It isn't journalism: it's opinion.
It's in the Food section [0], and tagged with "Critic's Notebook" anywhere the article is linked. That apparently being one of their blog / opinion lines for food.
It doesn't seem fair to look at modern news conglomerates (which typically combine news and opinion) and complain that the non-news content bismirches the journalism.
That content typically funds the journalism, and is the only reason the latter still exists.
A fair shot would be saying "I do not feel like this article is appropriately declared as opinion." Which, maybe. But I think that's debatable, and the NYT certainly differentiates a helluva lot better than Fox News and MSNBC.