Between Bites with Nina Compton and Larry MillerBrett Anderson & Brett Martin | Between Bites Podcast with Nina Compton & Larry Miller S3E7
On episode seven of the third season of the Between Bites podcast, Nina Compton and Larry Miller sit down with acclaimed restaurant critics and food journalists Brett Anderson and Brett Martin to explore the evolution of food media, from the shift from print to digital to the growing influence of social media on restaurant criticism.
The Bretts discuss the decline of traditional food writing and the challenges of maintaining journalistic integrity in an era dominated by influencers. They reflect on how thoughtful critique shapes the dining industry and why independent restaurant journalism still matters.
Listen in as they break down the art of restaurant reviewing and reveal their favorite unexpected food cities.
All right, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of Between Bites with Nina Compton and Larry Miller. Nina, who do we have to All right, then I'll say we have the Bretts, Brett Square, Brett Anderson, and Brett Martin. Welcome, gentlemen.
Could reverse the order.
That's the right order.
That's actually when I actually thought about that. When I wrote down some of the topics that we could discuss, I didn't know who to put first. I went alphabet, You did it accurately. That's that's funny that that came up right away, because I was stressing over that an hour ago. Welcome, gentlemen. It is a pleasure to sit in chat with you all. Two of our favorite writers, but also two of the most talented writers that we have in the country. It turns out, and you both happened to live here. Welcome, Thank you, Thanks for having us, Thanks for having us.
I'm itching to know because you guys are like two peas in the pod. How did you guys meet and where was it?
Well, all Bretts come from the same place.
Oh yeah, same no Ida Garden.
I I don't know.
Sometimes mid mid two thousands, was coming here. Well, no, not not mid to a little probably about two thousand and seven and eight. We were introduced by John T. Edge I was coming down. I was living in New York at the time, and John T sent me Brett's Way. Brett mailed me this was the way it was, mailed me his dining guide as my introduction to eating here and.
A print dining guide, and mailed, yeah, we would publish that every fall fall in spring in the Times. Piccuna is like a separate mean.
It's incredible to me that it was twice a year. I can only imagine how in credible.
It was to you. And uh. And so we met that way when when I was still living.
In New York and when you came down. Now, Uh, fortunately for us here in New Orleans, Uh, Brett Anderson had been established as a one of the real bona fide food critics in the in the country. But in a community that was so hospitality centric. Did you have any preconceptions of coming down south to talk to this guy and say, well, I'm from New York. We'll see what this guy knows about.
No, no, no, no. Brett reputation was well established in that voice. I feel like.
And I was already getting the impression. I was starting to to to understand, uh that the that there's nobody more provincial than a New Yorker. And you know, it would take me another several years to kind of break out of you know, I'm from New York, I've lived there my entire life. But to uh, I was respectful of the wide world. I didn't know as somebody who lived in Brooklyn most of my life, and and I was I was certainly happy to be to be guided by Brett.
And I should say too, I I I reflect on this with people often, often when Brett Martin's not around, but I do remember I think we've met at the bar at dB A and he had more hair on his face and a bearded, bearded Brooklyn night. And I remember also Brett Martin like just spending a lot of time eating crawfish outside the Arbar and whatever in whenever year that was a two thousand and seven or whatever. And I mentioned that because the r Bar was like my living room in those days. I mean, I've lived two blocks from the Arbar for twenty five years, and I kind of you know, you take things for granted when you live in New Orleans, and I was like, what the crawfish is good there? It had occurred to me, and he was like in my memory he was like sort of like just super obsessed with it in a way. And it like was one in a series of instances where I feel like I was able to see New Orleans even though I had only lived here at that time between seven and eight years. It felt, you know, at that stage of your life. I was still in my thirties it, you know, and I had worked at the paper and since I was like, my job is to kind of get around and eat everything. You know, you do feel like you've got the hang of it at that point. And like, and I remember Brett Martin like had gone I think it was to R and O and and which is you know, my favorite rousby pull boy. I've been there ten million times and he and he ordered the shrimp Palm Poe Boy and I was like, I was like, who does that? And he was like it's fantastic, you know. And and also it was like kind of my first friend I knew who sort of hung out at the the French seventy five bar at Arno's when Chris Hannah was there, and and I had sort of known about Chris Hannah and was like respectful of him, but but I liked I didn't go to bars in the quarter, you know, and uh, and it took me a while. I was like, why did you keep going there?
Right? You know?
And uh, and you know, ultimately I got it. But it was I think an interesting example about how or a reminder that you know, when people moved to nor Lands, they bring, you know, fresh eyes that can be really valuable and can be eye opening to people who live here who you know, I mean Brad Martin's talking about New Yorker is being provincial. I mean New Orleans are too, obviously, and they kind of you know, you live here for a while, and you don't you stop seeing stuff that you you stop saying open to things, I think in some ways and uh, and you know, I think Brett Martin's a good example among a lot of folks who come to New Orleans and become kind of go native, but in their own way, you know, that is like can help Yeah, right, yeah, we're all like that, right, yeah, we're only ten years and now I really like that and it made me more sort of open too to what other people see when they visit, Like, so what do you do you know? And like what did you like and why and anyhow.
How did both of you end up in your different paths writing about food and restaurants.
Well, well, I am unequipped to do anything else, and it used to be a career, so I, you know, more specifically, I worked in a magazine. Really the only true job, non freelance job I've ever had was I came back to New York after college and was getting an MFA in fiction at NYU, but started writing for magazine called Time Out in New York, which was, you know, a magazine that was sold based on listings and then sort of you could do anything you wanted.
Around at ault weekly.
Yes, exactly, in magazine form, in magazine.
Form, and at that time, this is New York City, you know, a magazine purporting to cover New York City. The food section was two pages at the back of the shopping section, with no editor of its own. The staff was or the people who were so basically nobody wanted to do it. The those of us who did were myself, Pete Wells, Adam Sachs, who went on to edit uh Siver and there's a great food writer himself, and Adam Rappaport, who was the editor of What for a long time, of course, and we kind of it was like a new subject.
It was the four of the all together.
Yeah, well we were all sort of we were the people who were you know, and I'm the laggard in.
That group whatever. But there was no.
Yeah, basically it was all we could. You could go out and do a story on cheese. You could do a story on like oh, We'll go to every steakhouse in the city, like, oh here's steak Have you heard of savij you know, and you could go do these. It was it was almost untouched world.
I mean, it's kind of incredible to think and this is you know, I'm.
Not that old, and and nobody I was the only person who lived in Brooklyn, so it nobody lived in Manhattan. And so I had the entire kind of burrows to myself, and I had a car, So it was it was a kind of a niche I could. First of all, I was it was sort of something I always cared about. I grew up in a food centric household. It was a way into culture that was open to me. And uh, I just kind of claimed it a little bit at that space. And then then then and I continued.
On then you were good at it kept going well good enough.
Yeah.
Well, I'm originally from Minnesota, and I I only ever was interested. I mean, I was not a very disciplined student as a young person, and I but I did have one interest. I really loved reading magazines. I really really really loved pop music, you know, rock and roll, pump rock in those days, and early hip hop and stuff. And really the only thing I was ever interested in doing was writing for newspapers and magazines. And but with no plan or on how to do that. But I ended up failing out of college where I was going in Iowa, and I ended up coming back to Minneapolis, and I was just like living in an apartment with you know, a bunch of friends. And one of the of the women I lived with worked at the weekly newspaper. There was two weekly newspapers, you guys mentioned the phrase all weekly, and it was one of the weeklies of this era, this is like nineteen ninety and she was a nursing student and she got this opportunity to have like a nursing job, and she could only give her the place she worked, this newspaper like a week's notice, you know, and so she was like putting me in a buy and she's like, well, this dude just like sleeping on my couch and needs a job. And so I got this job at this newspaper, which was like I mean, I was like what I mean because I love you know that I would read that to read about bands all the time.
You know.
It was called the Twin Cities Reader. And you know, my job was not a writing job. It was like a xerox boy, you know, basically. And I my first job there, my first boss when I got there was actually a woman named Katie Rectall, who is a, into my mind, maybe the best reporter in New Orleans. And uh but we've known each other and she and she wasn't a writer there either. She was like in charge of marketing or something like that. And anyways, I started writing little blurbs about you know, bands coming to town. And after I was there about a year, they got a new editor. And they this new editor they hired this guy who had just cut you know, pretty well known locally. I have to be honest, I knew he was a journalist. I knew he was like a drug dealer and he had just gotten out of out of rehab and he became the ouit of the paper. Is this guy named David Carr who like journalists would know his name and he uh and he like he he was like, well, what would you think about being like a columnist? And I was like, wow, I will you know, I don't even remember what I said, but you know, we got to know each other because we both smoked, you know, and we'd smoke on the stairwell, right, and that began this sort of like mentorship with this person with David who was you know, it would go you know, he'd turn out he was you know, I just thought everyone was like David. I you know, I just thought that was how editors were, you know, And it took me a long time to realize how lucky I was and that he was this really brilliant mentor and stuff. And so anyways, I did that for a couple of years, and I followed him to Washington, d c. Where he edited a David got a job at a paper called Washington City Paper, and that was another alternative weekly that had never had a restaurant critic before and I was, and he asked if I wanted to do it. I wrote a column called Young and Hungry. This was in nineteen ninety January of nineteen ninety six is when I started. I had never tried sushi before.
Wow.
I mean, I you know, this was not something that was offered to me because I was like some corebo, you know. But I and I took the job because I was like, you know, I wasn't in a position to be turning down jobs, and I wanted to, you know, I wanted to continue writing about music and culture and learn to be a reporter and stuff. And when you work at a weekly newspaper, you got to do a lot of different things. And and so I was like, well, I'll write this weekly column and then I'll you know, it was kind of like a half of my professional identity or a third of it. But I sort of thought that I would get sick of that and and go on and you know, move move in with Brett Martin somewhere, you know, like go to New York. And that was what I wanted to do. But I did that job for five years and I got a phone call one day at you know, back in the voicemail a desk phone, you know. A woman with an accent, Karen Taylor Gift who it was from the called from the Timespicking in New Orleans, and she asked if I wanted to apply for this job. And I had only been here once. I'd come here actually to visit Katie and to go to jazz Fest, like in the year two thousand, spring of two thousand and like weirdly that summer, I got this phone call from The Timespicking, and so I moved here in two thousand to become the restaurant critic it's Times Picking. I committed to them verbally for three years, which in my mind I thought was going to be for just like no, I'm just keeping that commitment, you know, And I worked there for lengtheen years, and Jesus.
That's a long time. So what was your first impression when you started reviewing restaurants.
When I started reviewing restaurants like.
Globally or just here when you've moved here.
When I moved here, yeah, well, for one, it was literally a different media world, right like it was. I was, you know, every it was totally paper centric, you know, I mean, our website was just a disaster area, and and and at the time, it didn't no one seemed to care, you know, And and like I would write, you know, two stories a week, and I would spend and all this time writing a restaurant review that had beans on it. You know, we did beans like other places do stars.
You know.
I have to say that one of the things people would tell me when I was trying to make the decision to come here was, you know, some people would say, like, looks, it's not a very good town to be a restaurant critic because it's it's small and remote, and it's out of the blah blah blah, and it's you know, a hundred chefs making the same ten recipes. That was you know, and damn, you know, there was a bit of that. You know, there's a bit of truth to that. But I it was an unbelievable sort of just personal education in lot just you know, being from Minnesota and stuff, but just in the culture of the South, just you know, understanding more about America by living here. And you know, I really started to like kind of more appreciate how sort of cooking as like a repertory type of art in the way that jazz is, which I know is sort of super cliched when you're talking about New Orleans, but like I really believe in that, like that in I mean, some of that is gone frankly, you know, like this idea that you could be as good as you as anyone could expect the chef to be in terms of a skill set and not claim authorship over the dishes. You know, open a restaurant that's just like a bunch of that you can get like in seventeen other places around town, you know, like and there's I sort of missed that a little bit, that era, and that was a really wonderful thing to be immersed in, and you know, I I loved it. It took but it took a minute. I mean, I have to say, I think it was five years after I got heres when Hurricane Katrina had And that's like, you know, sort of paradoxically is like the thing that's like I'm staying now.
Well and you made get rid of right how you you were part of an award winning team for coverage with the paper during Katrina? How did how was that? If you would find they had your head around all right four or five years I'm doing nothing but restaurants. Now the city that I think I love, and I'm stayed longer than three years. How was it? Is there a switch in your writing style or your thinking as you approach a news story versus a restaurant room.
Oh yeah, you know, I didn't write a restaurant review for three years after Hurricane Katrina. Like the I when I came back to the city, I you know, I thought for sure what was going to happen. I mean, I had no doubt in my mind what was going to happen was that I was gonna you know, once, the once the sort of daily news stories, you know, the the need for me to do that kind of thing, which I did do for a short period of time, dissipated once people got back, other reporters got back to the city. That I would write story after story after story of restaurant that was gone, had gone forever, and then I'd get laid off and move somewhere else. You know what I mean? That Like if you if you were here then and you imagined a different future than that, you were in denial as far as I'm concerned, I mean, there was you know, there was a house that the reporters that the picking were staying at. I'm pointing over to our old colleague and friend, Douc Tatum, where a bunch of the writers from the paper were in town. It was Stephanie Grace's house, and she wasn't there, but I mean the first I think it was the first three four or five days that I was in that house and I came here like a week after. I mean, there's all sorts of people colleagues that saw much worse stuff, you know, but there was a dead body on the on the on the porch across the street that just we couldn't figure out how to get addressed.
Damn, you know.
I mean, it was not like just to remember, like this was not sort of like, oh, you know, someone someone called me when the restaurants are ready to feed me. Like so yeah, there was a different approach and which I became a reporter and wrote about like the business struggles and wrote a lot about the sort of emotional environment that restaurants enabled.
You know.
It's like I think a big part of that era of writing and stuff and a lot of guides, you know, like this is what's open, you know, like if you're here It's interesting.
I never really I of course know the story, but I've never really thought about your emergence as a as the writer you are and as you know, much more than a food writers.
As a writer.
That was sort of by the time I met you or got to know you better, really on the national stage and and sort of at a level of sort of presenting, really addressing a much bigger canvas or painting a.
Much bigger canvas than just Newt's restaurants.
I never really put together that there was that Katrina probably was where that developed, you know, and I you know, as I say, by the time I moved here, Brett was, you know, really this unique thing to have to have a I mean, what is now passing practically doesn't exist, you know, a local.
Report. He represented this city in a way that when it's gone, has not been replaced. And that was.
You know, punching. I don't know what was punch who was punching above his weight? The city was punching above his weight, and Brett was the fist.
Let's say that is that well, I mean, well, that's all very.
That's our little that's our little name.
This was worth waking up early the.
Times punched above its weight.
Yeah, well that's but I would say that that that yes, that's that's.
And the you know, the paper was incredibly important to the city at that time. And it's like, you know, in the era of like then on Enemy of the People, you know, it's like it's it seems almost impossible to believe how much people were attached to the work of the of journalists in New Orleans when you consider what the public attitude is about journalists today, you know, and.
It's obviously, in our opinion, unfortunate, But it was even living in I grew up in Atlanta than the Nina and I met in Miami. I was reading your articles, and I was reading New York Times. I was reading San Francisco Chronicle, just because I'm a dork about food and restaurants and it is more important than whatever's on the front page. But it was a it's a situation like what happened with the Times Pick where there was a food writer, a crick an editor and.
What else Judy was I mean, it was me and me and Judy Walker and uh Todd Price and then that no, Todd wasn't here at Okatrina. I mean, but Todd did a lot of work as a freelancer, good real important work and stuff. But and he but he joined the paper in twenty twelve, okay as a staff writer. But at when Katrina hid it was Judy Walker and I period.
How did we get that quickly to a fully staffed food section of a paper in a city that is so restaurant focused? How do you just eliminate that that quickly? I know it was not a that's a nationwide or a worldwide movement in media. How do y'all feel about that? Now? You will say this, you've since moved on to very secure institutions that aren't going anywhere in the New York Times for Brett Anderson and GQ with Brett Martin.
Yeah, I think it was a little more securely.
But yes, how how do you feel being uh not elder statesman, but leaders in or high performers in that little corner of the world with what's changing so quickly?
Very insecure? You know, to be prope I mean magazines are are in I don't know who could. It's not really a competition, which is which is in more trouble? But what I do is is largely non existent anymore. You know, I've been because it's very expensive to do what I and and to do it well, or to do it you know, sort.
Of at a high level.
Yeah, the way the way I do it, anyway the way I try to do it. And so I don't have a very good news to deliver on this front. You know, it's a struggle. It's it's unfortunate. Uh, it's hard to get people to read. It's very hard to figure out. The model that Brett and I came up through has not been replaced with a viable replacement of how to pay for the kind of work that well, there is one and it's the New York Times and and you know the uh, they seem to have figured it out so far, and and it's great that. I mean, it's it's you know, it's a great place to be. And uh, I will say, what what would that?
That? What I miss in a local paper?
And you know, this is fully understanding the climate in which it operates now and all the incentives and all the all the limitations. Is I do miss a critic And I think that the I think the ecosystem is healthier. And I'm curious what you guys think as on the other side, I think I think most restaurants hers or or many that that I think, uh that I would care about their opinion, would agree, even if they were sort of annoyed by critic at any given time, that it makes restaurants better to have somebody who's doing it. And this is again not casting any particular shade, because I do understand why it doesn't happen, but I think it's been a loss.
It's absolutely I agree with you one hundred percent. We opened Compare the Pen in June of twenty fifteen, and because of how I understood looking at y'all side of food writing and food criticism, I knew that for our local paper, Brett Anderson, there's no way he would come in and have an article or have a review of us of our restaurant within six months. But that means from January on every Tuesday morning, I woke up at about six point thirty to look online. I subscribed to the paper, but in the digital form, I would look online to see if we'd been reviewed. And it kept going for about another year that every Tuesday, when I normally didn't work, I was waking up early, but it was it was there's some hubris I think to having nice things said about you and oh and that reminds me of something that you wrote about us once. We'll get to that later, But there was also it kept you on your toes. One of our very our second hire behind the bar at Compare the Pen, was a woman named Abail Gulla, tremendously talented mixologist. She also happened to mention that she babysat for both of you growing up, and I said, we are hired. If you can't even make a gin and tonic, at least you'll nose when these two guys come in. So it was that sort of attention that we wanted to make sure we showed out for everybody so we could have a business that continued to stay in business. But we also were cognizant of the fact that if a critic or a writer came in and said nice things about us, it was first of all justification for what we were putting everything everybody through who we worked with, and it would make an impact on the amount of people coming in to eat, at least for the first time. If something nice was set up, it definitely does.
Move the needle. And I think that's something that is missing now. Yeah, Like when I lived in New York and I worked at Danielle, it was every Wednesday that that would come out and everybody's like on edge, just waiting to see who's going to be reviewed, because it is a big deal and people do read that stuff and that does dictate are they going to come to the restaurant or not.
Or they're going to want to work with us.
And I think that now with social media, that all of these things have shifted where you have influences dictating where people are eating now. So I think that I would like to get back to having people review restaurants that are qualified, not somebody that has a million followers.
How often do you guys get approach by influences for free meals whole time?
Often on Instagram that I run most of the Instagram, and it's extremely annoying. It's another thing that has one of the ways to tell who is somebody with a valuable opinion I think comes at the end of the meal when both of you have had, at different times, situations where you've been sent treats from the kitchen, additioning and was working on something that popped in her head something she just wanted to send out to be nice, and you insisted it end up on the check take. That made an impression on us that, wow, there are professional standards of journalism they're being upheld. And then you get these people who are I'm not saying they wrong with begging for a free meal, And it's just we prefer to save things that are free for family members or dear friends or somebody who just eats at the restaurant forever and maybe help remind them of their professional or what should be professional standards. But again that goes to getting away from the actual professional people being the one who influence people's dining decisions versus a million follower person.
So I have a question when you are reviewing, sorry, when you were reviewing a restaurant, when you walk in, what is the first thing start to finish? Walk me through that process.
You start?
Yeah, sure, I mean I I've never was never a reviewer in the sense that Brett was or he is even but certainly not like he was when he was a full time critic. You know, I used to do this absurd project where I would called where I would name GQ's best new restaurants every year, and so I had to cover the country and and I had a pretty good budget, but I mean I didn't have, you know, a year to travel, and you know, it was an absurd ask to to sort of cover the entire country that has disappeared. And this was diminishing already had become untenable for reasons of my family, my body, and most importantly the money before COVID, and COVID really killed it. But when I would do that, I did it for five years. The only way I could not constantly feel like the worst imposter and like it was to lean into the subjectivity of it. You know, it had to be my journey and sort of how I felt that night, and you know, I mean I was bringing to bear some experience and some you know, sort of analysis, but I also knew that, you know, it was really, you know, how I felt, and i'd sort of.
That's sort of how I still approach it. You know.
I like to think of what I used to say that when I was reviewing, I wasn't reviewing food as much as I was restaurants, and I was sort of reviewing the business. I was reviewing restauranting as an art and so that I'm doing this in.
This very convoluted way. But all this is to say that that I.
Try to be open and as impressionistic as possible when I walk in and I really am attuned to sort of how I feel in a place as the first.
Thing, and then.
And then I try to, you know, sort of balance that openness and kind of you know, openness to the immediacy of the experience that I'm having, of the meal with as I say, thirty years of going to restaurants and sort of knowing what should be working which way, and obviously the food and obviously you know, some some standards of service, et cetera. But it's a chaotic process. Of the answer, I don't have it. I can't walk you through it other than to say, you know, I kind of I have had the luxury because I'm not accountable the way a critic truly is, and I have kept it that way by being by being sort of leaning into the subjectivity that I just kind of try to experience it as holistically as possible. Does that make some sense?
I mean it does to me, but like, no, no, it does.
You know.
I you know, we do a lot of the same types of stuff I mean, I will say one thing about just the whole restaurant critic of you know, grading a restaurant, visiting it at least three times, which is, you know, was the process I did. Don't hold your breath on that coming back. I just not because I don't value it personally. Of course I do, like, I mean, I own a home because I did that. I mean like, and but the having you know, been privy to sort of reader traffic data in a couple of different jobs. You know that just kind of the eight hundred to eleven hundred word restaurant review is a hard sell to readers in in the media environment that we live in, and it's in a very expensive investment, and I just it's hard for me to imagine that many institutions beyond The New York Times and a handful of others, being able to rationalize keeping that specific job as we've When I say we, I mean us for a similar generation coming up in the restaurant business. Like that's I don't it's hard for me to imagine that coming back. I think there's going to be some some creative I really hope that there are creative journalists people who maybe don't consider themselves journalists who operate mainly on social media, who emerge and can show a path forward to doing real service journalism.
That is.
That I feel like is independent, you know. I mean, I don't. I got very lucky in my career where I've always had a job with an expense account, you know, And I don't think it's entirely fair for me to look down on people who who who have to go to other ways to get into the restaurant. I mean, I think that there are you know, it's just the fact of the world. I mean, I do. I mean, we could sit here all day to hear my thoughts about the sort of narcissism of social media and what people are really up to.
But the.
So, you know, your original question, you know, was about sort of the process, the process that I've had, I had for a bunch of my career doesn't really apply anymore for me personally, because I'm not a local critic. I'm a you know, I'm a food correspondent. I do a lot of reporting. I've also participated and I spent a good bit of my time in the last couple of years the time New York Times has started leaning into service journalism around restaurants in ways that they haven't in the past. We do a fifty you know, sort of best Restaurants of the Year package every fall, and we've started to do dining guides, you know, the twenty five places we feel like you should eat and a bunch of different restaurants across America. And so I've been doing quite a bit of traveling the last few years on those to do the work to make sure we're recommending to Times readers, giving them recommend edentations that they can feel good about, right and and that that the work to do that is a little bit more like what what Martin was describing that he would do when he would go around the country for GQ to determine what the best new restaurants in the country are. It's like, you don't get you know, when I reviewed compare let Pound for the New York for The Times picking, I probably had eaten there seven or eight times or something. You'd be killed, you know, like just because I you know, because and I didn't do that to every but there was no reason I couldn't. It's all, you had to go sixteen blocks from my house, you know, and you gotta eat and the But when you fly into Chicago. You know, if I had my brothers, I would stay in Chicago for for three weeks, right, Like to me, that's like what you know. Of course my editors are going to be like rolled in and the But so that's hard. You know, you go to a city for I try to go I mean, think of a place like Chicago. It's so big, you know, you try to go to four or five days. You know, often you're writing something based on one visit. That's challenging, man.
You know, and how much preparation too, for say it's your first time having whatever. I don't know Indian Lassa and you know nothing about the history of Lawson. Is it just reading? Are you talking to other folks you know whose opinions you Yes?
And yes. It's also you know, I've been doing this for thirty some years and so there's less things out there that are like that. But the it's yeah, it's reading. It's also trying to eat at other places serving the similar, similar food in that market. One thing that I've been doing since I've been traveling for the Times is you know, like I'll go to a place like Chicago or a place like Philadelphia, Miam Me And now when I go, it'll be like the fourth or fifth time with this specific mission of like identifying a place to tell the whole country about. And so I am kind of building up visits where now I am able to occasionally write about a place that I've eaten at two or three times, or write about a place that I at least have put it, gotten to eat some meals, to eat comparative meals against it, to feel a little better about saying, you know, this is you know, a standout place for dumplings in Detroit, you know what I mean? Like that, and that's and even that, you know what I just described, I'm in an incredibly privileged position because I do go back. I know I'm going to go back. It seems like the Times will be in business next year, so you know, like that kind of thing. And so I that's a really that was a pretty windy answer, But I think vibes matter a ton. You know, You're like when you particular where you're traveling around the country, and sometimes you're meeting with people you don't even know. I mean, that's another thing, like you know, you go to some cities, it's like who you got to eat with other people because you can't. I don't know people everywhere, and that just kind of the ineffable.
Uh.
Just the hospitality really matters a lot, you know, like of being welcomed into a space, feeling like you're surrounded by people that live there, you know, and that are just kind of doing it for a mix of special occasion and habit. Like that atmosphere in a restaurant is what I always want.
Can remember every dish she's ever had at any restaurant? Oh, do you remember this at that? I can remember the man, there was a great dinner, and I can't really necessarily remember the dishes.
Well, but let me ask you what has been the most surprising food city in your travels?
Who don't say Houston?
Why can't I say that? I hadn't thought of it, but I think it's Houston.
Houston. Did you love? This is where it gets worse.
What did I love?
Say you love the crawfish in Houston?
Well, hold on, hold, on hold.
I also wrote a piece about this debate not having to happen.
I will say that I feel good.
Yes, Houston was a place you talk about New York provincialism. You know was is a perfect example of a place I certainly did not discover Houston, but you know, it's exactly the kind of place not only like had you had. I sort of dismissed it in my head, but that physically was the least kind of cool, you know, just just the least urban, least landscape I can imagine was you know it was it was. It was the opposite of the kind of just visually of.
All time.
Houston isn't beautiful like Los Angeles, but it is ugly like.
Beautiful.
That's beautiful. It was a pretty good one. But but you couldn't have a place.
And I remember very vividly, you know, one of the things I did in in Houston was I went to go find the Bookerny Bookery boodnt Man.
I was taken.
By a guy named Chris Reid, who's a really great and generous local barbecue writers. It took me to see it's a guy with a trailer who sets up in a Walmart parking lot, you know, and rides down the road.
With with with the smoke building out the back.
And it was part of what I was learning about Houston's kind of spirit, you know, sort of frontier like spirit in you know, in this in this what presents is this extremely generic suburban landscape.
And and I was very aware that.
Five years ago or whatever, maybe eight years ago, I would have spent an inordinate amount of time describing the Walmart parking lot and how big it was and how like, oh, you know, and and done a whole riff on the size of this parking lot that we were in. But that everybody outside of New York knows what a Walmart parking lot and you don't have to do that any you know. And and it felt like a moment it was important to me to realize that I had sort of and I sort of had to let go of the fun of that. But it made me realize that, you know, that that I had sort of left the city. This is, you know, to go back to the provincialism thing. So so, you know, Houston was surprising to me that way I have grown. I grew to love the Midwest when I was able to travel through it. I love Detroit.
You know.
I'm more in the loss of that job, as I've said many times, not because I missed going to San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, New York, every year, although I do I miss the excuse to go to Indianapolis, and the excuse to go to Toledo, and the excuse to you know, go to Louisville or you know, those places, because I think, in many ways, the story of my period of food writing has been the decreasing importance of those places.
I mean, and I love Los Angele.
I mean, I was a very early not early in the big scheme of things, but I from the beginning of my career when I first started going to Los Angeles, which was at the time, you know, the divide was not red and blue. The divide was New York or LA. And you know, we're you an East Coast person or a West Coast person, and you know I was and bred to hate LA and I were just you know, look down on it and and pretty early on at GQ, I did a food story that just to give you a sense because we now recognized LA as, you know, one of those great food cities of the world. You know, the headline was something like, go to LA for the food, you know. And this is after doing a similar story about Brooklyn. So my whole career has been sort of a kind of series of surprises like that.
My answer is in terms of the being the kind of the most surprising city for restaurants is actually Minneapolis and Saint Paulitis.
I was.
Careful listeners will well remember that I said I'm actually from up there. But that's not actually why it is not a Homer opinion. I mean, I left Minneapolis in thirty years ago almost and became a food authority, and you know, my restaurant education all ocurred after leaving, and there was a period of time when I would go home and I would I was like disdainful of, to be honest, of like the restaurants in that town. You know, like I didn't know what to recommend that people that just seem so aspirational and like kind of silly, and I, you know, I just I didn't think that the city was a very good place to eat for a long time. And you know, during this period of time where I was sort of starting to really care about what it meant to go to a good restaurant, right, that has changed and it's like, really in the last ten years, it is I believe it is the equal to a city like Portland, Oregon, in it's just in the quality of the food, the diversity of the of the cuisine there. You know, that city, that community has such a reputation of being you know, people backgrounds are like me, you know, Swedish white guys like growing up. But yeah, and but you know there's this amazing Native American restaurants and Somali and among American chefs and just like really high quality, like you know New American bistros, right, you know what I mean, Like there's actually like real depth there and I don't think people know that about it. And I think it's a really cool place to visit. And I don't say that just because I got a bunch of friends there.
I agree.
When Laren and I went in twenty eighteen, I.
Was we were there for a week.
We're there for a week, and I said, I'm like, I'm not looking forward to this trip because I don't know anything about the city. The food's going to be terrible.
We could not get.
Enough in Grand Cafe, Young Joning.
Everything is just so good.
It's the highest level.
Yeah, and very similar to New Orleans. That the community, the community of chefs, and the friends we ended up making just out of being there for a week. It's kind of of it's very refreshing.
It is a special place, and I think more people need to know about that city because.
They got no no, well, I mean, but it's also like that I don't get the sense. And this is something maybe Martinkaway and on too, like, particularly when you travel as a food journalist and you feel a certain amount of pressure to visit restaurants that are new. You can see in a lot of instances how restaurants in all parts of the country a certain kind of restaurant are kind of performing for outsiders or trying to deliver something that they think a more sophisticated audience that maybe doesn't already exist in that market. Once you know, like there's something a little bit disconnected from local culture that that you can see in restaurants that are part of developments, you know, created by people for money and all over all over the place. You know, you can you can just you can. I feel like I can eat in a restaurant want sometime, and I can hear the investors in a room saying, well, whatever you do, you got to have this thing on the menu. You know what I mean, Because this is what I get when I go to Atlanta at bit and I think that Minneapolis doesn't have that so much. Right, it does feel like they're cooking for each other and kind of pushing each other, and that is.
That's a nice way to look at it. Anyhow, go to Minneapolis, Go to Minneapolis. Do you ever throughout your careers, obviously with the subjects you have now it's not as it's much grander than our dear little restaurant industry, But did it ever weigh on you what you put down on paper or on a website, what it would do to the performance of the financial performance of that restaurant or I guess it's success or the people working there or that sort of Did you ever realize that if you wrote something mean it was that place was going to have that much bigger, steeper a hill to climb.
I I I faced this much less than Brett did, because again, I was sort of in the business of finding wonderful things more than you know, although there were times.
Along the way when.
When I would when when there was something was a phenomenon that you know, I found in my experience, when I would you know, would go there wasn't worth the hype or you know, basically I I only needed to do that where the target was was pretty big and pretty successful. You know, there were times when I worried that too much attention would would hurt a place in a positive too much positive attention would hurt a place or could. But that's not something I could, you could really think too much about. But I wasn't in the Maybe I shouldn't have been the one starting to answer this question, but I didn't. I was rarely in the position of of I didn't have to write about things I didn't like for the most part, which is different than being especially a local critic.
Imagine and then Brad Anderson as a local critic there, you just didn't really publish any bad ones.
Well you came in, I did. I mean that used to be. It used to be a lot. I mean, you guys got here at a different like the era of the you know, early two thousands up to twenty ten, like the oil spill there. You know, I wrote a lot of stuff that wasn't flattering to the people, probably or at least things that weren't full throated endorsements. And uh, you know, I don't I never took that lightly. But I also just you know, in the newspaper business. It's like part of the thing, particularly when you work at a local paper and you're the subject. Just the whole institution is subject to lots of outside pressure and stuff. It's like part of the job is you don't pull your punches, man like, and that's like a way it's like you're writing for the reader, you're not writing for And but I would think about, you know, I when I was a kid, my dad was a politician, and I know that like unflattering press is can be incredibly painful, not just to the person receiving it, but even the people around them. I mean, that is something I've always thought about, and I you know, I think there's certainly a lot of people out there that, you know, I don't like me because of things I've written, and that kind of comes with the job. But it's not a fun part of the job. I mean, it's not like it's not like I, you know, I sort of do. I've been a journalist my whole life, so my whole a doubt life, So I kind of am sort of just at peace with this idea that, like, doing your job is going to make some people really not like you. But I don't like that. I mean, I'm not a sociopath. I mean like you know, like oh awesome, Yeah, you know this person hates my guts and the h so you know, all of those things where it comes to criticism can be hard. My job at the times is a little when it comes to like kind of doing restaurant criticism is really more like what just described his job has been, which is to go find wonderful things you know there are I also do some kind of investigative work and that's a little different animal where you know, it can be pretty ugly, right, and it's just part but it's a different reason.
Part of being a real journalist too. You're not always writing about the yeah.
And I mean the kind of things I'm thinking about is like transcends actual what you're eating too, you know what I mean. And uh, and that's just a different kind of discomfort.
So you guys have both seen the restaurant industry evolve. Where do you see it going in the next five to ten years because it has changed a lot. You know, COVID has changed a lot of things.
Major Food group has changed a lot.
Of as they have.
Are they they're popping up? Yes, for those of you who are listening to this a couple except in the Super Bowl. We had the Super coming up this weekend, our next weekend.
You know, I'll tell you as somebody who doesn't have an expense account anymore, you know, I found out that restaurants are pretty expensive.
And I feel like there was a moment.
I feel like that I think that the that the and I I don't know what the answer here is. You know that there was a moment in what we call the food revolution, the sort of restaurant revolution, which I think I sort of think of you guys coming here right in that sort of particularly here but everywhere where, it felt like it was this big shared cultural thing. And you know, part of that was again the provincial of me being in this in this media world, but that there was that it was a little more open to a wider group of people. I think COVID and sort of the attendant cultural you know me too, and and and and and sort of the senseivity to I think I think there was a moment which was kind of great and kind of delusional, in which we thought of restaurants as an art form and instead of a business ecosystem, or at least I was fooled into sometimes thinking that, and I think that is over, but it leaves.
The coverage or the are you saying of the culture of our side.
I guess, I guess, I guess there was a moment we sort of felt like we were all together in it, and maybe that was all again, maybe that was a delusion, but I I I hear, on the one hand, my restaurant friends talk about the impossibility of the business, and you know, the incredible pressure and incredible sort of like just seemingly untenable nature of the business. And I also know that as an eater, I'm largely shut out of most dining these days. I mean not you know, I have to, like, you know, have to think seriously about what I'm I'm eating out and what I'm eating out. So I don't know where that goes. I don't know where the economics economics feel like. And this is during a good times, you know, right, So I I just so I'm anxious about what will happen to this art that I love, in this this.
World that I love.
Should like the tiniest Why I shouldn't say tiniest. We've lived through some pretty big disruptions, but you know, I don't know how all that gets resolved, how how it remains a public ritual and a business where we are, and I don't know that that's I don't seem not getting better anytime really fast.
I mean, you guys would would know. You can speak to that more clearly than me.
It's the neurosis that we live with too. I mean that we think that if we have a bad shift, no one's ever going to come eat with us again. But you look at some of the things that are happening, and that's one of the reasons we love New Orleans too, is the we move from Miami and there are great local, independent restaurants there. They're not the ones that end up on the society pages or this sort of thing that maybe that's what people care about more than just going and getting a great meal at a restaurant owned by a chef and his wife or you know that sort of thing. It's unfortunate, it's scary, but all we do is just put our heads down, knowing we have a limited shelf life and hopefully it won't change too much before we're ready to call it quits.
I mean, the thing that I feel optimistic about is there are continued to be. I continue to meet a lot of people in the restaurant business, and I'm not just talking about owners and chefs sort of at all level of it, who are just super sincere about wanting to do this and wanting to do it well and the reasons for it. It reminds me of like early in my career, you know, when you would talk to like the rhythm guitarists to it, and it's like they did all they would know, all they care about is like making music that people listen to, right, you know what I mean? And I do feel like there is that part of the restaurant business in ways there was not when we are. When I was a young person, at least I wasn't aware of those people, and that I think makes me feel like there's some good creative energy and some in the business, but I do not know if it can overcome what I believe is far and away the greatest threat to restaurants as we know them, which is real estate. The price of real estate is outrageous, and we grew up in a world where all of the sort of creative dynamism, I don't want to say all because agriculture is a rural right thing, but was really generated in American urban areas, right. And the restaurant model as we know it really was invented in our lifetime by people like Alice Waters and Okuk, people who are still alive this And what I mean is that sort of alter idea of someone who can create a restaurant that is has a personality and all that sort of stuff, and to draw other people into that business that weren't born into it, you know what I mean. Like that that's all kind of new in terms of it being everywhere. And that model of restaurant was the business model that you guys follow was created in urban areas that were cheap as hell. They were bohemian impulses. Even nonre Sultner's restaurant was like on a bad street, you know what I mean. And that environment has completely gone away, and it's been replaced by a super accelerating energy from investor class that is demanding a certain return on their investment. And if we want to have dynamic urban areas, they need to chill. I mean, seriously, it's as easy as really someone has to chill, because I think that we're going to end up with a bunch of chains. And I do think that there's a lot of people out there who have their you know, who are the puppet masters of the real estate who are going to be fine with the chains because they don't think past next November. And that to me is worrisome. And I don't know where you're going to find the dynamism if you can't have it in these dense populated areas where people can walk to eat, where people you know, like it's certainly you can go to a suburb. There's a lot of really wonderful eating outside of urban areas the United States areas of the United States. But I don't know how you can build a culture that without some density, you know what I mean, Like, it's hard for me to imagine.
Well, it's It's one of the things that scares us is when you look at hotels. Hotels used to and you're acutely aware of this, your wife, Natalie, Jordy, or the Peter and Paul, but they've almost for everybody else in the world, they've become just a real estate business. All it is is financing and refinancing and refinancing and then selling and gone are the Grand Budapest days of you know, having a lobby boy who you know throughout your link to your say, or a door man. But yeah, it presents challenges to us. Speaking of challenges for you guys, the A P style book, how often is that updated? And do you pay attention to it?
I've never that. I don't know. I don't know. Uh, I enjoy But we.
Have a friend where you can write whatever you want and they can't.
Oh, you know, I can write anything I want, I admit for no, I never, I don't. I guess at the times.
I occasionally written for Times as well, and there have been a couple of times when I've had to make some adjustments. But and then you know, each publication has a style book for certain things. But but you know, an internal kind of style book. But the magazine and people we're just like groovy man, which is I could make make, you know, put put suffixes on stuff.
I don't exactly.
How tough is it for you to raising children when they bring home uh English or whatever? The elementary school versions of English are reading their their writing.
Oh my kids are really good, I gotta say, like they're.
Do you do you look at it critically? Or are you looking at that as a dat.
Well, I mean they're not really writing articles.
I got secret though, there were writers that you can chill.
No, no, no, no, no, I'm curious they.
What do you mean they signed twelve year olds to club leagues in Europeans? Oh yeah, can you Is there a way for you to look at a high school student, a college student? Can you look at someone else's writing and say there's something there? They just need to refine this. We did the same with cooks us.
In a general sense, I do believe that writing, being a good writer is being a good thinker, and you know, and and so I feel as though that's you know, you know, that's the which is why and we don't have to go on this whole tangent, which is why. This sort of the fact that our kids will will grow up constantly with the temptation to use an a AI instead of writing, instead of thinking through what they want to say, is a you know, nightmare scenario. You know, this is a local podcast. I'm gonna plug it, Homer. Plusy Community School is teaching my kids to write really well, and they can write a lead to an essay better than you know. I'm going to guess seventy five percent of the people submitting freelance articles grown ups who think it's their profession submitting it to the magazine. So I'm extremely pleased with that. And that's not genetic, you know. You know, their mom is a writer, is the writer in the family. And but it isn't it isn't innate. They are getting this terrific education at Homer PLUSI Communities.
I got.
I arrived here late because I was at Willow School Elementary school at an art show, you know, like and the and where I was reminded once again how grateful I am for that public school, you know. And I I sort of let you know with our kids that Brett Martin and my kids are the same age as the second and eight and ten years old. The thing I care about the most at the stage of their life is that they learned to love and struggle with narrative that isn't from a screen, you know, like that, you know, they of course I want to play video games and all that sort of stuff, but like just to like it doesn't really matter to me if it's Kick Comic Club or whatever, dog Man and it's you know, some of the things that Julius really likes and as long as it's is, they're losing themselves in a story that has lots of characters and things. Because I just feel that the you know, I'm sort of a liberal arts educated person and I do as I'm fifty four years old, and I kind of shocked myself to be aware sometimes of like how other adults who maybe didn't have that impulse reading impulse that I did, struggle with the complexity of real life in near you know, like I mean, I and I'm just convinced that it's that's it's the diminution or the the reduction of you know, this idea that like, well, why should I read Moby Dick? How is that going to get me a job? Is a like a cancerous way to see the world, because it's you need to challenge yourself mentally and and understand that things aren't always as the appear. And I actually think that fiction can teach you that.
That's interesting. Well, gentlemen, thank you. Yeah, one of the things we just I mean, it wouldn't be. It's very important that the rest of the world knows how the the impact that good writing can have on people. For example, when I can't even remember how old I was that Adam Sachs wrote an article about the Grand Central Oyster Station that as a young, like maybe not responsible young adult, I went. Next time I was in New York, I went to that restaurant just because of the way it was written about the steam going through the steam kettle, and that just latched in my mind to the point that when we finally got to this stage of life where we knew these guys, I asked if Brett had Adam's contact info, and he found an article in his garage a clipping, copied it and scanned it and emailed it to me. But that was an example of writing about a restaurant and experience how it tagged me, you know how whenever we go and now I have to go by myself. But it's just one of those things that became embedded in my head from what I read in a magazine about a restaurant. Also, this is the important part and the only reason we really invited Brett Martin a chance to make up for the fact that when he wrote an article about you in Garden, a Gun magazine, we were actually living upstairs from Babs and he mentioned that the loft had of feeling of people who don't spend much time at home.
It's stuck.
It bounced from ear to ear inside my head trying to figure that out, and ever since then, I've tried to decorate our home. Now it feels, but I won't know until he comes to check it out. So with Brett Anderson, Brett Martin, thank you very much for the time today. Y'all are incredible people. We're glad to count to a friends and keep writing great stuff.
Thanks a lot, thank you.
It's really good for here.
Everybody
