THE CATFIGHT
COMBATANTS: Martha Stewart, Domesticity Deity vs. Rachael Ray, Girl-Next-Door Cuisine Queen
LOWDOWN: In an ABC News interview in 2009, post-prison Martha’s younger, newer competition was brought up. Martha—who had just appeared on Rachael Ray’s show—responded by explaining that Ray’s cookbook consisted of her old recipes, simply reworked, noting “that’s not good enough for me.” Also, that Rachael Ray can’t bake, and that she’s “more of an entertainer” than a “teacher like me.”
RETURN FIRE: Rachael Ray kills ’em with kindness: “It’s true. It’s 100 percent true. Why would that make me mad? Her skill set is far beyond mine. It’s simply the reality of it. That doesn’t mean that what I do isn’t important.”
AND THE WINNER IS? Ray. Martha took to her show to downplay any bad blood between the two in light of Ray’s response, noting that she “applaud[s] Rachael’s enthusiastic approach to cooking.” Yeah, right. Martha looked stone-cold delivering the initial sound bite, and Ray volleyed it back with all the charm that’s made her the enormous success she’s become today. How can Martha not hate that?
THE MEGASTAR TITLE BOUT
COMBATANTS: Mario Batali, Celebrity Chef Featured on Television Shows with Celebrity Friends vs. Gordon Ramsay, Celebrity Chef Featured on Television Shows Where He Screams at Lesser Humans
HISTORY OF FEUD: At the height of his Hell’s Kitchen television prominence, Ramsay was dismissed by Batali in Guardian dining critic Jay Rayner’s 2008 book as someone who didn’t “get” New York City’s dining scene, a hard dis considering Ramsay’s numerous Michelin stars. In a 2009 interview with Rayner, Batali admitted the words had sparked a feud, and that he had consequently personally banned Gordon Ramsay from his restaurants.
BEST SHOTS: Ramsay went around calling Batali “Fanta Pants.” For a guy who screams on television for a living, you’d think he could do better. Batali, of Ramsay: “Nothing’s changed with [Ramsay’s] food since his second year at Aubergine [in the mid-90s].” Burn.
AND THE WINNER IS? Batali, who was never refuted when he told Rayner that Ramsay had tried to score reservations at one of his restaurants and was promptly rebuffed. For those who keep score on what the New York critics say, Batali got his first four-star review from The New York Times in 2010 with Del Posto (Batali co-owns the restaurant with Joseph Bastianich and Lidia Bastianich; the chef is Mark Ladner). Ramsay has yet to accomplish that feat; his two New York restaurants have not been massive successes.
THE CRITIC AND THE CITY (RICHMAN VS. NOLA)
COMBATANTS: Alan Richman, GQ Dining Barbarian vs. The City of New Orleans
THE NOT-SO-BIG EASY: Richman’s a notoriously curmudgeonly critic. What do you think happened when he visited New Orleans a little over a year after Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Big Easy? “I’m not saying we shouldn’t rescue the city,” began one paragraph of the November 2006 screed. Yes, folks: Less than a year after Katrina, Alan Richman laid into New Orleans culinary heroes like Susan Spicer and Donald Link, and NoLa standbys such as Galatoire’s, Restaurant August, and Jacques-Imo’s. He also tried to debunk the entire being of a Creole people. Nice timing, no?
A DOWN-HOME CAJUN STOMPIN’: One blogger called Richman’s piece a “cruel, callous, ignorant, poorly researched and factually vacant piece of trash.” The New Orleans Times-Picayune restaurant critic Brett Anderson rallied: “He mucks around in exhausted clichés with the pride of someone who has uncovered hidden truths.” Needless to say, New Orleans was not about to welcome Richman back any time soon. The national food press was about as kind. The New York Times noted: “The man essentially called New Orleanians fat, lazy and too hung over to recognize good food.”
AND THE WINNER IS? New Orleans, of course. In the wake of Katrina, the city’s dining scene has evolved tenfold almost in spite of the setbacks, Richman’s criticism, or otherwise. It’s now one of the most nationally powerful draws for not just tourism but culinary talent as well. (Donald Link currently owns a small mafia of critically acclaimed restaurants down there, for example, and Anderson won a James Beard Award for his reporting on the aftermath of Katrina.) And of course, there’s the now-famous episode of Treme (see “The Punk Celebrity and the Critic”).
THE PUNK CELEBRITY AND THE CRITIC
COMBATANTS: Anthony Bourdain, Celebrated Author and No Reservations Host vs. Alan Richman, GQ Restaurant Critic
DOSSIER: Bourdain has made a career out of being the most outspoken critic of everything in the food industry, first in his memoir Kitchen Confidential and continuing in various writings and television shows. Richman made a career out of savaging anything that crossed his path that didn’t tickle his palate.
BIG HITS: These two have long had a pleasant back-and-forth. Richman called Bourdain “a living, breathing low blow.” Bourdain named a chapter in his 2010 book Medium Raw “Alan Richman Is a Douchebag,” in which he noted the critic as “uniquely gas-engorged.” In a March 2008 GQ review of Bourdain’s restaurant Les Halles, Richman noted the celebrity’s role with the restaurant has diminished, followed by a slam: “It’s hard to know what a place that specializes in the hoariest of French dishes would need from an American who wasn’t much of a chef back in the days when he worked at being one.” Bourdain replied in kind: “It was like being mauled by Gumby. Afterwards, you’re not sure it even happened.”
AND THE WINNER IS? Bourdain ended up scripting Richman into an episode of Treme playing himself. In the episode, Richman gets a drink thrown in his face. To be fair, Bourdain has also called Richman’s palate “discerning.” It’s a close one, but considering that Richman has a fraction of Bourdain’s following, Tony squeaks this one out.
THE SEWING CIRCLE VS. THE APOSTATE
COMBATANTS: Anthony Bourdain, Known Firestarter vs. Alice Waters, American Chef, Author, and Food Activist; Sandra Lee, American Home Cooking Icon; and Paula Deen, Comfort Food Queen
THE LADIES: Alice Waters has been regarded as the “Mother of American Food” and advocates for cleaner, healthier meals; she’s one of the foremost activists for organic ingredients in cooking. Paula Deen is the Georgia-based populist television host, best-selling cookbook author, and restaurant owner (she also has a grocery-store line of products). Sandra Lee is the host of Semi-Homemade Cooking and breeds mutant iterations of preprepared foods by smashing their atoms together.
A GENTLEMAN AND A SCHOLAR: Did you really think Bourdain would only show up once on this list? Bourdain and Waters once sparred at a panel discussion—about hot dogs. Waters was philosophizing about wanting to know where a hot dog came from, meat, bun, and all. Bourdain: “As a chef, I’m not your dietitian or your ethicist. I’m in the pleasure business.… My responsibility is to give you the most delicious tomato that I can afford, given the circumstances, and maybe increase the likelihood that you get laid after dinner.” Also, regarding that culinary punching bag San Francisco, Bourdain has said, it “may be the town of Alice Waters, but it’s also home to Dirty Harry.” He also called her “very Khmer Rouge.” A meeting with Sandra Lee? “I’m pretty sure, judging by the vestigial ectoplasm on my jacket that I was sideswiped by pure evil.” Her television show was a “war crime” and he once said that watching Lee make her infamous Kwanzaa Cake was “the most terrifying thing I’ve seen,” wondering how one’s eyeballs couldn’t “burst into flames” upon viewing it. As for sweet-as-pie Paula Deen? “The worst, most dangerous person to America” whose food “sucks.” Also: “She revels in unholy connections with evil corporations, and she’s proud of the fact that her food is f--king bad for you.” Don’t hold back, Tony!
AND THE WINNER IS? Bourdain drops points on Waters and Deen, picking up a victory only with Lee, who’s seemingly indefensible. Gael Greene called critics of Waters—a thinly veiled reference to Bourdain—“toxic misogynists.” He eventually relented, and, on his blog, imagined running into her and issuing a mumbled apology. Lee’s Kwanzaa Cake video became even more of a viral YouTube sensation after Bourdain’s musings. Deen responded that Bourdain needed to “get a life” and noted her charitable contributions, while critics pointed out the hypocrisy of praising haute chefs’ fried chicken while slamming Paula Deen’s.
THE ENFANT TERRIBLE VS. GOLDEN STATE STYLE
COMBATANTS: David Chang, Momofuku Chef/Owner Extraordinaire vs. The City of San Francisco (Like, All of It)
THE CHANG PRIMER: David Chang made a fast name for himself with his tiny, East Village noodle bar that’s expanded into the four-time James Beard Award–winning mini-empire it is today; early on, he also made himself quickly synonymous with being as punk rock as a wildly successful chef/owner could be while still maintaining an air of likability. No reservations at his restaurants, for anybody. Rock music, on blast, all the time. Putting foie gras on the menu every night at every restaurant he owned when vegan activists protested outside one of them and then donating proceeds from the dishes’ sales to hunger charities City Harvest and the Food Bank for New York City.
THE WORDS: At the 2009 New York Food & Wine Festival, in a panel discussion entitled “I Call Bullshit!” Chang noted: “F--kin’ every restaurant in San Francisco is just serving figs on a plate. Do something with your food.”
FALLOUT: Needless to say, the words gained decent traction in food circles: Chefs responded on blogs and The New York Times filed an entire report of San Francisco chefs’ responses to Chang’s slight. A little over a week later, the Asia Society in San Francisco canceled a book signing of Chang’s then unreleased Momofuku cookbook.
AND THE WINNER IS? David Chang. His final words on the matter? “I would never open a place in San Francisco,” according to an interview in SF Weekly’s blog. Reminder: This is a man who has a picture of the racket-smashing ’80s tennis star John McEnroe above one of his bars. His cookbook was a best seller. He’s since opened more restaurants. And who doesn’t want what they can’t have? Also, nobody from San Francisco cooked up anything even remotely funny in response, at least in comparison to Chang’s dis.
THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR
COMBATANTS: Award-Winning Chef Santi Santamaría vs. Molecular Gastronomy God Ferran Adrià
THE TITANS: Santamaría, who unexpectedly passed away in February, held a total of seven Michelin stars for his world-renowned Mediterranean cooking at four restaurants, and was the first Catalan chef to receive three stars (in 1994 for El Racó de Can Fabes in Sant Celoni, Spain). Ferran Adrià’s El Bulli was widely understood to be the best restaurant in the world until he shut it down earlier this year to work on other projects.
THE SKIRMISH: In 2007 Santamaría told a convention of chefs in Madrid that there’s little pride to be had in his once-friend Adrià’s smoke-and-mirrors cooking, noting that “cooks should not be preoccupied with creating sculptures,” labeling Adrià’s acolytes a “gang of imposters” who cooked for “snobs” and rallying against Adrià use of chemicals as a “public health risk.” Adrià fired back, calling Santamaría’s claim “ridiculous” and bemoaning the reputational harm Santamaría may have caused Spanish chefs, but mostly let others do much of the talking for him: A European chefs’ association issued a statement condemning Santamaría’s vitriol; another chef accused Santamaría of jealousy.
AND THE WINNER IS? Adrià. For one thing, when El Bulli closed, every food writer in the world wanted a ticket, and every single one of them who went to one of the restaurant’s final meals regarded it with some degree of otherworldliness. For another, when Santamaría died, Adrià took the high road, noting: “Everyone knows of our differences and many know of our prior friendship… His death has come as a very great shock. It’s a sad day for me personally and for Spanish cuisine.”
THE MANAGEMENT PROBLEM CHILD VS. THE MANAGEMENT
COMBATANTS: Chef Ryan Skeen vs. Owners and Managers of Various Restaurants
LOWDOWN: Ryan Skeen is an extraordinarily talented chef. Ryan Skeen is also an extraordinarily volatile personality, as evidenced by the sheer number of restaurants he’s worked at and the various ways those stints have ended.
BEST SHOTS: Three months into his tenure at New York City’s Allen & Delancey and even after a five-star review from Time Out New York, Skeen tweeted, “[G]et me the f--k out of NYC I can’t do it anymore,” among other complaints (he later called the owners “liars” and “shady,” according to Eater). A few months later, Skeen was punched in the face by the general manager at the Harlem restaurant whose kitchen Skeen was running, 5 & Diamond.
AND THE WINNER IS? Nobody, really. Skeen was fired from Allen & Delancey, but the restaurant closed just a little over four months later. The GM who punched Skeen left, but landed a plum job afterward (draw). Skeen was eventually dismissed from 5 & Diamond, and has worked various gigs throughout New York, all of which remain as high-profile as the length of time he can hold onto them. (He’s currently consulting on troubled restaurants’ menus and most recently planned on a pop-up restaurant that was canceled before it could come to fruition.)
THE SCORCHED-EARTH APPROACH TO CRITICISM
COMBATANTS: Famed New York City Restaurateur Keith McNally vs. Every Single Food Critic, Ever
THE OWNER: McNally is the man behind such epic New York City dining destinations as Balthazar, Pastis, Schiller’s, Morandi, Pulino’s, and Minetta Tavern. His restaurants commonly attract as much buzz as they do celebrity clientele, and can be anywhere from moderately penetrable to nearly impossible to get into.
THE RAW SAMPLER: On New York Post critic Steve Cuozzo: “an illiterate, low-life hack” and “a paid lackey.” Reading Cuozzo “is like receiving a lecture on ethics from Richard Nixon.” On New York magazine critic Adam Platt: “Out of touch” and a “bald, overweight” critic “incapable of reviewing lively downtown restaurants impartially.” On former New York Times critic Frank Bruni: “Desperate for attention” and “a man of limited, but undeniable intelligence.” Also: “I’m not sure whether being called ’a horrible man’ by the person who wrote an entire book in praise of George W. Bush (Ambling Into History) is necessarily a bad thing.” When he accused Bruni of a bias against female chefs: “One can only wonder whether Bruni would still have his job at the Times if he himself was a woman. Based on the unremittingly sexist slant of his reviews one has to say no.”
AND THE WINNER IS? Unbelievably, McNally, who Frank Bruni begrudgingly awarded three out of four stars for his smash-hit revivalist steak house Minetta Tavern. Cuozzo and Platt will never be able to review a McNally restaurant without the bad, objectivity-tainting juju of being sliced with an ad hominem attack by the restaurateur in question hanging over said reviews. Of course, McNally restaurants are still packed to the gills nightly, and given his celebrity draw, remain about as critic-proof as a Michael Bay movie.
THE CRITICAL MELTDOWN
COMBATANTS: Frank Bruni, Former New York Times Dining Critic vs. Jeffrey Chodorow, Restaurateur
HISTORY OF FEUD: To call Frank Bruni’s tenure as the Times dining critic “memorable” would be a vast understatement. His reviews didn’t elicit reactions so much as they did fervor. The most widely remembered instance, however, followed his February 2007 review of China Grill restaurateur Jeffrey Chodorow’s Kobe Club—a flashy, big-box dining destination serving up the trend-of-that-moment, Kobe beef, in every possible iteration. Now, Chodorow makes restaurants for critics like Disney makes Broadway shows for theater scholars, which is to say, he doesn’t. That doesn’t mean they won’t review them, though.
ROUND 1: Bruni’s Kobe Club review was one of the most scathing slams the Times’ dining section has run over the last decade. Fearing the samurai swords dangling above his head (literally), he noted the design as a “gloomy rec room” the atmosphere of which was “part torture chamber and packed with chunky guys on expense accounts.” The food? “Disappointing,” “infuriating,” and “alarming.” Chodorow responded by taking out a full-page advertisement in The New York Times in the form of a letter to dining editor Pete Wells, whose integrity he attacked while questioning Bruni’s qualifications to be a reviewer. Eater.com called it, at the time, “100% pure, uncut insanity.”
ROUND 2: Chodorow opens Wild Salmon, another flashy big-box serving—you guessed it—salmon, mostly. Despite Bruni being “banned” from all 27 of Chodorow’s restaurants—something eventually “repealed” a week after Chodorow announced it—he still found time to review Wild Salmon (he later revealed in his memoir, Born Round, that he had to visit in a wig to avoid risk of being booted or confronted during his meal). Bruni’s August 2007 review was tepid at best, and still brutal at worst (“If a posse of tough shellfish were mugged by an unruly fruit salad, the crime might look something like this”). Chodorow took out yet another advertisement in the Times, hitting Bruni and referencing his review by beginning with the line “The penguin has returned to the South Pole where it belongs.” With the context of the review, it makes (some) sense. Without the context of the review—which it didn’t have anywhere near it—it could appear totally insane and unhinged. Which it did.
AND THE WINNER IS? Bruni. Sure, Chodorow’s dining empire still spans the globe, but Kobe Club and Wild Salmon both shuttered within two years of the reviews. Bruni’s memoir was a best seller, and he got the last word in during a Q&A with Times readers a few months before his departure from the post: “I stand by that review, but I also respect his right to let the public know how strongly he disagreed with it. My position at the Times gives me a big, loud megaphone. I can’t and don’t take offense when someone affected by a review wants to fashion and use a big, loud megaphone of his or her own.”
CRITIC-ON-CRITIC VIOLENCE
COMBATANTS: Former Grub Street and the Feedbag blogger/Time magazine food critic Josh Ozersky vs. Robert Sietsema of The Village Voice
THE CRITIC: Ozersky once regularly tortured the service industry’s biggest names as the original blogger for New York magazine’s infamous Grub Street blog before branching out on his own with another blog, an online television show, and then a gig as the dining critic for Time. In other words, the inmate got to the top of the asylum.
THE BLOWOUT: Ozersky’s come under fire for the typical offenses food bloggers come under fire for: favoritism, hackiness, certainly nothing anyone who’s ever written about food has never heard before. It wasn’t even his wedding—which was catered by a team of boldface-name chefs including Michael White and Michael Psilakis—that set the hounds of critical hell upon him. It was when he wrote about it in Time, and failed to disclose that he got those services for free, that Voice critic Sietsema let loose on Ozersky, bemoaning the lack of disclosure in Ozersky’s piece and furthermore panning the culture of food writers being corrupted by free meals on the whole.
AND THE WINNER IS? Sietsema. While he did get to keep his job, Ozersky had to issue a public apology for the lack of disclosure (however lacking contrition: “It was a mistake, but I was hardly trying to trade column space for goods, as Sietsema is pretending to suppose”). Furthermore, the debate about pay-for-play writing flared up again. If you’re going to vouch for an ethical cause, provoking conversation is always a victory.
Foster Kamer is a senior editor at The New York Observer. His work has also appeared in Esquire and The Village Voice and on Gawker.com, BlackBook, The Awl, RollingStone.com, and BBC Two’s The Culture Show. He’s currently down to five a day. His last feature for Gourmet Live was “The Postmeal Smoke.”