“Having Frank Bruni in your restaurant is one of the most nerve-wracking experiences you could have as a cook.”
—Seamus Mullen, chef-owner of Boqueria

ABC News has a big profile on Frank Bruni, the New York Times restaurant critic who for the last five years, “has been, arguably, the single most powerful man in New York’s big-money restaurant business.” Today, Bruni filed his last review for the Times. (Next he’s taking on a staff writer job with the New York Times Magazine.) He has inspired fear in many a cook and restaurant owner but he had to overcome his own fear of food as someone who fought obesity as a child and adult.

“I remember Mom bought [the Atkins book] in hardcover, so this was serious stuff,” Bruni said. “And I remember leafing through it and learning about ketones and ketosis and, you know, having no idea what that meant—I was 8 years old—but I thought, ‘Ooh, that’s profound stuff. If I can get into this ketosis thing, I’ll be home free.’”

He wasn’t home free—not for years. Giant weight swings followed Bruni through high school, college and in his career as a successful political reporter for The New York Times. He tried fasting, he suffered from sleep-eating, he toyed with every diet under the sun.

In 1999, Bruni covered George W. Bush’s first presidential campaign. He remembers it as a time of professional accomplishment and dietary failure.

“I mean, I knew I was big,” replied Bruni. “I was marching to the Gap store to trade my size 40 chinos for size 42 chinos. I was doing that, but on another level, because you have to get up the next day and keep going forward and not be capsized by it, you tell yourself, well maybe my face doesn’t look that heavy. Maybe it doesn’t show as much as the size 42 pants suggest it does. You tell yourself a bunch of interesting lies to get from one day to the next.”

He’s down to 190 lbs these days from an estimated peak of 275 but he’ll always be considered a heavyweight, at least in terms of being a critic. Stephen Starr, the top New York City restaurateur behind Morimoto and Buddakan, says, “Frank Bruni is the smartest, handsomest, most wonderful human being in the world. I have to say that. I am still afraid he is going to come get me.”

Join Bruni at 92Y on Nov 1 when he sits down with Mike Colameco to discuss what a New York City eatery needs to be successful today.

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