Some of Todd English‘s Boston brethren think the celebrity chef is full of stale air.
After articles in Boston magazine branded English a “tourist-feeding hack” and “half the chef he used to be,” two of his pals and his former publicist wrote a strongly worded letter defending him and asked fellow top toques to put their names to it. But most wouldn’t lift a pen to help, sources say.
“All this is contrived phony baloney,” said one chef who was asked to sign. “It’s such a joke. Todd’s supporters are probably saying, ‘Everyone’s running to his defense!’ But it’s all orchestrated. They were calling all of us, asking us to sign. He’s lost his focus. We used to like him. But why would you stand up for him?”
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A draft of the letter seen by Page Six reads: “The personal attack against our friend and colleague . . . was unwarranted . . . he brought us gourmet pizza before there was such a thing, delicious Mediterranean fare, a Latin-inspired restaurant before the boom . . . and a fun cupcake shop.” It signed off, “Sincerely, Boston’s Restaurant Industry.”
But few chefs responded, and a more recent version of the letter was downgraded to “Friends of Todd English” — signed by two of its authors and just three others.
English launched his empire in Boston in 1989 before expanding to New York — where he has Olives and the Food Hall at the Plaza Hotel — LA, Las Vegas, airports, cruise ships and casinos. Two of his places here, English Is Italian and Libertine, flopped, and his new Ember Room has been torched by critics.
Boston magazine sniffed, “Lately you’ve been making yourself a laughingstock. You appear in ads for Michelob . . . you claim you got clocked in the eye by a wristwatch-wielding fiancée . . . you get caught ‘sucking serious face’ by Page Six . . . and host Miss Universe pageant contestants in Las Vegas.”
A rep for English said, “We had nothing to do with [the letter].” She added that the articles were “disappointing” and that “Todd has thanked his friends and colleagues and patrons that have supported him.”
But, as another chef who was asked to sign the letter told us, “you live by the knife, you die by the knife.”