Trump lashes out at Vanity Fair after review says Trump Grill 'could be the worst restaurant in America'
"Has anyone looked at the really poor numbers of @VanityFair Magazine. Way down, big trouble, dead! Graydon Carter, no talent, will be out!" Trump wrote on Twitter, referring to the magazine's longtime editor.
On Wednesday, Vanity Fair reporter Tina Nguyen, a political reporter whose coverage of Trump has skewed overwhelmingly negative, published a scathing review of Trump Grill.
Save the employees, no element of Trump Grill was spared, from the food to the decor to the inconsistent spelling of the restaurant itself (at different times referred to as "Trump Grill" and "Trump Grille").
Nguyen wrote that the food "tastes like an M.S.G.-flavored kitchen sponge lodged between two other sponges." The bathroom, she said, mimics "the experience of desperately searching for toilet paper at a Venezuelan grocery store."
The review said the cocktails "seemed to be concocted by a college freshman experimenting in their dorm room," while the steak was "overcooked and mealy, with an ugly strain of pure fat," and "slumped to the side over the potatoes like a dead body inside a T-boned minivan."
Despite the brutal critique, Nguyen is hardly the first to skewer the food at Trump Grill.
Earlier this year, Eater found food at the restaurant was "chronically afraid to take chances, food for timid people with digestive problems." New York magazine said "countless restaurants trump this spot." And restaurant reviewers at the Wall Street Journal apologized to the cows that were slaughtered to produce the cheeseburger and steak sandwich at Trump tower.
For his part, Trump has a long history of criticism of Carter. He famously needled Trump while serving as the editor of the now-defunct Spy magazine, referring to Trump as a "short-fingered vulgarian" and mocking his penchant for ostentatious displays of wealth and status.
"To this day, I receive the occasional envelope from Trump," Carter wrote last year. "There is always a photo of him-generally a tear sheet from a magazine. On all of them he has circled his hand in gold Sharpie in a valiant effort to highlight the length of his fingers.
"I almost feel sorry for the poor fellow because, to me, the fingers still look abnormally stubby."
Vanity Fair didn't respond to a request for comment on Trump's tweet.