Nathan

I am the source. I posted this invention of mine in the "Post Your New Cocktail Creations Here" thread here on January 29th, 2007. How soon they forget! I had shortly before picked up a bottle of Cherry Heering (which doesn't seem to be its official name anymore) on a whim, and came up with the cocktail above as a use for it. My formula specifies Luxardo maraschino, although I imagine Maraska would be fine as well. I haven't been able to find that brand in the Washington area, where I live (and it's hard enough finding the Luxardo)."Tarleton's Resurrection" is the name of a beautiful lute air by John Dowland, the 16th-century English lutenist. Dick Tarleton was an enormously popular clown and comic actor, who died in 1588. "Tarleton's Resurrection" was written as a tribute after his death. I'm not sure what prompted the connection with that title and my cocktail creation, but once I named it, it seemed like a good name. ← Thank you very much for noticing and taking due credit! It's a great drink -- I don't know why but at the time neither a Google nor a site search yielded your post. I'm glad to know the originator (and the origin of the name as well). ← and here I was thinking that it referred to Banastre "Bloody" Tarleton!

no, I don't think there is such a thing as restaurant criticism (in the narrow sense of the term). there may be such a thing as food criticism...i.e. Brillat-Savarin. I'd thought it was clear that was my contention.

that's why I said: the Times refers to its art reviewers as "critics" as well. yet everyone in art knows the difference.

an English version of the Physiology of Taste can be read (for free) here: http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/b/brillat/savarin/b85p/

that's why I questioned the existence of food criticism qua criticism up the thread (why I said we might be "full of ourselves")... but I also noted that if Trilling had or if Rothstein wanted to....write an essay on cuisine...I would love to read it. of course, this has been done. Fernandez-armesto wrote "Near a Thousand Tables" which is precisely a monograph using food as a cultural lens. I'm not even counting the Kurlansky pop-books on salt, cod and oysters of course, the grand-daddy of them all is Brillat-Savarin's "Physiology of Taste".....which, indubitably, fits into the category of criticism and not restaurant reviews.

oh sure. but I don't think that's a disagreement. if anything, the relative affluence of people who actively read the dance reviews (talk about a field with a massive income gap between the consumer and performer!) is almost certainly higher than that of people who actively read the restaurant reviews.

to be fair, reviewers are often mis-entitled "critics" today...I think as an attempt to give them authority. and not just in the food world. but art people are still certainly aware of the distinction between Russell and Perl. edit: what I'm trying to get at here is that insofar as there is something called "food criticism" as the discussion of culinary excellence....it is something different than a weekly restaurant review...which in my view really is a form of consumer advocacy (essentially, is this place worth my money?). that is why I have no problem with Bruni being very price conscious in his reviews (I think that's desireable). I don't think that food criticism should be especially concerned with price. now, the point has been made here that theater and dance reviews don't really take account of price (at least in NY -- though there's a great deal of parochiality in assuming that's the case everywhere else as well)...but, ultimately dining is democratic in a way that theater and dance are not. the vast majority of the population will eat in a restaurant at some point...the majority will never attend a theater or dance production. more importantly for this topic, the majority of NY Times readers probably eat at restaurants several times a week...I doubt the majority of NY Times readers attend theater or dance performances even once a year (more like once every couple years). the level of frequency certainly weighs in on how price-conscious one is.

to amplify the distinction: take oakapple's moniker...it implies he's a Gilbert & Sullivan fan. there's a clear distinction between a review of a specific production of Iolanthe and an essay that uses G&S as a lens with which to touch on aspects of late Victorian society. the first is a review, the second is criticism (in the sense I'm using the word).

I don't believe Rothstein was ever a reviewer, per se. He was hired to be a critic at large. That was the point of hiring someone with his educational background. I'm perhaps having difficulty phrasing this...my background was in the academy (I had some of the same grad profs as Rothstein) so to me the distinction between criticism and reviewing is obvious and even assumable (of course there are overlaps!). hmm... put it this way. one is concerned with overall aesthetic judgments...even existential questions relating to (or arising from) the topic at hand. one is concerned directly with consumer-related value judgments (should I see this Alvin Ailey production?) as opposed to (the Rite of Spring as an advent of the collapse of modernity). to analogize: a reviewer writes: "The Brothers Karamazov, though at times a wooden and overly didactic novel, contains powerful instances of religion-soaked imagery culminating in a trial that evinces Dosteyevsky's full dramatic gifts." a critic writes: "Dosteyevsky's concern with children as a motif for ordinary Russians, in both their everyday cruelty and generosity, is especially poignant in the Brothers Karamazov" That is the difference. I trust I make myself obscure.

behind the Voice????????????????????????????????????? this was a joke, right? as for whether it was appropriate to mention Chodorow's foibles...I absolutely think so. he made himself into a public figure and made his administration of his restaurants a subject for comment. ditto for Ramsay. you can't reap the economic benefits and assert that commensurate criticism is out of bounds because it is "personal"

Frank Bruni has the "public advocacy" part of the job nailed. But I think a restaurant critic is more than just a consumer reporter. You're confusing two different things.The quality or the nature of criticism doesn't change because it happens to be delivered in bite-sized chunks via periodic newspaper articles. The book, music, dance, art, and architecture critics do the same thing. Fundamentally, it is still criticism. Does food as an "art" belong on the same plane as literature? Probably not, but I don't see the need to settle the issue. Cooking is partly an art. If you're going to write intelligently about it, it helps to have seriously thought and written about the topic for a long time, rather than just parachuting in after a stint as Rome bureau chief. ← my point is that he's not a "critic"...he's a reviewer. let's take the visual arts: John Russell used to write about exhibitions, now he writes reviews of art books. in contrast, Jad Perl writes meta-criticism...sometimes making his point by use of a specific exhibition, but always in the service of a larger point. arguably, one is a reviewer, the other a critic. (indeed Chodorow to the contrary, professional architecture critics aren't necessarily trained in architecture...but they do all have training in aesthetics in some fashion) Edward Rothstein is today sort of a critic at large for the Times...which makes sense...his background is with the unique Committee on Social Thought at the U. of Chicago (an interdisciplinary program once helmed by Leo Strauss, then Allan Bloom, now Robert Pippin and featuring such diverse scholars as Wendy Doniger, Marc Fumaroli, Mark Strand, and J.M. Coetzee (also the winner of an obscure literary prize). If Rothstein decided to write an article within the field of food criticism, I'd be most interested in reading it...but it wouldn't be a restaurant review per se...even if he used a restaurant with which to make a larger point.

I didn't say it was read by more people than Chodorow's ad in the Times. The implication above was that nobody has publicly made these arguments before. That is certainly incorrect. Well, yea. The arguments have been made before, but I would argue that they haven't been made before on anywhere near this kind of stage and to anywhere near this volume of readership. So, for whatever it's worth, by virtue of the circulation and iconic status of the NY Times, and the fact that it's literally happening in their own backyard, this does seem like the "calling out" of Bruni and the Times that's likely to make the biggest splash thus far. ← I suppose...though the fact that it's Chodorow doing it sharply mitigates that. If it was JG, Daniel, Bouley, Keller or even Danny Meyer or Steven Hanson it would have more of an impact I think. this will be forgotten in two weeks (just like Prime Time Tables was).

removed: I just realized that I verified the point that it's the same people reading the critiques of Bruni over and over. since the example I gave was of a site where people don't critique Bruni.

hmm...that's a conceivable Platonic description of an aesthetic critic (one that I might agree with). however, a "restaurant reviewer" (the traditional and standard term) is arguably somewhat a public advocate. as much as I admire what great chefs do, I'm not sure I really want to put it on the same level as literature or painting. I'd read anything Lionel Trilling wrote on aesthetic endeavours..including cuisine...and that would be criticism in a sense. But that wouldn't make him necessarily a suitable restaurant reviewer. put differently, you're talking about two different job descriptions -- someone who has to write a restaurant review every week is fulfilling a different function than a general aesthetic critic (which, frankly, I don't think restaurants deserve. food is not literature. let's not get too full of ourselves.)

delicious snark on Eater: "(If you're wondering, it costs on the low end about $30K for an ad like this, or $26 a word. In Chodorowbucks it's what he charges per person for about 15 minutes of eating at Kobe Club.)"

I highly doubt that there are a great many people who care about this stuff who also are weeping for Chodorow. Please. You're talking about one of the most cynical restauranteurs in NY. He runs clubs that happen to serve food (if you can call it that).

of course Hesser's overly positive review of Spice Market didn't help either. but, fwiw, I agree with your post.

btw...I didn't mean that as an attack on Reichl. she's clearly in the top echelon of professional critics. I just think that she gets the benefit of generous memories (this probably goes for Sheraton and Claiborne as well). all you have to do is read posts on egullet from four-six years ago to see how the standard base of food knowledge has grown here. now throw in that like minded individuals didn't really have the same access to each other before the internet and it's pretty clear that professional critics simply weren't questioned in the same way in the past. in other words, the internet has massively raised the bar. just because a critic cleared the bar twenty years ago doesn't at all mean that they would today...I wonder if any would actually.

Grime's one cocktail book is the standard text on cocktail history (as opposed to being a collection of recipes combined with histories of those individual recipes). He has written a couple food books as well. but anyway, although Richman is my favorite food critic, Grimes is the best Times reviewer I've read (if Reichl were the critic today she'd be skewered here daily for her outliers and mistakes....as far as I'm concerned she simply gets the benefit of generous pre-internet memories). but leaving that aside, I've never seen the slightest evidence that Chodorow knows anything about food (besides the economics of it).

That markup was typical for a tasting-menu wine pairing at just about any restaurant in JoRo's class. ← 9 pours for $125. I had 18 pours at Alinea for $125. average bottle price (of the ones that I found later) for the bottles at Alinea? about $35. Alinea, of course, is considerably more formal than L'Atelier.

well, Grimes is the preeminent historian of the cocktail. he's also written about food on and off for 20 years. Chodorow has opened various restaurants in NY and Miami that were always about the scene and not the food. He's never shown the slightest interest in actual cooking. since Chodorow restaurants aren't even good FOH operations....I wouldn't even want to hear his opinion on that side.

because a zero star review of the Kobe Club is almost certainly not a mistake. (indeed, Bruni rarely gets his ratings clearly wrong...it's the specific texts of his reviews that informed people object to most of the time)

here's an assessment of that $190 tasting menu and the $125 paired wines. the wine markup appears to be astronomical. http://nyobserver.com/20070226/20070226_Mo...iningaround.asp

If I had to guess, he's probably never heard of Ssam Bar.

Mine is very high...but this spicy cabbage was 90% below that of GS....