Jamison Foser

The case against not knowing what you're talking about

It’s official: Food has joined sports and politics atop the list of topics about which everybody feels perfectly comfortable pontificating about without having an ounce of actual knowledge or rational thought. Example: Neil Irwin, economics editor for the Washington Post’s Wonkblog has posted a rant about “small plates” in restaurants that wouldn’t really matter at all, except insofar as it offers a reminder not to assume that the economics editor for the Washington Post’s Wonkblog has any idea what he’s talking about.

Irwin:

[I]n Washington in 2013, I can’t get a decent meal.

Small plates have gone from novelty — an exciting new way to eat dinner! — to cliché, a tool for punishing those who just want an honest meal and, really, an affront to civilization.

In the most interesting and bustling stretch of restaurants in Washington right now, 14th Street NW, there are by my count seven establishments, all with delicious food, that offer that food primarily as small plates (The Pig, Masa 14, Estadio, Cork, Etto, Ghibellina and Bar Pilar). Several more are on the way. This madness must end.

So, by “in Washington,” Irwin means “in a four block stretch of 14th street.” OK, good to know. And by “honest meal” he means “not small plates.” Even that, of course, is stupid: There are plenty of restaurants that don’t serve “food primarily as small plates,” both on that very stretch of 14th street (For example, Cafe Saint-Ex, right next door to Bar Pilar, will happily sell Irwin the meat-and-three-sides meal he says he can’t find) and in Washington at large. Irwin is basically complaining that small plates restaurants serve … small plates. He may as well complain that in some of Washington’s most exciting Italian restaurants, it’s virtually impossible to get anything other than Italian food -- and forget about getting an order of Kung Pao Chicken. This is what he describes as “punishing” diners: Restaurants that bill themselves as small plates restaurants being exactly that.

It gets worse.

The economic case for small plates is compelling for the restaurants themselves; most notably, the chefs can focus on making each order when it comes in and can send it out whenever it is ready.

I’m neither an economist nor a restaurant industry bean-counter, but I’m pretty sure the economic case for small plates from a restaurant’s point of view is not about sending out each order whenever it is ready so much as it is about selling food that the public wants to buy -- and about the likelihood that selling three two-ounce plates of cod for $30 is more profitable than selling one six-ounce plate for $22.

But the very things that make small plates appealing for a restaurant’s chef and owner make them terrible for diners.

Well, no. Many diners love them. Many more diners sometimes love them, and other times prefer other things. Fortunately, in the capital of the United States of America, diners are not limited to choosing between seven tapas-style restaurants.

To wit: With a conventional entrée, the chef enters into an implicit agreement with the customer. You, Mr. or Ms. Customer, will order an entrée. I, the chef, will provide you with a properly sized portion of food for an adult human.

This is an astounding claim. It’s hard to believe anyone with even a passing familiarity with the subject is unaware of the fact that a “conventional entree” in an American restaurant includes a massive portion of food, far more than an adult human should eat in a single meal, which likely plays a significant role in our ever-expanding waistlines. But just for the record:

Food portions in America's restaurants have doubled or tripled over the last 20 years, a key factor that is contributing to a potentially devastating increase in obesity among children and adults. We Can! (Ways to Enhance Children's Activities and Nutrition), a program from the National Institutes of Health, offers parents tips to help their families maintain a healthy weight.

"Super-sized portions at restaurants have distorted what Americans consider a normal portion size, and that affects how much we eat at home as well," said Dr. Elizabeth G. Nabel, director of NIH's National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. "One way to keep calories in check is to keep food portions no larger than the size of your fist." Larger portions mean more calories, which can easily add up to extra weight.

This is basically disqualifying: Someone who thinks that a defining characteristic of a “conventional entree” in an American restaurant is that it contains “a properly sized portion of food for an adult human” simply has no business writing about food in restaurants.

Irwin continues:

It will be reasonably balanced nutritionally, with a mix of protein, starch and vegetables. It will be appropriately seasoned so that you might eat the whole thing. And the dish will arrive at the same time as your dining companions’ dinners.

Small-plates restaurants take each of those obligations and put them on the shoulders of the diner! You want to eat a quantity of food well-matched to the appetite of an adult human? That’s your problem, bub — and if you haven’t eaten here before, you’ll have to guess whether the grilled sardines are a heaping plate of fishies or a dainty, delicate snack.

Well, no. Small-plates restaurants give the diner more options about how they wish to structure and compose their meal. If they don’t desire those options, they probably shouldn’t go to a tapas-style restaurant. Far more likely, they chose the restaurant precisely because they do want those options. Irwin may as well complain that in a “conventional entree” restaurant, he is required to choose from among six to ten options -- not to mention a dozen more salad, soup, and dessert options. Why must chefs shove such obligations on the shoulders of the diner? Why can’t Irwin simply walk into a restaurant, sit down, and be handed food without making any decisions? (He can, of course. He just has to chose a restaurant that works that way.)

As for being required to guess about portion sizes: Literally ever restaurant I’ve ever been to that in any way resembles the restaurants Irwin is describing involve waitstaff who take your order. These people, being employed by the restaurant in question, and serving the dishes in question many times an evening many evenings a week, tend to be able to answer questions such as “Are the grilled sardines a heaping plate of fishes or a dainty, delicate snack?”

Do you want to sequence your meal — for example eating lighter, colder things like a salad or crudo before moving on to heavy, hotter dishes? That is also your problem.

Or, of course, your opportunity.

And in terms of flavor, chefs put themselves at an advantage when they offer only small dishes. They can provide cheap thrills, loading their dishes with salt and fat in ways that pop on the palate but would become gross if you ate a whole dinner-size portion.

And this, of course, presents an opportunity for the diner as well: The opportunity to have a few delicious bites of something that would be undesirable for reasons of taste or health at a portion four times as large.

And the sharing. Dear God, the sharing. You order from a menu the things you want to eat. In a small-plates restaurant, there is no sense of ownership. If you’re in the mood for shrimp, you order the shrimp dish. Yet social convention demands that you readily share your shrimp with the entire table! It’s one thing if you are eating with close friends or loved ones. But it becomes just awkward and weird if you are having a business meeting or are on a first date.

I probably wouldn’t conduct a business meeting over a rack of barbecued ribs or a bucket of steamed crabs, either. So, you know … I choose a restaurant that is appropriate to my circumstances and desires. It’s pretty simple, really.

So chefs of America: Embrace the entrée. Embrace the challenge of creating a dish that is balanced and enjoyable, arrives at the same time for the entire table and meets the nutritional needs of your customer. The dining experience is not about you and your convenience. It is about creating an enjoyable place where people will come and spend their hard-earned money. The small-plates phenomenon is a fraud, wrought upon all of us.

And that may be the most fundamental flaw with this whole screed, even worse than Irwin’s ignorance about entree portion sizes: Irwin thinks “The dining experience” is about one thing, defined as Irwin defines it, and accomplished in one very narrow way. It quite obviously is not. “The dining experience” is about many different things to many different people. It is not Irwin’s to define. And that god for that, or we’d all be eating the same damn thing every night.

But we cannot just wait for chefs to come around to this view, America. We must demand it: adult-size meals for adults. When a waiter begins a meal by explaining, in a chipper voice, “We have a small-plates concept here, so you’ll want to order two to four dishes per person,” the proper response is to stand up, proudly and confidently, and bid that restaurant, and its inherent selfishness, a quick goodbye.

There’s that “adult-size meal” idiocy again. Worse: Irwin doesn’t understand that it is his own “inherent selfishness” on display. He doesn’t want to bother choosing a restaurant that is appropriate to his desires for the meal in question; he wants to be able to walk into any restaurant and have the precise, narrowly-defined “dining experience” he is trying to impose on us all. He doesn’t want you to be able to choose a tapas restaurant, because he wants a steak and two sides. That’s selfishness.

On the other hand, I’d pay an extra five bucks at my next meal for the humor value of seeing Irwin throw that little temper tantrum at the next table.

UPDATE: A little more:

1) Irwin’s implication that Washington, DC lacks restaurants suitable for business meetings is perhaps the wrongest statement that has ever been made about restaurants in the history of Washington. Or about Washington in the history of restaurants. Half of downtown consists of restaurants you wouldn’t go to for any other reason than a business meeting!

2) That bit about the “inherent selfishness” of tapas-style restaurants continues to rankle. In a standard-entree restaurant, the chef decides that, say, the duck should be served with potatoes and asparagus. If you’d prefer it with green beans and rice, you’re out of luck: The chef has decided. In a small plates joint, you have the freedom to compose your meal as you’d like. Want the duck and green beans and the sweetbreads and the arugula salad? Done. There are great things about both approaches, and perfectly good reasons for preferring the first on any given night or in general. Or every time, if that’s your style. But it’s pretty nutty to describe the second, in which the restaurant gives the diner more freedom, as demonstrating greater selfishness.

3) I can’t help but wondering if the problem is that Irwin simply doesn’t much like or care about food. Not only because he seems to have an extremely narrow view of what constitutes “the dining experience” -- it’s possible, of course, to care deeply about something in a fairly narrow way -- though that’s part of it. But look again at his description of the specific restaurants he derides: “the most interesting and bustling stretch of restaurants in Washington right now.” But Irwin clearly does not find these restaurants interesting: He finds them infuriating. He hates eating in them. So why does he describe them this way? My guess is that he does so because they are trendy. Other people say these restaurants are interesting, and Irwin doesn’t really care enough about food or restaurants to find things that excite him. He just follows the buzz to trendy places, and has gotten sick of them. I’ve been to three of the seven restaurants Irwin names, and thoroughly enjoyed all three. But if they aren’t your cup of tea, there are plenty of other interesting meals to be had in Washington, at pretty much every price point and style.* If someone can’t be bothered to find them, that’s quite all right with me. But I’m not sure why they think anyone should take their thoughts on the topic seriously. It’s the equivalent of someone who doesn’t watch television deciding to check out this Arrested Development show that’s been getting some buzz and then writing a column about how television sucks because there aren’t any dramas or reality shows.

* Except, of course, bagels.

Rick Perry or Dangerous Psychopath?

QUIZ TIME: Which of the following quotes is from Texas Governor Rick Perry, and which is from a well-known psychopath?

1: "It's a good issue to keep alive. It's fun to poke at him.”

2: “I don't know what y’all would do to him in Iowa, but we would treat him pretty ugly down in Texas.”

3: “The louder they scream, the more we know that we are getting something done.”

4: “My brain is like a chicken pot pie.”

5: “Don’t attack my dog or you might get shot.”

6: “Adios, mofo”

ANSWER: Trick question. They’re all Rick Perry.

(Quiz inspired by this tweet.)

David Brooks and The Boastfulness of the Elites

David Brooks takes aim at the rise of “matter-of-fact” boasting you’ve probably witnessed dozens of times already today:

Many rich people once felt compelled to try to square their happiness at being successful with their embarrassment about it. They adopted what Charles Murray calls a code of seemliness (no fancy clothes or cars). Not long ago, many people covered their affluence with a bohemian patina, but that patina has grown increasingly thin.

Now most of us engage in more matter-of-fact boasting: the car stickers that describe the driver’s summers on Martha’s Vineyard, the college window stickers, the mass embrace of luxury brands, even the currency of “likes” on Facebook and Reddit as people unabashedly seek popularity.

For many people, vacation bumper stickers are nothing more than little daily reminders of happy times that help them get through the drudgery of daily life. And for many, college window stickers serve a similar purpose, or as a proud reminder of a hard-won accomplishment. (No: Pride and boastfulness are not the same, just as an immigrant telling a neighbor that his daughter has become the first in their family to graduate college is not the same as a third-generation Harvard man endless reminding you of his college years “near Boston.”)

That’s not to say these totems are never deployed in a boastful manner. Of course they can be. But they’re remarkably bad examples of elite boastfulness. Compare the boastfulness of a Martha’s Vineyard or University of Michigan bumper sticker to, say, this July 12, 2012 David Brooks column:

I’d say today’s meritocratic elites achieve and preserve their status not mainly by being corrupt but mainly by being ambitious and disciplined. They raise their kids in organized families. They spend enormous amounts of money and time on enrichment. They work much longer hours than people down the income scale, driving their kids to piano lessons and then taking part in conference calls from the waiting room.

[…]

The problem is that today’s meritocratic elites cannot admit to themselves that they are elites.

Everybody thinks they are countercultural rebels, insurgents against the true establishment, which is always somewhere else. This attitude prevails in the Ivy League, in the corporate boardrooms and even at television studios where hosts from Harvard, Stanford and Brown rail against the establishment.

David Brooks is a columnist for the New York Times, teaches at Yale, and lives in a $4 million home in Washington, DC. He is, by any reasonable definition, an elite. And he writes that he and his fellow elites achieve their lofty status by being more ambitious, disciplined, and hard-working than everyone else. Because they dial into conference calls from piano teachers’ waiting rooms, which Brooks thinks is a hardship unimaginable to a factory worker or waitress working 12 hours a day on her feet so she can earn less in a year than Brooks likely makes for a single speech. And he writes this not in his diary or a private journal of daily affirmations but in the pages of the New York Times, for all the world to see. He even goes on to argue that the problem with today’s elites -- like, remember, David Brooks -- is that they are reluctant to admit their own status.

And less than a year later, Brooks complains that bumper stickers celebrating a family vacation or an alma matter are “boasting.”

David Brooks, by the way, attended the University of Chicago, which his New York Times bio page does not hesitate to mention. When Brooks teaches at Yale, he assigns his own articles as required reading. Modestly, of course.