Dianne de Guzman is the regional editor for Eater’s Northern California/Pacific Northwest sites, writing about restaurant and bar trends, upcoming openings, and pop-ups for the San Francisco Bay Area, Portland, Seattle, and Denver.
Well, strap in, everyone, there’s no other way to put it: San Francisco Chronicle food critic MacKenzie Chung Fegan dropped a bombshell of a story about visiting the three-Michelin-starred restaurant the French Laundry, wherein chef Thomas Keller asked her to leave. This is, of course, one of the cardinal sins of a business built on hospitality, especially if the diner hasn’t done anything worthy of getting 86’d other than existing as a restaurant critic.
In the recounting of the visit, Fegan details being pulled away from her dinner for a 30-minute conversation with the chef, wherein Keller questions the motives for the visit (none, a review wasn’t forthcoming, according to Fegan); says New York Times critic Melissa Clark lied when attempting to review the French Laundry under anonymity; and then mourns a bygone era of when “critics and chefs were on the same team,” Fegan writes. Ultimately, despite being told that she was being asked to leave, Fegan’s party was fed and given a tour of the kitchen and restaurant, but notably, she writes that the conversation left her “rattled.”…