Sietsema Brutalizes Restaurant Girl, and That’s Just Not RightRobert Sietsema had some hard words about the Restaurant Girl yesterday. It’s rare to see a critic calling out another one so publicly, which probably made the post that much more enjoyable for readers hungering for gore. Sietsema tells Metromix, “Her writing has been improving, but still she seems to take an a priori, frivolous attitude towards the material. And the fact that she did choose to be recognized is, to me, like, really horrible.” Horrible, Bob? Really? That sounds like a cheap shot to us. Freeman was already publicly known as a blogger when she got the Daily News gig, and, in fact, all the major critics are familiar to chefs and restaurateurs, as everybody in the business knows. (Sietsema’s Senegalese soup kitchens wouldn’t know him if he was on the cover of Newsweek, but that’s just his own good fortune.) As for his other charge (“I presume that part of her being non-anonymous is that she goes into a restaurant under her own name, flashes her cleavage, and they just bring her free food”), it’s ugly and ungallant, and someone his age should know better than to say it unless he knows it’s true. As far as we know, it isn’t.
Q&A: Robert Sietsema [Metromix NY]
The Other Critics
Le Cirque Back in the Three-Star Club; It’s La Belle Epoque Again at Who says Frank Bruni has no heart? After demoting Le Cirque last year, Bruni restores the third star, courtesy largely to new chef Christophe Bellanca’s masterly handling of ultraluxe ingredients and, of course, the Maccioni family’s trademark feudal service. [NYT]
Maybe you don’t consider the salmon at Dovetail “a religious experience,” the way Restaurant Girl does, but everyone seems to agree with Adam Platt that it’s a very fine restaurant and outrageously good for the Upper West Side. [NYDN]
Related: This Dove Flies
Ryan Sutton has filed the first review of Adour, and he makes it sound, at least to anachronistically minded readers, truly awesome. Did you know Adour is serving lobster thermidor? Lobster thermidor! In this day and age! Sutton is also impressed by the virtual wine list, as most other visitors have been. [Bloomberg]
Mediavore
DOA Makes You Wait Longer to Eat Frankenbeef; Find Dinner on FoodTubeThough the FDA approved the sale of meat and dairy from cloned animals, the Department of Agriculture is asking farmers to postpone introducing cloned animals into the food supply until they can calm retailers and overseas trading partners. [NYT]
Related: FDA to Beef Industry: Send in the Clones
The list of restaurateurs interested in snatching up Tavern on the Green when its lease expires at the end of the year has expanded to include heavyweights such as Danny Meyer, Drew Nieporent, and the Ciprianis. [NYP]
The Great Restaurant Critic Notebook Caper of 2008 continues! With confirmation that it belongs to neither Frank Bruni nor Danyelle “Restaurant Girl” Freeman, the search for its owner goes on. [Eater]
Related: So the Critic Left Her (?) Notes. So What?
Mediavore
Bloomberg Delivers Cheesecake; McDonald’s Takes on StarbucksHizzoner showed up to a political summit in Oklahoma with Junior’s cheesecake for all. [NYS]
Jennifer LeRoy sees another 30 years of LeRoy ownership at Tavern on the Green, but she isn’t striking a deal with Donald Trump to keep the place. [Insatiable Critic]
When world adventurer Anthony Bourdain found out that Food Network would be re-airing episodes of his series A Cook’s Tour, he was sitting by a pool in Hawaii. His reaction? “This was like being unexpectedly groped and publicly slipped the tongue by the ugliest girl at the prom.” [Anthony Bourdain’s Blog/Travel Channel]
The Other Critics
Allen & Delancey Gets Its Two-Star Due; Irving Mill Continues to UninspireIn spite of lousy desserts and a misstep in the fish department there, Frank Bruni couldn’t avoid giving Allen and Delancey’s complex, accomplished food two stars. [NYT]
Alan Richman, no pushover, was also very impressed by Allen & Delancey, though he noted that the chef’s strength clearly lies in the realm of turf, rather than surf. Still, the respect is there: “The visceral satisfaction is high. He piles on flavors, and he does so with assurance.” [Bloomberg]
Irving Mill: tired concept, spotty execution. Restaurant Girl joins the chorus. [NYDN]
NewsFeed
Gawker Lays Hate on Restaurant Girl Danyelle FreemanNow that Bruni Digest author Julia Langbein is blogging for Gourmet, you don’t hear many jabs at Frank’s purple prose anymore. Enter Gawker, which yesterday took aim at a much fresher target in not one but three posts skewering Danyelle Freeman, a.k.a. “Restaurant Hurl.” Somehow we don’t think Gawker’s back-to-back parody reviews — which focused on a sandwich we eat about three times a week, Despaña’s El Quixote — will cause Freeman’s future dispatches to be any less florid and torrid.
The Other Critics
Bruni Closes the Book on Tailor; Allen & Delancey Gets Good, Not Great, NoticesBruni waited to be the last one to pronounce on Tailor, and his review pretty much recapitulates, albeit in wittier prose and with some much-appreciated Grub Street love, what everyone else has said: erratic brilliance, wee portions, and a killer cocktail program. The result: one star. [NYT]
Allen & Delancey keeps impressing the critics, at least with chef Neil Ferguson’s meat mastery. His fish, though, is strictly from hunger, according to Restaurant Girl. [NYDN]
Randall Lane offers one of his most thoughtful and precise reviews of Allen & Delancey, finding fault only in flavor balances and the fact that the place has to close up at midnight. [TONY]
The Other Critics
A Star Swap for Alto & L’Impero; No Amore for Richman at FiammaThe Times’ verdict is in on Alto and L’Impero, and it’s the expected three and two stars, respectively. Lost in the Alto upgrade is the hard fact that L’Impero now enters the dreaded two-star limbo into which Frank Bruni puts any place neither transcendent nor mediocre. Personally, we would have had it at four and three. [NYT]
Alan Richman admires the new Fiamma (former home to Mike White) in a cool and distant way, finding the food busy and not at all Italian, although not exactly lousy by any means. No one will read this review and want to spend money to eat at Fiamma. [Bloomberg]
On the other hand, Restaurant Girl’s three-star review reads like a perfume ad, it’s so loving: “Like an artist, he paints deeply flavored ragu onto a pappardelle canvas, finished with tender ribbons of venison.” Ew! But Steve Hanson must be happy. [NYDN]
The Other Critics
Cuozzo Likes Wakiya; Bruni, Platt Agree on RayuelaSteve Cuozzo bucks the early bad buzz on Wakiya, praising the place but cautioning that the chef will only be around one week a month. [NYP]
Related: We Catch Wakiya’s First Guests on the Street
Alan Richman submits a rare rave review for Soto, saying of its hot dishes “not one was less than wonderful. This is cooked food on a par with the most ingenious in New York.” Soto-san has to be pretty happy with that. [Bloomberg]
Restaurant Girl’s debut in the Daily News takes the form of a mixed review on Gemma: She liked the branzino and the atmosphere, the other dishes not so much. Nothing in the write-up suggests that they were unduly influenced by knowing who she was. [NYDN]
Related: Restaurant Girl Has a Face For Reviewing
NewsFeed
Restaurant Girl Has a Face for Reviewing
Ooh, boy! Danyelle Freeman, a “new breed of restaurant critic, a maverick whose face accompanies her weekly reviews,” was introduced to the city this morning in the Daily News. And not only is her face front and center, but she comes complete with glamour shots! Freeman gave Gemma 1.5 stars in her debut review, but the real gem is the News’ accompanying article explaining Restaurant Girl’s need to show the face behind the reviews. “I’ve felt like the ‘Dear Abby’ of food for years,” Freeman said, noting that she has been blogging since January 2006. Grub Street, for one, welcomes our new recognizable critics. With pics like those, how couldn’t we?
New Food Critic Faces Her Public [NYDN]
Gemma’s Cuisine Takes a Backseat to Hip Downtown Scene [NYDN]
Mediavore
Tycoons Tipping Badly; Goldfarb Is a Big, Bright, Shining StarWall Street big shots, frantic over stock-market fluctuations, are taking it out on the poor waiters who live on their tips. [NYP]
Will Goldfarb holds forth to Restaurant Girl at great length on his “brand identity”: “I think that Room 4 Dessert would definitely be credited with starting the pastry chef trend as crossover/rock star status that it has found in the media in the last 18 months.” Oh, definitely. [Restaurant Girl]
Related: Room 4 Dessert Is Dead, Long Live Room 4 Dessert
Frank Bruni tries to get in on the Top Chef action but has it all wrong: “Has Top Chef ever had a villain as obnoxious as Howie?” A villain? What show is he watching? [Diner’s Journal/NYT]
Related: Truces and Vanilla Candles Ruin This Week’s ‘Top Chef’
Mediavore
Tailor Delayed Yet Again; Bourdain Takes It to HowieThe opening of Tailor has been pushed back to September 1. Another delay? Who would have thought it? [Eater]
Related: Farewell, Sam Mason. Hello, Tailor
Tony Bourdain outdoes himself taking it to Howie in his Top Chef blog: “neither logic, nor the criticisms of chefs as great as Daniel, nor the passing seasons — nor even blunt objects — can infiltrate the inner workings of his space-age polymer nose-cone.” [Bravo]
Andrea Strong details her experience as a guest judge on Top Chef – and gives the full review that was read from on last night’s episode. [Strong Buzz]
Beef
‘Industry’ Types Baffled by Restaurant GirlBlowback continues from Restaurant Girl’s surprise appointment to the vacant Daily Snooze chair, which has somehow managed to make the somnolent paper relevant again, if only for a day. The industry backbiters over at PXThis have their own nasty ideas about Danyelle Freeman’s new assignment. The best comments, after the jump.
Beef
Restaurant Girl News Makes Commenters DishYesterday’s Eater news of the installation Danyelle “Restaurant Girl” Freeman as the Daily News’ new restaurant critic unleashed a torrent of snarky hostility on the site’s message boards. Sadly, the comments were infinitely more entertaining than anything the victuals vixen is likely to write in the paper. A few choice selections are after the jump.
Mediavore
Restaurant Girl to be ‘Daily News’ Critic; INS Crackdown PanicsIt’s a proud day for bloggers everywhere as Danyelle “Restaurant Girl” Freeman has been installed as the restaurant critic for the Daily News. [Eater]
Her appointment raises the old question of whether a critic should really be anonymous. [VV]
Restaurant workers all over town are freaking out, thanks to a major crackdown on illegal immigrants. [NY1]
Mediavore
Taking Food Snobbery to the Next Level; Paula Deen and the Pork Giant“Localvores” are highly virtuous and a big pain in the ass. [NYDN]
Paula Deen finds herself on the wrong side of a Smithfield Foods labor dispute, and striking workers are calling for her to sever ties with the pork giant. [NYT]
It’s not just red wine with fish anymore: Celebrity chefs are leading the way toward more imaginative wine and beer pairings, from Joe Bastianich’s pouring Dom Pérignon rosé with roast pheasant to Laurent Tourondel’s quaffing beer with his steak. [Forbes]
Back of the House
Mercat to Finally Open TomorrowRestaurant Girl is reporting that Mercat, the long-delayed Catalan tapas bar, is finally set to make its initial public offering. Gas-related issues kept pushing back a final inspection, but the restaurant is currently taking reservations for its opening at 6 p.m. tomorrow.
Mercat: Open for Business [RG]
Back of the House
Varietal Finds Its Man: Wayne NishWayne Nish, who already has a namesake venue with Nish, will now take over the kitchen at Varietal, too, replacing Ed Witt. Varietal owner Greg Hockenberry implied earlier that he’d fired Witt; Witt informs us that he left of his own accord — because the restaurant was going more “mainstream.” (Avant-garde dessert chef Jordan Kahn also quit, presumably under similar pressure. He declined to comment when we spoke with him.) Restaurant Girl, who broke news of the hire, reports that Nish will implement a $48 prix fixe menu — and serve as his own dessert maker. That sounds more mainstream to us, but the imaginative Nish no doubt has his own ambitions. Find out April 6, when he steps up to the plates.
Varietal - Bruni Aftershocks [Restaurant Girl]
Back of the House
The Travails of the Produce Biz; A Rebuke to Our Rachael Ray DefenseAn inside look at what restaurants’ produce suppliers go through and the razor’s edge their business turns on. [NYT]
Nina Lalli believes that we were wrong to defend Rachael Ray, who, she says, just throws fatty food at the masses, with no care for their well-being. [VV]
Joël Robuchon has confirmed that he’s going to open a restaurant in Chicago; now it looks like Alain Ducasse will be doing the same. If, as some speculate, Ducasse never reopens here, we may actually end up behind Chicago in something. [Chicago Sun-Times]
Back of the House
Restaurants Not Feeling the Love Last Night; Menu Secrets Kept From RiffraffA brutal Valentine’s Day for New York restaurants, battered by cancellations owing to the lousy weather. [WCBS]
Many of the city’s best restaurants have off-the-menu specials: foie gras donuts at Telepan, Daniel Boulud’s lobster ravioli at Le Cirque, and more, all revealed here. [Restaurant Girl]
Chocolate, of all things, turns out to be New York’s No. 1 specialty-food export — if you eat it on the East Coast, chances are it came from here. Food processing is “by far the most stable major manufacturing sector” in the city, and one of the last. [NYT]
Back of the House
Dinner Roll, Please: ‘08 SOBE Honorees Already LeakedRestaurant Girl has dug up the 2008 South Beach Food & Wine Festival honorees. Next year’s special food people will be … Jean-Georges Vongerichten and Jamie Oliver! The ‘07 fest, which won’t even be held until the end of this month, will give props to Maguy Le Coze and Le Bernardin’s Eric Ripert; Martha Stewart gets her own tribute brunch. Widely attended by the restaurant elite, if only because it’s an excuse to party in South Beach during the dead of winter, the SOBE event will likely be even more crowded this February — new sponsor the Food Network will be taping its first annual Food Network Awards there.
SOBE’s 2008 Nominees Are… [Restaurant Girl]
Back of the House
Alan Yau Isn’t Coming After All; There’s Always the BronxIan Schrager finally admits that Alan Yau isn’t coming to New York after all: “The challenges of coordinating our preparations across three continents were ultimately out of sync with our timeline.” [NYP]
So it took the Poughkeepsie Journal to bring New York its first detailed feature on the current food culture of the Bronx. [Poughkeepsie Journal]
A report on the convention of the world’s leading molecular gastronomists in Milan. [LAT]
Back of the House
Read All About Restaurant Bloggers; Everybody Loves GnudiThe Amateur Gourmet interviews Mario Batali, but he’s too starstruck to get tough with the chef (like he did with Sirio). One highlight: Batali insists that you can in fact drink a whole case of wine in one sitting. [Serious Eats]
It’s not an official review or anything, but Bruni ate at Maremma and wasn’t crazy about it. [Diner’s Journal/NYT]
There are apparently a number of New York City “food bloggers” who have some influence on the restaurant business. [NYT]
The Other Critics
It’s Final: Ramsay’s Dull; March Gets RomanticBruni goes to Gordon Ramsay and finds common ground with everyone else, saying it’s well executed, flawless even — and totally uninspiring. Even the paint is dull! (Two stars.) [NYT]
In keeping with his recent interest in the international, Meehan visits a Romanian restaurant with garlicky spreads in Sunnyside. Still, despite the Sphinx, the place still doesn’t sound all that interesting. [NYT]
March reborn as Nish: It’s more romantic, thanks to more intimate seating, exotic ingredients, and dishes that “broadly evoked the cuisine of chef Gray Kunz: international spices used with local ingredients and French technique.” Who isn’t doing that these days? [Bloomberg]
The Other Critics
Critics Keep Up the Steakhouse Shuffle; Ramsay ReviewedRamsay strikes a chord with Ryan Sutton: “This is artful food that makes you ponder the meaning of life, but it’s also accessible, gutsy fare that excites the senses and fills the tummy.” [Bloomberg]
Bruni does the ever popular steak two-fer (witness Platt’s double-up on STK and Lonesome Dove), declares Porter House New York “an M.B.A. program for beef eaters who did undergraduate work at Outback,” turning out “well-sourced, well-prepared flesh” though getting into trouble elsewhere. Despite the limo-like seats, he’s not grooving to the beat (or the meat) at the other spot: “STK might want to think about buying some soundproofing, along with a vowel.” [NYT]
Richman isn’t convinced Porter House New York is a steakhouse, or at least as good of one as its predecessor V. Instead it’s “an accessible, sensible eating establishment with decent prices and classy, comprehensible food.” [Bloomberg]
Back of the House
Foodies Flock to Networking Site; No Word If Any Have Dates
Food Candy is as simple as a baked potato: It’s the Foodie Friendster (or, as you cutting-edge types would probably prefer, MySpace). The strange thing about the site is how happy, normal, and attractive the people look. Can these really be the same hard-core geeks that we’ve eaten with? Or is this the food version of JDate, which for the longest time showed you pictures of one Sarah Silverman after another, only to deliver Golda Meirs? We appreciate how the site brings together established bloggers like Daisy Martinez with obscure but worthy writers we didn’t know about, like the farm-loving Pease Porridge and the admirably focused Burrito Blog. (Restaurant Girl and Famous Fat Dave had already made fans of us.) We just hope this social phenomenon reflects the foodie community’s increasing obsessiveness, not some attempt at reintegrating with normal human society.
