The Bruni Digest

Robert's at the Penthouse Club: Frank takes a seat on Mahogany

2007-03-01T15:15:00.000-05:00

Well, I should probably call my dirty uncle Earl and tell him it’s time to whip out that “eunuch in a whorehouse” joke: Frank Bruni finally made it to the Penthouse Executive Club.

Uncle Earl can be a real liability, even sobered up and strapped into a supportive braziere.

Never in the history of critics has there been a man so in love with sexual metaphors for meat as Frank Bruni—well, sexual metaphors for anything really—

Typical Frank: “The baby clutched the hard, glistening wooden shaft and tickled the head tenderly…” P.S., it’s gonna get so much filthier, so relax.

But yesterday’s review of Robert’s at the Penthouse Club broke some kind of superfluous-sex sound-barrier, screeching through the skies of the restaurant world with everyone on the ground pointing up at Frank in disbelief. Especially following the Kobe club/ Chodortard debacle, it’s interesting to see the man courting further scandal, or at least attention. It's as if, following a dirty fight in the middle of the schoolyard, he got up, walked away calmly, and then bent over and yanked down his Italian hand-tailored trouserpants to bare some victorious ass.

For those who want a similar effect without the drafty chill on their cheeks.

Frank opens: “IT may be laughable when someone says he gets Penthouse magazine for the articles. It’s no joke when I say I went to the Penthouse Executive Club for the steaks.”

This week anyway, it might be laughable when someone says he gets the Dining Times for the articles. Any illiterate hobo would enjoy the many stripper photos:

Times caption: “SHE NEEDS A STEAK…OR A SWEATER.” Couldn’t have done a better caption myself. Although I could try:

“Hi, I’m an asshole!”

For the first time since Horatius Pittenfarthing reviewed Big Edna's House of Both Ill-Repute and Chicken for the Times in 1896, a restaurant review actually came with a slideshow of exotic dancers:

Frank's commentary: “They whirl and gyrate and toss their heads around so violently that you wonder: is stripping-related whiplash covered by workman's comp?”

Yeah, when a lady takes off a fake policeman suit item-by-item and then polishes the length of an aluminum pole with her bush, you tend to wonder about the labor conditions stipulated in her contract.

These guys are wondering if “Chesapeake” has gotten her W-2 yet. Also whether she will let them touch her yams for free. Actually, the guy on the left just remembered it’s his wife’s birthday and the guy on the right is laughing because his pants are secretly off.

But the slideshow gives away the joke of the whole review: Frank and his "companions" are, in his words, “strangers to such pulchritudinous territory, less susceptible to the scenery than other men might be, more aroused by the side dishes than the sideshow.”

Wait a minute. Wai-wai-wai-waiiiiiiit a minute— Frank is less susceptible to the scenery? What’s he saying? He doesn't pitch a tent for gorgeous women humping banisters? IS FRANK BRUNI BLIND?

"The decor in the dining room... sounded... very beautiful..."

No, he's not blind. If you listen closely, you’ll see that he’s telling you something more personal, something that I’ve never explicitly addressed--

I’m just here to sit really unlady-like, smoke Pall Mall 100’s and make dirty jokes.

But since he's making it the central joke of his review, I think it's fair to point out that Frank is telling us he's gay.

Frank is gay.

Gay

Gay

Gay

Gay

Gay, gloriously gloriously

Gay

Gay

Gay.

Fine. One more.

Gay.

Man, I feel like I just came out of the closet. So liberating.

But does Frank simply pout, ignoring the titties and burrowing in his porterhouse? No. The man bucks up and does his Times-given duty of enjoying the ladies, mostly in conversation:

“A beautiful woman claimed the plush armchair opposite mine. She introduced
herself. I wasn’t sure I’d heard her name correctly.
‘Mahogany?’ I said.
‘Yes,’ she purred.
...‘Mahogany,’ I asked, ‘do you know where you’re going to?’
She didn’t miss a beat, noting the
reference, summoning the singer, and moving on to another of the dreamgirl’s
hits. ‘I’m ... coming ... out!’ she sang, waving her arms, wiggling her hips.
Mahogany and I would get along just fine.”

About 80% of the review consists of priceless interactions like this, Frank dodging the come-ons of women named after shades of Sherwin-Williams deck stain, indulging them the way a hospice worker indulges a mildly deranged old person:

"I've got to be at the Folies Bergeres in twenty minutes to meet President Wilson! I'm going to eat this dustpan first, as soon as I find m' teeth!"
"Of course you are, Mrs. Prendergast."

As if to tantalize and frustrate the straight men out there, he repeatedly turns down sexy propositions, never quite takes advantage of his enviable combination of an endless expense account and the ostensible professional excuse to have his ears boxed by a pair of coconut-oiled stripper's tits:

“She said she was running low on cabernet. I took the cue and asked if I could buy her a fresh glass.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘And you can pour it on my toes.’
Didn’t happen. And when one of her sorority sisters sidled up to us to pose a question not commonly uttered in fine-dining establishments — ‘Is there anyone I can get naked for?’ — the response was silence.”

And a thousand teenage boys said "DOH!"

For those nights when you just want to take grandma somewhere after church for a nice cut of meat, Frank reassures you that the naked ladies will “vanish quickly if shooed away.”

After all, grandma has made it pretty clear she enjoys the love of a gay gigolo far more than that of a female stripper. "It reminds me of my youth in Palermo" she screams, as she jams four figs and a tupperware full of her best gravy into his banana hammock.

Although prices, “pumped up to reflect the entertainment on hand, might also be called topless,” (groan) the steak bests competition from heavy's like Luger's, thanks to chef Adam Perry Lang of Daisy May's. Hence the count's one-star award.

As for the rest of the food, the "onion rings are fat and crunchy, and cream and bacon turn a side of brussels sprouts into something naughty."

It's funny, all it took was a little cream and bacon, and they spun those sprouts right into a grade-A, superfilthy butt-flossing dickmitt. EAT YOUR HEART OUT, ROBUCHON!!

But it gets naughtier: "It’s called a buttery nipple, and it involves one of the women straddling your lap, tilting your head back, pouring a combination of Baileys Irish Cream and butterscotch schnapps down your throat, and squirting Reddi-wip into your mouth. It costs $20 in cash. Note to the newspaper’s expense auditors: I don’t have a receipt."

You know, it's funny, there are a bunch of things Frank didn't get a receipt for this week:

I've cited about 1% of Frank's gay-among-the-babes hilarity; it must be read in its entirety to be fully appreciated. But the last third of the review is just extended conversation, covering everything from education to cell phone choice, between unaroused Frank and some braindead hotties in their birthday suits:

"'Foxy, I began, then stopped myself, wondering if I was being too familiar. 'Are you and I on a first-name basis, or should I address you as Ms. Foxy?'
'You can call me Dr. Foxy, she said.
'Is that an M.D. or a Ph.D.?'
'Yes,' she answered."

I think Foxy speaks for all of us. I for one, am completely confused, totally exhausted, and a little creeped out. I'd like you all to know that this post required me to do a lot of disgusting image searching, and I've seen more Ukranian pooter in the past few hours than the Planned Parenthood in downtown Kiev. It's time to just sit down, throw some ice down the back of my neck and stare at the least sexiest thing of all time:

Yyyyyyyup, thanks, Al, that'll do.

Waverly Inn: Ye Have Lost Ye Mind

2007-01-24T19:21:00.000-05:00

Ok I’ll admit that I’ve been in a vegetable state for the past few weeks…

… but like a 102-year-old in a nursing home who can still pop one for Barker’s Babes, when Frank goes as nuts as he did this week I get out of my wheelchair with a tent in my dockers screaming “I still got it in me! I still got it!”

Yes, it’s Free Bar of Gold Day for Frank Bruni satirizers and, I would argue, for Graydon Carter, whose Waverly Inn got it pretty easy from the Count. And by easy I mean completely crazy.

But before addressing Lady Huffypussy’s email correspondence (just wait) let’s pause briefly to salute Frank’s Critic’s Notebook complaint about being made to kow-tow before the city’s luminary chefs. The article included probably the funniest image ever cobbled together in Times Dining:

Oh, except for this one back in 1993, when someone was just having fun with Clarisworks:

Oh the heady early days of photoshopping. My what fun they had.

Anyway, for his review this week of Graydon Carter’s clubhouse Waverly Inn, Frank took a nom de plume, writing, in email format, as:

"Frannie Von Furstinshow," writing from the email account "FURSTINSHOW@guccipucci.com>"

Glossing completely over how disgusting "guccipucci" is, I'd like to not that this has happened before: Frank made up a fake interlocutor (a broad hybrid of A-hole meatpacking cruisers) when reviewing Sasha, and everyone wondered if it was a real person. Clearly it’s a sock puppet on Frank’s left hand.

Except way less inadvertently peeny.

Don’t worry about the sock puppet interfering with the typing; the Count dictates to a manservant who writes in a wax tablet with Dior eyeliner.

Frannie Von Furstinshow represents a sort of block-headed fancypants in-crowd stereotype. She begins her letter to “Dear Graydon” with a quibble, and no, it’s not about his maxi-pad haircut:

Now extra thin! With extra wide wings!

Frank, aka Frannie, begins:

“First, dear, a quibble: Demi? On the cover? Back when she was large (and naked!) with a child destined for a nutty celebrity-spawn name, it made sense. But if ‘Bobby’ is a comeback, I went to a state university.”

Get it? Cause rich people are snobby about state schools!

I'd like to point out that that’s just rude…

Chief Burning Asshole, the Florida State mascot, finds that quip incredibly insensitive.

But Frannie Von Tinklepot raves about the place:

“Now, applause: Waverly. Love it. I laugh when I hear it called a restaurant, as if it were anything so mundane and (apologies to Demi) pregnable.”

Those of us who are both extremely mundane (check) and extremely pregnable (well…my fallopian tubes are connected to a beer helmet right now but I could probably have the operation reversed) shouldn’t be offended here.

Frannie’s talking about the rigamarole you’ve got to go through to get a reservation at this exclusive spot, which, according to Frannie’s account, not only pretends to be closed, but won’t take phone reservations.

The foreboding door to Waverly Inn.

Frannie loves that “we have a Toots Shor’s of our own, a Stork Club without the plumage. I think back to that night in London at the Groucho Club (remember how everyone was trying not to stare at Martin Amis’s new teeth?!) and how we agreed that New York needed an English gentlemen’s club that didn’t take English gentlemen as members.”

Ah the conundrum of the English gentleman. Love the wit, hate the yard-long wake of hoppy beer gas.

Speaking of wit, Frank is really giving some pissy satiric sauce to Graydon's trans-Atlantic fashiono-literary crew. There’s too much crazy business here for me to excerpt it all. This one is a surefire must-read, start to finish.

OK, goodnight. Oh whoops, wait! The food!

Frannie likie: “chef John DeLucie is doing some of the best tuna tartare in town (all that creamy avocado and zingy heat!), plus a hefty and juicy pork chop, a classically blissful Dover sole, an addictive clam chowder, a gorgeous fillet of wild salmon (with those adorable little beluga lentils) and …feloniously fatty short ribs….”

Wow. Get in there, Fannie. Not so much a social X-ray as a social XL.

At Fannie’s last showing at the East Hampton Equestrian Show, many in the audience smiled to her face but secretly whispered about what the addiction to clam chowder had done to her judgment, not to mention her once-lithe ass.

We know the Inn is only getting one star, but Frank’s/Frannie’s review barely pauses the praise. Frannie hints at some disappointments (“the dull chicken pot pie and the humdrum crab cakes and the functional strip steak”) but ends with a sweeping conclusion about how genuinely great the place is:

“It’s not just about an A-list daisy chain of writers, actors, models. It’s not just about ringside seats to the latest Perelman-Barkin smackdown.
It’s about the ease and privilege of being among people who reflect your brainiest, prettiest sense of self.”

For those of you (whom Frannie calls “the lemmings”) unable to score a reservation, who would nevertheless like to see two divorced people engage in a smackdown, Rita and Derek Huffenblatt will be battling over custody of their ’82 Nissan Sentra at the Applebee’s in Elmhurst from now until Rita jams a press-on nail into Derek’s cornea sometime past midnight.

Less glitzy than Perelman-Barkin, sure, but there's a far far higher likelihood that one of them will call the other a "slutbucket." You take what you can get.

On the theme of dysfunctional couples, today’s Times has really reminded me how much Frank and I are meant to be. Or at least how badly Frank wants me to make fun of him. Hey guy, if you want to switch panties and hold hands, give me a call, m’kay?

Missed ya, buddy.

STK and Porterhouse: I am Giving So Many Thanks

2006-11-21T22:54:00.000-05:00

Another killer week. I don't have time to do this one tonight (early flight, you know the drill) but check in later this week...and don't forget to wear your "edible accessories for a naughty expedition to the other side of midnight." (YES, HE SAID THAT) Other choice tidbits to which I will be giddily appending deranged imagery:

- "I’ve never taken a spin inside a pimp’s stretch limo, and now I don’t need to."
- "It’s unclear whether she’s emerged from the boudoir or the abattoir, but her idea of fun obviously involves meat."
- "STK’s idea of a feminist must be Pamela Anderson"

And a bonus from the Diner's Journal (thanks for the heads-up, Cod):
"While Mr. Chow TriBeCa felt in many ways like a cynical swindle, the duck was a highlight. Restaurants will get the glistening, crackling skin right only to muff the thin band of meat just beneath, or they'll keep that meat moist and muff the skin, which won't be crisp enough."

MEAT + MUFF = Have a very sexy Thanksgiving.

This turkey's givin' a lot more than THANKS! Yowza.

Lonesome Dove: Sleepin' in the Prairie when there ain't no Stars

2006-11-15T02:09:00.001-05:00

Weeeee-haw! What we done gone dood din havin’ got up in here is an ole- fashin’ ass-whoopin’, like pappy use to give me when I git to splashin around in his tannery barrel.

That’s how come I got them chemicals in my brains.

The Count not only zero-stars Lonesome Dove, he does it with confidence, with panache, with the sangfroid of a prudish cop shutting down a tacky whorehouse. The place struck Frank from day one as nasty and he’s got the language to prove it:

Outside the restaurant, “on the sidewalk, like a rustler’s riff on a red carpet, lay a brown-and-white steer’s hide.” Chef/owner Tim Love apparently likes to shop for furniture and décor on Highway 9.

“Look at the handiwork on this bureau! I wonder if it comes with a dresser?”

With rain and traffic, Frank returned to find “this hairy and scary welcome mat plastered to the ground, mottled with dirt and squishy with water: roadkill after a rainstorm.” So already, Frank is being greeted at the doorstep by a sewer-rat’s jerry curl.

And yes, that’s Pedro Martinez’ hair. Don’t you recognize the sheen?

Lonesome Dove is playing up the cheeky southerner ad nauseum, according to Frank: décor includes a “mounted steer’s head and a chandelier of antlers,” while the cooks wear cowboy hats (which must be totally unbearable and really impractical.)
Not that I’ve ever cared about practicality!

One of my little inventions…It’s the ultimate easy travel pack for the traveler who just wants 50 extra pounds of dead weight— say, someone taking a dinghy across the Pacific.

Speaking of impractical,

“Lonesome Dove imagines and executes what might be called contemporary cowpoke cuisine. It’s a mash-up of the Southwest, the Wild West, the Outback and maybe even Brokeback…”

Wow. Australian Southwest gays?

+

It’s like the baby of Kenny Chesney and Keith Urban.

Lonesome Dove seems to test the limits of the most intrepid diners, offering meat from every animal that walks, e.g. “marsupial nachos” consisting of “reddish meat on blue corn chips with avocado and corn scattered about” like the marriage between a Vampire and a Fatass, where the guests threw trash instead of confetti. The shocker here is, the crazy meats turn out to me “more interesting in theory”: tastes like chicken, the Count admits.

Tim Love’s ingredients are as multiple as his meats are weird, and about as ineffective: “A deluge of salt and a gooey dollop of butter mixed with Serrano chili, shallots, Boursin cheese and fresh lime juice” topped a buffalo rib-eye. I can’t even play that one out in my imagination. Maybe Tim should have applied to his food Coco Chanel’s advice about removing one accessory before leaving the house:

“Ya know what? I’m gonna take this bracelet off, it’s just too much.”

But does the cheekiness of Lonesome Dove come as any surprise? Tim Love has been a cheeky press presence for a while now--

Perhaps more surprising at this point is the praise that the Dove actually gets:

“Mr. Love seems dedicated to getting first-rate cuts of meat, and if the rub-happy kitchen goes overboard in seasoning them, especially with salt and pepper, it certainly knows how to cook many of them.” Oh good ‘cause I like my chipmunk medium and I’ll take my meerkat and my narwhal as rare as they’ll let ya!

Tim Love's ranch.

Frank also appreciates the hearty portions and the inclusion of sides. But who cares, because move over for one of the most amazing Brunisms of all time:

The grilled $120-“Tomohawk chop” is a “bone-in rib-eye for two, accompanied by a lobster tail and two scallops as large as tennis balls, and that bone is so long it seems to stretch all the way back into the partly visible kitchen.”

Tim’s coming up from the rear in a separate tent with the balls and a signed copy of Innuendo? Yes please! Give Me Two Heaping Scoops, by Frank Bruni.

Picholine: Frank's Satin Panty Collection Turns 100!

2006-11-12T22:25:00.000-05:00

I know I know, it looks like, following Frank’s Italian séjour, I took a little “vacay” of my own. Not the case! Not at all. No, on the contrary, it took me some time to grapple fully with Frank’s Italy piece, a display of unflinching journalistic courage. Finally, finally someone had the guts to ask the question everyone’s been thinking but no one will spit out: “Just How Good Can Italy Get?”

So naturally, it took me a while to accept the man who had DARED, in the face of danger, to pit Tuscany against Piedmont (itd’s about time), might be back to reviewing papas-flinging tapas joints.

I mean, how does one, after forever being altered by The Naked and the Dead, read a post-it note left on the fridge by Norman Mailer?

Mailer loves the ladies.

But this week, Frank is back in inspiring form in his review of recently-renovated Picholine.

I’ve enjoyed Picholine in my day, mostly for the extensive consultations that I have with the maitre fromagier, a man who counsels you with awesome sincerity, pushing his little cart of stinky chunks, as if you were Brooke Astor and he were your portfolio advisor. He used to station himself against the wall making a brooding, hateful face, which I suspect had more to do with always standing directly above the farty waft of the cheese cart.

A face he was unfortunately also forced to make at home, standing in the waft of Thierry, his gaseous tabby.

But Frank picks up on the real reason for Picholine’s recent renovation: The place looked like a fancy funeral home, with 800-year-old opera patrons stacked along the cream-colored banquettes like wax dignitaries in Madame Tussaud’s storage locker.

Ex-Netherlandish Prime Minister Jeremiah Van Der Perv just doesn’t bring the crowds in like he used to.

There were other problems leading to the restaurant’s makeover: says Frank,
“The food lacked luster. The service lacked smarts. When my sister foolishly asked our waiter how old he thought she was, he even more foolishly took the question seriously, hazarding a guess that was two years too many. What a dolt.”

Yikes. Calling your sister "foolish" in the pages of the Times— risky. I mean, I called my Cousin Jeremy an “asshead” publicly, but that was different; it was a trial, and I was testifying.

Oh Jeremy. After years in the finest of European boarding schools, he still preferred the gentle cloak of a cool breeze to any cottons we could provide.

Frank is back to assess the place post-renovation, and he attests that “It now looks sleeker, shinier and better…”—

“but not much.”

Awww. Looks like Grandma Picholine got her mustache waxed, but forgot to change out of her muu muu:

“Was a nearby interior décor store having an end-of-summer sale on the colors purple? Picholine has gone with a cloying monochromatic palette: lavender walls, lavender accents, plum carpeting. It’s the architectural equivalent of a bridesmaid’s dress.”

Well I haven’t seen the new place, but it does sound pretty dismal—The color purple is such a talcum-crotched, potpourri-strewing, taffeta-wearing sign of preciousness. Unless it’s a musical about a battered black woman finding inner courage at the turn of the century. Or unless it’s this guy:

This guy: changin’ the way people think about purple. Also giving them cold, sweaty nightmares.

But all is not lost for dowdy Picholine: Frank calls it “a winner,” “the nicest restaurant surprise of this disappointing season,” due to the kitchen’s successful reinvigoration.

Some dishes are new, some old; some include surprising twists (a sauternes jelly under a Roquefort salad) and others are simple, like one where (drumroll) “the role of a slow-cooked egg is, in fact, played by an egg.” Shocking. I thought eggs were usually played by Danny deVito.

...With Sharon Stone obliging as the chicken

Even if Picholine is wall-papered in Bea Arthur’s panty-hose, Frank manages to drum up some fun from my old buddy the cheese guy:

“Max McCalman directs the cheese course with Tony-worthy exuberance..."

"STILLLLLLLTOOOOOONNNNN, all alone in the CAAAA-VEERRRRNNNN, all alone with its ENNNNNZYMES and its veiny blue moooooooooold." Alternately, "We have an excellent Stilton from-- what are you looking at? No seriously what are you looking at? What, you think it's fake? You think I put a baseball diamond in my felinetard? Take your eyes off my sack and focus 'em on the cart. AND THAT GOES FOR EVERYONE IN HERE, ok?"

We all know how much the Count loves a great meal, but he's always eating out on the job, doing Papa Keller's professional bidding. But this shows how much Frank really enjoyed Picholine:

“When a late-October milestone of my own approached”—OMG, Frank’s collection of satin Victorian bloomers turns 150!!!!!-- "and I surveyed the restaurants in my sights, I decided to celebrate the occasion with the last in a series of visits to Picholine."

There is. No. Greater. Honor. You could bestow on Picholine, Frank. 3 stars! Also, way to roll your celebration in with work, huh? When I tried to celebrate my birthday at the office...

...well, somehow a Dell monitor ended up in my bra. Not nearly as confusing as the staples in my pants.

One Sad Little Dancing Ape

2006-10-11T22:43:00.000-04:00

So for two weeks, Segnor Bruni is in Italy, examining his roots.

"Lai lai lai, I'm so alone, alone in a field, it's cause I'm deranged, la la laaa"

No, silly, his ITALIAN roots. Moskin's got his back, but...it's just not the same. When Frank's needle goes off the track, so to speak, this little ballerina stops dancing.

See you in two weeks (although carryover divertissement always available here.)

L'Atelier do Joël Robuchon: Like Catechism, But Snottier

2006-10-05T21:38:00.000-04:00

Bruni’s review of l’Atelier do Joël Robuchon was almost as highly anticipated as the arrival of Robuchon in New York when the place opened back in August of this year. This has to do with the man’s reputation and achievements (which apparently cannot be overestimated— I think he holds twelve Tonys and he invented Christmas, peanut butter, and overalls.)

“Thanks a lot, asshole. I don’t get Christmas OR overalls. Give my best to the Four Seasons, will ya?”

The Count, not one to be blinded by the gigawatt glare of a revered man, looks Joël’s reputation in the eye:

“THE best chefs have long been treated as artists worthy of adulation, and rightly so. But have they been promoted in recent years to deities who can expect reverence and sacrifice?”

I don’t know if expect is the word.

If this Southwestern pug needs to get the ritual pyre in order for Flay’s newest venture to succeed, I think we can all agree that’s fair. (tks, cuteoverload.)

Sure, these guys (and they are mostly guys) deserve the adulation, but Frank’s not afraid to ask whether we’ve taken it too far: Have we “gone from sweetly doting patrons to slightly deranged supplicants?”

I don’t think so. Can we HELP it if we become OBSESSED with these people? I mean they’re so AMAZING. As soon as I heard Charlie Trotter was an animal lover…

I had this tattoo done. CALL ME, CHARLIE. I’m so humane it’s NAUGHTY.

TO illustrate what we worshippers are willing to endure, Frank uses an episode from “the first days” of L’Atelier. His Countliness was made to wait forever to get seated with a group of other diners.

One crotchety lady started complaining.

“But does [the crotchety lady] leave?” Frank asks. “Do any of us?”

The answer, of course, is no: “We’re put out, but not enough to forgo whatever Mr. Robuchon has to show us. He’s one of the most acclaimed chefs of the last quarter century…. He had us at bonjour.”

Ah yes, Jerry Maguire is finally ripe for the cultural plucking again 10 years later.

DID YOU KNOW THE FRENCH CHEF’S HEAD WEIGHS 800 LBS??

The chef’s big-headedness marked the “soft” opening of L’Atelier, a period of time that usually falls outside the critic’s view:

L’Atelier “hit the ground limping: bad bread, flustered service, palpable arrogance.” Wait a minute…bad bread, flustered service…Maybe all this religious metaphor isn’t metaphor: Maybe L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon REALLY IS A CHURCH!! Silly Frank!

“Uh waiter? WAITER? Over here! Yeah, can we get another glass of the red wine, and some more bread when you get a chance? Thanks….Oh this is preposterous! He’s getting to everyone else before us!”

But the food merits the worship, says Frank: a foie gras and eel layer cake is “the stuff of dreams”; “a mélange of sea urchin roe, lobster and cauliflower cream” is “pure rapture.” And the sliders? He not only doesn’t make fun of them for their trendy name, but they get his “vote for haute burger of the new millennium.”

Everyone at the campaign headquarters for “Sloppy Jethro’s Fatface Nightmare Burger” was crushed, but also understanding. Head campaign strategist Melvin Spanks called the victory “justified” and further that he “needed to puke.”

Praise praise praise. Praise is fun. But as you probably know by know, Joel is getting three stars, not four. So let's have it.

The turmoil of the early days remains: “you still have to push past some nonsense.” I believe this is more than an oblique reference to the host, the stern but lovable Captain Asshole.

If you palm him french fries, he’ll seat ya faster.

Also, the whole counter thing doesn’t pan out like it’s supposed to:

“The hotel intrudes on the restaurant, challenging a fundamental reason for the counter arrangement — to allow you undistracted communion with your food.”
Again with communion. I guess he didn’t find the little knee pads at the pew too comfortable?

Frank returns to the food at the end, citing Robuchon's judicious use of the exotic and his respect for core ingredients: "Sautéed squid leaned on its own tenderness, as well as some chorizo. Mr. Robuchon knows when and how to bring a pig into play."

"Oh no...please not me...it's just a silly costume..."

Frank touches on the minute handiwork of the kitchen, like the miniscule chives, or the blocks of tuna so perfectly cut that they would satisfy a "geometry geek with a protractor."

Now what kind of a message is that to send to the kids, Frank? MATH IS NOT FOR GEEKS, ok? It's definitely for man-virgins and sociophobes, but it doesn't mean you're a GEEK if you like math.

This guy: not finding fault with Robuchon's tuna. In fact, not finding ANY tuna.

The desserts "resembled stage sets,": "I preferred a chocolate adventure with so many slopes and swirls in the landscape around a butte-like molten cake that I needed a road map to find my way back out of it." I'm literally going to leave this one alone. The above sentence is a make-your-own-joke kit. I'm going to back off slowly with my hands in the air...

So along with some quirks/inconsistency in service, the pricing is unpredictable for the results. Frank winds down his three-star situation with another question: Why haven't these kinks been worked out yet?? Answer: because someone like Robuchon doesn't have to "sweat the small stuff."

"L’Atelier suggests what happens when we too readily genuflect." A good lesson for restaurant-goers, but also for prostitutes. (Don't worry, you're exempt, MATH GEEKS.)

THE END.

Freemans: The Day the Edgy Emo-Music Died

2006-09-22T23:22:00.000-04:00

Alright people. It’s been a big week and I know I'm a bit late, but put on your American Apparel leggings and get ready to hipstercise.

If my college improv group, a university-funded exercise in pot-fueled public make-believe, had been reviewed by then theater critic Frank Rich, he would have said “These assholes are idiots, and they should put down their nancetry kits of wigs and tutus and get back in class.” He would have been totally right, but still, we had our place on campus.

Who else would the intramural badminton team have been cooler than?

The Count’s serious pan of Freeman’s this week seems like an analogous reaction to the one above: an older dude having the nerve to apply grown-up standards to a group of young dorks who just want to have some ironic fun.

But I think the Freeman’s KO might stand forever as a touchstone incident of Old Media v. New Hipster. Listening to Frank describe Freeman’s Appalachian 1950’s décor like it’s something strange (it’s not—it’s everywhere) is like listening to a foreign exchange student describe American college Greek life:

“The children divide into drinking teams, where they are brothers and sisters, and they label their beer teams in an ancient alphabet. What psychos. Now I will target-practice on housepets.”

Right off the bat, Frank invokes the staple brands of Hipsterville: “Like the folks who market Pabst Blue Ribbon and Converse sneakers...the impresarios behind Freemans understood that the nexus of retro and downscale is a lucrative spot”

The nexus of retro and downscale didn’t prove lucrative for Spanky’s Pants-Optional Jukejoint.

Must’ve been the health inspection fines that did them in. Because the shakes were delicious.

Owners William Tigertt and Taavo Somer “do it with a whimsical wink, which is what the artfully nicked walls, the stuffed ram’s head, the stuffed goose and all those antlers are about.”

I wonder if any of the snake-wrassling Appalachian types whose walls are loaded with their kill have any idea that taxidermy is now the instantaneous semaphore for hipster irony.

Doubt it. No irony here. Just bloody antlers and billowing shorts.

He's dropped some hints that this is going to be a pan...

"But first the positive:”

The positive: the décor of the place is “oddly hilarious” and sweet. This is his version of the “You did great in the baseball game!” that a parent uses to preface something like “Hey, Sport, no camp this summer. We’re going to Cincinnati to watch Grandma die.”

I think the smoking finally got her. Everyone hop in the Subaru!

Frank makes an odd comment about people coming in and out of Freemans. I’m assuming he’s referring to the way they react to the Wunderkammern walls, but all the giggling and smiling makes no sense to this frequent Freemans visitor:

“…I smiled every time I watched someone else arrive. That person invariably did a double take, then giggled. It’s sweet of a restaurant to make that happen.”
Are people really doing double-takes at the entrance?

I mean, I never thought twice about the white Indian ball-flasher at the door, but maybe other people do. Hm.

But now the fun is over. The Count must whip out the scimitar of duty:
“…it’s wrong to let so much else fall by the wayside,” he says, and embarks on a wince-inducing takedown.

I think the Victorian décor really got to Frank. The food doesn’t just suck, it sucks with pathos:

“Baby back ribs longed for succulence, while grilled trout with thyme and lemon cried out for a dash of excitement and a dew drop of moisture.”

That, my friends, is classic Frank. A Desperate Housewife of a trout, pulling its shirt open and crying out for a dash of excitement and a dew drop of moisture.

Maybe he’s on to something. He should talk to the execs, run it by them.

Speaking of catty bitches, Frank has zero appreciation for the surly Parisian-style staff: “A hostess had all the cuddly charisma of Cujo.” Nice. Classic moment of Frank’s misunderstanding hipsterism: Bitchy staff “had no place in a restaurant as studiously unfussy as Freemans.” Wrong!! Anomie and attitude are part and parcel of youth culture, Grandpa Frank.

But here’s the crux of the suckage for Frank:

“...one of the ways it pales beside a peer like the Spotted Pig” is that its food “could be quickly and easily replicated at home. If cooking were a sport involving a pool, a springboard and numerical degrees of difficulty, nearly everything Freemans does would be a swan dive. There’s not a triple flip in the bunch.”

Listen, not all competitions are the same. Maybe a swan dive is enough for some people.

Unless performed by a pregnant teen, a triple flip won’t get you points at the Tuskeegee Olympics, my friend.

But seriously, Freemans is in a different realm, and Frank hints at it:

“Freemans must be commended for keeping the average price of entrees to about $20.”

THAT, that right there is the point.

You know, as usual earlier this month I was having my fall suit tailored (it’s a nice mohair) and my prostate examined (also mohair) whilst reading men’s Vogue and noticed that the Count had penned a little piece ostensibly about his workout regime. But as those of us who read the piece know, indelibly, intimately, it had almost nothing to do with exercise (he runs; he has a trainer). It was a captain’s log for the S.S. Pricy Pigout, a laundry list of indulgent, mostly super luxe items gobbled in quantity and with relish (“I had downed osetra caviar as if it were Orville Redenbacher popcorn”). Item after item.

I know what you’re thinking: “Stop writing and show us a stupid picture already.” FINE.

But now I'm going to keep writing.

My point is, Manhattan is squeezing out its mid-priced restaurants, and I love Brooklyn, but sometimes you just want to wear a party dress and go to the Big Island. Freemans’ popularity isn't a perverse result of its hidden locale. Freemans is crowded because people without a ton of cash can have a rich night out in a place full of character. And the artichoke dip is nothing to shake your Osetra tin at. Which doesn't mean it deserves a star.

The last sentence of Frank's review smarts. It so perfectly reduces the whole playland sophistication of Freemans to its childish props. You can hear the air sucked out of the nursery as Frank pops his head in.

Of the diners lined up outside Freemans he warns that "what awaits them isn’t a memorable feast. It’s iceberg with ranch dressing under a stuffed boar’s head."

In other words, Grow up.

Trestle on Tenth: Break out the Juice!

2006-09-13T15:41:00.000-04:00

Well it’s only midafternoon but I’m about to open a bottle of Chateau British People, aka Gin. The Count’s review of Trestle on Tenth is all about the wine list, probably because, as the headlines of all the other articles in the Dining section suggest, it’s Beverage Theme Week at Times Dining! Everyone has to come to work dressed up like their favorite beverage.

That Bittman’s such a sport!

Bruni delves into chef Ralf Kuettel’s past so that we can better understand Trestle on Tenth’s wine list, which Frank calls a “principled document”.

In short, “From 2001 to 2005, Mr. Kuettel wallowed in wine.”

Sure, it sounds like fun, but it made household chores difficult.

Over the years, Mr. Kuettel “became a grape geek of the most fetching, infectious kind.”
“Fetching” and “infectious” haven’t been the happy conclusion of something since that pack of hunting dogs got mono.

Best infection ever!!!

Ralf Kuettel’s years of careful research and learning (“What smells like bloody pennies?” “Oh, Ralf soaked his pants in Grenache last week to see if they’d rot”) have yielded a list heavy in the unusual (lagreins, gamaret, savagnin).

In comparison, “so many other wine lists seem to have been assembled by a computer program — with France and California meted out in predetermined measure and enough generically velvety pinot noir to fill an Olympic-size swimming pool…”

An Olympic size swimming pool full of wine? … mmmm…that’s my second biggest wish come true!

My first biggest wish? I just wish my ex-boyfriend would talk to me, you know? It’s so awkward when we see each other at parties and he just rearranges his cloth diaper and pretends not to notice me.

CALL ME, Eustace!!!!

A term Frank has employed before for cute places, he calls Trestle “a hug” : “a warm little hug that beckons those at hand.” Which is actually an underhanded insult: it’s not good enough to travel for. If it were, maybe Frank would call it a “lively hickey” or “embracing dry hump” of a place.

GET IT? DRY HUMP? (Cut to me hi-fiving myself as I’m pushed offshore in a burning rowboat.)

Speaking of burning rowboats, Frank is really unimpressed by the food at Trestle, unfortunately. Such a letdown after the all the boozing and the hugging.

I’m also surprised at Frank's ambivalence, since he tends to reward food that refuses to pander to South Beachers, and according to Frank, Trestle “challenges vain, health-conscious New Yorkers to wade into the starchy and dive headlong into the flabby."

This would be the "About Me" on Frank's MySpace profile.

But Ralf’s helmets-on approach to fat may have been a little overboard: “Trestle on Tenth is the kind of restaurant at which, no matter what you ate, you feel as if you had brisket.”

I guess that’s an insult, but brisket happens to be my fave. I mean, I don’t like to advertise my other projects on this site, but this seems a propos:

What's for dinner? You are, with my line of savory, high-quality kosher baubles.

But it’s not just the brisketiness at Trestle that did it in:
Generally, "too much at Trestle on Tenth didn’t stand out or succeed.”

If Ralf is looking for constructive criticism, he’s not going to find it here: cauliflower soup, sautéed frogs’ legs, roast chicken and steak are just “bland” and a pig’s foot terrine is “unfocused.” Inscrutable, no? -- “Hey Ralf, your spatzle was illiterate your paté was rococo.” ?????

Even though the fatty food got no more than one star from The Count, I think I might check it out. Something about this Octobery weather screams "Eat Fat!" and lord knows I love to drink.
Which reminds me, one more quick plug before I sign off:

The Jules doll from Mattel (not included: handle of gin, karaoke set, and twelve gay Kens.)

PS: If you've not had your fill of the Count, check out a Hamburger Today's burgerrific interview with Frank Bruni. Be prepared to have your heart broken a little-- turns out he's a ketchup only man, which to me is like leaving the house only wearing a top.

Japonais: I Can't Tell Asians Apart Anymore

2006-09-06T14:54:00.000-04:00

As throaty teens make their Fantasy Football draft picks and college freshman assemble the rickety Ikea beds that will shatter under their first Pabst-breathed peccadilloes, we restaurant folk prepare for our season. The Times Restaurant Preview today laid out quite a daunting itinerary of new restaurants for Frank this fall-- I secretly prayed to God that the Count's laureled head get stuck between someone’s motor-oiled boobs at Hawaiian Tropic Zone.

The odds of this happening are slim to EXCELLENT.

But in reading the paper today, I couldn't shake the feeling that Frank was sad, in the doldrums. I wanted to take ol' Frank aside, the way Danny Tanner might pull DJ or Steph under his huge, pervy wing and say, “Hey, what’s wrong? Do we need to have a talk?”

“Girls, Kimmie has rabies and Uncle Joey has to shoot her."

In his write-up of New York outposts of wider empires (“Making It There Before They Make It Here”), the Count bemoans the specific conditions in New York that discourage creative and mid-size financial risk, and encourage the safe expansion of sturdy, oversize chains. Of Alan Yau, Thomas Keller, and Gordon Ramsay he says: “Their restaurants, too, are brands— more rarified and less ubiquitous versions of the Olive Garden and the Outback Steak House…” YOWCH!

Gordon Ramsay's associates en route to kick Frank's ass

And of New York, he says the unbearable: “At times it’s hard not to feel as if our bragging rights are endangered.”

No no, Frank. Listen hard. When New York’s restaurants can all be found in other American cities, when “unique New York” is nothing but an empty phrase repeated aloud by little minigays in theater camp to warm up their tongues, we will STILL be able to brag that at least…

we’re not…

the rest…

of

the

country.

Ahem. Sorry everyone. It had to be said.

So when Frank takes on East Side newbie Japonais today, he’s really throwing it under the bus to underscore the points he’s made in his trend piece-- that the scene is getting boring and redundant. Japonais fits his profile of a slick, oversize pseudoasian transfer (it started out in Chicago.) Frank does Japonais one worse than panning it-- he makes it seem trivial.

He begins:

“’Haven’t I been here before?’ a companion asked me one night as we entered Japonais…”

Get it? Because it's so BORING. Although someone had a good time:

The main dining room’s “many-limbed sculpture looks like the offspring of a supersize bonsai tree and a French poodle.”

“Brrrrrrrow”

You will experience a similar déjà vu if you’ve “managed over the last few years to drop into Megu or Morimoto, Ono or Nobu 57. The list goes on…” which explains the title of this review: “An Asian Fantasy, Reproduced,” which I wrongly assumed was a side-reference to the Suri Cruise photos.

When Frank calls Japonais “invariably theatrical, obliquely Asian and ostentatiously huge” is he really talking about a restaurant? Or a huge fake alien baby? You tell me. I’m putting it out there.

These restaurants “provide food with visual appeal and a (quickly diminishing) touch of exoticism. They…stroke many senses at once.” In other words, much like at Seaworld, the inclusion of a well-timed HJ still doesn't make the experience worth it.

"Oh jeez...the orca's reciprocating! Honey, get the kids out of here, this is disgusting."

The food is hit or miss-- "Unevenness was the norm." The staff was braindead-- "I don't even know what panna cotta is" said a server. As we all know, it's Italian for the "cooked underpants."

Traditional open-air panna cotta.

In the end, Frank says his friends actually liked the place. But to be fair, they were a group of neolithic pelt-shitting cave-dwellers who "hadn't been to many restaurants like this one. For them it had an intrigue that eclipsed its shortcomings."

"You know, I thought the duck was excellent. I thought the decor was kind of neato. I'd come back."

Suckers!

Hey Frank, buck up. There's still plenty of good food around. And if you don't think NY is special any more, you can come hang out on my old stoop in Brooklyn and have a drunk homeless guy sic stray cats on you. Can't get THAT in Vegas! HA!

Or can you...

Vong: the Gettysburg of Reviews

2006-08-16T10:15:00.000-04:00

Technically, Frank panned Jean-Georges’ Vong this week (one star), although the pan was accompanied by a MERCILESS SPANKING of Vongerichten’s Mercer Kitchen.

Not that I’m counting, but Frank devoted about 410 words to actual reviewee Vong, and about 480 to lateral casualty Mercer Kitchen. It’s not like Frank just threw the baby out with the bathwater here, a casual take-down necessary for a larger point. It’s more like he threw the baby out with the prom dress, a deliberate chuckage of two equally unwanted excrescences.

Live it up, Brianna! There’ll be no more tulle at Valley State!

No amount of cold showering could erase from my mind Frank’s 4-star confirmation of Vongerichten’s flagship, Jean-Georges, this past April. It was steamy; I think, although I am not certain, that the term “my turgid jibbly bits” was used at least once.

Frank tosses his former flame to the wind in service of his 3rd grade-style book report thesis: Chefs with empires may hold them together at the core, but they fall apart at the fringes.

My 3rd grade book report thesis: "Johnny Tremain, What a Fag."

Frank's thesis:

“…Jean-Georges Vongerichten shows that today’s globe-trotting, genre-straddling, hyperextended superchef can still create memorable … meals. You need only visit the restaurants Perry St. and Jean Georges to believe.

But can a chef stamp his name as wide and far as Mr. Vongerichten has and still make magic at the older as well as the newer establishments, at the fringe players as well as the flagship? You need only visit Mercer Kitchen and Vong to doubt.”

Frank uses 2nd person narration to really put us in his shoes as he sinks into the bog of terribleness which is Mercer Kitchen. But reading what he ate, I was worried for Frank’s health:

“Your pea soup doubles as a salt quarry.”

Frank: "C’I have s’more Pellegrino? I’m so dehyhy."

“Your hamachi sashimi comes with two incongruously gargantuan bread sticks, which Babe Ruth could have used to hit homers.”

The only thing worse than eating wood…

Well, lets just say Frank spent hours on the toilet crapping this Stradivarius.

Just kidding. But speaking of hours on the toilet:

“The mussels in your seafood platter don’t taste right.”

There's more:

“A pork chop with a hot-cool chili glaze requires the incisors of a jungle cat.”

And if that didn’t knock his precious pearly whites out of alignment,

“Come dessert, you almost chip your tooth on one of the hard, frozen strawberries in a deconstructed ice cream sandwich.”

So not only is the poor Count in fever sweats and totally parched...

He now looks like this.

Having bravely suffered the perils of Mercer Kitchen, Frank has the right to publish some scathing of sarcasm; but he really gets personal, and then delivers the Insult of Insults:

“…you question the point of Mr. Vongerichten’s involvement, beyond the cachet it lends the restaurant and the money it presumably brings him.”

Frank, you capricious bedmate! Jean-Georges falls from tender lover to ice-chasing merchandiser.

And add insult to insult:

Mercer Kitchen “is the SoHo version of an Applebee’s.” YOUCH

What does that even mean? Even within a metaphor, it’s hard to apply class to Applebees. I mean, what’s the Swarovsky version of an owl pellet?

From the Rockefeller Collection of Louis Comfort Tiffany's rare Golden Dumps.

And now for the review! Did you forget this wasn’t a review of Mercer Kitchen?

Frank calls Vong “tired” and evokes the exotisme of the go-go 90’s:

“It’s been around since 1992, when oversized palm fronds still counted as theatrical Asian décor, the pairing of sautéed foie gras with mango was considered novel, and the galangal in a chicken and coconut milk soup seemed exotic. Bryan Miller gave it three stars back then.”

I can barely remember the ’90s.

“Who’s Brian Miller?” wail a chorus of school children.

Alright, so Vong is a little better, but at this point he’s spent himself on Mercer Kitchen and is a little “tired” himself. But he ends by taking Jean-Georges to task, almost defending his own hard criticism:

“And shouldn’t Mr. Vongerichten be called on this? His reputation is attached as firmly to Vong and to Mercer Kitchen as to restaurants that undoubtedly absorb more of his worry. It’s the same lure, but it’s no guarantee. It’s no guarantee at all.”

What IS a guarantee, is that Jean Georges is at home, listening to Air Supply and crying into a handkerchief embroidered “FB,” wailing “He said he loved me! He said it was forever! WAAAAAH”

Blue Hill: Hi Ho The Dairy, Yo

2006-08-04T07:35:00.000-04:00

Well Frank's review of Blue Hill was like Blue Hill itself: muted and wholesome,

Like this pilgrim, the inventor of the hen-operated savings bank.

“It was a kitchen delivery, but it was also theater” Frank begins.

Is he referring to Chef Bobo, the riotous chef/mime I ordered to my nephew Toby’s birthday party?

He was hilarious. Everything was mimed...

Except the crème brulee torch. Whoops. RIP Tobes!

No, the theater this time was courtesy of Blue Hill chef Dan Barber, although still somewhat macabre:

“In came Mr. Barber [to the restaurant], toting yet another bit of bounty from that farm, up in Westchester. It was cradled against his chest and wrapped in a blanket…”

Aww, a baby!

“Mr. Barber had the carcass of a lamb”

A baby lamb, that is. (PS sorry that this punchline required us to venture into Twisted Dead Lamb Imageville.)

Frank justifies upping Grimes' 2 stars to 3 because Barber's expanded his farm operation and his sources are more immediate, leading to food that is superfresh, superfarmy, and simply done:

"An especially memorable dinner at Blue Hill began with a shot glass of pale tomato water so concentrated it was like some Platonic ideal of nourishment."

Plato's actual ideal of nourishment.

Fine, that was unwarranted. But despite the wholesomeness of Frank's review, Tomatoes did get a little raunchy:

"Tomatoes came into play again later on: ...bouncy tomatoes and supple tomatoes, ... mixed into a salad that charted a whole spectrum of tomato possibility, from modestly tart to immodestly sweet."

Immodest tomatoes? What is Frank talking about?

Oh. Well. Excuse me, I... had no idea.

Throw in some "romantic" upholstery...

...and Frank's in 3-star love.

Now for a little bonus treat, because many of you are suffering tit-searing heat (and I'm safely out of the sweat zone at the North Pole) I thought I'd spread a little joy.

Gawker unearthed a Steve Guttenberg/Village People clip that was, yes, amazing. But I'm seeing Gawker and raising them one with this forgotten Guttenberg trailer. Put an ice tray in your pants, sit on your AC box, and enjoy this clip, below, over and over again. Honestly, I don't know what's better, the confessional narrative structure or the multi-tier, feathered rat tail.

Little Owl: Lose the Bra, It's a Love-In!

2006-07-26T04:05:00.000-04:00

Oh, hello. I didn’t see you there. I was busy plucking wild gardenias in a meadow, and hot-gluing these puppies together.

This week, Frank submitted his review in the form of a hand-made quilt. His editor was at first a little miffed (“how am I supposed to ignore this?” he screamed) but finally cried when he read it, and then gave Frank this:

That’s right. It’s the newest American Girl doll: Louis XIV in drag.

Why? Because Frank’s review this week is adorable and heart-warming, just like its subject, Little Owl.

Frank begins, “One of the reassuring wonders of the New York dining scene is the speed with which word about some unassuming new restaurants gets out.”

Mmm, “reassuring,” like hot cocoa after sledding, and “wonder,” like “Sometimes I forget my wonderpants.”

"Anyone feel that icy breeze?"

Of course, Frank is referring to a different wonder—the way that “unassuming” places like Little Owl (Good Fork comes to mind) go from 0 to 60 in a matter of weeks.

Little Owl, having opened in May, is so molten hot that it has even had to create what Frank calls “an impromptu sidewalk cafe for the overflow, serving people wine and complimentary canapés out there.”

OMG, they’re feeding the homeless, too??

“Take your cod liver oil, boy!”

Gabriel Stulman, manager and co-owner, is Little Owl’s Florence Nightingale:

“’It’s the Little Owl way,’ he said as he tended to all of us. ‘We’re just trying to put the love back in dining.’”

That is SOOOO CUTE. Then he smoked an enormo blunt and healed some leppers.

Gabe Stulman's back yard.

Frank knows he’s being a little too earnest for the irony-and-cynicism set, so he adds a hip twist to the Stulman's gesture:

“Hokey? No doubt. But when Mr. Stulman says things like that — and he says things like that with disarming frequency — he does so in a slightly mischievous voice, acknowledging the hyperbole and turning it into a kind of joke.”

Right, I forgot to mention— as he hands out multivitamins and does light physical rehabilitation on minor aches and pains, he’s dressed like this:

"Tootie Toot Toot and Roota Tootie Doodie! Can I get you some lime for your mineral water?"

Usually when Frank front-loads with praise, he’s about to topple with criticism. But this time, Frank stays in a hearty treble clef, rolling with the praise:

“[Little Owl] has an irresistible earnestness and exuberance that explain its instant, well-deserved popularity.”

The menu, which is “without much pretension,” has, in Frank’s eye, one clear star: a pork chop that boils down to “a glorious hunk of flesh.” I can’t decide if that sounds like Penthouse or the Pentateuch.

Or the Chippendales. After all, they injected with brine and roasted for hours.

I love Frank’s little indulgent moment of confession— it turns out his passion for hunky pork exceeds his professional obligations:

“I had it twice,”—

That’s right, he had it twice, but came back for more!

- “and twice marveled at its juiciness, so often absent from such an oversize pork chop. If I could have justified a third evaluation (consistency must be monitored!), I would have.”

He was only supposed to tend to the ranch, and give the occasional perm…but her juicy pork was too much for him!

Pork is all over the Owl:

“Pork pops up repeatedly, not just in the centers of dishes but also on the peripheries.”

Even in dessert!! HAHA GET IT GUYS? Sigh.

“It pops up when it’s essential and even when it’s not, which makes its popping-up no less appreciated.”

Of course, I understand that perfectly. After all, I wanted a human child, but I settled for a wild boar.

Wow, this post started off SO wholesome and ended up SO GROSS.

But you know, after nods to the friendly front-of-house and the well-appointed space, Frank wraps it up by giving the lion’s share of the praise to the cooks (“In dish after dish the kitchen demonstrated remarkable care,” “puts the focus on…disciplined cooking”) and if that doesn’t warm your heart, well…

DIDN’T THIS????

Come on people.

2 stars for Le Cirque last week, 2 stars for the Owl today. That’s got to make the smiles of chef Joey Campanaro and “Love-In” Stulman slightly sweeter.

No comment on how it feels to have your restaurant named after an animal that is
SO

FUCKING

WEIRD

Heads up for the next Campanaro-Stulman venture: The Pint-Size Meerkat

Le Cirque: Fancy Pants, but No Family Jewels

2006-07-19T02:55:00.000-04:00

Time to take off those thatched heather pajamas and put on your fancy pants! The Count, feeling very Countly today, drops in on Le Cirque, flush with seeming nostalgia for the starchy, star-studded brand. He begins,

“RESTAURANTS, like poker players, often have tells.”

Yeah? Here’s mine.

I'm all, "LOOK AT MY CARDS!" [TOOT!]

He continues, “The tip-off to Le Cirque’s inner musings and true intentions is just inside the entrance, on a table to the left.”

How candid.

Also on said table are “copies of Sirio Maccioni’s autobiography… from which we learn “that Le Cirque isn’t peddling a particular dining experience so much as a larger legend, constructed by its ringmaster, Mr. Maccioni, over more than three decades of soufflés and stroked egos.”

And occasionally judging the Miss Teen Soviet Satellite competition.

Now, as I’ve mentioned repeatedly, I’m not one for glitzy places such as Le Cirque (Frank—“Le Cirque means luxury. Le Cirque equals privilege. Le Cirque connotes a … pecking order by which the rich and famous get the best tables…”) A good night out for me is talking my goat, Stroganoff, for a walk through Bed-Stuy.

Stroganoff is paralyzed. Check out my sweet Uggs.

And apparently, "walking" poor Stroganoff would be a far more valuable use of my time, since

“the restaurant itself is no longer an especially exciting one… The new Le Cirque…seems to be coasting on its myth, counting on the star power of Mr. Maccioni…”

No thanks! When I count on stars, It’s usually the North Star, and I’m wishing that it would rehydrate my ovaries.

Come on! Just get me a Grape Ice Gatorade and they'll be back in action!!

The food gives Frank occasion to be extremely girly— it’s best to read the following with an English accent and you have to imagine him done up like Salieri and tossing around a lacey kerchief at stressed syllables:

“Its ethereal Dover sole meunière makes you believe that this fish was put into the seas to await its appointment with butter and lemon. Its drab lobster salad makes you question the crustacean’s gastronomic calling.”

Fuck this! I’m shilling for my own death!

Almost as near-dead as Le Cirque’s breed, is LeCirque’s clientele:

“…on one starry night alone, Henry A. Kissinger, Bill Cosby, and Helen Gurley Brown — but I didn’t see many who looked younger than 65, the exertions of their plastic surgeons notwithstanding.”

Frank, are you suggesting that Helen Gurley Brown…NAAAH. Come on. Plastic surgery?? She just got out of a topless Corvette going at Mach 30 after hairspraying her face, that's all!

We will all find ourselves in the twilight of our years pooping into our own stockings at the produce isle and trying to hail a taxi in our linen closets, so it’s best to lay off the elderly, I find. But Frank has a good bit of fun among the rarefied ones:

“I detected a great deal of hair spray, spotted many pocket handkerchiefs and marveled at the gargantuan white toupee on a man who preened on a nearby banquette, seemingly unaware that a Samoyed had fallen on his head.”

AAAAAAH WHAT WOULD I GIVE??? WHAT WOULD I GIVE to have a Samoyed secretly on my head? Literally hundreds of pennies.

It’s impossible to talk about Le Cirque without mentioning the near-extinction of its species in New York:

“With its formally attired servers, puffed-up patrons and transparent hierarchy, Le Cirque clings to a kind of pomp that undid most of its competitors.”

There’s something dreamy about that kind of formalism— 1950’s America as portrayed in film, where nary a conversation can be undertaken without scotch in gloved hand, and a girl with 25 suitors that she hasn’t banged can order an île flottant without looking at the menu.

But that isn’t quite what’s preserved at Le Cirque, where Frank’s Reichl-invoking, consumer-minded sleuthwork uncovered some bald-faced snobbism:

“I sent three friends in ahead of me. One sat at the bar for 15 minutes without getting a server’s attention, and a bartender quarreled with the two others…”

“But I was treated like royalty when I showed up.”

As you should be Frank, as you should be.

And I like a wino covered in felt.

Well, 2 stars, as predicted.

I wonder if Frank is going to start employing disguises now?

JK!!!!!!!

Craft: Why Can't a Steakhouse be More like a Gay Barn?

2006-07-17T15:00:00.000-04:00

“THE line between freedom of choice and the tyranny of too many options isn’t such a fine one.”

Mmmkay. Clear already. This is going to be nasty. (P.S. For the record, Frank is kind of right.)

“There were any number of moments when the chef Tom Colicchio and his collaborators on Craftsteak, yet another new mega-restaurant on the edge of the meatpacking district, should have realized they were crossing [that line].”

Was it the moment where you were asked to choose between a normal table or a tricorner ass-table?

Tough to decide! The ass-table is hand whittled by an artisanal oakworker. On the other hand, it's disgusting.

I’ll say it— I’ll say it right now. I hate the Craft concept. Pick your own sauce? Pick your own sides? Hey Tom, one of us here is a genius chef and the “lentil salad” posing as diaper scrapings on my stovetop suggests it’s not me.

But my lentils are great for soldering off minor wrinkles and liver spots!

Among the choice-overload infractions:
“…they included, in a menu category for New York strip steaks, beef aged not only for 28 days and for 56 days but also for 35, 42 and 49 days.”

I’m not good at math, and I don’t know the science of beef aging. Does it age like babies?

Baby at 28 days

Baby at 56 days

…like cats?

Cat at 28 days

At 56 days

…or like Pont L’Eveque in the hot sun?

Cheese in hot sun at 28 days

Cheese in hot sun at 56 days

“Beef comes in various classes: “a Grade 6 ‘flat-iron’ steak, a Grade 8 strip, a Grade 10 rib-eye. You scan the selections, which reach $20 per ounce as a steak’s educational level rises, and wonder how much a postgraduate porterhouse would set you back.”
Not sure.

But 25¢ will get you a heapin’ helpin’ of this ground round. Not only did it fail kindergarten, but it was kicked out of ballet class for farting on Second Position.

And finally, the paragraph that has the world atwitter:

"The pedigrees and provenances [of beef at Craft] are so specific (“Ridgefield Farm Corn-Fed Premium Hereford Beef”) that my companions and I found ourselves wondering if we could inquire after a steer’s...sexual orientation (we figured gay cattle might be in especially good shape)."

“Thank God we have this mountain to ourselves!!! Wanna finnish necking and then go for a run?”
“I cain’t quit yeeewwww!! Sure, then maybe I can lift a little and you can spot me.”

The pileup of choices “would have been less irksome if it had been more delicious. But… the steaks at Craftsteak proved disappointing.”

BUM BUM BUMMMMM.

And Frank knows why! –

“Is the restaurant really getting the best beef? Is its in-house aging program on track? Or is the main problem a dictatorship behind a Potemkin democracy?”

Frank’s totally right— the problem isn’t the beef. It’s the puppet regimes of the post-soviet Caucasus!!!

“You ruined Frank’s steak! You ruined Frank’s steak!”

JK. What he really means by “Potemkin Democracy” is this: all steaks are prepared the same way, so even though it SEEMS LIKE you have many choices in your steak, in fact, they are ALL roasted…

by Victor Yushchenko.

After this triggering of the electric nail-gun at the coffin for so many paragraphs, Frank winds down with a surprising slew of compliments. Great. I’m sure at this point, Tom Colicchio has glanced down at the bottom to notice that lonely single star, so the “many terrific salads” and “exquisitely braised short ribs” probably feel like the “but I still think you’re hot” that follows a brutal dumping.

"Baby, I'm dumping you because I need some space. It has nothing to do with your weird bleed-from-the-mouth performance art. I still think you're cute when you take the pink whale vagina off your head!"

Frank’s conclusion reminds me of Rex Harrison in “My Fair Lady,” specifically the song where, scratching his five o’clock shadow and adjusting his sack-cradling gentleman’s pantaloons, he barks to Colonel Pickering “Why can’t a woman be more like a man?”

"God, Pickering, why can’t she juggle, read, or pee standing up in the rain with no one noticing?!"

Frank seems to ask, “Why can’t a steakhouse be more like a steakhouse,” and (his words now) less “like indie movie actors making salary-pumping appearances in summer blockbusters. Think V Steakhouse…”

MAN-- he was angry at V Steakhouse…

“But even if you head [toward the beef] you encounter too many additional forks in the road. And you soon realize you got a bum steer.”

Aww, a cute agricultural pun to hide a sizzling dis.

P.S. There's a bum steer on my corner. He's always mooing "Deck the Halls" for crack money and making 42-lb hay craps in front of Baby Gap. It's so sad!

Parea: First Ever Bruni Digest Gratuitously Graphic Novel

2006-07-05T16:10:00.000-04:00

I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I know it’s my job to be excited about Frank, but I just can’t handle another upscale Greek place. I sit down with my zinger-laden quill and my Webster’s Revised Scatological Dictionary to poke fun, and I find myself soundly passed out by paragraph two.

“And once you've perused the menu and begun to sample its highlights, you'll know that you're indeed encountering something more than a taverna with a better tailor, something beyond Hellas in Hermès”

Really? Did I encounter Dona? Oh sorry that was 2 weeks ago. But when Times get boring, the boring get kind of cray-cray, i.e., it’s time to spruce things up. Get ready for a first, mes amis: it’s the Bruni Digest GRATUITOUSLY GRAPHIC NOVEL!!

In his intro today, Frank decides that "above all else, [Parea is] a fittingly arresting showcase…"

"I HAD NO IDEA I COULDN'T TAKE MY PANTS OFF!!! Officer, please! And then, as a matter of logic, since I'm wearing a unitard, I had to take it ALLLL OFF! Even YOU can understand that, sir... Are your legs waxed?"

“…for a sophisticated chef's efforts to recast Greek cuisine by approaching it with atypically high standards, unearthing neglected traditions and finding novel assignments for commonly used ingredients.”

"I want you to find the Pope and bring me his underwear!"

"Michael Psilakis, another chef determined to tweak Greek, is building on his work at Onera on the Upper West Side. Parea builds on work from a more distant and even less glamorous place: Cleveland."

"YOU SHUT UP ABOUT CLEVELAND! Cleveland's a classy place! So we had that lake explode in '44. What's the big deal?"

“Mr. Symon presents 'spinialo,' a term and concept he encountered while rummaging through old Greek recipe books....He said in a telephone interview that spinialo refers to the unsold… seafood that Greek fishermen would save and store in salty liquid...”

"What will I do with this disgusting fish?"
"Dunk it in some saltwater, it'll be fine. We'll sell it to a restaurant or something."

"[salmon marinated in vinegar and paired with pickled veal tongue] appeared on Parea's evolving menu precisely when an appetizer of pickled lamb's tongue vanished, and Mr. Symon conceded it was an…attempt to slip diners some tongue..."

"I had no idea! In Greece, sometimes "no" means "I'd like to be frenched on the mouth by a stranger!...Are your legs waxed, officer?"

"[The chef] regards [yogurt and feta] as clutch players to be recruited for, and bent to, his own pleasurable purposes."

Sometimes you just gotta admit defeat.

"Mr. Symon had wrapped the fish in grape leaves before roasting it, and the payoff was pudding-like flesh."

"An array of cured meats hewed to a Greek tradition of spicing — with nutmeg and cinnamon, for example — that Mr. Symon described as aggressive. I'd call it downright bellicose."

He must've ordered the "Cyprian Moustache-Tickler."

"Our voices were shot. Although the word Parea means 'group of friends,' the restaurant retards their conversation."

Hey Frank? You know who still has the verb “retard” in common use? Yeah, the French. Not us. The French. Mkay. Just so you know.

I think signing off with a helmet is perfectly appropriate. Two stars. That's enough outta me.

Mr Chow Tribeca: What kind of sarcastically goes up must come cruelly down

2006-06-28T01:40:00.000-04:00

Sometimes, in elementary school, a new kid shows up. The new kid is always going to be the subject of scrutiny, but if he/she is stupid or annoying, the others can be merciless. And if additionally that kid is pretentious and snotty…

"No, we've never heard of New Canaan."

…there’s no question: the other children want to beat the shit out of the stupid, uppity new kid, ‘cause that’s just how kids are, all kids.

I’d like to beat the shit out of that bastard!

And as you’ve guessed, Mr. Chow is the stinky new kid, entering a ferocious arena with little to no merit and audacious, bald-faced pretension. The critical lions have already ripped him to shreds.

And enter Frank.
There’s always one girl, slightly older or maybe just tall, a notebook-clutching rule-abider who steps in, shaking a finger and reminding everyone that "Mrs. Fussbottom wouldn't want us doing this." This is really just a show, of course, and secretly she’s a huge bitch just exerting her temporary height advantage over everyone, which she’ll lose just in time to become a big old slut.

Exactly.

My point is, Frank sticks up for Mr. Chow—throws himself in front of the dirty new kid and says we should expand our point of view, try to understand him! He’s just different!

Defensively, then, Frank begins:

“IT'S easy to see the bad in things and harder to see the good.”

Thank you, Laura Ingalls Wilder. Is Pa dragging the laundry through lard out back, or is he with Ma stuffing blankets with corn?

“Take Mr. Chow Tribeca. There are sane, prudent, well-intentioned people who will tell you why you should avoid this new outpost of a nutty empire, and they'll be indisputably correct.”

“But with a slight adjustment of perspective, a certain generosity of spirit and a bit of willed enthusiasm, many reasons for embracing it can be found.”

But he can't be serious: i.e. lower your standards and expectations, and you might just come around! It’s like a “spoonful of sugar” chant for the undiscerning!

You thought you were above nudie photos-- but with “a slight adjustment of perspective, a certain generosity of spirit and a bit of willed enthusiasm,” anything’s possible! That’s right! Out come those hooters, you courageous pioneer!

And just as the schoolyard protectress will, minutes after she’s defended the wastrel, take him out behind the latrines, put him in a Nelson and sucker punch his tender bits, so Frank’s generous façade fades and his 4 “reasons” for visiting Mr. Chow emerge as bitchy jokes. Yay!

“Reason No. 1: You can participate in a strand of social history and mull over the eccentric genius of Michael Chow.”

This might be sarcastic, but it seems like Frank appreciates the entrepreneurial genius behind Chow’s proto-PR knack--

“Regulars included Andy Warhol who, Mr. Chow has said, didn't so much eat his food as play with it. An understandable decision.”

Not as understandable a decision, Mr. Warhol?

Peeing all over a canvas.

“Reason No. 2: Once you've visited Mr. Chow Tribeca, you will appreciate your favorite neighborhood Chinese takeout place like never before.”

Don’t bet on it, Frank:

The pantry at my local Chinese joint.

At Mr. Chow, the pricing reaches into the $30’s for entrees that don’t come close to earning it:

“If I learned that [a lamb shank entrée] had been plucked from a freezer after the better part of a decade and then nuked in a microwave for the better part of a day, I'd be shocked. It didn't taste nearly that tender or flavorful.”

Well now it's clear-- the bitchy sunshine has emerged from behind the dour clouds of kindness, and Frank is cleaning the floor with Chow. The best part:

“Reason No. 3: You will encounter a kind of service so aggressive at certain times and incoherent at others that it becomes a divine comedy.”

To borrow the language of internet chat, Frank had me “totes LOLing” in this part:

“At the start of each meal, servers push expensive Champagne. (‘For a toast! How about a toast? Don't you want to make a toast?’)"

"Make a toast! Celebrate something before I stick this Korbel in your eye, fucker!"

"Reason No. 4: You can get excited about spotting a celebrity, though you may not actually lay eyes on one."

It's kind of adorable that the Count still wriggles giddily in his high-powered boots when he--an admitted US Weekly fan!--gets allGawker Stalker. It's a sport to him! He was a whole strategy!

"I like to hide behind the bread cart, and when they come into view, BAM! 300 CC's of barbituates right to the jugular with one arrow!"

"You know that the possibility [of seeing celebs] exists, because Mr. Chow is the kind of restaurant whose opening is noted in Us magazine, not Saveur."

"US WEEKLY" will do just fine. Nice try. Nobody reads "Playboy News and World Report" either.

"But celebrities are like the best animals at the zoo: theoretically present in the designated exhibit but always obscured by a bush or boulder just when you're looking."

???

"I arrived at Mr. Chow late one Friday night to be told by a waiting companion that I had just missed Tobey Maguire. Had my companion seen him? Well, he said, sort of, but..."

Alright, enough. Toby Maguire couldn't save this place. The celebs couldn't even come through. Kiss of death. No stars.

But at least now we know what the Count's billiard room looks like!

In the words of Dag Hammerskjold, "Peace Out, My N's!"

2006-06-14T18:02:00.000-04:00

As long as Frank is spinning his crazy gold high in the turrets of the Dining Times, I will be the Rumplestiltsken drinking moonshine from a boot outside his castle and not knowing my own name. But beginning this summer, I'll be doing it from Chicago, instead of New York. My leaving town is a great excuse to host a comedy show with some of my favorite performers. Be you a one-time reader of the Bruni Digest, a loyal fan, or some pervert who googled "pussy" and landed on a Cats! image, please come check out the show, have a couple laughs and see me in my element, i.e., holding a tumbler and air-humping.

Dona: I Dona Understand a Damn Word.

2006-06-14T13:39:00.000-04:00

Is it just me or is Frank’s review of Dona just plain weird? I usually feel like Frank’s reviews are written by an effete yet avuncular she-clown/Bible scholar, but I feel like this one was written by a foreign exchange student. Like, an Asian one.

Frank opens with praise for chef Michael Psilakis’s strip steak, which Psilakis serves with a bowl of fat and a bowl of gremolata—

“he completes the Sparks-meets-Sparta composition with creamed spinach, tucked in a chalice of crunchy phyllo. You see it, you taste it and — holy Zorba! — you get it. It's an unbound classic, spanakopita with a skylight…”

Sparks meets Sparta? Holy Zorba? Spanikopita with a SKYLIGHT? I really don’t get it.

Moussaka with a porch extension. I don't know, people.

The name Dona refers to Donatella Arpaia, the sassy blond restaurateuse whose name seems to be everywhere these days (see Ama for more on that…) Frank sets the two up as a sort of cross-cultural “Who’s the Boss?” situation:

“She's Italian. He's Greek. Dona is a little of both and a lot of neither…”

In the trite sit-com opener, this would be where she hops out of a three-foot-long aluminum Fiat holding a bowl full of pasta while her ass doubles in front of our eyes, and then the camera pans over to Psilakis who’s sitting on a rock, counting one Drachma over and over while his teeth fall out.

She's wearing Gucci! He's wearing old diapers! It's the Italian and the Greek!

Except that’s not what happens at all. Instead (I think), they’ve decided to pair up, shun their oily Aegean trappings and go for fancy,

“vaulting past ethnic tags into the frillier realm of haute hodgepodge, where a foam anoints this dish, a broth is poured tableside over that one and abundant truffling occurs.”

No, someone did not put your brain in a blender, and yes, the above quote is from the NY Times. Ahem.

Although Greek and Italian cuisines are “best loved for their simplicity, he and Ms. Arpaia have more elaborate, affected designs."

And here we go: "It seems the mâche is always greener on the other side of the fence.” I can only picture the faggiest lamb ever saying that.

Could I have my dressing on the side? Nonfat Raspberry, natch.

Like a passive-aggressive teacher to a learning-disabled second grader, Frank both applauds Psilakis for his effort and also considers him an annoying spazz.

“Entrees like that [cumin-crusted tuna]— and like a fillet of marlin that was hijacked by an intrusively sweet orange vinaigrette and a too-salty twofer of caper berries and olives — make you wish Mr. Psilakis wouldn't try so hard.”
What’s the matter, Frank? You didn’t like Psilakis’ Sherbet-poached halibut in overalls with a spare tire and ten dancing gnomes?

Seafood antipasto at Dona.

Acutally, the chef’s strongpoint does seem to be seafood. In this city, you tempt Frank’s wrath by serving raw fish, if it isn’t inventive in some way. He hates to see restaurants shamelessly catering to South Beachers, but Psilakis seems to have passed the test. Among the crudo:

“He dressed botan shrimp with feta, blood orange and red onion, and in this mash, unlike several fish entrees, the coordination of accessories was impeccable.”

And so teacher gives the spazz not one but two little gold stars. No surprise there. A solid dessert roster later, it’s time to do the usual— drop some celebrity names, and get a little pervy.

“One night [Arpaia] spoke Italian to a table of dapper businessmen. Another night she breezily chatted up the actor John Leguizamo. Tapping into the alchemy that innately talented restaurateurs possess, she has filled Dona with a vibrant energy and a pampering air. If you took 40 years off Sirio Maccioni and gave him curves and a cocktail dress, you'd wind up with someone like her.”

Artist's rendering of Sirio Maccioni in a dress/DVD cover for Halloween IV: The Nightmare Continues.

“She undoubtedly has more restaurants to come, and so does Mr. Psilakis. Dona is good enough to see to that. But it's probably not the best that a guy who teases a strip so cleverly can do.”

I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THAT MEANS. But it begs for a strip-tease image. So here you go. Have a nice day, everyone.

I don’t know who hates me more right now, Gloria Steinem or M.C. Escher.

Gloria Steinem. Clearly.

Cafe d'Alsace: Franck ist Up-Gefuckt

2006-05-31T15:33:00.000-04:00

Guten Morgen! Heute Franck Bruni hat eine shöne Böner für Café D’Alsace! In fact, Frank had this Böner ) ">several weeks ago, but now, he’s positively certain about it: Café D’Alsace is better than it should be, “a solid neighborhood restaurant with a claim to distinction beyond its neighborhood.” And that distinction is a roster of over 110 different beers and a “beer sommelier” to usher you amongst them.

This place was on my To-Try list for some time, until I realized it was on the [insert confused scowl] Upper East Side. I’m not…I don’t…How do I even?...

Jules’ image of the Upper East Side.

I’m just kidding! I know that’s not really what the Upper East Side is like.

Actual image of the Upper East Side.

(Gonna get letters for that one. Sigh.)

While today’s review was alarmingly written in prose (as opposed to last week’s), it’s not without its mangled-yet-adorable linguistic stepchildren.

Frank opens with a frantic olfactory search for traces of clove in a Belgian Leffe beer:

“I searched my palate for what was behind the orange or maybe in front of the orange or possibly on the side of the orange.”

But did ya check between the oranges?

Oranges, pumpkins, who’s counting?

Alas, he never finds what he’s looking for:

“No clove, at least not for me. But I was having what I suppose I should describe as a heady time rooting around for it.”

“Heady” is Frank’s adorable euphemism for “shit-canned.” Sort of like how Hemingway daintily refers to himself as “tight” all the time but really he’s six frozen margaritas to the wind, wandering a rive gauche gutter and firing his rifle to the chorus of "The Electric Slide." Or, fine, "The Gas-lit Slide."

“I woke up next to a leapoard. The leopard was wearing my underpants. It was a good leopard. I liked the leopard. It was a fine and good leopard in my underpants and I liked it.”

But it’s not all about the brew-dogs here--

“Subtract the obscure ales at Café d'Alsace and you still have a very appealing restaurant…. Put them back into the equation and you have something special…”

Awwww. And he said it without any silly puns!

“Café d'Alsace won't just be beer today and gone tomorrow.”

Oops! Spoke too soon!

The place belongs to Simon Oren (of Marseille and Nice Matin), a savvy ruler who “made a career of colonizing needy neighborhoods with the likes of steak frites and crème brûlee.”

You should see what he did in Southeast Asia with chicken paillard and flourless chocolate cake.

Chef Philippe Roussel offers the perfect menu to counterbalance all that light, non-filling beer: choucroute, marrow bones, and “baeckeoffe, a traditional Alsatian casserole with bacon, lamb, oxtails and no small measure of potatoes. I suppose it's for diners who find the choucroute garnie too dainty,” specifically this man:

“Dude, that shit’s gay.”

Café d’Alsace isn’t completely perfect:
“I encountered a few too many dishes, including a wanly flavored veal breast and a gummy beer-braised lamb shank, that weren't really for anyone.” Really? Not for ANYONE?

“I'm sorry but that veal breast is way too wan. I’ll stick with my gruel, thanks.”

I don’t even know what to say about this one: “If tuna is the chicken of the sea, frog's legs are the chicken wings of the haute pond.” Except that I hope to see it on the Totally Nuts Analogy section of the SATs come 2007. Give the kids some PCP and I bet they'll get it right.

In the end, Frank has a warm, fuzzy feeling for this place in his heart (after all the beer, that fuzzy feeling will soon migrate to his colon no doubt), warm enough to drunkenly grant 2 stars. “I got a buzz from the surroundings…. Let's face it: I also got a buzz from the beers.”

You know what? Sometimes, that's what fine dining's all about.

Prose? What's prose?

2006-05-31T13:40:00.000-04:00

First. Things. First. I, along with other people with mixed up priorities and too much time on their hands, am FURIOUS that the Count responded with multiple Diner’s Journal entries addressing last week’s Life in the Fast Lane piece, but NOTHING, not a WORD, about the fact that he wrote last week’s (barely) starred review of Sascha in an A.R.Guerney style exchange of emails between himself and a mystery partner, SoOverSalsify@gmail.com.

Mouths were agape, the food world tittering with conjectures as to the identity of this too-cool-for-root interlocutor. Some even posited that it might be Tits Truly, which, sadly, it is not (I’m not over salsify).

But as a consolation prize for those frustrated with the total opacity of SoOverSalsify, at least we now know this from Frank's Journal:

“[Frank’s companion Kerry] was reading aloud the 'Us' magazine account of the Denise Richards-Heather Locklear feud. We had decided to use the long stretches of road between drive-through windows to catch up on our celebrity gossip."

I wonder if Kerry also French braided Frank’s hair so it would be awesomely crimped by the time they hit Tucson?

This week's review of Café D’Alsace to follow...

Life in the Fast Lane: Surely Make You Lose Your Lunch

2006-05-24T17:04:00.000-04:00

My God. I took a week off there, ostensibly because I left my job and have had a hard time doing anything but lying passed out on my roof. But maybe subliminally, I knew that THIS would be the best. week. ever.

Count Frank has craftily slipped out of his fancy metropolitan three-quarter-length velveteen unisuit and into the Foam-n-Mesh-hatted, slogan-T-shirted world of American fast food. That’s right, American— the majority of Frank’s stops were far outside the city, places like Texas and Mississippi, places it's a little harder for a man to wear fuschia or call things “fierce.”

That means a few things.

Waiters, captains, hosts, and cooks, take note: that Gawkered or Googled picture of Frank Bruni you have posted over the pass and inside the reservation book is now totally inaccurate. You want to keep your eyes peeled for someone who looks a little more like this:

Trust me. I went on a cross-country road trip with my best friend a few years ago and gained about 20 lbs in 3 weeks from sitting in a minivan pounding Arby’s 8 hours a day. It didn’t help matters that we contracted bed bugs and had to burn all our clothes and replace them all at Wal-Mart. I have a snapshot of me in front of the geological masterpiece of the Badlands in South Dakota, looking like a wife-abusing grifter dude, the kind of guy with skid-marked underpants and a ponytail you can only describe as “perverted.”

“I swear I left New York in Miu Miu flats and a Chloe dress.”

But more importantly, when you mix Frank’s baudelarian nancetry with the shit-slinging burger huts of middle America, you get an entertaining piece.

Frank opens by describing how flabbergasted his friend was by his ability to spot huge neon signs from the highway. (“How, she asked, had I spotted the sign from so far away?”)

Answer: “I had developed a crazy knack for detecting beef patties and sesame seed buns where they weren't readily apparent.”

Ah! So Frank plays one of my favorite games! “Find the beef.”

From Frank’s mission statement through his indigestion, much of Frank’s trip comes across as totally nasty, a “gluttonous odyssey” from “sea to greasy sea.” Eiw.
But the Count commits. He really luxuriates in the nastiness:

“It was a roving binge as warped road movie: ‘Transfatamerica.’ Or maybe, given our cholesterol-oblivious plunge over a nutritional cliff: ‘Thelma and Disease.’”

Hey, I got one for ya, Frank!

The following statement- or rather, understatement—makes me imagine Frank as a guarded little dauphin prince, playing for the first time with street children: “I'm a pampered diner, my diet richer in squab and poorer in chili dogs than most Americans'.”

But the chateau was left behind long ago.

“…all of my fast food was consumed…in the car, which smelled worse and worse as the trip went on and on. Like an obtuse houseguest or a Supreme Court justice, the scent of a White Castle slider lingers.”

Is Frank saying that when a Supreme Court justice stays over at your house, the scent lingers?

“Honey, Scalia left a doody in the guest room hamper!”

I'd love to excerpt the whole article, really. Frank's language applied to this food is like a La Perla bra on a crabby red-light hooker. Example:

“Among all the incarnations of candy-studded soft ice cream I tried… the Blizzard reigned supreme. It had the most candy most thoroughly integrated into the most sumptuous frozen cradle.”
The most sumptuous frozen cradle!
Aaaand William Butler Yeats stabs his eyes out in a grave.

As for his food reporting, everyone’s got their illogical favorites, and in the end of the day, most of it really is super seductive processed crap. He raves about KFC, which has never failed to make me headachy and barfy. But he puts the Whopper above the Big Mac, and if you know anything about my 8th grade year, you know I became obsessed with Whoppers, was banned from eating them, and purchased them on an intrafamilial black market for $10 a pop from my conniving brother.

Can you believe it? This balloon is powered by the virginity of wan, greasy adolescent girls! Technology, man!

Since we probably won’t see the Count’s Toyota-soiling side again any time soon, I’ll sign off with this, perhaps the grossest excerpt from Frank’s trip:

“Tommy's pours a pasty, forgettable chili over just about everything. … I nibbled on a chili-strangled hot dog and a chili-mugged double cheeseburger and then collected the latest round of voluminous, odiferous trash. What were these mushy, orange squiggles? Gold Star, the indigestion that keeps on giving.”

Next up: The Count returns to the city, replaces boxers with briefs, and promptly flips the bird to the meatpacking district's Sasha.

A Voce: Stop, Duck and Balls

2006-05-10T18:32:00.000-04:00

Ah, Andrew Carmellini. What a stud:
“During his six years at Café Boulud, the chef Andrew Carmellini achieved something remarkable.”

He crossbred a greyhound and a vegas showtranny?

Guess again.

“Although [Café Boulud] restaurant bore the last name of one of New York's most celebrated culinary figures, Daniel Boulud, ... its many fans came to see it as Mr. Carmellini's place. They gave him the credit, along with their trust.”

"CARMELLINI SAID IT WOULDN”T HURT!!!:"

And so, Frank notes, everyone anticipated a Carmellini breakaway from Boulud. But in what form?

Frank asks: “Would it be French and somewhat fussy?”
People who anticipated this outcome for Chez Carmellini were mostly basing their anticipation on his French culinary background and/or perhaps they had previously met Carmellini’s immaculately groomed French poodle, Tresor Bisou Pouffiasse III.

Tresor prereparing for a Brazilian bikini wax.

But back to Carmellini's new venture: “Would it strain for invention and strut for attention?”
Or would it strive for convention and sweat for detention?

Sweating for detention. Brought to you by Frank Bruni, Dr. Seuss, Google Image and B.O.

But the Count is here to cast aside all those anticipatory jitters with one swoop of his girlish, ruffle-sleeved arm: “A Voce, which means ‘word of mouth’ and is generating plenty of it, doesn't fit either of those descriptions.” It’s just delicious, inventive Italian, where there’s a “premium on sating diners as opposed to wowing them.”

This is brave of Carmellini. I think we’re all aware of the astronomical success of the recently opened Jerry’s Wow ‘Em Eyeful Bistro, where the order of priority is quite the opposite.

The ladies can’t get enough! And when he starts masturbating, FORGET ABOUT IT! The B & T crowd goes nuts.

Among the dishes that snapped Frank to attention were the many and expert uses of duck: “Duck doesn't get as much play in Italian cooking as in French, but Mr. Carmellini isn't about to let a good bird go unplucked.” And the Archaic Lexicon Society will be presenting Frank with an award tonight for bringing that expression back from the dead.

“Goodie Spritefart, would you hence be aft for a roll in the hay once I spit this snuff out?”
“Why, Sir Whiffleshitte, I for one am not about to let a good bird go unplucked. To the barn?”
“Anon, m’lady.”

Frank’s language actually centers on the food in this review, which tends to mean that he’s gearing up for some real star action. An agnolotti in a foie gras sauce gets the paragraph treatment, and Frank touches on everything from the well-executed classics (asparagus with parmesan, egg, truffle) to the “unforgettable” version of meatballs, and on that note, pins a last suggestion to his 3 stars:

“For his inevitable next venture, maybe Mr. Carmellini, now 35, should consider an all-meatball restaurant. I wouldn't put it past him. And I wouldn't want to miss it.”

Definitely hard to miss.

At least it's good to know I've hit immaturity rock bottom. It's all intellectual uphill from here, gang!

Next week: Julia rides a dodo with copies of the Aeneid in her underpants.

Buddakan: Restaurant as celeb? Or am I nuts?

2006-05-03T14:00:00.000-04:00

Aaaah the meatpacking district, now home to so many flashy, enormous pleasure palaces. I HEAR. Needless to say…

I tend to hang out in Brooklyn.

Buddakan is the big fat baby of Stephen Starr, who just stepped off the boat from Philly with rolls of blueprints under his arms and a passion for the diversionary needs of fancy young New Yorkers. For some reason I keep picturing Governor Ratcliffe from Disney’s Pocahontas.

Alright, OK, I’m getting a little out of hand here. Maybe they don’t just hire sluts. As for the food, Frank actually liked it. As for Frank’s language, I couldn’t help but feel like much of what he said about the restaurant itself could also be applied to the world of the rich and famous that often circulates in the meatpacking district.

The Count makes Buddakan sound like a sexy celebrity who could get by on her yams alone, but who happens to crochet strategic maps of the Balkans into her thongs and play lots of chess:

“…the real surprise is how good many of Buddakan's alternately faithful and fanciful interpretations of [Chinese cuisine] are. A restaurant this sexy doesn't need to be smart.”

“Buddakan is the apotheosis, at least for the next 60 seconds, of a distinct genre: the post-millennial urban mess hall as supersize cocktail lounge with superstylized dishes, which chart a far-out trip to the Far East.”

Lordy. “Supersized,” “superstylized,” and “far-out trip.” Brought to you by Bill and Ted’s California Press Releases, Inc.

“Fuckin’ rad and kinda Asian!”

“[Buddakan’s ]chef, Michael Schulson, breathes intelligence and creativity into it.” His mao poe tofu is Frank’s prime example: “Cubes of silky bean curd act as crucial moments of calm in a wet, fiery mix of garlic, Thai chili peppers and, well, minced pork. If you want tofu to bust loose like this, you have to give it meat as well as heat.”
IF YOU WANT TOFU TO BUST LOOSE LIKE THIS, YOU HAVE TO GIVE IT MEAT AS WELL AS HEAT. That, my friends, is why I exist.

Photoshop is to me as scissors are to Edward Scissorhands: a blessing and a curse.

Not everything at Buddakan was as stellar as the tofu: “that's the thing about Buddakan — more than a few losers keep company with the many winners.” See? Just like the world of celebrities!

Ladies and Gentlemen, Haylie Duff! Oops, please hold, I’ve got Kristen Cavallieri on line 2.

Frank concludes with some wisdom that to me seems charmingly self-aware.
Again recalling many of the platitudes about Hollywood, “Buddakan won't please diners of all ages equally. It's better suited to the young, and its own youth is crucial to its appeal.”

Buddakan’s place in Captain Starr’s spanking new roster is a draw for sure, and it’s true that no matter how good the spare ribs or the tofu, it’s probably not your first choice for parents-in-town fare. But Frank intends this youth comment in another way, too: the flashiness seems to turn tacky if you squint and look real hard:

“Restaurants like this tend to look junky upon fifth or sixth inspection, and it's hard to believe this kitchen, serving so many diners at such a fleet pace, won't show signs of strain over time.”

Just.

Like.

Hollywood?

Those Olsen twins are really out of control. Zing!

OK, I’m done with my extended metaphor. But don’t worry, more can surely be found in next week’s Dining Out!

August: As "Urban Rustic" as a pooped-on Blackberry

2006-05-03T11:19:00.000-04:00

Bruni titled his visit to crammed and rezzie-denying restaurant August “A Waiting Game with Savory Rewards.”

Below, a waiting game with unsavory rewards.

Rimshot!

Alright, so August is good, rustic and crowded. But in the end, this review was a bit of a snooze. Or maybe it just seems that way what with Buddakan on the horizon.

Don’t mean I can’t make cheap visual jokes!

YAAAAAY for uselessly hilarious images!

Frank begins:
"SITTING at a table just inside the restaurant August on a recent night, I was struck by two things."

A shovel and a bra?? A brick and a thesaurus?? I give up!

“The first was the look on the faces of many of the people who walked in. The second thing that struck me was how many diners had decided that August was worth the gamble.”

Oh. That’s no fun.

“Like many dishes at August, [an onion tart] had come from the restaurant's wood-burning brick oven, ideal for anything with a pizzalike crust.”

Oscar de la Renta hops in there twice a week!

“It make-a me so brown!”

“August layers rustic accent atop rustic accent, to the point where you just might forget you aren't in Provence or Tuscany, at least until a hipster poster girl like the actress Maggie Gyllenhaal strolls in, as she did on that recent night.”

Gotta give Maggie credit for trying to blend. And that Peter Saarsgaard is such a doll!

"The distressed plaster walls of the restaurant look like centuries-old stone, and wine bottles are wedged into various crannies, an artful pantomime of artlessness."

An artful pantomime of depression.

"The absence of ceremony (no reservations) suits the countrified visual details, which in turn complement the full-flavored, straightforward cooking"

Absence of ceremony?? Frank obviously didn’t order the Puglian Bridal Cake, in which you are served a rich ricotta-filled tart, andthen quickly circumcised before a burning pyre.

The dragon head represents the absence of anesthetics!

August's chef used to be narrower in its culinary focus, but "over time he's moved August from a tight focus on France, Italy and Spain to a broader, looser orientation."

Now he’s gay.
RIMSHOT!

I’m gonna go throw myself in the Hudson now, but expect Buddakan up today. Consider this belated August post the amuse-bouche, or "fanny laugher," for the delicious entree which will be Buddakan...

Jean-Georges: "I CAIN'T QUIT YEW!!!"

2006-04-20T18:03:00.000-04:00

There are over 17,000 restaurants in New York city, and among them are only 4 (or 5, depending how you look at it) little ribbon-bonneted golden children, elite 4-star beauties, most with French accents, all with perfect A+ report cards from the critics. So, when the Times’ star-doling emissary, Count Bruni, turns his squinty monocle toward one of them, with the threat of knocking them out of their patent leather booties and into the bristling gutter with the 3-star riffraff (“But I don’t WANT to play with them! They don’t have table cloths! And they play music! FROM I-PODS!”) or even—heaven forbid, the shit-eating 2-stars, well, the world takes notice.

Either the Count this week knew his reconsideration of Jean Georges would capture a bigger audience than usual, or else his old reporter’s instinct was throbbing like a barometrically sensitive arthritis. Because this was more than one review of one restaurant. It was a question raised about all megachefs with entrepreneurial empires like Jean-Georges Vongerichten: Are they capable of maintaining their kitchens?

The phenomenon of the megachef’s overreach is sort of like, you know, how someone is really famous for his or her tennis skills, say, and then next thing you know, after a couple of perfume advertisements, late nights at Cain, and the allure of a 3-by-3-inch velveteen mole, he or she couldn’t sell “backhand” in a game of charades.

A primary example of this being Anna “I resist-waxed my midriff and rolled in white paint” Kornikova and Enrigay “This hat is mad straight, bra” Iglesias.

While they do not boast helipad-like moles, Vongerichten’s profitable restaurants in Vegas, the Bahamas, and Shanghai among other places have lured him away from the kitchen at his flagship, Jean-Georges, just as Frank says “Thomas Keller peddles haute tuna sandwiches under a Samsung sign in the Time Warner Center” and “Mario Batali travels the country to hawk cookware and hang with Nascar drivers.” Makes them sounds like dirtbag grifters, dunnit?

Frank holds his experience, this year, at Jean Georges, as the litmus test for everyone: “if the restaurant Jean Georges holds up, there's hope for all the others.” There’s hope for what others? Other chefs? Other flagship restaurants? Chefs with TV deals and product deals, or just multiple-restaurant chefs? Or…does “all the others” mean…EVERYONE IN THE WORLD?

OH NO! If Frank doesn’t like Jean Georges… THE KITTEN GETS BLENDED!

Frank sets up the review with an interrogative monologue reminiscent of an episode of Sex in the City (can’t you see Frank in a silk nightie, smoking a parliament and scrolling this across his laptop screen?):

"Was Mr. Vongerichten trading exacting standards for easy money? Was fame getting the best of him, and leaving the worst for us? Can an artist morph into an industry and hold on to the magic that made it all happen?"

Cut to interior, Martini Bar:

Samantha: So I had my pinky up some guy's ass last night and he morphed into an industry!
Charlotte [beginning to shear a lamb]: Samantha, that's foul!
Miranda: Anybody know the Steeler's score?
Carrie: This would make a GREAT topic for my COLUMN! [takes clothes off]

Before launching into a rhapsodic analysis of JGV’s cuisine, Frank’s got to open some old wounds, reminding us of Vongerichten’s V Steakhouse, a “patently foolish miscreant.” Miscreant meaning, of course, according to the dictionary "an evildoer, villain, infidel or heretic."

"Sooo, what does zat mean? Are yeu inferring zat yeu did not like ze restaurangh?"

And now, for the review. If you follow Bruni, you will recall his review of Perry Street (I certainly do) last fall. He had a sort of theory about JGV’s food—he called it “time release gastronomy” and he described every bite as a fugue of flavors. Example: “The sweetness of the fruit set the stage for, then ceded it to, the sourness and gentle heat of other players, which arrived as a second wave, a delayed epiphany.”

And nothing but NOTHING makes him wax romantic like this time-release business. Hence, the Jean-Georges review is a doozie.

And P.S., if this hyper-romantic image that accompanied the article isn’t the Dining Times equivalent of a musk-oil massage on a bear skin rug, what is?

Let the nooniness begin:

“Mr. Vongerichten loves this sort of dance, in which one effect often defers so quickly to another that it seems like a memory almost as soon as it's experienced. He isn't seeking a seamless blend; he wants each sensation to have its say without overstating its case — to frame, tame and joust with the other players.”

At one point he describes “a bevy of herbs and spices, including mint, tarragon, basil and Thai chili, each of which registered a fleeting, teasing impression. The proportions were precise. The results were dazzling.”

Most of this review reads like a romance novel.

“The proportions were precise…the results were dazzling…”

EIWWW. I mean, am I wrong? Don’t you get the impression that Frank lay down blindfolded on a white linen tarp whilst Jean Georges tickled him with springs of herbs?

And it was a physically engaging meal— Frank repeatedly had to shift tactics and focus in order to fully appreciate his courses. It’s a dominant-sumbissive thing, where Frank is submissive and JGV’s food is the leather-clad ‘matrix…

Frank is the coy doe, and the cuisine is the firm yet demanding hound.

“An initial bite of caramelized sweetbreads with a chestnut glaze and shavings of black truffle was slightly cloying. But a subsequent bite, with more truffle, was exquisite. From then on I took greater care with each forkful, determined to make it count.”

Have you ever?? A critic saying to his meal, Garth-style, “I’m not worthy! I’ll try harder!”

“Eating is seldom this absorbing, this bracing.”

But NOTHING is quite as bracing as Frank's girdle.

“The dining room's big windows, Central Park glimpses and unobtrusive palette of beiges and grays give it an airiness that other fancy restaurants don't have.”

For people who really enjoy a palette in gray and beige...
remember, you're never too young to check in to a hospice!

Frank concludes, “Those qualities”—the ability to make him a coy mistress—“may be missing elsewhere in the Vongerichten empire, but they're still here.”

Cue Shania Twain’s “Still the One,” and turn the shower to cold, this is getting gross.

Amazed at a Grudge, INDEED!

2006-04-12T01:50:00.000-04:00

HAAAAAAAAAAA HAHAHAHAA HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AHAHAHAH... AAAAAAAAHAHHAHAHAHAHH

THEY--

AHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHA

THEY PUBLISHED...MY LETTER TO THE EDITOR!!! AHAHAHAHHA

(scroll to the bottom)

Update: For the record, I do think about things other than the NY Times Dining Section. For the most part, if you're looking me in the eye and I seem to be listening to you, be advised that I'm technically ignorning you and 100% thinking about lunch. But the "restaruant grudge" column in the Times was so huffy and vapid that I had to write a letter, the publication of which constitutes a pretty delicious morsel for anyone with an ironic palate.

Country: Hail to the Cooks. And the Bathroom Attendants.

2006-04-05T15:58:00.000-04:00

It’s time to whip out your glow sticks, kids, ‘cause this week, it’s a rave!

I’ve been hiding in 1996…is it safe to come out now? No? OK.

Frank loved the East Side bicameral beauty which is Country, in the Carlton hotel. The food seems to have wowed him, but the all-important décor tickled his cashmere thong no less. I have to agree with Frank on the looks of the place— only a few days ago, Michael “Dingle” Barry and I were lured from our afternoon stroll and into the restaurant by the luscious, man-clubby look of the place...

Not that it takes much to lure me into a restaurant.

Jules: This place is supposed to be great. We have to check it out."
Everyone: "But-"
Jules: "JUST APPS! We’ll just do apps!"

The place is called Country, Frank is quick to point out, not because anyone’s steering a semi or wearing hay pants, but rather because chef Geoffrey Zakarian also runs a place called Town. Frank sees this as, to paraphrase, totally douchy:

“[Zakarian] apparently couldn't resist the opportunity for matched-set cuteness, even though Country has a glittery soul that is almost entirely cosmopolitan.”

Frank assumes it was the matched-set appeal of “Town & Country” that Zakarian liked. But maybe, in fact, the chef deliberately wanted to reference the LEAST FUNNY movie of all time:

Zakarian’s next pair of restaurants will be named "Schindler's" and "List."

Frank rails further on the cutesy naming: “[Zakarian's] like a father who disregards such pesky details as gender to christen his second son Cleopatra because the first is Antony."

Above, a father who disregards such pesky details as gender.
(P.S. a male named Cleopatra is officially the gayest thing I’ve ever read in the Times. Along with today's usage of the phrase "wondrously silken," which Frank possibly lifted from an Estee Lauder ad.)

But seriously, I find parents that want to name their kids things like Hansel and Gretel, or Ebony and Ivory sort of insulting for the babies. If one little embryo, much less two, ever manages to cling to the gin-pickled ceviche of my uterus for nine whole months, you can bet I’m gonna reward those tenacious babies with their own totally original names.

Dinglemuff is already so tactile!

Frank’s review this week is front-loaded with wacky language. Then he sings a pretty straight-laced love song that essentially praises the cooks on the line as much as the chefs at the helm:

Both the upstairs and downstairs restaurants are “united and distinguished by their classically French inclinations and by unusually expert cooking” – they “wow you with their execution.” That's the line he's talking about, alright.

The Count ascribes one triumph after another to the central roast or the central braise, and not to the garnish or flourish. That said, it wasn’t totally boring:

“I liked the way seared skate was bracketed by roasted cauliflower and puréed cauliflower, the vegetable's flavor coming at me in different ways, with different degrees of force.”

The roasted cauliflower came at Frank from the left, with a schoolyard push, while the puree flanked him on the right with a fierce atomic elbow.

“I’m gonna treat you so good, daddy. YOU GET OVER HERE, FRANK!”

But stars are not earned on aggressive crucifers alone: the interiors of both the “distinctly masculine” café and the “more refined dining room” get the elusive Bruni approval. That’s not all:

“The attention to detail at Country is otherwise consistent and impressive…. In the cafe, iced tea comes with ice cubes made of tea…”

How considerate! In the dining room, steak comes with a fork made of pure sirloin, and in the bathroom, stall attendants are actually made of doodie.

It’s the little things, ya know?

Well, three big fat stars later, I’ll never be able to waltz in there off the street again, but I bet Zakarian and his gang are celebrating as any restaurant team would on the eve of a critical rave:

SLIP N SLIDE IN THE HALLWAY, DUDES!!!!

My Momma Raised Me So So Wrong

2006-03-31T14:17:00.000-05:00

Just kidding! My momma raised me really well, but how RUDE of me not to thank my guest blogger, Michael Barry, for his two outstanding weeks of service. If I could find a gay enough pole, I would hoist him up on it and salute his tight, talented shorts. Mmm, mmm, mmm.

Speaking of panties, tonight is the last night of our two-month run of "Doody Calls" at the PIT, and it's going to be 1) a full house, 2) insane, and 3) I'ma be real drunk. After this, I'm taking a "hiatus from performing" for a while to "focus on writing" (for those of you at my high school alumni magazine, that's code for "going to Tijuana" and "coming back as a man named Bradlee.")

Since I've gone organic, I'm getting my new "business" made of all-natural pinewood!

For advance tickets and more info on the show, click here.

Urena: "Yo' Restaurant So Ugly..."

2006-03-30T15:27:00.000-05:00

It’s true; I skipped last week's review of Morimoto. Since my return from France, I’ve been strapped to an elliptical machine in Fort Greene, trying to get rid of my “France fat” which is mostly made of duck.

If only my wooden jeans would take a cue.

For a wrap-up of what can go wrong when toothy-grinned American franchises encounter what they perceive as the fragile mysticism of Japanese culture, i.e. Stephen Starr’s Morimoto, please see Big Bird in Japan.

My favorite part is when Big Bird shrugs at the camera and says “Why is everybody here from Ohio????” Hilare.

But this week, oh man, this week is by far a juicier piece of Bruni work than last week. We all know that Frank takes décor seriously. Alto, Gray, and Telepan know this especially well. Poor ugly Telepan, whom Frank would have gladly renamed Bedpan for its insistent use of Pee Pee Green.

It’s from the MoStew “Rikers” Collection for Conway

Speaking of pee pee, Frank’s visit to Urena (named after the chef, Alex Urena, but an amusing false cognate with the Latin “Urena” meaning "a noblewoman who pees publicly after drinking") shows a far, far more judgmental Frank. This is a Frank who wants to be swept to the prom by the entire Varsity football team, but then demands that they wax and wear satin.

"Dude, I'm like, gonna pressure myself into sex after the prom!"
"Me too!"
"Totally! What's Dennis Quaid doing here?"

But before he finds some Lee press-ons with which to scratch out Urena’s eyes, Frank finds…a COMPUTER?? He begins:

“IT'S only a 0.58-mile drive from the new restaurant Ureña to a Home Depot. I know because I did a MapQuest search, which also provided the directions: east on 28th, south on Park, west on 23rd.”

(Cut to Frank leaning back on a dark leather sofa, smoking a pipe full of scotch and toying with a length of lanyard: Not only can I conduct such technological reconnaissance, I also know how to macramé, I can soft boil an egg, and wait til you see me build little sailor hats out of toilet paper…)

“I urge [Alex Urena] to commandeer a van and head over to the store, or somewhere similar, before it's too late.”

Obviously, Alex Urena’s restaurant is so fucking ugly because he had NO IDEA how to get to the design mecca which is HOME DEPOT from his restaurant. If only he had thought to commandeer a van, and log on to Map Quest.

HEY FRANK, we need your help!

This lady’s been waiting 250 years for you to MapQuest Vicky’s Secret for her. Thanks!

Frank continues unapologietically:
“Ureña fills me with apprehension — and, obviously, decorating tips — because it's the ugliest restaurant with great food that I know, a toad-faced prince, and I think it's paying a steep price for that.”

A TOAD-FACED PRINCE.

I’m not sure whether to make a “horny toad” joke here, or just to apologize for this image.

But speaking of mercury-lacquered boners, reading about the food at Urena really gives me a huge one:

“Mr. Ureña's salty rabbit confit appetizer — for which unusually tender strands of leg meat are braided with slippery shiitake mushrooms, molded into a puck and then nestled beside a cauliflower purée — dazzled me in a way that rabbit seldom does.”

Frank has obviously never met Sausage, the most dazzling man-rabbit of Crisco County, Mo. How he amuses the tots!

“IS THAT THING REAL?”
“HOLY SHIT, IT’S HUGE.”
“I'M GONNA THROW UP.”

Frank spends about 800 lofty words on a flounder that really baked his cookie:

The fish was pan seared and then roasted, and then surrounded with “ a beautifully orchestrated symphony of effects [groaaaan]: glazed celery root, hon shimeji mushrooms, a Manchego and spinach mousse and a grapefruit and elderflower sauce. Different bites emphasized different notes, this one vaguely bitter, that one fleetingly earthy, none of them too insistent.”

But for all that girly praise, Frank still can’t get over the “toad-faced” ambience:

Dining at Urena “suffers from not only Ureña's sights, like the zestless color combination of dirt-brown banquettes against lemony walls, but also its sounds. Much of the cheesy recorded music, like the lighting, suited a bicuspid extraction. On the way to the Home Depot, drop the CD's or tapes in the trash.”

Did Frank actually step back from his computer and make a you-go-girl air snap? I can’t help but feel that he at least high-fived one of his manservants. This is not just a friendly critique--it's downright sassy! While you’re torching your restaurant, make sure and dump your tapes in the trash! SNAP! I SAID IT!

But on a sidenote, if you’re dumping your “tapes,” Frank, maybe it’s time to get rid of your betamax and your tin-can phone, too, huh?

The Count's swimsuit.

But Frank has great respect for young chef Alex’s illustrious series of apprenticeships:

"Mr. Ureña's education also included a stint in Spain under Ferran Adrià, whose foamy lessons he learned well."

I was fortunate enough to learn my foamy lessons from my aunt Beatrice. Her secret? Eat a head of raw broccoli, down some hot coffee, and go for a jog.

Ah, foamy aunt Beatrice.

In fact, in the spirit of aunt B, Alex Urena's whole menu seems to be sliding into home-- and things that aren't foamy are on their way there. An artichoke puree “was like a foam waiting to happen,” a phrase I can’t BELIEVE is in the Times, and not in some 5th grader’s joke book.

There are too many delicious Brunisms to excerpt this week (“trios foie, to indulge in a rhyme”!) but I believe that Frank’s conclusion, in which he teams up with a friend, "Heathers"-style, to shit on ugly people, deserves to be repeated in its shocking, shocking entirety:

“A friend who accompanied me for one meal and then excitedly joined me for another compared Ureña to a ‘boyfriend with a great personality but unfortunate looks.’

After a bite of beautifully sautéed mahi-mahi with a portobello confit and a buttery ginger, soy and balsamic vinegar sauce, she said, ‘I can overlook the hooked nose.’

The short ribs persuaded her that she could also get past his ‘bad dental work.’

Me too. But a minor makeover would put me in a major swoon.”

I mean, two stars is no small endorsement—what a pity that 3 stars might have been in young Alex’s grasp but that his “hooked nose” and “bad dental work” interfered.

But you know [insert "Uncle Danny's Wisdom Theme" from "Full House"], Urena, sometimes it's the little ugly things that make us lovable. I mean, if my one oversized nipple hadn't caught the eye of the NYPD as I barfed into my halter top whilst slumped in a busstop on Avenue C, would I ever have met my loving boyfriend, Warden Bill? I doubt it. So keep your chin up, your banquettes dung-colored, and your music cheezy. You never know who might arrest, and then subsequently love you.

So, to the very ugly, I say: You keep lying to yourself, and we'll shut up and let you.

The. End.

P.J. Clarke's on the Hudson: It's no T.G.I. Friday's on the Gowanus Canal!

2006-03-15T15:12:00.000-05:00

Jules continues to flit about Provence, indulging in the traditional French lifestyle for which she's yearned all these years: riding a rusty Segue (TM) from her sleeping villa to the dairy shack for her morning glass of creme fraiche; vandalizing everything remotely symbolizing international trans-fat purveyor McDonald's, including clowns and mimes she runs into on dusty country roads; and relaxing with a daily bouillebaisse foot massage in the basement kitchen of the hotel maid's lean-to. Until she returns to her regular blogging duties next week, I, Mike "Turbo Dyke" Barry will once again carry on in her stead.

An artist's rendering of Jules in France, practicing her plainchant before a traditional dinner of the roasted limbs of disaffected bourgeoisie.

This week, the Count trundles downtown to take a gander at P.J. Clarke's on the Hudson, essentially a giant, 220-seat version of its uptown namesake. That is, it's the same P.J. Clarke's you would find on a jaunt in the East 50's, except it got a couple of shots of Human Growth Hormone in its ass cheeks after baseball practice.

The prototypical P.J. Clarke's on the Hudson customer. Note his wild red eyes and handsomely arched brows.

With the kind of deft sociopolitical touch that allows him to avoid being pantsed in liberal Alphabet City gastro-dives, even as he feels justified pissing in the mouths of designated "porter-potties" at the 21 Club during tea time, Frank puts forth two divergent viewpoints for how to perceive P.J. Clarke's on the Hudson, without ascribing fully to either one:

"You can look at the new P. J. Clarke's in downtown Manhattan as an unremarkable illustration of the laws of supply and demand, as an economics lesson writ boozy and caloric. It puts broad slabs of beef, tall mounds of carbohydrates, stiff drinks and an atavistically musky atmosphere in the paths of hungry financial types, who have been known to respond to such things."

I can think of other things "hungry financial types" respond to...

WAITER: And for you, madame?
FINANCIAL TYPE: I'll have the 48 oz. filet, hold the greens, but can I get a side of speedballs on the half shell?
WAITER: Very good, madame. And to drink?
FINANCIAL TYPE: Uhhhhhhhhhh...let's go with the blood of my competitors.

Yet the Count can also see something far more sinister in the new establishment:

"Or you can take a dimmer view and see a dark capitalist allegory, a validation of the idea that no rarity is safe from replication or protected from conversion into a kind of franchise divorced from any particular place and time."

We all know how sad and disgusting such entities can be:

The original "Prince of Payola," Dick Clark, top. Below, the HostTron 4000, aka Ryan Seacrest.

What Frank is getting at is that the intangible qualities of the original P.J. Clarke's are worth considering when evaluating the giganto, sanitized new version. As a patron of the former for one or two leisurely lunches, I must agree. The no-nonsense presentation (burgers served on small bread plates, ketchup in a bottle veruss a ramican, a waitstaff generously seasoned with experience and liver spots) juxtaposed nicely with the casually elegant clubbiness of the decor. Instead of wearing urine-soaked Sans-a-Belts and carting a grocery basket of Marxist literature like the geezers at the Carnegie Deli or Zabar's, the insufferable wheeze bags at P.J.'s wear seersucker and read the large print edition of the Financial Times.

Frank notes, "P. J.'s trafficked in its own singular history. Nat King Cole had a charge account there. Johnny Mercer supposedly wrote the hit song "One for My Baby" on a napkin at the bar. Aristotle Onassis and Jackie Kennedy had a favorite table and, of course, dibs on it."

He continued, "regulars still tell stories of when Nancy Reagan barfed all over the raw bar after one too many Perfect Rob Roys."

The secret basement piano lounge at the original P.J. Clarke's, where Carol Channing was said to participate in a gang bang with Sid Caesar, Robert Goulet, Ann Margaret and Henry Kissinger.

Frank is a purist, after all; he covered the Vatican, for chrissakes, and he cynically laments the possible bastardization of the P.J. Clarke's phenomenon in every hob-nobber-heavy white man's enclave from D.C. to Detroit:

"[The head of the new consortium of owners, Phillip Scotti]'s had thoughts about Washington, and he's had 10 copies of the original's famously oversize, winged porcelain urinals made, at a total cost of about $80,000. Ten was the minimum order that a special ceramics manufacturer in Ohio would accept, he said. Two of these urinals were installed in the new P. J.'s. Four pairs remain. P. J.'s could be the first restaurant chain with a destiny manifestly influenced by lavatory flourishes."

Not so fast, Bruni! You're forgetting about "The Bloke Boat," the venerable gay booze cruise chain with the popular see-through urinals and the weekly "Wide World of Watersports" night!

Wait, they serve food, right? Whatever.

With the remaining three-millionths of a column inch, the Count decides to focus on the food at P.J. Clarke's, and it's not nearly as shitty as those $8,000 urinals are gonna get when St. Patty's rolls around in a few days:

"In terms of food, the new P. J.'s, like the old P. J.'s, positions itself as an uncomplicated crowd pleaser. It's an American steakhouse (shrimp cocktail, iceberg wedge, T-bone for two, creamed spinach, cheesecake), a British pub (fish and chips, shepherd's pie), a brasserie (roasted chicken, steak tartare, oysters, other raw bar selections) and a diner (meatloaf, turkey club, corned beef Reuben) all wrapped into one. It's better than snobs would like to think and worse than contrarians would hasten to claim, which may be another way of saying that it's usually serviceable and sometimes respectable."

Hey, that sounds alright! I mean, I would also call the acting work of Harrison Ford "serviceable" and "respectable," and you didn't hear me complaining during Air Force One!

"I'm getting $20 million AND a cut of the back end to play this role, you DISGUSTING TERRORIST! NOW GET OFF MY PLANE!"

That isn't to say there aren't some problems with the fare; we're not talking about Christmas Dinner at the Keller compound here:

"[P.J. Clarke's on the Hudson's] baked macaroni and cheese, almost stiff enough to be hoisted from its bowl in one clump, should be called macaroni and an unconfirmed rumor of cheese, and even that might be overstating dairy's role in the affair.
For their part clams had seemingly minimized their involvement in a chowder named for them. Other dishes betrayed their pedigrees or purposes in other ways. A Caesar salad was insufficiently salty and excessively watery. French fries were stony, mashed potatoes pasty, lump crabmeat chalky."

Jeez Louise, if you ordered the french fries, mashed potatoes, and lump crabmeat, and threw in a box of crayons and some safety scissors, you could entertain a 5-year-old until his Bar Mitzvah.

This woman got her MFA working solely with P.J. Clarke's signature hummus.

The newness of this whole parrot routine on the old disquiets the Count:

"Light-filled, gleaming and so vast that the walk between the front tables and the bathrooms is almost a day's worth of cardio, this P. J.'s feels too polished, too mass-market, like an upbeat Beyoncé cover of a downbeat Billie Holiday classic."

Too true, wise Frank. Beyonce looked ridiculous singing "Strange Fruit" in that nude bodysuit at the Orange Bowl halftime show.

Here she is reciting the "I Have a Dream" speech on The Tonight Show.

Thus, P.J. Clarke's on the Hudson nests in its latest incarnation with no stars at all to adorn from its spankin' new rafters. Maybe bigger isn't better?

Check back next week, when Frank travels back in time to sample the eats on the fabulously, freakishly huge Titanic!

Blaue Gans: Things that make you go "meh..."

2006-03-08T13:37:00.000-05:00

Since Jules is tromping across the south of France in her trusty European traveling costume of shapeless peasant dress and milkmaid's hat, stuffing fistfuls of rich vineyard soil into her souvenier "Je Suis Avec le Imbecile!" fanny pack and learning, whilst on a day trip to Monaco, that Prince Albert is not only her favorite piercing but also an ambiguously gay royal, I, Mike "Dinglefairy" Barry have been entrusted with this week's Digest.

An accurate rendering of Julia abroad. Not pictured: the smuggled American version of Us Weekly tucked into her pewter chastity thong.

This week, the Count seems to have stumbled upon a pleasant if uninspiring sibling of Kurt Gutenbrunner's more celebrated culinary endeavors, not so much a delightfully nostalgic re-run of a fresh new formula as a rough distillation of themes and ingredients that have already regaled dining audiences in more sophisticated forms. Let's call Blaue Gans "The Nanny" to Thor's "Who's the Boss?"

"MS. FINNNNEEEE!!! You know you can't come near me for an unexpected tongue-ing until season 7!"

The familiarity of the place, from the food to the decor, is discomfiting to Frank, if not horrifyingly so:

"The space belonged to Le Zinc, and the few tweaks he and his collaborators made to its décor — still defined by a long zinc bar, scores of vintage posters, a curved ceiling and high-backed red banquettes — are so negligible that you find yourself wondering if he simply changed the locks and the name on the utilities and flicked on the lights."

Obviously, Frank has seen "Single White Female," and he's not falling for that steez, no siree.

Jennifer Jason Leigh, top, and Kurt Gutenbrunner, below. Both copy things they admire, and both have blown Steven Weber on-screen.

Displaying his position as a man cognizant of geopolitical history, Frank calls Blaue Gans both an "Austro-German" restaurant and "as much a land grab as an elaborately imagined restaurant." Does that make Le Zinc Czechoslovakia?

CHAMBERLAIN: Alright, Addy, you get some lebensraum and we get to keep our fruity accents. Deal?
HITLER: Zat vuz vot I vuz goingk to say!
CHAMBERLAIN: Besties?
HITLER: [fingers crossed] Foreverrgh!

Dare I say that Frank seems a bit bored with his choice of restaurant this week? Indeed, he yawns at the monotonous palette of components to the dishes presented:

"The menu Mr. Gutenbrunner installed is brief, and it returns again and again to the same ideas and ingredients. Sausages have their day, sauerkraut gets a say and horseradish holds sway over a third of the dishes, or so it seems."

He went on to rhyme, "Volkswagen Cabrios are gay, Xtina Aguilera's a great lay, and my preferred biopic is 'Ray.'"

Frank's backyard during his favorite month--May! Rimshot!

Nevertheless, he sees a niche for such a creation:

"As dashed-off as Blaue Gans may be, it perfectly suits a certain casual mood and a certain basic appetite, proving that a restaurant needn't be tremendously significant to be significantly appealing. It's for impulsive diners who haven't taken the time to make reservations, which it doesn't accept. For impatient diners who don't want to pore over dozens of relentlessly inventive options, which it doesn't have. For exhausted diners who don't want to study a lengthy, abstruse wine list. Blaue Gans doesn't have that, either."

So, all you shallow, fretful, overworked people with a neanderthal's palette and a hankerin' for some riesling, come on down to Blaue Gans!

"Dammit honey, I can't make you pork chops tonight, I've got a major presentation tomorrow morning and I'm lactating like the fountains at the Bellagio. Let's just go to Blaue Gans."

One thing's for certain: the Count doesn't just want to eat like a kaiser, he wants to be treated like a kaiser. That's why when the service is spotty, Frank gets a-snotty:

"Service isn't entirely reliable. When a friend and I went for brunch one weekend, our waiter repeatedly forgot to bring us things we'd asked for: a napkin, her second mimosa, her third mimosa (she'd had a rough week)."

What the waiter didn't realize, though, is that his friend wanted the mimosas all at once.

Frank's "friend" sleeping through their coffee date at Dean & Deluca

Thankfully, the negligent waitstaff wasn't so callous in the evening, after a couple of hearty braus and a long stint of admiring each other's genetic purety:

"Dinners proceeded much more smoothly, perhaps because the gracious young Austrian man who works as a combined sommelier, host and floor manager was there. He also lent the restaurant an aura of authenticity with his pronounced accent and Alpine musings.
When I arrived one night, he was raptly watching the winter Olympics on a TV above the bar, discussing the beauty of the mountains and reminiscing about his home country. If ever I felt a hunger for schnitzels and strudels, along with a thirst for raindrops on roses, it was then and there."

I imagine that Frank half-yearned for his entree to be served in a brown paper package tied up with string. Or was it the young Austrian that he hoped to wrangle home in a doggy bag?!

"Shoo-ah Herr Bruni, I vill hail you a leemo--vat did you poot in my bee-ah? I saw you! You roofie Dieter every veek!"

Gratuitous phonetic accent writing aside, Frank rouses himself to emit some faintly glowing admiration for the sausages at Blaue Gans, including a "mash of blood sausage and fingerling potatoes...molded into a circle and placed on a roomy bed of sauerkraut." However, he calls the fillets of cod and Arctic char "menu stretchers."

Likewise, he characterized the desserts as "as lazy in execution as a Sunday afternoon in the ol' Barca Lounger, sipping Knob Creek and reading a leather-bound edition of 'The DaVinci Code.'"

Frank Bruni's idea of a hike.

Taking note of a meringue dessert Frank sampled, meant to resemble the three mountain peaks surrounding Salzburg, his new friend the Austrian sommelier "glanced longingly at it. Was he reconnecting with his native land? Or just looking forward to a reliably satisfying meal at the end of his shift?"

One may never know. But more importantly, does he have a brother?

Tune in next week, when Frank samples a "Triplets of Bellville, Ontario sandwich"

Del Posto: Totally Down to Earth (if "Earth" is Rare Etruscan Marble)

2006-03-01T17:33:00.000-05:00

If you read the Digest for the uncompromised idiocy and care nothing about the New York dining scene, it may interest you to know that Del Posto has been the subject of much word-of-mouth shittings-on, and a good deal of gossip about landlord strife and air vents (all that juicy stuff!) Throw in the fact that Frank did a PR piece about the opening not long ago, and the fact that Batali is the reigning NYC chef/restaurateur (in celebrity if not in numbers) and this week’s review, like your fat "fun" uncle Kevin who insists on doing cannon balls at the pool party, is going to make a big splash, at the risk of giving some people concussions.

Frank alludes to the negative gossip right off the bat:

“I hear a lot of grousing that Del Posto feels soulless and spurious, that it's the culinary equivalent of an epic Hollywood folly: Dishtar.” I cannot believe Frank made that joke instead of Del Postman.

“Hmmm, I’m not seeing the intersection of Hubris and Baffling Studio Approval …Oh yes! Here it is! I’m standing on it! Hahaha, you handsome nincompoop!!!”

But still, the tone of the whole review feels like the Count is defending the honor of a wronged lady, to the point of accusing us New Yorkers of being small-minded.

I plead "No Contest."

Batali and his business partner, Joe Bastianich “have crumpled up page after page of the script that made their previous ventures so beloved and written a new libretto, emphasizing refined notes over rustic ones, sacrificing hip on the altar of elegant.”

In other words, that downtowny, accessible, rockery goodness that we know and maybe love as Babbo and Lupa and Otto etc., has been replaced with a totally different operational philosophy:

“Spacious and tranquil, with a piano player in place of a rock soundtrack, Del Posto is the anti-Babbo, the un-Lupa.” The a-Otto. The de-Esca. The Bistro du Venticide. We get it. There will not be enormo hamhocks curing from farm-like rafters. Let’s move on.

Now in partnership with Bastianich’s mama Lidia, the “two men have challenged New Yorkers to accept Italian cuisine presented with fastidious rituals and opulent trappings usually reserved for French fare.”

Rituals and trappings usually reserved for French fare and for Edwardian dance reenactors, that is.

“EDWINA?”
“INDEED, JEFFERSPIRE?”
“SHALL WE BEGIN THE QUADRILLE?”
“BY CHRIST WE SHALL. Safety.”
“Doorknob”

“Del Posto dares to speak in an unfamiliar idiom, only to be told it has a phony accent.”
Thank you Confuciou-- I mean, Frank.

The fancy gallic trappings of the Del Posto would set the stage for a real reaming if it weren’t for the food, which charms the pants off Frank (don’t worry! He’s wearing a lace petticoat underneath!) :

Del Posto’s fare is “distinguished by first-rate ingredients (the arugula here makes arugula at many other restaurants seem like iceberg in drag)”

WHEN WILL YOU FINALLY JUST ACCEPT ME AS ARUGULA?? I FEEL LIKE ARUGULA, I KNOW I'M 100% ARUGULOUS ON THE INSIDE!!!

The rustic authenticity doesn’t stop with the greens:

“Mr. Batali's love of offal finds expression in pici, a sort of fat Tuscan spaghetti, with coxcombs, chicken livers, duck testicles and, for conventional decadence, black truffles.”

You may protest that there is no such thing as duck testicle—after all, ducks aren’t mammals! And only mammals have testicles! But he is speaking of a special Italian duck, which doesn’t cross borders.

The Italian Great Balled Mallard struggles to cross even the narrowest streets.

So despite the classiness of the decor, you see, the food is straightforward—not exactly what Giuseppe Schmoe eats every day after cobbling together Fiats, but at least innocent of obnoxious frippery:

“Mr. Batali, Ms. Bastianich and the executive chef, Mark Ladner, tend not to go off on precious, rococo tangents.”

I’ll be the first to say Thank Goodness! I mean, I love Rococo, but…

Batali's tender nipplets make me ill, like a first-time seafarer.

“The potent appeal of a mixed grill with pork loin, a lamb chop, quail and a goose sausage hinges on the kitchen's care with these elements, not on a flurry of embellishments.”
Indeed. What could be simpler? What could be less embellished than a huge meat pile? It fed the dinosaurs, the simple spear-toting cavemen, and the homos erecti for millennia.

See? Not embellished at ALL!!! Ha!…ahem.

“In a disconcerting and sometimes disappointing fashion, dining at Del Posto can demand more than a generous budget and several hours. It can require a quorum.”

Quorum, of course, from the Latin for “liquor,” being a small copper hipflask, usually kept in a woman’s garter or between her breasts in some sort of girdle.
For those unused to girdles, a simple codpiece will suffice.

This one's very affordable, and it's L.L. Bean so there's a lifetime guarantee in case you lose a penis stud.

"Ms. Bastianich can be seen and heard whisking the zabaglione in a copper pot, and the incessant clanging, coupled with the tinkling of the piano, quickly teeters into parody."

I've been known to hooter into parody, but never teeter. Frankly it sounds cheezy. But for Frank, the physical luxury of the place amounts to space and quiet as much as gold trim and marble:

“It also affords real room to maneuver between tables, enough quiet to facilitate conversation…”

You see Frank, much like Silkymuff and Pooter here, has sensitive ears.

So in the end, those of us who were foolish enough to predict a slaying of Del Posto were wrong, and Mario, the eponymous Spotted Pig, now has a second 3-star in his woefully underpigmented crown:
"...why bristle at the pageantry, so long as the pleasure is intact?"

SPEAKING OF INTACT PLEASURE! Check out this short, hilarious video by my sketch comedy group. It literally includes a real kangaroo and several boobs, although they are covered in bras and shirts. I play the irascible "Carla".

Also, I'll be out of the country for the next two weeks on an extradition--OOPS! I meant exPEdition, sorryHAHAHA I HAVEN'T ROBBED ANY BANKS IN BERLIN AND I'M NOT BEING FORCIBLY BROUGHT BEFORE JUSTICE, THAT'S PREPOSTEROUS! HA! How you make me chuckle, reader!-- and during this time, my fellow sketch comedian and writer Mike "The Velveteen Faggot" will helm the Digest. As I will one day trust him to care for the fatherless bastard that will at some point tumble out of me at Pathmark, so I entrust him with this, my precious baby blog.

The Orchard: When Bad Trends Go Good

2006-02-23T17:36:00.000-05:00

Last week was a shame, a crying shame. Frank Bruni is clearly keeping very close tabs on me, and JUST when (for once!) I get all busy, he launches his massive treasure-trove of satire-hunter’s bounty: his own BLOG. And he throws in for good measure one of the funniest starred reviews in recent memory, where he basically describes the restaurant Telepan as a 17th century Dutch peasant: really fucking ugly but incredibly pious.

Frank doesn’t bring much insight to this week’s review, instead heaping on a flat I’m-with-it exuberance. Like a Cosby-clad dad popping in on his son’s meth-rave sweet 16 and sticking both thumbs awkwardly up: “This is COOOL! No It’s Kool! It’s Kray-zeee Kool! Awriiight!”

"You just keep makin' out, kids! The Mrs. and I are upstairs with a defibrilator and some cookies."

What is it that Frank is so eagerly on board with? While he hasn’t always been in favor of pan-global Epcot-Center menus (he in fact throws a jab at the Stanton Social in here), something about John Lafemina’s new Orchard restaurant on the LES gives him a hearty boner.

I have faith in Lafemina, if only via my love of his 1st place, Peasant, which, as Bruni says, “romances Italy to the point of presenting a menu entirely in Italian. Servers stand over your table and, item by item, for minutes on end, channel Berlitz instructors.”

Well the staff may be handily attentive upstairs, but the best time to be had at Peasant is the basement, a candle-lit caverna with earthen walls and long, shared tables. Yes, the food is delicious, but the basement is primarily a riot because the place is always serviced by two UNREAL dudes— one a lanky, Jesus-like Brit with a shirt unbuttoned to his navel who says things like, “The octopus, yeh? She’s goooorgeous.”

And then there’s his tawny slaveboy sidekick, a deferential mop-headed Mediterranean she-boy who seems born to lounge around fanning Caesar Augustus’ balls. They are both phenomenal, by which I mean that they drape themselves over the bar, dreaming idly, strumming instruments, trimming their chest hair, and bantering sexily, while the packed room is in full hunger-riot and everyone is creating elaborate semaphoric gestures to somehow communicate with them.

This is literally what the British dude’s chest looks like. It's oddly appetizing, like B.O.

But Peasant paves no conceptual way for Lafemina’s newbie, the Orchard.

"...while Italy again seems to be his touchstone, he touches down in many other places as well."

Touching in many places can be perfectly classy. (Disclosure: I obviously just wanted to post that picture. Have a lovely afternoon.)

Frank goes through a tour of restaurant globalism—- a trend he used to think smacked of trendiness. But now he concedes that there’s a new breed of fusion, respect-worthy fusion:

“I'm thinking of new restaurants with serious ambitions and uncommon culinary partnerships. Take Dani, which constructs a bridge between northern Africa and southern Italy. Or Morimoto, where an appetizer ‘pizza’ bedecks a tortilla with raw bluefin tuna, an anchovy aioli and jalapeño. It's Asian, Italian, a nod to Nobu, a wink at Taco Bell.”

Even so much as a wink to Taco Bell and my lower intestine quivers like a frightened doe.

But the globalism at the Orchard actually worked, for the Count at least.
“...while the itinerary may not be coherent, the trip is a world of fun.”
YOU KRAZEE KIDS!

Little girls sometimes dress up like tarts and pretend to be princesses with their friends. Likewise, the Count sometimes puts on black horn-rimmed glasses and twirls in front of his mirrors pretending to write for Architectural Digest. “Why yes,” he says, brandishing a bedroom slipper like a slide ruler, “that IS a mansard roof!”

(I’ve obviously missed the Digest, no? I’m off my rocker today.)

My point is, Frank has always taken interiors seriously (here's lookin' at you Alto and Cafe Gray), and this week is no different:

“The drab brown carpet beneath them better suits an office than a dining room.”
You mean, “That drab brown carpet better suits the humble retina of office drones, used to such a petty, terrestrial palette. Poor drones!! HOW THEY SLAVE! Waiter? Another caviar! On Bill Keller’s tab! And make it the real Soviet shit, the shit that’s running out!”

But I think there’s someone who would disagree with Frank on that point.

For the Arctic Brown Fox, brown carpeting, be it in the forest, the tundra, or the Lower East Side Hotspot, can provide cunning shelter from predators.

LaFemina has paid attention to the details— he “has installed lighting that bathes everything in a seductive orange glow, a magical, last-gasp sunset that never ends. He has bound the menus in suede.”

“Our safety word is ‘Mascarpone.’”

According to Frank, the “little flourishes add up, giving the Orchard real style.”
This is not always so.

Sometimes the little flourishes add up, making you into Count Fagula.

When it comes to the kitchen, Frank describes the wacky internationalism, mostly followed with gee-whiz applause; but the Orchard may have earned its two stars by reversing a ubiquitous shortcoming. At the Orchard, the “entrees do a more uniformly successful job of showcasing the strengths and skill of the kitchen” than the apps. A rarity-- usually the entrees weigh a place down.

Well, one thing's for sure. Someone over there showed Frank a good time, and it's all he can talk about: “no matter the label or language, the Orchard takes you on an enjoyable tour.”

It's like Carman San Diego...

But not hosted by Michael Jackson in very thin drag.

2006-02-20T18:10:00.000-05:00

LOOKIN' FOR SOMETHING TO DO TONIGHT??

Of course not. If you were looking for something to do, you'd be at Time Out New York's site, not mine. But on the offchance that you have no idea how to use the internet and you want to see me do standup tonight, come to Rififi at 8:00 for At Night With Gabe and Jenny.

Unlike many slaves, the show is free! So let's all get together and oppose slavery by watching me perform. Thanks guys.

"If it weren't for Jules human rights activism, well, actually Jules is useless. But damned if her tits aren't buoyant and serene!"

2006-02-15T13:22:00.000-05:00

Holy Shit. I can't tell whether my life just got soooo much better or soooo much worse. But I'll tell you this much, when I sit down at my black baby grand of a laptop, crack my knuckles, and prepare to hammer something out, I know that reliably, on the other side of town, retardo-Bach is scribbling out a score for me, Wednesday or not.

2006-02-10T11:26:00.000-05:00

Catch me this Saturday talking about Bruni's "My Week as a Waiter" escapade on Leftovers with Mike Salmon on Air America 1190 WLIB. The show starts at 3 and I should be on around 3:15. Mike and his co-host, Joe, have had me on a few times before; they're great guys and a lot of fun. And you can finally settle that bet about whether I'm an earth-rattling baritone.

Answer: OBVIE.

You may recall--pause while I demurely brush my nails on my lapel-- that I broke the story the day before it hit the stands, thanks to a tipster from the East Coast Grill who had waitered alongside Frank. So I'll let you know his side of the story.

And as usual, I'll be performing uber-nutso sketch comedy tonight and every Friday at 8:00 at the People's Improv Theater with my sketch group, The Wiener Philharmonic. The New York Times called us "delightfully sophomoric." My sister calls us "like, creative bohemians." You can, like, be the judge.

UPDATE:
The guys ran late on this past week's show, so I'll be on next week instead. Meanwhile, check out this column by Pete Wells in the March issue of Food & Wine. It make-a me blush!

Gilt: I like the avant-garde, I just don't LIKE the avant-garde

2006-02-08T18:09:00.000-05:00

Frank’s dipped his ponderous mug into hundreds of troughs so far in this city, but he hasn’t encountered much avant-garde cooking in New York—you don’t see a lot of guys in NASA suits with particle separators freeze-drying air for your dubiously pleasurable consumption. Chicago’s really the capital of that world; all we’ve got is little Wylie Dufresne at WD-50 holding up his fried mayo cube like the 85th-placed kid at the science fair with a poop colored ribbon slapped onto his mold garden.

Bruni on the cutting edge of futuristic food is actually a rather momentous event.

“At many restaurants I've received tutorials on the workings of the menu. At Gilt my companions and I heard a whole treatise on the ‘thought process’ behind the meal that was getting under way.”

Gross. I have to admit a prejudice against food that makes you feel less like you’re out on the town and more like you’re assembling furniture. Which no one should let me do.

"The baby’s crib is all ready honey!"

“Our server said that specially tailored side dishes with the entrees and even with the appetizers would provide contrasting or complementary effect, a dynamic not so revolutionary as to warrant introduction.”
That’s actually a very good point. Cut to server in futuristic avant-garde getup…

"It’s this conceptually intense approach whereby we broaden your flavor receptor sensitivity by orbiting your main dish with satellite dishes of things like vegetables. Don’t worry about it, you’ll catch on.”

You mean a side? I’ve heard of it. You know who else has heard of it?

Wendy.

I’ve recently been through an experience where I was coached for 3 hours about what and how I was to eat, so I sympathize with Frank’s friend: "'I feel like I'm in my first class of organic chemistry,' one [friend] said, 'and I'm ready to drop pre-med.'"

Definitely drop pre-med, dude. It’s like, why go through eight years of school when you can get the scrubs UPS-ed overnight? Am I wrong?

See how convincing that is? Ignoring the abject pervert grin and hair, of course.

But embedded in the whole exhausting, tutorial experience ("semester"), Frank did find some “extraordinary payoffs, like duck poached in beet juice and lobster seasoned with vanilla and set on a cauliflower purée.” And all of his meats and fish were--gasp!--cooked precisely to order (no doubt a first.)

In the end, the Count’s crystal clear message to mad-genius 29-year-old chef Paul Liebrandt, which you can read between the two shiesty stars if not the lines: CHILLAX. “Gilt sometimes doesn't know when to pull back, pipe down and let superior food speak for itself.”

Liebrant’s fame derives equally from wacky food (crystallized violets) and wacky gimmicks (blindfolding people and making them eat off a naked lady.) Unfortunately for repressed secret lesbians who love new age cuisine, the latter’s been eliminated—“He's not as intent on gadgetry”—but the food still involves “intricate constructions, with so many facets they fatigue.”

Take a piece of ocean trout, garnished with razor clams, sea beans, braised snails, TrimSpa, edible panties, a fire extinguisher, two Doc Martens and some Spam.

The trout “deserved to be big, on a stage of its own” but “was mobbed by an unruly cast.”

I felt the same way. Trout was WAY too good for such ensemble work.

But Frank is not one to quash an effulgence of youthful creativity— he concedes that Liebrandt's stuff “springs from an admirable thoughtfulness” and that Liebrandt is not ”some vacuously flamboyant bad boy, as his detractors have claimed.”
Let me translate this: “I like what you’re doing, Paul, I just don’t LIKE what you’re doing.”

The décor is as out-there as the food, with two rooms that are “like two Kubricks in one, a ‘Space Odyssey’ segueing into ‘Eyes Wide Shut.’ With a palate wide open, you embark on a feast worthy of ‘Barry Lyndon.’”
Eiwww. You had me with the Kubrick thing until...EIWWWWW

BARRY LYNDON + a sweatsuit from Price Club = the nooniest 40 year old woman's DREAM come true. This movie is SO NOONY! Even the mention of it makes me want to pluck a hair from my chin and go jazzersize. If you can't intuit what nooniness is from that definition, refer here.

Frank wraps up with a few more demerits (a sole "topped with Comté cheese, which was in turn topped with a tarragon mustard sabayon. What a lost sole." GROOOAAAAANNNN) and some compliments, but he touches on the olive oil drizzled over a wasabi-green apple sorbet:

"Women received a lighter oil from one bottle, while men got a heavier one from another. Gilt could provoke the first condiment-based gender discrimination suit."

You know, that just doesn't cut it for Po-Mo in this town anymore. Frankly, if he wants to do make an extreme statement he should serve men their food on a floppy disk and women from a L'Eggs panty hose jar. It's so avant garde it's almost...avant-garter.

OK, for that, I promise to kill myself. See you next week.

Barbounia: Why, I think you mean "toot pillow."

2006-02-08T02:09:00.000-05:00

How many times must a man run into the editorial wall of not being able to talk about a butt? How often must he search in the pockets of his bloomers for a solution and come up with nothing but gold coins, Estee Lauder Equalizing Foundation for Combination Skin, and a mille-feuille of expense receipts, but NO IDEA HOW TO TALK ABOUT AN ASS. Barbounia presented this very challenge to the Count this week:

“THE new restaurant Barbounia is very easy on the eyes, relatively easy on the ears and not so bad on the stomach, either. But it's kindest of all to another part of the body, which is less delicately evoked and most often consigned to euphemism.”

He’s encountered this problem before. With the Times' Crass Police hot on his tail, and without knowledge of such handy, seemingly innocent expressions as “salad-spinner," "turtle crack” or “meat buns” (the kids these days are so creative!) Frank really flounders.

I mean, if the corporate world can cope...

“How to put this into appropriately fuzzy language?” pleads Frank, as if we still have no idea what he’s talking about (I just don’t get it—you mean the seats are comfy on my ANTERIAL PERINEUM?)

His solution is to focus on the lush cushioning itself:
“Let's just say that no matter where inside Barbounia you sit and no matter how long you sit there, you will feel cushioned, coddled and grateful.”

And crunk. And spread-eagle.

“Chairs in the dining room are broad, soft and upholstered. Banquettes are pillow-paloozas, as suitable for napping as for noshing.”

This is starting to align with the eat-on-a-bed trend in New York, places like Duvet and Bed, which should be renamed Get Soup on Your Boobs Café and Crane Your Neck Til it Snaps Inn, respectively.

You know, they invented a sexy new way to eat in bed.

It's called an IV.

“In a city where diners' physical comfort often gets too little consideration, Barbounia is practically a massage of a restaurant, and its magic fingers reflect a broader eagerness to please.”

OK, WE GET IT. You lie in the lap of a bosomous wetnurse while a tiny, aggressive Swede runs your major muscle groups over a vibrating washboard yada yada yada. IS THERE EVEN ANYTHING TO EAT HERE?

For better or worse, yes: “Barbounia's Mediterranean menu smacks of a bit too much market research and a bit too little inspiration....You relish and remember the sitting in part because it's easy to forget the eating, which is often appealing but seldom exciting.”

So if you go to Barbounia, this might lie in your future:

Buddy: Hey, how was that new place, Barbounia?
You: Um, I don’t know. Well I know that we were sitting.
Buddy: Huh?
You: Yeah, we definitely sat during the meal. I can tell you that.
Buddy: What about the food?
You: Consumed demi-supine. For sure.
Buddy: Did you order—
You: On chairs, mostly.

Although if it tastes unexciting, at least the food looks nice:

"This restaurant knows how to assemble a nice spread, be it cheese or salumi. It understands the value of a good visual."

Thankfully, so do I.

In the end, Frank gives Barbounia a star, sheerly for the cushions, it seems. I can't quite get a reading on this place from the review, whether it's a corporate dump for suckers or kind of a treat. Frank's final clue:

Barbounia “is a reference to red mullet.”

That's a haircut for man who understands the concept of "commitment."

Awesome. I'm off to Barbounia, to order a glass of water and lounge on their banquettes like it's a commercial for the Bahamas.

Being an assclown-- off the page.

2006-02-02T15:10:00.000-05:00

"Where Barbounia at, ho?!" You demand angrily. "Get on it!"

And I will, as I hypothetically had you say, "get on it," asap, but I've been a little distracted. My sketch comedy group, the Wiener Philharmonic, has a new show opening tomorrow at the People's Improv Theater in Chelsea.

DOODY CALLS
8:00 pm
Fridays through February
People's Improv Theater (the PIT)
154 W 29th Street, between 6th and 7th

Get tix and learn more about us here.

Despite the title, this is not a gross show about poopie; it's an uncompromising, poignant interrogation into poopie. No it's not. But I promise, it's hilarious. And written by Jon Friedman (the Rejection Show), who is adorable. And if you don't support things that are adorable, well...

...quite frankly, you're racist.

So check us out!

Frank's review ofBarbounia (or as I like to say, Barboobs), in all its haremy, ass-comforting luxe, will be duly addressed tomorrow.

The Spotted Pig: When Metaphors for Fat Men are Totally Disgusting, Part 1

2006-01-26T17:18:00.000-05:00

With the first and last journalistic feather I will ever earn proudly jammed into my skull (I don’t wear caps) after a tipster from East Coast Grill got in touch with me, I can sit back and muse at what an awesome Brunami this week’s Dining Section was.

Between hawking pickles at unknowing Bostonians and elbowing his way to tables at the Spotted Pig, Frank has done a lot of waiting this week, and my, has it paid off! Frank’s “My Week as a Waiter” is the Times’ most e-mailed story right now, and while it wasn’t exactly revelatory—apparently these “restaurants” have secret “code numbers” for every table!—it was cheeky, risqué, and tarte flambee all at the same time. J’adore.

But let’s not let all this incognito pickle-hurling (reminds me of sophomore year!) distract us from what was actually very enlightening: “Stuffed Pork,” Frank’s visit to the white-hot Spotted Pig.

He starts out playing dumb: “In just one example of my lidless optimism and bottomless foolishness, I recently visited the Spotted Pig on a Friday night at about 7:30, not exactly an off hour.”

Bottomless foolishness happens to the best of us, Frank!

Facing a 2-hour wait that night, “I took a pass, because I had this thing called hunger gnawing at me, and vowed to be cleverer about my next Pigward journey.”
At least it wasn’t "this thing called 'badger'" gnawing at you.

I'm just trying to look on the bright side here.

And while in a few pargraphs, Frank will praise the distinctive and fresh English-Italian fare, his scant one star boils down to this: “The Spotted Pig may well be Manhattan's most unforgiving, uncomfortable trough, the gastropub as gastromelee.”

It’s a classic story, really— the place is too hot for its own good, like the cheerleader who’s so hot, she’s pregnant. Being cool can back fire, and cause that particular hate-nausea you can’t help feeling for, say, innocent thrillers about evil papal sects, or convenient little shearling after-surf booties.

I don't often say this about myself, but this image makes me "gun-hungry."

“So the Pig” – Frank’s on a species-name basis with the place—“inevitably, has porked up.” If you thought the Spotted Pig’s recent addition of an upstairs, doubling its capacity from 50 stupid twats to 110 stupid twats, would ease the wait time, you’re wrong: “the waits at dinnertime are as long, and the crowds as dense, as ever.”

Avril Lavigne waited for a table for about 200 years.

The Count has a saucy suggestion: “The Pig should give you more than a menu. It should hand out a special Kama Sutra on the contortions necessary to get to and from your seat.”

Like a child from the liquor cabinet, I should be kept vigilantly away from imaging programs.

"April Bloomfield, the chef and a principal owner, favors smoked things, cured things, rich things and salty things."

In other words, Gabriel Garcia Marquez is really her ideal entree.

The shaved white truffles are a nice addition.

More revelations: how did the Pig get its name?

"[Part-owner Ken Friedman] said he liked the sound of the Spotted Pig and considered it an allusion to one of his advisers and investors, Mario Batali."

Oh no...

"'He's got freckles,' Mr. Friedman said. 'That's on the record.'"

Interesting? Yes. NAST? for sure. Whereas you may have previously thought of the Spotted Pig as a charming little Briticism, like “spotty dick” or “marmite,” you can now sleep in a cold layer of sweat knowing it refers to the extensive, dappled tarp of pallor covering Mario Batali’s body. Nightmare on West 11th Street, roll credits.

So Bruni's conclusion? Aside from the famous gnudi and a good burger, the food cedes center stage repeatedly to the overwhelming hassle of trying to basically exist at the Pig.

“If you're intent on going at a normal dinner hour, do a searing personal inventory of the sturdiness of various body parts.”

Uh, how personal? Like 'Hey Karen, didja bring your huuuge vagina tonight, we're gonna be waiting around a lot'?

Well, actually, pretty personal...

The count asks, “Bladder strong? The line for the small unisex bathroom downstairs can be long. But it can also be interesting.”

How so? Old people makin' doodies en route?

“Two young, pretty women entered the bathroom together. And stayed for a bit.
While they were in there, a server and I exchanged amused glances, and my weariness with so much standing and waiting went away.”

There’s nothing like the warm, mirthful glance exchanged by server and diner over hot chicks doing blow in the bathroom. Am I wrong here? Or were they lezzies?

"With its festive spirit and with the best of its food, the Pig can make that happen.”

Make what happen? Marching powder or impromptu mid-meal sapphic breakdowns? Well, I'm not into coke but if you've got anti-naked-image-of-freckly-mario-on-a-platter-with-an-apple-in-his-mouth pills, I'll take a generous handful.

The Count poses as a WAITER??

2006-01-24T12:59:00.000-05:00

The Bruni Digest is not out to unmask people, has never posted images of the Count, and frankly, the only scooping I have ever done usually occurs on my neighbors' lawn and involves some quantity of dogpoop. However, curiosity has got the better of me, and I have to ask, what's THIS tip that I just got all about?:

A young man writes that he is a waiter at a restaurant in Cambridge, Mass., where this past Saturday "none other than Mr Bruni just completed a scandalous run posing as a waiter to find the story on the other side of the table. Mr Bruni, or Gavin White as he was introduced to me, seemed intent on his identity remaining secret."

But WHY? This makes no sense!

"He came to Massachusetts because he did not want in his words '.. the New York gossip columns' to get a hold of this story."

Huh. Only tomorrow's Times will tell, I guess, if he indeed is doing a behind-the-scenes waiter article. He is, after all, on a bit of a public service kick.

So...did anybody in Cambridge, Mass have a burger chucked at them by THIS GUY?

Pair of 8's: Franklene's Basement

2006-01-18T18:23:00.000-05:00

This week, if you were to feel suddenly invasive and decide to huddle outside Frank’s chateau window with a periscope while he dressed, you might see him forego the usual velvets and lace for a Jaquelyn Smith for K-Mart doily-trimmed sweatsuit in “mom-taupe.” Because between last week’s visit to Al di La, followed by Frank’s exposee of hidden charges lurking in bottled water and prix fixe supplements, and now this week’s restrained hoorah for Pair of 8’s based solely on its value, there’s no question that it’s Bargain Time in Frankville.

“EVERY Monday night on a stretch of Amsterdam Avenue with the kind of functional restaurants people outside the neighborhood seldom discuss, something remarkable happens.”

A Barnard freshman loses her bra at Bourbon Street?

7 lords a leaping, six skanks a skanking, 5 BRO-KEN TEEEEETH

No?...I give up then, what happens on Monday nights?

“It's a matter of value, pure and simple. For $25, Pair of 8's…presents you not only with a two-course meal - appetizer and entree - but also with a glass of red or white wine.”

What is this thing you call a “glass”? Huh. How many “glasses” are in a standard “sheep’s bladder” (my preferred unit)?

Tawdra and Ryan want to know how many glasses to a standard Metric Douchebarrel?

“Pair of 8's permits you to elect a proper, refined meal out over a thrown-together meal in, without digging too deep into your pocket or courting much guilt.”
Perhaps the subject matter is prodding Frank to return to one of my favorite habits: Biblical Frank! “It permitteth you to elect a repast afield, nay to plunder ye pockets afore!”

He continues, “It speaks to what many people really want from restaurants, as well as to how they choose where they go.”

In other words, people want ease and affordability.

Well, not these people. But most people.

"Unless the evening centers around a hot date, an important client or a special occasion, they don't jostle for admission to the place getting the most frequent mention in gossip columns. They're not spending whatever it takes for the most inspired confluence of Asian ingredients and French technique."

You may have reached the end of that paragraph before discovering who THEY is. It is YOU, us, the motley masses, le peuple, los popolos, la genitale. Frank is explaining to us, not unjustly, why we love our local neighborhood spots.

I'm the first to cheer for local joints. I’m not going to let a little thing like the Department of Health and Human Safety keep me away from MY favorite local restaurant, Café Lafayette.

I hope you’re hungry, Fort Greene: Ebola’s on!!!!

But wait! Pair of 8’s only offers this miraculous $25 deal on Mondays. “On other nights the prices at Pair of 8's are entirely fair in relation to the quality of the ingredients being used, but they're not quite bargains.”

Well, what can I expect in return for my not-insignificant bill 6 days a week?

“Much of the cooking doesn't snap you to attention, and some of it lulls you to sleep, suggesting a new school of gastronomic thought, devised to dovetail with the pharmacological moment: Ambien cuisine.”

I don’t even know what to say about this, except that I can’t believe it took a stodgy older man to clue me in to the drug-abuse zeitgeist. Great. I’ll just have Julie Andrews give me the latest scoop on "barely-there thongware" after Gloria Vanderbilt waxes my tooter, and call it a day.

But at the same time that it’s Ambien-licious, Pair of 8's is “a modest new bistro that doesn't feel like a comedown.” Uh oh. Don’t mix your drugs, Frank!

Well if the food’s sleepy, the wine happenings are like a welcome extended-family Herb Alpert conga line in your living room: kind of effortful, a little dorky, but better than homework. “You are encouraged to have fun with wine. Pair of 8's uses continually changing humorous themes to introduce sequences of three or four wines.”

This week’s theme is “Wines from Sonoma County: Queef Time 9000”

Well, it’s clear that Frank likes this place. Maybe his calling chef Bill Peet “soporific” will snap the chef out of his bland daze and make him spark up a bit; hopefully he won't “pull a Jules,” a.k.a. start dumping cayenne pepper into things when you don’t know what to do.

You know my motto: if it's good enough to spray onto a horse's hide to make it sweat, it's good enough to eat!

No matter what, Mondays at Pair of 8’s should be booming for a while, starred in reward for the place's austerity:

“Pair of 8's clearly wants to be a straightforward broker. And while it doesn't leave you mightily impressed, it leaves you feeling as if you've been treated with fairness and consideration. There's something to be said for that.”

Next week:

Burlap Susan’s Take-no-Shit Bread Hut

Al di La: One Point for Brooklyn Braggadoccio

2006-01-14T16:46:00.000-05:00

It is time for me to make public what everyone in my close circle of friends knows: if you ever need a dining partner for Al di La, an intrepid, obtuse companion willing to sign on for a 2-hour wait in the shivering cold (or alternately, more than willing to duck into a lezzie bar across the street), call me. I will drop the baby I was in the middle of delivering, or lob the volatile atom I was carefully tucking away into a nuclear safely vault, and come running to you, arms wide open, a tripe-seeking boner cramping my jeans and leading the way down 5th ave.

Frank’s become notorious for giving out 2-star ratings with the indiscriminate vigor of a suburban lawn-sprinkler. While strictly, my undertaking here is to stand behind the Count as he talks and make fart noises and stupid faces, I have to step out of bounds today and say, “Shit, bitch. Give ‘em all the stars your little heart desires. I love that place.” My excitement exceeds Frank's: his very earnest rapture this week is lexically restrained…or reserved, perhaps, for his fist-pumping, proletarian cry of outrage against $45 glasses of wine and other hidden costs.

"I mean, $18 extra on a $65 pre-opera prix-fixe just for DOMESTIC foie? It's time for barricades, people."

Frank begins, “Food lovers who live in Brooklyn, especially food lovers who moved there from Manhattan, love to say that they have better restaurants, ones that wed equally fine food to a humility often absent in the taller, shinier, haughtier borough across the water.”

No fair! No one will ever be as tall and shiny as Staten Island! (ZING)

When we Brooklynites gloat about our borough’s food, Frank is smiling in our faces and inwardly applying his Brooklynites’ Opinion Conversion Chart:

Brooklynite X Level of Boro Pride = Credibility X -1,000,000,000

“Sometimes these people are simply falling prey to local pride and grading on a generous curve.”
Well, it's better to fall prey to local pride in Brooklyn than to fall prey to a local pride in the Serengeti, that's for sure.

Poor Renee.

Frank had been resisting Al di La. Why ever?

“One reason was practical: it doesn't take reservations, and I wasn't wild about traveling to Park Slope to wait an hour or more…” Boo hoo. They take your cell phone number and you hit up a lezzie bar until they’ve got room for you. Mayhaps this appeals to me more than to Frank?

Awww, Jules’ christening!

“Another reason was journalistic: the charms of Al di Là weren't exactly secrets (hence those waits), so what purpose did a fresh look serve?”
Meanwhile, Frank's scrupulous investigations of Spigolo, Frederick’s of Madison, Bette, and recent restaurant Toilet Trends have shed great light on the impact of U.S. intervention in the Middle East.

But the third reason Frank avoided Al di La, I can certainly sympathize with: it’s the same reason I avoid “Lost” and “24.” Everyone’s SOOOOOO fucking into it and you feel like you’ll NEVER catch up and you’re totally alienated in idiot silence around the water cooler, and it’s like, you try, but these insane plotlines make you feel about as perceptive as a dolphin who’s recently had its head run over by a speedboat.

"Lost" script goes through its final editing stages at ABC headquarters.

OK, I’m off topic a bit, but the point is, when everyone is so unanimously in love with something, it makes you want to dig your heels deep into a trench of annoyed skepticism, even, as Frank says, “pure stubbornness: so many Brooklyn friends were so smug in asserting that this little Italian gem was the ideal neighborhood restaurant. Even if they were right, I didn't want to grant them that.”

Why would you? Those oaty Brooklynites would have taken their pride to the streets, inciting lord knows what kind of organic, child-friendly violence.

Only minutes before being sniped by a Manhattan SWAT team, this Brooklynite's drum circle was dangerously smug.

The food isn’t perfect—as per usual, there’s a dry chicken among the missteps. But on the whole, Frank digs the reliable, unaffected fare. And he points out the best tripe on the island, in my opinion at least:

“Al di Là has also been doing its tripe appetizer since the beginning, and I hope it will do its tripe appetizer until the end. Blissfully slimy and appropriately chewy, the tripe is cooked and served in a bath of white wine, soffritto and tomatoes, with grilled peasant bread that you can, and should, use to mop up the liquid remnants.”

Mop the liquid remnants… Nice one, Cyrano de Bergerac. Delicately put. Sounds more like what you do if a fourth grader pukes in the computer lab.

"Not another one...They have GOT to stop studying flight simulators..."

But either way, we’re agreed that the maneuver’s pretty essential.

In conclusion, "Al di Là, whose name is a kind of Italian double entendre, referring literally to 'the other side' and figuratively to the great beyond, beckons and rightfully attracts food lovers from far and wide, their local prejudices trumped by its universal appeal."

In other words: “You weren’t just being your cozy, prideful selves again, Brooklyn; this place is great. Now go to the Food Co-Op and roll in some trail mix while I retreat to my chateau to tickle my fanny with the tattered pages of a classic novel."
Man, it just makes me feel so...so small and hanicapped.

And now, if you'll excuse me, my ride is here.

4 Minutes in Heaven

2006-01-09T16:48:00.000-05:00

I'll be reading tomorrow at the Ritalin Reading Series at Mo Pitkins at 8:30. No one gets to take up more than 4 minutes, so if your attention span is as hopelessly eroded as mine, this is the show for you. Click the above link to check out the awesome lineup, or buy tickets in advance.

Bonus: Mo Pitkins is home of the much-publicized manishevitini. A definite improvement over the short-lived Manishevitatorade sports drink.

Centrico: Frank Said Knock Mama Out

2006-01-09T11:08:00.000-05:00

Frank’s double-reviews, an innovation purely of his own in the annals of the Dining Times (or, rather, the Anals of the Dining Times until the early nineties it seems), have thus far followed similar templates, and this one’s no different—two restaurants in the same general category of cuisine, one old and stodgy, the other new and eager to please.

Howevs, this week, Frank makes it a family affair, delivering a fairly handy smackdown to Zarela Martinez as a foil for a healthy appreciation for her son’s new restaurant, Centrico. Her son, Aaron Sanchez, owes me several thousand dollars in child support for all the children I conceived during happy hour at his first restaurant, Paladar.

That’s Peter, he’s the oldest—he shines my shoes. Nicky, Ronaldo, and Tiny do most of the housework, and little Francisco, while only 6, is already a WHIZ with a blow dryer.

I don’t know if Sanchez is a man of honor, but if so, Count Frank might want to hide in his Louis Quatorze enamel-inlaid armoire for a few days, just to let the dust settle, no? I mean, he insulted this guy’s mama! And if there’s one thing I’ve gleaned from a close cinematic analysis of Mexicans like “Pappa” Sanchez (as my little ones call him), is that they love gunplay,

revenge,

more gunplay, and

facial hair.

So when Sanchez shows up with huge prop guns, Frank, just be prepared to be tied to a kitchen chair and rigorously chafed by a unibrow. I think that’s the point I’m trying to make here. I don’t know. Three martini lunch, ya know? Anyway, let’s go back in time, to little Aaronito’s childhood:

“AARÓN SÁNCHEZ spent his boyhood in the heat and hullabaloo of professional kitchens, tied to his mother's apron strings in an almost literal way.”

"Mama, can I help with the tamales?"
"Oh Christ, not again."

"Centrico is a flashier, splashier bid for the big time than Mr. Sanchez's first restaurant, Paladar, which arrived on the Lower East Side about four years ago." My doctors concur that it was indeed four years ago:

"While Paladar serves pan-Latin American food, Centrico, like Zarela, focuses on Mexico. Mr. Sánchez is braising on his mother's turf. He also happens to be besting her. At Centrico, you can bet on a meal that will be at least somewhat pleasing. Zarela, in contrast, is a crapshoot."

And so it begins. The “Yo mama’s restaurant so inconsistent” joke only gets more painful:

“I sampled three chicken dishes…; in all cases, the meat was dry. A grouper special didn't taste remotely fresh.” Sad for Zarela. And sad for me! Bruni’s intra-familial wedge-driving this week has been notably sober in terms of language. At least his inner pickle-picking Peter Piper refuses to die: Arroz con crema went “from luscious one night to lumpy and leaden another.”

“But the relative merits of these two restaurants say less about whether a child's talents have outgrown a parent's than about something much less romantic: diligence.”
So in addition, “Yo mama’s so lazy.”

This situation is the reverse of the one my mother and I find ourselves in—I think we’re equally talented cooks, but while she’s sticking thromometer’s everywhere and measuring out things like “deciliters,” I use temperatures like “on fire” and quantities like “a contaminated handful.”

Jules delicately pan-fries tilapia fillets.

In the end, you really didn’t need to hear about Zarela to understand how Frank felt about Centrico—the maternal smackdown was totally incidental to his actual one-star review. But what’s done is done, and who knows? Maybe Sanchez is gloating—next time there’s a tiff in the Sanchez family kitchen, Aaron can always throw this in his mother’s face: “All these years later, her restaurant could take a few lessons from his.” Yowch! Then again, maybe he’s grabbing a huge fake gun and heading out the door on a mission of vengeance.

Then again, maybe not.

If you need to cleanse your visual palate from that disgusting image, you could always saunter over to the Accidental Hedonist, and vote for the Bruni Digest for Best Food Humor. Or you could just gauge your eyes out. Yuck!

2006-01-05T13:29:00.000-05:00

What what? The Bruni Digest is nominated for Best Humor Blog in the Accidental Hedonist's annual Food Blog Awards.

To express who YOU truly believe is the prettiest princess in funny foodblog land, vote here

"Aw, yeeeah. That Korean photojournalits wants it!"

Best of Bruni 2005

2005-12-29T11:50:00.000-05:00

As the Count's first calendar year as New York Times Restaurant Critic comes to a close, let's look back over our shoulders at the tantalizing trail of panties that has led up to this point: the Best of Bruni 2005.

"But," you protest, "how can you choose? It's like picking among your own children!" Well, I don't have children, but when I do, I'll clearly pick for favorites the prettiest and least gin-damaged ones.

Jules: Well, doc, is it a boy or a girl??
Doctor: I don't know how to say this, but...well...you've birthed several ounces of Juniper berries.
Jules: Perrrrrfect.

Most Pervy

Yumcha: “If you sense in those descriptions a blurring of boundaries - a sort of pan-Asian embrace coupled with a French kiss - you understand Yumcha's wiles. It christens its come-on ‘modern haute Chinese.’” I mean.

Taboon: "The restaurant Taboon was built from the ground up in a peculiar and particular sense. Its back story is a tale of love and parquet." It gets randier from there.

Sushi of Gari: "I am ashamed of my past. Horrified by it, really. I need to glance back only a little more than a decade to catch a glimpse of my wantonness, to see myself treating something precious as if it were just so much flesh. When it came to sushi, I was a cad. I degraded it with excess wasabi paste, and my use of soy sauce was nothing short of promiscuous." That's a winner.

Most Carb-Celebratory

Barbes: "Few carbohydrates could have triumphed so handily over Atkins and South Beach. But pasta thrives, insistent and ineluctable, like Paris Hilton.”

Bistro du Vent: "Mr. Pasternack...has created his own private Idaho, a place where...diners heretofore victorious over starches are bound to meet their Waterloo.”

Most Irrelevant

Frederick's: "To be clear, Frederick's neither composes an interesting enough menu nor performs consistently enough to lure many diners with no other business in the East 60's.” Grrrrrreat.

Bette: OK, sure, a Diner's Journal entry was justified. But 30 days later, Bette round II? "In this daisy chain of dauntless gawking, necks craned violently and heads swiveled abruptly. Was Bette a restaurant, or a cunning plot by business-hungry chiropractors?” Genius.

Biggest Winners

Sripraphai: "By the time [my friend] sampled the restaurant's roasted duck salad, its curry rice noodles and its sautéed 'drunken' noodles, I had traveled in his estimation from cretin to genius, villain to hero, a culinary Columbus who had discovered an untrammeled new world." This one was November 2004, techincally outside of the calendar year. But it marks, according to many, the most scandalous thing in Frank's record to date: 2 stars for a dumpy takeout place in Queens.

Bistro du Vent: Two Stars? Just for Serving Potatoes?

Biggest Losers

Alain Ducasse at Essex House: Frank brought the restaurant down to 3 stars from 4; this was just pre-Digest, although a few months later I did have a comment on the resulting curb-kickage of Exec. Chef Christian Delouvrier.

Ninja: This was more like a huge-handed birthday clown spinning around open-palmed in a tight circle of children: non-stop hilarious smackdowns of poor assholes that didn’t see it coming.

Koi: “Like an aged pop star on the latest of several proclaimed farewell tours, Koi ultimately relies on pose more than performance.” Just say "Cher," ok? You don't have to protect her, she's made of Teflon.

Most Distinctive:

Keens: A trip to Colonial Restaurantsburg, complete with 200-year history of mutton in America.

Della Rovere: CHOCK FULL of cheezy jokes.

Prem-on Thai: Inexplicably, done entirely in prayer format: “Let us now praise the crispy fish, which has swum and sizzled its way onto the menus of so many Asian restaurants in our fair city, determined to prove that seafood can taste as ecstatically naughty as anything else.” (Tied for Most Pervy)

Jules' Favorites

THE RED CAT. "The Red Cat feels vaguely colonial and tavernlike, except when it feels downtown-gallery cool, and apart from those moments when it feels modestly and eclectically elegant.” Wha??

Periyali: Next on Montel--"Fried rings of calamari...made all those reckless pub versions seem like so many oily bread crumbs with specious claims to maritime paternity.”

La Esquina: 'The harder it is to get in, the more fun it is to be in,' she said, articulating a maxim of Manhattan night life and a guiding principle of La Esquina, which is sort of like Studio 54 with chipotle instead of cocaine."

Aburiya Kinnosuke: “You definitely won't find elaborately constructed, kaleidoscopic sushi rolls, the kind that look more like kites than supper, or whimsically shaped stemware filled with neon-colored potions, the kind that look more like chemistry experiments than drinks.” Well, I usually don't dine at Willy Wonka's Shagadelic Thrift Store From Hell, anyway.

There are amazing, pants-shattering Brunisms I'm forgetting; so please feel free to comment or email me and I'll add 'em to the list.

OH GOD! I almost forgot: The Shitsposee-- Frank's toilet review, although really more of a revue.

Pylos: Why Pymore?

2005-12-28T17:05:00.000-05:00

At the East Village Greek spot Pylos, the fact that the ceiling is conspicuously covered in thousands of clay jugs is bound to take center stage. When I look at the jug-laden ceiling, I can’t help but feel

a) kindred (I’m totally jug-laden!)

and b) like there are 1,000 bosomy virgins waiting outside the restaurant and some woefully unattended spigot somewhere. I mean, it’s like if there are 1,000 razor scooters parked on the ceiling don’t you kind of look around and go, “Where’s the horde of helmet-clad librarians in Reeboks?”

But sitting at his large Vegas-showgirl vanity bureau, chewing thoughtfully on the end of his ostrich-feather pen/ tickler, Frank thought long and hard—not about how to approach these imposing jugs, but about WHICH PUN to use. He scribbled on the leather pages of his Ferragamo notepad:

It’s gettin’ pot in here
The grapes of carafe
Dungeons and flagons
You’ve lost that oven-baked ceiling...

Then it came to him-- the Count clapped and giggled and set quill to calfskin:

“The clay’s the thing.”

With that, the salons of the Upper West Side tittered with glee. A damsel swooned.

Well, "ate pavement" really.

The Count continues…

“[Clay is] what more than 1,000 unglazed pots attached to the restaurant's ceiling are made of. They hang upside down, dramatic and seemingly perilous, drawing your eye and maybe even making you feel a little chicken. This sky really does look as if it could fall.”

Nothing like a little survival-instinct tremor when you’re filling up on pita. Reminds me of that SUPERHOT Italian restaurant in the city in the 1970’s that wrapped your shins in pancetta and dangled you over a shark tank.

It ruined a few Bar-Mitzvah-Dancer careers early, but it sure was exciting! Are you listening, Batali? A sniper tucked in the olive barrel at Casa Mono would be a good start.

“Pylos [is] (pronounced pee-LOHS)…”

As in I have to pee-LOHS now than I did ten seconds ago.
Um, speaking of which, my pants asked me to ask you guys if anyone has any spare Resolve. Thanks.

Oh, and my office chair says to "make it snappy."

“[Pylos] opened in 2003, replacing a more casual restaurant called It's Greek to Me.”
THANK GOD. That’s all I have to say about that.

Bruni cites Pylos's “determination to stand out from other Greek restaurants by moving beyond lamb, whole grilled fish and stuffed grape leaves.” This smacks of one of my favorite Bruni reviews of all time-- Periyali. It was the most recent occasion, before Pylos, that Frank had jumped into a senatorial toga and elaborate mandals, and hit up a Greek joint. As you recall, he was impressed at various modica of ingenuity from such swill-diving shit-eaters as Greek people.

A delighted patron at Greece’s as-yet-michelin-unrated “Sloppy Nikos’ Crap Pit.” That bucket is Limoges, you know!

"Pylos also musters a hipper ambience than Greek restaurants usually attempt, the clay canopy playing a major role in that."

Earthenware vessels make the place cooler? Since when is rustic peasant gear “hip,” Frank?

I stand corrected. I also stand alarmed at the HUGE Franken-hand coming in from stage right.

But overall, while he rides the fence (like a pony) about the food, Frank has nothing but praise for the layout and the décor.

"Pylos rewards adventurous wine drinkers with a long, all-Greek wine list. After a few glasses, the clay pots, more than three pounds each, become even more transfixing."
So to answer your question about the wine list at Pylos, yes, it is alcoholic.

"Mr. Valtzoglou said he initially thought he would import pots from Greece, but learned that a nonprofit group on his block taught teenagers to make pottery. He contracted to get his reddish-brown pots from them."

Nonprofit? SUCKAZZZZ. The kids in my 'hood who sell pot are making a killing.

"Each pot is secured with heavy wire: no danger of a claystorm or clayslide here."
Oh good. There's nothing more reliable than a sturdy crockstrap!

No matter where you keep your stoneware.

And P.S.: A shout-out to Frank for his impeccable, correctionless record this year, as noted by Gawker. I'm sure that in accuracy-wrestling match, I'd go down like a Kappa Gamma Phi at the Anything-for-Money mixer. In an arm wrestling match, clearly the winner would be the concept of "nanciness."

Barca 18: Stephen Hanson Discovers Something Called "Tapas"

2005-12-22T13:58:00.000-05:00

Ahhhh, yes: One of the small perks of being a little wooden Pinnochio writer, stitched at the seams with pure H&M polyester and painted, like a Cherry Tavern pousse-cafe, in many layers of cheap alcohol, is that I don’t have to fuck around with C-cedilles. It’s the little things, you know? Thank goodness, as I walk across the Manhattan bridge, that my 1992 Dell laptop is strapped to my enormo-tits like a ragged and cold Slovenian cigarette girl’s case of wares, so that my two hands are free to flip two birds at Barca 18’s c-cedille. And now I’m retracting my middle fingers, and preparing to make a really sarcastic face as I form the “shocker”:

Because despite Frank’s admirable attempts this week to inject his review of Barca 18 with shock or surprise—it defies expectations! It doesn’t defy expectations!—the simple fact is, the “king of the one-star restaurant world” turns out to have dropped another shiny, lacquered one-star deuce on our island. Yawn.

I couldn’t help thinking of Maureen Dowd as Frank experimented with choppy, snappy fragments:

“You … get to your table, and think: Got it. The crowd, chaos and cocktails are the point of Barça 18. The food won't be.”

“Then the tapas begin to come. Big surprise."

"Lobster and mayo with a crunchy frame instead of a heavy roll: Is this genius or what?”
I can't answer that question, since I have NO IDEA what a lobster "frame" is.

But I feel like this guy might own one.

“Four pieces [of lobster] must be divided three ways. You've seen friendships sundered by lesser hardships.”

Totally, like in Beaches when CC Bloom and Hillary Essex, besties since their fateful childhood run-in on the boardwalk, have a violent falling-out over a 6-inch Cold Cut Combo from Subway (Hillary was allergic to provolone but CC needed the diary so she could fart the horn accompaniment to “Wind Beneath my Wings”.)

"Oops! Sorry, Hil, I tooted the King of Spades off the desk again..."

So the food’s good: Those of use who thought it'd be a kinda plastic pseudoswank moneypit were “dead wrong about Barça 18...

Except you weren't.”

Wha?

"The music swells, ominously and monotonously: thump, thump, thump. Is this a disco inferno?"

I don’t know, Frank— are you stuck inside this CD case?

“And is the hellfire lapping at the entrees? Three of them …are overcooked…It's what can happen when a kitchen is rigged for volume. Churn, baby, churn.”

And so with that gross slogan, Frank concludes that at Barca 18, “the exceptional jousts with the banal.”

Well, at least the socially maladjusted doesn't joust with the rurally isolated.

“The explanation for that unevenness may lie in the oddness of the couple who spawned Barça 18: the restaurateur Stephen Hanson, who bankrolled it, and the chef Eric Ripert, who clambered down from the tower of Le Bernardin to develop the menu and tutor the kitchen staff.”

What’s so odd about that? In classic New York fashion, we have a finance guy with a beautiful lady on his arm. The tower he "clambered down" is clearly the one he shares with Rapunzel. Ripert can be quite an enchantress: remember when he stole Frank's heart? I do. And Hanson is a worthy and clever Prince Business Acumen.

“Mr. Hanson is practiced at identifying countries with fetching culinary traditions…China (Ruby Foo's), Mexico (Dos Caminos) and Italy (Vento Trattoria).”

That Stephen Hanson sure is a visionary! You know, it seems obvious now, but before Ruby Foo's, no one had identified those cuisines as viable for American diners. Cut to black-and-white reel of Hanson facing a roundtable of investors:

Stephen Hanson: CHINA!!! China food tastes good! Let’s make a restaurant with China food!

Investor: (throws stack of papers into the air) You’re a madman, Hanson!

Stephen Hanson: How ‘bout Mexico? Mexico make good food, too!

Investor: Hanson, you’ve got to be realistic here, we’re trying to build a business, not an experimental global culinary laboratory!

Stephen Hanson: What about ITALY? Italy pasta food make yummy country!

Investor: You. Make. A. MOCKERY of these proceedings. Get out! Get out and don't come back 'til you have a plan for a Sumatran Stir-Your-Own Bean Stew Shit-hut!

Hanson is also famous for the tough-love guidelines he imposes on all his staff, including a rule that allows them to dress in their own (black and white) clothes as opposed to wearing a uniform. Bad call?

“The servers dress in black, including - egad - turtlenecks.”

Hi, I’m distracted by the whiff of my own adrenal gland in the wind; this wedding ring? It’s a sham. Can I take your order??

And so we wrap up with desserts, which can't save Barca from its own deliberate mediocrity-- there were "more flops than hits"; but they CAN save me from falling asleep at my desk, by inciting Frank to write this phenomenal Brunism: "a warm baked apple was hard and hard to eat - a pie that never happened; cobbler interruptus."

And with that, I wish you all a Merry Chri--uh, I mean a Festive Solstice Earthjam.

You'll Probably Just Be Getting Back from a 10K Jog Around Then, Right?

2005-12-16T11:18:00.000-05:00

I'll be on local Air America radio (1190) tomorrow morning at 8:00 a.m., discussing the Digest, Frank, the Times, and whatever else comes up on WLIB's food show, "Leftovers."

So set your alarm clock to "Radio" and assure that I will enter your nightmares far more concretely than usual!

Also, for anyone who might have been made curious about Chicago's Alinea restaurant by the New York Times "Year in Ideas" piece, you can read about my experience there last week.

It was fun and futuristic.

Keens Steakhouse: Dead Presidents and Burlap Britches

2005-12-14T14:13:00.000-05:00

This week, we are taking a class trip to Colonial Restaurantburg, and Frank is going to be our informative yet distractingly-attired docent.

Frank: And so Eli Whitney’s cotton gin revolutionized industry as we know it. Any questions?
[silence]
Small child: Sir?…this is just really inappropriate…

Frank begins:

“There’s a secret to the surprising mellowness of the "legendary mutton chop" at Keens Steakhouse, a restaurant long synonymous with that gargantuan slab of meat. (The menu announces it with a verbal trumpet blast.)”

Artist’s rendition...OK, Idiot's rendition.

But the following paragraph needs no artistry. It is the equivalent of a man getting hit in the face by his own boomerang or a bride catching on fire in America’s Funniest Home Videos: it's pretty hilaire, au natural.

“Nix the trumpet and commence a drum roll: it is lamb. The mutton lore is a mutton lie. For at least two decades and perhaps many more, the legendary mutton chop has indeed been a matter of legend. The following sentence is inevitable, as is the one on its tail. Diners have had the wool pulled over their eyes...”

Wait for it...wait for it...

“But they haven't been fleeced.”

At this point, dexterous reader, you will dislodge yourself from the noose that you, albeit resourcefully, fashioned out of your flannel pajamas. Yes, it was a little painful, but talk about historic: you just witnessed the officially most pun-intensive, word-play-laden Brunism of all time. That puts you in the pantheon of people that heard Pavarotti at La Scala in 1972, sat behind the goal when the Rangers took the Stanley Cup in 1994, or watched David Lee Roth get his “fruit cup” stuck between his guitar strings during the filming of Van Halen’s “Hot For Teacher” video. And it just gets wackier.

1980’s, man, not a comfortable time for balls.

“No restaurant in New York City pays the kind of lavish, often kooky, sometimes even touching tribute to the past that Keens does.”

Lavish, kooky and touching? Soooo…a gilt-copper statue of Carrot Top in an Oscar de la Renta wedding gown pulling a copy of Schindler’s List out of his prop bag?

Nope, weirder!

“Keens had what it called a pipe club, with members including Babe Ruth and Theodore Roosevelt. Even after smoking in restaurants went the way of absinthe, Keens inducted honorary members into the club, famous customers as diverse as Dr. Ruth Westheimer and Dr. Renee Richards, Liza Minnelli and Stephen King.”

Q: Hey, what do you get when you put Dr. Ruth, Liza Minelli and Stephen King in a pipe room?
A: Something terrifying and perverted.

“There are pipes bearing their signatures in a glass case beside the main entrance.”

This one’s handy ‘cause you can also barf Rum into it.

Keens turns out to be a little like TGI Friday’s, stuffed to the gills with “flare” that is somewhat more significant than your average anonymous sports pennant or fake antique doll:

“On a poignant note, in a room often used for private dining, Keen has what it identifies as the theatrical program that Abraham Lincoln was holding when he was shot.”

You can enjoy this Bloody Pequot while admiring a pewter urn full of Aaron Burr’s diahhrea on the mantle!

But wait! It gets even funnier!

“On a humorous note, in the main vestibule, it has what it identifies as "dinosaur sirloin," supposedly a fossil from the Red Rocks area of Utah. It looks like reddish-brown marble, and a sign with it says that in the opinion of Keens, it has not yet been aged long enough to be cooked.”

Then the restaurant pulls a quarter out from behind your ears, tells you about walking to school in 1937 and makes a doodie all with a fork Fixadented to the side of its face.

“It proved itself to be not only one of the city's most charming and diverting theaters for testosterone cuisine but also one of its most reliable.”
You know, reliability really is key in a testosterone theater. My personal fave, the Ram-Rod Shak just outside Newark, is really a coin-toss most nights.

Neeeeeever know when you're gonna get the experimental BELGIAN guy.

Frank continues:
“Keens is mischievous like that. Cue the mutton.”

And now Docent Frank really whips out the history lesson:

“Keens began with real mutton, which is often defined in this country as sheep of about a year or more in age. In 1935, the restaurant reached and publicly celebrated a milestone: one million mutton chops served. Apparently, Keens was an early, upscale McDonald's of mutton.”

Anybody who counts stuff and publicizes it is a McDonalds. That’s why China is the McDonald’s of Female Babies.

“9 Billion Served to the Silent Tide of the Yangtze!” j.k., guys, don’t come after me.

“World War II came. Deprived Americans ate more mutton than they wanted, and as it later fell farther and farther out of fashion, getting fresh mutton of reliable quality became iffy. At some point Keens had to turn to lamb, choosing a cut with a winged shape that mimicked the mutton chop of yore.”

YAMMA YAMMA BLAH BLAH BLAH through the 1980’s and to the present. See, here’s where, like a middle-school dork, I desperately feign making fun of Teacher, yet I actually enjoy his mutton lesson. To question whether it belongs in a Times review is to rearrange deck chairs in the Hindenburg viewing basket.

“Um, that's my seat, I believe I said ‘fives’”

Nevertheless, being cool is more important than genuinely engaging your interests. So I feel I should defensively deride him while hiding my true love for non-fiction culinary history. (read this next part with a “headgear lisp”) WHAT’S NEXT, FRANK?? A HISTORY OF LETTUCE STARTING AT THE FIRST NUCLEAR SUPERNOVA??? HAHAHAHA OR LIKE, A HISTORY OF VOUVRAY STARTING AT THE PLEISTOCENE ERA?? WHATEVER.

Frank lands his Hindenburg where he left off originally, with mutton, safely bypassing many other things about the restaurant's food. “That doesn't make it mutton, but it does seem to give it a more robust taste, like lamb with an exponent, lamb on steroids. Call it near-mutton. Call it extreme lamb. Go ahead and call it legendary. In more ways than one, it warrants that tag."

I have to say, it makes me want to run to Keens and try this thing. Two stars, what many people call Frank's default, is no paltry rating. So be it by exponents or by steroids...

The East German Swim Sheep
...Keens should be happy.

Now let's go buy some souvenir soap made of beef fat hand-shaped by a William and Mary sophomore, visit the silversmithy, and head home.

I mean, again...just awkward.

Cookshop: Like UNICEF but more delicious

2005-12-01T16:54:00.000-05:00

Frank’s review of Cookshop this week begins with a focus on the restaurant’s sanctimonious streak:

At Cookshop, “they don’t list daily specials." Instead, they “celebrate the restaurant's ‘favorite farmers,’ an honor roll of principled stewards and good shepherds who aren't exhausting their land, immobilizing their livestock, tweaking genes or toying with hormones.”

Candyslot Van der Muff: sadly not among this week’s gold-star organic champions.

“Along with an elite fleet of chosen fishermen, these farmers stock Cookshop's larder, and they are more or less local, or at least regional; the governing religion demands it."

Religion?...Frank has a habit (much mocked here) of using religious language to talk about food-- the sins of flesh, the redemption of sauce--

"In Habitus Homo Smokus" as the Latin goes.

But this week, that tendency hit its pinnacle:

"On a given night the number of them on those boards may rise as high as 10, just like the Commandments.”

10, just like the Commandments! I was hoping to this sort of exclamation would be repeated(the chicken was nailed to a plancha—just like Jesus!) but alas, the references remain general: cookshop is “selling virtue,” and is “suffused with it,” from domestic oak tables to recycled menus. But you want to know what I think when I think virtue? I think BORING. There’s a reason everyone loves hookers, cable, and the Netherlands, and it has nothing to do with being made out of thrice-processed domestic balsa mulch.

Boring loser.

American Hero.

“So you can sip, sup and simultaneously congratulate yourself, all of which might be a bit much but for this: You can also have a merry, heedless time.”

When I go out with my friends, there’s nothing I want to do more than SIP, SUP and be MERRY, even HEEDLESS. Additionally, nothing makes me more jubilant than putting ribbons in my hair, skipping about in my pinafore, and waiting for papa to return from the Franco-Prussian War!

Jules and her Boo, ready to get crunk.

No matter how anachronistic the slang, the point here is, Cookshop is as purely enjoyable as weirdly ethical. Frank is getting poetic about it!

“With the exception of those chalkboards, Cookshop renders its call to conscience as a murmur, audible to anyone soothed by the sound and ignorable by those who just want to chow down.”

And now, I will finish the poem that Frank started:

It’s hard for a hard-hitting journalisto,
A J-school man with talent ‘nuff to flaunt
To find his pride burned like neglected frito misto,
To find he’s a for-hire bon vivant!

I used to have John Paul and Berlusconi,
Not to mention Dubs and all his crew,
On my Buddy List under the title “Homies”
And now I spend my time with saumon cru.

And I’m dropping like three thousand dollars nightly
On the world’s best kitchens, (not to mention cellars!)
My compunction is acute ‘til I remember
That the money in the end is all Bill Keller’s. (phew!)

So a place like Cookshop feels like a cold compress
Pressed against my horseback-riding rash.
It makes you feel like Ol' Mamma Theresa
Except your makeup's better (obvie, natch!)

So: delicious? Yes, it is! But that’s not why
I’m giving Cookshop stars galore and raves:
I applaud their bold not-serving Snowy Owl,
And their moralistic not-hiring of slaves!

Cookshop, says Frank: "a place where eating well and doing good find common ground."

Hey hey hey! Retract your awkward dog paws, Mister Owl: you're 100% safe here!

Compass and Cafe Luxembourg: Revenge of the Loser

2005-11-23T02:15:00.000-05:00

This week, Frank plays the Chuck Woolery to our blank-faced 33-year-old administrative assistant looking for love.

“My name is Trelizabeth, and while my once-conjoined twin got the brain, I got the SMILE!!!!!!!!!!”

The two bachelors we’re deciding between, Café Luxembourg and Compass, are archetypal, really— Willoughby versus the Colonel, Zach versus Screech— it’s the flashy, popular dude versus the meritorious dork. In many ways, it is the ultimate scenario of high school injustice: says Frank,

“Cafe Luxembourg is the soccer captain to Compass's science club president. It has more sex appeal and an easier time getting dates.”

It’s an interesting comparison. Luxembourg is 22, a young hot athlete...

...while Compass is hindered as much by being a dork as it is by being 4 years old.

Your mold garden's awesome, Gary, but I'm still not going out with you.

After some inevitable Compass language (Lost its way! Back on track!) the Count begins what will be a litany of praise for its food.

“When several friends and I recently had [the skate], the moistness of the fish and the crunchiness of its panko crust played a textural tug of war. Neither side lost, so we won. Entrees arrived, and we were victors again.”

By the time dessert came, Frank and his guests had vanquished the entire place, roping up surviving diners to sell to the Mongols and bundling tableware for booty on their yaks.

“Well, that’s that. Check please?”

"Our lobster, poached in olive oil before being pampered with butter and clementine juice, made a dreamy case for never treating lobster any other way."

Soooooo...does that mean no more accessorizing with it?

Meanwhile, hottie Luxembourg has no idea how to handle fish. Its skate “had been put through uneventful paces - a sizzling encounter with olive oil, a subsequent shower of capers - and had emerged somewhat gummy.”

Well, even if the end result didn’t win Frank over, the “sizzling encounter” and “subsequent shower” sounds sexy, even if it was a caper-shower. Frank is baffled by Luxembourg's appeal:

“The way people push to get in and wait three deep at the bar, you'd think the restaurant's signature yellow tile walls were coated in some sort of culinary pheromone.”

That’s actually not a bad idea. Coat your restaurant walls in men’s Axe deodorant, sit back in a lawn chair with a stop watch and count the seconds until I stumble in, crazed she-wolf hormones squirting out my ears, to hump every last tile. However, is that even necessary? Did the popular jock ever have anything going for him but being a popular jock? Not really. As Frank explains,

“success perpetuates itself, a self-sustaining reality sometimes divorced from the merits, while a history of failure obscures current accomplishments.”

Hence, the popular kid wet-farts his pants in Latin class and he's a hero, but the school dork saves an errant fawn from falling down a well, and everyone ridicules him.

"I guess it’s just you and me, Louise. [sigh] So...can you fit in a prom limo?"

And speaking of deer:

“In the restaurant business, as in so much else, reputations linger and a herd mentality rules. Diners crowd Cafe Luxembourg, which is now 22 years old, in part because they see that it's always crowded. Diners don't rush to Compass, which is not yet 4, because they don't notice any stampede in that direction.”

Let me paraphrase: “People like you and your siblings and parents and the other re-re’s I see pigeon-toeing half-blind into walls, and drooling out the side of their faces, are mindless sheep.”

Yeah, RIGHT, Frank! That is soooo insulting! Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go buy this shithead’s album...

...smoke some cigarettes, and then throw myself off a Swedish cliff.

The Count concludes with a fervent pitch for the dork, encouraging us to see through the “hip” but “sluggish and often distracted” Luxembourg (picture the jock fondling your boob in the front seat of a Firebird while simultaneously flipping through his baseball card album). Its competitor, in contrast, “can't coast on comely pouts and poses.” [aside: Frank + Alliteration = Forever]

But if you didn’t already glance ahead to see that Lux got one star and Compass two, Frank will tell it to you striaight (and by “straight,” I mean with the last installment of an absurdly extended, essay-length metaphor):

“…if Cafe Luxembourg assumes your interest, Compass eagerly pins a corsage on you.”

Well, I guess it's worth a shot.

Right, Melinda?

Aburiya Kinnosuke : A New Fantastic Point of View

2005-11-16T04:09:00.000-05:00

After days on the open sea, Frank moored his enormous galleon on East 45th street, dropped the sails, collapsed his telescope, and leaped off the poopdeck to bravely explore Japanese spot Aburiya Kinnosuke.

"Go up the West side and cross at 42nd."
"Are you nuts? At rush hour?"

Maybe the Count was just itching to push the boundaries of his restaurant experience; then again, maybe it was simply the allure of getting to wear ass-high leather explorer boots.

2 parts “arrrrr” to 1 part “meow.”

But no matter the inspiration, Frank warns us that, in the words of Peabo Bryson, it's "A Whole New World":
“At Aburiya Kinnosuke, a new restaurant in Midtown, you probably won't spot any celebrities, the way you might at a more lavish, trendy Japanese pleasure palace like Megu or Nobu.”

You see, like a sebaceous teenager fluent in online porn but decades away from touching his first boobie, Frank has mostly experienced the far east in fusions and fanciness, but dammit, he wants the real thing. Basically, it’s hard to feel like you’re really in Kyoto when you’re eating miso-glazed Cheez-its off Robert Downey Jr’s lap.

“You definitely won't find elaborately constructed, kaleidoscopic sushi rolls, the kind that look more like kites than supper, or whimsically shaped stemware filled with neon-colored potions, the kind that look more like chemistry experiments than drinks.”

What? What the shit kind of Japanese places has Frank been dining at? That description sounds less like Megu and more like Willy Wonka's Shagadelic Thrift Store from Hell.

Hi, welcome to Sushi World, allow me to rape your cornea!

More from Frank's travel diary:

“Here's what you will see…: tables filled with Japanese businessmen, neckties still on, briefcases nearby, speaking Japanese to servers who fared much better in that language than in English.”
I wonder if the Count actually hid behind potted plants and spied them with binoculars.

Frank slyly observes the restuarant's clientele. Meanwhile, Japanese business men are confused as to why Swamp Thing is stalking them.

“I had a sense of seemingly boundless possibility, of new flavors that it would take quite some time to exhaust. I had a sense of discovery.”

At this point, you ask, did he make friends with a cartoon raccoon and a native Scores stripper who pretends not to speak English while singing elaborate songs about the Color of the Wind??

“ME NO SPEE NO EEENLESH!! Just kidding. Meet me in the champagne room inside that giant Sequoia in 5 minutes, the raccoon and the pug stay outside.”

Not quite. But he certainly makes a point of experiencing some new foods, with mixed results:

“The menu is so expansive and arcane that a diner can encounter bad luck as easily as good and wind up with food that disappoints, if only because it's so peculiar…”

It's unfortunate that Frank didn't have the language skills to translate "Man-Size Horny Carp" on the entrees list. It's a Japanese specialty!

“One night I blithely ventured in the direction of dried baby squid, only to make a hasty retreat after one repellently fishy, intensely funky bite.”

Oh really? Why do I have a feeling that anyone, even a lobotomized Cosmo girl shellacked head to toe in lip gloss and wearing a thong made of copper wire, could get the following question right:

Dried baby squid tastes like...
a) Ham
b) Dryer sheets
c) Roses
d) The sweat off a sailor’s scabby crack after he wrestles a walrus in the pit of a sulphite mine.

D!! Obvie, that crap stinks.

Worst. Neighbor. Ever.

The Count continues to hack his way through the culinary virgin forest, encountering “salmon neck, another fatty, slightly gamy, challenging and rewarding cut.” You'd think Frank had had enough with challenging and rewarding fish after the ol' Horny Carp, but the Count really is eager to learn:

“I hadn't tried black sesame tofu before Aburiya, but I hope to have it again…” Ah, just like the settlers of the new world who put yams, corn, and Coke Zero to their lips for the first time and yearned for more…

“But for a diner in the right frame of mind, the oddities of Aburiya just seem like part of the adventure…It's a pleasant escape that always made me feel as if I were traveling far away from the rest of the city.”

Well, Frank has left one twinkling star above Aburiya, so even if Frank never finds his way back...

"TAXI!!!!"

...maybe others will...

For those of you just Bruning in...

2005-11-14T10:24:00.000-05:00

If you were deposited here via Yahoo, USA Today, Washington Post, and many other local papers that ran this AP article about me and the Digest, welcome!

To those preacquainted with this project, WASSUP, DOMEPIECES?? Welcome back.

I just want to say this one thing before returning to my normal pattern of Wednesday lampoonery: If you hate Bruni, I'm not your mascot, and if you think he's great, well, I'm thrilled. Like a feather duster on a vestigial prostate, Frank Bruni's style tickles me; I find it funny and I respond. If you see vitriol, you've made it up, if you see typos, they're definitely there, and if you see dead people, relax! You're child actor Haley Joel Osment, and you're sitting on a king's counting-house pile of cinematic golden duckets.

D'or Anh: B'or Ing

2005-11-09T11:21:00.000-05:00

Dear D’or Anh,

Ha! What a mystery you are! What an enigma! Your food—and you don’t mind if I publish this in the New York Times, do you?—your food is ethereal and transfixing, i.e. confusing and crappy, and yet, welcome! Your mere existence tickles the lacy bloomers that descend to my mid-calf! Without places like you to mangle dry cod and rubberize beef in an Icarian attempt at success, how very boooooooring this city would be! Ah, my little Franco-Korean concubine, thank you for your adorable effort.

Veuillez accepter mes sentiments les meilleurs,

Le Frank

This little epistle was found beside the golden bidet in Frank’s chateau and leaked to me by his maid.

“Arf Arf Arf!!”
“What, Fido? LITTLE JONNY FELL DOWN A WELL??? “
“Arf Arf Arf!”
“Oooooooh, Frank’s using mascara again. Got it.”

And, if you could stay awake long enough to notice, the Count published those sentiments exactly in this week’s review:

“D'or Ahn isn't a great restaurant, and on its clumsier nights it isn't even a very good one. But it's a terrific example of why anyone who loves eating out has to love New York, a welcome reminder of the optimism and the deep well of ideas that drive the city's dining scene.”

But something else happened at D’or Anh…something …chemical. Frank is totally confused, like someone on AmBien who’s fighting sleep, like James Bond ten seconds after being poisoned but not quite dead, like me circa 11 pm on a Tuesday—in a word, he’s effed up.

The royal bizzity bizzity bong.

The confusatrix? Perhaps it is the seductive/deranged proprietress, the fluttering ephemera which is Lannie Ahn herself:
“Ms. Ahn flutters about...”

“...approaching diners with a spoken introduction to the restaurant that should be more practiced than it is. She talks about French standards, Korean flair, eclecticism…She seems at once ecstatic and slightly pained, inspired and unnerved, all of which may well foreshadow your own reaction to D'or Ahn.”

Wha? Uh oh. This is shaping up to be a bit of a Red Cat: nothing and everything, inspired and unnerved, sublime and retarded. It seems as though the question “What is this restaurant like?” is not as important as the question “Exactly how sick will Peyote make you if you melt it in a spoon and take it nasally?”

“[D'or Anh is] loaded with charm, rife with frustrations and impossible to pigeonhole.”

"Well, I'm kiiiind of a genetic freak but I'm also rabid, ambidextrous and gay. So, I'm tough to categorize."

But seriously, as yet, I have nnnoooooo sense of what this place is like. Mayhaps the food will make things clearer?

“The most riveting of the small plates, and one of the least small, was thin slices of eye round of beef, which had been dusted with sweet rice flour and seared in oil.”

Ah! Ok! So the Count enjoyed this beef, yes?

“These cutlets were more ethereal than I realized fried beef could be - maybe too ethereal, and thus an illustration of one of the restaurant's frustrations. The kitchen turned out a great deal of food more intriguing than satisfying, with a sense of surprise that wasn't matched by a payoff in flavor.”

TOO ETHEREAL. TOO ETHEREAL. Hey Lannie, couldya do somethin’ about that beef? It was too ethereal. Maybe you could drag it through some compost? I don’t know, find an accomodating donkey to take a serious dump on it? Maybe a pachaderm? Just something a little more…how to say…terrestrial? Thanks!

Yes, that's better! Bon apetit!

An exception was that terrific poussin, one of a handful of entrees on a section of the menu titled "more."

A terrific Poussin, get it?? Kill yourself, Jules.

Ahem, back to the review: Frank’s take on the food is equally opaque. I’ve got my big dumb jaw dropped in what would be characterized as a major “WHA?” Additionally, so far there’s been a—for me, at least—saddening absence of Brunisms, those wacktastic rhinestones that make Wednesdays so Beadazzled.

There's just one little metaphor, but next to the full-on brass band of metaphors we're used to, this is but a tiny taco-fart:

“Inventiveness and affectation are next-door neighbors, and D'or Ahn leaps frequently over the fence between the two.”
(Don’t worry, he’ll extend the metaphor later.)

“An oxtail ragout was advertised as an accompaniment for slices of rib-eye, but what and where was it?”

Well, if it’s in line with the rest of this review, the ragout is probably hanging out with a bunch of 35-year old douchebag gallerists at the Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert, naked save for a Hopi ritual sash and a mouthful of pot-croissant..

Almost. The ragout is actually “in the middle of a dry, unappealing mung bean cake, which gave the plate another component and geometric element but no more appeal.”
Another component and geometric element but no appeal. So yet again: through an elaborate Baroque ironwork gable of language you can peer into a hidden private estate of SUCKAGE. Nice.

"Poached black cod was unusually dry one time, wonderfully silken the next. It came with a mustard bread pudding that found D'or Ahn on the desirable side of that fence."

WHAT FENCE?? that's right, it's the fence between inventiveness and affectation, located in the town of Irrelevantville, in the County of YourRestaurantStillBlows, in the province of ButIDon'tKnowHowToSayThatSimply,ThankGod.

It's a Gaelic province.

“But whichever way D'or Ahn leapt, the gesture commanded attention.”
Kind of the way a FAS baby commands attention the first time it ice skates, i.e. with terrifying precariousness and almost unmitigated failure.

“I wasn't conventionally delighted by the fiery chili ice cream with a Korean pear upside-down cake, but I was transfixed by it.”

Dude, everything looks fuckin' awesome when you're fuckin' trippin out, man. Sick. This one time I was smokin' a fatty doob and I thought Dave Matthews was sitting in the back seat of my Saab cause I could hear him talking, and then I was like, dude, it's a CD. So yeah...what was I talking about?

Confusion is really the theme of the day: "the resounding successes don't outnumber the curiosities yet - but their effort is an earnest, thoughtful and welcome one."

You know, when my brother gave me a stick of butter for Christmas-- and this was during my younger, more corpulent years-- with the suggestion that it might help me get through doorways, was it his way of saying "I love you?" No, it wasn't. But it was his way of saying "I'm glad you're here to make fun of. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go drink competitively with my fraternity."

Maybe Frank's message is the same except that his stick-o-butter came with a little seedling to plant in the floorboards of their Enchanting Cottage of Confusing Crap and watch grow: a star.

How come that star is so round...and little...and white....?

P.s. Anyone who can interpret the meaning of the title of Frank's review ("So Ambitious, So Impossibly Thin"), which seems like it was ripped off the cover of another US Weekly celeb anorexposee, gets my serious respect.

Thor: Literally Run by Arnold Shwarzenegger

2005-11-02T12:16:00.000-05:00

Usually the Count, trained in the infamously razor-witted journalistico-priestly salons of Berlusconi-era Rome, has a firm grasp on subtle humor. But this week, Frank is taking everything literally, in an autistic Amelia Bedelia way:

“ONE of the waitresses fancies herself a futurist.

‘This is going to be the salmon lasagna,’ she said as she set down a pasta dish, her verb tense suggesting that the salmon or the noodles - or both - were something else for the time being.”

Is that really what she was suggesting? Or was she just using douchey waiter parlance? For example, it took me a while to realize that when a waiter says “My name is Jimothy and I’m ‘unna be taking care of you all tonight,” it doesn’t mean that he will escort your party home, wrap you in afghans and massage your corns with Vaseline. Silly Frank! He keeps interpreting everything literally...

“With the delivery of another dish came the saying of another sooth: ‘This is going to be the gnocchi.’ We stared at it, primed to witness some kind of transformation.”

Did you, though? Did you all stare at the gnocchi, waiting for it to do something magic?

The waiter then turned a deck of cards into an extremely gay hand pose. Ta da!

“One of the waiters longs to be the host of a quiz show.

‘Any questions about the menu? he asked some friends of mine. When they said no, he challenged them.

‘Really? they recalled his saying. ‘O.K.: what are cèpes?’”

But can you blame the waiter? After the Count’s table pointed at a dish of gnocchi and clamored WHEN WILL IT TURN INTO GNOCCHI?!! YAAAAY MAGIC TRICK!! YAAAY!, he probably thinks Frank’s party is a reunion of the original Awakenings patients.

What’s my name? Where am I? I’m feeling so flirty! What’s gnocci? Yaaaay!

The literalism doesn’t end there, though:
“Thor isn't a brave, arcane voyage into the uncharted waters of Viking cuisine. The name of the restaurant has nothing to do with the Norse god of thunder, whom it evokes only incidentally.”

REALLY? The Norse God of Thunder isn’t, like, an investor? Does the restaurant not serve EVISCERATED OSTROGOTH VILLAGER?? I’m sooooo disappointed! Wait wait wait…so you’re telling me…that the name THOR is FIGURATIVE???? That is really misleading.

“What I really wanted was an upscale place that could cater to the Lower East Side sophisticates while accommodating the lightening bolt attached to my penis.”

“Thor is the theater for an unlikely marriage of the…clangorous dining scene.. of the Lower East Side - and a classically trained Austrian chef, Kurt Gutenbrunner, whose temperament is quieter and more conventional."

Sounds like a sit com: Fastidious Old-World Chef gets dumped in Eccentric Urban Hipster Paradise, like classy Mister Belvedere rolling his eyes at the elaborately washed denims and hilariously exposed muffs of 1980’s teenagers.

Kurt learns to loosen up by episode 8, when he bonds with a tranny, does a heap of Tina and wakes up spooning a pheasant in the walk-in.

Who needs Marketing? Frank already wrote the tag line for the show:
“while that union plays out in awkward ways” (cut to Gutenbrunner getting beaten by cops)… “it doesn't ultimately foil Mr. Gutenbrunner's best efforts and ideas.” (Cue jazzy CHIPS music while Gutenbrunner hi-fives bloody tranny.)

Victory over Frank's visual impression is a whole nother matter:
“Much about the restaurant certainly erects hurdles for Mr. Gutenbrunner's food to overcome.”
When Frank hates the décor, it can translate into serious Bruni demerits. In other words, this could be a MAJOR erection for Gutenbrunner to surmount.

“The dining room's black and white wallpaper calls to mind tiles, at times confronting you with the unappetizing illusion of being on the floor of a very tall bathroom or at the bottom of a very deep pool.” Or both, if you are a midget taking a dump in a flooded Moorish bell-tower.

Aside from a few such qualms, the décor doesn’t end up doing Thor in. Will Frank’s second pet peeve, the catering to carb-phobic dieters, be Thor’s undoing?

“And so, of course, there was a raw fish appetizer, hamachi in this case. But Mr. Gutenbrunner thwarted expectations by presenting it in big, meaty cubes instead of little fingers or thin sheets.”

Little fingers and thin sheets? Nasty. Sounds more like an ad for a Philippino sex vacation than for a well-executed appetizer. That aside, this technique pleased the Count:

“In doing so he lent satisfying heft to a dish that might otherwise have skewed toward dainty.” Frank HATES dainty things.

For example, he chose to have his tutu made of industrial burlap.

You know when you’re watching a movie or something, and you’re totally on board with it, and then all of a sudden Claire Danes is naked on her stomach and Steve Martin is caressing her buttcrack lazily with one finger and you’re like “WHAT BEAT DID I MISS? This makes no sense!!!” and then Tony Scott gives it a rave review and you feel physically violated by what you assume to be a media conspiracy?

My point is, THIS was a superfluous bit of metaphor, no?

“[Gutenbrunner] told me in a telephone conversation that he considered Thor the culinary equivalent of a chance to move from orchestral music to rock 'n' roll.

His version of rock is more Eagles than Franz Ferdinand. With the exception of a few showy riffs like a white tomato mousse…, he constructed relatively safe melodies. And several dishes, including a roasted veal loin with pumpkin, carrots and apples, could have used more percussion.”

Thor's cooks arrange their mis-en-place while tooting out the Scorpions "Winds of Change."

There was a small snafu at dessert: “a multilayered confection that reinterpreted a Snickers bar did exquisite justice to its muse. If only its consumption hadn't been so perilous, and I refer not to weight gain but to clothing stain.”
Frank left Thor with an acute case of choco-crotch. Let's just hope he was wearing something brown!

Ninja: Crouching Failure, Hidden Assholes

2005-10-28T13:59:00.000-04:00

Frank returned from vacation this week full of sauce and ready to get dirty. Literally.

“Ninja New York deposits you in a kooky, dreary subterranean labyrinth that seems better suited to coal mining than to supping.”

Lighty cap? Check! Starving death-stare? Check!

Frank's review of Ninja was not a thoughtful rumination at the end of which we find a censorious conclusion; rather, his visit there was more like a huge-handed birthday clown spinning around open-palmed in a tight circle of children: non-stop hilarious smackdowns of assholes that didn’t see it coming.

“Oops! My B!”

For example, Frank recommends leaving as soon as you’ve entered. (Warning: I’ma hafta quote heavily this week…)

“You are asked to choose between two routes to your table. The first is described by a ninja escort as simple and direct. The second is ‘dark, dangerous and narrow,’ involving a long tunnel and a drawbridge that descends only when your escort intones a special command, which he later implores you to keep secret.

I recommend a third path: right back out the door.”

But if I leave, won't I miss lots of cool ninjas with steamy balls and sexy headwraps?

“…you will be spared … tedium, a visually histrionic smorgasbord of undistinguished food and a discordant bill that can easily exceed $100 a person with tax, tip and drinks.”

There's only one thing I hate more than a histrionic smorgasbord...

...and that's Discordant Bill. Hey Bill! Still looking retarded? Good to hear!

"Ninja acts like a Disney ride - Space Mountain under a hailstorm of run-of-the-mill or unappealing sushi"

These children were thankfully caught in a hailstorm of fresh and delicious sushi. No but seriously, why are they playing with exotic fish? All I got to play with was staplers and wall-tack. No fair!

"An American offshoot of a restaurant in Tokyo, Ninja intends to evoke a Japanese mountain village inhabited by ninjas, a special breed of stealthy warriors."

OH REALLY? IS THAT WHAT A NINJA IS? I don’t think Real Ultimate Power, the definitive authority on ninjas and their awesomeness, is news to anyone at this point. However, did anyone notice the COMMENTS on the NY Times forum that followed Frank’s review? I swear to a Shinto Bodhisatva, I did not make this up. Please pay special attention to the number of people that found these comments helpful.

September 8, 2005
Reviewer: damon88
I wanna to go to this restaurant so bad I have pee my pants. It has the potential to surrepticiously slice and dice the competition. Megu and their ice sculpture Buddha should think about relocating to Weehawken- the game's over dude. Ninja waiters? These guys are totally awesome and that's a fact. Ninjas are fast, smooth, cool, strong, powerful, and sweet. I love this restaurant with all of my body.

8 of 16 found this review helpful

September 28, 2005
Reviewer: mattbell7
Ninja don't even know how to swim! Were do you get your information bro? Pirates eat more sushi and most of the time are drunk. If a single pirate gets in this resaurant, GAME OVER man! Maybe if Morimoto was there he might be able to stop a few pirates. When I see a ninja, I dont even ask for WASABI.

5 of 11 found this review helpful

September 20, 2005
Reviewer: chrisgeisel
dude you wish you had realultimatepower but your so obviously NOT a ninja but just some kid who wants to be one and talks the talk but do you walk the walk? i don't think so.

your probably a PIRATE is my guess. anyway, a restaurant with ninjas way, way too dangerous but on the other hand could be sweet.

3 of 14 found this review helpful

AWESOME. Thank you for hosting that exchange, NEW YORK FUCKING GROWNUP TIMES. Amazing. "I love this restaurant with all of my body." Has he even been there? Did he pay in cash, or did he barter his Envoy of Earth Dark Emporer Yugio card? Page 1: Judy Miller, War in Iraq, Supreme Court Crap. Page D9: PIRATES vs. NINJAS!!!!!!

As for the food, skanky sushi, drowned octopus, and a "meteorite pot" in which the attendant ninja passed a hot gaul-stone directly into a pot of tepid broth did not "tickle his taint," as they say. Ok, no one says that. But apparently ninjas do say "Go-Mayn!"

Dishes arrived with "loud expectorations of a putative courtesy that sounded more like a rebuke, the phonetic rendering of which would be something along the lines of 'Go-mayn!'...

I grew so weary of these syllables that I asked if they could be varied, if something along the lines of a 'Surrender, Dorothy!' could be thrown into the mix. I was dead serious."

"Hey, guy, when you give me my food, instead of uttering benisons in your abrasive heathen jabber, would you mind singing 'You Gotta Be' by Des'ree? Thanks."

But seriously, I plan on going to Ninja sometime soon. "You're an idiot, Jules!" you say. "Everyone seems to hate this place, and plus, it's pricy and you're poor, like a Croate!" I can't argue with that, the following tidbit tempts me:

"[The restaurant] should respond to an expressed interest in sake with a presentation of its sake list, not with the words 'I'll bring half a liter,' which is what a ninja said.

It should also advise its ninjas that it's not nice to brag about having entertained a Hollywood celebrity who, by the account of the ninja in question, was the apparent beneficiary of recent breast augmentation. I was happy for the disclosure and appalled at the indiscretion."

EASY LIQUOR WITH A SIDE OF HOT CELEB GOSSIP??? It's like sitting at Bar 81 with a copy of the Post, except way more puerile and tacky. Where do I sign?

"If I pose this hard, they'll never know I'm illiterate!"

Speaking of illiterate, I would like to publicly offer my services to Frank as a body guard, since there is no doubt that a band of out-of-work actors dressed as ninjas are currently roaming the streets trying to kill him. I'm a great body guard and I'll work for steak tartare and martinis!

That way I'll be too drunk to notice when my polyester arrow breaks.

And Count Frank, kids would much rather just get candy when they come trick or treating; I tried to eat the copy of Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain that you stuffed in my bag last year and I ended up pooping a 19th century hand-crafted hourglass. It is very beautiful but was hard to pass!!!! Maybe some Charleston Chews?

Love
Jules

JLL69's Best Week Ever

2005-10-24T11:12:00.000-04:00

As I sit in my windowsill in a chiffonaded nightgown, completing the 2,647th stroke of a natural-bristle brush down my silky locks...

... I'm filled with giddy anticipation for a week that promises to be chronic.

a) Frank is back from vacation with a buttery tan and beaded cornrows, ready to take on the city with fresh verve.

The locals in Jamaica LOVE beading tourists' hair! Almost as much as they love sieving "floaters" from the baby pool.

b) Tomorrow I'm reading at the WYSIWYG Talent Show at PS122, along with some talented peeps. It's a Halloween show, and I promise you this: a 1996 Glamourshot of Yours Truly Insane, looking like a Brighton Beach madame who fell face down in a hot-pink blush quarry.

Click on the above link for more info / to get tickets in advance (recommended).

The Count Takes a Vacation

2005-10-12T17:30:00.000-04:00

Frank Bruni sat by the fire in his stately chateau, absent-mindedly running his hands over the lace trim of his princess sleeves.

He felt he had lost his edge in recent weeks. Count Frank had found his marriage to Lady Wednesday Dining less and less interesting recently. Whereas he used to enter the bedchamber every week with rapacious gusto, he had recently been performing his sirely duties missionary with the lights off. Had the knights and ladies that populated the Watteaus and Bouchers which lined his crimson corridors come to life, they might have spied Count Frank’s wandering fingers diddling under the skirts of Madame Travel Section and the Duchess of Television.

This wasn’t the real Frank! No; he shook his head as best he could in his Shakespearean ruffled collar (it sounded like a deck of hotel sheets being shuffled casino-style). His two best friends—a Lalique crystal coq named Philibert and an old copy of Diderot’s Encyclopédie that he called Dennis—seemed to look up at him from their booster seats with accusatory glares. Although they were dead, and also objects, Frank knew that they were disappointed in his philandering. “I’m so sorry, Dennis,” he whispered aloud, tears plopping onto blank parchment.

And speaking of lesbians, there was one more person that Frank knew he had disappointed: The Count’s personal jester. She had falled off the ball in the past two weeks. His jester was a distant female idiot whom he had never met but whose weekly online epistles were the equivalent of a humpy dance performed in his honor by a fat girl in a Technicolor dream unitard with a potentially sterilizing camel toe.

Not everyone enjoyed the Count’s weekly proclamations; there was always someone grumbling about his qualifications, complaining about his stars. But when Frank saw his retarded little jester howling and dancing in her trash heap in Brooklyn, the dirtiest princess of a mentally compromised kingdom, it made him smile under his handlebar goatee.

That was it: He needed a vacation. He unrolled his thick woolen longjohns and threw them into the fire, creating an enormous puff of flames and a small mushroom cloud that smelled like broccoli and Beefeater. He coughed and apologized to Philibert and Dennis, not noticing the subtle thud of a chamber maid who had dropped dead in the corner. “To the Bahamas!” He bellowed. “Until October 26th, I bequeath my pen to Marian Burros!” he exclaimed, while somewhere in Brooklyn, his Jester, too, bequeefed, in the hopes that the Count would return with a renewed sense of Countliness; in return, she promised to get a third, even fourth, amateur lobotomy. No, their partnership was far from over...

Cue “Vacation” by the Bangles

Strappin' on my tap shoes and whippin' out my cane

2005-10-03T15:36:00.000-04:00

I'll post a reminder closer to show date, but if you'd like to see me do a scaaaaaary Halloween storytelling in a lineup of mofos that should prove, in my newly adopted argot of compulsive truncation, "totes hilare," the date is October 25, the place is P.S. 122 and the dress code?

1950's aviator.

Performers at the October WYSIWYG Talent Show:

Ed Hamilton

Liam McEneaney

Rachael Parenta

Chris Trent

And me.

Musical performance by
Chris Alonzo and
his band Ghost Runner

Frank, I only hope you take this opportunity to come and pelt me with leftover Kobe carpaccio and rotten heirloom sunchokes.

After all, I'm always hungry!

Nobu 57: Spankin' it all over town!

2005-09-29T16:03:00.000-04:00

I know what you're thinking. How could I have let Mainland go last week, and then Pegu, and then Frank's AMAZING piece about San Sebastian which literally mentions specific restaurants and details what they're serving, while simultaneously revealing that he's "never been there" and "would like to try it." I hope he emailed the article personally to Bill Keller with a link to Expedia.

As Frank's seed spreads into Television reviewing and Travel writing, I decided to hawk my nooner on 14th and 9th for mere pennies! Why? Because this week is all about promiscuity. To wit, Nobu births Nobu 57, to which Frank applies his monocle and royal princely gaze:

"The name says it all. This isn't a new dining experience. It's an old one on a different block, Nobu in a different dress."

AYAYAYAYAYAYAY

"Its menu and its food elicit not so much a stab as a full-on body blow of the familiar."

A stab/body blow of familiarity? Interesting. Is that more like a “pants-exploding artillery fire of mediocrity” or a “shit-smattering explosion of comfort”? Either way you interpret it, one thing is certain: no kind of blow, body or other, is familiar to this guy

ZING!

Well, in case you found the language confusing, allow me to interpret:

Not only is this the second franchise of a restaurant that exists downtown already, but it is a copy of a restaurant that has created the template for upscale Japanese dining, and so, like a virile truck driver on a national circuit with a homebody wife who can’t count to ten, Nobu has one legitimate child and many, many, many restaurants that conspicuously take after it, all over the country.

in the words of the late Robert Palmer, “simply irresistible.”

Most exemplary of this phenomenon, the oft-imitated black cod: “Here it is, a plump wedge of miso-glazed black cod, the culinary equivalent of a Cole Porter standard, covered and interpreted by so many artists...”

THAT IS SO INSENSITIVE! Just cause it’s a black cod you have to use a BLACK MUSICIAN?? What’s next, Frank, will CHIEF SITTING BULL provide you with an appropriate descriptive vehicle for RED SNAPPER? How about some MICHELLE KWAN RICE, you bigot!

What? What’s that you say? Cole Porter’s white? [gulp] Sorry. It is I who should be more sensitive. Let's forget this whole argument.

The famed African-American cod that Nobu so geniusly coated in miso might be so familiar “that you may not recall where and when you experienced it first.
That place was probably Nobu, and that time might have been 1994, when the restaurant opened in TriBeCa.”

Let’s seeeeee. 1994—I’m pretty sure in 1994 I was shoveling an “after-school snack” of melon-sized Costco muffins and Lucky Charms into my face with a lacrosse stick while watching my mother prepare the dinner I was to eat in T minues 7 MINUTES. (What were you people trying to do to me???)

“TIME OUT!!!!! Can you fit a game hen through my face cage? I’m peckish. Thanks”

"The familiarity of Nobu 57 reflects more than its sire's genes and zest for reproduction. It reflects - and is compounded by - its sire's broader legacy."
ZEST FOR REPRODUCTION!!! While this reads like a section of your Addison-Wesley 8th grade history textbook, let not its genes and legacy talk distract you from the fact that it is about sluttiness. (Also, this is another one of those passages that you're going to want to read aloud in British English while rolling your R's to get the full appreciation.)

"Nobu is to Matsuri and Koi as McDonald's is to Wendy's: a tutor and template."
What an instructive comparison!

Chef Matsuhisa, poised for vengeance outside Frank's apartment door with brothers Saul and Mario.

So after all this exhausting work, including a torrid night of sequentially banging both Nobu and Newbu, Frank concludes that Matsuhisa still has the original magic, three stars' worth.

"What mattered was that black cod. I'm almost convinced that Mr. Matsuhisa maintains a secret tank in which the fish toss back Jacques Torres chocolates and watch 'Finding Nemo' while they fatten."

Akin to his comment in April about Kobe beef at Shaburi: "As it cost $69 for about seven ounces, I hope and assume the pampering includes Tivo, Opus One spritzers and bovine facials."

Well, at least we know they all end up in the plush velvet Napoleonic drawing room which must line the Count's countly interior. Meanwhile, I'm going to go shoot cans of dogfood off a fence and chew on jerky with the chicken from Pathmark. Later!

I also read about television. But I PROMISE that's it. No, like, literature.

2005-09-19T16:35:00.000-04:00

As I started to skim this article in the Television section of the Times today about the new “Kitchen Confidential” TV show, I was struck by the stylistic flamboyance of the piece. This was no “Straight-Shooter” Stanley, no “Hot Shot” Heffernan. When my titillated gaze jumped up to check the byline, it recalled the moment I found out that Santa was really Mommy: I had already, in my heart, intuited the truth (how could 2 strangers, one a suburban housewife, the other an overweight elderly Scandinavian philanthropist, have the exact same retarded, illegible handwriting? No, my instincts knew best). Frank's distinctive voice is as unmistakable to me now as my own mother's Stevie Wonder psycho-scrawl.

He begins:

“The meek better move to the end of the line. Chefs will inherit the earth. They have their product lines, publishing contracts and reality shows. Their empires traverse oceans. Their antics pepper gossip columns.”

Got that, Bible? Chefs, not Meek, to inherit earth. (Although I don’t know what my line-cook boyfriend would have to say about that… sometimes he inherits meats that are rotting or leftover cheese, but that’s about it.) Moving on.

“And now comes an additional helping of affirmation: a comedy on Fox that means to be hip, strives to be irreverent and wagers that nothing says lovin' like a stud muffin at the oven.”

NOTHIN SAYS LOVIN LIKE A STUD MUFFIN AT THE OVEN. That’s right, additionally, Fox is wagering that “if the beefcake’s shakin’ there’s a bacon in the makin.’” Said one studio exec, “[Cooper’s] buns are made for slappin’, gonna tap him till I’m crappin’!”

“The muffin man in ‘Kitchen Confidential’ is played by Bradley Cooper, familiar from ‘Alias’ and finally getting the kind of front-burner role he deserves.”
If you’re playing the Thematic “Kitchen” Metaphor Drinking Game, now would be an appropriate time for a shot of Jaeger.

Although in all fairness, he does deserve front-burner roles. At least, my front is burning just looking at him.

“He brings the show an ample measure of heat and a dollop of hope, his presence almost engaging enough to redeem an overstuffed, overbaked first episode.”
Bing! Bing bing! Jaeger shots all around! And you're going to want to get one of those extra big Skidmore/LeHigh commemorative sorority event quintuple-shooters for the conclusion:

Commemorating historic UVA girls' favorite places to bone athletes.

"Some viewers may well find a savory treat here. Others may want to hold out for the inevitable next phase in epicurean adulation, a Broadway musical about a quixotic Spanish visionary and his beloved steel griddle.

Anybody for 'Man of La Plancha?'"

No, but, funny coincidence, I am up for a role as one of the dead piglets competing for a place in a sack of herbed saltwater in this fall’s Off-Off-Broadway production of “A Chorus Brine.”

ZING!

Bouley Bakery Upstairs: Ewww! You're Joining the Softball Team?

2005-09-16T16:49:00.000-04:00

It’s no surprise that the Count alighted on Bouley’s Upstairs in the midst of a staff shakeup. The clown-car atmosphere the Count notes at the restaurant on his visits may be due to these putative scuffles. Complaints included an

“improvisatory, amateurish quality to the service: orders misunderstood, lags before drinks or dishes arrived, no coherent system whatsoever for managing, advising or even greeting diners.”

Maybe the place just hasn’t pulled it together, but isn't that allowed? Upstairs is like a sexed-up, corn-fed hussy on the verge of her 18th birthday, and Bruni is like an itinerant photographer with specious credits and a camera made of bubble gum. In other words, it was the Barely Legal of restaurant reviews, Upstairs having been opened a mere month.

Little newborn Upstairs couldn’t even figure what its opening times were: “None of the employees really knew.” Waiting diners grew anxious: “Mr. Bouley had morphed into a gastronomic Godot.”

Gratuitous diversion: In highschool we were asked to write and perform our own endings to Waiting for Godot and in mine, Escobar and Razzmatazz (or whatevs) had ducked into a shrubbery to have explosive diahhrea when Godot finally showed up, so they missed him. A+, Jules. What a student. Went over great in the auditorium in front of the parents.

This kid played the Diahhrea.

Well, anyway, it turns out that all of Upstairs' shaky service doesn't really count against it: the litany of complaints was a straw horse, a "necessary hedge against what I am nonetheless going to do: make a fervently admiring pitch for Upstairs.”

Some might ask, should a critic really be making pitches for a place? Is that his role? My issue is a little different: as a professional fag hag, I have serious qualms about your engaging in sports, Frank. We’re supposed to be behind the gymnasium chain smoking Marlboro reds together and pelting rocks at anorexics. 'Member?

The quality of the food (the reason for Frank’s fervent pitch) may have to do with the fact that Bouley is there cooking it: “Mr. Bouley, 51, looked at once enchanted and oblivious, a man in thrall to his own muse, which has always nudged him in surprising directions.”

“Thanks a lot, MUSE. Great. Fucking great.”

Apparently, Bouley had much bigger plans for this gastro-complex of his, but circumstances whittled the final product down to something less expansive. The resulting bakery, various food counters and restaurant “are the ‘Honey, I Shrunk the Dream’ outcome, much delayed, much diminished.”
Weird.

“Wow! Look at the whimsical, industrious chef in my cereal! My gosh is he SEXY!”
"What?"
"Uhh, I said your mother needs waxing!"
"Oh."

“The restaurant seems less like a coherently planned environment than an accretion of whimsies.”
Well, no one’s perfect. One time I was laughing really hard and I accidentally accreted a whimsy myself. Happens to the best!

The man himself is at the center of the review as much as he is at the center of his restaurant. Frank ends with this anecdote: "Acquaintances chat with Mr. Bouley as he cooks. One night, just before he nonchalantly wandered over and said hello to me, I watched one of those acquaintances grab a clump of herbs from the kitchen and sniff it."

They should talk to Subway about getting one of those Sneeze-Guards, huh? That’s a little too casual, no? What’s next, “I watched a curious child deep fry her ragdoll as her mother fondled the chest cavity of a dead hare.”

DOLLY NOOOO!!!

Well let's hope David Bouley hasn't totally taken his mind off of his flagship Bouley, accross the street, where I'll be tipping champagne flutes in honor of my mom's 60th birtday tomorrow.

This is us in our living room in New Haven, CT. She's a Finn who straddles creeks hurling spears at errant sea lions, so here's hoping the seafood's up to par. Wish me Bon Apetit! A Mercredi!

Perry Street: With Arms Wide Open

2005-09-07T12:53:00.000-04:00

Oh Jean-Georges. It’s been a long time coming, huh? You’ve had to put up with ol’ “Smackdown” Bittman’s mortifying obsequies on the Food Network (is his show cancelled yet?), where I must say, you were nothing but adorable and gracious.

Bittman: "I CAN COOK BETTER THAN YOU!!! YOU'LL SEE, LITTLE SWISS PUNK!"
Before that, “Spindly” Hesser’s raves over your haremy Spice Market were drowned in indignant protests, after she neglected to disclose that she sleeps at the foot of your bed in satin genie digs.

"I didn't think it was a conflict of interest! What?"

Then, a year ago in July, Frank was in the finicky toddlerhood of his tenure as the NY Times restaurant critic; you had recently opened V Steakhouse, an overly embellished nightmare in the Time Warner Center. Frank was like a hopped up hunter with an M-16 and your restaurant was like a gaudy elk just asking to get nailed.

“YOOOO HOOOOO!!”

It was a Bruni masterpiece; but you found your name sullied and slapped across the marquee of a one-star infamy serving $25 apps.

Now, a year later, like a reformed slut who finally gets her lower-back tattoo lasered off, you’ve calmed down. You've gone demure.

And in this review (sweet dios, may it not last), so has Frank. Not only does he focus on the food, he does so … sort of… calmly. He begins with placid Confucianisms:

“SOMETIMES the best way to move forward is to revisit the past. Sometimes the loudest statements are the quietest ones, made without undue fuss, in precise gestures.”

Arigato, sensei! You forgot “Man stuck in pantry has ass in a jam ahahahaha!”

Wow. Couple lacking chromosomes makes retarded decisions.

Frank knows that Jojo has felt the sting of Frank's (and others') spanking: Perry Street is “a studied retreat from, and maybe even an act of amends for, the high-concept flamboyance of 66, Spice Market and V Steakhouse, the New York restaurants he opened between 2002 and 2004.”

But he still gets one more jab in:

“All three have their significant merits and pleasures - or at least the first two of them do…”

DAMN! SNAP! He really hated V. He goes on to say that these flamboyant restaurants have “vacuous showmanship in their DNA.”

Doctor! We've found an unusually large and douchebaggy string of amino acids in this blood sample!"
"Hmmm, looks like acute Jay Leno."
"He's not cute!"
"Nevermind!"

But for every sassy, insulting zinger he’s ever loosed upon Perry Street’s ugly older sisters, he’s found something sublime at sweet little Perry.

Frank rather insightfully inspects JGV’s talent for “time-release gastronomy.” I’ve got the same talent— 17 minutes after I eat an artichoke, I’ll show it to you.

But JGV’s talent, slightly different, involves the engineering, in one bite, of a sophisticated fugue of flavor release:

In a gazpacho twist involving raspberries, the “sweetness of the fruit set the stage for, then ceded it to, the sourness and gentle heat of other players, which arrived as a second wave, a delayed epiphany.”
There's a lot more of this amazing Countly rhapsody, musically chronicaling each bite, which was enough of a pleasure to earn three stars for the prodigal son:

“Mr. Vongerichten has chosen a new tower of spare elegance in which to settle down - in more ways than one. He's back from the carnival.”

Who said anything about a carniv--

Well then. Welcome back indeed.

La Esquina: Spanish for "Epcot Nightmare"

2005-08-31T17:04:00.000-04:00

Usually, Frank smacks friends who arrive tardy to a meal with a ruler on the knuckles, makes them get up in front of the table, and recite passages of Boccaccio's Decameron in the original Tuscan dialect.

This time, however, he responded with clemency, since her lateness was due to a gauntlet of menacing staff that pretended she did not exist ("DO YOU SEE A CUSTOMER, I DON'T SEE A CUSTOMER, DO YOU??") and refused to seat her, even though Frank Bruni was sitting downstairs waiting for her.

"I asked her if she was miffed," says Frank. "She gave me the derisive, pitying look that a sane person gives a lunatic."

Akin to the accusatory, haunting look that a normal person gives a crippled child.

"'The harder it is to get in, the more fun it is to be in,' she said, articulating a maxim of Manhattan night life and a guiding principle of La Esquina, which is sort of like Studio 54 with chipotle instead of cocaine."

Another Juvenile addict proves that chipotle is a messy substance to take nasally. I remember the first time I blew a rail of guac and nearly went blind. Ha! College!

But one thing that you know if you are a frequent reader of the Digest is that while Frank and I both love big hunks of meat and well made martinis, our tastes diverge where he loves to bask in scenestery places, and I prefer to “keep it real” in a hairshirt, playing a wooden piccolo and eating canned beans in my Brooklyn hovel.

“Jules, you ready to go to dinner?”
“Yeah, totes! Let me just grab my purse/snapping turtle and we’re out the door/bog.”

In any event, this place is (surprise!) not about the food so much as it is about marketing: “ the significant pleasures it delivers boil down to its air of cunningly manufactured mystery, its speakeasy-channeling pantomime of illicit, exclusive pleasure.”

Illicit & exclusive? Kinda. Stuck in a box of her own contrivance? Possibly. Veiling a lifetime of unspeakable sorrows? For sures.

Says the bafflingly impressed Frank, “The unveiling of La Esquina belongs in a textbook for public relations and marketing executives.”

I mean, there’s a lot of evidence that there’s a gerbil living where my brain should be, and deductive reasoning has lead me to believe that the gerbil may also be dying of alcohol poisoning. But when the Count discusses La Esquina’s business principles, I think they sound, well, Heidelberg-style terrible. Let’s?

* You enter a “chutes-and-ladders passage down a harshly lighted staircase, along a corridor with kitchen supplies, through the kitchen itself, and into the contrived darkness of the vault” Are you entering a restaurant? Or did you just lose a round of the popular schoolyard game S.P.U.D. ? At the end, do you sit down in a comfy chair and eat tacos? Or do you get bound and gagged and asked a lot of questions about "Johnny Two-Toes" and "waste management"?

* "The subterranean chamber opened in mid-July without a listed phone number or a clearly marked entrance." Genius.

* “The aforementioned portal is inside a taqueria that says ‘Corner Deli’ - La Esquina means ‘the corner’ - and bears, in addition to the words ‘No Admittance,’ the words ‘Employees Only.’” Just down from there, they’ve placed sandwich boards that say “There’s no food here! Seriously!” and “You’re looking really fat these days, Potential Client. Ha Ha! Go chew on your arm, Fatty Boom Batty!!”

* “Within weathered brick walls are wrought-iron gates that recall the bars of an ancient prison cell.” Awesome! It’s also very redolent of prison imagery when you get sodomized by the guard as you pick up your soap. It’s just so kooky and thematic, y’know?! HAHAHAHA [quiet sobs].

* “If the Phantom of the Opera hired Zorro as an interior designer and asked him for something in contemporary Torquemada, this might be the result.”
See-- again-- Torquemada? Isn't he the leader of the Spanish inquisition who burned and tortured Jews, Moors, and witches? I mean, not. sounding. fun to me. But then, I'm a quarter Jew, part Moor, and 18% devil-worshipping alchemist, so maybe that accounts for my negative reaction.

Re the food (the wha?—oh yeah!): “It uses discernibly fresher herbs, vegetables and other ingredients than many other Mexican restaurants”
In other words, the food was noticeably not disgusting.

“It doesn't resort to easy cheats: oceans of salsa, tides of sour cream, eddies of guacamole.” No word yet on corn dolphins or bean-bra mermaids.

There are some clues that La Esquina’s cheeky seduction of the Count is cracking by the end—“The underworld has more attitude and courts more chaos, to the point of being off-putting at times.” Really? The UNDERWORLD isn’t all feather-ticklers and pillow fights? Then why have I been robbing nursing homes this whole time?? Think I'm doing it for my health?

You think I need this crap?...OK, I do. Desperately.

“After a shot or two, the smartly chosen music - Nina Simone, Soul II Soul, Nouvelle Vague - seems to swell louder.” After several more shots, the restaurant makes the floor wobble, and a few after that, they put a stranger’s tongue in your mouth.

“My tardy friend overheard several young women ask a waiter if the vault could be breached without a reservation. He told them that they were probably attractive enough to manage it, but that there were no guarantees.”

His Tard friend also overheard this scenario:

Woman: Help! I’m having a heart attack!
Waiter: OK, miss, you’re going to have to wait a minute.
Woman: Call 911! I’m dying!
Waiter: Yyyyeah, that’s not going to be possible.
Woman: Why not? Use my cell! Quick, I can’t feel my brain!
Waiter: Mmmmm OK we checked? And there’s no availability right now.
Woman: At the hospital? How do YOU know?
Waiter: Mmmyyyeeeah I’m going to be real with you. There’s a small chance, if we apply some coverup over here and some bronzer, that they’ll save you, but I just can’t promise anything.
Woman: [dead]
Waiter: MmmOK?

But moreover: Frank, you already HAVE a tardy friend? But I wanted to be your tardy friend!!

I promise I qualify!

Just look at the SHIT I post!!!

Spigolo: Bosomy Buddies

2005-08-24T15:07:00.000-04:00

I'm about as technologically adept as a blind limbless meerkat.

"WHAT??? You want me to do WHAT with the ISB chord???"

But if I could muster the savvy-- and who knows, maybe this will be the week-- I'm going to [gulp] "audioblog" a deep, soulful song about Spigolo. Mayhaps an opera? Spigoletto, about a young, rustic, bosomy couple overflowing with the milk of human breasts. I mean kindness.

SPIGOLETTOOOOOOO!

Frank evokes Spigolo as the beloved work of doting parents Scottissimo and Heatherata Fratangelo, who, in off-hours, reside hen-like in the apartment atop their little hatchling restaurant. All this had a distinctly Brooklyn feel-- you know, how reports from Brooklyn tend to include a lot of hearthwarmth and soulfulness. I.e. Crave, a "hug of a place." Awwww.

My least favorite picture of all time.

Frank's recent July visit to Brooklyn's Taku came to mind today, another lovingly rendered, intimate place where the chef lives within "crawling distance" of his restaurant: "Taku is that kind of place, seemingly more common in Brooklyn than in Manhattan: a lovingly rendered, hoveringly attended, very personal expression of a chef whose physical connection to his kitchen is close in the most literal sense."

Here, instead of a Brooklyn hobbit hovel, we've got an Italian home hearth, but same vibe, same gushing, same conjuring of baleful-eyed cousins Honesty and Earnesty. Anyway, let's dig into my future libretto, hmmm?

He begins: "THERE are many reasons to envy New York restaurant chefs these days, from the kitchen gadgetry at their disposal to their likelihood of receiving major publishing contracts. I for one covet their commutes."

After a long day of work, Frank commutes back to the Upper West Side from the coal mines of Guangdong.

"For the Fratangelos, deciding how to get to work simply means choosing a pair of shoes. They can match their mode of transportation to the rest of their outfits."

For more distant junkets, the Fratangelos make such orchestration possible with their Ford Stilettaurus.

"This arrangement doesn't allow them much of a sense of separation between home and work. But it lets the Fratangelos, both 30 years old, dote on and fret over Spigolo."
Ahhh, yes, like a milky Italian nursemaid.

As the Count entered the restaurant, "a summery lavender outfit worn by one of my guests, who trailed after me, was enough to prompt additional endearments.

'That's such a pretty dress,' Ms. Fratangelo said. If she didn't really mean it, Cherry Jones better watch out. There's an even better actress in town."

A few things. In reverse order of intensity.
1) Baronial usage of "my GUESTS." Picturing Frank at head of table like ghost of Christmas Present, velveteen arms outstretched infront of massive banquet, baritone laughter, addressing of guests as "My Guest."

"Never fear, My Guests, I will eventually get this candle removed from my temporal lobe."
2) Who is his lavender-clad guest?

3) CHERRY JONES? I have to admit, ignorant of Broadway as I am (where apparently she's kicking ass), I thought he made her up. Like, "If there's a better runner than Leggy Van Bones, well I'd be darned!" Well Cherry, you been warned, girl. YOU BEST WATCH OUT OR SOMEONE ELSE IS GONNA TAKE YOUR PLACE AS THE 28TH MOST IMPORTANT CHARACTER IN "ERIN BROKOVICH"/SMALL TOWN COP IN "SIGNS"!!!!

As for the food, there are some pitfalls, but "more - many more - of my memories of Spigolo are extremely fond ones." How...wistful.

"Meeeeemories, all alone with my paaaaaasta, all alone with my saaaaaaalmon, and my bosomy hoooooosts."

True, I never waste an opportunity to post pictures from Cats! But also, Frank does oddly talk about the food as if it were a lakeside summer village he attended with his family in the lazy summers of the early 60's, lots of "I remember" and "I recall." All part of the heartfelt mood, one can only assume, certainly a new tic.

"Spigolo means 'edge' or 'corner,'" Frank informs us. Second definitions are "BOSOMY ITALIAN HOSPITALITY" and "PLEASE POST MORE WEIRD PHOTOS FROM CATS!"

I couldn't POSSIBLY.
Ok. Fine.

Wow.

[photographer drops camera, shrieks, runs]

"What're you thinking about?"
"What're YOU thinking about"
"What a waste of cashmere my forearm warmer is."
"Me, too."

Bette (Part II): Still Irrelevant After All These Weeks

2005-08-17T14:06:00.000-04:00

Remember when Frank went to Bette, where he hunched in the corner like a little Hedda Hopper with his gossip journal and giddily espied Robert Downey fils, a bar full of ‘rexies, and lots of plastic surgery before casually noting that there was some food on his plate? Yeah, me too… Remember when I made fun of it? Yeah, me too. Probably because it was July 15, a scant month ago (and I’m not that brain damaged). But back in July, whilst scribbling into his trusty, probably girly Diner's journal,

he must have been rubbing his palms together and whispering to himself the immortal words of Al Pacino: “I’m crazy and I’ve aged like meat in the hot sun.” Or no, I mean, “HOO-HA! I’m just getting warmed up.” Because he's back for more.

But not much more. Frank’s one-star review today is to his prior write-up what Star Jones is to Miss Piggy: just a fleshed out version of the exact same concept.

Frank reconfirms that Bette is a vanity trough with a nice interior, great fries and oddly heavy fare. But let’s see if Franka Claus left any fun presents under the reconfirmation tree, huh?

As Frank was eagerly snooping around for celebs, “the people at those other tables were, in turn, doing their own wishful reconnaissance. In this daisy chain of dauntless gawking, necks craned violently and heads swiveled abruptly. Was Bette a restaurant, or a cunning plot by business-hungry chiropractors?”

Simpleton chiropractor that lost her own office?... Or the next SAM WALTON? You be the judge.

Bette is “an exercise in mass vanity and mutually assured voyeurism: that is, a beloved Manhattan ritual and a guaranteed good time.”

Innnteresting…What guarantees that it’s a good time, Frank??

Frank: Go to Bette! It’s a guaranteed good time!
Me: But… I’m not really one for hip places.
Frank: But it’s such a good time! It’s full of weirdly skinny modely types wearing expensive satiny things! What could be more fun?
Me: But I’m kind of dikey, and my clothes are all made of cotton and most are shaped like a T. Sounds intimidating!
Frank: Are you kidding? You’ll pay $28 for a mediocre entrée it’s guaranteed HILARIOUS!
Me: Frank, my hair is for sale on Ebay and I just closed a deal on my uterus.
Frank: But you could see a celebrity!!!
Me: But I don’t care about celebrity sightings—OK, fine. I care. I care deeply. Where is it again?

Good enough sighting for me! I’ll take it, and I’ll find it quasi-spiritual!

Speaking of dialogue, Frank reproduced an entire encounter with the reservationist, so impressed was he that when you call, you “encounter something other than unadulterated attitude. Like humor.”

“‘You have to bear with me,’ said a man who answered one day. ‘One reservationist is home sick. The other reservationist is home sick. The other reservationist is home sick. And the other reservationist had to stay home to make a dress.’
‘A girl's got to sew,’ I said.
‘It's the best of the four excuses,’ he agreed.”

Hilarious... You can catch the Count and the Reservationist doing birthday parties on weekends.

P.S...."A girl's got to sew?" I mean, I appreciate the journalistic integrity but couldn't we have punched it up a bit? "WHEN SHE GETS IN, TAILOR I SAID HELLO!" or "WELL, LAST TIME I WAS THERE, SHE DID SEAMSTRESSED!!!!" Can I join the act, Frank?

Well listen, since Frank didn't really comment on the food (after all, "depending on your mood or perspective, the cooking at Bette is either refreshingly straightforward or stunningly unimaginative"), I won't either.

See you around... TRISHELLE

(my fingers are crossed BIG TIME!)

Taboon: Norwegian Woody

2005-08-16T15:47:00.000-04:00

"THE restaurant Taboon was built from the ground up in a peculiar and particular sense. Its back story is a tale of love and parquet."

(for a tale of love and parakeet, please see this guy.)

No, this week’s review was all about wood (which of our bawdy Count’s missives aren’t? Zing!. The review was [ironic gong-bang] long in getting to the food, and heavily focused on Danny Hodak and Gadi Ruham, professional woodsmithying floormongerers.

“Well, I thought it was very informative."

So did Frank: "Of the infinite ways that restaurants spring into being, Taboon's is surely among the more unusual, and I probably wouldn't find it charming if the result had been a bust." Not all things that spring into being from strange unions are charming after all.

To wit, the Labradoodle, aka, the Devil's Dingleberry (aka Billy Dee Williams.)

But when Frank gets past the wood, he's still, how to say, excited: "Taboon puts a deft, sophisticated spin on Middle Eastern food, and it's better on the far side of its first anniversary than it was at the start."

Taboon has incited more boldly laudatory language than any review of recent memory: "superb," "extraordinary," "sublimely seasoned," "smartly and inventively" tweaked, etc etc.

"Taboon's food remained impressive, and no meal was without its formidable pleasures. One of these was Taboon's hummus, which carries an extra, unexpected jolt: jalapeño."
OH MY GOD WHO WOULD HAVE EVER THOUGHT OF DOING THAT??? WHAT A SURPRISE!!!

Oh. That's right-- I forgot. My refrigerator invented it about 6 years ago.

But the real secret to Taboon's success has more to do with their central brick oven:

"Every hot dish spends at least some time in this hive-like chamber, which imparts a faintly woodsy, smoky quality to its charges and perfumes the air. It's the Kathleen Turner of cooking implements: a fiery diva at center stage."

The Pam Anderson of cooking implements.

The Elton john of cooking implements.

The Olsen twins of cooking implements. I could do this forever.

“Efi Nahon, the chef whom Mr. Cohen trained back in Tel Aviv, knows how to coax an expert performance from [the oven].”

You can hear all about chef Nahon’s techniques from the oven itself, who will be discussing its performance methodology Inside the Actors Studio with James Lipton on Bravo tonight.

Let’s….talk….about….a little something you produced…in 2005…by the name of…FALAFEL!!" [roaring applause]

Taboon also has a way with nice little touches: "The milk for coffee arrived heated. Smokers are given an area out front with a bench, several chairs, potted plants and a proper ashtray."

Ooooh! That is charming!

"And we had efficient, even ebullient, service from a waiter who was clearly as excited about promoting Taboon's food as we were about eating it." Excited, huh?

Cendrillon: I Almost Entrechat Myself

2005-08-04T13:48:00.000-04:00

Frank was promenading around SoHo the other day when he fell upon a peasant in rags wearing one glass slipper and decided that he’d be her savior. You know, maybe not MARRY her but definitely give her some Listerine FreshStrips and a new pinafore:

“Cendrillon should be attracting many more fans and much more interest than it does. It certainly shouldn't be only about one-sixth full, as it was during the first of the many recent times I dined there, or one-fifth full, as it was the third.”

How appropriate it is that Cendrillon, the name of Romy Doratan’s Filipino restaurant, refers to a French ballet about Cinderella! The whole review is a sort of Cinderella story, and I’ve always thought of Frank as a little lexical ballerina--

And by the time he gets to the end of this particular review, a few pretty glissades and a battement later, you may have entrechat yourself.

Brunisms of the Week...

"Cendrillon's SoHo location and vaguely hip, loftlike décor would seem to augur Asian food tailored for a broad audience, which often means potent gusts of sweetness, pointed blasts of heat, a deluge of coconut milk, a riot of peanuts."

AAAAH ze sans culottes have breached ze sac!!! Bon dieu!

No but seriously, remember what happened when green peas rioted?

This kid remembers.

"[Cendrillon] doesn't serve dishes that are merely anagrams of what's available a block or two in any direction."

Good thing, too. I don’t want Oprahs Dandy Man Tit any more than I want Nasty Random Pad Thai. And as painful as Vegetables in Garlic Sauce can be, it’s nothin’ like Snug Near-Green Sciatic Balls syndrome, which is anything but snug.

Green Sciatic Balls alert!!

“Cendrillon probably uses as much vinegar per ounce of food as any restaurant in Manhattan”
Well, I wouldn't go that far. Frank has clearly not been to Balsamic Rita’s Pucker Shack in a while.

Rita’s world famous key lime pie.

"Cendrillon may not be easy or sexy. But it's daring, different and a sure remedy for the malady, too widespread these days, of dining déjà vu."

Sure, she’s “pretty” ‘cause she’s “different.” If there are any ugly young children out there reading this, it must sound familiar to you. You've probably frequently been told you were different, just the way an uncle will pat his flaxen-haired retard of a nephew on the head and call him "unique." But instead of entrusting Cendrillon to a special care facility, Frank charges us, the dining public, to be kind to little Cendrillon: "food lovers" have a "real investment in the survival of this unconventional place.”

In other words, Frank backs off slowly, arms raised: I’M not gonna marry the princess. But you guys should. She’s great! I mean, she's not perfect ("Admittedly, there are a few too many unremarkable dishes on the menu, and the service can veer from poignantly attentive to epically absent-minded") but someone should keep her afloat. Here! Look! Two pretty stars for a pretty lady!

GOTTA GO! Bon apetit!

Open Kitchens, Open Wounds

2005-07-28T11:57:00.000-04:00

Finnicky Grandpa Frank just figured out how to use all these newfangled toilets, and now they’re mucking up his peaceful dining experience with all these raucous, open kitchens! Next thing you know, saloon whores will start reading books and wearing pants while they eff you.

The official J.M. Coetzee fan club/ bunch of hookers.

Open kitchens: sometimes it’s for showmanship, sometimes it’s for space, sometimes it’s a personal offense to one Frank P. Bruni. Let me explain:

In horror movies, after a group of kids accidentally 82% kills an innocent fisherman and dumps his putative corpse into a ravine, estuary, etc., the kids emerge from the woods all covered in stains, clapping the dirt off their hands and whistling happily as they collectively repress their secret trauma and attempt to do normal high school things like poon each other and listen to rap.

“Right foot my vagina!!”

But as they emerge from the woods, some twatty older sister figure spies them. And then later, when one of the guilty teens drops his tray in the cafeteria or uncharacteristically snaps at someone, the twatty sister, in response to these mounting indices, will peer in really closely and intensely at one of these guilty kids and say, “What happened in the woods that night?”

And that’s how I feel about Frank Bruni and Café Gray. As the twatty older sister in this situation, I feel I have to peer closely at Frank and ask, what happened at Café Gray that night, Frank? Did a server drop a hot crotch in your coffee?

Hot crotch! WELL I NEVER!

Bruni’s original (pre-Digest) review, subtly entitled, “Prime Location, Obstructed View,” clearly didn’t get the anger out of his system entirely, ‘cause he’s back for more:

“[Gray] Kunz had put his open kitchen - and thus himself - smack between diners and broad windows overlooking Central Park, obstructing the view and sending the message that the kitchen's activity was more engrossing than any panorama.”

Next, suggestively-placed paragraph:

“I think people have created open kitchens without any consideration for how imposing it is," said Marc Meyer, the chef and co-owner of Five Points in NoHo. "I think it's been overdone."

Nice. Whatever you do, people, DO NOT

OBSTRUCT

Frank

Bruni's

VIEW

Because he will come after you. Yes, that means you, Erykah. And you, Lobotomized Irish Girl.

Less of a deal-breaker with B-style but nonetheless irking to him, is the interactive showmanship of the open kitchen, which he ACTUALLY makes sound like a weekend in Miami:

“Now you are primed to ooh as chefs simmer and aah as they sautée. You are prodded to watch the sausage being made (not literally, but almost) and feel the heat.” Watch the sausage and feel the heat? You don’t have to prod ME. I’ll watch it all day!

My personal ESPN.

Well, Grandpa Frank, hopefully you can find someplace nice and peaceful and quiet, where no one blocks your view.

May I suggest Camaroon?

Frederick’s: Mary Tyler Moore, Do You Feel Like a Chop?

2005-07-20T15:48:00.000-04:00

This week found Frank at the corner table of uptown Frederick’s Madison, in a power suit with football-sized shoulderpads and a permed bouffant, lacking only a nearby Meshach Taylor with whom to repartee.

Frederick’s reeks of the 80’s: it’s a fresh aroma of AquaNet and KY with an arriere-gout of flaming polyester and casual profligacy. And it’s an atmosphere that Frank, in his newish Tom Wolfe phase (see Bette, below), is going to spend a good hunk of the review chronicling.

Hark! The Bruni quill alights upon the parchment:

“FIRST came the overnight bag, the kind with wheels and a retractable handle, the kind that told everybody its owner was moving too briskly through his important schedule to swing by the apartment between the airport and dinner. One of the restaurant's managers hustled it to the back, a vassal stowing his lord's battle armor. Then came the lord: maybe early 30's, open collar, long strides, perfect hair, cellphone on his ear."

That’s the kind of metaphor you publish from a distance. I’d love to see that one go over face to face:

Frank (stentorian, grandiose): Ah, Waiter! How peasantly your manor in dragging away that lordly man’s suitcase!
Manager: What? I’m a manager. I'm in the service industry, it’s my job.
Frank: Yes, mmof course, I was just drawing a metaphorical comparison, so uncannily serf-like was your demeanor! Do you have any of that nifty tooth-blackout stuff? Maybe some straw you could stuff in your sleeves? Some burlap hosiery?
Manager: I WENT TO COLUMBIA! I have an MFA!
Frank: Wait wait wait! Put some pig poop in your hair! It will be hilarious! [Giddy chuckle] Really, are you sure you’re not that dignified rich man’s squire? Because you really had me there.
Manager: It’s JUST MY JOB! I’M WEARING A CHINESE SILK VEST!
Frank: Ta ha! Such fine raiment for a captive galleyman!
Manager: AAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

Essential for pseudoslaves, aka waiters.

I'm not ready to leave the opener alone: “First came the overnight bag, the kind with wheels and a retractable handle, the kind that told everybody its owner was … important.”

A small suggestion for an aspiring social chronicler: A ROLLIE SUITCASE, while undeniably convenient, is not a sign of glittering wealth and glamour.

Oh my God! It’s RUPERT MURDOCHHHHHH!

But my quibbles aside, here’s the major question, or, as I used to say when I taught English in really bad public schools, “WHO WANTS A FUCKING DOLLAR? YOU WANT A FUCKING DOLLAR TO GO WASTE ON SUNCHIPS? THEN ANSWER THIS QUESTION!”: Why review stodgy, expensive Fredericks? Let’s look at the facts, from the horse’s mouth.

1)“To be clear, Frederick's neither composes an interesting enough menu nor performs consistently enough to lure many diners with no other business in the East 60's.”

HEY SOUP'S ON ASSHOLES! SOOOOOOOOOOEYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!

2)“Frederick's seems to exist in very large measure for people who want to feel, and want restaurants to make them feel, that they have reached the very apex of privilege.”

3) Frederick’s is “for people with deep pockets.”

4)“The clientele consists of “older men in pastel sport shirts and pricey loafers; older women with very taut skin and very white teeth.”

5) Fredericks is “not especially dashing.”

GRRRREAT. Next time I am hurling emeralds at mermaids from Gigi LaGrange's East Hampton veranda and she asks where she can get a mediocre veal chop in the East 60's, I'll remember this. THANKS FRANKKKKK!!!!!

And P.S. Don't think I'm not still tallying up the bountiful cinematic references. Says Frank of the lordly, suitcase-owning high-roller, "He looked like Michael Douglas in 'Wall Street' crossed with Vince Vaughn in 'Swingers.'"

TONY AND MANOLA OVER IN MOVIES-- I repeat, if you see THIS GUY hanging around the office, it's Frank.

Maybe you should let him intern a couple days a week, 'cause he is REALLY interested in what you do, he's very talented and VERY eager. And maybe he will take you out to eat with cool people.

Sleep tight!

Bette: Thinking Outside Frank's Box

2005-07-15T17:12:00.000-04:00

Dude! Frank totally dropped a bomb today in the Diner's Journal (which he OBVIOUSLY wrote in an actual DIARY at Beppe, smirking at his neighboring tables and licking his quill nib.)

Frank has woken me up to my narrow-mindedness: no more of my sniffing the trail of his journalistic excrescence like a braindead bloodhound, and then yowling about it pointlessly into the virtual night, JUST BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT I SET OUT TO DO! Like a mindless sheep, following my stated mission! If the Diner's Journal is now Page 6 then from now on, I shall be using the Bruni Digest to post pictures of absurdly cute baby animals.

Oh damn. You are the cutest.

Oh my god! Stop the press! Baby mastiff!! I’m freaking out!

Holy shit, look how big your paws are! You are so cute, I’m like dumping in my pants!

what animal even are you? Who cares! Your mommy loves you so much, I’m having a heart attack! SO CUTE.

Oh Jesus Christ are you a handful of adorable! Call the cops! This little lovenut is nuzzling too hard, it’s got to be illegal! Stop nuzzling you cute little SHIT! I LOVE YOU!

I’m literally going to kill myself. You are so GRAY and DUSTY! You are so TIRED FROM LIFE! WHY ARE YOU SO TIRED ALREADY? IS IT CAUSE YOU ARE SO CUTE IT’S EXHAUSTING???? I AM GOING TO STAB MY EYES OUT IF I LOOK AT YOU ANYMORE, YOU LITTLE RETARD! I LIVE FOR YOU!!!!

OK, I'm not emotionally capable of continuing this. We're going back to the old Bruni Digest. Phew. Someone bring me a picture of Rutger Hauer, I need to calm down.

But you know, people may criticize the Bruninator for not discussing food. But it's like, WHY SHOULD HE??? Let's all take our bras off, smoke some ree-ree, and break the journalistic constraints that are imposed on us! Krugman, dawg, let's hear your style report! Hey, Liz Smith, what's the word on Baghdad?? C'mon people, I'm doing it, Frank's doing it, hop on board the freedom train.

And yes, Alto to follow. Sorry. I'm in Finland. I've been pickled in 8% beer.

Barbes: Old Man Couscous Just Keeps Rollin'

2005-07-07T16:35:00.000-04:00

At the 2005 Carbie Awards this year (which occurred entirely in the opening paragraphs of Frank’s review of Barbès this week), Frank presented the Lifetime Achievement Award for Most Undervalued Carb to Couscous.

All you cynics out there who might snort and claim that Frank was only looking for an excuse to type while wearing a D&G, split-to-the-hooha awards gown need only to remember that Frank doles out big fat gold stars when he sees Atkins-defying kitchens. You may remember the Wednesday we opened the door to his bedroom and interrupted him sloppily making out with an Idaho spud.

"Frank said he loved me! He even gave me this tiny Birkin bag as a token!"

So it was heartfelt this week when Frank, who apparently had not been told that he would be actually reviewing a restaurant until halfway into the article, wove elaborate tributes to the carbs we know and love:

“RICE runs rampant. Always has. It does a pantomime of subservience, deferring to the sliver of hamachi astride it or the lobster tail and chorizo in its saffron embrace. But playing humble is easy once you've already insinuated your way into so many dishes and cuisines.”

If you are allergic to personification, P.S., this is where you jump ship, unless your trachea has already closed completely and your eyes are shooting water. Frank describes Rice’s culinary prevalence resulting not from its status as the main subsistence for over half of the world’s population, but from its FAKING subservience and humility only to WORM ITS WAY into peoples mouths.

"Well, I was GOING to have a Hot Pocket, but then I remembered that Rice had offered to mow my lawn for free yesterday, and when I had gone to say 'thank you,' it had stabbed itself in the heart, screaming, 'I AM NOT WORTHY OF THANKS, I AM ONLY RICE!!!!' So it was really its overwhelming humility that won Rice its place in my face."

As for Pasta, nobody really knows why it’s so famous. It has nothing to do with the taste or texture of the stuff, but rather with its uncanny knack for self-promotion:

“And pasta? An unsinkable showboat. Few carbohydrates could have triumphed so handily over Atkins and South Beach. But pasta thrives, insistent and ineluctable, like Paris Hilton.”

It’s funny, isn’t it, to think of the snot-colored, 2-cent, water-flour-egg mixture spanked together and stretched out at the palms of leathery Italian grammas everywhere as the culinary equivalent of a hyperflashy Six Flags Great Vagina ride like Paris Hilton? It makes little sense. However, it does result in a sentence I will be SURE to repeat: “Pasta? An unsinkable showboat!” I will never eat pasta again without saying that.

Friend: I can’t decide between the veal or the pasta.
Jules [in Countly baritone]: Pasta? An unsinkable showboat!
Friend: So you would do the pasta?
Jules: AH! PASTA! WHAT A SHOWBOAT SHE BE!
Then I will laugh like Santa. Seriously say it out loud. I am literally in tears over this.

“Your cavatelli, ma'am?"
"I ordered mine manned with turn-of-the-century singing slaves, this can't be mine!"
"Ah, quite correct!"

So finally the award goes to couscous, but actually the award really goes to Barbes, in the form of 2 stars.

"Couscous, on the other hand, needs lessons in self-assertion, a better publicist, maybe even its own reality show on Fox. There's no reason it should occupy such an underexposed niche among starchy, grain-based canvases for meat, fish and vegetables. And it's all over the menu at Barbès, a Moroccan-French restaurant that attracts notice for that reason among others."

Actually, not really for others. This place didn't really seem to dazzle him aside from their willingness to serve a carb. Next week: Frank presents Taco Bell with the Heisman Trophy.

And with that, I'm literally late for a flight! Gotta Go! I'll be writing from Finland next week, so if I sound unusually ham-fed and peasant-like, that's why!

The Red Cat: What Kind of Cat do YOUUUUU Think It Is?

2005-06-30T15:43:00.000-04:00

After reading the Red Cat review this week, was one of your eyebrows arched, The Rock-style?

Mine certainly was.

“By turns cozy and sexy, laid-back and fleet, the Red Cat is a restaurant Rorschach, different things at different times to different people”

I seeeeeee.....ummmmmm....a hedged bet! No wait! A sidestepped conclusion! No I got it, a really intense way to say "versatile"!

I mean, sure, sometimes Frank overdoes it on the Courvoisier and finds himself teetering in his trusty, fireside Laz-E-Count, red in the face and giggling extra hard at the pages of Lady Chatterly’s Lover. On more than one occasion, Frank has alluded to his deep appreciation of a good martini, or lamented the results of a few too many. Nothing I myself haven't perpetrated, of course.

But this week, if you clang the massive knockers on his chateau door, a pensive and spaced-out Frank will answer. (If you clang MY massive knockers, a quarter falls out my nooners. Try it sometime.) Frank’s in a Stevie Nicks muumuu with a frightening décolletage...

...with a lot of psychobabble literature under one arm, and he’s smoking a J upheld at the butt end by many manservants.

(I picture them singing from Cavaleria Rusticana for some reason.)

"The Red Cat feels vaguely colonial and tavernlike, except when it feels downtown-gallery cool, and apart from those moments when it feels modestly and eclectically elegant.”

Apart when it's a spaceship except when it's a congressional hearing not counting when it's a petting zoo. Of course.

"It seems...in equal measures a local joint and a destination. It's the exceedingly rare place that can often take a reservation only a few days in advance and yet is almost always packed."

Paging Marty McFly: Red Cat defies all known business principles, as well as the time space continuum.

Doc and young McFly attempt to order the steak tartare, wind up in ancient Eritrea.

Basically, I’m all, “So Frank, tell me about The Red Cat!”
And he’s all, “Why don’t YOU tell ME something about The Red Cat.”
And I’m all, “No no no, you’re the reviewer: you’re supposed to go check out the restaurant and tell us what it’s like.”
And he’s all, “Why don’t YOU let the RED CAT let YOU ask YOURSELF what The Red Cat’s like.”
And I’m all, “Frank! Please take off your transparent chiffon mumu. Your tart, exposed nipples are making me very uncomfortable. How is The Red Cat?”
And he’s all, “Are my nipps really exposed? Or is the Red Cat telling you to think about whether my nipps are exposed because you want to touch them.”
And I’m all, “What?”
And he’s all, “My nips.”
And I’m all, “Red…Cat?”
And he’s all, “It’s not like I want to you touch them or anything.”
And I’m all, “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!”

[More] crazy Brunisms:

After listing The Red Cat by name several times as the perfect place for every and any occasion, (i.e. Place to get your shins waxed? Red Cat! Place to choke a stray mink? Red Cat!) he answers his final “Place to blah blah?” query with “Hint: a domesticated animal in a popular color for fast cars.”

How about a dog in black with silver detailing? How about just saying “Red Cat” again? Is it because, according to Frank, the name itself is an existential koan to intended to unfurl the psyche?

“The simultaneously prosaic and cryptic name they gave it alludes to nothing, connotes nothing. It's a phrase to be imbued with whatever meaning the imbuing party deems fit.”

"Red Cat": it is at once everywhere and nowhere, like the wise corn-fart of a Navajo Elder trapped in a dizzy plains wind.

"Safety!"

If you say “Red Cat” three times fast, Michael Keaton comes out of your butt in an alarming amount of makeup, and if you watch the Red Cat on video, Naomi Watts drops dead.

And you thought it was just a cute downtown bistro!

And even though the identity of the Red Cat is completely in the eye of the beholder, Frank, forced to pin down a quantifiable opinion in at least one respect, gives it two stars, starts a cult, is the only member, drops out, joins a kibbutz, gets bored, misses his fireplace and his Courvoisier, and returns to his chateau.

Well, I guess everybody's allowed an annoying hippie phase.

Bar Americain: Orange You A Little Exhausted??

2005-06-22T17:57:00.000-04:00

Bar Americain, suggests the headline on Bruni's review today, is "Not the Place to Wear Hot Pink."

Why, you ask? Because the cuisine reflects that of the Southern United States, where hot pink can prove an unwise wardrobe choice for men? No such thing! In fact, it’s because hot pink would clash: the whole place is orange, from the food to the décor to the red-headed stepchild of a chef, Bobby Flay.

At Bar Americain, I guess the rug DOES match the curtains. LITERALLY!

“NEW YORKERS have seen many a thoughtfully designed restaurant, but I'm not sure we've yet seen one where the décor and food are as color-coordinated as at Bar Americain, which finds a union of palette and palate in one bright hue.”

He really hammers home the orange thing. He highlights every orange food item, and decides that colors that aren’t orange are in fact orange, just in different moods.

“The lights glow orange. The walls are painted orange. The leather that upholsters some of the seats is orange - or, to be accurate, caramel, which is just orange in a retiring, pensive mood.”

Brown as retiring, pensive orange? Or orange as hopped-up brown? Or both as kind of poopy and 70’s? Food for thought, friends. Food. For. Thought.

big fans of brown and orange.

But Frank also got into the orangeness:

“As I dressed for one of my visits here, I found myself putting on the sole orange button-down in my closet.”

What? It’s a button down! There are buttons down the front, under the ostrich trim. He got it on sale at Banana (not the Republic—the leather store on Christopher.)

“I figured that if the restaurant's chef, Bobby Flay, and designer, David Rockwell, were going this far with chromatic integration, I should do my part.”

Frank frequently "does his part" to blend in with the decor of the restaurants he's reviewing.

Frank blending in at The Modern

Feelin' the spirit of BLT Fish

At Greek spot Periyali

And Prune

This review shed light not only on Frank's wardrobe strategies but also on his career ambitions:

"At this juncture Mr. Flay had two options. Like Julia Roberts in 'Closer,' he could choose a nuanced vehicle, challenge his image and assert the existence of an underappreciated aesthete beneath the megawatt luster. Or he could go with the flow and try to pack people in."

This is the third film commentary in recent weeks. Last week, he noted that tamarind and kaffir lime provoked and seduced each other like Brangelina in “Mr. And Mrs. Smith,” and let’s not embark on prior mentions of “the Aviator.” Note to A.O. and Manola over in Movies: if you see THIS guy hovering around your office, don’t worry, he’s only trying to replace you.

Two stars!!! YAAAAY!! ORANGE IS FUN! And Frank and I are alarmingly similar journalists:

"According to my exhaustive semiotic research, by which I mean a few clicks on Google, it's a color that connotes enthusiasm and is 'very effective for promoting food products and toys.' Simply put, it's fun. So is Bar Americain."