We try to keep the Weekly Feed focused pretty intensely at food happenings here in Washington, but there is one item that is too good to pass up. We wanted to make sure we touched on the knockdown-dragout between New York Times critic Frank Bruni and restaurateur Jeffery Chodorow (who you might remember from NBC’s The Restaurant with Rocco Dispirito).

Here’s the short version of the story: Bruni reviews Chodorow’s Kobe Club, pans it with zero stars, Chodorow goes ape and takes out a full-page ad in the Times for $40,000 to tell the world that Bruni wrote about politics and therefore knows nothing about food (offended!) and promises to follow Bruni’s reviews with reviews of his own on his blog. Bruni takes the bait and makes a couple of visits to another steakhouse: Robert’s, in the Penthouse Executive Club (yes, that Penthouse). Bruni proceeds to write what will be the best food article this year, and gives the strip club-cum-steakhouse one star (which is one star better than Chodorow’s high-end place). Now, this is coming from a man who, well, doesn’t like his beef loin with a side of boobs, cue the biggest (t)wink ever. You know it was a serious chore for him to do a couple meals in a place where ladies were offering back rubs and lap dances, yet it still scored one star. Chodorow followed up on his blog with a lame post saying he’s already been to the place so he feels no need to review it; it’s amazing how he could make one sentence sound so sleazy.

We’re going to go ahead and call this one for Bruni, who’s clearly a superior writer and a fantastic critic. Tom covered this in his TomChat last week, but begged off with a sensible answer about how it’s unwise for restaurants to take out ads and how Chodorow should have given that money to his staff when we clearly all wanted bitchiness. Feel free to take it out on the next dozen people who want a restaurant for their anniversary, Tom, that will make us feel better at least.