Gawker
from the mailbag
Posts Tagged “
Frank Bruni
”
from the mailbag
not afraid to be servicey
How Not To Charm A Restaurant Critic
Frank Bruni is pissed! The New York Times' omnipotent restaurant critic (pictured) today reviews a new Tribeca restaurant named Ago, which is owned in part by actor Robert De Niro. And Bruni's experience there is proof for the entire restaurant business that no matter how popular, expensive, or exclusive your place is, it is still quite possible to receive a terrible review if you act like an idiot. Please: Learn some lessons from Ago's fiasco. Here is what not to do when your restaurant is being reviewed: More »
how things work
Who Does Frank Bruni Have to Blow for a Reservation at Momofuku Ko?
Momofuko Ko is, as NYT food critic Frank Bruni tells us, "a new restaurant from David Chang, and David Chang is at this point the New York restaurant world's equivalent of Tiger Woods or Roger Federer." It has 12 seats. Their democratic Web 2.0 booking system requires everyone—yes, everyone—to go online at 10 a.m. and make reservations for the limited number of seats available that week. We love the idea. No calling Graydon Carter's office for a chance at the Waverly: here's the one place in New York where your precious connections and friends can't get you preferential treatment over the slobbering masses lining up for their share of the fancy chow-time. More »
diets
Fat Food Critic Has Death Wish
Did you know that people who write about food for a living tend to be fatties? It's true! Except for the Times' dreamy James Bond of gastronomy, Frank Bruni. The point is that some food critics have realized that scarfing down daily heapings of pork bellies and passing it off as a professional expense is no guarantee they won't keel over from a heart attack, and is a guarantee they will have a hard time seeing their own genitals. Even pork-loving wild man Mario Batali is threatening to start exercising! By chasing a greased sow in his Crocs, perhaps. But even while some of the wiser gluttons are easing back, says the Times, their stupider brethren—embodied by one man—just can't stop with the sausage: More »
Times restaurant critic (and the man I'd fourth most like to have lunch with before I go to London) Frank Bruni (first, Baryshnikov; second, my boss Choire; third, my own father) likes himself some Ssam Bar as best restaurant of 2007 (though as Eater mentions, it is really a 2006 affair. Allen & Delancey, Soto, Anthos and Insieme made the cut. FR.OG was among the worst. Ditto Wakiya. [NYT]
New York Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni is "a sucker for overpriced candles," is currently obsessed with Travis' second album, The Man Who, and loves the New England Pats. Also! Sometimes he eats baguettes so hard that "I sometimes have to change my shirt afterward because of the jam stains." Mignon! [Refinery 29]
underdiners
Is Sean Wilsey Frank Bruni's Underminer?
For those eight party people who read the Times Book Review this weekend, you might have seen Sean Wilsey, the creator of Oh Glory of It All and less gloriously ofohtheglory.com, wrote a review of Phoebe Damrosch's first book "Service Included. It's a memoir of Phoebe's stint at Per Se, Thomas Keller's triple-starred restaurant in the city. Wilsey quotes Orwell; he rambles on. And then there's a section about Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni that, if it were true, would be seriously underminery. More »
Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni really really really really didn't like Harry Cipriani, the mainstay of the Cipriani restaurant empire. He gave it no stars and used words like "robbery," "generic," and "confused" in his review. He also used phrases like "sexual harrassment" "highway robbery" and "bizarre mix of indulgence and deprivation." We're only disappointed that perverse and often baffling" didn't make the cut. [NYT]
New York Times restaurant critic (and totally self-appointed head language bitch on campus of us all!) Frank Bruni so rightly rails against the "semantic pox" of restaurantspeak today. Examples: The use of the first person singular ("How are we enjoying the quail?"); the overusage of "enjoy" ("How are we enjoying the quail?"); and pleonastic phrases such as "Pardon my reach." [NYT]
Times restaurant boy Frank Bruni has a knack for straddling the line between needlessly erotic and erotically needless turns of phrase. "Anytime Anne Burrell gets near hot oil, I want to be around," he writes of Centro's chef in today's one-star review. The last time Bruni was in the company of potentially oil-slathered women though he couldn't resist quoting Diana Ross and checking his Blackberry. [NYT]
the chick lit wars
Jennifer Weiner Wants To Have Her Cake And Eat It Too
One of the things about being a stay-at-home writer is that you have perhaps a little bit too much time to peruse and write blogs! We were reminded of this by chick lit author Jennifer Weiner's rant in the comments of the Times' 'Paper Cuts' blog, which she continued on over at her own blog 'Snark Spot' (really). She has a bone to pick with an author who'd yearningly mentioned her books' consistent presence on bookstore shelves. "Be careful what you wish for, oh shelfmate o' mine! If you wrote chick lit—provided it was any good—you would indeed find your books on the shelf of most every store. But your books would not be reviewed twice by the Times." More »
Remember when we wondered what sugardaddy was flying Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni to Moscow first-class? Neither do we! But in case you were wondering, Bruni was on his way to write a piece for Men's Vogue about wanting to be an astronaut. [Men's Vogue]
New York Times restaurant critic Francis Bruni one-stars Gemma in the Bowery Hotel today. (We said it was like TGIFridays mixed with the set of "8 1/2" with a nod to the boudoir scene in "When Doves Cry.") Salient Bruni-isms include, "Gemma loves candles the way Liberace did," and that it's "a cheat sheet of a restaurant whose proprietors take fewer risks than a hurricane-insurance agent in Nebraska." Well, according to FEMA—which has declared 35 disasters mostly having to do with severe storms in Nebraska in the past 48 years—Gemma should be pretty dang experimental. But we see his point.
still crazy after all these years
Jeffrey Chodorow To Donate Some Or Zero Dollars To Conservation International
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. More »
success stories
'Restaurant Girl' Claws Her Way From Blogger To Food Critic
Danyelle Freeman, food blogger Restaurant Girl, has been tapped to become the New York Daily News' next food critic. As many an Eater commenter has remarked, the only problem is that Freeman—an alumna of both Harvard and Duke, as she notes on her website—can't write. She cadges free meals from PR people—and she's oft-photographed and therefore never incognito. She also closes her correspondence with, "Until we eat again." She can be thought of as the Julia Allison of the food world: Cheaply attractive, ethically limber and relentlessly successful. More »
eat the rich
Rich, Drunk And Out Of Control Diners
This morning, Times food scribe Frank Bruni took on the troubling yet completely understandable—maybe even great?—sociological phenomenon of rich patrons at nice restaurants getting completely faced on wine that costs as much as your monthly paycheck and then doing stupid-awesome things like screwing in bathrooms and stripping in dining rooms. More »
Yet more analysis of Ratatouille: Frank Bruni examines whether the food critic Anton Ego is an accurate portrayal of his profession. Answer: Sort of! Except Bruni's office isn't coffin-shaped. [Diner's Journal/NYT]
