Sneakeater

Or are we (by which of course I mean "I") just getting more used to this style of cooking (actually "conceptualizing" might be a more appropriate word than "cooking" here)?

I went to Spice Market a few times when it first opened, and I found the food tasty if inconsequential. I went back last summer, and the food had gotten terrible. The preparation really was at the level of bad take-out. I wasn't surprised, really -- but I was disappointed.

Thanks for responding. The problem is that, according to this thread, you can't tip the sushi chef that way. Indeed, the reason I asked this question is that, earlier in this thread, it was suggested that you give a separate cash tip to the sushi chef, because the tip you add to your credit card bill goes entirely to the waiter. I would find it awkward to hand a cash tip to an owner -- but it may be that my attitude is paleolithic, since it was generated in the same Fifties and Sixties that your Irish bartender occupied. So -- I'm going tonight, so this question takes on some urgency (at least to me) -- what should I do?

Do we all agree that over time WD-50 has at least seemingly moved toward giving more attention to how dishes taste as opposed to how cool they are conceptually? That's been my (happy) experience there.

Tipping Question Would you tip the sushi chef if it's Mr. Yasuda? Or, since he's a proprietor, would that be an insult to him?

I guess for REAL Mexican you go next door to Specia.

But as Fat Guy has persuasively shown, the "star system" has changed since then, becoming more institutionalized. Moreover, as Fat Guy has persuasively shown, that change was pretty much inevitable. There is simply no way Peter Luger could credibly be given four stars now.

I'm sorry if this is getting tiresome, but perhaps the definitive statement is in here: http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showto...ne+star+quality

Corinna -- Also in this thread: http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=44875&hl=stars

Oh, I agree with you, FWIW. Just noting that it's still a contentious issue.

But OTOH, there are posters here who appear to view the new informality as a blot on the fine dining experience.

Back when Pico had just opened (and hadn't yet closed), I really wanted to try it. My wife resolutely refused, because she had heard from co-workers that they served entrees under cloches and choreographed the cloches' removal. She hated that kind of old-fashioned fussy/formal showiness. She just didn't want to go to a place like that, no matter how interesting and good the food sounded. (I fiinally prevailed on her, and it turned out that only one dish -- the roast pig -- was served that way. But it was an actual struggle to get her there.)

See especially the last post in the second thread I linked.

Some more are here: http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=49453&hl= There were others, but they're harder to locate.

I missed this post. Any chance of a link... if you've got a moment? Thanks. ← I think it's as much a bunch of posts as "a" post. Some are in this thread: http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=45287&hl=

Yeah, but the point is that if you happened not to have read that Fat Guy post, there's nothing explicit in the Times that would alert you to the fact that that's how stars are awarded. Of course they wouldn't. But would that justify giving Keller only one star, or excluding him from the star system altogether?

(FWIW, "overpraised" and "underpraised" are probably better words for what I was trying to talk about here than "overrated" and "underrated". I didn't mean to refer to how many stars restaurants get or how good their reviews are, but rather how much attention they draw from -- I hate this word -- foodies such as the people who post here. For example, Danube has three stars from the Times and two stars from Michelin, but I'd still call it seriously underpraised among people like us. Similarly for the Neil Gallagher-era Oceana, which consistently gets splendid reviews but just doesn't seem to generate much excitement. OTOH, Blue Hill NYC and WD-50 both have only two NYT stars (at least I think Blue Hill NYC has two stars), but they could hardly get a greater amount of favorable attention from the -- I hate this word -- foodie community.)

I think the problem is that Flay gets the kind of press that causes serious eaters to underrate his restaurants. (I agree that Mesa Grill is sort of a prototypical underpraised restaurant. Interestingly (or not), much as I like it, I'd put Landmarc in the "overpraised" category.)

I think the effect would be sort of the opposite (or the obverse, or whatever the correct word is). Not that people would go only to three- and four-star rated restaurants, but that they would avoid one-star rated restaurants (say, in favor of similar places that they have personal knowledge of or that their friends could recommend from experience). Thus, "starred" reviews can become useless if not counterproductive at the level of inexpensive places of limited pretense, because even favorable reviews can turn readers off rather than encouraging readers to visit. In other words, someone who's never otherwise heard of Pylos could decide not to go there on the basis of its only having received one star. To make it more concrete, think of something like what appeared to happen to Pan. You or I or Pan, reading the review, proposes Pylos as a dining spot to a friend. The friend says, "Are you kidding? That only got one star from the Times this week. Why would I want to go to a restaurant that's only one step above 'Satisfactory'?" So instead, you go to, say, Col Legno yet again. Which is fine, but it would have been nice to try someplace new that looked promising. I've never been Pylos, so I don't know how good it is. But doesn't that strike you as a "wrong" dining decision just based on the review?

I think the other thing about Michelin is that everybody understands that Michelin is very selective -- that it's an honor just to be listed in Michelin, much less to receive even one star. In such circumstances, people understand that even one Michelin star is a very high rating and that a restaurant must be special to get it. The Times and New York are different. They're periodicals. Their mission is to review lots of places, good and bad. Not just to recognize the extraordinary. So a lot of people assume (I think) that one star means a place is no better than OK. If the Times really applied the star system rigorously according to its terms, there'd be a lot more "Satisfactory" ratings and a lot fewer two-star ratings. (To be painfully clear, this is a separate criticism from my main issue with the star system, which is my problem with the star categories' signifying types of restaurants instead of just quality levels -- even though I recognize that the star system couldn't really work any other way.)

Once again, though, Oakapple, you're assuming that people understand that "three" and "four star" restaurants are types of restaurant and not a shorthand designation of a qualitative judgment within types. I'm not sure most people understand that. It isn't intuitive. Sure, if you read enough "starred" reviews and think about them hard enough you can come to some kind of general understanding (although I must be stupid because I didn't really get it until I read Fat Guy explain it here). But to me a shorthand code like the star sytsem is only useful if it's transparent. I.e., if you have to think hard about it to understand it, it fails in its mission and is rather, if anything, counterproductive.

No offense, but I don't think Rosa Mexicana is any good at all. A few years ago, I'd have recommended Maya, but that place is getting pretty tired. Now, I'd say Centrico (in Tribeca). If you don't mind limiting yourself to fish, Pampano is also very good.

I should add that when I've tried to explain the way the Times star system works, based on the understanding I've gleaned from Fat Guy and others on this board, to people who aren't the type of people who read boards like this, they too have dismissed that explanation as "convoluted bullshit". (Hey, maybe those guys have their own board, since they all seem to use the same terminology and all.)

Thanks, Pan. That's exactly what I've been trying to say, but you said it better.

1. You do at least me too much credit. I found the NY Times star system incredibly confusing until I realized that it is designed to rank luxury establishments and to either underrate or ignore other types of places. I think a problem with the star system is that in order to understand it you have to think about it. I guarantee you that a lot of people would have trouble grappling with the concept that a restaurant that gets one star can be better, for what it is, than a restaurant that gets two stars. 2. Moreover, unlike the NY Times reviews, NY Mag (which incorporates Cue) has a comprehensive list. You say that they don't list "counters in the backs of delis," but if you look at their list, you'll see that they do include places like that. Selectively to the point of being random, but they're there. It's been argued on this board that places like, say, Grand Sichuan International, excellent as they are, are not appropriate for starred NY Times reviews, because they don't fit into the star system. Rather, they're left for "$25 and Under". NY Mag's comprehensive listing could not appropriately be similarly limited. (This criticism will vanish if NY Mag limits the stars to the main reviews, but not to the Underground Gourmet and the comprehensive listing. Time will tell, but I think the stars will tend to expand even if they're initially limited that way.) 3. You say that adding a lower star to apply to casual places will resolve some of these complications. My point is that they won't. Giving, say, Grand Sichuan International only one star in a star system is confusing, I'd contend, because it implies that it's "worse" than all the two star restaurants, which isn't true (it's just less prepossessing). It only makes sense if the reader understands that the system isn't designed to rank quality in and of itself, or quality within restaruant categories, but rather is designed to rank luxury dining establishments. I know I'm getting repetitive, but I don't believe that the foregoing is widely understood, and moreover I think it takes too much thought -- more thought than casual readers are likely to put in -- to understand. So instead of making things easier, the star system makes things harder, IMO.