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I am not suggesting that. But in a hypothetical world where every restaurant in town got reviewed, the zero-star category would be the most plentiful — just as one-star is more plentiful than two, and two-stars are more plentiful than three.That being the case, there's basically a limitless pool of zero-star restaurants to choose from. When he uncorks one, the obvious question is: why? The most obvious reason is a prominent opening that requires a review: Lonesome Dove, Kobe Club, Ninja. Another case would be a previously starred restaurant that no longer deserves it: Mercer Kitchen. Yet another case is a zero-star review accompanied by a contrasting higher-rated review: Zarela (with Centrico). Indeed, I also suggested a way that Max Brenner could have been made relevant: a double-review, contrasting it with a similar place that got the formula right. If the best reason you can come up with is that the place is packed with tourists, and People magazine has featured it, that's awfully weak. One can give numerous examples of Bruni's poor use of space — and not just among the zero-star reviews. When you don't know much about the topic you're covering, you're going to make many mistakes. Far from it. Actually, one of Bruni's problems (this week notwithstanding) is that he's a follower, not a leader. He ought to be finding the places others ignored. I don't accept that every place worth writing about has already been heavily publicized. That's putting yourself in the hands of publicists, instead of figuring it out for yourself.Rosanjin is an example where he got it right. It wasn't totally ignored, but it was close. But in this case, at least he was using his bully pulpit to call our attention to a place that he felt deserved it. He should be doing a lot more of that. You've got to question priorities when he picks a place no one else seemed to think required it, and the best he can come up with is: don't bother.

I agree that nearly all plausibly reviewable restaurants that open in Manhattan below 96th Street are publicized.I am suggesting that his beat includes not only those restaurants, but also: * Restaurants that opened more than 3 years ago, but for whatever reason, were overlooked at the time. (I take 3 years as the reference point, because that's how long he's been on the beat.) * Restaurants that opened more than 6 months ago, but less than 3, which, for whatever reason, he did not review at the time. One can make a pretty good list of restaurants that attracted a decent number of reviews...but not from him. Two of Steve Cuozzo's favorites are Piano Due and Brasserie Ruhlmann. * Restaurants the Times reviewed years ago, but that are due for a revisit. * Restaurants in New York City, outside of "Manhattan (below 96th Street)." I am also suggesting that it is ludicrous, given the paucity of reviewing slots, to use one up on such an unimportant place as Max Brenner — a restaurant no other critic in town seemed to think required a review. I assert that there were dozens of candidates more worthy. But there didn't have to be dozens. There only had to be one.

You seem to be limiting your perspective to the widely publicized restaurant openings, which any automaton can figure out. I suppose that if one's approach is to piggy-back on everyone else's publicity, and then follow the "buzz," that would be acceptable. In that case, I would retract my statement: Bruni has shown himself highly adept at trolling Eater and Grub Street, and that's all one needs to look at.But with all the time and resources at his command, you don't think Bruni could ever discover anything? Heaven knows what the poor guy would have done in the pre-Internet days. Gosh, he'd actually have had to find restaurants for himself. I knew about that article. My perspective was "restaurants that have never had a rated review." If it's "restaurants the Times never noticed at all," obviously you land on a much more limited subset.

In the first place, there seems to be a fairly widespread consensus that Bruni wasted a reviewing slot here. Grub Street calls it "inexplicable," while Eater calls it "debatable at best." To be sure, there have been goose-egged restaurants before, and there will be again. But you have to go pretty far back to find a review more irrelevant than this one. At the very least, a multiple review—contrasting Max Brenner to a place that does it well—would have made more sense. To put it in perspective, Eleven Madison Park under Daniel Humm got 1/2 of a review, while Max Brenner (a chain restaurant where the only worthwhile item is chocolate) got a whole review to itself. Fallacy somewhere, I fancy. So where should he go? There's no doubt in my mind that there are many dozens of restaurants that have never been reviewed, that would get at least a star. If you look at some of Bruni's past ratings, you quickly see that a place needn't be all that special to get a star, or even two. My own blog has several of them (usually one star), and remember: I'm not looking for them all the time, as he is (or is supposed to be). Thalassa is the restaurant I've rated the highest (on my blog), that has never had a rated review in the Times. One could probably add many others that have been reviewed, but so long ago that they merit a fresh look. Can you or I make a complete list of these restaurants? Of course not. But we have day jobs. We aren't paid to spend the entire working day (and usually, evening as well) focusing on nothing but restaurants. Someone who does surely ought to be able to find things that we can't. Nor do I think that the search ends with making a mental note of all the places featured on Eater and Grub Street I mean: Nathan, Sneak: restaurants are a pretty passionate hobby for you, but you don't have all the time or money to spend that Bruni does. Wouldn't there be something wrong if the only places Bruni finds worth writing about, are the places we know about? If his perspective is no better than ours, then isn't he in the wrong job?

Presumably Rosanjin wasn't on your radar before Bruni put it there. I guarantee you there are dozens more. This guy is paid handsomely, full-time, to find such places. He ought to be able to identify far more than you and I can. If he cannot, it's a failure of imagination or effort.Remember, that "buzz" you refer to has to be created by somebody. It requires, you know, a "discovery." An intelligent critic who does this full-time damned well ought to be able to find more than one.

Frank Bruni doesn't decide which restaurants are important. That decision gets made by the universe, and his job is to identify the important ones and review them. I think there's an entirely coherent case to be made for the importance of Max Brenner, and especially for the need to debunk it. ← Pretty much the same argument can be made for Olive Garden (except for the Israeli part).I also think there's an argument that good criticism identifies the important restaurants, rather than just following the breadcrumbs left by tourists and that shrewed observer of the culinary scene, People magazine.

The Vong review fulfilled a purpose, since it's unquestionably a restaurant on Bruni's beat, and it adjusted the previous rating to a more realistic level. In mentioning those three, I was not passing judgment on the quality or review-worthiness of those restaurants. Those just happen to be three non-standard reviews that Bruni wrote when he wanted to have a bit of fun. They show that it's possible for him to review something that makes sense, while toying whimsically with the format.

Yeah, we noticed that. But to the extent Max Brenner has any appeal at all, it's as a dessert place. Which is what the review basically says. There are about a hundred restaurants within a 5-block radius of Times Square serving versions of the Chef Boyardee / Toaster Oven savory food he sampled at Max Brenner. Surely that couldn't have been the motivation for the review—whimsical or not.I mean, Frank has written a few "fun" reviews (Sascha, Waverly Inn, Robert's Steakhouse). But they were all at least quintessentially New York (non-chain) restaurants that belonged on his beat if they belonged on anybody's.

Two explanations come to mind, and neither is to his credit. Either he is bored, or he needed some time off.As I noted on my blog, the supreme paradox is that Room 4 Dessert, a serious dessert restaurant that deserves two stars, was relegated to $25 and Under. Meanwhile, Bruni wastes a column on a tourist trap that no one cares about, only to give it a goose-egg. What's next week's review: Ferrara?

Actually not, unless you meant to capitalize "Scene." According to Zagat, the most restaurant-heavy neighborhood is the East Village, but the West 40s & West 50s are second and third. If you combined them (and they really are one "neighborhood"), then together they outnumber the EV. Greenwich Village is fourth, and the East 50s fifth. Please feel free to introduce better stats, if you have them.If you consider the whole UWS, where Kefi is located, to be one "neighorhood," it has more restaurants in Zagat than the E.V. or any other downtown neighborhood. Perhaps the UWS doesn't qualify as a SCENE, but as a place for dining out (which is the relevant discussion) it has plenty. If Nathan's point is that you don't generally see high chairs at "Page Six" restaurants (or some other constrained definition of Scene), then I agree. What that shows, I don't know. Just to expand on my earlier hastily-written post, the UWS, UES, Theater District, TriBeCa, Battery Park City, and nowadays even the Financial District, are very child-heavy neighborhoods. And I agree you find plenty of children at Landmarc too, which actually markets itself that way. Kefi, of course, is the ultimate stroller restaurant, which is what makes this incident so funny.

I think the poster's complaint was the attutide with which the message was delivered, not the message itself. Obviously, any restaurant can change their minds based on their perception of market demand. It's how you communicate the change that counts. Coincidentally, I just saw a high chair in Insieme the other night. But I agree, it's not that common, except in a few neighborhoods (UES, UWS, Theater District).The irony here is that Psilakis deliberately took Onera down a notch, based on the kind of neighborhood he was in. To do that, and then act surprised when a family with children comes in, is mind-blowing.

See earlier post by ewindels. The prix fixe, which ewindels clearly had, is now $48. Add beverages, tax, and tip, and 90 bucks is about where you're going to land.

I agree about the block, but I don't think this particularly matters for restaurants in Varietal's class. Generally, people don't "just happen" to be walking by a $90-a-person restaurant, and drop in on the spur of the moment. If you've got a good buzz (which Varietal doesn't, and sadly never did), it's irrelevant which particular block in Chelsea you're on. This was also the case on wintertime Saturday nights, too.

I've e-mailed him in the past. He does not answer in person, which is understandable. (There have been blog posts lately about the crushing load of e-mails he receives — mostly along the lines of "You've got to try...." or "I had a terrible experience at....")If your question/comment is of general interest, and if he wants to answer it, he will respond publicly on the blog.

So it appears your opinion is that, of the last 10 reviews, 9 were more-or-less obvious, and he didn't have to sample a much larger subset before arriving at them. Well: that certainly would explain what you've been saying. I think there are a good number of reviews in New York (and not just bloggers) that are based off just one or two visits. The thing is, even for a cuisine as predictable as a steakhouse, Bruni visits at least three times.

Your level of confidence is interesting. The problem with your assumption is that the pipline has to come from somewhere. These are Bruni's last 10 reviews:Momofuku Ssam Bar Robert's Steakhouse Sfoglia Nish Varietal Rosanjin The Four Seasons The E.U. Esca Morandi Of those 10, only three were prominent new restaurants that were reviewed fairly promptly after they opened: Nish, Varietal, Morandi. (I am generously counting Nish as a "new" restaurant.) As soon as they were announced, Bruni would have made a mental note that he had to review them. That leaves seven reviews that were, in a sense, discretionary — he didn't have to review them. The question is, how many meals did he eat at restaurants not reviewed, to come up with those seven? I would guess quite a lot. It's too tiresome to find the exact quote, but I think Frank Bruni himself has more-or-less confirmed that he eats about 10 work-related meals a week.As FG noted, Bruni also has various travel engagements that take away from his usual dining pattern (e.g., the time he spent a week driving around the country eating fast food; or the time he spent a week having room service at hotels; or his week as a waiter.

FG has convinced me.Here's a bit of rough math. Bruni tends to review new restaurants about three months after opening. In a three-month period, he needs to file 13 reviews. If he visits each reviewed restaurant six times, that's 13 × 6 = 78 visits per quarter just to feed his "pipeline." If he dines out 10 times a week, that's 130 meals in a quarter. That means that 78/130 = 60% of his meals would be dedicated to the pipeline, leaving only 40% of his meals for sampling new restaurants that never get reviewed, spot-checking previously-reviewed restaurants, and so forth. Then consider that Bruni is sometimes traveling outside of NYC, and some of the reviews cover two restaurants, and the percentages get worse. So it's probably something more like the reverse: 40% of the meals spent on the forthcoming review pipeline, and 60% spent elsewhere.

However, many of these restaurants are sampled regularly over time. Prior to Bruni's 3-star re-review of Esca recently, there were at least three previous NYT articles by him (written quite a distance apart) in which he talked about Esca.So I think it's safe to assume that, before the concentrated set of visits that led up to the re-review, he'd dined at Esca at least 2-3 times over the last several years. Since there was no intervening event that fundamentally altered the restaurant, those visits "count" as evidence behind the 3-star review, even if they weren't explicitly mentioned.

Bruni administered similar two-star bruisings to Alto, Café Gray, Le Cirque, The Modern, Gilt, and The Four Seasons — all very pricey restaurants that, I am sure, considered themselves at least three-star material. Most critics, though not Bruni, did the same to Del Posto. I don't think GR was singled out for such treatment.I do agree that it is nuts.

A bit of perspective is in order. GR at the London was widely considered to be a near-clone of GR at RHR. That restaurant carries three Michelin stars, and regularly appears on various Top 50 in the World lists. GR at the London also carries an $80 prix fixe at dinner, making it more expensive than about 99.99% of NYC restaurants.With that in mind, you expect an experience that is far beyond merely "good." You expect an experience at or close to the NYT four-star restaurants — a level that virtually no reviewer, professional or amateur, believes this restaurant has attained. Unfortunately, the vast majority of the posts on this thread are not about the food. But among the few that are, you find varying degrees of "underwhelmed." For instance, tupac17616: "I've only had one meal at each (both extended tasting menus), but I found the food at Picholine to be of generally a much higher level than GR." This poster, of course, is not saying that GR is bad. But he's saying that, based on both its price and reputation, he expected quite a bit more. And there are a number of posts to that effect on this thread, though you have to wade through quite a bit of irrelevance to find them.

I know of at least one case (and Leonard Kim may have more) when John Canaday issued a rating based on one visit. That clearly would not be possible nowadays.

he's probably referencing eater's mention that Bruni visited Morandi 6-8 times (apparently he wasn't recognized...at least initially...on every visit...something also indicated by the review)... other restauranteurs have made similar statements... ← I have a few other data points. I had dinner at Varietal on Friday, February 9. The owner told me that Bruni had already dined there three times. (It could have been more, if Bruni managed to sneak in unrecognized.) The review didn't come out for another 5½ weeks, which almost certainly means he wasn't done with his visits.I believe there have been times when Bruni explicitly mentioned something around half-a-dozen visits. In his original review of the Modern, he said that he paid his visits over a three-month period. I have to figure that if the visits were spaced out over that long an interval, there were more like 6 of them, than 3. The only recent example when it was mentioned in the review was when Julia Moskin reviewed the Morgan Dining Room in Bruni's absence. She explicitly said that she'd made six visits. Moskin's not Bruni, but it could suggest where the current norm lies.

For starters, you're setting up a strawman. Frank Bruni's reviews of 3-month-old restaurants aren't press releases. They would more fairly be called "early views."Anyhow, although Leonard will no doubt have the exact percentage, we all know that the vast majority of NYT reviews are of fairly recently opened restaurants. You've once again set up a false dichotomy: a review can also have news content, and often does. But I do agree that, whether we like it or not, much of the public does consider the NYT review definitive.I think the problem here is not the date of the first NYT review, but the infrequency of re-reviews. It is neither realistic nor sensible to expect the paper of record to keep quiet for a whole year after a restaurant opens. There simply is no precedent—nor should there be—for a daily newspaper to remain silent for that long. If an establishment is open to paying customers, then it should be open to reviewers too. No, the real problem is that, once issued, the NYT review becomes the paper's "permanent" published opinion of the restaurant, and in most cases won't be updated for many years (or ever). As Leonard Kim has often reminded us, in the Mimi Sheraton era, two reviews per week was the norm, and it could sometimes be as many as five or six. Return to this system, and the Times would be able to update its ratings much more frequently. I also think the Times would need to reduce the number of visits required to issue a rating. Anecdotal evidence suggests that Frank Bruni pays six visits or more to each restaurant he reviews. This invariably means that each review requires a substantial investment of both time and money. Especially in the case of re-reviews, he has to be rather sure that there's a new story to tell before he makes that investment. If there were a lower barrier to re-reviews, they could be issued a lot more often.

Frank Bruni has been to WD-50, but any change/maturation — if he perceived it — was insufficient to move him to re-review the place. That's a little patronizing, isn't it? A chef who takes that approach — giving diners what he thinks they should have, rather than what they want — would probably be an unemployed chef before very long. (I know there have been rare exceptions.)

My sense is that, while Bruni certainly likes NewGilt more, better (to him) execution of less ambitious food equals still a two star rating. The to-be-sure paragraph ("Not all of Mr. Lee’s efforts pay off...") makes that fairly clear. "Revisit" will presumably be the dumping ground for re-reviews that keep the same stars. ← I wouldn't leap to that conclusion. You could easily find statements like "Not all of X's efforts pay off..." in three-star reviews.The reality is that Bruni doesn't have time to pay the required half-dozen visits to every restaurant that might conceivably warrant a re-review. Today's capsule review may have been based on as little as one visit. The other reality is that the paper has limited space for re-reviews, and Gilt was reviewed in full just last year. Obviously, by default, what you say is true: "Revisit" means that the restaurant keeps the stars it has. But it doesn't mean that he actually sampled enough of the menu, on enough occasions, to reach a considered judgment on the matter.