The Backfat To The Backlash

I was talking to a guy I know the other night and he was bemoaning the foodie arms race. I'd been having similar thoughts, and I was agreeing with him, and brought up a particular "a ha" moment I had after eating at a new pizza place in Manhattan that just didn't seem like it merited all the pre-opening buzz it received.

We talked and agreed and talked some more and then he brought up a great wine pairing he tasted — something about the nuttiness of a sherry working with a particular dish. I was excited because we had just tried a bunch of sherries and I was lucky enough to experience the same kind of pairing wonderment.

He suddenly stopped me and said we were now sounding like the same thing we were just saying we were sick of. True . . . but . . . there's a difference.

The people in the Village Voice Media chain have have thrown down — a la Bobby Flay — pronouncing a Foodie Backlash. Here's a writer in the Houston Press noting the "self-aggrandizing" of foodies that has turned into "a pompous satire of itself." A writer in the Seattle Weekly went further with his disdain for "those coup-counting, lock-jawed, cake-eating, nose-in-the-air dimwits who, with sticks planted firmly in their flabby asses will make their weekly cruise out to the hottest addresses in town, get weak little culinary boners over year-dead trends, focused-grouped Frog-humping menus and anyone doing New American comfort food or French-Asian fusion in million-dollar spaces; who will swoon after 'discovering' restaurants with 200 Yelp reviews, dismiss cheeseburgers and chicken-fried steak and sloppy tacos and Americanized Chinese food as beneath their notice, but go fucking bonkers for any restaurant that name-checks a farm on its menu". (Irony: Even bloggers for the Village Voice Media chain are exhibiting the same tendencies as the foodie straw men they try to villify when they rush to post ever-evolving takes on the food world.)

I like trying to string together a bunch of humorous observations about straw men as much as the next guy, but I think we need to clarify some of the criticisms.

It wasn't so long ago that "foodie" was a neutral term for someone who embarked on a personal quest to fulfill culinary essentialism checklists. Then it got overexposed. And then there was a backlash. I'm less interested in backlash because it's easy to feel annoyed by shit you read in the Sunday Styles section. Or T Magazine, as both Jen and I were the other day when we came across this convoluted apology for a Toll House log:

Anyone else craving a nice refreshing wedge of iceberg lettuce from the local A&P?

Actually, no. I wasn't even that impressed by my wedge salad at Thomas Keller's Ad Hoc on fried chicken night.

That's a joke, at least the second part of it.

Seriously though, I don't like iceberg lettuce — it's bland and tasteless and has little nutritional value and is probably the reason it took me years to start to really eat salads, which, if you do them right, can not only be healthy but also quite good tasting. The point of experimenting with good ingredients isn't to impress shallow people or raise the ire of Village Voice Media bloggers but rather to learn how to make great tasting food. I know the T Magazine writer is being facetious, but there's a reactionary impulse in there that is disturbing.

The other day I got free tickets to a taping of a podcast. The less said about it the better, except which to say that I came to the conclusion that maybe there are ideas and thoughts that don't need to be podcast. Or, the kind of idle discussion about culture or whatnot that sounds brilliant in your living room can come off as really annoying on your iTunes, much less real life. Just because you can say something in a podcast doesn't mean you necessarily should.

"Fuck, man," I turned to Brother Michael after we were out of earshot of anyone at the taping, "Do I sound like that?" Like as in, is this what we come off like when we shoot the shit in our living room? All he said was, "Take it to heart." It shook me to my core.

I think in part people are lashing back at the mediated experience — which is fine, whatever — but I don't think I want to go back to how it was when there were only a few gatekeepers and relying on word-of-mouth recommendations about where to eat or how to cook something. The free flow of information has made it simple for us to discover — for ourselves, not for humankind — great places to eat and fun recipes and ingredients to try. I'll tolerate a few insufferable food snobs in exchange. (Besides which, it's easy to figure out who is full of hot air and who isn't — in real life and online.)

The real problem with the foodie backlash is that it often doesn't differentiate between restaurant-goers and home cooks. Granted, sometimes there's overlap, but there are two levels here.

On the one hand, yes, food publicity and restaurant oneupmanship has gotten a little out of hand. There are a lot of goofy tropes in the restaurant world that are ripe to be lashed back at. There is a fetishism on the part of restaurant-goers that has contributed to an artistry-hospitality imbalance on the part of restaurateurs.

But even Guy Fieri's worst excesses don't mean that we should go back to a pre-lapsarian world of chain restaurants and Sysco-distributed ingredients. To all the Village Voice Media bloggers looking to "discover" a new take on the "controversy," get a fucking grip — it's still a good thing that people are searching for high-quality restaurant experiences, even if you have to deal with fellow diners photographing their food. There are worse things to get pissed off about. Banning foie gras, for example.

On the other hand — and this gets at the T Magazine article — what the fuck is wrong with trying to cook cool shit? Have you ever actually met anyone who was so obnoxious about the ingredients he or she was using that you didn't want to enjoy a home-cooked meal? I don't believe you. I don't even believe the piece. One person quoted in it seems to look down on homemade ice cream made with vanilla beans shipped from Madagascar. If I had been the person making the ice cream I would have been like "fuck you."

I was going to say "Only in America do people look down on well-intentioned though perhaps misguided home cooks who labor to make good-tasting food" but it's probably just a matter of "Only in the minds of over-educated freelancers do people look down on well-intentioned though perhaps misguided home cooks who labor to make good-tasting food." If someone I knew made me free-range whatever with whatever "Gilroy garlic" is and went out of his or her way to find a good head of baby lettuce for me to eat I would say thank you to him or her. What I wouldn't do is submit a snarky column about it to The New York Times, especially not for the glossy adservers that comprise those special magazine inserts.

But really this gets back to the artistry-hospitality divide. There's a backlash against artistry that seems forced or pretentious, whether on the part of restaurants or restaurant-goers or home cooks. But at least with home cooking, please don't overlook that someone is making you something to eat, and that in itself is a gesture that we've gotten away from.

I started writing these posts on restaurants because I have been thinking a lot lately about what it means to entertain people in your own home. Our financial position — or I should say my financial position — means that we've gone to way fewer restaurants lately, which is something I'm OK with (Jen maybe less so, truth be told). I've adapted Michael Pollan's "eat food/not too much/mostly plants" to apply to eating at restaurants — basically: "Eat out, not that much, if you can't."

Just kidding. Actually, it's more like eat out only at restaurants that are truly special dining experiences — it doesn't matter if it's an expensive prix fixe or an exceptional ethnic restaurant, just being more cognizant of what is "special" means that you're going to avoid all the craptastic chicken sandwiches and french fries that are probably not that great for you anyway. A corollary is only drinking at bars that serve high-quality drinks that you wouldn't normally make at home — no more twelve-ounce "pints" of draft beer that costs triple what you would spend at the already overpriced corner store.

Don't misunderstand, there's nothing "wrong" with a simple burger and beer at a neighborhood place, but more and more I'm kind of wondering why we should bother in the first place. One, it's just not that special. Two, it's overpriced for what it is. Three, you and I have no idea what they put into those things or where they come from, and even if you do know where it comes from, knowing the "sourcing" probably makes you want to revisit point #2. (And I know some of what I'm saying about the "artistry-hospitality imbalance" goes against this, but welcome to The Slightest; the first rule of The Slightest is that its authors reserve the right to tolerate apparent logical inconsistencies from entry to entry, or even within an entry as the case may be; email for a refund if you have a problem with this.)

I'm not excited about the service industry imploding when everyone follows this advice, and of course no one will, so there's nothing to worry about, but maybe people would at least feel less fatigued by it all.

Finally, it's absurd to get excited about cooking at home, but in a city where people use their stoves as storage, and hot plates as stoves, and it would take you eleven years to visit every restaurant that New York Magazine blurbs, it's not clear that home cooking is "typical" behavior. That's weird and troubling.

Fortunately, people are entertaining more at home. Unfortunately, this practice is also producing quotes like this:

"If you can't afford to hire a bartender," he added, "you shouldn't be having a party."

I kind of don't believe this guy said this, or if he did, that he wasn't joking about it. We should probably stop reading Styles articles, too, or if we do, then maybe fewer of them. Maybe we should just apply a Michael Pollanism here, too:

Read The Times. Not too much. Mostly the front section.

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.

No One Should Come To New York To Live Unless He Is Willing To Blow Tons Of Money On Overpriced Drinks And Mediocre Meals

I was single when I first moved to Queens. A friend of mine who was eager to somehow set me up on a date got in touch with her niece (or some relative) who lived in Manhattan to see if this person would want to go out with me.

My friend reported back that her niece (or some relative) would be happy to meet me — only after I "made it" to Manhattan. This from a person who apparently lived in a closet-sized place in Midtown East with a hot plate for a kitchen. Not a kitchen the size of a hot plate but rather an apartment with literally a hot plate instead of a kitchen.

I was fine with all of this — my own kitchen at that first place in Queens was large enough to eat in, and had a full-size stove to boot. Besides, I figured, if I ended up with this person then we'd probably have to go out to eat all the time and that would get tiring, not to mention expensive. I know that there are people who never eat at home, and who use their ovens as storage or whatnot. I don't actually remember how I know that there are people who use their ovens as storage — it's possible I saw this on television once or something and it stuck in my head, but the hot plate kitchen was something I distinctly remember.

Being that so many people in New York go out to eat, it's not surprising that there are over 24,000 restaurants that the City Department of Health inspects. Granted, there are a lot of places on that list that you'd never want to go to — according to the Yellow Pages, there are 52 Domino's Pizzas within 10 miles of "New York, NY" (that's 65 minus 13 in New Jersey that turn up in the search), which is a ridiculous enough proposition in a place known for "good pizza."

Even paring down this huge number to the restaurants you would actually go to, there is still an astonishing number — New York Magazine has 4069 restaurant listings in its restaurant database, 854 of which are "critics' picks." I know some of those listings are restaurants that are now closed, but using this number, if you visited one per day it would take over eleven years to try all 4069 restaurants and more than two full years just to visit the "good" ones.

But if half of Manhattan is living with just a hot plate then I guess it's important to have all these restaurants.

Although we try, our current apartment is not great for entertaining — it's small, we don't have much of a dining table and we're living next to and below people that we should at least attempt to be civil toward. So unless it's summer and you're able to go to a park, restaurants and bars are some of the few places to go to socialize. They're kind of like public utilities that way.

And people like to take advantage of a public utility — diners "camp" at tables while they catch up with old friends, freelancers and fly-by-nights use coffee shops as a work space, the Health Department uses restaurants as cash cows. People have birthday parties, baby showers and even wedding receptions at restaurants and bars. People go to restaurants and bars on dates. Respite in an urban environment like Manhattan means settling in for an evening at a bar or having a meal at a restaurant.

A few years back, Jen volunteered at a grade school on the Lower East Side. The public school kids had two observations about their neighborhood: One, that Jews wear hats and two, white people go to bars. It makes sense when you think about the Lower East Side — that's what middle-class kids on the Lower East Side do — they go to bars. Or at least that's how it seemed to the neighborhood kids. And if you stop for a minute and think about it, what else is there to do on the Lower East Side? Community Board 3 loves to crack down on bars, but in some ways who can blame them?