Sneakeater

Oh, and I forgot to note, from the list of daily specials: SUNDAY BOLLITO MISTO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That was incredibly wordy. The bottom line is that the irony is that all these McNally restaurants are incredibly fashionable places that nevertheless serve solid straightforward ungimmicky high-quality food. What a concept.

Keith McNally runs a string of places that are better by far than they have any need to be. It displays almost insane integrity, for example, to maintain any level of quality at all at Pastis, which would be wildly successful if it served up little plates of dog turds (French Poodle, in keeping with its strict attention to Gallic detail) to its heatseeking clientele. But yet, Pastis is quite good. And Balthazzar. When that place first opened, the whole idea struck me as so Disneyland, I actively resisted going there for almost a year. Finally, my wife insisted that I stop being such a stick and dragged me there. Who knew it would be so good? So now there's Morandi. I suppose it was inevitable that McNally would eventually try Italian. It's difficult to conceive of how this restaurant could be a failure. And guess what? It isn't. The only question I'm having trouble wrestling with is just how good I think it is. Is it a very high-level functional neighborhood Italian? Is it something more than that? I think I tend toward the former -- and I mean no slight by saying that, since I'm sure that's pretty much what was intended. The room itself is perfectly Italian-seeming, with the same attention to detail that makes Balthazzar such a perfect reproduction of a brasserie in Paris. You can argue over questions of authenticity and whether this is even a respectable goal to accomplish. But you can't dispute that these are great rooms to be in. The drinks list is excellent. Best list at a McNally place yet, IMO. So now the food. I've read references to its being Sicilian-influenced, but I didn't see that at all. As Nathan said, it seemed mainly Northern (although the fried artichokes of course come straight from the Roman ghetto). I've never had Jody Williams's food before. She's very good, in an unsurprising straightforward way. Italian comfort food at a very high level. I'll add some additional comments to what Nathan said about the food. The skate dish was my favorite. It was Skate in Saor -- a variation on the classic Venitian Sardelle in Saor (sardines in a tangy/sour vinegar sauce). The skate took well to this preparation. It was a good idea that worked. I wanted the pasta dish mainly because I've been reading the Alto Adige food thread here on eGullet (not that the menu identified its regional provenance -- or that of any other dish). I thought it was a bit bland -- maybe she should have used more cabbage or something -- but that blandness might actually be true to the style of cooking up there. It is interesting that the pasta was made from rye. Not that I tasted that, particularly. The only thing that bothered me about the rabbit is that they neglected to give us any bread with which we could have sopped up the fantastically delicious lardo broth. So where does this place sit in the scheme of things? I had dinner the night before in Sfloglia on the Upper East Side. I think I've underrated that place in the past. It's very very good. But still essentially a very high-level neighborhood place. Morandi is the same. The ingredients aren't as fine, the technique isn't as painstaking, and the conceptions aren't as interesting as at A Voce (a restaurant that's just worth going out of your way for). I'll note that if you can't get into Morandi, you can walk a few blocks and have a meal that will be slightly less interesting, but just as well-prepared, at Barbutto. I guess what I'm trying to say with all this is that there's a disjunction between the assertedly modest goals of Morandi and the incredible fashion frenzy attending the opening. It'll reach equilibrium in time. Meanwhile, the people in the room (other than me) sure were attractive.

I think the insinuation that I live in Brooklyn because I don't care enough about eating out to buy an apartment I can't afford in Manhattan is the most annoying comment in a recent thread.

I usually go to the Burger Joint in the Parker Meridien before City Center. Sometimes I eat at the bar at Molyvos. It's not well known that there's an affordable pre-theater menu at Estiatorio Milos, virtually next store.

For all of which we should be profoundly grateful.

I wonder why we're even talking about this.

Listen: off-topic, but when I referred to the "is cuisine art?" discussions, I didn't mean that anyone should let the specific views of aestheticians (if they've expressed any) close the discussion. I just meant that it seems naive to me (to put it charitably) to discuss whether something is art without any reference to the criteria that have been generated over the centuries for making that precise determination. Of course, people with knowledge of cuisine have a lot to contribute -- and the opinions of an aesthetician ignorant of cuisine would be worthess. But equally worthless are the opinions of someone who knows a lot about cuisine but nothing of aesthetics, because they don't know how to frame the issue. This sounds like I'm talking about hairdressers. (It's kind of like when people with no knowledge of Constitutional Law -- or apparently, of the contents of the Constitution -- argue whether or not something is unconstitutional [which to them usually seems to mean the same thing as "unfair"]. They may know a lot about the particular subject matter, but if they don't know anything about the Constitution, their opinion just isn't very meaningful.)

I tried to make that point above. I'm sorry if I wasn't clear.

You know what constitutes restaurant criticism (as opposed to reviewing)? Those posts where Fat Guy synthesizes some combination of elements and generates a theory that clarifies either a restaurant in particular or a restaurant trend.

I'm not sure that any of us should respect that.But Marc, that is EXACTLY the kind of pseudo-populist know-nothingism that we all criticize Bruni for (and frankly beneath you). You wanna just disregard the work of people whose actual job it is to think hard about this stuff (i.e., what is criticism? what is the function of criticism)? Fine. But don't wear it like a badge of honor. A. If restaurant criticism exists, it exists in periodicals that exist to discuss food and restaurants, that do it in a topical, general way. Are there such things? I assume there are. (I am NOT talking about Gourmet, obviously.) Food criticism certainly exists, since there's an existing magnum opus by Brillat-Saverin (hope I spelled that right). (BTW, guys, spring for the M.F.K. Fisher translation.) B. Bruni can write criticism in his periodic think-pieces. He chooses to write journalism instead -- which is a valid choice that I'm not criticizing. But the most brilliant food writer in the world couldn't write criticism in a short weekly review column. It's a different function.

I don't want to sound snobby, but it just seems to me that talking about (let alone denying) the critic/reviewer distinction without having read any of the shelvesfull of materials about it -- or, as also happens, talking about whether cuisine can be art without having read any of the shelvesfull of materials on "how do you define what can be art?" -- is sort of like Frank Bruni writing restaurant reviews.

That's just loose terminology. I mean, you don't expect daily newspapers to respect the critic/reviewer distinction that academics created pretty much for the express purpose of dissing daily newspapers.

Think of it this way. This isn't a qualitative distinction as much as it's a category distinction (although most people would agree that one category is better than the other). Like you can have a one-star restaurant that's better at being a one-star restaurant than a certain two-star restaurant is at being a two-star restaurant. But the one-star restaurant's extraordinary success at being a one-star restaurant doesn't make it a two-star restaurant (or didn't until Bruni). Or, Laurent Tourondel is a hamburger chef when he does BLT Burger and a three-star chef when he does (did) Cello. It's a category distinction.

If there is such a difference in theory, it is not rigorously observed by any Times critic, in any field where it employs them.It's not up to the WRITER to follow the distinction. It's up to the reader, to know what they're getting. ← And what you do indeed get is a mixture of both. The distinction depends on the circumstances, as well as the knowledge and insight the writer brings to bear on the subject. ← It doesn't, though. Andre Bazin, writing a movie review on deadline the night the movie opened, would have been fuctioning as a reviewer, even though his general status as a critic is indisputable.

If there is such a difference in theory, it is not rigorously observed by any Times critic, in any field where it employs them.It's not up to the WRITER to follow the distinction. It's up to the reader, to know what they're getting. But really, Times writers mainly write about events, on deadline. That's classic reviewing. Sometimes, they get to write "Critic's Notebook" thinkpieces. And some of them (like Rothstein) only write thinkpieces like that. That's closer to criticism. (I'll spot you that given the restaurant reviewer's choice of what to write about each week, and hence control over his deadline, it's not strict deadline "reviewing" in the absolute classic sense.)

Also, one thing I'll disagree with: I think the percentage of the people who actively read the Times's dance reviews who go to a lot of dance is a lot greater than the percentage of the people who actively read the Times's main restaurant reviews who eat out a lot in "review"-level restaurants. I think a lot of people read the Times restaurant reviews for general interest, or as porn. I don't think a lot of people who aren't actively interested in dance follow the dance reviews. I think some of the evidence for that is that the Times could never get away with having a dance reviewer who's as ignorant about dance as Bruni is ignorant about food.

But the thing is, in the end, that you expect a level of expertise from reviewers, too. That's where Bruni fails.

"Critic" v. "reviewer" isn't some new concept Nathan cooked up for the purpose of this thread. It's this standard accepted distinction.

I love David Chang's food (and like the music he plays) but I wouldn't take a single word he says to the media straight. He's obviously too smart for that.

What really bugs me about this is that Chowdorow's blog (for the second or so he will bother to maintain it) won't be a tenth as good as Bruni Digest was. Jules, why why why did you have to move to Chicago?

Rich -- have you LOOKED at the Voice after its recent acquisition???????????????????

"Critic" v. "reviewer": spot on. You know what? I didn't even notice that thing when I read the Times this morning. I just filtered it out as noise. It wasn't until I logged onto eGullet that I realized that this momentous event in the New York food scene had occurred.

I'm definitely in the camp that says this is pretty much a non event. Rich egomaniacs purchase vanity advertorials in newspapers all the time, and most of the time nobody cares. ← I definitely go to camp with you guys.

With all respect to William Grimes, calling him the preeminent historian of the cocktail is sort of like calling Mark Kurlansky the preeminent historian of the cod.