A restaurant review is a pretty standard thing in the the newspaper industry, but the best food critics know how to keep it fresh, even if the restaurant they’re reviewing seems to be stale.
New York Times food critic Pete Wells has published a review of Guy Fieri’s restaurant — Guy’s American Bar and Grill — and it is certainly a fresh take. The review, The Atlantic Wire notes, is composed entirely of questions. Other reviews have not exactly heaped praise on Fieri’s establishment, but Wells takes it up a notch with questions posed directly to the namesake of Guy’s American Bar and Grill, Guy Fieri .
“Did panic grip your soul as you stared into the whirling hypno wheel of the menu, where adjectives and nouns spin in a crazy vortex?” he asks.
Another review, by Gothamist , had referred to Guy’s American Bar and Grill as a “car crash,” suggesting the patrons in the establishment were comparable to those who gawk at accident scenes.
Here’s a selection of great lines from the New York Times review.
“Did you notice that the menu was an unreliable predictor of what actually came to the table?”
“Were you struck by how very far from awesome the Awesome Pretzel Chicken Tenders are?”
“Why is one of the few things on your menu that can be eaten without fear or regret — a lunch-only sandwich of chopped soy-glazed pork with coleslaw and cucumbers — called a Roasted Pork Bahn Mi, when it resembles that item about as much as you resemble Emily Dickinson?”
“Does this make it sound as if everything at Guy’s American Kitchen Bar is inedible? I didn’t say that, did I?”
Fieri owns several other restaurants and is most famous as the host of the Food Network show Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives . He also hosted Guy’s Big Bite and rose to prominence after winning The Next Food Network Star in 2006.
Have you eaten at the new New York restaurant owned by Guy Fieri? Did you like it? Did you like the New York Times review?