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Citronelle has plans to move to the Tysons Corner Ritz Carlton from its current Georgetown location. In a mad rush to break the news first, Don Rockwell from DC Dining and Tim Carman from Washington City Paper reported the news within minutes of each other.
The highly-rated restaurant had been caught up in a swirl of rumors amid the planned renovation of Hotel Latham resulting in the restaurant's scaled back hours. As Carman mentions, the deal has yet to be signed, so there is still the possibility that this could go the way of the Gordon Ramsay deal. The Tysons Corner space has been vacant since Maestro, the restaurant helmed by Fabio Trabocchi, closed in July 2007.
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lame.
..in a mad rush to break the news first..
Looks like Sietsema got scooped again. And the Post was on such a hot streak too: Watergate, Bo and every Nats loss this season (so far).
I mean, Citronelle might be moving. Stories just don't get bigger than that.
Sietsema is the worst restaurant reviewer in the history of the Post.
You people have a really short memory.
Sietsema is the worst restaurant reviewer in the history of the Post.
uh yeah. that's why sietsema has such a huge following. va, you wouldn't happen to be that restaurant owner recently scorned, now would you?
What following??? You and your cat?
And no, I'm not scorned. If it's still being published by then, Placas de las Heces, the new upscale poop-themed tapas gastropub that I'm associated with is about to get a 3-star rating in the May 17th issue of the Washington Post Magazine.
No Way.
WP has had, what, 2 food critics in the past 40 years? And Richmond is still the standard against which Sietsema is judged. So, stupid as VA is for Losers comment was in that context, I kinda gotta agree with it.
It's Phyllis RichMAN, and I thank god every day I don't have to deal with her sycophantic accolades of her friends' restaurants. Sietsema gets chewed out for wielding too much power in the DC restaurant scene. Readers think his reviews can make or break a restaurant. But with all the outlets for restaurant reviews, he doesn't have anywhere near that power. Richman, however, did, and her reviews showed it. Head over to Second Story books and dig up an old Washington Post Restaurant Guide from the 1980s and see for yourself. Her awkward writing, callous bitchiness, and a fondness for the clichéd phrase make Sietsema look like William F**king Faulkner.
And as for Bistro la Merde, they've earned that 3-star review. YOU try making a corn-and-celery turd "Napoleon" with three different kinds of ca-ca, AND make it vegan-friendly.
Richman, Richmond, meh, whatever. They're both far away.
Uh, oops. The above from me was directed at VAifL Post #3 and the Monkey follow-up.
Tom Sietsema is a good writer, I'll give him that. But since that gaffe last year where he had to retract a restaurant review after intentionally slamming the place due to a personal disagreement with someone associated with it, his credibility in Washington has been seriously damaged. In any other large city, that would be the point where you pack up your wigs and fake mustaches, and go off to do restaurant reviews in some medium-size city out in the middle of the country. But since we're talking about the Post and their steady decline, he'll probably be around for years to come.
Who cares what some trained seal at a dead media outlet says about anything? If they told me the sun was out, I'd go see for myself. Restaurant critics, music critics, art critics, movie critics...it's all just an elaborate confidence game. They exist because the establishment says they have to, and readers think they need them. Like advertising, Hogwarts, Brigadoon, and Carousel, once people stop believing, the whole house of cards collapses.
The flipside is you get a billion idiots on Yelp who keep re-cycling shopworn phrases like "not uninspired," "most unique," and "worse than Hitler."