JoeDoe’s Joe Dobias is among the spate of chef-restauranteurs in the New York City restaurant world that are lashing out at restaurant critics. According to Eater, a Dobias is said to have railed against New York Journal blogger for critical remarks expressed in a review. Here’s a taste of Dobias’ gratuitous, below the belt response, courtesy of Eater:

“….when you kill yourself for a living like I do, it is very tough to stomach an angry little mans opinion. Who honestly care what you think and further how dare you and the other shithead bloggers. You made your snap judgement on one visit and further as I said you have zero credibility for writing reviews..stop your malicious bullshit and stop this site! YOU ARE NOT A FOOD WRITER AND WILL NEVER BE YOU NASTY LITTLE MAN!!…It is 9:30am time to cook brunch hopefully not for some nasty little bald men like you.”

JoeDoe Restaurant - Image from Eater.com

Dobias much like, pizza-chef-restauranteur, Jim Lahey, who lashed out at Frank Bruni for a lukewarm review, is either plagued by massively detrimental anger issues or is wrongly convinced that self-inflicted negative publicity is a good thing. Dobias has even gone as far as formally banning photography of his dishes–the rule is purportedly printed on the menus. Glad The Gotham Palate was there to get pictures in February, when the photo-getting was still good. For the record, I’ve eaten at JoeDoe’s and not only enjoyed it, but also gave it a favorable review on this blog. See here:

But back to the backbiting chefs.

First of all: don’t these chef-restauranteurs realize when they overreact to these reviews, they are not endearing themselves to the public in any way? Nor are they hurting the critics. If anything they are affirming how relevant they really are. ey are only exposing their hyper-inflated, fragile and co-dependent egos. Is the restaurant business a tough racket? Unbelievably so. Do critics and bloggers occasionally issue unfair reviews? Of course they do. Do they warrant overly-defensive responses in the form of wickedly hostile and ad hominem attacks of the reviewer? Most defintely not.

If restauranteurs must offer any type of corrective to what they perceive as unfair criticism, they ought to consider taking a page from Jon-George Vongerichten’s rebuttal to Frank Bruni’s recent downgraded rating of his five year old, Meatpacking, Asian fare Mecca, Spice.

“I’m sorry that Bruni and his guests didn’t have a better time, but I make no apologies for opening Spice Market or any of my other restaurants. Like each one, Spice Market was conceived of and built as a stand-alone restaurant. In fact, it was a deeply personal project: I spent years cooking in Asia and ate at the fantastic open-air markets every night after work…

Whether or not you agree with JGV, the response is classy, to the point and do not constitute the makings of a PR fiasco.

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