Houston Restaurant Critic Alison Cook: “I’ve Been Banned from a Restaurant”

“Well, it’s finally happened,” writes long-time Houston Chronicle restaurant critic Alison Cook on the Web site www.29-95.com.

Liberty Kitchen, the new oyster-bar-and-local-beer joint that opened this week on Studewood in the Heights, has my name emblazoned on its door, captured inside a red circle with a slash through it.

I guess that means I’m not welcome.

In the comments section, Cook writes, “A friend Tweeted a photo from her camera phone and cc’d me on it. Have yet to see it with my own eyes.”

This isn’t the first time a resto critic has been banned from his or her beat. It’s even happened in Dallas, though not in such a public manner (my former editor and dining critic at the Dallas Morning News once told me she was blacklisted from any restaurant owned by a Dallas restaurateur).

But Cook,one of the best reads in the business, concludes her column thusly:  “And if the whole thing is just a sly publicity stunt to draw some attention to a new venture, I tip my hat.”