598: Food Writers Talking About Food Writing with Eater's Jaya Saxena & Matt Rodbard

0:28This episode is brought to you by Resi and American Express. We're back with another episode of Food Writers Talking About Food Writing. Jaya Saxena is here. How are you? I'm good. I'm good. Thanks for having me. I love your work, and we're going to cover it. If you're watching on YouTube, listen, we're here. We're in the studio. And if you're on the podcast, there's a link in the show notes to check it out on YouTube. We've been doing some fun stuff on YouTube. This is the only show we really go in its entirety on YouTube. Amazing. So when we start these conversations, I always want to ask you, you know, a meal.

1:01You start. I usually start, but I'll have you start. What's a meal that you recently had that just really excited you? I did last week go to Bar Kabawa. There are two new Momofuku joints. There's Kabawa, which is the set menu, tasting menu place. And then the bar next door, which I think is so much fun and so great. and, you know, just getting some of these really amazing patties there and really fantastic drinks. You know, they have this huge rum menu and they're making these great daiquiris. I had maybe the best pina colada I've ever had there, and I'm not even normally a pina colada drinker.

1:45And so that was just it hit everything. You know, it hit the food, the drinks, the atmosphere, the hospitality. I feel like sometimes it feels rare to get that whole package and it really felt like the whole package. Amazing. We had Paul on the show, Carmichael, the chef. Yes. Great conversation. It was like an hour and a half. Oh, my God. Check that in the feed. His story is amazing. Yeah. You know, working in Puerto Rico, working in New York, working in Australia. Yeah. He's been everywhere. He's been everywhere. And like the Kabawa response appears to be very positive. Yes, absolutely. I think that it's, you know, I think in general we're seeing, you know, there are more restaurants taking Caribbean flavors and putting them in more of a fine dining space or in more of an experimental space.

2:34And I think that's so great and so wonderful to see different versions of it. But I think that this one is just it's such a great version of it. Right. Well, my my pick is I was in Portland, Oregon last weekend and I got to go to Longbond, which is it won the Big Beard Award last year, which I didn't know until I after my meal. It won the Outstanding Restaurant Award, which is the biggest one. The chef is Earl Nim Sum, and he is going to be on the show. We're scheduling an interview soon. He's doing this tasting menu, and each couple months he switches up the format. The restaurant is Thai, and he's got several Thai restaurants in Portland, Oregon.

3:09But this restaurant is his real set piece, and he is doing this tasting menu focused around seafood. And it's really, really exciting. It was a pescatarian menu for everyone. It starts with small bites. He was doing a Hokkaido scallop with coconut cream, Thai herbs, and in a rice cup. It went on to this amazing coconut broth. And you've had coconut broth a lot. And it's typically good. This was the best. This was the highest level of coconut broth I've ever had. I've been fortunate to go to Thailand and tried some things with cordyceps was in it. And I was thinking Last of Us, which I don't know if you watched that show.

3:47Yes. So they're serving cordyceps. I don't know how to feel about that. Yeah, you're trying not to picture the show. Picture the show, but it works well. He moves on to some beautiful salads and does like a family style, like three or four plates at the end, mussels in a great curry with jackfruit. This amazing halibut perfectly done with baby corn and mushrooms. And at the end, Maya Erickson is the pastry chef. She's been there for like eight or nine years. Maya was a taste writer. She was a cook in residence and wrote some terrific pieces for Taste in 2017 and 18. So I got to meet Maya. So shouts to Maya Erickson.

4:23Had a great time in Portland. We're going to have an episode up in about a month where we really talk about Portland, Oregon. Have you been to Portland? Not in years. I was there a long time ago for a friend's wedding. I've been there a few times, but definitely it's been too long. and but I mean I remember that you know the food there was just so good it's so good um and yeah now now I'm like okay maybe I need to put that on the book I think it's great and it's like really local like you know a lot of cities in America have been taken over by corporations and just like urban sprawl with the usual suspects and like they fight that as a community and you walk around neighborhoods and you see no like uh you know uh Peloton stores and shit like that um anyways The big episode coming up soon.

5:10Check that out. But Jaya, let's talk about food writing. How about that? Yes, let's go. When we were exchanging emails about the lineup, we're always talking about what's big in the ether right now. There was no denying our top pick. The story that really made the week was from Mackenzie Chung Fagan out at the San Francisco Chronicle. The article is, Thomas Keller asked me to leave the French laundry. laundry. It turned out into my most extraordinary night as a critic. I love this piece. We have a lot to talk about here, and I'm going to summarize it briefly. The link is in the show notes to all of these articles, and you can read them, and we're trying not to spoil the show here.

5:49But Mackenzie's been the critic at the San Francisco Chronicle for over a year. We had her on about a month ago talking about the debut of the Top 100 Restaurants list, and she did such a terrific job with her colleagues there, loved the scope of restaurants and the work they put into that. And, you know, the French Laundry hasn't been reviewed in a while for the San Francisco Chronicle. But part of her job as critic is just to pop into restaurants and know the scene. So when she arrived at the French Laundry, she had no intention of reviewing it. But with that, she had kind of an extraordinary experience.

6:23She's in the dining room. There's, I think, a few canapes have been passed. And all of a sudden she has a tap on the shoulder. And somebody on the staff is like, can you join me in the garden? And she's like, what? And as she writes very beautifully, she is approached by the chef Thomas Keller. And Thomas Keller asks her point blank, what are your intentions? Which is an interesting question. Mackenzie is very honest. I think she had made the reservation under an alias, as you always do as a critic. But she then admitted that who she was. And Keller has a kind of a bizarre response. And I would say, I'll quote, Keller does not know what I want from him, he says, or what I what am I doing at his restaurant?

7:07I'm not here to write a review. I tell him honestly. So first, his response is he asked her to leave. Yeah. Which is after like just bizarre, bizarre behavior. asks her to leave and then decides to cook for her like an hour and a half after the reservation was set for. Yeah, I mean the server informs the group that Chef Keller would like to cook for us and sommelier has been asked to select wine. So it goes from you need to leave to I'm going to cook for you. And I'm not going to spoil the ending because you need to really get to the ending about the bill. And like throughout the piece, Mackenzie talks about her family's history of operating restaurants in San Francisco and her really, you know, her real like love.

7:56And it's like family to her, like the restaurant industry and how she had been at the French Laundry for a very important moment in her life. And I just thought that when the bill arrived, there was like, you know, as a critic, you have to pay for your meals. And it was a bit of a power play with, you know, like she couldn't accept a free meal because then Keller would have that on her. I texted Mackenzie after I wrote it. I was like, I need to take a fucking shower. Yeah. You kick it off. What did you what did you think about this piece and really what it says about this dynamic between chefs and critics?

8:30Yeah, absolutely. So I think, I mean, it's really interesting because I ultimately feel like, you know, often people think that critics and the subjects they write about are like so different. But you're ultimately doing the same thing. Anytime you are creating something, you put it into the world and then you have no control over it anymore. Right. You are waiting for other people to receive it and they are allowed to have whatever opinions they want. And sometimes they like it and sometimes they don't. And that's true of a restaurant. That's true of a painting. That's true of an article. And so I think it's always really fascinating when chefs are sort of like, oh, you don't know what it's like to create because you do.

9:16But you're just creating something different. I also think Thomas Keller, right, because he's coming to her and saying that, you know, French Laundry had had, you know, less than stellar reviews at some other publications at the Chronicle and elsewhere in recent years. So he was really concerned and he, you know, passed it off as concern for his staff saying that, oh, a negative review could affect them. I don't know how much I believe. You know, it's still the French laundry. I'm pretty sure if you have that on your resume, trying to be a line cook somewhere else, you're going to be fine. It's a master manipulation move.

9:53Yeah, absolutely. He's absolutely trying to. I try to use this word very, very, very lightly, but there's some gaslighting happening here. Oh, completely. It's like this manipulation of the facts that his staff would be hurt by these reviews. And like he had a he's had a tough time. You know, Melissa Clark wrote about Per Se and the French laundry. I will say, if you go back to the episode I talked to Melissa the week it dropped, she had lots of great things to say about the French laundry. Yeah. Like, for sure. Absolutely. And I think it's one of those things where, you know, because Keller, I think, echoes this thing that you hear from a lot of chefs and sort of a lot of artists and people whose work is criticized, that it is the critic's job to support the restaurant industry.

10:36that basically, why are you tearing us down? You know, your job should be to support us. And I think he's right, but I think he is not right for the reasons that he thinks he is. Because I do think it is the critic's job to support the restaurant industry and restaurants as a whole, but not your specific restaurant. No. You are talking about this to a standard of, well, what should a restaurant be? You are talking about, you know, you're talking from a point of, I respect the art form of a restaurant, of what a chef does. And that does not mean any one individual chef or restaurant. And I also think that, right, one, Mackenzie wasn't even there to review the restaurant.

11:20But even if she were, that a restaurant like French Laundry where, what, it's like$400 a meal and that's not including wine, that's not including, you know, tip, That's also not including a restaurant of that caliber where people might fly to go there, you know, or travel great distances and stay in a hotel. So if you are going to be spending that much money somewhere, it is of the utmost importance that somebody is going there and telling people, you know, is this going to be worth it to you to spend that amount of money? Yeah, and I was talking to Besha Rodell recently. We're going to have the episode up in a couple of weeks.

12:04And Besha, a critic of the LA Weekly and Creative Loafing. And we were talking about criticism. And I mean, I'd love to get your take on this. I feel like it's like a public service. Yes. For the restaurant industry. Yeah. I think publishers like the New York Times, which has two, you know, I would say like temporary critics who are trying out for the job. We don't know what the future is there. But like on the publishing side, we need more critics. Yes. It helps the industry. And I feel like there should be some responsibility from the publishing side to fund it. Now, we know monetization of criticism is difficult.

12:39And I know at Eater, you know, there were two critics and now there are none. Yeah. And so in our conversation with Besha, I was like, you know, it would be great if Vox could have another critic. But, like, I don't know the intimacies of the P &L at Vox. I can't judge that. But, like, as a public service for the restaurant community, let's, like, figure out how these can be monetized. Absolutely. No, I think it's really important. I think that, as you said, it makes it makes the industry better. I think it makes it better for everyone to have a more informed audience. I think due to the lack of criticism, that vacuum has really been filled, you know, by a lot of influencers, some of who are very good and sort of continuing journalistic work.

13:23But you also have a lot of people who are not holding themselves to the same ethical standards. And so it becomes really difficult. And I mean, the problem of ethics that exists in newspapers, too, that exists, you know, in the history of criticism the whole time. But right. You know, that thing, if you're watching a video and someone is saying that this restaurant is so good while they're showing you all like the beautiful. cheese pulls and all the wonderful shots of things. And you're like, well, you know, is their meal being comped? Is, you know, did they, are they getting paid for this? Is there some sort of deal behind the scenes here?

14:05Because good criticism is really about that trust, that you trust someone's taste, that you trust that someone knows their history and knows what they're talking about. And I think that's so valuable in sort of whatever form you get it in. And yeah, I wish there were more of it. Yeah. We'll leave it there. I think it's a topic that we'll continue to cover here. And I just think that just well done, Mackenzie. Yeah. What a piece. I actually also just will say the thing that really struck me in that, and aside from Mackenzie's amazing writing, is I wanted to know what Keller's plan was. Yeah, I know.

14:41Like, truly, that's fine if you're mad that a critic is in your restaurant. What makes you think that this would make it any better? Yeah, that Mackenzie would not write about this as a journalist. Or just tell people about it or whatever. It's like, truly, how did you think this would help? Yeah, I think that maybe the comms team and killer were not on the same page that afternoon. Absolutely not. Next piece is actually a piece of criticism dropped this week. The 22 best pizza places in New York right now. Yes. A terrific package written by the team of The New York Times, Priya Krishna, Nikita Richardson.

15:19and Luke Fortney. And this was an update of a list that was published about, I would say, six months ago. I think in October they published it, which I love to see the times doubling down on these city roundups and going and traveling through New York and doing it by category. I think it's a really nice investment. And it goes into what we're saying. It's nice to have funded criticism. I'll read from the intro. Pizza is the cultural and emotional bedrock of a city that can't even coalesce around a single baseball team. I'll even say basketball team. Here, finding a decent slice is as easy as jaywalking.

15:54But finding a great slice, one that's worth eating down to the last bite of crust, is much harder. The team at the New York Times visited 79 of the city's most popular and beloved pizzerias and landed on the 22 best. They assessed many different styles, Sicilian, Neapolitan, New York, and then some uncategorized bowl, classified, I guess is the word, versions of pizza. And I'll just go over a couple highlights. There's series in Manhattan, Little Italy. They write about the crust that looks like bread. It's savory. It's well aerated, the color of einkorn boule. It's fitting the recipes based on a baguette dough.

16:33This is the pizza that has been given a lot of press. I think it got a really big Portnoy score and it's been beloved. And also on the list is, of course, Chrissy's in Greenpoint and they write every few years a great Pisaolo appears out of thin air. And Chris Hansel is that. I had him on the show recently. And I'll just close and say I was personally happy to see the FNF, Joe's in the Village, and Ellenbis Bimoni stayed on the list. The big butt are the folks who didn't make the list. Yeah. Inducali, PolyG's, and Scar? I was really surprised about Scar's, especially because I have... Pizza drama is so good because it feels so lovely to have such a petty opinion.

17:21Because, right, it is... Believing one pizza place deserves to be on a list and another pizza place doesn't deserve to be on a list is totally inconsequential to the grand scheme of life. But it feels so wonderful. to like read a list and see something that you're like, I think you got that wrong. And I am going to hold that in my heart forever. Yeah. And pizza is so polarizing too. It's so polarizing. Neapolitan is all about the dough and like the rise. You've got, of course, gas, you know, bread oven pizzas that are all about that marriage of cheese sauce and very thin crust, but also really well fermented and matured flavor in dough.

18:01Yeah. It's crazy. I was right because I had a couple on there. I mean, I was really shocked about Scars. I was really happy to see one of my local places, Andrew Bellucci's on there. I was also happy to see Manos in Ridgewood. I went there. I didn't even know that they were sort of on the pizza radar. I just ran around the corner from a bar that I was at to grab a slice and loved it. I thought they were great. But yeah, I had been to Scars recently and I was just like, I love this pizza. And, you know, I also think it's something where a lot of these places, like, I think, I mean, I hope, but I think Scars is going to be fine.

18:40I think that people know that they do good stuff, you know, regardless of one list. But, yeah, seeing Scars not on there and then seeing some other choices, I was a little like, ooh, ooh, that's not me. It's not me. It's not me either. Scars is definitely in my top five. And I think they're trying to, like, spread out the geography. And, like, you know, going to Queens is important and Bellucci being on there is really cool. And, like, honestly, it's just great to see them putting four reporters on this work and actually putting in the time. I mean, 79 visits. That's no joke. Yeah, that's a lot.

19:14And I saw, you know, I think I saw Luke posting about it. Just like, oh, my God. And I had a doctor's appointment coming up. Like, you know, this is a difficult task. But I feel like, no, it's just really cool that they were all able to get their resources together on this. It's really, really fun. And I love when the Times takes these big swings. I think they clearly have a strategy where they put into a newsletter and like the big The Morning newsletter. Yeah. That, you know, it really is a moment in not just the food desk, but like throughout the New York Times when they put these lists out there.

19:50I want to get maybe Luke or Nikita on the show because I want to talk a little bit more about this from the source oh yeah like how did they narrow it down I mean was it are we talking about like are there's like a skunkworks room in the times with like a whiteboard especially like you know I'm assuming right tasting these things at all these different times and trying to figure out like what is the standard you're looking for here Yeah, I would love like the numbers on it. Yeah. Well, to switch topics and gears, I think a big reason I wanted to have you on, not just to talk about food and pizza takes, is your writing and an incredible piece that you wrote last year made it to the James Beard Foundation's Media Awards year.

20:36You're nominated. The article is called The Food That Makes You Gay. And it is, wow, I've read it twice and I have a lot to unpack. There's a lot of topics here in the best way possible. Oh, no. It's so sprawling. It's sprawling. I really thank my editors for allowing me to just sort of come with them of being like, I have a vague idea that a bunch of things are connected. Please just let me run with it. And they were like, go. Go for it. This is Food Writers talking about Food Writers. Who are your editors? Let's name them. Oh, my God. Well, my main editor, Erin DeJesus. She's fantastic. Love it.

21:12Monica Burton also worked with me on that. She's now at the New York Times. but she is really, really great. And Leslie Suter as well. And then my coworkers also, Amy McCarthy and Bettina McElintal, like they help me so much. Like we're always bouncing ideas off each other or just like venting to each other about our writing frustrations. And so they're such a great support. You have such a great team. I can't speak highly enough about the team at Eater, Eater National, whatever you want to call it. It's, you know, Rebecca Marks and her team is doing, the team is doing the cultural coverage. And it's amazing.

21:48Yeah. Doing incredible work. I want to read from you. This comes later on in the piece, but I think it's an important moment. I want you to tell us a little about it. Quote, identity is a squishy concept, material and immaterial at the same time, existing both in our minds and interactions. To be queer has to do with who you do and do not have sex with, but also how you approach those interactions, what it feels like, and how you sit in your own body. So these associations with food, a thing we all must consume and often be seen consuming, become a way to externalize something intangible. So this comes up in the piece later on, but I think it's a big, like, nut graphery, so to speak, of the piece.

22:29What were you trying to unpack with this piece? Yeah, basically. So it all it all basically started around thinking of, right, these little food associations that we have. I think one of the classic ones is if someone's eating, you know, a banana or a corn dog or this other phallic object that often, especially if it's a man doing it, there'll be this joke that like, ha ha, you look gay. All those scares around like, oh, if you eat too much soy. Yeah, that was a big part. You know, your body is going to change. It's going to give you feminizing hormones. And then realizing like, well, wait a minute.

23:11There are plenty of people who take hormones on purpose. In fact, with the express intent of changing their bodies, changing their sex. So is there a connection here? What do these things have to do with each other? And realizing that, you know, sort of throughout history, there have been all of these associations of people both negatively and positively thinking that the food you eat is going to change your sex, change your body. And right, some of this is people doing it with the full intention of that's what they wanted to do. And some of it is people saying, you know, Spanish colonizers saying, don't eat the food of the new world because you'll stop growing your manly Spanish beard.

23:57And, you know, so they're just all these different things connected. And I just did my best to try to show the through lines with all this and really this sense of queerness, of gender, of sexuality and identity and food, you know, has is connected in our minds and has been connected for a really long time. Food is so immediate. And I think that from that quote that I read, you know, it's something that is so much more immediate than sexuality. Yeah. Right. And so that expression of eating food clearly is it's easier for someone to make a remark. Yes. And I think that, you know, before in different scientific times, you know, food as medicine, food as something that does have an it has an effect on your body.

24:47Right. If you eat something you're allergic to, you're going to get a rash. If you, you know, only eat ice cream versus if you only eat celery, your body is probably going to look different, you know, in those two outcomes. So it does have an effect on your body. So why couldn't it have an effect in these other ways? You write about the online chatter and the television chatter around Joe Biden eating ice cream. And that was like a moment during the campaign when places like Fox News and others you cite in the piece really using that against him and really implying anything, you know, crazy things.

25:30Yeah. And I think that's a great example of how this can be used for political gain in some ways. Absolutely. Well, I mean, obviously, we're in such like a horrible moment when it comes to queer and trans people in the U.S. right now. Like, I think literally the morning that we're recording this, you know, there's a bill in the Senate that might get rid of trans affirming care for all trans people under Medicaid. You know, it's it's not good out there. And the right wing has really taken on these sort of, you know, gender wars and these really limited gender ideas and run with it. Because I think what Jesse Waters on Fox News was the one who was like, a man should never eat ice cream.

26:12A man should never eat soup. I think right wing grifter Andrew Tate was like, if you're a man and you're into food at all, that's too feminine. That's like gay. And it's just like where the idea that right being being into enjoying food, enjoying eating makes you less of a man. Just absurd things are being said. Wild, wild takes. Fuck that guy. Yeah, seriously. You know, this is a pro food show. Yes. Just unbelievable shit coming out of his. Yeah. No, it's it's it's really bonkers. Explain courtesy stigma. Yeah. So the idea of courtesy stigma comes up in this piece. And it's really, you know, another way to think of it is stigma by association that, you know, maybe you are not of a stigma size identity.

27:10But if you are friends with that person, if you are interacting with that person, then people are looking at you a little bit suspect. And, you know, you think about it to like middle school bullying or something where if there was a kid that was getting bullied and if you were nice to them and you were friends with them, then people start bullying you, too, because of that association. And so it comes up a lot with, I think, queerness and food because, right, that association of like, oh, well, I don't want to be thought of as gay because society considers that a negative. So I won't eat ice cream.