MANY a hungry sidewalk stroller is lured into restaurants by write-ups in the windows touting the culinary wonders to be found inside.
But let’s hope they don’t make costly dining decisions based on window clippings that often range from misleading to fraudulent.
Few customers read them closely, so owners hang reviews that are hilariously out of date. Some even add stars to the ones actually earned.
Many display colorful opening announcements from local magazines – which may only mean that the place can afford a flack.
Others hang “restaurant reports” that boast “as seen in the New York Post” or other papers without indicating they were “seen” only on a paid-advertising page.
There are “Zagat Rated” signs that don’t tell you what the Zagat rating is, and reviews of a different branch in the Baluchi’s, Panang or Mary Ann’s chain than the one you’re at. (Unless the name is McDonald’s, different locations are not interchangeable.)
You’ll even find reviews of totally unrelated restaurants – if you’re bold enough to put your nose to the glass. Take Blockheads Burritos on Second Avenue at 81st Street, which displays a page from Gourmet.
A casual stroller might surmise that Ruth Reichl’s cadres have embraced Blockheads’ Tex-Mex fast food. But the 1989 article is about Benny’s Burritos on Greenwich Avenue downtown. Ay, caramba!
Sneakier still are outdated reviews that bear the names of current critics – but not-so-current chefs. They clog the window of Mi on Madison Avenue at 27th Street, which was briefly a great Japanese fusion spot during the short reign of chef Gary Robins.
Almost two years since he left, glowing write-ups by Post, Times and New York magazine critics of his long-discontinued menu still tempt unwary passersby.
William Grimes’ Times review in the window of Thalia, at Eighth Avenue and 50th Street, is from 1999. Except for the name, the chairs and the tables, Thalia is utterly different from what it was then, with a new chef and a menu changed from pan-Asian to modern American.
There’s little in the law to protect consumers from these culinary come-ons. “As long as there’s a date on the review, it would not be a deceptive trade practice,” explained a Consumer Affairs Department spokesperson.
“There are many permutations of what would constitute deceptive trade practice if there were not a date, but it would be very incident-specific.”
It doesn’t get more incident-specific than at Bread From Beirut, a Middle Eastern fast-food spot on West 45th Street that my Post colleague Cynthia Kilian graced with 2 ½ stars in August 2001.
But her review mounted in the window magically promotes the place to 3 ½ stars! If you can’t trust the window, should you trust the kitchen?
Anyone entering Alfredo of Rome in Rockefeller Center might well be impressed by a stack of mounted clips in the vestibule. But when in Rome, read closely.
Alfredo offers a clinic in how to make a place that was poorly reviewed look like the toast of the dining millions. The top blurb is from an in-flight airline magazine – a dubious endorsement from folks who serve rubber gnocchi at 30,000 feet.
A Times clip is not a review but a news item from the paper’s “Off the Menu” column.
Next comes a quote from my review in The Post – with words chopped out so as to completely reverse its meaning. The displayed quote reads: “Don’t be shocked to find genuine Italians lunching at Alfredo – you’ll find plenty of Italians at Cipriani . . . at twice the price.”
The line is from a harsh, one-star review – and the words cut for the ellipsis read, “where the food is [even] worse.”
A USA Today roundup listing Alfredo as serving some of the best pasta in America dates from 1985, when “Alfredo” meant a different restaurant in the Citicorp building.
Nearby hang two Wine Spectator “Award of Excellence” plaques – which the magazine gives to practically any place with a big wine list that mails in a copy of its list and pays a fee.
So if you’re tempted by window write-ups, be sure you actually read them – even if it’s a pane in the butt.
