The Atlantic Ocean divides the profession of restaurant reviewing perhaps even more fundamentally than the pronunciation of potato and tomato or whether arugala and cilantro are in fact rocket and coriander respectively.
Many British restaurant and food writers are deeply envious of their American counterparts. This may be partly because the grass tends to look greener on the other side of the ocean, but there is no doubting the seemingly bottomless expense accounts which our American equivalents must enjoy in their bids to eat at every single restaurant of its type, whether these are the inexpensive street food hawkers in Singapore or the far more costly sushi counters of LA, topics which form the basis of so many of my American counterparts’ comprehensive pieces.
And certainly no British newspaper or magazine editor I have ever met encourages their restaurant correspondent to return four or five times to the same establishment, no matter how expensive, as several American restaurant correspondents are encouraged to do – a process which, however enjoyable, may not be that realistic given that this is certainly not how restaurant goers behave, particularly if their first experience proves disappointing.
As a result, several American restaurant writers such as Craig Claibourne, Gael Greene, Mimi Sheraton and R.W.Apple have become hugely important opinion formers in a manner in which their British counterparts have not, although ironically their status has now been overshadowed by the numerous celebrity chefs whom they were once so instrumental in creating.
And, as a further example of how the parasitical profession of restaurant reviewing is viewed in the US and the UK, numerous American restaurant reviewers have seen their journalism published in book form, a rare occurrence in the UK. It is almost 20 years since Paul Levy’s evocatively entitled Out to Lunch first appeared, for example, and not many similar collections of British food and restaurant writing have appeared since.
It may be that the internet, and in particular sites such as eGullet.org, will spell the end of such collections although I for one certainly hope not, particularly after the pleasure derived recently from reading Garlic and Sapphires (The Penguin Press US$24.95), Ruth Reichl’s account of her years as the restaurant correspondent of The New York Times (Reichl is now editor of Gourmet magazine), and Alan Richman’s hilarious account of the years he, together with his stomach and corporate credit card, travelled selflessly on behalf of GQ magazine and others, Fork it Over (Harper Collins US$24.95).
The first thing that has to be said about Reichl’s latest book is that it is not as fascinating as her previous two memoirs Tender at the Bone and Comfort Me with Apples which were quite obviously written from the heart. This latest offering seems to have been completed with more thought for her bank balance, or perhaps contractual obligation.
And although the book contains a fair amount of padding – does anyone reading this really need another recipe for roast chicken? – it is worth reading to understand just what an important place restaurants now play in New York society and quite how influential Reichl’s position was at a time when the Times was unequivocally the city’s opinion former as well as the light the book incidentally shines on to the Byzantine power structure among the paper’s senior management.
The book is most valuable and enjoyable for the insights it gives into how Reichl felt she had to adapt completely new physical identities to do her job properly – she appears in completely different makeovers as Molly, Miriam, Chloe and Brenda in certain instances so successfully that she is not recognised by the doorman in her apartment block, nor even occasionally by her family. And although the reprinted reviews have lost some of their relevance as the chefs have moved on, Reichl’s famous account of how she was treated so very differently at Le Cirque initially as an unknown and then once she was recognised makes for excruciatingly cringe-making reading. And her night out with Mr Shapiro and Mrs Shapiro, who had outbid everyone else at the hospital fund-raiser to win dinner with the New York Times’ restaurant correspondent, is enough to put off anyone who dreams of a career as a restaurant correspondent. Well, almost.
While Reichl’s career has taken her from a working in a café in Berkeley, California to a position where she now determines what so many Americans eat, cook and drink, Richman’s route to writing about food and restaurants was more circuitous.
Like any good Jewish boy, he begins by paying due respect to his mother’s cooking, but after conscription which took him to Vietnam – and led 25 years later to a nostalgic and much less harrowing return to review the restaurants of Saigon – Richman became a sports writer and then fell into writing about restaurants while posing as one half of a married couple, under the pseudonym William and Francoise Neill, for the Montreal Star.
What makes Richman’s book so engaging are the conjunction of his love of food and eating, a terseness of style that derives from his upbringing and the need to file copy to a tight deadline in his initial career as well as the realisation that, like me, he fully appreciates that he wakes up every morning to one of the best jobs in the world.
But Fork It Over also justifies the American approach to food and restaurant writing because it shows how in the right hands and stomach a holistic approach is so much more revealing than just a singular foray. Trips to Scotland to spend a week sampling the wares of the local haggis manufacturers; several days on the road around the coastal regions of North Carolina to find the best chopped-pork sandwich; his thorough review of the restaurants of celebrity chefs where their name is the lure but they no longer cook; and his nostalgic account of the emergence and subsequent sad disappearance of Jewish waiters from New York make for highly entertaining reading.
Any recommendation of Fork It Over must, however, come with a health warning – never read it when you’re hungry!