Dining with a food critic
Aug 19, 2009 14:44:46 GMT
Post by bixaorellana on Aug 19, 2009 14:44:46 GMT
I enjoyed this article by the NYTimes food critic, Frank Bruni. I would like to think that everyone here would be worthier helpers for him than his rather childish group of cohorts. Links to blogs by Bruni and others plus audio comments by various of his dining companions can be found here.
========================================================================
August 19, 2009
Critic’s Notebook
What They Brought to the Table
By FRANK BRUNI
FOR proof that Communism was bound to fail, pull a chair up to the table of a restaurant critic and his three guests. Then watch what happens after he tells them what to order, the food has been delivered, and everyone begins to take bites of everything, making a broad sample of the menu.
Jane tries some of the gnocchi Dick has passed to her, and curls her lip.
“My pork loin is much, much better,” she proclaims, with a resounding emphasis on the word “my” and no hint of recognition that the loin wasn’t her pick: the critic randomly assigned it to her.
“True,” Mary chimes in, affirming the pork, only to add, “My short ribs are the best thing on the table.”
“Well, I love my gnocchi,” Dick counters, possessive and prickly. He’s defending more than dumplings. It’s his very discernment that he’s standing up for, even though it never came into play. And he accentuates his pique by wresting the gnocchi from Jane. Like a kid in the schoolyard, he wants his ball back.
All in all, the scene — a composite of dozens like it — is a case study in the potent impulse toward ownership. And it’s just one of many lessons in human nature and behavior provided by the restaurant dinner table.
My five-plus years of nightly restaurant visits with guests in tow have exposed me to more than an array of amazing food. They’ve given me a special vantage point onto people’s temperaments and tics, especially (but not solely) in regard to eating and food. On top of a culinary education, I have gotten something of a psychological, sociological and anthropological one.
I learned that the world is divided into the hoarders and the sharers, and into the perpetually slighted and the eternally grateful; that the diners who eat the least are the ones who pretend to eat the most; and that no manner of advance instruction can prevent guests from saying your real name and even referencing your last three reviews loudly, repeatedly and in direct earshot of the restaurant manager. There’s a reason most people don’t go into the spying business. They have no aptitude for it.
I learned that the desire to turn everything into a competition runs just as deep as the impulse toward ownership, at least in America.
“First, second, third, fourth” was a string of words I heard time and again, as someone at the table took it upon himself or herself to rank the appetizers in precise order of appeal — and then to do the same, 45 minutes later, with the entrees. For many tablemates, saying yea or nay to a dish wasn’t judgment enough. They itched to dole out medals: gold to the squid à la plancha, bronze to the beets.
I learned, too, that there is little sense to the eating rules many people adopt and to the peeves and peccadilloes they nurse.
My friend K. swore off veal, citing her sorrow for calves that would never grow to be (slaughtered) steers, but she ate young chicken and the littlest of lambs. She also ate foie gras, though animal rights advocates have protested the treatment of the ducks used to make it more vociferously than they have the lot of those calves.
My frequent companion T. ordered foie gras whenever he had the chance and thrilled to the presence of calf’s liver on a menu, but he spurned sweetbreads, on account of their being organ meat.
I had more than a few companions who rejected food based solely on its texture (eggplant dip), shape (tendrils of octopus) or color (uni).
And while my friend M. had no complaint when duck, lamb or pork came to the table in slices, she fumed if her steak arrived as anything other than one solid slab of meat, feeling insulted and infantilized by the cutting of it before it reached her. People are as strange about eating as they are about love. They want what they want.
Dining with a critic doesn’t exactly facilitate that. I typically ate out with three other people, so a large number of dishes could be tried, and began each meal by telling my guests which dishes should or shouldn’t be ordered, in accordance with my progress through the menu on any earlier visits.
Reactions ranged.
“So I can’t get the steak?” my friend R. said one night, his pout so pronounced he was like a male Jolie: Mangelina. I apologized. I explained: I’d capitulated to the last steak maniac, on the second visit to the restaurant, and there really, truly, honestly wasn’t any way to justify a third examination of the steak.
“Oh, O.K., I understand,” he sighed, not sounding O.K. at all, and making me feel like the Grinch Who Stole Sirloin.
Many guests, I could tell, experienced a kind of cognitive dissonance over being treated to a meal in a restaurant — which is, after all, a theater of pleasure — but having to follow the precise, constricting script of a petty culinary dictator (that would be me). Maybe the hoarders were just struggling with that confusion.
Then again, maybe not.
When they liked the dish in front of them, they’d forget that they were supposed to eat no more than a quarter of it, to preserve enough for the other three diners, including me, to have a good taste.
“Oh, I lost track!” they’d say as they passed a nearly empty plate.
The sharers, in contrast, would be so frightened of consuming so much as a strand of angel hair beyond their allotment that they’d merely stare at the dish, visibly petrified.
I’d say: “Please, please have some. You didn’t have any.”
“But I did,” they’d usually protest. “Didn’t you see?” In fact I had been watching, and my observation, coupled with the survival of a full portion on the plate, was how I knew that nothing had been consumed.
The pretend eaters who amused me the most, though, were the skinny men and women who had developed a whole theatrical routine — a pantomime of gluttony — to obscure their asceticism. It wasn’t enough for them to be thin; they had to pretend that it was a fluke of metabolism, magical and effortless.
My friend A. was like that. I told her that we were going to a new steakhouse in Brooklyn.
“Steak!” she exulted. “Excellent! You’re too good to me!”
Reading the menu, she homed in on what promised to be the heftiest cut of beef: “Can we get the porterhouse for two? Oh please, oh please! And the fries? I’m dying to try the fries.”
We got the porterhouse, we got the fries, she loaded up her plate, and then she commenced such frantic knife and fork movements that a veritable cloud of dust rose around her — I was reminded of a Road Runner cartoon.
When the dust settled 15 minutes later, I took a close look at her plate, and almost nothing was missing. The food had just been reconstituted and rearranged, a Picasso of its former self.
Some companions kept track and kept count. They noticed if the four restaurants they’d accompanied me to all wound up with one-star ratings, and they wondered whom I’d taken to the restaurant that just got three stars. Guilt more than girth is a critic’s fiercest enemy.
But dining with a critic just as frequently brought out the protective, gallant side of friends. One frequent review accomplice noticed early on, and without my saying anything, that I felt abashed and anxious about my role as portion policeman. So he did the job himself, reprimanding hoarders and reassuring sharers. I, in turn, tried not to throw more one-star than two-star restaurants his way.
Companions were fixated on stars, their obsessions underscoring a human itch to codify, categorize, rank and render a verdict.
Often, toward the end of a meal, I’d catch one of them making odd, half-hidden hand signals in his or her lap, flashing one finger, then two — or two fingers, then three — while watching for me to shake or nod my head. The companion wanted to know what the star rating was likely to be. Sometimes I obliged, but usually not.
But what fascinated me most was the inherent resistance to setting aside individual will for communal mission. When a meal began, I’d always explain that everything we ordered would be shared equally, so it didn’t matter who actually asked for the lobster versus who took charge of the vegetarian cassoulet.
This explanation seldom made a difference.
“Remember, I don’t eat pork,” L. said one night when I asked if she’d be the one to request the pork entree I needed to try.
“Yes, yes, of course,” I sputtered apologetically. While the pork would rotate to her at some point, it seemed fair enough that she not begin with it. “You ask for the salmon. I’ll ask for the pork.”
Then I turned to another tablemate and instructed him to order the nightly pasta special.
“You’ve already tried the rib-eye on another visit?” he asked, clearly bummed to be missing the steak. No one ever, ever wanted to miss the steak.
I told him that I had not, in fact, tried the rib-eye — “I saved it for all of you tonight!” I crowed — but was going to assign it to our fourth tablemate, who then piped up to say that he would be more than willing to trade it away for the pasta if that was best. He didn’t sound willing at all.
“Remember, you’re all just temporary custodians of the dish you’re asking for,” I said, “and won’t eat more or less than a quarter of what’s randomly in front of you.” I was putting the hoarders on notice and the sharers at ease.
I was also, apparently, bucking human nature. Each guest seemed to think that what he or she wound up ordering was a matter of identity, a reflection of self. And more often than not, he or she would go on to describe and defend that dish as the very best.
Even if it wasn’t the steak.
========================================================================
August 19, 2009
Critic’s Notebook
What They Brought to the Table
By FRANK BRUNI
FOR proof that Communism was bound to fail, pull a chair up to the table of a restaurant critic and his three guests. Then watch what happens after he tells them what to order, the food has been delivered, and everyone begins to take bites of everything, making a broad sample of the menu.
Jane tries some of the gnocchi Dick has passed to her, and curls her lip.
“My pork loin is much, much better,” she proclaims, with a resounding emphasis on the word “my” and no hint of recognition that the loin wasn’t her pick: the critic randomly assigned it to her.
“True,” Mary chimes in, affirming the pork, only to add, “My short ribs are the best thing on the table.”
“Well, I love my gnocchi,” Dick counters, possessive and prickly. He’s defending more than dumplings. It’s his very discernment that he’s standing up for, even though it never came into play. And he accentuates his pique by wresting the gnocchi from Jane. Like a kid in the schoolyard, he wants his ball back.
All in all, the scene — a composite of dozens like it — is a case study in the potent impulse toward ownership. And it’s just one of many lessons in human nature and behavior provided by the restaurant dinner table.
My five-plus years of nightly restaurant visits with guests in tow have exposed me to more than an array of amazing food. They’ve given me a special vantage point onto people’s temperaments and tics, especially (but not solely) in regard to eating and food. On top of a culinary education, I have gotten something of a psychological, sociological and anthropological one.
I learned that the world is divided into the hoarders and the sharers, and into the perpetually slighted and the eternally grateful; that the diners who eat the least are the ones who pretend to eat the most; and that no manner of advance instruction can prevent guests from saying your real name and even referencing your last three reviews loudly, repeatedly and in direct earshot of the restaurant manager. There’s a reason most people don’t go into the spying business. They have no aptitude for it.
I learned that the desire to turn everything into a competition runs just as deep as the impulse toward ownership, at least in America.
“First, second, third, fourth” was a string of words I heard time and again, as someone at the table took it upon himself or herself to rank the appetizers in precise order of appeal — and then to do the same, 45 minutes later, with the entrees. For many tablemates, saying yea or nay to a dish wasn’t judgment enough. They itched to dole out medals: gold to the squid à la plancha, bronze to the beets.
I learned, too, that there is little sense to the eating rules many people adopt and to the peeves and peccadilloes they nurse.
My friend K. swore off veal, citing her sorrow for calves that would never grow to be (slaughtered) steers, but she ate young chicken and the littlest of lambs. She also ate foie gras, though animal rights advocates have protested the treatment of the ducks used to make it more vociferously than they have the lot of those calves.
My frequent companion T. ordered foie gras whenever he had the chance and thrilled to the presence of calf’s liver on a menu, but he spurned sweetbreads, on account of their being organ meat.
I had more than a few companions who rejected food based solely on its texture (eggplant dip), shape (tendrils of octopus) or color (uni).
And while my friend M. had no complaint when duck, lamb or pork came to the table in slices, she fumed if her steak arrived as anything other than one solid slab of meat, feeling insulted and infantilized by the cutting of it before it reached her. People are as strange about eating as they are about love. They want what they want.
Dining with a critic doesn’t exactly facilitate that. I typically ate out with three other people, so a large number of dishes could be tried, and began each meal by telling my guests which dishes should or shouldn’t be ordered, in accordance with my progress through the menu on any earlier visits.
Reactions ranged.
“So I can’t get the steak?” my friend R. said one night, his pout so pronounced he was like a male Jolie: Mangelina. I apologized. I explained: I’d capitulated to the last steak maniac, on the second visit to the restaurant, and there really, truly, honestly wasn’t any way to justify a third examination of the steak.
“Oh, O.K., I understand,” he sighed, not sounding O.K. at all, and making me feel like the Grinch Who Stole Sirloin.
Many guests, I could tell, experienced a kind of cognitive dissonance over being treated to a meal in a restaurant — which is, after all, a theater of pleasure — but having to follow the precise, constricting script of a petty culinary dictator (that would be me). Maybe the hoarders were just struggling with that confusion.
Then again, maybe not.
When they liked the dish in front of them, they’d forget that they were supposed to eat no more than a quarter of it, to preserve enough for the other three diners, including me, to have a good taste.
“Oh, I lost track!” they’d say as they passed a nearly empty plate.
The sharers, in contrast, would be so frightened of consuming so much as a strand of angel hair beyond their allotment that they’d merely stare at the dish, visibly petrified.
I’d say: “Please, please have some. You didn’t have any.”
“But I did,” they’d usually protest. “Didn’t you see?” In fact I had been watching, and my observation, coupled with the survival of a full portion on the plate, was how I knew that nothing had been consumed.
The pretend eaters who amused me the most, though, were the skinny men and women who had developed a whole theatrical routine — a pantomime of gluttony — to obscure their asceticism. It wasn’t enough for them to be thin; they had to pretend that it was a fluke of metabolism, magical and effortless.
My friend A. was like that. I told her that we were going to a new steakhouse in Brooklyn.
“Steak!” she exulted. “Excellent! You’re too good to me!”
Reading the menu, she homed in on what promised to be the heftiest cut of beef: “Can we get the porterhouse for two? Oh please, oh please! And the fries? I’m dying to try the fries.”
We got the porterhouse, we got the fries, she loaded up her plate, and then she commenced such frantic knife and fork movements that a veritable cloud of dust rose around her — I was reminded of a Road Runner cartoon.
When the dust settled 15 minutes later, I took a close look at her plate, and almost nothing was missing. The food had just been reconstituted and rearranged, a Picasso of its former self.
Some companions kept track and kept count. They noticed if the four restaurants they’d accompanied me to all wound up with one-star ratings, and they wondered whom I’d taken to the restaurant that just got three stars. Guilt more than girth is a critic’s fiercest enemy.
But dining with a critic just as frequently brought out the protective, gallant side of friends. One frequent review accomplice noticed early on, and without my saying anything, that I felt abashed and anxious about my role as portion policeman. So he did the job himself, reprimanding hoarders and reassuring sharers. I, in turn, tried not to throw more one-star than two-star restaurants his way.
Companions were fixated on stars, their obsessions underscoring a human itch to codify, categorize, rank and render a verdict.
Often, toward the end of a meal, I’d catch one of them making odd, half-hidden hand signals in his or her lap, flashing one finger, then two — or two fingers, then three — while watching for me to shake or nod my head. The companion wanted to know what the star rating was likely to be. Sometimes I obliged, but usually not.
But what fascinated me most was the inherent resistance to setting aside individual will for communal mission. When a meal began, I’d always explain that everything we ordered would be shared equally, so it didn’t matter who actually asked for the lobster versus who took charge of the vegetarian cassoulet.
This explanation seldom made a difference.
“Remember, I don’t eat pork,” L. said one night when I asked if she’d be the one to request the pork entree I needed to try.
“Yes, yes, of course,” I sputtered apologetically. While the pork would rotate to her at some point, it seemed fair enough that she not begin with it. “You ask for the salmon. I’ll ask for the pork.”
Then I turned to another tablemate and instructed him to order the nightly pasta special.
“You’ve already tried the rib-eye on another visit?” he asked, clearly bummed to be missing the steak. No one ever, ever wanted to miss the steak.
I told him that I had not, in fact, tried the rib-eye — “I saved it for all of you tonight!” I crowed — but was going to assign it to our fourth tablemate, who then piped up to say that he would be more than willing to trade it away for the pasta if that was best. He didn’t sound willing at all.
“Remember, you’re all just temporary custodians of the dish you’re asking for,” I said, “and won’t eat more or less than a quarter of what’s randomly in front of you.” I was putting the hoarders on notice and the sharers at ease.
I was also, apparently, bucking human nature. Each guest seemed to think that what he or she wound up ordering was a matter of identity, a reflection of self. And more often than not, he or she would go on to describe and defend that dish as the very best.
Even if it wasn’t the steak.
