Vanity Fair Brandishes (Steak) Knives in Their Scathing Review of Trump’s Restaurant

"A cheap version of rich."

December 15, 2016 9:00 am

It’s been a while since The New York Times‘s infamous takedown of Guy Fieri’s Times Square restaurant, Guy’s American Kitchen & Bar. If you prefer your restaurant criticism with (steak) knives out, we have a new champion: Vanity Fair‘s review of Trump Grill, which they say “could be the worst restaurant in America.” 

Of course, the pleasures are found in the journey, not the destination, and VF critic Tina Nguyen hands down multiple zingers per paragraph. Among the tastiest: 

  • “The bathrooms transport diners to the experience of desperately searching for toilet paper at a Venezuelan grocery store.
  • “The menu itself would like to impress diners with how important it is, randomly capitalizing fancy words like “Prosciutto” and “Julienned” (and, strangely, ”House Salad”).”
  • “Our waiter, coiffed and charming, was determined to gaslight us into thinking we were having a good time.”

And the pièce de résistance: 

  • “Renowned butcher Pat LaFrieda once dared me to eat an eyeball that he himself popped out of the skull of a roasted pig. That eyeball tasted better than the Trump Grill’s (Grille’s) Gold Label Burger.”

It’s a glimpse into how restaurant critics are handling the post-election period, and Trump, predictably, had something to say. 

This, of course, is far from the first time Trump has foretold of the firing of Carter, the magazine’s editor-in-chief since 1992.

In case you’re wondering what proto-scandal these tweets might distract from, we’ll take a stab in the dark and venture it could be that Trump still hasn’t released his tax records, unlike every Republican president since Nixon

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