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Alarming? If that's alarming, what adjective is left for things like—Darfur?Seriously, Per Se is into its third year. Imitation usually comes quickly in the restaurant industry, but no more tasting-menu-only restaurants have opened in New York. I think it's safe to say that those who find tasting menus an affront to their sensibilities will still have other fine dining options for a long, long time to come. We've definitely got the message you don't like tasting menus, but you should be careful about assuming that people with different preferences are experientially deprived. You know, maybe the people ordering tasting menus actually like them. Why is it necessary to assume that there's something wrong with this?

I don't have such a big problem with this. Restaurants, and especially untraditional venues like Varietal, are constantly evolving. Restaurants aren't like that Picasso painting, which, once painted, is the same thing forever. A large number of informal reviews may give a better pulse of a restaurant's current performance than a few "magnum opus" masterpieces of criticism that quickly become obsolete.Cuozzo took that argument to the extreme, announcing that reviews are (in his opinion) entirely obsolete. His official position is that he doesn't write reviews; he just comments on trends. I think he took it too far, but that is his position. I think it's understood that when JohnL (or any of us) writes, we are stating personal impressions. What else could they be? A comment like "tastes weird..." implies "...to me," since no one can say how it tastes to anyone else. I therefore don't care if "to me" is omitted, as it is pretty much obvious.

I haven't heard anyone saying that it's terribly difficult to get in. You have to plan in advance, but that's not unlike plenty of high-end places. With word-of-mouth and the first round of reviews not ecstatic, I suspect it will only get easier.Ramsay has got to be crossing his fingers now for three stars from the Times. If Bruni files what amounts to a combined review for the Bar Room and the main Dining Room—as he originally did, for instance, at The Modern—I think Ramsay could be in big trouble.

I haven't found any other reviewer that says you have to spend $80 in the Bar Room to put together a complete meal. I've found plenty who say that, for what you spend, it's just not worth it. A more relevant point is that if you're already on the hook to spend $55-60 for bar food, you might as well spend the extra $20-25 and get the real thing.

I tried it again the first time Cuozzo said that they'd fixed their problems. He was wrong. At that point, the original chef was still in place. I will go back again, when I get around to it, but I'm not rushing over there.

Even if you count previews, the review of a Broadway play appears much sooner than the six months the earlier poster was suggesting for restaurants.There are other examples: Opera productions are reviewed immediately after opening night, after zero previews.

Well...no. That distinction is already claimed: the six-star review for Eleven Madison Park and the Bar Room.

Not exactly. The clearest comparison point is the four-course menu in the London Bar at $55, versus the three-course menu in the main dining room at $80. I'd call that a pretty significant price difference.Whether you'll like your four London Bar courses enough to pay $55 for them is a whole other question.

Colliccio certainly gets full marks for trying to fix the problem. In the end, it comes down to "Can he broil a steak?" Except for the negative answer to that question, I absolutely loved everything else about craftsteak the two times I was there. But incompetence at preparing steaks is a pretty significant drawback, when "steak" is in the name of the restaurant.Cuozzo likes it in this week's Post, but I've given up on trusting Cuozzo.

There may be some good arguments for your viewpoint. But the problem shouldn't be laid at Bruni's feet, as he is simply conforming to an industry-wide norm that he had nothing to do with creating.I don't think there's any realistic way that the media are going to wait six months. I mean, they don't wait six months to review Broadway plays, either. They don't evey wait six days. Something they could do is to go back and take a quick second-look at major restaurants, and revise the rating (if it seems to be warranted) without having to go through the expense of a full re-review. As Leonard Kim has documented, in the Mimi Sheraton era the Times was much more responsive about re-rating restaurants — up or down — reasonably promptly.

He hasn't forgotten about it at all. Comments in his Critic's Notebook piece this week and in recent blog posts show that he's already paid multiple visits to GR. I suspect the review is no more than 2-3 weeks away.If you look back over the past year, I think you'll find that Platt's reviews of the major restaurants usually precede Bruni's. Yes, it has taken him slightly longer to get to GR than it did for Del Posto or Gilt. But not so much longer that it begins to look shady. It took him a very long time to get to Per Se.

I have no idea if Varietal will be a success. But how boring would it be, if restaurants never tried anything different? I don't see any fatal flaws in Varietal's concept, and I wouldn't be so quick to predict failure just because this exact idea hasn't already succeeded somewhere else. If Varietal fails, people will of course blame the concept. But the rate of restaurant failures is pretty high, no matter what the concept. Varietal is at least challenging the norm, and in some fairly interesting ways.

This is all true. Beyond that, he seems to be "punishing" the restaurant for what he perceives as an overly long soft opening. I am not sure why we should care. I mean, was there a huge public furore about this? (No, there wasn't.) Or was Bruni just ruffled because it interfered with his personal timetable?I also think it's symptomatic of boredom with his job. He couldn't find any restaurants that warranted a real review, but he wrote this crazy piece instead.

The two aren't mutually exclusive. Sometimes it's fun to go into a great restaurant and say to the chef, "I'm in your hands." Other times, I like to have a list of options and choose for myself. It's not as if one is bad, and the other good. While restaurants do say that, I have yet to be cancelled out because I didn't call. Even when they say that, if I forget to call, usually they'll call me.

Bruni was referring to the fairly newfangled affectation of referring to "Chef," rather than "the Chef," or "Chef Boulud," or "Chef Daniel." The use of Just Plain "Chef" has taken a big upturn in the last year or two. I myself had noticed this, even before Bruni wrote the piece. As a customer, it's immaterial to me whether the kitchen has a window. That's an issue between the owner of the restaurant and its employees.But when the owner sacrifices a bathroom for the customers, so that he can create an open kitchen—as Laurent Tourondel did at BLT Fish—it's certainly a newsworthy development. Can you name any other restaurants where that was done? When another owner sacrifices gorgeous views of Central Park, so that customers can have gorgeous views of the kitchen—as Gray Kunz did at Café Gray—it's certainly a newsworthy development. How many other restaurants can you name that have made such a boneheaded design choice? I had no quarrel with these observations in the Bruni piece, Part of his job is to comment on long-term trends in the industry, and there's no question these things have been changing over the last several years. Unfortunately, the article was not well balanced, and people who haven't actually seen these restaurants for themselves might get some wrong impressions.

I don't know whether you'd enjoy a top-of-the-line New York restaurant or not, but I wouldn't let Frank Bruni be the guy to decide for you. His overly precious observations don't really paint the full picture.

There might be good reasons to avoid Per Se, but "I don't like dining in a mall" is one of the silliest. While you're there, you have basically no awareness of being in a mall. If you'd like, there's a separate entrance so your feet need not be be sullied by the same floor tiles that mall customers have touched. I mean, it would be a bit like saying, "I don't like Alain Ducasse," because I hate dining in hotels.If you already tried Per Se, and found the service stilted and neurotic, that is of course a whole other issue.

It wasn't restaurant criticism, but creative writing. Whether you found the writing entertaining or not, the clear signal was: I don't have a real review to write today, so I thought I'd do this funny one instead.

By the way, Per Se is the one hard-to-get restaurant that you can't reserve with this service.I think the difficulty of reserving at Per Se is over-stated. I know numerous people who've done it. You just have to be ready to hover over the phone at 10:00 a.m. exactly 60 days before the date you want to visit. It doesn't work well if you're a short-term planner, but otherwise it's not that difficult.

I thought you were saying this service is a good thing. I am saying it's a bad thing.

Some of the current discussion grew out of the earlier comment about "Wow!" dishes. For me, the "Wow!" can come from either of two directions. The first is putting ingredients, flavors, preparation, and plating together in a way I've never experienced before. The second is doing those things in a familiar way, but extraordinarily well. The critics definitely have a bias against the second type of "wow," but I don't share that bias. Robyn is clearly a suppporter of GR, but my impression is that her experience comes from GR at Royal Hospital Road, not GR at the London. Have we had a post yet from anyone who's experienced both? One of my questions is whether the London is actually reaching the high standard set by Royal Hospital Road.

I would rather pay the restaurant. It's simpler that way (no third party to deal with).Also, my dining choices reflect, among other things, a choice about whom I want to reward with my business. For instance, my girlfriend and I are having dinner at Country on Valentine's Day. We chose Country because we had a great experience there previously. On V-Day, we will be paying a premium over the usual price of dinner at Country. I would rather not pay that premium. But if I must do so, I would prefer to have it go to the people who will actually be providing the service, than to middlemen who are not. I think you are misjudging the market. There are an awful lot of dinners served every night in New York, for which an extra $25-45 would be a trivial add-on. There are plenty of people who call at the last minute, and when they are told no tables are available, that is the end of it. In principle, I am sure a good deal of those people would pay a small premium, if it meant their request could be accommodated.There would be, of course, a psychological barrier, since we are not used to dealing with restaurants this way. But such barriers can be overcome. As noted above, people already doing it to an extent (holidays, lower prices at lunch, pre/post-theatre pricing, and so forth). This would merely be extending the concept. In addition, PTT poses additional barriers, because you have to join first before you can participate, and membership isn't instantaneous. If premium pricing is going to exist, it's much more efficient if it comes from the restaurant.

Yet another one-star review, this time from Bob Lape in Crain's: I would note that Lape is the most generous of the critics that award stars, often being a star higher than the Times. Can an Eater deathwatch be far off?

Eater, who seems nearly obsessed with this story, already has something like half-a-dozen posts on it. In the latest one, which has comments from various industry insiders, I found perhaps the best defense of the idea: While the service is undeniably on the shady side, I am starting to agree with Fat Guy that PTT is merely capitalizing on market inefficiency. In so doing, if they are successful, they will force restaurants to adjust to reality. Daniel Boulud may say, "If a last-minute 8:00 p.m. reservation is worth an extra fifty bucks, why should someone else be earning that?"

This assumes the people running the business can be trusted to describe it truthfully. We already know that they cannot — they claim to be doing the restaurant a favor, but also tell you not to mention PrimeTime Tables when claiming your reservation. That's some favor.