Dianne Jacob, Will Write For Food
Dianne Jacob, Will Write For Food
Todd Kliman doesn’t miss being a restaurant reviewer.
“It becomes tiresome after a while to eat lavish food,” he explains. “No matter where you go, everything’s plated the same way and it starts feeling like you’re in this very strange little bubble. You’re [Read more…] about Q&A: Former Restaurant Reviewer Says Reviews are Irrelevant
Food writer John Birdsall has won two James Beard Foundation awards for intensely personal essays.
A few years ago, I went outside my comfort zone. I contacted a stranger and asked to meet.
The stranger was John Birdsall, now a double James-Beard winning writer and essayist. At that time he was a restaurant reviewer for a local newspaper here in the San Francisco Bay Area, and I loved his restaurant reviews.
John has since moved on to narrative non-fiction or personal essays, often about the intersection of gay culture and food. I know he’s already won awards and was published in prestigious places, but I feel like he’s just getting started and has so much more to offer us.
Here’s his take on restaurant writing, personal essay writing, and taking risks. He also has good insights about his former writing and the role of an editor. I asked him to write his answers (rather than me interviewing him), so you can get a sense of his style:
Q. How does your background as a restaurant and catering cook influence your food writing? Do you believe that people who write about food should have professional experience or culinary training?
A. For a long time I didn’t think it did: Cooking seemed a prelude disconnected from [Read more…] about “Memoir Has to Risk Something,” says John Birdsall
Scott Warner snapped this shot of me and the affable Jonathan Gold, restaurant critic of the Los Angeles Times, as our talk began.
When I walked up, Jonathan Gold stood talking with a small group of food writers. It was after his keynote presentation at the International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP) annual conference in Hollywood, CA, and I was late for a session. I didn’t care. One of my food writing idols seemed to be available in the cavernous ballroom.
How often does that happen? At IACP, quite often. If you’ve been to their conferences, you probably remember when Julia Child and Jaques Pepin [Read more…] about What Happened When I Approached Jonathan Gold
Award-winning writer Leslie Brenner of the Dallas Morning News has taken a lot of flack for her reviews, but she’s still smiling.
Have you heard about the hard time restaurant critic Leslie Brenner has been getting in Dallas?
I didn’t know about it until I read this article in the Washington Post, which said at least 10 Dallas restaurants planned to ban the Dallas Morning News critic, refusing to take her money. They also planned to refuse interviews, stop allowing [Read more…] about Local Food Writers Dis Dallas Restaurant Critic
I know restaurant bloggers still exist, but I can barely find them.
I’m not the only one. The annual Saveur Best Food Blog awards doesn’t even list “restaurant blogs” as a category.
Sure, there are people who write reviews for websites such as Tasting Table and urbanspoon.com. But it seems that there are [Read more…] about Are Restaurant Bloggers Still Relevant?
If you’ve read the news on who’s a top US chef, they are all men, according to a male food editor and a male restaurant critic.
Two features stirred the wrath of many: a cover story on “The Gods of Food” in Time magazine; and a list of Rising Stars from the San Francisco Chronicle.
Eater interviewed the Time magazine food editor about why female chefs did not appear, and here is his reply:
“We discussed that for a while, we actually thought about it. We wanted to name a couple. Another reality: none of them have a restaurant that we believe matches the breadth and size and basically empire of some of these men that we picked. They have the reputation and all that and it’s an unfortunate thing. The female chef is a relatively recent phenomenon, except for Alice who has been around for a long time. None of them have the recent breadth that these guys have.”
Chronicle restaurant critic Michael Bauer offered this defense of his choices in a follow-up piece (in 2011, the first time he chose only male chefs — and this is his 4th year running), saying [Read more…] about Male Food Writers Promoting Male Chefs
In the old days in newspapers and magazines, if a restaurant chef or owner didn’t like my review, they called my boss. The editors never passed the phone call on to me.
But now that reviews are online, chefs can vent at reviewers directly, and that is not a good thing. Two bloggers who wrote less than glowing reviews of good restaurants were subject to vulgar and harassing comments that generated a lot of press.
The incidents brought up some good questions, however, about our expectations of reviewers, and I’ll get to that. First, let’s look at what happened:
1. Chef’s response: “…Wear a condom on your tongue to contain the orgasm of your ignorance.”
Dubai food writer and blogger Samantha Wood of FooDiva wrote a review of Giannino, an offshoot of a three-Michelin starred restaurant. She and a friend paid more than ‘a3200 (around $350) for a two-course [Read more…] about Chefs Blast Bloggers on Restaurant Reviews