Jules et Frank

The Gurgling Cod can no longer ignore the glaring truth. Jules, of Brunidigest fame, is no thorn in the side of the man universally acclaimed as America's most powerful restaurant critic.

Frank brings home the leftovers from Per Se.

In fact, as the Hardy Boys might say, Frank and Jules are "in cahoots." Diner's Journal was one attempt to extend the Bruni brand, but how much easier to co-opt the Bruni Digest by predigesting the reviews? For instance, in today's surprising bageling* of Freemans:

Behold Freemans, where the new Lower East Side, Appalachia, a British hunting lodge and a suburban 1950’s dinner party all converge. It’s the kind of unlikely restaurant you’d sooner expect to find in a David Lynch movie than in reality, but here it is, and here it’s been since the summer of 2004, at times pretending to shun attention as a cunning means of getting it.

and

Earlier this year it grew to about 105 seats, including bar stools, from 60. It subsequently overhauled its kitchen, which had been entirely electric, with new equipment and gas lines. Literally, Freemans is now cooking with fire.** Metaphorically, not so much.

not to mention

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.

As Alice Waters might tell you, with prose this ripe and juicy, you don't need to do much with  it -- a bit of time with Google Image search for requisite images of diving pigs, Eraserhead costumes, maybe a toothless Appalachian, and voila. Frank sets, Jules spikes.

This is the signal Frank uses for "Satisfactory."
This is print/web synergy at its finest. By producing such remarkable verbal images, week after week, Frank makes it easy for Jules, so folks read Frank through a Jules filter, thereby the extending the range of  the (did we mention?) Most Powerful Restaurant Critic in America.

Jules and Frank celebrate their dominance of New York food media.
Speaking of print/web synergy, the flip side of this relationship may be the curiously asynchronous and asymmetrical dynamic between the Bruni review, and a new feature at Eater, On the House,  a weekly column by William Tigertt of Freemans, which debuts with a diary of being reviewed by the Times. For folks who read reviews, the narrative of the process of being reviewed is of interest (protracted, and almost entirely non-anonymous). Part II conjures this moment:

It makes me sad to think that tomorrow night I will sitting in my office in front of a computer clicking reload on the New York Times webpage until carpal tunnel syndrome sets in. I would much rather be carousing dive bars with my co-workers, self-medicating our jitters, and celebrating whatever victories and setbacks the past two years of New York has thrown at us.

Even before reading this entry, I felt that Freemans deserved better than the "not as good as the Spotted Pig" collar Bruni threw, but this image of exhausting yourself hitting refresh is a useful reminder that even at a spot as calculated as Freemans, there are people and livelihoods involved. On the other hand, the concluding disclaimer (from Eater, not Tigertt)

This story was filed before anyone in the Freemans organization had knowledge of how many stars the Times would award. It should in no way be seen as an anticipatory rebuttal to the review.

has precisely the opposite of the intended effect--it certainly seems to be true, but makes you wonder. In a linear print environment, I might have read On The House first,  then looked at the review when the newsboy pedaled past and lobbed the print Times at my door. But as I imagine many folks do, I woke up, looked at the Times online, then worked my way through the blogs I subscribe to, until I came to Eater. Reading the disclaimer after the review made Tigertt's entire effort seem more defensive than it deserved.

*In the good old days, when midtown salarymen ventured below Houston, they took bagels, rather than left them.

** Gas. I know.

Comments

[mzn]

My sequence was different. I read On the House first, you second, Bruni third. I get my Bruni through a filter of Cod. Love the beach volleyball. That added value to my Bruni.

This has to be one of Bruni's masterpieces of prose. But isn't the David Lynch analogy a bit tired? Don't we need a better metaphor for "outrageously eclectic" than "like a David Lynch movie"? For starters, it's not specific enough. I'd gladly eat in a Mulholland Drive joint but would probably pass on anything reminiscent of Eraserhead.