Frank Bruni, having visited new restaurant Butterfield 8 in its opening days, asks: “Like other new restaurants, Butterfield 8 was charging anyone who came through the door full price. And if a restaurant is going to do that, shouldn’t it take full responsibility for the quality of the experience it provides? Shouldn’t it be ready to roll?”

Yes and no. The same could be asked of Broadway shows in previews, and the first year a new car or computer is on the market. They all charge what the market will bear—in Bruni’s case, retail price less $10 after mistakes were made.

And indeed, theaters in preview often serve up discounts to entice people to fill the seats. But a hot ticket is more than willing to charge full price, because people are willing to pay it. The same goes for new restaurants with buzz: 5 Ninth and Butterfield 8 (obviously the hip trend is to throw a number into the restaurant name) have full reservations and busy dining rooms, so they happily operate in dress rehearsal mode, right down to the cost.

Bruni should be impressed with the out-of-the-box apparent success of the new restaurants, and pleased that his industry’s consumers are willing to support such endeavors. In an expensive new launch, full pricing early helps defray costs and encourages profitability. More power to them.

It Rings, Sings, Downloads, Uploads. But Can You Stand It?, in The New York Times, starts with an anecdote that describes me perfectly: “You would think that he’d be wildly enthusiastic about the new third-generation, or 3G, cellphones that play video and music. But instead, he seems less than impressed—a reaction that could spell trouble for Sprint, Verizon Wireless and other providers that have spent billions of dollars upgrading their networks to lure customers to their high-speed 3G systems.”

Indeed. I was invited to the Sprint Power Vision Ambassador Program not long ago (see Consumerist‘s offer and reaction). Sprint delivered to me a shiny new Samsung multimedia phone with full access privileges and six months of unlimited usage, free of charge. I found it exciting to be a part of a beta program, and intriguing to be an ambassador, a chance for me to play BzzAgent from the inside.

Instead, I’ve turned out much like the article describes. The phone, while robust, is difficult to navigate. The features, while included, require my activating a subscription, making me skeptical of fees and reluctant to say yes to anything. And while I do want a new phone, I have hardly used my free ambassador toy, since my old phone does what I want it to do (make calls, send text messages and take the occasional photo) just fine. The Times is right: convincing ordinary phone service subscribers to bump their services is going to be an uphill battle.

Interestingly, the ambassador program has left me feeling like a bit of a heel. I was handed a cell phone with the works, free, in exchange for discussing it on my blog, and this is the first it’s come up. I hope to figure out Verizon’s call forwarding so I can turn the Sprint phone into my primary for a while. But then there’s a phone book to migrate, and that 816 number they gave me, and I’m not sure if and when I’ll ever use the streaming video….