A Facebook post is worth a thousand words (Progressive's FB)

Previously: [Comedian Matt Fisher Claims Sister’s Progressive Insurance Paid for Her Killer’s Lawyers]

[Update: Progressive Auto-Tweets to ‘Killer’ Claim, Matt Fisher Shoots Back]

Never underestimate the power of internet shaming! Not five days after New York comedian Matt Fisher recounted the tragic story of his sister's fatal car accident and her auto insurance company that went so far as to intervene on behalf of the defendant in court to avoid paying out the premium on her policy, Progressive has agreed to pony up the entire amount due to the Fisher family.

According to a statement on Progressive's website yesterday, the insurance company was obligated to see the case go to trial against Ronald Kevin Hope III, whose car collided with Ms. Fisher's in 2010, in order to prove that the driver was at fault.

Under Maryland law, in order to receive the benefits of an underinsured driver claim, the other driver must be at fault. Sometimes this can be proven without the need for a trial, but in Ms. Fisher’s case, there were credible conflicting eyewitness accounts as to who was at fault so they could pay out the premium.

A trial was necessary so that a jury could review all of the evidence and come to a decision. In those circumstances, under Maryland law, the insurance company providing the Underinsured Motorist coverage is considered a defendant. As a defendant in this case, Progressive participated in the trial procedures on our own behalf while Nationwide represented the other driver.

On Thursday, August 9, a jury determined that the other driver was at fault in the accident involving Ms. Fisher. In accordance with that decision, Progressive worked with the Fisher family and their legal representative to resolve the claim.

Of course, the "due process" argument doesn't really hold up when you look at the court documents of the case, which clearly show that Progressive was working to prove that Mr. Hope was not at fault in the accident:

It is this 19th day of May, 2011, by the Circuit Court For Baltimore City, hereby ORDERED
1. That Progressive Advance Insurance Company be and is hereby allowed to intervene as a party Defendant.

2. That Progressive Insurance Company is GRANTED all rights to participate in this proceeding as if it were an original party to this case.

Or why Progressive sought a motion in limine to discredit the one witness to the accident by casting her as suffering from a brain injury. (A motion that was denied by the judge.)

We called Mr. Fisher for a comment on the settlement, but he was unable to comment on the record. Progressive's publicist similarly refused to expand on anything outside of the official Progressive statement.

In other news, all those tasteless robo-tweets from the auto insurance company  have been deleted from its account and reverted back to its pre-PR-nightmare post: "Sunday yardwork-inspired poll: fresh corn or fresh tomatoes?"

Matt Fisher (via Twitter)

Read: Comedian Matt Fisher Claims Sister’s Progressive Insurance Paid for Her Killer’s Lawyer

The media has picked up the torch of New York comedian Matt Fisher, whose family has been battling Progressive Insurance since his sister was killed in a car crash in 2010. According to Mr. Fisher's Tumblr posting, his sister's insurance company actually got its lawyer to defend the driver at fault for the accident, just so it wouldn't have to pay out her policy to the grieving family.

Yesterday, Progressive responded by auto-tweeting this statement to people who wrote about Progressive on Twitter:

Mr. Fisher, whose family has retained a publicist after his story garnered so much attention, volleyed back with his own "statement" ... an update on his original Tumblr post:

At the beginning of the trial on Monday, August 6th, an attorney identified himself as Jeffrey R. Moffat and stated that he worked for Progressive Advanced Insurance Company. He then sat next to the defendant. During the trial, both in and out of the courtroom, he conferred with the defendant. He gave an opening statement to the jury, in which he proposed the idea that the defendant should not be found negligent in the case. He cross-examined the plaintiff’s witnesses. On direct examination, he questioned all of the defense’s witnesses. He made objections on behalf of the defendant, and he was a party to the argument of all of the objections heard in the case. After all of the witnesses had been called, he stood before the jury and gave a closing argument, in which he argued that my sister was responsible for the accident that killed her, and that the jury should not decide that the defendant was negligent.

I am comfortable characterizing this as a legal defense.

Progressive sent out an email Tuesday, essentially rehashing their robo-tweet statement and adding that Nationwide Insurance paid for the defendant's counsel. The next day they amended that statement. According to the Huffington Post, Progressive confirmed that it retained legal counsel for the trial:

A Progressive rep on Wednesday confirmed to HuffPost that an attorney for Progressive was providing counsel in the trial. However, the rep added, the attorney represented only Progressive, not the defendant. Progressive provided no evidence, he said, but was looking after its interests in the liability aspect of the case.

And let the court documents show that Progressive was given the ability to act as if it was defendant in the case, and to intervene on their part:

It is this 19th day of May, 2011, by the Circuit Court For Baltimore City, hereby ORDERED

1. That Progressive Advance Insurance Company be and is hereby allowed to intervene as a party Defendant.

2. That Progressive Insurance Company is GRANTED all rights to participate in this proceeding as if it were an original party to this case.

(Brown,J)

In addition, the judge ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, and ordered Ronald Kevin Hope, III and Progressive Advanced Insurance to pay out in the amount of $760,000.00.

The Fisher family has yet to see that money.

And two of his primary wins were by convincing margins—in Maryland, where he led Mike Huckabee by a two-to-one margin, and in the District of Columbia, where he was the overwhelming choice of the approximately 4,000 voters who took Republican ballots.

And now the bad news: McCain got a serious scare in Virginia, finally pulling out a high single-digit victory after trailing Huckabee in the early returns. McCain had been the runaway leader—by about 30 points—in polls taken just last week in Virginia.

Huckabee, powered by some momentum from his unexpected weekend successes, very nearly engineered an upset that would have seriously wounded McCain, adding fuel to efforts by some conservatives to find some way—any way—to deny McCain the G.O.P. nomination. Winning Virginia would have radically increased Huckabee's viability in subsequent G.O.P. contests, raising the possibility of multiple defeats for McCain in the remaining contests.

McCain's close call can be chalked up to several factors. For one, the Democratic race—as has been the pattern throughout the primary season—attracted far higher participation from independents than the Republican contest, removing from the G.O.P. electorate many moderate voters who would favor McCain. That, in turn, exaggerated the significance of the party's conservative core—including the religious conservatives who dominate Republican politics in the southwest part of Virginia. McCain also might have been hurt by conservative voters who previously favored Mitt Romney deciding to vote for Huckabee as a way of objecting to McCain's impending coronation.

Given his reliance on religious conservatives in rural areas, Huckabee's 41 percent showing in Virginia can not be regarded as a sign of growing appeal. He struggled mightily in the moderate and densely populated suburbs of Washington and was walloped in moderate-minded Maryland. The ceiling that has stymied his campaign all year—he can't win where religious conservatives don't hold sway—remains intact.

But there appears to be a ceiling for McCain, as well. Even though he's been declared the presumptive nominee, self-described conservative voters continue to prefer voting for his hopeless opponent than for McCain. McCain does well enough among conservatives that he is still able to win in most states, thanks to support from moderates and independents.

There will probably be more calls for Huckabee to exit the race after tonight, since he has fallen much further behind in the delegate count. But his Virginia showing will be enough for him to justify pressing ahead.

It's noteworthy that, while he has drawn some distinctions with McCain in the past week, Huckabee has made sure to use kid gloves. That's because his continued presence in this campaign can be read as his audition for a spot on the national ticket. By stubbornly attracting more than 40 percent of the vote in states like Virginia and Louisiana, he is making it clear—both to McCain and to hesitant members of the party establishment—that his presence on the ticket in the fall might go a long way toward soothing members of a party base that has never felt much kinship with John McCain.

Nor is the fact that she now trails in most every independent delegate count—even the counts that include the non-binding pledges of superdelegates. And nor, for that matter, is the likelihood that her skid will reach double-digits a week from tonight, when Wisconsin and Hawaii vote.

No, the most troubling development for Hillary Clinton is that—for the first time—Barack Obama has demonstrated an ability to eat significantly into her base of support while retaining his, creating the possibility that the Democratic race is shifting decisively in his favor and that it is no longer a clash between opposing and immovable coalitions.

Before tonight, Democratic primary voters had seemed to divide themselves along economic, gender, geographic, ethnic and age lines. Obama monopolized the black vote, scored much better among white men than white women and attracted voters who were younger, more affluent, more educated and more politically independent. Clinton's coalition was comprised of women, older voters, Hispanics and lower-income voters.

With those voting habits seemingly locked in, the Democratic race appeared destined for a split verdict in the primary season, with both candidates winning about the same number of delegates and popular votes and with the 800 or so superdelegates then being empowered to break the tie.

That outcome may still come to pass, but there are clues in tonight's results that suggest something very different may be happening.

In Virginia and Maryland (no exit polls were conducted in the District of Columbia), Obama performed very well with his usual constituencies, even boosting his share of the black vote (to 90 percent in Virginia).

But he also won—overwhelmingly—lower-income and less-educated voters, who before tonight have formed the backbone of Clinton's coalition. Among white men, Obama beat Hillary 55 to 43 percent in Virginia. On Super Tuesday, white men were evenly split. Obama also won Hispanic voters in Virginia and Maryland, a group that until now has lopsidedly backed Clinton—that was the main reason for her Nevada victory last month. In Maryland, Obama narrowly won among voters over 65 years old and also carried white Catholic voters, two more typically pro-Clinton constituencies.

Poaching Clinton's base translated into two of Obama's most dominating performances in primary states. In Maryland, where he'd been expected to win by somewhere between 15 and 20 points, his margin was 15 with about 15 percent of precincts reporting, and likely to climb higher. And in Virginia, where Clinton's campaign had held faint hopes of an upset victory, his margin was an astounding 29 points with nearly every vote tabulated. (He also won D.C. by more than 50 points, although a blowout Obama win there had always been expected.)

The Clinton campaign is facing must-win primaries and Texas and Ohio on March 4, states where they still hold sizable leads in polls. But with tonight's bad news, and the likelihood of more to come next Tuesday, Clinton's support may begin to erode—something that apparently happened in Virginia and Maryland in the wake of Obama's victories over the weekend.

For the first time since his Iowa triumph, Obama now has his opponent on the ropes. If he can win as he is expected to do next week and then steal Ohio and Texas from her in three weeks, the nomination will be his. Right now, he trails in the polls in those two big states, where Clinton's coalition is stronger than his. But what he proved tonight is that he has the ability to win over big chunks of Clinton's coalition. If he can do the same thing again on March 4, that may be the end of it.

"I promise you I am fired up and ready to go," he told a cheering crowd.

The Arizona senator's speech seemed to target Obama more than Clinton, in yet another sign of the shifting dynamics of the Democratic race.

At one point he suggested that Obama's candidacy offered "not a promise of hope but a platitude."

And in an implicit jab at the cockiness which some of Obama's critics believe he can be guilty of, McCain also said, "I do not seek the presidency on the presumption ... that history has anointed me to save my country in an hour of need. My country saved me. I'm running to serve America.”

McCain also included Hillary Clinton in his criticism, saying of both main Democratic candidates, "We know where each ... will lead this country and we dare not let them."

In the end, McCain won all three of today's primaries comfortably. He congratulated Mike Huckabee on his performance, saying with a smile that the former Arkansas governor's candidacy "keeps things interesting—maybe a little too interesting at times tonight."

But this evening's event, held in the ballroom of a Holiday Inn, did see one potential blow to McCain's ego.

As a line of dignitaries including former Senator George Allen and John Warner lined up onstage and music pumped out in anticipation of McCain's entrance, it became apparent that CNN had just begun to cover Obama's speech in Madison, Wisconsin.

McCain was forced to cool his heels for 20 minutes until the Illinois senator's speech began to wind down.

Virginia was Clinton's best chance of scoring an upset victory, or at least keeping the race close enough to declare a moral victory. If she has lost lopsidedly in Virginia, it points to even worse defeats for her in Maryland and D.C.

On the Republican side, the news is good for Mike Huckabee, who trailed by 30 points in Virginia polls just last week. But the Virginia race is now too close to call—perhaps the result (in part) of independent voters flocking to the Democratic primary, leaving a tiny and ultra-conservative Republican primary electorate. Huckabee needs a win—or a very strong showing—for his challenge to John McCain to retain its relevance.

Democrats

Barack Obama is supposed to go three-for-three on the day. Short of engineering an upset victory—which would represent a campaign-changing development—Hillary Clinton’s best hope lies in containing her opponent’s victory margins and keeping the delegate race close, possibly positioning her to declare some kind of moral victory. On the heels of her weekend drubbings—and the news that she is replacing her campaign manager—the risk for Clinton tomorrow is obvious: Three more unspinnably lopsided defeats could create the impression that her campaign is in a tailspin, and that Obama is beginning to pull away.

Maryland:

To appreciate why Obama is all but assured of winning the statewide vote, just consider Maryland’s most recent Democratic U.S. Senate primary, a racially polarized 2006 contest between former Congressman and NAACP President Kweisi Mfume and ten-term Congressman Ben Cardin. Mfume had little money and relied almost exclusive on black support. And it nearly worked: He was edged out by the well-funded Cardin, 43-40 percent. (Several minor candidates also ran.)

It stands to reason that Obama—who has consistently won more than 80 percent of the black vote in other states—will perform as well as Mfume did among black voters while also making inroads among white voters that Mfume couldn’t, thereby running his share of the statewide vote into the mid to high-50’s. The key question is how dominating Obama’s win will be: In how many districts will he cross the 60 percent threshold that will allow him to run up the delegate tally?

One factor that should help Obama is the hot Congressional primary between incumbent Al Wynn and attorney Donna Edwards in the heavily (about 60 percent) black 4th District. This is actually a rematch of a 2006 primary, in which Wynn was nearly caught sleeping by Edwards, who came within three points of knocking him off. This year, the incumbent may be more prepared. To prevail, he needs to produce a large plurality in his Prince George’s County base. Prince George, home to one of the largest black middle-class concentrations in the country, accounts for about 65 percent of the district, and a higher turnout here will probably translate into good news for Obama.

Edwards’ strength lies in affluent Montgomery County, which accounts for the other 35 percent of the district. Voters here tend to be white, educated and liberal. But they are also fiercely opposed to the Iraq War, and it was their fervent embrace of Edwards (who, like Wynn, is black) that nearly propelled her to victory in ’06. Montgomery County is supposed to be one of Clinton’s stronger areas in Maryland, but if the anti-war sentiment that drove Edwards’ voters in ’06 is still prevalent, Obama could fare well in Montgomery too.

Clinton is running with the backing of Martin O’Malley, the former mayor of Baltimore who is now in his second year as governor.

Virginia:

In theory, this should be a stronger state for Clinton than Maryland. Virginia has a high black population, but it’s about a third less than Maryland’s, meaning that Obama starts off with less of a leg-up here.

The Clinton campaign would like to make a score in the D.C. suburbs of northern Virginia, where the population—and Democratic registration—has been swelling for the last decade. They are counting on deep support in this area from women voters in particular. And they also hope to run up the score in rural southwest Virginia, where lower-income white voters—if the pattern that has prevailed in other Southern states holds up—will favor Clinton over Obama.

But this might work better in theory than in practice. Obama, who is backed by Governor Tim Kaine, seems well-positioned in northern Virginia, home to the affluent and educated white voters who have supported him elsewhere. And he could post big wins in the state’s heavily black areas, particularly Richmond (where Mayor and former Governor Doug Wilder is on board) and Norfolk.

Polls have shown Obama ahead by around 15 points. If Clinton can keep his margin in the mid-single digits or better, she may be able to declare some kind of moral victory here.

District of Columbia:

The District’s charismatic mayor, Adrian Fenty, has campaigned across the country for Obama, who will undoubtedly win here—and big. D.C. is about 60 percent black, meaning that Obama can probably win the primary without a single non-black vote, assuming he takes more than 80 percent of the black vote (which he has had no trouble doing elsewhere). And, since he has consistently been able to win at least 40 percent of the white vote in previous contests, a landslide D.C. victory is almost certainly on tap for him.

In 2004, D.C. held a non-binding primary the week before the Iowa caucuses, a mostly unsuccessful effort to put the statehood issue and other urban concerns on the candidates’ agendas. But most candidates didn’t participate because the event encroached on Iowa and New Hampshire’s preeminence. Howard Dean ended up winning with 43 percent, with Al Sharpton grabbing 34 percent (his best showing anywhere in 2004) and Carol Moseley-Braun (remember her?) at 12 percent. Overall, turnout was about 12 percent. With actual delegates on the line, it figures to be much higher this time around.

Republicans

Roughly speaking, John McCain is right now in the position Bill Clinton was in when he first seemed to wrap up the Democratic nomination in 1992.

Clinton seemed to emerge when he swept the South on Super Tuesday and then won landslide victories in Illinois and Michigan. His nearest competitor, Massachusetts’ Paul Tsongas, then suspended his campaign, bowing to the front-runner’s seemingly insurmountable delegate advantage. That left Jerry Brown, the former California governor who’d waged a shoestring, grassroots candidacy. The media dismissed him as a nuisance and declared the race over.

But then Brown won an stunning upset in Connecticut, and the media—along with influential Democrats—began rethinking its verdict. Was the Democratic rank-and-file sending a message that they were not happy with the idea of Clinton as the nominee? Was there room for a new candidate to step forward and claim the nomination?

No one considered Brown a serious threat to win the nomination, despite his Connecticut win. He was so far behind in delegates that wins in all of the remaining states still wouldn’t have put him over the top—and the party’s leaders were hardly willing to get behind him.

So the next state on the calendar—New York—became a referendum on Clinton’s nomination: If Brown (or Tsongas, whose name remained on the ballot) won, then Clinton would be considered fatally flawed, and either Tsongas would re-enter or the party’s big wigs would graft a white knight (say, Mario Cuomo) into the race. Or both would happen.

On primary day, Clinton won easily, and the nomination was essentially his.

Which brings us to McCain, who was declared the presumptive nominee by the press after his strong Super Tuesday showing prompted Massachusetts’ Mitt Romney to suspend his campaign, leaving the hopeless Mike Huckabee as McCain’s only remaining foe. And given the delegate disparity between the two, Huckabee was also immediately written off, since he—like Brown in ‘92—would also fall short of the nomination even if he won every remaining contest.

But Huckabee caused McCain a serious headache by winning Kansas by 36 points over the weekend, eking out a narrow victory in Louisiana, and almost scoring an upset in Washington state—a narrow loss his campaign is now contesting. Like with Clinton in ‘92, McCain is now being forced to answer all
sorts of questions about the message his party’s base seems to be sending.

Which makes Virginia and Maryland McCain’s New York. Convincing wins over Huckabee in both states—Virginia, in particular—should silence talk of a widespread Stop-McCain movement and cement his status as the presumptive nominee.

A win in Maryland, where the G.O.P. electorate is more moderate and independent-friendly, is all but assumed for McCain. Virginia might be trickier, because the electorate is more conservative and the presence of religious conservatives is more pronounced. This is, after all, the state of Pat Robertson and the late Jerry Falwell.

If Huckabee can engineer a win in Virginia, it will prompt serious questions from G.O.P. leaders about the wisdom of nominating McCain, just as it will portend similar results in many of the remaining primaries and caucuses, guaranteeing embarrassing headlines for McCain throughout the spring.

The good news for McCain is that polls show him clearly leading both states. Despite his weekend stumble, he is in a position to win both handily, and while that might not be enough to flush Huckabee from the race, it will be enough to prove that—as fervent and devoted as it is—Huckabee’s support has a clear ceiling and is not expanding.

I never did either. I ended up writing on the same fecund period, and was bowled over with gratitude when Arthur wrote a blurb for my first book, about Jacksonian New York (a far duller one than he ever wrote). Then, to my amazement, my career began to follow some of the grooves he had carved at mid-century. I got little history articles accepted by newspapers and magazines, and ultimately was hired by the Clinton White House to be a speechwriter. Those were heady days. Arthur was still legendary in Washington, especially inside an administration that regarded the J.F.K. precedent with respect and recognition. Arthur came to White House events now and then, and though the decades had brought a little curvature, his wit was still rapier, and he could cast a spell over any dinner companion with his ability to summon a memory from the various pasts he had access to: 1962, or 1933, or 1837. Really, there’s no point in specifying—all of American history was seamless to him.

I remember attending a glittering party at Kay Graham’s house one night with another Clinton speechwriter. Arthur beamed at us and said, “The President’s Praetorian Guard!” I bet it had been said about him once, and he had filed the words away. Not many people walk around with perfectly spelled diphthongs in their head, but Arthur was special.

I stayed with the Clinton White House until the last day, then went off to teach in a tiny college on the eastern shore of Maryland. A few weeks later, the phone rang, and Arthur was inviting me to lunch in New York. Of course I went; there were no longer any world crises to respond to. As I recall, we didn’t even look at the menu. By a strange alchemy, two very strong martinis simply arrived at our table, and then two steaks. As my head began to swim, Arthur made his pitch: He was editing a new biographical series covering all the U.S. Presidents, and he thought I was the perfect person to do one of the biggest of the lot. I waited in breathless anticipation, but couldn’t quite understand when it seemed like he was saying “Martin Van Buren.”

Arthur was right, as usual. I had a great time with the project, digging up lots of new stories about a President almost no one had ever paid attention to. No one except Arthur—Van Buren was a special favorite of his. He had a deft touch as an editor, and the follow-up lunches were all highly entertaining, martini-flavored affairs. Our conversations coincided with the run-up to the war in Iraq, and it was so refreshing, in that invertebrate time, to hear a real thinker poking holes in all of the lies that the Bush administration was summoning, with pompous grandiloquence, to justify its invasion. He was especially sarcastic about the rationale that we had to rush to war in March 2003 because the weather would be too hot later in the year for our soldiers to feel comfortable.

One always pulls down the old books at a moment like this, seeking contact with a friend. In one of them, The Politics of Hope (1963), there’s an essay that Arthur wrote about Bernard De Voto, another gifted historian too seldom read. He ended the essay with a passage that De Voto had written about Mark Twain, but which also seemed to be about Arthur himself, and the great historian who’d inspired him. I repeat it here, with the same feeling of gratitude:

“Pessimism is only the name that men of weak nerves give to wisdom. Say rather that, when he looked at the human race, he saw no ranked battalion of the angels …. Say that with a desire however warm and with the tenderness of a lover, he nevertheless understood that the heart of a man is wayward, a dark forest. Say that it is not repudiation he comes to at last, but reconciliation—an assertion that democracy is not a pathway to the stars but only the articles of war under which the race fights an endless battle with itself.”

When I made my first visit to celebrity chef Tom Colicchio’s mega-restaurant in the meatpacking district, there were two dozen categories of steak on the menu. The options have since been reduced to 16, but making a choice here is still like sitting for an exam. And with prices peaking at $30 an ounce for Platinum Wagyu from Miyazaki, Japan, there’s no room for mistakes.

Last spring, when Craftsteak first opened, I arrived with high hopes, since I’m a fan of Craft, the wonderful restaurant that Mr. Colicchio opened five years ago in the Flatiron district. Craft emphasizes great ingredients gleaned from small family farms and local fishermen—a welcome break from fancy froths and sauces. Craft begat Craftbar, a string of ’Wichcrafts, another Craft and Craftsteak, which opened its first branch in Las Vegas and then arrived in the meatpacking district, a neighborhood as glitzy as Vegas.

The restaurant, on the corner of 10th Avenue and 15th Street, is huge, with soaring ceilings and immense windows looking onto a small park and a nearby car wash. There is a lounge at the entrance with a vast slate bar, a raw bar, tables set with red candles, and a spectacular glass wall of stacked wine bottles. The main dining room—which can get pretty noisy—has well-spaced tables, dark brown leather chairs and comfortable, round blond-leather banquettes. Its back wall is dominated by a painting of the High Line and the projected Philip Johnson building over the Hudson River.

The room feels like a downtown version of the Four Seasons, so it’s hardly surprising that Craftsteak recently opened for lunch. “The ultimate power lunch in the ultimate non-power-lunch neighborhood,” commented a friend. All it needs is the beaded curtains.

My first meal at Craftsteak was disappointing. A seafood tasting seemed like meager pickings for $56 (it’s now $66); fried zucchini blossoms were leathery. But morels in a cream sauce and a salad of fava beans sprinkled with hazelnuts were up to Craft level. As for the steak—a “grass-fed Hawaiian Black Angus sirloin” ($39)—it had good flavor, but it wasn’t juicy. And despite a terrific chocolate soufflé, when the bill came in at just under $300 for two with cocktails and a $55 bottle of wine, I decided that Craftsteak wasn’t worth the money and didn’t go back.

I wasn’t alone in my lack of enthusiasm. In August, Mr. Colicchio told The New York Times that the tepid reception New York’s Craftsteak had received “was a wake-up call.” He announced that he was leaving Gramercy Tavern, where he’d been a partner for the past 12 years, to focus more on his chain of Craft restaurants. So I decided it was time to give Craftsteak another chance.

The menu changes daily. You can begin with a first-rate Caesar salad made with young romaine lettuces in a pungent dressing, strewn with silver-white anchovies and shreds of Parmesan. Two tartares are astonishingly good: tuna cut in thick chunks alternating with pieces of avocado, and an unctuous salmon-belly tartare paired with a thin, crisp, olive-oil-rubbed baguette. Buttery foie gras is served with candied pecans and a chunk of black bread cut the same small size; tender baby artichokes poached in white wine are lined up on a narrow white platter decorated with paper-thin rosettes of carrots. But the winners one evening were the flinty Coromandel oysters from New Zealand in their deep, sparkling shells.

And now we come to the steak. A corn-fed roasted T-bone ($49) is the best, but it’s not very juicy. The grass-fed filet mignon is tasteless. The 56-day aged strip steak ($52, just under a dollar a day!) is fine but nothing special. A 10-ounce Wagyu grade-6 flatiron ($49) is good enough, and a grass-fed New York strip is ordinary. None of these steaks stand out the way you expect great, aged, marbled meat to do.

Several of the sides, moreover—which add anywhere from $9 to $25 apiece to the bill—are a letdown. This is astonishing given the standards set at Craft (where I had much better hen-of-the-woods mushrooms). They include watery spinach, flat-tasting stewed collards and bland baby eggplant. The potatoes, on the other hand—a Yukon gold purée and nice waxy, Wagyu confit potatoes with onion—are very good.

The desserts, by Catherine Schimenti, include a pleasant panna cotta with slivered fruit, a dull peach tart and a doughy cake laced with black plums. The Brillat-Savarin, on the other hand, is perfect.

As we walked home one night after dinner for four, I asked if there was one outstanding dish that everyone remembered from the meal. It was the Coromandel oysters. Another night, it was the Brillat-Savarin. The steak was forgotten, but not the bill—it was burning a hole in my pocket.

Bon Anniversaire, La Baker

To celebrate its 20th anniversary in New York, Chez Josephine, the theater-district bistro owned by Josephine Baker’s son, the charismatic Jean-Claude, is serving dishes from the menu that the Folies Bergère dancer created for her Paris restaurant in 1926 with her then lover, Georges Simenon, and her African-American chef, Freddy. A complete meal costs $19.26 and includes her chicken Maryland with corn fritters and spaghetti à l’Italienne with red peppers (414 West 42nd Street, 212-594-1925).

When I made my first visit to celebrity chef Tom Colicchio’s mega-restaurant in the meatpacking district, there were two dozen categories of steak on the menu. The options have since been reduced to 16, but making a choice here is still like sitting for an exam. And with prices peaking at $30 an ounce for Platinum Wagyu from Miyazaki, Japan, there’s no room for mistakes.

Last spring, when Craftsteak first opened, I arrived with high hopes, since I’m a fan of Craft, the wonderful restaurant that Mr. Colicchio opened five years ago in the Flatiron district. Craft emphasizes great ingredients gleaned from small family farms and local fishermen—a welcome break from fancy froths and sauces. Craft begat Craftbar, a string of ’Wichcrafts, another Craft and Craftsteak, which opened its first branch in Las Vegas and then arrived in the meatpacking district, a neighborhood as glitzy as Vegas.

The restaurant, on the corner of 10th Avenue and 15th Street, is huge, with soaring ceilings and immense windows looking onto a small park and a nearby car wash. There is a lounge at the entrance with a vast slate bar, a raw bar, tables set with red candles, and a spectacular glass wall of stacked wine bottles. The main dining room—which can get pretty noisy—has well-spaced tables, dark brown leather chairs and comfortable, round blond-leather banquettes. Its back wall is dominated by a painting of the High Line and the projected Philip Johnson building over the Hudson River.

The room feels like a downtown version of the Four Seasons, so it’s hardly surprising that Craftsteak recently opened for lunch. “The ultimate power lunch in the ultimate non-power-lunch neighborhood,” commented a friend. All it needs is the beaded curtains.

My first meal at Craftsteak was disappointing. A seafood tasting seemed like meager pickings for $56 (it’s now $66); fried zucchini blossoms were leathery. But morels in a cream sauce and a salad of fava beans sprinkled with hazelnuts were up to Craft level. As for the steak—a “grass-fed Hawaiian Black Angus sirloin” ($39)—it had good flavor, but it wasn’t juicy. And despite a terrific chocolate soufflé, when the bill came in at just under $300 for two with cocktails and a $55 bottle of wine, I decided that Craftsteak wasn’t worth the money and didn’t go back.

I wasn’t alone in my lack of enthusiasm. In August, Mr. Colicchio told The New York Times that the tepid reception New York’s Craftsteak had received “was a wake-up call.” He announced that he was leaving Gramercy Tavern, where he’d been a partner for the past 12 years, to focus more on his chain of Craft restaurants. So I decided it was time to give Craftsteak another chance.

The menu changes daily. You can begin with a first-rate Caesar salad made with young romaine lettuces in a pungent dressing, strewn with silver-white anchovies and shreds of Parmesan. Two tartares are astonishingly good: tuna cut in thick chunks alternating with pieces of avocado, and an unctuous salmon-belly tartare paired with a thin, crisp, olive-oil-rubbed baguette. Buttery foie gras is served with candied pecans and a chunk of black bread cut the same small size; tender baby artichokes poached in white wine are lined up on a narrow white platter decorated with paper-thin rosettes of carrots. But the winners one evening were the flinty Coromandel oysters from New Zealand in their deep, sparkling shells.

And now we come to the steak. A corn-fed roasted T-bone ($49) is the best, but it’s not very juicy. The grass-fed filet mignon is tasteless. The 56-day aged strip steak ($52, just under a dollar a day!) is fine but nothing special. A 10-ounce Wagyu grade-6 flatiron ($49) is good enough, and a grass-fed New York strip is ordinary. None of these steaks stand out the way you expect great, aged, marbled meat to do.

Several of the sides, moreover—which add anywhere from $9 to $25 apiece to the bill—are a letdown. This is astonishing given the standards set at Craft (where I had much better hen-of-the-woods mushrooms). They include watery spinach, flat-tasting stewed collards and bland baby eggplant. The potatoes, on the other hand—a Yukon gold purée and nice waxy, Wagyu confit potatoes with onion—are very good.

The desserts, by Catherine Schimenti, include a pleasant panna cotta with slivered fruit, a dull peach tart and a doughy cake laced with black plums. The Brillat-Savarin, on the other hand, is perfect.

As we walked home one night after dinner for four, I asked if there was one outstanding dish that everyone remembered from the meal. It was the Coromandel oysters. Another night, it was the Brillat-Savarin. The steak was forgotten, but not the bill—it was burning a hole in my pocket.

Bon Anniversaire, La Baker

To celebrate its 20th anniversary in New York, Chez Josephine, the theater-district bistro owned by Josephine Baker’s son, the charismatic Jean-Claude, is serving dishes from the menu that the Folies Bergère dancer created for her Paris restaurant in 1926 with her then lover, Georges Simenon, and her African-American chef, Freddy. A complete meal costs $19.26 and includes her chicken Maryland with corn fritters and spaghetti à l’Italienne with red peppers (414 West 42nd Street, 212-594-1925).