San Francisco Chronicle restaurant reviewer writes about Los Angeles, San Francisco Chronicle restaurant reviewer gets slammed by locals, who complain that “he doesn’t get us.” Usual NorCal versus SoCal silliness, right? Big deal.
Well, it is a big deal when said critic is Michael Bauer, who has very little competition for the title of San Francisco’s most influential restaurant critic, and when it consequently surfaces that Bauer may not really know exactly what he’s talking about. Or so alleges Eater LA, which attacked Bauer on Friday for a blog post in which Bauer defined some esoteric ingredients (speck, finocchiona, saba, burrata) that he’d written about in his Los Angeles piece. Problem was, says Eater LA’s “anonymous tipster,” “he got almost everything wrong.”
Speck is smoked, not flavored with juniper; finocchiona was spelled wrong, and very rarely includes curry; saba is not vinegar, but sweet, greatly reduced grape juice, a signature ingredient of Batali; mantecato is described correctly but spelled wrong; stracotto may be made with shank at Mozza but in fact usually is made with other cuts; and burrata isn’t a creamy mozzarella-type cheese but mozzarella stuffed with cream, which is a crucial difference.
Eep, embarrassing. At least Bauer spelled stereotypes correctly.
These are esoteric ingredients? Only if you don’t know much about Italian food. Not knowing SF food writing well, I take it that’s not Bauer’s strong point?
To be fair, no one can be an expert on the finer points of every cuisine one is likely to come across in a major California city (even the “major” cuisines an SF restaurant review would be expected to be familiar with would have to include Chinese (several regions), Vietnamese, Mexican and South American, as well at the more “traditional” European cuisines). And a copy editor should have fact-checked the article.
That said, Bauer is widely considered to be an idiot by people in the Bay Area who actually know anything about food. He’s basically a journalist who writes about food (and not a very good one at that), not someone who is specially trained in culinary arts
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfgate/detail?blogid=26&entry_id=4849
Hello, spell check?! Ok, so maybe Microsoft Word wouldn’t have caught these errors, but The Food Lover’s Companion would. Any good journalist does research and fact-checks his stuff. Who cares if it’s esoteric or not. Is it CORRECT or not?
http://www.slammedmagazine.com
I think this article sums up the whole issue of Mr. Bauer brilliantly.