Not Being a Restaurant Critic

Seeing Frank Bruni’s article on being an ex-restaurant critic, I couldn’t agree more.

I have been a retired restaurant writer for nearly two weeks now. In between, we spent a week on a cruise to Alaska and a weekend in Seattle, eating up a storm in both places. I was a “judge” in a shipboard cooking contest. I put the term in quotes because 1) I was turned down as a contestant because “bad cooks are funnier” and 2) because while I was actually tasting the food and thinking about it, my two fellow “judges” were out-doing each other with comments such as “Yum”  and “Yum Yum” and licking their plates to show their enthusiasm. I was reduced to using a bit of cooked onion for a decimal point in so I could hold up a 4.5 grade and join in the fun.

In Seattle, we ate at Mike’s Chili and Sun Ya. I thought Mike’s chili wasn’t very flavorful, but the ambiance was fantastic. (Onions had been shredded several hours prior to serving for that metallic off taste). Sun Ya I like a lot, notwithstanding some reviews that simply trash the place. We had a great brunch at Lola (octopus, green beans, and corn on sumac dusted yoghurt for me. The green beans seemed superfluous, but the octopus corn and yoghurt rocked.)

No notes. No ordering what seemed representative. Off-duty, right? Well, I was still taking notes in my head “for a blog post.” Still having my dining companions treat my comments as more informed. (And still thinking they were more informed.)

Still, yesterday, I made tomato and mayonaise sandwiches for lunch, salmon (caught in Alaska) and corn for dinner, tomato and cheese for lunch today. Looking forward to food from my own hands with ingredients I know.