Best Food Writing 2011 Page 18

  If a farmer wants to expand, he has to purchase existing quota. Conversely, if a farmer wants to retire or cut back on the size of his herd, he can acquire a tidy nest egg by selling his quota on an exchange operated by the Dairy Farmers of Ontario. Currently, it costs about twenty-five thousand dollars to buy a quota equal to the amount of milk produced by one cow. Logic would suggest that large farmers would buy up quota, driving out smaller farmers. That has happened to some extent, but the average Ontario farm is still smaller than the average American farm.

  I left Visserdale convinced that supply management was good for farmers and for the prosperity of the rural communities they occupy. But who was paying for all this stability? Although Ontario sets the amount farmers receive for milk, the processors are free to charge as much as they like to consumers. According to Tipton’s forecast, the price of milk in Ontario should be sky-high. Nonetheless, the price of a gallon of milk in Kingston, a small city about an hour from Visserdale, is nearly identical to what it is at my local market back home in Vermont. So much for dire predictions.

  When I shared the results of my admittedly unscientific market survey with Visser, he said, “Somebody’s getting a whole lot of money between what American farmers get and what the consumers pay. The farmers are getting ripped off.” From his comfortable vantage point across the border, Visser expressed doubts about the prospects for changes coming to American dairy policy. “There’s always been a movement down there, but that only lasts as long as the price is down. When it goes back up, nobody wants to see change,” he said.

  But Rowell is convinced that this cycle is different from all the others. If the Dairy Price Stabilization Act does not make it through the current session of Congress, he predicts that it is certain to be incorporated in the 2012 Farm Bill. “All we want is to be paid a fair price for the effort we put forth to feed the country. We need some vision and leadership, and a few simple tools,” he said. Rowell and his colleagues on the Coalition to Support the Dairy Price Stabilization Program have provided the leadership and vision. That leaves it up to the politicians to give dairy farmers the necessary tools.

  THE FEED FRENZY

  By Sara Deseran

  From 7x7 Magazine

  A veteran observer of San Francisco’s food-centric culture, 7x7 co-founder and senior editor Sara Deseran—who herself tweets and blogs at tacolicious.com—sketches a cautionary tale of how a glut of online food commentary has muddied the waters.

  5:11 a.m. Dogs get fat from too much sugar too

  8:17 a.m. Morning headlines

  8:55 a.m. Wherein Anthony Bourdain stops by for a chat (24 re-tweets; 52 Facebook shares)

  10:43 a.m. Benu school: The process behind Corey Lee’s custom porcelain and tableware

  12:57 p.m. Staging at Alinea

  2:01 p.m. Where’s the best takeout?

  3:26 p.m. A bar star takes on Fillmore

  3:30 p.m. Egyptian restaurant tries to find its way into the Marina

  5:42 p.m. Evening headlines.

  On one given Friday in June, these are the headlines for a mere 12 hours worth of food news on Inside Scoop SF—the Chronicle’s all-encompassing, restaurant news–focused blog that launched a few months ago, the savvy decision of longtime critic and food editor Michael Bauer. The site also has an aggregated “Chefs Feed”: Within 15 minutes’ time, I watch Four Barrel announce a new Guatemalan coffee; Lafitte link to their Zagat review; Comstock Saloon tweet about a shot of Four Roses bourbon; and chef Ravi Kapur link to a dim TweetPhoto of the yet-to-open Prospect space. The Scoop is also home to Bauer’s “Between Meals” blog and Jon Bonné’s daily thoughts on wine and spirits. To the left, an ongoing column dubbed “Voices” invites select local food industry folks to wax on about things like hospitality issues and $1,000 knives.

  I click over to SF Weekly’s blog, SFoodie, to see that editor John Birdsall has reported that Mission Street Food founder Anthony Myint is opening Mission Chinese Food in July. Within the hour, the same information is repeated on Grub Street and Eater SF. (Birdsall later makes sure to let me know that he technically had the scoop for weeks, but, at Myint’s request, had kept it under wraps.) In the early evening, Inside Scoop reports the story briefly, linking it back to Birdsall’s original article. Paolo Lucchesi, the Scoop’s main gossip and news columnist, who was hired away from Eater, takes seriously the courtesy of crediting the original news source—something, he grumbles, not every blogger is inclined to do. “Not that it matters,” he says, checking himself. “This ain’t Watergate.”

  Maybe not, but the pure amount of information unfolding by the minute on the Internet has created a frenzy that can make a food editor’s heart race like they’ve had one too many espressos. By my count, including 7x7’s own Bits + Bites, there are currently at least seven major sites—from Grubstreet to Bay Area Bites to Tablehopper—whose sole mission is to report on the minutia of SF’s restaurant scene. There are forums such as Yelp and Chowhound, as well as dailies such as Tasting Table, Daily Candy, Thrillist, Urban Daddy and most recently Blackboard Eats, which offers deals from restaurants. More restaurant news can be found on SFist, SF Appeal and neighborhood-centric sites such as Mission Mission. Add to that the pastime of Foodspotting and Foursquaring; personal blogs such as Food Fashionista; Facebook fan groups; and oh, yeah, Twitter. Chefs rack up followers. Tyler Florence has some 188,000.

  Marcia Gagliardi, now known simply as “The Tablehopper,” started her career with an e-newsletter. Four and a half years later, she’s published a restaurant guidebook. “It’s funny,” she says. “When I started Tablehopper, it was to primarily cover restaurants that weren’t getting covered in print media. Now it’s a little exhausting how there’s this constant repetition of news in every outlet. It makes it harder to keep my content fresh.”

  But should you think we’ve reached our threshold, this summer, NBC’s Feast—a site about “eating, shopping and playing”—is launching its SF version. Ben Leventhal, Feast’s NYC-based managing editor of lifestyle content, has some perspective on this whole game. He cofounded Eater in 2005 and remains a stakeholder. “I think San Francisco is as good a food city as there is in the country,” he says, “and cities like New York certainly are an indication that a huge amount of food coverage can be supported by consumers and advertisers.” To differentiate itself, Feast features restaurant listings powered not by one human voice but by “Feast ranks,” which pulls in reviews from hundreds of sources, using a combination of critical attention and buzz to come up with a 1–100 composite score.

  My job is to keep up with SF’s food news, so I’m both blessed by this phenomenon and cursed. Blessed because I could eat in for the rest of my life and still know more about the restaurant scene than I’ve learned in my entire 15-year career as a food writer. Every day, I discover something new. Meesha Halm, the longtime editor of our local edition of Zagat, echoes this. “It’s great because there’s an army of people on the street blogging about restaurants before they open. It’s an easy way to keep my finger on the pulse.”

  It also makes for a case of FADD (food attention deficit disorder). I regularly find myself staring blearily at my computer, going from one site’s smorgasbord to the next—derailed in a moment of weakness by things like a Daily Mail post pondering whether or not three-Michelin-starred English chef Heston Blumenthal will indeed be serving the Queen of England testicles for a royal supper. It is at that point—just when I’m feeling the flush of indignation or at the very least the need to pour myself a double Scotch—that a quote from Anthony Bourdain reverberates in my head: “I think the blogosphere is the future. It’s agonizing to watch the established food media try to deal with that. It’s like watching your grandparents trying to break-dance.”

  Of course, there are some very positive things about this brave new world of food information, where there is now a true democratization of opinions on an activity that, let’s face it, everyone is born doing. “The playing field has been leveled,”
Bauer says about his job as a reviewer. Eleanor Bertino, a longtime SF-based restaurant publicist, agrees. “It’s nice to get more opinions than from just one or two powerful critics.”

  The Internet’s viral quality is also a powerful and free publicity tool for small businesses that can’t afford $40,000 a year for a PR agency. Anna Weinberg, owner of Marlowe in SoMa, had been struggling to bring in a lunchtime crowd to her Townsend Street location. “Turned out all I needed was a great burger on the menu, because that kind of information gets picked up and is regurgitated so many times by bloggers,” says Weinberg. People without permanent spaces, such as butcher Ryan Farr of 4505 Meats, have made their names using blogs and Twitter as platforms. “It’s been a great way to reach out to customers,” Farr says. “It’s kind of corny, but it actually creates a bigger connection.”

  On the flip side, chef Chris Kronner of Bar Tartine voices a common complaint. “One reviewer came in two weeks after we opened and posted shitty pictures he had taken and wrote negative things and it was like, ‘Thanks dude.’ He’s also written other things without fact checking it,” Kronner says. “So, false information is an issue.”

  Immediacy is ideal for those tweeting about an hourly food truck location, but the pressure to play ball in an environment where Eater has “plywood reports” and Citysearch uses Facebook to request reader reviews the day a restaurant opens, requires tough judgment calls on a food editor’s part—not always the best. I’ve found myself more than once letting my food cool while I sheepishly get out my camera to snap a photo of my dinner for 7x7’s blog. Bauer even admits: “I sometimes wonder if I shouldn’t be waiting a month before I start doing visits. Some people say it’s not enough time, but some people have Yelpers in during friends-and-family meals to review.”

  Yelpers have become infamous for rushing to get the “First to Review” status on a place—often whether they’ve eaten there or not. Kronner recounts a story that his friend, winemaker-of-the-moment Andrew Mariani, told him about a wine dinner he held in Napa that was attended by several Yelpers. “They were yelling out, ‘Susie’s FTP!’ Or first to post,” explains Kronner. “Were they actually paying attention to the cool experience they were having or were they more concerned with posting first to Yelp? It’s ridiculous.”

  Sometimes chefs get caught up in the maelstrom, too. For one of Inside Scoop’s “Voices” blogs, Hapa Ramen owner Richie Nakano wrote a humbling account of what happens when a chef tweets too much. In May, Nakano largely used Twitter to get out the word about his ramen trial run at Coffee Bar before launching his stand at the Thursday Ferry Plaza Farmers Market. He wrote: “The swell starts to build, and all at once I’m excited, and nervous, and sick to my stomach.” Tweets referencing @haparamen say things like “Can’t wait!” But the one that catches my attention says this: “How can @haparamen possibly live up to the hype?” That evening, more than 500 people showed up. Some waited four hours; some were very angry. In blog comment boxes, expletives were exchanged.

  Nakano might have gotten his noodles handed to him, but he can’t take all the blame. The debacle was partly caused by people who were willing to wait for hours for ramen they’d never had—the enablers. Since the invention of sun-dried tomatoes, this city has been passionate about its eating habits, but the social media hype has created a culture that celebrates an I-ate-it-first status, making for lines out the door. Tweeting to let the world know that you’re 70th in line at the American Grilled Cheese Kitchen isn’t considered insane—it’s considered dedicated.

  What used to be considered industry news is now fodder for everyone. Catapulted to stardom by shows on the Food Network and Bravo, chefs are followed like US Weekly celebrities, their every move documented. Gail Shifman is a criminal defense lawyer who follows Tablehopper and more. “I get Eater. SFoodie. I’m a busy professional who has a passion for awesome food. Now I’m getting information about everything from where the pig comes from to who’s butchering it. It can be a bit much, honestly.”

  Being in-the-know is a sort of social currency in a town where dining is one of the main forms of entertainment. “My role among my friends is to know the newest restaurants,” Shifman says, adding that she had a date set to eat at Wayfare Tavern before it had even opened.

  Gagliardi calls this “food adventuring.” Others might call it being a foodie. “I want to take the i.e. out of foodie!” says Bertino, who longs for the days when people just enjoyed dinner conversation, rather than making the dinner itself the conversation. “I hate it. Everything here has to become another commodity, another fetish. It takes the pleasure out of it.”

  Maybe this is the inevitable result of the perfect storm in a city whose deepest interests lie in food and technology. In explaining why he launched Inside Scoop, Bauer echoes this: “Hearst [the Chronicle’s parent company] wanted to go deep into different industries. In Houston, they did oil and gas. In San Antonio, the military. Here, I think anyone who looks at San Francisco thinks of food. It’s our city’s strength.” But can we sustain this hype or will some blogs soon be on what Eater once coined “Death Watch”?

  “Hopefully all the competition does is makes everyone better,” Bauer says. “But in an ideal world, the person who’s best will end up on top.” Foodies, start your engines.

  A DIGERATI’S FOOD DIARY

  By Nick Fauchald

  From Food & Wine

  Launching the e-newsletter TastingTable.com made Nick Fauchald an online pioneer, after several old-media editing jobs at Wine Spectator, Every Day With Rachael Ray, and Food & Wine. Even so, posting his own food diary was a brave new world.

  Bill Rugen loves cookies. Last January he ate 60 of them, mostly chocolate–chocolate chip. He also frequents Mexican restaurants, avoids vegetables (except french fries), sometimes binges on M&M’s and begins most days with yogurt and fruit.

  I’ve never met Bill Rugen, but I know all of this because he photographed everything he ate last year and arranged the evidence in a stunning online mosaic entitled Consumed. After shooting the foods in a flash-blasted style that evokes fashion photographer Terry Richardson, he tagged them by their ingredients, meal type and place of consumption. There are some 1,400 unique tags in all, displayed in a vast word cloud.

  Recording meals for posterity isn’t a new idea. We’ve learned from cave paintings that Mayans had a way with maize, and tomb etchings tell us that ancient Egyptians thrived on bread and beer. We know that medieval feasts were epic displays of wealth and edacity, thanks to the ur-food writers who chronicled them.

  But the food journal has entered a new era. It has never been easier to share one’s daily intake with the world, and more people are sending their diets into the digital sky for all to see and appraise, with reactions that range from a virtual thumbs-up to alarmed concern. When a camera flash goes off in a restaurant, I no longer look around for the birthday party—I look for the food blogger.

  As eating becomes a sport, it is also becoming a spectator sport, with a fan base that grows by the click. Is this a natural by-product of our oversharing ways? An obsession with food—and ourselves? Thanks to social-networking tools like Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare, we can not only find out what friends (and complete strangers) are having for dinner tonight—we can see, in real time, when they arrive for their reservations, look at photos of their dinners-in-progress and comment upon their choice of entrées.

  As a food amnesiac, I can tell you that this is intimidating. Without careful deliberation, I can’t recall what I made for breakfast on Tuesday or ordered at a restaurant last Friday—which is bizarre, given how much of my life revolves around what I eat. Unless I’m taking notes for a story, the only records I have are the murky photos my girlfriend takes with her phone whenever I cook dinner. (This way, she says, she can ask me to prepare a particular meal again, as I will probably forget what I’ve made by morning.)

  If I can’t remember what I eat, why would anyone else want to have a record of it? To see what it
would feel like to put my diet in the datasphere, I launched my own Twitter feed (@spilledmyguts). My goal was to document every single thing I digested, from mundane snacks (“Banana-sesame muffin for breakfast; too dry, ate half”) to an embarrassment of food consumed during a weekend in Austin. To paraphrase epicure Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin: I’ll Tweet what I eat, and you tell me what I am.

  I also embedded myself on Foodspotting, a website and iPhone app that lets its 400,000-plus users share photos of their restaurant endeavors. Images are geotagged to their origin so other Food-spotters can visually browse menus nearby. It’s a fun way to eat with your eyes—as long as the photos flatter the food. (Many don’t, including my own.) When she launched Foodspotting early last year, Alexa Andrzejewski realized this and engineered the system so that it would display the prettiest pictures first. Users single out their favorites by flagging the photos with a “Nom,” an onomatopoeic blue ribbon abbreviated from “om nom nom” (the lip-smacking sound a person might make while eating something extremely delicious).

  Racking up “Noms” is a competitive pastime. The more (and better) pictures you take, the more points you earn. “It’s become a game among my friends,” says Manya Susoev, a Las Vegas–based “Super Spotter.” “It lets you say, ‘I got to eat out more; I tried more dishes than you did.’” Chris Connolly, a San Francisco–based web designer, hauls his Canon DSLR camera wherever he goes, then touches up his photos before posting them. “Bad shots degrade the food,” he explains. “I try to make the food look better that it really is.” My own Foodspotting efforts earned me a solitary “Nom,” of which I am proud.

  Perhaps the oddest mash-up of food and digital culture, and a logical progression from Foodspotting, is the “food haul” video. Inspired by one of the biggest web phenomena of 2010—the “haul video,” wherein young women play show-and-tell with their latest shopping finds in front of a webcam—food hauls are a chance to share a meal before you’ve even made it. On the YouTube channel Farmers Market Hauls, you can watch people surveying countertops full of edible loot. “I found this melon at the market this morning,” one poster gushes on her video. “I don’t know what it is or what it tastes like, but it smelled so heavenly I couldn’t resist.”