The New York Times gave Guy Fieri's restaurant zero stars. The review became more famous than the restaurant.

Easy to write seventy-eight question marks when you've never had to feed Times Square at 11pm on a Saturday. Pete Wells came to my restaurant once. ONE NIGHT. He sat down with his expense account and his New Yorker cartoon framing device and turned my dinner service into a literary ego exercise he's been dining out on for fourteen years.

The review is 1,200 words and structured almost entirely as questions. Do the math — a question every fifteen words. That's not criticism, that's a man auditioning for The Daily Show. 'Hey, did you try the food?' 'No, but I have so many QUESTIONS.' This is the New York Times restaurant critic and he wrote his career-defining piece in the format of a Cosmopolitan personality quiz. 'Are you a hot dog or a ham roll? Take this quiz to find out.' Sir, you are the critic. You are paid to answer the questions, not stack them like a Jenga tower of smug.

Here's what Wells doesn't tell you: my restaurant served 500 covers a night for years after that review. The 'unsalvageable' burger sold by the thousands. Tourists stood in line in the rain. Because when you're in Times Square at 9pm with two kids who want chicken tenders, you're not looking for the deconstructed something Wells last reviewed in Tribeca. You want a place to sit down. The whole review is a category error performed for an audience that would never have eaten at my restaurant in the first place. He went to a stadium burger joint expecting Eleven Madison Park and acted shocked when the foie gras wasn't there.

And the zero stars. ZERO. The lowest rating the Times gives. For a tourist burger joint. It's like giving a kindergarten finger painting zero stars at the Whitney — the rubric was never designed for the thing he was reviewing. He knew that. The editor knew that. They ran it because it would go viral, and it did, and Pete Wells got a book deal, and I got fourteen years of being asked about it on every press tour.

Wells's review will outlive my restaurant. He turned my menu into a meme and his byline into a brand. The math is brutal: he wrote 1,200 words and built an empire on a single night of dinner. I cooked for two million people and became a punchline. Easy to be a critic. The press box never has to make payroll.