A hamburger with a giant bone protruding from between the buns. Barred knifejaw, a rare deep-ocean fish virtually without flesh and tasting mainly of bilge.
Sound like anything you want to munch on tonight?
Probably not — but weird and way-out foodstuffs are too much the bread and butter of restaurant coverage. You think the Academy Awards are out of touch with popular taste? The Oscars are Mayberry, USA, compared with the Food-with-a-capital-F crowd. And that crowd starts with those of us privileged to write about restaurants as critics or reporters.
Making my rounds, and reading my esteemed competitors, I’m struck that The New York Times’ Pete Wells, New York magazine’s Adam Platt, Eater.com’s Ryan Sutton and myself, among many others, inhabit a different planet than the one where normal people eat.
Reviewers answer to an ambiguous calling. Are we here to entertain readers with our presumed wit? Or to serve as consumer guides? Or judge food as if it were fine art, as we often seem to regard precious presentations at tiny, quirky Japanese, Thai and Korean places? (Some who celebrate the eclipse of “fine dining” by the more “casual” shtick fail to see irony in the eating elite’s drooling embrace of establishments with $200-a-head prix fixe.)
It was revelatory to hear a sushi-loving Japanese businessman whom I met blow off the idea of trying Sushi Nakazawa, home to the near-inedible barred knifejaw. Nor did he “get” New York critics’ obsession with $30-an-ounce Japanese Kobe beef: “American is better,” he said, and cited Peter Luger and Benjamin Steakhouse on East 41st Street as his favorites.
The written word, in print or online, increasingly seems estranged from actual cooking and eating habits, to a degree that makes TV’s celebrity clown-chef scene seem almost refreshing.
The “Comfort Food” issue of Bon Appetit, probably the most down-to-earth major food magazine, touts on its cover “The New Rules of Pasta.” Rules, for one of the world’s least pretentious dishes?
At first, lines like, “grated horseradish instead of Parmigiano? Why not?” grated on me. Aren’t the vast majority of Italian pasta eaters in New York perfectly happy with plain old orecchiette, sausage and broccoli rabe?
But then I remembered another recent story that celebrated just such departures from pasta tradition and snickered over old Italian-American “cliches.”
Its author was me.
Jaded restaurant reviewers in pursuit of all things novel, bizarre and entertainingly horrible are like cabaret critics who quest for songwriters’ “obscure repertory” after listening to 1,000 renditions of “Night and Day.” They’ve lost touch with what even many adventurous, well-traveled palates actually enjoy.
We’ve all written about “Venetian-Japanese fusion” dishes at All’onda — such as squid-ink arancini (rice balls) pointlessly crowned with sea urchin.
But traditional Italian places, the kind the public loves, bore the branzino out of the critical elites. Where are the reviews, other than my own, for Florian — a new, 200-seat trattoria on Park Avenue South that’s packed day and night?
Maybe some regard Florian as too much like owner Shelly Fireman’s three other Italian spots. It’s actually quite different, but even if it wasn’t, doesn’t so big a place in a part of town with few Italian options deserve a look and taste?
The notorious bone-in burger is among numerous offbeat items at M. Wells Steakhouse in Long Island City. Among those who reviewed it, Serious Eats editor Max Falkowitz had the balls to state, “Much of the menu makes no [bleeping] sense.”
Meantime, in the 14 months when funky M. Wells has hogged the spotlight, scarcely a word’s been written about five big, new, mainstream-menu Manhattan steakhouses, each with many more seats than M. Wells’ mere 70.
Among them: Charlie Palmer Steak, from one of America’s most famous chefs; and Mastro’s, the first New York edition of a legendary celebrity haunt in Beverly Hills.
Yet the only new Manhattan beef palace that’s gotten attention is Hunt & Fish Club, thanks to its over-the-top design and “Real Housewives” clientele. Only one critic’s reviewed it:
Bloomberg’s Tejal Rao, who leveled it with a zero-star howler.
We critics love to unleash our poisonous wit on hapless fiascos like Texas de Brazil, which I recently napalmed. It amused lots of readers. But would the dining millions be better served had Rao and I written about steak joints actually worth their time and money?
Critics shouldn’t pander to lowest common denominator tastes — or even to middlebrow taste — at the expense of identifying what’s legitimately original and creative.
But while they say that you can indict a ham sandwich in New York, we’re not supposed to enjoy eating one unless it’s made with pork from a remote corner of Andalusia, served on gnarled “artisanal” sourdough and spread with ramp mustard from Brooklyn.
And if you must ask what ramps are, I’ve made my case.
Steve Cuozzo writes The Post’s Free Range food column.