The Amateur Gourmet Defends Food Blogging
Last week, Mario Batali went a hatin' on food blogs.
This week, Serious Eats contributing editor Adam "The Amateur Gourmet" Roberts defends them:
[Playwright Arthur] Miller's dream of an egalitarian system for criticism—a system that "would broaden the public's awareness of how fictional, rather than a matter of plain fact, all criticism really is, which is to say, how subjective"—is being realized today, at least in the food world, with food blogs. Because of our varying voices, our palpable passions, and—most important—our lack of editorial control, we are the distant drums in the distance growing closer and closer, our torches waving, our laptops poised for posting. Mario will disagree, but I think food blogs are the best thing to happen to food journalism in a long time. To quote a friend and mentor: we are the future.
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3 Comments:
Like almost anything else, blogging or posting to sites on the net can be done responsibly or irresponsibly. I have found that this site (and affiliated sites) is pretty well grounded in facts when facts are being spoken, and makes it clear that something is an opinion when that is appropriate. Sadly, this is not always the case. I'd like to think most people are smart enough to separate fact from fiction, but when I read comments or posts, even some here, I am not so sure. We put a lot of faith in the written word and often erroneously assume it has been written in good faith, but my experience shows that is not always the case. Access to an audience is much easier on the net and while I am sure it happens in more traditional media as well , I have read a lot more hatchet jobs, and caught many people in lies in blogs and forums than I recall ever seeing in print.
Vitello Tonnato at 8:05PM on 06/18/07
I agree, Adam: Food blogs ARE the future. So are irradiated food, higher gas prices, drug-resistant strains of TB, and Paris Hilton's appearance on magazine covers. Merely because some combination of technology and the zeitgeist has made something -- an idea, a recipe, a consumer product -- popular doesn't make it desirable. Can you say "eleventy-million sold"?
Sure, I read food blogs, though I tend to be much more interested in those that involve cooking than in those that center on restaurant-reviews and the certainty that someone has irritated other diners by taking flash photos of every dish on the table. But the blogosphere is stuffed with the latter, and, as in every field, each blogger is anxious to differentiate his/her product. And the surest, quickest route to differentiation is snottiness. Not only is it easier to write a bad review than a good one, it's also more fun and much likelier to attract attention.
Furthermore, as countless millions have discovered, the Web provides a fabulous forum in which to get one's ya-yas out. You're pissed off at your boss/your mother/your spouse? Take it out on the subject -- perhaps the restaurant -- of your choice, and post your spewings somewhere. There, doesn't that feel better? Every time I venture into the world of Web-based responses, I am horrified and frightened by the extent of the rage on display, the number of people clearly delighting in being vicious about...diners from out of town, fat people, waiters, people with food allergies, people who eat foie gras, people who....whatever.
I own my own business and am in the process of setting up my website. Our designer, without asking me, built in a facility that would allow people to comment on our products, and I hit the roof. NO, I do not want people commenting freely on my products, and I certainly don't want to give them house-room to do it. This business -- like Mario's restaurants, like the making-it-by-a-thread restaurant of some guy who's braising his first pork belly with crosnes and white balsamic -- is my livelihood. It pays the rent. And the idea that somebody would deter a customer from buying my products, merely because it was amusing to write a put-down or satisfying to enter into a flame-war...this petrifies me. Until and unless there are some consequences for anonymous posting, an ugly percentage of Web-users and bloggers will opt to indulge their destructive fantasies and vent their anger. That may indeed be the future, but I'm afraid I don't share your delight in it. But then (snottiness alert, here), "the future" hasn't provided me with a hefty book-deal or with extorted meals at some of the priciest boites in town. Forgive me, but in writing "objectively" about the general wonderfulness of restaurant-review blogs, you've got what actual reporters call a conflict of interest.
maggiesara at 8:14PM on 06/18/07
Mario Batali has publicly stated that his favorite critic is whoever gives him a good review. The same understandably self-serving view holds for bloggers, whatever the recent chatter. At heart, Batali finds restaurant reviewers--credentialed and amateur--as helpful for rock star chefs in the kitchen as air guitarists are for rock star musicians onstage.
Fat and Happy Food Slut at 11:01AM on 06/19/07