Steak inflation

Quite some time ago, I was a teaching assistant for a survey course at an Ivy League school. Towards the end of the semester, we got a little talk about how it was OK to give students in the class Cs, if they deserved Cs. The impact of the talk was to give the impression that A and B were really the grades to be giving, and that's what I did. Even if they scuffled,  even if the work was inconsistent, they were still students at this fancy university, so there was effectively a floor on evaluating their performance. I was reminded of this experience as I read along as Bruni took Peter Luger to the woodshed, and then gave it two stars, anyhow. For those of you scoring at home, this is the same number of stars alongside a glowing review of Ssam, which was considered a ringing endorsement of David Chang.  On what planet does it make sense to equate a really well conceived, interesting and ambitious, but casual restaurant, with a fancy institution that has clearly fallen on evil days? Yes, apples and oranges, (or lucky peaches, more precisely) but the star system implies a kind of commensurability, doesn't it? The only answer I can see is that Peter Luger is simply in a different league.

Comments

[dubarry]

and let me tell i have been there w/in the last 3 months. the food there is SWILL.

given that i suspect the illustrious ivy of which you speak is my alma, i would say as well, the student body there is swill as well. see eg advertising practices re: dates for a club reunion.

[dubarry]

gotta say those tinted glasses give that academic a racy appeal in a 1975 in 1990 way. what did he teach any way?