Review Preview: Chin Chin

Tomorrow, the increasingly strange voyage of Times critic Sam Sifton takes him to Chin Chin, one of the city’s few upscale Chinese restaurants that has a modicum of critical acclaim.

The Eater oddsmakers are so shellshocked by last week’s bizarro threespot for Colicchio & Sons that they’ve declined to set a line this week. Nevertheless, we’ll wade in. We haven’t dined at Chin Chin in nearly twenty years, and we don’t know anyone who has, so our prediction is based purely on meta criteria.

Chin Chin hasn’t made any news lately: there is no new chef or renovation that would compel a re-review. Bryan Miller awarded one star in 1987. Why review it again unless something has changed? A demotion is always possible, but you very rarely see a one-to-zero downgrade in the Times, as there are probably hundreds of restaurants that got one star originally, but have slipped since then. Zero-star Chinese food is too commonplace to be worth spilling ink on.

That leaves an upgrade as the most likely outcome, so we’ll go ahead and predict two stars for Chin Chin.