Vanity Fair's Tina Nguyen has written a 1660-word review of Trump Grill in Trump Tower, declaring that it could be the worst restaurant in America. The worst in America. And just in case you didn't get the point that her review is really about The Donald himself and not the restaurant, she states at the outset that the Grill "reveals everything you need to know about our next president."
Nguyen is snarky about Trump right out of the gate, bitter that "the clubby steakhouse" is in Trump Tower, which is filled with "many dignitaries traipsing through its marbled hall to kiss his ring." She sneered at the restaurant's "stingy number of French-ish paintings that look as though they were bought from Home Goods." She twice described the Grill's Szechuan dumplings as "flaccid," as if trying to make a juvenile joke about Trump himself.
She ordered the Ivanka’s Salad seemingly only as an opportunity to dismiss Trump's daughter, a classy, professional, successful businesswoman and mother, as a "SoulCycle-obsessed, smoothie-guzzling heiress."
She quoted VF's overrated curmudgeon Fran Lebowitz as calling Donald Trump “a poor person’s idea of a rich person,” and applied this description to the restaurant, then went on to sneer about the food (a burger was "a sad little meat thing... hiding its shame under a slice of melted orange cheese") and judging that if the food were any indication, "Trump’s pledge to 'make America great again' suddenly appeared not very promising."
She made sure to point out that the taco bowl was "the most popular item on the menu after Trump turned it into a social-media avatar of racism." She found it edible but "not good enough to prevent Trump from deporting millions of Hispanics."
She concludes with,
Perhaps it’s a sign that Trump is in over his head, and a shallow, mediocre man who runs a shallow, mediocre business empire (and restaurant) would sink and implode, crushing the expectations of millions of his hopeful supporters. But watching Trump parade his enemies through the nearby lobby, taunting them with prestigious appointments only to cruelly humiliate them, I had to look over at the human cattle herd at the Trump Grill, overwhelming a well-meaning staff with their dreams of a meal fit for a president, and wonder if he cared about any of them, either.
Tina Nguyen isn't even pretending that this review is anything but an excuse to try to belittle the President-elect. Here's something that may be difficult for you to swallow, Ms. Nguyen: perhaps Trump can't micromanage his restaurant's burgers and dumplings because he is too busy preparing to run the country.
