Local Flavor

It's Lonely at the Top

Food writer Deb Barshafsky laments the trials and tribulations of writing about food.

by Deb Barshafsky

A FEW YEARS AGO—eight to be precise—I was The Augusta Chronicle’s restaurant reviewer. I was canned after two reviews. For being too acerbic if you can imagine that.
Here’s the whole sad tale....

One day, I answer my phone to find an old college chum on the line. She had ascended the editorial ranks of our local paper to become, at that time, features editor. One of her responsibilities was to round up a new restaurant reviewer and she thought of me.

“Real ones,” I inquire. “As in multiple visits at different times of the day and week?”

“Well,” she responds, “we’re only able to cover one meal for each review. No more than $25.” (Clearly I’m not in this for the money. )
“But you do want me to be anonymous, right?”

[Pause]

“You know,” I venture, “you probably want me to write under a pseudonym since a lot of folks know me as Augusta Magazine’s food writer.”
[Another pause]

“And my photo runs in the magazine,” I continue. “And folks will probably put two and two together and that may influence the service I get and the quality of my food.”
We rather quickly establish that my fellow English major from years gone by is not interested in “real” food reviews. She simply wants good copy about local restaurants. What the heck, I think, and agree to provide this critical service to my fellow Augustans. (READ: I’m always up for a free meal.)

The following day, I e-mail my new editor a list of interesting locally owned and operated restaurants that I think we should review for the gustatory illumination of our citizenry. She responds with my first assignment...Chili’s Grill and Bar. Chili’s?! Egad, a mid-range chain restaurant with, at that writing, more than 630 locations worldwide. Chili’s, I can assure you, was not on my list.

Nonetheless, I found myself there at 6:30 p.m. on a Monday evening and was seated at a hastily cleaned booth with the dreaded view of the kitchen. The place was packed with throngs of diners with automobile tags from neighboring Columbia County, which, at that time, had far fewer restaurant choices. So I wrote in my review... “Until a more westerly stand of urban forest is leveled in the name of progress, plan to arrive early.”

I also wrote about Chili’s relatively tame menu that included a Just for  Kids option...“If you don’t mind feeding your children corn dogs and cheese sandwiches.”
My general assessment went something like this...“Chili’s is good for what it is—a centrally located, mid-price, full-service chain restaurant in a town that adores centrally located, mid-price, full-service chain restaurants.”

My next assignment was Souper!Salad! [emphasis not mine]. Here’s my intro: “The kitschy, larger-than-life vegetable planters at the entrance of Souper!Salad! are a whimsical welcoming committee for this establishment specializing in soups, salads and sandwiches. Gotta give the corporate office some points for creating a festive atmosphere in the type of place that usually draws (how can I be tactful here?) people who are less focused on ambiance than they are on the phrase “all U can eat.’”

Maybe it was my observation that the restaurant’s slogan (“You’ve Never Had It So Fresh”) clearly didn’t apply to the spinach. Or my warning that the macaroni and cheese soup was not recommended for the faint of heart. Or perhaps it was that line about a menu that pandered to the palate of children. Whatever it was, I was summarily kicked to the curb shortly after that review went to press.

My short-lived career as a restaurant reviewer has been on my mind of late. In the past few weeks, I’ve had at least a dozen conversations that go something like this:

Friend/colleague/acquaintance introducing me to New Person: Deb’s a food writer.

New Person: Really? A food writer? So you write restaurant reviews.

Me: No, I don’t do reviews.

New Person: Oh, so you write recipes?

Me: No, I don’t do recipes either.

New Person: So what do you write about if you don’t do reviews and you don’t do recipes?

These days, every third person I meet has read Garlic and Sapphires, the book Ruth Reichl wrote about her exploits as the New York Times food critic. They learn that I’m a food writer and they ask me if I’ve ever gone undercover, worn wigs and costumes, booked my tables under a fake name. I explain that I like writing reflective pieces about food and eating, that I enjoy exploring the intersection of food and culture, that I focus on quirky, off the beaten path stuff—not reviews. And I get blank stares. How do you tell people who equate “food writer” to “restaurant critic” or “cookbook author” that your most recent piece was about a gigantic carrot that someone left on your doorstep?

When I go on to explain that, while I enjoyed Reichl’s book, I’m actually a devotee of MFK Fisher...her lyrical 12-page love letter to her first oyster, her reflections on gastronomic snobbism  and that poignant story about ignoring her cat’s advice about a tin of Polish smoked salmon. Well, I usually find myself alone, chatting with a platter of razor clams.

You see, writing about food isn’t as glamorous as it seems once you actually start talking about it. To be sure, this gig has a lot of perks. I was jetted off to Puerto Rico to tour the Bacardi factory and sample rum for a weekend. I’ve been comped more than my fair share of four-course gourmet wine dinners. And,  once, I received two cases of free barbecue sauce. But beyond the obvious benefits, being a food writer is, at times, a social burden.

The people I know and the people I meet generally fall into two camps—the ones who are afraid I’m going to write about their food and the others who expect me to. Oh, there’s that small percentage of individuals who don’t give a rip about what I do with my laptop in the privacy of my own home and I cherish my meals with them. Most people, however, shake out as I’ve described.
People who have pitched their tents in the Expectation Camp feed me and then drop not so subtle hints about how much they’d like to see their meal ballyhooed in print or on my website. Or they very directly suggest that I should write a column about their X, Y or Z, insisting that my readers would be very interested to learn more about said subject.

People in the Fear Camp automatically ask if I’m going to write about whatever morsel we happen to be consuming, whether it’s a tray of mechanically cubed cheese at a work function or a tired little egg roll at a gallery open house. “What are you going to write about this?” they inquire conspiratorially. And then they laugh nervously and tell me, “Oh, I’d never invite you to a meal at my house.”
I’m not sure about their line of thinking on this. Do they truly believe that I’d show up with my poison pen and surreptitiously jot notes about their stuffed pork loin, their flatware and their knife technique? That I’m sent out by my editor on clandestine dining missions, a top secret operation to reveal the culinary peaks and valleys of Augusta’s kitchens?

A recent survey conducted by the Pew Research Center found that 39 percent of Americans enjoy eating a great meal. I’m one of them. I just happen to get paid every now and then to write about it. Contrary to what you may think, I don’t eat pan seared squab breast and portabella cannelloni every evening. In fact, I ate leftover pasta three nights this past week. I buy wine based on the attractiveness of the label, not on its Wine Spectator rating. In a blind tasting, I can’t tell a zinfandel from a cabernet sauvignon. My guilty pleasures include beans and franks straight from the can, Hostess cupcakes and Underwood deviled ham on white bread. I have a container of Ruth’s Cream Cheese Pineapple-Pecan Spread in my refrigerator right now. I also have nearly a dozen types of salt in my kitchen but not because I’m an elitist. I’m an equal opportunity eater.

And just because I’m pursuing a masters degree in gastronomy, that doesn’t mean I know what a ficelle is or that I can mix a gimlet on command or that I can intelligently articulate the difference between a Dutch hutspot and a Belgium hochepot. I may know a tad more about food than your average Joe, but I am not the walking, talking Wikipedia of the food world. I use Google just like everyone else does.

Please don’t think of me as the notoriously snobbish restaurant critic in Ratatouille. While I’m rumored to have strong opinions, I share more qualities with Scooby Doo (“Rooby rack?!”) and Wimpy (“I would gladly pay you  Thursday for a hamburger today.”). Simply put, I love food. If you invite   me over for dinner, I promise I’m not going to talk about your undercooked spinach balls and your overcooked fish behind your back. It’s a secret I’ll take to my grave.

Even with all the social pressures and frustrations, I love writing about food. I’m both pleased and validated when I meet people who tell me they enjoy my work. “Oh, I just read that one about... (here they pause)...well, I can’t remember what it was about, but I just read it in the waiting room at my doctor’s office and I loved it.” Go ahead and say it. I’ve got a sick following. It won’t be the first time I’ve heard it.

Speaking of my following, earlier this year I received my first piece of un-fan mail. Seems a small contingent of Castleberries was a bit peeved that I took the family name in vain as I made light of that botulism scare we had in the Augusta plant this past summer. Sorry about that, folks. I ate a can of hot dog chili sauce as penance.

Keep those cards and letters coming, friends. And the dinner invites. Yeah, a dinner invite every now and then would be nice. I’ll wear a wig and use a fake name if it makes it any easier for you.