Restaurants go after reviewer's testicles

The knives are out in some of Auckland top restaurants after a food critic left out some of the biggest names in the hospitality industry on a list of top eating spots in the city.

Metro magazine food critics have been banned from a group of the upmarket Auckland restaurants which were excluded from the top 50 list, amid claims of "childish games".

Restaurateur Richard Sigley, the proprietor of Wellington's Shed 5 and Pravda and Auckland's Jervois Steak House, Pasha bar and Euro has taken out a full-page advert in today's Herald on Sunday hitting out at the omission.

Along with their own critical review of the Metro food critic, Mr Sigley has included a recipe for the "Preparation of Metro Food Critic Testicles".

Readers are encouraged to take a "very sharp knife, slice through the sort of skinnie muscley stuff that you find surrounding each of the Metro Food Critic Testicles (there should be two testicles, they can be hard to find)".

Underneath the recipe the advert reads: "No doubt you can sense we're a little miffed with Metro.

"Actually, we think they're playing some kind of childish game.

"Metro's reviews of Euro, in particular, are out of step with the reviews everyone else writes about that restaurant.

"And out of step with the thousand or so people that dine there every week.

"Metro is so far removed from reality that we don't believe they know what they're doing and they are no longer welcome in our restaurants. `Balls' to them.

The advert is not the first time a restaurant has hit out at what it considered unfair reviews.

Last year, a New York restaurateur paid $US80,000 ($NZ101,342.79) for a full page advert in the New York Times to defend its steakhouse against famous newspaper critic Frank Bruni, who had given it a zero star rating.

The list of Auckland's top 50 restaurants can be found at http://www.metrolive.co.nz.

- NZPA