Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Cracking the Codes - Further Thoughts

There was a further thought on the issue of blogger ethics codes which I was going to include in my initial post on the subject, but decided not to. Coincidentally, it just happened to present itself again today. The question is whether this is just a blogger issue, or whether (as I think most people assume) print journalists are adhering to the standards described in these codes, and whether it's legitimate to expect them to.

Word out of Chicago is that Esquire restaurant writer John Mariani is making the rounds. Indeed, somehow it's common knowledge (to MenuPages Chicago, at least) where he's dining before he even arrives. MP Chicago gives a link that may help explain its Nostradamus-like ability to foretell the future, a story from a few years ago indicating that Mariani had sent a four-page list of requests to a restaurant he was about to visit, including requests to be comped for "everything from cab fare to his hotel bill." A later story in the L.A. Times took Mariani to task for non-disclosure of non-anonymous, comped meals.

Mariani still is apparently far from inconspicious. Here's something of a play-by-play of his current Chicago visit:








Not exactly the best example of following the American Food Journalists' Critics' Guidelines. But my point here is not to single out John Mariani. Though this may be a somewhat extreme example, it seems that often these rules can be honored more in the breach than in the observance even by "professional" journalists. Read this Wall Street Journal story on the Miami satellite restaurants of Scott Conant's Scarpetta and Alfred Portale's Gotham Steak in the Fontainebleau Resort and tell me if you think there's any chance the author paid more than one visit to either restaurant. Admittedly it's a bit of a fluff piece, and the writer did have the good sense to venture beyond the NY outposts and pay a visit to local product Michy's, so I'm not all that troubled (though it is curious that the local consensus seems to be that Scarpetta's getting it right and Gotham's got issues, and the writer had it contrariwise). This local review of a newly opened Italian restaurant, I Corsini, although it makes parenthetical mention of a second visit (in which the only dish described is referred to as "perfectly cooked" and "savory"), takes so much joy in describing the service and kitchen snafus from the first visit that it's completely lost in the shuffle. Was the service equally abysmal on the second visit? Is it fair to judge a restaurant based on "one appetizer, one pasta, two entrees, and one dessert"? Maybe so. Additional comments on the place seem to indicate the review was pretty much on target.

Particularly with newspapers cutting back on budgets and facing increasing competition from online media, it may be unrealistic to expect all of these rules to be honored by the traditional media outlets as well. Which really matter, and which can be compromised? The funny thing is, if I read enough of their work, it's always been pretty easy for me to figure out the reviewers I trust.

Cracking the Codes

A couple weeks ago, a proposed "Food Blog Code of Ethics," followed shortly by some Reviewers' Guidelines from the same site, got quite a bit of play. Much of it is actually duplicative of what's in the Association of Food Journalists' Food Critic's Guidelines, though perhaps a "lite" version. Being a conscientious type, I spent a good bit of time thinking these things over. There are some good if not particularly revolutionary ideas in there - be accountable; be civil; reveal biases and comps; don't plagiarize; be fair to new restaurants. There are some others that may not work for every situation - don't post anonymously;[1] try to visit more than once before posting;[2] wait at least a month before reviewing a place.

Caught somewhat asleep at the switch, eGullet chimed in several days later with the assertion that they'd actually been hard at work on this for years, linking back to a thread from late 2007 which started with the prospect of a "list of guidelines" for posters, and quickly degenerated into a classic example of the meta-discussion to which the intertubes are prone, fading off into oblivion (with no guidelines) more than a year ago. The proposed eGullet code which emerged a week ago is not too dissimilar, though with more of a focus on site maintenance issues and less on aping the AFJ's guidelines. Meanwhile, the eGullet proposal prompted this rather pointed and ad hominem response from another website.

After much deliberation, I'm staying out of the fray. I operate by some simple rules:
  • Be honest.
  • Don't be a douche.

If that's a "code," then so be it.

[1]This would appear to be a fairly loose rule, given this exception: "Even if we choose to write anonymously for our own personal or professional safety, we will not post anything that we wouldn’t feel comfortable putting our name on and owning up to." I'm good with that.

[2]Again, this one seems to have been softened from the initial draft, now acknowledging "We realize that this is an ideal. Some people are writing about restaurants that they go to in their travels, and most of us don’t have the money to go to places more than once (and find it especially hard to cough up the extra dough if a place stinks the first time we go). If you only go to a restaurant once, just say so."



Wednesday, May 6, 2009

How to Win Friends and Influence People

While it's nice to hear that chef Jason Hall of Eos, the new Michael Psilakis / Donatella Arpaia venture in the Viceroy Hotel in Miami, is excited over some funky Sardinian goat cheese aged in a suckling goat's stomach that they're putting on the menu, locals may be less pleased to hear his thoughts on Miami:

I don’t really like Miami that much. It’s OK to visit for SOBE but I want to get back to New York.

Well, thanks for visiting anyway. Not exactly the kind of stuff that disabuses me of my perception on the influx of out-of-town chefs to Miami.

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Bad Science or Bad Cooking?

Several days ago a rather snarky review, "When Bad Science Meets Good Food," of a Buenos Aires restaurant, La Vineria de Gualterio Bolivar, appeared on the Atlantic Food Channel website. La Vineria's chef, Alejandro Dijilio, is one of the ever-increasing number of chefs who have a stage at El Bulli on their resume and have gone out to colonize the world with their own versions of contemporary cooking (or, as it's more frequently, if inaccurately, called, "molecular gastronomy"). I've not been to the restaurant, so I can't say whether the food is good, bad or indifferent. But what I found objectionable was the tone of the review, which seemed to criticize not so much the food, or the execution, but rather the entire genre of "molecular gastronomy," as if it - and not bad cooking - were to blame for a dissatisfying meal.

Indeed, the review starts off:
Behold, the Molecular Gastronomist! Marvel as he whips, gels, foams, and deconstructs your food, much as he would his own hair. Admire his sullen expression as he leans over, tweezers in hand, to artfully apply grains of black pepper and dehydrated orange peel to your spoonful of Jellied Olive Oil and White Truffle Powder. And soldier on when you realize that all you are eating, really, is a slightly-gelatinous bit of olive oil, whose concentration mutes all the other flavors around it, and reminds you of forced dosages of cough medicine as a child.
After much more of the same snarkiness (in which the chef is dubbed "McG", the author claims that "every McG must have at least fourteen thousand courses on their menu," etc.), the author concludes with a question:
Why can't more chefs just serve food that is simply comforting, and comfortingly simple? Not all of you are meant to paint a canvas on the plate.
To which I responded with a question of my own:

Why is this about "molecular gastronomy" and not about bad cooking? There are plenty of lousy restaurants making "traditional" food, but the reaction when someone experiences one is not "Why aren't they using an immersion circulator and a pacojet?"

Bad execution is just that, and there is no culinary genre that is immune to it. The lesson, if there is one, is that a stage at El Bulli (or any other highly regarded restaurant) does not of itself make someone a great chef - a lesson I've seen demonstrated several times.

The author has now responded, and perhaps we're not so far off after all. He now says:

What concerns me is chefs diving into "molecular gastronomy" and ignoring what they do well. I have nothing against the movement. ... But there is a fad as well, a bandwagon of McGs, and it is unfortunate to see a good chef hop on it without seeming to realize where he's going.
No doubt, contemporary techniques and ingredients will not improve a chef that doesn't have solid fundamentals. In addition, a chef without a clear vision, and the talent to realize it, will rarely create a great meal regardless of the genre in which they choose to operate. But I think it's crucial to distinguish these individual failures from the genre itself. If I have a bad bowl of pasta, I don't castigate the entire body of Italian cuisine. And if I have a bad meal from someone working in the arena of "molecular gastronomy" - it's just bad cooking.