Sneakeater

1. In addition to those "soufleed" potatos, they also have regular french fries, which I personally much prefer. 2. Actually, the back room is the main dining room. It's more formal than the front room. I personally prefer the front room, awkward as it is. It's more vibrant than the stuffier main room. 3. If you have the burger without the truffles, it seems less an impossible once-in-a-lifetime indulgence, and more something you can have whenever you're in the mood. Although I always think it's a pity that a lot of people miss out on the very good "real" food on the menu here cuz they have to get the burger. You should go back sometime. Or snag those sweetbreads from the fridge.

I wanted to go someplace fairly unprepossessing for dinner before hitting Will Goldfarb's new Room 4 Dessert. Hmmmmmm . . . this is a good opportunity to finally try Le Jardin Bistro. Strictly ordinary. Not nearly as good as any number of other "neighborhood bistro" type places all over the City. Next time, I'll try to snag a table at Balthazar.

It's hard to say enough good things about Room 4 Dessert. The space has been cannily renovated and is now somehow both extremely comfortable and extremely cool. The obviously overworked staff -- congratulations, guys, the amount of business you appear to be doing must have exceeded your fairest hopes -- look like slick Soho/Nolita peoploids, but they're really nice. The music is great. And, oh yeah, the food. Everything seems to be completely thought through, and, on the basis of the dishes my companion and I had, is completely delicious. Intellectually engaging, fun, brilliantly executed, and great tasting -- how much better can it get? As has been noted, there are the desserts by the glass (for something like $7 or $9 -- I guess it must be $9), and the "tasting" plates (for $12). I had a "glass" -- a so-called white chocolate margarita (I don't like white chocolate, but in this dish the white chocolate foam floated over a meyer lemon gelee, and I find it hard to avoid ordering anything with meyer lemon in it). As someone commented earlier in this thread, you don't experience these "glass" desserts as a mix of flavors, but rather as a succession of flavors. This one really worked (and I have a feeling that the others are even better). My companion had the "sushi" tasting. I can't tell you what the four objects on her platter were, but I can recount her complete rapture as she ate them. The teas, created by a maker called Atelier, were fantastic. I had the recommended pairing of a barley tea that was incomporably better than any I've ever had in a Korean place. My companion went off the reservation and ordered a tea that wasn't the recommended pairing with her dessert. It was an almond tea that was (you're not going to believe the advertising tag line that's coming, but I mean it) indescribably delicious. They told us that they're still fiddling with the hours. They're coming to realize that they'd do well to stay open very late on weekends. I think this would be a great late-night stop. I can't wait to go back to try more desserts. I can't wait to try some wine pairings. I think this place will be a huge success. I only hope it doesn't become impossible to get in. I'm going to go there a lot while I still can.

Bunch of discount stores around there.

(Isn't it "Yorkville", though?)

That's funny. Since the German places closed, I think of Yorktown as a sort of culinary wasteland (except for Pastrami Queen).

Just to be clear (cuz as you know, things tend to get twisted in ongoing discussions), my problem with the star system vis-a-vis the taco counter isn't so much that the star system necessarily excludes it, as that the star system necessarily undervalues it once its discovered. (As you may recall, I started talking about the taco counter more as argument against New York Magazine's adoption of a star system. My point was that the taco counter is the kind of place that New York's old system had handled very well, but that would tend to get underrated in a star system.)

I obviously hate to admit it, but that's a real point.

Off topic, but you'd be amazed what many of us who were young (adullts) here in the Seventies pine for.

Now that I think of it, though, it's pretty consistent with the way the Times treats theater. Ben Brantley pretty much limits himself to Broadway. Off, Off-Off, Off-Off-Off, etc. are handled by others. And Brantley's reviews tend to be on the first arts page, but not the others'. Maybe this is even an apt comparison. Hmmmmmmmmmmm.

That's not a double standard. Every production at the Met and City Opera is newsworthy by definition (just like pretty much every expensive restaurant is newsworthy by definition). Other things that are not newsworthy by definition get reviewed to the extent they're deemed notable. They all have a fair chance. (I think we all know why the Amato Opera, loveable as it is, rarely gets reviewed.) To me, that's like saying that Gilt et al. will pretty much automatically get starred reviews, and places like (say) Noodletown will get them if the critic deems them worthy. I.e., the way Mimi Sheraton and Craig Claiborne and Ruth Reichl did it. What the Cru party is proposing here, however, is a standard that EXCLUDES venues other than the Met or City Opera from the review system. They can ONLY be reviewed in subsidiary columns by subsidiary reviewers. They CAN'T be reviewed by the main critic in the main column no matter how good they are, if they don't meet a fairly rigid standard of "grand opera" (or in the instant case, "fine dining"). That's MUCH different from the way the Times treats opera, music, and dance.

Yes, but it's not a single rank. Bruni has given out one "Poor" rating (Ninja). So, Satisfactory means Satisfactory, not anywhere from Poor to Satisfactory. ← Got it. Thanks. And you're right: his "Satisfactory"s don't seem very satisfactory.

Also, you're misrepresenting my position. All restaurants that don't have wine programs aren't taco stands. And to the extent the star system necessarily excludes things like the taco counter in the back of that place on 10th Avenue -- which is NOT a stand, BTW, there are seats there -- then that's what I think is problematical about having a star system. Believe me, if there was music or a film as good as that taco counter, the Times would review it (or at least would not exclude it on principal). They have music and film reviews like that all the time.* _______________________________________________________ * That was the problem I had when Robyn complained last year that giving Sripraphai two stars was like giving a rave review to a concert held at Queens College. Queens College has an excellent concert hall. Why wouldn't a deserving concert there get a rave review? And how could you possibly contend that concerts there shouldn't be reviewed at all?

But YOU'RE the one (not just you -- I think most people here agree with you) saying that the main restaurant review should be limited to "dining" rather than restaurants. That's NOT like saying opera reviews should be limited to "opera"; rather, it's EXACTLY like saying that opera reviews should be limited to A CERTAIN KIND of opera, to the exclusion of others. I.e., you're saying that only a certain kind of restaurant (e.g., one with a wine program) should be reviewed in the "restaurant review" column -- even though there are many restaurants that don't have wine programs, but are still restaurants and can be perfectly worthy ones. (Also, BTW, a Times music reviewer can review a singing cowboy if he finds it worthy. There's nothing stopping him. To be less reductive, the Times music reviewers can AND DO review things like Rinde Eckhart's Moby Dick or Philip Glass/Robert Wilson's Einstein on the Beach, which may or may not be opera, depending on how you want to define things.) As for the "$25 and Under" column, my problem with that column is that it's a ghetto. Everything sounds the same there. You can't tell which well-reviewed restaurants there are "good for their price" and which are just "good, period." For example, I think New York Noodletown (at least in its prime) deserved its starred review: to me, it was one of the best restaurants in NYC at the time. I think the Hell's Kitchen Grand Sichuan International deserves a starred review now. I think Grand Sichuan was disserved by being reviewed in the same column, using the same terms, as a place like, say, Via Emilia (very good, but only very good for its price; not one of the City's greatest Italian restaurants). Reading the reviews, it's hard to tell that Grand Sichuan is an order of magnitude better -- one of the best of its kind in the City.

I just noticed that, at least in its electronic version, the Times now defines the rank below one star as "Poor to Satisfactory" rather than "Satisfactory".

FWIW, I agree with you completely about this, and think it's a major problem with Bruni's application of the system.

Leonard, that whole post was great, and I for one am grateful for it. What you describe in the paragraph I quote is pretty much how I used to understand the system to work. Until I started reading on this Board that it was some kind of perversion of the system for unprepossessing Asian places to be given two stars. Am I wrong in thinking that's the majority view?

PS -- For whatever it might be worth, I found your excellent posts and recommendations enormously helpful when I visited Oaxaca early last year (and, I hope it needn't be said, disagree with you on this tangential matter only with the greatest respect).

That might point to a difference between Oaxaca and Mexico City. It seems apparent that Oaxaca doesn't have as strong a local restaurant scene as Mexico City -- that, to an extent, almost all the restaurants in Oaxaca are directed at tourists (and must be so to survive). To put it another way, Oaxaca (like the Yucatan and, for all I know, most parts of Mexico) doesn't appear to have a strong traditional restaurant culture; locals don't have a tradition of dining out. In Mexico City, on the other hand, the trendiest restaurants are aimed at locals, not tourists: at the DF's thriving upper middle class. "Authenticity" is a slippery concept, but I'd argue that it's more "authentic" to go to a "trendy" new restaurant favored by locals than to go to an old traditional restaurant that now relies mainly on the tourist trade. Of course, "authentic" isn't the be-all and end-all. You might still like the traditional restaurant more than the trendy one. But not because it's more "authentic."

I almost started biting my monitor.

But, because I can't help myself: Would anyone think it was anything other than stupid for the Times to have a policy of only reviewing mainstream Hollywood films? Or limiting their main film critic to reviewing such films, relegating independent films, foreign films, and art films to some ghetto? And would anybody think it was anything other than stupid for the Times to officially adopt a set of criteria that favored mainstream Hollywood films over all others? (So that, say, the Charlton Heston El Cid would by definition rate higher than, say, Pretty Poison?) (Sorry for the dated -- and dating -- references.) Or, how about if the Times had a policy that its chief opera critic could only review operas at the Met and maybe City Opera? And officially adopted a set of criteria that favored what the Met does well, and disvalued the things the Met isn't good at (such as theatricality, immediacy, programming of lesser-known or new works, etc.)? But that's what the star system (certainly as Cru would have it -- but I think that's the way it's generally understood here) does for restaurants.

Rich was right. It's pointless to keep arguing against the star system. Cru's posts have just stated the arguments against the star system better than anything I'd write ever could.

Also, it's unique. I've been there two times. The first time, my waiter quit in the middle of my meal The second time, the guy playing and singing at the electric piano quit in the middle of my meal. I'm not sure that's happened anywhere else. But at Sammy's, EVERY visit.

Oh. Maybe that's slightly less not shocking. Although, really, that's the clear best Roumanian strip steak in the City. And some of the best gribine (sp?). No, maybe THE best. And where else would you go for a beef garlic sausage? And the pickled tomatoes and peppers are better than almost any other restaurant's. Really, on the whole, it's up there in the elite as far as barely adulterated plates of fat go.

Yes. It's admittedly modelled on the Burger Joint in the lobby of the Parker Meridian. It's not quite as good as the Burger Joint. But it's still really really good. (Same style of burgers, service, etc.) Tends to be very crowded during lunchtime. Deservedly. In addition to the burgers, they also sell such classic New York fountain items as Lime Rickeys.