Does opinion still matter? Yes. (Photo by Stuart Miles.)

Now that the New York Times’ latest restaurant critic, Sam Sifton, has moved on, the hand wringing begins anew about whether career food critics are doomed because of Yelp and food bloggers.

Let’s ask a different question. How have food bloggers changed restaurant reviewing? Here’s what I see as the biggest shifts:

1. Food bloggers don’t wait to review. In the old days, reviewers waited a month or so for the restaurant to get its groove. Bloggers figure that if they’re open for business, they’re fair game.

I like this approach. It implies there’s no cozy relationship between the two. Except that sometimes, there is. See No. 2.

2. Restaurants have opening events for bloggers. Print reviewers go to restaurants undercover and hope not to be recognized. They have expense accounts or get reimbursed as freelancers, whereas most bloggers write for free, as a hobby. So restaurants pay for them to come sample a meal. The cozy relationship is back.

3. Bloggers are more likely to cover an event than to review the food. Cover means “I went there and this is what I had,” versus. reviewing, which requires opinions about the food. At a poorly-attended panel on restaurant reviewing I attended recently (everyone was next door at a molecular gastronomy demo), a blogger said she doesn’t write reviews because her trips to restaurants are comped, as that would be a conflict of interest. Instead, she writes about the event of eating a meal.

Does less reviewing by bloggers have something to do with their confidence in generating opinions? Perhaps. Josh Osersky made that argument in Time magazine. “The current crop of food writers, at least the online ones, are a cacophony of dazzled novices, opining confidently in an intellectual vacuum,” he says.

4. Blog write-ups are more positive than print reviews. Another blogger at the aforementioned restaurant reviewing panel said that she doesn’t write anything at all if she doesn’t like the food.

The idea about “not saying anything at all if you can’t say anything nice” is not new. Your mother probably told you that. But it is not that relevant in restaurant reviewing, since most restaurants are neither horrible or stupendous, but somewhere between. (Except in the case of these food bloggers, who got duped. They were served frozen food and videotaped, without their knowledge, so some of them outed the organizers.)

“Mostly good” is the norm that qualifies for a restaurant review, because  it allows critics to write the pros and cons while still recommending the place. Bloggers, however, are more prone to puff pieces, with gushing headlines such as “Yet another fabulous meal at [Restaurant]”  and “[Restaurant], Will You Marry Me?”

5. Bloggers celebrate all kinds of restaurants, not just fine dining. They write about food trucks, joints, far-flung meals in monasteries, underground dinners, and tons of topics most traditional reviewers won’t touch. Perhaps that’s one of the reasons why some newspapers have added reviews of less expensive places.

So, some of these five trends are positive, and some, for me, are problematic. What do you think?

* * *

You might also want to see:

• BlogSoop, a site that aggregates food blog restaurant reviews in major cities
• An anonymous blogger reveals himself in this Eater interview

You know that secret smile you carry around after reading a good book? Especially one that makes you laugh and ponder the food world we love so much? I just finished Anthony Bourdain’s memoir, Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food, and I’ll be smiling all day.

He’s toned down the macho swagger I staggered through 10 years ago in Kitchen Confidential, but he’s still writing about his man-filled, foul-mouthed food world. Expect brutal honesty about what constitutes exciting restaurant food, why we should cook and what, no-holds-barred opinions on selected food writers and chefs, and dirt on restaurant reviewers who suck. In this self-deprecating, thoughtful memoir, Bourdain also looks back at his life and how he got to be so lucky to be a best-selling author, dad, and world traveller with a TV show.

You can’t help but laugh out loud, and often. After consuming an elaborate tasting menu at Per Se in New York by the chef he respects most, Thomas Keller, he writes:

“But look across the seat at the woman with you. Do you really think she’s breathlessly anticipating getting back to your apartment to ride you like the Pony Express? Or do you think it far more likely that (like you) she’s counting the seconds till she can get away for a private moment or two and discreetly let loose with a backlog of painfully suppressed farts?”

Vintage Bourdain. So outrageous and hilarious. If you’ve ever made it through an upscale restaurant’s tasting menu, you will relate.

Not only did he make me laugh, he made me think. He looks at food writers, particularly Alan Richman, to whom he dedicates an entire chapter called “Alan Richman is a Douchebag.” It’s because, after Bourdain called him the “Douchebag of the Year,” Richman wrote a negative review of Les Halles, the restaurant where Bourdain was once the chef. Here’s Richman’s side of the story.

In that essay, Bourdain writes thoughtfully about restaurant reviewers from his days as a chef, about how easy it is to “turn them” if you feed them for free:

“They’ll remember. It’s like giving a bent cop a Christmas turkey. They may not be able to help you directly — but the’ll at least make an effort not to 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 magnificance.”

This freebie comes, he continues, during the pre-opening tastings at the restaurant, where the writers are not officially reviewing, and therefore are ethically off the hook. Bourdain says food critics count on appearing on the restaurant’s A list. If they give the place a bad review, they worry they might not be invited to free meals at other restaurants.

Elsewhere in the book, “So You Wanna Be a Chef,” gives a cogent, passionate argument about whether readers have the balls to make it in a restaurant kitchen. You won’t have to buy the book to read this essay in full. Bourdain’s friend Michael Ruhlman (who makes a few cameos) got permission from Harper Collins to reprint it on his blog.

Another favorite is a journalistic profile of the Dominican chef who filets fish at the upscale Le Bernadin restaurant in New York. By featuring him, Bourdain shows deep respect for the Spanish-speaking workers who make restaurants around the country hum.

I only have two complaints. With Bourdain, it’s all-men-all-the-time. His only real discussion of women are where he recounts hooking up with a coke-head model on a Caribbean island; and his complicated feelings towards Alice Waters, whom he once compared to the Khmer Rouge (see last paragraph of interview). The book also sags a little in the middle, when he devotes two essays to being a dad. He’s such a softie, writing one piece about the evils of Ronald McDonald and another on dancing with his daughter. Still, I skimmed past. I hope he doesn’t call me a douchebag.

Disclaimer: Five years ago I interviewed Bourdain for Will Write for Food, and he wrote a generous endorsement that appears on the first page. I was already a fan, and nothing has changed.

Sara Kate Gillingham-Ryan

If you read my recent post on recipe writing that generated dozens of comments, you’ll see that commenter Victoria von Biel, executive editor of Bon Appetit, named a blogger who’s a killer recipe developer — the only food blogger who works for her. I’m going to tell you why.

First, let’s identify the golden girl. She’s Sara Kate Gillingham-Ryan, 35, founding editor of an Apartment Therapy sub-site, The Kitchn. (Her husband, Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan, founded Apartment Therapy.)

And why does Gillingham-Ryan qualify? Here’s what von Biel told me during an interview at the recent International Food Blogger Conference: She wants someone who understands “international flavor combinations that are fresh and unusual.” Someone to whom she can say, “Do a casual Spanish dinner party for six people” and the writer will give her four complete menu ideas that contain “ideas significantly different from each other.”

When I asked Gillingham-Ryan why she succeeds with von Biel, she said it’s because “My guess is it’s because I give it to her straight, in as few words as possible, and I give her lots of choices.” For example, if von Biel asks for one savory and one sweet, Gillingham-Ryan will give her five recipe ideas for each.

Gillingham-Ryan had help on the way to the top. She had a mentor and teacher in her mother, a former staff writer for the Los Angeles Times food section, a home economist who later quit to become self-employed as a writer, recipe developer and food stylist. “I was around. I saw how it worked,” said Gillingham-Ryan.

When she wanted to become a writer, her mother introduced her to an editor friend of the family at Tribune Media Services, where Gillingham-Ryan wrote food features. “A lot of it was just luck,” she admitted. Later Gillingham-Ryan took the short course at the French Culinary Institute.

How a Recipe Developer Thinks

I asked Gillingham-Ryan how she comes up with recipe ideas. “I draw on my experience as a cook and eater and reader of Bon Appetit,” she began. “I think, ‘What have I eaten recently that’s really amazing?’” She will try to recreate it in her mind. She tries to remember what she thought at the time, such as “This would be better with orange peel, or with chicken thighs instead of lamb.” Using her memory as a starting point, she heads into the kitchen to improve upon or change the dish, accessing a taste library of which flavors work together best. She tries to stay away from fads (“Not doing a ton of cardamom right now. It’s been done.”).

When she’s brainstorming a recipe, she’ll turn to books as a reference to see how people she respects think, such as reading Shirley Corrhier or Harold McGee on how baking soda and powder work together. At this stage, she’s not tinkering with measurements yet, and she’s up on what’s already been done in the magazine. If she looks at similar recipes to dishes she’s imagining, it’s to decide what she would do differently to put a personal stamp on it. “I know the basic formula for most foods,” said Gillingham-Ryan. “A lot of that came from culinary school and the cooking afterwards.”

What is her advice for food bloggers and other food writers who want to build expertise as recipe developers? “People think they can just call themselves (recipe developers) and start doing it, but it just takes time to develop a craft.” She also recognizes what worked for her. Find people who will “take you in and show you the ropes.”

The upscale eatery that invited the blogger to a meal.

Here’s a story that could have happened to any food blogger or restaurant reviewer who receives email invitations to restaurants.

A restaurant p.r. person invited a food blogger to a “food tasting session,”  where she said the restaurant would host him for lunch.

The food blogger couldn’t make it at the suggested time, and later sent an email saying he’d be in the following Sunday for brunch, not lunch. He did not confirm that he expected it would still be a “food tasting session” where he would be hosted.

Lesson #1: If you’re changing the game plan, seek confirmation that you can still be hosted. Just because a restaurant invited you to a specific event doesn’t mean you can show up any time for a free meal.

The p.r. person asked if he would be bringing a guest to brunch. He replied that he’d be bringing 3 friends!

Lesson #2: If you’re going to a “food tasting session,” you are working. Do not bring extra people as though you are out socializing. If the restaurant says you can bring a guest, that means 1 person.

That Sunday, the food blogger and his pals enjoyed a fine brunch over several hours, including champagne. At the end of the meal, the restaurant presented the blogger with a bill for about $320 US. Needless to say, he hadn’t seen that coming. After much discussion, the restaurant reduced the amount to $117 US. The blogger paid, but he was furious and stormed out.

Somehow the story got into the press, and then a second story followed quoting outraged food bloggers who made some good points, but did not have all the information.

Then the blogger tried to explain it all on his blog, and he apologized for being rude. But sorry, he fell short because he failed to observe Lessons #1 and # 2. He also said he assumes everyone knows that food bloggers don’t pay for their meals. You know what they say about assuming: it makes an ASS out of U and ME.)

And then the restaurant put out a press release suggesting “a possible formation of … an association/society, which cultivates and promotes the appropriate manner of blogging and blogger’s etiquette. There should be some guidelines and policies implemented to avoid any similar incidents from occurring again.” Good idea.

So what should Lesson #3 be? I’d say “Don’t take or expect free meals,” but I’m old fashioned.

Thanks to Nathan Lau for alerting me to this story.

For more on freebies, see this post on guidelines on taking freebies.

Befriending chefs and purveyors when you’re a food writer can be perilous. Worse yet, the practice can come back to bite you in the butt.

And that’s exactly what happened to Josh Ozersky, a food writer who got married recently in New York and showed poor judgement when planning for his wedding.

The trouble started when he accepted food from his buddies in the business as  presents: free bread, dips, seafood, lasagna, strip loins, and a free place to hold the event.

Then he devoted his column on Time magazine’s website to promoting the food and purveyors, never mentioning that his buddies supplied the goods for free, and saying most caterers “aren’t really good cooks” anyway.

Another food writer, Robert Sietsema of the Village Voice, busted him in an open letter, suggesting the food and venue could have cost $24,000 and asking whether he paid. And then the New York Times did a fascinating story about not only Ozersky but the whole issue of restaurants getting an increasing number of requests for free meals.

Time got so many comments on Ozersky’s column that they closed it, and later issued a statement: ”Josh is friends with a variety of chefs and those relationships inform much of his writing. Usually, those connections are clear in his work. This piece describing his wedding, however, lacked adequate disclosure. Josh should have made his personal ties to the chefs in the piece clear and disclosed that the food and the venue he was describing were gifts. Josh understands that such proper disclosures are to be made in the future.”

So obviously, Ozersky screwed up. It’s best to disclose when you get a free meal or product, at the very least. Whenever you’re being treated in a way that’s not identical to the way your readers would be treated, you have to fess up.

So let’s discuss: Are you friends with food purveyors and chefs? Have you ever considered whether this might cause a conflict for you? Or do you think it’s inevitable to have friendships with the people whose food you admire, and whatever happens, you can handle it?

Thanks to Cynthia of  Life of Cyn and Carole Bidnick for sending me links.

It’s been a while since I’ve held a food writing contest on this blog, so I thought I’d blast out another one, just for fun. This time, let’s have a simile writing contest.

Similes are comparisons that starts with “like” or “as,” for comparing two unlike things. Why would you want to use them? You need as many tools as possible in your writing toolbox. Similes are a welcome alternative to adjectives. They’re playful, making your writing fun to read. Restaurant reviewers are particularly good employers of similes because they spend a lot of time describing food.

Here’s an example from New York Times critic Sam Sifton. He compares two unlike things: a slice of slathered toast and kissing:

“The very first item on the menu at Marea is ricci, a piece of warm toast slathered with sea urchin roe, blanketed in a thin sheet of lardo, and dotted with sea salt. It offers exactly the sensation as kissing an extremely attractive person for the first time — a bolt of surprise and pleasure combined. The salt and fat give way to primal sweetness and combine in deeply agreeable ways. The feeling lingers on the tongue and vibrates through the body.”

Here’s another one from Pulitzer-prize winning critic Jonathan Gold, comparing a restaurant’s hot dog dish to the contents of a spilled ice chest:

“The dogs, which are high-quality franks from Chicago’s Vienna Sausage, are good, but the emphasis is clearly neither in their formulation nor on unusual sourcing — it is on what is done with them, whether wrapping them with jalapeño bacon in a Parmesan crisp as with the Holy Roller, tucking it under the pastrami in a classic Reuben sandwich, or burying it in barbecue sauce and potato salad, like a hot dog you’d find in an ice chest that accidentally tipped over in the back of the SUV.”

I hope these smile examples got you in the mood to write one of your own. Please enter your simile, on any topic related to food, within one week, by 6/24 at midnight PST.

To continue the theme of restaurant criticism, I’ll send the winner a copy of Born Round: The Secret History of a Full-time Eater, by Frank Bruni, former restaurant critic of the New York Times.

Update: And the winner is…Katy at Thought for Food, for her entire blog post on comparing lemon vinaigrette-dressed salad to a summer wardrobe.

Flickr photo used by permission.

You might have read in my last post on James Beard nominees that Alan Richman, a contributing writer for GQ magazine since 1986, received three nomations.

That’s nothing. His bio on GQ calls him “the most decorated food writer in America.” He has already won 14 James Beard awards, with 29 nominations overall. A congratulatory post from the GQ editors compared him to Meryl Streep, who has won twice, with  16 nominations.

Richman, who started his writing career as a sports reporter in Philadelphia, eats in restaurants as his main job. In one year he might dine in Bangkok; Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam; Paris; Beijing; Los Angeles; and New Haven, Connecticut.

He’s a master of the long form, but it must be relative. In an interview with Chow, Richman bemoans its demise.”We’re starting to lose something by stories getting so short,” he said. “I fully understand you can no longer write 10,000 words. Those days are over, and they probably should be.

“But as magazines more and more are turning to the 2,000-word story at the maximum, you lose the sense of adventure and expansiveness. A great story can sweep you away. A great short story can amuse you, but it can’t sweep you away.”

If you’d like to be swept away, read his three stories nominated this year, and see what you can learn from them:

“American Pie,” GQ, June 2009.  ”Richman traveled more than 20,000 miles across the U.S.A.—the country that makes it best—in a search for the 25 best pizzas.” (How many of us can do that for freelancer pay? The ambitious complexity and length of the assignment floors me.)

“Hillbilly Truffle,” GQ, September 2009. “…What happens when—sacrée merde!—an obsessed Yankee learns to grow black truffles in the scrub woods of Davy Crockett’s Tennessee?” (Ferocious research and analysis of black truffles’ history and appeal.)

“Le Petit Gourmet,”GQ, March 2009. “Between math class, student council, and swim-team practice, 12-year-old David Fishman pursues his true passion: writing reviews of some of New York’s most important restaurants.” (You’ll laugh your head off at his long lead, written in classic Jewish shtick.)

You’ll notice how much work he pours into each story, his whip-smarts, and how his personality comes through. How would he describe his voice? Here’s what he said when I interviewed him for Will Write for Food: “I’m a diffident, cranky, New York guy who walks into a restaurant and waits to see how he’s going to be abused. I’m a passive-agressive guy who gets the last word. I am someone to whom things happen. Writers should take a a passive role so readers feel represented.”

He didn’t say anything about being hilarious, intensely passionate about  whatever the topic happens to be, and opinionated. “Buffalo mozzarella” he sniffs in American Pie, “is pizza’s second-worst topping, exceeded only by whole anchovies—no hot, smelly fish on my pies, thank you.”

If you’re lucky enough to live in New York (and you’re loaded), you could take his class at the French Culinary Institute ($1,050), where he is the Dean of Food Journalism. When asked what he teaches, he explained to Chow:

“There are three stages to food writing. There is the planning, which takes an enormous amount of time to do well—so many phone calls, so many people to talk to, so many reservations. There is the writing, which is hard. You have to create your own story; there’s no automatic story, no natural outline. The third part is the traveling and the eating. And that’s really easy. There’s a lot that’s hard about preparing, about writing, but covering food and travel is about as good a job as you can have.”

Now that you know a little more about Richman, do you think it’s possible to get writing gigs like this today? Is he part of an increasingly rarefied group of writers that will not be replaced, or can we hope to hear more from a new generation?

Despite hand-wringing about the decline of print restaurant reviewing, few people seem to care. When I teach food writing, hardly anyone asks about becoming a critic now, and a post I wrote on how the net influences restaurant reviewing elicited no response.

Maybe it’s about the economy. Food bloggers cook, perhaps because it’s less expensive and more hands-on than eating out. Due to lack of funds, restaurant reviewers now fall into two camps:  the few remaining newspaper employees and freelancers reimbursed for meals; and hobbyists, who write on websites like Yelp.

So please correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems no one wants to be a restaurant reviewer anymore. And certainly this news about Yelp doesn’t elevate the profession.

What news, you ask? It’s called Yelpmail. On this post from Chez Geek, a restaurateur explains how Yelp salespeople ask for money to ratchet up the restaurant’s ratings. In another tactic, Yelp’s Elite reviewers came in and wrote a favorable review in exchange for a monthly fee.

Chez Geek is not alone in outing Yelp. The East Bay Express nailed Yelp in an expose. Now there’s a class action lawsuit against Yelp for “running an extortion scheme.”

I wonder why newspapers never thought of that? Oh yeah. Because once the review is printed, it can’t be altered (and because blackmail is illegal, BTW). But on the Internet, Yelp can tinker with ratings forever, and move negative reviews lower so readers have to scroll longer to find them.

I suppose print reviewers will gloat. For them, the news about Yelp is just another indication that hobbyist sites can’t be trusted. But other citizen reviewer sites like Chowhound, Citysearch, and Eater will fill the gap. Let’s hope they don’t abuse their power as their sites rise in popularity, just as print reviewers learn that traditional reviews are becoming scarce, and no one seems concerned.

It’s the last night of my husband Owen’s and my vacation in New York, and despite 10 days of eating meals at restaurants, he took shots of our food only once. I asked him to do so when I didn’t think anyone would notice, sitting at an outdoor table at  Xie Xie (pronounced shay shay, Mandarin for thank you), a casual pan-Asian sandwich shop. I wanted to experience what food bloggers go through when they’re going to blog about a dish. When we were done, however, Chef Angelo Sosa came over to say good-bye and thanks. Later Owen said the chef had been watching us. Would he have done so if we did not take the photos? I guess I’ll never know.

Let me interrupt for a moment to tell you about his sandwiches. Sosa has worked a the restaurants of Alain Ducasse and Jean-Georges Vongerichten, and I couldn’t wait to taste his cooking at a fraction of the price. The two pan-Asian sandwiches I sampled were loaded with layers of flavor and texture, and to top it off, cost under $9 each.

The Hanoi-inspired Cha Ca La Vong, a tumeric-laced seared fish sandwich loaded with sweet juicy onions, a layer of fresh dill, had a sriracha mayonnaise that kept the sandwich moist.

The caramelized Sweet Glazed Pork in Chinese buns, so tender it hardly required chewing, was laced with a sweet and sour sauce, onion and sprigs of cilantro.

We ate well and inexpensively in New York, including dinner with David Leite and his partner at La Caridad 78, a Latin American/Chinese restaurant frequented by cops (where Michael Richards, formerly “Kramer” on Sinefeld, walked by), then set out for the Culinary Institute of America at Hyde Park, where I gave a talk to Irena Chalmers’ food writing class about blogging.

Last night, we blew the budget at Blue Hill restaurant at Stone Barn in the Hudson Valley. I’ve been an admirer of Chef Dan Barber’s writing and farm-to-table philosophy for years, so it was a big deal to eat at his modern, barnlike restaurant at last. I was surprised by the low lighting, hushed conversation, and superb service, but I suppose all that goes with a restaurant of this quality and price range. I wondered what would have happened if Owen pulled out his camera and took flash photos of our three hour long “Farmer’s Feast 5-course tasting menu,” actually closer to 12 small courses that ended at midnight.

Today I called Blue Hill vice president Irene Hamburger to ask about it. She said no flash photography is permitted in the restaurant. For the first 1 to 1.5 years, the restaurant had no restrictions, and diners complained when the people at the next table broke the ambiance, taking flash shot after shot as each dish arrived. The restaurant management decided the “dining experience of a neighbor is as important as the blogger’s experience,” and banned flash photography after talking to peers at other fine restaurants, who have done the same. Now, if bloggers want photos of representative dishes, Hamburger shoots off an email with attached images.

I can’t say I blame her. I once ate lunch with a magazine editor who photographed every dish that came to our table as part of her cover story on the best Chinese restaurants in America. She was choosing the finalists. The manager came over and, after learning of her intent, comped the meal. Gee, do you think that might have influenced her opinion? Good restaurant reviewers try to be inconspicuous so they can represent an average diner’s experience. That was impossible in her case.

If you’re a food blogger, I’m curious to know how you handle photographing dishes at restaurants. Have you ever been asked to put away your camera? Should you take as many photos as you like, using flash? Have you received special attention and free meals as a result? Do you wonder whether your actions affect nearby diners? I’m still learning how this new world works, and your experiences and opinions are valuable.

Two leaders in print food writing have acknowledged the power of online restaurant reviews. They’re not about to say they value the opinions, but it’s a start.

Sam Sifton, the new restaurant critic for the New York Times, says the net can add value where newspapers cannot. Answering questions about his new post on Diner’s Journal, he said,  “The biggest change in restaurant criticism since my days at NYPress is — hands down — the Internet. I don’t know that I trust the opinion of that guy who loved the sandwiches at Xie Xie and wrote about it on his blog, or Yelp, or Eater, or Midtown Lunch. (Why prevaricate? I don’t trust his opinion.) But boy oh boy do I like the photographs he’s posted, the menu he’s scanned, the information he’s provided for all to share. For myself, I look forward to joining that discussion.”

(By the way, he failed to provide links to Yelp, Eater or Midtown Lunch.)

The announcement about the nation’s most powerful restaurant reviewer prompted some to ask if that title is still relevant, now that anyone can write a restaurant review online, whether a rabid  citizen reviewer or a well-known blogger.

I’m biased enough to think the answer is yes, with a background as a print journalist. I can’t think of a single online reviewer with his influence, when it comes to the fancy restaurants. Can you?

Back in 2006, Gourmet Editor Ruth Reichl said that restaurant reviews in her magazine no longer make sense, because online reviews appear immediately. National magazines often work six months in advance, so scooping the net would be a “ridiculous” proposition. Now the magazine focuses on trend stories, adding depth and insights that online posts do not, and posts reviews only on its website.

She made these comments about print versus online food writing during a New York radio show about “Amateur Gastronomes,” otherwise known as food bloggers. Bloggers Josh Friedland of TheFoodSection.com (who just did what used to be unforgivable: posted a mugshot of Sifton August 10), Jennifer Leuzzi of snack.blogs.com, and Regina Schrambling of gastropoda.com were also on the show. It’s worth a listen.