Persimmon

 

Note: Persimmon closed as of August 2009. The space became The Brindle Room.

*

The new Korean restaurant Persimmon opened quietly in the East Village a couple of months ago. So far, it has rave reviews in New York and the Village Voice to its name.

Critics have noted the similarity to Momofuku Ko: low seating capacity (24), backless stools, and a prix-fixe Korean-inspired menu that goes heavy on the pork and kimchi. The staffing level is similar to Ko: four chefs, a dishwasher, and two servers. The head man, Youngsun Lee, even has some Momofuku time on his resume.

The open kitchen

The differences are significant, too. Dinner is $37 for five courses—a stunningly good value. There is a printed menu, which changes bi-weekly, offering four or five choices for the appetizer, mid-course, and main course. The cuisine is more authentically Korean, in contrast to David Chang’s Momofuku empire, which borrows from many cultures and cooking styles.

Most importantly, you can get into Persimmon without playing Momofuku Ko’s website lottery. Reservations are accepted by phone and seem to be readily available. Persimmon caters to a late-arriving East Village crowd: less than half full at 8:00 p.m. on a Saturday evening, but full by 9:30.

Persimmon isn’t as good as Ko, but at roughly one-third the price it is well worth your time and attention. There will be a new menu by the time you read this, but it will give an idea of what Chef Lee is up to.

The restaurant seats twenty at a long communal table, and four at a bar that faces the open kitchen. We were lucky enough to be seated at the bar, so we were able to watch the food being prepared and have a dialog with the chef.

 
Left: Grilled Korean Blood Sausage; Right: Fried Stuffed Squash Blossoms

I started with the Grilled Korean Blood Sausage, served with pig’s liver, pig’s stomach, scallions and Korean herbs. The menu admits that the sausage comes from Min Sok Restaurant in Flushing. It’s an understatement to say that this dish isn’t for everybody, but I loved the salty, hot, intense flavor.

My girlfriend was impressed with the Fried Stuffed Squash Blossoms, filled with scallop, tofu, and Korean miso. Squash blossom season is ending, so this dish is almost certainly no longer on the menu.

Sliced Braised Pork Belly

For the second course, we both chose the Sliced Braised Pork Belly, or Bo Ssäm. Despite the similar name, don’t expect the Momofuku Ssäm Bar version. The pork comes pre-sliced, with kimchi, salted Napa cabbage and salted baby shrimp on the side.

I thought the pork was a bit too bland. As you can see in the photo, it’s unadorned white squares of pork. My girlfriend didn’t share that complaint, perhaps because her portion had more fat. We both loved the intense moo woo kimchi, which I used as a meat garnish.

 
Right: Monkfish Stew; Left: Kimchi Stew

All of the main courses are soups or stews. My girlfriend chose the Kimchi Stew, with onion, tofu, scallions, mushrooms and pork. I had the Monkfish stew with mussels, soybean sprouts, red peppers, chives, garlic and honey.

Both stews came out in their own crockpots, so hot that the broth was still bubbling. Had they spilled on us at that point, we would have been in the E.R. with first-degree burns. It was quite a while before we could dare taste them. Both were spicy and intensely flavorful. Mine was filled with huge chunks of monkfish, vegetables, and a good half-dozen clams. Eating it without a knife (not supplied, and not available) was a challenge, though well worth it. I don’t normally like to work for my food, but this was a rewarding exception.

  
Left: Browned Rice Porridge; Center: Korean cookies; Right: Fermented fish intestines

No choice is offered for the last two courses, and both were letdowns. The chef assured us that Browned Rice Porridge is a Korean standard, but to us it just seemed like dull rice with warm tea poured over it. There was a far better rice side dish served with the main course. A second rice dish didn’t really add much. Dessert came in the form of traditional Korean cookies (sesame, black sesame and wild sesame), which were dry and a bit unexciting.

There were various side dishes served with the meal. I don’t remember them all, but they were mostly terrific, especially a bowl of kimchi-infused vegetables that we regretted we were too full to finish. Then again, maybe it was too much of a good thing. I also liked a serving of dried salted anchovies, but I don’t recommend the fermented fish intestines.

Persimmon is BYOB, and apparently there’s no intention to change that, but they have nice stemless glasses and ice buckets for white wine. Taken with the almost unbelievably low $37 prix fixe, Persimmon must be one of the best deals in town.

The service staff were friendly and kept on top of things, but the restaurant didn’t really get crowded until the end of our meal. The décor is spare but pleasant, assuming you don’t mind the backless stools. The orange placemats and decorative metal chopsticks were a nice touch, but silverware was not replaced between courses.

The New York review said that the multi-course meal “requires the dedication of the greater part of an evening.” We didn’t find that to be the case; our meal took about 90 minutes, of which about 20 minutes was the time it took for our main courses to cool down to a safe temperature.

Some of the food here is adventurous (blood sausage, fish intestines), but there are “safe” choices for every course, such as chicken dumplings, grilled scallops and miso stew with seafood. There is at least one vegetarian option for each course.

Persimmon is a first-class experience of its kind, and a welcome addition to a Momofuku-dominated neighborhood.

Persimmon (277 E. 10th Street, west of Avenue A, East Village)

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

Rolling the Dice: Oceana

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 three-star seafood palace, Oceana. The Eater oddsmakers have set the action as follows (√√ denotes the Eater bet):

Zero Stars: 8-1
One Star: 6-1
Two Stars: 3-1 √√
Three Stars: 4-1
Four Stars: 90-1

The Skinny: Oceana has been around a long time. It replaced an old French standby called Le Cygne in 1992, earning two stars from Bryan Miller. Rick Moonen’s arrival in the kitchen prompted a two-star re-review from Ruth Reichl in 1994, which she bumped up to three stars in 1997. After Moonen left to open his own place, Cornelius Gallagher took over, and Oceana’s three-star status was reaffirmed by William Grimes in 2003.

Gallagher is long gone, but if you check out the Times website, it still says, “Oceana has found a new chef, and a new surge of energy. It feels, in fact, as fresh as one of its fish.” At least, it will say that for a few more hours. That surge of energy dates back to the Grimes review. So Oceana was probably overdue for an update, but we have to wonder about the timing, given the move to a new address planned for next year. The Times waited this long, so couldn’t they have waited twelve months longer?

No matter. The question is, what will Bruni say? Our own experience with Oceana isn’t particularly relevant. Gallagher was still there, and it was two years ago on Valentine’s Day, hardly the best day to test a restaurant’s mettle.

We have to agree with Eater that two stars is the most likely outcome here. Oceana has become a three-star backwater—a restaurant no one talks about. Bruni tends to give three stars to places that generate a lot of excitement. If Oceana is doing that, it hasn’t been written up in any of the publications I follow. I have no idea what Oceana deserves, but I have a pretty strong inkling of what Bruni will say it deserves: two stars.

The Bet: We agree with Eater that Frank Bruni will msot likely award two stars to Oceana

Gramercy Tavern

 

Note: Click here for a more recent review of Gramercy Tavern.

It’s hard to be both good and popular. Large restaurants with mass appeal can’t risk challenging their customers with unusual recipes, ingredients that are hard to pronounce, or menus that stray far from the old standards.

These realities are evident at Gramercy Tavern, which has practically defined New American haute barnyard cuisine since its debut in 1994. It was the first restaurant as co-owner for chef Tom Colicchio, who had worked his way through several three and four-star kitchens; and the second restaurant for Danny Meyer (after another huge hit, Union Square Cafe).

The list of chefs who have cooked in Gramercy Tavern’s kitchen reads like a who’s who of New York dining: Marco Canora and Paul Grieco (both now at Hearth, Insieme and Terroir); Jonathan Benno (now chef de cuisine at Per Se); Damon Wise (now executive chef at Craft); pastry chef Claudia Fleming (now co-owner at North Fork Table & Inn); John A. Schaefer (now chef–partner at Irving Mill).

Before they opened, Meyer and Colicchio rather foolishly said that they were out to “reinvent the four-star restaurant.” Then, as now, if you say you’re gunning for N stars, it’s a sure bet you’ll get at most N–1 . That’s exactly what happened, as Ruth Reichl awarded an enthusiastic three stars in the Times. But as Colicchio drifted away, the restaurant ran on auto-pilot.

Two years ago, Meyer and Colicchio had an amicable divorce. Colicchio wanted to focus on his Craft empire, and Meyer wanted a full-time chef. To replace Colicchio, Meyer hired Michael Anthony, formerly Dan Barber’s partner at  the Blue Hill restaurants—places that borrowed a lot from Gramercy’s haute barnyard ethos, and arguably improved upon it.

The current Times critic, Frank Bruni, had “a few forgettable dinners” and “a clumsy, laughable one” during the first few years of his tenure. Unusually for him, he gave Anthony time to right the ship before weighing in with a respectful three-star re-review last June. Bruni was about right, when he noted:

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.

But is there a restaurant in this city more beloved than Gramercy Tavern?

It was a tough to get a table here in 1994, and it is tough today. In the Zagat survey, Gramercy Tavern is the second-most popular restaurant in New York (behind only Union Square Cafe). Its Zagat food and service ratings are 27 out of 30; no restaurant is higher than 28 in either category

When reservations opened for Valentine’s Day, they sold out in something like fifteen minutes. Even on a “normal” day, Gramercy Tavern is usually booked solid at prime times. To be sure of getting a table, you need to call four weeks in advance at 10:00 a.m., wait on hold, and cross your fingers. By the time you get through you may find that 5:30 and 10:00 are the only times remaining. We were finally able to book on OpenTable during the slower summer season.

Gramercy is really two restaurants in one, with a casual no-reservations “tavern room,” which serves an à la carte menu; and the more upscale (but not really formal) dining room, where your only choices for dinner are an $82 three-course  prix fixe, which we had, or one of two tasting menus ($88; $110).

Like all of Danny Meyer’s restaurants, Gramercy Tavern practically defines excellent service. I was seated immediately, even though my girlfriend had not yet arrived; and they gave us as long as we wished to ponder the menus. There was no sense of being rushed through the meal, even though you can bet your life that our table was going to be turned. Our three-course dinner played out over a relatively leisurely two hours and forty minutes.

The wine list is of middling length, but there is something on it for just about everybody. I was pleased to find a 1996 Fronsac for $72, an unusually low price for a decently aged French wine. It was a bit tight at first, but opened up nicely over the course of the evening.

The amuse-bouche (photo right) was a small wedge of house-made sausage. There were three kinds of bread to choose from, but none of them really floated my boat. The olive bread was too hard, and the butter wasn’t soft enough.

 

Foie Gras Custard with cherry marmelade and hazelnuts (above left) was probably the most exciting dish we tasted. Besides being very good in its own right, it was a more creative way of presenting foie than the usual terrine or torchon.

But Lamb Pappardelle (above right) was cliché, other than the unusual beet greens on which it lay, and it wasn’t quite warm enough. It wasn’t a very attractive plating, either.

 

Neither entrée offered a trace of originality. Glazed Duck Breast and Duck Leg Confit (above left) were at least impeccably prepared. The duck skin was crisp, the inside succulent and tender. We were less enchanted with Rack of Pork and Braised Belly (above right). The rack was slightly on the tough side, while the belly didn’t have quite the crisp–gooey texture that it should.

 
 

If, like the rest of the meal, the sweets were devoid of fanfare, they were all at least well executed. The palate cleanser (top left) was a strawberry–rhubarb crisp. I had the selection of cheeses (top right), while my girlfriend had the Grand Marnier Mascarpone Cheesecake (bottom left), which she felt the average chef could make at home. I found nothing wrong with it, though. The meal concluded with petits-fours (bottom right).

I agree with Frank Bruni that the empire’s best food in Danny Meyer’s burgeoning restaurant empire is now being served at Eleven Madison Park and The Modern. (Bruni favors the latter’s bar room over its formal dining room, but at least he has the right address.) Gramercy Park has become the Zagat set’s go-to occasion place. There’s no doubt that Michael Anthony is a serious chef, and unlike Tom Colicchio he’s actually here most of the time. But the menu falls back on predictability, which doesn’t leave much room to excuse its occasional flubs.

You won’t have a bad meal at Gramercy Tavern—far from it—but there’s more excitement to be had elsewhere.

Gramercy Tavern (42 E. 20th Street between Park Avenue South & Broadway, Flatiron District)

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

15 East

 

15 East is the Japanese restaurant that blossomed out of the old Tocqueville space, when co-owners Marco Moreira and Jo-Ann Makovitzky moved that Union Square standout two years ago to larger digs down the block. The odd-shaped room always seemed too small for Tocqueville—the owners obviously thought so too—but in its new guise it seems just about right.

The front room, which formerly housed Tocqueville’s bar, now has a sushi bar. The layout isn’t ideal, since guests waiting to be seated hang out in the same room, but the bar seating appeared to be comfortable. As there were four of us, we were seated in the main dining room, which has been attractively re-decorated. We had the restaurant to ourselves when we arrived at 6:00 p.m. on a Tuesday evening, but the space was mostly full a couple of hours later.

The menu offers a wide range of appetizers ($6–22) and a smaller selection of entrées ($24–45). Sushi ranges from $4–12 per piece, rolls $5–18. Omakases and tasting menus range from $55–120.

The composed appetizers and main courses may even be more compelling here than the sushi. The amuse-bouche was a terrific spring pea tofu (right). We followed it up with the slow-poached octopus ($12; below left) that was the highlight in Frank Bruni’s two-star review.

Servers told Bruni that the octopus was “massaged 500 times.” We didn’t know that, but perhaps it explains the terrific fatty taste that reminded me of pork belly.

 

Tuna tartare ($22; above right) is the most expensive appetizer, but the kitchen throws a party in its honor, spraying the plate with a spice confetti.

 

The entry-level omakase offers ten pieces of sushi or sashimi for $55 (above left). For a party of four businessmen, the chef sends out safe choices. The rice was warm and each piece was individually seasoned, but you’ll probably have a more interesting meal if you order pieces individually, or order one of the more expensive tasting menus. One of our party did not want raw fish, so he ordered the Wild Salmon Five Ways ($26, above right), which he seemed pleased with.

The service here is more accomplished and elegant than at most mid-level Japanese restaurants. There was a hint of upselling, but the captain’s ordering advice was sound, and he picked a fine sake to go along with our meal.

15 East (15 East 15th Street between Fifth Avenue and Union Square)

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

The Payoff: Benoit

Yesterday, Frank Bruni concluded the review cycle for Alain Ducasse’s latest and perhaps final New York restaurant, Benoit. The review says as much about Bruni’s limitations as it does about Ducasse’s, but in the end Bruni lands on the correct rating, one star:

Don’t get me wrong: Benoit isn’t a bad restaurant, nor is it a throwaway restaurant, not even close. It has many enviable, pleasurable virtues…

But Benoit is selling a dining experience so familiar it’s almost a cliché, and that puts a particular premium on seamless execution, lest the production feel phony and cynical.

Invention and surprise are mostly off the table, so consistency and panache matter all the more. With a museum-piece restaurant like this, the difference between timeless and somewhat tired — between utterly delighting and intermittently amusing — is in its fluency and diction.

One star is the correct rating because, by all accounts, Benoit is inconsistent. We agree with Bruni that when “invention and surprise are off the table,” consistency and excellence are all you have to offer. Even fans of the genre concede that Benoit has two many slips to justify anything better than one star.

We also agree with Bruni that the menu should change with the seasons, and if baba au rhum is going to be offered, it ought to be the tour de force Ducasse is so noted for, and not the pallid version of it offered here.

But Bruni also uses words like “fusty,” “frowzy,” “stereotype,” “cliché,” and “museum-piece.” None of these are meant as compliments, and all of them are directed at the concept, not its execution. While the latter may rightly be faulted, the former should not be.

The critical cogniscenti of this town were never going to warm up to Benoit, but Ducasse certainly could have put a better foot forward than he did here. He may very well shake things up, and make Benoit the standout classic French restaurant it was intended to be, but he’ll never again have the critics’ attention.

We and Eater both predicted one star for Benoit. We both win $2 on our hypothetical one-dollar bets.

	Eater		NYJ
Bankroll	$94.50		$118.67
Gain/Loss	+2.00		+2.00
Total	$96.50		$120.67
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Won–Lost	44–20		47–17

Rolling the Dice: Benoit

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 Benoit, Alain Ducasse’s classic French bistro. The Eater oddsmakers have set the action as follows (√√ denotes the Eater bet):

Zero Stars: 4-1
One Star: 2-1 √√
Two Stars: 4-1
Three Stars: 60-1
Four Stars: 10,000-1

The Skinny: The betting calculus is pretty easy this week. The high-water mark for this type of cuisine in New York is generally agreed to be Balthazar, which carries two stars at the Times, courtesy of Amanda Hesser. No one yet has suggested that Benoit is anywhere near as accomplished as Balthazar, which means one star is the best Ducasse could hope for.

Benoit already got the goose-egg from Adam Platt in New York, but Platt has little enthusiasm for French food, and even less understanding, even when it’s done perfectly. Bruni, to be sure, is no Francophile either, but we think he’ll grasp what’s going on better than Platt did. That’s a low bar to clear, but we think he’ll manage it.

Platt admitted that he was grading Ducasse on a tougher curve. There’s some fairness in that. When you visit a Ducasse restaurant, you expect something of the quality and attention to detail that the world’s most lauded chef is known for. By almost all accounts, Benoit is failing to deliver on its promise. Yet, if the restaurant is worth a star—which in BruniLand usually means “mediocre”—it shouldn’t be treated more harshly just because of who owns it.

We liked Benoit more than most of the critics, awarding two stars. But we wrote that review in the restaurant’s early days, before it even had a liquor license. We loved the chicken for two, but based on later reviews it seems the kitchen can’t reproduce it consistently. We hated the fries, but we assumed their sogginess would ultimately be rectified—it has not been.

We would be torn between one star and zero, but for the fact that Bruni boards the zilch train fairly rarely, and he did so just four weeks ago, with Ago. Yet, make no mistake about it, if this is a one-star review, it won’t be the kind Ducasse could be remotely happy about. It has been a doleful review cycle for this restaurant, and it isn’t about to get any better.

The Bet: We agree with Eater that Frank Bruni will most likely award one star to Benoit.

Subway Cars on the George Washington Bridge

If Robert Moses and other city planners had had more foresight, perhaps we would have subway or commuter rail lines across the George Washington Bridge, instead of just perpetually clogged car lanes. However, apparently they do use the GWB for transporting subway cars on flatbed trucks. That was news to me; I always thought they were delivered by barge to Brooklyn or the Bronx.

We happened upon this unusual sight a couple of weekends ago, just after the p.m. rush hour on a Friday night. Police stopped everyone else so that the subway cars could have the bridge for themselves. On the Manhattan side, they went onto city streets — most likely to 207th Street Yard.

Mia Dona

Note: This is a review under Chef Michael Psilakis, who has severed his ties with the restaurant.

A group of six food-board acquaintances had dinner this week at Mia Dona. We’d all been before and were impressed with Michael Psilakis’s inventive take on Italian cuisine.

Alas, Mia Dona has regressed to the mean. Between us, we tasted sixteen dishes. They were all competently done, but mostly routine—the kind of generic upscale Italian food that could show up on dozens of menus around town. There was nothing, say, to live up to the Calf’s Tongue appetizer I had last time, the kind of dish that makes you want to shout, “You have to eat here!”

Prices have inched up too, though that was to be expected. Mia Dona is still inexpensive by today’s standards, but the center of gravity for the entrées, formerly about $20, is now in the mid-twenties, and there’s now at least one entrée in the thirties. Dinner for six came to about $100 a head, including tax and tip. That included wine, but not a particularly expensive one.

It surely doesn’t help that Psilakis and his partner, Donatella Arpaia, are juggling about half-a-dozen projects apiece. The server said that both drop by frequently, but the point is that they’re only dropping by. Day-to-day, the restaurant is in less capable hands.

It also didn’t help that there were about three dishes on the menu they were out of or no longer serving—and that was at 7:00 p.m. on a Tuesday evening. One of our companions quipped, “What about spinach ravioli don’t you have, the spinach or the ravioli?”

  

Out of our first batch of dishes (above), I liked the Bigoli (bottom left) best, with sausage, broccoli rabe, lentils, and peccorino romano. A version of this has been on the menu from the beginning. Stuffed figs (top middle) weren’t bad.

  

Among the second batch, a Grilled Trout (bottom left) was the best. The skin was crisp, the fish tender, and the beet sauce elevated it above the typical treatment for this kind of fish. Lamb chops (top left) and hangar steak (bottom middle) were both solidly done, but unmemorable. Gnudi (top middle) were chewy. The server initially didn’t want to serve us Spiedini (bottom right), as they were out of some ingredients, but they whipped up an acceptable substitute.

   

We had two side dishes, but neither lived up to the terrific spinach we had last time. Among the two desserts we tried, a Panna Cotta (2nd from right) was pretty good, but again, fairly typical of modern-day upscale Italian restaurants.

If you happen to be in this section of East Midtown, Mia Dona remains a solid choice, especially as it’s still a pretty good bargain, even after the recent price increases. But it’s no longer a dining destination. For that, you’ll have to visit Anthos, or wait for the next Psilakis/Arpaia project.

Mia Dona (206 E. 58th Street between Second & Third Avenues, East Midtown)

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

The Payoff: Bar Milano

At Bar Milano, Christmas comes early today, with a two-star gift from Frank Bruni. Let’s go ahead and call it a one-star restaurant, as it properly is, and quote Frank’s evidence:

Italian cooking is about a lot more than pasta, but an Italian restaurant that bungles its pasta dishes is like a Las Vegas resort that doesn’t let you gamble. There’s still plenty to enjoy, but you’re likely to feel that the essential point and signature pleasure of the place have been lost.

Bar Milano bungles its pasta dishes. Not all of them, but too many, sometimes in small ways, sometimes in big ones. And by pasta dishes I mean the “primi” section of the menu, which includes a few risotto dishes. Bar Milano bungles them as well.

And:

…there are also less rewarding routes, along with an overall sense — surprising, frustrating — that a dedicated team of accomplished pros have undercut a potentially excellent restaurant with some significant missteps.

What they do well, they do superbly: a rabbit terrine, crunchy-edged duck breast with duck sausage and lentils. What they do less well — orecchiette with lamb, lobster risotto, tagliatelle with favas — is hard to overlook.

And:

The dining room conjures a spirit of its own. One design element trumps all others, and it’s one of the restaurant’s missteps: a long, mesmerizing wall of marble strips and rectangles in different colors.

The owners must have paid a fortune for it, and are still paying for it, in terms of the room’s awful acoustics. You can see — in the carpeting, in the fabric on banquettes — attempts to fix the problem, but the cure isn’t taking. At a crowded hour you’ll spend much of your interactions with servers asking them to repeat what they just said or repeating what you’ve just said. Bar Milano is like a cellphone with constantly bad reception.

And lastly:

Desserts aren’t one of Bar Milano’s strengths, but drinks certainly are… Throw back a few of these and you might not even notice the pasta.

To be sure, Bruni does find some good things at Bar Milano. But in the Times rating system, “two stars” allegedly means “very good.” In our book, it shouldn’t mean “half bad.” There’s some serious grade-inflation going on at Times HQ.

To be sure, we did predict that Bruni would award two stars here. But we thought he would write the kind of enthusiastic review that a two-star rating calls for. We and Eater at least got the prediction right. We both win $3 on our hypothetical one-dollar bets.

	Eater		NYJ
Bankroll	$91.50		$115.67
Gain/Loss	+3.00		+3.00
Total	$94.50		$118.67
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Won–Lost	43–20		46–17

Rolling the Dice: Bar Milano

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 looks in on Jason Denton’s first post-Lupa solo act, Bar Milano. The Eater oddsmakers have set the action as follows (√√ denotes the Eater bet):

Zero Stars: 4-1
One Star: 3-2
Two Stars: 3-1 √√
Three Stars: 50-1
Four Stars: 10,000-1

The Skinny: The easiest thing about this week’s bet is to declare what Bar Milano is not, “a fun three-star place,” as its owners put it. In so declaring, the Dentons assured themselves of one thing: they will not receive three stars. That’s the curse of any restauranteur so foolish as to declare in advance how many stars they are gunning for.

We were torn between one star and two, but unlike Frank had the luxury of splitting the difference at 1½. As Eater notes, the reviews have been mixed, but Bruni has waited a while, and perhaps the kitchen has settled down. Lastly, Bruni loves anybody who has touched Mario Batali’s halo. If it’s a close call, that argues for rounding up.

The Bet: We’re not as confident as we’d like to be, but we’re betting that Frank Bruni will award two stars to Bar Milano.