Rolling the Dice: Mas

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 re-reviews the West Village farmhouse gem, Mas. The Eater oddsmakers have set the action as follows (√√ denotes the Eater bet):

Zero Stars: 8-1
One Star: 5-1
Two Stars: 3-1 √√
Three Stars: 6-1
Four Stars: 7,500-1

The Skinny: Frank Bruni’s first review of Mas came early in his tenure: it was something like his fifth or sixth review. He awarded just one star, which even then felt too low. When I finally got around to visiting, albeit a couple of years later, the restaurant felt like a clear two stars, with the potential for three.

Despite Eater odds that suggest a real horserace, two stars is the only realistic outcome here. Two-step promotions are extraordinarily rare in the NYT star system, and Mas isn’t an important enough restaurant for Bruni to bother re-reviewing just to re-affirm its original one-star rating. Actually, Mas isn’t a restaurant I would have expected Bruni to keep on his radar screen at all, so I’m glad to see him rectifying one of his earlier mistakes.

The Bet: We agree with Eater that Frank Bruni will award two stars to Mas.

The Payoff: La Sirène

Today, Frank Bruni awards one star to an “oddly compelling little bistro,” La Sirène:

I don’t want to oversell La Sirène, which opened last spring. It operates on a shoestring, doesn’t have a liquor license and doesn’t ace many of the dishes on its relatively short French menu…

And drawing attention to La Sirène runs the risk of overcrowding it. It has only about 25 seats and not an inch to spare, so if your table isn’t ready you have to stand outside, where you’re treated to an intimate view of cars streaming into the Holland Tunnel.

But this scrappy restaurant, where you can hear the bell every time a dish is ready and heat from the kitchen steams diners’ eyeglasses, will charm many people turned off by the vacuous polish and higher prices elsewhere. With no corkage fee, it’s a solid option for wine drinkers seeking liberation from restaurant markups.

Though he loved the place, only five paragraphs mention the food. The rest is about the cramped ambiance and chef Didier Pawlicki’s penchant for responding personally to Internet critiques on sites like citisearch.com.

But I loved the review anyway. It was one of the rare Bruni reviews that called attention to a worthy restaurant that all the other critics had missed. Usually, he just follows breadcrumb trails already well paved by others.

And it was one of the rare one-star reviews that was actually positive. Too often, Bruni’s one-star reviews read like a list of regrets that he couldn’t award a higher rating. One star is supposed to mean “good,” and there ought to be no shame in that.

Lastly, as I mentioned yesterday, this seems to be the first time that Bruni has actually gone out of his way to review a French restaurant. I don’t want to celebrate prematurely, but perhaps he is finally expanding his interests beyond Italian, Asian and Steakhouses.

In the betting department, we’re a loser again this week. We acknowledged that one star was the most likely outcome, but with Eater offering 15–1 odds on the higher rating, we couldn’t help but take the chance, though we must admit it’s a betting strategy that has never yet worked. But because this was such a good week for Bruni, we actually don’t mind losing. The review was at the higher end of one star, as we expected, but one star nevertheless.

Eater wins $4, while we lose $1.

	Eater		NYJ
Bankroll	$74.50		$85.67
Gain/Loss	+4.00		–1.00
Total	$78.50		$84.67
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Won–Lost	34–14		33–15

BruniBetting: La Sirène

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 an under-the-radar special: La Sirène. The Eater oddsmakers have set the odds as follows (√√ denotes the Eater bet):

Zero Stars: 3-1
One Star: 4-1 √√
Two Stars: 15-1
Three Stars: 75-1
Four Stars: 25,000-1

The Skinny: It’s hard for a reviewed restaurant to be more obscure than this one. La Sirène—that’s French for The Mermaid—has been in business for nine months, and I can’t find a single professional review. How did it even come to Bruni’s notice? Well, it does seem to be popular in the gay community. (I am not suggesting that that’s its only attraction.)

The Eater odds today are really crazy. Frank has never pulled a restaurant “out of nowhere” to give it zero stars. It makes no sense to waste a reviewing slot on a place the critics have already ignored anyway, only to suggest that it’s not worth our time.

When Frank reviews a small, earnest restaurant that’s off the beaten path, the rating is usually two stars. After all, one star in the Bruniverse isn’t much of a compliment for restaurants above the level of a deli. One star used to mean “good,” but the truly good one star review is a rarity nowadays.

To the best of our recollection, this is the first time Bruni has reviewed a French restaurant that wasn’t, in some sense, “compelled.” La Sirène is a restaurant he could easily have skipped—after all, every other critic did. When Bruni goes out of his way, it’s usually Italian, Asian, or Steak. So what’s going on here? Bruni must really have been smitten.

We hesitate to jump on the deuce train. For one thing, it’s BYOB, and that’s a rare deficiency in a two-star restaurant (though not unheard of in the Bruni era). Also, what is the probability that there’s a two-star restaurant that every other critic completely overlooked? Assuming that chef Didier Pawlicki’s cuisine is worthy of Frank’s attention, the rating could come down to service, and we have no reliable data points from which to judge.

Our usual practice here is to bet on the most probable outcome, which we believe is one star. But we are positive that if Bruni bothered to put this restaurant on his reviewing rounds, he must have found something extremely compelling, and he would just love to pull the two-star trigger if he could. Therefore, Eater’s 15–1 odds on that outcome are just as crazy as Eater’s 3–1 odds on a goose egg.

Perhaps Eater is just toying with us, but we can’t leave an attractive 15–1 spot hanging like that.

The Bet: Although we believe one star is the most probable outcome, we are laying a wager on the huge payday that the Eater oddsmakers have offered, and are betting that Frank Bruni will award two stars to La Sirène.

The Payoff: Bar Boulud

Yesterday, Frank Bruni awarded a slightly generous two stars to Bar Boulud, even though “there’s little wow from the kitchen, which turns out treatments of salmon, sea bass and roasted chicken that, while not quite losers, are definitely snoozers.” He actually preferred the lunch sandwiches to anything offered at dinner.

Frank has never cared much for classic French food, but the charcuterie won him over:

Bar Boulud is a terrine machine, a pâté-a-palooza, dedicated to the proposition that discerning New Yorkers aren’t getting nearly enough concentrated, sculptured, gelatinous animal fat, at least not of a superior caliber.

I’ll buy that, and I’ll buy it on the basis of the restaurant’s smooth pâté grand-mère (chicken liver, pork, Cognac) and coarse pâté grand-père (foie gras, pork, port), both of which are such pure joy to eat — on their own, on toasted bread, with mustard, without — that they sent me on a search across the menu not only for close relatives but also for distant cousins. I was ready to ingest the entire extended family.

And it gave Frank an opening to write another meta-review, to meditate on the micro-trends that fascinate him so:

Much of what you need to know about the direction of fine dining these days is distilled in Bar Boulud, where one of the most accomplished French traditionalists on this side of the Atlantic stages a production whose weakest facet is the conventional three-course dinner.

It’s not just white tablecloths that have fallen by the wayside at Bar Boulud, which extends the chef Daniel Boulud’s trajectory toward ever-more-casual restaurants, mirroring the culture around him. Gone, too, is the notion that sitting at a proper table and ordering a proper sequence of dishes is the way you want to eat.

You can certainly take that route, which in fact has rewards enough for anyone who does elect it. But unlike Mr. Boulud’s other New York restaurants — Daniel, Café Boulud and DB Bistro Moderne, in their order of birth and descending degrees of formality — Bar Boulud doesn’t press that path on you.

Many of its roughly 100 seats are stools at a high, long counter or chairs at a circular communal table. The fraction of menu real estate claimed by entrees is only about a quarter.

You get the sense that if Boulud had installed white tablecloths, Frank would have deducted a star.

We took the one-star odds, and lose $1 on our hypothetical bet. Eater took the two-star odds, and wins $4.

	Eater		NYJ
Bankroll	$70.50		$86.67
Gain/Loss	+4.00		–1.00
Total	$74.50		$85.67
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Won–Lost	33–14		33–14

Rolling the Dice: Bar Boulud

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 Daniel Boulud’s Lincoln Center charcuterie palace, Bar Boulud. The Eater oddsmakers have set the action as follows (√√ denotes the Eater bet):

Zero Stars: 8-1
One Star: 3-1
Two Stars: 4-1 √√
Three Stars: 8-1
Four Stars: 5,000-1

The Skinny: This week’s bet is a tough one, with the BruniTrends^® balanced on a razor’s edge. Though early reviews haven’t been rapturous, you’ve got to figure that if anyone can right the ship, it would be Daniel Boulud, whose restaurants already carry nine New York Times stars. Charcuterie takes center stage here, and Bruni is a confirmed meathead. Lastly, the restaurant is on his beloved Upper West Side, where the grading is always easy.

But was Boulud able to correct things quickly enough? Reports of bumbling service still come across the transom fairly regularly, and aside from the charcuterie no one has really loved Bar Boulud—not counting celebrities who go there to “see and be seen.” Great charcuterie, on its own, is probably a one-star deal, and Bruni loves to take down celebrity haunts. Bruni has been awfully lenient lately, with five positive reviews in a row. If this keeps up, people might almost start to think he’s gone flaccid. Frank wouldn’t want that to happen, would he?

Alas, we can’t bring any personal experience to the decision: our own first look at Bar Boulud was on opening night, and we tasted too small a sample to get a good idea of the restaurant’s capabilities.

The Bet: Our reasons, we admit, are soft. But we feel that Bruni is overdue to bring someone crashing down to earth. We are betting that he’ll award one star to Bar Boulud, with strong praise for the charcuterie, but too many other things wrong to justify the second star.

The Payoff: WD~50

Yesterday, Frank Bruni upgraded WD~50 to the three stars that some of us believed it deserved all along:

[Chef Wylie Dufresne] pushes hard against the envelope of possibility and the bounds of conformity to produce food that’s not only playful but also joyful and even exhilarating, at least when the mad science pays off.

It pays off more frequently now than in the past, when his attitude was cheekier, his judgment wobblier and too many of his creations gratuitously perverse.

Foie gras with anchovies? Venison tartare with edamame ice cream? I’d often shake my head, drop my fork and glance longingly toward the exit.

When William Grimes reviewed WD-50 in The New York Times shortly after the restaurant’s opening in 2003, he gave it two stars, saying that for all Mr. Dufresne’s ingenuity, he demonstrated “a certain contempt for the pleasure principle.”

…

But most of the dishes I tried over the last few months were knockouts, their measured eccentricities in the service of something other than eccentricity itself. These dishes validate the kind of experimentation that culinary pioneers like Mr. Dufresne undertake, and they reflect a thoughtful, mature equilibrium between what’s merely edgy and what’s truly enjoyable.

I’ve quoted Bruni at more length than usual, so that I can ask a question: has the restaurant really changed that much since the original two-star review? Or have Bruni’s tastes just caught up with what Dufresne was doing all along? It’s difficult to say, because there remain plenty of people who still think that the cuisine at WD~50 makes no sense at all.

In all of Bruni’s re-reviews, he tries to exaplain how the restaurant is different than before. But usually there is something far more specific—a change of chef being the obvious example. Bruni does admit that the restaurant “isn’t right for everyone or every mood,” a rare concession in a three-star review. Is there any restaurant that’s right for everyone or every mood?

Eater and New York Journal both took the three-star odds. We both win $2 on our hypothetical one-dollar bets.

	Eater		NYJ
Bankroll	$68.50		$84.67
Gain/Loss	+2.00		+2.00
Total	$70.50		$86.67
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Won–Lost	32–14		33–13

Rolling the Dice: WD~50

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 city’s lone successful example of haute molecular gastronomy, WD~50. The Eater oddsmakers have set the action as follows (√√ denotes the Eater bet):

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

The Skinny: WD~50 currently carries two New York Times stars, per William Grimes in June 2003. It also carries a Michelin star, and for whatever it’s worth, three stars on this website.

Frank Bruni’s re-reviews almost always come with a change of rating, unless there has been an intervening event to justify a fresh look—and there has been no such event at WD~50. The restaurant certainly hasn’t regressed in the last five years, which suggests the rating has nowhere to go but up.

The X-factor is that Bruni generally doesn’t like food you have to think about. The few examples of avant-garde cuisine that have come along during his tenure have not won favorable reviews. This would also be his third 3-star review in just five weeks.

But we have to agree with Eater that this review is pointless unless Bruni upgrades the restaurant to three stars. One can never put it past Bruni to waste a review slot, but we’re not betting he will. Expect Bruni to give Wylie Dufresne credit for staying in the kitchen at WD~50, when most chefs of his calibre (and fame) would surely by now have opened a second restaurant…or a third, or a fourth.

The Bet: We agree with Eater that Frank Bruni will award three stars to WD~50.

The Payoff: Bar Blanc

In today’s Times, Frank Bruni makes the remarkable discovery that some places called “Bar ______” aren’t really bars in the usual sense:

In an era of casual dressing, piecemeal supping and food as the adjunct to wine, is a restaurant’s best bet to pretend it’s less than it is? Should it persuade diners that it doesn’t harbor big ambitions or demand close attention, even if the opposite is true?

These are questions brought to mind by Bar Blanc, which belongs to a growing brood of establishments whose names suggest scruffier atmospheres and more modest menus than the places actually present.

Among its semantic siblings is Bar Stuzzichini, a fairly full-fledged Italian restaurant that opened last year, and Bar Milano, an apparently full-fledged Italian restaurant scheduled to open next month.

And then of course there’s Bar Boulud, a new French restaurant — yes, restaurant — that doesn’t even have a proper bar. Misleading nomenclature comes naturally to the chef Daniel Boulud, whose Café Boulud bears no resemblance to a café and whose DB Bistro Moderne isn’t anything oike a bistro.

Oh, yes. What about the food? Two stars.

We’ll admit it: We were very close to betting on just one star. But we didn’t. So Eater and NYJ both win $3 on our hypothetical one-dollar bets.

	Eater		NYJ
Bankroll	$65.50		$81.67
Gain/Loss	+3.00		+3.00
Total	$68.50		$84.67
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Won–Lost	31–14		32–13

Rolling the Dice: Bar Blanc

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 West Village’s latest two-star aspirant, Bar Blanc. The Eater oddsmakers have set the action as follows (√√ denotes the Eater bet):

Zero Stars: 5-1
One Star: 4-1
Two Stars: 3-1 √√
Three Stars: 8-1
Four Stars: 25,000-1

The Skinny: Today’s bet could be decided by a coin toss. Adam Platt and the Restaurant Girl have already awarded two stars, and the New Yorker liked it too, so it would be safe to guess that Bruni will agree. We were less enchanted, awarding only one star.

With most of the entrées between $25 and $35, these are not West Village neighborhood prices. To award the deuce, Bruni will insist on first-class service (not a strength of this restaurant in early reviews) and a high ratio of hits to duds.

The Bet: We are usually inclined to trust our own instincts (one star), but most critics have been positive, and we’re not willing to disagree with quite so many luminaries all at once. We are therefore betting that Frank Bruni will award two stars to Bar Blanc.

The Payoff: Dovetail

Yesterday, Frank Bruni awarded a glowing three stars to Dovetail, confirming that the Upper West Side sleeper hit is the Real Deal:

The inconspicuousness of the restaurant’s entrance may be bonkers or in fact brilliant, a subtle signal of Dovetail’s confidence in its inner strength. The carpeting and padded walls in the back definitely make sense. They keep noise in check.

Depending on where you sit, the restaurant can feel too plain for entrees that average above $30. The wines by the glass could be more exciting, and a few dishes don’t succeed, like an appetizer marriage of skate and chicken wings that’s inspired by semantics more than anything else.

All of that gives me concern about the possibility of a slightly disappointing dinner here. But most of my experiences were hugely positive.

The Eater oddsmakers offered an astonishing 15–1 odds on three stars, an opportunity for someone to make a killing. The oddsmakers are seldom that far off the mark. Like Eater, we took the more conservative two-star bet, so we both lose $1.

	Eater		NYJ
Bankroll	$66.50		$82.67
Gain/Loss	–1.00		–1.00
Total	$65.50		$81.67
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Won–Lost	30–14		31–13