Episode 10017:Calling Out Sam Sifton On His Review of SHO Shaun Hergatt
April 23, 2010 8:00 amSam Sifton’s Times review of Sho Shaun Hergatt was, it seemed to me, something of a cheap shot, a presumptuous lecture on the zeitgeist that had little to to with the restaurant itself. Two stars! Absurd. So as I tucked into my cake at Eisenberg’s I let flow why I was upset about it.
I love you!
That looks like a 3 star piece of cake, I tell you what!
If it had furniture from Levitz, I would give it four stars.
You totally nailed it, Cutlets!
Ozersky -
Do you not remember the years of Bruni? Bruni, Adam Platt, Cheeshes, Sutton, Cuozzo, NOBODY talks about service. Ever. Not even supposedly the Michelin guide, where stars are awarded solely on “cuisine”. You talk about captains, maitre d’s, a wine director, busboys, sous chefs, chefs de cuisine. Are these not things that a 1 star restaurant has? That a 2 star restaurant has? Of course 1 and 2 star restaurants have these positions. Unfortunately, it’s clear that you are clueless here, and you have quite a large soapbox to stand on.
It’s easy to be fooled at Sho. It looks right, the tablecloths are heavy, the silverware is french, the glassware Austrian, there are flowers flown in from exotic places. But it is all, forgive the pun, a sho. Maybe if you stop eating burgers for a minute, your palette may snap back to attention and you’d realize that this food isn’t as inspired and perfectly cooked as per Se’s or Jean Georges or EMP’s or even Alto’s, Corton, wd50, Picholine, Blue Hill Stone Barns, Del Posto, Gramercy Tavern (the latter group true 3 star restaurants).
And your arguement that Sifton doesn’t like fancy, fussy dining is TOTALLY thrown out the window when you realize he gave 3 stars to La Grenouille. The difference here is that la Grenouille is CLASSIC, Sho is just cheesy. And he gave 3 stars to Marea, and I know you can’t honestly say that the food at Sho is at the same level. People dream of Michael White’s octopus and bone marrow, of his uni and lardo……..I don’t know anyone that’s dreaming of Sho Shaun Hergatt’s food. Even you, you haven’t even talked about one dish specificly that was so great?
But seriously, if Maialino (A Danny Meyer!), Oceana (the old 3 star workhorse!), and A Voce (Food and Wine best new chef!!) got 2 stars from Sifton…did you really think Sho deserved 3? Of course not. 2 stars means “very good,” and that’s what Sho is….very good.
It’s when a menu of beautiful, inspired, heavenly dishes come together, you get 3 stars………and when they come together more perfectly and more consistantly every night, it earns 4.
Stick with your pizzas and burgers ozersky.
And finally, if there are any food critics you should really be getting on your soapbox about , it’s Adam Platt…for his banal, formulaic and mean spirited reviews week in and week out.
Good points. Still think your piece on ABC re: bacon was crap. God bless you, though.
: Thanks for the support!
: SHO is a far superior to Mailino and A Voce. There’s no comparison. The old “two stars means very good” is meaningless; no one thinks a zero star review means “satisfactory.” You may not like SHO, but that’s not why Sifty shafted the place; he’s just trying to be with-it. Which he really isn’t. (Not that I am.)
: It really is! The cake at Eisenberg’s is out of control.
You are absolutely on the money this time, Josh – well done.
I wonder to what extent Sifton was influenced by the fact that the Times had completely ignored the restaurant (apart from a couple of short, sniffy notes)? Hard to justify having refused to review a three star restaurant which opened middle of last year. But maybe that didn’t factor in.
You are totally on the money, I had the same reaction to the review. The irony is that even though I am part of the purchasing trend fueling this “zeitgeist” (used to, but now rarely eat at 3 and 4 star places, etc.) it offends me that Sifton is preaching with his stars. I like eating at the 3 and 4 star joints one every couple of months, and unfortunately Sifton has inappropriately devalued SHO to people who are off the blogs and only look at the stars.
best video so far. what an acute indictment.
Blah Blah Blah… Live by the sword die by the sword. Sift Shady is a rest critic just like a movie critic, you don’t have to agree with his opinion.
That’s right, I don’t.
[...] Shaun Hergatt recently took a beating from Sam Sifton, a fact I decried in a recent video. But Ozersky.TV viewers can be forgiven for wondering who the hell this guy was, and what his [...]
Read this trackback on the original site.I think you’re making an assumption, here, that what Sifton saw as anachronistic played into his rating. There’s no evidence of that, though. He doesn’t really say whether the vibe is good or bad, just comments that it feels a bit out of date – and frankly, it does. But reading the review – and excising all the talk of service, atmosphere, etc, and just reading the sections where he talks about the food – he doesn’t describe a three-star menu. He describes a two-star menu. And that’s fine. It is, in the NYT system, “Very Good” in fact.
I’d say it was “Very Good” as well. Not Excellent, not Flawless, but Very Good. This is no Marea, no WD-50. The presentation reminded me of Wylie’s (and to some degree Iacopo Falai’s… hmm… maybe SHO should relocate to Clinton St?) – only I find Dufresne’s (and Falai’s) food infinitely more satisfying when I’m eating it, while much of SHO’s food was, to borrow a phrase from SS, “relatively successful.”
That said, I think they’re a good deal, price-wise – $69 Prix Fixe is at the lower end of the high-end scale. But I don’t think it’s a place worth going out of one’s way for by any stretch. Nor did Sifton. Or Platt, or Cheshes, or a number of other critics… heck, Platt’s review was much worse than Sifton’s – why aren’t you giving him grief?
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