Our Inevitably Eroding Food Landscape

evan sung for the ny times"Every taste seems to transport you to another world, while every gesture of the staff convinces you that you live in the privileged center of this one. Daniel, which turned 20 this year, can make you feel that way." So writes Pete Wells at the start of his review this week. It reads with the same magnitude of the Le Bernardin review the critic filed in May last year, but Wells gave that restaurant the same four stars it already had. This week, Daniel has a different fate.

A lot is being said of the way Wells went about the review. "One night I had a reservation 15 minutes apart from a colleague who wasn’t likely to be recognized, as I repeatedly was," the critic explains. "We both ordered the six-course $195 tasting menu. (A three-course prix fixe dinner is $116.) Our meals were virtually identical. Our experiences were not."

But the New York Times restaurant review is irrefutably one of the most relevant pieces of food world commentary. And given the current state of food culture (how long would it take to come up with an accurate count of food-based reality TV shows and/or chefs who have more than one restaurant and/or people that don't take pictures of their food before they eat it), if a restaurant is privy to the fact that the Times critic is dining with them, there is little to be done to dampen the flame his/her mere presence ignites. That's not to say anything what so ever should be done differently for him/her, but seating the critic in the best server's section, folding napkins, refilling water, having the executive chef or proprietor cook the critic's food etc. are actions every restaurant will take should the circumstance arise.

"Daniel built its fame on Mr. Boulud’s exquisite refinements on French peasant food," Wells writes. "Over the years, the refinements have multiplied while the peasant food has been sent away to his many spinoff bistros." Wells gives Daniel three stars. The dagger that took away the coveted fourth is justified, as the critic notes partial treatment, and it suggests success (chefs expanding their empire) comes at a price (their flagship suffers)."

With three stars from Wells, Daniel joins the likes of Carbone, Ichimura at Brushstroke, Atera, The Nomad, Dining Room at the Modern, Kyo Ya, and Il Buco Alimentari e Vineria. It leaves Le Bernardin, Jean Georges, Per Se, Eleven Madison Park, and Del Posto as the city's surviving four-star restaurants. [NYTimes]