Time for a rant. It's been a while. I'll get back to the more lyrical stuff in a minute, but today I’m gonna get my Grumpy Old Jewish Man on.
First let me identify my target: Food Bloggers.
So Food Bloggers are those clowns that maintain personal sites that cover things like:
- over pictorialised restaurant reviews, complete with contrived metaphors and over anxious emotional descriptors;
- essays that unnecessarily (and failingly) attempt to use the depth of narrative and style required for a first hand account of a Spanish Civil War battle for a recounting of a Wednesday night spent following Grandma's chocolate cake recipe;
- breathless stories of some food-stuff that an old sorority sister found in a tiny store with the tag 'Gourmet' or 'Artisanal' or 'Overpriced Nonsense' plastered across it;
- and other vapid topics and posts that, to be frank, I just couldn't be bothered to Google, check and then describe to you.
I obviously don't have an issue with people Blogging. Obviously. The reality is that in order to blog, one needs to maintain a minimum level of narcissism and this is fine with me. In fact, the reality is that the peak out point of what Psychologists call 'Healthy Narcissism' is actually quite high and is very much necessary and required for maintaining a healthy level of self esteem. (Once it crosses beyond that point and combines with a few other very key pathologies, is when it enters into the domain of the Cluster B Personality Disorders. Examples of this can be quite evil and very, very unhealthy, but this is a whole other conversation (or relationship) for a whole other time.) Blogging – in particular the part of it that is the belief that people give a shit about what you think/say – is really just an expression of self-love. I dig that. That part is fine.
And even certain elements of Food Blogs don't bother me either. For example the parts that involve inane recipe sharing or pictures of your lunch or where to buy synthesised sumac or where to eat nachos in Florence or how much you weighed last week doesn't rile me up at all, cause I can just ignore that shit. Out of sight is very much out of mind in regards to that and I don't care if posting that stuff is what you need to do to distract yourself from the awareness that you haven't been laid since Bravo started making the 'Real Housewives' shows that you are now addicted to.
No - all of that is fine. What shits me to tears, is the Restaurant Review component of what those monkeys do. Because, as one who works in restaurants, this is very much in my sight and in my mind. On a nightly basis, I have to deal with those sanctimonious pricks and their displays of sucking all the pleasure out of pleasure. I have had enough of that. I am full up.
This is what I take umbrage with: The golden rule – number one – of writing is that one should only ever write of what you know about. If you do not know about something that, for some reason, you are required or require yourself to write about, then learn about it first and only then should you write about it. For example, there are many things I would love to rant on about here on this blog, but I don't feel I know enough about those issues or persons, so I do not. But Food Bloggers? Well, after way too many years working in restaurants and having to interact with many of their kind, I feel qualified to write about them.
The obvious question that you should now ask is how can I be so certain that they don't know enough (or anything) about what they are writing about? Good question. Well, here is some examples of how I know this:
If you are a giant, obese, Malaysian person, who sits down at your table after breaking a sweat walking the four and half feet from the door to your table and then lays out your notebook, pen and digital camera for display besides the napkin, you know nothing about restaurants. For, Giant Malaysian Fattie, you don't realise that the waiter is going to instantly identify you as a Food Blooger and because he/she will immediately dislike you for being - in his/her mind - scum of the earth, he/she will then treat you accordingly. This really doesn't make for a good night out for you.
If your even more obese male 'friend' (and he must be your friend - there is no way he is your sexual partner. I mean, the massive body mass pushing forward off each of your torsos would surely create too much of a distance and physical barrier for the two of to execute the physical closeness needed to copulate.) weezes his way from the table to the open plan kitchen to snap twenty six pictures of the chef trying to plate a dish, he must know nothing about restaurants. For, Mr Imminent Coronary, you don't realise that the fellow standing there and just trying to do his job is in fact a human being – not an animal in the zoo – and you certainly need to ask his permission – as you would of any human - to take his photo. Chefs – believe it or not – are people too.
If, you get invited into a restaurant for a free meal, after somehow convincing some idiot PR company that the fourteen times a day your mother, boyfriend, sister and the girl that sits next to you in accounts (the one that is yet to work out that you are openly gay and so has a massive crush on you) each go onto your Blog constitutes a massive pageload-count and following. And then, after dawdling through several courses and attentive, professional service you fail to leave a tip for the waiter, you know nothing about restaurants. For, Dickhead-with-deluded-visions-of-yourself-as-a-sort-of-suburban-offspring-of-Perez-Hilton-and-Andy-Cohen, you don't realise that the waiter is not your indentured servant and works for those tips so he/she may pay rent and bills and stuff. If the owner wants to offer you free food, this is fine. The waiter, however, did not make any such offer for his/her services.
If, for reasons that are only really a psychological consequence of a lack of control and attention in your formative years, you have now decided to be a Vegan and maintain a Blog that reviews and judges restaurants on their compatibility with and efforts to accommodate your psychosis, you know nothing about restaurants. For, Anemic Hippy, you do not realise that we in the industry never promised nor undertook to care about or for your mental health. If you really did have an unloving and destructive childhood, you should just do what we do to cope with that very same thing – self loathe and take heapings of drugs and alcohol.
If, because you read about him in some other review or press release or some other post on one of your brethren's site, you feel the need to name drop the owner in the vain hope that this will somehow win you extra 'love' from the venue, you know nothing about restaurants. For, Idiot-with-no-more-than-an-internet-connection, if you really were a friend of the owner, he would have let us know you were coming in and organised for something complimentary before you arrived. All you've have done is made it known to the waiter that you know the name of the owner. That's really not that impressive. The waiter knows his name too.
These are just a few examples. And I haven't even gotten to talking about how what they actually write - the way that their collection of words and paragraphs and commas is the biggest proof that they have absolutely no idea what they are writing about. And I wont. I wont be listing examples of this, for this necessitates me reading a review or three and I’m not going to do that. If I wanted to drive a dull, metal object into my eyes and then heart, I will flip out the tiny blade from my wine opener and hack away. Surely that would be less traumatic and painful than reading a Food Blog. Just now, even the thought of having to read a Food Blog caused me to shudder.
For their part, the Food Bloggers will counter my proclamations here by saying something like:
“I have been going to restaurants for years! I am fully qualified to write as a customer about the experience! I am not writing about telling people how to run one!”
My first response to that would be:
“Can you please remove that massive sandwich from your mouth and repeat slowly and clearly whatever it is you just said.”
Then, after actually understanding their statement, my next response would be that they are in fact not writing as and for customers. For if they were, all they would need to mention is the address, the style of food, a rough price guide and a reminder to wear shoes and trousers/skirt/dress and to bring a method of payment. But they don't write about that. They write nonsense about what colour they would've painted the roof and how they would've seasoned the lamb and how the toilets are laid out 'wrong' and how the ratio of male to female staff is 'wrong' and how the winelist is too expensive and how the place is not gonna last and what the reasons a certain brand of flatware is being used and on and on ad nauseum. This is not 'customer stuff'. This is opinioned positions taken by someone assuming to be informed enough to make such value judgments.
Hey Food Blogger - you are not informed enough to make such value judgments! Not even a little bit.
Ok, maybe the very very small minority of you out there actually have the knowledge, understanding, wisdom and experience that then equal up to the minimum requirement. But the vast majority of you guys do not. And I don't care how long or how often you've been to restaurants. This means nothing. If it did, then after going to the dentist enough times, UCLA Dental School would post me out a degree.
But UCLA does no such thing. Maybe you should take a leaf out of their book next time you log onto your blog and post nothing...
Or at the very least, please stay away from where I chose to work. I really think it's in everyone's best interests.
Thank you and have just the most lovely day.
