Turkish salt sprinkler vows to restrain himself on future visits to Boston

... "famous for being famous."

they're both very good-looking as professional chefs go, with the caveat that Todd used to be a great conceiver and executor of astonishing, inventive, over-the-top pile-ups of Mediterranean flavors, an indie entrepreneur who actually manned the stove at a couple of his own terrific restaurants before he sold out.

I don't think Gökçe has a whiff of that: he's purely a hollow Instagram-meme phenomenon, a steakhouse line cook with great abs and expensive PR, cannily exploiting the ridiculous, tasteless Veblen-good crowd. (To be fair, he might be a genuinely skilled butcher.)

The original Olives was my favorite restaurant in Boston in its heyday. I was heartbroken to see Todd crater as an artisan once he started reaching for the brass ring: it was like seeing a beloved obscure punk band suddenly whoring for Michelob. He deserves credit for mentoring young chefs like Barbara Lynch, Tiffani Faison and Michael Serpa who turned out to be brilliant restaurateurs, a positive influence that still echoes throughout our scene. And I don't blame him for chasing fame and riches. He made bank in a very tough business. But the way he did it is damnable.

Like Gökçe, he is a shit-heel of a businessman, among similar sins a wage thief. Todd has routinely fucked over his employees, contractors, vendors and landlords every time one of his ventures goes belly-up, yet he always manages, Trump-like, to escape a single consequence of his failures, always damaging the little people.

I haven't thought about English in years -- he ran out of gullible creditors in Boston long ago, had to flee here except for one not-terrible spot at Logan -- but my 2009 piece about his Faustian-bargain success still holds up, I think. And I didn't even mention the many local women I know inside the industry and out who were abused by his heartless-fuckboy habits.

When you live for the art of chefs doing beautiful food driven by passion and talent and grinding toil, it stings the heart to see a former hero devolving into shameless hucksterism of glamour-tinged mediocrity. English's lasting legacy might be that he helped pave the way for glittery, empty, social-media-driven charlatans like Salt Bae.

Too bad it's a fallen world.

the author of "everything I need to know I learned in Kindergarten," a key principle is "put things back the way you found them."

In this case, what that means is that if the problem is wholly created by the restaurant; if the problem would not exist if the restaurant was not there, then, yeah, I'd like to see the restaurant dealing with the problem rather than having the police deal with it at the taxpayer's expense.