mongo_jones

I'd take issue with that. Knowing about a chef's private life is the very essence of amateur information. Know how a chef thinks and what motivates his thinking and cooking is where a professional's interests would lie. And yes, I think insight into the latter would help in understanding the food. Then again I think the least part of a reviewer's job is to tell me if I'd like the food. It's far more important for him to help me appreciate the food and get the most our of my meal should I go there. bux, you've almost convinced me. but what exactly is the difference in your mind between "liking" and "appreciating" the food? i'm not saying there isn't one but i'm wondering what it is for you. me i'd rather like food than appreciate it any day, but i take the point that a reviewer can't really predict whether i, as an individual, will or won't. i may have used the wrong examples but i still stick with my assertion that food writing, and reviews in general, would be better served by a spirit of amaterishness. in fact, i think most things would be. the way in which you are reading "amateur" is not the way in which i intend it, but such are the hazards of communication. i think the overweight male got the sense i meant.

anonymous? my name's on every post! as for snark--you mean the e in egullet doesn't stand for "elitist"? edit to fix html

see, now you're missing the nuance of my posts. yes, it is suspect but mitigated by the disclosure. someone else who doesn't give me that disclosure becomes exponentially more suspect when i discover the connection elsewhere.

you know as i think about this more, and as the pomposity of a certain strand of food elitism (represented heavily in certain parts of egullet) wears on me more, i'm not entirely sure that we aren't better served by food-writers who approach the objects of their writing (as opposed to the writing itself) in the spirit of amateurishness. do i as a reader really need you to know the last detail of what is going on in the kitchen or which chef at restaurant a. sleeps with which sous-chef at restaurant b., or what their views on global food culture are, in order to know whether you think i'll like the food at a particular restaurant? in a restaurant review all the stuff that "access" signifies is fluff. save that for feature writing.

Hold on for a second here. There is such a thing as ethics which is almost de rigueur among writers and journalists. It's regularly practiced by 99% of all journalists, writers and reporters, the 1% who don't being people such as Jayson Blair and his ilk. Why would you view FG's connections as a weakness? I view it as a strength, in fact it's BECAUSE of El Gordo's connections that his writing is that much more informed. There are layers of nuances in his material that would be sorely lacking if someone with half or even a fraction of his experience were to submit the same material. Everyone in the industry worth reading knows pretty much everyone else. It's almost incestuous really. Are you suggesting that all of THEIR writing is automatically suspect? Soba i am talking about reviewers and reviews--should have been more specific. i am not interested in a positive review of a restaurant by someone who is a friend of the owner/chef or a negative review by someone who likewise dislikes them. a more general food-writer on the other hand (especially one writing about the food industry) is well-served by knowing enough about how that industry works.

well, actually yes. see espn.com for what happens when sports journalists get to know athletes and coaches too well. your knowing the food industry may well be one of your credentials, but your being friendly with particular food industry figures will certainly make your writing on them suspect to me if i know of it. there is a difference between knowing something or someone and having a personal relationship outside of the bounds of research with it.

you should thank vikram who corrected me some time ago when i used keralite. keralite is acceptable, as you say, but it seems clear that malayalis themselves prefer malayali. indians within india have so little idea of the variety of indian cuisines (we are usually so wedded to our local foods) that it seems strange to ponder this variety becoming known, let alone available, in the u.s.

It's something called "judgment" that we have to rely upon, and it's supposed to come from editors. Still, to make a minor alteration to your comment, I think she most likely does think Spice Market is as good as she says it is. Which is one of a few reasons why she's not fit to be a restaurant reviewer. I see that as exactly why you shouldn't bury your readers in a pile of red herrings. Knowledge is only an effective "filtering mechanism" if it's relevant and contextual. A reader who doesn't have a frame of reference for judging the substance of a review, and who doesn't understand the realities of the world of culinary journalism, is going to be disproportionately influenced by the disclosure of a relationship between a critic and the subject of criticism. Yet such relationships are business-as-usual in many areas of criticism. The important thing is to hire critics who are professional enough to put their duties as critics ahead of their personal relationships with chefs. fat guy, i think we are in some danger of going round in circles: all reviews are subjective, the reviewers whose reviews we agree with are the ones who should be reviewers etc. and i don't think that knowing that a reviewer has a prior relationship (personal, economic) with a restareuteur is a red herring. i mean it is if you're not basing whether you go to a restaurant or not entirely on a review, but if you are it isn't. that is to say, food writers may relate to this differently than non-food writers. i'm guessing your position on this is based on the fact that you know a lot of food industry people and don't feel that should per se compromise your food writing credentials. russ parsons might disagree, and i think i am more in agreement with his take on these things as expressed in an earlier thread--don't really know what his take on hesser is. mongo

I have not heard of that... which type of gourd is it.. man all this food talk is making me really hungry! not sure what is is called in english--bong may know--gautam definitely will but he don't come around no more. the classic prep is with a paste made from poppy seeds (potatoes are also prepared this way). i love the dish but making the poppy seed paste (the poshto) is such a pain i rarely cook it. not surprisingly it also makes you very lethargic.

i went a long time before realizing that when north indians said jhinga they were talking about prawns. in bengal jhinge is something else entirely--a gourd like vegetable (mmmmm jhinge poshto...).

I have not seen this movie. What is it about? it's a beautiful movie monica. Chinese - in subtitles, but ti's about a Father who's a chef, and his four grownup daughters. Essentially the father communicates with his girls over leaborate chinese dishes that he cooks for them for their weekly dinners. Their lives change, but the constant is his elaborate cooking for them. He also can't taste anything. But that's a different story arc. Visually a very lovely movie. it is an early film by ang lee, the taiwanese director of "crouching tiger" fame--part of his "food trilogy"--"pushing hands", "eat/drink" and "the wedding banquet"--all of which use food and parent/child relationships as metaphors for the relationship between tradition/modernity. wayne wang's "dim sum" is another great immigrant food movie. much better, in my opinion, than "the joy luck club" which it anticipates in many ways.

tryska, again if you go back and read all my posts in this thread you'll see that i say quite explicitly that i am not offended by this restaurant's spelling of this name but was intrigued by what it might or might not signify. that question has been answered for me at this point and my curiosity is satisfied. i'm re-reading "midnight's children" right now and i noticed rushdie spelled it "parsee" as well. he also spelled shivaji "sivaji"; if these things are related it seems like the spelling, in addition to everything else, is located in a particular time (rushdie left bombay in the early 60s). a curious aspect of the "parsee/parsi" thing in general is that a number of people who spell it parsi nonetheless spell their own names as "bhagwanjee" etc. in bengal anglicization took the forms of bandhopadhyays and mukhopadhyays and chattopadhyays becoming banerjees, mukherjees and chatterjees (though the fourth high family the gangopadhyays became gangulys); i'm not sure when the spelling changed for some to banerji and mukherji (never seen a chatterji) or if it did consistently or in connection to some nationalist narrative. the hyper-anglicised banerjees and mukherjees of course turned in bonerjees and mukherjeas. regardless of how they spelled it, however, most of them were usually equally fanatical about traditional bengali cuisine. it is always interesting to think about which aspects of oneself is opened up to "westernization" and which kept "traditional". of course this too is a dynamic affair.

it isn't just a "technicality"--for one thing for us to call gurinder chadha or her movies "indian" is to participate in the same narrative that right-wing british politicians do when they say indian immigrants are not really "british" but "indian". she is a south asian brit and her films reflect that. for another thing, it is important not to substitute the diaspora for india. with these distinctions made we can consider the ways in which films by diasporic indian directors, films by bollywood directors, and films by directors from other indian cinematic traditions do or don't represent food (or anything else). if we don't make these distinctions we disrespect both the cultures in question and the intelligence of those we might seek to educate. i'm tempted to make the hypothesis that the mass bombay cinema does not harp on food imagery because this would be extremely alienating for a large part of its audience that doesn't eat well every day. it is one thing to show wealth as aspirational but another to show actual food. but i won't make this hypothesis just yet because i suspect that the minute i do i'll remember tons of movies that do show food being lavishly cooked, eaten and thrown away (as i say that i remember "jaane bhi do yaaron" and the "thoda khao, thoda phenko" scene--suman will know what i am talking about).

fat guy, all well and good but how are we to tell when this has happened? how do you know, for instance, without recourse to the dubious magic of "common sense" that she doesn't actually think spice market is as good as she says it is? what makes us suspect these things is other things we happen to know about that relationship. it is precisely because it is impossible for all readers to tell these things, and because this is already such a subjective arena, that readers need to be armed with as many filtering mechanisms as a writer or editor can give them. in the overall scheme of things this hesser issue may be minor--as you say there are more egregious omissions to worry about. but that doesn't mean it is irrelevant or excusable. mongo

and here i thought this was going to be a thread on having babies in restaurants or restaurants that serve them. by all means take babies to restaurants. just don't take them to movies, and if you do don't sit within earshot of me.

not that i have anything against random yelling but i don't think correcting inaccuracies should ever automatically be considered "yelling". people take a lot of pains to educate themselves about certain parts of the world, less so about others--and are more prone to feel hurt when someone from that part of the world points out the gaps in their knowledge--as vikram has found out on a couple of occasions :-) along these lines i don't feel the need to be a translator or cultural ambassador every time i talk about indian things--food or otherwise. for one thing people on the french and spanish boards, for instance, don't seem to feel any pressure to explain things to a non-french or spanish audience every time they post, and i don't see why everyone on the indian forum should either--though more power to those who want to do it. everyone can do some work in finding things out--life is more satisfying that way. there may be more americans than any other nationality on this site but this is a global site. being global in a positive sense should mean everyone can behave like egullet is located where they are and not have to translate themselves for the "real home" audience--if that makes any sense. or at least that's how i relate to the indian forum on egullet.

what a coincidence--i cooked rajma last night too; but i used the pressure cooker, thus relieving the pressure on my insides. that reminds me i owe some people on this site a rajma by pressure cooker recipe. i should get on that.

thanks for explaining mongo, but the question itself didn't refer to bollywood movies. yes tryska, but as you'll see later replies referred to specific films that are not bollywood films (or even indian films) as bollywood films.

first things first, "bend it like beckham" and "bhaji on the beach" are not bollywood movies. they're not even indian movies. they're british movies. nor is "monsoon wedding" a bollywood movie. it is a movie set in india by a director of indian origin starring indian actors. bollywood refers to the hindi film industry of bombay, and specificially to the popular cinema that emerges from it. there are completely different film industries in other parts of the country, and the art cinema is separate from these as well (ray in bengali--occasionally hindi as well--adoor in malayalam; mani kaul in hindi etc.); there is a middle cinema which is anchored uneasily in bollywood, and draws on the same resources--people like basu bhattacharya, sai paranjpe and ketan mehta. speaking of ketan mehta, his great film "mirch masala" is not about food but uses chilli powder both as metaphor and thematic element. more later on bollywood films later when i have time. but a film with extended eating scenes is the early 80s bachhan starrer: "satte pe satta"; a take on "7 brides for 7 brothers".

and just the right amount of typhoid in the water. plus the mysteriously murky glass. god, i must have drunk a lake's worth of sugar-cane juice when we lived in chandigarh.

can someone please explain the appeal of earl grey to me? and while we're on the subject can we stop calling things that don't have tea in them tea? i'm sick and tired of asking for tea in american restaurants and being presented with fancy chests full of everything but actual tea: call it herb water or something but don't call it tea.

i should have said "in india". there are fascinating connections between malayali and malayan culture. i have to go to bed now but i can start a thread about it later. i expect that vikram, episure, skchai, bhelpuri et al will have far more in depth knowledge than me of these anyway, so hopefully one or more of them will either start it before i get to it or respond once i do. edit to add: p.f chang's china bistro is to chinese food what the olive garden is to italian. except flashier.

pan, i am tempted to agree but i wonder if by this criterion even french or italian food can be said to have "arrived". i think it isn't till we see an indian style abomination on the order of the olive garden or p.f chang that it will truly arrive--regional specificity tends to be something that appeals to foodies. currently, it is by and large foodies (and indian immigrants) who eat at existing indian restaurants. i think it is going to take a much longer time for indian food to become a mass phenomenon. and i think it is going to need to become americanized in an interesting way for that to happen--just as chinese and japanese have in their mass version (sichuan, hunan etc. is for the foodie and immigrant audience, regular folks eat "chinese"). edit to add: p.s. no such word as "keralese"--you can say keralite, but the more accurate term would be "malayali".

damned if i know. we were very happy drinking our thums ups and limcas, and, when we could get them, green daabs (the top expertly sliced off with a machete and a straw inserted). bong, was there a bengali drink you enjoyed as a kid? gautam i am certain will come up with many, but he doesn't seem to be around anymore.

missed this completely. as far as i know tea is not drunk "with" any kind of food. it is to tea-drinking indians what coffee is to most north-americans: a drink best enjoyed after waking up but consumed all day. many people serve tea and snacks (pakodas, samosas, sweets etc.) to visitors in the evening but i don't know that there is any particular food item that tea is matched with. and i don't think too many people drink tea after dinner the way coffee is often drunk. what does go really well with tea, of course, is biscuits (not the american kind). take a good non-fruity biscuit (ideally brittania chocolate bourbon), dip it in the tea till the dangerous moment before it dissolves and then bite into it. mmm mmm mmm--my morning ritual. (there's a thread about this in the u.k forum too.)