Can professional food writers disagree? You bet your sweet bippy they can. But on the whole, those arguments are usually of the “how-many-angels-can-dance-on-the-head-of-a-pin” variety.
Tag: restaurant critics
Chefs Tough As Nails? We Don’t Think So.
Never confuse the size of your talent with the size of your paycheck. – Marlon Brando
All wish to have knowledge, but few are willing to pay the price. – Juvenal
ELV note: Chef John Tesar’s feud with restaurant critic Leslie Brenner of the Dallas Morning News has been getting a lot of traction lately. In response to it all, a certain anonymous Dallas chef posted this missive on line, siding with Tesar (complete disclosure: JT is a Facebook friend and a chef we hold in high regard), and calling out Brenner in a number of ways. Both it and our response are probably a bit over-the-top, but both he (the anonymous Dallas chef, NOT John Tesar) and Eating Las Vegas have some rather strong, contrary opinions which we at ELV thought you might enjoy agreeing or disagreeing with. So, without further ado, for your elucidation and delectation, we give you the following war of words:
Dear Go to Hell,
Chefs tough as nails? Maybe some of them, but you sir are a big baby. A small-minded, fragile little girl who objects to someone’s tone of voice. What are you? Twelve? Man up…and admit that you and your ilk get your feelings hurt very, very easily.
A chef is a craftsman who is trained to put out food, in volume, with a minimum of health concerns to those eating it. That’s all you really are. A cook. Not a humanitarian or a philanthropist. “Anyone can write about food,” you say. Well, I suppose so, just the way anyone can heat up food. Even an idiot can make a pot of stew and fill people up with it. And you sir, I fear, are a stewcook. If you truly had game, I suspect you wouldn’t take critical words to heart like sappy teenager.
Really? Really?
Eating Las Vegas refuses to get with the Marilyn-sanity that’s going on over this “earnest review” of an Olive Garden in Grand Forks, ND, because 1) the prose is written with all the skill and grace of a twelve year old (and for that statement we apologize to twelve year olds everywhere), and 2) there is more than a little patronizing going on with all of the fawning over an older woman who clearly can’t write and doesn’t know what she’s talking about.
For this we have been called mean by more than a few Facebook friends.