Sneakeater

Yeah. Funny thing what a bad rep this very good place has.

I'm going to quote this definition because it supports me: http://www.epicurious.com/cooking/how_to/f...y/entry?id=5063 I'm also going to admit that if you go onto the net you'll find several definitions that tend to support FG and DaveH. (I have to say that the idea of offal as a mutable category had never occurred to me.)

Wait a minute. In what way isn't head cheese offal? As for sweetbreads, it sounds to me like you're such a hardcore offalhead (that's a compliment) that you push the mainstream into the margin. (Meaning that most people would consider sweetbreads quintessential offal.)

Oh, excuse me. That should have been: Sneakeater definitely thinks that the solution to the objectification of women is to have more objectification of men.

Do you all think sir would feel better if I started doing this to sir? ← Oh, yeah. I definitely think the solution to the objectification of women is to have more objectification of men.

But again (and I don't want to stretch this out), while I was addressed as "sir", I was never addressed as "sir" in the third person. They never asked, "Did Sir like his pork belly?" And my other point is, the fact that I noticed this shows that it's simply not the norm in upper-end NYC restaurants. And my third point is, I'm not really complaining about this, but merely using it as an example of how retro this restaurant is -- both in ways I enjoyed and in ways I didn't. But it's probably silly to talk about this any longer.

Yeah, but of all my servers, only ONE (a German) wasn't a native English speaker. Most of these people seemed to come from either England or the Midwest. My point is, it's an AFFECTATION. They're aping "Continental" service. In some ways it's charming. In others it's creepy.

But that's a different issue than the one we're discussing, right? You could be completely principled, in that sense, and still feel constrained to review restaurants too "early" for some tastes.

For starters, you're setting up a strawman. Frank Bruni's reviews of 3-month-old restaurants aren't press releases. They would more fairly be called "early views."Anyhow, although Leonard will no doubt have the exact percentage, we all know that the vast majority of NYT reviews are of fairly recently opened restaurants. You've once again set up a false dichotomy: a review can also have news content, and often does. But I do agree that, whether we like it or not, much of the public does consider the NYT review definitive.I think the problem here is not the date of the first NYT review, but the infrequency of re-reviews. It is neither realistic nor sensible to expect the paper of record to keep quiet for a whole year after a restaurant opens. There simply is no precedent—nor should there be—for a daily newspaper to remain silent for that long. If an establishment is open to paying customers, then it should be open to reviewers too. No, the real problem is that, once issued, the NYT review becomes the paper's "permanent" published opinion of the restaurant, and in most cases won't be updated for many years (or ever). As Leonard Kim has often reminded us, in the Mimi Sheraton era, two reviews per week was the norm, and it could sometimes be as many as five or six. Return to this system, and the Times would be able to update its ratings much more frequently. I also think the Times would need to reduce the number of visits required to issue a rating. Anecdotal evidence suggests that Frank Bruni pays six visits or more to each restaurant he reviews. This invariably means that each review requires a substantial investment of both time and money. Especially in the case of re-reviews, he has to be rather sure that there's a new story to tell before he makes that investment. If there were a lower barrier to re-reviews, they could be issued a lot more often. ← I think oakapple has nailed it here. Who knows, maybe that new bi-weekly bottom-of-the-review-page format they've instituted will help ameliorate this.

Rich, it's like a cardinal sin to confuse Del Posto with Babbo.

I agree with this wholeheartedly.

Today - madame is simply a polite French/sometimes Continental way to refer to a woman who is too old to be a mademoiselle (most women past college age) - whether or not she is married. Just like a polite way to refer to the same type of woman in the southeast US is m'am. And in Spanish - it would be senora. Etc. Robyn ← To clarify, I find referring to women in the third person as kind of creepy. I believe they addressed me as "you".

Daniel would say Gino. Just because we don't know doesn't mean we should send this guy to some sham chain.

Rich'll say Parkside in Queens. This is just a spaceholder until he does. (You can't SERIOUSLY be recommending Carmine's, can you?)

Amato doesn't get reviewed, but other small companies do, at least when they do something notable. There used to be one called "Opera at the Academy" (on Lafayette St.) that got reviewed pretty frequently. Another downtown company's production of an early Rossini opera just got reviewed recently. There are plenty of others. The Julliard and Manhattan Schools of Music put on full-scale opera productions frequently, and they often get reviewed. As do other schools on occassion. Here's that Rossini review (just to prove it exists): http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/27/arts/music/27goth.html (I'll also note that, while the review linked above doesn't establish this, if it weren't for smaller companies, there would be practically no contemporary opera performed in New York. And you can bet that when contemporary opera gets performed, it gets reviewed.)

You could actually make an argument that the two major opera companies are the UES and UWS of the opera world, and the many smaller producers (the music schools, the small local companies, etc.) are like the smaller restaurants you refer to.

I'm so old I remember when that grape was always called Pinot Chardonnay.

The existence of web archives has kind of messed this up, but the whole point of newspaper reviewing at least used to be that it's disposable but current. That's what newspapers do (did?). You wouldn't look to even the best newspaper movie reviewer for the kind of in-depth (and non-current) criticism you'd find in the film journals. It's just a different hing. I'd argue the same for newspaper restaurant reviews. They should mainly be current (i.e., "news"). Serious, in-depth criticism should have other venues.

I guess what I'm saying is that the kind of restaurant criticism FG is talking about COULD exist (in one of the magazines, maybe). But not in a newspaper.

But in a way that's the difference between serious criticism and newspaper reviewing. Serious criticism of performing arts gets published in journals and special-interest magazines and is not necessarily tied to openings. But newspapers print news. They HAVE to serve a consituency rather than the cause of good criticsm.

Another detail to mention. Throughout the meal, the entire service staff kept referring to my date -- a 30-year-old woman who looks younger and couldn't possibly be construed to be my wife -- in the third person, as "madame", with the accent on the second syllable. Even though none was French (one was German, one was British, and the rest were American). I alternated finding it charming and creepy. Where -- at least at places that are serious -- do you see that any more in New York?

I've never eaten at Per Se, and I'm answering this as of right now, 12:21 AM on April 26, 2007 (I might answer differently in an hour) (when, like, maybe I'll feel better disposed to Daniel -- which I really like -- or less jaded about Le Bernardin). But, as of right now: Jean Georges Eleven Madison Park Sushi Yasuda (If I had drunk more with dinner tonight, maybe I'd say Momofuku Ssam. But that would just be japery.)

I loved -- LOVED -- the beef offal soup, but it made my lips hurt. I'm not sure I'd call it "mildly spiced". It has an afterkick.

Oh, and my date REALLY LIKED the bathroom. (But she grew up under Communism, so she might be easily impressed in that regard.)

Another thing I forgot to mention (which is actually pertinent to Bryan's last post) is that, consistent with previous reports, the clientele when I was there Monday night was disproportionately English.