably won't go back.Obviously we have higher expectations for Mimi Sheraton, but she's no longer the most powerful critic in New York. She's just a private citizen. Just like the rest of us, she is not obligated to pay multiple visits and eat her way through the whole menu before passing judgment. And just like the rest of us, she is not obligated to turn every restaurant visit into a research project. She's spending her own money. Whether it's $7 or $70, if she doesn't like it, she won't be back—and she'll probably tell her friends. Which is exactly what she did. Defenders of Momofuku Ssam Bar have something in common with the defenders of other unusual restaurants, like WD-50 and Blue Hill. When someone says they don't like it, the defenders instantly assume that the detractors "don't get it." Just look at the responses on those respective threads whenever someone posts a negative review.

Actually, my interpretation of her note was that she did understand this. But her point was that the average guest visiting at lunch is probably expecting better, and she thinks there's something not quite right about that. Probably not the correct analogy. Guests at Vong have no right to expect a "Jean Georges" experience, even though Jean-Georges Vongerichten has lent his name to both restaurants. But guests at Jean Georges for lunch do expect something approximating four-star food. They would probably not be pleased to discover that the kitchen is serving rice-a-roni and hamburger helper at lunch (which, of course, it is not).People who closely follow the NYC restaurant scene know that the original concept of Ssam Bar morphed (somewhat by accident) into a very different concept. Mimi Sheraton seems to know this, but even if she does not, it hardly detracts from the merits of her post. The backstory is not something any sane restauranteur should expect his clientele to know. Consumers generally realize that a different brand name implies a different experience, but the same brand name shouldn't vary wildly depending on the time of day you show up.

You know, it's possible — just possible — that Mimi Sheraton is more up-to-date than you give her credit for. She's not exactly new at this.It's also possible — just possible — that the bloom is wearing off of David Chang's rose, and not every reaction to his work is going to be 100% rapturous. Ed Levine's post yesterday, though not about the food, is indicative of this trend. In her note to Eater, Sheraton indicated she was aware that Ssam Bar (like many restaurants) could be different at lunch. But her argument (and how can you disagree with it?) is that if a restaurant is open to paying customers, it is open to criticism if it's serving anything less than its "best." I'll bet Mimi Sheraton isn't the only person showing up at lunch expecting a purported two-star James Beard rising-star experience. Is every guest supposed to acquire a "history of the restaurant" before they visit? A concept whose very existence is, to date, accepted by only handful of people (and even that may be stretching it).

As far as I know, patrons of Spice Market aren't required to wear name tags that announce where they came from, and blonde hair doesn't correlate well with residency status.

A better way of putting it is that SM has lost its foodie street cred. I'm sure most of the diners there are local...just not "foodie" local.A recent visit found the rice and seafood dishes better than the meat and poultry. The Thai Jewels were the single most memorable item we had. I've no idea how well the quality holds up from visit to visit. But my sense is that this is a restaurant that runs on cruise control, with no more than the occasional glance at the steering wheel by the man purportedly in charge.

In the past, we've talked about certain well known bloggers, and whether their "reviews" are invariably comped. In the last week, Restaurant Girl has posted reviews of Soto and Fr.Og. I think there's zero probability that the Soto meal was comped, and Fr.Og is highly unlikely. If the latter was comped, the restaurant is no doubt dismayed, because it was one of RG's rare pans. This week, Andrea Strong reviews Tocqueville. Here too, I would put the comp probability as very low, given that Tocquelle is a successful and long-established restaurant, and doesn't need Andrea Strong's help to attract customers.

It's more like 1/4, not 3/4, which seems to me appropriate, bearing in mind that it's only a 2-paragraph review.In restaurant reviewing, like any other kind of writing, you have to make a judgment call about what the reader can reasonably be presumed to know. In a general-audience magazine like New York, Platt can't just say "kaiseki" and assume his readers know what that is. It's another tough judgment call. How do you write, "I don't like it, but if I did like it, I would award N stars."

But the only reason we know his familiarity, or lack thereof, is because he wrote the Mozza article. You could argue that pizza isn't even on his beat (he certainly doesn't cover it with any regularity).

I suppose it depends whether Bruni is a restaurant critic or an entertainment writer. Depending on the article, and the day of the week, he seems to do both. The story on Mozza was entertaining. Therefore, as an entertainment writer, he did his job.As a restaurant critic, I would have expected some him to acquire more understanding of the genre he's writing about—including the local exemplars of the genre that are a subway ride away. Given that he spent thousands of dollars of NYT money—and several days away from his regular job—to write an article on a pizzeria, it seems like the least he could have done. Obviously it's the NYT's money, and in a sense I shouldn't care. But the story demonstrantes, once again, that Bruni is a dilettante ... a dabbler.

Well, Frank said that Mozza is serving that style — to wit, that it was "inspired at least loosely by the thin-crust pizza of Naples." So I'm not sure what's factual any more.

Your reviews aren't sold as a professional product. Bruni's are. You don't work at this full-time. Bruni does. Pizza in New York isn't a singular thing; there are different varieties, as there are everywhere else. Mozza serves Neopolitan-style pizza, and by many accounts New York's best example of that genre is Patsy's.So, Bruni got management approval to take a multi-day trip to California costing thousands of dollars, and taking several days away from his normal job. But he couldn't be bothered to take a $4.00 round-trip subway ride to baseline the genre.

The Times very clearly is a national paper, although it still has (and will always have) considerable local coverage.They don't see Bruni as a national guy. The vast majority of his writing is NYC-focused. It actually makes for him to travel out of town every once in a while. Among other things, it ensures he doesn't become too insular. This assumes the trips have a sensible agenda, and in this case it apparently did not. I agree with FG that if Bruni is going to fly to L.A. and pay multiple visits to a pizzeria, he ought to be familiar with the comparable NYC examples of the genre he's writing about. Bruni clearly has a keen interest in downscale food. On another occasion, he spent at least a week, maybe more, on a multi-state driving tour, so that he could sample fast food. He has had numerous blog posts on his search for the perfect hamburger.Obviously, his bosses at the Times approved these projects, all of which take away from his coverage of the high-end restaurant market. And his coverage of that segment isn't really very good, partly because he doesn't have the background, and partly because it doesn't seem to interest him all that much. The $25 and Under category has withered. It now appears only bi-weekly, and Peter Meehan has been taking it way downmarket. That leaves Bruni to cover a lot of restaurants that Asimov (in the old days) would have reviewed. Bruni probably likes those restaurants better anyway.

Bruni's defense doesn't really answer the most glaring questions about the article.I certainly agree that Mario Batali's first L.A. restaurant was worth covering—even if it's only a glorified pizzeria, and even if Batali's role is fairly limited. But I cannot believe that the opening of Mozza is the only culinary trend in L.A. that's worthy of journalistic notice. It's not as if the Times has a regular L.A. food beat, and it's not as if they send Bruni there all the time. Had I been Bruni's editor, I would have said: "You can go, but I want you to hit 5 or 6 places. It beggars belief that Mozza is the only place there worth covering. (And if it were, that would be a story in itself.)" The article clearly refers to multiple visits, suggesting a multi-day trip. But he apparently visited nowhere else—or if he did, found nothing else worth writing about. I mean, imagine if the L.A. Times sent their restaurant critic to NYC, and the only thing he wrote about was multiple visits to Otto.

I certainly couldn't write as well as Frank Bruni. I do think that both my ratings and choice of review targets would be better. But we all probably think we could do that part better. The Times cannot have been unaware that they were choosing someone who had no prior background in the beat he was going to cover. They probably assumed—wrongly, it turns out—that they could send him on a "feeding tour" (yes, they actually did this), and he would pick up whatever he needed to know.There may well have been a considered decision to make the reviews more entertaining, and less about the food. But I doubt that anyone ever said, "We'd like critics to write more about their personal lifestyles." Clearly Frank has now done it (at least once), and the Times not only allowed it, but actually featured that review more prominently than they normally do. There is a noticeable improvement since Pete Wells took over.

This might be hair-splitting. I think Bruni's meaning was fairly evident to most readers—even to the feminists. They just didn't like the objectification of women (as they saw it), never mind that it was a gay guy doing it.

He was lambasted for that??? ← that was satire (my statement that is). (in other words, your orientation is only an issue if you're gay...it's perfectly ok to reference it if you're straight) ← In fairness, the two situations aren't quite comparable. Grimes didn't write a whole review around his heterosexuality. If you replace "My wife" and "She" with "My partner" and "He," and that's what Bruni wrote, then they would be comparable.

Grimes wrote: He was lambasted for that???

Well, in Claiborne's days, attitudes about being openly gay were a lot different.Bruni clearly feels he is at liberty to toy with the classic review format, particularly when he doesn't have much to say about the restaurant itself. He has written three reviews (Sascha, Waverley Inn, Robert's) that were more about his own cleverness than the restaurants. In only one of the three was his sexuality openly mentioned. But I couldn't imagine Grimes, Reichl, Miller, Sheraton, or Claiborne writing any of them. They just wrote restaurant reviews. I could conceive of a food critic who would bring a "gay sensibility" to every review. I just don't think Frank Bruni is that critic, since he's done it in only one of about 150 reviews so far. Mimi Sheraton pretty obviously imparted a Jewish sensibility when she reviewed Jewish restaurants (and in those days, there were Jewish restaurants worth reviewing). But the other 99% of the time, she was just a food critic who happened to be Jewish. I think it's more sensible to either approve or disapprove of the Sascha-Waverley-Robert's type of review as a group, than to heap disapprobation on the Robert's view alone.

I believe it was mentioned upthread: a few years ago, NY Mag ran a story about prominent NYC gays, and Bruni (then a political reporter) made the list. Obviously not everyone read that story, but at that point you could say it became common knowledge.Why was that list made? Well, why do people make any type of list? To talk and write about sex is human nature.

Indeed it is. I mentioned upthread that I consider it one of his best reviews—not only for the quality of the writing, but because it fulfilled an essential need that should be part of the NYT critic's core responsibility. By your definition, both Rosanjin and Petrosino weren't truly "off the radar." People had mentioned them, though not in fair proportion to their merit. But yes, those are the types of places Bruni ought to be finding. And yes, I think there are many more of them.Now, Bruni's job is multi-dimensional, and I hardly think that such reviews could ever take up the bulk of his time. But in relation to the length of his tenure, I think there have been far too few of them. As it appears to me, he spends far too much of his time following other people's footsteps, ratifying Received Opinion, and when he runs out of ideas, and writing lazy reviews like Max Brenner. This is unprovable, but that's what opinions are for! In the sense that it's well off the critical radar, yes it would. But my premise is not merely that Bruni should be finding such places, but that he should be using his bully pulpit to A) identify culinary trends (rather than merely ratifying them after they're widely publicized by others); and B) directing diners to under-appreciated restaurants whose merit is not matched by recent critical attention I seriously doubt that Bruni would think La Grenouille fits in either of these categories. Indeed, we can write the review in our sleep. He would criticize its tired rituals, and advise us that no one under 55 is actually interested in that kind of food any more. I would eat my hat if he re-affirmed La Grenouille's existing three-star rating. We all know that Bruni knows how to announce that established restaurants aren't as good as previous critics said they were. A Bruni review of La Grenouille would almost certainly fall in that category. Now, if Bruni were to discover that—surprise, surprise—La Grenouille is doing some great things no other prominent critic had given them credit for, it would be precisely the kind of thing I'm talking about. Bruni will sooner be elected Pope.

Either we're talking at cross-purposes, or you're not reading what I write.Obviously every restaurant open for more than 5 minutes is discovered by somebody — otherwise, it wouldn't be there. So apparently if I name a place that anyone, anywhere, has mentioned, then it's disqualified. By that definition, Nathan, you are absolutely correct. Every restaurant worth talking about has customers, who could be said to have "discovered" it. And at least one of those customers knows how to use the Internet, and posted somewhere about their "discovery." By your terms, I have to name a place that no. one. has. ever. mentioned. Ever. I agree, that's nearly impossible. But of course, that was never the point. The point was that someone doing this full-time (and there is no one who is doing it full-time, and has Bruni's microphone) would easily find dozens of worthy places that have been under-publicized. Not "never mentioned by anyone, anywhere, ever." But under-publicized in relation to their merit. On top of that, the 40+ bloggers you mentioned (and I'm among them) spend a disproportionate share of their time at restaurants open less than 3 years. Expand your horizons to restaurants open longer than that, and the field broadens considerably.

There aren't a whole lot of people who are paid full-time to do nothing but this, and have Bruni's microphone (weekly review, blog, daily podcast). Actually, there's really no one else in a comparable position.Can it conceivably be your view that, if you were in his position, you'd never find anything that hadn't first been widely publicized by others? Or, if we credit Bruni with 2 restaurants in 3 years—that you'd only find one every 18 months? My own most recent discovery is Koca Lounge (blog post here). Whether you personally happen to think Koca Lounge is any good is irrelevant. But I didn't find it by following other people's breadcrumb trails. And unlike Bruni, I'm not paid full time to do this.

For whatever little it's worth, that's what I think. ← I disagree. I think if you go back and compare to his first year or so on the job, Bruni has markedly improved in some areas. Most notably his prose, which was routinely as embarrassing as anything in that Roberto's review, and is responsible more than anything for making him a laughingstock today. If you don't believe me check out brunidigest or the Mouthfuls Bruni thread. And this covers everything from preposterously strained and mixed metaphors, to distracting overuse of alliteration and an unholy predilection for the word "moist", to a tendency toward elaborate hooks that sometimes took up half the review, to an inclination to view his column as more an Eater-style fashion report than a review of food and service. Today there are far fewer gaffes or displays of ignorance, such as when he was mystified to find recessed seating at a Japanese restaurant, or when he researched and explained to his readers what a "plancha" was. (Yes, there was the recent todo about grower Champagne, but at least that's more obscure than a plancha.) There's many fair points here. There's been nothing lately to match the awfulness of the Bouley, Wolfgang's, or LCB Brasserie reviews (all fairly early in his tenure).He still looks for a "hook" to hang the review on, often with poor results. For instance, the Bar Room/EMP double-review was couched as a "changing of the guard" in Danny Meyer's world, with a needless slam against Gramercy Tavern, which was just breaking in a new kitchen team. I haven't really detected any change in the way he assigns the stars, and I'm not so sure they were ever that settled or accurate. Beautifully put. But of course, his lack of appreciation for fine dining is precisely what makes his ratings (and the justifications for them) so wildly off.The only thing I can add, is that I think he's more of a follower than a leader. A great critic identifies important trends overlooked by others, rather than merely confirming them. Obviously he couldn't do this every week. But in general, I think he follows the breadcrumbs the foodies leave behind, and most of his positive reviews just ratify what everyone else already knew. (I know there's at least one person here who thinks that everything worth discovering has already been discovered, but you'll never convince me of that.)

I should add that Leonard's rather strict definition of "Italian" has given Bruni a break. Bruni gave three stars to Cru, which the Times website lists as an Italian restaurant, a characterization I've no doubt Bruni was responsible for. In the review, he described it as "Tilting heavily toward Italy, nodding slightly toward Spain." In his own mind, he regarded Cru as substantially Italian.