TDG: Introducing The Chocolate Curmudgeon

[William Bitterman]

Mr Klc-So bitter for one who works with desserts. RC got you right-and while you may not be a 'newbie who writes anonymously', your mean-spirited attack on Retired Chef is the second example I've seen of you trashing a new user, and the reason I stopped coming here after my first few visits. You and Fat Guy gang up on anyone who dares contradict the great Klc. Very sad. Oh, and Zaitinya sucks! Just kidding, Steve, don't cry.

[Jason Perlow]

I find it extremely interesting that in today's LA Times, Regina Schrambling wrote the following:

"when I went trolling on restaurant message boards online, I had a hard time turning up any firsthand reports from Rocco's. On Chowhound.com, one poster finally wrote: 'Surly someone will take one for the team here.'"

So in other words, even though eGullet.com has personal accounts from about half of Rocco's employees, plus Tony Bourdain, and our thread was referenced more than a week earlier in an article in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, she couldn't find any talk about Roccos on the internet, except for a vague reference at a competing web site?

Oversight? Coincidence? Hmm.

[tanabutler]

(I edited out this first paragraph. I might cross paths one day and that would be awkward.)

One little thing I noted: in the books she recommends, she says of Lilek's Gallery of Regrettable Food (actually the book, made from the website): "This book is so fabulously snarky it would be easy to write it off as a one-gag wonder: retro recipes can be pretty scary."

I believe, if you look up "snarky" in the dictionary, you will find a photograph of Ms. Schrambling herself. I think Lilek's refusal to be mean-spirited precludes the use of that word. Hilarious, he is. But it isn't as if he's actually pointing out the deficiencies of living people in his encapsulation of Things That Went Very Very Wrong at Mealtime. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think so.

Edited August 7, 2003 by tanabutler (log)

[Fat Guy]

Depends what dictionary you use, and dictionaries are just about the last place I'd look for definitions of the words Gen-Xers use in informal conversation. I think the general understanding of the word among those who use it is more along the lines of "witty, sarcastic, and a bit cynical." Merriam-Webster adds the grouchy/cranky/Schrambling-esque overlay to the term but nobody I know uses it that way.

[Fat Guy]

Having finally, painfully, waded through the offending matter, I've got to say this is pretty unremarkable stuff. I can't imagine that anybody would be surprised that Schrambling would abuse her podium and fail to live up to basic journalistic standards. We know she's clueless and mean-spirited, is it any surprise she's petty as well?

Schrambling is of course a known quantity, but what excuse does the Los Angeles Times -- a major newspaper -- have for trusting the awareness of one spiteful writer's perspective on anything? This is a great example of what can befall a West Coast paper relying on a single New York-based source for a "knowing" perspective. In addition to her apparently deliberate refusal to acknowledge eGullet's existence (surely she knows of us, since she has already retaliated against Steve Klc on her blog site, as if it would be any less of a lapse in competence for a professional food journalist to be actually unaware of eGullet at this point), her use of the term "trolling" reveals the elitist attitude she has toward new media rather than the awareness and respect that countless other "old media" professionals have -- like Jeanne McManus of the Washington Post, Tony Bourdain, and the judges of the James Beard journalism awards and the Glenfiddich journalism awards committees.

What did she expect to find on Chowhound anyway? It's quite understandable that there's no interesting discussion on Chowhound about something in the food media like Rocco's -- it's obvious that no chef and no one who actually works in any restaurant or any food professional anywhere for that matter would actually post on Chowhound if aware of the site's anti-industry agenda, unless of course it's someone under the Chowhound protective umbrella, a recognized non-capitalist like maybe the arepa lady. That's just the marginalized nature of a "where should I eat when I'm in such-and-such a place" site with an us-versus-them attitude about consumers and the restaurant business.

Even in the LA Times, Russ Parsons has credited eGullet in a story this year and linked to eGullet -- a story that got picked up by newspapers all over the country. So it surely can't be a case of lack of awareness out on the left coast as far as where the online food action is.

If this is Schrambling striking back get out the tissues. I'm about to weep. This wouldn't be the first time a writer got it wrong or held a grudge. We'll just keep exposing her incompetence and spitefulness until her current employer has the same realization that all her former employers seem to have had and gets rid of her. And if she does manage to hang on to her job, her petty conduct towards us certainly wouldn't prevent us from calling attention to Ms. Schrambling were she to write something interesting or newsworthy in the future. Just as we allow links to Chowhound on eGullet even though references to eGullet and its moderators are routinely deleted from Chowhound, we'll continue to report the bad and the good about Schrambling because in the grand scheme of things the only person who can marginalize Schrambling is Schrambling.

Meanwhile, I'm going to catch up on the 723 eGullet posts about "The Restaurant."

[Jason Perlow]

From Regina:

Jason:

I have to confess I never read Klc's opus, or the pile-on. Not only do I have six long-term siblings who do petty savagery better than any strangers, but any extensive takeout that doesn't talk to the subject doesn't pass the journalism smell test. Especially since the few members of my court who did indulge gave me the impression that neither the author nor his apparent overseer, "fatguy," disclosed the cleavers they had to grind with me. I'm only flattered that you're apparently all such dedicated readers.

Nonetheless, why I could type what I typed is very simple. If you were lucky enough to read the piece, which the LATimes admittedly made as inaccessible as possible, you know the context. When I was sent to Rocco's, my suspicion was that regular old Manhattanites were not flocking there. (I certainly wouldn't set a paw in the place unless assigned.) If Bourdain and a bunch of narcissistic "service" people had something to say, I don't see how it was germane to my point. I was intrigued by the fact that chowhounders, who seem to do more eating than chest-thumping, were wondering just what I was: anyone out there risked the insanity?

Thanks for actually hitting the writeme button, though.

regina

Alrighty then. Thanks Regina.

[alacarte]

more eating than chest-thumping

thump.thump.thump. I was wondering what that sound was.

[Andy Lynes]

Eating and chest thumping is probably not a great help to the digestion in any case. Better to keep the activities as seperate as possible in my opinion. Perhaps a bit of chest thumping mid morning, leaving a resonable gap after breakfast and before lunch. Similarly in the afternoon, between lunch and dinner. That way, eating and chest thumping need not be mutually exclusive.

[theabroma]

Gotta be more to this mano a mano than is on the table: arch and bitchy, with a basic knowledge of English syntax and a fine control of your adjectives and imagery is one thing, vicious and in needing to have your vaccs updated is something else. That woman is obviously in need of at best a muzzle and a rabies booster.

Who would hire her? Hey, that's a good one. Makes you rock back on your haunches and consider the apparent contradiction, and then rethink a few things - like, it's a given that the LAT or NYT are so good they're above reproach. Maybe not always. And when one is so very prominent in the public's mind and heart as to have become an icon, then the display of pique or worse, anger, by a member of the team simply is not done. So, hire a mouthpiece, someone you can easily and readily keep at arms length, reap any buzz they may create, and drop them at that arm's length the second they become a liability. The mob perfected this technique: it's known as the 'cold gun'. Doesn't trace back to the triggerperson by proxy. Just a thought, that's all.

And given her obsessive-compulsive penchant for ankle nipping (did she go to Califas to join the LAT, or to hook up with that pack of feral Chihuahuas?), I am rather, oh, flooped, as to why Klc carried on as though his ox had been well and truly gored. Get a grip, Steve. Sit down, have a handful of fine, fine chocolate, you do so many things so well. She, like you writes, and cannot even do that. That tar baby w/her face on it you've been slapping is made of Summer Coating. Don't sully your patissier's paws w/it.

And, while you're at it, a favor. If you've got that stuff on your hands, don't be slapping us w/them, either!

T.