Restaurant Review From Hell

...love stuff like this: As Not Seen on TV Restaurant Review: Guy’s American Kitchen & Bar in Times Square By PETE WELLS (NYT) GUY FIERI, have you eaten at your new restaurant in Times Square? Have you pulled up one of the 500 seats at Guy’s American Kitchen & Bar and ordered a meal? Did you eat the food? Did it live up to your expectations? Did panic grip your soul as you stared into the whirling hypno wheel of the menu, where adjectives and nouns spin in a crazy vortex? When you saw the burger described as “Guy’s Pat LaFrieda custom blend, all-natural Creekstone Farm Black Angus beef patty, LTOP (lettuce, tomato, onion + pickle), SMC (super-melty-cheese) and a slathering of Donkey Sauce on garlic-buttered brioche,” did your mind touch the void for a minute? Did you notice that the menu was an unreliable predictor of what actually came to the table? Were the “bourbon butter crunch chips” missing from your Almond Joy cocktail, too? Was your deep-fried “boulder” of ice cream the size of a standard scoop? What exactly about a small salad with four or five miniature croutons makes Guy’s Famous Big Bite Caesar (a) big (b) famous or (c) Guy’s, in any meaningful sense? Were you struck by how very far from awesome the Awesome Pretzel Chicken Tenders are? If you hadn’t come up with the recipe yourself, would you ever guess that the shiny tissue of breading that exudes grease onto the plate contains either pretzels or smoked almonds? Did you discern any buttermilk or brine in the white meat, or did you think it tasted like chewy air? Why is one of the few things on your menu that can be eaten without fear or regret — a lunch-only sandwich of chopped soy-glazed pork with coleslaw and cucumbers — called a Roasted Pork Bahn Mi, when it resembles that item about as much as you resemble Emily Dickinson? When you have a second, Mr. Fieri, would you see what happened to the black bean and roasted squash soup we ordered? Hey, did you try that blue drink, the one that glows like nuclear waste? The watermelon margarita? Any idea why it tastes like some combination of radiator fluid and formaldehyde? At your five Johnny Garlic’s restaurants in California, if servers arrive with main courses and find that the appetizers haven’t been cleared yet, do they try to find space for the new plates next to the dirty ones? Or does that just happen in Times Square, where people are used to crowding? If a customer shows up with a reservation at one of your two Tex Wasabi’s outlets, and the rest of the party has already been seated, does the host say, “Why don’t you have a look around and see if you can find them?” and point in the general direction of about 200 seats? What is going on at this new restaurant of yours, really? Has anyone ever told you that your high-wattage passion for no-collar American food makes you television’s answer to Calvin Trillin, if Mr. Trillin bleached his hair, drove a Camaro and drank Boozy Creamsicles? When you cruise around the country for your show “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives,” rasping out slangy odes to the unfancy places where Americans like to get down and greasy, do you really mean it? Or is it all an act? Is that why the kind of cooking you celebrate on television is treated with so little respect at Guy’s American Kitchen & Bar? How, for example, did Rhode Island’s supremely unhealthy and awesomely good fried calamari — dressed with garlic butter and pickled hot peppers — end up in your restaurant as a plate of pale, unsalted squid rings next to a dish of sweet mayonnaise with a distant rumor of spice? How did Louisiana’s blackened, Cajun-spiced treatment turn into the ghostly nubs of unblackened, unspiced white meat in your Cajun Chicken Alfredo? How did nachos, one of the hardest dishes in the American canon to mess up, turn out so deeply unlovable? Why augment tortilla chips with fried lasagna noodles that taste like nothing except oil? Why not bury those chips under a properly hot and filling layer

And when we hear the words Donkey Sauce, which part of the donkey are we supposed to think about? Eewwww...

Quote Originally Posted by tomcat View Post (http://www.ajarnforum.net/vb/dining-and-entertainment-in-thailand/70340-restaurant-review-from-hell.html#post1740788) WELCOME TO FLAVOR TOWN! Population: 1 awesomely shite restaurateur, by the sound of things.

A fun review. I enjoyed that. What is it with this (seemingly recent) fashion for using brioche as a hamburger bun? I haven't had one myself, but I can't imagine it's that good. The bread shouldn't be a smart-arse and try to upstage the meat.

This review is really making the rounds on the internets. I guess I could go pay the place a visit, but with that write-up, someone will have to paypal me cash to cover the bill.

Quote Originally Posted by Thinkingofachange View Post (http://www.ajarnforum.net/vb/dining-and-entertainment-in-thailand/70340-restaurant-review-from-hell.html#post1740829) someone will have to paypal me cash to cover the bill. So says the independently wealthy New Yorker. [image: http://www.ajarnforum.net/vb/images/smilies/smilie_yellow_icon_rolleyes.gif]

Quote Originally Posted by Thinkingofachange View Post (http://www.ajarnforum.net/vb/dining-and-entertainment-in-thailand/70340-restaurant-review-from-hell.html#post1740829) I guess I could go pay the place a visit, Hell, why don't you just buy it?

Quote Originally Posted by tomcat View Post (http://www.ajarnforum.net/vb/dining-and-entertainment-in-thailand/70340-restaurant-review-from-hell.html#post1740788) The well-meaning staff seems to realize that this is not a real restaurant. ouch

While this review is now copied all over the Internet, I don't think many people who watch "Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives” also read the restaurant reviews in the New York Times. And how many denizens of NYC do you think actually eat at this restaurant? Likely less than a handful per night--if that. In short, this review probably won't hurt his bottom line one iota. And BTW, who is Pete Wells' editor? The Times would be better served (no pun intended) leaving this sort of snarkiness to the NY Post.

Quote Originally Posted by toong tao daeng View Post (http://www.ajarnforum.net/vb/dining-and-entertainment-in-thailand/70340-restaurant-review-from-hell.html#post1740907) In short, this review probably won't hurt his bottom line one iota. No, but it'll sure hurt his pride.. ---Update--- Quote Originally Posted by tomcat View Post (http://www.ajarnforum.net/vb/dining-and-entertainment-in-thailand/70340-restaurant-review-from-hell.html#post1740788) POOR That's his new diner sign..

Quote Originally Posted by Guy Mandude View Post (http://www.ajarnforum.net/vb/dining-and-entertainment-in-thailand/70340-restaurant-review-from-hell.html#post1740845) So says the independently wealthy New Yorker. I'm not wealthy, and I never said I was.

Also, just cause he's wealthy doesn't mean TOAC isn't a cheap Jew.

Yes, there is that too. The only reason I was able to retire so young is because I am very, very, very cheap.

This SO reminds me of the late Bernard King (for all the Aussies), and his bitchy reviews of all things, from fat-arsed western suburbs housewives to...um restaurants! TC would have been a fan!

Quote Originally Posted by toong tao daeng View Post (http://www.ajarnforum.net/vb/dining-and-entertainment-in-thailand/70340-restaurant-review-from-hell.html#post1740907) And how many denizens of NYC do you think actually eat at this restaurant? even people who work in the Times Square area won't eat at Times Square tourist traps.