I have absolutely no business reviewing restaurants. Consider the facts: I like Ramen noodles. I burn my meat. And I'm pretty sure the Klondike Bar is the pinnacle of modern cuisine.

I've also heard good things about Applebee's.

But when it comes to restaurant feedback, someone like me can just go online and write literally anything. And people might actually read it.
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Over the past two days, the now-infamous New York Times review of Guy Fieri's new 500 seat Times Square restaurant Guy’s American Kitchen & Bar caught fire across the Twittersphere, blogs, morning shows and even David Letterman's Top 10, but the boisterous, spike-coiffed chef remained uncharacteristically silent, until now.

Fieri said in a statement released by his PR reps:

“I wholeheartedly disagree with The New York Times’ Review of Guy’s American Kitchen & Bar. My philosophy on life is what drives my attitude towards food. As a kid, I used to make four-course sushi meals for my parents and our family friends. I got hooked on food because I saw the way people reacted; the atmosphere around a family dinner, dining out with friends and family – it was contagious."

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Celebrity chef Guy Fieri is no stranger to jabs at his over-the-top persona. From his first appearances as a contestant on "The Next Food Network Star" to his cross-country speaking tours and swelling empire of restaurants across California and on Carnival Cruise Lines, the spike-haired, flame-shirted, gravel-voiced 44-year-old has been a ubiquitous and polarizing presence on the American culinary (or in Fierian parlance, "kulinary") scene.

Fieri has taken his share of heat from comics, fellow chefs and critics alike for his bombastic delivery and monumentally macho food fixations - but perhaps never so pointedly and deftly as in New York Times restaurant critic Pete Wells' review of Guy’s American Kitchen & Bar in Times Square.
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Today marks the 50th anniversary of the New York Times restaurant review. We're honoring the art of criticism in a series on the subject.

It took Jay Rayner around 700 words to lay waste to a Russian empire. In a blistering review of famed Moscow restaurateur Arkady Novikov's eponymous London outpost this past February, the Observer critic pronounced the establishment so "astoundingly grim you want to congratulate the kitchen on its incompetence" and compared its cuisine to cheap Chinese food. He was just getting warmed up.

“And so my advice to you. Don't go to Novikov. Keep not going. Keep not going a lot," Rayner wrote. "In a city with a talent for opening hateful and tasteless restaurants, Novikov marks a special new low. That's its real achievement.”

Harsh words, but for a professional restaurant critic, this was par for the course. As with any creative medium, the culinary arts are subjected to critical judgments. With the good, comes the bad. Or in the case of Novikov, the “very, very bad.”
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