The Other Critics

Pat Bruno’s Anniversary Register Of Hated Dining Concepts

Passing up his regular review this week (is this a thing? The Trib’s Phil Vettel didn’t file this week either), the Sun-Times’s Pat Bruno takes the opportunity of the twenty-fifth anniversary of his tenure as a restaurant critic (both at Chicago and the Sun-Times) to look back on the last quarter-century. Which is actually just a thinly-veiled excuse for Bruno to list off things he hates:

Cal-Mex cooking (“let’s call it what it is – Mexican”); “global” cuisine; “anything with a ‘Pan’ prefix” unless its boundaries are explicitly defined; the word “fusion”; regional Italian food that doesn’t include anything south of Rome; chefs who aren’t in their restaurants all the time; owners who use computers instead of walking the room; meats that are identified by the farm from which they’re sourced; and — of course — communal dining. Happy anniversary, Pasquale. You give us more than you could ever imagine.

Critic looks at 25 years of eating out in Chicago [Sun-Times]

Pat Bruno’s Anniversary Register Of Hated Dining Concepts