Rolling the Dice: Franny's

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 Franny’s, the acclaimed Park Slope pizza joint that was infamously Banned on Chowhound. The Eater oddsmakers have set the action as follows (√√ denotes the Eater bet):

Zero Stars: 4-1
One Star: 2-1 √√
Two Stars: 6-1
Three Stars: 75-1
Four Stars: 25,000-1

The Skinny: Frank Bruni has been on a pizza kick lately. He even managed to get the Times to spring for a trip to L.A. so that he could review Pizzeria Mozza—a restaurant genre not normally on his beat.

We know that just about any type of restaurant can get two stars from Frank Bruni. So why not a pizzeria? Franny’s has all the trappings of a two-star special: it’s in Brooklyn, it’s Italian, and as Eater notes, Bruni does have “an undying love for small, earnest restaurants.”

My guess is that after dining at Mozza, Bruni wanted to find the best pizza in town, and if he could give it two stars, he would. New York’s Underground Gourmet says Franny’s has the best pizza in New York. And Eater says that Franny’s “has turned it up a notch in the kitchen of late,” an assertion I cannot verify, but which would certainly explain the timing of this review.

The Bet: Lately, we’ve been spanked anytime we disagreed with Eater. Nevertheless, we’re going to roll the dice on two stars for Franny’s.