“If I start being a critic, then I’m a critic.”
March 2, 2017 3:51 PM   Subscribe

In the wake of Chicken Connoisseur (previously) and with a rise in populism on both sides of the Atlantic, Navneet Alang contemplates what qualifies someone to be a food critic.
posted by noneuclidean (11 comments total) 9 users marked this as a favorite
 
I found out about CC via this vid. Totally down with populist food criticism.
posted by Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey at 4:15 PM on March 2, 2017


I have not yet found my pengest munch. I suppose it's a metaphor for life really.
posted by GuyZero at 4:26 PM on March 2, 2017


Quashie’s reviews are particularly nice because they focus on non-haute cuisine without that unpleasant undertone of tourism that I get from a lot of NYT (or NYT-wannabe) reviews, when they mount an authenticity-hunting expedition into the less-gentrified parts of Harlem or Queens. Sometimes I have to imagine the narrator in a pith helmet and accompanied by a gun-bearer while he evaluates food trucks north of 155th or whatever.

In a similar vein, I discovered I can't stand Anthony Bourdain's Parts Unknown, despite liking him in other vehicles; in contrast I'll happily watch Chef's Table all day, even though it doesn't focus on food that most people eat.

But maybe I've been doing it all wrong in watching Netflix, when clearly I should be on Youtube instead.
posted by Kadin2048 at 4:47 PM on March 2, 2017 [2 favorites]


Anyone with children knows a food critic.

There is a place for professional critics in fine dining. If you're going to spend big on a special occasion it'd be nice to read an experienced opinion. I find much of it to be insufferably pompous and elitist though. Unlike fine dining, if my chicken sandwich is rubbish I put it in the bin with little remorse. I may tell my mates to avoid the place.

Chicken Connoisseur is more like entertainment than advice on where to eat. I mean, I don't live in London, it's just fun to watch.

Yelp is a protection racket.
posted by adept256 at 4:51 PM on March 2, 2017


On one hand, what is refreshing about Quashie is the way in which these standards skirt the usual debate between a big newspaper review and those on Yelp. His reviews aren’t predicated upon arbitrary notions of sophistication, like those that tell us a pale, French omelet sprinkled with fleur de sel is the height of class while a browned Indian one loaded with chillies is crass

This is strawman nonsense. No good big-newspaper reviewers fault a dish because it's not some other sort of dish. Pete Wells didn't slam Guy Fieri's place for serving nachos instead of gougères. He slammed it for serving lousy nachos.
posted by neroli at 6:52 PM on March 2, 2017 [5 favorites]


what qualifies someone to be a food critic.

Based on the Chicken Connoisseur it would be sweet kicks.
posted by srboisvert at 6:55 PM on March 2, 2017 [5 favorites]


sweet kicks

I think you mean creps.
posted by cichlid ceilidh at 9:36 PM on March 2, 2017


Pete Wells didn't slam Guy Fieri's place for serving nachos instead of gougères. He slammed it for serving lousy nachos.

I don't think anyone has an issue with Wells' review of Guy’s American for being too hard on the place, or not being upscale enough, and I don't think that's what the Eater article was saying. Or that's not how I interpreted it, anyway. I mean, I have issues with NYT restaurant reviews (cf. my prior comment), but I don't think the article was strawmanning in order to make that particular jab.

The point as I read it was a little more nuanced: NYT readers (and pretty much everyone else I know who tried the place) largely cheered Wells' panning of Fieri's restaurant for having bad food, because, well, the food was bad. So, yay to Wells for standing up for food in the face of hype.

But when Wells turned his attention to Locol, and deemed it merely "Satisfactory" -- not "Poor" as he called Fieri's restaurant -- on basically the same basis of just not having particularly good food and not living up to the hype, he took an unbelievable amount of flak for it, and it seems suspiciously likely it was from many of the same quarters that apparently thought he was doing the Lord's work when he was taking Fieri down a peg for serving mediocre, overhyped food.

It would appear, comparing the two reactions, that the NYT readership have a very distinct double standard, or at least a very steep grading curve, where a restaurant like Fieri's gets held to a different standard than Patterson and Choi's. I think that's what the Eater article was getting at, and personally I think there's some merit to it.

While I don't know if we want to delve too deeply into the Locol debacle here (since I think there was a thread on it just recently?), suffice it to say that I think that double standard, while it might seem to be doing a favor to socially-minded restaurants in the short term, is really doing them a significant disservice by treating them with kid gloves -- because the marketplace ultimately won't. Plus, it basically demands Wells abandon any pretense of reviewing food qua food in a way that's comparable from one restaurant to another even if their politics aren't the same. Lose / lose: on both sides of the equation.

Quashie seems to be doing a good job as a reviewer because he is, at least as far as you can tell from the videos, both fair and consistent in his critiques and methodology. He doesn't seem to be handing out bonus points for decor to one place, and then ignoring the same thing in the next; he has his criteria, which do admittedly have a bit of a sliding-scale variance with price, but he's not sneaky about it or anything, and he seems to apply them pretty consistently. That's pretty much what I think most people would agree, in the abstract, that a critic ought to do. But the counterpoint is when Wells did basically the same thing, he was only getting cheers so long as he was goring the right ox. I guess the lesson is: even if you do your job as a critic well, don't expect to be loved for it.
posted by Kadin2048 at 10:41 PM on March 2, 2017 [3 favorites]


First, I love his videos. Borderline genius.

BUT, can anyone honestly say his greater interest is chicken sandwiches, or being a Youtube star? The reviews are merely a vehicle to garner clicks. He doesn't have some great overarching interest in chicken.

And he's not a critic, he's a dude with an opinion. Here's the acid test, Does anyone give you money to voice your opinion? If not you are merely opinionated, not a critic.
posted by Keith Talent at 9:02 AM on March 3, 2017


Can anyone honestly say that Pete Wells' greater interest is in uncreative NYC restaurants, or being a NYT "star" able to tell his parents he has a real job despite that degree in journalism able to afford a house in Brooklyn allowed to deduct meals at Per Se on his taxes as "research" invited to all the cool cocktail parties having health insurance? The reviews are merely a vehicle to garner newspaper sales. He doesn't have some great overarching interest in shitty celebrity-chef restaurants.

I dunno, man. He sounds like a dude with an opinion to me. I'm starting to think that maybe if people listen to your opinions, you may be a critic.
posted by Kadin2048 at 11:04 AM on March 3, 2017 [1 favorite]


Here's the acid test, Does anyone give you money to voice your opinion? If not you are merely opinionated, not a critic.

His videos have millions of hits. Is he not monetizing those views?
posted by Room 641-A at 4:33 PM on March 3, 2017 [1 favorite]


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