RIP, Tom Menino, the Boston food nerd’s friend

Mayor Menino at a charity event
(Photo courtesy of Hubbub)

I can’t add much to the countless heartfelt remembrances of Boston’s late, beloved, longest-tenured mayor, Thomas M. Menino. Myself, I ran into him personally three times, always when browsing the way-marked-down suit racks at the original Filene’s Basement in Downtown Crossing, looking for bargains on my lunch hour. The third time, we exchanged more than pleasantries: I told him I was proud as a Bostonian that he had upped his sartorial game lately with better suits and ties and tailoring. He seemed genuinely pleased. I meant it: I thought he looked more dignified and statesmanlike with his newly-smart dress sense, bringing a much-needed, high-profile dash to our famously schlubby burg.

That’s my only anecdote, one of tens of thousands among a citizenry that, according to one famous survey, more than half of had met Menino personally, an astonishing statistic, and doubtless a big part of the reason he endured and thrived as a popular and effective change agent in Boston for so long.

My real point here is to encourage you to check out these two pieces by Corby Kummer, the longtime restaurant critic of Boston Magazine whom I’ve long admired for his food journalism and estimable books on the history of food. One is a video interview with The Mayor at Esperia Grill (one of my very favorite Greek restaurants in town, in part for its phenomenal pork gyros). It’s part of a promised series by Boston Univerity's BU Today that trailed Menino as he visited local, family-run restaurants out in the neighborhoods. I’m really looking forward to seeing the rest of those.

The other is a piece Kummer wrote for The Atlantic that makes a convincing case for Menino’s stunning, positive influence on our food scene. I was a longtime Menino supporter, especially appreciated his pioneering advocacy of our food-truck movement, but I had scant idea of how broadly and pervasively he improved our access to quality food, benefiting Bostonians of every age and stripe.

Thanks, Corby, for shining some light on that. And thanks, Mr. Mayor, for being a fellow food nerd, but also one with an aggressive social conscience and political dedication to making good, healthy food available to every one of the citizens about whom you so obviously, deeply cared over a lifetime of public service. That ought to humble every one of us who merely writes about the pleasure in good eating. You left an indelible mark. We owe you a huge debt of gratitude.

RIP, Peter O'Toole. Glad I Got to Review You in "Ratatouille"

Image courtesy of Picture Show Pundits

I was saddened to read of the passing of Peter O’Toole, the great British actor I much admired in films like Lawrence of Arabia, The Stunt Man, The Ruling Class and My Favorite Year. But I was especially tickled by one performance that many obituaries omitted: his icy Parisian restaurant critic Anton Ego in Pixar’s 2007 animated feature Ratatouille.

Aside from O’Toole’s vivid voice work, I loved the fact that -- six-year-old-movie spoiler alert -- the chef/hero, a rat from the provinces who improbably ends up running a Parisian restaurant kitchen, manages to win over Ego’s hard-hearted professional spoilsport with a Provençal comfort-food dish that mashes the critic’s nostalgia buttons. (I confess: that same tactic has worked on me.)

When the film debuted, I was writing only restaurant reviews and food/drink features for alt-weekly Dig Boston; doing a film review was a lark. As it happened, I loved the movie, even though its depiction of food critics is a bit problematic.

The Dig redesigned its website in the summer of 2007 and in the process accidentally blew up its online archives, so I’m running it again here. RIP, Mr. O’Toole. It’s not the size of the life, but the size of the liver.


From Boston’s Weekly Dig, 27 June 2007

RATATOUILLE
There’s a rat in me kitchen, thank goodness.
Review by MC Slim JB

When the Dig asked me to provide a Chowhound’s take on Ratatouille – Pixar’s new computer-animated feature about a rat who aspires to be a great chef – I thought, what business does a food writer have reviewing movies? But as a restaurant fanboy and film geek, I’ve noticed the two worlds have much in common. They’re collaborative efforts: a film’s scenarist, director and actors mirror a restaurant’s chef, cooks and servers. Enjoyment of each requires a couple of hours’ time and benefits from comfy seats and boon companions. Whether dining or viewing is the main event, discussing it afterward is part of the fun.

No surprise, I love food-themed movies. I went in prepared to measure Ratatouille against the greats of the genre. My all-time favorite is Tampopo (1985, Japan), in which a trucker helps a young widow save her failing ramen stand by taking her on a quest to uncover the quintessential noodle soup recipe. It both respects and satirizes genre films, movie lovers and food dorks, and features some jaw-dropping scenes that deliriously conflate the pleasures of food and sex.

Another is Big Night (1996), in which two immigrant brothers struggle to keep their traditional Italian restaurant afloat in philistine 1950s New Jersey. The climactic feast, prepared for a VIP who never shows, is one of filmdom's giddiest, most tantalizing dinner parties, while the wordless finale is a lyrical reminder of how cooking and sharing a meal can express love and forgiveness. Does Ratatouille belong in this rarified company?

It has some bona fides. The film got the food-nerd community buzzing by hiring Thomas Keller – chef/owner of The French Laundry and Per Se, two of America’s mostly highly regarded restaurants – as a consultant. Keller guided the filmmakers’ painstaking efforts to realistically recreate the workings of an Escoffier-vintage kitchen brigade and its product. Meanwhile, co-writer/director Brad Bird – of The Iron Giant (1999) and The Incredibles (2004) – has created a hero any food obsessive can identify with.

That would be Remy (ingenuously voiced by alt-comedy genius Patton Oswalt), a rural rat with a hypersensitive nose, refined palate, and dreams of culinary greatness. He covets fresh people-food and emulates its cooking, to the bemusement of his trash-scavenging family. Separated from them during an emergency evacuation of their country nest, he lands in Paris in the kitchen of Gusteau’s, a once-famed, now down-at-the-heels restaurant. The ghost of the late chef Gusteau himself (Brad Garrett, sage and dolorous), whose cookbooks and cooking shows have made him Remy’s hero, pops up periodically as mentor and conscience.

Remy forges a symbiotic relationship with the kitchen’s plongeur Linguini (Lou Romano), a clumsy doofus utterly bereft of cooking skills. Like Cyrano turning an inarticulate hunk into a silver-tongued Romeo, Remy becomes Linguini’s literal puppet master, making him a talented cook by proxy. Thus Linguini earns acclaim for himself and the envious enmity of the gnomish, scheming Skinner (a gleefully wicked Ian Holm), the restaurant’s current chef/owner.

Remy and Linguini’s other antagonist, restaurant critic Anton Ego (imperiously voiced by Peter O’Toole) may cause food writers everywhere to squirm, and not just because he looks like a refugee from Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride. The real affront is how the film misrepresents their profession. Ego’s a pompous aesthete, insufferably certain of his power and infallible taste. Wait, that’s not the error: it’s his announcement that he’ll dine at Gusteau’s the following evening to review it. I know that every local restaurateur recognizes the critics from Boston Magazine and the Boston Herald, ensuring they get fabulous meals, but some of us still cultivate anonymity, seeking the same treatment as our readers.

That’s a quibble in a film where the food looks so fabulous, the milieu and technique so true to life. Ironically, another false note belongs to Keller with his design of the titular specialty that Remy creates to impress Ego. Unlike most of Remy’s soulful, instinctive cooking, Keller's ratatouille is a fussy, post-modern abstraction of the humble French peasant stew. Looking like a Bundt cake made of poker chips, ringed by a too-careful smear of sauce and crowned with a tiny sliver of basil, it’s the least appetizing dish in the movie.

Mercifully, Ratatouille eschews the obnoxious pop-culture riffing that has plagued recent animated films, which should help it age much better than anything involving Robin Williams. The CG looks gorgeous: wet rat fur is as lovingly rendered as the sleek, Anna Karina-esque bob worn by Colette (a winning smarty-punk performance by Janeane Garofalo), the brigade’s feisty lone female cook. I’m grateful that Remy and his clan aren’t Disney-cute; they look especially glossily, greasily gross when running for their lives, as rats frequently must do.

Ratatouille features thrilling action sequences, abundant slapstick, nefarious intrigue, screwball romance, and lovely Parisian scenery, albeit with some pat homilies about daring to follow your dreams. I particularly enjoyed Colette’s Anthony Bourdain-like description of Skinner’s dubious kitchen crew, as well as Remy’s musings on the ecstasies of well-matched flavors. The kids will love it, but even meat-and-potatoes grownups should find Ratatouille brisk, hilarious and moving. With any luck, it will also inspire them to cook with a bit more passion and joy, and maybe eat a little less garbage.

CSI Boston – Restaurant Edition: Who Killed Rocca?

A lot of Bostonians woke up New Year’s Day to learn that Rocca Kitchen & Bar, an upscale, modern Italian restaurant in Boston's South End, had closed. (I got wind of it on New Years' Eve from parties connected with the restaurant, confirmed it the next morning, and broke the news at 8am on Chowhound.) Many expressed shock: wasn’t Rocca doing well? Hadn’t chef Tiffani Faison (brought aboard in March 2010) reinvigorated the menu, garnered enthusiastic re-reviews in the Boston Globe and Boston Magazine, attracted plenty of press (in part with her celebrity from Bravo's Top Chef)? What the heck happened?

It’s said that success has many fathers while failure is an orphan. I expect many conflicting stories to trickle out in the coming weeks, laying blame for Rocca’s closing variously on troubled management, the recession, the fickleness of customers, bad weather, crossed stars. As someone who lives nearby, roots for local businesses to succeed, and gave Rocca many chances over its three years and eight months of life, I have my own particular theory. Let’s consider the evidence:

• Food. I considered Faison’s food an improvement over her predecessor, and particularly admired her deft, creative hand with seafood: I will fondly remember a dish of squid-ink strozzapreti with shrimp and grilled-escarole pesto. But opening chef Tom Fosnot was no slouch either, and some of his dishes, like corzetti with rabbit ragù, were also extraordinary. I found it refreshing to see a few nods to the cuisine of Liguria (like a hand-rolled trofie with hand-mortared pesto), a region of Italy that gets short shrift in the US, especially hereabout. On the whole, I really liked the food.

• Location. Rocca had a great spot in a corner of the South End that had become gentrified with neighboring luxury condos and helped by the success of nearby restaurants and pubs like Gaslight Brasserie du Coin, Myers + Chang, Oishii Boston, and J.J. Foley’s Cafe. Locals no longer considered that stretch of Harrison Avenue dangerous to walk around at night, and visitors could take advantage of free parking, a rare amenity in the South End.

• Ambience. I considered the upstairs dining room and bar a bit cramped and more than a little tacky, with shifting-colors LED lighting that was about ten years too late for hipness. But the first-floor bar and lounge was beautiful, airy and inviting, and the spacious patio, secluded comfortably away from street noise and car exhaust, was my favorite in the South End.

• Wines and spirits. I found the wine list pretty useful, with good range in Italian wines and enough price breadth to meet both my weeknight bargain-sipping and weekend splurging needs. Bartending was never extraordinary but generally adequate, not distracting enough to be a minus.

• Service. Okay, some major blood spatter here. Rocca’s service ranged from very good to adequate to thoroughly incompetent. There were nights when we experienced flawless attention, others where we felt not especially well-treated but not ill-used, and at least two occasions when I thought, “This is the worst service I have gotten anywhere in a long time.” There appeared to be a persistent expediting problem, an inability to get food quickly from the basement kitchen to tables. During one particularly maddening stretch in the Fosnot era, I was so consistently served lukewarm to cold food that I stopped ordering anything that needed to be hot to be enjoyable. The biggest problem was that you never knew which Rocca service experience was going to show up. It could be great and awful on successive nights.

• Management. I can’t speak directly to management competence at Rocca except as reflected in my service experiences, but one Chowhound poster made an observation that hadn’t struck me but I recognized as true: co-owners Michela Larson and Gary Sullivan weren’t a strong, visible presence at the restaurant. I didn’t often catch them working the room after the first few weeks, didn’t see their hands-on presence in the front of the house. That stands in marked contrast to many successful restaurants in the neighborhood.

There is doubtless more to the story than what customers can see; I can only share a customer's impressions. Great first experiences: loved the food, brought many friends there, spent a bunch of pleasant summer evenings on the patio. An ensuing pattern of frustration, as mediocre and poor experiences alternated with strong ones, leading me to drop Rocca from my rotation of reliable neighborhood standbys. A second chance granted under the new chef: another great first impression, with relief that it seemed to be on the upswing. Then another series of wildly inconsistent dinners, with service quality varying from good to so-so to my worst single fine-dining service experience of 2010 -- which I described as "so bad it was almost comical, until the $170 check arrived." Similar woes reported by friends I’d dragged back to the “new Rocca” but were no longer thanking me for it. We all have less dining-out money to spend and fewer free nights to spend it: why roll the dice when there are a dozen places within a few blocks that are less risky?

More than anything else, that inconsistency is what did Rocca in for me. In my experience as a customer and industry employee, it’s the one pitfall that is the most difficult for a restaurant to avoid. Inconsistency is the key reason so many places like Rocca that appear to have all the factors necessary for success – great location, attractive physical plant, veteran management team, loads of talent in the kitchen, strong concept – still fail. I really liked it, yet I couldn’t depend on it, and so found it difficult to recommend to others. The lesson in my mind is that it’s better to earn a B-minus seven days a week than an A on some nights and a D on others. Above all, consistency is what keeps restaurants in business.

The Stuff Magazine 2010 Dining Awards

I don't highlight my professional food writing very often here, as that's what the column on the left of this blog is for, but I'll make an exception for the 2010 edition of Stuff Magazine's annual Dining Awards, which I've been doing by myself or in collaboration with my good friend, the awesome food writer Ruth Tobias, for the last four years.

If you go back and reread the awards from 2007, 2008, or 2009, you'll notice these aren't exactly traditional: we try to avoid hackneyed categories like the "Best Italian Restaurant". We draw more inspiration from Esquire's bygone "Dubious Achievement Awards", and so spend as much time deflating the overhyped and shameless as we do lauding the worthy. (And if an award is too snarky even for my rather-indulgent editors to publish, it ends up here.)

Anyway, the biweekly Stuff Magazine, which focuses on Boston nightlife, fashion, food and drink -- and where I also write the recurring Food Coma column on Boston fine dining restaurants -- is the only publication I know that would let me recognize both the fanciest, most expensive new French restaurant in town and a modest, slightly mysterious, out-of-the-way Haitian restaurant on the same page. Our friends at publications like Boston Magazine ain't doing a Lady Gaga of Plating Award, or a Biggest Balls Award, a rare recurring category of which I'm especially proud.

Ruth and I always have a blast pointing out both the most notable and notorious chefs, bartenders, dining trends, restaurants, dishes and stories from the past year of Boston's great little dining scene. Hope you enjoy it, too!

Todd English sobs quietly into a big pile of money

In a fascinating and funny article in the April 2009 issue of Boston Magazine, Amy Traverso makes a winking, half-ironic case for reconsidering the reputation of Todd English, Boston's most famous and successful celebrity chef. English is now derided by many locals for reasons Traverso aptly captures: “The English brand has come to eclipse English the chef… These days the high priests of the food bloggerati, in particular, seem to take special pleasure in framing him as the epitome of a sellout celebrity chef. ‘Yeah, Chowhound has beat me up a lot,’ English says. ‘I don't even read it anymore. It probably took me a couple of bad articles to realize that maybe I was misunderstood.’"

Mea culpa: I’m one of those Chowhound.com contributors who excoriates Olives Boston as a pale facsimile of the days when English actually cooked there, and thinks other English outlets like Bonfire are pretty terrible, too. I recently wrote a piece in Stuff Magazine in which I revisited Olives and other former It Places to see if they still deserve the crowds they get. I was relatively kind to Olives, not mentioning the sight of men’s-room partitions falling off the walls, nor how the giant bucket of deep-fried onion strings called to mind The Cheesecake Factory, nor that the tagliatelli Bolognese was the worst fine-dining pasta dish I’d tasted in years: an ugly, gloppy mess grossly overseasoned with cinnamon, frankly disgusting.

But why would English care what Bostonians think at this point, anyway? He’s a multi-millionaire, a national celebrity. As Traverso documents, he has 21 restaurants (including an L.A. joint venture with Eva Longoria), a deal for more restaurants in Thompson hotels, Top Chef appearances, his own TV show Food Trip, and so on and on. English could just say, “Please. My job hasn’t been about being a chef for years. My role is to promote Todd English, The Brand. Expecting the original Olives to maintain its old quality is naïve. Don’t hate the player; hate the game.” That kind of candor and self-awareness would be refreshing, wouldn't it? No such luck -- English actually wishes the masses could appreciate his ambition as something noble. Says English, "Go to Dallas, go to Tampa. I go to Tampa once a month because of my Home Shopping Network gig [where he flogs his own line of cookware]… and it's chain city. I don't eat for three days." Can't you feel his pain? You see, he just wants to help people in culinarily-benighted towns across America.

Look, we all tend to rationalize the compromises we make in life. But I get a little incensed when English's rationalizations extend to why he couldn’t settle for being a one-restaurant, one-town kind of guy: “‘I watched the stars [at NYC's bygone French restaurant La Côte Basque] fade away and the ambition fade away. I learned from a ton of really burned-out chefs at the Culinary Institute. That's what this business will do.’" (Aha: so it wasn't about chasing rock stardom, but running away from burnout.) Traverso continues: “English never wanted to end up in a precious little bistro, recalling his glory days while plating his millionth serving of steak frites.”

To me, this fish story is not only lame, but belittles the dedication and staying power of many talented Boston chef/owners who have chosen to helm a single restaurant precisely because it's so hard to scale up those qualities that make their cooking unique and wonderful. I’m guessing Gordon Hamersley hasn't done a casino or cruise-ship restaurant because he recognizes that if he’s not at the stove, it’s not really his cooking -- and he's too proud to collect a check just for stickering his name over some lieutenant's work. Bostonians know the real deal when they taste it, too, which is why Hamersley’s Bistro landed in the Top 10 of Boston Magazine’s recent ranking of Boston's 50 best restaurants and Olives didn’t even crack the list. That’s a long tumble down for a place that many critics and consumers, myself included, once called the best restaurant in the city.

So when English expresses chagrin at not feeling the hometown love, I have scant sympathy, though I'm kinder than my friends who speak with the bitterness of the jilted: “We loyal fans put Todd on the map, and he never shows up anymore. We're like the first wife who slaved to put her husband through medical school, then got dumped for a young hottie with big fake boobs the minute he finished his residency.” While you can't blame those folks for burning their old snapshots, I think their attitude unfairly discounts English’s net-positive influence here, like his mentoring of some bright young chefs. But it partly explains why many of us who fondly recall Olives' heyday just shake our heads when English cavils about being misunderstood. We understand his real motivations perfectly, and we don't fault him for grabbing the brass ring. But the bottom line for Bostonians is that a chain -- no matter how gifted the man at the top, nor how skillfully and glamorously he markets it -- is still a chain. Maybe you can fool your new fans, but it's tougher to put one over on the old ones.

What’s up with the odd moniker, MC Slim JB?

Pictured: an actual MC
Photo courtesy of Wikipedia

I know my pen name is obviously unconventional for a food writer, so I get asked about its origin a lot. It dates back to the days when my friends and I, very young punk-rock kids, became fans of old-school hip-hop: The Sugarhill Gang, Afrika Bambaataa, Grandmaster Flash, Kurtis Blow, et. al. We sat around dreaming up stage names: what would your emcee (rapper) or deejay (turntablist) name be? Good for a laugh, but as I was unlikely ever to rap outside of the shower, my microphone controller name “MC Slim JB” went into a drawer alongside my spinner name, “DJ Phattee Phat Phat" or somesuch.

I dredged up the MC moniker sometime around the turn of the century for use as my alias on Chowhound.com, where most posters go by nicknames. As a frequent poster on Chowhound's Boston Board, I came to the attention of two local print-media editors: Scott Kathan of Stuff Magazine, and Eric Solomon of Boston’s Weekly Dig. Both approached me the same week with offers of freelance food writing work. Kathan, my first editor, suggested I write under my Chowhound nickname, saying “MC Slim JB has some credibility with local Chowhounds, and I’d like you to bring that Chowhound sensibility to your food writing here.” Solomon saw similar value in the name for use at The Dig.

After my food writing debut with a Stuff cover story and over 30 pieces for The Dig, I felt the name had brand equity worth preserving, and so pitched it as I went on to write for Boston Magazine (where predictably it made the editors nervous) and The Boston Phoenix (which valued its name recognition). My current gigs at The Phoenix (a cheap-eats review column) and Stuff Magazine (a fine-dining review column) are what I am now best known for, all as MC Slim JB.

So through no real plan, a jokey lark from my youth ended up as my nom de plume. As it happens, choosing an alias for Chowhound instead my real name proved a happy accident, as the anonymity it afforded has made it easier to avoid special treatment, the extra service and kitchen attention that well-known critics get. (The great Ruth Reichl outlines this phenomenon in her excellent, funny restaurant-critic memoir “Garlic and Sapphires”.)

Anonymity is a fragile thing; no critic goes unrecognized forever. But thanks to the MC Slim alias, many restaurants still don’t know me by sight, and I strive to be an unobtrusive, ordinary-Joe diner. This improves the chances that my experience will be the same as that of any diner walking in off the street, not the “as perfect as it can be” version that recognized critics tend to get. With any luck, there will always be restaurants that don’t connect the dots between that person sitting at the counter and the food writer with the odd hip-hop name.