Sneakeater

Emerging Egg Trend http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/04/dining/0...html?ref=dining

Nah. That building wants to attract the gentry. It'll be a Popeye's.

There's a new Richard Meier apartment building going up down the block from me. I'm thinking that, in my neighborhood, they'll probably have a Kennedy Fried Chicken at street level.

Just to be clear about what I meant to be saying, though, I didn't just mean that I disagree with Nathan's assessment of Bruni's assessment of the food. I also -- and primarily -- meant that I disagree with Nathan's assessment of the food in chief.* I think it's better than he does. ___________________________________________________ * That came out wrong. It sounds like I'm talking about the food after some tribal leader or fire department functionary has ingested it.

Although more than one poster complained that the portion sizes on the prix fixe at EMP were inadequate, so that the prix fixe (as opposed to the tasting menus) was insufficient as a meal. I never could understand people's complaining about a three-course prix fixe, BTW. How many times do you not order an appetizer, a main course, and dessert at a "fine" restaurant? (And, to be tendentious, I personally think that people who don't order dessert when they eat out should.)

Having said all that, the problem with the Atelier concept (putting aside the problem with the NYC branch that it doesn't make sense to have an Atelier on the inside of a fancy urban hotel) is that it's never going to be as easy to eat there as the concept seems to anticipate, so it's never going to be the no-fuss (albeit expensive) stopover that the concept seems to anticipate.

For once, I think Bruni nailed it. Not just the star rating (which is fairly meaningless), but the analysis. It's interesting to note that his criticisms were not primarily of the food. I tend to disagree with Nathan that this is clearly "not four-star food." I think that in a different setting, with a different service model, it could be. (As I've said above, I think the whole Atelier concept was intended to sort of confound the "star system".)

I can honestly say that the only time I've watched Rachel Ray (or, to be truthful, anything on the Food Channel) is when I was visiting my mother in Florida and there was literally nothing to do.

Or listening to recordings they like, or going to concerts or the theater, or talking (or whatever) to their significant others, or hanging out with friends, or taking walks, or playing sports, or reading, or . . . .

Also, just to clarify, based on no more than one or two visits, I would say the Manhattan outpost of Szechuan Gourmet is a step or two down from Grand Sichuan and Wu Liang Ye -- but several steps up from what you'd expect from an unprepossing mid-block place in Midtown. Not quite a destination, as I feel those two places are, but more than worth a try.

Perry Street is just too casual. That would be more of a Big Deal than I think they want to present.

I doubt they ever will. It's just somehow not that kind of place.

I laughed very hard at the beginning of that post. But then when I got toward the end I begin to get this strange idea that you weren't joking. I hope I'm wrong about that.

I don't know what "right" means in this context. An expert witness is "right", first of all, if he or she supports your client's position. You won't retain an expert who doesn't. An expert witness is then "right" if he or she can persuade a jury of the correctness of your client's position. But that has nothing to do with any objective truth. As for challenging her credibility, you could do that if she was inconsistent. Or if her views did not fall within the accepted norms of her profession. But that's really saying the same thing that Oakapple said: that the way you judge the "correctness" of a list like Michelin's is with reference to the consensus of professional opinion in the area. But again, how could anyone in any field be said to be objectively "right" 100% of the time. What does objectively "right" mean? In every contested litigation, where there's one qualified expert arguing one thing on one side, there's another qualified expert arguing the opposite on the other. Is the losing side's expert "wrong"? Or did he or she only fail in persuading the jury in that instance? If an expert is on the losing side a lot, he or she will have hard time getting hired, not because he or she is "wrong", but because he or she is ineffective. I'd add, though, that if Michelin did nothing but summarize or mirror the already existing judgments, then it would be deemed useless by the market, as not contributing anything "new". So of course their list is going to differ slightly from the conventional wisdom (have some "surprises"), just to show they have their own viewpoint, and hence some value added. But it can't vary too much. So, again, 80% correct is correct.

Not just me, but William Grimes (I realized recently when I (re)read his review, which I didn't otherwise remember, as linked in the eG "Tasting Room" thread). And Adam Platt said the same thing about the food in the old place in his very recent New York Magazine review of the new place. I'm not arguing that Grimes, much less Platt, was/is infallible. Only that my lowish opinion of the food at the old Tasting Room was no more of an outlier than your high opinion. Of course, I'm not arguing that your opinion was "wrong", or doubting your basis for having it. Only trying to show how your argument that the old Tasting Room should have been starred, to me, shows the bootlessness of any argument that the Michelin list was "incorrect".

How could a set of subjective ratings ever be "correct"? What would you judge its "correctness" against? To put it another way, to me, if I agree with 80% of such a list, to me, that IS "correct".

December might be a bad time to go to Gramercy Tavern, as they just changed chefs and, I believe, the new menu won't be set until January. (If I'm wrong about that, someone please correct me.) But to me, the star Danny Meyers restaurant now -- and one of the star restaurants in New York -- is the renewed Eleven Madison Park under Chef Daniel Humm. I can't recommend it to you highly enough. Really. And I have a strong feeling that once it gets a New York Times review (which could happen any week), reservations are gonna get MUCH harder to come by.

Flatiron Lounge might have trouble accomodating that many people, too: those few big booths they have look they wouldn't seat more than maybe 8 people apiece (and they're not contiguous). I've never been in Employees Only's dining room, so I don't know if they have any big tables. But then again, I don't know if they let you sit at the tables if you're just drinking and not ordering food. I don't think 14 people could comfortably be accomodated in the bar area.

This post by my adored-from-afar RestaurantGirl makes it seem like the new Russian Tea Room will REALLY be a waste of Gary "One 'b' One 'n'" Robins's talents: http://www.restaurantgirl.com/restaurantgi...an_tea_roo.html

Speculating further, considering at least some of the investors, they could view backing WD-50 as a sort of "giving back to the industry" or even as a kind of general R&D.

This is embarrassing, but I couldn't tell you.

I've been there. It isn't as good as Grand Sichuan. It's still good, though. Definitely worth patronizing.

Yeah, at least according to the menu they post outside. But the prices are still much higher.

CUT THROUGH THE FAT?????????????????????????????????? DITTO re the eel dish. Best I've ever had at a (NYC) Shanghainese restaurant -- by far.

Whoops. One "b" or two?