Food Critics and Egomaniacs

Some of you might remember Jeffrey Chodorow from his restaurant reality show, The Restaurant, starring the young and talented publicity whore Rocco DiSpirito. You might even know him as a restaurateur. After all, he has over 20 restaurants. Recently, he received a poor review from The New York Times' food critic, Frank Bruni, for his new restaurant Kobe Club. Chodorow fought back, in classic sore looser fashion, with an obnoxious ad in the Times about how great his restaurant is and how the other critics loved it. He spent a lot of money telling the readers of The New York Times that Bruni was wrong and that his restaurant is great. The ad was well worth the money. He's getting a ton of publicity from it, good and bad. There is such a thing as bad publicity when it comes to restaurants. I can understand his frustration. His restaurant that took over the space that used to house Rocco's on 22nd Street suffered from Rocco's Curse and harsh criticism that could have been residual distaste for Rocco's. Frankly, I believe some of its demise was in the name, Caviar and Banana. What the F!

The main point of Mr. Chodorow's ad/letter was that Bruni has no food experience and hence is not qualified to be a food critic. This brings two issues to mind. One, Jeffrey Chodorow is an egomaniac. If you watched The Restaurant you would come to the same conclusion. Of course he thinks his restaurant is great. He has now gone so far as to create his own blog, giving himself the title of food critic. He claims that he plans to post only positive experiences. That's realistic! Bad restaurants do exist and if you want to be a critic you have to report on the negative experiences too. If not, you're not a food critic but rather a reporter of good restaurants. After being criticized for censoring the comments that were streaming in to his blog, the decision was made to let them all through. There are some harsh words to Mr. Chodorow in those comments. How can he bare it? On his own blog? How dare they! At least it won't cost tens of thousands of dollars in ad fees to respond to those opinions.

The second issue that came from all of this is the topic of food critics. Frank Bruni does not have a background in food, except for an eater of it. I believe he's been eating all of his life. I'll have to check on that fact though. Commonly, food critics are snobbish when it comes to food. I am in no way a food expert. I love pub food and beer as much as I love fine dining and a great wine. I just love food. I do, however, know a good experience when I have one. I'm even more aware of a bad experience when I have one.

A little story:
My wife and I went to the Chart House, located at 60 Long Wharf in Boston, which is part of Landry's Restaurants, Inc.. The Chart House in Boston is one of 26 in the country. More about these upscale chain restaurants at a later date.

We had a great meal. However, something that happened that night would have completely given a food critic the red ass. The first problem we had was our waitress in the lounge. She was slow to take our cocktail order, slow to bring the bill and generally slow all around. After being seated, everything went very smoothly until it was time to clear the table. The waitress piled our plates on a tray, turned around and something happened. I can only explain this as a glitch in the gravitational pull or maybe a drop in atmospheric pressure. I just don't know what happened. The waitress didn't just loose her hold of the tray but somehow managed to violently toss the contents. My wife and I were covered in rice, fish and lemons halves with the little seed condoms on them. The very subtle Australian gentleman behind us screamed "WOW I've never seen that before". I'm telling you, it was something to see. I felt very bad for the waitress. She was extremely upset but she kept her composure enough to promptly move us to another table and offer us free dessert. It was an accident. It clearly made an impression on me though. I can see past that though and tell you that the food, atmosphere and even our server were all great. I can only imagine the horror of a food critic wiping rice from his lapel and picking fish shrapnel from his wife's hair. I'm thinking that would not be a pleasant review. It was a bruise to the ego, for sure. I deserve nothing short of flawless service and food. Supernatural phenomena is no excuse.

I think social networking, mainly blogs, will have a big effect on these types of things. Everyone will become a critic. The challenge is to write about your good experiences as well as your bad. We are tempted to only tell people about the bad experiences we have. That has to change. I don't have a problem with Frank Bruni being a food critic. He's a regular guy. So am I. He doesn't have a background in food. Neither do I. It does, however, matter to those who get bad reviews from him. You don't hear complaints when three stars are awarded, unless you're Mario Batali. Nobody likes to be criticized, especially egomaniacs.