Bruce Feiler - Where God Was Born, Abraham, Walking The Bible

Food Fight at the NYT
Thursday, March 15, 2007

Poor Frank Bruni. To be the NYT restaurant critic in the age of the blogosphere can't be much fun. More than one blog is dedicated to attacking his reviews on a weekly basis. I was briefly approached a few years ago about applying for this job. It was unbelievably flattering -- a never-in-a-lifetime experience, as my wife called it -- but once I looked into the workload, eating out a dozen meals a week, I was daunted. Bruni got the gig and while he is much reviled in the restaurant world, he's now facing a new kind of counterattack. The WP has the details:

Everyone at the Kobe Club knew the drill: When the New York Times critic comes for dinner, the whole place goes on high alert.

Whoever recognizes him raises the alarm. The chef prepares two of every dish the reviewer orders, so he can taste-test a duplicate of the entire meal before sending it out to the table. Waiters are attentive but not overbearing. And the owner, Jeffrey Chodorow, keeps a respectful distance.

When the moment of destiny finally arrived in the form of Frank Bruni, the Times restaurant critic since April 2004, every procedure was followed to the letter, according to staffers and Chodorow. After Bruni departed, the Kobe Club's general manager called Chodorow at 2 a.m. and made a bold prediction: We're getting three stars.

Wrong. On Feb. 7, Bruni awarded zero stars, which for a dining establishment aspiring to top-tier status in this town, the restaurant capital of the USA, is a failing grade with a side order of crow. He found a "rubbery" pork chop, "limp" iceberg lettuce, "gluey" mashed potatoes and a clam with a "metallic tang."

"We ate his meal in the kitchen," recalled Chodorow, who was livid. "We would know if something was off." Chodorow then shelled out $40,000 to take out a full-page ad in the Dining Out section of the Times two weeks later.

In his broadside, which took the form of an open letter to Bruni's boss, Chodorow said Bruni had launched "personal attacks." He questioned the reviewer's credentials, citing his previous job in Rome, covering politics, the pope and other general news subjects. He promised to start a blog with a section called "Following Frank," in which he would review the critic's reviews.

Labels: Food

Posted by B Feiler at 8:00 AM
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