Best Food Writing 2010 (7 page)

ATTACK OF THE ANTI-MEAT CRUSADERS!

By Lessley Anderson From
chow.com

Though
chow.com
has expanded beyond its original base of die-hard street eaters, it’s still an audience of wide appetites and strong opinions. Instead of polarizing the meat-eating issue, senior features editor Lessley Anderson brings balanced reflection to this book review.

M
eat eating is under attack! And yet you may not have noticed all the noise—new, shocking reports from the World Bank, United Nations, and more—because you were too busy mawing on that delicious artisanal bacon.

The upshot is that, by some estimates, livestock farming produces more greenhouse gases than all the world’s transportation systems combined. Factory farms are responsible for 99 percent—yes, 99 percent—of all the meat in the U.S.

Then there’s the newish (November) nonfiction book by hot young writer Jonathan Safran Foer,
Eating Animals
, which details more horrors of factory farming. Like how just one pig farming operation (Smithfield) produces more tons of shit than does the entire human population of California and Texas combined, and how that untreated waste has nowhere to go other than sprayed in a fecal mist into the air and waterways.

The timing of this stuff is really weird. We are arguably in a meat-obsessed cultural moment. Trendy Williamsburg restaurants like the Brooklyn Star features few dishes in which the main course is not wrapped in bacon. Hell, Fig in Santa Monica serves bacon wrapped in bacon.
The New York Times
even coined the phrase “hot butchers” to describe chefs like Ryan Farr of San Francisco, who teach sold-out classes in sausage making to slavering packs of meat nerds. Then there are Crif Dogs kimchee hot dogs, Shake Shack burgers, David Chang’s pork belly, Donald Link’s Boudin Balls. We can’t get enough of it. It’s just so damn cool.

Of course, for all of us ordering charcuterie plates, there’s a caveat: we eat sustainably-raised meat. The pork skins Farr uses for his chicharonnes aren’t from a factory farm, they’re from pasture-raised pigs from Becker Lane Organic Farm, Dyersville, IA. The philosophy many of us have is that promoting the
right
kind of meat is helping fight the good fight against the
wrong
kind of meat produced by big agribusiness.

“I do feel like the environmentalists, vegetarians, and sustainable meat people do have a common enemy, and it is factory farmed meat,” says Sasha Wizansky, editor of
Meatpaper
, a print magazine that chronicles meat culture.

But you, with your artisanal bacon, are you really above the fray?
Spoiler Alert
: Foer’s book says we’re full of shit.

Reason Number One: All “Ethical Omnivores” Cheat.

Admit it: Not all the meat you eat is sustainably raised.

“How effective would the Montgomery bus boycott have been if the protesters had used the bus when it became inconvenient not to?” writes Foer. Zing!

“If I’m down in Mexico City or Barcelona, Japan, and there’s really good street food, I’m going to eat it, and if I don’t know where the meat’s coming from, I’m still going to eat it,” Ryan Farr told CHOW. And what about that pho place you love to go to for lunch? Is its beef grass fed? Or how about when you felt too stingy to buy the heritage turkey for Thanksgiving, because it was like, 80 times more expensive than the conventional one?

Reason Number Two: Organic, Free-Range, and Cage-Free Mean Jack.

These words do not mean healthy, happy animals. Here’s the deal, once again (we’ve all heard it before): To be considered free-range, a chicken must have “access to the outdoors.” This, according to Foer and plenty of others who’ve covered this, is interpreted cynically by the poultry industry. Like, there’s a little door or window that gets opened sometimes, that shows a little patch of earth onto which the chickens in their gloomy, overcrowded sheds of doom, will never tread.

“Cage-free” means they’re not in cages, duh. But it doesn’t mean they’re on dirt. And how about the killing floor, where most birds are dragged through that lovely fecal soup? No cages there, either!

Organic, Foer points out, just means they were fed organic food, had “access to the outdoors” (see above), and weren’t fed antibiotics or growth hormones. Not that they were treated humanely or safely during their lives and deaths.

Reason Number Three: Any Meat Eating Promotes More Meat Eating, and Most Meat Is Factory Farmed.

You get invited to somebody’s house for dinner. They know you eat meat. Of course you’re not going to be an asshole, and tell them that you only eat meat from such and such farms.

“This effort might be well-placed, but it is certainly more invasive than asking for vegetarian food (which these days requires no explanation),” writes Foer. “The entire food industry (restaurants, airline and college food services, catering at weddings) is set up to accommodate vegetarians. There is no such infrastructure for the selective omnivore.”

So you eat what they put in front of you. And what they put in front of you is Tyson chicken or Smithfield ham.

And yet, all these very good arguments being what they are, I have not gone vegetarian. Why? For me the main reason is that becoming vegetarian means not supporting the small farmers who are trying to make a difference in our screwed up system of meat production. People like Mark Pasternak, of Devil’s Gulch Ranch, who raises pigs in Sonoma County for many great local restaurants, while also offering nature education summer camp for kids. Or heritage poultry farmer Frank Reese, whom Foer profiles in his book as being one of the few farmers in the U.S. raising non-genetically modified chickens. (His birds don’t have enormous breasts, and instead, have big legs from all the walking and running around that they do.)

Yes, there’s the argument that there aren’t enough of these farmers (or enough farmland) to supply all the meat in our country if overnight the entire U.S. population decided to boycott factory farms. But most nutritionists and doctors agree that we need to cut way back on the amount of meat we eat. And, furthermore, the best way to inspire real change is to find leaders and role models like those guys who create new paradigms consumers and law-makers can aspire to. Or at least that’s my opinion.

As Foer and the recent reports make clear, it might be mission critical to planet Earth that factory farms stop right now. But let’s face it: Our culture is currently madly in love with meat. Not a day goes by that I don’t get another email from a PR firm about a new product flavored with bacon, or see a menu featuring chicken liver mousse on the appetizer list. That’s the reality. So now let’s work with it. This is just a starting point, something I’ve been thinking about for a long time. So let’s discuss: Where do you get your meat? Do you buy Safran Foer’s arguments?

DEAR ZAGAT

By Tim Carman From
Washington City Paper

As the Zagat restaurant guide dynasty continues to expand, a nagging discontent with its influence has pervaded the food world.
City Paper
food editor Tim Carman investigates just how the guides are put together—and how reliable they are.

T
he Zagat guide turned 30 years old this year, and in honor of the occasion, I’d like to give founders Tim and Nina Zagat a hearty thanks for all their years of service to the restaurant industry. And, if I may, I’d like to offer some friendly advice, too: You can go away now.

Ten years ago, back before everyone had access to a world of opinion via some device tucked into purse or pocket, diners relied on your slim red eponymous guide, which compiled restaurant ratings based on public opinion. It was your slap against the imperial voice of the critic. The Zagat book would be the voice of the people, guiding diners by the collective wisdom of the people, even if you would never tell us how many people actually voted for any one restaurant.

But now, nearly a decade into the 21st century, the people no longer need Zagat to compile data, crunch it, and cough it up in cute little numbers of dubious quality. They can compile their own dining information of dubious quality without all the opaque, Wizard of Oz, man-behind-the-curtain nonsense that you have insisted on for three decades.

The truth is, the Zagat guide belongs to a time when tourists and urban newcomers, looking for some guidance on restaurants, had nowhere else to turn. For these folks, the Zagat guide was like asking 1,000 random strangers, “What’s your favorite restaurant?” and then tabulating the results.

Except it wasn’t. The Zagat survey has never been random. Its respondents are, in the language of pollsters, self-selected. Or perhaps mostly self-selected. That’s the problem: Few people outside of Zagat’s New York offices know who actually votes and how those voters are selected.

Nina and Tim Zagat, a pair of former lawyers, have indicated in the past that they’d send out hundreds of thousands of surveys to law firms, medical offices, and other white-collar institutions where people, presumably, have the disposable income to eat out often enough to provide the Zagats with the free data they need to sustain their empire. But Zagat also solicits online reviews. Are those included in the final ratings? That would seem to be the case, but one restaurateur complained to me that some never appear on the site.

THE ZAGATS ARE LIKE a couple living in a walled compound, sealed off from some of the major developments of the past decade. The generation that willingly accepted unverified pronouncements from established authorities has moved into retirement homes. The younger generation is far more interested in its own opinion, which it shares in virtual communities like Yelp, MySpace, and Facebook. It values transparency among peers (if not in the comments sections of blogs), and its members are strung out on the 24-hour news cycle, which has them addicted to the latest 140-character information bomb from Twitter.

We do not live in a Zagat World anymore.

This epiphany came to me via the 2010 edition of the Washington, DC/Baltimore Zagat guide. There, on page 10, are the 40 highest-rated restaurants in the D.C. area in terms of food. At the top, for the second year in a row, is Makoto, a 25-seat Japanese restaurant in Palisades that prepares a pristine, multicourse
omakase
menu based on the seasons and the chef’s whims. The place earned 29 out of 30 points for food from Zagat raters, just barely beating out the Inn at Little Washington, which is rather impressive given the latter’s bona fides. In 1994, the
International Herald Tribune
named the Inn one of the 10 best restaurants in the world, and it has remained a darling of critics. Celebrities and politicians hop in helicopters to dine at the Inn at Little Washington. Washingtonians consult their GPS to figure out how to find Makoto.

You might be wondering how a niche restaurant like Makoto, with such a minuscule seating capacity, could generate enough votes to win the top spot two years running in the D.C. Zagat guide. There’s an easy answer: It didn’t. Makoto won the 2009 Zagat survey for food. The ratings in the 2010 book merely repeat those from last year’s survey, although the casual reader would be hard-pressed to know this important fact.

THE ONLY WAY I LEARNED about the duplicate ratings was through Michael Birchenall, editor and publisher of the local trade magazine
Foodservice Monthly
. After reading a blog item that I wrote about Makoto’s strange stranglehold on Zagat, Birchenall combed through his old guides and discovered an interesting trend: Those restaurants that topped the Zagat ratings in the odd years were the same ones that topped them in the even years. A spokesperson for Zagat confirmed his findings.

“As Michael Birchenall pointed out to you, we compile new survey results and prepare a new guide for Washington, DC/ Baltimore every other year,” e-mailed Tiffany Barbalato, director of communications for Zagat. “This is why the winning restaurants and top lists you refer to in the 2010 guide are the same as last year’s.”

Barbalato, in the same e-mail, alerted me to this line in the latest guide: “This 2010 Washington, DC/Baltimore Restaurants Survey is an update reflecting significant developments since our last Survey was published.” (Those significant developments, incidentally, are mostly the addition of new, unrated restaurants with an editor-written description.) Barbalato offered up this lone, coyly worded sentence as evidence that Zagat doesn’t try to dupe its customers about the duplicate nature of the even-year guides.

I had my doubts that this anemic sentence was pulling its weight, so I called a few restaurateurs and asked them if they knew about Zagat’s duplicate ratings. “I did not know that,” says Jeff Black, 46, the owner of four restaurants, including BlackSalt and Addie’s, who’s been working in the hospitality business since age 13. “That’s kind of lame.”

“Oh, really?” says Barton Seaver, chef at the new Blue Ridge in Glover Park. “OK, that’s a dinosaur. . . . We’re living in an era where Todd Kliman [of the
Washingtonian
] reviews a restaurant as it happens” via Twitter.

Their alarm at this news is understandable. Many restaurants have shorter life spans than the average prime-time program, which means that these places grow, mature, and gray quickly. A Zagat rating based on a year-old survey—or older—is the equivalent of judging this season’s
Mad Men
by the episodes of the previous season. Take, for example, the rating in the 2010 Zagat guide for Black’s Bar & Kitchen. Jeff Black’s Bethesda operation scores a respectable 24 for food, but that rating is based on a survey likely tabulated when Mallory Buford was executive chef in mid-2009. Black’s is now on its third different executive chef since Buford left. “Things do change [at restaurants],” Black says, “and they change quickly.”

Makoto may be one of the few exceptions to that rule. Time doesn’t stand still here—but it actually seems to expand, as if you get two minutes for every 60 ticks around the clock. Part of the sensation can be traced to a pair of unyielding policies at Makoto: You must take off your shoes in the anteroom and don slippers, and you must silence your cell phones. These house customs leave your toes swaddled in pillowy comfort and leave
you
to contemplate the finer things about the restaurant experience: your food, your dining companions, and your deepest, most neurotic thoughts.

Depending on the quality of the latter two, it’s often best to focus on the food. Yoshi Itoh, chef and co-owner of Makoto, has developed a disciplined kitchen that can quickly produce a small banquet of plates, some so good you’ll wonder why there’s not a line snaking around this restaurant every night. Deep-fried soft-shell crabs breaded with pebble-sized crumbles of rice cracker. Strips of medium-rare tenderloin so rich and tender they practically slide down your throat with the soy-based sauce. Wasabi-smeared slivers of fresh fish perched atop the fluffiest sushi rice you’ve ever seen, each piece of nigiri expertly balancing its heat with its sweet.

And yet for all its devotion to the fine art and technique of Japanese cooking, Makoto is not one point away from perfection, at least not according to my own internal guide. The tuna served as part of my sashimi course during a recent visit was mealy and gummy, while the flounder was flavorless. The dessert of shaved ice, flavored with fruit and Grand Marnier, was refreshing enough but, frankly, has worn out its welcome after countless appearances on Makoto’s
omakase
menu. Then there’s the squadron of female servers, who balance the gentility of a geisha girl with the fastidiousness of an English nanny. I can’t tell if they want to sit with me or tell me to clean up my room.

SO HOW DOES A PLACE like Makoto reach the pinnacle of the Zagat food ratings? If you research the published literature on Zagat, you’ll come across stories of restaurateurs trying to game the voting system. They’ll blast e-mails to the diners in their database, reminding them to cast their votes before the Zagat survey period ends. Their message is implied but clear: Stuff the Zagat ballot box for their restaurant. Some restaurateurs might even offer discounts, or other gifts, to those diners who cast ballots, despite the fact that this kind of tit-for-tat vote solicitation can get you banned from the Zagat book.

Jeffrey Buben, owner of Bistro Bis and Vidalia, knows for certain that some restaurateurs try to outsmart the Zagat system. He’s one of them (though without the promise of any kitchen bribe). In the past, he’s placed little promotional tents on the tables or slipped cards into the checks, asking diners to vote in the next Zagat survey. His goal is to land a Top 5 ranking in Zagat’s food category. He doesn’t apologize for it, either. “That’s what grass-roots PR is all about,” Buben says. He leaves it up to the Zagat data-crunchers to weed out the questionable ballots, which they claim they can do.

Makoto has accomplished exactly what Buben was aiming for. The restaurant opened either in 1992 or 1993 (neither Makoto manager Michiko Lecuyer nor anyone at the restaurant could remember), and for its first few years, it never even appeared in the Zagat guide. But then in 1997, it suddenly scored 28 out of 30 points for food, tying it for second place with L’Auberge Chez Francois in the entire D.C. market. Makoto has never slipped lower than third place since then, a run of more than 12 years.

Lecuyer credits the kitchen for Makoto’s long ride atop the charts. The chefs select only the freshest seasonal ingredients, from fish to vegetables, no matter what the price, she says. The cooks also prepare the
omakase
plates with a nod to authenticity. “We serve the food we want to eat,” Lecuyer says, “the way we want to eat it.... Our customers get it and understand it. That’s why we’ve been highly listed.”

Now, if there’s one question you don’t want to ask the owner or manager of an elegant Japanese restaurant like Makoto, it’s this: Do you beg or cheat for Zagat votes?

“We don’t do that,” Lecuyer says, noting that servers aren’t allowed to talk to customers. “We don’t know who is doing the survey and is not doing the survey. We don’t know.”

SUCH IGNORANCE MAY BE a blessing to Makoto, but it’s a bane for diners who want to know how legitimate Zagat’s ratings are. Team Zagat in New York won’t answer any questions about its survey methodology, and Tim and Nina Zagat turned down my interview request. It’s more of the same stonewalling that has worked for 30 years for the Zagats and their guides, which now cover subjects ranging from dining to golf in more than 100 countries. The company’s attitude forces you to make a snap decision: You either trust it or you lump it.

A lot of people are opting for the latter. According to a
New York Post
article from earlier this month, not only are Zagat sales “down dramatically,” but the company moved too slowly online, “allowing Yelp and others to dominate the market.” Zagat, the paper wrote, laid off about 16 people in May. The founders themselves seemed to see the writing on the wall a year earlier: The Zagats tried to sell their company for a reported $200 million last year but couldn’t find any buyers in that price range and pulled Zagat off the auction block.

It’s easy to see why people choose Yelp, Chowhound, Urban Spoon, and OpenTable over Zagat, both the guide and the online site. The obsolete-before-you-buy-it Zagat book is $14.95 a shot, and
Zagat.com
charges nearly $25 a year to access its complete site, including those ratings that can be seriously outdated. Plus, the mere act of creating an account with
Zagat.com
requires that you provide the kind of personal information—mailing address, telephone, birth year—that other sites have decided to forgo.

By contrast, Yelp, Chowhound, Urban Spoon, and other sites are free, and most already have established communities where members interact with each other on particular topics and restaurants. Even better for diners looking for recommendations on Yelp or OpenTable, they can see exactly how many people have commented on a particular restaurant—and how those reviews have been averaged into an overall rating. Even the minimal transparency on these sites makes Zagat seem like Stalinist Russia.