Back to the Future: The NYC Restaurant Scene, 1994

[Fat Guy]

A long-dormant book called The New York Times Guide to Restaurants in New York City 1993-94 caught my eye tonight as I walked past a rarely utilized bookshelf in my apartment. It's a compilation of reviews and comments by then-critic Bryan Miller, who in my opinion was the last Times critic to take the stars seriously. Looking at the front-of-the-book indices, one of which is divided by star rating, it's striking how sensible and unconfused the stars are in this decade-old volume. I also see that the book came out right around the time I was really getting into fine dining, when I was transitioning from law-student summer-associate to attorney at Cravath, Swaine & Moore, and I remember how much more reliable it was than anything available today: there was order to the restaurant universe, thanks to a veteran, conscientious, articulate, principled, and super-smart critic. Was he the world's best writer? Certainly not: Reichl, Grimes, Bruni, and even Hesser can run literary circles around the Bryan Miller of a decade ago. But Miller was the better critic.

Looking over the introduction, a sense of anachronism with a twist of deja vu set in. It could have been written in 2004. It begins: "New York City's economic woes, which have battered restaurants particularly hard in the past few years . . . ."

The four-star restaurants as of publication of the book were:

Bouley

Le Bernardin

Le Cirque

Lutece

The Quilted Giraffe

Three are closed, one has recently been demoted to three stars, and only one retains its four-star rating, though to the best of my knowledge that rating has not been challenged or reaffirmed since Ruth Reichl's tenure.

Perhaps most interesting is the presence of The Quilted Giraffe on the list. Reading through Miller's review of The Quilted Giraffe (the full-length Times reviews and Diner's Journal pieces are reprinted in the book almost verbatim), it sounds like the template for Per Se, from the city-of-the-future high-rise aesthetic of "the new room's stainless-steel walls, black granite tables, and Star Trek-style lighting columns" right down to the whimsical New American internationally influenced dishes on the tasting menu, described by Miller as "the $135 Western version of a kaeseki dinner . . . built around seasonal ingredients . . . . The ever-changing repertory . . . is as spectacular as it is culturally illuminating . . . swordfish-and-wasabi pizza, sizzling baby squid with ginger-scented enoki and shiitake mushrooms, smoked salmon over pickled seaweed, and beef seared on one side, nearly raw on the other, with confetti of corn kernels and mashed potatoes. The polymorphic parade rolls on, ending with an assortment of the house's superlative desserts."

Lespinasse, still in probably its first year of business, had three stars and a glowing review that seemed to promise four upon conclusion of the shakedown period. Chanterelle, Aureole, Four Seasons, Gotham, Montrachet, and Union Square all had three stars as well. The highest-rated "ethnic" place was Periyali, with three stars. Hatsuhana and the other best Japanese places of the time had two stars, which to me is the primary sociocultural defect of the Miller star universe -- later, Ruth Reichl remedied the situation but perhaps went too far in giving three stars to places like Honmura An. Peter Luger had one star, and was probably better then than it is now even though today it holds a hard-to-swallow three-star rating. Most of the classic old guard French haute places, like Caravelle, Cote Basque, Grenoiulle, and Perigord, held three stars.

[micropundit]

Res Judicata

[Fat Guy]

Now all we need is collateral estoppel.

[milla]

My understanding was that the Quilted Giraffe closed its doors for good on December 31st, 1992. Is that possible if the title of the book read "93-94"

[Fat Guy]

It's like how the 2004 Zagat comes out in 2003. Standard operating procedure for guidebooks. This book was prepared and went to press in 1992, but bears 1993-4 as the title. From Amazon:

New York Times Guide to Restaurants in New York City, 1993-1994

by Bryan Miller

Publisher: Times Books; (November 1992)

ASIN: 0812918592

[milla]

that makes sense.

i think you are right on about the Per Se/QG comparison also. we await the review...

[Fat Guy]

To add to the chronology, it was in 1993 that Ruth Reichl took over from Bryan Miller.

Also, just for follow-up/backround, it was in 1996 that Bryan Miller wrote the famous anti-Reichl letter to the Times. According to Salon.com: "How do you think she comes off giving SoHo noodle shops 2 and 3 stars? SHE HAS DESTROYED THE SYSTEM that Craig, Mimi and I upheld." (Emphasis either in original or added by Salon.)

[foodexile]

I am young, so can you tell me more about the Quilted Giraffe? Where was it? What happened?

Thanks

[milla]

Can that letter be found in archives? I had heard about it for years but never actually read it.

Bryan Miller extolled the virtues of the QG from day 1 until it closed through all its incarnations, 2nd Ave., AT&T, Sony Plaza, Casual QG.

As much flack as the QG, and Barry, got, they have proven themselves to have been way ahead of the times. Mr. Miller always saw that I thought...

[bloviatrix]

Quilted Giraffe was the baby of Barry and Susan Wine. One of their signature dishes was beggar's purses filled with caviar. Its final location was in the Sony building on Madison btw. 55th and 56th.

Edited August 19, 2004 by bloviatrix (log)

[Fat Guy]

It wasn't a public letter, so it wouldn't be in the Times archive. This is the article from Salon.com that quotes the letter. Apparently larger quotes appeared in the New York Post. http://archive.salon.com/nov96/interview961118.html

Manresa, to add to your list of locations, QG started as a small Hudson Valley restaurant before Barry Wine moved it to New York City. The amazing thing to me is how ahead of its time it was. We're talking about a restaurant that got four stars in 1984, yet that on paper at least could easily pass for a totally contemporary restaurant in the Time Warner Center 20 years later. The same could be said of Bouley. There has been a lot of evolution in New York dining, yet the most cutting-edge restaurants from one and two decades ago were exceptionally forward-looking.

[docsconz]

Why did the QG close? I never had the opportunity to experience it.

[milla]

Upstate it was, in New Paltz. they started small there and moved to manhattan around 1982. Self taught and not afraid to follow his instincts is what made Barry ahead of his time. He was travelling to Japan and bring back tableware and ideas back in 1985.

It closed because AT&T became Sony Plaza and they wanted to enclose what was then an outdoor arcade area where the entrance to the QG was. He would have had to shut down for 18 months He was offered a deal to move the QG team up to the top of the building and they became the Sony Club, open for lunch only and catering to Sony elite and their artists.

Edited August 19, 2004 by manresa (log)

[milla]

Oh FG, and thank you for article link on Salon. much appreciated...

Edited August 19, 2004 by manresa (log)

[docsconz]

It closed because AT&T became Sony Plaza and they wanted to enclose what was then an outdoor arcade area where the entrance to the QG was. He would have had to shut down for 18 months He was offered a deal to move the QG team up to the top of the building and they became the Sony Club, open for lunch only and catering to Sony elite and their artists.

Are they still there?

[milla]

I don't know if the Sony Club still exists or not. I assume it is still private...

[Bux]

1994 is a banner year in terms of restaurants for us. That was the last year we faced a tuition bill. Our allegiances in the very early 90's went from Bouley to le Bernardin and then to Daniel. Ten years ago, our tastebuds were very much still tied to France. I can't remember when Daniel got his first four star review or when Lespinasse got four. Mimi Sheraton gave it three stars when it opened. It would be interesting to see who first gave four stars to which restaurants.

[docsconz]

I believe it was Grimes who gave Daniel his fourth star. He was also the one who initially gave it three stars. It is documented in The Fourth Star by Leslie Brenner.

[Fat Guy]

William Grimes gave Daniel four stars after first giving it three, but that whole process occurred against a backdrop of Daniel having four stars in the first place.

The original Daniel location, where Cafe Boulud is now, opened in 1993. Marian Burros was the interim critic at the time of the July 1993 review, filling in between Bryan Miller and Ruth Reichl's tenures. It was Burros who gave Daniel its first review, three stars. Ruth Reichl later gave it four. Back to three with Grimes after the move to the current space, then back up to four. Daniel has to the best of my knowledge received two three-star reviews (Burros and Grimes) and two four-star reviews (Reichl and Grimes).

Mimi Sheraton was the Times critic from 1975 to 1983 and as far as I know did no reviewing thereafter, so she would not have had the opportunity to assign stars to Daniel, Lespinasse, et al. As for Bryan Miller, he would never have had the opportunity to review a standalone Boulud restaurant, though he gave four stars to Le Cirque with Daniel Boulud as chef in 1987 and again around the time of Boulud's handover to Sottha Khunn in 1992 after Boulud had been the chef there for 5 years.

[docsconz]

This explains why Grimes' original review was`such a shocker.

[SethG]

That Salon article to which Steve linked is by far the most appealing presentation I've seen Ruth Reichl give of herself (and I've read both of her books). She offers a spirited defense of her ratings, and claims that Miller's really the odd man out. Reichl says that Sheraton and Claibourne had a much greater appreciation of ethnic food than Miller had, and that she's really in their tradition. She also argues that the star system becomes hopelessly muddled when you accept the premise that foods of other cultures can equal French food; if you want a star system that makes sense, you have to elevate one cuisine above all others, as Miller did.

While I think her argument is absolutely valid, it is impossible to deny that Reichl was pretty quick to give three stars to make a political point about a restaurant, and sometimes gave three stars to undeserving restaurants for no political reason. She's a grade inflator. Still, I think I prefer her New York to Miller's.

[Dave H]

I've only lived in New York a year, and besides am too young to have paid much attention during Miller's tenure or even much of Reichl's. Going by the Salon interview, it's very likely true that my dining priorities are much more in line with hers than his.

Still I think it's wrong to underestimate the mockery some of her ratings made of the star system. For example, some months ago I found myself pressed by the bonds of friendship and various exigencies of timing and poor planning into a meal at Ruby Foo's in the UWS. (The highlight: our waitress's unsteady pronouncement that the wines on offer were "esoteric" and then, on being asked how so, all but admitting that she didn't know what the word meant. The lowlight: my duck.) On the way out, I happened to catch the New York Times review proudly hanging in the window.

Ruth Reichl, two stars.

:blink:

Or, a few weeks ago when I had a very tasty pot of orzo with lamb at Molyvos. Pleasant meal. Three stars, as Ruth's review hanging in the vestibule had it? Give me a break.

The latter mistake, if you happen to look it up on nytimes.com, has been since corrected by a two star review penned by Eric Asimov. (A star too high in my opnion, but perhaps defensible.) The Ruby Foo's rating apparently still stands--presumably because they couldn't get a reviewer to go there since.

But even when the record is officially corrected, it only gets seen by food geeks like us who read the reviews every week and know off the top of our heads what ratings many places carry. The restaurant still gets to display the original review out front for pedestrians to be mislead by. Asimov's rereview does not hang at Molyvos.

[side note: out front of Ruby Foo's, after my jaw hit the sidewalk and I started stumbling around, wailing and muttering what a travesty had been visited upon the world (ok, it wasn't quite that dramatic), some of my dining companions debated amongst themselves whether that meant I thought the rating was too high or too low. The verdict: I must have thought it was too low. The lesson, of course, is that the average person with no knowledge of the Times' star system innately assumes it's to the same scale as, say, movie reviews--where two stars means "below average" and the perfect hot dog could indeed merit four stars.]

[oakapple]

The latter mistake [Molyvos], if you happen to look it up on nytimes.com, has been since corrected by a two star review penned by Eric Asimov.  (A star too high in my opnion, but perhaps defensible.)  The Ruby Foo's rating apparently still stands--presumably because they couldn't get a reviewer to go there since.

Interestingly, the statute of limitations seems to have run on the pre-Reichl reviews. The Times's "Quick Guide to the Best Restaurants in New York" (here) lists only ratings assigned from Reichl's time or later. It hasn't been updated all year, so any rating given since Grimes left isn't reflected. That includes demotions, so Bouley is still at four stars on that list, Montrachet and Union Pacific at three, Compass at two.

But pre-Reichl ratings aren't available on the site (e.g., Mimi Sheraton's three stars for Sammy's Roumanian), so you could say those ratings have expired. Ruby Foo was a Reichl rating, so it's still up there at two stars.

Edited August 20, 2004 by oakapple (log)

[Fat Guy]

Just for perspective's sake, I'll try to type up the lists of starred establishments as of the 1994 Times guide, bearing in mind that these are Bryan Miller's ratings mostly from 1992 and before:

FOUR STARS

Bouley

Le Bernardin

Le Cirque

Lutece

The Quilted Giraffe

THREE STARS

An American Place

Arizona 206

Aureole

Cafe des Artistes

Chanterelle

Darbar

The Four Seasons

Gotham Bar & Grill

Jo Jo

La Caravelle

La Cote Basque

La Grenouille

La Reserve

Le Perigord

Les Celebrites

Lespinasse

Montrachet

Park Bistro

Periyali

The River Cafe

The Sign of the Dove

Union Square Cafe

I'll type up the two- and one-star places another time -- the lists are quite a bit longer. Or if someone is willing to do it I'll fax you the pages.

By the way, I stand corrected on my claim above that Periyali was the only "ethnic" three-star. Darbar, an Indian restaurant, had three stars from Bryan Miller as well. I think those two ratings cast some doubt on Ruth Reichl's characterization of Bryan Miller as staunchly anti-ethnic. I think it's probably more correct to say he just didn't quite buy into the Japanese aesthetic. Aside from Japanese upscale restaurants, most of Ruth Reichl's other high ratings for Asian places are very difficult to justify.

[ahr]

See here for Seymour Britchky's early take on the Quilted Giraffe.