On the Inside Looking In
Veteran Food Critic Observes the Changing Landscape of his Field
By: Ari Mehlman
“To be here is to be in a food wonderland. It’s possible for me to have pursued this job for 30 years without exhaust[ion].”
Robert Sietsema — Eater
Robert Sietsema is one of NYC’s maven food critics. 20 years with The Village Voice, and the last ten with Eater NY. But before he was writing about Chopped Cheese, he was eating Italian Beef. His roots in the midwest help him put into perspective the behemoth that is NYC food culture, and its reportage. At this point, he’s pretty far down the buffet line… having accumulated lots of food for thought.
And I attempt to stomach it. “The biggest problem is that most food journalists don’t really like to eat.” Sietsema has kept receipts on trends and ethics in the industry. Tips follow:
What’s your Bodega order?
My bodega order is a breakfast sandwich of pork sausage, egg and no cheese and a Kaiser roll.
I do pork sausage, egg, and cheese on a bagel. I don’t mind the bodega bagels. I think they’re just fine.
As bread, yeah, it’s true. Sometimes when I go into a bagel place I get a bagel with hot pastrami even though pastrami in a microwave is like a sin. [But it’s] salty, greasy.
How do you approach different restaurants based on their fare and scale? Do you have a different mindset going into an expensive place versus a little hole in the wall or food cart or something?
The guide is based on economy and being a consumer oriented order. If I get a really cheap chopped cheese sandwich, and it’s not very good, I’m going to ignore the place. Whereas if I go to a restaurant that charges $100 to $150 per person, and most of them do now, I’m much more critical.
I often go to restaurants that are very expensive and it looks like the food is all like invented for Instagram. It’s made to look really good, but there’s very little correlation between how something tastes and what it looks like. If you go to a diner and get corned beef hash and eggs, it doesn’t photograph well, but it tastes delicious. You’re not as critical about a diner burger.
I like the patty melt at Joe Jr. up on —
— on the East Side. They have some of the best diner hamburgers in town because they barely touch the ground beef and then cook it immediately.
How effective is social media in delivering quality food content? Is it a viable way to do your job?
These are all moot points because they’ve taken over completely anyway. And whether they do a good job or not is not the issue. It doesn’t lead to true knowledge. It leads to thinking of the world as a Phantasmagoria of flashing images.
What about the videos recommending a few cheap spots in a neighborhood?
You’re right, TikToks of cheap restaurants are very useful because the mainstream media doesn’t pay attention to those places and never did. What they lack is knowledge and research. There’s no sense that the people that do [these videos] really care what the origin of the dish is, or any interesting ethnographic features of it.
As a food critic, what’s the difference between responding to trends and being responsible for them?
Writers have always been ensnared in various ethical dilemmas, and the quality of the ethics of food writers has slowly slipped downward. We now have influencers, bloggers, people from mainstream publications who are now accepting food for free, and writing as a result of that constraint. I want to write honest food criticism and reportage. It’s easier because everyone else is so corrupt.
The biggest problem is that most food journalists don’t really like to eat. Most people that go into it are interested in the glamor. I don’t have the mindset. I’m not a news hound. I am not interested in a lot of things that an actual person trained as a journalist might care about.
You don’t consider yourself a journalist?
I’ve had editors who have these things called nut grafs — I don’t know what the fuck it is — they make you write all the most important things in the first graf. Every successive graf is more and more boring until it is so boring that everyone has given up and doesn’t read it. When I worked at the Village Voice, I would always try to have a question embedded early in the piece that I didn’t answer until the end. It’s like a cowboy on a bucking bronco or a steer, wanting to keep them on as long as possible — make them hang on one way or the other. But frankly, nobody reads anymore. Ever. So why are we even bothering to write?
What experience did you get writing for the Village Voice that you thought was unique?
Writing for The Voice was just fantastic. Every one of the editors that I had taught me so many things.
I learned to stop thinking that a single piece of writing was somehow precious or unique. I learned how to turn out volumes of material and that has kept me employed ever since. I will tell you a little secret which they may not have told you in Journalism School. The way to remain employed as a journalist is to do exactly what the editor says. There’s nothing worse than someone who thinks that their writing is so great that they can’t stand to change a word or two or even throw out an entire paragraph. Be compliant, be agreeable.
Sort of a contrary question to your response… Do you feel like your own quirks have helped you make your career in this industry?
Definitely. Nothing helped me more than being in a rock band for 14 years. It made me unselfconscious — I could get up on stage and play absolute crap in front of an audience. To both give a shit and not give a shit at the same time is a talent, and it’s one that I enjoy.
What does a typical day look like for you?
The best part about my job is that I can pretty much do anything I want at this point. I often ask my editor for suggestions just for the hell of it, but it’s easy to think of things to do. Nothing I like better than going to a neighborhood I haven’t been through in a long time, noting how it’s changed, and eating in three or four places in sequence. You’re going out into unfamiliar territory, and wondering what you’re going to find.
Robert Sietsema, Restaurant Critic, robert@eater.com
