Juiciest Beef in Town

He also wrote: "Although Kobe Club does right by the fabled flesh for which it's named, it presents too many insipid or insulting dishes at prices that draw blood from anyone without a trust fund or an expense account."

Chodorow, interviewed during dinner at the Kobe Club, takes issue with the idea that his restaurant, which serves a $290 steak, is overpriced. Expensive, yes. But not overpriced. He said he's already working on deals to replicate the place in Miami and Los Angeles.

And Kobe rib-eye steak. Striped with pink in the center and a dot of red at the core, with a crispy, salty layer on the outside, the beef indeed proves "rapturous," as Bruni conceded.

No question, Kobe Club has its fans. On a recent Tuesday night they included a midtown finance crowd of baby-faced expense-account boys, and older men with younger women; on weekends, the clientele is 99 percent New Jersey, said General Manager Philipp Posch.

"I love this place -- I go to the best restaurants all the time," said Robert Rosenberg, a Manhattan real estate investor. "I have money," he added, opening his wallet to show off his black American Express card.

Critics of Times critics have delivered their message in advertising before. In 1990, for example, the Broadway producer David Merrick took out a full-page ad in the Times against theater critic Frank Rich and columnist Alex Witchel. And the food section of the Times has been a favorite venue for debate. A Chinese restaurant once took out a full-page ad asserting that Times critic Mimi Sheraton, who reviewed the place, had never eaten there. The high-end market Zabar's placed a smaller ad objecting to Marion Burros's evaluation of its caviar. And the Italian restaurant Patsy's placed an ad, paid for in part by Frank Sinatra, rebutting reviewer Bryan Miller's claim that the celebrities in photographs on the wall had never visited the restaurant.

In fact, the power of a New York Times review often dwarfs all others -- so much so that Adam Platt, a food critic at New York magazine, asked on his blog why his own negative review got barely a mention in Chodorow's screed. Nor was the poor review from the New York Post mentioned by the owner. Instead, he cited three positive reviews since the place opened in December.

On Wednesday, the Times' Dining Out section seemed to take a swipe back when it ran a story about restaurateurs who threaten libel suits after negative reviews.

And Bruni still had the last word -- at least for now. After the Chodorow ad, Bruni surprisingly awarded a star to a steakhouse in a strip club, the Penthouse Executive Club. He says the timing was coincidental, but it couldn't have been a more perfect riposte. He seemed to be saying to Chodorow: You may be vulgar, but vulgarity's not the problem. It's your food.

Staff writer David Segal contributed to this report.