Good and Bad Reasons to Become a Food Writer

Hey there.

Lots of people I talk to think I have the best job in the world. And I do. I love, love, love my job.

But the first rule of food writing is this: You have to use your powers for good, not evil.
The second rule of food writing is: You have to accept that everyone's as human as you are.
The third rule of food writing is: You have to do your homework.
The fourth rule of food writing is: You don't know everything and you have to be okay with that.
The fifth rule of food writing is: Have mercy on others, for at some point, you will need them to have mercy on you.

So, here are good and bad reasons to become a food writer.

Bad Reason #1: "I have a discerning palate and am an excellent judge of service." Um, yeah. If you are taking it upon yourself to warn the masses off of places that don't meet your standards, please stick to Yelp. Seriously. I've read your reviews. There was an "off" taste to the sparkling wine. The waiter didn't call you "Sir" or "Ma'am." Your discerning palate can't tell corn in a can from frozen from something just cut off the cob. And if you have food allergies that must be accommodated,you need to recognize that's not part of the algorithm for the rest of us.

Good Reason #1: "I LOVE eating out. I want to celebrate the Good Guys whenever and wherever I can. I've waited tables/cooked professionally/been part of the business and I want to do the Good Guys justice."  Exactly. You count the number of tables and guests your server's working with and deduce that she's been given five extra tables because someone who's supposed to be here, isn't. You figured out that the weird rhythm of your dishes coming out of the kitchen is because the chefs both decided to watch NASCAR instead of showing up tonight, and you come back two weeks later to see what it's like when they're not being idiots. Then you find out how often they're idiots before weighing in.

Bad Reason #2: FREE FOOD!!!!!!!  Okay, lookit. If this is your goal, it'll work for awhile. You'll either be a kiss-butt "reviewer" who loves even the worst of food, or you'll turn into an extortionist. I promise. The temptation's right there.

Good Reason #2:  FREE FOOD!!!!  I know, right??? If you have the right attitude, you express gratitude you're able to consume truffles, abalone and caviar when it comes along. And you don't dis the free tri-tip sandwich a street vendor gives you; if it's decent, you plug it when you can. If a brand-new business gives you overcooked lamb, you shut up and give them another six months to work out the bugs. You turn down freebies after you know you can't endorse the givers.

Bad Reason #3: You want to be SOMEONE. Get over it.
Good Reason #3: You want to be someone paid to write. Well, Go for it!! Get stuff in on deadline, or ahead of it. Make it readable and grammatically correct. I know there are editors, but the less they have to edit, the better they like it. Take assignments you don't want about stuff you wouldn't normally write about. You can DO THIS!

Bad reason #4: You want deferential treatment. No, you don't. In the first place, deference becomes annoying rather rapidly. You really don't want to freak out a hotel's Food and Beverage Manager (aka F&B), do you???  No, you don't. You really don't want fake respect, do you? No. Unless you're a total jerk.
Good reason #4: You want inside info: You do. You want to get to know the chef. You want him/her to pick up the phone and call you about the new dish at the restaurant, or the holiday special that's brewing. And you want to share all of that with your readers right away!

Bad Reason #5: You want to take your revenge on the evil places. Nope. A place is not evil or bad because they screwed up your 25th anniversary. Sorry. Your silver moment - especially without reservation - was subject to a lot of the vicissitudes of restaurants everywhere. You need to go into it with the attitude, "Our silver anniversary is coming up. I booked a restaurant. For better, for worse.  . . " and like that. Relax and let it happen, if it does.
Good Reason #5:You want to celebrate the heroes' achievements: You went to a restaurant and the server/hostess remembered something - your birthday, your anniversary, that you went to France last month. . . Dangit, that's cool. Give them 20% plus. and thank them out loud. Profusely. Your fav place remembered that you LOVE mushrooms and HATE fried food.  Any of those things.

That is all.

Freshening up the Menu vs. Keeping the Regulars Happy

I've had many conversations with many people on this topic. I've also seen it on Robert Irvine's Restaurant Impossible. So it must be important, right?

Here's the story: A locals' favorite, which we'll call the Fish Flop (totally made up, I promise), has been around since 1979. During that decade of excess - the 1980s - it was flamboyant - ostentatious, even. You knew the menu - chicken/broccoli deluxe with some sort of cheesy-creamy sauce was on it. The big shrimp cocktail was still around. Something was blackened. Something had been jerked. Curry was very "in." There was probably a quiche or two. And if you had room for dessert, there was mud pie.

Fast-forward into the 1990s. Times were tight and the Fish Flop (which I just noticed didn't serve much fish, unless it was blackened or jerked, but that's okay) was desperate to hold onto its customers. It offered an early-bird special, with a salad, a main and a dessert for two, for around $15.00. They still had most of the 1980s menu, too, sans the blackened dish, because blackening is a smelly, smoky pain. They decided not to buy an espresso machine because their loyal locals said that they would never pay $2.50 for a cup of fancy coffee when the house brew was 99 cents with unlimited refills.

Come the new millennium, the Fish Flop felt optimistic. They decided to freshen up their look - out with the pink tablecloths and the brass (it was a pain to clean anyway) and in with some shabby chic/Victorian stuff. The loyal locals weren't too keen on it. The wicker chairs were uncomfortable. One of the LLs said it "looked like my grandmother's last rummage sale." But they kept coming.

Fast-forward again to today. The Flop's LLs are aging. Their kids and grandkids bring them there to celebrate birthdays and anniversaries. They turn up faithfully for Sunday brunch to order the salmon benedict and home fries. They come for lunch to order the $5.00 chowder and the $4.99 house salad (iceberg lettuce, corporate tomato, prepared Italian dressing and a red onion ring on top), with iced tea.

Now the Flop's got a problem. If they change up the menu, they're going to alienate those LLs, who've been with them through thick and thin. But they've noticed that there are few, if any, young couples coming in. Even though the town's got great summer tourist traffic, they're not getting much of it. They go on Yelp to figure out why and the reviews are dismal:  "The 80s called; they want their food back." "Nice people, but the decor's drab and the food is just okay - nothing interesting."

The restaurants I've seen survive this schism split the difference. They keep their most popular old-time dishes - and by "popular," I mean what those LLs really order, not what outspoken Lucretia Beasley has the two times a year she comes in, or what Grandpa Ed has when he visits once a year from Sacramento. Then they offer specials and add them to the menu if they catch on. They listen with great care to the LLs, but they don't do something if it doesn't make sense, economically. And they survive.

What are your thoughts? What dish would you miss if your favorite eatery took it off the menu? What do you see as the balance between satisfying the LLs and bringing in a new crowd?

Why I dislike Yelp rather strongly

I think Yelp! has some utility.

Having said that, I really dislike it a lot - especially when it comes to restaurants.

My mother owned a couple of restaurants - not fine dining, but neighborhood joints where you'd sit down with friends and have a good meal. She has marked saltine preferences. My sister's been front and back of house in the same kinds of places. I started work life as a waitress at Maxine's Continental Restaurant and Lounge (not as fancy as it sounds). I also worked at the NCO Club at Ft. Indiantown Gap, Robbie's Carry-Out Pizza in Gettysburg, PA (prep, pizza maker, front of house, delivery), Creme de la Creme Pastry in Monterey and as a volunteer caterer over various firepits as part of the California Rodeo Salinas. I've been a wedding cake consultant, pastry deliverer, outside salesperson, finisher, and maker of many, many pounds of shrimp scampi - once over an open fire in the Salinas Valley in midsummer. I was married to a waiter at Spanish Bay.

I read cookbooks like other people read novels. The place in my head where other women pair off shoes, purses and cute little dresses was co-opted early on by rotating ingredients to see if they worked together.(Note to all: anchovies in meatloaf - bad idea.) I pay full price for "Cooks' Illustrated" at the newsstand.  I have over 30 episodes of "Good Eats" with Alton Brown on TiVO and I've actually read "Cookwise" by Shirley Corriher. I still don't understand carbon chains, but I'm trying.

All that's to say I'm not a chef, but I know a little bit about cooking and what makes a professional kitchen succeed - and how easy it is to have an epic fail. I once met a couple who fancied themselves gourmets. Okay, you know good food, I'm with you. They announced that any restaurant with three Michelin stars should NEVER have a bad night. And by the way, they said, "the French Laundry wasn't all that." I ventured to say that ANY kitchen was subject to the vicissitudes of its employees. If your dishwasher, one waiter and oh, a busser, all call in sick - you're way behind the eight ball, if not totally screwed. They snapped at me that the Michelin three-star should have "people on call."

Okay, I don't know where you're finding a dishwasher, a waiter and a busser - who don't make much money to begin with - sitting around with no other work, just waiting for you to call them on a Friday night, but good on ya.

I've read Yelp reviews where diners panned dishes not served at the restaurant. I've read reviews where they were "watching the elephant seals" on Monterey's Fisherman's Wharf. Spoiler alert: We have no elephant seals on the Wharf. One reviewer in high dudgeon dished that her server went to a neighboring restaurant to get dinner. The neighboring restaurant had the same owner; their meal policy allowed for it.

And here's the really sucky part of Yelp: If you own the business in question, you have to provide all your information plus a picture of yourself to respond to bad reviews, whereas the Yelpers can be anonymous with only an email address and first and last name - which they can totally fabricate.

So an anonymous "reviewer" can negatively affect business based on one bad - or imagined - or falsified - experience, while the business owner has to put him or herself out there to attempt to redeem the experience. Or, I, as a competitor, can create (and have my employees create) a bunch of yahoo mail accounts and post uninformed BS to my heart's content.

Go ahead and look at Yelp, but consult a site or publication staffed by professionals, like Gayot.com, Zagat Guide, or your local paper. Get the whole picture. And give a restaurant more than one try if you have a bad night out. Or at least ask a friend or two to check it out another day.

Thanks!

I'm baaaaaaaaaaaaaack. . .

A lot of people have told me that they think it would be awesome to have my job and they want to know more about what it's like to be a food writer. Well, while I'd never complain about my work, here are some of the ups and downs:

Ups:
Free food. Amazing service.
Meeting celebrities and seeing what they're really like.
Getting a table pretty much any time I want one (I NEVER, EVER abuse this privilege).
Hearing about new trends early.
Trying the chef's new dishes first.
Enjoying luxe locations and occasional overnight accommodations.
Being invited to all kinds of goings-on.
Being on chefs' and winemakers' holiday gift lists.
Not having to settle for well drinks.

Downs:
Server and management at my table every 5 minutes, "just to see how things are going."
Meeting celebrities and seeing what they're really like.
Being the 800-pound gorilla in the room.
Five days. Five restaurants. Serum cholesterol test on day six. . .
Two lunches in three hours because I'm on deadline.
People who want to use me.
Fake people.

Here's my favorite part of my job: I get to meet amazing people and see them in action. Case in point: Sometime in the recent past I was reviewing a restaurant. The five tables in my server's section were so close together, she could barely insert herself between them. Besides me (the known reviewer), she had two seasoned citizens who wanted the menu "their way," two tourists who fancied themselves restaurant savants, and a man who'd brought his wife - who had dementia, Alzheimer's or both - to dinner. The server never batted an eye. She treated me with grace, she accommodated the seniors, she calmed the tourists down and sent them on their way with a map to places for breakfast, and treated the wife with dementia as if she were her own grandmother.

I over-tipped, but probably not enough. Watching the woman work was inspirational. She was a portrait of patience and compassion. I'm thinking that if you look around, you'll see plenty like her in your everyday life. But you have to look. Your server has to be a human being in your eyes. So does your driver, your masseur, and your stylist. They are often among the most amazing humans you'll ever meet. Open your eyes. Admire the class in the person who's serving you.

That's what it's like to be me.

Why I take freebies

People are often surprised to hear that I don't review restaurants anonymously, a la Ruth Reichl. They're more surprised to hear I take comps and the restaurants know I'm coming.  Well, let me elucidate a little.

Freelance writers are a dime a dozen out there. So are foodies. While I think I'm pretty reliable and knowledgeable about food, I know there are a few people who could easily take my place as a reviewer, so I'm pretty conscientious. Also, I hate the thought that someone could show up at a place I rated highly and have a dreadful experience. In a way, that makes me an advocate for all of you - and the restaurants know it. If someone reads my review, goes to the restaurant and has a bad experience, the restaurant's going to hear from me - politely and tactfully, of course.

The real deal is that when Ms. Reichl was writing, her income outstripped the cost of eating out - and I think the Times may have actually reimbursed her for her mandatory three meals at a restaurant with one or more guests before she did a review. The truth - at least for me - is that I'm paid much less for many of my reviews than the cost of the meal. I couldn't afford to do this job without the comps.

Having said that, I will add that against at least one of my editors' advice, I often pay for meals I "shouldn't" because the restaurant was on my list and I was going to eat out anyway. I don't identify myself as a food writer (really, who does that??) and I sometimes get "Single Woman Dining Alone" service. And I write it up that way.

Here's how comped dining really works:  They know I'm coming. About half the time, I'm invited to bring a guest. Most times, alcohol is included (they'd love to get me happy - I usually refrain), but sometimes the wine list is limited to certain less expensive selections. The tip is my responsibility, which is fine - and I almost always overtip, because the waitperson's stressed out by my presence. So here's what I look at:

1. You knew I was coming: you know I'm here. If you can't get it right now, fuhgeddaboutit.
2. I'm watching all the tables around me, especially the single diners. If I get served ahead of someone who came in after me, I'm annoyed. Equally annoyed if you serve someone who came in after me, first.
3. I talk to people at adjacent tables about their experiences and food.
4. I sometimes send friends in later to see what "regular people" experience.
5. If I like you, I come back unannounced at a different time of day or on a different day of the week to see what happens.
6. Please don't hover or come by the table every 10 minutes. It's annoying and reeks of a lack of confidence.
7. My ultimate rule is this: "How would I describe this restaurant to my sister?"

So yes, I take the comps. I couldn't do my job properly without them. Also, different publications have different rating systems, so something I "LOVE" in one publication, I might be "meh" about in another. But I'm still way, way better than YELP.  I promise.

On Civil War Re-enactments

So tonight I was scrolling through Facebook and I came to this blog entry at Gettysburg College's student blog, "Surge":  http://surgegettysburg.wordpress.com/2013/08/14/stuff-white-people-like-1863/. I read Surge because (1) Gettysburg's my alma mater, (2) one of the best externs at my office EVER, Hannah Frantz, worked there before she graduated, and (3) I like to read opinions written by people who are not yet old enough to run for President, just to keep my mind nimble.

Briefly, Steve Slowinski ('09), the blog entry's author, attended the sesquicentennial of the Battle of Gettysburg and went to a re-enactment, only to find himself very conflicted by the event. He concluded it cheapened and trivialized an horrific Civil War Battle, and that it missed the point that the South fought to keep their slaves.

I see his point of view, but I respectfully disagree. I think Civil War soldiers - especially Southerners - fought for complicated reasons. Individual Southerners didn't necessarily go to battle in support of slavery - they called the conflict "the War of Northern Aggression" - they were defending their homeland and states' rights. General Lee, a West Point graduate, was deeply conflicted about choosing a side.

The re-enactment is a great living history exercise, as Slowinski initially observes, but he bemoans the fact the announcer failed to provide context for the battle. I was not there, but I'm guess that was because (1) it was blazing hot, as Slowinski said, and (2) it would probably have been like stopping to explain what a Vulcan is at a Star Trek convention. Only a bunch of Civil War nerds would travel from far and wide to sit in a field in Gettysburg in July to watch a bunch of guys in wool suits re-enact the bloodiest three days in American history.

Why were the spectators all white? I have no idea. I don't think it has to do with tacit praise of Southern support of slavery, though. Absent evidence, our conjectures are just that. Conjecture. What I really wish was that Slowinski had interviewed some re-enactors and included their thoughts in his piece. Whether they supported or refuted his POV, I believe their opinions would have been informative.

Americans have learned to embrace those who fought for their country without embracing the wars themselves.  I think what we celebrate - if that is the right word - about the Civil War is that we came out of it whole and were able to rebuild. And wrong though their cause may have been, can anyone question the courage and devotion to duty of the Confederates who undertook the suicide charge under General Pickett? Or resist the poignancy of Lee's bemoaning, "This has all been my fault," after surveying the carnage? There were great men, brave men (and women, but that's a whole other blog entry) on both sides - and tragic though the battle and War were, there is no denying their courage and love of the land.

I think the re-enactors pay tribute to that courage. I think they show us that the armies were not "good" and "evil" - that's dreadfully reductionist. And I think they remind us that this was one of the last truly personal wars, where soldiers saw each other and even knew or were related to people fighting on the other side.

Finally, I'd like to ask this question: Why do we re-enact the American Revolution and the Civil War, but not, say, the Normandy invasion? Clearly, the latter was not on our soil, but I think it goes beyond that. During the American Revolution, there were colonists who took the British side - and believed they were the patriots and the Continental Army were the traitors. I think we're fascinated by the complexity - that we could feel strongly enough about a political issue to take up arms against each other, and then still come out of the conflict first birthing, and then re-birthing, an amazing nation.

Intro

I'm a professional writer. I started out as an unpaid blogger, right here on Google's Blogger. And I had every blogger's dream come true - I got hired to write professionally for a number of local publications and some websites, mostly having to do with food, travel, and local human interest stories.

I gave up posting to my blog here (Lainie's Last Stand) because I just didn't have time to create recipes for free anymore. But then a funny thing happened: I discovered I still had lots to say on a variety of topics and that my paid outlets weren't giving me a place to give expression to those things. So I'm back here on Blogger to see if anyone cares about my opinion. And to respond to my alma mater's (Gettysburg College) student blog, Surge, (http://surgegettysburg.wordpress.com/) on its most recent topic. That's where I'm starting out; let's see where it goes from here.