The New York Times Goes to Bistrot Ha's and Delivers a Very Bush v. Gore Result

I’m back to hammer The New York Times Dining Section with my extremely biased personal opinion.

I’ve been to Bistrot Ha’s and I’m friends with Chef Anthony. I think he’s great. Loved Ha’s Snack Bar, Bistrot Ha’s, as well as his turn as Ned in Spider Man.

For the last two years, Anthony and Sadie, the Chefs at Ha’s Snack Bar and Bistrot have captured the imagination of downtown Chefs, diners, etc. It’s emblematic of the New York Dining Scene at this particular moment and its undeniably an important restaurant whether you like it or not.

The New York Times awarded them 2 Stars, which I feel is on point in regard to my personal visits. In many ways, this review is reminiscent of the 2015 Mission Chinese review that Pete Wells wrote when Danny moved to East Broadway.

While Pete Wells is my favorite food critic of all-time, he couldn’t help sitting from his perch at the Times and say shit like: “At its new address on East Broadway, there is a host behind a lectern instead of a dude handing out plastic cups near the beer keg.”

For someone to get a job at the Times is it a prerequisite that you’ve never been to a good party or were just regular at some point in your life? Were you always a Zabar’s Tote Carrying intellectual with hot sauce and a West 70th Street Therapist? Are you denied employment if you’ve been to a keg party? Or do you just need to act like you never crossed paths with collegiate culture because that would associate you with white people from state colleges you absolutely must separate yourself from?

You catch the same gristle in Ligaya’s review of Bistrot Ha’s: “Sometimes messiness is a price you’re willing to pay for some of the most thrilling food in town.”

The funny thing about the writers at this paper is that if someone presented it as “wabi sabi” they’d understand it, but when it’s vulnerable, authentic, or perhaps human, it is viewed as “messy”.

There’s nothing messy about Ha’s Snack Bar or Bistrot Ha’s; it’s just another world.