Fat Guy

I think it's an excellent idea. As with any such plan, it involves compromise, but it's intelligent compromise. And we can hope it's part of a larger plan to reorganize the review content. It's just too bad that structural improvements will never be able to save the reviews from the reviewer.

I think the best chocolate candies, such as those from La Maison du Chocolat, offer the greatness of top-notch chocolate (I believe they're based on a custom Valrhona blend) enhanced by the artistry of the candy-maker. So, I think almost by definition the best candies are "better" than the best plain chocolate, because they're chocolate plus, or, rather, chocolate synergy. It's the equivalent of any great chef taking great ingredients and making them into a finished dish. In the hands of a great chef, the dish pretty much has to be better than the ingredients -- otherwise we're not talking about a great chef. A chocolatier like Robert Linxe is essentially a chocolate chef, taking the finest ingredients and creating a finished composition that is greater than the sum of its parts. At the same time, one doesn't always want the best, and for the chronically overstimulated palate sometimes less is more. So there are indeed times I'd choose a piece of plain Valrhona chocolate over a La Maison du Chocolate candy.

It's amazing to me how much of a difference the thickness of slices of meat, cheese and vegetables makes to the eating experience. It's even more amazing to me how little attention people -- both sellers and buyers -- pay to it. In particular, I'm thinking about things sliced on the deli slice, like when you go to the supermarket deli counter and get half a pound of sliced cheese, or salami. Or, when you order a sandwich at a standard-issue deli where they slice everything (including the tomatoes and lettuce) with the deli slicer. It seems to me that for each product there's an optimal thickness. For example, if you slice the average deli salami paper-thin and stack up a bunch of slices, they all kind of meld together into a gloppy mound. If you slice it too thick, it's a similar effect. But if you slice it just right -- just a little thicker than thin -- each piece has integrity and things work out. Most cheese seems to be better sliced a little thinner than meat. (I won't go into a digression about how most delis put too much meat and too little cheese on a sandwich -- that's another topic). Anyway, as I was saying, I'm amazed how many people just accept stuff from delis however the deli slices it. The machines all have adjustment knobs. You can demand thicker or thinner slices. If I'm buying a pound of something, I'll ask for a slice first and then say thicker or thinner. If I forget to do it, or someone else does the shopping, the eating experience is never as satisfying.

http://www.egullet.org/tdg.cgi?pg=jeffrey

The point is that it's not the career path they're striving for, not if they have any sense of perspective. So it's not clear why this is a relevant point. It's like saying they'll never be President. I also don't agree that Andrea Strong never writes anything negative.

It's also worth noting that people like Jay McInerney, who have been serious candidates for the New York Times job (he may even have been offered it and rejected it), have a long history of industry contact. I think you'll find that if you pick it apart, newspapers make a lot of allowances for history, even if they have strict going-forward policies.

Can't speak for the other two but RestaurantGirl's blog has a link for contacting her about advertising on the blog. And there are plenty of ads there. Perhaps not enough to pay the rent in Manhattan but if she's getting enough page views and click-throughs it mugh be a nice bit of supplemental income every month. ← Yeah but if ads are the standard for the professional/amateur distinction then every blog with Google ads is professional. Again, these distinctions are pretty meaningless.

How many such jobs do you count?

I think Nathan is saying -- or at least this is the one example that I think is true -- is that (for example) Andrea Strong is never going to be hired as the restaurant reviewer for the New York Times. Whether she wants that job is another story. Whether she could get that job absent "coziness" with the industry is yet another story. It seems that these days to get the job as New York Times restaurant reviewer you have to have no background whatsoever as a food writer. However, aside from a couple of high-profile reviewer and New York Times positions, I can't think of any food-writing gigs for which (for example) Andrea Strong becomes less eligible on account of whatever she does in pursuit of her blog. If anything, her blog is very helpful to her in getting paid work.

There are plenty of customers, like me, who would go to a restaurant Marc likes and the professional reviewers don't, because they consider Marc's opinions more reliable and informed than those of every professional reviewer working in New York right now. Except when I disagree with him.

It's an overused cliche in all writing. Do some searches on newspaper websites and see.

The thing is, the professional critics don't meet those criteria, so they aren't workable standards. But if we're talking about amateurs who do a professional caliber job (which sets the bar pretty low, unfortunately), Marc's blog is a good example of a highly conscientious, true amateur (in the best Olympic sense of the word) blog. He's out there eating all the time, he has no agendas, he pays his own way and his opinions are highly informed. Approximately 100% of the time I would trust his one-visit/six-dishes analysis of a restaurant over Bruni's four-visit/forty-dishes inanity. I'd add Steve Plotnicki's blog to that list -- he may very well dine out more than Bruni. Those are just NY examples. The true amateur is sort of a dying breed these days, though. As we've discussed before, the professional/amateur distinction has been so deeply eroded as to be meaningless. How do we categorize Andrea Strong's blog, Restaurant Girl's blog, Jennifer Leuzzi's blog, etc.? I don't think they get any money for doing those blogs, so are they amateur? Most anybody who does a good amateur blog for an extended period of time will either fold it up or "go pro." I mean, "The Amateur Gourmet," will be published by Bantam/Dell in Fall 2007. Then there are all the people who are not bloggers by the formal definition but are, rather, people who post frequently on well-trafficked discussion forums. Some are "household" words around the good restaurants and many of them dine out with incredible frequency.

We're not talking about the average person. We're talking about the average food blogger. That person is likely to dine around at a lot of new places, and to order with writing in mind. No, that person won't be able to keep pace with the 10-times-a-week, 6-people-per-meal (though that's not the average for Bruni), distributed pace of the Times critic. But it takes more than 6 months to establish infinitely more breadth and depth than the amateurs. It takes years. Not that it makes Bruni's reviews particularly noteworthy. Breadth and depth also trade off. The 10 places you dine at the most often, you know better than Bruni ever will, and your opinion of them is likely to be more valuable than his. I mean, you can't seriously ever care what he says about Landmarc, except from the perspective of pure curiosity.

He does have a lot of experience by virtue of his position, but I wouldn't call the contrast infinite. It's true that the Times critic is likely to dine out 10 times a week, but the average investment banker food blogger probably dines out 5 times a week at real restaurants (and 16 times at the breakfast cart, Au Bon Pain, etc.). When you do that math, you get 6 months = 26 weeks x 10 meals a week = 260 meals. That's double the 130 meals the investment banker blogger had during that time frame. But when you've just arrived from another country and are starting from 0 (other than the meals you had as a kid at the Four Seasons), 260 meals doesn't come close to catching you up to an investment banker or lawyer who eats 5 meals a week out and has been doing so for 5 years (1,300 meals). Bruni's depth of experience doesn't start to pull away from the pack until he's 2-3 years into the game.

Actually there's a range of practices in evidence in both "professional" and "amateur" media. It's true that Frank Bruni pays for his meals (but is rarely anonymous) but plenty of magazine writers who cover dining accept comps and are always recognized; likewise, plenty of bloggers and other people posting online have never had a comped meal and are never recognized.

I think you've highlighted the absurdity of the distinction with that example. I agree that people make the distinction on a widespread basis, but it's certainly also the case that the average blogger comes to the table with more restaurant and dining knowledge than Frank Bruni had when he got that job (though of course he is a better writer than most bloggers). There are, also, plenty of educated gourmets who consider the online sources to be more useful than the New York Times. Not a majority, but a growing number no doubt. I know lots of folks who never make a dining decision based on what Frank Bruni says -- they read him for amusement and/or irritation, not because they rely on him -- however they can be convinced to go somewhere or stay away based on the online commentary. Which raises the issue of the singularity of online commentary. Usually, people's opinions aren't swayed by the word of any one online source, but rather by online sources as a group. That reflects a change, I think, in the way a lot of people process information these days.

I think there are a few things worth noting about online versus print reviews. The first is that the print reviews are almost all online too. We know that the New York Times online gets many more visits than the paper has print readers, so it's probably safe to assume that many more people read Frank Bruni's reviews online than in print. Perhaps not an accurate sample, but I bet it's safe to say that 90% or more of the people reading along here rarely or never read Frank Bruni's reviews in print. From the perspective of archives, of course, it's online all the way -- nobody is pulling up old print reviews from the Times, except insofar as they hang in restaurants' windows (alongside printouts of other reviews, online reviews included). In addition, the traditional print reviewers, whose reviews appear online, are slowly becoming bloggers themselves. Frank Bruni, of course, writes for the Diner's Journal blog and often gives impressions of restaurants there. As a pure statistical matter, it's likely that the New York Times main review of the week is read by more people than any review by any blogger or other online writer. The same is probably true of New York Magazine's main review. However, such is not necessarily the case with all the print reviewers. How many people do you think are reading the review in the New York Sun, New York Observer, etc.? At that level, the numbers probably start to get a lot closer to the better-trafficked online sources. Moreover, the niche sources online, it is safe to surmise, reach a much more highly targeted audience. While Frank Bruni's reviews are widely read, only a small percentage of that audience is likely ever to dine at the restaurant being reviewed. Those who self-select as audiences for food blogs and other online food sources are, it stands to reason, much more likely to dine out at the restaurants under review. For all we know, they're ten, fifty or a hundred times more likely. Finally, don't underestimate the psychological aspect of the belief that print is so influential. Restaurateurs and die-hards really obsess over Frank Bruni's reviews, which creates the illusion of outsize impact. It's not clear that the general restaurant-going public cares nearly as much. Restaurants that fire chefs in response to print reviews may very well be participating in a fantasy rather than responding to any objective reality. That's probably why many times, when restaurants ignore the reviews, they do just fine.

I walk on Mulberry street about once a week, on the way to and from Chinatown parking, and it's rarely overrun with tourists. Weekend nights, good weather, high tourist season, yes, sure, there are a lot of tourists there. But go on a Tuesday night during an average week and nothing is going on. That's one reason why so many restaurants have closed over the past few years. Meanwhile, go to Carmine's, Sambuca or Tony's di Napoli (the comparable restaurants) any night of the week an you're likely to see capacity crowds. And the food, while not great (nobody is asking for Babbo), is better than what you get in Little Italy -- and you don't have to endure predatory commercial practices like hiding the ball on the price of specials, hawkers with fedoras in the street competing for customers, etc. You're somebody who knows better, is who you are. I don't think customer satisfaction in Little Italy is particularly high. I think a lot of folks go away scratching their heads and wondering why they just paid double for the same garbage they can get in their local strip-mall Italian. I, as a member of we, object because the food is bad, not average. I'd certainly settle for average or Carmine's level. Jean Georges appeals to tourists, Babbo appeals to tourists, etc. The tendency, I think, is to decry bad restaurants that appeal to tourists. That's like saying a country that doesn't maintain a military, has hostile neighbors, has no allies to protect it, and then -- surprise! -- gets invaded and conquered, didn't make a willful decision to commit suicide. No, nobody decided "Let's all implement a collective death wish," but at the same time the decisions that led to that result were made by actual people. The restaurants in Little Italy have decided to pursue a short-sighted program where they serve bad food and hope the supply of ignorant customers will remain. Meanwhile, they're closing one after another. Right. At least there's an excuse for deli and appetizing store owners: the market is insignificant. That's not the case with Italian, which is the category leader. All you have to do is offer the bare minimum Olive Garden level of customer experience and you can do well.

I've been waiting for days for someone to mention bamboo steamers. Say more, please.

I was walking around Little Italy yesterday -- what's left of it -- and I became annoyed. Why did it have to come to this? On a single block of Mulberry there were three restaurants closed, with their space for rent. There wasn't a single thing I could have eaten with a straight face: the pastries were uniformly awful, and the restaurants all had the same food and the same annoying guy out front wearing a fedora and hawking tables. Sure, there are a couple of non-awful things in Little Italy, like DiPalo's, but most of Little Italy is a joke. The thing is, it's not even a successful joke. I suppose it would be understandable if the restaurants were bad but still attracting hordes of tourists. But they're not. They're empty most of the time, while Carmine's, Sambuca and Tony's -- all much farther uptown -- are always packed. Manhattan's Little Italy has committed suicide. There's hardly any of it left, as Chinatown has encroached more and more. And what a contrast. Chinatown is full of great restaurants and shops. It's what an ethnic neighborhood should be. But, you say, the Italians all moved out of Little Italy so it's not like Chinatown. Fine, so maybe the more appropriate comparison is the old Jewish Lower East Side. That area too has been shrinking. But at least it doesn't suck. There's Katz's, Russ & Daughter's -- places that are the best of their kind. There's nothing on the Lower East Side that makes me ashamed to be a Jew; there's plenty in Little Italy that makes me want to forget I'm part Italian. Moreover, at least the shrinkage of the Lower East Side is understandable: nobody wants to eat Jewish food anymore. Deli and appetizing are mostly passe, just like Russian and German food. But Italian food? It's the single most popular type of "ethnic" food in the USA (followed closely by Mexican and Chinese). And tourists (not to mention plenty of New Yorkers) love the idea of eating in Little Italy. If Carmine's had a place in Little Italy -- and we're not talking about a high level of Italian cuisine there, we're not asking for Babbo or L'Impero -- it would be off-the-hook busy. What a shame. At least there's still Arthur Avenue.

I don't know what to tell you. These guys are restaurant suppliers and all their stuff is supposed to be up to code. But yes, the catalog as well as every picture I can find when I Google that product shows it as red.

Just out of curiosity, what's the advantage of wood over other materials when it comes to muddlers? I've seen stainless steel muddlers, both bare and capped with plastic, as well as all-plastic muddlers in use in some places. Are they just inferior? Also, my AdCraft (a big restaurant supplier) catalog shows a really spiffy wooden muddler in red (Muddler WMD-8 by Admiral Craft Equipment) for about three bucks (and that's the full retail price -- restaurants probably pay a dollar). Is it junk?

For the past few weeks, we have been experimenting with an exciting new technology called Amazon Context Links. The test has been limited to Daily Gullet articles. If you have, for example, had a look at Ivy Knight's recent piece, Respect Your Mother: Stocking up in Toronto, you may have noticed a new type of link. It's a double-underlined link in our "flamingo" color and, if you hover your cursor over it, an information box pops up, which you can click on to go to an Amazon purchasing page. Like so: +++ +++ Amazon's software scans our pages and uses various algorithms to identify words and phrases that are relevant to products available on Amazon. So in the above illustration the Amazon software saw the phrase "The Making Of A Chef" and had the wherewithal to connect that to Michael Ruhlman's book. We have now activated this technology for all eG Forums pages. Starting this weekend, you will see the double-underlined, flamingo-colored links as you browse various eG Forums topics. (If you're running an ad-blocker, you'll need to disable it to see the links.) The benefits of these links are: first, that our members who are interested in reading books and purchasing products mentioned in eG Forums posts will now have an easy way to do so; and, second, those purchases will help support the eGullet Society's mission and services. If you click on one of these Amazon Context Links and buy the book or product (or any other books or products of any kind -- sold by or through Amazon.com -- in the same session), Amazon pays the eGullet Society a commission of about 5% of your purchase price. It doesn't cost you, the buyer, anything to make this happen. Amazon doesn't increase the price; the eGullet Society just gets a commission. Our food-loving members and readers purchase many thousands of dollars a week worth of merchandise, with many of those purchases inspired by eG Forums discussions. A small portion of that revenue, if directed to the eGullet Society, will go a long way towards enabling us to expand our scholarship program and improve our online services. This technology is still in its early stages, so at this point we can't promise that every link will make sense. Please understand that these are links generated by an automated system and that they do not represent the opinions or desires of the eGullet Society. In addition, the links are not meant always to be literal. This is more of an impressionistic, fun, sometimes trippy way to explore interesting books and products that folks might otherwise not explore. And, while there may be some bizarre links, many of the links are genuinely helpful, making it easier for our members and readers to find books and products that are mentioned in eG Forums discussions, Daily Gullet articles and beyond. You can help things along by using exact book titles and full product names and model numbers in your posts. There are no guarantees that this will be 100% effective, but it increases the chances that Amazon will catch a title or product. We realize the flamingo color can be a bit flamboyant, however we have applied very conservative settings to the Amazon Context Links software: we are only linking to books, housewares and food products (in other words, categories germane to our mission) as opposed to the dozens of other categories of merchandise Amazon sells (computer games, automotive, etc.). In addition, we are limiting the number of links per page to a handful. Needless to say, as a not-for-profit public charity, we need to pursue fundraising opportunities like this whenever possible, so that we can generate the funds needed to support our mission of advancing the culinary arts. We hope you'll support the eGullet Society with your Amazon purchases. Even if you're purchasing something unrelated to a link in the eG Forums, please do use one of the little flamingo-colored links to access Amazon.com, so that the eGullet Society can realize a commission from your purchase. For our members around the world, please note that these links all currently lead to Amazon US. The technology does not currently provide for links to the Amazon UK, Canada and other international portals. We'll let you know if that changes. With relish,

CSA really limits your flexibility. It's great for people with settled lifestyles who cook at home several times a week for the entire six-month CSA cycle. If you travel a lot, or you dine out a lot, you wind up with a lot of excess. You're also limited in that you get what you get and then you have to figure out what to do with it. That can be a lot of fun, and if you handle it well you get amazing output, but it can also get exhausting by week 20. We're lucky in that our CSA option is three blocks away, with delivery at a church on 90th Street and Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. That's more convenient than any greenmarket in the city, and far far more convenient than any good greenmarket. But if you don't have a super-convenient CSA location, that's also a factor, because you still have to go grocery shopping every week anyway. The other thing that can make a difference is if you live in a city where you can get very good produce without the help of either CSA or greenmarkets. You can certainly do that in New York, though nothing quite matches the best of CSA or greenmarket. Then again, you can often beat the CSA/greenmarket average if you're a smart retail shopper (Chinatown, Fairway, etc.). The social/political/ethical considerations certainly seem to support CSA as an excellent food solution. So in some years I'll pay for CSA even though I hardly need it. Probably not this year, though. At least in New York, supporting greenmarkets is a little bit less of an ethical slam dunk -- you can get great stuff at the greenmarkets, and some of the farmers are wonderful people, but there's also a lot of junk at our greenmarkets, a lot of sleazy practices, it's hardly idyllic.

Anything involving chocolate under my arm and a bread knife is way too ambitious for me.