Steak n' Legs or How Maxim Is Opening Several Steakhouses

YumSugar — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 11:21:42 -0800

Now that Joe Francis is in jail, the plans for the Girls Gone Wild restaurant are probably on hold. If this leaves you worrying where you'll go for your steak n' legs dinner then fear no more, Maxim Prime is opening in late March. Restauranteur Jeffrey Chodorow - you may remember him from NBC's The Restaurant - has announced plans to open Maxim Prime, a joint venture with Maxim magazine. The restaurant will be located in New York's Gansevoort Hotel and has a scheduled late March opening. Another branch will be located in Atlanta's Glenn Hotel and 13 other locations will open over five years. Chodorow has said that he does not want it to be like Hooters. Instead he has said it will be, "sexy but sophisticated." Unlike traditional steakhouses, the portions will also be smaller and lighter. Chodorow said:

The people who leave here are going to go someplace else - maybe dancing. They're not going to go home and go to bed.

So if you live in the Atlanta or New York areas, be sure to check it out and report back. I want to know what "sexy but sophisticated" is like. I mean they never said it wasn't going to be "sleazy."

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Frank Bruni Stepping Down as Times's Restaurant Critic

YumSugar — Thu, 14 May 2009 15:00:58 -0700

After five years as the lead restaurant reviewer of the New York Times, Frank Bruni is hanging up his napkin, the newspaper announced today.

As the restaurant critic at one of the nation's preeminent publications, in the last five years, Bruni has been arguably the most influential food writer in America, catapulting restaurants like Napa's Ubuntu to fame while sending others, like Jeffrey Chodorow's Kobe Club, to a controversial early grave. But come August - around the same time that his new food memoir gets published - he will step down from his position.

Despite the fact that his reviews have ignited as many haters as supporters, I'll miss Bruni's poignant and often hilarious reviews - although I am looking forward to learning more about him in Born Round: The Secret History of a Full-Time Eater. Are you disappointed to see Bruni join the likes of former critics Craig Claiborne, Mimi Sheraton, Bryan Miller, and Ruth Reichl? Who do you think should be his successor?

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