Guy Fieri's Times Square restaurant is closing, and people are sad, sorta
In a way, Guy Fieri's Times Square restaurant embodied the man himself: Snubbed by critics, but pretty damn popular.
Despite being one of America's highest grossing independent restaurants, racking up $17 million in sales in 2017, Guy's American Kitchen and Bar is closing on Dec. 31 for yet-to-revealed reasons, according to a report by Eater.
The restaurant gained infamy following a brutal zero-star review by New York Times critic Pete Wells, consisting of 34 different questions about its subpar offerings and service like this:
"Hey, did you try that blue drink, the one that glows like nuclear waste? The watermelon margarita? Any idea why it tastes like some combination of radiator fluid and formaldehyde?"
Fieri told Today at the time the review was "ridiculous" and accused the reviewer of trying to increase his profile at the chef's expense.
With the restaurant only open for two months at the time of the review, Fieri acknowledged there was work to be done, but rebuffed the suggestion his establishment was bad, despite menu items with names like "Motley Que Ribs" and "Guy-talian Nachos."
"Do I think I'm falling short? No, by no means. I'm doing the food America loves and we're doing it the right way ... to me it's impossible to come have a dining experience and have every single thing wrong, unless you come in with a different agenda," the celebrity chef told the show.
Being a restaurant with such a reputation, there was plenty said on Twitter about the restaurant's imminent closure.
Not all of it was negative, we guess.
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Of course, we bet Fieri will take the news with the cheery aplomb that has come to define him. He still has his TV show Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives, as well as more than a handful of other restaurants open.
As for Wells, who wrote the New York Times review, we suppose he'll never know why one of the drinks tastes like "radiator fluid and formaldehyde."
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