Today Jeffrey Chodorow, the priapic owner of many a poorly reviewed restaurant, placed another ad in the New York Times Dining section. (He had previously taken out a full pager impugning critic Frank Bruni's motives in panning Kobe Club.) Today's ad was in response to Bruni's one-star review of Wild Salmon. It was written on "letterhead" in a generic "handwriting" font.
Danyelle Freeman, food blogger Restaurant Girl, has been tapped to become the New York Daily News' next food critic. As many an Eater commenter has remarked, the only problem is that Freeman—an alumna of both Harvard and Duke, as she notes on her website—can't write. She cadges free meals from PR people—and she's oft-photographed and therefore never incognito. She also closes her correspondence with, "Until we eat again." She can be thought of as the Julia Allison of the food world: Cheaply attractive, ethically limber and relentlessly successful.
This morning, Times food scribe Frank Bruni took on the troubling yet completely understandable—maybe even great?—sociological phenomenon of rich patrons at nice restaurants getting completely faced on wine that costs as much as your monthly paycheck and then doing stupid-awesome things like screwing in bathrooms and stripping in dining rooms.
Now that every department at the New York Times has moved into the new building, you're probably wondering where everyone has gone! So let's go floor-by-floor, shall we? And as we work our way up, we'll see who really matters in the Times organization.
Say you want to have one of those low-stress, non-Bridezilla weddings. You know: Your high school pal serves as the rabbi, your fave gay whips up a nice chuppah, and everybody just shows up and has a ball. If you're Times deputy editor for online journalism Ariel Kaminer, you even hire a pal to do the catering—his very first wedding job! Except your caterer, one Montgomery Knott, the hipster-genius behind MonkeyTown in Williamsburg and member of Stars Like Fleas, went and got arrested on Friday, the day before the wedding. It was for a "bench warrant that shouldn't have been a bench warrant" said Mr. Knott this afternoon by phone, somewhat cryptically. "Apparently Brooklyn arrests more people than any other bureau." (Um, GOOD.) So he did his 20 hours—which plunged the wedding into the sort of chaos that forced Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni to bartend, with Times chief art critic Michael Kimmelman as his bar back. Still the "candied bacon balls" were sorta tasty, guests said. They were like gobstoppers... made of bacon?
Balthazar and Pastis owner and possible presidential candidate Keith McNally added further flame to his feud with New York Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni when the Dining section printed McNally's passive-aggressive letter to the paper today. We've already posted the draft, but the published version emphasizes the point that even William Grimes, "the last male restaurant reviewer for The New York Times," gave more stars to chick chefs. But in his femiladyist comparison, McNally neglects to mention any of the Times's female restaurant critics (Mimi Sheraton, Ruth Reichl, Marian Burros). Does McNally think only men can be sexist? There's a complicated word for that, isn't there? —Josh
A whorl of unanswerable questions have been encircling the hardbody of New York Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni. Keith McNally accused him of lady-hating. Phallic restaurateur Jeffrey Chodorow accused him of pettiness. Now The Observer's Chris Shott accuses him of influence. Shott claims restaurants live or die by the Bruni review, a charge which Bruni accurately denies.
Keith McNally and his new restaurant Morandi were recently on the business end of Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni's bitch stick. So McNally did what all powerhouse restaurateurs seem to be doing recently in the wake of a harsh negging by Bruni—go totally postal. Jeffrey Chodorow, when his ghastly Kobe Club was flayed, claimed personal persecution; but McNally is of a savvier cloth. In what can only be termed a manifesto, published today on Eater, McNally claims that Bruni doesn't just hate Morandi, but hates all women.
Restaurateurs take note! Come Sunday, the voice of Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni—that soufflé of mystery!—will gain greater exposure beyond whatever radio station plays the Times stuff. (We don't think our AM band goes down that low, so we wouldn't know.) Now the former Rome political correspondent has given his Stentorian voice to a slideshow that accompanies his piece about Apuglia. As the National Center for Voice and Speech writes, "voices are as distinctive as our faces—no two are exactly alike." So what should concerned chefs listen for if they want to ID the Bruni?
Yes, it's Max Brenner, the wacky Israeli chocolate place-entity that invaded New York a while back. Only a Jewish mother or a Catholic gay could venture into a sweet chocolate wonderland and return so concerned. But sure—there is no surprise in the fact that Max Brenner is a gimmicky shitty crapshow, whose chocolate isn't even that great. Still it's a handy spot, because it gives the Times restaurant critic an excuse to bitch and make Willy Wonka references, two of his favorite things. But what's next—reviewing a McDonaldland playground in the Bronx? The search for the best Dunkin' Donuts? Defining the boundaries of high and low culture in critic-land is gonna get increasingly more difficult.
New York Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni one-stars Keith McNally's new Morandi with a review notable for its level and venomous prolixity. If this is how he describes something as good, it's a super thing that he doesn't have children, unless you believe that article about the inverse power of praising kids, in which case it's a "desperate inconveniently hokey insane uncomfortable odd hackneyed" thing that he doesn't have children. Let's break it all down by word choice!
Still giddy from three starring Esca, Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni tackles the hot topic of the Heimlich Maneuver. After interviews with professionals around the city (including Vicki Freeman, co-owner of Cookshop, Five Points and Provence) the conclusion is this: If you start choking in a restaurant, you're so screwed. "It seems that most workers haven't taken even some hour-long tutorial, though they're around that poster enough, several managers said, that they've probably paused, read the instructions and committed them to memory." That is to say, either they'll be squeezing you like a this or sprinting off to find whatever godforsaken hinterland to which the Heimlich poster has been remanded. Our advice: Find the nearest chair and slam yourself into it solar plexus first.
The significance of holding last night's party to celebrate the New York Observer and its new website at the Four Seasons restaurant was intentional, obvious, and not at all lost on anyone. Despite its recent Frank Bruni demotion to two New York Times stars, the restaurant remains the symbolic and probably actual center of New York old-guard media power. After so many years of playing gadfly to the media, politics, and real estate elite of this city, the Observer and its boy-owner and his advisers chose to make a very specific sort of statement.
When New York Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni walked into the troubled East Village restaurant EU recently, he entered a fractious arena, one rife with history, short on harmony and big with promise. Beset by liquor license woes, chef woes, a flood, EU seemed born under a bad sign. But with a new chef and all liquored up, EU was emerging finally from its dark period and the question on everybody's mind was: Would Bruni stick a no-star nail into the coffin? He didn't. Brundle, in a rather generous review today, hailed chef Akhatar Nawab's menu but bemoaned the general unevenness of the experience, "its atmosphere can be infectiously lively or insufferably chaotic." So Bruni one-starred it. But how does EU the restaurant compare to its namesake, The European Union?
