Reviewing the costs
“Reader trust” is a big buzzword in journalism right now. There are classes, conferences, and entire organizations devoted to cultivating and keeping it.
That makes sense since the American public’s faith in traditional news sources is eroding at a scarily fast rate. While 71 percent of Americans in a recent Pew Research Center study said they have some or a lot of trust in local media, that figure has dropped from 85 percent in 2019. Among adults under 30, trust in information from social media sites stands to soon surpass trust in information from national news outlets.
Interestingly, in my experience, food writers don’t typically encounter that level of skepticism. I’ve had readers accuse me of snobbery and vulgarity, intellectualism and idiocy, and bias toward and against the same chef. But I haven’t heard from folks claiming I made anything up.
I suspect there are two reasons why reader trust proceeds naturally from food journalism. One, our methods are transparent. Readers may not be overly familiar with sourcing and public record searches, but they can relate to going to a restaurant and reporting back on the meal. Two, there’s a social contract between critics and eaters: The latter has to trust that they won’t be poisoned if they follow the former’s advice.
In other words, I believe reviews—such as the assessment of Dakar NOLA that I sent to paying subscribers on Monday—are an important component of food journalism. But they’re not cheap.
To produce this week’s review, I had to fly to New Orleans ($95. Thanks, Breeze!), book a hotel room ($75), buy a ticket to dinner ($197.01), and pay a corkage fee ($34.15). In newsletter terms, that’s the equivalent of 51 monthly subscriptions.
Even worse, planned reviews don’t always pan out. When you’re reviewing restaurants for a local audience, just about every new place qualifies for critical scrutiny, since there’s a fair chance that at least some readers will consider spending their hard-earned money there.
Reviews for a regional readership, though, are held to a different standard. They should either involve a restaurant that tourists are highly likely to patronize while in town or reveal something that’s relevant to people who will never eat there. Additionally, because The Food Section guarantees stories that readers won’t find anywhere else, the review has to offer a unique or underreported perspective.
When I was last in Nashville, I dined at Tailor, thinking its new location could serve as the springboard for a review. While I had a phenomenal meal there, I realized pretty quickly that it wasn’t review material, mostly because everything that’s been written about chef Vivek Surti and his exceptional food is true. Eat there if you can.
Also in Nashville, be sure to eat at Degthai, the two-year-old permanent location of Jay Jenratha’s beloved food truck. That’s not a find of mine: Surti sent me there, explaining that it’s one of the few Thai restaurants in the area run by someone of Thai descent.
Unlike its local competition, Degthai has a very short menu, but it’s packed with vivid expositions of bitterness, sweetness, and spice. Its satisfyingly sour tom yum, bobbing with cubes of custardy tofu and crisp cauliflower, is the soup I’ve wanted to eat on repeat all winter.
Even if I hadn’t been swayed by the warm hospitality at Tailor—which extends from a personal welcome at the door to an email sent the day after dinner, prompting guests to file their birthdays with the restaurant—or the mischief and skill rolled into its gloriously messy, cushy-and-crunchy take on dabeli, I damn well trust Surti now.
The Food Section’s reviews are paywalled in deference to the high cost of producing them, but a few older reviews are free for the reading, including a June 2022 review of Blacksheep in Beaufort, South Carolina. Should you feel compelled to eat there right away (reservations permitting!), please come say hello at the Beaufort Oyster Festival: I’ll be judging the Tastiest Oyster contest tomorrow.