Sneakeater

Gosh... that's really disappointing to hear. Are you sure you emphasized on the phone when you made the reservation that you specifically (and only) wanted to sit at Yasuda's station? That's really too bad! ← I have to say that, based on my own experience, I don't find this very surprising. No matter how much you emphasize on the phone that you want to be seated at Yasuda's station.

Just to dig myself in deeper, why wouldn't you be as discerning, in terms of seriousness of purpose, with respect to the cocktail places you go to as you are with respect to restaurants?

I've seen that recipe before. It's frightening. Adios Motherfucker 1 oz vodka 1 oz rum 1 oz tequila 1/2 oz gin 1 oz Blue Curacao liqueur 2 oz sweet and sour mix 2 oz 7-Up® soda Served stirred or shaken in a pounder glass(16 oz) Basically a Long Island Iced Tea using Lemon soda instead of Coke and turned blue with the Blue Curacao instead of regular triple sec. And equally as deadly. ← I know this will just sound snobbish, but I try to stay away from places where they even make stuff like that.

I had their standard pulled duck confit sandwich yesterday, and it was absolutely delicious. The standard sandwiches have something going for them, as I'd have never chosen that particular combination of ingredients on my own.

Actually, it was the lovely models at Perry St. -- a restaurant I otherwise adore -- who I was particularly thinking about (since they're the ones I've most recently been dealing with).

What I don't get is if he's so humble and gracious -- and I agree, he was really nice the one time I met him -- why does he insist on hiring those snotnosed model wannabes to hostess his places? I've loved many of JGV's places. But I've almost universally hated dealing with his very-front-of-the-room staff. (And don't get me started on his firm's reservations policy.)

As we now know Lucille Ball (of all people) once said, if you want to get something done, ask a busy person to do it.

It's a few blocks north of your geographic limit (and maybe not quite as good as its fans claim), but don't forget the Biltmore Room.

I WANT MY MONEY BACK!

I wonder -- this is not a rhetorical question -- whether anyone has really liked WD-50 on their first visit? Maybe you, docsconz?

http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=79211

FWIW, I stopped by here last week and had a pork tonatto sandwich (if that's what it was) and I thought it was very good. Not great. Not stratospheric. Not this-came-from-Thomas-Keller-the-greatest-chef-in-America spectacular. And maybe a little pricey at more than $10. But still very good.

Even on the Smith St. Row, I always preferred Patois (where I haven't eaten in years, so don't ask). Not that I've been yet, but for now Taku seems most promising there.

Another gaf review that nails it. FWIW, I think Saul is somewhat overrated. And just for the reasons you said. To me, it's sort of like "fine dining lite" -- very good, but the sort of thing we can get better and more creative over the bridge. My favorte (non-"cheap eats"-ethnic) Brooklyn restaurants are more like Al Di La or Ici or even Madiba -- less, I don't want to say pretentious, but maybe more quirky and "of themselves", the kind of things maybe you couldn't afford to do in Manhattan, rather than a smaller-scale version of what's done better in Manhattan.

Maybe I'm overly suggestible, but this quietude did not last through the night. I was going to post event-by-even updates in real time, but decided to spare you all.

Now that I think of it, I misspoke. We called for the cancellation the day before.

At a little before 7 tonight, there was maybe a 5 minute wait at most. I then took the subway home, maybe a half hour to forty-minute ride. There were no, um, problems to upset me during that journey.

I guess it should be noted that Biscuit on Flatbush Ave. in Brooklyn has closed.

Another interesting thing to note is that my entree at Del Posto was disappointing in an entirely different way than the entrees usually are at Babbo. There, the problem is that every flavor seems to be turned up to eleven, so that the dishes are too busy and lack balance. Here, the problem was the opposite: the dish was simply dull. It would be both an overstatement (since after all this was only one entree on a very large menu) and presumptuous to hypothesize that Batali & Co. took note of the frequent criticism that the entrees at Babbo tend to lack subtlety and then overcompensated at this, their "classy" restaurant. But I think I just did.

I was there last Friday (4/14). It was crowded. We couldn't get a reservation on two weeks' notice; we got in by checking for cancellations that day, as the reservations clerk suggested. I have no idea who was or wasn't in the kitchen.

So let's compare Del Posto with A Voce. The food at Del Posto, on the whole, is significantly better. So why does my review of A Voce sound much more enthusiastic than my review of Del Posto? Because Del Posto is much more expensive. And because the ambiance at Del Posto (a) is such a turnoff to me and (b) so obviously requires absolutely top-quality food that it makes you much more judgmental about the food quality.

Maybe if you slip the counter girl a fifty . . . .

Maybe they moved. I'm positive I walked by each of them this weekend. La Luncheonette was on Tenth Ave. in the upper Twenties; the Foccaceria was on First Ave. somewhere around 10th St. (Anyway, the one on Union St. in Brooklyn is better.)

It's hard for me to think what I think about Del Posto. I guess the first thing I should get out of the way is that my pasta course was MUCH better than anything else I had. So that problem remains. I found the ambiance kind of creepy. Obviously "fancy" in a stilted sort of way. Service was the same. It seemed too much like playing dress-up. It's funny, when you walk out of Del Posto, to see the entrance to Morimoto right in front of you. It's sort of like the Street Of Fantasies -- choose which one you want. The food ranged from good to fabulous (that was the pasta). I nearly plunged over the railing (we were seated on the mezzanine) with disappointment when I was told that the bolito misto cart had been discontinued on seasonal grounds the week before our visit. There was still a bolito misto terrine on the antepasto menu, but that turned out not to be the same. This is the kind of thing at which you'd expect Mark Ladner to excel, but served chilled in aspic the various meats were all a bit dull. The pasta was ravioli stuffed with braised beef and topped with ramps (at least SOMETHING I like was in season). This was beyond great -- probably the best pasta I've ever had in a Batali restaurant, and that's saying a lot. Not much to say about it -- it tasted like the very best possible version of what you'd expect it to taste like. For an entree, I and one of my companions followed the waiter's strong recommendation of the Stinco de Vitello (portioned for two), i.e., braised veal shank. Looking back at Frank Bruni's review, I see he found it dull and dry. I disagree to the extent that our serving wasn't dry. Maybe I could've ordered better -- I don't want to damn the whole secondi menu on the basis of one visit -- but the difference in quality between the pasta and the entree was marked. My dessert was fun: a tasting of three chocolates accompanied by a tasting of three rums. It was extravagant, but seemed much more interesting than the rather dull dessert menu. Interestingly, although the sommelier advised mixing the pairings up rather than slavishly following his pairings, his pairings turned out to be best. It's actually pretty easy to miss this possibility the way it's placed in the dessert booklet, so I recommend you look out for it. (I guess this is intended to be eaten as a separate course, after dessert. But even I'm not that much of a pig. And anyway, nothing on the dessert menu proper seemed that interesting.) Del Posto is expensive and kind of a pain. I'd happily go back to try more food, but it's not the kind of place I can get very excited about.

I probably last went about a year and a half ago. My thoughts are almost exactly the same as jeanki's. I'd recommend it.