A few weeks ago I bet my old pal Johnny Red Sox that his team would make the playoffs. He said they were going to blow it. Here’s the bet: If the Sox won, he takes me out to dinner. If they lost, I take him out.

Figured it was a win-win for me. Now, let’s just hope his tastes are reasonable. That doesn’t mean Gray’s Papaya, but let’s hope it doesn’t mean Del Posto either.

I’ve never been to a four-star restaurant. Might be fun to try one day if I ever win the lottery.

In the Times, Sam Sifton gives Del Posto, the coveted four-star rating:

GREAT restaurants may start out that way. But an extraordinary restaurant generally develops only over time, the product of prolonged artistic risk and managerial attention. An extraordinary restaurant uses the threat of failure first as a spur to improvement, then as a vision of unimaginable calamity. An extraordinary restaurant can transcend the identity of its owners or chef or concept.

And of course an extraordinary restaurant serves food that leads to gasps and laughter, to serious discussion and demands for more of that, please, now. The point of fine dining is intense pleasure. For the customer, at any rate, an extraordinary restaurant should never be work.