In 1993, New York Times restaurant critic Ruth Reichl savaged the snobby Manhattan celeb haven, Le Cirque, describing her meal as a “parade of brown food,” adding that she wished she'd just said no when the maître d’ asked if she had a reservation. It took nearly 20 years for the Times to exceed that level of vitriol against a restaurant. In November, 2012, the broadsheet’s critic, Pete Wells, began his column by asking celebrity pseudo chef Guy Fieri if he'd ever dined at his Times Square restaurant, Guy’s American Kitchen & Bar, which greeted its customers with a sign reading "WELCOME TO FLAVOR TOWN!”
It went like this: “When you saw the burger described as ‘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,’ did your mind touch the void for a minute? Did panic grip your soul as you stared into the whirling hypno wheel of the menu, where adjectives and nouns spin in a crazy vortex?”
Restaurant criticism is a field nearly devoid of humor, so Wells, who’s stepping away from the week-to-week reviewing job at the Times he's held for 12 years, will be missed, but for more than just his droll wit. By his own account, stuffing his face—and drinking too—night after night, all over town in some of the country's best dining rooms (Fieri’s tourist trap was an exception) has rendered him obese and suffering from everything from gout to hypertension.
Wells worked at what people commonly called the best job in the world. Free food and drink with your pals (and wife) most nights of the week sounds great on paper, but Anthony Bourdain often heard that he also had the world's greatest job, and look how that worked out for him. Wells, at this point, is like the football player who hung around the gridiron a little too long for love of the game.
Wells made his national reputation with his brutal dismissal of a hustler chef from Vegas who claims to love honest food prepared with passion—”Diners, Drive-Ins & Dives”—but isn’t so interested in doing it himself because that's not where the big bucks are. But the critic's body of work encompasses much more than a talent for snide dismissals of phonies. Wells went after industry heavyweights as well. American culinary icon Thomas Keller felt the sting of Wells’ pen with the review of his Manhattan showcase, Per Se, which resulted in the restaurant losing two of its four stars. Keller, bowing to the power of Wells’ make-or-break power, knew he had no choice but to make a public apology, promising to tighten up his ship. Rarely are chefs of Keller’s repute forced into such contrition.
Keller's a chef at the highest level, while Fieri, who fatuously refers to himself as “the mayor of Flavortown (and once served barbequed pork in a sushi roll at his now defunct Santa Rosa restaurant, Tex Wasabi's) is a hype machine, but they had something in common that caught Wells’ attention. They were powerful in the restaurant world, which made them fair game for a critic concerned with fairness; as in delivering in proportion to both reputation and hype, and to prices charged. As for prices charged, Wells' predecessor at the Times, Sam Sifton, once wrote that Per Se was “not for those who do not understand that such pleasure comes at a cost.” There's a haughtiness there, as if to say cab drivers don't regularly enjoy $300 dinners there due to simply a lack of “understanding.” Wells steered clear of such high-horse pronouncements.
Wells disliked pomposity at the dinner table, of which there's no shortage in NYC, and had a pithy way of taking it down a few notches. Writing in 2012 about Romera, in Chelsea, he said: “A restaurant willing to send out a garnish meant to be interpreted rather than eaten is a restaurant that wants to be admired, not enjoyed.” Romera would soon close.
In his Per Se review, Wells wrote, “It’s a bit of a mystery what pickled carrots, peanuts and a date wrapped in a soft crepe were supposed to do for a slab of Dorset cheese from Consider Bardwell Farm, but a good first step would have been allowing the washed-rind cow’s milk cheese to warm up to a buttery softness; served cold, it was rubbery and flavorless.”
Le Cirque, which probably attracted Wells’ ire with its status-based double standard towards guests, got this jab: “Beef carpaccio, the chilly maroon flesh stretched out below a scattershot application of radish and celery slices that had started to curl, tasted of refrigeration and surrender.” No decent restaurant would slice beef for carpaccio, which I've ordered probably 50 times, in advance and refrigerate it. The slicing takes approximately 10 seconds.
But Wells wasn't just doom and gloom. Reviewing a sushi place he wrote, “Yuzukosho, a paste of bright yuzu peel and burning chiles, bites playfully into the cool sweetness of a sea scallop lopped from its shell just a minute before it’s served, its edges still fluttering.” “Playfully” aside, it's vivid praise.
For a diner comfortable in high-end places, Wells never got on the tasting menu bandwagon. A tasting menu involves course after course, selected by the chef, sent out to the table. It can take up to four hours to complete the meal. Servers have to describe each course, which Wells felt put a damper on conversation. Referring to Eleven Madison Park, a place aspiring to be the top restaurant in the world, Wells wrote. “By the end of the four hours, I felt as if I’d gone to a Seder hosted by Presbyterians.” My personal experience aligns with this opinion. The last tasting menu I had was years ago at Wolfgang Puck’s Spago. By the time desserts came out, I was in such agony from overeating that I had to summon the will to finish them.
Wells said the impetus for his resignation came when he had a two-week break from the job while recovering from a hernia. During that time, he ate simply—soups and salads—and reached an epiphany. He'd had too much for too long. It was time to make the shift from the Dionysian to the Apollonian mode. Eric Ripert, chef/owner of Manhattan’s Le Bernardin, once said he'd go out of business if he lost one of his four Times stars. That's a lot of power to put in one man's hands, but Pete Wells always strived to wield his power gracefully. He was especially harsh on corporate restaurants with numerous outposts, and more forgiving and generous with his praise for the standalone places run by the passionate few with a single-minded desire to achieve excellence in the kitchen.
I visited few of the restaurants Wells reviewed, but always read his columns when I came across them. Some of it was vicarious pleasure—and they were well-written. I can't get any of that from a TikTok “influencer” using their 300,000 followers to get free meals, but that's where the trend’s heading now.