A Hypothetical 4 Stars

[Holly Moore]

I got to wondering. Maybe it has even happened and word never made it to Philadelphia. But would/could/has a NYC restaurant that served good ol' american fare - raw bar, steaks, fried chicken, local seafood, leg of lamb and the like - prepared perfectly from the finest of ingredients, with impecible service, awesome decor and commanding top dollar ever earn four New York Times stars?

[Jason Perlow]

No.

[Holly Moore]

Why not?

[Jason Perlow]

Because that restaurant already sort of exists or has existed in several forms, and at best, they've only gotten 3.

[Fat Guy]

There are a few issues. A restaurant that contributes nothing to cuisine in terms of creativity or evolution has a serious disadvantage when vying for that last star. The restaurant you're describing sounds more like a luxe three-star American restaurant along the lines of Patroon when Geoffrey Zakarian was in the kitchen. Another issue is the "ol'" part of "good ol' American fare." Restaurants serving oysters and chops could have gotten four stars in days of yore, when The Four Seasons was the pinnacle of American dining (we could probably dig through the Times archive and find four-star reviews of The Four Seasons and other American restaurants from days of yore), but today the top echelon of the American culinary genre is defined by New American cuisine such as what is served at Charlie Trotter's or French Laundry (or Per Se). That being said, there are no rules for the star system other than the whim of the New York Times restaurant reviewer. So the current reviewer could certainly exercise his authority and give four stars to a grand luxe conservative old-style American restaurant. But it would not be in keeping with the way the system has thus far evolved and been deployed.

[Jason Perlow]

Right. Its not enough to serve impeccable food and have really outstanding service to be a 4 star restaurant in modern times. Without adding creativity to the cuisine, its just a great steak or chop place. Hence Peter Luger. Or the late Gage and Tollner, which was the seafood equivalent. Or even BLT Steak for that matter.

[oakapple]

That being said, there are no rules for the star system other than the whim of the New York Times restaurant reviewer. So the current reviewer could certainly exercise his authority and give four stars to a grand luxe conservative old-style American restaurant. But it would not be in keeping with the way the system has thus far evolved and been deployed.

No argument there, but Bruni (and most of his predecessors) write as if they consider themselves bound by the system as it has historically evolved. Bruni is there for 2 1/2 months now, and while his writing has been criticized, there have been very few complaints that he got the actual ratings wrong. I am not saying no complaints, but there have been very few. This suggests that most of us have an innate sense of what it means to get N stars. If Peter Luger got four stars, suddenly we'd have no idea what the existing ratings mean any more. I do realize there's a minority on eGullet who think the existing ratings are meaningless already, but most of us believe that the current system, like it or not, conveys meaning. That works because there are settled expectations that either don't change, or that change very slowly and imperceptibly over time.

Edited August 18, 2004 by oakapple (log)

[WillieLee]

Well Peter Luger has three stars right now, does that imply there is a four-star sreakhouse out there? Or is that the pinnacle rating for a restaurant of that ilk, i.e. a steakhouse? The NYT certainly has not been consistent over the years in shedding any light in either direction.

[oakapple]

Well Peter Luger has three stars right now, does that imply there is a four-star sreakhouse out there? Or is that the pinnacle rating for a restaurant of that ilk, i.e. a steakhouse? The NYT certainly has not been consistent over the years in shedding any light in either direction.

As far as I know, there has never been a four-star steakhouse per the Times. This suggests that Luger's three stars is the de facto maximum for that genre of restaurant.

I think Fat Guy is right, when he observes that four-star restaurants need to be on the cutting edge of creating and evolving a cuisine, and not merely executing a well known genre to near-perfection. Of course, a four-star restaurant needs to do other things too, but if all the restaurant does is to tread a well-worn path superbly, it's no better than three stars.

It could be argued that the system is biased against "good ol' american fare," and not just at the four-star level. Relatively few restaurants in this category carry any star rating at all. Luger's is the only three-star steakhouse, which is perhaps surprising when you consider the number of high-end steakhouses that are available.

[Bux]

I'm not sure what people expect of a four star restaurant, but it often seems to me that people want their favorite restaurant to be capable of earning four stars and regard it as unfair that they don't like the food at four star restaurants. I think four star restaurant has always been synonynous with haute cuisine which has always been synonymous with French cuisine of the most luxurious sort. I think the link to haute cuisine will remain, but haute cuisine is changing and certainly it's no longer as French as it used to be. That's true even when it's prepared in Paris. The issue here is one of the complexity of preparation of the food and skills and techniques involved. The issue is not about good and bad food. There is also the issue of luxury and service.

[rich]

The title of this thread is perfect. Four stars are ONLY hypothetical (in the mind of that day's reviewer). There are no REAL four-star restaurants - the only rating that matters is yours.

Just for the record - there is a steak house worthy of the nebulous four-star designation that the NY Times condones and has been accepted by its faithful minions who need that crutch, but it doesn't exist in New York. It exists in Tampa, Florida and its name is Bern's.

[oakapple]

The title of this thread is perfect. Four stars are ONLY hypothetical (in the mind of that day's reviewer). There are no REAL four-star restaurants - the only rating that matters is yours.

Actually, I think the four-star standards have been pretty consistent from one reviewer to the next. Now, if each reviewer promptly demoted all of the past four-star places and replaced them with a bunch of others, it would lend credence to your view that it's "in the mind of that day's reviewer." But that does not happen.

Also, since most of us have the neither the time nor the money to try every restaurant, we tend to rely on recommendations. The Times's rating is one such recommendation. Nowadays, we also have eGullet, but eGullet is a relatively new phenomenon.

Just for the record - there is a steak house worthy of the nebulous four-star designation that the NY Times condones and has been accepted by its faithful minions who need that crutch, but it doesn't exist in New York. It exists in Tampa, Florida and its name is Bern's.

I have been to Bern's several times. It is a very fine steakhouse. It would get three stars, just like Luger.

Edited August 18, 2004 by oakapple (log)

[Fat Guy]

Luger's is run-down, loud, and uncomfortable, with capable but often brusque service, a terrible wine list, even worse wine service, and very little else to recommend it except for the best steaks available in any steakhouse I know of. If that earns three stars, so be it, but Peter Luger does not meet my expectations of a three-star restaurant.

I think some historical context would be helpful here, because the cuisine scene that we take for granted today is relatively modern, as are the stars awarded with it. But contrary to Bux's assertion, I actually think it is the French-only four-star pantheon that is new. Back in the 1970s it would not have been unusual for a Chinese restaurant to receive four stars. Uncle Tais Hunan Yuan did, in 1973. I bet there were several four-star restaurants in the 1960s and 1970s that I've never even heard of and that were closer in spirit to Peter Luger and Shun Lee (not to mention The Four Seasons, Luchow's, et al.) than to Le Bernardin and ADNY.

In September we have Mimi Sheraton, one of the early New York Times critics, coming on for Q&A. I think it would be interesting for someone to ask her how the concept of a four star restaurant has evolved since her time as critic.

[herbacidal]

It could be argued that the system is biased against "good ol' american fare," and not just at the four-star level. Relatively few restaurants in this category carry any star rating at all. Luger's is the only three-star steakhouse, which is perhaps surprising when you consider the number of high-end steakhouses that are available.

Actually, I would modify that.

I would say that the system is biased against good ol' fare from anyplace.

I'd say ONE OF THE REASONS that the only four-stars in NYC have been French is that the leading edge of French cuisine has been making its mark in NYC

for the past few decades, and I don't think you could say that about any other cuisine, except to some extent Japanese, and that still is only starting and has not come close to fruition yet.

Of course, many would argue that Gramercy Tavern is the leading edge of new American cuisine, and does so in a way that deserves four stars.

Being nowhere close to familiar with the restaurant, its trappings and nuances, I leave that for others.

[Bux]

I think Danny Meyer has almost made a conscious decision not to have a four star restaurant in the case of Gramercy Tavern. Its tendency towards the informal and the nature of its menu seem to say we've got the best food, but we're not a four star restaurant.

I can't argue with Fat Guy's contention that the French haute cuisine domination of the four star category didn't begin until the 80's or so. When did Craig Claiborne become restaurant reviewer for the Times? He became the food editor in 1957 and retired in 1988. * I believe he was also the restaurant reviewer during that period, but maybe not for the whole time. I find it hard to picture him awarding four stars to anything but a luxe French restaurant, but I wasn't aware of him in his earlier days at the Times and in the 60's, I was far more interested in learning how to cook from Julia Child's cookbooks, than I was in reading restaurant reviews for restaurants I couldn't afford.

Four stars are ONLY hypothetical (in the mind of that day's reviewer). There are no REAL four-star restaurants - the only rating that matters is yours.

While the only rating that may matter is the one that matters to the person to whom it matters, four star ratings are not hypothetical, they are a matter of record whether or not anyone else agrees with them. Even if they are meaningless, they are a matter of record. To argue otherwise, is no more useful that arguing that we may not really exist, but may only be a product of someon's imagination.

[Fat Guy]

I'm sure French haute cuisine has dominated the four-star pantheon since the beginning; what I mean to say is that today's French-only four-star pantheon is not something that necessarily existed at the beginning or even up through the 1990s. Until the Quilted Giraffe closed in 1992 (see the other thread running right now, "Back to the Future"), it seems to me there were generally some American and even Chinese restaurants in the group.

I don't have the research facilities to get exact dates on all this because I'm not able to get archived New York Times articles without paying for them and I wouldn't know any other way of doing the research, but it sure would be interesting for someone to do a New York Times restaurant reviewer chronology, beginning with Claiborne and going up through Bruni, with years for each, plus a list of four-star reviews by each reviewer.

Do we have any research-oriented eGulleters out there? The ideal project would be a complete annotated list of every Times review back to the beginning: reviewer, restaurant name, summary of review, type of cuisine, number of stars awarded. We did something like this already for most of Grimes's tenure, without the summaries, but the really useful report would be the one that takes the, what, something like 2000 Times reviews that are out there and really catalogs them. I think it would be an important documentary history project. And wouldn't it be interesting, each week when the new Times review comes out, to be able to name and summarize the reviews from 10, 20, 30, and 40 years ago for the same week?

Does anybody know how to do that without spending $1 per article as required by ProQuest on their 25-pack pricing scheme? I'd be willing to have the eGullet Society fund the project as a public service if there are some expenses, like some kind of unlimited usage of the archive for a short period of time for a couple of hundred dollars, but I don't see an all-you-can-eat option and $2000+ is not acceptable. Maybe this stuff is all available for free at some big public library. I don't know. But if we have a person or people willing to do the work of finding out and then extracting and summarizing the information, please PM me.

[Mayhaw Man]

Has there never been a collection of reviews put together in book form? It seems to me that would be a natural for an interesting collection, in terms of tracing the history of New York's 20th Century Dining trends and history.

[Fat Guy]

There have been collections here and there in book form. I have a copy of one published in 1992. But the reviews aren't dated and it's not clear how much editing has been done. The collections are not comprehensive as far as I know. In more recent years the Times has started publishing a Zagat-shaped guide that includes short excerpts from reviews instead of full-length reviews -- in other words they've given up their biggest advantage over Zagat. But to do this project right we'd really need to go back to Craig Claiborne's first review and pull the reviews for every week thereafter out of the Times archive.

I suppose it's a simple enough matter to do this for as far back as Lexis-Nexis or some other service has the information. What would that be, around 1996? So maybe phase I of the project is doing that group of reviews, up until today, plus adding the updates every week going forward. If we could get a team of several people working on this, it wouldn't be a huge burden on any one person -- each person could take a date range of 104 reviews (2 years worth) and do the entries on a template designed by the team leader (oh yes, we'd need that volunteer as well). Then phase II could be going backwards in the archive towards the beginning. Surely we have plenty of librarians, research assistants, paralegals, attorneys, etc., on eGullet who are good at this sort of thing, have access to the research tools, and could do it in their sleep.

[Holly Moore]

I appreciate that the 4th star is an opportunity to recognize restaurants which advance culinary art. And I realize that the 4th star lies solely in the eye of the reviewer.

But I have trouble accepting that the hypothetical, exceptional restaurant I describe should not qualify simply because it is not doing anything new. Forget the American part of my example. I was shooting at extremes. Under the standards set in this thread, a restaurant that impeccably serves classic French, Chinese, Italian or Tsarist Russian cuisine would not qualify for the fourth star because it is merely reproducing and not creating.

Maybe it's the target of the star system. For NY Times it may be the state of the art. For me, it's the diner. I want the NY Times, through its stars, to point me to the finest dining experience. Adventure could be part of it. But it doesn't have to be. If a restaurant serves the absolute best of it's chosen cuisine and does so consistently and flawlessly, I would like to see that restaurant receive four stars whether or not it is pushing the edge.

With my approach - impeccable, consistent excellence in one's chosen cuisine - a Nathan's or a Katz Deli could strive for four stars. I'd like that.

[oakapple]

I want the NY Times, through its stars, to point me to the finest dining experience. Adventure could be part of it. But it doesn't have to be. If a restaurant serves the absolute best of it's chosen cuisine and does so consistently and flawlessly, I would like to see that restaurant receive four stars whether or not it is pushing the edge.

It remains unclear whether the Times would award four stars to a restaurant that executes a classic cuisine extraordinarily well, with the service and ambiance to match. I think it might.

The one thing highly unlikely to change is the exclusivity of that rating. There are just four 4* restaurants at the moment. There will probably be five after Per Se is reviewed, but there will never be dozens & dozens of them.

However, if your question is, "What restaurant does the Times consider the best in Category X," this is easily answered if you visit their website. Although no Chinese restaurant has 4* at the moment, you can discover in a flash which restaurant(s) in that genre the Times's critics have rated most highly.

[Fat Guy]

It may be possible for a hypothetical grand-luxe restaurant serving, say, the cuisine of Escoffier, with impeccable service, a tremendous wine list, and a room to match, to get a four-star review. It's not likely, however, because nobody puts that kind of effort behind traditional restaurants in New York. We don't have the equivalent of Grand Vefour here, and our Taillevent-equivalent places -- like Gramercy Tavern -- tend to operate at the three-star level of luxury. There was thought, early on, of pushing Gramercy Tavern to be a four-star restaurant, but they started backing away from that even before they opened and they quickly settled into a three-star groove. The gap between the level of luxury provided at Gramercy and that provided at ADNY, or even at Jean Georges or Le Bernardin, is quite significant.

What wouldn't be possible, even hypothetically, would be for Nathan's to get four stars. It's possible to conceive of an entire hypothetical system under which the best restaurant in every category would get four stars, but we don't have that system. Under the system we have, there is no hypothetical situation in which the best example of a hot dog place could get four stars. I happen to support the system, but even if I didn't I'd have to say that the system can't accommodate four-star hot dog joints. The system would have to be completely redefined, and it's not likely that the Times would want to make such a move after 40+ years of doing it a certain way, having readers accustomed to it being that way, etc. Right now the most radical thing you're likely to see is the possible entry of a non-French luxury restaurant into the four-star category, and that's not particularly radical -- it's more of a retro move than anything else.

[phaelon56]

Maybe this stuff is all available for free at some big public library. I don't know. But if we have a person or people willing to do the work of finding out and then extracting and summarizing the information, please PM me.

Definitely available free of charge through most public library systems (it may take an inter-library loan request to get it). Problem? It's on microfiche. We'll someone with really good eyes not to mention plenty of patience and loads of time to spare. That's not me. At least my eyes are good.

[Holly Moore]

OK.

Let's take a hot dog place that makes its own sausages from the finest of ingredients - sausages that exceed Germany's best - creative blendings that redefine the possiblities of sausage. A place that bakes its own buns - different buns paired with each sausage. A place that prepares its own relishes and sauces in a manner Escofier would envy. A place that has been designed by the finest NY designer and whose staff has been trained to Ritz Carlton standards. Let's say it is by far the best hot dog place in the world - a hot dog place that could only thrive in New York.

Four stars?

[oakapple]

Let's take a hot dog place that makes its own sausages from the finest of ingredients - sausages that exceed Germany's best - creative blendings that redefine the possiblities of sausage. A place that bakes its own buns - different buns paired with each sausage. A place that prepares its own relishes and sauces in a manner Escofier would envy. A place that has been designed by the finest NY designer and whose staff has been trained to Ritz Carlton standards. Let's say it is by far the best hot dog place in the world - a hot dog place that could only thrive in New York.

Four stars?

Hypothetically yes, but I'm trying to picture the luxury restaurant with a 35,000-bottle wine list and tuxedo-clad waiters, and only hot dogs are on the menu. This might be one of Woody Allen's dreams in his next movie, but nobody in real life is going to open such a place.

[Fat Guy]

Probably no stars. Look at a place like Starwich. They're following a close cousin of that template, right down to redefining the genre and using the Roderick Institute of Hospitality system for staff training, albeit not quite as extreme. They'll never get even a single star. The star system is defined by fine-dining at its pinnacle, and everything else flows from there. No amount of dressing up the concept of a hot dog joint is going to bring it in line with that system. It's possible that, at a grand luxe restaurant, a chef could do some sort of cheeky nouvelle interpretation of the hot dog in a four-star context, just as Daniel Boulud's DB burger is accepted as a menu offering at in his nouvelle bistro context, but that's the closest the hamburger or hot dog is likely to come to having stars.

I think it's healthiest to look at the star system as a system for rating fine-dining restaurants, as a way of dividing up the reviewing burden among the staff, and not as a value judgment about the superiority of those restaurants as such. Pizza, burgers, et al., are simply rated on a different system, by different writers, in different formats.