She is also very funny—and, frequently, right about things. And always, even when I strongly disagree with her, worth reading. She rarely if ever commits the first and most common sin of food writing—being boring.
For inventing cute names for her targets, though, and not having the stones to simply say what everybody knows she is saying, she’s a villain. If you’re going to piss on Mario every other week, say “Mario Batali.” Not “Molto Ego.” Stand up fucking proud and tell us why you hate Mario Batali and everything he touches. Which also makes her a villain in my book: because it’s all fine and good to loathe Mario in person and in principle, but to deny any value at all in any of his enterprises is criminally disingenuous—particularly for a food writer.
His name is “Frank Bruni,” not the funny name “Panchito” she refers to him by. And for the unpardonable act of being insufficiently critical of George W. Bush in the run-up to the election (a transgression Bruni was hardly alone in committing), his every word as the eventual Times dining critic was (for Ms. Schrambling, anyway) utterly worthless—or worse.
I think Alan Richman is a douchebag. Writing the chapter about him in this book felt really good. Regina should try to be as specific as possible and clearly identify the targets of her derision.
Hero/villain, with Regina Schrambling it doesn’t matter. She is—even at her crankiest, most unfair, and most vindictive—good for the world of food and dining: a useful emetic, a periodic scourging, the person shouting “Fire!” repeatedly in a too-crowded room. You have to respect the depth and duration of her scorn. I do.
She is, unfortunately, a return to that vanishing breed of food writer and “gourmet” who claims to love food yet secretly loathes the people who actually cook it.
While this might, if you think about it, be an indicator of good instincts on her part, it is unlovely, to be sure. But somebody has to call “bullshit”—regularly—on those of us who cook or write about food or talk about it. Even when wrong. There needs to be someone out there, constantly watching. It may as well be Regina.
I can’t wait to read her next blog entry.
14 Alan Richman Is a Douchebag
The intersection where chefs, writers, restaurant reviewers, publicists, and journalists meet has always been a swamp, an ethical quagmire where the lines between right and wrong are, by unarticulated consensus, kept deliberately permeable. It’s like a neverending hillbilly joke: we’ve all fucked each other’s sisters. Everybody in the family is aware of it—but we delicately avoid the subject.
The New York Times struggles mightily to remain above the orgy of pride, vanity, greed, gluttony, and other sinful behaviors around it—traditionally by keeping its critic as anonymous as possible. False identities, wigs, and other disguises are employed in an effort to keep their writer from being recognized. It doesn’t always work, of course. Any restaurant with serious four-star aspirations always has someone on staff who can pick out Frank Bruni or Sam Sifton from across a crowded room. To what degree that helps, however, is debatable. To the Times’ credit, I’ve never heard of anyone “reaching” a full-time reviewer, influencing the review through favors, special access, or things of value. From what I’ve heard, lavishing extra attention on them is risky—and not necessarily rewarding. Knowing the Times guy by sight is useful mostly for making extra-sure you don’t fuck up—rather than providing you with a real edge. Those chef-players who do dare to send extras are very careful to do the same for all the surrounding tables as well. Anonymity does not provide 100 percent protection from special treatment. But it’s an extra layer, an added degree of difficulty—the ethical version of a wet suit or hazmat garment, keeping the Times man (or woman) safe from contamination in the primordial soup of free food, bodily fluids, and slow-festering morals they must swim in.
Journalists who write about food and chefs are in the business of providing punchy, entertaining prose—hopefully with a good human-interest story attached, and some good quotes. More important, they want and need an angle or perspective different from what every other food or dining writer is doing. They would greatly prefer it if a Web site or food blogger has not already comprehensively covered the same subject. This is, to be fair, extraordinarily difficult. People who write professionally about food—to the exclusion of all other topics—are painfully aware of the limitations of the form. There are only so many ways to describe a slow-roasted pork belly before you run into the word “unctuous”—again. Trying to conjure a descriptive for salad must be like one’s tenth year writing “Penthouse Letters”: the words “crunchy,” “zing,” “tart,” and “rich” are as bad as “poon,” “cooter,” “cooz,” and “snatch” when scrolling across the brain in predictable, dreary procession. Worse, while your editor has just asked for an overview of “Queens ethnic” in a week, some lonely food nerd has been methodically eating his way, block by block, across the entire borough and blogging about it for years.
Pity, too, the poor chefs. One of their new jobs in this brave new world of dining is co-opting, corrupting, and otherwise compromising food writers whenever possible. The care and feeding of the Fourth Estate—and their bastard offspring, food bloggers—has become an important skill set for any chef looking to hit the Big Time. It’s no longer enough to cook well, to be able to run a kitchen. You have to be able to identify and evaluate all the people who might hurt you—and (as best as possible) neutralize them ahead of time. One memorably bad review can punch a hole in a restaurant’s painstakingly acquired reputation, letting the air out of one’s public profile in a way that’s often hard to put back. One snarky Web site, early in a restaurant’s life, can hobble it in ways that might well prove fatal in the long run.
When you are repeatedly made to look ridiculous, lowbrow, or déclassé, on Grub Street or Eater, it’s very hard to get your mojo back—as operators like Jeffrey Chodorow have found, to their displeasure. Nowadays, the professional snarkologist will confidently imply that a Chodorow place will surely suck even before it opens. In a business where something as nebulous and unmeasurable as “buzz” is seen as a vital factor for the bottom line, everybody with a keyboard is a potential enemy.
But, traditionally at least, “turning” a journo is usually a pretty simple matter. Just feed them for free. You’ll never have to remind them about it later. Believe me. They’ll remember. It’s like giving a bent cop a Christmas turkey. They may not be able to help you directly—but they’ll at least make an effort to not hurt you. And if you can make a journalist or a Webmaster your “special friend,” you have a powerful ally. In addition to singing your praise early and often from the rooftops, they can act as your proxy, shouting down those who might question your magnificence.
Every time a restaurant opens, the joint’s PR firm sits down with the chef and the owner and starts running down the list of usual suspects, wanting to know who are the “friendlies” and who are not. Most restaurants have one version or another of the same list. They are all, presumably, the sort of people who want to come to a special pre-opening “tasting” at your restaurant. They will not be reviewing you—yet, which lets them off the ethical hook, so to speak.