Well at least you don’t take issue with my desire to avoid vegetables.

As for Mario Batali, I am sure he is a great chef and the pizza from Mozza was really good. It did score an 8.5 on my overall scale.

I’m sure authenticity was what the restaurant was going for in writing the menu, but since the average American can’t understand Italian, it would be pretty nice to see an explanation of such ingredients. Am I expected to ask the waiter about every menu item? If they were really trying to be authentic, they probably wouldn’t have had Hispanic cooks out there in the open for everyone to see (which I actually liked since most restaurants hide such people in the back kitchen to try to give a false illusion of authenticity).

As for hype, while it doesn’t change presentation or flavor, it does change overall impressions. If you are told that a place has the best pizza in LA, you are going to expect to be blown away. I think hype is terrible and would love to avoid it, but when expectations aren’t met, it will affect your overall opinion of an experience. This goes for everything, not just eating.

Finally, I am a HUGE fan of this sentence: “Glossing over several of terribly written sentences about the consistency of sauce, the idea that it’s the restaurants fault for being hyped is absurd.”

Don’t you mean “…several of your sentences…” and “…restaurant‘s…”?

Please double-check your writing before critiquing mine.

You shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss “Top Chef” and “The Food Network”, maybe you’ll learn enough to not have an entire post boiled down to “I’m ignorant to 98% of the culinary world.”