Update: Scorecard added to bottom of post…

Today, as expected, Frank Bruni laid a goose-egg on David Bouley’s TriBeCa Titanic, Secession:

Menus this epic and indefinable can certainly work, as long as the majority of dishes are appealing in and of themselves. But when as many are as unremarkable or off key as they were at Secession the production comes across as slapdash, undisciplined…

Not much of what emerged from Secession’s seemingly overburdened kitchen rose far above mediocrity. And there were instances of outright sloppiness.

Bruni’s review exactly channels our own experience, from the cold terrines down to the grumpy coat-check woman. (Yes, she was rude to us too.) How hard is it to find someone to check coats with a smile?

Where does Secession go from here? I think Bouley needs to ditch about three-fourths of the menu, hire a new chef de cuisine, and find a new drill sergeant to run the front-of-house.

Thanks to this week’s rather generous odds, we and Eater both win $5 on our hypothetical $1 bets.

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.

By popular demand—okay, two or three folks asked for it—Rolling the Dice has returned for the first time since July.

The Line: Tomorrow, we have a doozy, as Frank Bruni tackles the TriBeCa trainwreck, David Bouley’s Secession. The Eater oddsmakers have set the action as follows (√√ denotes the Eater bet):

Zero Stars: 5-1 √√
One Star: 3-1
Two Stars: 6-1
Three Stars: 60-1
Four Stars: 20,000-1

The Skinny: We didn’t like Secession, and we don’t know anyone who did. Eater already gave ample reasons for predicting the goose-egg, which we’ll amplify. Steve Cuozzo liked it, and Cuozzo is practically the anti-Bruni.

Bruni doesn’t like phoned-in restaurants with consulting chefs on the roster and more than 70 items on the menu. He’s not especially fond of French cuisine, which this mostly is. He takes offense at over-priced mediocrity, and faux luxury.

Alain Ducasse’s Benoit managed to eke out an unenthusiastic one-star review. But Benoit, uneven though it is, at least feels authentic. Secession feels fake, and it will take a lot more than just modest tweaks to fix it. You get the sense that Bouley needs a wake-up call. Our man Bruni is the man to deliver it.

The Bet: For the return of “Rolling the Dice,” we thought hard about bucking the Eater prediction. The trouble is, we just can’t make the one-star case. We’re not saying it can’t happen, but we don’t see it.

We agree with Eater that Frank Bruni will award no stars to Secession.