Everyone knows the perils and regrets of drunk dialing. There’s that awful feeling of waking up the next morning remembering the nastygram you left on someone’s answering machine. Washington Post critic Tom Sietsema must be feeling that way today after the paper retracted his review of Commissary, citing that he and one of the owners has a previous “personal relationship” and should have recused himself. This morning the owners of Commissary also sent out an email to their listserv blasting Sietsema over his review.

The review was uncharacteristically scathing, implying that the food was on par with prison food and calling the pizza worse than Domino’s. Whether or not those comments may be true, most reviewers prefer to “damn with faint praise.” One also wonders: where were his friends? Even if Food section editor Joe Yonan was not aware of the relationship, the review was so far out of line with the norm that it should have been obvious something was not right. C’mon, Yonan, friends are there to stop you from drunk dialing!

Image courtesy of sexy fitsum