Top restaurant critic sparks outrage after writing a zero-star review of progressive fast food restaurant

"This composite of ground meat is mysteriously bland and almost unimaginably dry," he wrote

One of LocoL's 'burgs' (Audrey Ma)

As far as pieces of journalism go, restaurant reviews are usually some of the least controversial and rarely provoke strong reactions.

A recent review by The New York Times, however, has bucked the trend and sparked outrage across the internet.

NYT restaurant critic Pete Wells wrote a scathing zero-star review of one branch of LocoL in California and has received a backlash as a result - some people have even canceled their subscriptions to the paper.

Part of the reason people have responded so strongly is that LocoL is a restaurant with honourable intentions - the idea behind the mini-chain is to offer good quality, healthy food at affordable prices to some of the poorest, most neglected neighbourhoods of the US.

But Wells is used to reviewing fine-dining establishments, and he was not impressed.

He slammed both the service and the menu, claiming what he ate tasted “like hospital food.”

The biggest offender for Wells was the chicken: “LocoL’s chicken is an amalgam of chicken bits invisibly bound together.

“Inside a thin sheath of fried coating, this composite of ground meat is mysteriously bland and almost unimaginably dry,” he wrote.

It’s not all negative though, and the critic does commend LocoL’s wider mission, but that didn’t stop the furious reaction the review provoked.

Fans of the restaurant jumped to LocoL’s defence, arguing the critic had been unnecessarily harsh.

“Lovely takedown piece on a small company genuinely trying to make underserved communities better through food, innovation and employment,” commented one person on Facebook.

Another claimed that the restaurant was an example of west coast food scene being “too innovative for the suits on the east coast.”

But LocoL chef Roy Choi managed to take the high road, writing a lengthy response to Wells’ review on his Instagram account: “I welcome Pete's review. It tells me a lot more about the path. I don't know Pete but he is now inextricably linked to LocoL forever,” he said.

After his barrage of criticism, Wells tweeted this:

Perhaps it was a case of the wrong critic for the wrong restaurant.