479: The Future of Restaurant Criticism Is in Your Inbox with Ryan Sutton

0:28This episode is brought to you by Resi and American Express. One of the cool things about good restaurant criticism, you read a review by Pete Wells or by Matthew at New York Magazine or Robert Sietzema or my old reviews at Eater, is that we like to be in conversation with one another. So many occasions I would disagree with what Pete Wells says and I would quote his review and they say, here's why I think he's wrong or here's how I disagree with him. This is Taste. I'm your host, Matt Rothbard. For years, Ryan Sutton was the chief restaurant critic at Eater New York, and previous to that served as a critic at Bloomberg.

1:06Ryan is one of the most respected critics in the game, and we wanted to invite him to the studio to talk about the low times, his substat covering the New York City restaurant game. We talk about modern pizza by the slice, the economics of sushi, and go over some of his favorite restaurants in this great restaurant city. I loved catching up with Ryan and I hope you enjoy this conversation

1:38Ryan Sutton welcome back to this is taste it's great to see you so great to see you Matt excited to be back and excited to be back in the food media game well I want to go back to our last conversation which was February 2023, and I'm going to link to that great interview in the show notes. You had just been laid off from Eater, and you were thinking about your next move. I think it was a real melancholy kind of chat, and I really appreciated you being vulnerable and chatting with us because you really were bummed that you had been laid off from a job that you gave so much to, and I read all the time.

2:14But in the last year, you've rebounded. You're back in our world, and I love the low times. I think it is if you live in New York City, you have to subscribe. I'm going to say that, put it on a billboard, use the poll quote. It's absolutely a must read. You're doing the work, Ryan, and I appreciate it. Oh, thanks for thanks for saying it. And it's no, I'm lucky that I have, you know, it's the low times is, you know, reviews and and guides that I publish on Substack. And I'm lucky that Substack was there to, you know, let me do this thing that essentially provides me from, you know, personally, provides me the opportunity to, you know, make some bucks for myself in such a fashion where I get to, you know, express my voice and develop my voice in the way that I want to, if I can be somewhat selfish about it.

3:01But also it allows me kind of to say no to a lot of people who reach out to me to say, hey, do you want to work with us? Because right now, and this is no offense to anyone, freelance rates aren't the greatest right now. And so it allows me to be selective and to keep kind of a roof over my head without having to take something that undervalues my work from a freelance perspective. So that's incredibly grateful for me, both financially and just the ability to keep doing what I love to do. And I've been reviewing restaurants for about 20 years right now. And so the fact that there's this thing out there called Substack that allows me to keep doing that.

3:34I mean, Jiminy Crickets, I'm really grateful for that. Yeah, and to remind everybody, you were a critic at Bloomberg for years, and then you were the New York critic at Eater and helped out with a lot of business reporting at Eater as well and did terrific pieces. So I recommend going back to that 2023 interview where we get more into your history and your time at Eater because we're going to talk about a lot more things today because you've been talking – you've been having a lot of slices of pizza. So we're going to get into that New York City pizza scene. But I've always enjoyed your tenacious reporting, how you aren't just assessing the restaurant quality, but providing this real zoom out kind of element.

4:13And I want to talk about the NYC restaurant scene from a zoom out perspective, because I think you have a lot to say. What are you feeling right now in New York? Are we in a healthy environment? Is it still very much held back and held down by the pandemic and the reality? Of course, one more topic, and this very big question, is inflation and the price of dining out, which many people are stunned when they go to restaurants in New York. But we've had a lot of chefs here, and really it's not like all the chefs are getting rich doing this. So I've thrown out a lot of topics. I'd love to get your take.

4:52Yeah, a lot to cover there. I think briefly, I think there's, you know, as always, there's amazingly delicious and inspiring restaurants out in New York City right now, more so than ever, at least more so than since the pandemic. So I think we're in terms of quality and good young and old chefs doing amazing things. I think we're in a good place. But yes, as you hinted at, inflation is still tough. Or maybe let me tweak that. Inflation throughout the economy is reasonably low right now. But just because inflation is low and inflation, of course, means prices are rising and the purchasing power of the dollar is, you know, a little bit weaker than it used to be.

5:30Even though inflation is low, prices are still high. And that's key. The price of drinking a glass of wine or a having a cocktail in New York City right now, I would politely describe as prohibitive unless you're kind of higher middle income at a good restaurant. A glass of wine is probably going to cost, you know, upwards of 15, 16, 17, 18 dollars at a base level. Not uncommon to have martinis in the 21 dollar plus range. And so, yeah, eating and drinking out in New York City right now is tough. The prices of a kind of a top tier omakase, your going rate is about 500 dollars before a single drop of sake is poured.

6:13And there are at least 10 of those places right now. And, yeah, the price of dining out right now in New York is tough, both at the high end, but it's also high at kind of the middle to low end when you think of some of New York's best sliced pizzas right now. And, again, this is, you know, really good stuff. You're talking about, you know,$5 per slice. And, again, this is not a criticism. This is a product of the fact that, you know, flour prices are elevated over the past few years and that labor costs are up as well. And, again, nothing wrong with any of these factors. Some of them are just a product of supply chain.

6:44Some of them are a product of increasing labor costs because of higher minimum wages. Those are great things, too. But it all leads to the fact that if you're an everyday person with an everyday job, everyday things like going to your favorite restaurants are a lot more expensive than they used to be. So that means for a lot of us, we get to do it a little bit less. And so, you know, it is what it is. Yeah. Well said, Ryan. And I have a follow up. You know, when you're thinking about even like the most simple sandwich shop, pizza slice place, taqueria, and you're paying 30, 40, 50 dollars a person, that's even prohibitive.

7:20Is there a model in New York that you feel can keep the prices lower by either having less labor? I know we've spoken with Steve Ellis from Chipotle and now Kernel, his new restaurant, about like lowering the labor footprint. Or is there just like maybe a cuisine, maybe plant based is better? Again, very big question. I would love to get your take. I don't think there's a great question. I don't think there's any magic solution to any of this. I think it's the reality. We're all paying more for what we used to pay less for somewhat tautologically. And, you know, it is what it is. I remember before the pandemic, when the price or sorry, when the tipped minimum wage rose dramatically right before the pandemic, I anecdotally noticed fewer servers on the floor of any given restaurant.

8:15and I think that continued through the pandemic and afterwards. And so, yeah, every now and then you're going to see fewer servers on the floor and you're going to see more venues adopting a kind of a fast casual model where you pay first and get your food later. I don't know necessarily if that's going to become the predominant model because we're lucky to, if that's the right term, we're lucky in New York to have enough wealthy consumers, huge finance and legal industries here in New York City where a lot of people can truly afford these things. So we'll still have these upscale restaurants where dinner for one is going to cost you upwards of$100 to get three courses and two glasses of wine after tax and tip.

8:55But yeah, you're going to see more fast casual-ish style restaurants. But I don't think that will ever fully subsume the service industry model of having a fully serviced front of the house staff, even as the minimum wage continues to go up And even as the tip minimum wage probably eventually completely disappears in New York, which I'm sure it will sometime in the next 10 years, because I feel like that's kind of the national trend as we've seen the tip minimum wage disappear in other cities and municipalities and states as well. I have to ask you simply, you know, with the idea that we maybe need to dine a little less to afford these prices that are very just with increasing costs.

9:36Are there too many restaurants in New York City? Let me look at it more specifically. It seemed for a while that maybe there were too many high-end sushi restaurants. You know, we saw the closure of Ginzo and Adara, and I think another one or two closed as well. And indeed, if you have like a billion dollars, you can get into any of these restaurants on any given night. But generally speaking, they're not closing. If anything, they're still opening up. And I think more of them will continue to open up as high-end operators from across the world see the success of venues like Sushi Show, which moved from Honolulu to New York.

10:12The Honolulu location is still open. And as they see these restaurants doing well. So at least at the super high end, there are not too many restaurants. We may feel like some of those places are disproportionately covered, especially as people like me and you can't afford to eat at these places every single day of the week. It would be nice to have a$500 sushi meal twice a month, maybe if we were oligarchs. But such is not the case. So at the high end, I mean, culturally, you could argue that maybe there are too many of these places. But from a financial or demand perspective, these places seem to be doing OK.

10:47Yeah, well, it's a good answer. And it's obvious, too, if you look at like the messaging from banks, they want five days in the office. Legal operators want five days in the office. You know, it's Midtown is as busy as ever and not just with tourists, but with people actually in the offices. And clearly, if these high earners are in the office five days a week, there's going to be a lot of T &E budget given to these restaurants at the high end. So that makes a lot of sense. I want to zoom out one more time and ask you a big question about the food media landscape. You know, you were laid off from Eater, and it's clear that the world of restaurant viewing is getting smaller and smaller, and fewer publications are supporting a full-time critic.

11:33And even the places supporting full-time credits are rolling back some of the responsibilities, throwing those individuals into more feature reporting, into more listicles, which is not bad at all. And I think we're a very healthy environment creatively, but financially, these publications aren't supporting full-time critics. I mean, do you see the restaurant review format changing over the next five years? Maybe. Maybe. I certainly think things are better in the food media landscape than they were, say, a year, year and a half ago, you know, when I was laid off. you have the New Yorker doing longer reviews than they ever have under Helen Rosner who I think won a I don't think I know won a Beard Award for her recent efforts you have New York Magazine hired a critic Matthew who does great work in addition to Matthew you have Tammy who's doing who continues to do amazing work at Eater you still have Robert Sietzema in addition to Robert Sietzema you occasionally have Eater doing these great scene reports of, you know, critically minded takes on restaurants throughout the city by people who aren't traditionally critics, which I think is a good thing because it helps give people more voices.

12:49And we saw, you know, I think Emma Orlo had a really fun take on Frogs Club in her scene report. And so things are, you didn't necessarily have that a year ago. And in addition to that on Substack, and I know it's not a traditional media publication. It's getting there. It's getting there. Yeah. Folks like me have, you know, Mahira Rivers, who has an excellent sub stack about desserts in New York. Charlotte Druckmann, who has her own sub stack, mostly about baked goods and sweet things. So again, not necessarily traditional criticism across the fronts, but I think things are a lot better than they were a year ago.

13:25And of course, the New York Times is going to have a new critic probably sometime in the next six months. But however long that takes, you have Priya and Melissa doing interim critic work. I think Priya just reviewed Bungalow. She gave it three stars. Really kind of smart contextual review about the state of modern South Asian cuisine. Really like that one. Yeah. Really good stuff. And Melissa just reviewed, I think, Lola's in the Flatiron Nomadish area. I would say right now we're in a we're in a much better place than they were a year ago. I mean, there are things I would like to see change in the critical landscape.

14:02I think it would be great just as Eater, the way Eater used to have two critics, me and Robert Sietzema. I think it would be lovely if The New York Times had had multiple voices there as well. You know, a dual critic system, because it's a it's a really huge job for any one person. And because the more you can just give more voice to all the great journalists out there, just as The New York Times used to have, you know, the Hungry City column or twenty five dollars and under. It would be lovely to see them return to that, because I think people love different points of view. And because one person can only cover so much and different people bring quite obviously different perspective based on where they come from.

14:39I don't think there are a lot of people who could have written that review the way Priya did. And so the more that – and then we had Melissa write one of the subsequent reviews from the point of view of her skills as a recipe writer and as a cookbook author, I believe. And so I think with that system they have right now with these two people from these two different points of view, I think that's awesome. I realize your question was somewhat different, but I think things are improving. And I think the what I will say is it's not the worst thing in the world that places like the New York Times are doing these these kind of these cool listicles, you know, top 100, top 25 restaurants in different cities around the country.

15:17I mean, they're ultimately they're they're they're trying to compete with, you know, the eaters and the infatuations of the world. But they're not retreating from traditional criticism either. Yeah, you've laid out a really, really fine case about the health of print media and print meaning generally words on a page either on Substack or in the printed New York Times. And I fully see what you're saying. And I really do think we have a healthy, diverse crop of critics in New York City. And I love to hear that. I will push back slightly and just say to me, it seems like with all that said, there is a sea change happening in the way people get their restaurant reviews.

16:00And I say reviews if they get quotes. And a big part of that is TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, everything from the back of the seat pizza reviews to people going and having really detailed accounts of meals. And if you read any headline, you also have AI playing in this mix and, you know, restaurant wrecks coming from AI, you know, scraping from these print outlets but doing it for free and not really compensating the outlets. So let's ask you, especially let's start with TikTok. Do you see TikTok as an existential threat to the print restaurant critic? No, I don't. I mean, listen, I mean, why do people go into platforms like TikTok or any new and emerging form of media?

16:46And I'm not even sure TikTok qualifies as new or emerging right now, given its ubiquity. And the same could be said for Instagram stories. They do it because they probably want to see their voices out there because they don't feel their voices are being represented. They're usually filling in from some sort of power vacuum. And again, that power vacuum is probably caused a little bit by traditional print media and digital media retreating right now from, you know, whatever it is they've been doing because, you know, things are a little bit tough in both the digital media sphere and the print media sphere.

17:17Obviously, what someone like, you know, Keith Lee or Muslim foodies, I think Muslim foodies are I think they do a pretty nice job at covering the halal restaurant scene in New York. What they're doing, of course, is not criticism. criticism what they're doing is kind of very short form reviewing I mean there's reviewing this criticism reviewing is you know broadly speaking when the context of our conversation is going to a place and trying to help people make an informed economic decision and hopefully provide a little bit of you know context as well here's a new modern Korean restaurant and here's where the chef comes from and maybe here's what they're doing a little bit differently than someone else that's not criticism that's reviewing criticism is something entirely different a good review should have criticism.

17:58And when I say criticism, I don't mean this is good, that's bad. I mean, criticism from the academic pursuit of trying to reckon maybe with competing strains of thought refuting bad ideas, advancing good ideas, and maybe even trying to, you know, track a trend that other people haven't tracked before. There are a lot of modern Korean restaurants in New York City right now. Here it means, here's what it means for the state of modern fine dining. And here's how other restaurants are adopting some of the ingredients, techniques, and ethos of those modern Korean fine dining restaurants. And I'm going to put that in my larger restaurant review.

18:29You don't need to do that every single restaurant review, but I think a good review should have elements of criticism. It should have elements of reporting, and it should help people make an economic decision. What the people are doing on TikTok is very narrow. I think some of it's good. I think some of it is, reductively speaking, not good. I wish it had more context. And what troubles me isn't the existence of these TikTok critics. And again, I haven't devoted a lot of thought to someone like Keith Lee. I'm sure they probably bring a lot of attention to restaurants that maybe mainstream critics aren't necessarily giving a lot of attention to.

19:02And that's probably a really good thing. And the same could be said for, again, Muslim foodies on TikTok. But I think the more troubling thing is when people exclusively look to a quote unquote TikTok critic to get their dining inspiration, to get their dining pics, rather than looking towards printer digital media. Because like I said, traditional criticism or reviewing through print media provides a much bigger and much more intellectual picture. And I think that's a cool thing. And we should also talk about the infatuation of Michelin at some point because they're both also moving into the power vacuum that is being caused by the retraction of print and digital media.

19:46And I think that's not always a good thing the way that either Michelin or infatuation are expanding themselves. So you're saying that the power vacuum is these outlets entering into a world where they're not necessarily giving these restaurants the rigor and really the art of real criticism, which has been the long history of restaurant reviewing criticism being said. And you are saying that their entry into this world is a net negative. I don't want to say it's a net negative. I think there just has to be balance. I mean, again, if Keith Lee goes to a restaurant that regular critics aren't reviewing, either contextually or critically or whatever, and brings attention to that place and gives that restaurant an economic benefit and tells people about the restaurant that they otherwise wouldn't have known about, I think that's a net positive.

20:43and same goes for Muslim foodies and a few of these other TikTokers or what have you. I think the downside is that when people neglect traditional media, here's another way of putting it. I think one of the cool things about good restaurant criticism, you read a review by Pete Wells or by Matthew at New York Magazine or Robert Sitsima or mild reviews at Eater is that we like to be in conversation with one another. You know, I, you know, so many occasions I would disagree with what Pete Wells says and I would quote his review and they say, here's why I think he's wrong or here's how I disagree with him.

21:18No one's really right or wrong in these situations. These are just, you know, you know, of course, the old the old expression, you know, there's two economists in a room for opinions. You know, no one agrees with these sort of things. We all disagree. That's what we as critics do. But we're in conversation with each other. You don't see those same conversations happening at the level of TikTok. And again, I realize people aren't going up to TikTok in the morning so that Keith Lee can quote four different critics and try to refute all of them. They're going because they want to be delighted by someone who delights them and provides them with good advice.

21:48Again, I think that's a good thing. But you're losing this larger conversation that's happening between intelligent writers who disagree with each other. And if you believe that intellectual discourse and listening to different opinions makes you have better opinions yourself and creates a more delightful environment for deciding to try to where to go out to eat at night, I think you're losing something by entirely focusing on that. The same, incidentally, can be said for, and again, I'm not trying to really jump on anyone here, but you read the infatuation and you read Michelin and you're not getting what's going on from a cultural or contextual perspective, the way you're getting it if you're reading either Grub Street or the New York Times.

22:37And again, I realize that, you know, what the infatuation or Michelin does, what they do, I mean, they're not doing criticism. They're doing reviewing in the strict sense. And so they would probably argue that it's not our game to be part of that larger conversation. We're just giving our very kind of, you know, narrow take. But given how big those two organizations are, I wish they thought more broadly about their jobs because they ultimately do hire and employ very smart people who are probably very good at their jobs, who have a lot of opinions, who I think would make this food media landscape a lot better.

23:11If they were given the word count. If they were given the word count. If they were given the word count and given the ability to stretch and give this cultural context, historical context, all the great things that we appreciate in fine restaurant criticism. I'm going to leave it there. I'm going to transition and talk a little bit about money in terms of your business, the low times on on sub stack. Ryan, is it financially sustainable what you're doing now? Because you really do go out and spend a lot of money on restaurants if you read your your your sub stack. I do spend a lot of restaurant.

23:43I do spend a lot of money on restaurants. It's a little bit frightening sometimes. Not as much as I used to when I had a full time expense account and a full time job. Generally speaking, any given review I write costs anywhere from, say,$300 to$800 or$900. Not a lot of them cost$900. That would be more like a sushi show, which is, you know, I'm obviously not going to a sushi show three times and writing a review. You know, I went there once. Is it financially sustainable? It's a great question. I would say that depends on your point of view and depends on your accounting method. Let's just say I'm not yet in a position where I'm ready to buy a seized Russian oligarch yacht in the Mediterranean, nor am I buying fancy homes on the Gold Coast of Long Island.

24:31But my site is not underwater. It is profitable. Again, what does profitable mean? All of my reviews pay for themselves, at least I would say on a two to three month rolling basis. Um, so yes, the site is profitable. All the meals pay for themselves and I get to use a little extra to pay for some of my student loans. Uh, not yet in a position to expand. Um, but, uh, everything pays for itself. And that's a, that's a huge key because if I was in the red, uh, and the meals were not paying for themselves, uh, I would be hemorrhaging cash and I'd be in a lot of trouble really fast. So I'm, I'm lucky that I, um, thanks to my subscriptions, uh, everything I, I don't, you know, I don't see any of this.

25:15I all my meals are paid for. So I'm very grateful for that. Now, does that undervalue my labor a little bit? Yeah, but I'm willing to ride that wave until things become better. And, you know, you establish yourself a little more. But again, I'm OK with that. So let me ask you, how do you interact with with your readers if you do at all? And I guess how do you generate more subscribers, paid subscribers to the low times? Because it It seems if you're going to do a subscription model, you're going to have some churn, obviously, every month. Every month that you have the notice that you're resubscribing, people are going to decline for a variety of reasons.

25:55But you have to grow, obviously, somewhat just to maintain the subscriber. But you, of course, want to grow. It seems extremely difficult. And so the fact that you're sustainable, major props to you. But how do you actually build a community and grow your audience? Yeah, by writing more, which is always difficult because I only have so much bandwidth to write. And you try to move into different coverage areas. And some of them work and some of them didn't. You know, I run a podcast right now. I tried to launch my own podcast. The sheer effort it took to – I'm not a laissez-faire podcast producer.

26:33I'm a pretty hands-on person. And so that took a lot of effort. And, you know, it didn't really work out. Because I just didn't have the time. But I've been trying to move into other coverage areas. I've been working pretty hard on expanding into edibles and THC because I view that as an undercovered area around the country. THC drinks themselves are a half billion dollar a year business. Edibles are also something that people do a lot of. I think a recent survey found that there are more daily marijuana users in this country than there are daily drinkers. And in as much as both of those things intersect with the restaurant world, a lot of us eat edibles in order to make food taste better, just as a lot of people pair wine with food because they think it matches well with good cuisine.