GQ’s Alan Richman rails against the service at “hipster restaurants”

GQ food writer Alan Richman’s latest column was posted to its website today, and it’s creating a minor scandal in the online food world. The piece details a bizarre spat—complete with allegations of “a hardy pat on the ass”—between the sometimes-curmudgeonly critic and M. Wells, the infamously uneven cult haute-diner in Queens co-founded by a former partner in Montreal’s celebrated Au Pied de Cochon. Beyond the lengthy sermon on the ethics of food reviewing and an exegesis of the actual dispute, the piece is irresistible for Richman’s self-flagellation over the “disastrous decline in service” at the “hipster restaurants” that are now in the ascendancy (of which Toronto no doubt has its fair share). “Critics like me deserve some blame for the current proliferation of impossibly low service standards in so many casual New York restaurants,” he writes. “We tend not to censure lackadaisical conduct, thinking this is what customers want and that we would appear out of touch if we disapproved.” Read the whole story [GQ] »