Well, they say that all good things must come to an end, but who could have predicted that this applied to one of the most heavily publicized restaurants in New York. As of Dec. 31, Guy Fieri’s Time Square restaurant, Guy’s American Kitchen & Bar is closed for business. Unfortunately, the chef who gained notoriety and The Food Network and other cooking shows did not get the critical support he thought he would receive from the food critics in the Big City. In New York, a food critic can make or break your food establishment.
Guy’s restaurant did not just receive one poor review, it received two. First, Anthony Bourdain completely trash-talked the restaurant in his review. If that was not enough, Pete Wells followed that with a review that basically said that the sign at the entrance that said, “Welcome to Flavor Town” was simply messing with the head of the patrons. Wells obviously did not believe that the restaurant met the demand for its hype and billing. This should not be taken as an assessment that nothing in the restaurant was any good. That would be completely untrue and unfair.
In fact, Fieri was able to overcome the negativity created by those scathing reviews to tie for first place in the New York Wine and Food Festival Burger Bash.
It is not certain if the closing of the restaurant is due to the negative publicity it originally received, which is highly unlikely – that was back in 2012. Unfortunately, Guy did not give a specific reason for the restaurant closing at the end of the year. The fact that it closed on the final day of 2017 supports the idea that the closing may be symbolic. In his statement about the closing, Guy simply stated that he was proud to have been able to serve millions of people from around the world over the last five and a half years. He also thanked those individuals who patronized the business.
Anyone who understands business knows that it takes a lot to keep a restaurant open for any length of time, especially in a market like New York where everything is so trendy and the competition is unrelenting. There will be a great deal of speculation as everyone begins to weigh in with their postulations as to what caused the demise of the restaurant, with the most prominent suggestion being that it was forced to close because it was not performing on the financial side of the equation. While this postulation could easily be true, it should not be considered a given.
This could simply be a new chapter in the life of Guy Fieri that does not have space for owning and running that restaurant. What I think should happen is that he should be given credit for opening and operate a food establishment in Time Square for more than five years. The reason that his run in this highly competitive stretch of real estate came to an end is not as important as the fact that he has done what, so many have not. Let’s see what he does next.
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