There were very negative Yelp reviews written by self declared fans of Guy Fiery before the NYT review came out.
People who like to eat good food, those self proclaimed "foodies" (oh god how much I hate that word) watch this show and then wander along Times Square and are like "hey, I know this guy from television, he genuinely cares about good, classic American food, let's go in there instead of any of the tourist traps around here".
Mind you the NYT review isn't about a TGIF or some other franchise, it 's about a singular restaurant owned by a celebrity chef. The author probably did his research and found out that even fans of the guy and his show had bad experiences at the restaurant. So what's illegitimate about going there to find out what's really going on?
All his observations to me speak of a carelessly run business.
He starts off by quoting the menu and unless he's flat out lying, it says shit like ???Guy???s Pat LaFrieda custom blend, all-natural Creekstone Farm Black Angus beef patty, LTOP (lettuce, tomato, onion + pickle), SMC (super-melty-cheese) and a slathering of Donkey Sauce on garlic-buttered brioche,??? Come on... how would you expect this to go down with any food critic or with any halfway sane person? What follows are all observations about how neglectfula nd uninspired the service was and how atrocious the food. Sure, generous sides of vitriol but hey, the author went there repeatedly (I heard 4 times?), probably because he first thought he caught them on an off night and then probably just because he couldn't couldn't believe how bad the place really was. You don't become a food writer for the NYT without knowing a whole lot more about food than most of us will ever know. So don't shoot the messenger. I'm personally convinced that this place is every bit as bad as he makes it sound. Maybe even worse.
I personally had fun reading the review. Not only because I hate this guy. I think he's an obnoxious know-nothing who shouldn't be let near food and instead maybe do a wrestling show. But hey, I probably couldn't stand a whole ton of chefs whose food I ate. Everybody who ever worked in a restaurant kitchen knows that a fairly high percentage of chefs are just disgusting people, some of them might even qualify as sociopaths. Outside of the artificial world of food tv and celebrity chefs, working in a restaurant kitchen is amongst the hardest ways to earn a living. You don't succeed by being a sweet person and just having a whole lot of love for good food. You succeed when you can handle an unimaginable amount of pressure and hard work under some of the most demanding and challenging conditions any really hard job could ever throw at you. Food critics know that. They don't care much about the personality or character of the chef or restaurant owner. They know how hard it is to open and to sustain a restaurant. They know how high the stakes are. Food is a fickle thing. You usually can't repair anything. The numbers in terms of cost productivity are very, very hard. You mess up one main for a table of 4, the restaurant will not make a dime on the entire table. Unless they order two $200 bottles of wine. If you're a millionaire tv celebrity you don't have to care much about these things. Especially with $30 for a main course consisting of generic and cheap ingredients. It makes my blood boil when some yahoo who can't cook shit and who has no respect for good food makes a ton of money with some idiotic tv show and then, like pestilence crawls across the country opening up one shit restaurant after the other just because he can and because he's a fat, greedy fuck-face with a two-tone chin-muff who can't rake in enough dough, fully knowing that the only reason any idiot would ever set foot in one of his useless "restaurants" is because they've seen his mug on tv.
"Eat shit suckers, millions of flies can't be wrong. Here, have some donkey sauce with that!"
