This Ain't A Foodie Scene, It's A Goddamn Arms Race

Back in high school I had a teacher who was one of those earnest educators who — I think (at least in retrospect I think this) — tried to cultivate a student's intrinsic desire to learn by sharing all the special wonderful things in his world that made life the wonderful journey of exploration that it was for him. He played hacky sack with kids before school, let us listen to his favorite mid-1980s college rock before class, told us stories about his children and shared pictures of places he liked to hike to.

One spot he liked to hike to was his favorite place in the entire world, something he simply called "Paradise." He wouldn't tell any of us where Paradise was for fear that too many people would find out about it and it would cease to be Paradise.

Paradise was introduced to us through glossy photo prints that the teacher passed around. If they weren't dog-eared, slightly bowed four-by-six prints then they should have been, because that's the kind of low-tech proof of Paradise that I remember. There were blue skies and waterfalls and a swimming hole in the picture, and probably some sort of desert trees around the swimming hole. Looked nice, I thought, and I would be curious to visit there had my teacher let me in on the big secret, but no — that was his Paradise.

I think — at least in retrospect I think this — that the point was that we would have to find our own Paradise, that that was part of the deal if you were a sentient, exploration-worthy type of human being. He may have even said this, I don't remember, but at the time I probably thought that he was just being a pretentious dick about it. (Over the years I've wondered about where he might have been talking about — there have been a few state parks that were established since then, and it's possible one of these places became a state park, but I still don't know where he was talking about.)

My family always loved trying new food and new restaurants. This sounds hackneyed in this day and age, but back home we had a fair number of interesting restaurants and different cuisines and my folks always were up for trying out places.

This became an institutionalized ritual after I stupidly critiqued my mother's hamburgers and she, as Bobby Flay might put it, "threw down" and suggested a new routine: Each of us would be responsible for cooking one meal a week, and one night we'd try a new restaurant that the family had never been to before. In this way we systematically ate through the local weekly's restaurant section and became well versed in the culinary offerings of our Southwestern United States metropolitan statistical area.

Moving to New York — and specifically Queens — was a boon to my food education. Now there wasn't just "Chinese" food, there was Cantonese, Dai, Fuzhou, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Sichuan & Hunan, Taiwanese and Teochew food. There was a thrill in being able to try so many different kinds of restaurants and dishes and cuisines, all within easy access to public transportation.

The Chowhound.com website was in full swing when I moved to New York, and somehow in the course of Googling restaurants I came across it. (Incidentally, I'm not sure how this used to happen — I wish I remembered how I first stumbled on the website since the way we stumbled upon websites is so much different than it is now, with filters and virals and whatever else that makes it easy to "find" interesting stuff online.) I mostly just used it for ideas for where to eat and enjoyed the enthusiasm and knowledge that the regulars selflessly contributed. Before the site was sold to CNET in 2006, it was a mess of a message board, with long threads and lots of links that you'd have to individually click through to, but it was such a great resource and such a genius idea. (I think I only asked a question once — ah yes, here it is! — no one replied to a "lurker" and please excuse the typo for the type of cuisine I was asking about, which seems to be missing an "A".)

The best "genius ideas" are the most obvious ones — the democratization of information about restaurants was less about democracy than it was about finding a simple obvious solution to how to share information about where there were great places to eat. At one point I think some of our friends believed that we "discovered" all these cool "finds" but we never found any restaurants — at least in the way that Harrison Ford found lost arks. Instead, we read about every restaurant we went to on message boards like Chowhound.

In a way it's silly to even think about a term like "discovery" — there are so many eyes on the street that there is no such thing as "discovering" a restaurant. Even if you "found" a "discovery" on your own, someone would have already long since found it and it would only be a discovery to you yourself. The free flow of information via the Internet has demolished this idea, and good riddance, since the only good thing about discovering a restaurant is enjoying really wonderful food, and if it really is about the food, then that's all that matters.

As for something that encapsulates the enthusiasm of that era of Chowhound, I still remember for example this post by a regular named Eric Eto; his posts were consistently well informed and helpful (this looks like it might be his Twitter feed, though it hasn't been updated in some time). (Chowhound founder Jim Leff's Arepa Lady column also set the tone for that expression of enthusiasm.) People on that website were devoted, maybe even fixated, on finding great stuff to eat, and they helped lurkers like us figure out where to eat. I always wanted to thank them somehow.

The other great resource I had was Robert Sietsema's The Food Lover's Guide to the Best Ethnic Eating in New York City. One, I can't believe he went to the over 500 restaurants in the guide — now that's a feat — and two, I'm kind of surprised that my 2001 edition of his book has restaurants that are still around. I would have thought that the thing was completely out of date by now. The guide was first published in 1994 and seems to have stopped being updated in 2004. Books just don't work like they once did and there's more up-to-date information online. (I think Sietsema is still a really important person in the food writing world, now more than ever, especially in terms of clarifying ethical considerations, which have only magnified since Chowhound changed the food media world.)

One thing I remember from Archaeology 101 was that archaeological sites are non-renewable finite resources, and that once a site is picked apart it disappears forever.

Now I think I see where you think I'm going with this, and I am going there but I'm also not quite going there, because it's too dramatic to say that, and because it's not that DiFara Pizza is "over" but more that places like Di Fara Pizza will never come around again. Which is to say that if you read about Di Fara Pizza in 1998 or even 2001 or think about what it must have been like in the 1960s when it apparently first opened, you get the sense that things were different before people hunted down the essential culinary experiences of city life. Now that there are so many eyes on the street, and so many critical eyes on the street, and so many critical eyes on the street that are writing about places in everything from newspapers to mainstream websites to small blogs — not to mention all the television networks devoted to this stuff — I don't think there can be the sort of "authentic" or "genuine" storefront food experience like there once was.

Which is also to say, people still "discover" stuff but it seems like there's a level of self-awareness on the part of restaurateurs now that enables people to discover great stuff to eat. Even the small mom-and-pop restaurants seem self aware about the attention they get. Profit margins for restaurants are notoriously thin but restaurants still have to spend money on stuff like food or restaurant publicists to get get the word out.

Don't misunderstand me — artistry in cooking is a great thing and more and more we search out restaurant experiences that we can't replicate at home. I think that's why pizza is such a hotly debated and eagerly sought out item — no one really makes pizza at home. And New York is known for a lot of simple stuff that people can't make at home — pastrami and bagels in addition to pizza. So I get why a place like Di Fara is celebrated (and don't get me wrong, it's great pizza — period — no matter how popular it has become I would never be so contrarian to suggest that it's not worth it) (though at $5 a slice — holy moly! That Times article linked to above says that it was $2 a slice as recently as 2001).

But at the same time, the crowded competitive restaurant scene has become so self aware and so devoted to artistry that it seems like some are getting away from what should arguably be the primary goal of restaurants — hospitality. You're seeing that shift when you visit restaurants that don't take reservations, or those that politely decline substitutions, or those that do any of a number of things that indicate that the goal of an establishment is to bowl you over with their culinary genius and not necessarily provide you with a pleasant evening of top-notch restaurant service. Great restaurants will emphasize hospitality as much as they focus on artistry (as great restaurants always have) but the foodie scene such as it is now means that a lot of other places will get away with what they can get away with because they know that their product is something that people will line up for. It's tricky sometimes.

Posted: December 9th, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Feed | Tags: , , , , , , , ,

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