Post Food Critic Still Eating Heartily

Did you hear that the Post-Dispatch fired its restaurant critic – Joe Bonwich – Friday? So did we.

"It was my Mark Twain moment," says Bonwich, who is definitely still eating and drinking on the daily's dime.

Bonwich tells Riverfront Times he chose a most inopportune time Friday to go hunting for some organic vodka. Bonwich walked out of 900 North Tucker mid-morning, alongside several people who’d been laid off and escorted out – right when Mike Owens, investigative reporter at NewsChannel 5 (KSDK-TV), was gathering material about the Post’s lay-offs for an evening news story.

Bonwich had no idea he was rumored to have been axed until that evening.

"A little before five, I was driving home and my phone exploded," recounts Bonwich. "I had six or seven phone calls in a row, one from the woman I work for, Judy Evans, and who said, 'KSDK is reporting that you got laid off.'

I called [Owens] up when I got home and he’d already retracted it by then, and was exceptionally apologetic.

"I bear totally no ill will toward Mike," Bonwich adds.

Asked how he liked that organic vodka anyway, Bonwich laments, "I haven’t tasted it yet."

Apparently nobody in town carries it.

-Kristen Hinman