Rarely has "Satisfactory" been so damning an assessment.

Pete Wells, New York Times restaurant reviewer, reviews Kappo Masa, on the Upper East Side:

Now three months old, Kappo Masa is not the most expensive restaurant in New York. That distinction belongs to Mr. Takayama’s home base, Masa, in the Time Warner Center. (Price of dinner for one before tax, tip and drinks: $450.) Still, it is expensive in a way that’s hard to forget either during or after the meal. The cost of eating at Kappo Masa is so brutally, illogically, relentlessly high, and so out of proportion to any pleasure you may get, that large numbers start to seem like uninvited and poorly behaved guests at the table.
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It doesn’t seem possible that Mr. Gagosian and Mr. Takayama just made up these prices out of thin air, diabolically chortling like Batman villains, late one evening at Masa. (Number of times each month Mr. Gagosian eats there, by his estimate: two.) And yet if you are one of those people who suspects that Manhattan is being remade as a private playground for millionaires who either don’t mind spending hundreds of dollars for mediocrity or simply can’t tell the difference, Kappo Masa is not going to convince you that you’re wrong.

...

Kappo Masa provides a pantomime of service without the substance, and the restaurant itself is an imitation of luxury, not the real thing.

Stars I might have given Kappo Masa if the prices were, say, 20 percent lower: one.

Stars I am giving it: zero.

h/t FT Alphaville