Nathan

It's good. really good. tiny. 18 seats. stopped by at 11:15 on Saturday night. they took my number and called me at midnight with a table for two. wine list of about 20 bottles...most of them are available by the glass. all bottles are $25....all glasses are $8. had a bottle of a slightly off-dry Riesling...it was fine....certainly for the price! bunch of small plates ranging in price from $7-14. the plates aren't that small btw. heirloom tomato salad with a balsalmic and olive granita was very good. simple and obvious, but good. foie gras with strawberry glaze was terrific. generous portion for $12 (!?!). crabmeat "spring rolls" were good. so were the ginger-glazed scallops...maybe a little overcooked (but then I think scallops should always be raw). generous portion. service was charming (literally). space isn't the most comfortable but it creates a sort of "dinner party" atmosphere. loved it. no, it's not as subtle or good or put-together as Tailor...not by any means. but it's pretty darn amazing for 18 seats in a tiny EV storefront. go.

I finally made it here for lunch yesterday. the shio broth really is subtle and good. will return.

My guess is "no." People who want Appletinis want candy. there's simply not much you can do for them. the people who are potential converts are the whiskey drinkers, those who order sours, and the straight gin or vodka "martini" drinkers (at least they like the taste of alcohol!). Serious beer or wine drinkers too. the other night at Flatiron I heard this guy tell his friend "just get me an apple martini or something sweet...."

I had something similar to this at Flatiron last night. I think they did something different with the syrup (allspice maybe?)....

well, the problem is that Valbella is close to Chelsea Market. so, after JG I would walk to 57th and take the F down to Essex Market. then he can walk through Chinatown and walk up Lafayette to Bleecker (since Monday is supposed to be a nice day) and then walk along Bleecker (an excellent way to see disparate parts of the WV) all the way to Hudson...and then go up Hudson to Chelsea Market. and then double back a few blocks to Valbella. that's what I would do. alternatively, he could from JG take the A or C (the Columbus Circle stop is right next to the restaurant) to 14th/8th. walk out of the 15th street entrance and Chelsea Market (which is more in the MP than Chelsea) is right there. then you have two options...there's a complicated train route involving a transfer which will get you to Essex Market. or just walk down 8th ave or Hudson to Bleecker. then take Bleecker all the way down to Lafayette (its an excellent way to see several disparate parts of the WV) and then walk a few blocks down Lafayette to Chinatown. but then you're going to have to walk or cab back to Valbella.

Bruni writes up Peasant here (very accurately I must say): http://dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com/200...e/index.html?hp

I'll put it this way: me at Little Branch the last time: "I'll have a Last Word please." bartender: "I don't know what that is." me at Pegu with new bartender: "I'll have a Horse's Neck please." (no, it wasn't super-crowded then). I see him go look it up in a book, make it and then tell me it's his first. Little Branch is great if you get the right bartender...but that's true of any number of places. but yeah, D&C is very very reliable...and has an awesome assortment of bitters. at PDT, two of egullet's own work there, Jim is sometimes there, and Cervantes is awesome.

Is the Jean Georges $28 prix fixe lunch not offered on weekends? ← JG is not open for lunch on the weekends.

you might want to explain what "appetizing" means. its a term that is apparently exclusive to the New York Jewish community.

generally true...with the obvious exceptions (Mexican...which you noted)...Indian in Chicago or Vietnamese/Lao or Scandinavian in Minnesota or German in Wisconsin. but one thing most midwestern cities generally have is an obscure Asian storefront restaurant somewhere that is hyper-authentic and pretty much only caters to customers of the same ethnicity. basically the kind of thing that you'll find in Flushing but not in Manhattan (due to rents).

I had to laugh when I saw this. an Italian friend of mine upon first trying NY pizza: "This is very good. But why do you call it pizza?"

yeah, it's not like the Two-Boots dough. another vote for Giordanos here.

I was awe-struck by Alinea as well. But (this isn't a criticism), it could be located anywhere...

I wish that were true...(Little Branch is the closest to my home). Little Branch has bartenders that have no off-menu knowledge (maybe they're in training?).

Not at all. The weightings just vary depending upon the individual critic (i.e. Bruni clearly weighs price more heavily than some of his predecessors). ← Bruni never said that. ← I didn't say "Bruni said that he weighs price more heavily"...I said "Bruni clearly weighs more price more heavily"....cause he does.

Not at all. The weightings just vary depending upon the individual critic (i.e. Bruni clearly weighs price more heavily than some of his predecessors). But the factors don't change.

welcome Kaiser Penguin! I've been an avid read of your blog for awhile now. restaurant: Jean Georges (or if it's booked...Perry Street). best lunch deals in NY (you can get out for $40-50 with several courses and a glass of wine, tax and tip) bar: Death & Co., P.D.T. or Pegu....these are the top three cocktail bars in NY....with Milk & Honey and Flatiron Lounge close behind. Anywhere else suggested is a tier behind those five. D&C and P.D.T. are only a couple blocks away from each other so you could do both easily. liquor store: LeNell's...but that might not be convenient to get to. Astor Place has a massive selection and is in walking distance of the bars named.

well..like Bobo, it has "date place" written all over it. but I liked it more than Bobo.

ah...ok....I see your point. in that sense, Alinea is more cosmopolitan while WD-50 shows more of a sense of terroir.

Jessika and LPshanet: I think we're in agreement.

add Momofuku and Momofuku Ssam Bar (dinner only) to the "value" section of Jessika's list.

well...there are Indian restaurants in Paris. I don't know anything about the quality. as for WD-50...there's plenty of molecular gastronomy going on in France. far more than in the U.S., let alone NY. heck, L'Astrance is in Paris.

what handicaps? they're not necessary...it's absurd. Sripaphai makes really great food. it's not quite intellectually stimulating or balanced enough to be the very best think you'll ever eat...but it's still fricking good. but it has no service to speak of, no ambience or wine program. on the other hand, it's fricking cheap. so it ends up being on the border between two and three stars. if Sripapahi served the same food with decor, wine and professional service...at higher prices, it'd be a three star. if it somehow served that same food with decor, wine and professional service at the same low prices. it'd be a four star. but that'd be impossible to do. so three stars would be the limit for that food. Jean Georges is a four star cause it serves even better food than Sripaphai with decor, wine and professional service, at high prices. but the prices are justified by some of the best food on the planet. so it gets four stars. same playing field. no handicaps.

Classes are only a meme, just like your percentages. I just think my meme is better, because I could imagine an intelligent person arriving at a rating by comparing restaurants to others with similar aspirations, but I couldn't imagine an intelligent person doing it putting percentages into a spreadsheet. ← no! I'm saying that the Bruni does exactly what he says he does: balancing four different factors to come up with an overall evaluation. and all of those factors apply no matter what the purported aspiration of the restaurant. I realize that several here (and elsewhere) believe that there are separate restaurant categories which somehow are roughly equivalent to Times stars. this leads to statements like ("its an underperforming four star" or "it's an overperforming one star"). I think this hypothesis owes much to the relatively common belief that that's how Michelin does things. maybe so...I don't know enough about Michelin to know. but I'm pretty certain that the Times (and especially Bruni taking him at his own words) doesn't operate that way. indeed such a system only makes sense in a very stratified dining structure today. purportedly NYC used to be that way. I don't know. I do know that it doesn't have that rigidly stratified dining structure today. And Bruni is certainly not a water carrier for such a structure. far from it! neither is Richman (and I've been reading his culinary oevre for a lot longer than Bruni has been writing about restaurants). these guys say that they don't walk into a restaurant and think: "Ok, its a three star category restaurant based on the prices, decor, menu and amount of white hair in the dining room....so let's see if that's what it is or if it underperforms and gets two or overperforms and makes me think about four" they say they don't think that way. I believe them. obviously some do not but it seems to me to be more of an exercise in projection. edit: and as a relatively intelligent person, who unlike a certain legacy admit blogger recently turned "professional reviewer", knows the (substantial!) difference between being "serviced" or being "served", understands that one can't rely upon shift-f7 to suggest words unless you actually know what they mean and who knows that ceviche is not a recent trend and doesn't involve boiling; I somehow manage to rate all restaurants on the same playing field: is the food really fricking good, is it pleasant, was the service proficient, and was it worth the money considering the first three. it's a really simple calculus. and you can apply it to all restaurants equally.

The Times says that the critic considers food, service, and ambiance, with price taken into account. It does not say how, and it does not say that there is a formula with percentages. What on earth would it mean to say that the ambiance at Masa is X% better than the ambiance at Del Posto? To imagine any intelligent person saying so is to instantly recognize the absurdity of the idea. ← You're being overly literal. Like I said, the Times itself claims to consider a rating as the result of the combination of four factors. That's it. No classes. No categories. I'm taking them (and him) at their word. (No, I'm not suggesting that Bruni is using Excel.)