By now you’ve seen the announcements for the Oscars of food writing, the James Beard Awards for books, broadcast and journalism.

But have you read the pieces that won over the judges? I thought not.

I tracked down a handful of feature stories and explain why this is food writing at its finest. Here’s what it takes to win an award of this caliber, with links to writers so you can investigate who won as well:

1. Cooking, Recipes, or Instruction: Anna Thomas, Eating Well, for “The Soup for Life”

Here’s a sensuous look at how Thomas concocted recipes for green soups for her most recent cookbook, Love Soup. Her writing is full of action verbs (“a bitter wind was swatting down the last damp leaves”), evocative writing (“onions, slowly sizzling in the skillet, turned the color of caramel toffee”), and passionate storytelling about how her obsession drove her to create earthy, elegant soups.

I still have my beloved 1972 copy of The Vegetarian Epicure, which Thomas wrote while a film student at UCLA.

2. Environment, Food Politics, and Policy. Ben Paynter, Fast Company, for “The Sweet Science”

What’s a computer industry magazine doing writing about food and food politics? It’s really a tale of how agriculture giant Cargill triumphed in bringing a new sweetener, Truvia, to market. Paynter, a first-rate reporter, humanizes the story by focusing on a single employee’s successes.

3. Food Culture and Travel, Fuchsia Dunlop, The Financial Times, “Global Menu: Kicking Up a Stink”

Dunlop expertly leads readers into a suspenseful tale of serving stinky cheeses to to the Chinese. You’re halfway through the story, wondering, “Will they like it?” before you find out the answer. And you’re as fascinated as she is by the question.

4. Group Food Blog, The Salt: NPR’s Food Blog

Quirky, intelligent, and newsy, this group blog focuses on the fascinating  issues like whether rice and beans really are good for you; and how chefs add butter to make wild food taste great. Read bios of the main contributors on NPR’s right column.

5. Humor, Brett Martin, GQ, “The Hangover Part III”

I don’t know about you, but I am so over reading about drunken Tokyo escapades with chef David Chang. I mean, the whole idea of answering a tweet asking if a magazine could sponsor a drunk weekend of amazing meals is crazy…unless you’re a testosterone-fueled magazine like GQ. A fun read, nevertheless.

6. Individual Food Blog, Poor Man’s Feast, Elissa Altman, Poormansfeast.com, “Craving the Food of Depravity”

As we know, anyone can start a food blog. But Elissa Altman is not “anyone.” She’s a fascinating storyteller, trained chef and published author. This post was a seemingly ordinary tale of gorging on pimento cheese and eating smoked oysters, but her thoughtfulness and intimacy about her life come through with a total lack of pretension. Here’s Altman’s post on winning the Beard award.

7. Craig Claiborne Distinguished Restaurant Review Award, Alan Richman, GQ, “The Very Tasty Liberation of Paris,” “I ♥ San Francisco,” “Diner for Schmucks”

It wouldn’t be the Beard Awards without Alan Richman. He almost always wins. You can see why in these three stories. You’ll be shocked by the bravado he displays in the last one.

Richman writes with confidence and intelligence. He’s funny, brutally honesty, and suspenseful. He’s famous for such lines as, “The cooking here has two styles: a little too much or a lot too much.”

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You might also like:

• Alan Richman, the “Most Decorated Food Writer in America”
• Who Qualifies as a Beard Finalist, and What They Wrote

(Disclosures: I was a judge for the Beard awards this year, but in books, not journalism. This post contains affiliate links, from which I make a few cents if you buy something.)

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Critic Jonathan Kauffman's huge brain let him store info about dining without taking any notes. (Photo courtesy smokedsalmon, FreeDigitalPhotos.net.)

Ever had dinner with a restaurant reviewer? Usually I’ve been on the other side, so when I got the invitation I jumped at the chance to see a multiple-award winning writer and critic in action.

Jonathan Kauffman, restaurant reviewer for San Francisco Weekly, invited my husband and me to dinner at AQ, a sleek new restaurant serving what Trendologist Kara Neilsen calls “modern cuisine meets foraging.” Jonathan and I had exchanged tweets and emails, but had never met.

I began the evening with a faux pas. Jonathan had made a reservation in a false name, which I forgot and said his name when I introduced him to my spouse. We looked around to see if anyone noticed, but no one seemed to care. He also had a credit card in a false name.

Professional critics have to be careful about being recognized. Jonathan says he manages his online presence to ensure there are no photos of him online. (I checked and he’s right: you can’t find his face in an image search. Strangely, there are lots of photos of women and food.)

Over dinner, the critic was relaxed and open to our impressions. He had been to the restaurant a month before, and already knew what he wanted to write. The dishes were complex and beautiful, and Jonathan took no notes. What impressed me was the remarkable recall in his literary, sensuous review, and his ability to tell a tale so fluidly.

Most of the awards Jonathan has won are for his narrative story telling. They include:

• 2010 Pacific Northwest Excellence in Journalism Awards, Society of Professional Journalists Region 10, for
 “… And You Will Know Us by the Trail of German Butterballs”
• 2010 AAN AltWeekly Award for 
“Healing from a Hot Pot”
• 2010 AAN AltWeekly Awards for 
“Drawing Room Comedy at Number 1 New York Pizza”
• 2009 Bert Greene Award for Food Journalism, “What I Saw, and Ate, at the Pig Sacrifice”
• 2006 Association of Food Journalists Award for restaurant criticism, circulation 150,000 or less
• 2006 James Beard Award for newspaper reporting on nutrition or consumer issues, for “Endangered Species.”

A few days after our dinner, we discussed the challenges of being a critic, how he got there, his influences, and what he thinks about food bloggers and Yelp:

Q. You’ve been a critic since 2001, at three alternative weeklies. What did you do before becoming a restaurant reviewer at San Francisco Weekly?

A. I cooked all through college and cooked in San Francisco in my 20′s, then worked as a copy editor while freelancing for East Bay Express for two years.

Q. Why did you stop being a cook?

A. I realized I didn’t want to be doing it when I was 40. It’s hard on your body and I knew I didn’t want to be wedded to a restaurant.

Q. What kind of cooking did you do?

A. At the last place I was a sous chef. We did California French, Southern French-tinged dishes such as cassoulet and variety meat like squab, sweetbreads and tongue. I learned a lot about offal, before it became cool.

Q. How important is it to your career as a food writer and critic that you were a cook?

A. It helped me talk about food. I don’t think it’s necessary, but helped me discuss what’s going on on the plate and my palate, and gave me a good understanding of classic French technique. It helped my taste memory to recall the particulars of what I ate at a restaurant. Formal training is good for understanding of the subject, but it has nothing to do with crafting an article and making a story that people want to read from start to finish.

Q. How did you learn to do that?

A. I had good editors. I read constantly, from the time I was very small. Even when I was cooking, I would have a long bus ride, and I was on the couch reading before work.

Q. What were you reading?

A. Mostly fiction. David Foster Wallace and Italo Calvino were big heroes of mine.

Scallops with parsnips at AQ. (Photo by MBarnesPhoto.com for San Francisco Weekly. Used with permission.)

Q. How often are you eating meals at restaurants?

A. I probably average dinner out three nights a week. I’m out at three to four lunches per week. During the peak periods, such as the “Best of” issue, then I’m probably out four to five nights a week and another one to two times for lunch.

Q. What do you like most about restaurant reviewing?

A. As a writer, I love the weekly deadlines, the practice of always writing, and always having something to work on. There’s no time for writer’s block. As a critic, I love both helping people find places they wouldn’t have gone to, and making the city a bigger place by talking about the breadth of the food scene. San Franciscans eat broadly, so it’s not just about bistros and cheap eats. There’s this huge richness of food worth eating and writing about.

Q. What drives you crazy about it?

A. Always feeling like I’m working when I’m eating, anytime I’m out. There’s a part of me that has to be lodging details to possibly write about it.

Q. How do you feel about food blogs?

A. Food blogs are fantastic. I love the diversity of voices that reach the public. For me, restaurant going isn’t necessarily a positive experience, though. There’s so much more that being in a restaurant brings out than excitement about the food. So I love it when bloggers write about that — that it’s not uniformly positive food, or about the best food ever. That there are shades. The food can be boring and tasteless in addition to being good, or the experience has its flaws, or that it calls up emotions other than delight, like specific memories, or the broader social issues that play out in restaurants.

The real Jonathan Kauffman, at a tender age. (Photo courtesy of Jonathan Kauffman.)

Q. You said over dinner that you never go to soft openings (meals for family and friends when a restaurant launches). Why is that?

A. For me, there’s the anonomity issue. I’m sure there are people who know what I look like now, but the more I can limit the exposure the better. As a journalist and blogger, having relationships with people can help the writing, but as a critic, I need to be more removed. I may love one person’s restaurant, and then their next one I don’t like so much, but I don’t want to soften my criticism because it can affect my relationship with the person. Some people are very good at that, but I’m not.

Q. How does it feel to be in a town where one reviewer has a lot of power, and it’s not you?

A. That was a question I had about coming back to San Francisco. In Seattle it’s more of an open field. San Francisco has been a one-critic town who has had most of the economic power. In the end it doesn’t bother me, though. Yelp is taking over that role of what makes or breaks a restaurant. For me it’s about the experience and writing more broadly about restaurants. (For contrast, see Michael Bauer’s review of AQ.)

Q. What does the word “reviewing” mean to you?

A. It means not just evaluating the success and failure of every dish, but looking broadly at what the chef or restaurant owner is trying to do: what image they’re trying to sell, what crowd they’re trying to attract, what larger trends they’re participating in. It’s more like cultural (movie, film and book) criticism.

Q. Do you consult Yelp when researching a restaurant for review?

A. It depends on what kind of restaurant. I love skimming Yelp to see what restaurants might be popping up. If I’m going to a restaurant serving a cuisine I’m not so familiar with, it’s good to see who’s writing about it and how they’re talking about the dishes. It gives me hints. Back when I started, food critics were the enemy of cooks and restaurant people. Now they appreciate that we spend a lot of time thinking about what we write, compared to Yelp.

Q. How has your job changed due to social media and blogging?

A. I work twice as much as I did when I started. I write two to three posts per day for SFoodie. I also tweet. I write one full-length review, plus I’m always going out to update our online dining guide and add new restaurants. I’ll write about them on the blog and then throw them into the dining guide. The past couple months I’ve also made assignments and scheduled posts on the blog, but someone else does the actual editing and posting.

Q. What advice do you have for someone who wants to be a restaurant reviewer? Are there still full-time jobs?

A. There are about a third of the jobs from when I started out. It’s definitely harder and harder to break in. Maintaining a blog or writing for a group blog, either for an alternative paper or others, gets your name out there and gives you a lot of practice. If you do it for a while, it gives you a certain amount of authority.

Q. What are three or four restaurants where you would like to go to dinner tonight?

A. I’m interested in a school of cooking right now that I can’t name: Chefs are combining an intense focus on local foods and making everything from scratch with an interest in gadgets that used to be avant-guard, like immersion circulators for sous vide, siphons for whipped cream, and dehydrators. There’s an amazing font of activity. If I see a pair of tweezers in the chef’s hands, I know I’m in the right place. I’d choose Sons and Daughters, Coi,  Commonweath, and Bar Tartine.

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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?

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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

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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.

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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.”

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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.

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