Rolling the Dice: Dovetail

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 John Fraser’s Upper West Side hit, Dovetail. The Eater oddsmakers have set the action as follows (√√ denotes the Eater bet):

Zero Stars: 9-1
One Star: 3-1
Two Stars: 2-1 √√
Three Stars: 15-1
Four Stars: 25,000-1

The Skinny: It’s rare that a restaurant enters this world with the favorable winds that Dovetail enjoys. Both Adam Platt and the Restaurant Girl awarded three stars. The Platt review was especially striking, as he has awarded more than a deuce just three times in the 26 months since he started giving stars. That’s even less than Frank Bruni.

Could Dovetail be en route to a triple triple? Eater doesn’t think so, and neither do we. Bruni tends to spread out his three-star ratings (he has given just 21 of them in 45 months on the job), and he awarded three stars to Le Cirque just two weeks ago. On top of that, our sense is that Dovetail is more casual than most of the places that have earned three stars from Bruni.

On the other hand, Bruni’s judgment is seldom more than a star away from Platt’s, which would seem equally to preclude a one-star outcome.

The Bet: We therefore agree with Eater that Frank Bruni will award two stars to Dovetail.