Critic Writes Savage Review of Trump's Restaurant

Gina Mei
Updated
Critic Writes Savage Review of Trump's Restaurant

Donald Trump may be a huge fan of his restaurants, but at least one food critic is definitely not.

In a scathing review published this week, Vanity Fair reporter Tina Nguyen went in on everything from the food to the decor at Trump Tower's steakhouse Trump Grill - which is apparently spelled both Grill and Grille throughout the restaurant. Describing in great detail what an unpleasant experience she and her dining partners had while eating there, Nguyen leaves no stone unturned in the review, explicitly suggesting that the restaurant gives patrons a "hollow sense of wealth."

"The allure of Trump’s restaurant, like the candidate, is that it seems like a cheap version of rich," she wrote. "The inconsistent menus-literally, my menu was missing dishes that I found on my dining partners’-were chock-full of steakhouse classics doused with unnecessarily high-end ingredients."

Nguyen goes on to describe the restaurant's "stingy" decor, and her experience ordering from a waiter "determined to gaslight us into thinking we were having a good time":

“Trump gets the taco bowl and the lasagna and baked ziti,” he said, before subsequently informing the table that we could not order the lasagna or baked ziti. I asked the waiter what Trump’s children eat. He didn’t seem to understand the question, or, like Marco Rubio, appeared unable to depart from his prescribed talking points. “Oh, I’ve shaken hands with him before, and they’re pretty normal-sized hands,” he responded.

According to Nguyen, their experience only got worse once their food arrived. The writer describes the filet mignon as looking like "a dead body inside a T-boned minivan," while the lamb burger tasted worse than a roasted pig's eyeball:

Trump Grill’s (Grille’s) Gold Label Burger [was a] short-rib burger blend molded into a sad little meat thing, sitting in the center of a massive, rapidly staling brioche bun, hiding its shame under a slice of melted orange cheese. It came with overcooked woody batons called “fries”-how can someone mess up fries?-and ketchup masquerading as Heinz. If the cheeseburger is a quintessential part of America’s identity, Trump’s pledge to “make America great again” suddenly appeared not very promising. (Presumably, Trump’s Great America tastes like an M.S.G.-flavored kitchen sponge lodged between two other sponges.)

Nguyen also, of course, tried the restaurant's now-infamous taco bowl, which she described as "perfectly adequate" and the most passable part of the meal. This didn't, however, make up for their drinks - which she says tasted as if they were "concocted by a college freshman experimenting in their dorm room."

Of course, Trump took to Twitter to respond to the piece. The president-elect criticized Vanity Fair and claimed the publication's numbers are "way down, big trouble, dead!"

You can read the rest of her scathing review right here.

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