PaellaCoincidentally (?), both Willamette Week and The Oregonian came out with a review of the Spanish tapas restaurant Toro Bravo this week. I can’t remember a week where I’ve had so many letters and phone calls about two divergent reviews. 100% of them have been negative towards the Oregonian version, with comments along the lines of “Karen Brooks doesn’t know anything about Spanish cuisine”, “she just doesn’t get the restaurant”, and here pretentious writing: “house pampered meat,” “deep chew,” “pristine, lusty and lip-smacking,” and “I’ve done some glorious crunching here”. Shudder
I’m not going to draw any conclusions here. I don’t buy the talk that The Oregonian rushed out a badly written review in an attempt to embarrass Willamette Week for their choice for restaurant of the year. Instead, I’m just going to link to them for you to read, and will say they both make some good points, but overall, I agree with Willamette Week.
Oregonian review [no longer on the web]
Nancy Rommelmann says
Here’s WW’s, Dude:
http://www.wweek.com/editorial/3349/9698/
themick says
I am a huge fan of Toro Bravo and I do not think the O’s review is a bad review for the restaurant. In fact I think it is one of the most spot-on reviews that Karen Brooks has ever written. She gushes where appropriate yet almost all of the negativity in the review has substance. The only argument I would pick with Ms. Brooks is about the size of the menu…..It is because of the size (insert joke here) that I keep going back, and the few misses on the menu that she alludes to I have learned to stay away from, still leaving me enough (really) good dishes to choose from.