Posted by Lia Bulaong, May 1, 2007 at 8:00 AM
Remember all the drama that ensued from Frank Bruni of the New York Times giving restauranteur Jeffrey Chodorow's steakhouse Kobe Club a zero-star, start-to-finish smackdown back in February?
Well, Chodorow's latest venture is in London—Suka, which serves Malaysian fusion cuisine created by the New York-based Zak Pelaccio of 5 Ninth and Fatty Crab—and this Sunday it received a review from the Observer's Jay Rayner that begins thusly:
"It takes a special kind of incompetence to create a restaurant with dysfunctional tables. At Suka, a new hipper-than-thou joint in London's Sanderson Hotel, which does to the noble culinary traditions of Malaysia what the Romans did to the Sabine women, they have managed it."
Ouch. Still no response on chod-o-blog, but maybe he'll buy a ad in the Observer first, just like last time? [via Gulfstream]
N.B. Suka means "to like" in Malay but, as you'd expect from a disyllabic word, means different things in other languages. In Polish, it means "bitch"; in Tagalog, it means either "vinegar" or "vomit" depending on pronunciation.
Posted by Lia Bulaong, February 21, 2007 at 3:53 PM
We see restaurant reviews in newspapers and on blogs every single day but we rarely ever get to hear the other side of the story, how chefs and restauranteurs feel when they read what critics and customers have to say about their food. Today we've got two totally opposite reactions from people on different ends of the food industry ladder:
Matt Finarelli's is working what's only his second job in a kitchen (at Restaurant Vero in Arlington) and his reaction to a local food blog reviewing the restaurant and giving highest praise to a dish he created is sweet and joyful: "So while my one addition was well-received, and even achieved “gem” status, I give all thanks to my bosses for taking the chance to allow me to be creative, my fellow cooks for letting me - the salad chef - take up space on the stove and in the bain marie for the creation of this dish, and to the servers for getting it to the right people at the right time. The seeming success of one in the kitchen is really the success of all."
Financier Jeffrey Chodorow—perhaps known to most as Rocco diSpirito's partner-turned-nemesis on the reality show The Restaurant—was so upset by Frank Bruni's recent slam of his new steakhouse Kobe Club that he spent at least $30K to buy a full-page ad in the NYT today declaring war on the Times food section: "In the interest of fairness, I am introducing my personal blog, which will be a compilation of my food-related experiences and musings and a special section entitled Following Frank and After Adam, in which I will make a follow-up visit to the restaurants they write about for the purpose of reviewing their reviews. My blog will appear at http://www.chinagrillmgt.com/blog/."
Related: What it's like to wait for a NYT review
