Seeing Stars: Eater Blinks and So Do I

The stars are back.

Two years ago, the Los Angeles Times announced it was dropping the “star system” for rating restaurants. To my knowledge, no other publication followed the LAT’s lead.

In New York City, the Times, New York magazine, the Post, the Daily News, Time Out New York, the Observer, and GQ, all give stars. Among print publications that regularly review restaurants in New York, to my knowledge only the New Yorker and the Village Voice have yet to use stars (and they never did).

Last week, Eater.com (which had long eschewed reviews of any kind) began two new series of reviews, with critics Ryan Sutton (formerly of Bloomberg) and Robert Sietsema (formerly of the Village Voice), who will use separate non-overlapping four-star systems. (New York is the only other publication with separate star systems for low- and high-end restaurants.)

After the LAT announced its decision, the Times’ Pete Wells filed a blog post explaining why his reviews would continue to have stars:

No two critics are going to have the same reaction to a restaurant, and no two critics are going to come up with identical interpretations of the precedent. The whole process of critiquing restaurants is inherently subjective. Readers are free to disagree with the critic. Go ahead and throw the newspaper across the room if you like. That’s part of the fun. . . .

Whether you think that renders the stars meaningless depends entirely on what you expect them to do. If you hope they are going to organize the entire New York City restaurant scene into an objective and verifiable hierarchy of good, better and best, you’re going to find that the reviews are a weekly exercise in frustration. (A corollary: If you read the reviews believing that all restaurants with a given number of stars are meant to be equally good, you’re going to lose your mind.)

On the other hand, if you understand that the stars accompany a review of at least 1,000 words, I hope you’ll believe that they do have meaning. The reviews have to cover a lot of ground. They tell you what kind of restaurant is being reviewed, how it looks and feels, how customers are treated, how some of the dishes taste and often whether it’s worth the price. A star ranking from zero to four can’t do any of those things in any meaningful way, but it can try to serve as shorthand for how strongly the reviewer is recommending the restaurant.

After the LAT announcement, I introduced my own system, which not-coincidentally was a five-step scale, just as the stars had been (four to zero), but—as I then saw it—without the stars’ historical baggage. From highest to lowest, my ratings were:

• Extraordinary
• Category Killer
• Critic’s Pick
• Neighborhood Spot
• Not Recommended

These categories had always approximated my general sense of what the stars ought to mean, although not all critics used them that way. I found in practice that my new system was no more liberating than the stars. In fact, it was less discriminating, because I had used half-stars in the past, but I had allowed myself no way to designate a restaurant as, for example, “Neighborhood Plus.”

Other problems I saw with the star system seem less serious to me now. I do not fundamentally take issue with a restaurant like Roberta’s receiving three stars, as it did from Sutton last week, assuming you agree with his assessment. Restaurants are rated against the ideal versions of themselves, not against others in completely different genres. You could agree with Sutton’s rating, while concluding at the same time that Roberta’s isn’t for you. (That, in fact, is precisely my view of Roberta’s.)

There is nothing to be done about the fact that, on crowdsourced review sites like Yelp, a three-star review is terrible, while to most professional critics it is terrific. In my system, a one-star restaurant is “good,” which ought to be a compliment. I cannot do anything about the fact that some people will read my reviews, see one star, and think, “It must be awful.” The readers who say that haven’t read the review.

There remain considerable differences in the ways critics use the star system. Some publications go up to five stars, although most use four. Some go down to zero, but others stop at one. Some use half-stars; others don’t. Because of this, stars are generally not comparable across publications. For a given publication and critic, the stars, as Wells put it, “serve as shorthand for how strongly the reviewer is recommending the restaurant.”

But the system, in whatever fashion it is used, remains the lingua franca of restaurant reviews.

A few years ago, the Post’s Steve Cuozzo dropped the stars (in fact, he dropped traditional “reviews” entirely), but after a while concluded that he might as well re-instate them. I’ve now come to the same conclusion.

Michelin–New York Times Ratings Comparison

After the jump, you’ll find the list of all New York City restaurants currently open, that:
(1) Have now, or have ever had, at least one Michelin star; or,
(2) Have now, or have ever had, three or four New York Times stars.

For both Michelin and The Times, the list shows the maximum number of stars it has ever had (“Max”), and the current number of stars it has (“Curr.”). In the last two columns, you’ll find the name of the last Times critic who reviewed the restaurant and the date of the review. Click the link on the date to read the review itself.

The two rating systems are correlated. Most of the Michelin 1-star restaurants have two or three Times stars. Most of the Michelin 2-star restaurants have three Times stars. Most of the Michelin 3-star restaurants have four Times stars.

Given this correlation, you can find restaurants where the two systems disagree. For instance, Babbo has three Times stars but zero from Michelin. Danny Brown in Queens has a star from Michelin but has never even been reviewed in The Times.

Click to read more ...

Pete Wells and the Two-Star Restaurant

In case you hadn’t noticed, the New York Times restaurant critic, Pete Wells, likes to give two stars. In seven months on the job, it has become his base rating. Half of his reviews (50%) have been two stars; just 27 percent have received one star:

It wasn’t always this way. Sam Sifton gave one star 44 percent of the time, two stars 33 percent. Eater has a handy distribution of Frank Bruni’s ratings over the course of his tenure. People jokingly called him “Frankie Two-Stars,” due to his fondness for that rating. But he always gave one star more frequently than two. In his final year, he gave one star 45 percent of the time, two stars just 33 percent—about the same as Sifton.

Has there been a sudden upswing in the quality of New York restaurants? I don’t know anyone who thinks so. Wells is just a far easier grader than Sifton or Bruni.

Wells’s reviews are infinitely better than Sifton’s, and his knowledge is superior to Bruni’s. He’s just generous with the stars—or at least, with two of them. (His percentage of three-star reviews is on par with Bruni’s and Sifton’s. He’s filed only one four-star review, Le Bernardin, and I doubt anyone would argue with that.)

In the New York Times star system, one star is supposed to mean “Good.” Wells’s one-star reviews almost never sound good. Although the rating system hasn’t changed, Wells is reviewing as if one star means “Fair.” Sifton, in contrast, wrote quite a few enthusiastic one-star reviews.

For instance, if we consider just Chinese restaurants: Sifton gave one star raves to Imperial Palace, Hunan Kitchen of Grand Sichuan, and 456 Shanghai Cuisine. Wells has given the deuce to Wong, RedFarm, Café China, and Mission Chinese Food. Are those four restaurants really a whole star better than Sifton’s trio of one-star places? I doubt it.

At this point, Wells would need to give one star exclusively for several months straight, just to get back to the ratings percentages of the Sifton/Bruni years. But the inflated ratings of his first seven months can’t be reversed. A sudden shift now would confer a boon on all the restaurants that got an extra star they didn’t deserve.

Perhaps it’s the descriptions of the stars that need to change. Readers are conditioned to believe that one star isn’t a compliment. Ryan Sutton of Bloomberg uses the same four-star scale, but in his system, one star means “Fair.” New York magazine claims that one star means “Good,” but its critic, Adam Platt, follows Wells’s de facto system: his one-star places never sound good, either. For an example, see his review of Mission Chinese Food this week.

On crowdsourced review sites like Yelp, a restaurant has to be really terrible to get anything less than three stars. None of the professional critics are that generous; nevertheless, the public perception is that one star is awful. For instance, the Eater.com headline after Platt’s review came out, was: “Adam Platt is Unimpressed by Mission Chinese Food.” Eater’s summary was accurate: Platt didn’t like the place, although he gave it one star, purportedly meaning “Good.”

Since Wells can’t retroactively re-rate seven months worth of restaurants, and the public will never think of one star as “Good,” perhaps The Times just needs to re-define its ratings. Change the definition of one star to “Fair,” and two stars to “Good,” and Wells’s ratings will make sense.

The End of the Star System

Last week, the Los Angeles Times stopped awarding “stars” in its restaurant reviews. I’ve decided to do the same, but with a twist.

Unlike the LAT, I am still going to rate restaurants—in my own way (see below). Ratings are still meaningful, and I believe that consumers both expect and value them. But the existing stars are too laden with baggage to be useful any more.

The Problem

Although the LAT’s decision precipitated mine, the underlying issue has been on my mind for several years. The LAT explained it this way:

Starting this week, The Times will no longer run star ratings with our restaurant reviews. There are a couple of reasons for this. First, star ratings are increasingly difficult to align with the reality of dining in Southern California — where your dinner choices might include a food truck, a neighborhood ethnic restaurant, a one-time-only pop-up run by a famous chef, and a palace of fine dining. Clearly, you can’t fairly assess all these using the same rating system. Furthermore, the stars have never been popular with critics because they reduce a thoughtful and nuanced critique to a simple score. In its place, we’ll offer a short summary of the review.

There are also thoughtful comments from Huffington Post and preciently, a couple of weeks earlier, from Toqueland’s Andrew Friedman. Personally, I do not think the stars are any more difficult to apply than they were five, ten, or twenty years ago. They’ve always suffered from several problems.

First: a luxury restaurant is usually a candidate for three stars, but a disappointing luxury restaurant gets two; perhaps one or zero if it’s really bad. Conversely, a small neighborhood place usually gets one star, but it can get two if it’s exceptional. So the two-star level is a collision point, where you could find anything from SHO Shaun Hergatt to Parm.

Second: in the age of Yelp, most people are conditioned to think that if a restaurant gets one star, there must be something pretty badly wrong with it. Sometimes that’s true. But there are also some really good restaurants that have received one star in The New York Times—restaurants that the critic very clearly liked (despite some limitations), such as The Spotted Pig and Imperial Palace.

Compounding this problem, a number of critics use the same system nominally, but apply it in very different ways. Bloomberg’s Ryan Sutton awards zero to four stars, but to him two stars is “good, reliable,” while one star is “fair.” At The Times, two stars is “very good,” while one star is “good.” Time Out New York awards one to five stars (never zero), so one star there is terrible.

Third: there is an unwritten rule that some types of restaurants just cannot get three stars, no matter how good they are. Pete Wells’s threespot for Il Buco A&V may be an attempt to change that—we’ll have to see—but for the most part only fairly luxurious, expensive restaurants even get the chance for three stars.

Finally: the star rating, at least as practiced by The New York Times, takes price into account. Restaurants sometimes get docked a star for being too expensive (in relation to perceived value); others get a “bonus star” for offering an exceptionally good deal. But this system is open to manipulation. Time and again, restaurants have raised their prices after receiving a rave review. The rating remains available years later on the paper’s website, even after the bargain prices that contributed to it are no longer offered. (I wrote a blog post decrying this practice a couple of years ago.)

These problems have been around for a very long time—perhaps forever. Because there are such heavily ingrained views about “what a three-star restaurant must be,” any attempt to redefine the system while still awarding stars, is doomed to fail. What’s needed is a different system entirely.

The New System

I am going to classify NYC restaurants in the following way:

Extraordinary: One of the best five to ten restaurants in the city; a restaurant that has it all. A transcendent experience, one of the world’s best. Worth a trip to New York in its own right.

Category Killer: A restaurant that aces its category, on its own terms, and without comparison to restaurants in totally different genres; the best, or very nearly the best, of its kind in NYC, without any serious weaknesses or omissions.

Critic’s Pick: the restaurant does something out of the ordinary, something that makes it better than the average place you can find in just about anywhere in town; a place worth traveling to—assuming the cuisine and ambiance fit your mood, tastes, and price point; a minor destination.

Neighborhood Spot: if you’re in the neighborhood, it’s nice to know it’s there. Worth considering if you’re in the area.

No Recommendation: Not recommended; I wouldn’t go back.

Simplistically, there are five levels, just as there were before, from four stars to zero. But these ratings no longer carry the same meanings. If you believe (as Sam Sifton did) that Motorino serves the city’s best pizza, then you can rate it a “Category Killer,” even though Sifton gave it just one star in the old system. (I have not reviewed Motorino.)

Even when I was awarding stars, I tended to think of restaurants in a hierarchy, as above. A two-star restaurant had to be a destination in some sense, while a three-star restaurant needed to be a destination in every sense. But time and again, I was frustrated by the need to maintain fidelity to what the stars had traditionally meant. Thus, I’ve assigned “Category Killer” status to The Spotted Pig and Minetta Tavern, even though I never would have considered giving them three stars.

The top rating—but only that one—retains its old meaning. Since there are no more stars, I’ve replaced it with its synonym, “Extraordinary.” This level has remained relatively pure over the years. Four-star restaurants have practically always been luxurious and very expensive, and there have never been many of them. I could envision a system where the city’s best hot dog stand gets four stars, because it’s the best that a hot dog stand can ever be. But no professional critic has ever come even close to doing that.

Over the years, I’ve gradually moved away from taking price into consideration. I am now making it explicit: ratings do not take price into consideration. I always state in my reviews what I paid for the food at the time. You can decide for yourself whether the restaurant is offering a good value. Price and value are dependent on too many factors that a critic can’t assess. Of course, if I think I overpaid or got a terrific deal, I’ll still say so. It just won’t affect the rating.

I’ve never made a distinction between rated restaurants and “$25 & Under,” as The New York Times does. But it is worth noting that this system can work at all price levels. Restaurants are rated against the Platonic Ideals of themselves. Shack Shack could be a Category Killer, if you believed it was the ideal burger stand. (That’s just a hypothetical; I haven’t reviewed Shake Shack, but the last guy who did wasn’t impressed.)

There can be more than one Category Killer of the same kind, but there can’t be too many. If you think that twenty sushi restaurants are Category Killers, then none of them are. That’s one of the reasons why I’ve given no steakhouses that status (unless you count Minetta Tavern as a steakhouse—which I don’t). There are a number of steakhouses that I recommend, but none that really stands sufficiently apart from the others.

This new system clearly does not eliminate subjectivity. No doubt more chefs think they are operating Platonic Ideals of their restaurants, than actually are. But at least this system articulates specific criteria for the ratings, eliminates price as a factor, and does not purport to measure wildly different establishments on the same numeric scale.

The Transition

RedFarm is the first review published on the new scale. It’s a Critic’s Pick.

Starting today, I will gradually convert my old reviews to this new system. I have hundreds of reviews accumulated, so this will take some time. I am not going to update the reviews of restaurants that have closed. And if I reviewed the same place multiple times, I am only going to update the most recent review (the one linked from my ratings page).

The Restaurant Index page now shows all the restaurants I’ve reviewed in approximately their final positions, but I am still adjusting them. (For reference, the old ratings are available here.)

It is possible that, after doing this for a while, I will find that this solution isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. But the ratings described above correspond reasonably well to the way I believe critics ought to think about restaurants. It’s a system that I believe can work, and that other critics could use—not that I am holding my breath.

The Pete Wells Wars

Last Update: March 7, 2012

Pete Wells, the latest New York Times restaurant critic, has been in the saddle for two months. How’s he doing?

Early Assessment: Wells is being extremely lenient on casual restaurants, but he has his knives out for upscale ones. Shake Shack got a star, despite inconsistent burgers and terrible fries. Parm got two stars, when it is basically a $25 & Under sandwich place. Il Buco Alimentari e Vineria got three stars, when it is in essence a slightly over-achieving neighborhood trattoria/grocery.

But Crown received one star, in a review dripping with contempt for its affluent clientele. Jungsik received just two stars, along with some condescending comments about Korea.

Wells’s grade inflation has doomed his tenure from the very start. One star supposedly means “good” in the NYT star system. In a world where Shake Shack (with all its faults) gets one, and Parm gets two, nobody will ever feel good about a one-star review, ever again.

We will have to wait and see whether Il Buco A&V’s three-star review was just a mistake, or if he intends to start handing out three-star reviews like Christmas candy. (This post will be updated periodically.)

The table after the jump shows every starred (or star-eligible) restaurant review that Wells has filed, his rating, and what I consider to be the “correct” rating. Those Wells over-rated are highlighted in red; those he under-rated are highlighted in green.

Click to read more ...

New York Times 3 & 4-Star Restaurants

This is a list of New York City restaurants currently open, that:
(1) Have now, or have ever had, at least one Michelin star; or,
(2) Have now, or have ever had, three or four New York Times stars.

For both Michelin and The Times, the list shows the maximum number of stars it has ever had (“Max”), and the current number of stars it has (“Curr.”)

The two rating systems are somewhat correlated. Most restaurants with at least one Michelin star have three NYT stars, or did at one time, and vice versa. Where this is not the case, it could mean that one service or the other has over- or under-rated the restaurant.

Unlike The Times, the Michelin ratings are anonymous (you don’t know who came up with them) and are published without explanation. But the Michelin ratings are updated annually, and are often reflect changes (for good or bad) that The Times fails to react to.

So you could think of this list as the set of restaurants that are plausible candidates for three or four NYT stars, or were at one time, whether or not they are now.

Restaurant	Michelin		New York Times
	Max.	Curr.	Max.	Curr.	Critic	Date
15 East	*	*	**	**	Bruni	7-11-07
Ai Fiori	*	*	***	***	Sifton	4-23-11
Aldea	*	*	**	**	Bruni	4-7-09
Annisa	*	*	**	**	Sifton	6-23-10
Aquavit	*	*	***	**	Sifton	7-21-10
Atera	**	**	***	***	Wells	7-18-12
Aureole	*	*	***	*	Sifton	11-11-09
A Voce Columbus	*	*	**	**	Sifton	11-25-09
A Voce Madison	*	*	***	***	Bruni	5-10-06
Babbo	*	–	***	***	Bruni	6-9-05
Blanca	*	*	**	**	Wells	10-16-12
BLT Fish	*	–	***	***	Bruni	4-20-05
Blue Hill	*	*	***	***	Bruni	8-2-06
Blue Hill at Stone Barns	–	–	***	***	Bruni	7/28/04
Bouley	**	*	***	***	Bruni	3-25-09
Breslin, The	*	*	*	*	Sifton	1-12-10
Brooklyn Fare	***	***	***	***	Sifton	4-27-11
Brushstroke	*	*	**	**	Sifton	7-13-11
Brushstroke (Ichimura)			***	***	Wells	9-26-12
Café Boulud	*	*	***	***	Bruni	8-15-07
Café China	*	*	**	**	Wells	5-2-13
Carbone	–	–	***	***	Wells	6-5-13
Casa Mono	*	*	**	**	Burros	1-28-04
Colicchio & Sons	–	–	***	***	Sifton	3/17/10
Corton	**	**	***	***	Bruni	12-10-08
Craft	*	–	***	***	Sifton	9-7-11
Daniel	***	***	****	****	Bruni	1/21/09
Danji	*	*	*	*	Sifton	8-17-11
Danny Brown	*	*	–	–	NEVER	NEVER
Del Posto	**	*	****	****	Sifton	9/29/10
Dévi	*	–	**	**	Bruni	11/17/04
Dovetail	*	*	***	***	Bruni	2/20/08
Dressler	*	*	**	**	Bruni	6/7/07
Eleven Madison Park	***	***	****	****	Bruni	8/12/09
Esca	–	–	***	***	Bruni	4/18/07
Felidia	–	–	***	***	Bruni	8/30/06
Four Seasons, The	–	–	***	**	Bruni	4/4/07
Gilt	**	**	**	**	Bruni	2/8/06
Gotham Bar & Grill	*	*	***	***	Sifton	5-17-11
Gordon Ramsay	**	**	**	**	Bruni	1/31/07
Gramercy Tavern	*	*	***	***	Bruni	6/6/07
Hakkasan	*	*	*	*	Wells	6-12-12
Il Buco A&V	–	–	***	***	Wells	3/14/12
Jean Georges	***	***	****	****	Bruni	4/19/06
Jewel Bako	*	*	*	*	Bruni	6/21/06
JoJo	*	–	***	***	Grimes	4/17/02
Jungsik	*	*	**	**	Wells	2-28-12
Junoon	*	*	**	**	Sifton	3-30-11
Kajitsu	**	*	**	**	Wells	6-18-03
Kyo Ya	*	*	***	***	Wells	4/11/12
Kurumazushi	*	–	***	***	Reichl	10/6/95
Lan Sheng	*	*	–	–	–	–
Laut	*	–	–	DB	Moskin	7/29/09
La Grenouille	–	–	****	***	Sifton	12/23/09
Le Bernardin	***	***	****	****	Wells	5/23/05
Le Cirque	–	–	****	**	Wells	9/19/12
Le Périgord	–	–	***	**	Grimes	10/11/00
Marc Forgione	*	–	**	**	Sifton	10/6/10
Marea	**	**	***	***	Sifton	10/21/09
Masa	***	***	****	***	Sifton	6-15-11
Minetta Tavern	*	*	***	***	Bruni	5/20/09
Modern, The (Bar Rm.)	–	–	***	***	Bruni	1/10/07
Modern, The (Dine. Rm.)	*	*	***	***	Wells	3-26-13
Molyvos	–	–	***	**	Asimov	7/17/02
Momofuku Ko	**	**	***	***	Bruni	5/7/08
Momofuku Ssäm Bar	–	–	***	***	Bruni	12/3/08
Nobu	*	–	***	***	Reichl	9/8/95
Nobu 57	–	–	***	***	Bruni	9/28/05
Nobu, Next Door	–	–	***	***	Reichl	12/23/98
NoMad, The	*	*	***	***	Wells	6/20/12
Oceana	*	*	***	**	Sifton	11/18/09
Palm & Palm Too	–	–	***	*	Sifton	7-27-11
Patroon	–	–	***	**	Asimov	7/10/02
Perry St.	*	–	***	***	Bruni	9/7/05
Per Se	***	***	****	****	Sifton	10-12-11
Peter Luger	*	*	***	**	Bruni	9/19/07
Picholine	**	*	***	***	Bruni	11/8/06
Public	*	*	**	**	Grimes	12/17/03
River Café	*	*	***	**	Grimes	2/13/02
Rosanjin	*	*	**	**	Bruni	3/28/07
Rouge Tomate	*	*	*	*	Bruni	1/7/09
Sammy’s Roumanian	–	–	***	***	Sheraton	5/21/82
Saul	*	*	**	**	Wells	10/7/09
Scalini Fedeli	*	–	*	*	Grimes	10/13/99
Scarpetta	–	–	***	***	Bruni	7/30/08
Seäsonal	*	*	**	**	Asimov	2/25/09
Shalezeh	*	–	–	–	NEVER	NEVER
Soto	**	**	**	**	Bruni	9/5/07
Spice Market	–	–	***	*	Bruni	6/24/09
Spotted Pig, The	*	*	*	*	Bruni	1/25/06
Sugiyama	–	–	***	***	Reichl	3/17/99
Sushi Azabu	*	*	*	*	Bruni	10/29/08
Sushi of Gari	*	*	**	**	Bruni(1)	3/2/05
Sushi Yasuda	–	–	***	***	Asimov	11-16-11
Tamarind Tribeca	*	*	**	**	Sifton	8/4/10
Tori Shin	*	*	–	–	NEVER	NEVER
Torrisi Italian Specialties	*	*	**	**	Sifton	6-8-10
Tulsi	*	*	*	*	Sifton	3-30-11
Union Square Cafe	–	–	***	**	Bruni	8/5/09
Veritas	*	–	***	***	Sifton	3-16-11
Wallsé	*	*	**	**	Hesser	5/5/04
WD~50	*	*	***	***	Bruni	3/5/08

Note 1: Frank Bruni actually reviewed Gari, the west side branch of Sushi of Gari. The latter does not appear to have ever been reviewed in The Times, but the two are quite similar.

The Asimov Chronicles

Here is a handy list of all the “starred” reviews Eric Asimov has written for The New York Times, both in his first tour (June 19–December 4, 2002) and his second tour (October 26, 2011–present).

Both tours were as an interim critic, the first time while William Grimes was on leave; the second as a fill-in between the tenures of Sam Sifton and Pete Wells.

Date	Restaurant	Rating	Comments
FIRST TOUR
06/19/2002	Blue Smoke	*	Still open
06/26/2002	Butter	*	Still open
07/03/2002	Compass	**	Closed
07/10/2002	Patroon	*	Still open
07/17/2002	Molyvos	**	Still open
07/24/2002	Teodora	*	Closed
07/31/2002	MarkJoseph Steakhouse	*	Still open
08/07/2002	The Basil	*	Closed
08/14/2002	Fresh	**	Closed
08/21/2002	ROUGE	ZERO	Closed
08/28/2002	Il Gattopardo	**	Still open
09/04/2002	Django	*	Closed
09/11/2002	Zócalo	*	Closed
09/18/2002	La Caravelle	***	Closed
09/25/2002	Noche	*	Closed
10/02/2002	F.illi Ponte	ZERO	Still open
10/09/2002	Pazo	**	Closed
10/16/2002	industry(food)	*	Closed
10/23/2002	Alfama	*	Moved to East Midtown
10/30/2002	Diwan	**	Closed
11/06/2002	RM	***	Closed
11/13/2002	Le Madri	**	Closed
11/20/2002	Dos Caminos	*	Still open
11/27/2002	Sushi Seki	**	Still open
12/04/2002	L’Impero	***	Closed
SECOND TOUR
10/26/2011	Salinas	**
11/02/2011	Saxon + Parole	*
11/09/2011	Rouge et Blanc	**
11/16/2011	Sushi Yasuda	***
11/23/2011	Isa	*
11/30/2011	Fatty ’Cue	**
12/07/2011	Monkey Bar	**
12/14/2011	Seäsonal	**
12/21/2011	Lupa	*
12/28/2011	Mas (la grillade)	**

The Meaning of Meh

So, Pete Wells is the new restaurant critic at The Times.

As I expected, the job went to a NYT insider, as it has done each of the last three times it was vacant (William Grimes, Frank Bruni, and Sam Sifton). And like each of the last three, it is probably not a career move, but rather a sabbatical en route to some other job, a few years from now.

Sam Sifton was officially announced as National Editor on September 13. Heaven knows why it took two months to find a replacement, when he was a few feet away the whole time. Was he drafted, like Sifton? Or did he have to apply, and then twist in the wind while higher-ups decided whether to give him the big promotion?(*)

(*Technically, the restaurant critic works for the Dining Section editor, the position Wells is vacating. But given the visibility and influence of the job, this is a step up. They are not demoting Wells, trust me.)

Fortunately, we do have some evidence of what Wells will be like as a restaurant critic, as he filed several reviews during the last interregnum, between Bruni and Sifton. I have no argument with any of his starred reviews: Gus & Gabriel Gastropub (zero stars), Hotel Griffou (zero), The Standard Grill (one), and Saul (two).

On the other hand, when he had the opportunity to hit a home run, he whiffed. If you don’t understand that SHO Shaun Hergatt is a three-star restaurant, you are presumptively unqualified. He could, of course, eventually show us that this error was a momentary lapse, and not a fair indication of his judgment. I’m not holding my breath.

At least his full reviews, from two years ago, show none of the preciousness or pretension of Sam Sifton. If he can just keep writing in that style, the reviews will be a lot better than they’ve been the last two years.

Bye, Sam!

The tenure of New York Times restaurant critic Sam Sifton has ended. As of Monday, he took over as national editor, a position he’d had his eye on for some time. His departure is not a surprise. When Sifton was announced in the job, he already had a foot out the door:

For the record, it is our expectation that this will not be the end of Sam’s career as an editor/manager/entrepreneur/mentor. He has run two departments exceptionally well, and nobody would be surprised to see him running something in the future.

The guy who picked Sifton, former executive editor Bill Keller (who was also responsible for picking Bruni), practically admitted that Sifton hadn’t even applied for the job:

In the weeks since the announcement that Frank Bruni would be hanging up his napkin, we’ve received numerous applications for the job of NYT restaurant critic. We narrowed the list, and then narrowed it some more. We had some really impressive candidates, writers who know their food and have interesting things to say about the way we eat.

Then we threw out the list and drafted Sam Sifton.

Restaurant criticism burns people out, but Sifton had one of the shortest tenures on record. The Eater.com timeline shows just two New York Times critics with shorter stays: John L. Hess for nine months in 1973–74, and Marian Burros for a year in 1983–84. Burros, however, was never billed as a permanent replacement, which leaves Sifton in the dubious company of the now-forgotten Hess.

Here’s hoping Sifton has more enthusiasm for editing than he did for reviewing. I don’t think dummies get to be national editor, but as a critic, he was vacuous, bored, and intellectually lazy. At least half the time, he was more interested in reviewing the guests than the food—more fascinated with their shoes, clothes, hairdos and gadgets, than with what they were eating.

Sifton was a man of simple pleasures, seldom interested in being challenged, seldom engaged thoughtfully on any culinary subject except fishing. His reviews were full of empty adjectives like “delicious,” “terrific,” and “good,” and laden with obscure references to second-rate fiction. He embraced mediocrity, and neither established nor recognized trends.

He didn’t even work very hard. Frank Bruni, may have had no experience reviewing restaurants, but he at least realized he had a lot to learn, and worked his tail off. Here’s a comparison of Bruni’s first two years to Sifton’s:

1. Starred Reviews. In his first two years, Bruni filed every Wednesday but two (and for those two, Julia Moskin filed in his place). In Sifton’s first two years, he skipped four Wednesdays (and no one replaced him).
2. Critic’s Notebook. These are the longer “thought pieces” that appear roughly every couple of months In his first two years, Bruni filed 17 of these. Sifton filed 12.
3. Diner’s Journal. Before the blog came along, Bruni used to file a shorter review (unstarred) on Fridays. He did 80 of these. The closest equivalent in the current system is “Dining Briefs”. Sifton has done 26.
4. The Blog. That leaves the blog—difficult to quantify, because the NYT search engine can’t filter out blog posts specifically. Bruni often used the blog to write about restaurants he wasn’t going to review, whereas Sifton almost never did. Bruni generally filed at least 1–2 substantive blog posts per week, while Sifton’s average is near zero. (A short post linking to that week’s newspaper review is not substantive.) In lieu of writing about restaurants, Sifton posted near-useless “Hey, Mr. Critic!” Q&A pieces every so often.

If you don’t care for the numerical approach, just read Village Voice critic Robert Sietsema’s devastating lampoon of Sifton’s laziness or Josh Ozersky’s takedown in Time. These are notable, because critics seldom attack one of their own, whatever their private opinions may be. Why The Times was willing to pay Sifton to do so little work is utterly beyond me.

Industry people I spoke with found Sifton unimpressive. His predecessor, Frank Bruni, came in with a thin resume, but at least he worked hard, wrote well, took the job seriously, and established a clear voice that readers could relate to. Sifton treated it like a two-year vacation.

Fortunately, The Times needed a new national editor, so after two years we are done with him, and he is done with us. Sifton gets an early out from a job he never wanted, and management gets another chance to find someone competent to write restaurant reviews.

If this seems harsh, I offer no apology. There is no other critical discipline at The Times that is treated like a hobby—a mid-career sabbatical before moving on to greener pastures. In books, architecture, theater, film, music, and other fields, the paper has critics who’ve honed their craft for years—decades, even. Whether or not you agree with them, at least you’ve got someone dedicated to his craft.

For restaurants, The Times first gave us a dabbler who had never been to a Michelin-starred restaurant in his life, outside of Italy, before being appointed restaurant critic. And then it gave us someone who had his eye on management, and coasted along while he waited for a better job to open up.

The Times can do better. It must.

The Sifton Scorecard

Last Update: October 12, 2011

Sam Sifton was New York Times restaurant critic for two years. How did his ratings stack up?

The table below shows every restaurant review that Sifton filed, Sifton’s rating, and what New York Journal considers to be the “correct” rating. Those Sifton over-rated are highlighted in red; those he under-rated are highlighted in green.

The correct rating, although clearly not scientific, was determined via a consensus of sources I trust. In a number of cases, it is different than the rating I myself gave the restaurant when I visited. Where there isn’t much critical opinion, I generally gave Sifton the benefit of the doubt. If you disagree, I am happy to refund your money. Oops! I forgot; you didn’t pay to read this. Forget the refund, then. But feel free, to weigh in (with civility) in the comments.

Sifton filed a number of reviews for no apparent reason — that is, where there was no news story or precedent that suggested the restaurant needed to be reviewed (or re-reviewed). Those are labeled “WTF?” in the right-most column. Note that this is a quite different issue than whether he rated the restaurant correctly. (N.B. I am not saying that none of the restaurants labeled “WTF?” should have been reviewed, which is a more nuanced question. I am merely pointing out that these are the ones he didn’t have to review.)

Date	Restaurant	Sifton Rating	Correct Rating	Comments
10/14/2009	DBGB	**	**
10/21/2009	Marea	***	***
10/28/2009	Imperial Palace	*	*	WTF?
11/4/2009	Le Relais de Venise	*	ZERO	WTF?
11/11/2009	Aureole	*	**
11/18/2009	Oceana	**	**
11/25/2009	A Voce Columbus	**	**
12/2/2009	SD26	*	*
12/9/2009	Madangsui	*	*	WTF?
12/16/2009	Tanuki Tavern	*	*
12/16/2009	Ed’s Chowder House	ZERO	*
12/23/2009	La Grenouille	***	***
12/30/2009	Purple Yam	*	*	WTF?
1/6/2010	Casa Lever	**	*
1/13/2010	The Breslin	*	**
1/20/2010	Maialino	**	**
1/27/2010	Le Caprice	ZERO	ZERO
2/3/2010	(no review)
2/10/2010	Novitá	**	*	WTF?
2/17/2010	Motorino	*	*
2/24/2010	Tanoreen	*	*	WTF?
3/3/2010	Choptank	ZERO	*
3/10/2010	Strip House	**	**	WTF?
3/17/2010	Colicchio & Sons	***	**
3/24/2010	Chin Chin	*	*	WTF?
3/31/2010	Recette	**	**
4/7/2010	Faustina	*	**
4/14/2010	Nello	ZERO	ZERO	WTF?
4/21/2010	SHO Shaun Hergatt	**	***
4/28/2010	The Mark	**	*
5/4/2010	Pulino’s Bar & Pizzeria	*	*
5/12/2010	Fatty ’Cue	*	*
5/19/2010	Mia Dona	ZERO	ZERO
5/26/2010	Prime Meats	**	**
6/2/2010	ABC Kitchen	**	**
6/9/2010	Torrisi Italian Specialties	**	*
6/16/2010	Takashi	*	*
6/23/2010	Annisa	**	***
6/30/2010	Balaboosta	*	*
7/7 2010	Kenmare	ZERO	ZERO
7/14/2010	Má Pêche	**	**
7/21/2010	Aquavit	**	**
7/28/2010	The Lion	*	ZERO
8/4/2010	Tamarind Tribeca	**	**
8/11/2010	(no review)
8/18/2010	Toloache	*	*
8/25/2010	Plein Sud	ZERO	ZERO
8/25/2010	Wall & Water	*	*	WTF?
9/1/2010	Il Matto	**	*
9/8/2010	Fornino	*	*	WTF?
9/15/2010	Nuela	*	*
9/22/2010	Vandaag	**	*
9/29/2010	Del Posto	****	***
10/6/2010	Marc Forgione	**	**
10/13/2010	Xiao Ye	ZERO	ZERO	WTF?
10/20/2010	Manzo	N.R.	**
10/27/2010	The Lambs Club	*	*
11/3/2010	Peels	*	*
11/10/2010	Lavo	ZERO	ZERO	WTF?
11/17/2010	Hurricane Club	*	*
11/24/2010	Lincoln	**	**
12/1/2010	Osteria Morini	*	**
12/8/2010	Riverpark	**	**
12/15/2010	Kin Shop	**	**
12/22/2010	Anella	*	*	WTF?
1/5/2011	Millesime	**	**
1/12/2011	Ciano	**	**
1/19/2011	Lyon	*	*
1/26/2011	John Dory Oyster Bar	**	*
2/2/2011	The Fat Radish	*	*
2/9/2011	Hunan Kitchen of Grand Sichuan	*	*	WTF?
2/16/2011	Bar Basque	*	*
2/23/2011	Ai Fiori	***	***
3/2/2011	Fish Tag	ZERO	**
3/9/2011	Red Rooster Harlem	**	**
3/16/2011	Veritas	***	**
3/23/2011	La Petite Maison	*	*
3/30/2011	Junoon	**	**
3/30/2011	Tulsi	*	**
4/6/2011	M. Wells	**	**
4/13/2011	Niko	*	ZERO
4/20/2011	Graffit	*	*
4/27/2011	Brooklyn Fare	***	***
5/4/2011	Colonie	*	*	WTF?
5/11/2011	The National	*	*
5/18/2011	Gotham Bar & Grill	***	***
5/25/2011	(no review)
6/1/2011	Tenpenny	*	*
6/8/2011	Imperial No. Nine	ZERO	ZERO
6/15/2011	Masa	***	****
6/22/2011	Desmond’s	*	*
6/29/2011	Empellón	*	*
7/6/2011	The Dutch	**	**
7/13/2011	Brushstroke	**	***
7/20/2011	(no review)
7/27/2011	Palm and Palm Too	*	ZERO	WTF?
8/10/2011	Boulud Sud	**	**
8/17/2011	Danji	*	*
8/24/2011	Roberta’s	**	*
8/31/2011	456 Shanghai Cuisine	*	*	WTF?
9/7/2011	Craft	***	***
9/14/2011	Hospoda	*	*
9/21/2011	St. Anselm	*	*	WTF?
9/28/2011	Coppelia	*	*
9/28/2011	Miss Lily’s Favourite Cakes	ZERO	ZERO	WTF?
10/5/2011	Tertulia	**	**
10/12/2011	Per Se	****	****