The best part of today's profile of David Chang in the Times isn't that the reporter notices Pearl Jam playing on the stereo (no big deal, I have a limited edition of Ten!) or the news (unconfirmed) that Chang will be opening a Vegas Momofuku. No, the best part comes from Chang himself. Apropros entrepreneurs, Chang asserts that restaurateur "Jeffrey Chodorow is the antichrist." A quick marshaling of the evidence proves that Chang is factually correct.

A whorl of unanswerable questions have been encircling the hardbody of New York Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni. Keith McNally accused him of lady-hating. Phallic restaurateur Jeffrey Chodorow accused him of pettiness. Now The Observer's Chris Shott accuses him of influence. Shott claims restaurants live or die by the Bruni review, a charge which Bruni accurately denies.

When Jeffrey Chodorow stopped by our table at his newly opened Wild Salmon, he proudly pointed heavenly to the shoal of golden salmon swimming, as noted, semenly upstream on the ceiling. Choad, like a proud father, told us the fishes were injection-molded copper. His eyes shining under the reflection of 249 fish, Chodorow confessed the fish had cost more than Kobe Club's Damocles-like swords. So imagine our sense of betrayal when we read the Choad has "assured" New York's Gael Greene that "They're plastic, so you can't possibly be killed if one falls on your head." Well, which is it, Chodorow? A quick call to the restaurant confirms our worst fears. The fish are extruded plastic finished in metallic copper. But there's more perfidy than we thought. After four hours of calling nearly every medical examiner on the Eastern seaboard, we're pretty sure a four pound fish falling 22 ft would indeed kill somebody. So, j'accuse, Chodorow. You SO CAN possibly be killed.

In the same cavernous space that held the inappropriately named English is Italian (turns out English is the New Failure), Jeffrey Chodorow's newest restaurant Wild Salmon opens to the public today, Good Friday. Last night, So-So Thursday, we tried it out. It seems to be a Chodorow signature these days to have weird whatnots hanging from the ceiling. Instead of Kobe Club's swords, Wild Salmon features a school of 249 copper injection-mold salmon hanging by fishing line from the ceiling. Caught in the wild race upstream, the mildly abstracted fish bring to mind gilded spermatazoa. One is surprised not to find a giant ovum on one end of the restaurant.

Restaurateur Jeffrey Chodorow and Times food critic Frank Bruni have mad cow beef. Think of it as Suge Knight v. P. Diddy without guns or any sort of street cred. Ever since Bruni flayed Choad's Kobe Club, the two have been in a cat fight—well, mostly it's been Choad on Brundle, with the latter disdaining the former. But Chodorow is opening up Wild Salmon on April 6th, the latest avatar in the space where English is Italian died the death of a thousand cuts. There's a new (unheard of) chef from Seattle, Charles Ramseyer—and a chance for the feud to dissolve! On the other hand, there's the chance for it to escalate, something we would love to see. Bruni has three options: love it, hate it, ignore it. Each action has its own opposite and not at all equal reaction. Here's our quick flow chart explaining.

Today's Dining section of the Times stars food critic Frank Bruni's review of room service during a week spent in hotels. There are questions, and there are answers. There are answers that look like questions. There are also significant references to Bruni-hating chef Jeffrey Chodorow, which remind us that the chef is implicated in the McNally-Gansevoort Meatpacking wars. We retreated into the warm confusion of a group IM chat to get to the bottom of it all.

You know, it's only been a week since his vow to destroy Frank Bruni, but restaurateur Jeffrey Chodorow has already proven that he can blog like the pros.

In covering the recent Jeffrey Chodorow-Frank Bruni feud, The New Yorker's Lauren Collins reported that "Chodorow said that his next restaurant will have a Pacific Northwest theme, and added that he was offering a trip to Seattle to any employee who blocks Bruni from its premises." Today's Post ups the ante, as Braden Keil quotes the disgruntled restaurateur:"I'm telling my staff that the first person to recognize Bruni at any of my restaurants will be given a free trip for two to the Caribbean." Whether this change of prize is a result of confused reporting or merely bluster on Chodorow's part (calls to all parties involved were unmade as of our post time) we look forward to the inevitable moment when Jeffrey declares that "I will buy a villa in Tuscany for the first person who brings me Frank Bruni's giant midsection on a platter."

• Steven Johnson deconstructs David Brooks' insane, insane, insane Sunday Times column on hipster parents. (Insane!) He thinks Brooks has never listened to Sufjan Stevens. [StevenBerlinJohnson]
  

• Who will succeed Bill Keller as Times executive editor: Jill Abramson or Dean Baquet? Get set for the inevitable Hillary-Obama comparisons. Either way, oddly, the real job worth having seven years from now will be digital fella Jon Landman's. [WWD]
  

• The beef (sorry) between Jeffrey Chodorow and the NYT's Frank Bruni claims another victim, and gets even weirder. [Eater]
  

Two weeks ago Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni reviewed Kobe Club, the newest highly-contrived chowhouse from restaurateur/felon/Rocco DiSpirito co-star Jeffrey Chodorow. The Brunster did not find favor with the place, granting it zero stars and noting that "it presents too many insipid or insulting dishes at prices that draw blood from anyone without a trust fund or an expense account." Today Chodorow strikes back, taking out a full-page ad in the back of the Dining section (click to enlarge) that rambles on in crazy-person tiny type about how Bruni is out to get him and ends with this inevitable warning:

The supercool dudes at UrbanDaddy, who totally get just as much play now as they did in their Psi Upsilon days — you better believe it, bra! —hipped us to the opening of a new restaurant from noted felon/reality show character Jeffrey Chodorow. Like many things that UrbanDaddy hips us to, it's kind of a perfect storm of bankery douche clich s. Checklist: