Sneakeater

I also think someone has to make the obvious comment about the cascading effects of prior inflated ratings. I know Frank Bruni appears to have been trying to rein himself in lately, but I wouldn't be surprised if part of his thinking was: "Well, I gave Little Owl two stars, and the food at The Bar Room at the Modern is clearly better than Little Owl's, and service/ambiance is no worse, so The Bar Room must be three stars." The problem then would be all those ridiculous two-stars Bruni was strewing about last year.

This is great news for this restaurant. I'll go anywhere Chef Kaplan goes. That said, I had dinner a few nights ago in the Enoteca. On the one hand, the $41 four-course prix fixe (which now consists of your choice of any one item from each of their courses), with $19 wine pairings, is a great deal. On the other hand, the food is stilll maddeningly inconsistent. You might say, "how much can you complain for $41 for four courses?," but still, I've never had a meal in the Enoteca where more than one of the savories really stood out. Especially now that Nicole Kaplan is there, I'm going to keep going back -- you really can't argue with $41 -- but I wish it were better. Mainly, though, I think it's ironic that I now go to the restaurant that was supposed to vault Italian food into the highest reaches of haute for its bargain pricing. (PS -- I'm told the bolito misto cart is BACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) (Only on weekends.)

I probably shouldn't answer for FG, who I'm sure has already posted something smarter than this in the remaining segment of this thread that I haven't read yet, but . . . . The problem with this review is that it shortchanges Daniel Humm's achievement at EMP. EMP has been given a side-by-side review with a completely incomparable restaurant. They both received the same ranking, but not in a way that sheds any particular light on EMP (and in fact tends to favor the Bar Room). Being given three stars alongside the Bar Room sort of devalues EMP. I mean, read the review. Do you think it conveys the excitement that EMP deserves? (I agree with vivin that the paragraph toward the end, where he says there's always a dish or two he keeps wanting to talk about the next day, EXACTLY conveys what I feel about EMP. But IMO it just gets lost.) Also, it has to be said, from a business perspective, when two places get the same rating at the same time, and one of them is much cheaper than the other, how much does that devalue the review for the more expensive place? I'll bet Chef Humm is pretty disappointed with this turn of events.

I've been working round-the-clock for the last three or four weeks (with the occasional break for things like eating an inhuman amount of pig). Tonight I literally fell asleep at my computer as I was assembling yet another very-important-to-someone-but-perhaps-not-so-much-to-me appellate brief. I figured I'd have someone make me dinner and then go home to sleep before two or three in the morning for a change. But who? I figured that this would be last time I could easily get a bar seat at The Bar at the Modern for a while, in view of what I assumed would be their highly favorable two-star New York Times review. So I walked over and had my usual very satisfying The Bar at the Modern experience. It really is one of the great dining values in New York. As I was finishing dessert, the bartender plopped a champagne flute in front of me and said, "I hope you won't mind if I treat you to a glass of champagne. We just got three stars from The Times." Mind? Send me to a hospital if I ever mind. (It was good champagne, too.) After I left, though, in the cold dark of night, I had to think to myself: "Three stars for The Bar at the Modern?????????? Is he fucking nuts???????????????"

You might want to rethink the 205 recommendation.

For the record, I didn't mean to state that Brooklyn was the restaurant incubator for Manhattan. I meant that it was a place where chef-owners were more able than in Manhattan to follow their own wishes because fixed costs were lower. If anything, chef-owners would escape TO Brooklyn from Manhattan -- not work their up to Manhattan from Brooklyn.* (I am ONLY talking within the last several years.) Now, unfortunately, Brooklyn seems to be developing something of a cookie-cutter style. In other words, the analogy would be Brooklyn's Off-Broadway to Manhanttan's Broadway (rather than Brooklyn's being the old preview circuit to Manhattan's Broadway). _____________________________________________________ * Yeah yeah, before someone else points it out, I know about Hubert's in the 80s.

Yeah. That's what I love about it. It keeps changing, and it keeps getting better.

Actually, I think you should make it a circuit and end your visit at Room 4 Dessert (about two blocks from Balthazar) for a late dessert. I guarantee you your girlfriend will love it. I guarantee you'll love it, too.

Brunch at Balthazar is great. Don't deny yourself just cuz it's famous. Be sure to make reservations, that's all. As for shopping, Soho and Nolita (the neighborhoods around Balthazar) are great for that, if that's what your girlfriend likes. Bloomingdale's is, like, the least interesting of it. (But I'm not the guy to say any more than that.) And, by the way, if you're driving, don't go to any of those restaurants that I hear will serve you alcohol. (NY Board in-joke. Sorry.)

She'll REALLY kill you when you get to the Shake Shack and discover that it closed for the season two months ago.

So then my point is that there's a distinction to be made between opening various branches of "concept" restaurants and just opening your restaurant in another location (usually moving it). I don't think Le Bernadin really fits into the current model. Places like Morimoto, Buddhakan, etc., are concepts as much as they're restaurants. You can tell that they were sort of made to be cloned. Same applies to Atelier Robuchon. And while the Ramsay places look more like normal restaurants, it's really a TV-certified "brand." They didn't even have that in the 80s. I guess what I'm saying is that I think it's more the "concept" part than the "branch" part that we (or at least I) tend to object to. The new breed of "cloned" "concept" restaurants are places that appear to have no felt need to exist: they're just marketing concepts. I think that's what people find objectionable about them, not that they're originally from outside the City. (Indeed, I think that this is the root of many people's skepticism about the new Russian Tea Room, which is as indigenous as they come: it seems so clear that it was developed more as a brand exploitation than because Gary Robins had any real desire to cook Russian-inflected food.) (Indeed, I continue to contend that this is the primary reason why Del Posto has yet to be embraced by the New York foodie community: it, too, seems more like a pure marketing concept --and not a very good one -- than like anything Batali and Bastianich felt "had" to be done.) (I don't think Sfoglia really fits into this discussion either.)

I'm sorry if this is too trivial, but just as a point of fact as to one example that's been advanced here, did the Le Cozes open a branch of the Paris Le Bernadin in New York, or move operations here? I always thought it was the latter. If I was supposed to know that a Le Bernadin remains open in Paris, I apologize for my ignorance. Also, have they opened other "Le Bernadin"s elsewhere in the U.S.? I know about the Brasseries Le Coze in Atlanta and, formerly, Coconut Grove. But are there any other Bernadins? I thought not. I'll make the import of this clearer if it turns out I'm right on the facts.

Le Bernadin is next!!!!!!! ********************************************* NEW YORK POST COPS SHUT DOWN TWO NIGHTCLUBS By Angela Montefise and Mellissa Jane Kronfeld January 6, 2007 -- The hammer came down on Crobar and the lights went out at Sol last night as police shuttered the two West Side nightclubs for numerous violations. Crobar, located at 530 W. 28th St., and Sol, a block away at 609 W. 29th St., were closed at 10 p.m. "This sucks," said DJ Dave Singh, 25, who was set to greet the crowd at Crobar. "I basically had at least 50 or 60 people coming here. . . I'm definitely disappointed." At Crobar, police cited nine instances of violence last year, including two women who were both shot in the legs July 23, several arrests for drugs - mostly ecstasy and cocaine - and three State Liquor Authority violations for serving minors. Sol was cited for eight drug arrests, two SLA violations and "numerous assaults," including two people stabbed in June, police said. Even as they raided Sol, cops said they found two men in the DJ booth rolling a marijuana joint with coke out in the open. Representatives of both clubs have to appear in court Wednesday if they hope to reopen.

Thurgau

Fuck. I'm sure it's that. It is profoundly embarrassing that there's something that could have referred to either Dashiel Hammet or Sylvia Fucking Plath, and I picked Plath. I can never show my face in public again. My apologies to the proprietors of Death and Company for implying that they're lame. (PLEASE let me in again anyway.) (PS -- It's a short story, not a novel, right?)

I like this place a lot. I think I marginally prefer Pegu Club because it seems more "adult" to me (probably a function of its location, and hence the crowd it attracts, although also its decor -- and it seems less cramped). But OTOH, the daquiri with the mescal is a work of genius. These guys are REALLY good. I'm going to be here A LOT. (If I can get in, I guess.) (Re: the name -- it's from Sylvia Plath, right?)

Although, to be fair, it seems likely that small focussed menus are a fairly recent development. Do you remember that Menu exhibition they had at the New York Public Library a year or two ago? Around the turn of the last century, menus were VAST (and, as someone noted in some other thread here, almost entirely a la carte).

This may be veering slightly off-topic, but the way "young people" view restaurants these days kind of mystifies me. I was at an arts reception recently at one of the downtown NYC club-restaurant barns, and I was talking to this mid-20s i-banker/financial services type. He asked me what I thought of the restaurant and I said I thought its menu was much too vast and that it was too much work to try to suss out the good things. I added that I thought menus that big were a bad idea, because nobody could do so many things well. It made it seem to me that they didn't take their food seriously. He looked at me quizically. "If the menu doesn't have everything," he said, "how can you go out with a group and know that everybody'll find something they like?"

Sorry. That was in answer to K8memphis, not to you.

In honor of this thread, I had a teroldego with dinner a couple of nights ago. It was interesting. I liked it a lot immediately, but I liked it less as the bottle went on.

Rack & Soul B'way & 110th St.

Yeah. That's why there's a Brooklyn. (Or at least, there used to be a Brooklyn.)

I thought that was the whole reason we had separate boards.

OK: u.e. and Pan.

Smoke Joint. Uneven but on the whole very good barbecue. The owners are the nicest guys you could imagine.