It’s now been a week since Jeffrey Chodorow decided to take on the world — Frank Bruni and Adam Platt, to be specific — and if it wasn’t evident before, it’s now quite clear that his hubristic quest to correct for the failings of the critics and recover his image has only humiliated him further. He has yet to update the blog that he announced in the Times ad, and the flurry of think pieces that have come down pretty much dismantle the guy piece by piece.
First came Mimi Sheraton’s acute and acerbic take in Slate, which outlined the more or less unassailable view of the critics; then there was a droll overview in The New Yorker, which put the whole business into a historic context stretching back to Zola. And today, the Sun contributes “Food Fight,” which, although it seems sympathetic to Chodorow, also includes the kind of sharp comments one actually remembers after finishing such an article, like this one from Sheraton: “I assure you that if a 3-year-old gave Chodorow three ‘goo goos,’ he’d think that baby had a really discerning palate.” The question now is if the chastened Chodorow will strike again and actually follow through on his promise to rereview the restaurants he thinks Platt and Bruni didn’t fully appreciate. We somehow doubt he’ll want to puff up Robert’s Steakhouse, inside the Penthouse Executive Club, which Bruni today awarded one star — or give any more props to Kefi, which won four stars from the Underground Gourmet this week for excellent, inexpensive food that illustrates everything wrong with Kobe Club.
Earlier: Chodorow Blog Lets Slip the Foodies of War
We Ask Jeffrey Chodorow If He’s Been Feeling Well Lately
The Gobbler Responds to Mr. Chodorow’s Broadside
