It’s not quite at the same pitch as Jeffrey Chodorow’s famous letter to the Times after Frank Bruni’s zero-star Kobe Club review, but Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s rebuke to our own Adam Platt was potent nonetheless. Maybe it’s because Vongo, a far-cooler customer than Chodorow, so rarely speaks about bad reviews. He doesn’t think that Platt was wrong or vicious in giving Matsugen only one star. Rather, he was just misinformed. “It seems he may have misunderstood the concept behind Matsugen — it’s commitment to pure, authentic Japanese cooking,” Vongerichten writes.

Matsugen’s dishes are not spicy, not aggressively seasoned, and they’re not meant to be. Everything on the menu builds upon the very best of what the Matsushita brothers have served in Japan. I was taken by their cooking when I first ate at their Tokyo restaurant years ago and I still am today here in New York. I trust that other diners will be too.

In other words, not everything is supposed to blow you away with pork fat and funky masalas, you big goon! Secretly, we suspect that Vongerichten was more hurt than he lets on. Despite his seemingly imperturbable surface, he’s said to be extremely sensitive to slights and put-downs: Alan Richman’s full-bore takedown of the chef in GQ in 2004 was said to have kept the chef in bed for two days. We can just hear Platt protesting that “one star means ‘good’! It’s not a slam!” but that will weigh but little to Jean-Georges.

Lost In Translation [Vongoblog]
Earlier: Jean-Georges Basks Briefly in Soba Glow

Scott Conant digs into former Alto and L’Impero partner Chris Cannon in the new New York Restaurant Insider. “It became clear to me that I couldn't work with that group anymore.…There is such a thing as the Peter Principle, where people rise to their level of incompetence. And it just became clear to me that maybe I was associated with a group that was in that category,” he said. Today in the Post, Steve Cuozzo asks Conant to explain himself. “I'm going to do the right thing and keep my mouth shut,” Conant said. “It was a conversation I didn't realize they were going to take verbatim.” Conant was quick to say that Michael White is “doing a great job” at Alto and Convivio, but something tells us this won’t be the last time hard words come out.

The Italian Job [NYP]
Related: Behind the Scenes at the Conant-Cannon Divorce

We assumed that after our crushing condemnation yesterday of Gotham City Insider, the "blasphemous blogger" behind it would creep away in shame, but no! He writes us to defend his shocking "F Di Fara" post.

As a punk at heart I am well versed on the strategies of "theres no such thing as bad press" but I had no idea what my little words would incite. That said, I am happy to see people so fired up over the one religion I can get behind: pizza. Tomato sauce, mozzarella and dough: I'll pick up a rifle and kill for that Holy Trinity any day. Regardless, I think you've missed the point.

Tim and Nina Zagat have made a living rating the "Food, Decor, Service and Cost" of restaurants, yes? In my outspoken Di Fara's review I've expounded upon 3 of the 4 criteria.
You are assuming that had I stayed and suffered through the tear gas for a $20 pie I would have somehow forgiven the rest of the things I discussed. Truth be told it wouldn't have changed anything. I would've just ended with "but the pizza is fantastic". You're assuming that I would have been SO blown away by Dirty Dom's pie that I would've NEGLECTED to even mention the filth and the smoke. This is where you are wrong.

I know people who've been going to Di Fara's for years; a dozen years before everyone started writing them up. Back when Brooklyn was still Mars to most everyone. Back then Di Fara's was an institution; a little hole in the wall spot that only the locals knew about. So whom do you think is responsible for "the hipsters and pseudo-foodies" doing the place a disservice? Surely not us Brooklynites or the local Midwood pizza lovers.

I could get into gentrification and all that crap but I'd rather keep it light and sweet. We're arguing about pizza for fucks sake. Let's relax. I love that the man takes his pizza seriously and takes his time with each pie. I wasn't a guy who got upset when Nirvana got popular. I'm just saying the place is filthy and for all the cache and cult status he's acquired, at $20 a pie, lets clean the place up. Roaches aren't that charming.

P.S. - Don't get me started on another place you all love to herald, Tanoreen.

Oh, so now "F Di Fara" is a Zagat review? Sounds like backpedaling to us. But we're glad to see GCI softening his position. Perhaps if he goes back and actually eats the pie that makes all the pain worthwhile, he will truly see the folly of his way.

Earlier: Di Fara Attacked by Blasphemous Blogger

Occasionally we read something so wrong-headed — so perverse, self-righteous, and utterly dopey — that our fingers shake on our keyboard, and a vein throbs in our temple. That was the case some minutes ago when we read Gotham City Insider’s “F Di Fara” post. What effrontery! This character was apparently not pleased that, upon entering the city’s most sacred temple of pizza-making, the crowd didn’t part for him, and the Saint of Avenue J failed to greet him with a hearty hello. “You want $20 for a pie? Say hello to me when I walk in. Ask me what I need. I don't care how fucking busy you are — that is NOT Brooklyn.” How can we begin to unpack the gall, the crust, the audacity of this? Some anonymous writer is going to lecture Dom De Marco on what constitutes Brooklyn culture? Why not just lecture Jefferson on civics? The blogger, a laid-off Bear Sterns employee no doubt seething with cosmic bitterness, exaggerates the dirtiness of the place (what’s a little loose trash in the name of greatness?) and then goes on to claim that only credulous foodies keep Di Fara's in business: “Without this hipster/foodie cache you'd just be another dirty, random, roach infested pizza joint in Midwood.”

The new season of No Reservations began last night, and Tony Bourdain is already in trouble — but over an episode from last season. Some Jamaicans have taken umbrage over Bourdain's Imus-like use of the word “bitches” when describing a dance-hall concert: "Like reggaetón, its mutant cousin, dance-hall is the hard-core beat behind lyrics concerning, for the most part, acquiring possessions, getting respect on the street, beating down perceived enemies, and enjoying the physical charms of varied, if not multitudinous, bitches.” The women of Jamaica were not amused. “I am offended as a woman,” reggae artist Nadine Sutherland told CaribWorldNews. The backlash is growing, the online news service reports: “Other observers say that when Bourdain, a white, privileged man, uses the word it takes on a connotation different from its use by the dancehall artist. ‘I don't blame dancehall for Anthony Bourdain's comments,’ said female hip-hop sensation Stahhr. ‘It's not like he doesn't have any common sense.’” The Travel Channel, which airs No Reservations, hasn't responded with the inevitable rote apology yet, but we can't wait to hear what Bourdain has to say about his privilege and lack of common sense.

Anthony Bourdain's No Reservation Comment Pisses Off Jamaicans [CaribWorldNews]
Related: Bourdain Set to Reconquer the World in New Season of ‘No Reservations’

Salon launched “Pork Week” today, the online magazine's tongue-in-cheek answer to Discovery Channel’s popular Shark Week. But it isn’t getting off to a very promising start with “Bacon Mania.” The article, which enumerates seven theories why bacon is popular, is even more tiresome than the bacon fetish it questions. The theories include “Bacon is sexy,” “bacon is rebellious,” “bacon is kitsch,” “bacon is funny,” and so on, each one less convincing than the one before. Salon consults some go-to bacon aphorists, with predictable results: John T. Edge (“Bacon is a sort of 21st century tattoo, a marker that declares the wearer to be a badass, unbeholden to convention.”) Bacon of the Month Club founder Dan Philips (“Bacon is the ultimate expression of freedom.”), and Sex and Bacon author Sarah Katherine Lewis (“Pour me a drink, light me a smoke, fry me up a pan of bacon, and let's get it on.”) When will the anti-bacon backlash come? Surely it’s overdue already. Not that bacon – the food, not the fetish – has anything to fear from it.

Bacon Mania [Salon]

Correction: Sarah Katherine Lewis was originally identified as Sarah Katherine Phillips. We gret the error.

Related: Porn Star Who'll Eat Anything Draws the Line at Cheese
Bacon Has Jumped the Shark

So, Florent. Just to recap: We learned back in, oh, January that Florent was going to close its storied doors. The landlord, Joanne Lucas, put the space on the block for something like $58,000 or maybe even $70,000 a month. Florent Morellet had been paying around $6,000 — clearly, Lucas wasn't looking for a new diner to move into her space. For that kind of money, Lucas was clearly looking for the kind of tenant that is synonymous with the meatpacking district's latest incarnation: a high-end retailer, perhaps the sort of chic, Euro-friendly designer or boutique that would willingly bleed that sort of money just to sit on a cobblestone corner near Soho House (and just a two-second cab ride to the Norwood!).

But, as we all now know, Lucas didn't get that high-end retailer as a tenant. She didn't get any tenant, it would seem, as it has been reported that after Florent shuts its doors for good on Sunday night, Lucas will reopen the joint on Tuesday as R&L Restaurant, the diner that Florent replaced many years ago (and which was once owned by Lucas's father). Even better, R&L will have the same staff and menu as Florent. So besides a name change and the removal of a quaint neon sign, we're guessing the only real, quantifiable difference will be the absence of the inimitable Mr. Morellet. And that's a big difference, of course — but still, we can't help feeling a little duped here.

Dan Silverman, Lever House's former chef, saw our post on the new Lever House burger and wrote in to remind us that the Lever House burger won't be entirely new. To wit:

I wish Brad Thompson all the best at Lever House. However, I'd like to clear the air a bit about the Lever burger. Pat LaFrieda has been the house meat purveyor at LH since day one. I used LaFrieda for five plus years at Union Square Café, and for years before that at Alison on Dominick. Also, the LH burger that I made weighed in at 10 ounces. Good for a hangover? Absolutely! A “Sunday” burger? I’m not so sure...As one of the last freestanding wholesale meat businesses left in Manhattan, Pat Jr. and his partner Mark are doing a remarkable job and deserve every bit of press they get.

Best,
Dan Silverman

Earlier: Brad Thompson Plans a New Burger for Lever House

E.U. owner Jason Hennings was pretty hot when we spoke to him last week about fired chef Justin Smillie. We thought when we saw an e-mail from him that he perhaps regretted coming down too hard on this chef, whom he accused of managing 45 percent food costs owing to his commitment to the Greenmarket. But no! Hennings was just getting started.

Steve Lewis has his fighting gloves on today — he takes an underhanded (if probably unintentional) jab at reporter Joshua David Stein by calling him Ben Stein. (Stein called Lewis an “icky nightlife dipstick” in a Gawker post linking to his interview with former Top Chefs Camille Becerra and Nikki Cascone. If you care, parts two and three of that interview are now up — Nikki says there was “a lot of bullshit” during her season, knocks Whole Foods, and questions the consistency of the judges and their say in who stays or goes.) Of course, what we’re really interested in is Lewis’s latest words about Todd English, whom he previously referred to as a “two-bit, lying punk” (English’s flack then told us they wouldn’t comment on “insane ramblings made by ex-convicts”).