the pete wells thread

[Sneakeater]

Is there a transcript of that anywhere?

[Diancecht]

if only that were true. i looked and there doesn’t seem to be one.

[Orik]

there are sites for that

[Diancecht]

i googled and didn’t see anything 🤷🏻

it’s a podcast, so this episode will be around for a long while if you miss it for whatever reason.

[Sneakeater]

Just don't have 45 minutes to listen to a podcast.

[mongo]

i don't even have five minutes to listen to a podcast.

[MitchW]

What's a podcast?

[Diancecht]

how restaurants have changed

 

I’m at the end of 12 years as a critic who ate in and reviewed restaurants constantly. Of those years, I probably spent two solid months just waiting for the check. I ought to be in favor of anything that speeds up the end of the meal, but Blackbird’s new checkless exit gives me the creeps. It is just the latest in a series of changes that have gradually and steadily stripped the human touch and the human voice out of restaurants. Each of these changes was small, but together they’ve made going out to eat much less personal. Meals are different now, and our sense of who we are is different, too.

[Orik]

An email I sent a blackbird exec after telling him they're the enemy of hospitality:

 

Of course I know who your dining companion was. My bald spot prominently features in his 2007 photo of Ssam Bar for the nytimes review. He had a sandwich at Foxface about a week before the covid lockdown. I hope he liked it. 

The person seated next to him works at a big tech company (he's a diligent javascript developer that they could put to better use) and is in the bay area most of the time. He likes offal dishes and enjoys funky white wines. The person seated next to you came after reading the New York Magazine piece (I didn't ask him that, but I know). He also likes offal (!) and may come back on special occasions, although perhaps with a different date. An A list actress was seated in one of the tables behind you, with her literary agent friends who live around the corner (is there a book coming?). We put her in a seat with some privacy. She had fun but was jetlagged, we tried to help with a fast paced meal. 

I can do this for over 75% of parties who had dinner with us since we opened.

I understand the model and the use cases, I just don't like them. The host who doesn't know you from Adam until the database tells him you're a heavyweight is not a good thing, and it's even worse if that is systematically leaked across restaurants. 
 

[small h]

22 minutes ago, Orik said:

I can do this for over 75% of parties who had dinner with us since we opened.

And this is what keeps me coming back (the food and wine are also something of a draw), even though I should probably be putting a little more money aside for my retirement. There is value in being treated like you have value. I'm 97% sure that the bartenders at Eastwood don't actually recognize me - there's too much turnover there, for one thing - but they do a credible job of acting like they do. Good enough!

[Orik]

Yes, the ones that are at least very good at pretending they know you are of value, and the ones who actually know you is what it's all about.

Much of the other issues such as online vs phone is due to wage increases - you just can't have someone loafing about for minimum wages (if that) anymore, but the model of a restaurant nobody ever comes back to is inherently pretty terrible. 

[MitchW]

2 hours ago, Orik said:

you just can't have someone loafing about for minimum wages (if that) anymore

I just heard tonight, from a well connected person, that this may even go on in the civil service!

[backyardchef]

It's amazingly sad that I got to see the beginning of the end of traditional bbq and the hospitality industry in my career. I appreciate Wells a bit more than ever. 

[Diancecht]

here’s an an excerpt from an interview that pete did with the sporkful back in 2019

when you click on that link, scroll down and click on “view transcript” to see the transcript of the podcast 😉

——————-

A: “I mean, I'm still very — I mean, I still have a very kind of ... [SIGHS] uncomfortable relationship with like the .... you know, the power that The Times confers and it's not —  and I don't mistake it for my own power.”

Q: “But that power, at least as long as you have the job, you're connected to it. I wonder if having that kind of power for a number of years changes a person.”

A: “I mean, I've changed in a lot of ways in this job and I don't know how many of them have to do with power. I mean, I think about ... I think about things more carefully. And I think about how to use the power, I suppose. Like I think when I first started the job, I had the feeling that in a sense it was a consumer service that The Times was willing to spend this money on these really expensive restaurants to tell people what's worth it. And that that was a good use of money. And I don't think that's quite so important anymore. And I'm more interested in kind of where I sort of shine the spotlight of The Times than I am and where I spend the money of The Times. So I'm more interested in getting some attention to places that can't afford to buy attention. For example, you know, last night, we went to a Puerto Rican restaurant. I want to be able to tell people Puerto Rican food actually matters in New York City. We have a big Puerto Rican community and some delicious, delicious Puerto Rican restaurants. And it's been a long time since I've heard anybody talk about one of them, and I'm excited to be able to do that. That's the kind of power I find myself more interested in now than just, you know, can I can I make Thomas Keller stay up at night.”

Edited August 7 by Diancecht

[Sneakeater]

Wow.  Pre-Lockdown Star Interregnum.

I wish I knew about that back during the debate here after the reinstatenent of the Star System, so I could have used it to  prove I was right (as subsequent events showed).

[Diancecht]

i just came across that because i was thinking hmm, pete is leaving the nyt critic job…i am sure there are interviews he’s had recently and voilà!

Edited August 7 by Diancecht

[relbbaddoof]

On 8/6/2024 at 5:40 PM, Orik said:

An A list actress was seated in one of the tables

@small h would be too obvious. Was it @Sneakeater? Was it I? Or would we have to kill you if you told?*

 

* Tragic, but more importantly would Foxface keep on? It's your legacy, remember, that's more important than your life.

[Wilfrid]

5 hours ago, Sneakeater said:

Wow.  Pre-Lockdown Star Interregnum.

I wish I knew about that back during the debate here after the reinstatenent of the Star System, so I could have used it to  prove I was right (as subsequent events showed).

And unsurprisingly perhaps I remain hostile to this, sincere though I believe Pete to be, first because he has his byline on a restaurant column and a restaurant is still a restaurant. Second, and more easily overlooked, there is no reason for readers to believe he is scrupulously comparing the merits of Puerto Rican restaurants, Dominican food carts, Afro-Caribbean jerk joints, phao places and so on because there is no context, no archive of writing about all of this.

You can write a column called Restaurants for the Times; you can swing around the boros looking for someone hacking up pigs feet in a trailer. If you have the time and appetite to do both, great (Pete wilted understandably), but smashing those things together makes no sense.

[Sneakeater]

We can disagree on the merits, of course, but I think we can no longer disagree on the facts.

More particularly, I don't think Wells is trying to "subvert" the star system.  I think Wells is trying as best he can to work within a system that has been imposed on him but that he no longer believes in.  I hadn't realized that this problem predated the Lockdown Interregnum.

[Sneakeater]

Oops forgot that should all be in the past tense.

[Diancecht]

he did an “ama” (short for ask me anything) on reddit a little over four months ago.

[Diancecht]

3 hours ago, Sneakeater said:

We can disagree on the merits, of course, but I think we can no longer disagree on the facts.

More particularly, I don't think Wells is trying to "subvert" the star system.  I think Wells is trying as best he can to work within a system that has been imposed on him but that he no longer believes in.  I hadn't realized that this problem predated the Lockdown Interregnum.

you can see some of this in a short interview he did in 2022 with brooklyn magazine.

“The longer I’ve been on the job the more I look at the flip side of that which is the power to shine a light on some place that can maybe use more attention,” he says. “It has become much more interesting to me to get out there around the city and get into neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Queens that are not yet on the radar but deserve to be.”

[Wilfrid]

That’s wonderful and praiseworthy. But. I would repeat myself: how is he evaluating any of this and why would it be in a Restaurants column?

[Sneakeater]

We really don't need to argue this again.  I certainly have nothing new to add.

[backyardchef]

It almost seems like the inherent problems with the idea of a "powerful food critic" are the problem, not the stars or the words. Although, often the stars and the words seem to be out of alignment. Of course the NY Times Food critics are gatekeepers. Pretending they are uncomfortable in that role is a bit much to swallow. 

Edited August 9 by backyardchef