my little ethical dilemma

yes, yes and yes - it's irregular and probably against your paper's policy too.

can i afford NOT to use it considering the state of my bank account

Well you could justify all sorts of theft like that too.

/sanctimoniousness

Sell it on craigslist if money's so tight! Or barter it for something nice.

I actually have a few of these that I don't want to use but haven't gotten around to doing anything else with. Maybe you'd like to swap yours for $200 at Churrascaria Plataforma in New York?

Ooh, lots of xposts. Everybody OTM.

xpost!

Or maybe not... I mean, you would hardly want a free meal in Marv's House Of Slard, so you wouldn't give them a good review in the first place. Maybe there is no ethical dilemma.

I'd love to see more watchdogging of this kind of sleaziness. ("Corrupt Critics Busted In Slard Bribe Ring")

use it! USE IT! I would. you really should, I actually am caught up on a wave of thinking getting a voucher like that is ace, but nonetheless, USE IT.

Do you have a link to your review?

Maria OTM..

Hey, you're in Vancouver, right? I probably read your stuff. I'm racking my brain to remember a recent review of a greek place.. you've gotta tell me what you write for, however google proofed. w35+3nd3r? c0ur13r? 5un? 5+ra1gh+?

and hey, i like greek!

s1ocki, have you ever been to "la queue du cheval"? i went there on a business dinner a long time ago, it was really amazing.

no, that's out of my budget! always wanted to go though!

also paul i'm a little reluctant to link to the paper from this page, i hope you understand...

Yeah, but that's what, $7.36 in US dollars? (I kid, I kid)

I think the pass it on to a friend/charity idea is a good one.

Sometimes it goes ludicrously in the opposite direction though: five courses, a couple of extra desserts maybe, and difficulty standing afterward.

exactly!! also i find i kind of have a keener sense of taste when i'm a little hungry! do you find this too?

If you dont mind me asking s1ocki, how do you know what to order when you review these places? a little bit of everything?

guesswork and a little research beforehand. also i like to order stuff i imagine will be interesting or funny to write about! so i end up eating blood pudding and stuff

s1ocki, hopefully your restaurant reviews are not uninspired, tired pieces that never leave the reader with the sense of the meal's substance.

wuzzat?

is it the greek place next to the rialto? if so, morals shmorals. pass the skordalia.

yes, that's the one!

i usually have a cigarette.

me too!

[i feel like i just caught up on my correspondence]

i find i kind of have a keener sense of taste when i'm a little hungry! do you find this too?

Absolutely. And if I am loving the first bite of something tremendously, there's a good chance I'm too hungry for objectivity. Take a piece of bread, calm down.

wuzzat?

Quoting some hate mail I found online w/r/t your film reviews.

yes, yes, yes, and yes! all of these are totally key techniques in my experience. except the last one, which my budget can't afford! :(

On the other hand, I don't read loads of food and restaurant criticism. I suppose there are two things that make all that comping seem bad: there's the sense of insider buy-offs and back-scratching and self-congratulation at the expense of honest criticism, and then there's also the fact that a restaurant's job includes service and consistency, neither of which you can judge if they know you're a critic. The latter, I think, can be kinda gotten around, so long as the writer presents himself or herself as talking strictly about the restaurant's style and story and approach, rather than offering a consumer's-guide "review." The former is more of an issue of how publications want to present themselves, and since most of these publications aspire to more than publicist-style inside-the-business chatter, it's a much bigger problem.

Return to the restaurant with a friend or two and spend the money there. All of it. Just hand 'em the check when you get the bill with a little note of thanks. Then, go into the bathroom and shit in the sink.

I mean, really, you could get totally double-blind no-conflict about this sort of thing, if a restaurant just solicited a review from a publication by offering to comp things after the fact; reviewer comes and goes anonymously, and a week later some receipts come in the mail.

That is good thinking. I can think of a couple of loopholes: 1) the receipts show which table the reviewer was at, at which time and date, which makes him/her easy to spot next time; 2) restaurants would probably balk at refunding meals that led to a poor review -- or to no review, which is common -- putting pressure on the publications to print more positive reviews.

as for me i pretty much always go incognito, except for a couple of cases when i knew people at the restaurant. and yeah i might have crossed a line in reviewing those places but i felt i did so in good faith. and they weren't close friends or anything. but i probably wouldn't do it again.

(xpost Slocki I dunno that it'd be a bad thing for critics to feel vaguely "entitled" to a free sampling; that's how it works in most other industries, right? The only problem with this with food is that these kinds of systems don't really make for anonymity.)

Too bad about the commission!

I went to this place with a delightful atmosphere and aroma and whatever. A quick glance around revealed some hot babes working there and I eventually chose my two favorites to periodically stare at for the rest of the night while I ate my meal alone. Such is the life of a food critic. Of course, some dude came to wait on me rather than a hot babe. He rattled off the specials to which I never can stay focused on long enough to mentally absorb. I looked at him blankly and said, "Great. Thanks," then ordered a beer that has a delightful aroma to go with the delightful atmosphere. He said their "smelliest beer was..." and I just cut him off right there and ordered a Corona. I ended up ordering some chicken, cheese and corn-wrapped thing with the usual tomato and cilantro sort of spicy-sweet flavoring you would expect at an upscale Mexican restaurant (that's what this place is, right?) and I drowned it with 6 Coronas in total. I ordered a few shots of Tequila afterward at a bar down the street and had a few more beers. When I woke up, I burped up a little of that Rosa Mexicana flavor and it still tasted good, so that says something about the quality. Shortly thereafter, I spent some time in the bathroom like you wouldn't believe (or actually, you might expect) and this too was a pleasant enough experience, for what it was. No cramping or sweating and no burning or bleeding. If Rosa Mexican isn't a 5 star restaurant, I don't know what is.

Every critic on earth is on this mutual suck and fuck with the people they criticise (right now th ere is some puritans bitching about the editor of Art Forum hiring his boyfriend to write, his boyfriends a medicore writer, but everyone I know who reads AF usually just looks at the picture and hes not more medicore then most). I dont know why this suck and fuck shouldnt move onto resturant critics, doesnt everyone know that people who bitch for money, and get shit for free should be taken w. a grain of salt, and is anyoen suprised that food folx are in the same boat?

(& the esquire writer is okay, but he writes articles like the 20 best new resturants in America...which neonsigns his whoredom)

This is true in many cases but not all. A lot of places I review have been open 8 weeks maybe and don't feel they're ready to be reviewed. Smaller places which don't have PR staffs might not contact the paper on their own initiative -- should the paper say to them "We're sending a reviewer: be prepared to pay us up to $1000 sometime in the next month!" What about places that don't want the attention of a big review? Does the paper keep a separate budget for them?

Not to mention that it costs the restaurant much less to serve a free meal than to reimburse the reviewer's retail cost, including tax and tip, for the same meal.

i didn't know pitchfork did food reviews now.

http://www.slate.com/id/2129306/

?

I don't follow the cost thing; the only extra is tax, right? (Does a guy like Mariani tip on his junkets?)

Mostly just curious about this stuff. Obviously I know nothing about the process/system and how it works; I'm just fascinated by the fact that it can sometimes hold itself to much higher ethical and conflict-of-interest standards than reviews of so many other things (music, theater, art, films) (oh geez especially films).

Food talk in today's slate: http://www.slate.com/id/2129306/

Yes. I wasn't sure if that was part of your proposal though. I still think it would do weird things to the balance of power. The editor would have to make sure that PR-paid and editorial-paid reviews are equable, I suppose, but I'm curious which pressures would be redistributed where: would papers put pressure on restaurants? editors on writers? restaurants on papers? At minimum, flacks on everyone, I'm sure. The PR people hammering on my door are bad enough as it is; I hate to imagine the email I would get if I savaged their client restaurant after they had footed the bill for me to go there.

I don't follow the cost thing; the only extra is tax, right?

I was referring to the markup -- serving a plate of noodles with onions costs the restaurant $3, but buying the bucatini all'amatriciana costs the diner $25. In your scenario the restaurant would be paying the latter rather than the former amount, correct?

Anyway: in the end I think it's great that food criticism can actually aspire to play the high ground with relation to this stuff, so I dunno why I'm dreaming up workarounds; I guess I'm just trying to mentally compare it with the model for stuff like music. I'm probably imagining the balance of power wrong here, too -- e.g. I'm suddenly starting to suspect that editors don't play as big a role in dictating this stuff as I might be imagining?

On a closer look (used my fingers this time) I think you're right about the math but I still don't quite see how the Nabisco System, even at its best, solves the Mariani Problem. The MP is not a symptom of publications' unwillingness to foot large restaurant bills, which is the main issue alleviated by the NS.

Not to mention the booze.

Hahaha Tracer I can't believe you guys are weirdos: YOU PAID THEM $25! They gave it back to you! Your meal exactly as free as if you hadn't paid them and they hadn't reimbursed you. They can say the food costs $4 million dollars or whatever -- you're just handing them money and they're handing it right back!

COMP SYSTEM
Cost of food items: $3
TOTAL EXPENSE: $3

REIMBURSEMENT SYSTEM
Cost of food items: $3
Menu price paid: -$25
Reimbursed amount: $25
TOTAL EXPENSE: $3

(Except for, like I said, taxes. And I don't really know anything about how tips and drinks are handled when you're being comped.)

also, i've received a few "suggestions" from "readers" to review great places they've "discovered" that share their name with the "reader's" last name.

(You know, I'm kinda glad for this thread where it's the three of us talking about chicken and waffles instead of anything to do with the Village Voice, say.)

yeah, i couldn't wade through more than like... 100 posts on the VV thread.

Is there an upside to running your email address with your articles? I never wanted mine there, but maybe I'm just a misanthrope. Or a mis-- what's Greek for flack?

this is a good question. i can't think of any good thing that has come of it, actually!

oh wait, i got solicited for a z*g*t job once but i didn't get it!

so... no.

And too bad about the job. You would build an awesome ziggurat.

http://www.voir.ca/restos/chronique.aspx?iIDArticle=38873

Wow, the seven-course dinner there is the price of a glass of wine here. What are "panais"? Parsnips?

yeah tastet's name is hilariously apt. he's a really good critic too

http://www.montrealmirror.com/2005/111705/resto.html

slocki i didnt know you were a food critic! thats like my dream job. some friends of mine and I have started a thing where we eat somewhere once a week and then write up a little critique. we're calling ourselves "the mile high supper club" - thing is, nobody really had anything noteworthy or great to say about the food: i.e. "this looks weird." - "my wine glass is stained." - "too pedestrian."

so, yeah, forget that idea.

do tell.

1) green bean salad w/roasted almonds & hazelnuts, goat cheese from lac st-jean, OR insanely amazing gnocchi, parsley, reggiano sauce, bread crumbs

2) wild suckling pig & morel ravioli w/celery-root-flavoured potato puree OR braised beef cheek w/bacon, cheesy potato puree, mushrooms, onion strings OR vacuum-cooked salmon w/breaded scallop, polenta

3) insane cheese plate w/fig compote, almonds

total = ~$17CAD

yes, please

do tell.

Aw, a new soul-food opening doesn't really merit that much attention up here in the alleged birthplace of chicken&waffles. Melba's is the newish one, and it's open late, but it's not the best c&w around. If you're coming all the way uptown, I'd recommend Pan Pan, at Lenox and 135th.

"The idea behind our shop was to create a voyeuristic experience for our customer, therefore changing their patterns of choice."