Letter Of The Week

Dear Readers, We usually don’t post comments as LOTW, but when an esteemed, national food writer weighs in with a comment about being mentioned in one of our posts, we thought it best to highlight (and correct) the record.

Re: Seymour Britchky and your referral to me in: How To Be A Restaurant Critic

To Eating Las Vegas,

Someone asked me if I said this about Seymour and–no! Impossible that I could ever dismiss him. I also treasured my battered copy of his collected reviews, in the old (ie original) New York Magazine typeface, and wrote him a fan letter in college, and had the pleasure of meeting him on numerous occasions, and actually got to edit him (on a jazz piano bar) at my first job. He was certainly singular, and worth both remembering and reading.

Corby Kummer

Atlantic Magazine

Dear Corby,

Je m’excuse! So glad you share the same opinion of SB as I do…..And you got to work with him! I’m broccoli-green with envy.

It was unfair of me to lump all of you in the same basket, but I distinctly remember someone (I think it was RR) completely dissing the poor attendee who wanted to discuss Britchky’s prose/approach to the craft of restaurant writing. At the time, I remember thinking some kind of professional jealousy is at work here, but it’s probably a New York thing that we in the hinterlands can’t penetrate.

Regardless, he was left out of the conversation that day and I thought it was a disservice to The Great One, and to the audience.

But no words of dismissal or derision came from you, and we shall post a correction forthwith.

Sincerely,

ELV