Thursday, September 27, 2012

'Worse than herpes': Restaurant owned by Lady Gaga's parents



Lady Gaga was wearing meat not long ago (photo below) but now the singer enjoys eating food so much she blames it for her sudden weight gain.
  

Well, let's get back to the real story here.
The Italian restaurant owned by her parents just keeps getting slammed, this time by the New York Daily News, which called Joanne Trattoria 'worse than herpes'.

But how bad can it be?
Lady Gaga blamed her family's restaurant for for her recent 25lbs weight gain, she told radio host Elvis Duran: 'I’m dieting right now, because I gained, like, 25 pounds... My father opened a restaurant. It's so amazing... it’s so freaking delicious, but I’m telling you I gain five pounds every time I go in there.'
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But since Joanna Trattoria opened its doors in February, it has received terrible reviews.
There are nasty rumors that diners were paid to write great reviews on Yelp! and Zagat.

New York Post's Steve Cuozzo showed up for what he called 'a 2 1/2-hour meal that seemed like as many days,' and even The New Yorker, which waited five months after the opening was dissapointed.
Leo Carey, the magazine's senior editor, described a homemade focaccia as 'good in the same way that the garlic bread at Domino’s is good.'
He continued: 'The squid in the grilled-calamari salad, though bearing the browned marks of grilling, has none of the charcoal richness you might expect - indeed, it has almost no flavor at all.
He did say a few of the items were 'creditable,' like the lasagna, 'an overwhelming paving-stone slab of meat and ricotta with micro-greens on top,' but he calls the more 'ambitious dishes' as going 'uniformly awry'.
'Osso buco is more or less just osso, and such bone marrow as there seems to be is oddly chewy,' he writes.

Then there was Michael Kaminer, a dining-out critic at the New York Daily News, he called the Italian restaurant 'an incomprehensible imitation of a restaurant.'
'I came with an open mind, despite the fact that most of my colleagues have portrayed Joanne as the worst thing since herpes,' he says.
Then there's the restaurant's prices, he says: 'A dry lemon chicken ($28) did have a discernible taste, but only in its zesty skin. 
'The meat itself came closer to those supermarket birds in foil bags. And people: That $28 doesn’t include sides. The only adornment is a shriveled lemon segment perched atop the meat. Sauteed spinach or rosemary fingerling potatoes will set you back $9.'
He continues: '[The] “Expresso” - yes, with an “x” - for $5 on Joanne’s menu... is more like concentrated Sanka, but you’ll need it to avoid choking on a tiramisu cake ($14) whose desiccated base holds gelatinous cream tasting vaguely of plastic.'

Restaurant critic Gael Greene also had concerns about the pricing.
Writing for The Insatiable Critic: 'Aside from the fine focaccia, a lush lasagna (too small, too pricey) and my $38 veal osso bucco, much needs to be reconsidered. Okay, the meatballs and spaghetti were fine - but $23?'

(Celebrity chef Art Smith, who for years was Oprah Winfrey's personal chef)


Well, from the looks of it, Lady Gaga enjoys the food.