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Tasting Room and Tocqueville carry 1 & 2 stars respectively today. Eater is predicting 1 star for both.

Eater reports that the closure of ADNY on New Year's Eve will be permanent, and the restaurant will not open in the St. Regis. Take this with the usual boulder of salt that attends an unattributed rumor. If you want to join what could be the last supper, here's how it's described on OpenTable:

Funny you should mention it, as tomorrow's review is exactly that: a double-review of Tocqueville and Tasting Room — this only a short time after the double-review of Porter House and STK. Given that Times critics did this regularly before the Ruth Reichl era, I would have no problem with reviving the practice. It would allow more restaurants to get reviewed, and it would allow outdated reviews of important restaurants to be refreshed more often.

I don't think there's a whole lot of difference, because "received opinion" is what one tends to learn in the course of an education. What's more, while it is probably impossible to avoid being influenced by "received opinion," it doesn't necessarily mean one hasn't thought about it.

I was doing a bit of tangentially related research over the weekend. In 1977, Mimi Sheraton posted a double-review of Le Veau d'Or (1 star) and Smith & Wollensky (Fair). Those two restaurants are as different as can be. When Frank Bruni writes the occasional double-review (he seems to have renewed the practice after a long absence), the two restaurants are always thematically related.

We'll have to agree to disagree on that one. My only data point is a magazine article a number of months after Esnault replaced Delouvrier. It's a visit one would expect the principal restaurant critic of the Times to make under those circumstances, especially if it was a restaurant he liked—or, to use his word, that "excited" him.(I am taking it as a given that Bruni could not dine at ADNY unnoticed.)

I certainly trust what you say about the archive, but even if the ratings were unattributed, the clearly had to be the result of some "reviewer's reaction," even if the reviewer wasn't named. Of course...I am reacting to what he actually did, not what he could have done. But apparently he did not, at least not within several months of an event (a new chef) that clearly should have provided the impetus for it.

I think we need to be careful to separate actual changes to the star system from clarifications that don't really change anything. When "satisfactory" was added as a rating choice, that was substantive. Stating that the rating is based on "the reviewer's reaction" is non-substantive, because obviously that was always true. No, I don't. Indeed, I recall an interview with Ducasse or one of his underlings several months after Tony Esnault replaced Christian Delouvrier. They mentioned that Bruni still hadn't been back to the restaurant. I think that's very telling. Fat Guy has made a similar point on numerous occasions. Even in subjective criticism, there are norms that must be observed, or you fail to communicate. A restaurant critic that can't appreciate Alain Ducasse is like a music critic who can't appreciate Beethoven. I make that analogy to point out that it's not about the stars. Bruni's reviews of Alain Ducasse and The Modern would be wrong-headed even if the Times didn't award stars. The fact that they do just makes it more apparent.

In that case, I've entirely lost track of what the "argument" is.

Even on that understanding, his actual ratings can't be squared with the statement. As I and others have noted, he seemed a lot more excited about Spicy & Tasty than Alain Ducasse, but he gave two to the former and three to the latter. Assuming he means what he writes, the stars do not dovetail with his excitement level.

For what it's worth, I agree entirely with SE and FG. What Bruni wrote was sloppy, and not really well thought out. Bruni is a man of the people; he doesn't write with tortured logic that you need to be a lawyer to parse. He throws stuff out there, and sometimes it just doesn't make any sense. This was one of those times.

As always with Frank Bruni, you have to wonder if he really thought this through, or if he's just writing imprecisely. In reviews of places like Alain Ducasse, Gilt, The Modern, and V Steakhouse, the text suggested a distinct lack of excitement.

Your formulation seems like just a more rigorously analytical way of arriving at the same fundamental result.Anyhow, when Bruni has been asked how he arrives at the stars, he has never indicated that such a calculation exists. If it does, it's buried deeply enough that he's not aware of it.

I don't know why "comparable establishments" was dropped from the description. But there's very little doubt that the de facto system still works that way. There's otherwise no sane explanation for the ratings. Le Cirque's two stars, for instance, are relevant only when compared to other luxury restaurants. That is the only way that Le Cirque and Spicy & Tasty can both be two stars. Another mistake was adding "Satisfactory" as an option in the zero-star category. In recent times, there have been very few "Poor" or "Fair" reviews, while those rated "Satisfactory" seldom convey much satisfaction.

I'm assuming that she couldn't have been paying the 5-6 visits to each reviewed restaurant that Bruni does.

Just when we thought it was impossible for Leonard Kim to amaze us further, he's done it again!! I wonder if Mimi actually lived by that. We all know that, for a restaurant built for three stars, one absolutely is a put-down. We also know that the reviews of such restaurants are usually not very enthusiastic, even if one star technically means "good."This has certainly happened plenty in the Bruni era—one and two star reviews that don't read like "good" or "very good." I would assume Mimi did it too, when reviewing a fancy restaurant that didn't meet the grade, but wasn't quite bad enough to deserve zero. Back to you, Leonard.

The quality of the criticism depends on the insight and writing skill of the critic. Frank Bruni wouldn't start writing better reviews if the star rating were eliminated. The presence of those ratings doesn't reduce the quality of what he writes. It's patently absurd to suggest that restaurants are getting second-class treatment because they are rated, and other things are not.I do think the stars provide a coarse hierarchy to guide the diner's selection process. There are only about 40 Broadway shows playing at a given time, and the Metropolitan Opera does only about 25 operas a season (not all playing at once), but there are 20,000 restaurants. I don't know how many of them have had a Times review at some point, but it is probably several thousand. Try sifting through all of those reviews, with no indication at all which ones the critics liked. I would note that the $25-and-under reviews are almost instantly forgettable. Try figuring out, among the hundreds of restaurants Asimov and Meehan have reviewed, which ones they raved about. Someone with an awfully good memory would have to tell you about it. I can't remember what Meehan reviewed last week, much less a hole-in-the-wall that Asimov raved about two years ago. By the way, the stars aren't as unique as you think. Look at this page. It lists all of the currently running Broadway plays, with check marks next to the "critics' picks." This is basically a star system with one choice instead of four—a show is a critics' pick, or it is not.

Maybe Bryan Miller said that. But in recent times, I can't think of a case where the principal critic wrote a rave zero-star review. Zero stars nowadays means "not good." Obviously the $25&under critic can write a rave zero-star review. But all of that critic's reviews are zero stars. I haven't found anyone yet who thinks amenities are more important than food. But there are a lot of people for amenities are relevant. I'm not taking my girlfriend to Spicy & Tasty for Valentine's Day, although she does love spicy Asian food.

For the two reviews printed in the newspaper, the critic (Bruni or Meehan) pays multiple visits to the restaurant. The blog posts are usually based on one visit, so they really aren't proper reviews.

Eater likes to laugh at our obsessions, although, to be fair, he has some himself.

SE has it right. Jim Leff may not have invented the word, but in modern parlance it almost always refers to that type of diner.

Too bad. ← Ditto. ← This argument always comes down to the unproven assertion that the stars confuse people, even though the purportedly confused people don't really exist. In fact, the system has survived for the very good reason that this thread illustrates: the ratings provoke interest and discussion, which is a boon to everyone concerned.

If money were no object, I'd like to see a third review every week. This would allow for FG's idea — a review for "fine dining," a review for "casual dining," and a review for "interesting hole-in-the-wall joints." If you're limited to two reviews, I've seen all kinds of suggestions for how the responsibility should be divided. I personally think that a garage in Queens that serves great tacos is beneath journalistic notice, and Meehan should move up the food chain. But I know some people adore hearing about those places. NY Magazine has a pretty good idea. There are two parallel star systems, one for fine dining, another for cheap eats. The "cheap" stars are printed in a red outline, while the fine dining stars are solid red. That means you can give Spicy & Tasty four "cheap eats" stars, while still making clear that it's a dive that serves terrific food. But if the Times keeps doing what it's doing, I think the chances of confusion are minimal. Are there many people who think Le Cirque and Spicy & Tasty are comparable, even though they both carry two stars? I agree with FG that Spicy & Tasty somewhat stretches the traditional meaning of two stars. But that meaning has been stretched often enough that I think the horses are already out of the barn. It's not as if all of Bruni's predecessors were uniformly consistent. I do too, but any system that allows for subjective opinion is sometimes going to make errors.

Although many media outlets split their ratings, many do not. For instance, neither NY Mag, nor TONY (both of which award stars) do this. Therefore, I don't exactly think you can call the practice antiquated. Having said that, it seems to me a logical enough thing to do, and I don't really see a downside. I would have a lot more sympathy with this argument if there were actually people raising their hands, and saying, "The Times really screwed me: I visited Spicy & Tasty, thinking it was the same kind of place as The Modern. That was sure misleading!" Then we'd know this is an actual problem. You're expressing indignation on behalf of people who are absent from the discussion....and those people might not actually exist.

I must admit my thinking has somewhat evolved on this topic, and I now think that in principle there is nothing fundamentally wrong with a place like Sripraphai or Spicy & Tasty being awarded two stars. I have never dined at either one, so I am talking about a principle, and not whether these two actual restaurants have been correctly rated.