The Ethics of Restaurant Criticism in a Time of Crisis

A few days ago, an industry friend posted something disappointing on social media. She’d ordered some fairly expensive take-out from a prominent Chicago restaurant, and her experience had not been ideal. This was one of those increasingly common situations wherein restaurants require a ton of at home assembly for take-out meals, and without going into too much detail, the delivery was not correctly packaged and made a bit of a mess. Understandably (at least in a pre-covid age!) she posted a complaint on her social media.

Here’s where things went off the rails. While many of the comments contained sympathy or disappointment, several instead expressed anger, sometimes quite vehement anger, at the thought that she would dare to criticize a restaurant during this pandemic. Restaurants are suffering, so the logic seemed to go, and the industry is in a free fall, so consumers should simply accept what they are given, grateful that there’s really anything left aside from whatever is in their freezer drawer.

Once I started looking, I saw this sentiment popping up all over the internet. Food criticism, both amateur and professional, isn’t appropriate right now, because of the immense stress the restaurant industry is under. Bitterness about Yelp reviewers seems to have hit a new high, which is quite a feat given how high it was among chefs before the world descended into chaos. People complaining about their food online seem to almost-universally face at least some degree of reproach. So, as someone who has spent many years being paid to write about food (and some years being paid to criticize restaurants), it led me to ponder: what are the ethics of criticism during this complicated time?

It’s worth noting that this sentiment has existed long before the pandemic. A segment of the restaurant industry has always felt that criticism is somehow inappropriate; that all food writers should, in fact, be food boosters, and that restaurant critics are mostly those who can’t actually cook, spending time and energy impugning the life’s work (and potentially affecting the livelihood) of dedicated culinary professionals. I’ve fallen victim to this before when I’ve given a bad review: “Won’t you feel awful if the restaurant closes?” I’ve been asked, or “why don’t you focus on the positive, rather than the negative?”

My answer has always been the same – my job is not to be a booster for the restaurant industry. They have paid professional PR for that task. My job is to represent the consumer, the average diner, the people shelling out their hard-earned cash in order to purchase food. And if in so representing the consumer, restaurants (especially bad ones, or mediocre ones) get hurt, that’s just part of the risk of doing business. Don’t charge a fortune for bad food, and I won’t call you out for charging a fortune for bad food.

But right now, everyone has become a booster for the industry. Every story I wrote (before Dish shut down) during the pandemic was trying to help a business I cared about. My social media posts have encouraged donations to restaurants, boosted up innovative operators, or expressed sorrow about restaurants who are closing. I’ve felt a sense of responsibility to use whatever influence I have to help my friends and colleagues who have worked their entire lives to serve us great food and provide a sense of belonging, as their businesses, lives and identities have been yanked out from under them by this virus.

However.

I’m still a critical, consumer focused person. There are still restaurants doing well, and restaurants doing badly. There are amazing values to be had for consumers, and terrible ripoffs. Despite the newfound sense of the restaurant industry as a group of heroes, the same restaurants that cut corners, failed health inspections, put out bad product and used subpar ingredients… probably still are doing all those things, along with some new companions forced into less-than-ideal practices by economic circumstances.

A simple example of this ethical dilemma: There are a ton of restaurants doing beer and wine sales to go right now. Many of them have come up with incredible deals, selling wine and beer (some a consumer would be hard pressed to access at a store) for reasonable prices. In some cases, these are prices akin to retail, allowing the restaurant a profit margin between the wholesale and retail price. In other cases, restaurants have offered wines at a markup, but a markup significant smaller than their standard restaurant markup in the before times. But other restaurants continue to offer wine at the sort of 3-4X markup that implies it’s being served in a glass by a server while you’re at a table.

Anthony of 2019 would have probably created a spreadsheet, done a bunch of math and made a list of best bargains, calling out some of the potential vultures and directing consumers to bargains. But now…I’m given pause. What if a super marked up wine is the only way a restaurant is paying its employees’ health insurance? If consumers are willing to pay it, and have the disposable income, maybe that’s just part of the way we work now.

Or take the many, many restaurants that have attempted to escape the vampiric clutches of delivery services like GrubHub and are offering their own delivery. This is great for restaurants, but often not so great for consumers. A few weeks ago, I ordered a fairly huge feast from a restaurant I love. I went right to the restaurant, instead of through a third party service. I scheduled delivery a day in advance, to try to minimize the burden on the restaurant, and made no special requests. The food was scheduled to arrive at noon.

At 1 p.m., I called the restaurant. They informed me, without even a hint of a sense of apology, that things were running late, and they hoped I’d get it by 1:30, but maybe it would be more like 2. If I had been using GrubHub, I would probably have gotten a chunk of cash for this, but in this case, I was seemingly expected to just accept it as part of the growing pains of the new normal. And I did. And the food was excellent. I said nothing on social media, I sent no angry emails. But I wondered a bit about where to draw the line.

This won’t end when restaurants re-open. Some places will be better than others about implementing social distancing but keeping a sense of atmosphere and engagement. Some places may even break or bend the rules. As an industry advocate, am I expected to continue to not comment negatively on restaurants for… how long? Until we are fully re-opened? That will still likely be a time of serious recession. It’s not like the restaurant industry is ever going to be easy. And if consumers who have experienced job losses and pay cuts have even LESS money to spend on food, shouldn’t those of us who have the ability to do so advise them where and where not to spend it?

I don’t claim to have any comprehensive answers. As I move forward, my only approach is to critique with compassion, to try to distinguish between honest, one-off mistakes and systematic low-quality disasters; to pick the things that are the fault of the restaurant and the fault of the circumstances. That bottle of champagne arrived flat? They didn’t know that when they sent it. Your food got a little smooshed in the package? It happens.

But if food was seasoned totally wrong, or ingredients were missing, or that rare steak was sent well done? I think it’s still worth commenting on. Without filtering out some of the negative, the places that continue to excel, to do amazing food in a time of strife, won’t get enough meaningful attention. And at the end of the day, even when an industry and a world is suffering, it’s worth making sure that the people who are trying hard, who are doing the right thing and who are bringing joy to diners hiding at home for the third consecutive month get the accolades that they genuinely deserve.

The 2020 James Beard Nominations, or: Give Lee Wolen a Damn Beard Award Already (And Chicago It's Own Category, Duh)

Even in the midst of a pandemic, there’s something oddly reassuring about the fact that the Beard Awards keep on ticking along.  Especially for a writer, these various awards (Beard, Michelin, Food & Wine) help mark the passage of the year, and add a bit of normalcy to our otherwise timeless lives.  And while the actual awards have been postponed (they’re happening in September, instead of May), the final list of nominees was released yesterday.  Obviously, I have thoughts.

First, I’ll get on my usual soapbox: Best Chef: Great Lakes is broken, and the fact that the Beard Awards continue to fail to remedy that makes me slightly nuts. How is it broken? I’ve written about it many times before (including with math) going all they way back to 2014. If you want a detailed analysis, look at this Chicago Magazine article I wrote in 2018, but the basic point is that once the process moves from semi-finalists to finalists, the Great Lakes category is, almost inevitably, the “Chicago” category.  And while New York City gets its own category of awards in order to avoid the problem of knocking out the entire Northeast region of the culinary nation, Chicago doesn’t get the same treatment, leaving chefs in the other Great Lakes states… out of luck.

This year is a perfect example – a wide range of chefs were represented in the semi-finals for Great Lakes, but the final nominees are all from Chicago.  I’ve heard from committee members that this issue has been discussed, but no changes are forthcoming. Oh well.

What about the actual nominees?  Six Chicago chefs made the list: Jason Hammel (of Lula), Gene Kato (of Momotaro), Noah Sandoval (of Oriole), John and Karen Shields (of Smyth), Erick Williams (of Virtue) and Lee Wolen (of Boka). A very solid list of excellent chefs (and, to be honest, pretty great people). However, nothing particularly surprising. Who am I pulling for? See below.

Another odd foible of the Beard Awards (unlike other sorts of, say, movie awards) is that chefs, shocker, continue to exist and cook things year after year, so the good ones tend to get nominated over and over and over until they win.  Famously, Mindy Segal managed to rack up five nominations before she finally won, the Susan Lucci of the food world. Wolen, Sandoval and Hammel were nominated last year, Wolen was nominated the year before that (2018), and the year before that (2017), and the year before that (2016). 

For god’s sake, give Wolen the damn award already. 

The other issues with the habit of many repeat nominees are that it makes the awards slightly less useful for consumers, and leaves out new talent - for whom a Beard nomination can make or break their restaurant.  I love using the Beard awards as a roadmap to dining in a new city, but nominating the same chefs over and over make that less appealing. That said, obviously these awards are about recognizing professional achievement, so perhaps use a local award (like, say, the Jean Banchet Awards?) for your dining pleasure.

What about the rest of the Beard noms, outside of Best Chef: Great Lakes? Its’ taken me so long to get to them because… there aren’t many. Lost Lake was nominated for Outstanding Bar Program, and Spiaggia was nominated for Outstanding Wine Program.  And that’s it.  A pretty sad year for us. At least I won’t have to pay much attention during the awards parties and I can just drink with my friends?  Assuming any of us are allowed to congregate in the same room.

So You Panic Bought a CSA: Now What The Hell Do You Do?

I swear, I’m not hoarding food.

That said, you might think from my refrigerator, chest freezer and pantry that I am – I haven’t been this well stocked in years. My buying habits have altered, not from any fear of running out of food, but because I want to go to the grocery store as little as possible to minimize outside contacts during this time of epidemic.  And between buying directly from farmers and having multiple CSAs (or Farm Shares), I’m going to a grocery store about once every two weeks. 

Apparently, a lot of people feel the same way. CSAs (which stand for Community Supported Agriculture, or farm shares) experienced a huge popularity boom about 10 years ago, when local eating was in the news much more. They’ve been on a steep decline for the past several years, with a number of farms dropping them entirely as demand dried up.  Consumers like the idea of buying a piece of a farm, but find the experience of getting large amounts of unfamiliar ingredients somewhat daunting in real life. 

Well, things have changed. CSA purchases have skyrocketed, and there are a ton of reasons – access to alternative supply chains, a lot more home cooking, and expanded home delivery options.  

I’ve been a CSA loyalist for years (i use Tomato Mountain, but there are a ton of others), and I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about exactly how to maximize productivity and minimize waste.  Most of us are used to going to the store and buying the quantities of ingredients needed for a given recipe – a CSA forces you to think like a homemaker of a different era, with elements of storage, preservation and creativity in addition to just being a good cook. How do you actually do this?

Here are my top 7 tips for how to manage your CSA.  

Re-Pack Everything – Immediately!

As soon as you get your CSA box, you want to unpack it and “re-pack” everything in the box. I set aside 20-30 minutes each week for this.  What do I mean by “re-pack”? Well, convert everything into the form that will keep the longest and be the most useable in your kitchen.

Greens should be broken down into bite sized pieces, washed, dried in your salad spinner and stored in ziplock bags wrapped in paper towels. Vegetables should be separated and stored correctly – carrots and radishes in your crisper drawer, apples and potatoes in cool dry places, beans and dried goods in jars.  The huge advantage of a CSA is freshness – instead of buying produce that’s weeks old, thanks to travel from South America, your produce is brand new – which means, with proper storage, it can last for weeks.

Bottom line: If you just throw everything straight from the farm box into the fridge, when you remember it a week later, it’ll be rotten mush.  

Process Into Usable Chunks

While you’re re-packing, keep in mind the ways that you tend to use different types of foods. Do you eat salads? How much green stuff do you use for each salad? Well, pack bags that size, so all you need to do is pull one out and dump it in a bowl.  Do your kids eat carrot sticks? Peel and slice them now.  It’s much easier to do that sort of processing when you’re sitting down with a clean counter, a block of time and an empty fridge.

 Make a List

I keep a list on my refrigerator of the stuff I got from my CSA, so I don’t forget it. If you’re not in the habit of eating this way, it’s easy to forget that you have an extra pound of watercress and you have to figure out something to do with it.  If you look at that list before every meal, it’s a lot easier to think “how can I incorporate this into a recipe” and avoid waste.

Think Outside the (Dinner) Box

One of the best ways to use up a large amount of fresh produce is to be more creative with the other meals of the day, not just dinner.  I’ll often add a small fresh salad of greens, cabbage or fruit to my breakfast plate, throw hearty greens like chard into my breakfast scramble, or bake potatoes or beets at lunchtime (making extra so you’ve got an already-done side dish for dinner).  If you wait until dinner and try to shove all of it in, you’ll end up with a lot more waste. 

Pickles Are Your Best Friend

Go buy a bunch of vinegar of all types right now. I’ll wait.

No, seriously. An insane amount of your CSA produce can be turned into refrigerator pickles, which means great snacks and a lot more time to consume stuff. Radishes, carrots, cucumbers, beets, green beans, peppers – any crisp, solid vegetable just needs to be thrown in a jar with vinegar, garlic and spices and a day later, you’ll have something delicious that doesn’t spoil.  Last week, I found myself with pounds and pounds of mushrooms that were starting to get dry, and absolutely no plan to use them. About 20 minutes of work later, I had 2 awesome jars of super mustardy marinated mushrooms that i’ve been snacking on ever since.

Develop Some “Throw it All In” Recipes

It’s a great idea to have some recipes that don’t require thought but use up a ton of ingredients.  I love to make “bottom of the fridge” scrambles, throwing in veggies, greens and other leftovers.  Similarly, pastas with veggies (made from a simple oil, garlic and onion base) are awesome, as handfuls of veggies mix well and reduce to almost nothing in the pan.  Make a batch of quinoa, a simple vinaigrette, and throw in a ton of different veggies for texture and crunch.

Forgive Yourself

You are going to waste food. It is 100% inevitable. Take a deep breath and start again the next week.

Even the most accomplished cook will forget about something, unconsciously avoid something or let something spoil. I’ve thrown away a ton of food over the years from my CSA, and it stings a little every time – but it also reminds me to forgive myself, google a few recipes and try harder. 

If you want it to sting a little less, subscribe to a composting service like WasteNot (or compost in your own backyard).  

How Not To Run A Supper Club

You know that old parenting trope, beloved of every bad multi-cam sitcom: “I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed”? It’s rare that a canned sentiment so perfectly maps onto how I feel about a restaurant, but that’s precisely how I felt about Queenies, the alleged supper club that opened last year inside the United Center. It went from such a promising concept to such a messed up reality. 

I first covered Queenies for Chicago Magazine last September a few weeks before it opened. Chef Dan Snowden was temporarily off duty during the “short” closure of Bad Hunter (which is still closed, six months later), and had taken on the job of creating this new concept, which was to be a collaboration between Heisler Hospitality and Levy (which controls the United Center’s food and bev ops). Snowden had big plans, including traditional supper club dishes, tons of tableside items and a custom-brewed beer. It seemed like the perfect idea for stadium dining – a super approachable style of cuisine that would appeal to the jersey-wearing masses, but one that offered a lot of opportunity for fine-tuning that could elevate it above the hot dogs downstairs and justify high prices.

Wow, did that idea go off the rails quickly.  

It took me about six months to finally visit Queenie’s, and it was the worst meal I’ve had in 2019 thus far. In part, the disappointment stems from the fact that I love the Wisconsin Supper Club as an art form, one that celebrates the simple, non-snobby food that an ordinary cook can make pretty great. So when someone both destroys the integrity of that concept and charges a fortune for it? You’ve made me about as sad as I can be.

Let’s start with the space. It somehow straddles the line between “charming” and “airport lounge” – lots of blond wood, a huge piano with a bar stretching around it, faux windows with cool curved screens inside showing whatever is happening inside the arena at the moment. It’s even got that staple of high-end 90s malls – a high balcony looking out over the interior of a large atrium. A balcony effect, as it were. 

Unfortunately, that balcony is a huge problem for the restaurant. When we entered the United Center, a horrible cover band was blasting out 80s hits at eardrum-rupturing volume inside the main atrium, and once we got up to Queenie’s, we were seated at a table near the door to that damn balcony. I’m not quite yet at the age where it’s my god-given right to bitch about noise in every restaurant I visit, and I’m fairly tolerant of bustle, but this was so loud it made my head hurt and the sound waves made it impossible to converse – my date and I basically sat there in bemused silence. I asked to be moved to another seat in the still-empty restaurant. My server shrugged, and promised she’d try to keep the door shut. Every time a party was taken to the balcony, the pressure change from the massive speakers actually made itself physically felt; unsurprisingly, every party taken out there loudly demanded to be taken inside immediately. 

However, I was immediately placated by a relish tray. Oh, how I love a relish tray. Oh, how I’m easily manipulated. A first round of cocktails arrived, including a dirty vodka martini with a sherry rinse and a surprisingly excellent take on a Wisconsin brandy old fashioned. The menu looked like what I’d reported on, though there was a suspicious lack of tableside items – except a Caesar, so I opted to try that. Beef tartare is hard to screw up and classic, as is fried chicken and a bratwurst platter. I was pulling for Queenies, not attempting to order weird obscure items just to watch the kitchen trip over its own feet.

What was billed on the menu as a “Tableside” Caesar … wasn’t. The salad station has been moved into the dining room and onto a cart, but the cart doesn’t move, so if you happen to be on the proper side of the dining room, you can watch a supremely bored chef toss the same salad all night long. Since you don’t speak to this chef, the “made your way” claim on the menu is a straight up lie. Plus, this salad is unnecessarily massive – a literal beach ball of lettuce that was too much for even two people to finish.  Beef tartare turned out to be flavorless pink mush, looking like some kind of meaty playdoh when spread on bread that wasn’t so much toasted as dried, and the dish was so bad that I stopped eating two bites in for fear of potential food poisoning. 

I swear I didn’t try to make this look bad.

Fried chicken isn’t easy to perfect, but it’s easy to make adequate – and remember, there’s an outpost of Honey Butter Fried Chicken literally feet away, so it’s not like they don’t have an example to draw upon. My date, upon receipt of the mess that was his chicken, joked we should order HBFC delivery to the restaurant as a commentary on the experience. The chicken had clearly been sitting under a heatlamp for a while, the skin was separated from the bones, the meat was dry as sand and the whole thing had no hint of the alleged “maple-chili” glaze. Have you ever had a bratwurst platter where the meat had less flavor than the French fries that came with it? I hadn’t either, until that night. 

Once again, this is how it came out.

Queenies tries to make up for the awfulness it must know is coming out of the kitchen with huge piles of accompanying carbs – there were enough French fries to feed a family of six on the plate, and they weren’t bad. However, a strange ramekin of sauce on my plate (alleged to be beer mustard cheese) almost put me off even my beloved fries; it somehow both had the consistency of modeling clay but wouldn’t stick to anything. It was so weirdly cold and solid that I instagrammed a video of myself holding it upside down and poking it; anything to entertain and distract myself from the noise, the food and the fact that I was about to spend a small fortune when the check came.

There’s no reason why you can’t make decent food in a high volume restaurant. It’s just a question of will. But when the hordes filling Queenies are clearly charmed by the idea of being in a nice restaurant before a game, regardless of the experience, I guess the restaurant doesn’t have to try.

On the way out, I ran into a Chicago food celebrity, and he beckoned me over. We put our heads together, and he quietly said “How was your meal?” with a tone of mild disbelief. I admitted, “abysmal.” He sighed with relief and admitted that he, too, had one of the worst meals of the year. We looked at each other with that mutual sympathy that comes from knowing your awful dining experience wasn’t a fluke, and headed off into the arena.  

Supper clubs are about comfortable abundance; large portions of simple flavors like fried fish, grilled meat and strong spirits. You should never leave one feeling anything other than happy and maybe slightly ill, but in a pleasant, intentional way. Queenie’s isn’t a supper club; it’s a sad cafeteria for rich sports fans. There’s so much potential, but as of right now, it’s wasted.

How the Disney Cruise Line Managed To Annoy Me (Or, Why Over-Upselling And Fake Formality Are Dumb-Ass Ideas)

Anyone who knows me (hell, anyone who has come within 15 feet of me when I've had one drink) knows that I am a fervent, revival-tent-level evangelist for the Disney Cruise Line ("DCL"). I've been on five Disney cruises, I'm going on one for my honeymoon (transatlantic 2017, here I come!) and I've converted some pretty hardcore cruise haters to the Disney fold.  I'm also a big Disney food fan. Heck, i wrote a fairly substantial chunk of the Eater guide to Disney World!  I said a Disney Cruise meal was my best meal of 2015! In a public forum!

That's why my recent experience on the Disney Dream pissed me off.

First, some background for the DCL initiates.  Disney pioneered a system of "rotational dining" so instead of one horrible giant cruise ship mess hall, guests rotate between three different themed dining rooms with three different pretty good menus. In addition to these (which are included in the price of the cruise), guests can choose to pay a bit extra to go to two other restaurants. For a small charge, guests can go to Palo, DCL's Italian spot (and the site of the aforementioned best meal of 2015).  For a bigger charge, guests can go to Remy, DCL's fancy French joint.

I've been to Palo a ton of times, and to Remy twice before. Why? The food is generally awesome, the atmosphere and view are superb, and there are no kids allowed. It's a great way to end a day of vacation, and it doesn't usually cost that much.

This trip, I returned to Palo for the 50,000th time. It was so good I can still taste it, and our server from a cruise a year ago actually remembered us (probably because we came to the restaurant so often). This restaurant has, over the years, resulted in: my having to special-order a bottled water my fiancé found there because it's not sold anywhere in Chicago, a spending spree on Barolo because a somm finally walked me through why it's so good, and me seriously considering buying a rolling antipasto cart to use at every dinner party I ever have.  In other words, they're not playing around, despite the ridiculous assertion that they serve "Regional Italian Cuisine" (what region is, sadly, not specified). 

After a lovely meal there, things got bad. I decided to take my family (parents and fiance) to Remy.  

Remy is more formal. It's fussier. The servers are French. The decor and dishes are more expensive. But I eat in a fair number of formal restaurants for a living, so I like to think of myself as someone who has some idea how to behave and who knows how these things should go. So when I tell you it wasn't good, believe me, it wasn't good.

Even more confusing? It wasn't the food. The food was great, and the cheese cart is a religious experience.  But Remy practically taught a master class on how a restaurant could be so annoying that I'll never go back despite great food and good drinks. 

How? Let me count the ways.

The upselling is completely out of control. 

Each diner who goes to Remy has to pay almost $100 extra for the privilege of dining there. And it comes with some great perks: a welcome cocktail, four courses, some extra presents from the chef and a great cheese cart. This should be enough. But someone in Disney management must have cracked the whip, because the servers are much more concerned with upselling than with making guests happy.

When the menus were presented, we also got not one, not two, not three, but FOUR different special upsell menus. We could get hundreds of dollars per ounce Miyazaki Beef ("the best beef in the world" our server said at least 10 times).  We could order truffle accompaniments. We could get caviar pairings. And just in case the table had any room left or anyone had any cash in their checking account, the sommelier came over with the regular wine list and the ENGRAVED ON ACTUAL METAL "RESERVE" WINE LIST WHICH MUST HAVE WEIGHED 10 POUNDS. Of course, everything on it was outrageously expensive. 

And these weren't just casual menu drops. Each was accompanied by a polite lecture which implied that we were complete rubes if we didn't take this amazing opportunity to spend our mortgage payment on rare ingredients. There were even props: a truffle was brought out under glass, with great ceremony, for us to smell. 

When we actually ordered dinner, the server asked us once again if we were absolutely sure we didn't want to spend extra money on "the best beef in the world." By that point, I was actually ready to give up and leave. 

This sort of behavior leaves a terrible taste in a guest's mouth, especially when they are already spending hundreds of dollars on top of the thousands of dollars the cruise costs in the first place. It actually taints the rest of the meal, because by emphasizing that the regular diner is getting something second-rate (compared to what this kitchen COULD do, if only you were spendy enough) it makes what follows less special. Given that the restaurant is never full, likely because it's slightly beyond the reach of most cruise customers, trying to triple each person's bill (or make them perform the uncomfortable dance of saying no) isn't exactly bringing new people in the door. 

It's 2016, give up your stupid jacket policy or at least administer it more politely.

The fancier restaurants on DCL have a dress code. Ok, that's fine, because you're trying to create an atmosphere and if you didn't make rules, everyone would come in in salt-stained swimsuits. But when your restaurant is sitting mostly empty every night, maybe consider making things less strict? Remy requires a dinner jacket for anyone who entered the dining room. Who brings a suit jacket on a cruise in 2016? (answer: Me, actually)

Earlier this year, Disney changed the dress code at Palo to make it less formal. You can even wear jeans! Unfortunately, they didn't change it at Remy and I screwed up and thought they had. I even had a suit on board, but didn't wear it, instead wearing nice slacks and a formal shirt. Uh oh. Here we go.

A dress code, by itself, doesn't have to ruin your night, even if you don't quite measure up. This time, it did. 

Let's walk through why the way DCL does this is utterly stupid. We get to the restaurant, where my fiance and I are informed that we need jackets. Whoops! We messed up. They offer us loaner jackets, emphasizing three times that we can take them off the moment we sit down at the table. Wait a second. Is it that important to your restaurant that i make the 15 foot walk from the door to the table in formal dress but not sit for any of the 3 hour meal in formal dress? If so, why? Customers might see me?

We are also informed that, should we choose to get up to go to the restroom, we have to put on our jackets again or we will be breaking the rules. I still can't figure out what the utility of this is, except to annoy guests. During course 4 of a very expensive meal, you're actually going to scold people because they forgot to put their jacket on during their walk to the bathroom and send them back to their table? Shoot me now. I should have experimented to see what would happen, but I was so mortified that I didn't bother.

This doesn't fit Disney, which is why it is so annoying and puzzling that it happens on their boat.

Disney fans know that the brand is all about service. Everywhere on the boat and in the theme parks, guests are totally pampered, and any reasonable request is accommodated. Special needs, whims, wishes and more are granted. 

However, Remy follows a different formula, one familiar to diners who ate a lot of fancy food 30 years ago. "Service" means making the diner feel like they are somewhere special, not that they are special.  It means emphasizing the exclusivity of the experience at the expense of actually creating a good experience.  And it means making a lot of money by annoying people instead of making a pretty good amount of money by serving people.

In a non-captive marketplace? This place would be dead, which is why the vast majority of Chicago restaurants have gotten rid of this sort of fluff. And I won't be going back again. 

Anthony's 2016 Dining Reviews

It's been a little while since I've updated my portfolio, but that doesn't mean I haven't been writing up a storm. In addition to freelance pieces, you can find my work nearly every day at Chicagoist.  And one of the most exciting things about my work there is that I get to do really-for-real anonymous dining reviews.  Not a ton, not one every week, but enough to keep my critical claws sharpened. 

So, in case you want a bunch of my recommendations in one place, here are (most of) my dining reviews from 2016.  

- I went back to the Milk Room and, surprise, it's still freaking amazing. 

- I found a new favorite steakhouse.

- Latinicity ... isn't great. Especially their flagship restaurant, Pata Negra.

- On the other hand, Revival Food Hall rocks. 

- Despite a new chef, you still can't good food with a view in this damn city, at least not at Cite. 

- I continue to really like the Winchester. 

- Food writers disagree strongly on this one, but I am in favor of Imperial Lamian. 

- I was pretty lukewarm on Snaggletooth. 

- C Chicago (or Ocean Cut) is in the running for worst meal of the year. 

- I have a strange obsession with Millie's. 

- Steadfast surprised me with how good it was. 

A Vile Petulant Little Soul-Sucking Scenester, Or, Why Bad Reviews Aren't Fun to Write but Still Need to Happen

Let’s get the pointless drama out of the way first.  Food writer (and I use the word loosely) Brett Hickman, formerly of Eater Chicago posted the following to Facebook.

I wasn’t tagged in the post, so I didn’t find out about it until a friend forwarded me a screenshot.

I’ve been called a lot of thing in my foodie career, but “vile petulant little soul-sucking scenester” might be the most impressively stupid.  He has since edited it to be less offensive, but the post is still there.  Even better, chefs have liked and commented on it, and insulted me and the publication that I work for.  FYI: I’m coming for their souls first.

Joking aside, a little backstory:

I write restaurant reviews.  It’s not my whole job as a writer, but it was part of the reason I returned to Chicagoist, as I’m now provided with a (small but usable) dining budget to do regular restaurant reviews.  These articles are some of the most challenging to write, and I do a lot of soul searching about them.  I try to do them right: I go anonymously, I order a wide variety of dishes, I bring dining companions that have knowledge of the relevant cuisine.

Sometimes, reviews are great!  When reviews are great, no one complains and the critic gets to be the hero of the story.  Sometimes, reviews are bad.  When reviews are bad, I usually get a bunch of emails from people agreeing with me and a bunch of emails from people calling me names.  

Here’s the thing: Bad reviews are not fun to write.  You don’t have to tell me that I’m hurting someone’s business and trashing their dream. Ask my fiancé – I lose sleep over it.  I happen to like the chef who runs the kitchen he was complaining about! 

But telling the truth is part of the business, and it’s why I get paid.  If a restaurant isn’t good, I don’t care if it’s small or large, independent or chain, cheap or expensive: the public needs to know.  Why?  So they don’t waste their money.  So the restaurant knows what their problems are.  So in this ultra-competitive industry, the cream has a chance to rise to the top.

Trust me, after a decade in the food writing business, I want every restaurant to be awesome.  I want every chef to succeed.  I know most of the people whose restaurants I review, and it really sucks to insult their hard work. 

This particular review was of a restaurant called Ocean Cut.  It’s part of the same group that owns Chicago Cut. Read the review, but TLDR: it’s on its third concept, it’s not very good and it’s pretty expensive.

The man who called me the nasty names seemed mad for a few reasons.  Let’s break them down:

1)   I went to the restaurant too early.

I hear this a lot, and I think it’s not a very fair criticism.  The complaint usually goes something like this: You can’t possibly review a restaurant until it’s been open for four months, because they haven’t figured out how things work yet. 

Ok, fine, but are they charging me (or any other customer) any less money for that trial period? Are they putting a sign out front saying “we’ll get it eventually, don’t worry”?  Are they closing their Yelp page?  Of course, the answer to all of these questions is no.

Unlike some pubs, I don’t review opening weekends.  But I actually don’t question their right to do so – I just don’t think I get a very good sample when I do.  I actually choose my review times fairly carefully, and if a restaurant is from an established group that should know what it is doing, I don’t think going a few weeks in is particularly problematic.  I also take that into account when I review.  I’m not giving a place a bad review because the server doesn’t remember the specials yet; I’m giving it a bad review because the food coming out of the kitchen is awful.  

So, complain all you want.  You’re not totally wrong, but it’s not going to stop me.

2)   I only went to the restaurant once (or other versions of “you didn’t give them a fair chance.”)

Look, I wish I had both infinite time and an infinite dining budget. If I had those things, I’d do it the old fashioned way.  But I don’t, sadly.  Your choice is to not get dining reviews (because, heads up, I’m not the only critic with this limitation) or deal with it and read many people’s opinions.

Also, here’s the thing: Diners don’t eat that way. Restaurants get one shot to make a diner happy, and if they screw up, that person feels like they wasted their money and probably isn’t coming back. 

3)  I dissed a restaurant he liked.

Let’s get it out of the way: I was mean to Swift & Sons.  Yup!  I was.  I maintain that the meal I had was not good.  And, by the way, other critics agreed with me.  

Since then, I’ve heard some good things, and I plan to go back.  I’ve had a great meal at Cold Storage.  But I stand by my original review.  Get over it.

In any case, if you aren’t making someone mad in this business, you aren’t saying anything meaningful.  There are plenty of food writers who write puff pieces, are in bed with chefs (literally or figuratively) or who don’t know the difference between good and bad if the food is free. 

Given the choice between those options and being yelled at occasionally?  I know where I stand.

The Top 4 Reasons I’m Excited for my New Job, or, It Turns out You Really Can Go Home Again

Some of you may have noticed (I flatter myself that people are paying attention) that I’ve been contributing pretty frequently to Chicagoist over the last month or so.  They offered me a great opportunity to freelance, and since I like everyone there, how could I say no?

After Melissa McEwen, my awesome successor as Food and Drink Editor who took over when I went to Tasting Table (RIP) in 2013, decided to step down to focus on other projects (which are going to be crazy awesome, follow her here), the overlords at Gothamist broached the idea of coming back to Chicagoist.  I’ve decided to accept their offer. As of this week, I’m the F&D editor of Chicagoist. Again. 

In the grand tradition of blogging, to which I am happily returning, here’s a listicle of the top four reasons why I’m really, really excited to be back at Chicagoist.

1)   Turns out I really, really missed the pace.

I didn’t even realize it until I started up again, but writing at this pace is an adrenaline rush. Gathering stories is fun, and while I love polishing and polishing longform pieces, it’s also a real challenge to be able to push coherent (even sometimes entertaining) stuff out on a short deadline. 

2)   Being able to write (and commission!) whatever I want is fabulous.

Any editor will tell you this – being able to curate a publication to look the way you want it (at least in part) is freaking amazing, and I’m delighted at the chance to do it. As many people know, I’m a ridiculous geek about a ton of things. And guess what? Now I can write about them (within limits, of course). I can also help others write about the things they care about. More about that in #3.

3)   Chicagoist is changing a lot, and it’s awesome.

When I started at Chicagoist in 2007, it was a ragtag group of pretty amazing volunteers, led by one fearless leader (hi Margaret!) and a couple of very, very part time fearless sub-leaders. These days? There is a full time editor, a full time associate editor, and multiple paid section editors.

Even better? The site is paying its contributors for high-quality, original content. At a time when the food media is getting smaller and smaller and paying jobs are harder and harder to find, I actually get to work for a publication that is increasing the number of opportunities for paid food writing and photography in Chicago. That rocks. PS: if you have great ideas, pitch me at Anthony@chicagoist.com. Oh, and if you take amazing photos or make cool videos, pitch me those too. 

4)   It fits my schedule.

As some of you may know, by day I’m a lawyer. And when I say “by day” I mean by day, evening, night and sometimes early morning. That’s the lawyer life, and I’m loving it. But I’m lucky enough to work for a firm that doesn’t work me completely into the ground, and this writing gig provides me an opportunity to set my own schedule, work from anywhere and vary my output from day to day. It’s pretty great.

I couldn’t be more excited or happier to start such a fun job. Thanks to all who’ve supported me over the years, and here’s to lots more oysters, martinis, interviews and stories. 

Eater Guide to Disney - Three Parts

I was so excited to write for the Eater Guide to Disney World.  I saw that Helen Rosner, their features editor, was headed to WDW to research it.  When I sent her a long list of places to dine,  instead of telling me I was a freak, she offered to let me pitch. These are the results.

7 Worth-It Disney World Restaurants Where the Food Doesn't Matter

How to Maximize the Value of the Disney Dining Plan

7 Ways to Ace Your Disney Dining Experience

Chicagoist Posts - August of 2015

I returned to Chicagoist.com, the site where I had my very first paid food writing gig, as a freelancer for August to help them fill in some gaps.  Here are a few of my favorite stories:

Why are Kale Juice Crazed Hordes Chasing Alpana Singh?

Pumpkin Pie is now the official pie of Illinois

Your salad obsession could be hurting the world

Food Fanatics - How to do Discounting right

I wrote this piece for the Fall edition of Food Fanatics magazine on how to make discounts work for restaurants. 

Food Fanatics Fall 2015 - Discounts

Food Fanatics - Awesome Ideas for Turkey

I wrote a feature (with recipes!) for the fall edition of Food Fanatics about ways to use turkey. 

Food Fanatics Fall 2015 - Turkey

New City: The Tack Room

My first feature for New City, on The Tack Room 

Edible Chicago - Farmhouse

I wrote a fun profile of one of the owners of Farmhouse, TJ Callahan.

Farmhouse

Is Your Whiskey Artificially Flavored?

Last week, a blow hit faux-pretentious whiskey geeks everywhere - Templeton Rye, the craft whiskey brand that popped out of nowhere to become the thing that boys who graduated from Makers have to drink, settled a big false advertising lawsuit.   What was the basis of the suit?  Well, Templeton spent a lot of energy marketing itself as an Iowa product.  Except... it's not made in Iowa.  Like most rye in America, it's made in a huge factory in Indiana, and then bottled (and sometimes aged for short times) at whatever distillery's label is on the fancy bottle you bought it in for $40.

But that wasn't the story that caught my eye.

.... "Alcohol flavoring formulation."  Blech.

We spirits geeks are all about the flavor, and we spent a ton of energy talking and writing and snobbing about how the quality of the wood, the humidity, the temperature, the charring, the time in the barrel and the general demeanor of the distiller (magically transmitted through to the liquid) all combine to make this magic thing called good whiskey.

Yeah, right. Except when it's not - except when it comes out of a test tube like the delicious "cheese" on your favorite bag of nacho cheese chips. 

I, of course, am not the first person to have noticed this - when Templeton had to do some disclosures late last year, the scandal hit and I missed it.  Two great blog posts from back then explained the laws behind this.  

The bottom line: Federal regulations don't require any labelling when artificial flavors go into booze.  The only ways you can know for sure? First, you can look at the bottle. According to the experts, if it says "straight" (as in "straight bourbon whiskey") you're safe.

Or, you could go the second way and ASK your local distiller.  Yet another argument in favor of local, craft products.  So I did!  Turns out they have some pretty strong feelings on this issue. 

Koval:

@FoodieAnthony @LocalFamily @CedarRidgeIowa the notes in KOVAL whiskey only come from the grain and the barrel. Nothing is added.

— KOVAL Distillery (@kovaldistillery) July 15, 2015

Journeyman: 

@LocalFamily @FoodieAnthony Believe the preferred terminology is "proprietary flavoring compound" lol and it's definitely not used here

— JourneymanDistillery (@JourneymanDist) July 15, 2015

My hometown distillery in Iowa, Cedar Ridge (who, one supposes, has a right to be pissed at Templeton's fakery, since they're making award-winning product from scratch in the same region):

@FoodieAnthony @LocalFamily @kovaldistillery Rest assured that you won't find any artificial flavors in our spirits!

— Cedar Ridge (@CedarRidgeIowa) July 16, 2015

When asked about whether FEW uses artificial ingredients, distiller Paul Hletko responded "Ha. No. We make whiskey the old fashioned way. We actually make it."

Some may complain that i'm being too fancy, elitist or picky.  Everything else is artificially flavored, so who cares? We eat artificial flavorings (or "natural flavorings" which are the same thing) in everything from candy to bottled water to roast chicken, so why should liquor be any different? It tastes good, stop your whining.

Here's why it matters: Fine spirit makers are selling an idea.  They're selling an experience. You're not spending $50 for some flavored water with a pretty label - you're buying the copper still, the barley spread on the floor, the handmade barrels, the master distiller with the tongue of gold, the smell of the mash. You're buying the time capsule of it all - the idea that when I crack open a cognac made in 1982, i'm returning for a brief moment to the year of my birth.  And you're buying the craft, created over hundreds of years, of making this stuff taste pretty amazing.  That's what your $50 is being spent on - and that's why it's an insult when someone fakes it. 

But, it tastes pretty good, someone said to me, so why should i care?  So does a bag of cheetos.  That's not what I want to sit down to at the end of the day.  

PR Fail: Balls Vodka and Gay Marriage (MAYBE?)

One of my favorite pastimes, back when I used to be a professional blogger, was making fun of press releases for ridiculous products.  It's not always the PR person's fault when something is horrible - some products, like this crystal-encrusted wine wand, just can't be saved.  But in other cases, there's a magic confluence of stupid product and badly-conceived PR that makes me so incredibly happy that I have to share it with everyone I know.

Enter "Balls Vodka."  The puns are, of course, endless.  "You never want to be without the right size balls" is a great way to point out that bottles come in many sizes!  

Check out that busty lady!  How can you NOT buy this vodka?  

Well, if you're a gay man (and therefore not the target audience for busty ladies) you might be able to resist.  Though her fetching strappy sandals almost brought me back.  And gay men do love balls, now that I think about it. 

Balls decided to capitalize on the recent gay marriage decision with a release entitled "A Little 'I Do' and Balls Vodka."  And they created an adorable photo of a guy putting a not-quite-ring (it looks like an onion ring, but could be a piece of cheese or a napkin ring) on another guy.  

Except, of course, no heads.  So it might not be two guys. It might just be a man and a woman who happen to be talking about getting married the week after the most exciting thing to hit marriage since the invention of the cupcake wedding cake.  You don't want to go TOO far with the pandering to the homosexuals. 

To Balls, everyone.  The vodka whose tag line (which is particularly appropriate to the situation) is "Don't act like a Mary unless your name is Mary."

Epicurious: Five Ways to Use Up Leftover Wine

My first of what I hope will be many pieces for Epicurious!

Food Fanatics: Restaurant "High Rollers"

I wrote about how to cater to "high roller" diners for Food Fanatics.  Download the magazine here!  (I'm on P. 39)

Blackboard Eats: Best Picnics in Chicago

It's summer! Time for some great picnic recommendations. 

New City Heat List

I contributed a bunch of profiles to the 2015 New City Heat List!