Though he deems it "satisfactory," Bruni points out Michael's most obvious flaw: it charges outrageous prices to people who want to see and be seen, so who cares about the food? I'll tell you who: Frank Bruni.

The shrimp were entombed in a dense, soggy beer batter and interred in an almost monochromatic landscape of goat cheese, puddles of dark miso aioli and shavings of summer truffle that might have been shavings of summer rubber for all the flavor they had.

California cuisine? More like gloppy, affected pub grub, for which Michael’s charges $25

Zing! You could have had a corner seat, Frank, but now forget it. How about the obligatory media-food tie-in?

Across a series of visits I had some enjoyable food, notably the renowned Cobb salad, less a salad than an entire ecosystem, vast and verdant, with enough avocado to feed three I.C.M. agents or five Vogue editors.

Gracious. Now back to the main point:

And shouldn’t a diner paying $38 for sea scallops get more than two, situated at opposite ends of a long hillock of sautéed snow pea leaves?

Also keep in mind Michael's is hated by its own waiters, and its sommelier gave Bruni a bum recommendation on Chardonnay. On the upside, you are guaranteed to meet Laurel Touby there.

[NYT; pic via Radar]

Wake up at Gansevoort breakfast includes water, cereal and fresh fruit. Simply perfect. Everyone that served had something that I call sunshine...a nice smile. Lunch at Four Seasons was a small filet and I asked for a small salad but add a ton of shrimp on it. No problem. Perfect lunch and perfect service. For dinner I took my $2500 " date" from Zurich to Papaya King. We brought the food back to the hotel and I watched Marta stick it up her Swiss twat.The only thing Bruni would review would be the hot dog not how Marta prepared it and served it to herself. No this isn't a Playboy or Forum story its my life. ANYWAYS. Enough with dancing mushrooms and asparagus parfaits. I like fine food and great presentation but if you travel all the time meat loaf,potato salad or a good BLT hits the spot. Momofuku can blow me. If I can get an appointment for my daughter to see possibly one of the top brain cancer doctors in the world but I can't get into this noodle joint they should change their name to Momofuku kaka.

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

#1: Be late with the reviewer's reservation.

He returned at 9:02 with something less than disaster relief. Our table, he said, should be ready in 10 minutes. Never mind that we'd been told at 8:45 that we had five minutes to go. Never mind that Ago has some 110 seats, giving it more flexibility than many restaurants have.

We waited. And waited. One of the hostesses finally fetched us at 9:22. I'll do the math: that's 52 minutes after our reservation.

#2: Spill wine on the reviewer or his friends.

I'm talking about the "Poseidon Adventure" of wine spills. Shelley Winters could have done the backstroke in it. I'm not sure how the bartender set it in motion, and neither was he. He kept marveling at its fury and aftermath: my friend's wine-splashed chin, her wine-soaked skirt, her wine-sopped entirety.

#3: Put the reviewer at the worst table in the house.

She led us to a round table little bigger than a bike wheel. When our four appetizers later arrived and claimed every square millimeter of it, the waiter audibly contemplated balancing a fifth, communal appetizer that we'd ordered on top of our wine glasses.

The table was pressed so close to a column that I couldn't lower my right arm all the way, and if my wine-drenched friend leaned back in her chair, the column obstructed her view of me and mine of her.

#4: Have bad food.

This restaurant isn't in the hospitality business. It's in the attitude business, projecting an aloofness that permeated all of my meals there, nights of wine and poses for swingers on the make, cougars on the prowl and anyone else who values a sort of facile fabulousness over competent service or a breaded veal Milanese with any discernible meat.

The one I had one night was pounded so thin that the breading on top met the breading on the bottom without pausing for much of anything in between. A vegan could have made peace with it.

#5: Have waiters who are jerks.

Then came an entree that perplexed us, a pale slab of meat with one long bone.

"What is this?" asked one of my friends.

"The special veal chop," said the food deliverer.

"But I ordered rack of lamb," my friend said. I had heard him.

"Yes," said the deliverer. "That's rack of lamb."

My friend pressed: which was it?

"It's the special rack-of-lamb veal chop," the deliverer said, at which point we sought deliverance from him and searched for our frequently vanishing waiter, whom I had come to think of as the bucatini Houdini.

[NYT]

Kottke explains the technical side of this feat, but the best part is watching the commenters on Bruni's Diners Journal blog. Some of them, after various technological contortions, got reservations:

One even offered his own review (since Bruni hasn't yet gotten in):

Very "ooo-mommy" indeed.

"I think enjoyment of food has never proven to be harmful to anyone's health," said Mr. [Steven] Shaw, who turned from practicing law to writing about food in the late 1990s with an article for salon.com defending fat guys. He still cultivates a persona in print and online as The Fat Guy, and at 5-foot-10 weighs about 270 pounds.

Mr. Shaw said he believes the genetic component of weight and health matter more than moderation and exercise. Although his father died from heart disease, he thinks that the state of medical knowledge on the relationship of diet to health changes so frequently that it can't be trusted.

Some of his views about diet and health border on the extreme. "I think the whole diabetes thing is a major hoax," he said. "They are overdiagnosing it."

In other words: "I am an idiot." Steven Shaw is plodding towards a meat-induced coma, the timing of which will surely be directly correlated to how much he continues to spout delusional health advice. The self-imposed decline of a man's health is a sad thing to watch, I say as I light a cigarette. In any case, if Shaw does decide to turn his life around, there is only one clear strategy for success:

The Bruni chapters are cliffhangers, drawn out for drama, written in clear and at times exhilarating prose. It's great entertainment watching professionals at the top of the field spare no eccentricity (rules for staff behavior read: "No cologne, scented lotions, scented soaps, aftershave or perfume are to be worn during service"; "No first names, no flirting, no hands on the chairs, no touching the guest") or expense (Per Se, with its cruise liner decor, apparently cost $12 million to open): all to impress a single critic (spotted almost immediately).

But the phraseology of Wilsey's sentence suggests that the rules for the staff's personal hygiene, their comportment and the $12 million dollars Keller sunk into Per Se were all for the benefit of Mr. Bruni. The sentence isn't really confusing in this regard as much as it is misleading. That mash of parenthesis, colons, colognes, and quotes imbue a causality that is, even in the most jaded of New York minds, a stretch. It's hard to believe Thomas Keller sunk $12 mil into the restaurant "all to impess a single critic." On the other hand, as Wilsey notes, Bruni did spend $10,000 of the Times' dollars there, so he is a good customer.

The Food of Love [NYT]
The Magic of Napa With Urban Polish [NYT]

She goes on: "Your books would not be reviewed once by the Times. Your books would be completely ignored by the Times unless they included a thinly-veiled villainess who was nonetheless recognizable to Times editors, in which case said editors would hire her former deputy to review your book. Also, you'd be ignored by Oprah. This would be worse." Ignored by Oprah! But wait, the list of depredations worsens.

Your MFA-toting literary peers would shun you at panels or public events, assuming you actually got invited to such things. They'd sneer at your breezy, accessible tales of young women and love, especially if your breezy, accessible tales were selling and their deeply ambiguous, finely wrought short-story collections and/or memoirs about masturbation were not.

The grande dames of literature would turn up their distinguished noses, complaining that you'd undone their years of struggle by writing amusingly of heroines who care about love and marriage. Maureen Dowd and her very good friend Leon Wieseltier would call you frivolous (apparently, novels about women who date are verboten, while autobiography about not being able to get a date is just fine).

Your loved ones would blush when describing your covers and mumble the names of your titles. You'd spend each day living with the pain of having betrayed feminism, your early intellectual promise, and your expensive education by writing something popular instead of something important. Your life would be a hot-pink hell, a toxic cocktail of shame and sugary Cosmpolitans. Worst of all, nobody from the Times would ever email to ask what's on your iPod or how many hours a day you burn on Bluefly.com.

On the plus side, you'd be able to buy a great many pairs of cute shoes...and any board book your daughter's heart desired.

But Jennifer is right that our rules about what constitutes highbrow and lowbrow literature are not only arbitrary, but informed by a outdated, snobbish sensibility that doesn't seem to have much to do with what people actually want to read about. Also, that Maureen Dowd can be such a ladder-pulling-up cow sometimes.

Dear Frank, The penguin has returned to the South Pole where it belongs. I'm contributing the money I would have spent on a larger ad to the fight against global warming. Really glad you loved the wild salmon at Wild Salmon. It is like no other salmon I've ever tasted. Regards, Jeff. P.s. Loved "your" cameo in Ratatouille."

On the first front, after some scrambling, they came back with an organization called Conservation International which, we guess, combats global warming. What are the chances some PR flak thought, "Doh, they're actually calling us out. Quick, somebody Google 'conservation'!"

But in response to how much dough Chodorow is throwing away, we got "We are not disclosing the amount at this time." This either means somewhere around $20K (the approximate difference between a full pager and a 2 column ad), or maybe nothing. A better formulation would have been "I'm contributing the money I'm going to lose at my business due to my continuing obsessive craziness to the fight against global warming." That way the environmentalists would be trillions of dollars richer!

[Scan: Eater]

Freeman has been accused of shilling for restaurants—she denies it. But her response to the clearly troubling fact that everyone knows what she looks like (she played Maria Giaculo on the Sopranos and plasters her face everywhere she can) isn't reassuring.

I want to give chefs and restaurants their best opportunity to communicate a vision. Restaurants aren't running out to grab different ingredients or a new chef simply because you're recognizable. Besides, let's be honest, everyone knows what Frank Bruni looks like. There are photos of him in every important kitchen in NYC.

Perhaps the most succulent morsel in this sordid story of sex, fame and food is alluded to by the 27th commenter on the Eater post, who asks, presumably of Eater editor Ben Leventhal but maybe also of Eater publisher Lockhart Steele, "Isn't this your girlfriend?" We asked—denials were uniform and believable. But hasn't science shown that this is exactly the type of things dudes lie about?

THE Bordeaux was flowing, the foie gras abundant and the well-heeled epicures at Daniel were having a refined old time when suddenly all eyes turned toward a table against one wall and all conversation ceased.

Jean-Luc Le Dû, a sommelier in the restaurant, looked in that direction, too. And he saw her: the woman making like a dancer on a pole at Scores.

She stood facing the rest of the dining room. First she took off a vest or a jacket, as best Mr. Le Dû remembers. Then she went to work on her blouse.

Just as she was getting to her bra, the maître d'hôtel got to her. Thus her drunken, wobbly stint as a stripper ended, and so did her dinner. She and her date, a smiling, sloshed man who had seemingly egged her on, were escorted to the door.

"She was not necessarily attractive or young, so it was disruptive," complained Mr. Le Dû, who left Daniel several years ago and now owns a wine shop in Greenwich Village. "If she were beautiful, it might have been different. People might have been cheering her on."

Well! Probably not Larry Ingrassia and his Business staff—like David Carr, Joe "Near-Death Experience" Sharkey, and soon, ex-TV Newser Brian Stelter—who are stuck way down on 2 (maybe they sold it to them as "bad views, but a short way down in case of emergency"?). Sharing that floor are various research/administrative-y departments like contracts and news surveys and database reporting, but also fun desks like Escapes/Travel; Investigative, which is run by former "Our Towns" Metro columnist Matthew Purdy; the Science desk (presumably where counterintuitivist John Tierney hangs his hat); and the wacky dudes of Sports. Oh, and Week in Review also gets its own corner on 2.

On 3, we've got a real newsy smorgasboard: City Weekly (hey, Jake Mooney! What's up, Jennifer Bleyer!), the clerical staff, the Continuous News Desk (they still have those?), Alison Mitchell's Education desk (where we presume ethics-loving and Jew-struggling Sam Freedman probably has a cubicle), the Foreign desk (the editors, we assume? If everyone else is, you know, in a foreign country?), and hip-hop and memo loving Joe Sexton's Metro staff—like Clyde Haberman, overwriter Michael Brick, weather poet Robert D. McFadden, and Peter Braunstein-chronicler Anemona Hartocollis. We're not done, though—also crowded into the third floor are the National desk, led by Times lifer Suzanne Daley (though, like the Foreign desk, most of her reporters are scattered in various places); the News Administration, News Design, and the simply named "News Desk" desks; Obituaries, where advance writer Marilyn Berger toils away, presumably maintaining the office celebrity death pool; the limping Regional Edition; and WQXR, the Times-owned classical music station.

Most important, though, is that the "Masthead" also lives on 3. Who, or what, is the "Masthead" desk? Why, simply the Most Important Editors of Our Time, such as executive editor Bill Keller, managing editors Jill Abramson and John Geddes, and deputy managing editor Jonathan Landman, who've clustered in a corner of the floor to protect themselves from the unwashed masses.

Up on 4, we've got Sam Sifton and his Culture clique—Alessandra Stanley, Bill Carter, Virginia Heffernan, Jon Pareles, Kelefa "K" Sanneh, etc.—who share space with a bunch of other features-y departments. We've got Trish Hall's Home section, which, of course, is not just for rich people! This floor is also where Pete Wells holds court over the Dining section, which is home to sometime bartender Frank Bruni, cheapskate Peter Meehan, and food-world gossipper Florence Fabricant; the Real Estate section, which hopefully will never again publish a front-page story printed at an angle like they did the other week; "Special Sections"; the TV Studio; and (drumroll!) WASPy Jew Trip Gabriel and his Styles minions. This, we imagine, is where the real decisions at the Times get made. It's where Stephanie Rosenbloom sits at her cubicle, calling her mom. Where Guy Trebay and Eric Wilson get into catfights over who's wearing the skinniest pants. Where Cathy Horyn swans into the office in a conceptual muumuu. Where "society editor" Bob Woletz has the power to decide which couples shall receive an announcement the paper's Weddings section, and which shall die a certain social death.

Moving on! On 5, ensconced with, undoubtedly, many bookshelves, we've got New York Times Book Review editor Sam Tanenhaus and his staff, including Paper Cuts blogger and "Inside the List" columnist Dwight Garner, deputy editor Bob Harris, and assorted other book review staff.

On 6 and 7 is Gerald Mazorati and Alex Star's New York Times Magazine—plus the various incarnations of T, Play, Key, and whatever other one-word glossies they're incubating over there. The Art department also has space on 7. And most of the Editorial staff of NYTimes.com, including Digital News Editor Jim Roberts, lives on 9.

Our friends on the editorial page—editor Andrew Rosenthal, deputy editors Carla Robbins and David Shipley, and Letters editor Thomas Feyer—have taken up residence on 13, which they share with some ad operations people from NYTimes.com.

The Morgue has, sadly, been sent off-site, to the Times offices at 230 W. 41st St.

Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis and her corporate communications cronies are on 17, which they share with the controller's office and part of the executive committee (scary!), part of which is also on 16. Now we're getting to some potentially good views. On 18, we've got the corporate secretary, the "forest products group" (uh, paper?), legal, blah blah. The 19th and 20th floors are home to Ad Sales (and a herd of mice). Then, on 22, which is the very top Times floor (the rest of the building has been leased to fancy law firm Goodwin Procter) are what, clearly, are the most important departments in the place: Circulation and Finance. Just remember that.

LAST week the New Yorker immortal ized me. Everybody mentioned it. Last week the restaurant critic of our city's broadsheet shpritzed me. Even typesetters mustn't read Mr. Bruno, or whatever his name is, because nobody mentioned it. He wasn't critiqueing star chef Eric Ripert's Le Bernardin, the town's Number One restaurant, or owner Sirio Maccioni's Le Cirque, the world's most famous restaurant. Somewhere between sauerkraut and pastrami he said Katz's Deli opened 1888, which was even "before Cindy Adams." It's actually a funny line. Someday I'll have to read him - or let my dogs pour over him.

Frank Bruni doesn't want comments that discuss his reviews. People can disagree with stuff he posts on the blog. A prime example of what he doesn't want is the first ten or so comments on the restaurant-landmarking post, where everybody screamed at him for giving 4 Seasons 2 stars. The post wasn't about the 4 Seasons review so the comments were off-topic. It's the same reason we don't publish letters taking issue with our critics' opinions. You'd just get a bunch of people screaming "No it's not!" and "Yes it is!" and there would be no dialogue, just shouting.

Spector Murder Trial Is A Lifetime [NYP, last item]

I have no way of knowing whether a review I've written hastens the death of any restaurant," Mr. Bruni told The Observer, "but I can assure you it's not my goal in writing a negative review to put a restaurant out of business. I'm just writing what I honestly think about the restaurant, with my principal consideration being readers and consumers."

It's Brundle's job to catalog abominations as they emerge from the kitchen. Sure, that he does so with acerbic, populist cattiness is unusual—but essentially he is merely helping dying restaurants die and vital ones prosper. Think of him as a hospice-helper. The real Bruni Effect, perhaps, can be seen less in a city strewn with the carcasses of mediocre restaurants and more in the pages of The Observer, whose unmemorable restaurant critic pops up twice a month whether one likes it or not. —Josh

Feel the Bruni Effect, New York!

Two weeks ago my restaurant, Morandi, and its female chef, Jody Williams, received a one-star rating from Frank Bruni of The New York Times. Prior to the review I was told by a number of chefs in the business not to expect anything above a token one star. Not because Morandi didn't deserve it (it's not for me to say), but because Bruni had never given a female chef in Manhattan anything more than one star, ever.... One can only wonder whether Bruni would still have his job at The Times if he himself was a woman. Based on the unremittingly sexist slant of his reviews one has to say no. The surprise is that The New York Times continues to condone it. But until it refuses to, its message, through Frank Bruni, is loud and clear: If you're a woman and talented, the one place you'd better get out of - and fast - is the kitchen.

Keith McNally: Bruni Has "Unremittingly Sexist Slant [Eater]

Over the clatter of flatware and the barking of the expediter, it might be difficult to pick out one voice in a crowded dining room. But Bruni's voice is unique in a couple of ways. First of all, it's quite often biphonic—that is, there are often two sources of sound. The man whistles when he speaks, as air passes through both his vocal folds and teeth. In words like "Times, special, that's," the overtones of a whistle can be heard. When he says, "a gnarled grove of olive trees that date back more than a century behind a long stone wall"—a phrase he is likely to repeat in your restaurant!—listen for the whistle in "century" and "stone." Bruni's register is similar to that of film critic A.O. Scott, though far less sing-song in speech. His words come in little well-crafted clots that are often strung together with a drawn-out, aspirated "um" or "ah."

Would this information have saved Max Brenner, if Max Brenner existed, or Jeffrey Chodorow ,if he wasn't a crazy fuck, from recent savagings by Bruni? Probably not. But it does offer us a glimpse at the veiled and mercurial Bruni—and you know what? He sounds, at least, like a pretty nice guy. —Josh

Hear Frank Bruni Here

You Can Almost Eat the Dishes [NYT]

—Josh

Morandi [NYT]

An Extraordinary Measure [NYT]

Inside the restaurant, Tom Wolfe had his photo taken with Julia Allison. (That bears repeating: Tom Wolfe had his photo taken with Julia Allison.) Kurt Andersen made a little chit-chat before begging off to the Larry King appreciation party in the next room. (They had better snacks, by far. Also CNN partygoers received a Coach-imitation leather tote with a CNN tag, and a DVD of King's reputedly best work. You could sneak in through the kitchen.) The two parties side-by-side may have been a slight disaster on the part of Steven Rubenstein and his PR folks, but it came off fine, actually. (It was a question of wattage; did we see Hillary Clinton presswoman Jennifer Hanley outside, meaning that Hillary Clinton was inside the CNN party?)

Uniformed waiters were aggressive with the hors d'oeuvres, most of which featured caviar in some form, but the knot of yarmulked men gathered by the bar ignored them. (The duck, the shrimp, the crabcakes!) Also not eating, or drinking, was Jared's rehabilitated felon father, Charles Kushner, who mostly spoke in low tones to men at the end of the bar. Ever-gracious Jared entertained a seemingly endless stream of well-wishers and posed for photographs. The real estate broker-developer Michael Shvo said he'd call him about having lunch. Jared recently purchased the most expensive office building in America.

So how were things at the paper? "We're having a lot of fun," Jared said. Was he dating Ivanka Trump? "We're just friends. But thanks for asking." So that partnership was all business too.

Ms. Trump was in a very nice short black dress, looking tall and blonde; she talked for what seemed like eons with Jared's assistant Kimberly. Steven Rubenstein, who represents the Observer and the Kushner family, made sure everyone was having a good time and that the photographers were getting all the right people; he talked with did not talk with New York Times reporter Allen Salkin, who wrote such nice things about Jared in the Sunday Styles section.

Cindy Adams talked to Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, notebook in hand, hair at attention. Salon editor Joan Walsh, in a pantsuit, stayed close to Salon writer and former NYO staffer Rebecca Traister. Harry Evans was there with his wife, former lots-of-places editor Tina Brown, who spent a lot of time deep in very close conversation with W/WWD boy Jacob Bernstein.

"I love this tabloid!" Mr. Evans said, Britishly. "I seized it with great joy before a long bus ride, and I loved every word!" He is somewhat reminiscent of a brilliant leprechaun. "Joe Conason on politics! John Heilpern! The Obama piece! I thought it was terrific! The tabloid format is far better." Mr. Evans said that the bus had taken him to Southampton.

Ms. Brown has recently finished her book about Princess Diana. "It's like a plum pudding—there are great nuggets everywhere!" she said. "It's as much about celebrity culture as it is about Diana herself." And how did Ms. Brown feel about the Stephen Frears film The Queen? "I loved The Queen," Ms. Brown said. "It was very accurate! Except for the portrayal of Robin Janvrin, the Queen's private secretary. He looks like Kenneth Branagh in real life."

Ms. Brown said that the book had taken her a year and a half; for it, she conducted 250 interviews. "I feel like a giant whale has been lifted from my head."

Maer Roshan, who worked for Ms. Brown at her short-lived magazine Talk, was there with a bundle of his Radar-ites, including his lieutenant Chris Tennant, who was holding court with several ladies in a booth. He was wearing jeans that appeared to have been painted on. That tall woman with the jet-black hair, talking with the older man? So tall! Atoosa Rubenstein! Lots of flashbulbs.

Observer reporters seemed vaguely uncomfortable at such an extravagant gathering ("It's the Observer with money," more than one was overheard whispering), and they swiped multiple Bellinis as they came around on silver trays. Transom reporter Spencer Morgan however did not look uncomfortable.

Jessica Joffe wore eyeglasses. Slate editor Jacob Weisberg and Domino editor Deborah Needleman arrived with New York's Ariel Levy. Jacob is going on a three-month book leave soon. Andrew Balazs, Columbia J-school graduate, was there solo. Lloyd Grove was not in attendance, but Ben Widdicombe, Hud Morgan, and Daily News gossip boy Patrick Huguenin were.

We were promised there'd be no speeches but there was a microphone and so Jared took it and said that 20 years ago, when the New York Observer was founded, he was starting a venture called... kindergarten. His voice still has a little hint of his Livingston, New Jersey upbringing. The new website, he said, was to launch on Monday, but as a preview, they had a page up on the screen. (The Four Seasons, it turns out, does not have Internet access.) Jared said he was very fortunate to work with Peter Kaplan, the editor of the newspaper, a sentiment that was greeted with cheers from the crowd. "We get to go to the 21st century with a new newspaper," said Kaplan. He then referred to the paper's former owner and publisher, Arthur Carter, as "my buddy and weekly tormenter."

Of the paper, he said: "The paper is younger, thinner, and better looking, like Jared."

We talked to Peter Kaplan in person. "For anyone under 30, the New York Times is a queen-sized sheet!" he said. "Going smaller was the best thing we could have done. We're still smart. We still have an edge." He said something about possibly becoming the smartest tabloid in America. "It was time to make a change. I love it. It's great!"

Jacob Bernstein left in Peggy Siegal's car. The New Yorker's Nick Paumgarten may have left with William Berlind for stiffer drinks. Patrick McMullan's photographers would prove unable to identify Alex Kuczynski. Ivanka Trump left alone, and on foot, heading east on 52nd Street. —Doree

The menu, typically Chodorowian, is a 12"x17" sheet of heavy parchment. The Rosetta Stone is only slightly larger. As expected, salmon comes in all its variants: Alaskan King, Coho, Sockeye, Smoked, grilled, cedar planked, bronze seared, poached or en papillote. Throw in some Wagyu for $85, creamed corn and about a hundred other things and you get the idea. There were some hits (a delicious black cod, a surprisingly strong short rib entree) and some misses (smoked scallops, unhappily salty salmon).

When we went, the room was filled with food journalists and bloggers, happy for the cocktails, the pandering and the free dinner—you can bet the day-to-day clientele will be much better dressed, richer and more appreciative. Be that as it may, there's plenty to roll one eyes about. Though the ingredients are fresh and expertly prepared, they feel asphyxiated by pretension in presentation. The plates are massive white slabs on which the entrees hunch all cowed. And on the flip side, the Dungeness crab would be better had it not been crammed into tiny shot glasses. The menu has more trios, duets, and quintets than a Balanchine ballet. One gets the feeling the Seattle chef is determined to out New York New York.

Then there's the elephant in the room, looming larger than the salmon and weighing heavy on the mind of both Chef Ramsmeyer and Capo Chodorow: Bruni Brundle v. Choad, one of the more epic battles in the catty world of chef v. critic. Times critic Frank Bruni already seems to dislike Chodorow's moremoremore aesthetic. (Higher prices, more decor, bigger menus!) It's like Mondo Restaurant. And Chodorow, well, he hates being disliked. So what of Wild Salmon? As we mapped out previously there are three essential possibilites. Bruni loves, hates, or ignores.

Having met The Choad for the first time last night and having eaten ostensibly the best the restaurant can offer, we're going to say it would be best if Bruni steered clear. More likely is that the critic will visit and throw the place a star. Bruni, sensibly uncaring about the "feud," will in that case have turned the other cheek and Chodorow, as Chodorow likes to do, will stridently claim he makes restaurants not for critics, but for the people. Just not for the salmon. —josh

—Josh

NYT restaurant critic Frank Bruni's memoir that traces his unlikely path to the unexpected destination of high-profile reviewer of fine-dining establishments in New York, to Jane Fleming at Penguin Press, in a major deal, by Lisa Bankoff at ICM (NA).

Once in office, he boldly dashes down a dark path which results in calamity and destruction, harming both the influence of his platform and dragging down the reputation of the very institution that he serves. He is surrounded by trusted advisers, all schemers and cronies of dubious ethics and bald politics. We're particularly interested in his rationalizations for the War on Crudo, which was launched based on evidence concerning an abundance of raw fish on New York restaurant menus that later proved to be manipulated. Likewise, the crusade against Jeffrey Chodorow, murderous dictator of the China Grill empire, who Bruni assumed to have weapons much more destructive than what he actually stockpiled, should also make for interesting reading. The surprise ending is that he gets north of half a million bucks for the memoir—the very one you're holding in your hands as you turn that final page! How meta. How expensive. Expect a lot of alliteration. —balk

Ambling into History [Amazon]

The young lady's nipples shone under the purple-gel spotlights but my companions and I were more interested in the uni than the yoohoo yingyang haha. Cheetah's is a lascivious playground for the brave sushi lover where delicate sushi and sashimi, prepared by Blue Ribbon master Shinsaku Yamakage, are placed over the glistening pallid flesh of similarly delicate women. One of the supine geisha-cum-tables enquired if I or my buddies would like anything stronger than the Arnold Palmers we had in our hands, making, "You wanna sip something harder?" sound almost X-rated. We demurred. After all, we had an African dance class later and this was but a Sunday tea party.

Cheetah's Gentleman's Club & Restaurant

But how's the actual experience of it? I stopped by in a gearing-up-for-Morandi mood and frame of mind, and on this visit — and do I emphasize it was just one visit — I didn't have such a wonderful time at all...Inexcusable risotto. I mean bad. Really bad.

Don't you know, FB, that 90% of Gawker's wheeling-and-dealing happens on those chairs you deride as spindly? Or that without the Balthazar bread basket, Denton deflates like a leaky bouncy castle, taking hordes of screaming kids with him?—Josh

Back to Balthazar [Diner's Journal]

Rhymes with Story HELLO?
Rhymes with Memily YES
Rhymes with Story SEXTACULAR! Where's BALK.
Rhymes with MemilyHe is late to the party AS USU
[BALK BTW has joined this chat.]
Rhymes with Memily Oh hey, we were just talking about you!
BALK BTW What'd I miss?
Rhymes with Memily We talked about your body hair.
Rhymes with Story Oddly true.
BALK BTW It is lush and plentiful.
Rhymes with Memily You're clearly overcompensating for something. But is Frank Bruni?
BALK BTW (Nice transition, Em!)
Rhymes with Memily I could like host a chat show!
Rhymes with Story You sort of do, with your boyfriend Greg Gutfeld!
Rhymes with Memily YOUR GAY BOYFRIEND you mean.
BALK BTW You guys lemme know when you're ready to work.
Rhymes with Story OMG I wish. I love them stumpy and aggressive. Fucking Balk. Sorry.