NEW YORK — Following The New York Times’ merciless takedown of celebrity chef Guy Fieri’s new Times Square mega-restaurant, “Guy’s American Kitchen and Bar,” in which food critic Pete Wells asks the celebrity chef a series of increasingly condescending rhetorical questions (“Were you struck by how far from awesome the Awesome Pretzel Tenders are?”) Fieri has fired back, penning a surprisingly coherent op-ed on the decline of modern print journalism.

Fieri, whose credits include hosting Food Network’s “Diners Drive-Ins and Dives,” looking generally douchey, and inexplicably co-authoring a cookbook with ’90s buzz rockers Smash Mouth and former Pittsburg Steelers running back Jerome Bettis, calls out the Times for what he perceives to be a “slip in standards from a newspaper once viewed as a bastion of journalistic integrity.”

Fieri goes on to write, “Wells’ review reeks of a desperate attempt to remain relevant in a media landscape increasingly dominated by infotainment websites such as Buzzfeed and Gawker.” Later Fieri adds, “And anyway, Pete Wells couldn’t find Flavor Town if I gave him a map and double-kicked him in the right direction, Donkey-Sauce style! Did he even try our Sweet & Sticky Ain’t No Thing Butta Chicken Wings? I say no way, brosay!”