GQ's Alan Richman on New Orleans Food

So GQ resident food critic has written an article in the November issue on his recent visit to New Orleans and the state of cuisine there. I found the article to be pretty poor (unfortunately, it's not online--you'll have to go out and buy the issue or spend 20 minutes standing at the magazine rack in Walgreens). I understand that post-Katrina, it's going to be tougher to find good food, but he's coming in with a pretty prejudiced view of Creole and Cajun cooking in the first place. He talks about the article on the GQ podcast as well, which is linked at http://men.style.com/gq/features/podcasts (go to the November podcast).

I found this response to the article on the blog Appetites, ableit pretty clear that the author never liked Richman in the first place: http://www.appetites.us/archives/000466.html and http://www.appetites.us/archives/000467.html

Did anyone else read the article? Thoughts?

I haven't read the article. But, I will say that I find Richman to have been overly opinionated to the negative in much of his work.

Richman is not really a food guy so much as a wine guy. It seems to me that he judges food based upon its ability to be pared with wines that he like.

Cajun especially can be a really difficult pairing with wine because frankly, in its native origins, it is not a cuisine that id often paired with wine at all.

The fact that Richman doesn't like Cajun/Creole doesn't really come s a surprise. He has trashed a good bit of regional southern cooking in his day.

I'll admit that, in the past, I actually have enjoyed some of Alan Richman's writing (in GQ and also in Bon Apetit, I believe). However, after reading the commentary on that blog (through the link, above, to "appetites"), I'll have to say that if Richman's piece is half as bad as they say it is, it sounds as though he's gone off the deep end and taken a position that -- among foodies -- is completely indefensible. I simply do not know how anyone who purportedly is knowledgeable about food and enamored with restaurants can form these opinions/conclusions about NOLA.

IMO, from fine dining establishments (i.e., Commander's, Brightsen's, Galatoire's) to the hole-in-the wall places, NOLA is and always has been totally in a class by itself. I'm surprised a guy like Alan Richman would kick it while it's down. Sad, really. And inexcusable.

I think Richman writes well, but I also think he picks phrases and arguments that play everywhere, which is to say if looks, smells, and feels like controversy, he'll latch on to it, irrespective of whether he believes it or not. I mean he called Grant Achatz conservative.

I have a (one week) business trip planned for NOLA starting on November 13th, guess I will have to check out the article. This is only my second visit ever there, so I am looking forward to it.

When I return I will post my thoughts.

r.

After digesting Alan Richman's absurdly vitriolic ax job on the city of New Orleans, its cuisine and its entire culture [GQ, November '06], I was left with a few burning questions.

First for the writer: What's wrong, Mr. Richman—did you lose your per diem lunch money in the slot machines at Harrah's? Has your wife stolen off with a washboard player? Surely, there must be some source to your reservoir of venom other than a few overcooked oysters and an unimpressed maître d'. As an independent rock critic who lives and works in New Orleans, I know all about harboring unpopular opinions about hallowed institutions; I disseminate them on a monthly basis. But your bitter rant reads less like a balanced critique from a celebrated gastronomic authority and more like the outsider observations of a jerk who's just jealous that he wasn't invited to the party. More malignant than merely picking on a scuffling populace, your rank, error-riddled writing is akin to intentionally tripping a hapless cripple. There isn't a person in this city who hasn't been through hell in the last 12 months, be it from losing their loved ones, their house or simply their job. Instead of pointing out the positive angles to their story—e.g., that 75 percent of New Orleans' eateries have now reopened, or that several world-class restaurants have since started up—you saw fit to set fire to their rebuilding efforts with overt falsities. You are a heartless arsonist, sir, and for that, you should be ashamed.

To the GQ editorial board—the same people who, I can only assume, commissioned this baseless piece of yellow journalism from an ignorant, admittedly biased author and are therefore left to answer for it: What if I wrote food articles for a swank, Southern-based mainstream fashion magazine and traipsed around Manhattan on the company's dime back in the Summer of 2002? What if I decried the supposed "newness" of the New American menus at David Burke & Donatella and the River Café; bitched about being presented the wrong bottle of wine only five blocks away from ground zero; whined about the dry franks and lumpy shakes at Gray's Papaya; and then proclaimed that Spanish Harlem had never existed because I didn't run into a single Puerto Rican during my limo ride from Yankee Stadium to a hotel on the Upper East Side?

The obvious answer is that I'd be unceremoniously dismissed—the very same action that the gentlemen who steward this suddenly afflicted Quarterly will take with regard to the embarrassing Alan Richman, should they seek to retain even an ounce of the fallow dignity it once so fervently flaunted. Only then will you regain New Orleans' respect and, more to the point, its growing potential readership.


Noah Bonaparte Pais
Senior Editor, ANTIGRAVITY Magazine

Noah wrote:

>rock critic who lives and works in New Orleans

Hi, as I said above I will be in New Orleans November 13 – 17. I will be staying at the Hotel Monteleone without a car. I have a company dinner on the 14th, but that gives me 3 nights free. Any recommendations for dinners near the hotel?

R.

The Monteleone is right in the French Quarter on Royal Street and you won't need a car to get around. I highly recommend Bayona, in the French Quarter, but there are a ton of places from which to choose. You may want to check out the New Orleans board over at chowhound.com, for updates on what's going on. I also like Mr. B's (a Brennan family restaurant), which is right near where you'll be staying, but I believe it's still closed. Palace Cafe (another Brennan place) also is very good, and it's close to your hotel on Canal Street.

On Nov 2, 2006, at 1:40 AM, thecritic@optonline.net wrote:


RE: "I know all about harboring unpopular opinions about hallowed institutions."

Obviously you don't.

Best of luck.



Alan Richman



Subject: Re: A letter to Mr. Richman and the GQ Editorial Board
Date: November 3, 2006 3:54:45 PM CST
To: thecritic@optonline.net
Cc: jim_nelson@gq.com, michael_hainey@gq.com, fred_woodward@gq.com, jim_moore@gq.com, erik_meers@gq.com, andy_ward@gq.com, joel_lovell@gq.com, jason_gay@gq.com, mark_healy@gq.com, adam_rapoport@gq.com, john_gillies@gq.com, mickey_rapkin@gq.com, devin_friedman@gq.com, chris_huvane@gq.com, alex_pappademas@gq.com, nate_penn@gq.com, candice_rainey@gq.com, kevin_sintumuang@gq.com, andy_comer@gq.com, greg_veis@gq.com, laura_vitale@gq.com, ted_klein@gq.com, rebecca_peterson@gq.com, leah_zibulsky@gq.com, lucas_zaleski@gq.com, jordan_reed@gq.com, david_gargill@gq.com, kyla_jones@gq.com, benjamin_phelan@gq.com, thomas_wallace@gq.com, info@frenchculinary.com


Mr. Richman:

Thanks for your response, however rote. It's entirely plausible that you were, at one point, an intrepid, relevant reporter; the French Culinary Institute is an estimable organization, its inclusion of you as an ethics professor notwithstanding, and it's doubtful that the dear James Beard Foundation could have erred a dozen times over.

That said, your piece on New Orleans was so poorly planned and ineffectually argued as to be deemed laughable — if not for its lackadaisical reductionism, libelous bigotry and grave implications of serious sabotage on the city's one functioning economic engine. Amazingly, you seem not to know (or, worse, not to care) what corrosive effects your high-profile hack job could inflict upon the region and its ongoing recovery. Such lack of foresight and insight into one's own professional and ethical responsibilities is beyond contemptible. From someone in your decorated position, it's downright unpardonable.

I thought that by listening to your podcast I might better grasp why an honorary like yourself would choose such a lowbrow approach to his craft. I only grew more confused. You sling hateful hypocrisies as if they were poison-tipped arrows from atop an ivory tower; express unprovoked contempt for a culture you barely understand (your friend Leah Chase is one of your "faerie folk" Creoles, you should know); and wield the resources of a respected, 70-year-old journal as a soapbox for dispensing ridicule and racism in the guise of sardonic marginalization. Not to mention the continual mispronunciation of "Louisa's by the Tracks," your second favorite joint in the city even though you don't know its name ("I've never said it aloud"), and your confession of a simpleton's comprehension about the general tenets of social geography ("New Orleans shouldn't exist ... Why have they built there? Because it's nice living on a river"). Following your rationale, it's no wonder 12 million people settled in the equally precarious New York City: Situated as it is, on not one but two rivers, Manhattan must be just swell.

More offensive than your offhand generalities are your misleading, mean-spirited specifics. Could it be that poor Derek Guth, the Parkway Bakery daytime manager you ruthlessly skewer for displaying a photo of his damage, was simply excited to have a luminary like yourself eating in his humble establishment? You liken his ebullience to some sort of masochism: "Maybe the residents of Pompeii had the same macabre sense of fulfillment, pleased that they were being buried in hot ash like none before them." Were New Orleanians not so busy "stumbling out of bars" and "loving the dinner table too much," you pompously posit, we could have done more to prepare for Katrina's unprecedented devastation. Read your own paragraph once more, and then imagine the outcry had someone in 2001 gallingly suggested that the $350 prix fixe at Per Se somehow prevented New Yorkers from properly defending their borders. Your logical jumps would make Evel Knievel jealous.

"New Orleans has always been about food and music, with parades added to the mix," you oversimplify in the same sorry passage. "In the North, where I come from, we like to think we're about jobs and education, with sports thrown in." Might I suggest, Mr. Richman, before embarking on your next sensationalist smear campaign, that you properly educate yourself about the region you are about to excoriate — it might save you and your unfortunate employers from another internationally distributed ignominy.

That is, if these eight pages of repugnant excrement don't first cost you your job.


--
Noah Bonaparte Pais
Senior Editor, ANTIGRAVITY
P.O. Box 24584
New Orleans, LA 70184
www.antigravitymagazine.com
www.myspace.com/noahbonaparte
www.noahbonaparte.com

^nicely said.

I also fail to see what was behind the editorial decision to run that article other than pure mean-spiritedness; I was really flabbergasted. Instead of trashing New Orleans, the article simply perpetuates the worst stereotypes this country has about New Yorkers.

GQ has been going down the tubes ever since they panicked and made the editorial decision to become a snarky Maxim wannabe. But they can't even do that right, their idea of cover-worthy hotties are androgynous preeners like Justin Timberlake and Orlando Bloom. BOY, THIS'LL REALLY BOOST CIRCULATION WITH THAT YOUNG MALE DEMOGRAPHIC! What does that say about their editors (not that there's anything wrong with that)? Their circulation is in a death spiral, this is just one more nail in the coffin.

Don't forget, this is the same culinary explorer who handed down a list of "Best Hamburgers" after making it clear that he doesn't actually like hamburgers, at least as most Americans understand the form. While his list covered some already-so-well-documented-who-cares winners, it also had a mall chain, "kobe sliders" and the NYC Parker Meridien's Burger Joint at #5.

The Burger Joint plaudit is most telling. While a good burger, the Burger Joint's sandwich is no better than thousands of burgers sold around the country across the counters of non-ironic, non-hipster/wannabe/ conceptual greasy spoons, drive-ins and taverns that are not "hidden" (literally, behind a taupe curtain) in the lobby of a posh Midtown hotel. If Ed Debevic's were in the Pen and had a velvet rope line, he'd probably be delighted with it.

I'm looking forward to his list of Best Speed-Metal of the Early '90's, though.

JeffB wrote:I'm looking forward to his list of Best Speed-Metal of the Early '90's, though.

I understand his #1 pick is Carnivore.

Robert Peyton of Appetites, who was mentioned previously for his blogged reaction to the Richman article, has actually conducted an email interview with Alan Richman.

I quit reading when I read this:

I think Emeril, who I know and like tremendously, has been good for American food and bad for Emeril. He’s a great cook,

I've started a formal petition to eradicate Mr. Richman's byline from GQ's pages in toto. Anyone interested in signing, go here:

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/318795153

And if you think 1000 Davids can't take this Goliath down, consider this: A little birdie relayed that Richman has resigned his position on the James Beard Foundation board due to pressure from colleagues. Clearly, we're moving in the right direction toward discrediting this insult to all journalists.

Or you could just figure that a magazine that exists mainly to tell you how to dress like a country club type is probably not the place to get great tips for downhome eating, and ignore it and him.

Off to play squash,

Mike G

The NY Times weighs in. I'm just so furious with what's going on about New Orleans. Earlier this week there was a story about an insurance company that has decided not to renew commercial policies in New Orleans because of the condition of the levees. If that sticks and spreads to other insurers, there will be no New Orleans, because business can't operate without insurance. There was also another story about how the Army Corps has slowed down the reconstruction of the levees -- not sure why. It seems like an entire American city has been written off, without any debate. And while many American cities have signature dishes, it does seem that NOLA has an entire distinct culture and cuisine.

Anyway, sorry. Here's a link to the NY Times article. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/06/dinin ... ref=dining