Review Preview: SHO Shaun Hergatt

Photographers from the New York Times were spotted in SHO Shaun Hergatt’s dining room last week, which likely means that it will be reviewed tomorrow. We’ll post the Eater.com odds when and if they appear. In the meantime, we offer our usual instant analysis.

We’ve dined at SHO three times and reviewed it twice (here, here). We think it was the best new opening of 2009, and easily a high-end three-star restaurant. The Times thought otherwise, relegating it to a Pete Wells Dining Brief during the interregnum between critics Frank Bruni and Sam Sifton.

We thought that Wells missed the point of the restaurant by a country mile. Yet, Hergatt should be grateful that he didn’t file a rated review. Had he done so, it clearly would have received no more than two stars, and would have foreclosed the review that Sifton is filing tomorrow.

Business has been picking up at SHO: that was not only our own observation, but that of others who’ve visited lately. Hergatt and his backers deserve credit for sticking to their guns, and continuing to offer a high-end experience, when they could very well (and quite understandably) have dialed down the concept when the economic crisis hit.

Sifton has been unpredictable, to say the least, but we assume he would not invest a review slot unless it were to upgrade Wells’s judgment. We therefore make the only prediction we can: three stars.

Review Preview: Faustina

“This guy is hard to nail down.” Thus sayeth Eater.com in today’s edition of Sift Happens. Six months into Sam Sifton’s tenure as New York Times restaurant critic, nobody can figure the guy out.

Tomorrow, Sifton reviews Scott Conant’s Faustina, which was built on the husks of the failed Table 8. The Eater oddsmakers have set the action as follows: Goose Egg: 15–1; One Star: 2–1; Two Stars: 3–1; Three Stars: 15–1; Four Stars: 500–1.

We liked Faustina, giving it two stars, but that means nothing to Sifty, whose ratings have been all over the map. Early critics have been down on Faustina, but with Conant fine-tuning the menu, those earlier reviews might not be relevant.

A one-star review won’t surprise us, but with Conant giving Sifton the white-glove treatment, we’ll lay our bets on two stars.

Review Preview: Chin Chin

Tomorrow, the increasingly strange voyage of Times critic Sam Sifton takes him to Chin Chin, one of the city’s few upscale Chinese restaurants that has a modicum of critical acclaim.

The Eater oddsmakers are so shellshocked by last week’s bizarro threespot for Colicchio & Sons that they’ve declined to set a line this week. Nevertheless, we’ll wade in. We haven’t dined at Chin Chin in nearly twenty years, and we don’t know anyone who has, so our prediction is based purely on meta criteria.

Chin Chin hasn’t made any news lately: there is no new chef or renovation that would compel a re-review. Bryan Miller awarded one star in 1987. Why review it again unless something has changed? A demotion is always possible, but you very rarely see a one-to-zero downgrade in the Times, as there are probably hundreds of restaurants that got one star originally, but have slipped since then. Zero-star Chinese food is too commonplace to be worth spilling ink on.

That leaves an upgrade as the most likely outcome, so we’ll go ahead and predict two stars for Chin Chin.

Review Preview: Colicchio & Sons

Tomorrow, Sam Sifton reviews Tom Colicchio’s latest and not-so-greatest, Colicchio & Sons. The Eater oddsmakers have set the action as follows: Goose Egg: 3–1; One Star: 2–1; Two Stars: 20–1; Three Stars: 400–1; Four Stars: 25,000–1.

Tom Colicchio doesn’t need my sympathy, but I am starting to feel sorry for the guy. Today’s pan in Time Out New York is the latest of many, including our own in early February. Actually, I have yet to see a positive review.

This is a place that I am quite sure Colicchio believes is capable of operating at a three-star level. That was clearly his intention when he abruptly jacked up the price to $78 prix fixe about a month ago. He reversed the decision last Friday after just three weeks. I cannot recall any other restaurant where this has happened.

By Friday, Colicchio would have known that the restaurant was going into the Times this week. (I have been in restaurants where the Times photographer was in the house; the photos are normally shot about a week in advance.) He wouldn’t have cut prices if he thought there was any chance at getting the trifecta from Sifton. So we can safely guess that even Colicchio knows that he will not get three stars.

At this point, Colicchio will be relieved to get two stars. We don’t think it’s quite as unlikely as Eater does, but we certainly agree that it’s not the most probable outcome. We also think there are enough hits on the menu here to avoid the dreaded goose-egg, much as Colicchio may deserve it for sheer chutzpah alone.

In short, we agree with Eater that Sam Sifton will aware one star to Colicchio & Sons.

Review Preview: Strip House

Tomorrow, Sam Sifton reviews the Greenwich Village steak parlor, Strip House. The Eater oddsmakers have set the action as follows: Goose Egg: 200–1; One Star: 3–1; Two Stars: 2–1; Three Stars: 75–1; Four Stars 2,000–1.

Among the many restaurants overdue for a fresh look, we aren’t sure why Sifty chose Strip House. We love the place, and gave it two stars four years ago. In the Times, William Grimes gave it one star in 2000. We think he missed the mark (or Strip House got much better), but Frank Bruni’s mistakes are far more urgently in need of correction.

When there is a re-review with no intervening event (such as a move, a chef change, or a remodeling—none of which has happened at Strip House), the rating almost never remains the same. There is no point in picking Strip House out of nowhere, only to deliver the same message as Grimes did.

As Eater noted, Sifton dropped a goose egg last week on Choptank, and it surely won’t happen two weeks in a row, besides which it would be the wrong result, and Strip House isn’t important enough to demote.

That leaves a promition to two stars as the only sensible bet.

Review Preview: Choptank

Tomorrow, Sam Sifton reviews the West Village’s casual seafooder, Choptank. The Eater oddsmakers have set the action as follows: Goose Egg: 50–1; One Star: 2–1; Two Stars: 3–1; Three Stars: 500–1; Four Stars: 25,000–1

While we loved Choptank for what it is, it struck us as fundamentally a one-star concept—in the good sense of that term. Sifton has been less inclined than his predecessor to toss out two-star ratings like candy bars. We therefore have little hesitation in predicting a positive one star for Choptank.

Review Preview: Tanoreen

Tomorrow, Sam Sifton reviews the Bay Ridge Middle Eastern restaurant Tanoreen. The Eater oddsmakers have set the action as follows: Goose Egg: 100–1; One Star: 3–1; Two Stars: 2–1; Three Stars: 50–1.

In 2004, Tanoreen got a rave review from Eric Asimov in $25 & Under (those were the days when that column reviewed real restaurants). Recently, it moved to a bigger space. It now has a bar and takes reservations.

We haven’t been to Tanoreen, but it strikes us as the quintessential outer-borough one-star place—at least according to the grading curve Sifton has adopted since he took over from Frank Bruni last fall.

So we will bet on one star for Tanoreen.

Review Preview: Novita

Tomorrow, Sam Sifton reviews the Gramercy Italian standout, Novita. The Eater oddsmakers have set the betting line as follows: Goose Egg: 500–1; One Star: 2–1 ; Two Stars 3–1; Three Stars: 250–1.

We agree with Eater that neither the goose egg nor the trifecta is likely. The Times doesn’t pick restaurants out of nowhere, only to trash them. And we also subscribe to the view that three-star restaurants do not hide in plain sight. That leaves one and two as the only remotely possible outcomes.

Ruth Reichl awarded one star to Novita fifteen years ago. There are many, many restaurants that have gotten a star in the Times and were never reviewed again. With the vast majority of reviews being given to new places or old ones where a substantial change has taken place, Times critics don’t have much time for re-reviewing run-of-the-mill one-star places, only for the purpose of re-affirming the original rating.

It could be, of course, that Novita is simply one of Sifty’s old stand-bys, and he is happy to spend one of his precious review slots to bump it up on the radar screen without claiming that anything significant has changed since Reichl reviewed it. A one-star review therefore would not shock us.

But as we must make a guess, we think that Sifton would not review this place without upgrading it. Therefore, we predict that he will award two stars to Novita.

Review Preview: Le Caprice

Tomorrow, Sam Sifton reviews British import Le Caprice. The Eater oddsmakers have set the action as follows: Goose Egg: 5–1; One Star: 2–1; Two Stars: 3–1; Three Stars: 20–1; Four Stars: 5,000–1.

We think this one is pretty close to a coin flip between one and two stars. As the restaurant attempts nothing especially adventurous, it needs to execute its menu of classics extremely well. As Eater notes, Sifton already named the haddock tart one of his best dishes of 2009, and Adam Platt (who is no fan of such places) actually liked it.

Those factors, we believe, push Le Caprice more likely into two star territory than one; so that is our bet.

Review Preview: Maialino

Tomorrow, Sam Sifton reviews Danny Meyer’s Roman Trattoria, Maialino. The Eater oddsmakers have set the action as follows: Goose Egg: 500–1; One Star: 5–1; Two Stars: 2–1; Three Stars: 3–1; Four Stars: 1,000–1.

We were slightly less enthralled with Maialino than we expected for a Danny Meyer place, awarding just 1½ stars. However, Sifton’s system doesn’t have half-stars, and we cannot ignore the fact that most of the reviews to date have been positive.

We’ve no trouble at all agreeing with Eater that two stars is the likely outcome.