The year 2018 gave us all plenty to complain about, and it was no different for restaurant criticism. Of course, there were those restaurants that were predictably baffling to critics (see Salt Bae’s NYC branch of Nusr-Et, Drake’s Pick 6ix in Toronto, or the reincarnation of the Playboy Club in New York City), but some of the most scathing restaurant reviews were inspired not by easy targets, but in reaction to restaurants that promised to deliver something good — they had potential!
This year, Major Food Group opened a dud, David Chang disappointed LA’s most legendary critic, and more than one international import fell far short of critics’ expectations. Per annual Eater tradition, here’s a look at the best of what restaurant critics had to say about the worst dining experiences. Read on for harsh words from an extremely displeased bunch, among other takedowns. (Although it seems highly unlikely that snarky London critic Jay Rayner was ever going to be into a health-focused Australian cafe.)
Pete Wells on Dadong, New York
New York Times restaurant critic Pete Wells dropped a goose egg on highly anticipated Beijing import Dadong in March. The main issue: the Peking duck at this Peking duck restaurant was lackluster. The meat, Wells writes, “made very little impression at all, apart from my strong sense that there ought to have been more of it.” A Peking duck restaurant without good Peking duck is certainly an issue, but Dadong’s problems don’t end there — the truncated New York menu is “rife with dishes that are dead on arrival,” including too-sweet Champagne-glazed tomatoes stuffed with crispy mushroom salad that “wasn’t crisp and didn’t particularly taste like mushrooms.”
For the kill: “Slowly, gradually, with great mental resistance but still inexorably, it dawned on me that I had paid $98 for a duck with almost no flavor. It was dry, too.”
Jonathan Gold on Majordomo, Los Angeles
The late Jonathan Gold’s LA Times review of Majordomo was all the more biting given its context. David Chang’s first restaurant in Los Angeles was one of the biggest openings of the year. Critics hailed it as one of the best new restaurants in the country — but not Gold. In an April review that veered into personal territory (Chang appeared in the 2015 documentary about Gold, City of Gold, and Gold was in an episode of Chang’s Netflix series Ugly Delicious), Gold takes issue with Chang’s style (“Cracked Perfection… with flaws so evident that they announce themselves more as features than as bugs”) as well as the fact that Chang put an end to beloved food magazine Lucky Peach. Gold ultimately concludes, “It’s complicated — I’m not sure whether I’m here to praise Caesar or to bury him.”
For the kill: “When executed poorly (a gummy mass of vermicelli and shellfish that is presumably a riff on the Korean noodle dish japchae), his dishes just sing out of key.”
Tom Sietsema on La Vie in Rare, Washington, D.C.
It’s rare that Washington Post critic Tom Sietsema writes a zero-star review, but, La Vie compelled him to warn readers against ever paying the restaurant a visit. He lists the restaurant’s problems in eight points, including “lack of common sense” and “ceviche in name only.” He laments that La Vie can’t even get basic dishes like Caesar salad or broiled oysters right. The restaurant, located in waterfront development the Wharf, may have a view to recommend it, but inside it’s not at all serene: “Combine Las Vegas with a Carnival cruise, and you have an idea of what to expect,” Sietsema writes.
For the kill: “You’d better have something in the fridge at home, because the likelihood of your joining the Clean Plate Club here is as good as Omarosa Manigault Newman getting invited to a Christmas party at the White House.”
Ryan Sutton on Bluebird London, New York
In his final restaurant review of 2018, Eater NY critic Ryan Sutton declares a worst new restaurant of the year: British import Bluebird London. The restaurant, located in New York’s Time Warner Center, is soulless and overpriced, but more significantly, the food is “manifestly dreadful.” The fish and chips are “soggy,” the duck is “blubbery,” and worst of all, the steak tartare “so abominable” Sutton spit it out into a napkin. Despite this, the restaurant is reliably packed, a fact that baffles Sutton, especially given that the J.Crew next door offers “a more reliable view of Central Park in an equally basic setting.” Unsurprisingly, the critic gives Bluebird no stars.
For the kill: On the steak tartare: “The initial flavor was bland, quickly followed by a fetid, ammonia-like tang. It was an aroma that recalled room-temperature hamburger meat from a grocer that lost power. I felt my eyes water up as I chewed. I tried to swallow. I felt my entire GI tract prepare to purge.”
Jason Sheehan on Louie Louie, Philadelphia
Philadelphia Magazine critic Jason Sheehan didn’t have a kind word for Louie Louie. He calls it “bad in every way a restaurant can possibly be bad,” but the food is worse even than the poor service from staff who “all seem annoyed at having to be there.” There isn’t a winner on the muddled menu, but perhaps most unappetizing among the mix of Italian mains and Spanish apps is the “quote/unquote ‘duck burger’...a patty of dry, dank duck confit, rewarmed on the flat grill under a half-melted slab of brie and lubricated by a ‘cherry-onion marmalade’ that tastes like a handful of old onions sweated in a Jolly Rancher demi-glace.” Sheehan gives Louie Louie no stars.
For the kill: “While there are many words I could use to describe Louie Louie, I’m going to say only this: Louie Louie is a bad restaurant.”
Jeff Ruby on Radio Anago, Chicago
It was a bad year for sushi restaurants from established restaurateurs. Chicago Magazine critic Jeff Ruby thought Radio Anago, a sushi restaurant from the restaurateur behind Au Cheval, was worse than a bad restaurant — “it’s a too-clever, glossy pretender from people capable of more,” he writes. He finds the atmosphere unsettling, like a “Heineken ad set in a Japanese-themed nightclub.” And while the sushi was passable, the restaurant’s signature Houji fried chicken was “disturbing.” Ruby dedicates an entire paragraph to this chicken dish, eventually naming it the “worst dish of the year. Maybe the decade.” Despite good cocktails, he gives it no stars.
For the kill: “The sprinkling of gold flakes lent a top note of bullshit. And that was the good part. The skin had an off-putting tang and a rancid flavor, which seeped into the dried-out meat and left a greasy feeling on the roof of my mouth that, like the demonic clown from It, could not be destroyed.”
Hannah Goldfield on Zauo, New York
Zauo, a Japanese restaurant that asks diners to literally fish for their dinner, is a “disaster,” according to New Yorker critic Hannah Goldfield. At the New York branch of the Japanese chain, staff cheer, chant, and beat a drum each time a guest catches a fish, a ritual that Goldfield calls “an endless dystopian cacophony.” But the food is the restaurant’s biggest issue, and Goldfield says the overpriced fish are the “restaurant’s greatest offense, to both predator and prey.” She notes that the bathrooms, with their Toto toilets, offer the only bright spot.
For the kill: “Did it have ‘a simple flavor with a touch of sweetness’? It was hard to say after half of it had been simmered in soy sauce to a bony mush, the other half grilled in salt until chewy and served with its head still on, propped up with a wooden stake like a Big Mouth Billy Bass about to sing.”
Mark Kurlyandchick on Empire Kitchen & Cocktails, Detroit
To Detroit Free Press critic Mark Kurlyandchick, Empire Kitchen & Cocktails wasn’t just bad — it was “banal to the bone.” The American bistro and bar “reads like a paint-by-numbers restaurant concept — the modern Detroit dining equivalent of the Brooklyn Bar Menu Generator,” Kurlyandchick writes. He takes particular issue with the fact that everything offered can be found in better versions just hundreds of feet away. And adding to “offensiveness” is the restaurant’s particular location, “a stone’s throw from a homeless shelter,” making dining at Empire Kitchen & Cocktails feel like “a longtime Detroiter’s gentrification nightmare playing out in real time.”
For the kill: When compared to similar restaurants, “Empire is their hollow echo, parroting back a faded, carbon-copied version that takes no risks and contributes little to Detroit’s dining scene dialogue.”
Jay Rayner on Farm Girl Cafe, London
Scathing reviews are so on-brand for Jay Rayner that he’s turned them into a one-man show, and so this list wouldn’t be complete without at least one selection from the Guardian critic. In March, the king of one-liners went all in on the third location of Farm Girl Cafe, which takes a “holistic and healthy” approach to Australian cafe culture.
Rayner takes issue with the crowd of “blonde-tressed Chelsea women just bubbling with intolerances,” the space — “it’s like a cartoon version of a farmhouse as imagined by someone who hasn’t been in one” — and, naturally, the food. An artichoke dish “smells of a long Sunday afternoon in someone’s overheated suburban front room,” and jackfruit tostadas are “a fibrous tangle that gets stuck in your teeth on top of a violent, acidic sludge of guacamole.” Rayner hopes the meat dishes will be more successful, but alas, finds himself eyeing a guest’s pet Yorkshire terrier: “Just hand him over, give me access to the grill, and five minutes,” he writes.
For the kill: “There’s V for Vegan. There’s GF for Gluten Free. There’s DF for Dairy Free. I think they’re missing a few. There should be TF for Taste Free and JF for Joy Free and AAHYWEH for Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here.”
Honorable Mentions
Robert Sietsema on Sorbillo, New York City
New York may have its fill of pizza, but still, the city was looking forward to the opening of Italian pizza star Gino Sorbillo’s first restaurant stateside. But while Eater NY critic Robert Sietsema judges the cheaper pies worth ordering, other items on the “tediously long” menu are “terrible.” He gives it one star. For the kill: “Nobody told the recipe developer that Americans don’t much like small, stale peas in their pasta.”
Parker Hall at Ouibar, Portland, Oregon
It’s clear that Willamette Week’s Parker Hall had much more fun writing his review of Ouibar + Ktchn (yes, that’s the actual spelling) than he did eating and drinking at the Portland bar. The decor is “a fluorescent hellscape” and a cocktail “offers overwhelming notes of Robitussin and rubbing alcohol.” He notes, “The food is equally befuddling.” For the kill: “Nobody should pay this much money to be sad.”
Lesley Chesterman on Brasserie 701, Montreal
In a one-star review, Montreal Gazette critic Lesley Chesterman finds that hotel restaurant Brasserie 701 is little more than a mediocre hotel restaurant. The appetizers tasted “reheated,” the salmon was overcooked, and a dessert was “dull, dry, and about as memorable as Justin Timberlake’s Super Bowl halftime performance.” For the kill: “McDonald’s does a better job for one-third of the price.”
Mike Sula on Terrace 16, Chicago
Chicago Reader critic Mike Sula debated reviewing Trump International Hotel restaurant Terrace 16. Last year, he decided it wasn’t worth spending his publication’s money “on a restaurant owned by a proven liar, unrepentant racist, and admitted sex offender.” But now that the restaurant is cheaper, he felt free to report back on whole fried chicken that was just “hacked and battered boneless chicken breast” along with several dishes that have been “denied the assistance of salt.” For the kill: “I’m not so batty from Trump Derangement Syndrome that I can’t objectively identify what a poor value the food is at Terrace 16. The only thing Chicagoans on the ground are missing is the spectacular view from occupied territory.”
Karen Brooks on Nomad.PDX, Portland, Oregon
In a review for Portland Monthly, Karen Brooks expresses extreme disappointment at pop-up Nomad.PDX’s transformation into “slick restaurant.” The meal begins with “so much modernist mist and gloom, [she] feared Jack the Ripper lurked nearby,” and by the end of it, Brooks determines the restaurant “was all smoke and mirrors.” For the kill: “To put it mildly, licking Plexiglas is more rewarding than some of the duds on the set menu.”