Hangin' with the peeps

[Fat Guy]

Am I the only person who finds it exceptionally irritating when publications like the New York Times and Saveur make a big deal about running feature stories on hot dogs and hamburgers.

Here's the New York Times's effort:

http://nytimes.com/2002/07/03/dining/03HOTD.html

Saveur's isn't online, but the description of the story speaks for itself:

Cover story: Hamburger Rules

This classic sandwich may be able to trace its roots back to the Tartars 750 years ago, but today's burger—in whatever variation—is an all-American delight and a vivid expression of this nation's individualistic spirit.

It feels so patronizing, as though the editors sat around the conference table one day and said, "Hmm. We have to do more about the foods those common folk eat. I know, let's do a big story on hamburgers! Let's say things like how much we love them. That'll do it."

[LaNiña]

gonna get myself in trouble here, but what the hell. i know paul lukas (writer of hotdog article). his more or less raison d'ecrire is focused on this kind of thing...makes me nuts, too. it's like, if it ain't decrepit, it ain't worthy. reverse snobbery at its best.

[Steve Klc]

There once was a wonderful monthly column by Raymond Sokolov in Natural History magazine which addressed regional foods. This writer is no Sokolov. In fact, this Paul Lukas in no Paul Lukacs!

Shaw--I fully expect those same editors to next assign a major investigative piece on the emergence of a truly unique American cuisine!

[Fat Guy]

I love hot dogs!

Sorry, I was just trying to emulate the faux-populist writing style of the glossies. Still, the thing is I do love hot dogs, but I don't go around self-consciously trying to convince people that I do. Sure this particular author may be genuine (though his article is pretty weak), but the editors who assign the story are pursuing what seems like a fairly transparent agenda. Save for Asimov, who has legitimately covered the dive beat forever, the Times dining section simply lacks the moral authority -- or at least the credibility -- to opine about hot dogs.

[Steve Klc]

Of course you love hot dogs Shaw. Recently the Hartford Courant treated the subject well, without a faux-populist voice, but it was so long ago maybe the Times thought we had forgotten? Or that no one reads the Courant? Who wrote that dog treatment anyway?

[Ron Johnson]

I don't mind it when Saveur does it because covering regional food is their schtick. Whether is fried chicken and country ham in Kentucky, pizza in New Haven or Americana gems like the hamburger, I don't feel this is a departure for that magazine.

On the other hand, I do know what you mean.

[Steve Klc]

Ron--to your knowledge, has Saveur ever covered Louisville--and you know what I'm going to bring up? Those rolled oysters. Now that's neither faux-populist nor patronizing and surely fits within their schtick better than Hamburger Rules, don't you think?

I read that and wonder whether Saveur is worried about Bon Apetit and Better Homes & Gardens.

Perhaps we should be thankful Saveur didn't run a three part series called "Celebrating Everyday Burgers: Memory, Elegance & Power?"

[Mebutter]

Of course you love hot dogs Shaw.  Recently the Hartford Courant treated the subject well, without a faux-populist voice, but it was so long ago maybe the Times thought we had forgotten?  Or that no one reads the Courant?  Who wrote that dog treatment anyway?

You are too much, Steve!!!

I'm glad the New York Times wrote about hot dogs - hot dogs always get a big reaction from our readers even without Mr. Shaw's fine prose - but I will admit reading about hot dogs or other prole fare in the NYT is sort of like seeing news from Sheepshead Bay or Flatbush on Page 1.

Is it just me or has the Times tried to adopt a grittier, streetwise approach toward some aspects of food lately? I've kind of liked it.

And, speaking of changes and a favorite bete noir of eGulleters, what's with Amanda Hesser writing "cheap eats"? (I've been on vacation a couple of weeks so forgive me if this has already been discussed elsewhere.)

As a reviewer who cherishes anonymity, and thinks it's vital for a fair review, I've got to wonder about the wisdom of sending to a restaurant, even a cheap one, someone whose face appear regularly in the magazine read by hundreds of thousands of people. Yes, Amanda is stylized by the guy who does the Bendel's ads, but still.

Is the NYT naive enough to believe the owners and staff of these cheap eateries don't read the newspaper or the magazine? Or, is the assumption that these folks - outer burough people to be sure - are devotees all of the News, the Post or Newsday?

[John Whiting]

It feels so patronizing, as though the editors sat around the conference table one day and said, "Hmm. We have to do more about the foods those common folk eat. I know, let's do a big story on hamburgers! Let's say things like how much we love them. That'll do it."

I suspect that it's quite simple. The purpose of journalism is no longer to extend the readers' horizons, but to reassure them that where they are is exactly OK. Any suggestion of anything whatsoever that is different from what they know and love is elitist -- and could negatively affect sales.

[Ron Johnson]

Ron--to your knowledge, has Saveur ever covered Louisville--and you know what I'm going to bring up?  Those rolled oysters.  Now that's neither faux-populist nor patronizing and surely fits within their schtick better than Hamburger Rules, don't you think?

Steve, they have covered regional Kentucky cuisine, but never Louisville to my knowledge. We have a local freelance food writer who is a friend of mine. They ran a small piece she submitted in the latest issue on a BBQ restaurant in Louisville.

Maybe it is time for me to step up to the plate and submit my own piece on rolled oysters to Saveur. Of course, the research is going to be tough, eating rolled oysters at all those places, especially Mazzoni's!

[Steve Klc]

Bill--Have I got a NYTimes thread for you:

http://forums.egullet.org/ibf/index.php?ac...db880a2adc28b16

[Mebutter]

That was interesting - and exhausting. Makes you wish everyone had spellcheck or a dictionary. Thanks Steve, you made good points. And I liked Shaw's comments about chef/owners calling the critic and talking through a bad review. That's far more productive for both sides than name calling and fingerpointing.

[Kim WB]

Well, I for one rarely read the Science Times...yet I always glance at the first page of that section, and every once in a while, a headline or a photo will entice me to read about a subject I don't have too much interest in...maybe that is the idea of the editors of the Food section...an opportunity to draw the attention of non-regular Dining section readers. It's quite timely, after all, with a major grilling holiday coming up...lots of folks vacationing this week, a little more casual approach to draw a few readers in. No harm done, IMO.

[Fat Guy]

Well that's easy to say for someone who's not a hot dog.

[JSD]

There once was a wonderful monthly column by Raymond Sokolov in Natural History magazine which addressed regional foods.

I really loved those articles in Natural History. What happened? Is he writing somewhere else?

[Lesley C]

I completely agree with Mebutter about the anonimity issue. It's too late for Hesser to be walking in to restaurants pretending nobody knows who she is. Unless she's in disguise, the opinion lacks credibility -- even of the cheap places. I know Asimov is a stickler when it comes to anonimity as, I believe, any good restaurant reviewer should be.

I also think the points raised by Rachel on the other thread about conflicting statements are quite right. Doesn't Hesser have a team of sharp editors at her disposal?

[Steve Klc]

Unless this is a move toward the anarchy which Shaw was advocating in the Compromised critics thread--where the importance of issues like anonymity and conflict of interest is lessened in favor of a more enlightened sensibility about "food writing" and "restaurant reviewing" merging?

If you assign little or no credibility to remaining anonymous--and instead assign credibility first and foremost to knowing your subject and what you're talking about--then it wouldn't be problematic for Hesser to review any restaurants--even those that she has previously been wined and dined at as a food writer in the company of publicists.

[Lesley C]

I have worked in restaurants where, when the Michelin man arrived, we would drop everything and work like dogs on his plates.

I know a well-known chef who, when the local critic arrived in his new "bistro," pushed everything aside and made her a meal worthy of a four-star restaurant.

I have reviewed restaurants where once the owner recognized me, the meal went from indifferent to overly attentive.

Before I started doing this job, I never really thought it was all that important. Now, more than 150 reviews later, I see it as critical to an honest report. I'm there representing the customer, not filing a report for the food section.

That's the way I see it.

[Mebutter]

I have worked in restaurants where, when the Michelin man arrived, we would drop everything and work like dogs on his plates.

I know a well-known chef who, when the local critic arrived in his new "bistro," pushed everything aside and made her a meal worthy of a four-star restaurant.

I have reviewed restaurants where once the owner recognized me, the meal went from indifferent to overly attentive.

Before I started doing this job, I never really thought it was all that important. Now, more than 150 reviews later, I see it as critical to an honest report. I'm there representing the customer, not filing a report for the food section.

That's the way I see it.

Amen, amen, amen, amen!!!!!!!!!!!

As for the hot dog story, two of my colleagues - born and bred on Blackies - are shaking their heads over the article's description of this Cheshire legend.

One of them, our humor writer, isn't smiling. He even used the f-word in questioning the accuracy of the Blackies' paragraphs - particularly the deepfried component and the kitchen layout.

"Tell them I'm canceling my subscription,'' the writer has just called out.

[Steve Klc]

And then there's the excerpt of Shaw's post from the Compromised Critics thread:

"I'd like everybody to make a list of good critics and bad critics. Do your lists correlate at all to questions of journalistic detachment? In my opinion some of the best critics historically have been the ones with the closest ties to the industry, such as Bryan Miller and David Rosengarten (like him or not, his reviews in Gourmet were superb). This should come as no surprise. When you pluck a beat reporter and say, "Poof! You're our restaurant reviewer!" how can that reporter possible write reviews as competently as a serious food person with a strong culinary background and all the relevant connections?

Ethical guidelines are sensible because they provide a framework, but in the final analysis a person's conduct must be judged on an individual basis. There is certainly potential for corruption in any situation where you have close ties with your subject matter. Some are better than others at maintaining boundaries.

And I certainly hope we won't drop the issue of the ethics of anonymity. Sure, you can always argue that you'll get purer information by being anonymous in any situation, but that would make the ethical question moot in all cases. I think it has to be extraordinary. Is the restaurant industry really so corrupt and out to fool the customer that this kind of institutionalized undercover reporting is justified? It is at least something to think about. And what about my point regarding unequal treatment for restaurants that do and don't recognize critics? If it's impossible for a critic to remain truly anonymous in a major market, isn't the route to equal treatment to do away with anonymity altogether?

What is a restaurant review, anyway? It's really something that the New York Times invented. The whole idea of multiple visits and a certain style of reporting has taken hold, and that's fine if you want to read that. Me, I find the traditional restaurant review written in that style to be exceptionally boring and not particularly useful. I'm guilty of writing plenty of them, but over time I've become convinced that meaningful restaurant reviewing must be more than just reviewing. The better result will be achieved by a merger of the artificially divided categories of restaurant reviewing and food writing, and to get there you simply can't work within the anonymous, Consumer Reports/Ralph Nader-esque guidelines that the Times has imposed upon the journalistic community.

It's also too convenient to give that ground to the Times folks, since they are able to set ethical and professional standards that only a few publications in the world have the money to maintain. Yet even with all that, does the Times provide the best reviews?

You've really got to ask what the motivation is for all this focus on a Chinese Wall between reviewers and the industry. I think it panders to a public perception that restaurants are inherently dishonest, and I think the consumer protection function of reviews, as well as the entertainment function, the desire to be controversial, and just about anything but a discussion of cuisine and actual dining, have totally overwhelmed the potentially valuable content that could be delivered in reviews. Such guidelines are certainly convenient, and they allow for a degree of self-satisfaction that you don't get if you're actually involved with your subject matter, but they are not necessarily in the best interests of the readers. The greater sins, in my opinion, are laziness, ignorance, and the refusal to learn.

Let's not allow the hypocrisy to go unnoticed either. All these newspapers and magazines that maintain supposedly high ethical standards should be held under the magnifying glass: The most amazing thing to me is that they all accept restaurant advertising. Moreover, while I have no doubt that in most cases newspaper critics at good newspapers pay for their meals, they are just individual members of food writing staffs that may be very close with chefs, dine for free all the time, and otherwise have biases. The editors may be this way as well, and management too. Sure, an ethical journalist can do his best to ignore these influences. But an ethical journalist can do his best to ignore any influence. And, I submit, the influence of advertisers and managers is by its very nature much stronger than any influence a chef-friend of the reporter is ever going to be able to exert."

That's just a great passage.

[Sandra Levine]

There once was a wonderful monthly column by Raymond Sokolov in Natural History magazine which addressed regional foods.

I really loved those articles in Natural History. What happened? Is he writing somewhere else?

He's the editor of the Leisure and Arts page of The Wall Street Journal.

[Toby]

There once was a wonderful monthly column by Raymond Sokolov in Natural History magazine which addressed regional foods.

I really loved those articles in Natural History. What happened? Is he writing somewhere else?

He's the editor of the Leisure and Arts page of The Wall Street Journal.

Probably long out of print, but many of the articles were collected in Fading Feast, A Compendium of Disappearing American Regional Foods by Raymond Sokolov.

[Fat Guy]

Is it just me or has the Times tried to adopt a grittier, streetwise approach toward some aspects of food lately? I've kind of liked it.

I'm trying to figure out what's giving you that impression. I guess there are at least three sub-questions, though: 1) Are we seeing a trend towards "streetwise" food writing at the Times; 2) How does said streetwise food writing measure up against traditional sources of streetwise food writing; and 3) Is it a wise move for the Times to attempt to operate on this foreign ground, perhaps at the risk of inattention to long-held territory.

[macrosan]

I hesitate even to say this on an American thread, but I honestly cannot conceive what there is to like in a hot dog. It's just a sausage in a bread roll, and as commonly served from street stalls in the USA, it's an over-stewed or over-roasted suasage of doubtful provenance in a stale piece of tasteless bread. The need to smother the aforesaid item in a combination of soggy sauteed onions, mustard, ketchup, and a variety of other tinned and jarred confections reinforces my view.

I can accept the dish as relatively safe (hygienically speaking) emergency rations, but many people seem positively to like it. What am I missing ? Surely there can't be such a vast gap between the "great places" to buy a hot dog and all those I've sampled.

[Steve Plotnicki]

Articles on those types of foods in those places don't bother me. It's just that there isn't much to write about. I have the Saveur here but haven't read the hamburger article yet. But what can it say? How thick to make the patties? What temperature to set the griddle to? As for it being patronizing, well it's the 4th of July so it makes sense that they ran those articles now. Is there more to it than that? As for their having the moral authority to opine about hot dogs, what's there to opine about?

To me this is just one more example that the "Cheap Eats" aspect of dining not being very interesting on an analytical level. Yes information about where you can buy a great hot dog/hamburger (raw or cooked) and maybe a tip or two about how to prepare them might be helpful but, there isn't the same level of subtlety and variance when discussing them as there is when you discuss things like potato gratins or how one uses green tea.

As for John Whiting's comment on the purpose of journalism these days, I think the answer is simpler than that. I think in large part we are jaded as eaters. Most people have been to many of the places that come up in the articles when the Times or other publications write about these things. Like when the Times did the story on Cuban restaurants a few months back. So what? I've been to all of those places for years now and everyone else has been to. It was one thing when at least the list of places to go to was a new and interesting bit of information. But now, we've all been and we've all eaten mofungo. It's boring.

It used to be when I was a youngin', that New York Magazine had a "Best of" series about food. The famous one was "Best Pizza" article that Goldberg's Pizza (which was on First Avenue around 50th street) won. Goldberg's made a Chicago style pizza. Another famous article was "Best Pastrami" which was won by a place on 23rd Street. Something like the Pastrami Factory or something. In hindsight, both places were bad. But at the time they were published there was a dearth of information about food. Just looking at the lists of pizza places or delis that were part of the article would give you months worth of eating opportunities of going to new places. Now, 30 years later. It's pretty much been there, done that for almost every great Cheap Eats place around. Not only here in NYC, but to a large degree all over the U.S.

JSD - You can get the Raymond Sokolow book at Kitchen Arts & Letters in NYC. I'm not sure if it's in print or they have used copies but I know they have it there.

Lesley C - You raise a good point about anonymity, but it begs the obvious question. You have decided that just because the restaurant doesn't know who you are, that what an anonymous diner is served can be assumed to be the average meal. But in some restaurants, especially ones that cater to regulars like Le Cirque, the average meal is "special." In fact in most of the top places, much of the cooking is special because the customer base are mainly regulars. So I'm not sure that anonymity gets you the average meal you are looking for. As for owners of bistros wanting to prepare a four star meal, can't that just be avoided by ordering off the menu? And in addition, is it relevent to your readers to know that the place can prepare a four star meal and that they should go in and ask them for it?

I just think that newspapers who in the process of wanting to maintain their integrity by assuming that anonymity "does the trick" gloss over the fact that it is a gross generalization that doesn't apply in every situation. And what you end up with are reviews directed to the lowest common denominator of diner. I'm not sure how much value that has anymore.

Macrosan - Only someone who likes pie could ask that question.