Rolling the Dice: Ago

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 Ago—that’s pronounced “Ah-go”—in Robert De Niro’s Greenwich Hotel. The Eater oddsmakers have set the action as follows (√√ denotes the Eater bet):

Zero Stars: 3-1 √√
One Star: 2-1
Two Stars: 6-1
Three Stars: 25-1
Four Stars: 1,000-1

The Skinny: By all accounts, Ago is a formulaic trattoria. The nominal chef, Agostino Sciandri, for whom the restaurant is named, spends no time in New York, and apparently doesn’t intend to. Ago might be a one-star restaurant if everything were working perfectly. The trouble is, it’s not that impressive. Alan Richman didn’t think so, and neither did we.

As Eater notes, Ago is “goose-train eligible.” Bruni normally doesn’t review obscure restaurants only to trash them, but where you’ve got a celebrity owner, a celebrity chef, and a well publicized opening, then nobody’s safe. Bruni is on record with the view that:

…the definition of one star as “good” would quickly lose any meaning if the review space didn’t occasionally present examples, and reviews, of restaurants that fall below that mark. That argues for zero-star reviews from time to time.

To Bruni, “occasionally” has usually translated into a handful of zero-star reviews per year, but he has issued no goose-eggs since he rated Harry Cipriani POOR in November 2007. That’s seven months ago. The goose train is overdue.

The Bet: We agree with Eater that Frank Bruni will award no stars to Ago.

The Payoff: Elettaria

Today, as expected, Frank Bruni awards one star to Elettaria, finding the performance too inconsistent, the ambiance too scatter-brained:

The ostensibly individual tables bisecting the dining room are essentially one way-too-long communal table, which makes for odd traffic patterns.

And why is this central and most crucial region of the restaurant so cramped when there’s so much elbowroom and extra space around the bar up front? Elettaria is lovely but awkward, and its awkwardness undercuts Mr. Nawab’s impressively creative cooking.

But then his cooking also undercuts itself, some dishes mirroring the setting: seductive in the abstract, less so in actuality. There’s too broad a gap between the best of them, which are excellent, and the rest. I had only one meal that wholly delighted me, while the others were a mix of exciting, intriguing and frustrating moments.

We and Eater both win $2 on our hypothetical one-dollar bets.

	Eater		NYJ
Bankroll	$86.50		$106.67
Gain/Loss	+2.00		+2.00
Total	$88.50		$108.67
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Won–Lost	40–18		42–16

Rolling the Dice: Elettaria

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 takes a belated look at Elettaria, Akhtar Nawab’s Indian–American fusion restaurant in Greenwich Village. The Eater oddsmakers have set the action as follows (√√ denotes the Eater bet):

Zero Stars: 5-1
One Star: 2-1 √√
Two Stars: 3-1
Three Stars: 8-1
Four Stars: 1,000-1

The Skinny: As usual, there are only two possible outcomes here: one star or two. The closeness of the odds (2–1 and 3–1 respectively) shows that this is basically a coin toss. Reviews have been all over the map, ranging from Platt’s one-star slap to RG’s three-star rave. Will the real Elettaria please stand up?

The X-factor is the rather long time it took Bruni to get around to this review: it has been more than six weeks since most of the other critics filed, including this blog, which awarded two stars. We can only assume that Bruni saw potential, and wanted to give Elettaria time to resolve the early kinks. Bruni doesn’t usually give restaurants that chance, so you’ve got to figure that he really wanted to like this place.

We are torn, but our sense is that the cramped ambiance, abbreviated menu and chronic inconsistency will rate mentions in this review.

The Bet: We are betting, with some reluctance, that Frank Bruni will award one star to Elettaria.

The Payoff: The Harrison

After a week off, Frank Bruni returns today with a review of The Harrison, clocking in at the upper end of two stars:

How often, really, do you go through four appetizers, entrees and desserts without confronting a total bore, a total bust or an overwrought underachiever?

Take it from someone who spends as many hours dining out as a cat does dozing: not often. Even the best, most exciting restaurants stumble from time to time over their own ambitions. They’re exhilarating rides, but also risky ones.

The Harrison, in contrast, is the very definition of dependable, poised to impress you, if not quite wow you…

Like the Red Cat, which is technically its older sibling but feels like its younger one, the Harrison doesn’t promise or deliver out-and-out excitement. But it safeguards against disappointment as well as just about any other Manhattan restaurant.

We haven’t yet visited The Harrison under new chef Amanda Freitag, but Bruni’s review captured the spirit of the place as we recalled it from past visits, though his complaint about the décor seemed off-key: “…the Harrison’s visual evocation of a country inn in the big city still strikes me as more stodgy than cozy.” We don’t find it stodgy at all.

We win $3 on our hypothetetical one-dollar bet. Eater, who had predicted three stars, loses a dollar.

	Eater		NYJ
Bankroll	$87.50		$103.67
Gain/Loss	–1.00		+3.00
Total	$86.50		$106.67
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Won–Lost	39–18		41–16

Rolling the Dice: The Harrison

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 takes a pulse check on TriBeCa standout The Harrison under new chef Amanda Freitag. The Eater oddsmakers have set the action as follows (√√ denotes the Eater bet):

Zero Stars: 10-1
One Star: 6-1
Two Stars: 3-1
Three Stars: 5-1 √√
Four Stars: 12-1

The Skinny: It may not be fair, but chef changes at existing restaurants don’t get the same press as brand new restaurants, even where the change is fairly dramatic. The Times is the only paper in town that at least makes the attempt, however irregularly, to re-review restaurants where there has been a significant change of personnel—and indeed, sometimes when there hasn’t been.

When Amanda Freitag took over at The Harrison, owner Jimmy Bradley told Grub Street, “We were doing French cookery in a New American style, but with Amanda the menu is going to be lusty, soulful, rustic Mediterranean-inspired cookery.” That’s enough to make The Harrison, for all intents and purposes, a brand new restaurant. But as it’s still called “The Harrison,” the rest of this town’s critics have basically ignored it.

So I don’t have any kind of critical baseline to go on here. I can tell you that William Grimes awarded two stars shortly after The Harrison opened in 2001, with the Little Owl’s Joey Campanaro in the kitchen. Bruni wrote a favorable Diner’s Journal follow-up after Brian Bistrong took over.

I can also tell you that I’ve loved The Harrison both times I visited. The chef has changed, but what hasn’t changed is Jimmy Bradley’s sure-handed touch, which was good enough to attract a generous two-star Bruni review for Bradley’s other restaurant, The Red Cat.

Eater is taking the three-star odds, betting that Bruni will award three stars for the same reason he did at Dovetail: for the price, The Harrison is very good indeed, with appetizers mostly below $15 and entrées mostly in the mid-twenties. We also realize that Italian or Italian-influenced menus, if they are good, often get a “bonus star” from Bruni.

Against that, we haven’t heard the kind of raves about The Harrison that we heard about Dovetail, and we subscribe to the theory that three-star restaurants usually don’t hide in plain sight. Our gut tells us that if Freitag were turning out three-star food, lots of folks would have noticed by now. Bruni has given out a lot of three-star ratings this year: at some point the average needs to return to normal.

The Bet: We are betting that Frank Bruni will award an enthusiastic two stars to The Harrison.

The Payoff: Eighty One

Today, Frank Bruni awards the expected two stars to Eighty One, finding the ambitious food over-thought and over-wrought:

Maybe it’s an inevitable consequence of so many restaurants vying to be noticed. Maybe it’s an attempt to justify entrees sailing far north of $35. Maybe it’s a reflection of chefs too neurotic or vain to commit to one strategy or to dwell on one note.

Whatever the reason, the high-end New York dining scene is awash in troikas of pork, trilogies of tuna and the like. A meat that does a wholly satisfying turn as a chop, or a fish showcased adequately in a fillet, appears in many guises, as if it’s an actor doing one of those multi-part tours de force.

The spectacle is impressive to a point, but exhausting, too.

He awards points for the wine list, but subtracts them for the room:

Eighty One certainly preens. It goes so far as to title a section of the menu in which it lists spotlighted dishes the “tasting collection.”

When you see something like that, you’re less inclined to overlook a restaurant’s shortcomings. In Eighty One’s case, they include a sprawling dining room with unflattering lighting and oversize red velvet booths that look as if they were carted in from a bordello on some planet where the prostitutes are 12 feet tall.

We win $4 on our hypothetetical one-dollar bet. Eater, who had predicted three stars, loses a dollar.

	Eater		NYJ
Bankroll	$88.50		$99.67
Gain/Loss	–1.00		+4.00
Total	$87.50		$103.67
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Won–Lost	39–17		40–16

Rolling the Dice: Eighty One

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 gives us another pulse check on the Upper West Side’s fine dining revolution, with a review of Ed Brown’s Eighty One. The Eater oddsmakers have set the action as follows (√√ denotes the Eater bet):

Zero Stars: 10-1
One Star: 5-1
Two Stars: 4-1
Three Stars: 5-1 √√
Four Stars: 12-1

The Skinny: This week’s Eater odds reflect the lack of consensus on Eighty One, with anywhere between one and three stars being realistically possible.

Of the reviews so far, the worst came from Paul Adams in The Sun. Adams doesn’t award stars, but he called the restaurant “a sad disappointment.” At the other extreme was Steve Cuozzo in The Post, who doesn’t do stars either, but said he would award three. Adam Platt in New York was in the middle, awarding the deuce.

For the record, we gave Eighty One 2½ stars. If we were using Bruni’s system, which does not have half-stars, we’d have rounded down to two. We think that’s the most likely outcome here—not just because it conforms to our own verdict, but for other reasons too.

First, Bruni is seldom impressed with the trappings of luxury, which he usually calls “fussy.” I abhor the word, but if ever there was a fussy restaurant, Eighty One is it.

Second, Eighty One is more expensive than nearby Dovetail, to which he awarded three stars. Given that Bruni is highly sensitive to price, Eighty One would need to be a lot better than Dovetail to receive the identical rating. It’s hard to see that happening, given that his review of Dovetail was a rave. Most critics, regardless of their rating, have had their complaints about Eighty One. If Bruni does too, it’ll be enough to withhold the third star.

Bruni has been pretty generous with three-star reviews this year. Maybe they’re putting happy pills in the water over at Times HQ. The year’s not half over, and three new restaurants have received that honor. In all of 2007, none did. As the honor comes rarely, and Frank can time his reviews however he wants, we doubt he’d do two of them in a row. Last week’s review, of course, was three-stars for Momofuku Ko.

Lastly, there’s the Cuozzo effect: he and Bruni seldom see eye to eye. Cuozzo loved Eighty One.

We’re a little perplexed as to what has taken Bruni so long to file this review. The place has been open for months, and Platt’s review appeared more than six weeks ago. We can only guess that Bruni really wanted to love this place—it’s in his neighborhood, after all—but in the end, couldn’t quite make the case.

Why not one star? For a restaurant at Eighty One’s level, a measly star would be close to insulting. Bruni is quite capable of delivering that kind of smackdown, but usually only when he feels he has to. Given how long he’s waited, we figure he has something nice to say—just not three stars’ worth.

The Bet: We are betting that Frank Bruni will award two stars to Eighty One.

The Payoff: Momofuku Ko

Today, Frank Bruni concludes the early review cycle for Momofuku Ko with a strangely mixed three-star review:

You don’t get start-to-finish enchantment, but that’s not a function of insufficient coddling. It’s a function of where you set the bar for a restaurant that must master only a cluster of dishes on a given night, and that compels you to surrender so fully to its authority.

Under those terms there’s a promise of unwavering transcendence, and Ko in its early months serves a few dishes that merely intrigue along with others that utterly enrapture. It also falls prey to some inconsistency.

At least half the review was about matters other than the food: the newfangled reservation system; the minimalist aesthetic; the pared-down service. When he does discuss the food, he finds it surprisingly uneven.

In a sense, this was a “review by subtraction.” Bruni started with the unwritten presumption that Momofuku Ko was gunning for four stars — a presumption certainly bolstered by Adam Platt’s review in New York — and proceeded to explain why “Deification may have come prematurely to Mr. Chang.”

Bruni was also hemmed in by his two-star reviews of Momofuku Ssäm Bar and Degustation, the most similar non-Chang restaurant in Manhattan. Ko is better than both.

It seems that there’s a “bonus star” available for any restaurant that confirms Bruni’s wholly unwarranted assumptions about what the younger generation of diners is purportedly seeking in a restaurant:

Ko pares down stuffy atmospherics in a particularly thorough way. It wagers that for a younger generation more focused on food than on frippery, a scruffy setting, small discomforts and little tyrannies are acceptable — preferable, even — if they’re reflected in the price.

Bruni’s reviews have improved markedly over the years. We could almost become a fan if these tiresome rants were sent to the cutting-room floor, where they belong.

We and Eater both took the obvious three-star bet, paying just even money. We both win $1 on our hypothetical bets.

	Eater		NYJ
Bankroll	$87.50		$98.67
Gain/Loss	+1.00		+1.00
Total	$88.50		$99.67
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Won–Lost	39–16		39–16

Rolling the Dice: Momofuku Ko

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 delivers his most anticipated verdict in quite a long while. The beneficiary, or victim, is Momofuku Ko. The Eater oddsmakers have set the action as follows (√√ denotes the Eater bet):

Zero Stars: 15-1
One Star: 6-1
Two Stars: 3-1
Three Stars: EVEN √√
Four Stars: 12-1

A Bit of Trivia: On August 3, 1990, Bryan Miller of the Times upgraded Bouley to four stars. The next new member of that exclusive club was not named until December 10, 1993, when Ruth Reichl upgraded Chanterelle. That 175-week drought is the longest in the 45-year history of the New York Times star system.

Do you know how long it has been since Frank Bruni named a new four-star restaurant? Remarkably enough, the last new entrant to the club was Masa, reviewed on December 29, 2004 — exactly 175 weeks ago.

Tomorrow, regardless of what he does, Bruni will match a record of futility not seen since the 1990s; and he will set a new record if he awards anything less than four stars to Momofuku Ko.

We do not suggest that Bruni is aware of the record that he is about to reach. But he must be aware that he is grading on a four-star scale, and it has been three years and four months since a new restaurant earned the top grade. He must, in a sense, be itching to pull the trigger, while also being aware that four stars mustn’t be doled out lightly.

It’s an open question whether Bruni has called his past shots correctly. We think he under-rated several promising candidates, though we cannot say for sure that any of them deserved four stars. The atrophied state of high-end dining is in any case newsworthy—and something he must be thinking about—regardless of whether it’s Bruni’s own fault, the market’s fault, or some combination of the two.

The Skinny: Frank Bruni’s rating of Momofuku Ko will depend on his interpretation of this little blurb, which appears at the bottom of every New York Times review:

Ratings range from zero to four stars and reflect the reviewer’s reaction to food, ambience and service, with price taken into consideration. (emphasis supplied)

Bruni has frequently awarded two stars, and occasionally even three stars, to objectively middle-brow restaurants that he regarded as “good values for the price.” But to the best of our knowledge, no Times critic, including Bruni, has ever taken price into consideration at the four-star level. A top-rated restaurant has to be extraordinary in the absolute sense, not merely “good for the price.”

We think Bruni has dined at enough four-star restaurants to recognize that Ko is not one of them. It is a remarkable restaurant in many ways, and we have come (quite reluctantly) to the view that David Chang deserves most of the laurels that have been tossed his way. But let’s get real. Ignoring price, the experience at Momofuku Ko is a quantum leap below every four-star restaurant in town. Indeed, it’s probably a mid-tier three-star place.

Yes, it is very good for $85 prix fixe. But at that level, Ko is squarely in the price range of many three-star restaurants. For instance, the prix fixe at Eleven Madison Park is $82; Granted, it’s not a long tasting menu (which would be $145), but rather three courses with some amuses-bouches and petits-fours thrown in. But those three courses have considerably more culinary craftsmanship than most of the menu at Momofuku Ko, and they’re served in a room 10 times as lovely, by a staff 10 times as polished.

To be sure, a four-star rating for Momofuku Ko would give Bruni the chance to put the heel of his boot on the Times star system in a way that none of his previous ratings have done. It’s an opportunity that must have occurred to him. But we think he cares enough about his craft to recognize a real four-star restaurant from a mere imitator.

The Bet: We agree with Eater that Frank Bruni will award three stars to Momofuku Ko.

Update: Just anticipating some potential comments here: The 175-week drought is the gap between new entrants to the four-star level. Bruni has had other four-star reviews, but they were re-affirmations of ratings given by his predecessors.

The Payoff: Commerce

Today, Commerce gets a well-deserved smack-down with a one-star review from Frank Bruni:

The memo apparently went out, and those New Yorkers versed in showing up at the right new places right when they’re supposed to have descended on Commerce in style and in droves. That makes it either exhilarating or enervating, depending on your age, your mood and the strength of your eardrums…

Commerce in one sense evokes the Waverly Inn and in another emulates Balthazar. But in the end it isn’t like either of them, which becomes clear when the menu arrives and, in its wake, the food.

[Chef Harold Moore] … creates a rankling dissonance, his dishes beseeching a closeness of attention that the frenzied atmosphere doesn’t easily permit.

And he errs. While there’s some wonderful food that reflects the talent he showed and the experience he received at Montrachet and then March, there’s also some food that’s not cooked or seasoned as it should be, and there’s food that’s too fussy, not just for the ambience but also for its own good.

I never root for restaurants to fail, but I must confess I am delighted that Bruni didn’t fall for this mess. We’ve seen far too many restaurants attempting to serve three-star food in zero-star surroundings, with the aim of earning two stars. Enough is enough.

Unfortunately, we didn’t trust our gut, so we lose $1 on our hypothetical bet. So does Eater.

	Eater		NYJ
Bankroll	$88.50		$99.67
Gain/Loss	–1.00		–1.00
Total	$87.50		$98.67
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Won–Lost	38–16		38–16