Only Restaurant Employees Should be Writing About Food

A funny little thing I wrote about a funny little idea that will never go away.

Photo: Light Field Studios/Getty Images.

I’m sick and tired of all these so-called food journalists telling us how food should be when they’ve never spent a day in a professional kitchen. Who are they kidding?

If they haven’t spent six years on the line of a TGI Friday’s reheating Sysco chicken wings how could their opinion about the lobster bisque being too watery possibly be credible?

I don’t care what degree they might have, how could a journalist know if a rib-eye tastes good if they haven’t painstakingly sous-vided a duck breast for two hours, then tea smoked it, glazed it in blackberry-Sichuan gastrique, seared it over binchotan and finally tweezered flowers all over it?

They may have spent 25 years reporting on the restaurant industry but if they haven’t spent a few weeks making stock or breaking down animal carcasses their thoughts on the state of fine dining are absolutely null and void.

You want a critical review of that new modern Italian place down the street? Who better than someone that spent years working with the chef and was in their wedding party?

All those years in journalism school, reading texts and papers, analyzing facts, doing interviews, chasing hard news and listening to experts from other fields will never be as relevant in food writing as the ability to pair scallops and strawberries six different ways.

Only someone that has worked a no less than 8 hands dinner of male Norwegian chefs from restaurants with Michelin stars could ever be able to communicate to an electrician that lives in the Cleveland suburbs why they should be enlightened by the chawanmushi being served in a hyper-local bistro instead of spending their money on the roast chicken they know will comfort them.

I’m not just talking about restaurant criticism either. I mean all aspects of food writing.

You know who has the time to go roaming back streets of immigrant communities to seek out mom-and-pop restaurants? It’s a line cook that works 18 hour days, that’s who.

Who is more capable to analyze complex data systems about supply chain economics than someone who staged at The French Laundry for six weeks?

What would a mother or father that cooks three meals a day for their children ever know about writing recipes that make people happy?

Who is more fit to break down widespread instances of seafood fraud than someone who has put tilapia on a menu and called it red snapper?

Can you really report on workplace abuse if you have never seen a coworker grope a waitress?

Wouldn’t The Gastronomical Me have been so much better if MFK Fisher had worked the brunch shift at a country club?

Can you imagine the profile of an indigenous farming family written by someone who has never catered a wedding in Silicon Valley?

Why trust some blogger to break down what the 50 Best ecosystem means when you could have someone whose restaurant financially depends on it explain it for you?

Who better to help us understand deforestation from agriculture than someone who appears in advertisements for an industrial beef supplier?

Really, what possibly could Jonathan Gold have told you that Mario Batali could not?

And while we’re at it, let’s make sure only musicians that are classically trained should be rock critics, that political reporters have worked for the government and if doctors want to write a medical paper about curing a disease they should have that illness themselves.