York's Friars Club, stood before audience members in the Grand Ballroom of the

New York Hilton and asked them to familiarize themselves with the fire exits.

Then, because he'd said that "these are very different times for us all," he

attempted to answer a question that people had been asking him.

Mr. Roman's Vulcanesque eyes and brows scanned the audience

before him. The question sounded a little like something that would be asked at

Passover. "Why have a night like this in times like these?" Mr. Roman was

referring to the Friars Roast, the club's yearly ritual of profane humor and

insult that was about to get underway with Playboy

founder Hugh Hefner in the hot seat.

In the aftermath of the terrorist attack on New York, the Friars

organization and Comedy Central, the cable network that, for the last three

years, has taped and televised an expurgated version of the roast (this one

will debut on Nov. 4), had, after some debate, decided to go ahead with the

event. "It's time we get back to normal, like Mayor Giuliani and President Bush

have asked," Mr. Roman said. "And for the Friars, this is normal. Telling dirty

jokes, making fun of people. That's what we do, and we're proud to do it for

you," he said. "So you can get some laughter back in your life and into your

hearts."

While the crowd waited for the cameras to start rolling, Mr.

Roman eased into the task at hand.

"A couple married 48 years. Wife takes sick and passes away.

Funeral at the Riverside, 78th and Broadway," Mr. Roman said.  "After the service, the pall bearers pick up

the coffin. As they're leaving the building, the coffin hits the wall." From

inside the coffin, he said, the woman's voice could be heard. "They open the

coffin-it's a miracle," he said.

"She stays married for another two years. Gets sick, passes away

again. After the service, the pallbearers lift the coffin. As they start to

leave, the husband yells, 'Watch out for the wall!'"

The laughter sounded grateful. Mr. Roman got the high sign to

introduce Mr. Hefner. A small group of Playmates led the flesh magnate-who

looked frighteningly robust and wrinkle-free for a man in his 70's-to the big

red swivel chair on the stage.

Behind Mr. Hefner, stretching out like the wings of a B-52 bomber,

was the event's dais, a roster that only the Friars could put together: actors

Danny Aiello, Keith David, Vincent Pastore and The Sopranos ' Joe Pantoliano in a newsboy's cap;  MTV personality Carson Daly, looking lost;

mentalist the Amazing Kreskin, artist LeRoy Neiman, developer Donald Trump;

actress Diane Farr and Dr. Joyce Brothers; comedian Dick Capri, former kidnap

victim Patricia Hearst, onetime Playboy

pictorial subject Kylie Bax and makeup-less Kiss member Ace Frehley. 

Friar Club's Abbot Alan

King's eyes shone in the spotlight.

"The Friars have an age-old motto," Mr. King said. "'We only

roast the ones we love.' Tonight, we give lie to that bullshit."

His gaze shifted to Mr. Hefner, in mid-chuckle. "Not only don't I

love him, I never met this putz before in my life: Hugh Hefner, who likes to be

called Hef-but in Hebrew, spelled backwards, it's Feh!"

Our "leaders kept telling

us," Mr. King said, "we must get on with our lives, and laughter is a very

important part of our lives. And who better to laugh at than our guest of

honor," a man "who made jacking off a national pastime." A guy who "has smelt more

beaver than a furrier. A man who makes Donald Trump look like Elie Wiesel. A

man who thinks the early-bird special is eating pussy before 6 o'clock."

Mr. King stared down the crowd. "Who better?" he said.

Yes, who better to ease this

crowd back to its favorite bloodsport than Mr. Hefner, a man whose soul had

escaped his body decades ago via his vas deferens? The Friars weren't roasting

a man, they were roasting an abstraction: a square-jawed, silk-robed symbol of

American priapism, who, at 75, wanted us to believe that he was bedding down

nightly with more than a half-dozen human equivalents of Jessica Rabbit.

For a city that had crossed its pain threshold weeks ago, Mr.

Hefner was a fortunate choice. It's hard to eviscerate a man whose only innards

are a hyperdeveloped reproductive system, and who, up there onstage, looked as

burnished and ageless as a publicity still, emitting his affectless, Teflon

chuckle.

The table of Mr.

Hefner's alleged paramours and Playboy

Playmates seemed to have been placed strategically in front of the podium as a

symbol of what was at stake should any joker go too far. At the Comedy Central

after-party at Beacon restaurant, comedian Jeffrey Ross agreed that some

comedians had pulled their punch lines when it came to Mr. Hefner. "I'll tell

you why," said Mr. Ross, who was wearing a bow tie that Buddy Hackett had given

to him. "Because they're afraid they won't get invited to the mansion. They

were all backstage going, 'I know it's funny, but do you think this will piss

him off?'"

The roastmaster of the evening was Jimmy Kimmel, co-star of

Comedy Central's The Man Show . "I

could go on and on," said Mr. Kimmel, "but what could you say about Hef that

hasn't already been mumbled incoherently by a thousand young women with his

cock in their mouths? I've read just about every issue of Playboy since I was 15 years old," Mr. Kimmel continued. "Not once

did I ever see a Playmate say one of her turn-ons was fucking a 75-year-old

man."

Rob Schneider, whom Mr. Kimmel said "is so short he doesn't even

have to bend over to kiss Adam Sandler's ass," was the first roaster on the

podium. Mr. Schneider told the crowd, "We're here tonight to honor a man who

personifies why these terrorists hate us. If it were up to them, women couldn't

read, couldn't work, get fake tits, go to school, pose nude to help their

career. Hugh Hefner believes that women should be able to do all those

things-except read."

Mr. Schneider was the first comic of the night to approach the

topic that was foremost in everyone's thoughts. The laughter seemed hesitant

and restrained.

Jeffrey Ross went up to the podium. "Hasn't there been enough

bombing in this city?" he said into the microphone.

" Ooooooooooooh !" the

crowd erupted.

Mr. Ross was up next. The Buddy Hackett bow tie seemed to be

working. "My good friend Abe Vigoda's here," Mr. Ross said. "Last week, Abe

tried to enlist in Old Navy." Mr. Ross looked over at Mr. Vigoda. "Abe, enough

getting old. Just fuckin' die already, all right?"

Eventually, Mr. Ross got around to Mr. Hefner.

"Hef has fondled more playmates than Michael Jackson," Mr. Ross

said, which got him a big laugh. "Personally, I think it's awesome, awesome

that you sleep with seven women," he told Mr. Hefner, "because eight would be

ostentatious." And then the comic explained the real reason that so many women

were required: "You know, one to put it in, and the other six to move you

around."

Alan King's Last Fan

Sarah Silverman, in a stylish black number, replaced Mr. Ross at

the podium. "Jimmy Kimmel, everyone," she said to the crowd after Mr. Kimmel

introduced her. "He's fat and has no charisma. Watch your back, Danny Aiello!"

The crowd loved that one, and Ms. Silverman, who was the only

woman to roast Mr. Hefner, proceeded to lay waste to a few more of the men on

the dais. She told Mr. King that a nursing home in Florida had just called.

"The last person who thinks you're funny just died." And gazing at the

gray-bearded face of Dick Gregory, she said: "Is he the guy from the rice or

the cookies?

"Well, let's talk about the whores-the Bunnies," she continued.

"I think they should be role models in society-if only for the fact that they

wax their assholes." Later, The Transom asked Playmate Michelle Winchester what

her fellow Playmates had thought of that particular joke. She replied with a

smile: "Actually, that's true!"

Ice-T made his second speaking appearance at a Friars Roast. "I

just wanna rob all you white motherfuckers. And for some reason I don't, and it

fascinates you," he told the crowd, which gave him a healthy laugh just in case

he was serious. But there seemed to be some confusion in the crowd over whether

his line that Mr. Hefner's "dick is busier than an orthodontist in fucking

Japan right now" was actually funny.

The civil-rights activist and nutritionist Dick Gregory told a

couple of jokes. "Black folks," he said, "know this is a great nation" because

of the success of Michael Jackson. "Where else can a poor black boy be born in

utter poverty in Gary, Ind., and end up being a rich white man?" Mr. Gregory

said.

But Mr. Gregory had come to praise Mr. Hefner, not roast him. He

cited Mr. Hefner's courage for hiring black entertainers to work the Playboy

Club when no one else would. And then he delivered an inspirational speech

about New York and the United States.

"Fear and God do not occupy the same space," Mr. Gregory told the

crowd. "If you stop and think about what makes America great, it's not soldiers

… it's the firemen that left home this morning and intended to come back

tonight and ran into a building when everybody else was running out."

The crowd gave Mr. Gregory a

standing ovation, but the quick-thinking Mr. Kimmel steered the event back to

its profane moorings. "So anyway," he said, "I was reading your magazine the

other day," and he described what he was doing while he was reading. The crowd

exploded with laughter. "Someone forgot to tell Dick this was a roast," Mr.

Kimmel said, adding: "Boy, does that make me feel like a piece of shit."

Ice-T Did My Act

Gilbert Gottfried was the last man up to the podium. In his $11

gray shawl-collar tuxedo jacket with tails, black bow tie and Caesar haircut,

Mr. Gottfried looked like he had just come from band practice.

Mr. Gottfried grasped the podium with both hands and, squinting

out at the audience, he began the screeching parrot-like delivery that is his

trademark.

"Ice-T did my whole act," he said. "So I'll do it anyway: I'm

going to follow you white motherfuckers home and rape you fucking white

bitches." Mr. Gottfried paused while the crowd convulsed. "You see, it's such a

strong bit it still works," he said.   

"Dick Gregory did the rest of my act," he continued. "I want to

say-a lot of you young people don't know, but years ago, Jews were not allowed

in comedy!" 

Then Mr. Gottfried started in on Mr. Hefner. "Hugh Hefner doesn't

need Viagra. He needs cement! He needs to take ice-cream sticks and tape it

around his dick and use it as a splint!" Mr. Gottfried screamed. "But in all

fairness to Hefner, he really had to fight for free speech, so we could say

things we couldn't say before. Like: 'Die, you senile old bastard! Die! '"

Mr. Gottfried was killing. It

was time to push the envelope.

"Tonight I'll be using my Muslim name, Hasn't Been Laid," he

said. This got a big laugh. Then Mr. Gottfried began a routine that had worked

extremely well for him at the Richard Belzer roast.

"A woman is on her deathbed," Mr. Gottfried said. "The husband is

sitting at the corner of the bed …. [H]er hair's all dried out. Her skin's all

white. All of a sudden, she goes, 'Please, honey …. '" Mr. Gottfried described

the woman's verboten sexual

request. 

The comedian paused. Some of the audience members were looking

around.

"This is a clean one," he said. The husband complies and, Mr.

Gott-fried said, "the color returns to her skin; her hair looks healthy. She

jumps up in bed. She's sexier and healthier than she ever was before. She looks

down. Her husband's sitting at the corner of the bed, crying. She goes, 'What's

the matter?'"

Mr. Gottfried waited a millisecond. "He goes, 'I could have saved

my father!'"

The laughter came in gasps. There were gurgling sounds in the air

and people hung doubled over, sucking air through hoarse throats.

The man in the gray tuxedo jacket looked out over the crowd. "I

have a flight to California. I can't get a direct flight," Mr. Gottfried said.

"They said they have to stop at the Empire State Building first."

There was a silence. Then hissing and hooting flooded forward.

"Too soon," a man could be heard saying in the back of the ballroom.

When the booing started, Mr. Gottfried responded: "Awwwwwww, what

the fuck do you care?" Silence fell once more.

Mr. Gottfried had his answer. Up on the podium, he began making

strange movements with his arms, as if he was working some sort of invisible

machine that could take him back in time to the moment right before he had

pushed too far. Seconds passed.

"O.K.," he continued. His voice was not so loud. 

"A man-a talent agent is sitting in his office. A family walks

in. A man, woman, two kids, their little dog, and the talent agent goes, 'What

kind of an act do you do?'

"At the father's signal, Mr. Gottfried said, the family disrobes

en masse. "The father starts fucking his wife," he said. "The wife starts

jerking off the son. The son starts going down on the sister. The sister starts

fingering the dog's asshole." Mr. Gottfried's voice was growing stronger. "Then

the son starts blowing his father."

The Hilton's ballroom filled with the sounds of sudden

exhalations. The comedians on the dais were bug-eyed with laughter and

recognition. Some of the men had dropped to all fours.

Mr. Gottfried was beaming.

"Want me to start at the beginning?" he asked.

He kept going, turning the joke into an extended bacchanal of

bodily fluids, excrement, bestiality and sexual deviance. Mr. Gottfried plumbed

the darkest crevices he could find. He riffed and riffed until people in the

audience were coughing and sputtering and sucking in great big gulps of air.

Tears ran throughout the Hilton ballroom, as if Mr. Gottfried had performed a

collective tracheotomy on the audience, delivering oxygen and laughter past the

grief and ash that had blocked their passageways. 

Then he brought it home.

"The talent agent says, 'Well, that's an interesting act. What do

you call yourselves?'"

Mr. Gottfried threw up his hands. "And they go, 'The

Aristocrats!'"

There was a sound in the room that went beyond laughter.

Mr. Gottfried had gone to "The Aristocrats," the comedy

equivalent of the B-flat below high C that Leontyne Price had sung at Carnegie

Hall on Sunday. "The Aristocrats" is one of the definitive inside jokes among

comedians. It is so definitive that comicPaul Provenza and performance artist

Penn Jillette are making a digital documentary about the joke. "Every comic

makes it their own," Mr. Provenza said. "The set-up is the same and the punch

line is the same," but the comic puts his or her "own stamp" on the material in

between.

Mr. Gottfried had used it to save himself, but also to lift the

crowd to another place.

A few minutes later, Alan King paid him a high compliment.

"Forgive me," he said. "I'm just still a little touched by that

asshole Gottfried."

It was therefore a considerable mercy-for us and for them-that the focus of their devotions proved to be as rich, as various and as artistically compelling as, for a time at least, it was. These stalwart painters were fortunate, to be sure, to be the first American artists to attempt to paint the untamed grandeur of the American landscape on a grand scale. They were also fortunate in the cultural assumptions they brought to the task-assumptions that easily ascribed not only an aura of visual romance but a religious and moral significance to virtually every glimpse of a virgin wilderness.

The glories of Nature were thus annexed to a Christian-which is to say, a Protestant-idea of spiritual redemption. This was a view of the world that was widely shared by both the artists themselves and their 19th-century American public, for neither brought to the experience of art any highly developed ideas about aesthetic innovation. With few exceptions, the painters were satisfied to rely on "tradition"-which usually meant the landscape conventions established by Claude Lorrain and some of the Dutch and Italian masters-while the public, which remained largely ignorant of such conventions, exulted in what was taken to be an art of purposeful celebration of the world that (in their view) God had created for their spiritual and material benefit.

It is for all of these reasons that the Hudson River School of landscape painting forms a kind of oasis of repose in the history of American cultural life. The absence of menace in these picturesque paintings of the wilderness, like the absence of sex in Emerson, imparts an air of unreality to what is most appealing in the art itself. The clarity of the gold-tinted light that is so characteristic in these paintings is indeed comparable to the limpidity of Emerson's prose style in his Essays . Both exert an immense appeal upon our initial acquaintance with them, yet both eventually reveal themselves to be an elaborate artifice designed to divert attention from what is most threatening not only in Nature but in human nature as well. For an account of that difficult feature of 19th-century American life, you have to turn to the writings of Hawthorne, Melville, Poe and Dickinson, who occupy a very different spiritual universe.

It is the principal virtue of the exhibition which John Driscoll has organized at the National Academy of Design under the title, All That Is Glorious Around Us -the title comes from James Fenimore Cooper-that it provides an interesting inventory of the subjects that were of principal concern to the Hudson River painters and a useful guide to the variations in pictorial style they brought to them. He has even managed to expand the roster of the Hudson River School by including a small number of female artists and at least one painter of African descent. Yet something central to the aesthetic of the Hudson River School is missing from this exhibition of small-scale pictures. No exhibition that excludes the large-scale panoramic paintings of the movement's most ambitious talents can hope to convey the level of aspiration that made the Hudson River School such a sensation in the heyday of its popularity. Unfortunately, the intimate scale of the exhibition rooms at the National Academy pretty much precludes the showing of such oversized paintings. Some excellent examples can be seen, however, in the American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum just down the street.

Yet still another problem with this exhibition is that its very inclusiveness tends to diminish the stature of the movement's most gifted painters. My own favorite among the Hudson River painters, John F. Kensett, is represented by two very charming pictures, but they are not the pictures that would allow a newcomer to this artist's work to appreciate its most distinctive qualities. What we really need, of course, is a big monographic exhibition devoted to Kensett himself-but that is probably too much to hope for.

Mr. Driscoll makes up for some of these shortcomings by providing an excellent introduction to the entire history of the Hudson River School in the catalogue that accompanies the exhibition. It is one of the best short accounts of the subject I have read, and it leaves us in no doubt why this tremendously popular movement in American painting went into decline in the 1870s. "Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection and survival of the fittest called into question a long-standing and basic way of looking at the world; the nation had been through the extraordinary crisis of the Civil War and Reconstruction; there was massive industrialization; and the accelerated disappearance of the wilderness was increasingly evident," and so on. In other words, what Mr. Driscoll describes as "the Hudson River School's confident poetry of mood and jubilant sense of place" was overtaken by the realities of the modern world. What I have called the oasis of repose was no longer viable.

All That Is Glorious Around Us: Paintings from the Hudson River School remains on view at the National Academy of Design, Fifth Avenue between 89th and 90th streets, through September 12.

Judging from the blackened mood of the city's culinary elite, Mr. Grimes is in no danger of being mistaken for the Love Unlimited Orchestraofrestaurant criticism.Infive months as TheTimes 'toptastebud, the 49-year-old Houston-born reviewer with a Ph.D. in comparative literature has left little doubt that, as long as he'swritingthereviews, NewYork'sculinary constellations will be composed of fewer stars.

His detractors complain that Mr. Grimes is killing the chefs of New York. As one chef said, "It's a little uneasy out there in restaurateur world."

In June, Mr. Grimes gave three stars to Daniel Boulud's $10 million reincarnation of Restaurant Daniel, compared to the four stars that Mr. Boulud had been given by Mr. Grimes' predecessor in the job, Ruth Reichl. On Oct. 20, Mr. Grimes demotedCharlie Palmer'sAureole down to two stars from the three that The Times ' Bryan Miller gave Mr. Palmer in 1991. In between, Mr. Grimes has awarded a flurry of one-star reviews-which have long represented mediocrityinthis town-to such luminaries as restaurateur Drew Nieporent and MichaelLomonaco, chef of Wild Blue and Windows on the World.

Tradition dictates that those who are badly reviewed by The Times should hold their tongues. Café des Artistes owner George Lang said, "Whether the clay pitcher hits the rock or the rock hits the clay pitcher, it is always the clay pitcher that is going to break."

Still, some restaurateurs have decided they want to be heard.

"I think it's unfortunate that someone like Bill Grimes is allowed to use The New York Times as a vehicle for his own personal agenda," said Mr. Palmer, who claimed that The Times ' review of Aureole "is not a critique of the restaurant. It's a critique of our success with Zagat." He added: "My clientele at Aureole is a very educated group, and they dine in the best restaurants in the world. Probably 75 percent know more about food and wine than Bill Grimes will ever know."

Mr. Nieporent, co-owner of Nobu, Montrachet and TriBeCa Grill, said, "I believe in restaurant critics and reviewers. I believe in that system. But in order for it to work there cannot be an adversarial relationship between the critic and the restaurants he reviews. I'm sure he's a nice guy and he doesn't particularly want to hurt anybody, but unfortunately a pattern has already begun where he's trying to prove something. This is not about a chef's or a restaurateur's ego. This is our livelihood."

Mr. Grimes' one-star review of Mr. Nieporent's Berkeley Bar and Grill prompted Mr. Nieporent to fire off a letter to Times executiveeditorJoseph Lelyveld,butMr.Grimes said he was unaware of the letter.Hesaidhehasn't "heard a peep"fromthe restaurant world about his reviewing. Although he would not grant a full interview to The Observer because,hesaid,hedidn't want to look like "a self-promotingasshole,"Mr. Grimes did agree to explain hisinterpretationofthe Times restaurant star system and to respond to comments made about him.

"Ruth hated the star system and was on record as not believing in it and therefore did an end run around it," Mr. Grimes said of Ms. Reichl,noweditorof Gourmet magazine."Basically, one star had been abolished, and all sorts of restaurants were getting two stars, and the whole thing became sort of meaningless."

Mr. Grimes said one of his New Year's resolutions was "to reinstate a valid star system in which the stars meant what they said and said what they meant. The one star's purpose in life is to reward the good, solid neighborhood restaurant that's operating at a high level, but is never going to be a Daniel." At one point in the conversation, he characterized himself as "administering tough love."

Even those who agree with Mr. Grimes said his attempt to change the perceptions of a one-star Times review has its price. "There's going to be a lot of sacrifices to the cause," said one restaurant critic. "He's tied a lot of restaurants to the front of his tank. They're the shock troops."

Some restaurateurs argue that Mr. Grimes will turn off readers who skim the review looking for excellence. "If he's going to reorient the system to a one-star system, the irony for me is that you're not raising the bar, you're lowering it," said Mr. Nieporent. "Because nobody's going to read the piece, ergo nobody's going to go [to one-star restaurants]. You're doing a disservice to The Times and the restaurant industry."

"It doesn't benefit the industry at all to have grade inflation," responded Mr. Grimes, adding, "The reviewer exists not to serve the restaurants or the restaurant owners, but the much larger population of readers."

Of the 23 restaurants that he has reviewed since May, Mr. Grimes has awarded one star to 11 of them, including Della Femina and Maison. Two restaurants, Colina, in the ABC Carpet building, and Roy Yamaguchi's Roy's New York, have received no-star, "satisfactory" reviews. Six restaurants have been given two stars. Three restaurants have gotten three stars: Daniel, Cello and Union Square Cafe. The vinegary sting of Mr. Grimes' new standards was compounded when he gave his sole four-star review to Bouley Bakery. The city's culinary hierarchy generally agrees that David Bouley's osso buco-size ego does not need further stroking. If Mr. Grimes had been trying to piss off the city's culinary mafia, he couldn't have picked a better chef.

Of Ms. Reichl's first 23 reviews in late 1993 and early 1994, 15 were awarded two stars. Only three came away with one-star reviews, and none were given no stars. Lespinasse got four.

"I cared much more about writing the column than about making the star system," said Ms. Reichl. She said The Times chose Mr. Grimes because the newspaper "wanted someone who would be very different than me."

"I can empathize with him. It's a tough job," said Mr. Miller. "Once you put that hat on, you assume near-papal authority. It's as daunting as it is dangerous."

But Mr. Grimes doesn't seem very daunted. "This guy hurls thunderbolts from 43rd Street," said one restaurant reviewer, who noted that Mr. Grimes has transformed himself from a Times food section writer into a critic "with amazing speed and a sense of authority. There's no sense of hesitation with this guy. Not one doubt ever creeps into a sentence."

Many in the business interpret Mr. Grimes' confidence as snarkiness, an irreverent tone shared by the latest crop of Times writers who are helping the broad sheet fit into a tabloid world.

Here is Mr. Grimes on Roy's New York: "If clowns had a cuisine, this would be it."

On Danny Meyer's Union Square Cafe: "What looked like a flashy sports car a decade ago now seems more like a midsize Buick …"

On Berkeley Bar & Grill: "The place is called Berkeley, but they should have called it Oakland. There's not a whole lot of there there."

Mr. Grimes can also deliver a compliment: Mr. Bouley "cooks the way Racine wrote and Descartes thought."

Roy's Mr. Yamaguchi told The Observer that when he saw Mr. Grimes' no-star review, he thought, "O.K., guys, we've got to change the name of the restaurant and get rid of the menu." Instead, Mr. Yamaguchi wrote Mr. Grimes a letter. "I wrote: I appreciate you guys reviewing the restaurant but, jeez, the bottom line is, I think we're doing everything right. If you disagree with what we're doing, tell me what you think I'm doing wrong. But I never got a reply," said Mr. Yamaguchi. Mr. Grimes called the letter "gentlemanly."

If Mr. Grimes' first 22 reviews got restaurateurs sizzling, his review of Aureole was a napalm-laced flambé. Mr. Grimes whacked several members of New York's culinary establishment: New American cuisine icon Charlie Palmer and the Zagats, Tim and Nina.

"Aureole's reputation exemplifies, to an extreme degree, the self-levitating phenomenon that I think of as the Zagat Effect," wrote Mr. Grimes, "in which a restaurant, once it has achieved a top rating, continues to do so year after year, regardless of the quality of the food." Mr. Grimes said the Zagat reference was an attempt "to explain what I thought was a nonculinary explanation for the slightly puzzling popularity of this restaurant. I didn't think it could be explained on objective grounds, so I searched for another explanation and I developed this theory.… But it wasn't a knock against Zagat."

Some who read Mr. Grimes' paragraph about Zagat and Aureole came away with this message: The people don't know what's good, but I do.

Mr. Grimes replied, "That's my function. Film critics don't have to get behind an idiotic movie like The Sixth Sense . You don't look at what everybody thinks is wonderful and say, 'Yeah, well it must be wonderful.' You flunk Criticism 101 if you do that."

As for the perceived snarkiness, "Sure, it's there," said Mr. Grimes. "That's my writerly personality. It's involuntary almost."

EvenwhenMr.Grimes' critics acknowledge he is a good writer, at least half a dozen chefs and restaurateurs said he doesn't seem to enjoy what he is doing. "He doesn't seem to have had a good time anywhere. I get the impression of a man sitting so rigidly in his seat that he can barely lift his fork," said a restaurateur.

"Well, I'm having a reasonably good time," replied Mr. Grimes."I'mmystifiedby that."

Before Ms. Reichl came to The Times , she had been a reviewer for almost 20 years, which has led some restaurateurs to question Mr. Grimes' relative inexperience as a critic. "My background is as follows,"saidMr.Grimes."I haven't been to any cooking school except to report on the experience of going to a cooking school. I haven't worked at a restaurant. I'm an amateur eater who's turned pro in the tradition of A.J. Liebling."

After graduating from Indiana University and earning a comparative literature doctorate at the University of Chicago, Mr. Grimes worked as an editor at Macmillan Publishing Company and in the 1980's wrote the Drinking Man column in Esquire .Mr. Grimes is said to have a fondness for expensive bottles of wine. ("At pricy restaurants, you tend to be offered pricy wine," replied Mr. Grimes. "I don't think I've ever crashed the $200-a-bottle barrier.") He went to Avenue magazine as an editor before arriving at The New York Times Magazine in 1989, followed by stints with The Times ' theater and dining sections.

"The question of expertise is a funny one," Mr. Grimes said. "There is no school of accreditation for food journalists." He added, "I'm absolutely confident that 90 percent of readers" who visit restaurants he's reviewed "would come away saying that's the appropriate review."

Brian Young, chef of Pop restaurant, which got one star, said, "I don't think [Mr. Grimes] got the restaurant." Mr. Young said he found it unusual that when Mr. Grimes called "through back channels" to find out the ingredients in some of the dishes he had eaten. "Some of his guesses were very off-base," Mr. Young said.

Mr. Grimes responded, "I recall asking him to describe in detail how he made a couple of things. I don't call up and throw out guesses at chefs."

"His due diligence sucks," said Mr. Palmer, who said that, contrary to Mr. Grimes' review, Richard Leach was not Aureole's original pastry chef. And Mr. Palmer took issue with Mr. Grimes' taste. "One night, he came in here and ordered a bottle of Blanc de Blancs champagne and three of the people were eating red meat," said Mr. Palmer. "How much does he know about food and wine?"

Mr. Grimes reponded, "That's a silly comment. I usually order champagne as an aperitif. It could be that people were drinking it so slowly that it was still there when the meat came."

Mr. Miller said he knows what Mr. Grimes must be going through. "I wanted The New York Times ' one star to be something that a restaurant would be proud of," he said, "but a restaurant getting one star is like a kid getting clothes for Christmas. Whatever your definition of a one-star, the reaction is always, 'Hey, I deserve more than this.'"