Russelnod.com

I’ve been writing restaurant articles for a year now. Everyone calls them reviews, but I am specifically directed not to review the place, but to describe it. A review makes value judgements, awards stars, and so on. What I do is go in, describe the food, tell what I liked and didn’t and why, and interview the chef or owner, usually by phone. I don’t trash places and if a place is bad, I move on.

The difference? Here’s an example. At a Bavarian restaurant in a party of four, we had the strudel. The apples and sauce were delicious; the pastry was soft and chewey. Our baker hated it–she wanted flaky. The rest of us weren’t as negative, thinking perhaps that microwaving it had softened the crust. When I asked the owner about it (”I was surprised that the strudel crust wasn’t flaky.”) his immediate response was “It’s not Viennese. It’s Bavarian. You need it chewey.” So, the strudel was done the way he wanted it.

Without the interview, I probably would have trashed the strudel, calling it soggy, perhaps. Was he simply spinning? I don’t think so–he was pretty direct throughout the interview.

I put the interchange into the article so anyone ordering it would know that what they got wouldn’t be flaky and it was intentional. Same result, different attitude. Truth be told, I prefer it flaky, but does that mean I deduct a star? What standards do you use to evaluate a dish? What does the chef’s intent count for? Being witty at someone’s expense is fun for the moment, but in print it lives past the moment and is it something you want to stand for after the moment is over?

This entry was posted on Monday, March 31st, 2008 at 7:11 am and is filed under Pioneer Valley Restaurants, Commentary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.