CRITICAL ANALYSIS by Philip Innes |
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Many consider San Francisco second
only to New York as a restaurant destination, although Los Angeles, Chicago
and New Orleans might have something to say about that. And understandably,
there are some from the Bay Area who consider San Francisco second to none.
Because it’s such a desirable place to
live, I expected its top daily to hold a stable of restaurant critics to
rival The New York Times. It’s on that assumption that I turned my
lens onto the Bay Area right after New York. The Top Dog: The Bauer Area When the Times job—considered by many the top restaurant critic position in the nation—was up for grabs, one name bandied about was Michael Bauer of the San Francisco Chronicle. But apparently the Times couldn’t give the post away. According to Alexandra Wolfe of the New York Observer, four people were offered the job and turned it down, one of whom was Bauer. San Francisco’s near deliverance was New York’s narrow escape. I got the impression, as I scorched phone lines and fiber-optic cables between the East and Left Coasts, that there were more than a few in the Bay Area who wouldn’t have been sorry to see Bauer go. Speculation was rampant as to why Bauer turned down the Times position. Most of it focused on the notion that he would lose money because his Top 100 Bay Area Restaurants guide was so lucrative. Upon analysis of his work and position, I have other theories. First, the Times critic operates under a microscope where every slip is magnified. Second, Bauer managed to create his own little fiefdom in San Francisco, a feat which he could never duplicate in New York. And third, in San Francisco, the fall-off to the second most influential critic seems much greater than it is in New York. In fairness to Bauer, when this article went to press, the Association of Food Journalists (AFJ) had just announced Bauer as a finalist in its over 350,001-circulation restaurant criticism category for 2004. (Does the Times even enter?) His selection couldn’t have been for any of the 35 reviews I labored through, trying to divine how he became San Francisco’s most influential restaurant critic. Well, perhaps for his review of Quince. When Bauer puts his mind to it—which isn’t nearly often enough—he’s a decent writer. At Yan Can, the crispy pot stickers…had the look of a 90-year-old Florida snow bird who had spent too much time in the sun; salt comprised four of the five spices in the five-spice chicken; and the chiles hit the palate like a hammer. More often, the writing is sloppy, as if Bauer were phoning in his stories. How about this howler from his Espetus review? You can take your grandmother from Delaware, your aunt from Idaho or your cousin from Arkansas and they’ll both have a good time. Of another eatery, Bauer wrote: To become fully realized the restaurant needs to do three things: edit, edit and edit. The same could be said of Bauer. Bauer’s writing is frequently slapdash, as if he hasn’t been challenged in far too long. So often he starts a metaphor, then mixes it. In the process, their firstborn seems to have been pushed to the back burner. I wondered if he understood how to finish a metaphor or, better yet, continue a theme throughout an entire article until I read his Quince review. In that piece, he set up a (frequently used) stage metaphor, then continued it beautifully throughout. I found this disturbing, because I’m more offended by someone who can’t be bothered to write well rather than one who isn’t able to. After all, if a person can’t write, then the editor who hired him should shoulder a sizable portion of the blame. Of Globe, in yet another mixed metaphor, he says…the spell has worn off, the sign of a place that has been on autopilot for too many years. Bauer should know something about that. Bauer’s observations are often astute, in part because he held his position 18 years. His longevity is not only his greatest strength, it’s also his Achilles’ heel. The biggest problem with Bauer, and why some seem to feel it’s time for him to move on, is that he knows everyone—he’s too embedded. On my first visit, I…[observed] Jean Alberti, former chef-owner of Kokkari; Daniel Rasic, former chef of La Table; Hiro and Lissa Sone of Terra in St. Helena; and Stan Bromley, general manager of the Four Seasons. On other visits, I spotted a whole different crop of notables… Bauer name-drops to give his readers confidence in his knowledge of the restaurant scene, or perhaps to show his own importance. But rather than inspiring confidence, for many restaurant industry observers, such statements instill concern. A 2001 San Francisco Magazine piece by Maile Carpenter took the former president of the AFJ to task for his lack of distance from the restaurant scene. “We used to have a picture of him hanging in our kitchen,” Carpenter quoted Kevin Cronin, co-owner of Tra Vigne, “but everyone knows what he looks like, so we threw it out.” Another concern expressed in that article was the disproportionate power Bauer wields and how he wields it. “I think he’s mean-spirited and I think his intentions are pretty nasty sometimes,” said one of Carpenter’s anonymous sources. “If you don’t play with Michael,” added renowned restaurateur Gary Danko, “he doesn’t want you around.” Wrote Carpenter, “We are eating in Michael Bauer’s town. His reviews have thrown chefs into a tizzy trying to please him, and in the madness of figuring out what he likes week after week, it seems some have been scared into padding their menus with safe pop hits.” Concluded Carpenter, restaurateurs “have gone crazy trying to make their restaurants more… Baueresque.” The bottom line on Bauer? One industry observer I asked put it this way: “He’s a mediocre writer, a mediocre mind, a man of no inspiration and limited taste.” Middle of the Road: The Rest of the Chronicle Staff Where the 14 Times critics I evaluated last issue evidenced a stunning array of talent ranging from terrific to terrible, the Chronicle seems to have packed its 10 critics (that I counted) into a middle ground ranging from pretty decent to not-so-great. Bill Daley left the Hartford Courant critic position at the end of 2002 for a job at the Chronicle. (He has recently moved on to the head critic position at the Chicago Tribune, which owns the Courant and swallowed the chain of alternative newsweeklies where I got my start.) Daley is a capable but not especially graceful writer, which was enough to put him at, or near, the head of the Chronicle critic pack. Tilde Herrera seems to be doing good work for the Chronicle. Karola Saekel appears knowledgeable. Kim Severson writes well most of the time. Miriam Morgan, Chronicle Food Editor, exhibits less personality than Saekel in her writing, which is often why writers become editors in the first place. Amanda Berne seems to emulate her editor’s favored method of concluding: With some tweaks, it could shine. Tanya K. Henry’s writing is just tolerable. At times, Stett Holbrook can draw an intentional laugh, as when he writes of Pete’s Brass Rail & Car Wash: There is no brass rail. Nor is there a car wash. There’s no Pete, for that matter. He’d better be able to find the laughs, for how else could one bear a beat in which one must cover Red Smoke Grill and Red Tractor Café in (so to speak) short order? And finally, there’s GraceAnn Walden, a scoop columnist who pens the “Cook’s Night Out” column in the Chronicle (and who also contributes to Where Magazine, which is placed inside of hotels and greatly influences tourist, if not local, spending habits.) Walden can go 10 paragraphs deep without disclosing the restaurant she’s visiting, all of the while fawning over the chef who’s accompanying her to dinner. The San Francisco Treats: The Top Five San Francisco turns out to have more than its fair share of fine writers. In New York, I felt first place was clear-cut. In the Bay Area, determining first place was as difficult as separating the finishers in one of those bicycle races where a small lead pack of riders crosses the finish line with identical times. But in separating the contestants in a photo finish, Josh Sens of San Francisco Magazine wins by a nose. Throughout his pieces, readers are treated to sens-ational descriptions ranging from elegant (Chinese long beans, which stretch across the plate like lounging fashion models) to witty (the sort of dishes that make one marvel at how the French can eat such heavy food and still stay awake through movies so sorely lacking in explosions.) Of a chef, Steve Litke, Sens says: His cooking risks triggering the kind of avalanche of adjectives that can make food writing such a deadly affair. Sumptuous. Delectable. Mouthwatering. Sublime. All of these apply in ways very close to their original meaning, before they were swept into the valley of cliché. Which is one place Sens’ readers never have to fear being swept. Unlike Sens, whose column is monthly, Jonathan Kauffman of the East Bay Express puts it all on the line weekly. What passage could better demonstrate the liveliness of his writing than the following? Scooping bits [of ceviche] into my mouth, I kept expecting little star-shaped balloons from a Batman fight scene to pop out: Zing! from the limes. Pow! from the onions. Thwack! from the chiles. Kauffman certainly knows how to finish his metaphors. Some of his dishes rocked my world. But just as many suffered from small faults of execution that left the final product teetering over the precipice of mediocrity. Some of his writing is laugh-out-loud funny: [A pressed chocolate sandwich is] the kind of snack you’d imagine millionaire stoners ordering up from their personal chefs. Another terrific writer who finishes with the frontrunners is Meredith Brody of the San Francisco Weekly. Her control of tone is masterly. I have a couple of friends down in L.A. who fill this particular bill because they don’t really possess taste buds—they have other talents. Whereas overuse of adverbs is normally a writing flaw, Brody turns it into an art form. I was too full to eat the éclair that was waiting mutely. Although her follow-up quote of Vladimir Nabokov’s description of an éclair left on a plate as “lonely, despised, unwanted” proves that, no matter how great the writer, there’s always another level. Paul Reidinger of the San Francisco Bay Guardian is a terrific writer who occasionally loses his way. His openings are often wonderful. To say that Oxygen Bar… has atmosphere is to put the case with heroic circumspection. Oxygen Bar is atmosphere, quite literally; from its sky-blue walls pop plastic tubes from which various interesting and eclectic people arrayed on low vinyl sofas take the heavily oxygenated, recreative airs, while a tall drag queen ushers the famished to a sushi bar at the rear. Such openings are the hallmark of award-winning writing. The following passage, written for Valentine’s Day, on the other hand, is the hallmark of Hallmark writing: The many-hued blossom we call love is both fragile and hardy. God, did he channel Rod McKuen for that one? Patricia Unterman is the critic for the San Francisco Examiner, which was the Chronicle evening edition before a recent split with that paper. I’m grateful when I come across a critic whose writing is so clearly competent I don’t have to scan it for problems of grammar and syntax. However, I have a bone to pick with her—she’s chef and co-owner of the Hayes Street Grill in San Francisco and runs Vicolo Pizzeria behind it. By what stretch of the imagination is this not a conflict of interest? I put the question to my Bay Area contacts, who explained that Unterman had once weathered accusations of conflict of interest, but that her restaurants are neither new nor particularly cutting-edge and have established clienteles. They actually used adjectives like “intelligent,” “insightful” and even “majestic” to describe her. Diagnosis The best thing that could have happened to the Bay Area would have been for Bauer to have accepted the position at the Times. As long as Bauer remains entrenched at the Chronicle, the dining scene will suffer. As critics become too embedded, the work they do becomes compromised. However sweet the post, a critic needs to move on periodically. It’s time Bauer realized he has tarried too long. At this point, Josh Sens, Jonathan Kauffman, Meredith Brody, Paul Reidinger and Patricia Unterman all have more to offer than Bauer. The best prescription for what ails San Francisco would be for someone of their caliber to ascend to the top restaurant critic post at the Chronicle and inject new life into the dining scene. |
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