An adventure in food blogging

I blog about food alot. I know this, its what I do and what I like. I wouldnt call this a "food blog" though. I was quite disappointed that I wasnt able to join PghPodCamp this last weekend, but I was able to listen & watch a few streaming while I was at work and that kind of rocked. I got to see Michelle from BurghBaby and loved her presentation and caught a little bit from a food blog focused presentation that I also liked & introduced me to some food blogs I didnt even know existed. I will be making it a point to get there for at least 1 day next year...I dont wanna miss out!

So Ive spent a few evenings checking them out and just seeing what they say.  I, personally, couldnt run a food blog. I kind of feel that would somewhat a conflict of interest. Running local restaurants I dont feel it would be considered kosher for me to critique the work of others...well that and I really dont have time to go out so many nights a week to make that worth it. But I found a few to be great and a couple others that made me stabby.

The good ones are well written, objective and informative. The ones that have made me stabby bring to mind people who have watched too much TV, have a key board and feel the need to share. I will not list names or link to their blogs, I dont think that is fair and Im not looking to start a food blogger war but if you are a food blogger and you are reading some things to consider...

• You cant go into a restaurant to review it, modify a menu item from its original form and them bitch you didnt like it. Of course you didnt like it. Chefs dont put menus and foods together because we have nothing better to do - it is done that way because that is the flavor profile we were going for and all of the components need to be included in order to get the dish. If you change it its now YOUR dish and we cannot be held responsible for your poor taste.

• You cant go once and thats it. No food writers does that, even the really really good ones. You have to go back 3-5 times on average to get a solid feel for the consistency of the service & food, check out a variety of menu items and get a feel for the atmosphere. To only go in once, order 1 item and then make a snap judgment about a place is unfair. I mean seriously, just as a customer I would never go someplace once, have a bad or mediocre experience and write it off completely. Thats narrow minded & short sighted. It isnt possible to get a full scope of any business with 1 visit, especially a restaurant or bar.

It was painfully obvious reading some of the blogs that about half of them have never stepped foot in a professional kitchen and the knowledge they are basing their "reviews" on is from reading Bon Appetit & Gourmet and watching Food Network. Im sorry, but liking to eat and liking food doesnt make you qualified to review someone's work. I know that I can go into a restaurant, order a dish and when its put down in front of me know that the fish doesnt have a crisp crust because a line cook didnt heat their pan enough, or the mashed potatoes are gooey because they were allowed to cool too much prior to mashing or the green beans are shriveled because they were cooked from a raw state with too much acid - that puts me at a distinct advantage and in a unique position to honestly evaluate the food in front of me. I dont feel some of these self proclaimed food writers are able to do that...so how do they objectively review anyplace? Can they identify that the plate put in front of them was at one point perfect, but because a server took too long to get back to the kitchen and it sat under a heat lamp and is now lamp burnt - which doesnt mean bad cooks - it means bad servers. I also noted a bunch of "I" statements going on...food reviewing isnt about your personal tastes or preferences, its about the technical merit & flavor of a dish. I personally cant stand curry powder - but you put a curried dish in front of me I can appreciate it for what it is and tell you if it is good or not - personal feelings about curry aside.

As an industry professional I take bad reviews of my work personally...especially if it was literally MY work. In my current position yeah, I might create a recipe, but I depend on my staff to execute them and rarely am I actually the one making your food in any of my restaurants...so I tend to get irritated by them, but not hurt...and a hell of a lot more likely to go find the offending KM and crawl up his ass and out his mouth so he understands exactly what they did wrong and it never happens again. But reading some of these blogs I actually felt bad for the chefs. We do what we do because we love it, and its a bitch having to read what some dude wrote about the ONE night he came in that you were training a new grill cook who over cooked a steak or burger, didnt tell his server about it so we could fix it and then writes a post saying the cooks at This Restaurant cant cook. Harsh man...and not true.

I have a few notes for you folks...

1. If you are so damn good at what we do and think you can do it better come on down and give it a shot. I will be more than happy to sit idly by and watch over a beer while you drive yourself nuts trying to do what we do everyday...and when you collapse in tears in a corner I will also happily jump in and bail you out. I dont come into your full time marketing job (or whatever it is these folks do to as their day jobs) and and tell you how to do your job. I would never assume I could walk into your office and proceed to tell you what you need to do to make your operation better - why would you assume your qualified to that to us? Eating in a restaurant doesnt qualify you to run one - ask any of the millions of people who have failed at operating a restaurant & try to be objective about what you experience.
2. Restaurants are operated and staffed by humans. Seriously. Real live humans. And guess what...we have bad days too! Ever have one of those days at the office that the fax machine blows up or you forgot to do something for a flipping out client or clicked the wrong button and lost 4 hours of work because you forgot to save...you know, the days that make you want to walk in front of a bus? Restaurant employees have those days too. We have days where shit just doesnt click, the day that you forget to ring in a tables apps, or forget to run their salads, or just cant get the timing right for shit coming off the grill or drop the last item on an 8 top on the floor and have to hold the whole check back for the refire or the managers didnt order liquor so your out of well vodka or the bartender is fighting with her boyfriend and just cant it together to get service bar drinks up in any kind of a timely fashion. We are people, not robots, and we have lives too and as much as we would love to be able to leave that bullshit at home it doesnt always work. Only differences are 1) we dont get "personal days" to handle our shit...we have to go to work and 2) we get to take the abuse of patrons who think we should be infallible and think its ok to treat us like garbage because we made a mistake. Believe me - there is not a single person I know who works in the food industry that sets out to make sure their guests have the worst experience ever or to fuck up their food order. That would be stupid.
3. Realize that it is entirely possible that you just dont get the restaurant you are at. One of the reviews I read basically had the writer raking a place over the coals because the menu wasnt "pretentious" enough for the location. Ummm...Ive been to the place he was referencing, multiple times...and that was their point. The point of this place was to create an environment that fit aesthetically into their neighborhood without loosing their comfy feel and in my opinion pulled it off beautifully. This guy just didnt get it and then felt the need to make this the basis for half of his review. Um no. Thats bullshit. And yet another reason to visit a place a couple times, get to know it and then pass judgment on it - but after reading a few of his other reviews I feel he has that problem more often than not...well that and we just do not agree about food. 
4. I read quite a few that were obviously written by people with crushes on the owners/staff/ management. Thats some epic level bullshit. I read about places that get constant raves about how fanfreakingtastic they are...in my experiences at these same places its less than awesome - which I feel comfortable saying because Ive gone to them. Are they good bars/restaurants? Yes. Do they have a pretty great atmosphere? Yes, in most cases. Is there food amazing? No. Not by a long shot on most of my experiences. Is their service exceptional? Not at all usually.  Are they cheap? In some of the cases, yes; in the majority of them, no. BUT I know why these places get sucked off (pardon my french) by anyone who reviews the place...they know how to pimp and who to pimp to. I havent read one review of most of these places that I would say reflects any of the experiences that I have had at them. They are some of my more regular watering holes because I like them, I like the staff, I like the menus & regardless of the imperfections I will go because I want to. Some of them I will get fed up with and wont go back for awhile, but I always end up giving them another shot eventually.  As an operator its a brilliant marketing strategy for creating a loyal customer base, but that isnt the purpose of a restaurant review & isnt bait that a reviewing blogger should take. Facts about their operation shouldnt be skewed by personal feelings about the staff. Go ahead and hang there all you want...but the review should be honest & unbiased.

As a professional I welcome valid feedback. I want to know what people think of my food. I want to here that I made you a dish that made you quiver or that I missed the mark on seasoning whatever. I like that level of interaction - will I get defensive - SURE! You are attacking what is in essence a part of me that I gave you and I should take that personally, but it makes me better at what I do. I enjoy reading what others think about my places and that of my competition to stay ahead and see what my guests want and react to it. I just think less emotional attachment and more objective observation is key if you are going to label yourself a "foodie blog".

I dont know if I have said this before, but if I have you get to read it again. Every human on the planet should at some point in their lives have to work in a restaurant. EVERY human. The life skills learned in that environment are priceless. You learn conflict resolution, tolerance, patience, how to multi-task, how to handle difficult customers & coworkers, team work and immediate deadlines. You learn about all kinds of people and their backgrounds and cultures, you learn to laugh, how to not be so goddamn PC & sensitive and how to curse like a champ.  It would also teach people to treat service employees like humans...because there are far too many out there who are just out of line with their behavior & expectations when they are out to eat.

And if youre going to blog about food and "review" restaurants like a pro then do it like a pro and follow the basic etiquette about food writing. Realize the effect you have on the business you review and the potential customers you are either driving there or driving away. Yippie for you that you got a bazillion hits to your site...but in the mean time you have given a small restaurant a "bad service" tag that might not be true because you didnt do your homework adequately.

All that being said I still found some great bloggers that do objective reviews that actually give you a great scope of a place and have made me try places I might not ever have gone to and thats pretty damn awesome...and I promptly removed the ones who seem to be writing for their ego from my feed, their tabloid story like reviews are not valuable to me at all. I dont want to hear about your idiosyncratic dietary issues that led you to not like what you ordered...I want to know objectively what your experience was.