Medium Raw

I should mention that I visited New Orleans a year after Richman’s article. It was a city still struggling to get up off its knees. The vast dining rooms and banquet spaces of Antoine’s, the beloved institution in the French Quarter, were mostly empty—and yet the restaurant soldiered on with nearly a full staff, unwilling to fire people who’d worked for the company for decades. Everyone I spoke to, at one point or another, would still tear up and start to cry, remembering lost friends, lost neighborhoods, whole lives swept away. It seemed sometimes like all New Orleans had had a collective nervous breakdown, their psyches shattered by first the disaster itself—and then, later, by a pervasive sense of betrayal. How could a country—their country—have let this happen, their neighbors left to huddle like cattle in a fetid, reeking stadium, or bloat and rot, day after day, in full view of the world?

It’s the kind of scenario, the kind of special circumstances, one would think, where even the most hardened journalist would ask himself, “Do I really want to kick them when they’re down?” Richman was not reporting on Watergate, after all—he wasn’t uncovering a secret Iranian nuclear program. He was writing an overview of restaurants. About a restaurant town that survives largely on its service economy. At its lowest, most vulnerable point—right after a disaster unprecedented in American history. And not for the Washington Post, either, mind you. For a magazine about ties and grooming accessories and choosing the right pair of slacks.

But no matter. The truth must be served. Alan Richman knows what “authentic” Creole cuisine means. And he damn sure wants you to know it.

This, alone, was surely reason enough to qualify as a finalist for Douchebag of the Year, but there was also this—another column: Richman’s “restaurant commandments,” in which he imperiously (if rather wittily) laid out a compendium of things which He found annoying and which those restaurants hoping to stay in His good graces should probably take to heart. This kind of article is much loved by writers in the field of restaurants, particularly recognizable ones, like Richman, whose lives are no doubt made easier in their daily rounds once their likes and dislikes have been communicated to their eager-to-please victims ahead of time. Under commandment #19, Richman lists:

Show Us the Chef:

If dinner for two is costing $200, you have every right to expect the chef to be at work. Restaurants where the famous celebrity chef has taken the night off should post a notice, similar to the ones seen in Broadway theaters: “The role of our highly publicized head chef will be played tonight by sous-chef Willie Norkin, who took one semester of home economics and can’t cook.”

As an example of lazy, disingenuous food journalism, one could scarcely hope for a better example. And this kind of cheap populism is particularly galling coming from Richman, because he knows better. If anyone knows the chef is not in, is not likely to be in, and can’t reasonably be expected to be in anytime soon—it’s Richman. He doesn’t live and work in a vacuum. He doesn’t write from a cork-lined room. Like others of his ilk, he moves in a demimonde of writers, journalists, bloggers, “foodies,” freeloaders, and publicists, all of whom know each other by sight: a large, ever-migrating school of fish involved—to one degree or another—in a symbiotic relationship with chefs. For years, he has observed his subjects being shaken down by every charity, foundation, “professional association,” civic booster, and magazine symposium—as well as by some of his colleagues. Many times, no doubt, they have complained to him (off the record) directly. Countless times, I’m sure, Richman has gazed wearily across the latest Fiji water–sponsored chef clusterfuck, over the same tuna tartare hors d’oeuvres (provided by some poor chef who’s been squeezed into service by whatever the concern of the moment is), seen the chef or chefs dutifully doing their dog-and-pony act. He also well understands, one would think, the economics of maintaining the kinds of operations he’s talking about.

Yet he demands, and expects us to believe, that every time a table of customers plunks down $200 at one of Bobby Flay’s restaurants, that Bobby himself should rush on over to personally wrap their tamales—then maybe swing by, give them a little face time over dessert. Thomas Keller, according to Richman’s thesis, should be burning up the air miles, commuting between coasts for every service at the French Laundry and Per Se. Particularly if Richman is in the house.