Bruni and Beyond: NYC Reviewing (2007)

[Nathan]

I don't follow that.

does the Amato Opera get reviewed?

Juilliard has lots of concerts but do they put on full-fledged operas?

[Sneakeater]

Amato doesn't get reviewed, but other small companies do, at least when they do something notable. There used to be one called "Opera at the Academy" (on Lafayette St.) that got reviewed pretty frequently. Another downtown company's production of an early Rossini opera just got reviewed recently. There are plenty of others.

The Julliard and Manhattan Schools of Music put on full-scale opera productions frequently, and they often get reviewed. As do other schools on occassion.

Here's that Rossini review (just to prove it exists):

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/27/arts/music/27goth.html

(I'll also note that, while the review linked above doesn't establish this, if it weren't for smaller companies, there would be practically no contemporary opera performed in New York. And you can bet that when contemporary opera gets performed, it gets reviewed.)

Edited April 26, 2007 by Sneakeater (log)

[slkinsey]

Amato Opera, bless them all, would be the equivalent of Fried Dumpling. All the major NYC schools put on full staged operas that are reviewed.

Adam Rapp may be a good example. But, still, I have to believe he's getting at least 6 weeks of full day rehearsals, and several days of previews before they open. By the time that's happened, the director and playright will have made most of the necessary adjustments and the performers will have had plenty of practice. In terms of "being ready for a review" I still assert that they're miles ahead of a restaurant. And, of course, there are plenty of other reasons (a limited run being primary) why it makes sense to review the opening performance.

Sneakeater: Not sure I agree about contemporary opera. I think if you look you'll see that both the Met and especially City Opera have done plenty of opera composed in the last 20 years.

Edited April 26, 2007 by slkinsey (log)

[Nathan]

thanks for the heads up on opera...wasn't aware of that.

as far as six weeks of rehearsal goes....I'd say that three is more standard for a well-financed production....

[Fat Guy]

I took it as given that neither Andrea Strong nor RG sees themself in such a job. Among other things, you'll notice that there's hardly ever a negative review from either of them. Even within a broadly positive review, negative comments are held to a minimum. They just don't think like critics, or write like critics.

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To return to this for a moment, I was struck by this passage in Restaurant Girl's write-up on Le Cirque:

I cringed as the next dish neared the table: walnut crumble-topped scallops with cauliflower a la Grenobloise (brown butter, capers and lemon juice), red beet and mushroom jus.  Enough with the unbearably trite scallop and cauliflower ill-pairing.  Unmemorable at best, this was a messy match of poorly married flavors and seasonings.

http://www.restaurantgirl.com/restaurantgi.../le_cirque.html

[ned]

I wonder if Professor Kim has any idea what percentage of reviews are of the risky press release variety versus how many are of stalwarts or restaurants which might be considered to be in their stride?

I also object to the notion of the Times reviews being considered as newsworthy rather than as defining. For better or worse (the jury is still out as far as I'm concerned) there isn't a more credible assement of a NYC restaurant than from the NYT. In their role as restaurant critic, I think they might well transcend the job of covering that which is newsworthy. The collective of their reviews represents an authoritative position on restaurants' status within the hierarchy of NYC dining institutions. There's plenty of room for an argument about whether this should be the case but what I am asserting is that as far as the populous goes it is the case.

[oakapple]

I'm certain that a review of WD-50 now would find it a much more nuanced, cohesive organsim than it was when it Grimes saw fit to critique its interior design shortly after its opening.  Now is a great time to devote some serious focus to WD-50.  And there are many other restaurants about which one could make the same case.

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Frank Bruni has been to WD-50, but any change/maturation — if he perceived it — was insufficient to move him to re-review the place.

That illustrates the fallacy of serving a constituency rather than serving the cause of good criticism.

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That's a little patronizing, isn't it? A chef who takes that approach — giving diners what he thinks they should have, rather than what they want — would probably be an unemployed chef before very long. (I know there have been rare exceptions.)

[oakapple]

I wonder if Professor Kim has any idea what percentage of reviews are of the risky press release variety versus how many are of stalwarts or restaurants which might be considered to be in their stride?

For starters, you're setting up a strawman. Frank Bruni's reviews of 3-month-old restaurants aren't press releases. They would more fairly be called "early views."

Anyhow, although Leonard will no doubt have the exact percentage, we all know that the vast majority of NYT reviews are of fairly recently opened restaurants.

I also object to the notion of the Times reviews being considered as newsworthy rather than as defining. ... There's plenty of room for an argument about whether this should be the case but what I am asserting is that as far as the populous goes it is the case.

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You've once again set up a false dichotomy: a review can also have news content, and often does. But I do agree that, whether we like it or not, much of the public does consider the NYT review definitive.

I think the problem here is not the date of the first NYT review, but the infrequency of re-reviews. It is neither realistic nor sensible to expect the paper of record to keep quiet for a whole year after a restaurant opens. There simply is no precedent—nor should there be—for a daily newspaper to remain silent for that long. If an establishment is open to paying customers, then it should be open to reviewers too.

No, the real problem is that, once issued, the NYT review becomes the paper's "permanent" published opinion of the restaurant, and in most cases won't be updated for many years (or ever). As Leonard Kim has often reminded us, in the Mimi Sheraton era, two reviews per week was the norm, and it could sometimes be as many as five or six. Return to this system, and the Times would be able to update its ratings much more frequently.

I also think the Times would need to reduce the number of visits required to issue a rating. Anecdotal evidence suggests that Frank Bruni pays six visits or more to each restaurant he reviews. This invariably means that each review requires a substantial investment of both time and money. Especially in the case of re-reviews, he has to be rather sure that there's a new story to tell before he makes that investment.

If there were a lower barrier to re-reviews, they could be issued a lot more often.

Edited April 27, 2007 by oakapple (log)

[Fat Guy]

That illustrates the fallacy of serving a constituency rather than serving the cause of good criticism.

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That's a little patronizing, isn't it? A chef who takes that approach — giving diners what he thinks they should have, rather than what they want — would probably be an unemployed chef before very long. (I know there have been rare exceptions.)

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Well, unless you mean that it's by definition patronizing to do anything other than exactly what people think they want, then no, having principles is not patronizing. It is, rather, the opposite of pandering. A chef who gives diners what they want rather than what he believes is good is pandering. That's the operative theory at a mediocre, middle-market restaurant, or at McDonald's, where menus are designed by focus group and approval rating. But if all chefs did that, there would be no great restaurants or, rather, there would be a handful of popularity-based restaurant formulas with many copies -- a state of affairs that pretty much describes the middlebrow restaurants of the world. Of course, part of being a great chef is that customers like your food. But to a serious chef making food that customers love is not specifically the same as giving customers what they want. The same goes for a critic. It's the critic's job to say a restaurant sucks even if everybody else in the world thinks it's fabulous, and to explain why; and to say a restaurant is great even if everyone else hates it, and to explain why.

[Nathan]

of course, that six plus visits is admirable thoroughness...but agreed that it limits the number of reviews...

[Fat Guy]

Just out of curiosity, where does the six visits number come from?

[Nathan]

he's probably referencing eater's mention that Bruni visited Morandi 6-8 times (apparently he wasn't recognized...at least initially...on every visit...something also indicated by the review)...

other restauranteurs have made similar statements...

I would surmise that one reason why the Per Se review took so long is garnering the necessary number of reservations...(of course...with a tasting menu type restaurant it's probable that he would visit it on fewer occasions)

[Sneakeater]

I wonder if Professor Kim has any idea what percentage of reviews are of the risky press release variety versus how many are of stalwarts or restaurants which might be considered to be in their stride?

For starters, you're setting up a strawman. Frank Bruni's reviews of 3-month-old restaurants aren't press releases. They would more fairly be called "early views."

Anyhow, although Leonard will no doubt have the exact percentage, we all know that the vast majority of NYT reviews are of fairly recently opened restaurants.

I also object to the notion of the Times reviews being considered as newsworthy rather than as defining. ... There's plenty of room for an argument about whether this should be the case but what I am asserting is that as far as the populous goes it is the case.

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You've once again set up a false dichotomy: a review can also have news content, and often does. But I do agree that, whether we like it or not, much of the public does consider the NYT review definitive.

I think the problem here is not the date of the first NYT review, but the infrequency of re-reviews. It is neither realistic nor sensible to expect the paper of record to keep quiet for a whole year after a restaurant opens. There simply is no precedent—nor should there be—for a daily newspaper to remain silent for that long. If an establishment is open to paying customers, then it should be open to reviewers too.

No, the real problem is that, once issued, the NYT review becomes the paper's "permanent" published opinion of the restaurant, and in most cases won't be updated for many years (or ever). As Leonard Kim has often reminded us, in the Mimi Sheraton era, two reviews per week was the norm, and it could sometimes be as many as five or six. Return to this system, and the Times would be able to update its ratings much more frequently.

I also think the Times would need to reduce the number of visits required to issue a rating. Anecdotal evidence suggests that Frank Bruni pays six visits or more to each restaurant he reviews. This invariably means that each review requires a substantial investment of both time and money. Especially in the case of re-reviews, he has to be rather sure that there's a new story to tell before he makes that investment.

If there were a lower barrier to re-reviews, they could be issued a lot more often.

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I think oakapple has nailed it here.

Who knows, maybe that new bi-weekly bottom-of-the-review-page format they've instituted will help ameliorate this.

[Sneakeater]

It's the critic's job to say a restaurant sucks even if everybody else in the world thinks it's fabulous, and to explain why; and to say a restaurant is great even if everyone else hates it, and to explain why.

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But that's a different issue than the one we're discussing, right? You could be completely principled, in that sense, and still feel constrained to review restaurants too "early" for some tastes.

[Nathan]

I took it as given that neither Andrea Strong nor RG sees themself in such a job. Among other things, you'll notice that there's hardly ever a negative review from either of them. Even within a broadly positive review, negative comments are held to a minimum. They just don't think like critics, or write like critics.

←

To return to this for a moment, I was struck by this passage in Restaurant Girl's write-up on Le Cirque:

I cringed as the next dish neared the table: walnut crumble-topped scallops with cauliflower a la Grenobloise (brown butter, capers and lemon juice), red beet and mushroom jus.  Enough with the unbearably trite scallop and cauliflower ill-pairing.  Unmemorable at best, this was a messy match of poorly married flavors and seasonings.

http://www.restaurantgirl.com/restaurantgi.../le_cirque.html

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I guess they didn't recognize her.

[oakapple]

Just out of curiosity, where does the six visits number come from?

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he's probably referencing eater's mention that Bruni visited Morandi 6-8 times (apparently he wasn't recognized...at least initially...on every visit...something also indicated by the review)...

other restauranteurs have made similar statements...

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I have a few other data points. I had dinner at Varietal on Friday, February 9. The owner told me that Bruni had already dined there three times. (It could have been more, if Bruni managed to sneak in unrecognized.) The review didn't come out for another 5½ weeks, which almost certainly means he wasn't done with his visits.

I believe there have been times when Bruni explicitly mentioned something around half-a-dozen visits. In his original review of the Modern, he said that he paid his visits over a three-month period. I have to figure that if the visits were spaced out over that long an interval, there were more like 6 of them, than 3.

The only recent example when it was mentioned in the review was when Julia Moskin reviewed the Morgan Dining Room in Bruni's absence. She explicitly said that she'd made six visits. Moskin's not Bruni, but it could suggest where the current norm lies.

[Fat Guy]

I don't have any way to determine the average, but I would think that six is the maximum rather than the average. And of course it is in the critic's interest to emphasize and highlight the instances in which he made a high number of visits, and to avoid mention of numbers when he makes three or four visits. Mathematically, it's hard to believe that six is the average. I do, however, know of at least one review, pre-Bruni, that was based on two visits.

[Leonard Kim]

I don't have it here, but I believe Buford's Heat mentions the number of times Bruni visited Babbo before his debut review.

The older critics I get the sense mentioned the number of visits more consistently. Canaday almost makes a rule of it -- thing is, his number of visits was more like 1-3.

It'd take a lot of work to measure first review timing (since I'd need to find dates of restaurant openings) -- I could maybe do one or two critics (Bruni and x) just to see.

Re-reviews are simple:

Bruni: 19%

Grimes: 17%

Reichl: 32%

Miller: 58%

Sheraton: at least 30% (I say "at least" since some of her reviews may be of restaurants that were reviewed before what I have data for.)

This is consistent with a couple of informal observations I'd made earlier --

Miller was the champion re-reviewer

Grimes almost never issued a self-correcting review. Although that's somewhat different than what's measured here (as this includes previous critics), that surely contributes to his figure.

Bruni's "stats" are very consistent with Grimes (which is itself unusual since every other change of critic introduced large differences).

One interesting thing is that Reichl, even though she was the one who got rid of the multi-restaurant review, managed to maintain a high percentage of re-reviews.

[oakapple]

I don't have any way to determine the average, but I would think that six is the maximum rather than the average. And of course it is in the critic's interest to emphasize and highlight the instances in which he made a high number of visits, and to avoid mention of numbers when he makes three or four visits. Mathematically, it's hard to believe that six is the average. I do, however, know of at least one review, pre-Bruni, that was based on two visits.

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I know of at least one case (and Leonard Kim may have more) when John Canaday issued a rating based on one visit. That clearly would not be possible nowadays.

[Fat Guy]

The incident I recall was mentioned in Danny Meyer's book, "Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business." I don't have my copy handy, but I believe he said that Eric Asimov's one-star review of Blue Smoke (this was when Asimov was holding down the lead reviewer job during Grimes's leave of absence) was based on two visits, according to a phone conversation he had with Asimov.

I'm sure there are instances in which Bruni makes six visits. However, looking at the overall picture, he is dining out on average ten times a week when he's in New York. From that he has to derive one main review each week, plus all sorts of stuff for diner's journal, plus he has to visit places he's never going to write about because, until he visits them, he doesn't know if they're worth writing about. He also travels. So it makes much more sense to assume that the average is in the neighborhood of four or five visits, with highs of six and perhaps the occasional three.

[Leonard Kim]

Apropos of last week's discussion, Bruni wrote this in Friday's Diner's Journal

"Brand-new doesn’t have to equal bungling. Most restaurants rehearse a bit before they open their doors, and many come out of the gate as strong as they’ll ever be."

Bruni doesn't put numbers of visits in his reviews, instead choosing words like "several." In addition to Marc's mention of Moskin's review of the Morgan Dining Room (six meals), Burros' review of Ben & Jack's Steak House, which was also done during Bruni's tenure, was done over at least 4 visits.

Reichl would occasionally mention number of visits in her reviews -- she once wrote, "Restaurant critics make lousy customers. We sneak into restaurants when they are too new, make five or six quick visits, and are not seen again for years." Looking at her reviews, that seems right, though there are some with four.

In his reviews, Miller puts # of visits at 3-4, but of course he and earlier critics often reviewed multiple restaurants per week. In Sheraton's reviews, examples of two to six visits can all be found. There's even one instance of 10 (though in that case she talking about her experience with the restaurant's service "over the years.")

FWIW, the New Jersey restaurant reviews tend to mention # of visits fairly consistently, and the norm there seems to be two or three.

I get a vague sense that re-reviews of established restaurants are based on fewer visits. My own guess, based on nothing in particular, is that, currently, new restaurants get 5-6 visits and established restaurants get about 4.

Edited April 30, 2007 by Leonard Kim (log)

[Fat Guy]

However, one should also factor in that it is in the interest of Bruni and the Times to portray the number of visits as high, and therefore only to mention numbers when they're high. It does not follow from the mention of several high numbers that all reviews are based on the average of what's mentioned. Remember, Bruni and the Times need to buy their restaurant reviewing credibility. They don't earn it anymore, the way they did in the old days. The Times can't compete on the quality of Bruni's reviews because their quality is so low, but thanks to a large budget the Times can try to divert attention by emphasizing anonymity/payment, number of reviews, etc. -- the areas in which they know bloggers and other publications can't compete. I would take the claimed number of visits with as much of a grain of salt as I would take claims of anonymity. Bruni is, no doubt, a hard-working reviewer. But if he's visiting every restaurant six times, I'll be shocked -- doubly so given how weak his reviews are.

[oakapple]

I get a vague sense that re-reviews of established restaurants are based on fewer visits.  My own guess, based on nothing in particular, is that, currently, new restaurants get 5-6 visits and established restaurants get about 4.

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However, many of these restaurants are sampled regularly over time. Prior to Bruni's 3-star re-review of Esca recently, there were at least three previous NYT articles by him (written quite a distance apart) in which he talked about Esca.

So I think it's safe to assume that, before the concentrated set of visits that led up to the re-review, he'd dined at Esca at least 2-3 times over the last several years. Since there was no intervening event that fundamentally altered the restaurant, those visits "count" as evidence behind the 3-star review, even if they weren't explicitly mentioned.

[oakapple]

However, one should also factor in that it is in the interest of Bruni and the Times to portray the number of visits as high, and therefore only to mention numbers when they're high. It does not follow from the mention of several high numbers that all reviews are based on the average of what's mentioned.

FG has convinced me.

Here's a bit of rough math. Bruni tends to review new restaurants about three months after opening. In a three-month period, he needs to file 13 reviews. If he visits each reviewed restaurant six times, that's 13 × 6 = 78 visits per quarter just to feed his "pipeline." If he dines out 10 times a week, that's 130 meals in a quarter.

That means that 78/130 = 60% of his meals would be dedicated to the pipeline, leaving only 40% of his meals for sampling new restaurants that never get reviewed, spot-checking previously-reviewed restaurants, and so forth. Then consider that Bruni is sometimes traveling outside of NYC, and some of the reviews cover two restaurants, and the percentages get worse.

So it's probably something more like the reverse: 40% of the meals spent on the forthcoming review pipeline, and 60% spent elsewhere.

[Nathan]

I don't buy it. (this whole conversation is becoming rather arcane and pointless but....) I'd guess that for full meals it's about 70% restaurants in the pipeline and 30% elsewhere. easily.

you're assuming that he can visit at most two restaurants a day. I don't see that. when this is what you do for a living and you can eat at odd hours (3-7 PM)...it's easy enough to check out several different spots for dinner and see if any of them strike you as deserving a longer take.