Sneakeater

We can be unpopular together because I completely agree with you.

So, just to make what I take to be an unstated premise clear, you're saying that a (if not "the") primary cause of the scarcity of reservations at "hot" spots is the practice of making multiple reservations and then either no-showing without cancelling or failing to cancel until the last minute?

It's pretty traditional for you to get a bunch of small dessert items (there are French terms for this that a barbarian like me doesn't know) along with your coffee at upper-level French restaurants. The only difference here is the cart.

The point is, these guys are taking something away FROM ME. Why shouldn't I be pissed off?

The difference between this and ebay is that ebay isn't interposing itself into an already existing system and making scarce commodities even scarcer. I'm affronted by the fact that this will now make getting reservations -- already much too hard -- even harder.

This point should not get lost. The food (or at least much of it) is REALLY good. (Let's give a shout-out to the stewed vegetables!) And the meal as a whole is sort of an adventure. I scared up the Peter Meehan review. Except for the fact that I'm not sure in what universe a meal at Tsukushi doesn't exceed $25, he also captures it well: http://events.nytimes.com/2005/05/11/dinin...ews/11unde.html

I don't want to stir up disagreement (especially because I agree that NTY reviews still have importance, albeit not the primary importance they once did), but I just want to note as a fact for the record that it was impossible to get into Little Owl even before Bruni reviewed it. The word was out. I think Little Owl could be a poster boy for the power of the net as an information-spreading medium.

I am reviving this thread only to note the ridiculous frequency with which I get comped desserts, wine, after-dinner drinks, lots of stuff when I eat alone at bars in restaurants. I'd honestly say it happens more often than not. Not places where I'm a regular, either: just as frequently at places I'm visiting for the first time. I think the largest part of it must be that I drink pretty heartily with and before dinner, which obviously is a big profit center for them. A smaller part is probably that, while my ignorance is palpable, my enthusiasm for food and drink is pretty obvious, and I'd guess they enjoy how into it I am (indeed, an ignorant enthusiast must be their ideal customer). Of course, I probably also radiate pathetic neediness. Experiences of other habitual solo bar diners?

God back in the day I loved B&S so much. It was like the Peaceable Kingdom. Except not so peaceable.

It's more than just Bruni. It's ingrained in current New York foodie/restaurant culture. You see it here. The way people say that time has simply passed a place like Chanterelle by. The way FG said that if JG (the restaurant, not the man) doesn't keep developing, but simply keeps on doing what it does at the same level of accomplishment, it will necessarily lose its fourth star. The "wow" factor means that there's something about the food that you haven't seen before. I don't know if I agree that that's a valid criterion for being considered one of the very top restaurants (or, rather, that it's valid that that's the primary criterion). But it there it is.

I've been on a three-and-a-half-year losing streak with ChikaLicious. Every single time I've gone there to eat it's been closed. Sure, I could walk by it on the way to somewhere else and it would be open. But everytime I've turned down East 10th St. with the intent to procure dessert: grating down. Until last night. I think I'm sorry I didn't get to this place until after Room 4 Dessert opened. Because Room 4 Dessert has simply raised the bar on what I expect from a dessert place like this. Everything was excellently prepared. But I wasn't astonished. Now, a couple of years ago, it wouldn't have occurred to me to expect to be astonished by dessert. But now that I have eaten of the tree of knowledge, I cannot go back. I'll let Bryan speak for me, because I think he got it just right:

Raji took a bunch of us here last month. Nobody's written about it yet. I think it's because, even though everybody liked it a lot, nobody really knew enough to know what to make of it. I was happy to find Todd's review from a few years ago, because it seems to capture Tsukushi really well. Tsukushi is on a surprisingly obscure stretch of East 41st St., just east of 2nd Ave., right before the street starts to go into Tudor City. As Todd says, it's unmarked and easy to miss. I don't mind the fact that there's no menu and they just bring you what they have on hand that night. In fact, I enjoy that. And I don't mind that you don't know what it'll cost, only because the price ends up being so reasonable. (OTOH, I would like to shoot the people behind Il Mulino, where you're sitting there minding your own business eating dinner and suddenly you find out you're in the hole for hundreds of dollars.) As for the food, I have no idea what to say about it. It's a type of food I've never eaten before -- something like Japanese home cooking (as opposed to restaurant cooking). Some things were better than others, but the good things were REALLY REALLY good. (I remember a cold soup with an egg in it as being one of the best things I ate last month.) We went during the week between Christmas and New Year's, when Tsukushi's regular Japanese expat clientele has pretty much vacated North America for Japan. I don't know if we'd even be able to get in otherwise. And I don't know whether non-Japanese-speakers can wander in and expect to be seated. So I don't know that I can recommend you actually go to this place. If you find yourself there, though, I think you'll be happy.

I ate at Kasadela last night for the first time. I enjoyed it very much. The room and the music are great. The staff is fun. The food is good -- although nothing near blow-away great, as at Yakitori Totto. Just good. (Compare the skewered beef tongue at the two places. At Totto, it's sublime. Here, it's slightly overspiced, and maybe slightly overcooked as well.) But all in all very enjoyable. Prices may be a little on the high side for an East Village izakaya, but still are gentle. And you get a great atmosphere in return. The sake selection is extremely well-curated, especially the specials. Now raji can tell me I don't know what I'm talking about.

I don't think that criticism arises from the cuisine. Instead, I think it's part of the "cheap Mexican restaurant" syndrome. People expect these places to be cheap, and so they are, and so they can't afford first-rate raw materials (especially proteins). It's really too bad.

I don't know which mental image to go with: this swarm of grasshoppers doggedly hopping up to Park Slope from southern Mexico, or the Twelve Plagues. (I can't wait to munch on the chapulines either.)

It's ridiculous to think that New York restaurant critics are using Gordon Ramsay to make a name for themselves. I also think it's ridiculous to suggest that New York critics don't know who Ramsay is beyond his television shows. Not having eaten there but only having read the reviews, I think Ramsay is running into two problems. First, his cuisine seems to be pretty traditional and non-innovative, which, as oakapple has pointed out, doesn't get you points from New York critics these days. Second, I think he opened just as people were beginning to get sick of the idea of all these satellite/import restaurants.

I should also say that the time I used the wine bar as a wine bar (it was a night during Christmas weekend, and we had the bar pretty much to ourselves), it was a very good experience. We had flights, the bartender/sommelier was engaged and engaging (and very informative) in discussing them -- it was fun.

I think JohnL pretty much nailed it. But I would add one thing. Contrary to their clear intention to have the bar function as a wine bar in the manner JohnL describes, at least the time that I ate at the bar there, everyone at the the jam-packed bar was clearly using it the way restaurant bars are typically used in New York these days: as a place for solo diners and walk-ins to take meals. You could see the sommelier/bartender's frustration, since he wanted to deal in flights and esoteric by-the-glasses, and everybody at the bar just wanted to eat. So I'd say there's another layer of confusion on top of the ones JohnL has identified.

I know this isn't what Gruzia is looking for, but I can't help but keep coming back to the thought that one of the very best places to eat in the whole City is right in the Museum . . . .

In re the carts, it's too bad Gruzia's going on a Saturday, since NYC's all-time greatest cart -- Hallo Berlin -- is right up the block from MOMA, but not on weekends. Oh well.

What really gets me about that kind of commentator on the BruniBlog is that their sense of self-worth must be so fragile, if it's so easily rattled. Like, "If I'm paying for dinner, how DARE Sapora d'Istria (sp?) make me buy bottled water at a cheap price rather than serving me tap water?" Like, "For $400 a meal, how DARE Per Se be hard to get a reservation at?" I mean, if you take everything as a slight . . . .

Fried grasshoppers are very Oaxaca. It's the local snack. When you go the market, there are mounds of them.

That drives me fucking crazy. Just complete batshit crazy.

Not quite. Wu Liang Ye is on 48th St. between 5th & 6th Aves. (south side of street). Grand Sichuan International is on 9th Ave. between 50th & 51st Sts. (west side of street).

It's not their readership so much as their approach. They're gonna adopt a whole different attitude for their food writing?