Pete Wells Loves Deep End Dining! Still Hates Guy Fieri's "Restaurant". The Internet's Viral Critic.

Maybe it's because I don't wear my NASCAR wraparounds around the back of my spiky-haired skull. Or maybe it's because I use descriptions like "coagulated blood" when illustrating my comfort comestibles. Whatever the case maybe, I just want to go on record as saying that Pete Wells is not a hater...well, at least not until he really hates something.

Last week, Wells, restaurant critic for The New York Times, concocted a new dish called the Guy Fieri skewer that comes with a side of flaming Awesome Sauce.  In brief, Wells wrote a venom-soaked review based on rhetorical, snarky questions and effectively tore food personality Guy Fieri a new hole the size of Times Square (where Fieri's eatery Guy's American Kitchen & Bar happens to call home). Wells hates Fieri's restaurant like Mitt Romney hates the 47%.

About six years ago, Wells gave me and my geriatric food blog Deep End Dining a stellar review when he was still with Food & Wine Magazine. It was one of the brightest moments in the history of this blog and my life. But, he also managed to upset many of the hundreds of food blogs that existed then. (Yes, there were merely hundreds back in those heady days of the food blogosphere.) And if you read my reaction and the reader comments to that article, you'll see that Wells is no stranger to the viral critique. In fact, that Food & Wine write-up by Wells was so widely spread and notorious, it ended up being dubbed "the cheese sandwich blog review".

It's great to see that Wells is as feisty as ever. Whether you agree with him or not, it's always fun to witness a good food fight.