New York's coverage of Chicago restaurants

Am I the only person who feels like positive reviews of Chicago's dining scene that come out of New York contain the occasional back-handed compliment? It's like they've discovered a good restaurant in the middle of some isolated prairie where in recent years, the inhabitants were rubbing two sticks together to make a fire to cook over.
Here are two recent quotes from the New York Times:

Chicago has morphed from a meat-and-potatoes town to one claiming some of the country’s best chefs

From 6/28/09
I'm not THAT old, but I grew up eating in Thai restaurants and taquerias. I'm not sure this was a 'meat-and-potatoes town' in anyone from LTH's recent memory.

Straightforwardness is a virtue in the Midwest, so Chicago’s fanciest restaurants often seem both splendid and desperately out of place

From 5/31/09

I have some good friends in NYC, a couple of whom think I have an inferiority complex about being from Chicago (maybe they're right) but I feel like some New Yorkers are shocked that anyplace away from the coasts (in particular, the east one) has sophisticated dining options.

thaiobsessed wrote:...some isolated prairie where in recent years, the inhabitants were rubbing two sticks together to make a fire to cook over.

I believe that's always somewhat been the case, as exhibited in Saul Steinberg's famous 1976 New Yorker cover:


And more recently, this 2005 graphic from The Onion:

(from the article 'Midwest' Discovered Between East And West Coasts)

Having spent the first 22 years of my life in New England, and the latter 13 here in Chicago, my experience is that this NY-centric viewpoint of the Midwest as "flyover country" is more the rule than the exception. I find, though, that it only demonstrates their ignorance. Most people on the East Coast rarely leave it, so unfortunately, I think they get their ideas about the Midwest from watching The Beverly Hillbillies on TV and reading The Grapes of Wrath. When, on the rare occasion, they do leave it to visit the hinterlands of Chicago, they're surprised that we don't all walk around in overalls with hay sticking out of our mouths. On the other hand, I find the Midwesterners to be much more worldly and overall, better familiar with the country as a whole, not just one coast or another. I realize that I'm generalizing for the sake of making a point, but I, too, have noticed, not just lately, but anytime there's a NY article regarding Chicago, the tone mocking our so-called meat and potatoes culture.

Where's New York?

Khaopaat wrote:(from the article 'Midwest' Discovered Between East And West Coasts)

O.K., that article is hilarious!

I especially liked this line:

"The Midwestern Aborigines are ruddy, generally heavy-set folk, clad in plain, non-designer costumery," Eldred said. "They tend to live in simple, one-story dwellings whose interiors are decorated with Hummels and 'Bless This House' needlepoint wall-hangings. And though coarse and unattractive, these simple people were rather friendly, offering us quaint native fare such as 'hotdish' and 'casserole.'"

Well, I guess I should get back to work, then home to make 'hotdish' (whatever that is).

thaiobsessed wrote: offering us quaint native fare such as 'casserole.'"

"casserole", hilarious... aka "Chicago Style deep dish pizza".

as for New Yorkers opinions about the midwest, our food, and our restaturants, I take it with a grain of salt.

thaiobsessed wrote:
Well, I guess I should get back to work, then home to make 'hotdish' (whatever that is).

It's a Minnesota thing, as in, "Oh, I'm going to make a nice hotdish to bring to the party."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotdish

I think one sees what one wants to see in those quotes. What's wrong with meat-and potatoes? I LOVE meat and potatoes, and can't understand why someone would be insulted by having their town called a "meat-and-potatoes town." And being described as people for whom straighforwardness is a virtue - why would anyone be insulted by that? I would think that being called the opposite of straighforward would be the insult. I see nothing but compliments in those articles.

From Wikipedia article on 'hotdish'

It consists of a starch, a meat or other protein, and a canned vegetable, mixed together with canned soup.

The soup is often cream of mushroom, which serves as a binding ingredient

Yep, I'll be rushing home to make that. Any ideas on where I can fine corn, lima beans, carrots and green beans--all mixed together in one can?

thaiobsessed wrote:Any ideas on where I can fine corn, lima beans, carrots and green beans--all mixed together in one can?

It's called Veg-All, it's available in the canned vegetables aisle, and it's great in homemade pot pie...er, or so I'm told...by the sort of people who would cook such abominations...uhhh, yeah. That's the ticket.

In some ways, that wikipedia blurb on hotdish reads like The Onion piece.

wikipedia wrote:[Hotdish] can be prepared over a woodstove and provides a hearty and warm meal in a part of the United States that gets hit with frigid temperatures in the dark of winter.

So this thread begins with a complaint about the New York Times making fun of midwesterner food, and then proceeds to make fun of midwestern food.

Incidentally, Hot Dish seems quite similar to many of the one-dish meals that my grandmother used to make, like chicken baked in a casserole with rice, water, and cream of chicken soup. I presumed that many of these were, at the time, convenience versions of meals her mother and grandmother made.

If you want to feel particularly poetic about the virtues of hotdish (cheap, uses minimal dishes... what's not to love??), then I recommend that you purchase 'Hotdish Haiku', a collection of haikus honoring hotdish.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/096763 ... D1XYPCBXS2

Hotdish and casserole are frequent touchstones on Prairie Home Companion.

Every area of the world seems to have its culinary "Chicago." Until I first began eating Korean food (here in Chicago, ironically), I often heard it characterized as if it were the "Chicago" of Asia, (i.e. no subtlties, no presentation, just big hunks of meat broiled over flame).

It has always seemed to me, as one NY born, that it's the belief that no one else is possessed of real originality, cool, or sophistication that is the height of provincialism.

When I came here from California, I was shocked to discover that Chicago has Mexican food.

A few years ago, New York critic Jeffrey Steingarten wrote that Chicago is the most interesting food city in the country now. I thought the comment was a bit over the top, and not because he named Chicago; just seems like a silly form of statement. As I recall, though, the article was pretty good. As for the New York Times-- well I have a hard time judging their coverage of New York restaurants, to begin with. I don't care for the tone of most of Bruni's reviews, period; he usually sounds bored. I don't know, maybe it's because of being an outsider but I get the feeling that New York is full of diners who are willing to spend unbelievable amounts of money on dining out, sometimes judiciously and sometimes not so much. Just a lot more of a scene there. I really enjoyed living and eating in New York, although my budget did not run to the high end. I feel as if New York and Chicago are surprisingly different cities, considering proximity and similarities of scale. New Yorkers who don't spend time here don't really know what to make of us.

bibi rose wrote:I get the feeling that New York is full of ...

New York is such a large, diverse city, that you could replace the ... above with anything, and you'd be right. If one stereotypes New Yorkers as being this or that way, one is choosing to see only what one wants to see.

Yes, it is a rare if not unique article on Chicago that does not manage to reflect, in passing, the assumption that Chicagoans subsist on Flintstonian racks of beef and have never seen a French restaurant.

One can only compare it to Soviet visitors who, after decades of propaganda, have their entire adult worldview shaken by the discovery that in America, the proletariat owns their own homes, televisions and cars.

If you want to get a sense of where NY'ers closest in spirits to LTH'ers are eating, take a look at the NY forum on eGullet. I think you'll find the themes surprisingly similar to those here.

I think that's what's odd about it. It's not as if lots of New Yorkers haven't been to Alinea, and Blackbird, and this and that.

But that trope or whatever you want to call it seems unshakable. Imagine Chicago food writers starting every piece on Per Se or Le Bernardin with an offhand reference that suggested that they were pleasantly surprised to find that it wasn't under a bridge and had something besides porterhouse on the menu.

Just imagine how many times you'll read it if we get the Olympics.

With all due to respects to the journalists here, I think some of this meat-and-potatoes talk is a cheap way to grab the attention of readers who aren't familiar with Chicago. Whenever I watch Cubs baseball on a national broadcast (Fox or ESPN), especially a playoff game, you have to wade through all of the fluff about lovable losers, the curse of the billygoat, Babe Ruth's called shot, etc. Nobody here ever thinks about those things, ever. But the national media apparently thinks those are devises to motivate the causal, out of town fan. Perhaps the same thing goes on with food writing.

It seems to me that New Yorkers don't really like to give Chicago credit for much of anything. Oh sure they will concede we might have a few good things here but they still view they are the center of the universe.

I have friends from NY that say "if you want to have good Italian food, you have to go to NY". Fiddledee.

toria wrote:I have friends from NY that say "if you want to have good Italian food, you have to go to NY". Fiddledee.

I guess they don't like to acknowledge the facxt that Italy exists, either.

Suzy Creamcheese wrote:When I came here from California, I was shocked to discover that Chicago has Mexican food.

I think that's a common belief; my brother-in-law frequently goes to Texas for business and the locals always take him out for Mexican food, and they act like they're exposing him to something he's never had, when what he really wants them to do is take him out for BBQ! He doesn't have the heart to tell them that Mexican food is plentiful up here.

My mental picture of what new Yorkers in particular and East Coasters in general think of the Midwest is represented by the West Wing episode in which two key members of the President's staff miss their plane in Indiana because they are ignorant of Indiana's -- let us say, idiosyncratic -- attitude toward daylight savings time. (Needless to say, they spend most of the rest of the episode meeting pickup-driving, salt-of-the-earth, hayseed types who teach them a few life lessons that they are delighted to forget as soon as their bus gets them back to Washington.)

I suppose being as unimpressed with them as they are with us is the easiest, if not the best, revenge.

Uhh, Chicagoans? you think YOU get dissed by East Coasters, try being a Kansas Citian.

A recent article in the Washington Post had this to say about coming to Kansas City for the first time:

From the moment the plane emerges from the clouds, your attention is pulled in two directions. In one there are rolling green pastures as far as the eye can see; in another, it's all ribbon-of-highway stuff, every road seemingly leading to Kansas City's downtown, part of a more-handsome-than-you'd-think metropolis erected on the shoulders of corporations like H&R Block, Sprint and Hallmark.

More handsome than WHO'D think?? Sheesh.

Still and all, the amazed Washingtonian pilgrimaged to KC because he wanted to learn about bbq, and that's what he learned about. So I guess I should be satisfied with that. But the crucial part of this exercise is the prior assumption that makes these Coasters surprized when they find out that, contrary to expectation, there IS some culture in Fly-Over land. Or, at least something to eat.

Geo

"Everything's up to date in Kansas City." --Oklahoma!, 1943

Only took the NYT 66 years.

You've always got Calvin Trillin in your corner.

O.K., when I saw this referenced on the Great Lake thread, I thougt, this one has to go on the list. I like Ed Levine. His New York Eats book was a great resource when I lived in NY. But come on...The Windy City Finally Has Great Pizza to Call Its Own (emphasis mine)

Things never change, do they?







Geo