Wednesday, May 31, 2006

I hate this woman

No, not Katie Couric (not in love with her either).
I hate so much the way Gael Greene writes, I even hate that little horrid drawing of her with the wide-brimmed hat and the drunkard's nose. What is it about her style that makes me want to scream? I'm hoping she goes the way of that other terrible critic, John Simon: a miserable bastard, but a slightly better writer. Please retire this woman already, NYM, I beg you.

Listen to her current kvelling about Le Cirque:
(The italics are mine, like I have to clarify)

A dozen chefs dance silently on the kitchen stage at Le Cirque, fluffing up frisée on plates that look like bridal bouquets.
Enough with the alliteration and the cute rhyming already. Please leave poetry to the poets.

It’s the night of the very first friends-and-family tasting at the resin-coated ebony chef’s table.
What is this sentence? Editing, anyone?
Just friends and family, huh? Just the chosen few, that happen to include you. If you're so friendly and familiar with Le Cirque, Iteration 568, why should the readers trust you? You're so happy to be invited, you're just kissing ass.


I definitely do not recall starters quite so boldly sprouty and frondful (Just holding on to my gag reflex here) at the old Le Cirque 2000. English peas and wild mushrooms three ways: chilled pea soup with chanterelles, peas in casserole with morels, pea ravioli and porcini. Tomato in a trio of incarnations.
I hate her incomplete sentences.

Tomato sorbet is a surprise in the sprightly gazpacho.

FEH!
Alsatian-born chef Pierre Schaedelin spent his downtime cooking for Martha Stewart when prison probation kept her home after dark, and it shows. “He fell in love with my garden,” (OOOOH)... says Stewart, on my right.
Gag reflex turns to full-fledged vomit at the sight of the usual trying-really- hard-to-be-casual-about-it namedropping, this time of another public harridan.

“Pierre came back a different man,” (What did you do to him, Martha?) Sirio Maccioni says, with a nod to the evening’s leafiness.

Too precious by far.

Le Cirque old-timers will be relieved to find crispy pig’s feet, tête de veau vinaigrette, and unabashedly retro quenelles de brochet as well as the meaty orange-honey-glazed duck breast with sweet-and-sour baby turnips, and the wondrously crusty braised lamb shoulder we’re (the inner circle and don't you forget it) tasting tonight.
Tippling from the new 50-ounce wine goblets is a challenge.
Do they serve you 40 ounces of wine per glass? Is this a criticism?

I tilt my head way back as if for a beauty salon shampoo.
I don't care how you tipple, I hate that present tense thing you do, like you never go away.

(Prediction: The glasses will shrink.) Can’t afford $42-to-$48 entrées?
It's not a matter of affording; it's a matter of self-respect. Why submit voluntarily to highway robbery?

Lunch in the bar: There’s a $39 prix fixe or a three-course box lunch to go.

Cool, for forty bucks you get a dogie bag.

Too stubborn to retire, Sirio is back, eager to seduce toot New York.

TOOT???? TOOT??? Le tout New York, you mean.

I think I'm about to retch.

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