Things that are making you happy*******food and drink edition****** - Page 161

Oh calm down William Faulkner. Not everything is going to be a pulitzer prize winning piece of journalism. I don't give a fuck about the NYT or Guy Fieri. I just thought it was funny.

WELCOME TO FLAVOR TOWN, BITCH.

The NYT review is petty, utterly gratuitous, and one-note. On the other hand, it is Guy Fieri.

exactly

Are they required to review these kinds of restaurants? This is basically the m.o. of this new food critic, and he clearly appeals to people who don't give a shit about food more than those who do, but are just in it for the bitchy, nasty blogger tell off climax, which is kind of an odd way to run a food section.

I haven't followed the new NYT food critic at all. I certainly hope this is a novelty one-off and not one in a series of shitty restaurant put-downs.

if anything, they have been very generous as of late.

Where is Russ at in all of this?

I'm pretty sure he wouldn't lower his section by allowing this kind of shit out.

You seem troubled by this.

Huh, poked around some of his recent reviews and found this as the opening of the review of the 21 Club, which is described as a fun, old-timey place to have drinks even though it serves shitty food:

Maybe once he described this desire in a segment of his audience, he figured he should set about satisfying it.

Its still the best section in the paper, which I know is not saying much. Mark Bittman, Florence Fabrikant, Eric Asimov are good. I always liked Asimov because he reviews out of the way small restaurants, there aren't a lack of reviews on Per Se out there. They should just bring back Ruth, isn't she working for some publisher now , I'd come back to the Times.

Asimov is great. Bittman is pretty good from time to time, but I always feel like somebody is going to catch him masturbating to a video of himself cooking while he cooks one of these days.

+1. The current column is a little meh, but others are consistently excellent.

We've all been there.



Are the husband and wife still doing the WSJ wine column/reviews? I liked them, they were very good.

i'm of two minds about this (and better get to be of one quickly ... i've got a tv news crew coming to interview me about it). which kind of makes one of my points. one of the functions of a restaurant critic (not the only one or even the most important one) is to get people talking. This has succeeded beyond measure. And I'm with Rambro in that I thought it was cleverly done. The question seems to be: should it have been done at all? Does it qualify as "news" by any stretch of the imagination that Guy Fieri has a really shitty restaurant? It certainly isn't news that it's shitty, but because it's Guy Fieri, much bally-hooed promoter of what one wag has called "no-collar cuisine", does that change the equation? You certainly can't argue that an equally horrible restaurant opened by a nonentity would have drawn the attention of the New York Times, but that's not really the point, is it? And it's not likely that some stunning, utterly amazing restaurant isn't going to be reviewed because Wells (whom I"ve met, but don't know), took the week off to riff on Fieri's place. Personally, as takedowns go, I wouldn't compare it to Ruth's review of Le Cirque. But there aren't many reviews I would compare to that (ruth is an old, dear friend and former boss).
as I tell my restaurant critic friends: the only popular restaurant critic is the last one. And that's fair ... if you make a living putting other people under the magnifying glass, you should expect it yourself.