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There are a few significant differences. Cuozzo stopped writing reviews, full stop. His one weekly restaurant column has turned into "what's going on in the local food biz that I can bitch about this week." Bruni is still going to write the Wednesday reviews. In addition, he's going to post to this blog—several times a week, he says.Cuozzo's view was, "The restaurant review is dead." Bruni's view is, "In addition to my reviews, this blog will allow me to communicate more often and more flexibly." I would guess that up to half of Bruni's meals out don't actually get reported on—at least, not directly. If he follows through, the blog will allow him to put a lot more information out there, without the space limitations of the printed newspaper. If you read the innaugural post, he's not saying that this is his "life of a critic" blog. He's going to use the space to do what he usually does—restaurant criticism—but in chunks that are more frequent, closer to real time, and not hindered by what the paper has space to print.

It seems so, since the entry refers to the Diner's Journal in the past tense.

For the first time in a long time Frank has done something to cheer about. Obviously we're going to have to see what he writes about, but this gives him the opportunity to comment much more in "real time." It's a welcome change. And the first few blog entries are better written than his articles for print..

It depends whose review(s) you believe. Frank Bruni demoted ADNY, but Michelin assigned it their top rating.In my view, if you buy the whole ultra-luxe French cuisine concept, there is very little doubt that ADNY is in the top echelon. I suspect they will pull out all the stops for a meal in the aquarium.

I find the Valentine's Day sentiment to be genuine. However, I've generally been disappointed with my restaurant experience on such days. The most recent example — my New Year's Eve dinner at Picholine — was really a rip-off. The restaurant didn't deliver its best, and I paid at least double what I normally would.

We're going to Oceana — coincidentally, NY Mag's leading choice. (We made our reservation long before the magazine came out.) On OpenTable, this page lists restaurants that have a special service for Valentine's Day, although many of them are probably unavailable by now. We had seriously considered Cru, but we were rather turned off by this warning: We would probably be out in two hours anyway, but being told that we must be, when no other restaurant is saying that, seemed to us a bit rude.

I beg to differ. There is an over-use of hackneyed phrases ("xyz on steroids," "a tangle of pasta") and an inability to get to the point (3-4 paragraphs of euphemisms to explain that the seating at a restaurant is comfortable—a "massage of a restaurant"). I wonder how much of Bruni's oeuvre Ms. Waxman has sampled, and whether she has any other knowledge of the restaurants besides what Bruni says about them.

Any honest perception of the meal is reasonable commentary. One might eat a dish without sending it back, and yet, conclude that it wasn't good enough for the price paid.

I actually think that Bruni's "bottom line" is correct far more often than not, but he has stubbed his toe often enough that his credibility is in doubt almost every week.One must always bear in mind that the star ratings are comparable only when looking at restaurants that are in the same market segment. Bouley and Gilt are both in the luxury segment. Platt's three stars for Bouley and Gilt means he considers them a step behind other luxury restaurants to which he gave four or five stars. It does not mean that all of Platt's three-star restaurants are directly comparable to one another. Similarly, Gilt's two stars from Bruni are not comparable to Sripraphai or The Red Cat (to which he also gave two stars). I, too, found that comment a bit out-of-bounds. It might well make sense to deduct a star for a menu that's too limited, but this criticism really isn't explained in the review.As a bit of context, the latest menu shown on Gilt's website shows a total of seven appetizers and seven main courses between the classical menu and the modern menu. That does seem a little bit light. Daniel's website shows ten appetizers and nine main courses. Le Bernardin's website shows ten choices in the "almost raw" category, nine that are "barely touched," and another eleven that are "lightly cooked." Alain Ducasse's website shows just six appetizers, but there are eleven main courses. (There is no on-line menu for Jean Georges. Per Se, with its three long tasting menus that change daily, is difficult to compare on the same basis.) So, it would appear to be true that Gilt's menu is indeed less varied than at least three other luxury restaurants that might be considered its peers. Whether that's sufficient reason to withhold a star is an interesting question.

Curiously, Platt gave three stars to Del Posto last week, but this review seems considerably more favorable. Bear in mind that NY uses a 5-star scale, so three stars from them aren't quite as luminous as three from the Times.

I basically agree with this, but a review seven weeks after opening is definitely on the quick side of things, especially given the lack of bandwidth to come back and review the place again anytime soon. I might believe that if reputable restauranteurs actually were happy with unfavorable reviews. But to the contrary, when they have anything publicly to say about it, restauranteurs are — as one might predict — unhappy about bad reviews. I doubt that they were in a partying mood at Gilt last Wednesday morning. There's only so many people in this town who will spend that kind of money on a meal. If the first wave of curiosity-seekers are less than wowed, they probably won't be back, and they certainly won't send their friends. I usually say that the Times reviews are close to irrelevant, but Gilt's upscale clientele are more likely to be Times readers. For someone on the fence, Bruni's review didn't offer much encouragement.

My two cents, and I am a rare poster, but I read the dining companions as a small batch of sycophants..... ← I think Bruni has a lot of different people who accompany him on these meals. I wouldn't lump them into one category. He's eating something like 10-12 fine dining meals a week, and it's probably not the same 3-4 people every time. By the way, in the Gilt review I noticed that they had become "companions," rather than "friends." In the early Bruni reviews, they were always "friends."I would not assume that every companion agrees with him all the time. The quotes that make it into the review are obviously those that he finds memorable. If you eat out with enough people, there's going to be somebody at every meal who agrees with you about something. That doesn't mean that he socializes only with sycophants. The emphasis on companions' comments is definitely a "Brunism." I don't recall other critics doing it to this extent. At one point, Ruth Reichl specifically said that she didn't want to know her companions' opinions about the food. She felt that the Times was paying for her opinions, not theirs. I wouldn't really have a problem with Bruni quoting his companions, except that the comments are sometimes not all that witty.

Given the timing, a fair inference is that the lunch trade was already dire, but they didn't want to rock the boat till after the review appeared. Had Gilt received four stars, perhaps they would have kept the lunch service going, but this isn't assured. At lunchtime, the market for that kind of luxury dining is much more limited. Even Per Se serves lunch only on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. Alain Ducasse stopped its lunch service several years ago. I'm sure there are other examples—Craft comes to mind.

I remember. All due praise to Rich. He called this shot correctly. What's pathetic about that? If Bruni is so dependable, that ought to be seen as a virtue. Here I agree.

Eater is again first with the scoop. Of course, we should note that Eater is correcting its own earlier erroneous scoop. Tom Colicchio himself assures Eater that Craftsteak "is not located in the space scarred by Mario's duct work and is on target to open sometime between late March and early May."

My feeling is that if he considered a two-star rating most accurate for Bouley, he should have given them two stars. Do we have to be Kremlinologists to understand the meaning of the stars? ← I think Leonard is just saying what Steven Shaw and I (and I suppose many others) have said: there is clearly an unstated expectation element in the stars. Bruni would have known that it's news enough to take a fourth star away; to take two away would have been shocking. I agree with Pan that if he truly believed it was a two-star restaurant, Bruni should have said so, but the expectations inherent in Bouley's history are difficult to ignore.Leonard is right: Leaving the expectation element aside, the Bouley review reads like the two-star smackdowns he has delivered to places like Alto and The Modern. But that doesn't necessarily mean that Bouley would have received two stars if it were a new place. They are also not independent judgments, because they relied on expectations that earlier critics had set.

I've just a couple of comments on Leonard Kim's wonderful statistical analysis: I wouldn't draw that conclusion from the statistics that have been offered. As Leonard mentioned, Frank Bruni has doled out eight 3-star ratings. Seven of the eight conform to the traditional notions of a 3 or-4-star restaurant, in all the points that Steven Shaw mentioned in his Asiate post. The lone exception is BLT Fish, which from its trappings has the appearance of a 1 or-2-star restaurant.As you say, Bruni isn't a robot, but from one exception I don't think you can generalize that Bruni considers only the food in assigning in a 3-star rating. The statistics say that he is generally following the traditional model. It's worth noting that Bruni has given just four 3-star ratings that are uninfluenced by a prior rating: BLT Fish, Blue Hill Stone Barns, Cru, and Perry St. Babbo, Bouley, and ADNY had already been elevated to that level (or higher) by a prior critic. And Nobu 57 is merely a branch outlet of a restaurant that was already 3 stars. To the contrary, I don't think Bruni has rejected that notion. He is well aware of this convention, and follows it most of the time. This is most evident in his "demotion" reviews, such as ADNY and Bouley. In both cases, there could be no question that both the restaurant and the public expected them to be 4 stars, since they were at that level already. The reviews, therefore, express a considerable amount of disappointment—how else would he explain why they are no longer 4 stars?When Bruni reviews a new place, one can only make informed guesses as to what rating the restaurant was aiming for. But it is pretty clear that Bruni knows he is coming in lower than expectations. Read the reviews of Alto, The Modern, or Café Gray. Those reviews convey disappointment, in some cases profoundly so. Bruni is aware that these restaurants, as well as members of the dining public who follow such things, expected 3 stars or more. His comments, therefore, are designed to explain why the expectation was not met. Contrast those write-ups with the reviews of restaurants that never had any pretension to three stars, and you'll find Bruni is far more enthusiastic, the criticisms (if any) far gentler.

That's well put. I suppose an athletic analogy might help. If a player is making a comeback after a long absence, I might say that I hope he does well. Implicit in that "hope," is that his success, if any, will be deserved.Obviously, disappointment with the Bruni review is on more than one level. People are saying any/all of the following: 1) I've dined at Gilt, and based on my experience the review is wrong. 2) I haven't dined at Gilt, but I know Paul Liebrandt's cuisine, and this just doesn't sound right. 3) I'd like such a restaurant to be (deservedly) successful, and so I hope that the positive reviews from eGullet members are more accurate than Bruni's unflattering review. 4) The review is no journalistic gem, and whether Bruni's verdict on Gilt is accurate or not, one wants to see it more compellingly explained.

It's been reported in more than one media outlet, so I take it as true. However, I agree with the various comments upthread that the two sides are posturing. The landlord doesn't really want, or expect, Del Posto to leave. They are angling for a better deal.

I find your use of "ephemeral" interesting because that is one problem with this type of journalism--it is "toss away" writing with little substance--it certainly had little or no context and perspective. ← Before you could do on-line searches on the Internet, practically all newspaper articles were ephemeral. The Times, however, would periodically excerpt its restaurant reviews in an annual book, giving them a bit more permanence than most of the paper's food writing.Today, you can look up any article on the Times website, but most articles are hidden behind a paid firewall after the first week or so. Bruni's "Critic's Notebook" pieces are in that category. If you want to read the piece on pricing trends that was so critical of Gilt, you need a subscription to Times Select. Even for those who have that, who will remember 5 years from now that the piece was ever written? Who, in other words, would even think to search for it? In contrast, the Times makes its restaurant reviews permanently available for free. They offer a search engine that allows you to find restaurants matching various criteria, and you can click through to read the full review. Until Frank Bruni or a subsequent critic re-reviews Gilt, yesterday's review is what people are going to be reading for a long time to come.

This week, Frank Bruni awarded two stars to Gilt, Paul Liebrandt's temple of luxury that has opened in the former Le Cirque space. The review reminds me of Amanda Hesser's one-star slapdown of Asiate. Not since then has a restaurant with such high aspirations received so disappointing a rating. (The one star that Jean-Georges Vongerichten's V Steakhouse received also comes to mind, but that was a steakhouse, and such establishmens seldom exceed two stars, no matter how good the execution may be.) For argument's sake, I am going to assume that everything Bruni wrote about Gilt was factually correct. None of us had the same experiences, and at this point he has probably spent more time at Gilt than anyone else who has written about it. (The Times expects its critics to visit a minimum of three times; as far as I can tell, no one else who's posted about Gilt on eGullet has been there more than once.) Assuming the Bruni review was accurate as far as it went, was it responsible criticism? I am reminded of what Steven Shaw said after the Asiate review: Fat Guy's comments boil down to three observations:1. Every high-end restaurant is built with a certain conception of luxury (or lack thereof) in mind. 2. The critic's role is certainly not to ratify the restaurant's desired star rating, but the critic needs to operate within the realm of what is reasonably expected — otherwise, "we are left with a failure to communicate." 3. If a restaurant is been built for N stars, then an award of N–1 conveys some level of failure, and an award of N–2 conveys a very profound failure. I think there is very little doubt that Gilt was designed for four stars, with three as a minimum. I agree with Fat Guy that the critic has no obligation to award three or four, merely because that's what the restaurant wanted. But I do think that it's the critic's responsibility to be aware that the rating he is assigning connotes a very substantial failure. If that's what the critic concludes has happened, the critic's duty is to tell us very clearly why he thinks so. Our judgment of the critic is not merely a question of whether his verdict is correct, but also whether that verdict—whatever it may be—is adequately supported. Bearing in mind that a two-star review for this type of restaurant connotes a very significant failure to achieve most of the goals it had set out to achieve, is Frank Bruni's two-star rating adequately supported in the review? In other words, was it responsible criticism? I don't think so.

Todd's comment adds an appropriate note of caution. Frank Bruni catches a lot of grief because he's not a culinary professional, and his writing is mediocre. But at the end of the day, many of his calls have been correct. His two-star review of Café Gray raised a lot of eyebrows, as Gray Kunz was an established four-star chef. Look at the latest comments on the Café Gray thread. It turns out that Bruni's two stars were right on the money. (I do think that Amanda Hesser got Asiate wrong, but that's a topic for another thread.)

I had the identical dish on Tuesday night at Les Halles downtown. This is a pretty fair description of it. The hangar steak was not a particularly thick cut, but then, the dish was $17.50. I could have walked ten minutes in the other direction, and paid more than double for my dinner at Mark Joseph, where the steak would be as thick as you could ever want. But you go to Les Halle because you're in the mood for a different kind of experience.February is choucroute month at Les Halles, which is a good reason to give the place a try, if only because so few restaurants offer it. I wasn't up to such hearty fare the other night, but I was impressed with last year's choucroute festival, and I assume the preparations are still up to standard.

It's notable that Blue Hill and WD-50 are (per the Times) two-star restaurants. I would award three stars to both, but to date the paper of record has not done so. The Times judges restaurants against their peers — in Gilt's case, against other ultra-luxury restaurants. Gilt's two stars mean that Frank Bruni found the restaurant relatively disappointing compared to other restaurants in its category, like Bouley, Ducasse, Daniel, Jean Georges, Per Se, and Le Bernardin. I am not saying that this judgment is accurate, only that this is what it means.It certainly does not mean that Frank Bruni thinks Gilt is in the same class as The Red Cat, Sripraphai, Spigolo, or Oriental Garden — all of which received two stars from him. I'll grant that the Times could do a better job of explaining its stars, but empirical observation supports no other conclusion. Not long ago, Leonard Kim explained it this way on the Bruni & Beyond thread:

Your $200/person ceiling would get you into nearly anyplace in town except Per Se, Masa, or Alain Ducasse. (Actually, the list price at Alain Ducasse is under $200, but I'm assuming you don't want to drink tap water.)For iconic NY restaurants that would fit comfortably in your range, consider Babbo, Gramercy Tavern, WD-50, Blue Hill, or Gotham Bar & Grill. I'm not sure whether you were considering Ouest for your "nice meal" or your "cheaper meal." It's a reasonable candidate for the latter, but for your $200/pp blow-out it's not in the same class as the other options mentioned. But frankly, even for the cheaper meal, I think there are far more interesting candidates than Ouest.