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

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.

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.

The Payoff: Gottino and Terroir

In today’s Times, Frank Bruni hands out a pair of one-star cupcakes to Gottino and Terroir, two fine restaurants masquerading as wine bars:

Both are trawling an easygoing confluence of Italian soul and finger food. And they’re reeling in enough— both menus have dozens of options beyond salumi and cheese — to force the question, are Terroir and Gottino restaurants in wine-bar drag?

Ms. Williams seems terrified by that notion. On the phone recently she caught herself using the words lunch and dinner and quickly reversed course, saying she didn’t want customers looking to Gottino for an actual meal.

“Just squeeze in, eat and drink, because it’s not a restaurant,” she said. “I don’t want people to have restaurant expectations. But if I tell people just to squeeze in, eat and drink, it’ll all be O.K.”

Since the “Restaurants” column doesn’t normally review wine bars, we figured Bruni would choose two that he liked. He acknowledged the “very real limitations and discomforts of both Gottino and Terroir, where space is tight, the mood is agitated, reservations aren’t accepted and you could easily wind up standing and waiting 45 minutes for the privilege of straddling a stool.” Also, “overall dining experiences are abbreviated, and not suited to many occasions.”

But make no mistake about it: Gottino and Terroir are those rare establishments that could be happy about a one-star review. Most likely, they were designed with no expectation of a starred Times review at all. It helps that both lend credence to Frank’s favorite meme, namely, “the increasing degree to which distinguished cooking pops up in the unconventional, informal settings that many food lovers often prefer.” Their menus are “unfussy compendia,” and they don’t “play by mustier rules.”

It also helps that both are Italian, which is always a guarantee of Frank’s attention—though not necessarily his love.

We took the one-star odds on both restaurants. On hypothetical bets of $1, we win $3 at Gottino and $2 at Terroir for a total of $5. Eater, which predicted zero and one star respectively, loses $1 at Gottino and wins $2 at Terroir, for a net of $1.

	Eater		NYJ
Bankroll	$90.50		$110.67
Gain/Loss	+1.00		+5.00
Total	$91.50		$115.67
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Won–Lost	42–20		45–17

Rolling the Dice: Gottino and Terroir

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 files a wine-bar twofer, looking in on Terroir (East Village) and Gottino (West Village). The Eater oddsmakers have set the action as follows (√√ denotes the Eater bet):

     Gottino
Zero Stars: 2-1 √√
One Star: 3-1
Two Stars: 6-1
Three Stars: 50-1
Four Stars: 10,000-1

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

The Skinny: We bettors are out of our element today, as neither of these is a traditional review target. It’s not even clear what the star system means when applied to a wine bar. But His Frankness has chosen them, so we’ll place our bets.

In our view, one star is the floor for both of these places. Bruni doesn’t normally review wine bars at all. With so many to choose from, why waste space on one he doesn’t like? The question is, could either of them get two?

At Gottino, the chef is Jody Williams. Her last experience with the star system is one she’d rather forget: a one-star hazing at Morandi that read like zero. (She has since left the restaurant.) We don’t think Bruni will pick on her again. Besides, the other critics have actually liked Gottino, including the Underground Gourmet for New York (three hollow stars out of five), Jacqui Gal for MetroMix (3½ stars out of five), and Robert Sietsema for the Village Voice.

Terroir is the work of two really smart guys, Marco Canora and Paul Grieco, who have two terrific restaurants already to their credit, Hearth and Insieme. Here as well, the reviews have been positive, including Ed Levine at Serious Eats and Paul Adams for The Sun. We liked it too, though our visit was on opening night, so we didn’t assign a rating.

The ceiling for Terroir is set by Canora and Grieco’s other two restaurants. Bruni awarded two stars to the more ambitious Insieme, while Amanda Hesser did the same for Hearth, which actually actually supplies many of the items that Terroir’s non-existent kitchen can’t produce itself. Terroir is lots of fun, but unless Frank is crazy it has to be a star lower than the other two places.

With Gottino, we have less to go on, but we’re having trouble imagining what a two-star wine bar would be like.

The Bet: We are betting that Frank Bruni will award one star apiece to Gottino and Terroir.

The Payoff: Bar Q

Just when we thought we had Frank Bruni figured out, he uncorked one of the weirdest reviews of his tenure, awarding two stars to Bar Q:

In terms of its variability from one stretch of the menu to another, Bar Q is a riddle, but it’s a riddle with a solution: don’t pay too much attention to the restaurant’s name, which alludes to barbecue, or to the culinary direction in which that name points you.

With the exception of pork-stuffed spare ribs, richer than a Russian plutocrat and sauced with an elementary school’s worth of peanut butter, the dishes that veer the closest to conventional barbecue or that give you bones to grab and gnaw on are among the least enjoyable and impressive.

Let us be clear: our complaint isn’t that Bruni awarded a different number of stars than we predicted. That has happened plenty of times. And our complaint isn’t that Bruni liked a restaurant we didn’t. That has happened plenty of times, too.

The trouble is that this review, even on its own terms, doesn’t read like two stars. We can’t recall a review in which he had so many complaints about the food and still awarded two stars—unless it was a “three-minus,” such as Gilt or Gordon Ramsay. Bruni’s critics sometimes bellyache about exceedingly casual places he elevated to two stars—Sripraphai and Franny’s come to mind—but at least he made the case for them as passionately as it could be made. With Bar Q, he didn’t even try.

It makes nonsense of the current rating at Annisa, Anita Lo’s other, and infinitely better, restaurant nearby. Annisa carries the same two stars (Grimes, 2000) as Bar Q, a misguided judgment Bruni shows no signs of remedying.

Lastly, he also commits a cardinal no-no, at least in my book: complaining about the tough life restaurant critics (and those who dine with them) lead:

A restaurant critic’s most practiced companions know that the questions to be asked in advance of a meal go beyond the address, the hour and the (fake) reservation name.

More important bits of information: is the visit to the restaurant a first one or a follow-up? And if it’s a follow-up, what are they in for? Is the critic doing them a favor, or are they doing him one?

As I ushered several of my most loyal and keenly inquisitive sidekicks into Bar Q for Visit 2, I tiptoed around the answers. I stressed that I was paying the check: drink up! I emphasized that Bar Q belonged to Anita Lo, whose cooking at Annisa can be sublime.

We know that full-time critics have it rough (I know I couldn’t hack it), but keep it out of the review.

Eater and I both predicted a one-star review. We both lose $1 on our hypothetical one-dollar bets.

	Eater		NYJ
Bankroll	$91.50		$111.67
Gain/Loss	–1.00		–1.00
Total	$90.50		$110.67
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Won–Lost	41–19		43–17

Rolling the Dice: Bar Q

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 visits Bar Q, Anita Lo’s Asian barbecue in the West Village. 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: 50-1
Four Stars: 10,000-1

The Skinny: Luckily for Anita Lo, a zero-star review is off the table. Goose eggs are rare, so you can be sure Bruni won’t crack two of them in a row. Ago, last week’s spanking victim, takes Bar Q off the hook.

We agree with Eater that Adam Platt’s two-bagger sets the outer limits of what is possible here. As usual, Platt’s reasoning is suspect: “My wife agitated (loudly) for three stars; my hulking barbecue friends agitated (almost as loudly) for one. Diplomatically, I’ll split the difference.”

We think Bruni will sympathize more with Platt’s barbecue friends than with his wife. Besides, we found the place just a tad better than mediocre—certainly nowhere close to two stars, either in concept or execution.

The Bet: We agree with Eater that Frank Bruni will award one star to Bar Q.

The Payoff: Ago

Today, the Brunatrix bends Ago over the table and administers a first-class spanking, with only the third POOR rating of his tenure:

She led us to a round table little bigger than a bike wheel. When our four appetizers later arrived and claimed every square millimeter of it, the waiter audibly contemplated balancing a fifth, communal appetizer that we’d ordered on top of our wine glasses…

This restaurant isn’t in the hospitality business. It’s in the attitude business, projecting an aloofness that permeated all of my meals there, nights of wine and poses for swingers on the make, cougars on the prowl and anyone else who values a sort of facile fabulousness over competent service or a breaded veal Milanese with any discernible meat.

The one I had one night was pounded so thin that the breading on top met the breading on the bottom without pausing for much of anything in between. A vegan could have made peace with it…

The review proves that Ago is doubly incompetent. In the first place, it offers terrible service to its non-VIP customers. And in the second place, even when it has a VIP customer, it doesn’t even know the difference.

This review also proves that critic anonymity works. There are about 15 times when the restaurant could have partially redeemed itself, if only they’d recognized that they were serving Frank Bruni. Critics that always trumpet their presence—Restaurant Girl, for instance—are practically assured of never having such an experience.

Eater and I both predicted a zero-star review. We both win $3 on our hypothetical one-dollar bets.

	Eater		NYJ
Bankroll	$88.50		$108.67
Gain/Loss	+3.00		+3.00
Total	$91.50		$111.67
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Won–Lost	41–18		43–16