Sneakeater

...and that is supposed to give him a pass? ← It's more like, why start and stop with him? Believe me, Sean Delonas's cartoons are a lot more offensive than some real estate reporter (sorry rich) calling food "weird".

We're talking about the Post, aren't we?

It wasn't a review. It was an article about how weird the food at Varietal is.* I don't see how it would make anything clearer to his expected readership to refer to an even weirder restaurant that they've never heard of in a city halfway across the country. _____________________________________________ * His point -- not mine. I did think the desserts were pretty weird, though. Not that I (unlike Cuozzo) necessarily think that's bad -- although I tend to be closer to JohnL than to docsconz on that subject.

I'm not wanting to be an apologist for Cuozzo, but in the context of writing for the Post, I'm not sure that a reference to Alinea would have been appropriate. And FWIW, I'll bet money Cuozzo has heard of Alinea and knows Kahn has worked there.

I think there's a severe disjunction between the savory menu and the dessert menu. It's almost like two different restaurants. I don't think you can say anything about the "menu as a whole" here.

Joel Robuchon doesn't have a TV show.

I mean, even Daisy ordered the Chicken Kiev. Can't work.

You know, appropos of nothing, restaurant people are really remarkable in their ability to remember people. There have been two separate occassions recently where I made second visits to restaurants after fairly long gaps (in one case, two months; in the other, six months) and the owner or manager not only recognized me, but was able to point out where I'd sat and what I'd ordered.

I made that point to the owner last night (before the review came out). He did not seem particularly convinced. The main reason I stopped in last night (it was completely last-minute spur-of-the-moment) was that I figured that it would become hard to get in for a while after the review.

BAD SIGNS: It's on Seventh Avenue (the "bad restaurant" strip) (there are exceptions). The ridiculous English name. GOOD SIGN: They serve chapulines.

I don't think they're happy with it. Their ambitions are obviously higher than one star. Neroni drips ambition. And the whole point of hiring him was to make this a "serious" "accomplished" restaurant. FWIW, I personally think one star is what they deserve. And I think they should be happy with it. I just don't think they are. It's very funny that you'd say that, since one thought that popped into my head as I was eating last night -- I swear this is true -- was, "rich would hate this."

It's a peculiar statement. Instead of admitting that he employs such a curve, he says that the restaurant isn't "asking" to be graded on one. While there may be some restaurants that are grateful for his earlier largesse, which restaurants is he saying ever asked for that?Maybe he was just talking back to Eater. (This review was filed unusually late. I grabbed dinner at the bar at Porchetta last night, figuring it might be at least interesting to be there when the review came out, and when I left at about 10 they were still waiting for it.)

So average that you were able to have a full meal at the Fatty Crab right afterward.

Courtney Love?

So do we agree that he's admitting that he grades on an "outer-borough curve"?

Apparently Frank Bruni has entered his baroque, reflexive period: "But Porchetta isn’t at all traditional. It chases an edginess that other Italian restaurants in its area don’t have in their sights. It’s not doing a tame, by-the-numbers number and asking to be graded on an outer-borough curve."

Really, it's a no-brainer.

And what's ironic is that the food portion of the review is actually very cogent.

I hear that even the reputable merchants are watching their respective asses at customs now, owing to a current (hopefully temporary) crackdown (although they continue to minimize your risk by guarantying the shipment).

It's hit-or-miss. Sometimes I'm there and the bar is packed. Sometimes I'm there and the bar is practically empty. I have no idea if there are any set-asides at all for walk-ins. (The only time I ever tried to go without a reservation, there was no room for me. But that might just be my own luck.)

I'd recommend Wolfgang's as well.

Just wanted to publicly recognize what I considered to be an excellent -- textbook, really -- response to a service snafu on the part of the Blue Hill staff. I went there Sunday night with a date who has Celiac Disease. She can get very sick if she eats gluten. We told the waiter her limitation when we ordered. Fortunately, the entree she wanted -- venison on pureed jerusalem artichoke -- contained no gluten. Unfortunately, they brought her a plate of lamb on cracked wheat instead. She's only recently started eating meat, and so was unable to recognize the taste-and-texture difference between the lamb and her venison. I, on the other hand, was looking only at her and at the pork on my own plate (which I'll note, in case she sees this, bore no resemblance to each other), so I didn't notice that the stuff under her meat looked kind of wheat-like and certainly not pureed. They realized their mistake after a few minutes, after we'd started in on our entrees. They whisked the plate away from her and replaced it with the correct one. A managerial type came over and told her what had happened, emphasizing that she had already eaten some gluten. They offered to run over to a drug store and buy her any over-the-counter drug that would help (this isn't treatable that way). They offered to get her to a hospital immediately, if necessary, and in any event to pay for any hospitalization that might prove to be necessary. (Happily, none was.) They comped us both our dinners (including a fairly pricey bottle of wine). They called her the next day to see if she was OK and if there was anything they could do to help her. Happily, she ate little enough of the wheat that there were no repercussions. Obviously, this was a fairly serious glitch, and if she had a severe allergy rather than a syndrome like Celiac Disease she could have been in serious trouble even though she had only eaten a tiny bit of the forbidden substance. Nevertheless, mistakes happen. What's important is the way places deal with them. The way Blue Hill dealt with this one was exemplary. I've always been on the fence about the food here: I appreciate its virtues, but have always found it just too subtle (if I weren't speaking in mixed company, I might say "bland" instead of "subtle"). But the way they conducted themselves Sunday night has now made me an enthusiastic supporter anyway. Places with this kind of attitude deserve to be patronized.

Well, if you're gonna put it THAT way: the restaurant was crowded one time I went, and full the other. (But those were both in the very early days of this iteration, before it started getting slammed by reviewers and, for all I know, word of mouth.)

You know, Kiz's post shows just how misguided it was for them to hire Gary Robins to helm their revivication. The kitchen couldn't make it clearer that they have no interest in cooking and serving Chicken Kiev, that that's not what they intend to be about now. Yet, even someone here -- where everyone can be assumed to be considerably more sophisticated than the average tovarich on the street -- orders it. Because everybody knows that's what you order in the RTR. What's the over/under on the current iteration of this place? Six months? Four months? (I'm going to have to go back a lot, because unlike most others, I like it.)

That just shows how much farther there is to go in developing an educated constituency for cocktails. (It's exciting, really.)