new york food journalism

[Diancecht]

“Alan Sytsma is a longtime observer of the New York City dining scene who is behind New York magazine’s formidable food coverage. On this episode we dig into Alan’s take on the current NYC restaurant scene and hear about New York mag’s amazing “Who Ate Where” issue, which digs into the cultural history of eating out in New York City. It’s really fun talking restaurants with Alan, and I hope you enjoy this conversation.”

click (slightly over one hour in length)

[Diancecht]

on being a regular at a restaurant: “i think the real test is whether the restaurant is happy to have you…if you are adding something to the dining room, whether it’s a certain kind of energy, whether that…if you’re just a whale…whatever it may be…for the restaurant to be happy that you are there, that’s when you have really arrived as a regular.”

[Wilfrid]

5 hours ago, Diancecht said:

“Alan Sytsma is a longtime observer of the New York City dining scene who is behind New York magazine’s formidable food coverage. On this episode we dig into Alan’s take on the current NYC restaurant scene and hear about New York mag’s amazing “Who Ate Where” issue…

 

I paged through that issue and gosh it was dull. Mainly people I hadn’t heard of or didn’t care about and long gone and forgotten restaurants.

And I like restaurant history. I read old restaurant guides. If you’ve lost me, who are your readers? 

[Diancecht]

…I started 30 Minute Meals. It was a three hour course where you were given six versions of five different recipes. Over the course of three hours, we would go through the basics of how to make all this stuff. Then in theory, you could go home and make a month's worth of food without repeating yourself. That got picked up on the local news, and then the local news got me onto a local public radio station. My friend called me one day, all of his guests had canceled and he said, "Can you bring over a hot plate and make food in the Radio Control Room?" I said, "Well, I think that's completely illegal, but sure." So I made 30 minute jambalaya in his little Vox Pop Studio at the Albany Public Radio Station.

There was a man named Lou Ekes who knew the Vice President of Food Network, Bob Tuschman, who teaches at NYU right around the corner. We do classes together to this day. We hang out together with his peeps. But that guy got a call from Lou. This guy said, "I don't know who this girl is, but she makes 30 minute meals, and she's doing it on the radio. I can't even see her, but it sounds fun."

 

rachael ray interviewed by kim severson in 2022

click for the podcast 😉

the transcript is the first link

[Diancecht]

The last thing I wanted to ask you was how what we’ve talked about so far relates to food criticism. You’ve been careful to point out that you are not a reviewer — you are someone who writes about food. So, perhaps this is too big a question, but: How does one approach the need or the desire for food media to be about connoisseurship — to be about things that are genuinely good — versus things that people actually engage with on a day-to-day basis?

I think about this a lot and I think it’s also a thing that sort of inadvertently has become kind of a defining element of my career as a writer. I’ve written about chicken tenders, and Olive Garden, and the Popeyes chicken sandwich. I eat across the spectrum and it’s been fascinating to me that the things that I write about — what we might call more “mass food” — have often been my most successful or my most resonant pieces.

There’s a kind of “poptimism” in the way we think about food, much like poptimism as a critical phenomenon in music.⁵ And I think there’s a backlash or retaliation in some ways against the cliché of fancy European food media, or like stereotypical food media, and instead you have the chicken tender, the ode to ugly food, the ode to diner coffee.

I think that writing about food that is underappreciated, even if it is extraordinarily popular, gives us space to talk about our daily lives in a way that writing about things that are special, and only things that are special, does not. And to give the quotidian and the unspecial the same regard and the same grace we give to celebration food or expensive food or rare food and the experiences that attend them.

So, the small moments of filling up the car with gas with your dad and he buys you a Hostess cherry pie and that becomes your special ritual. That’s not me saying the Hostess cherry pie is the greatest food in the world. That’s me saying that moment with my dad was an important moment. And because food is more than just food, because that moment was important, the Hostess cherry pie is the greatest food in the world.

So food media moves away from service writing, which is you should buy this because it’s delicious or because it’s cool, and more toward: our lives are valuable. The small parts of our lives are valuable, the quiet parts of our lives are valuable. And the value in that does not demand observation. But when it is observed, it reveals brilliant facets of beauty.

——-

much more here from an interview helen rosner gave in november 2022

[sourbroughten]

she would be my pick for the NYT role.

[Wilfrid]

Yes, she's easily the best restaurant critic working in New York.

[backyardchef]

4 hours ago, sourbroughten said:

she would be my pick for the NYT role.

Agreed

[Orik]

Too nice but yes.

[mongo]

i guess the times critic is the biggest restaurant critic job in the u.s. me, i'd find it hard to leave the new yorker.

[Wilfrid]

The odd thing about her New Yorker role is that Hannah Goldfield gets to contribute food features to the main part of the magazine while Helen is restricted to restaurant reviews in the Goings On section (which in the print edition are abridged versions of what appears online).

[mongo]

i confess i only look at what shows up online and haven't paid much attention. so, yeah, i suppose the new yorker gig may not be as prestigious as i thought it was (though still prestigious). 

for a while when she started there she wasn't reviewing restaurants per se. she was always quick to point that she wasn't a restaurant reviewer. now she clearly is. if she's interested the times would be stupid to not hire her. though given the fact that they have allowed priya krishna to write restaurant reviews...

[Wilfrid]

I can see that it was not her main calling. She was known for long-form journalism which is why I was puzzled that Goldfield gets to do that.

[mongo]

the roles seem to have flipped at some point.

[Diancecht]

blogs haven’t stopped and this is a good introduction to a new place on my daily reading list:

“At Wenwen, the stem-like Chinese vegetable, is served as a refreshing crunchy salad, enhanced with a dressing of red vinegar, numbing Szechuan peppers, sesame seeds, and lots of garlic. It’s wonderfully balanced and is not over the top with the heat, but gives just a light numbing sensation that is tamed by a hit of sweetness. It was so delicious. And how many people in this country can say they had celtuce for dinner? Price: $13