Rolling the Dice: Park Avenue Autumn

Every week, we take our turn with Lady Luck on the BruniBetting odds as posted by Eater. Just for kicks, we track Eater’s bet too, and see who is better at guessing what the unpredictable Bruni will do. We track our sins with an imaginary $1 bet every week.

The Line: Tomorrow, Frank Bruni reviews Park Avenue Autumn, the only restaurant in town that changes its name four times a year. The Eater oddsmakers have set the action as follows (√√ denotes the Eater bet):

Zero Stars: 4-1
One Star: 3-1
Two Stars: 4-1 √√
Three Stars: 750-1
Four Stars: 25,000-1

The Skinny: The Eater odds are a little funny sometimes. Frank Bruni gave zero stars last week to Wakiya, and he isn’t going to award a donut twice in a row, so the only outcomes truly in play here are one or two stars.

We weren’t impressed with Park Avenue Autumn’s summertime incarnation, awarding zero. Much as I disagree with Bruni sometimes, our ratings have seldom been more than one star apart. That alone would incline me to take the one-star bet.

On top of that, Bruni is seldom enthralled with “scene-y” places, which this unquestionably is. And he also tends to punish (as he should) high-priced restaurants with uneven performance, which I also think this is.

The Bet: We are betting that Frank Bruni will award one star to Park Avenue Autumn.