Eater

[Sneakeater]

6 hours ago, Wilfrid said:

Yes indeed. Remember the roller coaster of Frank Bruni?

You mean like:  this restaurant has a new idea!  You eat Japanese food with your legs in a pit below floor level!

You mean like:  Aaron Sanchez has come up with a new dish!  He slow-roasts pork in orange and achiote, and calls it Pibil!

Edited November 15, 2023 by Sneakeater

[backyardchef]

 

https://www.restaurantmanifesto.com/time-for-pete-wells-to-step-down-new-york-times-restaurant-critic/

 

Edited November 15, 2023 by backyardchef

[backyardchef]

I get that everyone has their favorites, but we all have blind spots.

[Wilfrid]

33 minutes ago, Sneakeater said:

You mean like:  this restaurant has a new idea!  You eat Japanese food with your legs in a pit below floor level!

You mean like:  Aaron Sanchez has come up with a new dish!  He slow-roasts pork in orange and achiote, and calls it Pibil!

No, not all, I mean like being served slices from a ballotine and calling them rabbit medallions.

[splinky]

5 hours ago, backyardchef said:

 

https://www.restaurantmanifesto.com/time-for-pete-wells-to-step-down-new-york-times-restaurant-critic/

 

do people not like white men telling them what to do, like and think, anymore? how is this possible? it's the end times, for sure!

[relbbaddoof]

5 hours ago, backyardchef said:

 

https://www.restaurantmanifesto.com/time-for-pete-wells-to-step-down-new-york-times-restaurant-critic/

 

"The newspaper’s unyielding commitment to white food critics needs to end"

I wasn't aware that Wells was just a critic of white food. In just the one celebrated review of Guy Fieri's now-departed Times Square joint he criticizes brown food (the bison meatloaf), orange food (the carrots on the pork shank), yellow food (the french fries), and a blue drink (a margarita).

[backyardchef]

12 hours ago, relbbaddoof said:

"The newspaper’s unyielding commitment to white food critics needs to end"

I wasn't aware that Wells was just a critic of white food. In just the one celebrated review of Guy Fieri's now-departed Times Square joint he criticizes brown food (the bison meatloaf), orange food (the carrots on the pork shank), yellow food (the french fries), and a blue drink (a margarita).

I'm glad we have a Wells expert here for protection. He never gets any love. 

[backyardchef]

For the record, Pete Wells put food I cooked on his fantasy barbecue team, so I think he has excellent taste. 

[Orik]

One objective issue before getting into skill is attention to the facts. For example, before offering any critique of Momofuku Noodle Bar, Sietsema writes:

 

Quote

When Momofuku Noodle Bar opened in the East Village on a rundown stretch of First Avenue (171 First Avenue, near 11th Street) in 2004, the excitement it caused is now hard to imagine.

Except no, it didn't open there. 
 

[backyardchef]

Yeah. a few doors down. Terrible. Pete's lucky to have fact checkers as a journalist even though he has said some absurd shit that they don't edit....

[Orik]

Well, journalists from other impoverished publications check their own facts, but this is surprising given that he says he decided to eat there "again" to see if things are "as good" as he remembered them. Maybe he missed to og location altogether? I don't see any sign he covered it. 
 

[backyardchef]

I guess I just don't understand the hate except for your personal reasons, which makes sense. I find him indistinguishable from any other "critic."

Edited November 17, 2023 by backyardchef

[Sneakeater]

Just not true. 

[Sneakeater]

Tell me you don't see a difference between this

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/28/dining/momofuku-ko-closing.html

and this

https://ny.eater.com/2023/11/14/23956650/momofuku-noodle-bar-east-village-is-it-still-good

[Orik]

4 hours ago, backyardchef said:

I guess I just don't understand the hate except for your personal reasons, which makes sense. I find him indistinguishable from any other "critic."

I've been mocking him for years with no personal reasons. 

[Wilfrid]

Sietsema not only has a history of egregious errors, but refuses to admit them when they are pointed out. When it became clear that his claims that Terroir’s wine list was dishonest were nonsense — for reasons that should have been obvious — he shut the comments thread down.

I don’t know anyone else who would act like that; certainly not Wells.

[MitchW]

Yes, the no comments thing was basically started because they didn’t want anyone disagreeing with anything they wrote, even the factually inaccurate stuff.

[small h]

2 hours ago, MitchW said:

they didn’t want anyone disagreeing with anything they wrote,

I very much doubt that was the only reason. More likely Eater didn't want to pay a moderator, and its comments section was a homophobic cesspool.

[Anthony Bonner]

I think to the extent the group has a collective view of him it dates back to the terroir review.  Prior to that I think we just thought of him as a a guy who was pretty good at sniffing out lower prices venues mostly in the outerboroughs.

 

In that review when people tried to polite point out that he needed to be better educated about German wines to review a German wine centric wine bar I believe his exact responses was "I don't care and it's not my job to know that" which is an intriguing response given it's actually precisely his job to know something about the thing he is reviewing.

[backyardchef]

8 hours ago, Sneakeater said:

Tell me you don't see a difference between this

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/28/dining/momofuku-ko-closing.html

and this

https://ny.eater.com/2023/11/14/23956650/momofuku-noodle-bar-east-village-is-it-still-good

I see style difference 

[Sneakeater]

Analytic difference?  Knowledge base difference?

[Orik]

1 hour ago, small h said:

I very much doubt that was the only reason. More likely Eater didn't want to pay a moderator, and its comments section was a homophobic cesspool.

I think spam was the main issue for Eater as a whole but that comments were locked for that article specifically before they were disabled altogether. 

[Orik]

Thus Spake Sietsema:

https://archives.cjr.org/feature/everyone_eats.php?page=all

Quote

 I’m all for everyone having his or her say, but when it comes to cultural criticism there is a strong case to be made for professionalism and expertise. As the eminent film critic Richard Schickel wrote in 2007, in response to a New York Times article on the decline of professional book-reviewing and the rise of review-bloggers: “Criticism—and its humble cousin, reviewing—is not a democratic activity. It is, or should be, an elite enterprise, ideally undertaken by individuals who bring something to the party beyond their hasty, instinctive opinions . . . . It is work that requires disciplined taste, historical and theoretical knowledge and a fairly deep sense of the author’s (or filmmaker’s or painter’s) entire body of work, among other qualities.”

 

[Sneakeater]

Wait he said THAT???????????

Edited November 17, 2023 by Sneakeater

[Sneakeater]

4 hours ago, Anthony Bonner said:

I think to the extent the group has a collective view of him it dates back to the terroir review.  Prior to that I think we just thought of him as a a guy who was pretty good at sniffing out lower prices venues mostly in the outerboroughs.

 

In that review when people tried to polite point out that he needed to be better educated about German wines to review a German wine centric wine bar I believe his exact responses was "I don't care and it's not my job to know that" which is an intriguing response given it's actually precisely his job to know something about the thing he is reviewing.

Actually the context of the "it's not my job to know that" remark was even worse than that.

As @Wilfrid referred to above, aside from displaying ignorance of the subject he was writing about (Sietsema would probably respond, "how was I supposed to know it's a German-leaning wine bar?  It's called Terroir, not Lebensraum"), Siestema also baselessly accused Paul Grieco of fraud.  Sietsema said that the extensive wine list at Terroir had to be a lie because such a small place could never store that many bottles.  @Wilfrid pointed out in the Comments that the small place was connected to a much larger restaurant down the block (whose wine program was run by the same person -- a very respected sommelier whose reputation requires you to check before making accusations), so there was no reason to doubt Terroir's storage capacity or the veracity of its list.  Sietsema replied, "Don't know who Paul Grieco is, and it's not my job to know."

First, this whole thing is another instance of Sietsema's hostility to any place with any ambition:  if it's the kind of place where you'd know who the chef or somm is, or if a somm is respected in Wine World, Sietsema has no time for it or them.  In fact, he presumes the "fancy" place or somm must be unethical.

But worse:  if Sietsema thinks it's not his job to know anything about people he accuses of fraud in print, he has a way different conception of journalistic ethics than I do.

Edited November 17, 2023 by Sneakeater