A usage of "goody-two-shoes" I was not at ALL expecting

[dianeduane]

The New York Times food critic Frank Bruni walks all over Gordon Ramsay's new place in NYC. Goodness!!

The cautious palette foreshadows a cautious menu, as reliant on default luxuries and flourishes like foie gras and black truffles as on real imagination. Most ingredients are predictable, most flavors polite, most effects muted. Mr. Ramsay may be a bad boy beyond the edges of the plate, but in its center, he’s more a goody-two-shoes.

And for all his brimstone and bravado, his strategy for taking Manhattan turns out to be a conventional one, built on familiar French ideas and techniques that have been executed with more flair, more consistency and better judgment in restaurants with less vaunted pedigrees.

Hooboy!

 

Comments

[rebelsheart]

That sounds like fairly harsh criticism.

[jfargo.livejournal.com]

Wow. Somebody's not a fan...

[barberio.livejournal.com]

That's almost fashion magazine cattyness!

[lunza.livejournal.com]

And it wasn't "My steak was so overcooked that it tasted like goody-two-shoes."

P.S.

[lunza.livejournal.com]

In case you were wondering where that phrase came from... (http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-goo2.htm)

Re: P.S.

[petermorwood.livejournal.com]

And as blogged about right here a couple of weeks ago.

Like many of the other posters, my first flash was on the Adam and the Ants song. Amazing to think that it goes back a quarter-century.

Looks at flamboyant New Romantic clothes, looks at self in mirror, looks at restaurant review, realizes why clothes and self don't fit any more, sighs and goes away...

[scarfman]

At first I thought it read, "Frank Burns walks all over Gordon Ramsay's new place".

Guess which screen fandom (not that there were screen fandoms besides Star Trek at the time) got me through adolescence.

[keristor.livejournal.com]

I thought "Isn't Frank Bruni the plural of Frank Bruno?"

[albireo.livejournal.com]

Good lord, what a snippy review. What did he expect, exactly? Ramsey to run out with a plate of duck's gizzards marinated in turnip essence, and then light his table on fire?

I bet that would have gotten him four stars.

[dduane.livejournal.com]

R. O. T. F. L!!

[albireo.livejournal.com]

Incidentally, did you hear about this (http://u.tv/newsroom/indepth.asp?id=79787&pt=n)?

Improvisation is the best sauce. XD

[kengr]

The proof-readers at NYT need to learn the difference between "palette" and "palate"

[dduane.livejournal.com]

No, it's OK, the writer was talking about the colors in the decor first.

[petermorwood.livejournal.com]

...And deserves congratulation for not using the word "palate" in that sentence; it was a fairly obvious choice.

The NYT star rating strikes me as a bit off-balance: the (None) rating covers "poor to satisfactory" and in my book, lumping those two categories together is something of a disservice to the higher one; whether in its dictionary or school report useage, "satisfactory" is appreciably better than "poor". I can't help feeling that "no stars" should mean a non-quibbling "poor", and an incremental rating from one star up should cover all the categories above.

I'm most curious about why the NYT uses only four stars, since the usual classification for hotels etc. (where the establishment warrants a star at all) runs from one to five.

Is their none-to-four rating, and the vagueness of what falls into the category of (None) a means to avoid unpleasantness, like being sued by the disgruntled restaurateur - or having a pair of flambéed lamb's kidneys shoved down your trousers by a chef who's decided he might as well be a Bad Boy after all...?

[psycho-machia.livejournal.com]

sounds like somebody is trying to make a point....

How many Michelin stars has Ramsey got ...9....10?