Wednesday, November 14, 2012

WELCOME TO FLAVOR TOWN:  Count me among the dissenters to those squeeing with delight over Dexter's dad's trashing of Guy Fieri's new Times Square restaurant. Not that I think the restaurant is any good -- I trust that it isn't -- but that merely saying that a thing everyone expects to be bad, is bad, is a waste of the NYT's resources no matter how many creative ways you can say "bad."

What a worthwhile review does is place the item being reviewed in context -- whether it's comparing Fieri's place to other restaurants-for-the-masses or a movie like Transformers or Battleship to big dumb action movies which delivered. Until a reviewer makes clear what the expectations are for the genre, and establishes markers which demonstrate an appreciation of when it's done right, then merely saying "this was bad" over and over again is unhelpful. Compare it to what Time Out NY wrote yesterday, which while almost as dismissive took more effort to explain why the restaurant fails:

You’d expect Guy’s American Kitchen and Bar, for one, to be as wild as a three-ring circus—given its Times Square locale and namesake’s Food Network persona. But even in that context, Guy Fieri fumbles his New York debut. TV’s most over-the-top food personality—known for high-fiving his way across the country and scarfing down junk food while dressed like a rodeo clown—has toned his shtick down at his first East Coast restaurant....

The Heartland Brewery chain—his managing partner here—is actually in charge of day-to-day operations. It’s kept the onscreen mania from getting out of hand at the restaurant. While that means neither the food nor the space are terribly crass or offensive, they aren’t very exuberant or fun, either.... Where are all the teetering towers of sticky sweets? The “holy moly stromboli” moments? The triple-decker grease bombs swooned over in all those onscreen diners and dives? Fieri’s own restaurant wouldn’t inspire even a single catchphrase.
Heck, even this Yelp review from "Amy P" is more helpful than Pete Wells', because it gets into the value provided for families and the quality of the kids' meals, which, given that it's Times Square is more relevant to the likely audience for the restaurant than Wells' ability to turn a phrase. Or maybe I'm just in a forgiving mood today.

added: Choire Sicha, The Awl:
This is a case in which this snobbery is expressed at the bluntest, most obvious manifestation of Garbage USA incursion into Manhattan. This is the easiest stone to throw.

And it's celebrated because that stone is coming from a traditionally stodgy institution that doesn't often see fit to throw stones. Plenty of blogs have called this terrible place terrible, at great length and with much glee. But come from the allegedly esteemed pulpit of the Times restaurant reviews, it becomes "official."

25 comments:

  1. girard3111:02 AM

    Guy Fieri has become one of those pseudo celebrities it's easy to bash, which makes Wells review more like hack stand up comedy than anything of value.


    It's kind of like a TV critic attacking Honey Boo Boo's family for being fat.

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  2. Matt Brown11:28 AM

    Now that I know that Heartland Brewery is involved, this makes a lot more sense. That place is a horribly run restaurant.

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  3. Part of my own personal glee at reading the review was that Wells hasn't really, in his tenure, taken the hatchet to anyone. I'm delighted that he can hate things, as it wasn't totally apparent that the man could dislike anything labeled "food."

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  4. Adam B.11:46 AM

    Except that he did, last month, to a place which apparently deserved it -- the esteemed 21 Club:

    Sadly, the future of “21” might be grim if it had to survive as a restaurant alone. To get the violence over quickly: a game platter, with venison, a boar chop, house-made bacon and rabbit sausage, was as cold as if it had been carried all the way from the hunting lodge. Caesar salad, exactly what you want to eat at “21,” was hopeless, the sliced romaine unevenly dressed and dumped on a plate with stale, dry croutons that might have come from a box. Creamed spinach was a rough paste of chopped greenery in a floury white sauce.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/24/dining/reviews/restaurant-review-21-club-in-manhattan.html

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  5. Ok, fair point. But are you arguing that Fieri's didn't deserve it?

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  6. andrewraff11:56 AM

    Is giving constructive criticism going to have any effect on how Guy's conducts business? If you've had to eat multiple meals at this place, would you really want to do anything other than write a snarky review? Is there really any overlap between the people who read the NYT Dining section and the people who would go to Guy Fieri's restaurant?

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  7. Adam B.12:16 PM

    Saying that a restaurant that everyone expects to suck, sucks, is just too easy, and there's a better way to write it.

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  8. Thank goodness for snobbery is all I have to say. There's a place in this world for turning up your nose at the willfully mediocre.

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  9. isaac_spaceman12:47 PM

    I'm not a foodie, I'm not exactly sure what kind of food Guy Fieri would make, and I know nothing of Guy Fieri except what I've inferred from parodies of Guy Fieri and pot-shots on the Internet. So I'm not saying this as a person who is defensive because of my love for Guy Fieri, or for casual family dining in general, for that matter. But I bristle a little at the phrase "restaurants-for-the-masses."

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  10. I actually don't get the snobbery claim at all. The review may have been a bit kitschy, but I did not automatically think the restaurant would be bad. I know Fieri has successful restaurants and I also know he became famous, at least partially, because he was a good chef. So if I found myself in Times Square I would have thought that it might be a step up from some of my other choices. Now I won't. So for me the review worked.

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  11. I disagree. I think the review is absolutely in context of the genre of the place. What would I expect from this place? I'd expect a menu of delicious, basic comfort food, fun drinks, and decent service. And this review is telling me not to expect any of that.

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  12. Saray1:16 PM

    I disagree - and I actually think that the review was a decently-argued case for why the restaurant is insulting to his fans. I'm not saying that NYC diners are going in droves - I'd be surprised if there were more than a handful of actual New Yorkers in the place - but people who (for whatever reason) enjoy Fieri's TV personality should know that the place is lifeless. NYTimes readers include tourists who look to the paper for info on what shows to see when visiting New York and what restaurants to eat in while seeing them. This review alerts them to the hapless listlessness of the actual restaurant.

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  13. Roger1:24 PM

    I actually thought the review did a good job of contextualizing why this restaurant does not live up to the positive things you might expect from his other (apparently good) restaurants.

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  14. Thank you for that. 21 is where you go when you have no ideas or taste, in either sense of the term.

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  15. Watts1:35 PM

    Bristling with you.
    http://youtu.be/yuTMWgOduFM

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  16. Adam B.1:54 PM

    See, I *like* a good deal of casual dining chains (Outback!), so I didn't intend the term derisively. I apologize for not wording it better.

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  17. As one who lives in the heartland, and hangs out with a lot of homebrewers, I demand that this company change its name to "Brooklyn Mediocre Restaurant" immediately.

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  18. Jordan3:11 PM

    So we love it when eater does the same type of thing with that restaurant in the dark, because they're a blog and it's pretentious, but not so much when it's the Times and a restaurant for tourists?

    http://throwingthings.blogspot.com/2012/08/its-no-olive-garden-let-me-tell-you-so.html#disqus_thread

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  19. Watts3:25 PM

    Sometimes, I just gotta have Chili's Chicken Crispers and nothing can stop me.

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  20. Tosy and Cosh3:34 PM

    Me too. What I liked most was that he wasn't saying "casual comfort food sucks and you are a rube if you like it," but "this is bad food trying to pass as casual comfort food."

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  21. One of the things that I especially like about the Fieri review is that the reviewer obviously loves casual food done well and that's tinging his review of a restaurant where it's being done especially badly.

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  22. I clicked on the link originally thinking "why did James Remar do a restaurant review for the Times?"

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  23. Me, too, Watts! I was having a bad day last week at work and indulged in a little Chicken Crispers therapy.

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  24. bellawilfer12:13 PM

    Fieri is getting a ton of press off of this and he handled it fairly well on the Today show this morning... I think he's getting a real bump by coming off as a "real guy" who got bullied by the snobs at the Times.

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  25. Marsha1:23 PM

    Although it didn't make it to air, I did enjoy SNL's take on all this. http://www.hulu.com/watch/426627

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