Food Blogger Syndrome

I don't know about you, but I've read a lot of food blogs. Wayyyy to many in fact, if you ask my girlfriend. I spend almost all of my time in front of a computer screen at work only to come home to check if the food blogs that I've been checking all day have updated. Has ChuckEats posted about yet another restaurant I have to try in some distant corner of the globe???!!!?!?!?!?!? It's only been like 10 minutes since I last checked a blog and my hands are starting to shake... The symptoms are clear now, first a cold sweat, than the shaking, than as if from nowhere a full blown case of delirium tremens. That's when you know you've viewed one too many food blog for your own good.

I think everyone has noticed that just about every single person in the western world has a food blog, or knows a writer of a food blog. So it begs the question, does this create a better dining community? If we're all more informed because there is a wealth of information on the Internet than it stands to reason that we'll be happier more educated diners who are more willing to try what the chef's offer...

Or so one hopes.

On a visit to The French Laundry last summer, post coming soon I'm a bad person I know; after our meal when we were introduced to Chef de Cuisine Corey Lee I made the extreme faux pas of mentioning to him that "we'd read a lot about your food in the "blogosphere," and we were looking forward to trying it." He snapped back, quite tersely if you ask me, "don't believe everything you read," before turning back to his kitchen. It got me thinking, are the blogs really just making us more difficult diners?

At a recent dinner at a favorite Japanese restaurant I was speaking with the owner's son who runs the front of house there. He was saying that the culture of food blogging is not only annoying to the restaurants, but he believes the other diners as well. Firstly, most people who take to the Internet, myself included, are not trained food professionals. Also how much fun is it for you the regular at their resturant to have dinner while a table next to you sets up multiple angles of pictures with lighting that they brought to best document the food. While that doesn't make their opinions invalid, it makes them just that, opinion. Anyone can pan a Michelin 3 star restaurant in their blog, but how many of our blogger friends would be willing to step into the kitchen of The French Laundry or Manresa or Per Se and be able to deliver anything on the level of the lowest commie there.

I'd do it if someone gave me a bottole of McCallan 25 so I can put on a thick enough skin to stand the heat....

In my industry there are a lot of people who judge what we do. As a record producer I'm also still a professional musician. I write and record full time. I've been playing instruments longer than most people working at record labels have known that their jobs even existed. However I have to listen to their opinions about my playing, about songs that were written that hold a deep personal meaning to the artist and myself. Their opinions while completely untrained, and in my opinion unwarranted most of the time, are important; just like the blogs. While I personally can't stand people talking about subjects they know little about I guess everyone needs an enemy. I spend my days trying to think of ways to improve songs and how to force my will on the A&R's the Management, and the band to get everyone to perform at the highest level and come back with a product we can be proud of. I guess chef's spend their time thinking about how they would disembowel and cook a reviewer or food blogger who pissed them off.

To each his own.

My advice to those who read food blogs, take everything with a large grain of salt. A lot of blogs are written by people who love the status they get by eating multi course tasting menu's at the most expensive restaurants in the world and than looking down on everything else. I don't know about you but I can't afford to go to Urasawa every month. But the point is this, these blogs are nothing more than a dining journal. Don't take them to be the Gospel truth, most of us would be lost in the kitchen....


PS

sorry for the lack of lunch updates, this record I'm doing is consuming my life. I'll get back to normal shortly.