Maialino

Among New York restauranteurs, it’s hard to name a more bankable success than Danny Meyer. From Union Square Cafe, to Gramercy Tavern, Tabla, Eleven Madison Park, and The Modern, his restaurants have never failed.

Meyer’s knack for this business can’t be attributed to any one thing. He has a keen sense of “the moment,” he doesn’t do the same thing twice, he puts smart people in charge, and he focuses relentlessly on the customer. At a Meyer restaurant, you’ll never see a bartender who can’t transfer the tab to your table, or a host that refuses to seat incomplete parties. So it was at Meyer’s latest creation, Maialino, where I arrived thirty minutes too early, but they offered to seat me anyway, in a dining room booked solid for the evening.

That was so Danny Meyer.

Maialino, Meyer’s first Italian restaurant, replaces the failed Wakiya in the Gramercy Park Hotel. It’s a perfect location, with panoramic windows facing the park. It’s also perfect for Meyer, whose restaurant empire is all (except for The Modern) in walking distance of Madison Square, allowing him to keep close tabs on his growing brood.

The space is decked out like a modern trattoria, with a design by David Rockwell that seems instantly authentic. We would ditch the checked under-cloths at the tables, which look a bit too Little Italy.

Even Danny Meyer isn’t recession-proof. The antipasti are $9–14, the primi $13–17, the secondi mostly in the twenties. The menu also accommodates grazers, with a wide selection of salumi and formaggi, available individually or on platters serving anywhere from two to six. You’ll spend less here than in most of Meyer’s other restaurants, but we suspect that prices will be $10–20 more per person in a year or two.

The word Maialino refers to suckling pig, which recurs in several dishes. The pièce de resistance is a half-pig for $68. We were tempted to try it, but it feeds two to three people, and would have been wasted on us.

 

Zampina di Maialino, or Suckling Pig’s Foot ($14; above left), offered an ample bounty of smoky pink pork meat. It was served on a bed of heirloom beans that weren’t very good. Malfatti al Maialino, or suckling pig ragu with arugula and hand-torn pasta ($17; above right), was under-seasoned; the flavors barely registered.

 

Coda alla Vaccinara, or oxtails with carrots and celery ($23; above left), were tender from braising, but they were served in a dull sauce. Bistecca, or aged sirloin ($29; above right), was an enjoyable hunk of meat for a non-steakhouse, but the beans that accompanied the pig’s foot made an unwelcome re-appearance.

Service was excellent, as you expect in a Danny Meyer restaurant. Meyer himself was in the house, and stopped by most tables to say thanks, including ours. He said thank you again as we were leaving. Such is his reputation that we had much higher hopes for the food. But at a Danny Meyer restaurant, you can safely assume it will get better.

Maialino (2 Lexington Avenue at 21st Street, Gramercy Park)

Food: *
Service: **
Ambiance: **
Overall: *½

Tabla Retrenches

Union Square Hospitality Group has announced that Tabla, the Indian restaurant at Madison Park, will eliminate its casual downstairs sibling, Bread Bar at Tabla. From now on, both spaces will serve the identical menu.

When we visited the Bread Bar in June, Tabla was serving a $59 prix fixe. On a Friday evening, the space looked almost empty, while the Bread Bar was bustling. The new menu (PDF here) strongly resembles the Bread Bar menu that we dined from that evening. It has a wide range of à la carte choices from $9–22 (Naan just $4), along with tasting menus at either $54 or $79.

So while USHG says that the Bread Bar has been discontinued, it’s actually the fine-dining option that’s going away. The new combined menu is basically the Bread Bar menu. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, as we liked most of the food we had there.

But it does appear to be a retrenchment.

The Tire Man at Borders

There was a panel discussion last week at Borders TWC, with Danny Meyer, Lee Schrager, Mimi Sheraton, Jean-Luc Naret (head tire man), Jean-Georges Vongerichten, and Kate Krader, with Mike Colameco as moderator.

The occasion was the release of the Michelin 2010 ratings for New York, although a wide variety of subjects was touched upon.

Naret shared an anecdote that is relevant to those who find the ratings baffling. A number of years ago, a restaurant opened outside Paris to scathing reviews. A year later, the tire man gave it a star. People came up to him, and said, “How on earth can you give a star there? It’s terrible?”

Naret replied, “Have you gone lately?” The answer, invariably, was no. Either they hadn’t gone at all, or they had gone a long time a go. Of course, his point was to emphasize the value (as he sees it) of a system where the restaurants are re-visited and judged by what they are doing now, not what they are reputed to have done many months or years or ago.

The panel was asked whether restaurants are reviewed too early nowadays. Every one of them said, in different ways, that once you are charging full price, you are fair game to be reviewed. Danny Meyer, however, said that he thinks good restaurants keep getting better and better over time. But Vongerichten said that a restaurant is at its best in the first two months, and thereafter it is a struggle to keep it that way. That is certainly an accurate description of his own places.

Meyer, in a nice way, pointed out the difference between himself and Vongerichten. Meyer hires chefs who stay full-time, or close to full-time, in their kitchens. Vongerichten launches a restaurant and moves on to the next one. He has been remarkably successful at it; however, he clearly has the problem of ensuring quality in kitchens where he is seldom physically present, whereas Meyer hires chefs who stay put.

They all thought that critic anonymity, though challenging to achieve, is both possible and important. Sheraton said that she once wrote an article for Vanity Fair about all the things a chef or restaurant can change once they know a critic is in the house. She said that after the article was published, a chef acquaintance called her up and said, “You don’t know the half of it.”

Naret, of course, claimed that his system is the best, because nobody knows who his inspectors are. Coincidentally, I received an e-mail last week from someone who has been a sommelier at a two-star Michelin restaurant. She said that they were at least two occasions that they knew an inspector was in the house. So even tire men are recognized sometimes.

Naret was asked about highly dissimilar restaurants having identical star ratings (L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon and The Spotted Pig, for instance). He said that the reader can tell from the number of couverts (little crossed knife+fork icons in the guide) that the restaurants are very different styles. This was an understandable answer from a fellow who makes his money by selling books. But to the average consumer the stars are much more recognizable than the humble couverts.

I asked Naret how many visits are required to either confer or take away a star; and after the decision is made, how much time goes by before the restaurant is revisited. His answer wasn’t as specific as I would have liked. He said that most restaurants listed in the guide (that’s over 600 places) were visited only once or twice, but that Daniel (elevated to three stars this year) was visited eight times.

The whole panel was asked whether professional reviews matter any more in the age of food boards and blogs. They all said that, while reviews matter less than they used to, the New York Times review is still the gold standard in New York. It moves the needle the way no other review can. Most also said that chefs consider Michelin stars a higher honor than any media review.

Danny Meyer thought that blogs and food boards definitely matter, because they are seen by more people than if an individual diner just tells a few friends about their meal. Jean-Georges admitted that he looks at online reviews when he is visiting an unfamiliar city, and Krader admitted that she looks at Yelp. But Mimi Sheraton thought that the food board and blog community is insular, and that the reviews in those forums are not much noticed beyond a small community of like-minded people.

Review Previews: DBGB, Marea, Eleven Madison Park

Record to date: 8–3

We’ll be away for the next two weeks, and most likely will not be able to post our Review Previews in real time, so we’re posting them now.

Bruni has three reviews remaining. What will they be?

1. Marea is a definite: there’s no way Bruni would pass up an upscale Italian place that opened on his watch.
2. Eater.com reported that Bruni has been spoted three times recently at Eleven Madison Park. He wouldn’t be there so often in the twilight of his tenure unless he’s working up a re-review.
3. The last one’s something of a wild card, but among places that must be reviewed (and a Boulud restaurant clearly fits this description), we are fairly certain that DBGB is the oldest outstanding.

Bruni has already reviewed Eleven Madison Park twice (two stars; 2/23/2005 and three stars; 1/10/2007). A promotion to four is the only conceivable reason to review it again. He has not named a new four-star restaurant since Masa in December 2004. The 4½-year gap is the longest in Times history, a record he set in the middle of last year. We and others believe that he’s itching to crown one more.

Unfortunately, that will leave poor Marea with three stars, as Bruni isn’t going to canonize two restaurants in under a month, when in almost five years he found none at all. We don’t think Marea is a four-star restaurant in any event, but given Bruni’s love-affair with Italian cuisine we thought he just might pull the trigger until we heard he was taking another hard look at Eleven Madison. (If the 11MP review doesn’t come through, then Mike White and Chris Cannon could still have a chance.)

Finally, DBGB: Most reviews we’ve seen (including our own) have been slightly less enthusiastic about this place than Bar Boulud at Lincoln Center, where Bruni awarded two stars. We therefore believe that DBGB will be rated a notch lower, at one star.

In summary, our predictions are: one star for DBGB, three stars for Marea, and four stars for Eleven Madison Park. Obviously, it’s possible that Bruni’s final reviews will include one or two other places, but we’re positive that Marea will be among the three.

Citi Field

We paid our first visit to Citi Field yesterday. We did not try to visit Danny Meyer’s restaurants, Shake Shack and Blue Smoke (see red arrow, above). That area was packed all game long, despite the rain and a crowd well short of a sell-out. I figure we would have missed at least a couple of innings just to get there and back.

Honestly, I don’t understand the point of paying $90 for a game ticket, only to stand in line for mediocre burgers and barbecue.

The game got started (above left) and was halted in the 8th inning due to rain (above right). It later resumed, only to see the Mets lose 3–1.

The Bread Bar at Tabla

Bread Bar is the oddly named casual sibling to chef Floyd Cardoz’s fine-dining Indian restaurant, Tabla.

I say “oddly named” because bread isn’t any more prominently featured here than at any other Indian restaurant. It’s a small section at the end of the two-page menu. If you didn’t know otherwise, you’d think it’s a bar that serves bread with your cocktails, and that’s not what Bread Bar is at all.

In the fine print (a/k/a/ the website), Bread Bar bills itself as “home-style Indian cuisine,” but of the four dishes we tried, none would be encountered in the typical Indian restaurant. There are traditional dishes on the menu, like Tandoori Lamb, Chicken Tikka, and Naan, but most of the items—at least as described—seem just as novel as the upstairs fine dining restaurant.

Tabla is the the quietest member of Danny Meyer’s restaurant brood. It’s not as well known as Union Square Cafe, for which the company is named; nor Eleven Madison Park, for which Frank Bruni has such a shine; nor The Modern, where chef Gabriel Kreuther just won a James Beard award; nor Shake Shack, so adored by the burger mavens; nor the perennially booked Gramercy Tavern.

But we have no reason to doubt Floyd Cardoz is just as talented as those other chefs. We awarded three stars when we dined there three years ago, the same as Ruth Reichl in the Times a decade ago. Tabla still serves a prix fixe menu, and at $59 it’s actually $5 cheaper than it was in 2006. The Bread Bar a different restaurant, for all intents and purposes, but its only Times write-up was a 2002 rave from Eric Asimov in $25 & Under. If the paper has mentioned Bread Bar since then, I seem to have missed it.

The space is typical of the casual “front rooms” attached to fine dining restaurants. Reservations aren’t taken, and the atmosphere is very much a bar that serves food. The dishes are served family style—meaning they come out as they’re ready—and the server recommended sharing, which we did.

The à la carte menu has 6–7 choices in each of five categories: Cold ($6–15), Hot ($9–15), Vegetables ($4–24), Fish & Shellfish ($16–38), and Meat ($18–23). There are two tasting menus ($54 or $89). Breads and chutneys are $4–10 each.

Some of the prices are tough to comprehend. In the Creamed Spinach Samosa ($15), and the only other ingredients are garlic, chickpeas, and radishes. The server said that it was just a single samosa, and she was at a loss to explain why it would be the most expensive hot appetizer. Why is the most expensive seafood dish the soft-shell crabs at $38, when lobster is only $23? I’m sure there are reasons, but not that we could make out from the menu.

Family-style menus tend to induce over-ordering, but we resisted that. Two of the small plates and two of the larger ones were more than we could finish, especially as the entrée portions were ample.

It’s also hard to tell what counts as an appetizer, and what’s just a side dish. Onion Rings ($10; above left) flaked in chickpea batter were perfect, but a bit odd to eat on their own. A Sunny Side Spiced Up Egg ($13; above right) worked beautifully as a starter. My girlfriend was skeptical of the dish, but the egg contrasted nicely with arugula, applewood smoked bacon, and gingered chicken livers.

Incidentally, all of Danny Meyer’s restaurants are offering a special “egg” dish during the spring, with $2 from each sale going to City Harvest. The Feedbag’s Josh Ozersky tried them all on a single evening, demonstrating that even his legendary appetite had its limits. But this is a great dish, and it’s a pity that it will come off the menu on June 20.

The Berkshire Country Pork Pan Roast ($18; above left), marinated with apple cider, cinammon, and mustard seeds, was the better of the two entrées. The pork was tender, the seasoning well judged.

A Pulled Lamb & Mustard-Mashed Potato “Naanini,” or “street sandwich” ($23; above right) seemed far too carb-heavy. The potatoes seemed to be there, not so much for flavor, but merely as a binder to hold the lamb together. The lamb was pretty good, though. It was an enormous portion, probably 50 percent larger than it needed to be. Imagine eating three pieces of quiche at one sitting.

This is a Danny Meyer restaurant, and naturally the service is first-rate. Some of the prices seemed dear to us, but with judicious ordering you can put together a fine, inexpensive casual meal.

Bread Bar at Tabla (11 Madison Avenue at 25th Street, Flatiron District)

Food: *½
Service: *½
Ambiance: *
Overall: *

Blue Smoke

Note: Click here for a review of Blue Smoke Battery Park City.

*

When Blue Smoke opened in early 2002, it was an odd diversion for the restaurateur Danny Meyer, who was better known for a string of insanely popular three-star restaurants, such as Union Square Café, Gramercy Tavern, Eleven Madison Park, and Tabla. (He has since added The Modern and Shake Shack to his brood.)

As Eric Asimov noted in the Times, “if anybody was going to give New York great barbecue, the thinking went, it would be Mr. Meyer.” But Blue Smoke delivered an uneven performance, and Asimov (then writing as the paper’s main critic) awarded just one star.

The NYC barbecue landscape has changed considerably since 2002. Righteous Urban Barbecue (“RUB”) and Hill Country have come along, both run by folks to whom barbecue is a religion, not just a sidelight. With those and several other standouts now available, Blue Smoke is just one of many NYC restaurants offering what purports to be authentic barbecue.

Those other places don’t have the Danny Meyer service model; most of them don’t even take reservations. Blue Smoke did, and when I called to say I was running a bit late, the staff offered to “make a note of it for the maitre d’.” My bar tab was transferred to my table without my even asking, and the host seated me before my girlfriend had arrived. That kind of service puts many higher-end restaurants to shame, and you certainly wouldn’t find it in any other barbecue place.

But while we appreciated the fine service, the barbecue at Blue Smoke wasn’t as good as RUB, Hill Country, or even Stephen Hanson’s Wildwood Barbecue, all located nearby. On top of that, Blue Smoke was absolutely crushed on a Friday evening. While it isn’t Danny Meyer’s fault that his restaurant is insanely popular, the crowds detracted somewhat from whatever charms Blue Smoke would otherwise have.

We had the Rib Sampler for Two ($35.95), which featured two Texas-style beef ribs, four Memphis baby back ribs, and four Kansas City spareribs. It is a pity that you cannot mix and match proteins and preparation methods. The dry-rub beef ribs were the most enjoyable, but they didn’t have as much meat on them as I would have liked. The spare ribs were the meatiest, but they were slathered in a a “KC Sauce” that was over-powering. The baby backs had the saucing right, but they were too lean for our taste.

The ribs are served à la carte, so I would definitely recommend ordering a couple of sides (they range from $3.95–7.95). Roasted Cauliflower Gratin ($4.95; above left) was too dry and had no perceptible cheese content. Macaroni & Cheese ($7.95; above right), the most expensive of the sides, was just fine.

We didn’t drink much, as we were driving out to Eastern Long Island after our meal, but there is an impressive list of beers, bourbons, house cocktails and other spirits. In this respect, Blue Smoke has other barbecue places beat.

There is much more to the menu at Blue Smoke, including a long list of appetizers and salads, more than a dozen more side dishes, and standard entrées, along with several more barbecue specialities. You can probably put together a good meal here, but we left with the distinct impression that it is not worth the trouble.

Blue Smoke (116 E. 27th Street between Park & Lexington Avenues, Flatiron District)

Food: *
Service: *½
Ambiance: Satisfactory
Overall: *

Eleven Madison Park

We had an excellent meal at Eleven Madison Park in early August. I didn’t note every dish, and it’s obviously too late to remember them all, so I’ll keep this brief.

This is a controversial restaurant. In May of this year, Danyelle Freeman gave it five stars in the Daily News (the only restaurant so honored during her brief tenure there). And Frank Bruni said that the new restaurant Corton “joins the constantly improving Eleven Madison Park as a restaurant hovering just below the very summit of fine dining in New York.” If Bruni promotes any restaurant to four stars in 2009, as I believe he is itching to do, I have to think EMP is one of the few real candidates.

But Eleven Madison Park has no Michelin stars, probably the most glaring omission from the French guide’s otherwise very sensible advice. Michelin skeptics cite the snub as evidence that the guide should be disregarded. Still, it’s a fact that this restaurant lacks the near-universal acclaim of, say, Le Bernardin or Jean Georges. Even Bruni, in a year-end blog post, noted that he had an uneven meal there in the fall.

Public adoration seems to be undimmed. Eleven Madison is one of the few restaurants that has continued to raise prices, and get away with it. The prix fixe is now $88 for three courses, and the two tasting menus are now $125 and $175, the latter being one of the most expensive of its kind in the city.

You can count us as fans of Eleven Madison Park. After three visits, we have never yet been disappointed. In August, we had the prix fixe. I was especially eager to try the duck for two. It was wonderful, but I do prefer to have it carved tableside, as they did at Le Périgord. When they whisk it away to the kitchen, the plates that come back never quite seem to add up to a whole bird.

As our meal was five months ago, I’ll let the photos speak for themselves.

Canapés (left); Amuse-bouche (center); Burgundy (right)

Appetizers

The duck as presented (left), and served (center), with leg confit on the side (right)

Cheese course

Palate cleanser and petits-fours

Eleven Madison Park (11 Madison Avenue at 24th Street, Flatiron District)

Food: ***½
Service: ***½
Ambiance: ***½
Overall: ***½

Gramercy Tavern

 

Note: Click here for a more recent review of Gramercy Tavern.

It’s hard to be both good and popular. Large restaurants with mass appeal can’t risk challenging their customers with unusual recipes, ingredients that are hard to pronounce, or menus that stray far from the old standards.

These realities are evident at Gramercy Tavern, which has practically defined New American haute barnyard cuisine since its debut in 1994. It was the first restaurant as co-owner for chef Tom Colicchio, who had worked his way through several three and four-star kitchens; and the second restaurant for Danny Meyer (after another huge hit, Union Square Cafe).

The list of chefs who have cooked in Gramercy Tavern’s kitchen reads like a who’s who of New York dining: Marco Canora and Paul Grieco (both now at Hearth, Insieme and Terroir); Jonathan Benno (now chef de cuisine at Per Se); Damon Wise (now executive chef at Craft); pastry chef Claudia Fleming (now co-owner at North Fork Table & Inn); John A. Schaefer (now chef–partner at Irving Mill).

Before they opened, Meyer and Colicchio rather foolishly said that they were out to “reinvent the four-star restaurant.” Then, as now, if you say you’re gunning for N stars, it’s a sure bet you’ll get at most N–1 . That’s exactly what happened, as Ruth Reichl awarded an enthusiastic three stars in the Times. But as Colicchio drifted away, the restaurant ran on auto-pilot.

Two years ago, Meyer and Colicchio had an amicable divorce. Colicchio wanted to focus on his Craft empire, and Meyer wanted a full-time chef. To replace Colicchio, Meyer hired Michael Anthony, formerly Dan Barber’s partner at  the Blue Hill restaurants—places that borrowed a lot from Gramercy’s haute barnyard ethos, and arguably improved upon it.

The current Times critic, Frank Bruni, had “a few forgettable dinners” and “a clumsy, laughable one” during the first few years of his tenure. Unusually for him, he gave Anthony time to right the ship before weighing in with a respectful three-star re-review last June. Bruni was about right, when he noted:

There are restaurants with more shimmer, and there are certainly restaurants with more spark. There are restaurants that take bigger chances and stake bolder claims to your attention.

But is there a restaurant in this city more beloved than Gramercy Tavern?

It was a tough to get a table here in 1994, and it is tough today. In the Zagat survey, Gramercy Tavern is the second-most popular restaurant in New York (behind only Union Square Cafe). Its Zagat food and service ratings are 27 out of 30; no restaurant is higher than 28 in either category

When reservations opened for Valentine’s Day, they sold out in something like fifteen minutes. Even on a “normal” day, Gramercy Tavern is usually booked solid at prime times. To be sure of getting a table, you need to call four weeks in advance at 10:00 a.m., wait on hold, and cross your fingers. By the time you get through you may find that 5:30 and 10:00 are the only times remaining. We were finally able to book on OpenTable during the slower summer season.

Gramercy is really two restaurants in one, with a casual no-reservations “tavern room,” which serves an à la carte menu; and the more upscale (but not really formal) dining room, where your only choices for dinner are an $82 three-course  prix fixe, which we had, or one of two tasting menus ($88; $110).

Like all of Danny Meyer’s restaurants, Gramercy Tavern practically defines excellent service. I was seated immediately, even though my girlfriend had not yet arrived; and they gave us as long as we wished to ponder the menus. There was no sense of being rushed through the meal, even though you can bet your life that our table was going to be turned. Our three-course dinner played out over a relatively leisurely two hours and forty minutes.

The wine list is of middling length, but there is something on it for just about everybody. I was pleased to find a 1996 Fronsac for $72, an unusually low price for a decently aged French wine. It was a bit tight at first, but opened up nicely over the course of the evening.

The amuse-bouche (photo right) was a small wedge of house-made sausage. There were three kinds of bread to choose from, but none of them really floated my boat. The olive bread was too hard, and the butter wasn’t soft enough.

 

Foie Gras Custard with cherry marmelade and hazelnuts (above left) was probably the most exciting dish we tasted. Besides being very good in its own right, it was a more creative way of presenting foie than the usual terrine or torchon.

But Lamb Pappardelle (above right) was cliché, other than the unusual beet greens on which it lay, and it wasn’t quite warm enough. It wasn’t a very attractive plating, either.

 

Neither entrée offered a trace of originality. Glazed Duck Breast and Duck Leg Confit (above left) were at least impeccably prepared. The duck skin was crisp, the inside succulent and tender. We were less enchanted with Rack of Pork and Braised Belly (above right). The rack was slightly on the tough side, while the belly didn’t have quite the crisp–gooey texture that it should.

 
 

If, like the rest of the meal, the sweets were devoid of fanfare, they were all at least well executed. The palate cleanser (top left) was a strawberry–rhubarb crisp. I had the selection of cheeses (top right), while my girlfriend had the Grand Marnier Mascarpone Cheesecake (bottom left), which she felt the average chef could make at home. I found nothing wrong with it, though. The meal concluded with petits-fours (bottom right).

I agree with Frank Bruni that the empire’s best food in Danny Meyer’s burgeoning restaurant empire is now being served at Eleven Madison Park and The Modern. (Bruni favors the latter’s bar room over its formal dining room, but at least he has the right address.) Gramercy Park has become the Zagat set’s go-to occasion place. There’s no doubt that Michael Anthony is a serious chef, and unlike Tom Colicchio he’s actually here most of the time. But the menu falls back on predictability, which doesn’t leave much room to excuse its occasional flubs.

You won’t have a bad meal at Gramercy Tavern—far from it—but there’s more excitement to be had elsewhere.

Gramercy Tavern (42 E. 20th Street between Park Avenue South & Broadway, Flatiron District)

Food: **
Service: ***
Ambiance: **½
Overall: **½

The Payoff: Gramercy Tavern

Today, Frank Bruni awarded three stars to Gramercy Tavern. A good deal of what we predicted yesterday came true. As expected, it was a “yes, but…” kind of review:

• There are restaurants with more shimmer, and there are certainly restaurants with more spark. There are restaurants that take bigger chances and stake bolder claims to your attention.

• They steer clear of anything too challenging, and if tameness is a consequence, so be it. Gramercy has never been a destination for the most adventurous or jaded gourmands.

Bruni reiterated his view that Gramercy Tavern is no longer the flagship of the Danny Meyer empire:

• It doesn’t scale peaks as high as those at Eleven Madison Park, currently the most exciting restaurant in Mr. Meyer’s collection. But like a solid marriage rather than a heady love affair, it has stood the test of time, righting itself when it starts to go wrong, knowing that what’s at stake are a great many warm memories, some yet to be made.

As we imagined, Meyer nailed the balance between casual and formal that Bruni finds lacking—the casual part, that is—at many high-end restaurants:

• The service is back on track, with its trademark blend of coddling and unpretentiousness, a mix that Gramercy nailed well before other restaurants and that explains a lot about diners’ loyalty to the restaurant. They find comfort in rooms with well-spaced tables and one rustic touch for every two elegant flourishes. Gramercy Tavern is a homey retort to the slickness of some fine-dining peers, and minor changes to lighting and art have made it look fresher, less where your grandmother goes after needlepoint class and more where your aunt goes after Italian for the Umbria-bound.

But having correctly predicted all of that, we failed at the one prediction that counted: the rating. Frank Bruni awarded three stars, and we predicted two. We don’t like losing, but if it has to happen, we’re glad it happened this way. In Frank Bruni’s three years on the job, this was one of the few times he awarded the correct rating to a restaurant, simply for doing classic things well. We would not be so foolish as to suggest Frank has actually learned something. We expect him to be back up to his old tricks again soon.

We lose $1 on our hypothetical wager, while Eater wins $3.50 at 7–2 odds.

	Eater		NYJ
Bankroll	$34.00		$35.67
Gain/Loss	+$3.50		–$1.00
Total	$37.50		$34.67
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Won–Lost	14–3		12–5