After Four-Year Break, Post & Cuozzo Bring Back the Stars

Careful readers of the Post today may have noticed a long lost feature on restaurant and real estate critic Steve Cuozzo's column about the new iteration of Oceana. It has stars! Three out of four to be exact. The newspaper dropped the star system long ago, saying they weren't necessary, meaningless. Not anymore. Perhaps the Daily News' decision to ax their critic has inspired the Post to change things up a bit. A sidebar, found only in the paper edition, explains why:

What's with the stars? Didn't we drop them four years ago because we said they don't mean anything anymore? Well, we still think that if people can read, they can understand what a writer is saying without having it counted out on a scale of zero to four. But times change.

Some highly literate readers said they missed the stars. So did some owners of restaurants -- even ones that we clobbered. And with more newspapers, magazines and Web sites than ever before doling out twinklers, we decided it was time to rejoin the party. Not every week, though -- only when a place is very important, very good or very bad. We're thrilled to start with one in the "very good" category. The next one might not be so lucky.