{"id":10123,"date":"2012-11-19T16:54:50","date_gmt":"2012-11-20T00:54:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/?p=10123"},"modified":"2012-11-19T16:54:50","modified_gmt":"2012-11-20T00:54:50","slug":"right-idea-wrong-place","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/right-idea-wrong-place\/","title":{"rendered":"Right idea, wrong place?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Las Vegas<\/strong> is a city whose attractions feature the eat-at-your-own-risk Heart Attack Grill<\/strong>. It’s also got no shortage of vast, empty spaces waiting to be filled. So it would have seemed inevitable had Guy Fieri<\/strong> chosen to open a three-story, 500-seat (!) temple to junk food in Sin City rather than Times Square<\/strong>. Local food critics are so starstruck they’d undoubtedly have waxed rhapsodic over Fieri’s “Donkey Sauce” and “Malibu Oysters.” However, it was Fieri’s misfortune to erect Guy’s American Kitchen & Bar<\/strong> in New York City<\/strong>, not on the Las Vegas Strip. This earned him a royal roasting<\/a> from New York Times<\/em> food critic Pete Wells<\/strong>: “How did Louisiana<\/strong>\u2019s blackened, Cajun-spiced treatment turn into the ghostly nubs of unblackened, unspiced white meat in your Cajun Chicken Alfredo?<\/em>” Wells expounded the thinking behind his review<\/a> even further to Poynter<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

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However, such is the power (read: money) commanded by Fieri that the Times<\/em>‘ public editor called Wells on the carpet to explain himself. What’s more, Fieri hopped a readeye from The Coast and apparently demanded (successfully) that NBC News<\/strong> send Savannah Guthrie<\/strong> on an immediate pilgrimage to Guy’s American Kitchen and provide him with a soapbox. (With Today<\/em> losing the morning-ratings battle, who was NBC to refuse?) Fieri’s complaint about the Times<\/em> having an “agenda” doesn’t wash: Wells paid the restaurant four<\/em> visits, rather than his customary three, which suggests a backward-bending effort to be fair. Also, how much quality control does Fieri really think can be exerted at a restaurant which might be serving as many as 500 diners at a time? Fieri’s fiery blast may have backfired: The New York Observer<\/em> was quick to double down on the rhetoric<\/a> (“a massive and multilevel exercise in megalomania”). However, Guy’s American Kitchen might be just the thing to put foot traffic back into Crystals<\/strong> or Palazzo Shoppes<\/strong>. Casino owners here don’t seem to care much what food you serve or whether it’s any good, just so long as there’s a celebrity name up front. How else does one explain the ubiquity of Wolfgang Puck<\/strong>, the Ronald McDonald<\/strong> of fine dining?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Las Vegas is a city whose attractions feature the eat-at-your-own-risk Heart Attack Grill. It’s also got no shortage of vast, empty spaces waiting to be filled. So it would have seemed inevitable had Guy Fieri chosen to open a three-story, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[56,28,18,101,9,17],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10123"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10123"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10123\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10124,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10123\/revisions\/10124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}