Sneakeater

Just to keep things in the same thread, here's the post:

Or Craftsteak. Or Gilt. Or (I'd imagine) Lonesome Dove.

I usually think that speculating about business prospects is sort of beside the point, but FWIW I'd be very surprised if the RTR were still operating in its current form a year from now. I think that, in order for this experiment with Robins to have worked, they needed a great review from the Times. Look for it to dumb down pretty soon. If you're interested in trying Robins's menu concept,* I'd say you should go pretty soon. ________________________________________ * I'm not saying he's necessarily going to be fired. Only that the menu will change, a la Alta.

You're probably right. But then all I can say is that the whole idea of assigning stars to restaurants is retarded. Or at least overly reductive to the point where it becomes retarded.

And it's not just this review, either. Bruni has frequently been criticized for insufficiently supporting his conclusions. Also, to be clear, it's not that I'm disputing his one-star rating. I'm just criticizing the text of the review for not being clear as to how he reached it.

But that really is what the problem is with (a) the monolithic star system in general and (b) this review in particular. Under a star system, the main news is how many stars the place got. Here, it was one. You read the review to try to determine why. Mostly because some things aren't as important to you as they are to others. But also because things are contingent (what if that unfortunate wine incident hadn't happened to Bruni -- as it didn't to me?). So, in a sort of ironic way, the star system ends up putting a lot of pressure on the written review, as it has to explain the star rating. For people who care a lot more about food than service, how was the food? For people like rich who don't care much about ambiance, how much did ambiance count? Without explanations of all that, the star award can be very misleading. I think this review has engendered the kind of debate it has because it really isn't clear, on its face, what Bruni is saying about the various categories. Like Nathan, I read it as saying the food was either "high two" or "mixed three", but service brought it down to one, especially in view of price. But others obviously don't read it that way. Moreover, this isn't just empty Talmudic disputation. Many of us would go to even a fairly expensive place with bad service if we thought the food would be good enough. I think that's why this review has been subject to this kind of parsing.

"Enjoy" it while you can. I mean, for this week, at least, you're probably the most famous secret restaurant in the world.

Re: Bruni and Service Actually, the closest analogy is his recent blog entry about the new Turkish restaurant on Madison Avenue near the Library. The entry mentioned the food, but put its primary focus on some service lapses that were really unforgivable (e.g., spilling wine on a patron and not even apologizing for it). Not that I'm an apologist for RTR, but to me, this early on, that's the way to handle something like this. Note it in Diner's Journal, and give them a little time to get it together before doing a formal review. I guess his reasoning is, the food at that Turkish place is such that it probably will never warrant a full review, and in any event it certainly isn't a big-deal front-page-headline place like the new RTR.

But don't get me wrong. I agree with you, Nathan. When I read the review, my thought was, "he makes some negative general remarks about the food, but his specifics make it sound like he thought most of it was really exceptional."

I admit this is getting sick: "As for service, well, let’s get there by way of one of Mr. Somer’s pre-Freemans commercial enterprises. He designed T-shirts with cheeky messages. One said, 'My girlfriend is out of town.' Another: 'Emotionally unavailable.' That’s the shirt that should be worn by some of the servers, including the bossy, brittle man who wouldn’t let us order the artichoke dip and the Cheddar toast — a version of Welsh rabbit — while we studied the rest of the menu. "He said we needed to give our whole order at once, so our meal could be properly paced and we could have 'a much more pleasant experience.' Of course that prohibition had nothing to do with our enjoyment and everything to do with the kitchen’s convenience. It also had no place in a restaurant as studiously unfussy as Freemans, but it exemplified the real attitude here. Bartenders forgot drink orders. A hostess had all the cuddly charisma of Cujo."

And I must add, this isn't like ordering Cantonese or Shanghainese or Chinese-American dishes at Grand Sechuan. This is the Rusian Fucking Tea Room, for God's sake.

Of course it wasn't. But the problem is, they still serve it. And people still order it. Even if Robins is dragged into making it kicking and screaming, people are still paying good money to buy it.

Is that "Bruni" or "beyond"?

I'll just note that how critical you think Bruni was of the food at RTR depends in large part on how much you think the "coach not first class" "airline" chicken kiev counts. That was clearly his most damning criticism of the food -- and it was extremely damning. I have to say that I tend to think it doesn't count. I don't agree with Bruni for criticizing them for doing so, but I think it's clear, as he said, that the restaurant is trying to discourage people from ordering it, making it almost an "off menu" item. But I also have to note that I saw a surprising number of people ordering it anyway. So it's hard to say that it's not still in play.

Can't tell you about the Copperhead, but here's a Diamondback recipe I pulled off the web somewhere that should tide you over (and keep your husband busy) for a while: The Diamondback Cocktail 1-1/2 ounces rye whiskey. 3/4 ounce green Chartreuse. 3/4 ounce Applejack. Shake with cracked ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. No garnish. From Bottoms Up, by Ted Saucier.

Of course, if you have a hot date with raji's mom, triple points.

I got treated fine the two times I was there. Maybe they got us confused.

Relevant to that last comment (but not necessarily supportive of it) is the following excerpt from the interview of John LeFemina (proprietor of Peasant, Apizz,and the Orchard) that Bruni posted on his blog a few weeks ago: "On the subject of crowd rhythms, which was why I had called, I told him that I’m regularly struck by the fact that so many new restaurants (and every month there are many, many new restaurants) are jammed from the get-go, their tables packed night after night and week after week, even though they’ve not been around long enough to create loyal customers or get reviews. "I see all these people and wonder how they know about a place so early and get there so quickly. And I wonder why so many restaurants struggle, as we all know they do, when it can look so easy and automatic at the start. "In recent years Mr. LaFemina has opened Peasant, Apizz and, lastly, the Orchard. What has he learned from those restaurants? "'Everybody wants to go to a new place,' he said. New Yorkers want to be the first to have opinions about, and experiences at, the latest place to open, the place their acquaintances haven’t managed to visit, especially if it’s been mentioned prominently in a few publications. "So the first months, he said, are the cakewalk. After about five months, he said, it gets harder, and without doubt, he said, the most challenging, predictive months of a restaurant’s initial year are the 11th and 12th ones. If a restaurant can remain packed then, it may well hang around for a significant while. "But being packed at the start, while a good thing, isn’t something with a whole lot of meaning for the long haul."

Not that anyone cares, but I think the Copperhead (Phil's variation on a Diamondback -- the Diamondback being a drink that the Porter House claims, under a slightly different name, to be a house invention, BTW) is one real good cocktail.

Don't forget the absinthe.

Nathan's last post got me to thinking. It's true about places like the Biltmore Room and Cru: they get these extremely favorable reviews, for a while you can't get into them, and then at some point it's all too easy to get into them. Meanwhile, you still often can't get near Landmarc, even after all these years. Not to mention a place like Balthazaar. Or even Al Di La, for that matter. Which makes me wonder: are there actually more expensive restaurants in New York than the market can bear? Were there always so many new openings each year, with new places edging out old places, and then getting edged out in turn? Or is this a relatively new phenomenon (maybe having its roots in the 80s and developing from there)? I'd have imagined that there used to be more stability, but maybe I'm just imagining a past that never existed. (Certainly, things still stay fairly stable at the very top: it's not like it's that easy to get into JG or Daniel.) This seems like the kind of thing Fat Guy would know.

Eater may or may not be correct in his reading of Bruni's evaluation of the food at the RTR, but I thought his remark about "The Age of Two Stars" having been succeeded by Bruni's "Wild Card Period" was spot on.

If the chicken kiev counts, I think that proves my point about the current concept of this restaurant not making sense.

Remember that scene in The Producers where Max Biolistock tries to bribe the Times critic on opening night precisely in order to get a bad review so his show would flop?

I don't think it does, though. As I said in my RTR review post, the best analogy is Danube in its glory days. But Danube was a new place in a hip neighborhood. If Danube had simply taken over Vienna 79 (or whatever the number was), I don't think it would have had such a good reception. All it would have gotten were a bunch of uptown traditionalists complaining about how the food had been changed. I'll also note that I think the criticism RTR is receiving -- all of which seems to focus on the service -- is hitting them exactly where it hurts most. Despite what I said in the last paragraph, maybe maybe maybe the audience for this place would tolerate unconventional food if it were reviewed well enough to reassure them -- but they would never tolerate the risk of bad service.