It’s kind of cool, and kind of funny. Everyone seems to have a blog now. The one thing this blog doesn’t have yet is a way for people reading my blog to respond. I hope to have that someday when the thing really catches on. In last weeks New York Times food section, Jeffrey Chodorow wrote a letter in the form of a full page ad (reports of the cost of that ad varied from $25,000 to $84,000) in which he rebuts the review of his newest restaurant in Manhattan, The Kobe Club. The Times restaurant critic, Frank Bruni, gave the Kobe Club no stars, and a rating of Satisfactory. Chodorow was upset about the review, and the reappearance in it of the ghost of Rocco DiSpirito from which he can’t seem to escape. However it did always seem to me that Chodorow manufactured all the occurrences on the infamous TV show “The Restaurant” to get publicity for himself. And a full page ad in the Times to soothe an ego after a negative review seems like the ultimate publicity hounds trick. Most of us do not have the means to go to such extreme ways of rebuttal. And there is more than one person responding on his blog who says he should have licked his wounds in private and given the money spent on the ad to the poor. I can’t disagree with that. He brings up a good and very debatable point; that Frank Bruni has credentials as a journalist but not as a food writer. The previous Times reviewer also admittedly had no formal culinary training. Debaters say restaurant critics don’t necessarily need a culinary degree to review a restaurant, and in fact the public prefers to read a review written by a real person, with the same expectations as any customer. It’s all good food for thought. I don’t know how you can access the actual ad if you didn’t see it. I am sure someone has reproduced it and a google search would turn it up quickly. But if you want to read J. Chodorow’s blog, which is some very entertaining reading for a foodie, make yourself a nice pot of coffee and go here and enjoy. You will be there for a while, just a warning.