Saturday, February 5, 2011

Hamptons Restauranteur Gets Ugly With Commenters


Our favorite, clueless, and harmfully unhinged restaurant owner Bruce Buschel is currently engaged in a cyber-smackdown with commenters on his New York Times blog "You're the Boss: the art of running a small business."

Buschel is a recovered writer, editor, filmmaker, and whatever else draws him attention. We're still waiting for him to release his own fragrance: Eu de Poorly Run Restaurant. He owns "Southfork Kitchen," a fish-house located on what is locally referred to as the Bridgehampton Turnpike: a double-yellow stretch of highway that bypasses all the cops and the need for safe driving. His restaurant doesn't need a menu-change: it needs an overpass!

Anyway, since he opened his fish-house, (local fish only, so we hope you like Ling and Porgies) he's had the unique luxury of blogging about it in the NYT (he even had the gall to review his own restaurant!) He's an absolutely perfect specimen for the Hamptons. Except...his blog posts are kind of obnoxious. And his ideas on how to run a restaurant are kind of um...idiotic. His commenters think so, and this week Bruce decided he'd had enough, and got cunty with em'.

Exhibit A:
Dear Wasting time,
I see how you earned your name. We had 60 people coming for dinner and six staffers protesting. You would have called the guests? People get hurt on the ski slopes. You would close them down?

Exhibit B:
Our first general manager left after four months of work, one month after we opened to the public. The current manager has been with us from the git-go. Thanks for paying attention. No, really, thanks.

And:
If people put their passion and time and money into a project, who determines if it’s a hobby or a business? I have an idea that might please you: Stop reading.

Ooh, burn. So we're trying to decipher Buschel's tack here. Either he has no concept that bitching out commenters on his blog is sort of a bad PR strategy for his restaurant, OR...he's trying to channel the success of McSorley's Ale House on 7th street, which is famous not only for its microbrew of the same name, but for its notoriously cranky bar staff. Either way, he has learned one effective strategy for running a Hamptons restaurant in January/February. Close down.

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