Gawker
Today Jeffrey Chodorow, the priapic owner of many a poorly reviewed restaurant, placed another ad in the New York Times Dining section. (He had previously taken out a full pager impugning critic Frank Bruni's motives in panning Kobe Club.) Today's ad was in response to Bruni's one-star review of Wild Salmon. It was written on "letterhead" in a generic "handwriting" font.
Dear Frank, The penguin has returned to the South Pole where it belongs. I'm contributing the money I would have spent on a larger ad to the fight against global warming. Really glad you loved the wild salmon at Wild Salmon. It is like no other salmon I've ever tasted. Regards, Jeff. P.s. Loved "your" cameo in Ratatouille."We contacted Chodorow's people to learn to what charity exactly he would be contributing money and how much.
On the first front, after some scrambling, they came back with an organization called Conservation International which, we guess, combats global warming. What are the chances some PR flak thought, "Doh, they're actually calling us out. Quick, somebody Google 'conservation'!"
But in response to how much dough Chodorow is throwing away, we got "We are not disclosing the amount at this time." This either means somewhere around $20K (the approximate difference between a full pager and a 2 column ad), or maybe nothing. A better formulation would have been "I'm contributing the money I'm going to lose at my business due to my continuing obsessive craziness to the fight against global warming." That way the environmentalists would be trillions of dollars richer!
[Scan: Eater]
Comments
Did I miss something? When did "professionals" (Pulitzer prize winners, restaurateurs, etc.) get so g.d. crazy? If silence is a virtue, these people are basically Michael Lohan.
@LolCait: Yeah, but without the fun cartooning skills. Seriously, if this letter featured an enormous God pointing His finger angrily at Frank Bruni, I might actually go to Wild Salmon.
@Colonel Mustard: Ooooh! I'm totes picturing the Giant Hand coming down from the clouds Monty Python style.
In exchange for his donation, maybe Conservation International will allow him to include some of their literature on Wild Salmon's menu:
"What have the fish been swimming in and eating that we would rather not become a part of us? Mercury? PCB's? Pesticides? Sewage? The real catch of the day is that we cannot count on the health of the fish we consume, nor of the oceans they live in."
Um... check, please!
"priapic owner"?
LOVE it.
Jesus H. Christmas, Chodorow needs to calm the fuck down. Somebody give him farm-raised Xanax marinated in Adavan, stat.
@Sara Benincasa: LOL! ...
I wonder if Bruni gets a "finder's fee" for Chodorow's ads? Doubtful, but it's cool to think the NYT would share the wealth (and, of course, it would give Chodorow something else to kvetch about to his analyst).
penguin? what the fuck did i miss?
@TheBigDoggy: doesn't he realize that they will just continue to trash his restaurants, even though they do suck legitimately, as long as he keeps forking out mountains of cash for rebuttals in the form of advertisements.
"we here at Wild Salmon take global warming very seriously. Obliterating the wild salmon population is a different story"
Perhaps the folks from Top Chef should come critique one of Choad's restaurants? Or has Padma had enough Wild Salman for one lifetime?
oh, i just love it. takes such a brass set and totally offsets everything bruni said because smug new yorkers start to believe he's the underdog.
i don't eat fish, nor do i enjoy going beyond 23rd street, but i might just drink my dinner at wild salmon yet.
Bruni's just trying to do a job, folks. I'm not from his camp, but it seems to me he's got a lot of mono-maniacal restaurateurs to deal with...
Many of these people -- Batali, Stephen (ugh) Starr, and, most certainly, Chodorow -- do not get the business.... not truly. The business is About hospitality. It is not about razzle-dazzle; it is not about 'every butthair in place"; of Course it is not about anything having to do with a (Any) food cable channel.
They will make their instant money, and then they will be gone. Everybody can tell when there's no real feeling. Why do you think they're still lining up at Katz's? Think that's going to happen 75 years from now at (ugh) Wild Salmon? (What a [insert adjective] name!)
I write about a bunch of things on here, but this is the business I am in today. (How crazy is That?)
Regards,
Given the limited number of working hours in the day for any one human, it's starting to become obvious why Chodorow can't produce any decent food. Maybe the fare will improve once his masterpiece Bruni hair doll is finally complete.
Oh, and Chodorow has perhaps one of the best one-line Wikipedia summaries attached to his article: "Jeffrey Chodorow is a financier, restaurateur, and convicted felon."
Shall we say pistols at dawn?
@depardoo:
"We can say it; I don't know what it means, but we can say it."
@Cookie Guggleman:
Bingo!
OMG, a critic who criticizes? The nerve! I'm surprised Choda-chow keeps buying ad space for all this inane bluster rather than creating Bruni lookalike reviews that will fool commuters looking for a place to eat in The City. Whee! Hey, if it's glam enough for finger fuckee Dina Lohan...
And that "Ratatouille" reference is beyond lame, in so many ways besides ign'nt use of quotation marks.
FINANCE • The nation's largest mortgage lender, Countrywide Financial, almost out of credit. Oh. No. [NYP] • Recent hedge-fund woes look far from contained — they've even inspired a country song.
@slinkimalinki: A dessert featured a little chocolate penguin on the side, and then it wasn't there on Bruni's next visit, or something.
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