Bruni and Beyond: NYC Reviewing (2006)

[Fat Guy]

I think that's right, and also from reading a lot of Mimi Sheraton's reviews I get the sense (I'd have to do statistical analysis for it to be more than a sense) that the two-star review was her baseline -- and I do remember one instance where she gave two stars to something like six seemingly casual Thai restaurants at once (the multi-restaurant review was pretty common for her). At the same time, a one-star review from her could be very flattering. Of course the really noticeable contrast between her reviews and those of the current critic is that her reviews are very rich in food content.

[Leonard Kim]

I reported in an earlier post that Mimi Sheraton's most common rating (which you might take to be her baseline) was 1 star (45% of reviews) with pretty good symmetry around that (25% 2 stars, 23% zero stars). I don't have all her ratings in this calculation but this figure considers 383 ratings.

Don't forget "comparable establishments" were part of the stars definition at the time she was reviewing.

Actually specifying whether a no star restaurant was "poor" or "fair" happened sometime in her tenure, I think. I'm not sure where yet.

I think there are a couple of really interesting facets to Sheraton's reviewing. When I have time, I'll compile a few examples. Stuff like giving a restaurant 3 stars and then, within five months, knocking it down to "fair". In the era of multi-restaurant reviews, star ratings were much more malleable, subject to change in very short time frames, without any need for external justification like personnel change, etc. She lamented more than once that some restaurants were unable to handle the interest generated by a high rating, resulting in poorer service and food, resulting in a lower rating in re-reviews just a couple of years, or less, later.

Edited December 1, 2006 by Leonard Kim (log)

[Fat Guy]

I'm sure you're right. I pulled a random sample of 4 reviews. There were 2 x 2-star reviews (10 Mar 1978, 6 Feb 1977), a double 2-star review (2 Dec 1977) and a 1-star and a 2-star together (21 Jan 1977). And I remembered that multi-Thai review, which I've now looked up and it has 6 x 2-star ratings and 2 x 1-star ratings all in a single piece (4 Feb 1977). My sample was obviously not big enough to establish a reliable baseline, though.

[oakapple]

I'm sure you're right. I pulled a random sample of 4 reviews. There were 2 x 2-star reviews (10 Mar 1978, 6 Feb 1977), a double 2-star review (2 Dec 1977) and a 1-star and a 2-star together (21 Jan 1977). And I remembered that multi-Thai review, which I've now looked up and it has 6 x 2-star ratings and 2 x 1-star ratings all in a single piece (4 Feb 1977). My sample was obviously not big enough to establish a reliable baseline, though.

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I'm assuming that she couldn't have been paying the 5-6 visits to each reviewed restaurant that Bruni does.

[Fat Guy]

The one review in that set that mentioned the number of visits cited three: "Based on three recent meals, the Hermitage kitchen already rates one star, with a second held in escrow until such time as the chef has more confidence in his own palate and really seasons food as though he means it." That was for half of a dual review. The other restaurant was a kosher place, Lou G. Siegel. She didn't mention the number of visits but did allude to recently visiting 83 kosher restaurants in the city.

[oakapple]

\Don't forget "comparable establishments" were part of the stars definition at the time she was reviewing.

I don't know why "comparable establishments" was dropped from the description. But there's very little doubt that the de facto system still works that way. There's otherwise no sane explanation for the ratings. Le Cirque's two stars, for instance, are relevant only when compared to other luxury restaurants. That is the only way that Le Cirque and Spicy & Tasty can both be two stars.

Actually specifying whether a no star restaurant was "poor" or "fair" happened sometime in her tenure, I think.  I'm not sure where yet.

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Another mistake was adding "Satisfactory" as an option in the zero-star category. In recent times, there have been very few "Poor" or "Fair" reviews, while those rated "Satisfactory" seldom convey much satisfaction.

[Sneakeater]

I'd like to note that, notwithstanding Fat Guy's remark that bumping one star up from "fair" to "good" constituted grade inflation, what it in fact does (or would do, if critics took the criteria seriously) is fine-tune the system by adding a category. Although it's nominally a four-star system, this way it becomes at least a five-category system, with "no stars" replacing one star as the bottom category. (When "one star" meant "fair", then no stars meant poor. Now, if "one star" means "good", no stars means either "satisfactory" or "poor", depending on how it's designated.)

Of course, that's not to say that's how the stars are actually used.

Edited December 1, 2006 by Sneakeater (log)

[Nathan]

" Le Cirque's two stars, for instance, are relevant only when compared to other luxury restaurants. That is the only way that Le Cirque and Spicy & Tasty can both be two stars."

I don't buy this.

I don't see why a reviewer wouldn't have an unpublished (or even not explicitly worked out but nonetheless real) metric that assigns points for taste, creativity, service, ambience and price.

I fail to see why a reviewer applying such a metric couldn't end up with Le Cirque and S&T at the same level. I know I could. (I think part of the disagreement is that some people here do not consider prices at all.)

[oakapple]

" Le Cirque's two stars, for instance, are relevant only when compared to other luxury restaurants. That is the only way that Le Cirque and Spicy & Tasty can both be two stars."

I don't buy this.

I don't see why a reviewer wouldn't have an unpublished (or even not explicitly worked out but nonetheless real) metric that assigns points for taste, creativity, service, ambience and price.

I fail to see why a reviewer applying such a metric couldn't end up with Le Cirque and S&T at the same level.  I know I could.  (I think part of the disagreement is that some people here do not consider prices at all.)

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Your formulation seems like just a more rigorously analytical way of arriving at the same fundamental result.

Anyhow, when Bruni has been asked how he arrives at the stars, he has never indicated that such a calculation exists. If it does, it's buried deeply enough that he's not aware of it.

[Leonard Kim]

I've said this before, but I am kind of fond of Bruni's description of his "system." For him stars come down to how excited he would be to return to the restaurant. Food, service, and ambience are all considered, but that excitement is the bottom line.

There are no assigned percentages for food versus service versus ambience. The star ratings take into consideration all of those elements, giving primary importance to food, to come to a conclusion about how excited I would be to return to the restaurant. The number of stars chart ever greater degrees of excitement.

[Nathan]

"Your formulation seems like just a more rigorously analytical way of arriving at the same fundamental result."

well, yeah. that's the point.

[Fat Guy]

The number of stars chart ever greater degrees of excitement.

This strikes me as flawed on two levels: first, excitement should be at most one of several criteria for evaluating a restaurant, unless the critic's personal sense of excitement is exactly in line with norms of good cuisine; second, the star system should be bigger than any critic and, indeed, the latest critic should not be the one determining what it means -- that should be a higher-level executive decision made by the guardians of the paper's traditions and the critic should serve that system. Not that I'm in favor of the star system at all, but if we're going to use it then it should be used correctly.

[Sneakeater]

I agree with FG completely.

As often as I've been there, I'm still really excited every time I return to Blaue Gans. But in a star system that has any meaning I can discern, it's a one-star restaurant, no matter how excited it gets me.

[Nathan]

you're misreading Bruni.

The quote from Bruni says that those criteria determine how excited he gets.

In fact, he explicitly states that he has metric, weighted toward food. (I realize that the first sentence says otherwise. But the following sentence contradicts that. And it's clearly the operative one.) That metric determines how excited he gets. That is exactly what he says above.

Edited December 1, 2006 by Nathan (log)

[Sneakeater]

Some of us may have problems with his basic culinary knowledge, but it's clear that Bruni likes food too much to let a metric determine how excited he gets.

[oakapple]

The number of stars chart ever greater degrees of excitement.

As always with Frank Bruni, you have to wonder if he really thought this through, or if he's just writing imprecisely. In reviews of places like Alain Ducasse, Gilt, The Modern, and V Steakhouse, the text suggested a distinct lack of excitement.

[Sneakeater]

It's just silly.

I get excited about going to Franny's. I get excited about going to DiFara's, for God's sake.

[Sneakeater]

Yakitori Totto.

I get really excited about going there.

[Fat Guy]

If we've just been driving all night through dense fog on I-77, I'm really excited to return to Waffle House.

[Sneakeater]

The number of stars chart ever greater degrees of excitement.

As always with Frank Bruni, you have to wonder if he really thought this through, or if he's just writing imprecisely. In reviews of places like Alain Ducasse, Gilt, The Modern, and V Steakhouse, the text suggested a distinct lack of excitement.

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One thing -- and this applies just as much to the Mimi Sheraton quote that was discussed above as to this one from Frank Bruni -- is that, when these Times reviewers discuss the meaning of stars, they always seem to focussing on the cases where a restaurant gets what it's going for, as opposed to smackdowns of failed places with pretences toward more.

[Nathan]

Alright, maybe I'm illiterate, because when I read the following it says nothing like whatever you're all reading him as saying:

"food versus service versus ambience. The star ratings take into consideration all of those elements, giving primary importance to food, to come to a conclusion about how excited I would be to return to the restaurant."

Either I'm illiterate or the lot of you are completely misreading him.

Nowhere does Bruni say that his "excitement factor" is either a criteria or the only criterion for judging a restaurant. He says that his level of excitement is simply a sum of food, service and ambience.

Please tell me which part of the English language I failed to learn in grammar school.

[Nathan]

in other words, whatever gets me excited (Rachel Weisz) or you excited (Waffle House, Blaus Gans) is absolutely irrelevant to what gets Bruni excited -- namely, food, service and ambience.

Edited December 1, 2006 by Nathan (log)

[Sneakeater]

The problem is that he can't mean it the way he says it. It just doesn't make sense. I mean, don't you get the feeling, from reading his respective reviews, that he's more "excited" about Spicy & Tasty than about ADNY?

[Nathan]

In the visceral sense I agree.

But what he says is obviously what really happens. Otherwise, S&T would have a higher rating than ADNY.

The point is that in that quote Bruni wasn't really talking about "excitement", he was explicitly talking about a metric of food, service and ambience and then used "excitement" as a signifier for the sum of those parts.

[Sneakeater]

So what you mean is that "excitement" was the wrong word for him to use in that context, because its usual meaning suggests something other than what he was trying to convey.

Edited December 1, 2006 by Sneakeater (log)