oakapple

In general, I think it's entirely reasonable for Bruni to make comments about other restaurants besides the main restaurant he's reviewing. In the same vein, a film critic might compare the film he's reviewing to other films by the same director.The Gramercy Tavern comment was wrong for the very reason he stated: the restaurant is in transition. USC, on the other hand, is stable (as far as I know), and Bruni is entitled to comment on its current state whenever he wants. The Bouley comments were in a whole other category, because they had nothing to do with the restaurant.

That is not my supposition. I am not only aware that the Times reviewers take price into account, but I also use that same principle myself. The respective ratings of The Modern and The Bar Room are incoherent even in light of that principle. One should be careful of freely tossing around "simply" (though I'm guilty of that myself sometimes). I thought EMP was indeed very good in its previous incarnation. USC would probably get two stars if it were re-reviewed, which means "very good" according to the Times' definition. This is absolutely correct. The problem is that it leaves a whole genre of fine dining out in the cold.

I think this is a serious sign that they're trying to improve the place.

I'm afraid I don't follow your reasoning. Nobody knows when Frank Bruni is going to review Gramercy Tavern until after it happens. Are you suggesting that readers will be snapping up copies of the Wednesday Times in giddy anticipation of GT's Hour of Judgment? I think not.And exactly who are those people who've been anticipating an EMP re-review? He said nothing in earlier reviews to suggest this was coming, and there was no precedent for it — this being the first time Bruni has redone one of his own reviews. Obviously, the Times hires critics because it believes their work helps sell newspapers — they are running a business, not a charity. But in that regard Bruni is just like any other critic. Indeed, there is probably less anticipation for his reviews than that of most critics, because it's totally unpredictable when his reviews will arrive.

I completely agree that his original review of EMP was off-base. He has, unfortunately, written far too many of those for us to expect that they will be corrected.But what is your concern with this review, aside from the fact that The Bar Room got one star too many (a not inconsiderable error, I admit).

By that definition, Per Se is the only non-Japanese high-end restaurant in New York. I think you've simply set the bar too high. The right figure is more like $125-150. Tokyo and London are simply more expensive, and have been for a long time. (I haven't been to Paris recently, so won't comment.) Aparments are scarce, but restaurants are plentiful. Indeed, New York has far more restaurants than it needs, which is partly why so many fail. Even at successful restaurants, you can generally get a table at reasonably short notice, which certainly isn't true about successful apartment buildings.You also need to consider that an apartment is something you possess, while a restaurant meal is a transitory experience. I think the price ratios (most to least expensive) for other transitory experiences, like professional theatre and sporting events, are closer to 5:1 than 100:1.

My own theory is that classic formality bores him, and he has too little comprehension of the food to distinguish great cuisine from tasty comfort food. The pork chop at The Little Owl and the Bluefoot Chicken at Alain Ducasse are pretty much the same thing to him. It's entirely typical that the suckling pig at EMP was the dish he raved about the most, and while I've no doubt that it's very good indeed, I'll betcha anything it's not what Chef Humm considers his best work.I think the Bar Room is a two-star restaurant. While I've no doubt Danny Meyer's crew are floating on air this morning, when the dust settles, they have to face the preposterous fact that the main dining room is at two stars while the bar is at three. I'm not sure I understand the comment. I don't know anyone who thinks Union Square Cafe is the real flagship of the operation these days (except in name only), and we all know that Gramercy Tavern is in transition. These comments seemed to me unremarkable. I don't think there's any pattern that after a 3-star review, the next restaurant in line gets bludgeoned. It's unlikely to be 3 stars, of course, simply because that rating isn't given out very often.

In one of those paradoxes only Eater could come up with, the purported odds favor 2 stars for EMP and 1 star for the Bar Room. But Eater's own prediction is 3 & 2. (The paradox, of course, is that Eater is responsible for both the odds and the prediction.)Bruni has said that he actually likes the Bar Room better than the main restaurant, so I agree with Eater's prediction of 2 stars for the Bar Room. EMP is more of a wild card, but with almost everyone saying that Chef Humm has improved the place, I also agree with the Eater prediction of 3 stars for EMP. On top of that, a re-review less than two years later, even with a change of chef, would be unusual unless the rating is being changed.

For the record, Union Square Café's last Times review was in September 1999: three stars per Grimes. He re-affirmed a Bryan Miller three-star rating, bestowed 14 years earlier. Even in 1999, Grimes's endorsement was somewhat tepid, making it fairly clear he was adding a star for comfort, service, and consistency: Should a USC re-review be on Wednesday's bill, I think two stars are the most likely rating.

She did say that, but the actual review had four question marks printed — no rating at all. Had she been forced to make a decision, we'll never know what she would have done. The Times doesn't allow half-stars.At the time, people noted that the best seat for a Japanese omakase is always at the bar. Ergo, if she thought it was a four-star experience at the bar, four stars was the correct rating. That's all academic, as Bruni came along less than a year later and awarded four.

I thought EMP deserved three even pre-Humm, but perhaps I'm exaggerating — if it was an error, it wasn't egregious. Agreed, and besides that, most of the reports I'm reading suggest that Ramsay won't get four.

Do you have links? That's correct: at the moment, both are sitting at two stars. Upgrading them to three stars would give Bruni a chance to correct two of his most egregious errors in one stroke. And a trivia note: it would also be Bruni's first re-review of restaurants where the previous reviews were his, and not another critic's.I can also see a scenario where EMP gets three, but The Modern remains at two. I recall a comment from Bruni long after his original review, suggesting he had revisited The Modern and remained unimpressed. A double re-review leaving both at two would seem to be pointless. I'll repeat here a comment I made previously. New York Times critics can make or break reputations with their four-star reviews. Bruni gave four stars to Per Se and Masa, but both were clones of west coast restaurants whose reputations long predated him. His other four-star reviews have either been smackdowns (Ducasse, Bouley) or the confirmation of existing ratings (JG, LeB). Two and a half years into his tenure, Bruni has got to be itching to pull the trigger.

One must be careful about retroactive definitions. There aren't many restaurants that "feel the need to exist" before they actually exist.Per Se was very much a concept designed to piggy-back on The French Laundry's already legendary reputation. It worked because: A) The marketing wasn't perceived as blatantly exploitative (though, make no mistake, it was there in the background); and B) Per Se was simply damned good. Morimoto, Buddakan and Del Posto all suffered from marketing hype that was very clearly over-the-top. For the first two, you had Stephen Starr ludicrously telling the Times that he would teach New Yorkers what a good restaurant is about. For Del Posto you had Batali and Bastianich pre-emptively announcing that they were gunning for four stars. Per Se wasn't any less deliberate in its intentions, but it was a whole lot smarter about the execution. Having said all that, Buddakan and Del Posto won reasonably favorable critical notices. We are almost getting over the cynical marketing hype that surrounded them. I agree that the idea of Gary Robins cooking Russian food seems bizarre, but the poor reviews for The Russian Team Room are the result of fundamental problems (slow, sloppy service; inconsistent work in the kitchen) that would be unacceptable at any restaurant that serves $40 entrees.

Adam Platt reviews the RTR in today's New York, reaching the same conclusion Frank Bruni did: one star:

...and... I agree with FG that any new concept could be called a "test." But Broadway roadshows were virtually always undertaken with the intention of bringing the show to New York fairly promptly if it was successful. This is not common in the restaurant industry, and indeed, I can't think of an example offhand.

In most of the cited examples, I don't think the origiinal restaurant wasn't developed as a "test." But it so happened that when it was successful, a New York version was deemed a logical next step.

I'm amazed at the number of commenters on this thread who don't seem to understand why the law is what it is, as well as the lack of support for leaving it that way. So let me give it a try. Historically, the age of emancipation in the U.S. was 21. It was changed to 18 after the Vietnam War, on the theory that if you were old enough to be drafted into the army, and sent away to die for your country, then you ought to be old enough do the other things adults do, such as vote and order a beer. The problem is that some high school students turn 18 during their senior year. And once one student in the school can legally buy alcohol, the whole school has access. There were many highly publicized incidents of underage students behaving recklessly, deaths from drunk driving, and so forth. The police can arrest the kid who bought the alcohol in the first place, but you can't bring back the dead. Increasing the penalty doesn't really help, because kids that age just don't have the good judgment to appreciate the consequences. At first, some states changed the legal age to 19, but many 19-year-olds have friends that are still in high school, so it wasn't really an effective solution. So the age was set to 21, to provide a 3-year buffer between the legal drinking population and the oldest high school students. There can be no reasonable doubt that this saved young lives. Now, I fully agree that if 20-year-old BryanZ wants to have a drink with his mom in Eleven Madison Park, it's not remotely close to the actual problem that New York State was seeking to regulate when it established the legal age at 21. But laws aren't always written with the precision of a scalpel. As amply documented on this thread, 20-year-olds in Bryan's position nearly always get served anyway. Revising the law to carve out a new exception doesn't really strike me as the legislature's most pressing problem.

Well, I had the tasting menu on New Year's Eve (report here), and none of the dishes were the same as the report upthread.I also had the tasting menu about two years ago, and while memories have faded a bit, most of the dishes have seem to have changed.

Not yet.

Admin: Archived discussion on Per Se from previous years may be found here. There is one other piece of related news. Effective January 10th, the seven-course menu will no longer be available. Your only choices will be the 9-course chef's tasting or the 9-course tasting of vegetables.The third menu at Per Se has gone through several iterations. When the restaurant opened, it was a five-course menu at $125, with several options for each course. The vegetarian menu was $135, and the chef's tasting was $150. At some point, both nine-course menus went up to $175, and the five-course menu became a seven-course menu—also, I think, at $175. The increase to $210 didn't have much practical effect, because it included service, and $210 is just $175 plus 20%. But taken together, these increases are pretty steep. When Per Se opened, you could order the five-course menu for $125. Assuming a 20% tip, the entry-level price was $150 before beverages. It's now $250, which is a 66% increase in about three years.

At the outset, let me say that I've visited each restaurant only once. I thought that Little Owl was doing a very good job of pretty basic things. Bruni noted that about 1/3rd of the diners order just one thing—the pork chop. It's indeed great, but we tried two different appetizers, finding them merely competent. There is nothing particularly inviting about the space. Tables are both small and cramped. Or as Bruni himself said, "The Little Owl’s reach is modest and its limitations real."I found the cuisine at Mai House more complex, innovative, refreshing and unique, and the space is quite a bit more enjoyable. It's unprovable, of course, but I don't think that is even close to being the case. Here's one example: No, I don't. As long as the same rating is being used for smackdowns and positive reviews, you need to consider them separately. You need to compare Mai House to reviews of comparable establishments.

Perhaps I did not understand your earlier post. You said that the review read like one star. As evidence for this, you compared the number of dishes the critic did not like to another one-star review, namely the Russian Tea Room. What FG and I are saying is that it doesn't work that way, and never did—even before Bruni was the critic. The review is quite consistent with any number of occasions that he has awarded two stars. What you need to bear in mind, in relation to Bruni's other "smackdown" reviews, is that when prices are as high as at RTR, "not a few" is a very significant criticism. It is not a mere throwaway. I was not at all suggesting that Little Owl is not good. Remember, the meaning of one star is "good."

As Fat Guy pointed out after the RTR room review, there isn't a formula where you plug in the number of dishes the critic didn't like, and the number of stars pops out.It must be noted that Mai House is a considerably less expensive restaurant than the Russian Tea Room, and at Mai House he had no complaints about the service. Also, the negatives are not severe: "didn't measure up"; "lobster took too retiring a role"; desserts were "a letdown." I'm pretty sure you could easily find other two-star reviews from Bruni with similar comments. For restaurants at lower price points, two stars means, "If you order the dishes I liked, you'll have a terrific time." Mind you, I'm not saying Bruni's ratings are the ones I would have given. For the record, I gave Mai House two stars on my blog, but I haven't dined at RTR. I am only pointing out that your method of analysis—counting the number of negative comments and trying to relate them formulaically to the rating—isn't the way it works. As for Little Owl, that review never made sense to me. But nothing good can come from picking out Bruni's worst reviews, and then holding him to that standard.

I've had two long tasting menus in the last week (Gordon Ramsay, WD-50), both of which clocked in somewhere between 2½ and 3 hours. And in both cases, I wanted them to go slower. While 4 hours is clearly on the long side, the ideal time for me is certainly well above 3 hours --- assuming I'm not in any particular hurry. Even at Jean Georges, where I had the long tasting menu a couple of months ago, it went by faster than we wanted, and they had trouble slowing down even when we specifically requested it.

The situation, as I understand it, is this:It is illegal to serve anyone under 21, full stop. However, I have never heard of a law or an official state policy on carding. How old must a patron's "apparent age" be, before it is totally unnecessary to card them? Is there a government position on that? Not that I've heard of. So the reality is that, in places where police sting operations are likely (bars and liquor stores), they card conservatively. I've haven't heard of little old ladies getting carded, but it's quite typical to be carded if you look under 30, on the off-chance that you might be an extremely mature-looking 20-year-old. In fine dining restaurants, where a police sting is about as likely as an Elvis sighting, the de facto rule is apparently the exact opposite. If you look like you could be 21, you're generally not carded. Would they serve my 11-year-old son? I don't think so.