oakapple

Airport bars don't card everybody. They don't card me, and I'm 46.I'm amazed that no one has considered the possibility that maybe, just maybe, the server didn't do this on his own.

That's right: Rich will be Bruni's successor, and the topic next year will be "Schulhoff and Beyond: NYC Reviewing (2008)."

From Grub Street comes the astonishing news that Dona has lost its lease, and is closing this Saturday. Donatella Arpaia says that she hopes to find another location and re-open, but she has no time frame.

This week's New York reports that staff salaries have been "slashed" at Café Gray (including Kunz's own salary). That doesn't sound like a harbinger of optimism for the restaurant's future.

Actually, what we have now is more like the reverse. Per Se, Masa, Buddakan, Morimoto, Lonseome Dove, Gordon Ramsay, Craftsteak, L'Atelier Joel Rubuchon --- all clones of concepts first developed successfully somewhere else.

Do you define "B&T" as "anyone who doesn't live in Manhattan," or specifically with a particular type of non-Manhattan resident (i.e., especially lowbrow and unsophisticated)?

In the past several years, there has been an explosion of steakhouses, including quite a few of the so-called "Luger clones" (specializing, as they do, in the porterhouse).The alleged sophistication of the Luger buying machine is the stuff of legend. But with so many steakhouses competing for prime beef, it simply must be the case that some of the better short loins that would have gone to Luger in the old days, are now going to other steakhouses. Their sourcing can't be so good that no one else has a shot at the best quality. I also find it unlikely that the supply of excellent beef has kept up with the demand, so it means that ordering a porterhouse, whether at Luger or elsewhere, is a bit of a crap shoot.

While I am not disagreeing with your assessment, $40 not including side dishes is pretty much standard for NYC steakhouses—mediocre or not.

What's interesting about The Four Seasons, is that it is frequented by some sophisticated people who—although they're not "foodies"—have been around the block enough to tell the difference between fine dining and an imitation of it. It's not like One if By Land or Tavern on the Green, which really do survive almost solely on the tourist/B&T crowd.

Of the five restaurants currently carrying four stars from the Times, I suspect that at least four will not long survive the death or retirement of the current chef. That's probably true of most of the three-star restaurants too.

Is that true of all restaurants with sustained success, or merely of the kind Stephen Starr is associated with?

No, I'm not. I was only suggesting that it did not meet the description of a "hot place that starts to struggle after three months." Failure after about three years is pretty common in the restaurant industry, in both good times and bad. There's clearly a natural birth-life-death phase in the restaurant industry, as in all industries. The question is whether it's due to over-capacity, or some other explanation.Alto strikes me as a place that never truly caught on. Scott Conant's reputation got people in the door, but there were some peculiar items on the menu that diners didn't fancy (Conant has admitted this). Town is now five years old, and obviously it was doing well enough for Zakarian to double-down with Country. Clearly it's no longer the "hot restaurant" it once was, but I don't have enough data to conclude that it's struggling.

I don't know how we'd measure that. What's the basis for the statement that many (as opposed to "some" or "a few") struggle after the first three months?In particular, neither of the examples in Sneakeater's post really stood for the stated premise. Cru isn't struggling at all. You don't need to reserve months in advance, but it generally sells out prime-time seatings. Cru is clearly a hit. Biltmore Room did close, but that was after almost a three-year run. If it was already struggling after three months, I doubt it would have lasted that long. March was not in business for "a couple of years." It had an extremely long run, having opened in 1990. Jovia? Well, that's the only one mentioned that more-or-less fits the pattern, though not necessarily because there are more high-end restaurants than the market can bear. A certain number of restaurants are going to fail, even in the best of times. (Was the average check size at Jovia over $100? I actually think of Jovia as a mid-level place.)

Or Craftsteak. Or Gilt. Or (I'd imagine) Lonesome Dove. ← The key word in the post is "practically."

I think both Eater and Nathan are wrong.It's abundantly clear that Bruni loved a good deal of the food. This is definitely not a fire-the-chef type of review, although Robins certainly should be taken to task for some of the inconsistency Bruni complained of. What's more, even if they do fire the chef, as Le Cirque has now done, the Times won't be back anytime soon, so they're stuck with the curent rating—whatever the reason for it. But as Leonard Kim once again documented for us, Bruni has never awarded three stars when the negative food comments were as severe as here—even if the most severe comment was reserved for an off-menu dish. The closest he has come was Perry Street, and as Leonard explains, that was an anomaly. Anyhow, practically the only type of bad publicity is none at all, so I strongly suspect the RTR will do just fine. Even the recipient of Bruni's most scathing review ever, Ninja, has survived, and has just made the Forbes list of the World's Most Unusual Restaurants (along with WD-50 and El Bulli, among others).

For a change, this post is not about The Russian Tea Room.As I look at this list of Bruni's seven most recent *** reviews, something strikes me. Of the seven: Two are re-reviews of restaurants that were already ***. Four have chefs that previously earned *** elsewhere: Del Posto (Babbo/Felidia), A Voce (Cafe Boulud), Country (Town), Blue Hill (Blue Hill Stone Barns). That leaves L'Atelier, and while Rubuchon was new to New York, he brought enough Michelin stars with him that the expectation of at least *** from the Times was established before his arrival. There's a similar pattern in Bruni's **** reviews. There have only been four of these, but two of them had **** already, and the other two were copies of models that had been created elsewhere. Also, in 2½ years on the job, Bruni has yet to award **** to a restaurant that opened on his watch. There is, in other words, a distinct lack of boldness in Bruni's *** and **** awards. He has confirmed pre-existing reputations; he hasn't made them. He certainly hasn't hesitated to slaughter sacred cows (Bouley, Ducasse, Kreuther, Conant, Liebrandt), but he hasn't elevated anyone to sainthood. This is in stark contrast to Bruni's ** reviews, where he has shown himself quite willing to shatter conventional boundaries. Whether we agree with him or not is a whole other story, but he has at least left a mark. Yet, his *** and **** reviews are more notable for the smackdowns and the ratings not given.

As Leonard Kim noted at the time, Perry Street was that very rare three-star review from Bruni that expressed significant reservations about the food. That's why I said "hardly ever" in my upthread post.On top of that, if Bruni thought the food alone was worth three stars, then he docked two for service. I cannot remember another review in which he appeared to have awarded two fewer stars than what he thought the food was worth on its own. Of course, he never says outright what the rating would have been for the food alone, so one can only read tea leaves. If food, service, and ambiance were rated separately, as Rich always reminds us they should be, then there would be no debate.

Unless any of us have a previously undisclosed inside track, the guide to what he intended is what he wrote. All of it. And I think he's made it abundantly clear that, to get three stars, it is not enough to be "seriously gifted." One also must be consistent. Almost none of which were about the food on the plate, except for "undistinguished" lamb, to which he devoted not even a full sentence.

With so many people reading it the way we are, doesn't that tell you something?I would add one more point. I think it was the redoubtable Leonard Kim who pointed out that Bruni has hardly ever doled out three stars to a new restaurant if he had any significant reservations about the food. You can debate just how "significant" the reservations must be. But I challenge you to find very many three star reviews in which his complaints about individual dishes were of comparable intensity to his complaints at RTR — even if it was only one paragraph (by my count it was two paragraphs). Your best example was L'Atelier, where he merely complained that lamb was "undistinguished."

A very high percentage of new restaurants don't survive their third year. This doesn't mean that the Times review is economically irrelevant. Many factors determine whether a restaurant lives or dies, and critics' reviews are a part of it.Reservations aren't easy to come by at Cru. I mean, it doesn't take 2 months like Per Se, but my anecdotal experience on Opentable is that prime times fill up pretty quickly, and most evenings sell out all but the most undesirable times. Blue Hill is similar. Bruni's reviews are full of examples where the staff very obviously had not figured out who he was. This was certainly not the first time it has happened. What Bruni says, is that Robins doesn't really want to be cooking it. But he is cooking it, and presumably other people will order it, and it tastes like airline food.To support his contention that this was a three-star food review, Nathan trots out the Joel Rubuchon review for comparison. There is nothing about the food in the Rubuchon review that compares to Bruni's clear dissatisfaction with "more than a few" items at the RTR. There is quite a bit of distance between "undistinguished" lamb and a dish that "had an acrid aftertaste," or that tastes like airline food. Here I agree with Nathan. The food industry's low esteem for Bruni is not widely recognized.

This isn't complicated. Sturgeon "had an acrid aftertaste." Chicken Kiev "did a rubbery impersonation of airline food." Several of the caviar choices "had an excessively pasty texture." Buckwheat blini were "golden and fluffy one visit were charred and leaden the next." The kitchen was "bedeviled by inconsistency," which suggests this is merely an example, and there were numerous others. I think you would struggle to find very many three-star reviews where the critic's reservations about the food were as severe as this. And yes, the Chicken Kiev does count.

I think he docked one star for the inconsistent kitchen and one star for service. Even if the service had been perfect, he had too many issues with the food to award three stars. It was clearly more than just the sommelier. Remember, it began with the waiter saying "It's not my problem." He also mentioned "outdated menus," "ludicrously slow" service for food and drinks, and that servers "responded dismissively to complaints" (suggesting more than one). It has indeed happened to me on a couple of occasions, although I do consider it tacky. This was an egregious example of it. I don't think this review was very far out of line with the current norm. Maybe the critics should wait longer, but these days they usually don't.

I think we'll see a lot less of him after the major reviews come out.

When Bruni changes a rating, he virtually always suggests that something has changed since the original review. I can't recall a case where he insinuated that the original rating was wrong to begin with.He is probably just being respectful, because in most cases I don't think he was actually living in New York when the original reviews were written.

I think that the initial "buzz" of the review itself, coupled with word-of-mouth, the Dining Out Guides, and of course reviews posted in restaurants' entry foyers.How effective was it? I don't know. Bruni hasn't always done a good job of separating factors that really count long-term, from those that do not. At ADNY, he complained about an out-of-order bathroom fixture. At The Modern, he didn't like the attitude of a coat-room attendant. Obviously, one must always use judgment, but I think it's a safe bet that ADNY repaired the bathroom fairly quickly, and that a Danny Meyer restaurant wouldn't tolerate a grumpy coat-room attendant for very long.