Momofuku Ssäm Bar and the New Paradigm

Note: Click here for a more recent visit to Momofuku Ssäm Bar.

On February 27, eGullet’s Steven A. Shaw (handle: “Fat Guy”) launched a discussion thread called, “Where to get the haute-cuisine experience, cheap.” The premise was Shaw’s observation that, these days, you don’t need to go to a “fine dining” restaurant to get haute cuisine.

Another eGullet member (handle: “Nathan”) dubbed this phenomenon the “New Paradigm” (“NP”), and it stuck—at least with Shaw, Nathan, and one other eGullet member who bought into the idea (handle: “Sneakeater”). Shaw would later claim that it was Bouley Upstairs that got him thinking along these lines, although the discussion thread was launched just six days after Frank Bruni’s two-star review of Momofuku Ssäm Bar.

What exactly is the New Paradigm? The very small band of people who believe in its existence chose a most peculiar lodestar — Frank Bruni himself — though Bruni has never acknowledged a “paradigm” in any review except the one that launched it:

[Momofuku Ssäm Bar] has emerged as much, much more than the precocious fast-food restaurant it initially was. By bringing sophisticated, inventive cooking and a few high-end grace notes to a setting that discourages even the slightest sense of ceremony, Ssam Bar answers the desires of a generation of savvy, adventurous diners with little appetite for starchy rituals and stratospheric prices.

They want great food, but they want it to feel more accessible, less effete. They’ll gladly take some style along with it, but not if the tax is too punishing. And that’s what they get at Ssam Bar, sleek, softly lighted and decidedly unfussy. Most of its roughly 55 seats are at a gleaming dark wood counter that runs the length of the narrow room, though these seats afford more elbow room than exists at the much smaller Noodle Bar.

Many of the remaining seats are at communal tables, and reservations aren’t taken…

There’s a good deal in Bruni’s description that’s patently offensive. Who’s to say that people who want to make a reservation and sit at a table are “effete”? Who’s to say that those who are “savvy” about fine food have “little appetite” for rituals that Bruni finds “starchy”? Bruni’s error, of course, is that he projects his own prejudice onto everyone else. He doesn’t like these things, so he just assumes nobody does—at least, nobody that knows what they’re talking about.

eGullet’s Nathan, who apparently counts mind-reading among his many skills, says that the purported phenomenon “especially appeals to a youthful but knowledgeable demographic.” We can readily believe that Nathan knows at sight who is youthful—although the clientele at Meatpacking District bars, and for that matter the McDonald’s across the street from Stuyvesant High School—seems pretty youthful too. How he discerns that the clientele are knowledgeable is beyond my comprehension. It’s Bruni’s error all over again: he counts himself as knowledgeable, and simply assumes that those dining where he does must be as smart as he is.

Shaw, perhaps realizing that restaurant critics shouldn’t be mind-readers, calls the alleged phenomenon, simply, “haute cheap.” Shaw mined an article (and a paycheck) out of his invention, with an article in the March 19 issue of Crain’s New York Business. He chose five restaurants to illustrate the concept: Momofuku Ssäm Bar, Bouley Upstairs, Degustation, Room4Dessert, and the Bar Room at the Modern.

I’ve dined at all five. Their points in common are not at all new, and can easily be attributed to other explanations. For many years, fine-dining restaurants have been offering casual dining at the bar to walk-in patrons. In a number of places, the “casual front room” takes on the identity of a separate restaurant, though clearly still affiliated with the “mother ship.” Bouley Upstairs and the Bar Room are two of the many examples of this. I love Room4Dessert, but it fails the first test: it may be haute, but it ain’t cheap—bearing in mind that it only serves dessert.

Degustation’s similarity to the others is only skin-deep. Patrons there sit at a bar (as they do at Ssäm Bar and Room4Dessert), and the menu there is “tapas-style” (hardly a novelty these days), but in most other respects it is fairly conventional. Even Shaw had his doubts about it: “Whether Degustation fits the pattern is an open question. I think the food, while quite good, is weaker and less haute than what’s available at Momo-Ssam, Upstairs and certainly the Bar Room at the Modern. Visiting Degustation between Momo-Ssam and Upstairs really emphasized that it’s operating at a lower level…”

Because the New Paradigm is such a tenuous concept, its three advocates have continually struggled to redefine it. Skeptics point out the many holes in their theory, and it morphs into something else. For instance, a no-reservations policy was allegedly a keynote of the paradigm, but three of Shaw’s five examples take reservations. Another canard was “no dress code whatsoever,” but in an age when only about 10 restaurants in town still have a dress code, that hardly narrows it down.

Menu

I paid another visit to Momofuku Ssäm Bar on a weeknight a couple of weeks ago (first visit here), to try to get my arms around this alleged paradigm. As I was by myself, I had no trouble getting a seat at around 7:00 p.m. (Couples who had arrived before me were still waiting, since there weren’t two adjacent bar stools available.) I actually had a pretty good seat, facing part of the open kitchen.

I decided to order two dishes at the opposite end of the Ssäm Bar spectrum: something funky, and something totally conventional. I started with the Veal Head Terrine ($13), mainly because I was alone, and my usual dining companions would have been totally grossed out. If you ignore where it came from, there’s nothing gross about the Veal Head Terrine (photo here). Its bark is worse than its bite.

The terrine is served warm, in a roughly 6”×8” portion sliced as thin as tissue paper. Frankly, I think that if it were sliced thicker, but with a smaller surface area, it would pack a heftier flavor punch. At first, I spread it on the toasted bread provided, but the terrine was overwhelmed. I ate the last half of it without the bread. It had a slightly spicy taste, but was not anything special.

Then I ordered the Milk-Fed Four Story Hill Farm Poulard ($26). For the curious, Frank Bruni had a blog post about this recently. It was a follow-up to his review of Resto. (The Gang of Three have not admitted Resto to the New Paradigm club, despite its similarity to the other restaurants mentioned.) Four Story Hill Farm is, of course, an impeccable poultry source, and Chang’s kitchen knew what to do with it. It was nearly as juicy and tender as you could want chicken to be, but nothing special was done with it. It was just chicken on a plate over a bed of warm leaf greens.

Actually, it struck me that if you ordered the chicken at Blue Hill, this is almost certainly what you’d get. I never had the chicken there, but I’ve dined at Blue Hill often enough to know the style. It would be the same quality of ingredients, and the same style of preparation. They do indeed offer a similar dish on their menu, and according to the website, it’s $30.

This anecdote helps to debunk the idea that Momofuku Ssäm Bar is “haute cheap.” For what is almost certainly the nearly-identical entrée, Blue Hill charges only $4 more. When you consider that dinner at Blue Hill has all of the traditional restaurant amenities, while Ssäm Bar has almost none of them, you could even argue that Ssäm Bar is over-priced. I can’t make any direct comparison of the Veal Head Terrine, because Blue Hill doesn’t serve anything like that. However, Blue Hill’s appetizers are in the $10-16 range, and the terrine was $13.

(I am prepared for the David Chang Army to advise that Chicken isn’t what Ssäm Bar is about. Too bad. They serve it; I ordered it. It was an experiment to see what Chang does with something conventional. It was pretty good chicken, but something I’m sure dozens of other restaurants are offering. Perhaps this section of the menu is meant to be “Ssäm Bar for Wimps,” but it wasn’t labeled that way.)

Before tax and tip, the total cost of my meal was $55, including two glasses of the house sake at $8 each. Obviously if you think Ssäm Bar is serving four-star food (which it isn’t), you could call it “cheap” in a sense. But objectively $55 isn’t a cheap meal, and of course Ssäm Bar isn’t serving four-star food anyway. It’s pretty close to what you’d pay for dinner at Blue Hill, but a whole lot less pleasant. It turns out that “haute cheap” isn’t really that cheap.

Beverage and Wine List

The wine list has improved since my last visit to Momofuku Ssäm Bar, and there seemed to more serving staff behind the counter. Both of my selections were delivered without silverware. Neither one could reasonably have been eaten with chopsticks (though those weren’t offered either). However, my requests for a knife and fork were quickly granted. The sound system played music at a noise level I found annoying.

You might have wondered whether the New York Times review affected business. The server I asked said it had. He said people come in “all the time” and mention the NYT review. As far as I could monitor, most of the orders coming out of the kitchen seemed to be pretty conventional stuff. I did see one additional order of the Veal Head Terrine. In that case, I happened to overhear the server steering a couple towards that choice. It appeared that only the guy could stomach it.

David Chang does some very good cooking, although you have to be willing to put up with a setting that is far from ideal, and verges to the unpleasant. In terms of comfort, it is probably the least appealing of the purported “New Paradigm” restaurants, and the quality of the food doesn’t quite overcome its many disadvantages.

Eating out, like most other things we do, has gotten progressively less formal since about the 1960s. There’s really nothing new about that, and it’s astonishing that a seasoned critic like Steven Shaw thinks so. One expects that from an arriviste like Frank Bruni, but not from Shaw. Momofuku Ssäm Bar, in its radical rejection of amenities we have come to expect in a restaurant, could be called a Paradigm of One. It really has no competitors. And frankly, I’m not aching for more of its kind. I’d rather pay the extra $4 for a table and a reservation.

Momofuku Ssäm Bar (207 Second Avenue at 13th Street, East Village)

Food: **
Service: *
Ambiance: Fair
Overall: *½

The Bubble Lounge

Did everyone else in town know that the Bubble Lounge is a champagne bar?

It seems obvious now, but I’ve walked by it for years, and never went inside, or even made the connection that bubbles = champagne. Well, I was meeting a friend for drinks after work, and I picked The Bubble Lounge simply because I’d always been curious. So now I know.

The Bubble Lounge is actually a mini-chain, with outposts in both San Francisco and New York, and if the website is correct, more to come in other cities. The speciality is a menu featuring over 300 varieties of champagnes and sparkling wines. The food menu is strictly hors d’oeuvres.

The vibe is cool and dark, the seating comfortable. My friend and I found a couple of soft, wing-backed chairs right next to the jazz band. We spent an hour or so talking, but once the band arrived there wasn’t much hope of conversation. That’s not the bar’s fault, and the jazz at least was excellent.

The sparkling wines are a better bet than the cocktails. I tried two of the latter, neither of which impressed me, but the champagne we tried was very good. However, there aren’t many bargains to be had: the bill was $98 for six drinks (including tax, before tip). We only drank, so I can’t comment on the food.

The Bubble Lounge (228 West Broadway between N. Moore and Franklin Streets, TriBeCa)

Industria Argentina

Note: Click here for a more recent (and less positive) review of Industria Argentina.

*

I paid my first visit to Industria Argentina in the winter of 2006, a couple of weeks after it opened. I imagined I’d be back sooner, but only last night did I finally get around to it. Most of what I said in the previous review still stands, so I’ll keep this recap brief.

Unlike last time, there was no amuse bouche, but there was a terrific bread service, with warm sourdough bread and soft butter mixed with spices that carried just a bit of extra heat.

I had the suckling pig entrée ($27; served only Wednesdays and Thursdays). The menu states that the pig is only 21 days old, which the squeamish might find a turn-off. The portion was ample, and the kitchen did a fine job with it. It was served with bones and tasted more like chicken than suckling pig usually does, although I particularly enjoyed the skin. The accompanying sweet potato purée and broccoli rabe were up to snuff, and the whole stack was topped with two crisp oven-roasted potato skins.

The restaurant wasn’t crowded, which goes to show that a storefront on the gold coast of TriBeCa is no assurance of success. Industria Argentina is a bit more expensive than Gaucho Steak Co., the Argentinean steakhouse we tried last weekend, though it is still quite reasonable, with most entrées priced in the $20s. The food here is prepared with more care, and the space is considerably more inviting. For a casual night out, Industria Argenina deserves more attention than it seems to be getting.

Industria Argentina (329 Greenwich St., between Reade and Jay Sts., TriBeCa)

Food: *½
Service: *½
Ambiance: **
Overall: *½

The Payoff: Gramercy Tavern

Today, Frank Bruni awarded three stars to Gramercy Tavern. A good deal of what we predicted yesterday came true. As expected, it was a “yes, but…” kind of review:

• There are restaurants with more shimmer, and there are certainly restaurants with more spark. There are restaurants that take bigger chances and stake bolder claims to your attention.

• They steer clear of anything too challenging, and if tameness is a consequence, so be it. Gramercy has never been a destination for the most adventurous or jaded gourmands.

Bruni reiterated his view that Gramercy Tavern is no longer the flagship of the Danny Meyer empire:

• It doesn’t scale peaks as high as those at Eleven Madison Park, currently the most exciting restaurant in Mr. Meyer’s collection. But like a solid marriage rather than a heady love affair, it has stood the test of time, righting itself when it starts to go wrong, knowing that what’s at stake are a great many warm memories, some yet to be made.

As we imagined, Meyer nailed the balance between casual and formal that Bruni finds lacking—the casual part, that is—at many high-end restaurants:

• The service is back on track, with its trademark blend of coddling and unpretentiousness, a mix that Gramercy nailed well before other restaurants and that explains a lot about diners’ loyalty to the restaurant. They find comfort in rooms with well-spaced tables and one rustic touch for every two elegant flourishes. Gramercy Tavern is a homey retort to the slickness of some fine-dining peers, and minor changes to lighting and art have made it look fresher, less where your grandmother goes after needlepoint class and more where your aunt goes after Italian for the Umbria-bound.

But having correctly predicted all of that, we failed at the one prediction that counted: the rating. Frank Bruni awarded three stars, and we predicted two. We don’t like losing, but if it has to happen, we’re glad it happened this way. In Frank Bruni’s three years on the job, this was one of the few times he awarded the correct rating to a restaurant, simply for doing classic things well. We would not be so foolish as to suggest Frank has actually learned something. We expect him to be back up to his old tricks again soon.

We lose $1 on our hypothetical wager, while Eater wins $3.50 at 7–2 odds.

	Eater		NYJ
Bankroll	$34.00		$35.67
Gain/Loss	+$3.50		–$1.00
Total	$37.50		$34.67
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Won–Lost	14–3		12–5

Rolling the Dice: Gramercy Tavern

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 the newly-retooled Gramercy Tavern, with Blue Hill alumnus Michael Anthony now in the kitchen. Eater’s official odds are as follows (√√ denotes the Eater bet):

Zero Stars: 9-1
One Star: 8-1
Two Stars: 3-1
Three Stars: 7-2 √√
Four Stars: 400-1

The Skinny: Eater is clearly as conflicted about this wager as we are. Only a half-point separates the most probable outcome (3½–1) from the next-most probable (3–1). To the best of our recollection, the Eater odds on two different outcomes have never been so close. Indeed, the careful Brunomics watcher can put together a quite compelling case for two stars or three.

The case for two stars. In Bruni’s infamous six-star double-review of Eleven Madison Park and the Bar Room, posted just five months ago, he drew a highly unfavorable contrast to the other restaurants in Danny Meyer’s empire:

I prefer them to Tabla, to Union Square Cafe and definitely to Gramercy Tavern, whose luster had dimmed some even before the chef Tom Colicchio officially severed his ties in August. It’s anyone’s guess how it will emerge from its current state of transition, which isn’t pretty. During a meal there last month a fillet of cod was a mealy catastrophe. Servers tried to deliver another table’s entrees to ours, then tried to deliver the same desserts twice.

Restaurants seldom get a second chance with Frank Bruni. Once he gets a negative impression, it tends to persist. His comments in the double-review are significant for another reason. The whole premise of the review was that the torch had passed from the former flagships of the Meyer Empire—Union Square Cafe (for which Meyer’s corporate umbrella is named) and Gramercy Tavern—to the Bar Room and Eleven Madison Park. If he gives three stars to Gramercy Tavern, he can’t help but admit that the whole premise of the earlier review was, if not wrong, at least premature.

On top of that, Bruni loves to slay sacred cows, and few restaurants are more sacred than the perennial Zagat leader, Gramercy Tavern, which is currently tied for the best food in New York City—as it usually is—at 28 out of 30. And lastly, a number of critics have been less-than-wowed by the current incarnation of Gramercy Tavern, suggesting that Michael Anthony simply hasn’t maintained the magic of the the Tom Colicchio era.

The case for three stars. Frank Bruni is a man of predictable habits and predilections. And he definitely has a predilection for Michael Anthony’s food—or at least, the kind of food Anthony is known for. He awarded three stars to Blue Hill at Stone Barns, when Anthony was sharing the helm there with Dan Barber. And he did it again last summer, awarding three stars to the original Blue Hill in Greenwich Village. Anthony was gone by then, but by all accounts he has brought the same cooking style with him to Gramercy Tavern.

And the smart money says that, with a few months to work on it, Danny Meyer surely will have smoothed out the service glitches that Bruni complained about in January.

Our conclusion: The three-star case definitely seems weaker. On top of that, Bruni is seldom wowed by the luxury service that high-end restaurants like Gramercy Tavern offer. He is liable to give no credit for service (unless it is absolutely pitch-perfect and unfussy), and then to penalize a $76 prix fixe, on the grounds that substantially the same food is available at Blue Hill for considerably less money.

If Bruni does award three stars, we suspect it will be with significant reservations, and not the exuberant three stars that the Bar Room and Eleven Madison Park (or, more recently, Esca) received

The Bet: We hate to do it. We really hate to do it. We are kicking ourselves for doing it. But we just can’t bring ourselves to believe that Frank Bruni will award three stars to Gramercy Tavern—much as it may deserve it. We are placing our money on two stars.

Gaucho Steak Co.

Alex Garcia sure has been busy. This month, he’s opened two restaurants: Carniceria in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn (replacing the failed Porchetta); and Gaucho Steak Co. in Hell’s Kitchen. The Food Network chef’s growing empire also includes Calle Ocho on the Upper West Side, Novo in SoHo, and another Gaucho Steak in New Jersey.

Gaucho Steak Co. has opened in a neighborhood that was once considered rough, but nowadays Tenth Avenue buzzes with bars, restaurants, and new condos. It’s a bit of a hike to the subway, but we took a walk south after dinner and found plenty of nightlife in this formerly desolate area. Things get pretty bleak once you get to 42nd Street, but you can see the potential if the #7 train is extended west, and Mayor Bloomberg’s West Side Yards project takes off.

The focus here is Argentinean beef, though Garcia’s menu includes a number of generic nueva latina specialities that I suspect would be at home in any south-of-the-border country. Garcia must have gotten a sweet deal on rent, as nothing is above $20, which is remarkable for a steakhouse. Portion sizes are all generous. The restaurant had been open only three days when we visited. Both the service and the cooking suffered from some glitches that we presume will be rectified.

As yet, there are no wines by the bottle, though we were assured there eventually will be. In any case, we probably would have ordered the excellent sangria. A large pitcher ($24) yielded eight tall glasses.

We suspected that one appetizer to share would be ample, which indeed it was. The Ceviche ($9) came in a tall soda glass, studded with shrimp, lemon oil, jalapeno and fresh lime. We thought it was a perfect summer dish, but expected it to be a bit more spicy.

Steaks are $14–20, depending on the cut of meat, but we both chose the Combination ($18), which comes with grilled sausage, skirt steak, short ribs, grilled onions, and a choice of side dish. The sausage, with a bold, spicy taste, was the best of the three meats. The kitchen did fine by the skirt steak, but it was undistinguished. The short ribs, served on the bone, were a bit over-cooked.

Neither of our side dishes ($4 apiece if ordered separately) quite measured up. Mushroom Rice wasn’t warm enough, while Gaucho Fries were a bit too greasy.

There were assorted problems with the service, none of which seriously inconvenienced us, especially for such a low-priced restaurant. For instance, none of the servers offered us water, and the credit card machine broke down just before we left, forcing us to pay cash. Then, the new cooking equipment blew a fuse, and the power went out for about 15 minutes. However, the management gave us a free pitcher of the sangria while we waited, so I am not complaining.

The décor vaguely suggests an Argentinean Wild West (if there is such a thing). There are only about 30 seats, and the restaurant doesn’t take reservations. When the word gets out, I suspect there will be long waits.

Gaucho Steak Co. (752 Tenth Avenue between 51st & 52nd Streets, Hell’s Kitchen)

Food: *
Service: *
Ambiance: *
Overall: *

Salt

Note: Salt closed in 2011. The space is now Cómodo.

*

Salt is a delightful little restaurant on the left edge of SoHo that you could easily overlook. It is neither large nor pretty, and the block on which it resides doesn’t get a lot of foot traffic. But chef Melissa O’Donnell does wonderful things with her seasonal menu—enough to overcome a slightly unpleasant space.

The MenuThe restaurant opened as Stella in the summer of 2001, which turned out to be an inauspicious time to be starting a business in Manhattan. After 9/11, two of the three owners left, leaving O’Donnell to re-fashion the place, which she re-Christened “Salt” (one-word names having been in vogue back then). As of 2007, she appears to have a success on her hands, judging by the brisk Friday night traffic. A companion restaurant called Salt Bar on the Lower East Side offers small plates to go with wine, beer, and mixed drinks.

The space at Salt is dominated by three long communal tables running the length of the restaurant, with only a few two-tops in the front, by the windows. We were lucky enough to have one of those, but they’re squeezed pretty close together, and it’s not easy to maintain a conversation. The wooden tables are painted a bleached white, which at least makes the everthing bright and cheery.

Appetizers ($6.00–12.50) and side dishes ($6) are on the left side of the menu, entrees on the right. The latter are divided into two groups, “protein + 2” ($25.50–28.50) and “chef’s entrees” ($19.00–28.50). The “protein + 2” category offers a fish or meat course, with your choice of any two side dishes—not a bad concept, even if the category name is ugly.

The appealing bread rolls, brought to the table in a ceramic planter, were large and doughy. They weren’t warm, but at least you could tell they weren’t the generic dinner rolls many restaurants settle for. Butter was soft and easily spreadable.

Goats cheese brulee, leeks, radish sprouts, cantaloupe, raspberry vinegar

I was torn between a number of appetizer choices, but when we saw the “goats [sic] cheese brulee” delivered to an adjacent table, our minds were made up. It’s an enormously clever idea, with the warm fried goat cheese contrasting the cool vegetables. This was a a dish so well judged I would have been happy to have it in a four-star restaurant.

Whole grilled Dorade Royale, balsamic reduction

Whole grilled Dorade Royale ($26.50) was a hit too, with the balsamic reduction giving the skin a delightfully tangy flavor. I had to work a bit for my supper, but the impeccably prepared fish flaked off the bone without great difficulty. I chose asparagus and the Yukon Gold potato puree for my two side dishes, but with the fish sitting on top of them, they weren’t easy to get to. My girlfriend had the Alaskan King Salmon ($25.50) with the same two side dishes, and she too seemed pleased.

I suspect we may have hit the jackpot at Salt. There were two major reviews in 2002, Adam Platt in New York and Eric Asimov in the Times ($25 and Under). Those were the days when the $25 and Under column reviewed real restaurants. Anyhow, Platt thought the composed entrees were better, while Asimov preferred the “protein + 2” (while hating the name as much as I do).

The wine list isn’t long, and it offers a reasonable number of choices below $50 (always the litmus test at a mid-priced restaurant). We had the Ridge 2004 from Three Valleys, California ($48), mostly a Zinfandel, which has a nice peppery taste.

The servers did their job and left us alone with a carafe of tap water, which on a warm evening should have come with ice. But aside from that, the service was just fine for this type of restaurant.

I didn’t expect much from Salt, but Melissa O’Donnell’s kitchen delivered a fine performance. Perhaps the overall level of the menu can’t match what we had, but the goat cheese brulee and the grilled Dorade made about as good a meal as I’ve had in a long time.

Salt (58 MacDougal Street between Houston and Prince Streets, SoHo)

Food: ***
Service: *
Ambiance: *
Overall: **

The Payoff: Katz's Delicatessen

Today, Frank Bruni awards one star to Katz’s Delicatessen. This is Frank at his best, reviewing the casual, fatty-greasy food he likes:

Let’s do something we don’t do often enough. Let’s take the occasion of the most recent rumors, which swirled just a few weeks ago, to pause and appreciate Katz’s. To take its measure in a format that grants it the kind of recognition typically reserved for restaurants more proper but no more deserving.

To revel in its pastrami sandwich, one of the best in the land, with an eye-popping stack of brined beef that’s juicy, smoky, rapturous. To glory in the intricate ritual of the place: the taking of a ticket at the door; the lining-up in front of one of the servers who carves that beef by hand; the tasting of the thick, ridged slices the server gives us as the sandwich is being built; the nodding when we’re asked if we want pickles, because of course we want pickles.

There’s part of us that says Katz’s deserves its place in the pantheon of starred restaurants, and Frank was exactly the guy to do it. Another part of us wonders why Frank is so bored with the high-end restaurants he’s supposed to be reviewing. Today makes 3 out of the last 5 Bruni reviews that really should have been “$25 & Under” restaurants. But if Frank is going to slum it, Katz’s was at least a worthy subject.

We were nervous about disagreeing with Eater once again, given that we’ve been hammered the last three times we did it. But this week, virtue was rewarded. We win $4 on our imaginary $1 bet at 4–1 odds. Eater, who had predicted zero stars for Katz’s, loses $1.

	Eater		NYJ
Bankroll	$35.00		$31.67
Gain/Loss	–$1.00		+$4.00
Total	$34.00		$35.67
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Won–Lost	13–3		12–4

Rolling the Dice: Katz's Delicatessen

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 a New York institution, Katz’s Delicatessen. Eater’s official odds are as follows (√√ denotes the Eater bet):

Zero Stars: 2-1 √√
One Star: 4-1
Two Stars: 8-1
Three Stars: 75-1
Four Stars: 25,000-1

The Skinny: I guess Frank is formally auditioning for the $25-and-under beat. For the second week in a row, he’s reviewing a place that probably doesn’t even belong in the fine dining critic’s territory. Eater thinks Bruni will award zero stars, which would be a harsh verdict indeed. What are we to make of this?

In the first place, zero-star reviews are fairly uncommon—as they should be—and we’re only four weeks removed from Frank’s last bagel, Max Brenner.

In the second place, this is clearly not a review that’s demanding to get written. Katz’s was founded in 1888, and as far as I know, has never been given a rated review. Frank normally doesn’t pick review targets out of nowhere, only to trash them. Actually, when Frank chooses the review target—as he clearly has done here—it is usually a rave. (Max Brenner was the exception to that rule.)

In the third place, Frank is a confirmed carnivore, and he clearly prefers casual food to formality and luxury. When Frank is reviewing one of his favored cuisines, a positive review is usually the outcome.

And lastly, does Frank Bruni really have the balls to give the goose-egg to a revered institution like Katz’s?

The Bet: Lately, we’ve been getting clobbered whenever we bet against the oddsmakers. Nevertheless, we once again think Eater’s got this one wrong. We predict that Frank Bruni will award one star to Katz’s Deli.

Le Périgord

Note: Click here for a more recent review of Le Périgord.

In a town where a five-year-old restaurant can seem old, Le Périgord is a survivor. Open since 1964, it is one of the city’s few remaining classic haute French restaurants. Actually, if you’re looking for a certain kind of French elegance, Le Périgord and La Grenouille are your only options. I found La Grenouille fair-to-middling when I visited a few months ago, so I thought it was time to give Le Périgord a try.

For the record, Le Périgord currently carries a two-star rating from The New York Times, per William Grimes in 2000. An oft-reviewed restaurant, it has ranged between one and three stars, depending on the critic and the year. First one critic would find Le Périgord over-the-hill; then, a new chef would arrive, and shake things up. Jacques Qualin, the chef when Grimes reviewed it, left in 2003, replaced by Joel Benjamin, whom I assume is the man in charge today (his name is not on the menu).

The space has never been as lovely as the rival Grenouille. Grimes found it looking much better after a 2000 renovation, but it nevertheless seems a little dull. The curtains don’t quite have the sheen that they should; the lighting, neither bright nor dim, doesn’t help. There’s an “old smell,” as if the space hasn’t had a good airing out. But the banquettes are comfortable, the tables set elegantly.

The Friday before Memorial Day was probably not a typical evening. No more than eight tables were occupied, most of them with patrons not younger than 70. The captain assured me that there’s normally a more varied dinner crowd, as I expect there would be with the United Nations located just a few blocks to the south. Only a skeleton service staff seemed to be on duty on this holiday-weekend evening, but they were attentive and friendly.

The menu for dinner is $65 prix fixe, about $30 less than La Grenouille, although numerous dishes carry supplements. Many of the menu choices are classic French staples. A few choices break that pattern, such as a Kobe-style ribeye.

The wine list wasn’t nearly as over-priced as I expected, but there were very few half-bottles. Make that almost none. There were about a half-dozen choices by the glass, but I wanted a half-bottle, so I landed on a Pouilly-Fuissé basically by default. It turned out to be a wonderful wine to go with fish, so I was none the worse for the lack of choice.

I wasn’t very encouraged when the butter that came with the bread service was rock-hard, clearly sliced long before I arrived, and stored in the fridge. But the food turned out to be very good indeed.

To start, smoked salmon in a pastry crust was beautifully presented, and the vegetable garnish was most enjoyable.

I was especially impressed with the sea bass entrée. The skin was crisp, and the flesh tender. The sauce was described as champagne and caviar. I detected no caviar, but with the fish prepared so immacuately, it hardly mattered.

Four soufflés are available ($6 supplement, and you have to order them before dinner): chocolate, black currant, grand marnier, and armagnac. I chose the armagnac soufflé, which initially looked a lot prettier than the photo shows, before the server split it open and poured a hot armagnac sauce at the table.

It’s probably no accident that restaurants offering classic French cuisine are going the way of the dinosaur: it’s a style of dining that no longer appeals to many diners. Truth to tell, I don’t choose it very often myself. But when I’m in that mood, it’s nice to know that places like Le Périgord are still there.

Le Périgord (405 E. 52nd Street, east of First Avenue, Turtle Bay)

Food: ***
Service: **½
Ambiance: **½
Overall: ***