Rolling the Dice: La Fonda del Sol and Txikito

The Line: We missed BruniBetting last week with the flu, but for the record our bet would have been the same as Eater’s: no stars for Charles. Oddly, we find ourselves nearly always in agreement with Eater these days. We realize that’s boring, but there’s no point in disagreeing for its own sake, especially where imaginary dough is on the line. Anyhow, back to business.

Tomorrow, Frank gives us a Spanish twofer, taking a fly on La Fonda del Sol and Txikito. The Eater oddsmakers have set the action as follows (√√ denotes the Eater bet):

La Fonda del Sol
Zero Stars: 10 - 1
One Star: 3-1 √√
Two Stars: 5-1
Three Stars: 25-1
Four Stars: 10,000-1

Txikito
Zero Stars: 7-1
One Star: 2-1 √√
Two Stars: 5-1
Three Stars: 500-1
Four Stars: 20,000-1

The Skinny: Eater gives a good explanation why both of these restaurants will get the singleton, but we have an even better one. In Bruniland, the line between two stars and one is the line between good and mediocre, between important and humdrum, between destination and also-ran. Though one star is supposed to mean “good,” in Bruni’s world it almost never does.

Two-star reviews have been extremely scarce this year. So we figure that if Bruni thought that either of these places merited the deuce, he would let it have a review all to itself. As best we can recall, Bruni has never awarded more than one star in a double review if the Times had never reviewed the restaurant before—as is the case with both of these establishments.

For the record, we really liked La Fonda del Sol, but the other critics haven’t been as wild for it as we were.

The Bet: The year of the one-star restaurant continues. We are betting that Frank Bruni will award one star to both La Fonda del Sol and Txikito.