Let Them Eat Fast Food

In throes of recession, rent dispute, the Big Apple landmark will shutter its dining hall

(NEWSER) - New York’s vaunted Rainbow Room will shut down its dining hall next week amid the recession and a rent conflict, the New York Daily News reports. With the Rainbow Grill’s closure, the tourist hotspot at 30 Rockefeller Plaza will—temporarily or otherwise—be 40 employees lighter and limited to a bar and banquet hall. "It's such a classic New York place," one fan laments. More»

Bankrupt restaurant chain offers bad food at high prices

(NEWSER) - There are a lot of theories as to why Sbarro filed for bankruptcy last month—including “too-rapid growth” and the decline of malls. But Justin Peters has “a simpler explanation: Nobody likes Sbarro,” he writes in Slate . “Devoid of atmosphere, charm, and gustatory relevance, with no signature product to call its own, it's America's least essential restaurant.” On top of that, a simple slice of pizza sets you back $3.49. More»

From onion blossoms to overhyped chefs, these things need to go away

(NEWSER) - Asked to name the decade's worst dining trends, chefs and other food experts couldn't shut up. There were too many (including "mache, water sommeliers, organ-meat entrees, unisex bathrooms, bacon tattoos on chefs, over-flaunted kitchen burns, chefs tables") for Christopher Borrelli to list them all, but he hits the top 10 in the Chicago Tribune:

• Fried onion blossoms: Too sweaty, too greasy, too little onion, and too much fried stuff.
• The $40 entree: When your neighborhood bistro has hit these heights, it's time to say enough is enough.

Eateries cut corners and assume you won't notice

(NEWSER) - Restaurants are known to cut a few corners for the sake of their bottom lines. Slashfood sheds some light on dirty little industry secrets, including:

• Using cabbage instead of seaweed: An ex-maître d’ at an upscale Chinese joint says the chef assumed his celebrity clientele wouldn’t know the difference. He was right.
• Topping off beer pitchers with seltzer: “The drunker the guys got, the more seltzer they got,” says one sports bar insider.

(NEWSER) - Just a year ago, 25% of the country's highest-grossing restaurants were in Las Vegas—where diners ran up $15,000 checks and tipped waiters with wads of C-notes. But now restaurants are closing, new construction languishes half-finished, and more than 5,000 food industry workers have lost their jobs. "It was gold, and suddenly it became fool’s gold," one restaurateur tells the New York Times. More»