Rolling the Dice: Elettaria

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 takes a belated look at Elettaria, Akhtar Nawab’s Indian–American fusion restaurant in Greenwich Village. The Eater oddsmakers have set the action as follows (√√ denotes the Eater bet):

Zero Stars: 5-1
One Star: 2-1 √√
Two Stars: 3-1
Three Stars: 8-1
Four Stars: 1,000-1

The Skinny: As usual, there are only two possible outcomes here: one star or two. The closeness of the odds (2–1 and 3–1 respectively) shows that this is basically a coin toss. Reviews have been all over the map, ranging from Platt’s one-star slap to RG’s three-star rave. Will the real Elettaria please stand up?

The X-factor is the rather long time it took Bruni to get around to this review: it has been more than six weeks since most of the other critics filed, including this blog, which awarded two stars. We can only assume that Bruni saw potential, and wanted to give Elettaria time to resolve the early kinks. Bruni doesn’t usually give restaurants that chance, so you’ve got to figure that he really wanted to like this place.

We are torn, but our sense is that the cramped ambiance, abbreviated menu and chronic inconsistency will rate mentions in this review.

The Bet: We are betting, with some reluctance, that Frank Bruni will award one star to Elettaria.