NWR: And when we hear the words Donkey Sauce, which part of the donkey are we supposed to think about?

You know, I realize that 97% of my friends have linked this piece on Facebook, but it doesn't strike me as the triumph of the negative reviewer's art that everybody's making it out to be. It certainly wouldn't buy the writer a seat at the Algonquin Round Table - there's no wit to it. The whole rhetorical question shtick just makes it look like an article in a high school newspaper.

Although I did like the "long refrigerated tunnel" line.
 
I was also surprised about all the supersized praise being heaped on this piece. I enjoyed it, but the target was a bit too easy to feel that impressed.
 
I don't know: I really didn't hear much praise being heaped upon the writing. It seemed more to me to be a hefty dose of Schadenfreude.

Mark Lipton
 
originally posted by georg lauer:
I was also surprised about all the supersized praise being heaped on this piece. I enjoyed it, but the target was a bit too easy to feel that impressed.
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Agreed. My brother-in-law showed me a restaurant review some months ago in providence and the writer described one of the dishes as running through you with the fury of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. Now that's funny.
 
Frustratingly, the Times is now behind a pay wall, but I swapped a few favorites with an Irish friend who lives in Paris.

"Next to us, right next to us, was a table of four men who all appeared to know each other in some professional capacity, but hadn’t grown to like each other. They sat surrounded by glasses, and swilled and snorted and squelched and gargled and perused as the sommelier passed among them like Mr Bean doing Uriah Heep. The plates came and went without notice. They must have consumed a bottle and a half each. And as they settled into their brandies, I noticed their slack faces and squinty, dull eyes regarding each other with a collective, bibulous, self-pitying gloom. Each was thinking: 'This is what I’ve come to. I’m balding, I’m paunchy, I’ve got a pathetic sports car, it’s 11.30pm and I’m on the outside of a couple of grands’ worth of posh plonk. And I’m seeing two of Kevin from conveyancing.' This table was the utter antithesis of everything gay Bacchus intended for the magic joy of the nobly fermented vine. They’d all have been better off, and far happier, with a £7 bottle of Asda vodka and a really expensive Ukrainian hooker."
 
originally posted by Sharon Bowman:
"Next to us, right next to us, was a table of four men who all appeared to know each other in some professional capacity, but hadn’t grown to like each other...."
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I've seen that table, too. Great description of the dinner.
 
originally posted by Sharon Bowman:
I think the crown for best negative restaurant reviewing will never be knocked from the head of AA Gill. The dude is legendary.
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All I could think about when reading the piece was how much better it would have been had it been done by AA (roast chicken like Bridget Bardot’s tits) Gill...
 
"I have decided not to go for the famous roast chicken, mainly because I’ve suffered it before and I’d just been watching a Japanese couple wrestle with one like a manga poltergeist from some Tokyo horror movie, its scaly blue legs stabbing the air. So on to the broiled kidneys. Nothing I have eaten or heard of being eaten here prepared me for the arrival of the veal kidneys en brochette. Somehow the heat had welded them together into a gray, suppurating renal brick. It could be the result of an accident involving rat babies in a nuclear reactor. They don’t taste as nice as they sound."
 
"Food writing is already the recidivist culprit of multiple sins against both language and digestion, but the little encomiums of the Michelin guide effortlessly lick the bottom of the descriptive swill bucket. Take this, for instance, but only if you have a paper bag close at hand: “Can something be too perfect? Can its focus be so singular, pleasure so complete, and technique so flawless that creativity suffers? Per Se proves that this fear is unfounded.” That was written in chocolate saliva. Or this: “Devout foodies are quieting their delirium of joy at having scored a reservation—everyone and everything here is living up to the honor of adoring this extraordinary restaurant Uni with truffle-oil gelée and brioche expresses the regret that we have but three stars to give.” That’s not a review of Chef’s Table at Brooklyn Fare—it’s a handjob."
 
Jay once wrote about a restaurant and noted "a bunch of chaps swirling Bordeaux". I later found out that it was an off-line with some fellows from the UK wine forum!!
 
originally posted by Sharon Bowman:
Frustratingly, the Times is now behind a pay wall, but I swapped a few favorites with an Irish friend who lives in Paris.

"Next to us, right next to us, was a table of four men who all appeared to know each other in some professional capacity, but hadn’t grown to like each other. They sat surrounded by glasses, and swilled and snorted and squelched and gargled and perused as the sommelier passed among them like Mr Bean doing Uriah Heep. The plates came and went without notice. They must have consumed a bottle and a half each. And as they settled into their brandies, I noticed their slack faces and squinty, dull eyes regarding each other with a collective, bibulous, self-pitying gloom. Each was thinking: 'This is what I’ve come to. I’m balding, I’m paunchy, I’ve got a pathetic sports car, it’s 11.30pm and I’m on the outside of a couple of grands’ worth of posh plonk. And I’m seeing two of Kevin from conveyancing.' This table was the utter antithesis of everything gay Bacchus intended for the magic joy of the nobly fermented vine. They’d all have been better off, and far happier, with a £7 bottle of Asda vodka and a really expensive Ukrainian hooker."
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What's the going tab these days for an evening with an Ukrainian hooker/
 
originally posted by Lou Kessler:

What's the going tab these days for an evening with an Ukrainian hooker/
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You'll have to ask Steve Verlin... with the help of a ouija board.

Mark Lipton
 
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