Chicago Rib Shack

Press Reviews (6)

• Jay Rayner (28th July 2008)
  
  No hanging around for the critic’s overview on this relaunched institution: “[T]he Chicago Rib Shack stinks… It's a waste of ribs, an insult to pigs and cattle. It's a sauce crime, and it's taking place right in the heart of Knightsbridge. Call the food police. Now!”
• AA Gill (23rd June 2008)
  1/5 stars
  
  Like most reviewers to date, the critic really doesn’t like the relaunch of this Knightsbridge institution, or its “congealing and collapsing incinerated animal bits”. In response to a cheery query from the manager about the forthcoming review, he “smiled the smile of the apocalypse”. (How divine is that?) “No, it won’t be that bad, sonny. It’ll be on a whole new level of bad. This is bad from a bad place where the bad people live. This is a glutinously awful pig-swamp bad, out all on its own in the badlands. This is, to put it simply, just so you don’t forget, terribly bad food. And it’s terribly bad food from the bad past.”
• Richard Vines (5th June 2008)
  1/4 stars
  
  A nicely factual review of the relaunch of this self-promoting Knightsbridge legend, where the critic has one meal that was “terrible…, worse than you might expect in a suburban U.S. mall or a highway rest stop”, and another that was “OK”.
• Marina O'Loughlin (29th May 2008)
  1/5 stars
  
  “Never underestimate the power of public relations.”, says the critic. “Here we are in The Chicago Rib Shack, which, as far as I have seen, has so far only garnered reviews spitting with vitriol, yet it's absolutely packed.” (All to do with a “viral marketing campaign”, organised by an outfit called the Cowan Group, apparently.) The other reviews were right, however, as the food is “almost uniformly ghastly”. “Everywhere”, she continues, “there's something to make you shudder… It's like the previous decade never happened, culinarily or culturally”. Sounds as if it was like shooting fish in a barrel, but a very amusing review nonetheless.
• David Sexton (21st May 2008)
  0/5 stars
  
  In the spirit of the oncoming Eurovision contest, a rare ‘nul points’ from the Standard’s number two critic for this recent reincarnation, on a new site, of a self-explanatory Knightsbridge joint which was at its peak in the ’80s. He finds a place which “tries hard to be cute”, where service is “cheery to the point of desperation”, where the food ranges from “astoundingly gross” or “alarmingly industrial”. “What would the total calorie count each have been, had we eaten everything we were brought?”, he wonders. “Enough for several days, perhaps. Maybe for several people for several days. As it was, we left quite hungry.”
• Jan Moir (1st May 2008)
  
  Ms Moir – who is even keener on being first with the news than Ms Maschler nowadays – gives the reader loads of background on the relaunch, after a ten year absence, of the Knightsbridge ‘Shack’. As to its new incarnation, she found “something lacklustre about the… décor”, and the food was “filthy”.