Gaga’s parents had a tough crowd at their new trattoria, Joanne, last night.
Irascible New York Post restaurant critic Steve Cuozzo savaged the Upper West Side eatery ruthlessly, in a hatchet piece headlined “You’ll Gag on the Food at Gaga’s.”
Gaga’s dad, Joe Germanotta, just opened the trattoria (on Columbus Avenue and 68th Street) and tapped openly gay chef Art Smith, Oprah’s old cook, to run the place.
In Germanotta’s defense, it was the opening night, but Cuozzo says he has license to review so early because Gaga’s “hype machine” has been “trumpeting the joint for months.”
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Cuozzo’s choicest eviscerations:
*The place smelled funky. “You don’t expect a brand-new eatery to be running on all cylinders. But Joanne, owned by the pop superstar’s parents, last night was running mainly on acrid-smelling burnt vinegar wafting intermittently through the raucous dining room.”
*The staff was so bridge and tunnel. “Much of the staff, including the crew toiling in the open kitchen, seemed plucked from the ‘burbs. Clueless busboys wandered the floor, performing no other function than to pou
r tap water into sparkling.”
*The starters blew chunks. “Appetizers took 50 minutes to arrive. Grilled calamari with bitter greens and radicchio were the worst I’ve had in a lifetime of squid-mongering, the salad unseasoned and the calamari like leather.”
*The entrees sucked too. “One-note orecchiette with shellfish recalled the flaccid pasta commonly doled out along Long Island’s Jericho Turnpike—or at 35,000 feet.
It’s too bad for Smith (right), who was clearing tables personally as well as instructing cooks patiently in the kitchen. “I’m baffled that he’s lending his name, prestige and presence to an Italian ‘trattoria’ that last night wasn’t ready for prime time—or even the wee hours,” wrote Cuozzo.
Yikes. Better call our girlfriends and cancel our Sunday brunch reservations.
Photo: Stefan
Sirio
This review is bias everyone knows you don’t review a restaurant on opening night, it’s bad taste but not surprising coming from the New York Post . They are just looking to cash in on the hype.
RomanHans
What? An Art Smith restaurant isn’t any good? Next we’ll hear Madonna’s movie stinks. (Still, I’ll do the man any time he’s in town.)
ChrisC
“You’ll Gag on the food at Gaga’s”? Does he know that Gaga doesn’t own the place? Or even have a share in it? What a biased moron.
Riker
And what, may I ask, is wrong with Jericho Turnpike? The road is over 100 miles long and has hundreds of restaurants on it, some of which are top quality. Just seems like Long Island bashing for no reason.
barry
They should have had a test run to see where they could improve. But oh well. This was hilarious
Red Meat
That has to be the most obvious troll review I have ever read lmao
MikeE
ah, it would appear that Steve Cuozzo misses the good ol’ days when Manhattanites were permitted, even encouraged, to believe that they were the very essence of class. I remember hearing and reading the most hateful things about ANYTHING that was off the island. I’m glad I was only in New York for a year. It’s a depressing and hateful place, despite all of the great things that are there – which most native New Yorkers don’t even know exist.
christopher di spirito
The New York Post is the culinary standard for Manhattan?
Rest assured, if Sarah Palin had opened some fried fish joint in Midtown, the New York Post’s restaurant critic would fall all over the place, pronouncing it the best thing to hit Manhattan since the opening of Eric Ripert’s Le Bernardin.
Spike
The reviewer got exactly what he wanted, publicity, on the coat-tails of trashing Gaga.
Price Waterhouse
The Post, if I must remind you, is owned by Rupert Murdoch. Anything remotely associated with the dreaded Gays will receive the fairness associated with Fox News.
QJ201
Yeah, foodies take their hints from food reviews in the NY Post.
It was a hatchet job. Restauranteurs usually begin inviting reviewers after the first week or so when they have worked out the kinks.
And the staff is bridge and tunnel you *sshole because…um busboys can afford Manhattan apartments?
ousslander
nyc is so tired. It leads the word in very little these days, if anything. How unfortunate
Allen D.
You know, there actually ISN’T anything wrong with not liking something connected to Gaga. It’s actually possible that the place sucks. Deal.
MikeE
@Allen D.: but there IS something wrong with taking out your dislike of Gaga by attacking her family. Somehow, I highly doubt this food critic was being honest. There are far too many snarky references to Gaga herself, which is unfair since the restaurant is in no way connected to her. It’s her parents’ restaurant.