shirts and photos

[Amanda]

i would like to know where you get your dress shirts. very nice. and always so well pressed. also, and unrelated...i wonder about the art that goes with your stories. do you have input? how does that work at vogue?

[russ parsons]

and what about that cashmere chalkstripe suit?

[Wolfert]

Do you ever disguise yourself when you are checking out a restaurant? If so, will you share a tip or two with us?

Edited December 15, 2003 by Wolfert (log)

[Jeffrey Steingarten]

I'll answer the questions about shirts first because it's the easiest and few will benefit from the answer. I've retained two luxuries from my years as a lawyer: lavish amounts of food and custom-made shirts from Turnbull & Asser in London. This would not be fantastically expensive if I did not continually change in size, usually on the upside. My shirts are always neatly pressed because I get them neatly pressed.

Oh, a third luxury, more costly than the other two: I get my sheets ironed. I can't accept spending so much time in a bed that is more shabbily outfitted than one at, say, a Motel 6.

As for the artwork that accompanies my photos:

Vogue is a picture magazine, and enormous amounts of money and time are expended on the photographs. It's more important for the photograph that accompanies my pieces to be very fine, from Vogue's point of view, than that it be a perfectly accurate illustration. Iriving Penn is pretty much revered by all of us. (Despite his age and experience, I'd say that between a half and a third of his food photos see the subject in a way that nobody has before.) He has first dibs on every article I write; if he gets excited about doing the picture, we're all glad and relieved. Then, my piece goes in the center of the book and theoretically gets more space. One sittings editor, Phyllis Posnick, has pretty much sole responsibility to get Mr. Penn excited. If Mr. Penn, as we all call him, unless we call him just Penn , is not interested, the art department and Anna Wintour look to assign the photo to another photographer. Although they're always looking for one who merits a full color page in the center of the book, the only photographer who has made the grade is Raymond Meier. Raymond has not done a photo recently, but I love working with him. He loves food and knows about it, and we have fruitful discussions before the shoot. Mr. Penn and I converse only through Phyllis. Vogue always prefers pictures that are edgy.

As I rarely turn in my pieces before the photo is taken, I have my input orally with Phyllis and with the food stylist, who is usually Victoria Granoff (and who knows huge amounts about food), and then more often than not with the photographer. I'm happy if the photo 1) is beautiful and perhaps provocative and 2) does not contradict the point of my piece.

[Jeffrey Steingarten]

and what about that cashmere chalkstripe suit?

Hey Russ,

How're you doing? That suit is not cashmere, it's honest wool, though quite soft at that. And it's a pinstripe, not a chalkstripe. I so wish I could afford those dreamy handmade British suits again. Why should a food writer be paid less than a lawyer? Maybe it's because we can't help doing it, and they can.

I like lawyers and generally admire the system. It's investment bankers who I feel have somehow captured a key node in the economic system--it's as though they've somehow constructed a toll both on the San Diego Freeway or the Internet--and for doing what really amounts to absolutely nothing, they can exact exorbitant tolls and beautifully cut, hand-sewn British suits.

Jeffrey

[Jeffrey Steingarten]

Do you ever disguise yourself when you are checking out a restaurant? If so, will you share a tip or two with us?

Dear Wolfert,

I had spent a half-hour writing a very nice answer to your question. And then, as has happened three times during this Q & A, Windows announced that it had to shut down Internet Explorer. And there was no way to recover more than a paragraph of it. I'll try again tomorrow or the next day. Very demoralizing.

Yours,

Jeffrey

[Jeffrey Steingarten]

Do you ever disguise yourself when you are checking out a restaurant? If so, will you  share a tip or two with us?

Hey Wolfert, are you Paula? Happy Holidays. Hope your wonderful new book is walking out of the stores!

My answer to your question was destroyed by my computer just as I was sending it. I think I can remember most of it. Ill get to the thorny issue of anonymity near the end.

Yes, I always disguise myself in restaurants, usually as a tall, willowy, 23-year-old woman.

Actually I don't have to. It doesn't matter if I'm recognized. First, a few restaurateur-chefs are friends or fans, and I can never review their work anyway. Second, my appearance is, apparently, not memorable. If the staff of a restaurant recognizes me, God bless them. They deserve any underhanded advantage they might gain from this. And third, I rarely review restaurants.

Last week I was dining in a hot new downtown Manhattan restaurant. Of course, I was the oldest person in the place, which is a dead giveaway that I'm either a food person, or have Alzheimer's and forgot that I am a food person, or didn't know that people over 57 rarely go to hip downtown restaurants where they're welcome only if they spend enormous amount on alcohol, which I do to prove I don't fit into the Alzheimer's category.

Anyway, the waiter seemed to recognize me. I tested this by giving him a mock hard time about something trivial. He handled me with humor and grace, which in New York City means that he feared me. One thing led to another, and between the main course (which, to my amazement, some morons still call the entree, which is of course the entrance to the meal and is used as such in its country of origin, which would be France) and the dessert, the waiter led me into the kitchen where, on a wall adjoining the staff lockers, were ten or fifteen photos of food critics, their names, and a brief description. I was described this way: "Has a slight stutter. Always orders many dishes and favors the exotic."

I don't know any NYC restaurant critic, nor any in L.A. or San Francisco (though I don't know them all in those cities) who wear disguises. (Michael Bauer is known everywhere in the Bay Area, and Jonathan Gold, back in L.A., is easily recognizable.) When Ruth Reichl, whom I dined with frequently when she was the NY Times critic was making her transition to Gourmet, a P.R. genius there named Karen created a campaign that got Ruth into every publication you can name, including Brill's Content; the first paragraphs of the stories were all the same: "For twenty years she's had hidden in the shadows. Now the country's most famous restuarant critic comes out into the sunlight. Yet in all my dinners with her, I remember only one disguise, a pretty good one at that--she played a beautiful blonde who to my astonishment kissed me as she walked in.

Ruth and I disagree about this. She believes that she was rarely recognized. I believe she was nearly always recognized. I remember one meal at 11 Madison, where I recognized for the first time a wonderful trick. The waiters, and there was an excess of them, fawned over everybody at the table, all seven of us, and brought us extra foode and little tastes of desserts, except for Ruth, whom they nearly ignored. Ruth doubted that she was recognized but the truth was obvious.

Several years back, the N.Y. Observer had an amusing and amazing-if-true article on the lengths that restaurants go to when they recognize a critic. In one example, the chef and managers at Duane Park called lots of friends, relatives, and neighbors to fill up the place,and one woman followed the critic into the ladies' room to wax ecstatic about the lamb chops. I believe I was at Duane Park with Ruth near the opening when this happened.

Also several years ago, I was on a panel at an NYU career day program with Mimi Sheraton and David Rosengarten, both of whom I like and respect. So you'll understand how painful it was to witness what ensued. Even though I had explained to the audience several times in a row that restaurant criticism was usually the least interesting form of food writing and that any one of them was unlikely to become a big-time critic, they insisted on asking only about the life of a restaurant critic. David had a show on the Food Network, and so somebody in the audience asked whether this wasn't an ethical conflict because every restaurant knew what he looked like. David explained that anonymity doesn't much matter because, among other things, a restaurant cannot radically change its cooking or its decoration to please a food critic. (I later asked Lee Hanson, chef at Balthazar, about this becauses David was then eating there frequently; Lee said that the main change they would make was the Lee Himself would cook the meal, and of course the wait staff would be informed.)

Meanwhile, back at the NYU panel, Mimi strenuously objected. She told the famous story about one restaurant that reupholstered the banquettes when they learned that Mimi detested overly cushy red plush. Another time, a Northern Italian restaurant she had reviewed favorably had opened a very similiar establishment not very far away. When Mimi entered the new place, the owner sent for the chef whose food she had like so much and had him cook the meal. She said that was one of the reasons she had quit the Times after ten years was that she could no longer dine anonymously.

Later in the panel discussion, Mimi was asked again about wearing disguises, and she said, a bit too pointedly I felt, "A restaurant critic who says that anonymity does not matter is either a food or a liar." Whew

[Wolfert]

whew is right!!!

I'm exhausted just reading what you had to say. Thank you for the time and you can thank me for my patience.

And, yes, I'm that Wolfert .

[Jeffrey Steingarten]

Thanks for your patience, Paula.