The Payoff: The John Dory

Today, Frank Bruni awarded two stars to the John Dory, in a surprisingly muted review:

[Ken] Friedman is credited as the decorator, and it’s as if he went on eBay, typed in “fish décor” and bought and made use of everything that popped up. It’s all very “Finding Nemo,” or maybe losing Nemo, because the impact of this visual chaos — ratcheted up by an open kitchen that is a distraction too many — can be to give you a maritime migraine and tug your focus from the edible fish that are the purpose and point of the project.

Nemo gets lost in another sense as well. In Ms. Bloomfield’s laudable determination not to treat seafood as lean and pristine cuisine, she sometimes goes too far, for example dousing the restaurant’s namesake dish, a whole roasted John Dory for two, with not just a salty salsa verde but also an audaciously generous measure of butter and other pan juices. Although gorgeously cooked, the fish becomes almost incidental. Dungeness crab, meanwhile, is bombarded by a black pepper sauce.

There were more complaints than he usually incorporates in a two-star review, unless it’s a three-star aspirant gone bad. I suppose it means that Bruni seriously considered awarding three stars, and felt obligated to give the reasons why not. We thought the John Dory was very obviously a two-star place from the get-go, but we hear Chef April Bloomfield was disappointed.

The trouble is that when Bruni gives three stars to marginal places, every chef thinks it can happen to them, even though their restaurant lacks most of the amenities a three-star place should have. The John Dory is a two-star restaurant—in the good sense—and has nothing to be ashamed of:

Ms. Bloomfield’s revel in richness and big flavors pays off. Two in particular stand out: this restaurant’s answers to the gnudi that Ms. Bloomfield made famous at the Spotted Pig. Only they’re more adventurous, and possibly even more enjoyable.

One of them, an appetizer labeled an oyster pan roast, is essentially a thick, garlicky, intense bisque in which several of the plumpest, most tender oysters imaginable loll. But even that’s not the whole of it. With the bisque comes crostini covered in overlapping petals of a pale orange purée of uni, butter and salt. If Poseidon had a preferred canapé, this would be it.

The other marquee dish, an entree, involves several large, seared bulbs of squid that are stuffed, as the menu promises, with chorizo. But once again the menu is indulging in understatement. The chorizo is joined by Bomba rice, saffron and more: a veritable paella’s worth of ingredients, and a very fine paella at that.

We are back on the winning track this week, winning $3 on our hypothetical one-dollar bet. Eater loses a dollar.

	Eater		NYJ
Bankroll	$109.50		$126.67
Gain/Loss	–1.00		+3.00
Total	$108.50		$129.67
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Won–Lost	50–25		52–23

Rolling the Dice: The John Dory

The Line: Tomorrow, Frank Bruni goes swimming at the John Dory, the new Ken Friedman/April Bloomfield seafood place. The Eater oddsmakers have set the action as follows (√√ denotes the Eater bet):

Zero Stars: 25-1
One Star: 6-1
Two Stars: 3-1
Three Stars: 5-1 √√
Four Stars: 250-1

The Skinny: A bad review (zero or one) would be a big surprise here. Ken Friedman knows how to run a restaurant, April Bloomfield can most assurely cook, and reports have been fairly positive—including ours.

But three stars? Hoo boy, that’s stretching it, even by Bruni’s loose standards. Bruni has given the trifecta to some dubious restaurants, but we don’t see here the level of execution we observed at Dovetail, Matsugen, or BLT Fish in its early days—all three-star laureates that should have received two.

Our bets lately have not been very reliable, but we’re going with the safer choice.

The Bet: We predict that Frank Bruni will award an enthuisastic two stars to the John Dory.

The Payoff: Oak Room at the Plaza

Today, Frank Bruni gives the Oak Room a one-star spanking from which it may not recover, finding that “there were letdowns, huge and many”:

I had meals stippled with disappointment. More than a few dishes were clumsily executed or vacuously luxurious. Seldom have I had so many black truffle shavings thrown at me to so little effect.

The prices aren’t crazy in the context of such truffling and trappings; in fact, they’re reportedly 25 percent lower than they were slated to be back in the early fall, before the economy deteriorated further.

But they remain steep enough — $34 for cod, $44 for a double-cut pork chop — to build expectations for meals more seamless than the ones I had… .

[F]or anyone seeking relatively firm assurance that a serious tab will mean serious pleasure, the Oak Room won’t do. It’s more looker than performer.

Make no mistake: the Oak Room was designed for three stars; to receive only one is a serious setback. Among new restaurants reviewed during Frank Bruni’s tenure, only V Steakhouse and the Russian Tea Room stand out as comparable smackdowns. The former is now closed; the latter fired its chef not long after the review.

I haven’t dined at the Oak Room, so I can only say that if Bruni had the meals he described, a one-star rating may be too generous—an insult to the many restaurants where one star actually means what it is supposed to mean: “good”.

In the wagering department, we have not been doing well since our BruniBetting feature resumed. We’ve been losing lately far more often than we’ve been winning. But this week, Eater was wrong too, so we both lose a dollar on our hypothetical bets.

	Eater		NYJ
Bankroll	$110.50		$127.67
Gain/Loss	–1.00		–1.00
Total	$109.50		$126.67
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Won–Lost	50–24		51–23

Rolling the Dice: Oak Room at the Plaza

The Line: Tomorrow, Frank Bruni reviews the legendary Oak Room at The Plaza, recently under new management with a Michelin-lauded chef, Joel Antunes. The Eater oddsmakers have set the action as follows (√√ denotes the Eater bet):

Zero Stars: 20-1
One Star: 6-1
Two Stars: 3-1 √√
Three Stars: 4-1
Four Stars: 25-1

The Skinny: The poor Oak Room had the misfortune to open right into the headwind of the worst recession in a generation. The price of dinner here is more than a car payment. The cuisine is luxe Continental—always a tough sell in New York, even in the best of times.

Pro reviewers to date all give Chef Antunes his due, but none of them are shouting from the rooftops, “You must eat here!” — the way they did at Corton, for example. This isn’t a style of dining that has ever floated Frank Bruni’s boat, and we suspect he’ll find the high price point off-putting, unless everything served was absolutely perfect.

We agree with Eater that the odds between two and three stars are nearly in equipoise, and any other outcome would be surprising. Given Bruni’s track record, we agree that two stars is the slightly more probable outcome.

The Bet: We agree with Eater that Frank Bruni will most likely award two stars to the Oak Room.

The Payoff: Cabrito

Today, as we half-expected, Frank Bruni files a largely redundant one-star review of Cabrito:

Visited on its best nights and judged by its best dishes, Cabrito is the Mexican restaurant so many of us dreamed about for so long … .

Much of the time, that is. There’s a qualification in the first sentence up top and a digression right here because Cabrito is afflicted by an inconsistency that’s puzzling, even maddening, in the sense that you don’t want anything challenging the exhilaration you can so easily and rightly feel about this special place.

There are dishes that don’t seem, by nature, to rise to the caliber of others, and dishes that aren’t dependable from one visit to the next.

In the wagering department, we took a literal “roll of the dice” on two stars, and lose a dollar on our hypothetical bet, while Eater wins $2.

	Eater		NYJ
Bankroll	$108.50		$128.67
Gain/Loss	+2.00		–1.00
Total	$110.50		$127.67
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Won–Lost	50–23		51–22

Rolling the Dice: Cabrito

The Line: Tomorrow, Frank Bruni reviews Cabrito, the West Village Mexican place helmed by Fatty Crab alumnus David Schuttenberg. The Eater oddsmakers have set the action as follows (√√ denotes the Eater bet):

Zero Stars: 4-1
One Star: 2-1 √√
Two Stars: 5-1
Three Stars: 500-1
Four Stars: 20,000-1

The Skinny: When we heard about this review, our initial reaction was, “Why bother?” It seemed like an obvious one-star place, which in Timesspeak usually means “uneven.” Julia Moskin more-or-less delivered that verdict in a May 2008 Dining Brief. Why give it more ink, just to deliver the same message a mere eight months later?

The only other clue comes in Frank Bruni’s year-end retrospective, in which he says that Cabrito’s “best dishes — including the carnitas with salsa verde and the roasted poblano peppers in cream — match those at just about any Mexican restaurant in New York.” If he thinks Cabrito is a category-killer, it just might be enough to push it over the edge to two stars, provided there aren’t too many duds on the menu.

To be sure, the Eater odds accurately reflect the probabilities, but we think two stars are definitely in play here. This review will almost certainly be an “enthusiastic one” or a “two with caveats.” He has more often done the latter than the former.

The Bet: Our record when we literally “roll the dice” has been mixed, to say the least. Nevertheless, we’ll go out on a limb and predict two stars for Cabrito.

The Payoff: Daniel

Today, Frank Bruni re-affirms four stars for Daniel. A new Adam Tihany décor sealed the deal:

Daniel was always fancy; now it’s genuinely gorgeous, too. And that’s almost reason enough to reaffirm the four stars the restaurant was awarded by William Grimes in The New York Times in 2001.

But the contemporary French menu and the service make their own contributions, usually measuring up to the extremely high standards the restaurant has established.

All in all Daniel remains one of New York’s most sumptuous dining experiences. And while it yields fewer transcendent moments than its four-star brethren and falls prey to more inconsistency, it has a distinctive and important niche in that brood, a special reason to be treasured.

Among the handful of elegant restaurants that maintain the rituals once synonymous with superior cuisine and cling to an haute French style, Daniel is the most straightforward, the one with the fewest tics or tweaks. It’s the truest link to the past.

The review invites at least two meta-critical questions. First, should a restaurant that is “prey to…inconsistency” be rewarded with four stars? And second, is this consistent with what Bruni has done in the past?

To the first, there is no clear answer. I gave Daniel four stars myself, so I certainly cannot disagree with Bruni’s conclusion. Even at the highest level, in a forced ranking some restaurant would be the least wonderful four-star place, just as some restaurant would be at the top of the three-star heap. Bruni has put Daniel on the better side of that line, and I won’t argue with him.

But if Bruni’s oeuvre has a consistent theme, it’s that classic luxury doesn’t matter. Even when luxurious places got good reviews, one always sensed that Bruni would rather be elsewhere—that he believed fine dining was only for old fogies. In almost five years on the job, I cannot think of another review in which he actually celebrated luxury as something worthwhile, as he does here:

In fact there are moments during a meal at Daniel when you may well wonder why it isn’t more expensive, given how much staff is required for service like this…how much plotting goes into the ceremony.

At restaurants considered much less exclusive, you could spend only $30 less on a similar amount of food, and you wouldn’t get anything approaching Daniel’s bells and whistles. These flourishes make you feel that you’ve slipped into a monarch’s robes, if only for a night, and turn an evening into an event.

Take note of the dotted circles, a visual motif woven into the restaurant’s new design. They’re on the welcome mat outside. And on the carpeting inside. And on the china, the cotton damask napkins and even the plush, thick paper hand towels in the restrooms…

It’s for coddling this thorough that lovers of fine dining turn to restaurants like Daniel, which safeguards a graciousness that deserves to survive any change in fashions and fortunes.

Where did this Frank Bruni come from?

Eater correctly predicted that Bruni would award four stars to Daniel, and wins $2 on a hypothetical one dollar bet. We thought that Bruni would demote Daniel to three stars, and lose a dollar.

	Eater		NYJ
Bankroll	$106.50		$129.67
Gain/Loss	+2.00		–1.00
Total	$108.50		$128.67
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Won–Lost	49–23		51–21

Rolling the Dice: Daniel

The Line: Tomorrow, Frank Bruni reviews one of the few remaining grandes dames of French cuisine, Daniel. The Eater oddsmakers have set the action as follows (√√ denotes the Eater bet):

Zero Stars: 500-1
One Star: 499-1
Two Stars: 498-1
Three Stars: 4-1
Four Stars: 2-1 √√

The Skinny: Daniel currently carries four New York Times stars, courtesy of Mr. William Grimes. It is the last remaining four-star restaurant that Bruni has never reviewed. He has, however, written obliquely about the restaurant on several occasions, and it has never been positive.

Here he is in December 2004:

I dropped by Cafe Boulud the other night. I went because I had recently visited the chef Daniel Boulud’s other two Manhattan restaurants but not this one, which happens to be many of my acquaintances’ hands-down favorite of the three. I can see why. It doesn’t have the starched self-consciousness of Daniel or the cheeky swagger of DB Bistro Moderne.

And then in August 2007:

Under Mr. Carmellini Café Boulud had thrived: for many diners, it was the most consistently enjoyable of the restaurants owned by Daniel Boulud, more relaxed than Daniel, less scattershot than DB Bistro Moderne.

And here he was in October 2007, commenting on the Michelin Guide’s two-star rating for Daniel in relation to the three stars given to Jean Georges:

Putting the restaurant Jean Georges ahead of Daniel — giving it three stars to Daniel’s two — is a more defensible judgment call, consistent with the appetites and appraisals of many of the city’s most discerning diners.

In all of these comments, Bruni’s enthusiasm falls well short of the rapture one expects at a four-star restaurant. Unless Bruni has been wowed lately to a degree he wasn’t before, I cannot see how Daniel can remain a four-star restaurant. Bruni’s well known abhorrence of classic French luxury dining is another factor not in Daniel’s favor.

We’ve long believed that Daniel’s days in the four-star club were numbered, as soon as Bruni could find a replacement. There are currently just five such restaurants, and that total has remained remarkably stable over the years. When Bruni demoted Alain Ducasse and Bouley from four stars to three, other restaurants replaced them.

What would be Daniel’s replacement? I had once thought that either Eleven Madison Park or Del Posto could be the lucky winner, but in a blog post on New Year’s Eve, Bruni strongly suggested that neither one was ready. Among Bruni’s known favorites, that leaves only Momofuku Ko as a potential promotion candidate—a review that would put Bruni on the map like no other. Among traditional restaurants, the newly relocated Bouley is the best candidate, though we don’t see it happening.

We don’t discount entirely the possibility of four stars tomorrow: Boulud could have upped his game since Bruni’s earlier visits, or maybe the Brunz just feels itchy because he hasn’t given four stars to anybody in almost two years. But given Bruni’s long-standing disdain, both for Daniel itself and the style of dining it stands for, we just don’t see it.

The Bet: We believe that Frank Bruni will award three stars to Daniel.

The Payoff: BarBao and The West Branch

Today, Frank Bruni delivers identical one-star verdicts on BarBao and The West Branch:

Both the West Branch, a mostly Mediterranean brasserie, and BarBao, which interprets Vietnamese cuisine, deserve to make it. While their kitchens aren’t consistent enough or their menus quite original enough to brand them destination restaurants, they have real talent in their DNA and bring serious food to a patch of Manhattan that, for all its recent strides, could still use more of it.

This was one of Bruni’s better reviews. The text was consistent with the rating, and the rating was consistent with the general buzz about these places, and in the case of BarBao, with my own observations. And he resisted the temptation to give two stars to The West Branch merely because it is inexpensive.

Bruni liked BarBao a tad better than The West Branch. Yet, he thinks we may be heading into a burgers-‘n’-fries era, which could work to the latter restaurant’s favor. He found The West Branch consistently full, but BarBao always had empty tables (as it did when we visited). However, it could be less about the recession, and more about the fact that Tom Valenti is already well known in the neighborhood, thanks to Ouest, his other restaurant nearby.

We went home quite unsure about our hypothetical wager with Eater.com, given that either one of these places could have earned two stars. But our sense was that if either place had struck Bruni as a destination restaurant (which is essentially what two stars means), he would have granted it the courtesy of its own review.

As we correctly predicted one star for both restaurants, we win $5 on our hypothetical one-dollar bets. Eater was correct for BarBao (winning $2), but not The West Branch (losing $1), for a net of $1.

	Eater		NYJ
Bankroll	$105.50		$124.67
Gain/Loss	+1.00		+5.00
Total	$106.50		$129.67
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Won–Lost	48–23		51–20

Rolling the Dice: Bar Bao and The West Branch

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 has a two-fer, with Michael Bao Huynh’s BarBao and Tom Valenti’s The West Branch going under the microscope. The Eater oddsmakers have set the action as follows (√√ denotes the Eater bet):

BarBao
Zero Stars: 6-1
One Star: 2-1 √√
Two Stars: 5-1
Three Stars: 35-1
Four Stars: 35,000-1

West Branch
Zero Stars: 7-1
One Star: 3-1
Two Stars: 2-1 √√
Three Stars: 5-1
Four Stars: 20,000-1

The Skinny: Bruni’s double reviews usually have a theme. Here, it is geography: both places are on Bruni’s beloved Upper West Side, where a deuce is always in play. You wonder, though, why a new two-star restaurant would be relegated to sharing a review, when trivial one-star places have so often been given reviews to themselves.

Frank Bruni has reviewed Michael Bao Huynh twice, awarding one star at Bao 111 and two at Mai House. When we visited, we found BarBao a touch less exciting—less polished—than Mai House.

We haven’t made it to The West Branch yet, but reviews have generally been positive. It’s a less ambitious version of Valenti’s other restaurant, Ouest, but as Eater notes, Bruni could give bonus points for serving pretty good grub at recession-friendly prices.

The Bet: We are betting that Frank Bruni will award one star apiece to BarBao and The West Branch.