Sneakeater

My impulse is to say the peak. But since it's very difficult to get into most of the current eight or ten, I'd have to say that in reality the market is still underserved.

I think that's exactly right. What's more important and interesting is why there's this group of 8 or 10 places in the City that are categorically different from all other similar places.

For the very very little it's worth, I find your inability to "get" Death & Co. to date interesting, since to me it's the best of the field. I think this shows, among things, that these places are extremely variable, depending A LOT on who's manning or womanning the bar when you're there.

I think you got that exactly right.

The thing is, NYC's cocktail culture has matured, but even now I think you could pretty much do it ALL in a list of seven: Death & Co. PDT Tailor Pegu Clover Club Milk & Honey Flat Iron I personally just don't think there are enough contenders yet to merit a "Top 5", since it would be the top 5 out of at best 10 possibilities.

Why in the world would you expect a hip vibe on the UES?

If you walk over to Cafe Boulud you can make yourself very happy.

I believe lunch will consist entirely of burrito-like Korean items.

A HINT: Mix the mousse up, or at least spoon it from the bottom. That's where the foie component is. It's like the fruit in Dannon yogurt.

I went in for the ribs last night and they sent me to Ko instead. Oh well. (My waitress at Ko, when I told her how I came to end up there, said that she'd had the ribs the night before, and they were the best she'd ever had, too. "Go back soon for the ribs," she directed. "And don't let them send you here instead.")

Of course you're right about that.

Right. There's this demographic (I hate that word) of wealthy older people who are better traveled, and have eaten more serious food and drunk more serious wine, and know more about both, than any member of the youthquake that we're told has for the first time made food serious. I don't necessarily enjoy going to those oldline restaurants much myself. But I certainly respect the knowledge, experience, and sophistication of much of their cilientele.

I would think the Chowhound crowd are pricisely the people who know about this place. Is that wrong? I have to say that out of the innumerable times over the last several years I tried to get into SG for lunch, I succeeded precisely once.

Maybe there's a difference between a third and a half, or between Russia and other parts of the former Soviet bloc, but I really generally do tend to notice the food I'm eating.

This is key. There are a lot of places that SAY they're open till, say, 1. But you often get there at 12:30 and find they're already sweeping up and saying the kitchen is closed. It's a problem that restaurants don't distinguish, when listing their hours, between "closing time" as in the time they hope everybody'll be done by or as in the time the kitchen closes. And that restaurants with purportedly late closing times will start to close earlier if the night manager doesn't think they're busy enough.

Maybe the thread title should be changed to "Chef Tell Is STILL Dead".

The old one did, too, didn't it?

I don't see anything wrong with this policy at all.

I agree with LPShanet. For a while late last year and early this, Noodle Bar was seeming better -- fresher, somehow -- than Ssam Bar. But on the basis of my last couple of meals at each, I think Ssam Bar is back to being the better of the two. And it's certainly the more ambitious.

I've noticed this, too. (Last night, for example, I ate somewhere a few blocks from where you were -- Buenos Aires on 6th St. -- and: windows open, no air.) It's even worse when this year August started in mid-June.

I haven't yet been thrown out of anywhere for doing that.

What other reason was there?

It can't possibly be as ridiculously cheap as it was in Brooklyn, can it?

Right. The second time I was there, the floor staff was operating like (gasp) normal wait staff.

I've never been to Masa, but eating at a sushi bar in general is one of the very best solo dining experiences.