New York Times Guy Fieri Times Square Restaurant Review

The Big Seize with teeth Burger from Guy's American Kitchen and Bar in New York's Times Square. In 2012, New York Times eating place critic Pete Wells penned an infamous takedown of the restaurant. Krista/Flickr hide caption

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Krista/Flickr

The Big Bite Burger from Guy's American Kitchen and Bar in New York's Times Square. In 2012, New York Times restaurant critic Pete Wells penned an infamous takedown of the eating house.

Krista/Flickr

Pete Wells has a job that most people can only dream of. As restaurant critic for The New York Times, he gets paid to eat out iv or five nights a week — often at quite pricey places — on someone else's dime.

But for Wells, going out for drinks and delectable meals is notwithstanding work. He tells Fresh Air's Dave Davies that coming upward with words to draw flavors is something he "wrestles with all the time."

"I observe that the dead-end route is to try to depict what's going on in your oral cavity," he says. "If you say, 'Oh, there was a little scrap of acidity from the lime juice on the left side of my tongue, and and so this beautiful, smoothen pureed potato with some crunchy shallots on top, and it all came together,' y'all never will get out of that sentence alive."

Instead, Wells likes to describe a food's presentation in a way that gives the reader a feel for what information technology is like to eat: "My feeling is, if I tin can describe the way a steak looks on the plate, when it'southward but kind of juices are coming out, and it'south almost alive, and only wants to be eaten, I hope that people will feel information technology, more than they will feel me describing the tangy minerality of the dry-aged beef betwixt my teeth."

Interview Highlights

On beginning his very disquisitional review of one of New York City's near expensive restaurants, Per Se, past describing the poor service as " the ho-hum pitter-patter of mediocrity"

There is ofttimes with eating place reviews in detail, I think, this kind of impulse to be deferential and bow downwardly to the greatness of the eating place and the greatness of the chef, and and then with smashing regret to say, "And however, all is not as it should be in the kingdom," and I didn't desire to practice whatsoever of that. I simply think that we show an awful lot of deference to chefs in our civilization and maybe non plenty deference to customers, and I wanted this review to come out and say, "Aye, this is a very respected chef, simply are the people at the tabular array being respected in the aforementioned way?"

On his infamous takedown of Guy Fieri'due south restaurant, Guy'southward American Kitchen & Bar, in Times Square

I wanted to similar the restaurant. I wanted the restaurant to be the same kind of commemoration of grease on your elbows and grease on your ears and grease on your nose, Americans wallowing in unhealthy, unwholesome joy. ... It'southward flashy and energetic-looking, and it seems like information technology's going to exist this wild, crazy political party. So the food arrives and it's no political party at all. At all. All of the promises of the restaurant kind of die on the plate ... [like] these nachos that had this kind of greyness turkey lurid on them. I don't think I've ever met nachos that I didn't similar before. It'south virtually inconceivable that nachos can be bad. It makes no sense.

On the reaction to his brutally negative review of Fieri's restaurant

A lot of people rejoiced and thought that I was putting this interloper from television back in his place, which was not my intention. And then a lot of people thought I was being a bossy East Coast elitist who was analytical the common people and making fun of their tastes, which was non my intention at all. I wanted to say, "This can exist great food, this should be great food, why isn't information technology great food?" Only it was wild. It was really wild. I endeavor to answer to emails that people ship me after reviews come out, and that was the ane time when I just absolutely could not. I couldn't continue up. There were so many and all over the place, positive and negative. After a few days, the actually nasty ones started to come up in, which really surprised me, because the review had been out for three or four days and then all of a sudden I started to become these really profane and savage emails, one later on another. Somebody wished that my kids would get cancer and I thought, "What have I washed here?"

On his joyous review of Señor Frog , a spring-break-themed eatery in Times Square, where he danced in a conga line wearing a three-foot-loftier crown of yellowish and orange balloons and drank a margarita out of a phallus-shaped glass

The reason I wanted to write about it was considering — it's not the most sophisticated fun in the globe, it's maybe not fifty-fifty my kind of fun, but it was fun. And I was really struck by how solemn and then many of the restaurants I review have become. Every bit I said in the review, information technology'due south become like going to church. Everybody used to say going to restaurants ... is like theater, there'southward stage sets, there's drama, there'southward play acting and you lot sentinel the show. And at present, boy, everything'due south just become then serious. And you sit at the counter and the chef comes out and tells y'all what he did to the Brussels sprouts leaves and no, there's not a lot of dancing.

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Source: https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/01/21/463825817/times-restaurant-critic-dishes-on-guy-fieri-and-reviews-that-stir-the-pot

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