Don't Hate the Player...

The foodieverse is aflame over the announcement of the Vendy Award finalists. More correctly, the foodieverse is aflame over the inclusion of the Rickshaw Dumpling truck in the Vendy Award finalists.

No one is wrong in saying that, at $6 for 5, their dumplings are the most expensive, anemic travesty of a dumpling ever sold, and that they can't be mentioned in the same breath as the most apathetic place in Chinatown or Flushing. In my opinion, they are barely a step above the frozen gyoza from Japanese groceries. (And no offense to the Japanese, but the Chinese jiaozi kicks gyoza ass.)

Hell, I can make better dumplings with these diluted ABC hands tied behind my back.

But I don't have a Warholesque food truck with a chinky-subversive name and puns galore ("Who's your EDAMAME?!"), and neither do any of the authentics in Chinatown or Flushing.



So I am more bemused than outraged by the legions that voted for Rickshaw Dumpling in this popularity contest, 'cuz this is clearly a case of roundeyes getting HOSED. And I kind of have to give props to Kenny Lao for that.

The Omnivore's 100: In Which I Am a Killjoy

Bear with me, this one evolved as it was written, and everything I've been thinking scatteredly for months seems to have made it out.

I take issue with this list the way I take issue with most food writing in general: in its pronouncement that "the list includes fine food, strange food, everyday food and even some pretty bad food – but a good omnivore should really try it all," it glides over the fact that "omnivore" apparently means someone who eats at all price points as much as someone who eats at all food pyramid points.

For example, number 84: "Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant."

Food writing, in general, tends to be pretty glib about the socioeconomic impossibility of pleasures such as the above for 99% of the world's population. In taking up Pleasure as the banner of foodie-ism, we are able to overlook everything from cultural theft to local poverty as unfortunate, but ultimately not our problem.

Leave it to the people who write food politics blogs or race blogs or humanitarian blogs, the thought goes, so we can get back to the business of analyzing whether something tastes good. Let hedonistic enjoyment prevail, all else is irrelevant. The world is our banquet.

But I am bothered by taste that exists in a vacuum, sucked from its context. I am not saying we shouldn't eat, and eat everything, it's just that should we not also recognize the privileges of being so entitled? Food is an excellent entry point to examination of ourselves and the world around us, but an element of self-critique has been missing from the current trend.

What is the current trend? The current trend is that frat boy down the hall who went to India and came back with Buddhism and rope sandals. We go out of our way to eat (and write) the most exciting things sourced from both Third World backyards and our own, and we congratulate ourselves on being open-minded.

I hate that kid down the hall, and I find myself turning into him.

But once in a while, something like The Omnivore's 100 comes along, and I end up checking myself even though I was only intending to check off numbers. I find myself looking at the "whole insects" entry and wondering about the people who eat them because they are the cheapest protein available or the only protein available, as my Dad once did. I look at something like "sweetbreads" and wonder when it became so hip, and why only European cuisines can seem to make offal hip. I see McDonald's on there and recognize its place on the list as an ironic cultural marker, not the way of life for people living in urban deserts.

I look at "pho," "aloo gobi," and "chicken tikka masala," and wonder when did other peoples' histories of immigration and adaptation - people who face oppression in America even as their foods are celebrated - become something for me to check off a list and pat myself on the back over.

As foodies and as writers, I think we've done a good job of giving serious thought to important issues like animal rights and America's broken agricultural systems. What I don't see is the same incorporation of critical analysis toward people.

When Yelpers or Chowhounders complain about the lack of great Mexican food in NYC, I want to ask whether they've thought about why that is. Are the people qualified to make great Mexican food priced out by the high overhead costs of opening a restaurant here? What about the great "secret" taco shops hidden in the back of unassuming grocery stores? Can we look at their locations not as a charming quirk - or worse, a badge of authenticity - but as the manifestation of people trying to do business with very few resources?

Foodies often take food a little too seriously. I want foodies to take food even more seriously, but in a different way. Our prevailing attitude toward ethnic food and ethnic communities cannot be like Columbus discovering America. How many times have you heard someone say, "I found the best Indian/Vietnamese/Thai place the other day, I was the only white person there," or, "The only GREAT Chinese restaurants are in Flushing"? If we think something exists solely for our foodie creds, our little pilgrimages, it's inevitable that we develop a hurtfully cavalier attitude toward other people's cultures.

You see, for people of color, food is more than just food. It is often the only representation our histories and cultures have in America; it is our face. So with feelings of pride at seeing our cuisines be accepted come feelings of protectiveness as well. It is hard to abide casual users and casual judgments of our food when our food is known as our identity, whether we like it or not. You may not feel like Chinese tonight, but we can never escape questions like, "so is it true y'all eat dog?" Thus, it is even harder to see casual users enjoy our foods with no strings attached, when we ourselves have been ostracized many a time for our curries and kimchis, which were "weird" and "disgusting" long before wealthy white foodies made them cool.

I guess I am uncomfortable with food writing and going about it as a woman of color. There are plenty of people of color who write food blogs, but I can't help but feel the conversation is still very white. I'd like to hear thoughts on this. Does anyone else have opinions about these things?

In Pity of Joe Dobias

I'm currently following a developing story I came across on Eater.

While most commenters are quick to deride Joe Dobias's grasp of grammar, his attitude, and his food, I see a chef painfully lost as the roles within the little theater of dining - chefs, customers, and critics - shift around him, thanks to this thing called "the internet."

In Hong Kong, I briefly interned for a time at HK Magazine, a free weekly magazine read by the expat population. I had the opportunity to review a few restaurants there. I was unpaid, but the reach of the publication was considerable, and no reader could have known that I was a 20-year-old with zero experience in the food industry.

I had a lot of fun, and the fact that I saw it as fun didn't strike me as problematic until after my internship ended. I decided that I would no longer write reviews until I gained a level of food knowledge I was comfortable with. I didn't want people's livelihoods on my conscience. Not that it mattered - it's not like the Times, or any other publication, was banging down my doors.

And then I started this silly little blog on a whim. I'd received a deluge of responses to my Craigslist ad and thought it would be funny to post about the food and the conversations with strangers. I know my friends found it amusing enough.

But I've gotten a significant bump in hits since the Top Chef Masters liveblog and the recent Bunnette ridiculousness, and this morning I saw in my stat tracker that someone at Jean-Georges Management had chanced upon this blog. That all makes me very nervous, because I still haven't learned a thing in the two years since my last "formal" review for HK Magazine, and I really hope to God no one takes me seriously.

I hope that even after I go to cooking school, or get whatever cred I need (which is probably none, in this democratic age of critics), that no one will take me too seriously. As Marc Shepherd at New York Journal astutely pointed out, even Frank Bruni's data point is but one of many. And what is Frank Bruni but a man who gets the technical facts right, and forms an opinion on the rest based on his own collection of sensory data points? He has the weight and resources of the Times, which is not to be confused with extra taste buds.

As a customer in today's restaurant world, you have many choices - not only in the restaurant you frequent but the reviews you read. When I read Yelp reviews of Chinese food, I roll my eyes at many people who don't seem to know what they're talking about, but that's the snooty foodie in me. Ultimately, people just have different standards, and the only thing you can do is decide whose opinion to trust and whose to ignore - be it Bruni, a friend, or some uppity blogger.

You don't need knowledge to enjoy a meal; that's why I love food. As a chef/owner, the only thing you can do is decide where your audience should fall on the foodie spectrum and hope that the right people come. Joe Dobias simply does not understand that there is no All-Powerful Critic anymore, and that in the deeply subjective world of food, there were never any "credible sources." I wonder what he'll say if certain rumors are true and the Times hires a blogger to replace Bruni in the fall. Yet panic rings beneath his nasty personal attacks, and for this reason it worries me to see so many people declaring that they'll never visit JoeDoe based on his comments. It's always a sad day when a restaurant fails.

Let's face it, the role of "food blogger" is self-appointed and therefore inescapably self-important. As a blogger, I get to decide what degree of integrity I hold myself to when I write, and I think about it quite a lot because Google can always find me, and someone might actually care. We the masses may be entitled to opinions and free websites on Blogger, but if that means we're also entitled to some small determination in another person's success or failure, I hope we don't forget it. Entitlement should come with ownership of one's words, however sparsely read they may be.

I still write for fun, while others still cook for a living. Thus, I don't think I can ever be as careful with my words as I should be. The formula is a work-in-progress. Generally, I've shied away from giving typical reviews here, and I try to say everything equally irreverently. A friend commented the other day that he'd take me more seriously if I didn't pepper my posts with variations of "fuck," but that's exactly the point. I'm a random girl on a lark; don't take me more seriously than I take myself.

Do I come off as the Simon Cowell of food or something?

alex: come by here

my office

we're ordering food

me: i cant

jim wants to meet with me

alex: lamesauce

me: just order something for me

alex: for how long

me: dunno

alex: I CANT DO TIHS BY MYSELF

okay

i'll try

me: dude i'll eat anything

Here's something you should know about me.

I judge food, and I judge what other people are eating. If I don't know you, I'm probably not going to want to know you if I see you order sesame chicken and a California roll at a sushi bar. But if you're ordering for ME, have no fear. I would never look unkindly on another person's efforts to provide me sustenance. In fact, I hate people who complain about a meal while they're still eating it. It ruins the atmosphere and boosts nobody's ego but the complainer's. When I'm out eating with friends, I rarely talk about what's being served, and if I'm asked what I think, I'll just say it's good.

Because, in truth, it's hard for food to be not good. I'm Chinese and I eat everything - there is that. But more importantly, I'm Chinese and my Dad, who lived through some of the worst food times in Chinese history, instilled me with gratitude for anything I have the privilege of eating. I have the tapes to prove it, courtesy of a 7th-grade oral history project: "I should really send you off to the nong cun, starve you for a few years so you'll know what it's like. Then, you eat anything, everything tastes good."

So, in the spirit of "eat anything, everything tastes good," Alex's choice of "1 burger, 1 steak, 1 yellotail scallion roll, and 1 chicken wings - i hope youre hungry" will do just fine for lunch.