Whither "$25 & Under"?

Last Friday, Eater.com broke the story that Peter Meehan had resigned as the “$25 & Under” dining critic at The New York Times. Meehan’s editor, Pete Wells, confirmed the story on Grub Street, and today Meehan speaks up on Eater.com—dubbed an “exit interview.”

Eric Asimov founded the “$25 & Under” column in 1992. As conceived at the time, the column was supposed to highlight “restaurants where people can eat lavishly for $25 and under. For that price, you should be able to get a complete meal: appetizer, main course, and dessert. Beverages, tax, and tip are not included in the calculation.”

Like the Alternative Minimum Tax, the column name wasn’t indexed for inflation. Asimov kept reviewing the kinds of restaurants he’d always reviewed, but by 2004 (his final year), the name wasn’t literally true any more. As Asimov recounted in an eGullet Q&A, “Let’s be honest about the $25 cutoff. It made literal sense in 1992. Nowadays it communicates generally that this restaurant is going to be cheaper than the other restaurant on the page, and that it’s going to be a good value.”

When William Grimes stepped aside as chief restaurant critic, Asimov could have had the job if he’d wanted it. Instead, Asimov chose the cushier job of chief wine critic, Frank Bruni took over as the main restaurant critic, and the “$25 & Under” job went to the then-unknown Peter Meehan.

The paper had apparently decided to restore truth to the “$25 & Under” label. Meehan did as he was told, but the column became increasingly irrelevant, as he struggled to find newsworthy restaurants where you could have a $25 meal worth writing about. Bruni, in the meantime, “stretched” the traditional star system to encompass everything from Per Se to Katz’s Deli.

My view? Asimov had it right. Rename the column “$40 & Under.” Doing so would give Frank Bruni more bandwidth to cover the traditional territory of “starred restaurants,” and would restore to the former Asimov column the luster it used to have.

My reasoning? The Times is a national paper first, a metro paper second, and a neighborhood paper third. Anyplace the Times reviews needs to be a “destination” in some sense. The $25 ceiling forces the critic into reviewing obscure outer-borough destinations that most readers don’t care about. The paper will never have the bandwidth to do justice to tavernas in Queens or taco stands in the Bronx. Websites like Chowhound.com cover that ground more effectively than the Times ever can.

I am not trying to make the Times any more elitist than it already is. I know there are some people who adore these humble neighborhood joints. But I am trying to be realistic about what the paper’s dining section can realistically achieve. Editor Pete Wells seems to have realized this, when he dialed back “$25 & Under” to bi-weekly, replacing it with “Dining Briefs,” a column that provides shorter snapshots of two or three restaurants at a time.

If Times management is unwilling to lift the “$25 & Under” ceiling to a level that would restore the column to its original purpose, then they should just kill the column altogether, and run “Dining Briefs” every week.

Momofuku Ko: Shame on Adam Platt

We’ve roasted and skewered the Times’ Frank Bruni more than the law allows, but he’s the model of rectitude compared to New York’s Adam Platt, who bestowed four stars on Momofuku Ko after just one visit.

Platt concedes that critics are “normally” supposed to pay multiple visits before passing judgment. Why break that rule? Apparently because it’s so hard to get in:

The murmuring, deferential patrons who manage to find a spot at the modest, twelve-seat bar are chosen at random, by a computerized system that seems designed not to entice people to dine at Momofuku Ko but to drive them away. These seats can be booked only a week in advance, and only by logging on to the Momofuku Website. The computer begins taking reservations each morning at ten o’clock, and thanks to the legions of devoted and increasingly frantic Chang groupies (the 30-year-old chef was just nominated for his third James Beard award, and has been the subject of many glowing profiles in many glossy magazines), they’re gone not in minutes but in seconds. Under these trying conditions, getting in the door once, let alone the three times most critics prefer, could take months or even years.

Sorry, but that makes no sense. I have Ko reservations this Friday, and I didn’t “have the services of many diligent assistants willing to peck at their keyboards like gaming zombies for an entire week.” I did it myself.

As the food boards attest, there are already people who’ve dined at Ko more than once, and the place is still under a month old. It’s difficult, but not that difficult, to get in. It certainly wouldn’t take “even years” to visit three times. As Platt paid his lone visit in the restaurant’s third or fourth week of existence, you’d have to conclude he didn’t try very hard.

If it takes “months,” so what? Four years ago, it took Frank Bruni more three months to review Per Se, which in the day was just as hard to get into (I would argue that it was harder) as Momofuku Ko. Bruni was obligated to take his time, particularly before giving out four stars, and he took that obligation seriously.

Platt’s breathless over-eagerness is shown by the timing of his review, posted late yesterday (Tuesday). His reviews are normally posted in line with New York’s publication cycle, with new issues hitting newsstands every Monday. It seems he was more concerned with making Eater.com’s Week in Reviews than with writing responsible criticism.

You may be thinking, “Wait a sec! What about this very blog, New York Journal, which routinely reviews restaurants after only one visit?”

Well, I respectfully submit that there are some significant differences between Adam Platt and me. I’m not paid to do this, I spend my own money, I don’t do it full-time, and I don’t have the benefit of “diligent assistants” to make reservations for me.

I also haven’t changed my standards for one restaurant.

Fiamma Capitulates

As we noted yesterday, the SoHo Italian restaurant Fiamma jacked up its prices, while reducing choices and banishing luxury ingredients from the kitchen, not long after Frank Bruni awarded three stars. Bruni took them to the woodshed in the Times dining section.

Hours later, Fiamma waved the white flag. Chef Fabio Trabocchi e-mailed Frank, and announced that prices would be lowered once again—not back to November 2007 levels, but to lower levels than they’d been just twenty-four hours earlier.

Mr. Trabocchi said that he and Mr. Hanson decided today to lower the three-course prix fixe from $92 to $85, the five-course from $120 to $105 and the seven-course menu from $138 as of early this week to $125.

Anyone want to take bets on how long this lasts?

Fiamma Flummoxed

[Kalina via Eater]

In today’s Times, Frank Bruni slaps Fiamma with a wet noodle, after hearing complaints that prices went up dramatically, while quality went down, after he awarded three stars in November 2007.

Indeed, the prix fixe menu went up from $75 to $95, while many of the luxe ingredients were banished from the kitchen. New Yorker’s “Tables for Two,” which often reviews restaurants much later than the other critics, caught Fiamma after its downturn, and it wasn’t pretty. The Eater Complaints Dept. sprang into action, noting not just the price hike, but also fewer choices than before.

The prix fixe was $92 on Bruni’s most recent visit, “an increase of more than 20 percent in just three months.” The five-course prix fixe had risen from $100 to $120, while the chef’s tasting menu “had contracted from seven courses to five.” He says, “The number of choices within the prix fixe was slightly smaller than on a menu I’d saved from mid-November, and in some slight ways the food on the more current menu seemed less luxurious, a shift noted and debated on several dining blogs recently.”

While the cost of dining, like everything else, has continued to rise, the shift at Fiamma—more money for less luxury—was especially abnormal, and deserved the dubious distinction of being called out in the newspaper itself. Normally, Bruni saves this type of news for his blog.

But he left Fiamma at three stars, while noting that it “makes me feel a bit less enthusiastic about a restaurant with so much to recommend it.”

The trouble is that most people who are searching for restaurant reviews will find Bruni’s original three-star rave, and not the far less conspicuous correction. You can’t tell whether Fiamma has slid to the lower end of the three-star range, or if Bruni would award two if he were doing it all over again.

Unfortunately, Times policy doesn’t allow a re-rating without three full visits, rather than the one visit that preceded this update. Bruni is no doubt unwilling to make that investment for a restaurant he reviewed only four months ago.

Had Bruni lowered Fiamma to two stars, the repercussions would have been substantial. It would have been a cannon-shot across the bow of restauranteurs: “As quickly as I gave you the third star, I can take it away.” Instead, restaurants can feel free to take advantage of the consumer after the rave reviews are in, knowing that they are not likely to be revised for many years to come.

Adour: Shame on Ed Levine

In a post yesterday about Alain Ducasse’s new restaurant Adour, food journalist Ed Levine asked, “Does the World Need More Fancy-Pants French Restaurants?”

It’s the hallmark of argumentative writing to ask a question, while at the same time leaving no doubt as to the answer. No one uses the phrase “fancy-pants” about something they like. (Frank Bruni’s obsession with the word “fussy” is very much the same.) In the comments section, Levine said he was really looking for a word like “stuffy,” which isn’t much of an improvement.

It’s no surprise that Levine isn’t really comfortable with luxurious French restaurants. He made his name writing about humbler fare. When Levine dined at Per Se, Thomas Keller (in jest) served him a hot dog. But in phrasing the question as he did, Levine is asking, not merely whether Ducasse is offering what Ed Levine needs, but what the “world” needs. Those are two completely different things.

It’s lazy thinking to presume that one’s own tastes are the same as everyone else’s. Levine says, “In New York people love the energized informality of Babbo or the Union Square Cafe or Craft. We love places that serve serious food in a way that makes us feel comfortable, relaxed, and well taken care of.” Well, there are almost 18 million residents of the New York metro area, and they don’t all love the same thing. I’ll bet the vast majority of them haven’t even heard of those restaurants.

If you add the approximately 44 million tourists who visit New York City annually, that makes at least 62 million people who will eat dinner in New York at least one night this year. Do you think there might be enough of them who, unlike Levine, actually appreciate what Alain Ducasse has to offer?

Levine thinks “we need more restaurants with heart and soul,” apparently having concluded that a Ducasse restaurant cannot qualify. Now, I’m sure Mario Batali (Babbo), Danny Meyer (Union Square Cafe) and Tom Colicchio (Craft) feel passionately about what they’re doing, as does Ducasse. But all three of them are running huge restaurant conglomerates for profit, as does Ducasse.

Ironically, New York has more of Levine’s heart-and-soul restaurants than ever before, while not a single three or four-star restaurant opened last year. Yet, the demand for luxury restaurants remains intense. Just try booking a last-minute prime-time table at any of the city’s high-end dining palaces. They are usually full. Obviously these places aren’t for everybody, but with 20,000 other restaurants in New York, they don’t need to be.

And it’s not as if we have glut of four-star restaurants. There are just five of them (per the Times), and the two most recent (Per Se and Masa) opened four years ago. All candidates since then have been found wanting, at least according to Frank Bruni. I don’t know how much of a chance Adour will have, when a Francophobic critic like Bruni is doing the judging. But should restauranteurs stop trying?

Places like Adour don’t come along very often. Do you want a restaurant with rustic pleasures and menus sourced daily from the greenmarket and local farmers? There’s practically a new one every month. But how many luxury French restaurants are there in New York? They can be counted on the fingers of one hand.

I don’t know whether Adour will be a great restaurant. No one can know that until the place opens. Based on my experience at its predecessor, Alain Ducasse at the Essex House, I am optimistic. From a critic of Levine’s stature one expects a new venture, especially one that comes along this rarely, to be judged on its merits.

Top Restaurants of 2007

In the last couple of weeks, Frank Bruni, Adam Platt, and Moira Hodgson have all filed their “Best of 2007” restaurant lists. The three didn’t quite follow the same rules, but still it is useful to compare what they came up with:

Bruni	Platt	Hodgson
1. Momofuku Ssäm Bar 2. Soto 3. (tie) Anthos 4. Insieme 5. Park Avenue _____ 6. Resto 7. 15 East 8. Allen & Delancey 9. Pamplona 10. Mai House.	Insieme Anthos Soto Park Avenue _____ BLT Market Hill Country Resto 15 East Allen & Delancey Market Table	Park Avenue _____ Soto 15 East Insieme Alto L’Impero Fiamma Allen & Delancey Pamplona Anthos Ilili Tailor The Monday Room Morandi Cafe Cluny The Waverly Inn

A couple of Bruni’s choices actually opened the prior year. We’ll allow an exception for 15 East (which is on all three lists), as it didn’t open until December 2006, clearly too late for consideration last year. But Momofuku Ssäm Bar was a 2006 restaurant by any definition, even if its current menu bears no resemblance to the original one. Eater summarized the situation perfectly:

Bruni’s bigger, less explicitly stated, point is that 2007 was dull. Ssäm Bar is 2007-eligible on a technicality: the menu overhaul heard ’round the world happened days into 2007, a full three months after the restaurant opened… With all due respect to sweet goodness that is Ssäm Bar, if better restaurants had opened in 2007, and a Best crutch was not needed, it would have been relegated to the ranks of 2006.

Dull indeed. Bruni rates on a four-star system, but no restaurant on his top-10 list was rated higher than two stars. Bruni issued no four-star ratings last year, and his only three-star ratings were re-reviews of older restaurants. Platt was even worse: he issued three stars to nobody, and indeed, I cannot recall his last three-star review. That’s despite the fact that Platt rates on a five-star scale.

Though I often disagree with Bruni’s ratings, I do agree with the core conclusion: 2007 wasn’t a great year. Anthos was the only truly new-in-’07 restaurant that won three stars on this blog. Insieme and Soto barely missed, and I don’t think there were any other reasonable candidates.

Bruni and Platt both suffer from the same disease: they are hostile to luxury restaurants. That explains why neither of them awarded three stars to the new restaurant I would rate as the year’s best, Anthos. Ironically, though they much prefer casual restaurants, neither critic has loosened the criteria for three stars. Thus, you have the paradox that they don’t award three stars to the places they truly like, but they seldom award three stars to the restaurants that truly deserve them.

A case can be made for Gordon Ramsay, which like 15 East opened too late in 2006 to be counted in last year’s roundup. I had a considerably more favorable impression of it than the mainstream critics. The fact that Ramsay had to fire the chef de cuisine is clearly not a factor in its favor, but if you count it as an ’07 restaurant, then it was the best new place that opened.

I would also award an honorable mention to Rosanjin, which also opened in late 2006, but did not start serving its exquisite sit-down Kaiseki until December. Frank Bruni awarded it two stars, but perhaps he felt that Soto and 15 East (also two stars, according to him) had used up his quota of Japanese restaurants. I can’t comment on 15 East, but I would rate Rosanjin higher than Soto, by a nose.

The only restaurant listed that’s in serious disagreement with my own experience is Park Avenue ______, to which I awarded no stars. But as all three critics included it, I have to assume we caught it on an off-night. It’s now on my “return-to” list. I haven’t yet made it to 15 East or Resto, but I am now eager to try both. (Resto remains awfully tough to get into, which is the main reason I haven’t gone yet.)

Bruni’s other unusual choice is Mai House, which no other critic included. But based on my four visits, I agree with Bruni that it deserves a spot in the top 10.

Platt had three choices listed by no other critic: BLT Market, Hill Country, and Market Table. I can’t comment on the latter, but BLT Market and Hill Country were two of my favorites in 2007. Bruni relegated BLT Market to the “Dining Briefs” treatment, once again showing that he often under-appreciates the best places. And as Hill Country was covered in the “$25 and Under” beat, Bruni never reviewed it.

Hodgson had some of the oddest choices, listing restaurants that no other critic was especially excited about, like Tailor, Cafe Cluny, and Morandi. Hodgson didn’t limit herself to ten choices, and she said they were in “no particular order.” She also included restaurants with new chefs, even if they weren’t new in ’07. (Bruni and Platt considered “transformed” restaurants, but not in their “top-10” lists.)

In his year-end retrospective, Bruni once again sounded the themes that have defined his tenure: as he sees it, the younger diners—“food adventurers,” he calls them—have rejected the traditional trappings of luxury dining:

The restrained size (along with the tight focus) of so many of these ventures speaks in part to the desire of young chefs to call their own shots and do their own thing, even if it means downsizing the settings in which they work.

It speaks to economic factors as well: high rents, exorbitant start-up costs, a local economy with less swagger than in the past.

But I suspect it also taps into wider cultural dynamics, into the anxieties of a country, overextended abroad and self-doubting at home, that has lost some of its appetite for grand plans and grand gestures, that would prefer to play things safe.

Bruni, as always, misjudges the market for high-end dining. Just try getting a last-minute prime-time table at Alto, Aureole, Babbo, Country, Cru, Daniel, Del Posto, Eleven Madison Park, Felidia, the Four Seasons, Gramercy Tavern, Gordon Ramsay, Gotham Bar & Grill, Jean Georges, La Grenouille, Le Bernardin, the Modern, Per Se, Union Square Cafe or Veritas—to name a few. These places are generally full, which suggests that the market for the luxury experience is not truly on the wane.

Now, you’re probably not going to find young foodies dominating these restaurants’ clientele, but these are expensive places. They don’t cater to young people on tight budgets, except perhaps as an occasional splurge. These diners naturally will gravitate to places like Allen & Delancey or Resto, where you won’t find three-star food, but where you can eat well without breaking the bank. A restaurant that’s relatively good is not “best” in the absolute sense.

Bruni needs to distinguish between reporting on trends and influencing them. Anyone considering a new luxury restaurant will be aware that it’s tough to get a fair shake from him, unless the cuisine is Italian. Gordon Ramsay made it over the hump, but others might not be so fortunate. So far, 2008 once again shapes up as a year of humbler ambitions, pending the arrival—or not—of Paul Liebrandt’s mysterious four-star wannabe.

Frank Bruni and the Fine Dining Deathwatch, Part 2

Six months ago, I wrote about the Fine Dining Deathwatch since Frank Bruni became the New York Times restaurant critic. I noted Bruni’s overwhelming bias against traditional “fine dining” restaurants, unless they happen to be Italian or Italian-influenced. Over and over again, you find in his reviews that he is actually offended by restaurants that pamper him. He not only doesn’t give credit for high-end service; he actually penalizes it.

Later on, I posted about Frank’s repeated use of the word “fussy” in his reviews to describe traditional formal service. He never means it as a compliment. This must weigh on restauranteurs and investors as they plan new openings. The presence of tablecloths, all by itself, costs you half-a-star before Frank even walks in the door. Some restaurants can overcome that handicap, but it is difficult.

As we approach another fall season, it’s worth taking a look at the year just past. Between September 2006 and August 2007, Frank Bruni awarded three stars to the following restaurants:

Felidia
L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon
Picholine
Eleven Madison Park
Bar Room at the Modern
Esca
Gramercy Tavern
Café Boulud

All but L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon were re-reviews. Hence, in the last year, only one new restaurant in New York City earned three stars. (None earned four.) Leonard Kim, the star-system historian over at eGullet, confirmed that this has not happened since 1995–96, when Ruth Reichl handed out eleven three-star reviews, ten of which were re-reviews.

In Bruni’s defense, I cannot think of another restaurant that opened in the last year that clearly deserved the third star. It so happens that I awarded three stars to Gordon Ramsay at the London and Anthos, but I can’t definitively say that Bruni got them wrong. There were plenty of critics that disliked Gordon Ramsay, and my visit to Anthos came after it had been open a while, and perhaps some of the early flubs had been worked out. So, it may simply be that this was an unusually lean year for high-end restaurants.

There’s no question that dining has become much more informal than it used to be. Frank Bruni never misses an opportunity to remind us of the fact. But many of the city’s high-end restaurants are regularly booked full, which suggests there remains untapped demand for that kind of luxury. Restauranteurs may be leery of making a big commitment, knowing that as the size of the investment goes up, the room for error goes down. Are they giving the people what they want? Or, do they feel that the city’s two main critics (Bruni and New York’s Adam Platt) are not going to give that kind of restaurant a fair shake—even when it’s done well.

But ironically, even among the casual restaurants that Bruni loves, the only new restaurant that merited three stars was a chain restaurant imported from France.

Restaurant Pet Peeves

Over at the Bruni Blog, Marian Burros has a post about “annoying restaurant practices.” She leads off with paper tablecloth tops:

If restaurants cannot afford fresh tablecloths made of fabric — and I know it costs money to clean them — it would be far better to have a bare table.

I agree with that, but I have a few more pressing ones:

1. “You can have a seat at the bar until your full party arrives….” I realize there are some legitimate economic reasons for this policy. But I’ve been shooed over to the bar even at restaurants that weren’t full. It comes across as a cynical attempt to generate bar income, rather than a legitimate way to manage the reservations book. Needless to say, if you do begin your meal at the bar, any good restaurant should offer to transfer the tab automatically to your dinner check.


2. “Would you like still or sparkling water?” This is a subtle trick by which the restaurant hopes you won’t realize there’s a third option: tap water. Bottled still water is the biggest rip-off in the industry.


3. “Would you like to start with a cocktail?” There’s nothing wrong with this question. But if you order pre-dinner cocktails, then the server should give you time to drink them. You shouldn’t be asked for your wine order when full cocktail glasses have been dropped off just moments ago.


4. “Let me tell you about our specials…” Any decent restaurant ought to be able to produce a written list of specials. If they’re recited, rather than written, it should be no more than two or three items—otherwise, you can’t keep them all in your head. Most annoying is when the server comes by to recite the specials after you’ve already had menus for 10–15 minutes. By then, you’ve already chosen something. The time to announce the specials is before the diner has decided what to order.


5. Side dishes. Many restaurants offer separately priced side dishes. I don’t object to the steakhouse pricing model, where everything is à la carte, but many restaurant menus fail to make this clear. The server should say something if you order a side dish, and your entrée already comes with a substantial vegetable. This is especially annoying if the side dish and the included vegetable are similar—e.g., you order a side of mashed potatoes, and your entrée comes with fries.


6. Tapas-style dining. I’ve nothing against tapas, of course. But nowadays, “tapas-style” is a shorthand that means, “The kitchen will send out the food as it’s ready.” Inevitably, this means that a pile of food is going to arrive all at once, since the kitchen is working according to their convenience, rather than yours.


7. Butter knives. Any respectable restaurant should have them. And the butter should be soft and warm, not hard as a hockey puck.


8. Replacement silverware. Any restaurant above the level of Chinese take-out should replace the used silverware after each course, without being asked.


9. “Can I tempt you with dessert?” By all means offer a dessert menu, but servers shouldn’t call it a temptation, nor should they try to change the diner’s mind after a firm “No, thank you” has been delivered. (Of course, this pet peeve applies to all forms of up-selling, but for some reason it’s most prevalent at dessert.)


10. Depositing the bill too soon. No fancy restaurant should present a bill till you’ve asked for it. At other restaurants, I don’t mind this practice. But the bill should never be presented when you’re obviously still eating. When you’re done, or very nearly so, the server may ask if you’ll be having any more to eat or drink, and if the answer is no, I’ve no objection if the bill presented shortly thereafter.

Fussy Frank

The March 6th Village Voice carried an interview with Frank Bruni, in which he was asked what he would choose to eat for his last meal. His choices should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with the Times restaurant critic’s predilections: a porterhouse steak, toro-stuffed maki rolls like the ones they serve at Masa; and “some buttery taglierini with heart-of-season white truffles shaved over it. Just like you’d get in the Piedmont region of Italy, which is one of my favorite areas in the world for eating.”

Steak? Check. Sushi? Check. Italian food? Check. Those are the foods Frank loves.

But another phrase in the interview caught my eye: “my final meal wouldn’t be a fussy labor of extraordinary technique.”

Frank uses that word “fussy” a lot. I’ve found the word, in its various forms, in at least a dozen of his restaurant reviews. (He has also used it in articles about other subjects.) I thought this was a little remarkable, because “fussy” isn’t all that common a word.

“Fussy” is never a compliment: no one aspires to be “fussy.” And Bruni virtually always uses it to describe high-end luxury dining, a niche of the restaurant industry for which he has very little use. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Bruni associates “extraordinary technique” with “fussy labor.” Perhaps there is extraordinary technique that Bruni doesn’t consider fussy, but judging from his reviews you’d be hard pressed to identify it. Fussy, starchy, stuffy, effete, highfalutin’ — those are the words Frank usually uses for fine food presented in luxurious surroundings.

For those who wish to keep track, here are all the Bruni uses of fussy (and its variants) in restaurant reviews:

Review of Anthos (16 May 2007):

And with Ms. Arpaia he opened Anthos, the restaurant you might get if you triangulated between Onera and Dona. It has the former’s resoundingly Greek soul. It has the latter’s fussy tics and more sophisticated wine list, with sommeliers who can guide you through the impressive advances of Greek winemaking.

Review of Momofuku Ssam Bar (21 February 2007):

By bringing sophisticated, inventive cooking and a few high-end grace notes to a setting that discourages even the slightest sense of ceremony, Ssam Bar answers the desires of a generation of savvy, adventurous diners with little appetite for starchy rituals and stratospheric prices.

They want great food, but they want it to feel more accessible, less effete. They’ll gladly take some style along with it, but not if the tax is too punishing. And that’s what they get at Ssam Bar, sleek, softly lighted and decidedly unfussy.

Double-review of Bar Room at The Modern and Eleven Madison Park (10 Jan 2007):

The Modern is divided into a fussy dining room and a more freewheeling bar area, where the food is less expensive, though not really and truly cheap.

Review of Freemans (20 September 2006):

[The server] said we needed to give our whole order at once, so our meal could be properly paced and we could have “a much more pleasant experience.” Of course that prohibition had nothing to do with our enjoyment and everything to do with the kitchen’s convenience. It also had no place in a restaurant as studiously unfussy as Freemans, but it exemplified the real attitude here.

Review of A Voce (10 May 2006):

It was just a matter of time before the right financial backers beckoned and Mr. Carmellini struck out on his own. The only real question was what shape that venture would take.

Would it be French and somewhat fussy? Mr. Carmellini had as much of that as of anything else in his background. Before Café Boulud, he worked at Lespinasse and Le Cirque.

Review of Del Posto (1 March 2006):

The ceremony surrounding main courses can indeed be fussy, with glistening slabs of flesh exhibited in their cooking vessels for adoration before being taken away and plated.

Diner’s Journal write-up of BLT Prime (24 June 2005):

The L and T mean Laurent Tourondel, whose manifest destiny is to attach his monogram to a great many B’s. The B means bistro, which none of the BLT restaurants really are. The word, or rather letter, serves to signal that an unfussy format accompanies Mr. Tourondel’s very fine food.

Review of Cookshop (30 November 2005):

The food is amply portioned, fairly priced and completely sophisticated but not remotely fussy.

Critic’s Notebook, “The Contemporary Dining Scene, Est. 1985” (12 October 2005)

About the same time [1985], a graduate of hotel and restaurant management school named Drew Nieporent and an emerging chef named David Bouley began their own experiment. Their goal was to recast the first-rate, fussy, uptown French restaurant as an affordable, approachable refuge with a downtown address, wines from California as well as France, and prices within reach of people who were not rich.

Review of Café Gray (15 December 2004):

The ambience doesn’t really suit the food, much of which is more ambitious and fussier than cafe or brasserie fare.

Review of En Japanese Brasserie (24 November 2004):

Even En’s identification as a Japanese brasserie suggests a have-it-all, connect-the-dots sensibility: it wants both the healthful allure of an ethnic cuisine in continued ascendance and the timeless appeal of an unfussy, teeming environment in which you can pass many a merry hour with copious drink as well as food.

Diner’s Journal write-up of The View (29 October 2004)

Both were more successful than an oyster and clam plate and a goat cheese terrine, the fussy presentations of which were undercut by the humdrum reality of how they tasted.

Review of Mas (7 July 2004)

Mas is the kind of earnest, tasteful restaurant that this city — that any city — can always use. It nicely splits the difference between fussy and unfussy.

The review of Mas, which contains his first known use of the word after becoming chief restaurant critic, is also the only time that he used the word “fussy” while making a compliment.

Critiquing the Critic: Pera and Dennis Foy

Today, New York Journal adds a new weekly feature. In “Critiquing the Critic,” we’ll deconstruct Frank Bruni’s latest performance in the Times dining section.

Sadly, Jules Langbein’s hilarious Bruni Digest has gone dark— she has posted only one of her patented Bruni-skewerings in the last three months. I can’t possibly replicate what Jules did, and I won’t even try. I’m afraid I’m going to sound much more sanctimoniously serious than the situation calls for.

To business: This week, Frank Bruni files a double-review of Pera and Dennis Foy, granting one star to both.

The frequency of double-reviews has gone up, and that’s a good thing. There are far too many restaurants that never get a Times review, and far too many others that go years before a re-review. If Bruni is right about Pera and Dennis Foy—and I’m not saying he is—neither one is important enough to deserve a column to itself.

Bruni reminds us, “Dennis Foy occupies the elegant, creamy space that belonged to the excessively self-conscious restaurant Lo Scalco.” That restaurant, I might add, won a Michelin star, but Bruni never got around to reviewing it. Whatever you thought of Lo Scalco, restaurants at that level shouldn’t go un-reviewed.

Today’s headline, “Knowing Their Place and Aiming to Fill It,” has an “Aw, shucks!” attitude. It is never a compliment to tell someone they “know their place.” It’s a bit like the massa telling the slave to be happy about picking the cotton. I don’t know about Pera, but I’m sure Dennis Foy thought he was opening a two-star restaurant. I’m not saying it is two stars, but it’s patronizing to give him one, and then congratulate him for “knowing his place.”

Bruni says that Foy is “an ‘if you happen to be’ as opposed to a ‘you have to try’ restaurant.” The trouble is that almost no one “happens to be” on Church Street between Walker and Lispenard Streets. It’s not a “happen to be” block.

I suspect Pera will be just fine with Bruni’s one-star review. As he notes, “Its jazzy look and feel are unmitigated delights, and jazzy isn’t so easy to come by on its patch of Manhattan, in the shadow of Grand Central Terminal.”

Overall, we are left with a sense that Frank was slumming it this week. Both restaurants slightly bored him.