New York feasts on pricey Kobe beef food fight

NEW YORK, Feb 24 (Reuters) A high-priced food fight has erupted in New York, with the owner of a high-end eatery seeking revenge on the city's top food critic, who dished out a brutal review complaining of rubbery pork and limp lettuce.

The spat is playing out in the newspapers, with restaurant titan Jeffrey Chodorow buying a defensive full-page ad in The New York Times after its food critic, Frank Bruni, trashed Chodorow's Kobe Club with a rare rating of ''no stars.'' Two weeks ago, Bruni's review blasted the Kobe Club for its ''insipid or insulting dishes at prices that draw blood.'' Entrees cost as much as 150 dollars.

While allowing that the Kobe beef served in the steakhouse was ''rapturous,'' Bruni added, ''At upwards of 5 dollar a bite, it had better be.'' He labeled other dishes ''disappointing, sometimes even infuriating,'' including the club's rubbery roasted pork chop, limp iceberg lettuce and gluey mashed potatoes.

Bruni also was snarky about the decor, which features 2,000 swords dangling over diners' heads, saying it was ''part torture chamber and packed with chunky guys on expense accounts.'' Chodorow's 1,100-plus word ad, written as a letter to Bruni's boss, editor Pete Wells, ran in the paper's dining section on Wednesday. Chodorow complained, ''The review was as much or more about me than it was the restaurant.'' Bruni told Reuters, ''I understand his disappointment with the review. ... There's no personal agenda and I don't hold any personal grudge.'' Wells said Chodorow ''can have his say, but I don't feel like we should be rebutting.'' The ad cost Chodorow more than 100,000 dollar, a Times spokeswoman said.

Chodorow owns about two dozen eateries from London to Las Vegas. But he is best-known outside New York as the nemesis of chef Rocco DeSpirito. Their ill-fated partnership at Rocco's Italian restaurant was chronicled on the short-lived reality TV show ''The Restaurant.'' In his ad, Chodorow suggested Times critics have had it out for him ever since.

While Chodorow directed his choice words at Bruni, the Times critic was not alone in trashing Kobe Club.

New York magazine critic Adam Platt once named the restaurant among the best new places to eat, but after another visit to the steakhouse he penned a piece titled ''Butchered.'' ''On further inspection, Mr. Chodorow's restaurant seems to me less like a steakhouse than a bizarre agglomeration of restaurant fashions and trends, most of them bad,'' Platt wrote.

''In a town filled with loud, incessant and annoying restaurant soundtracks, this is the loudest, most incessant, and most annoying.'' Hoping to prove Bruni wrong, Chodorow has begun a Web log, or blog, ''in the interest of fairness.'' The site will combine his food musings and experiences with his reviews of Bruni and other critics' reviews, based on his own dining experiences.

The site includes some negative comments, many of which echoed posts on other food blogs that defended Bruni and some that called Chodorow childish and worse.

REUTERS SSC VC0933