The future of restaurant criticism
Even though we didn't dine out much when I was a kid, I had some favorite restaurants. I loved the popcorn shrimp at Po’ Folks (which, looking at that menu today — hooboy is it problematic in its framing of poor people). The chicken tenders with honey mustard sauce and curly fries at Chili’s was my staple order well into twenties. East Texas summer Sundays were punctuated by a post-church trip to the Golden Corral, where I’d load up on fried zucchini coins on the salad bar and drench all of my vegetables with gloppy ranch dressing.
Shopping trips to Tyler, which had a mall, included a very special treat: lunch at Luby’s, where I always ordered the square fish, which came with an enormous glob of tartar sauce, and a side of mac and cheese and fried okra. For dessert, I’d get the little bowl of jewel-toned Jell-O, which had been cut into perfect squares and danced under the cafeteria lights as I carried my tray to our family’s table.
Going out to eat was a special thing in our family, a ritual reserved for time together and special occasions. It wasn’t until I had a family of my own that dining out became a routine, a way to punt on nights I didn’t feel like cooking, and even a job of sorts. I stopped going to restaurants and ordering food that I loved and that made me happy and started going to restaurants and eating like a critic (even when I wasn’t reviewing them).
I’ve mentioned here before that my relationship with writing restaurant reviews shifted dramatically when Trump was elected in 2016. Suddenly, it didn’t seem important to go to a restaurant and critique the food and ambiance when our nation was in crisis. I didn't write a review for a long time; in fact, I didn’t write a review for an entire year from November 2016 to December 2017, choosing instead to focus my food writing on social and political issues, from restaurants economically culture-jamming the Trump administration to how nonprofits use food to support underprivileged kids in the public school system.
When I started writing restaurant reviews again, I tried to interrogate the function of the spaces, questioning the decision to charge $36 a plate for what is effectively poor people’s (po’ folks?) food, taking accessibility issues into consideration, as well as their positions in gentrified neighborhoods. But, as I look back at some of those reviews, I see myself behaving in a way I find horrifying now, complaining about things like poorly trained service staff and criminally bland chicken pot pie.
The pandemic, though, has brought into stark relief yet again the uselessness of the traditional restaurant review and, by extension, the traditional restaurant critic.
Last week, our local paper ran a story written by its restaurant critic with the headline, “Statesman restaurant critic dines out for first time in months.” While this critic’s writing is often cringeworthy, there are some real dingers in this particular piece.
To wit:
I’m a pretty decent cook. But my crab cakes never seem to find the balance of creaminess and bronzed crackle like the ones at Perla’s last week. The plumped scallops that lunch didn’t demand my anxious attention to timing; no knife work was required of me for a fine chiffonade; and no juice pressing needed for the ceviche’s tart citrus bath. And, the real luxury: no dishes to be done, no mess to clean.
I feel you, Matt! Washing dishes is a drag. Especially when you have to do it every day because you’ve been cooking at home during, you know, a global pandemic. What a luxury to have someone else who can’t afford to stay home wash the dishes instead!
We hurried to place our masks back over our faces each time the server returned for more than a few seconds. […] My wife asked our server how he felt being back on the floor and if customers seemed properly cautious. He admitted he’d been a bit reluctant to return to work, as his wife is immunocompromised, but he needed to make money. Wearing masks protects you and other people.
Hey, you know what else protects you and other people? Staying the fuck home, your wife’s birthday be damned. If your wife is lucky, she’ll have another birthday next year. This guy’s wife? Well, too bad. Your wife wanted to spend her birthday drinking wine and eating seafood for hours, so she wins.
I saw a woman blow past the host stand to search for her friends. An employee followed her and politely offered a mask to wear into the dining room. The woman rolled her eyes, snapped the mask from the employee and placed it over one ear, only to dramatically whip it from her face upon entering the restaurant, eyes rolling the whole time. The privilege wafted off her like the stink of rotten fish.
Bruh. BRUUUUHHHHHHH.
We kept our single-use menu tableside for reference throughout the lunch, and Perla’s snazzy coasters with their signature coastal design had been removed, which led to some pooling of water from sweaty glasses.
Oh dear. Oh no. Yet somehow this didn’t stop you from lingering for HOURS, taking advantage of your fellow citizens’ acute need to make money in order to STAY ALIVE. But you had to mention the wet table in your closing paragraph because you wanted to make it clear that that wet table bothered you.
When I was discussing this review with my own personal Matt, he compared it to someone in pre-Revolution France complaining that they were out of wig powder but the wig shop was closed due to plague. How clueless, how privileged, how … let them e̶a̶t̶ wash the dishes after we eat crab cakes.
So much has happened in food media over the past few months, from the Alison Roman scandal to the dustup at Bon Appetit to the broadening discourse on racism in food media; as such, I’ve been mulling the future of food writing, particularly restaurant criticism as a genre.
I was able to clarify a lot of my thinking after listening to the interview with Soleil Ho on Racist Sandwich; I believe it is high time for a new iteration of the restaurant critic, one who contends with ethics and history and social justice. One who contends with and problematizes (sorry, grad school word) a restaurant’s joyous, anachronistic embrace of colonialism and Orientalism.
When all of this is over, we can’t as restaurant critics go back to bitching about wet tables and lack of attention to detail. If the restaurants we love survive this pandemic and the staggering, breathtaking lack of care and compassion on the part of our state and federal leaders who care more about money than people, we have to focus less on purple prose rhapsodizing this sauce or that scallop and more on the people that fuel this industry, often at great cost.
I don’t know whether I’ll be doing more restaurant reviewing, or even published food writing, in the future. Much depends on multiple factors over the next 8–10 weeks. But I do know that if I do, it will be with a greater appreciation for the people who have literally put their lives on the line for my enchiladas and your crab cakes.
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