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If you take the review as a stand-alone piece, there is nothing wrong with this. The problem, as Steven Shaw noted on the Del Posto thread, is that Bruni has seldom behaved this way before. In no other high-profile review, with the arguable exception of Perry St, has Bruni been so willing to recognize a restaurant for its potential, as opposed to what it is now. When Alto presented him with a directly comparable opportunity, Bruni found luxurious Italian dining "haute and cold."In Friday's podcast, he says he "celebrates" restaurants like L'Impero, Alto, and Del Posto for challenging New Yorkers to think of Italian cuisine in fancy trappings and luxurious preparations usually reserved for French. Another podcast a day or two earlier also speaks favorably of Alto. He didn't seem to be in quite so celebratory a mood when he reviewed Alto last July. Scott Conant is vindicated, but his newest restaurant is still carrying two stars.

Bruni the blogger is slowing down, as I had suspected he would. This is common in blogging, as the early exuberance is replaced with the sober realization that it's hard work to create a useful entry every day. In the blog's first full week, Bruni made 10 posts. In its second full week, he made 5 posts. This week, there have been 3 posts. He hasn't been blogging on weekends, so unless there's an avalanche on Monday, it looks like he'll end this week with no more than 4. (I'm counting Tuesday to Monday as a week, since the blog started on a Tuesday.)

If you go back and read Bruni's Babbo review, you'll find that he criticized other things besides the rock music. That was merely the first of several points he mentioned.You'll also find that Bruni never directly stated that, aside from the ambiance and service, Babbo deserves four stars. I believe it does not. And clearly, Batali and the Bastianiches concluded the same. You've also, I think, somewhat trivialized Bruni's complaint about the length of the menu. In the first place, he believes that "At a restaurant this self-regarding and pricey . . . you pay in part to submit to expert judgment and you want more guidance." But, beyond that: He also says that "Del Posto needs more blockbuster desserts," and that the pastas are more "consistently impressive" than either the antipasti and the main courses. All of those points, beyond mere length of the menu, are issues Del Posto needs to address if it wants to be awarded four stars.

What I took from Steve's post, and he has made this point before, is that this concern is omni-present at nearly all restaurants that aspire to two stars or higher. He's had a window to this (thanks to the research behind Turning the Tables) that most of us don't have. This isn't unique to Del Posto. Batali and Bastianich took the unusual step of putting it in front of the cameras, perhaps creating the false impression that they were 'star-conscious' in a way that typical restaurants are not.Failure to win the number of stars one had hoped for is not exactly an uncommon occurrence. In the luxury segment during Frank Bruni's tenure, you've got V Steakhouse, Cafe Gray, Alto, The Modern, Gilt, and Del Posto, all of which got a star or two less than they wanted. Among new luxury restaurants reviewed by Bruni that did receive the stars they were built for, I'd count Per Se, Masa, Cru, Blue Hill Stone Barns, Perry St, and Nobu57. So, you've basically got a 50% success rate. (I am not counting re-reviews, and I'm also excluding the peculiar BLT Fish, which received 3 stars, but does not seem to me a luxury restaurant. I am sure they're delighted with their review, but I get the sense it was built for 2 stars, and the extra one was gravy.) You could say that about most of the chefs of the places that did not get the stars they wanted.

I think you meant Babbo and Del Posto. ← no...I meant Babbo and Lupa. ← You say that Lupa was "clearly intended...to be a 3-star restaurant." Lupa has never had a rated New York Times review. Eric Asimov covered it in $25 & Under on November 10, 1999. If you are correct, then a restaurant with 3-star aspirations wound up with zero stars....zero. If they had been gunning for 3 stars, that would be a total failure. Babbo has been three stars all along, and I don't recall anyone before suggesting that this was a step below their aspirations. We know this isn't the case, because while they were building Del Posto, the owners (the same people) described it as the first all-out push to build a 4-star Italian restaurant. By implication, then, Babbo was not an attempt at a 4-star Italian restaurant.

It is probably a mistake to guess about where the restaurant's owners and management spent their time. The Del Posto menu, which is unlike any other menu in New York, clearly reflects considerable thought. It is not as if they built a palace, and then someone said, "Holy sh*t, we gotta serve food, too!"The comment that "they knew the critic's penchant for ambiance" leaves me perplexed. In his relatively meagre oeuvre, I can't find any indication that Bruni has a penchant for this type of ambiance. A lot of the trappings at Del Posto seem to have been copied from other four-star restaurants (e.g., the purse stools). Let's leave aside, for the moment, that Batali and Bastianich made the unusual (and probably reckless) public announcement that they were going after a particular rating from the New York Times. I cannot recall any other restauranteur doing that, and based on this example, it's doubtful that anyone else will be doing so anytime soon. Del Posto, like Per Se, Masa, Daniel, Jean Georges, Alain Ducasse, and Gilt, was clearly designed from the ground up to be a four-star restaurant. No modern restaurant with those aspirations achieves that rating without very consciously thinking about all of the required elements. It simply doesn't happen unless you focus on it. Some of those restaurants persuaded the critic on Day One that they had succeeded. Some of those restaurants did not. It isn't any more complicated than that. We don't need to psychoanalyze them. This comment is ironic, when you consider that Frank Bruni is a populist critic. He isn't a member of the foodie elite, but a feature writer for Consumer Reports. The things that go into a four-star restaurant are simply the things that people want in a luxury dining experience. Rich keeps writing as if there are two different concepts, and focusing on one necessarily assumes a lack of focus on the other. It ain't so.

I think Citysearch has the standard controls to prevent that obvious stunt. You wouldn't use an Internet poll to do a scientific study, but these polls do have some significance.

Rich's summation is excellent until he gets to this point. He presumes that "worrying about stars" is inconsistent with "serving quality food.....(etc.)."In point of fact, all of the current four-star restaurants (with the possible exception of Masa) are also extremely popular restaurants. The things Rich mentioned, if done luxuriously, are what four-star restaurants do. It's not as if there are two separate objectives here, and only by dumb luck do they coincide. Moreover, all of the current four-star restaurants were also, like Del Posto, very obviously built from the beginning with that objective in mind. Three of them achieved that goal right out of the gate. Daniel, like Del Posto, stumbled initially (in the critic's opinion), before being elevated to four. No one gets four stars these days without very carefully planning for it. It's true that none of those other restauranteurs made the blatant public statement that Batali and Bastianich did. But had they kept their mouths shut, I doubt they would have done anything differently in the restaurant itself.

why? it's like comparing Babbo and Lupa. two restaurants in exactly the same milieu...one is clearly intended to be casual (albeit expensive) and one is intended to be extremely refined and elegant. But they're both making the same type of food. the first is intended to be a 3-star (I think)...the second is clearly aimed at being a four-star restaurant. ← I think you meant Babbo and Del Posto.

Nope. The three-star review appeared on June 2, 1999. The four-star re-review appeared 21 months later, on March 14, 2001. I would have to agree. JohnL and others have forcefully argued that Bruni compromised himself by writing the Del Posto preview piece before the restaurant opened. Although I don't find any ethical concerns with that piece, its existence is probably what's creating this perception. That piece amounted to an announcement: "Attention! Important Restaurant Ahead!"Now, there's nothing wrong with informing readers in advance of trends he happens to spot, as that's part of Bruni's job. And Del Posto is an important restaurant, whether it succeeds or fails, given who's behind it and what it's trying to achieve. But when you publish such a "preview piece," it might seem like backtracking if you later have to write the review announcing that the experiment failed. In that sense, Bruni may seem to have a dog in the hunt, rather than offering a detached assessment from his perch as an independent critic.

That presumes he'll find a dramatic improvement. A lot of his objections to Gilt seemed to be fundamental, and if that's the case, there's probably not a lot they can do to make him a fan without totally changing the concept.Del Posto's problems, on the other hand, are the kinds of things a restaurant could rectify without fundamentally changing what they're about. There's a long list of places that would like a second chance. Most of them probably aren't going to get it (not from Frank, anyway). The Times reviewing system just can't accommodate second looks on a regular basis. The Union Pacific re-review is remarkable. In her eGullet Q&A, Ruth Reichl mentioned that there were other places she wished she could have re-visited, but there just wasn't enough time/space in which to do it.

Oh, absolutely...ambiance counts, as I believe it should.That said, it is a matter of good judgment to emphasize the issues that reasonable diners would care about, and at times Bruni's judgment has been lacking. In the Alain Ducasse review, he complained that he had not been informed that a certain "critically important fixture" in the restroom was out of order. Given the rather limited space that the Times allots to its reviews, was this point worth mentioning, especially given that the said fixture probably is working correctly 99.9% of the time? I don't think so. In the Babbo review, I don't mind that he informs us about the loud rock music. But as the leading reason (albeit, not the only reason) given why Babbo is not a four-star restaurant, it was inappropriate.

I am quite certain that WD-50 was not intended to be a four-star restaurant. Jean-Georges Vongerichten, one of the investors, certainly knows the difference. I suspect they were not surprised to receive precisely what they got, which was two stars. (Which is not to say that they were necessarily pleased with all of William Grimes's specific criticisms.) I've been to Blue Hill twice and WD-50 once. As enjoyable as they are, I see a clear gap between their cuisine, and what you get at Per Se or Alain Ducasse. And that's without considering the ambiance. I do think there's a strong argument for elevating them both to three stars.It's interesting that Rich says the Times puts "too much...emphasis" on ambiance, since the Times has never stated precisely how much weight they attach to all of the various factors that go into a rating. So, how does he know how much emphasis they're attaching to it? I can say that I've not yet seen a credible argument that any New York restaurant is serving food comparable to the current four-star restaurants, aside from restaurants that (in some critic's opinion) failed to receive four stars because of the food. Take Rich's specific examples, Blue Hill and WD-50. The critic (William Grimes in both cases) had specific complaints about the food. Even if the Times system were revised to disregard ambiance, he would not have awarded four stars to either restaurant. Indeed, he didn't even award three.

It's certainly reasonable to ask what makes this attempt at Italian luxury a success, but Scott Conant's a failure. In the Del Posto review, Bruni defends his case well. That doesn't mean he's correct, because we could argue that till the cows come home, but the argument is well stated. The Alto verdict, like many of Bruni's reviews, did not strike me as well-argued, although that doesn't make it incorrect. A very fair statement. Rather than biases, I should have said inclinations, or leanings. As far as I know, Alain Ducasse is the last relevant precedent. William Grimes awarded three stars on November 1, 2000, and four stars just barely over a year later, on December 19, 2001. A similar precedent is Daniel, which received two stars from Marian Burros on July 30, 1993, and four stars from Ruth Reichl on November 11, 1994.Critics choose their review subjects based on newsworthiness. A new four-star restaurant is simply more newsworthy than a neighborhood trattoria. Jean Georges hasn't had a rated review since June 6, 1997, but we can find any number of restaurants that have had two, and even three reviews since then—Ducasse being one of them. That doesn't necessarily reflect a bias against Jean-Georges Vongerichten. It could simply mean that Reichl hit the nail on the head in 1997, and none of her successors have seen the need to revisit the topic.

Plenty of restauranteurs have let it be known publicly that they were dismayed with a review. I see no reason to doubt that the Del Posto guys' reaction is genuine. Eater quotes an inside source, who says that "mario partied even more than usual to celebrate last night." Eater also knew the review was coming before anyone else did, so I think his inside sources are pretty good.(At Gilt, they said nothing publicly, but they fired the lunch brigade the next day.) Obviously they would have partied with even greater abandon had they received four stars, but this is a pretty good outcome, not just because of the number of stars, but because of the specific things Bruni said about the place. I mean, he could have just said, "it's a fancier Babbo." For that matter, he could have done what he did to Paul Liebrandt (Gilt), Scott Conant (Alto), Gray Kunz (Cafe Gray), Gabriel Kreuther (The Modern), David Bouley (Bouley), or Christian Delouvrier (Alain Ducasse), all of whom received withering reviews. The difference is that Bruni has pretty clearly laid out that Del Posto has four-star potential, which puts it in a different category than other restaurants that have maxed out at three.By the way, all critics have "fondness" for certain things—critical biases, in other words. As long as it's for the right reasons, I see nothing wrong with this. They are paid to have opinions, so why should it surprise us that they have them? I am aware of only one other formal review: Adam Platt in New York, who was considerably less enthusiastic than Bruni.

I've been twice (see posts here and here). We loved it the first time; we were somewhat disappointed the second.

My friend and I had dinner at 'Cesca last Friday night. I was sporting a 101-degree fever and wasn't in the mood for fine dining, but we had an opera to catch, so there we were. 'Cesca was a hit pretty much immediately after it opened in late 2003. Poor William Grimes, in his two-star review for the Times, complained that he could get only 5:30 reservations. That's still true, by the way. Our reservation was at 5:30 for an 8:00 opera. That's earlier than I would normally choose, but nothing later was available. The decor is warm, comfortable, and welcoming. There seem to be enough soft surfaces to catch the sound, and prevent 'Cesca from becoming another echo chamber. In the middle of the night, I wouldn't mind tearing down some of the velvet curtains and transporting them to BLT Fish. I had the cauliflower soup (a daily special) and a wonderful duck ravioli. It's not the restaurant's fault that I didn't finish them, but I just wasn't up to it that day. My friend had a tomato and mozarella salad, followed by a huge veal chop (also a daily special), which she pronounced a huge improvement over one we had recently at Cookshop. We had only one complaint. My friend ordered a side dish of mashed potatoes, only to find that her entree already came with potatoes. She said, "There are enough potatoes here to feed the whole Upper West Side." (That side dish was a huge helping, which even two people might have trouble finishing.) A server really should tell you that the entree you've ordered already comes with a generous helping of vegetables. I really was out-of-it for this meal, but we'll definitely return—if we can get a reservation, that is.

The meaning of the four-star experience will morph over time. Peter Luger was once four stars, and I don't think it ever offered a "Per Se" kind of experience. I suspect the Times will always have somewhere around half-a-dozen four-star restaurants, even if our notion of formality evolves. But in the meantime, restauranteurs keep opening restaurants that seek to mimic formality of the traditional kind, which suggests that the market for them has not yet evaporated.Incidentally, WD-50 and Blue Hill are both two-star restaurants per the Times. While neither of them has the ambiance of any current four-star restaurant, either one could easily be elevated to three stars without offending the purportedly "archaic" requirements referred to above.

Rich, I think that most people would agree that a review is supposed to cover the food, service, ambiance, and prices. The food comes first, but I don't think it's taboo to discuss non-food aspects of the overall experience, as long as it is in reasonable proportion to the overall review length.The Babbo review was flawed, because he asked the rhetorical question, "Why isn't this restaurant four stars?" And he proceeded to complain about the music. He went on to list a number of other very reasonable (non-musical) complaints that amply bolstered his argument that Babbo isn't a four-star restaurant. But if you're making the case for the prosecution, should the chef's taste in music be the first exhibit admitted into evidence? No, it should not. That was a lapse in judgment. However, in this review—where the audio background is mentioned merely as an aside—I see no problem with it. Whether stated or not, any well-informed review cannot help but be a response to the body of critical opinion that is already out there. In its short life, Del Posto was starting to acquire a mildly negative vibe, which Bruni seeks to correct. All critics think that their opinion is correct. There is one other comparable example in Bruni's tenure. He awarded three stars to Perry St, while noting some fairly significant flaws.

With the Del Posto review out, are there any four-star candidates on the immediate horizon? Off the top of my head, I can't think of any. Of the five current NYT four-star restaurants, three are successful copies of restaurants that originated in other cities: Le Bernardin, Masa, and Per Se. The other two are helmed by chefs who had earned four stars previously at other establishments: Daniel and Jean Georges. What is the last restaurant to score four stars without one of those two stepping stones: either a model created outside of New York, or a chef who had already earned four stars before? I believe Bouley and Chanterelle would qualify, and there doesn't appear to be much chance of either one of them reaching four stars again anytime soon. Alain Ducasse, of course, will probably be restored to four stars eventually. But ADNY fits the first category: it's a near-clone of the same chef's restaurants in Paris and Monte Carlo. All of which suggests that it's pretty hard to earn four stars de novo.

I've just read the Del Posto review a second time. I think this is the high-water mark of Frank Bruni's restaurant criticism. It is mostly about the food. It is free of the puns, distractions, clichés, contrived agendas, and hackneyed prose that have marred so many of his reviews. It is well informed about the relevant culinary and cultural context. I have not dined at Del Posto, so I can't say whether he pegs the restaurant accurately, but many of Frank Bruni's reviews have been so obviously laughable that it almost didn't matter what he thought. Whether you ultimately agree with him or not, this is a literate review that stakes out a meaningful position and defends it with relevant examples. The three-star rating is well supported by the text. The owners are no doubt a bit disappointed, but certainly they should not be despondent (as the owners of Gilt undoubtedly were). Bruni is clearly disposed to give this place another shot at four stars, if they fix some of the problems he and other critics have identified.

As they had so publicly announced their intention to go for four stars, the verdict of three has to be somewhat bittersweet. However, the tone of the review is overwhelmingly favorable (the best they've received so far), and it should be good for business. The review also very much leaves open the possibility of a promotion to four stars later on, if some of the kinks can be worked out, and the menu edited down to a more sensible length.

I wrote: I got the Gilt prediction wrong, so I'll crow about getting this one right. Here's Mr. Bruni:

Eater confirms (not stating his sources) that Frank Bruni will review Del Posto tomorrow: Eater's rationale is that Bruni is already on record as a Batali fan, making three stars more likely than two; but enough of Bruni's colleagues have found serious faults to make four stars a remote long-shot. I basically agree with Eater's reasoning, but I think a two-star slap is significantly more probable than just 50-1.To get four stars, Del Posto's cuisine needs to be better than Babbo's; moreover, it needs to be consistent, and that's hard to do with such a long menu. Every four-star restaurant in town has a far more limited menu than Del Posto's. They change frequently, but at any given time, they aren't trying to be all things to all people. While I do not predict Bruni's rating, I do predict that Bruni's review will comment on the length of the menu, and will suggest (in some fashion) that it wouldn't hurt to edit some dishes out of the picture.

There is a place for restaurants that just keep doing one thing extremely well. The clear leader in that category would be Peter Luger, whose menu hasn't changed in living memory. Lots of restaurants have tried to imitate it, but most observers believe Luger still serves the best porterhouse.I've tried some of those other attempts at miso black cod, and they invariably aren't as good as Nobu's.