Sneakeater

Of course, ue could point that this is a red herring, since the business casualwear those guys were wearing would pass any dress code in New York.

Well, no, it's NOT a red herring. Because the only reason those places AREN'T filled with sweatpants and hoodies is that they have dress codes. I've been grateful the times that EMP has let me in to eat at the bar, impromptu, when I was dressed inappropriately (flannel shirt, wool pants). But I don't think I was doing the other diners in the room any favors. I agree with Jesikka that Americans tend not to know how to dress well casually (an irony, since we invented casual wear). I've mentioned this before, but 15 or 20 years ago, when the tide was first turning to office casual, the New York Times ran an article with contrasting pictures of three members of the management committee of Cadwalader Wickersham & Taft, one with them dressed business formal and one with them dressed business casual. In business suits, they all looked distinguished and well-tailored. In business casualwear, they looked like three dumpy overweight middle-aged men.

I'm not a critic. But I totally take into account what other people are wearing when I rate a restaurant, for my own purposes. And I find it actually a little hard to believe that other people don't. Are you guys all saying you REALLY don't care what the other people in the room are like when you eat? If I went to Le Bernardin, say, and everybody else was in sweatpants, you'd better believe it would bother me. Conversely, Ssam Bar wouldn't be Ssam Bar if everybody were wearing business suits.

Del Frisco's is an obvious loser. (Although part of the problem is that you're asking US, a bunch of people obssessively interested in food. Del Frisco's is VERY popular with the undiscerning business set. If that's what your group is, they'd probabably be HAPPIER at Del Frisco's than at the kind of place we'd all recommend.)

Just to keep it clear in the mix, per se reservations are not particularly hard to come by these days. It's way different from a couple of years ago.

I think you should decide this one on non-food grounds. Like, how much better would it be for you to have your kids there? How much would your kids prefer not to be there? (I like per se better than Jean Georges -- but I can't say I've ever regretted eating at Jean Georges.) DIDACTIC POST SCRIPT: The chef's name has a hypen in it -- but the restaurant's doesn't.

That's just arguing from authority. His job as a reviewer is to explain (if not persuade), not just to conclude. The fact that he thinks a restaurant is worth four stars is worth precisely nothing without a cogent explanation of why he thinks so. It's just sloppy for him to fail to explain his conclusion. Shoddy critical writing. I'm not disappointed -- this is what I've come to expect from him -- but I'm not going to accept it just cuz it's what he's always done.

I guess what I'm saying is that if I weren't already a tremendous fan of this restaurant, there's nothing in this review that would convince me to give it another chance. He doesn't explain the improvement. He just asserts it.

1. He asserts that the service has improved. He doesn't say HOW it's improved, or what was wrong with it before. 2. He asserts that the food is better. Again, he doesn't say HOW it's better, or what was previously lacking. 3. OK, he DOES say that Humm's use of "molecular" techniques has increased. Of course, that by itself wouldn't justify a promotion. Paul Liebrandt got an additional star by making his cooking simpler and more traditional.

Bruni said that repeated revisits convinced him that EMP still wasn't exceeding three-star performance in a blog post on December 31, 2008. Clearly, he'd been thinking about it as a possible four-star candidate, but wasn't yet convinced, as of last year. It seems pretty clear to me that Bruni wanted to appoint another four-star restaurant, but it took him a while to become convinced that EMP qualified.

Re-reviewing EMP can't be near the top of his list. (To be clear, I have no problem at all with Bruni's giving EMP a third review and augmenting its star rating. My only problem is with what to me is his failure to justify doing so in the text of the review. I think the stuff Oakapple quoted is mainly vague gobbledigook.)

Sounds like Pan has.

But then it couldn't be four-star. I think at the four-star level, to factor in "value" is BULLSHIT. Four stars should betoken sheer excellence.

Just in terms of the review itself, I think Fat Guy is clearly right that it leaves you wondering what changed to justify the extra star. Bruni asserts several times that the restaurant has improved, but I don't think he ever really satisfactorily explains concretely what the improvement has been. ETA -- This failure is especially galling since, just around the beginning of this year (if memory serves), Bruni mentioned in a blog post that EMP still didn't quite make it above three stars. Clearly, he's been thinking -- and possibly vacillating -- about its proper star rating for a while. So the question isn't only, what's changed since the last review, but what's changed since January? ETA -- This has nothing to do with the merits of the four-star rating. I'm only talking about the flaws I see in the review.

David Waltuck was around 30 when he got his four stars. (Slow afternoon at work.)

Jean-Georges Vongerichten was only 29 when he got four stars at Lafayette.

Daniel Boulud got four stars at Le Cirque when he was 32, the same age as Daniel Humm. (Actually, Humm might be 33 -- I don't know what his date of birth is, only that he was born in 1976.)

Nah. Eric Ripert was only 30 when he got his four stars. I'm sure there are others, but he was the first to spring to mind.

Hey, I was just being a devil's advocate. I'm so unimpressed by BHWS that I haven't even made it up to SB yet.

They're out of their minds.

The steakhouse is a bad analogy, because I've never had anything other than massive amounts of a single cut at any steakhouse.

He doesn't start till October. (Between Bruni and then, there'll be temps.) I think it's a given that Marea will be one of Bruni's last.

But to play the devil's advocate, truly good asparagus is just as good as truly good anything. Your position sounds perilously close to my father's saying that he couldn't see why anyone would be stupid enough to go to an expensive steakhouse, when my mother could make supermarket steak for much less money at home. You wouldn't want BHSB to serve "weird" ingredients just for the sake of being different, would you?

I've got four letters for you: THOR* Also, the sort of people who go to Table 8 will buy the food because Govind Armstrong is hot (and, I am informed, was on television). There's nothing in the food that's particularly "advanced" or hard to understand so as to turn them off. It's just better than it has to be. Good cocktails, in contrast, are a specialized taste that's hard to understand. Table 8 could make them, but nobody there would order them. You'd be surprised at what a hard sell gin is outside the world of cocktailians -- to say nothing about bitters. It's not an accident that there's exactly ONE gin cocktail on the Table 8 list -- and even that one is so sweet as to be virtually undrinkable. _____________________________________________ * A restaurant opened in the trendy The Hotel On Rivington a few years ago. Featuring an honest name chef, Kurt Gutenbrunner. The crowd at THOR didn't need, like, or understand Gutenbrunner's food. He officially lasted about a year there, although word on the street was that he was actuallly out within a couple of months. The difference between Gutenbrunner and Armstrong is that Armstrong is so photogenic. So he may get to stay at Table 8 for that reason.

I think we'll both have to dream that dream elsewhere.