The case for the culinary arts

The slighted art of cuisine:
An open letter to Dan Rottenberg

LYNN HOFFMAN

Dear Dan,

Congratulations on the success of Broad Street Review. It's a brave and wonderful thing you're doing. There is a certain pleasure in connoisseurship, in thoughtful appreciation of the good things, in studying and knowing something well enough to get as much pleasure from your knowledge of it as you do from the thing itself.

There's also a bit of cultural and political statement involved. In an age when mass pleasures like TV grow more feeble and homogeneous, the very act of discrimination becomes a form of protest. And so I am a bit shocked a publication so fervently dedicated to refined appreciation and support of the arts shows such cultivated disdain for the culinary arts.

Now, I understand that many of arts supporters and critics come from two cultural streams. Both the Anglo-Saxon and the German-Jewish traditions are as disdainful of pleasure in general and gustatory pleasure in particular as they are appreciative of rarefied intellectual drama or orchestral music. Each culture maintains an Aristotelian hierarchy that elevates the brain above the tongue, the nose and the gut. (I'm not sure where the groin fits in there, but that's for another harangue.) Fair enough. Cultures have their emphases, and emphasizing something necessarily means neglecting something else.

Can you think of a great Anglo-Saxon chef? A prominent German-Jewish sommelier? The fact remains that (opera buffs aside) the guardians of our high culture are not only tone deaf in the taste buds, but many of them are proud of it.

Dan, my gentle friend, Broad Street Review is a prime offender. What follows is not a rebuke but a call to a larger understanding of what thoughtful culture might be about.

Great chefs make a great city

At a time when mass marketing produces food so disgusting that it has to be wrapped in distracting gimmicks to be sold, the mere fact of paying attention to what you eat and drink and telling the truth about taste is a revolutionary act. You may object that you and many of your friends can't tell the difference between a Côte du Rhone and a Côte de Beaune. Perhaps you can't, but let's not make the mistake of thinking that no difference exists. There's a whole world of pleasure out there, if only people will pay attention to it.

Asserting the cultural importance of great food is easy; proving it is even easier. Remember 1991? 1991 was not such a great year for Philadelphia. On paper at least, our city seemed to be sinking into a disorganized twilight. Signs of decay were everywhere. Center City residential streets were littered with “For Sale” signs and syringes. The city’s finances were badly mismanaged. No one in city government seemed willing to take responsibility, much less take charge. Our lame-duck mayor made a pathetic summation of his career by taking credit for the work of Willard Rouse and disclaiming responsibility for the works of Wilson Goode. Philadelphia’s municipal bonds were being swapped for rubles.

The only hopeful sign was what people called the Restaurant Revolution. By 1991, it had gone so far, and the taste for good things had gone so deep, that a retail revolution followed. Good restaurant chefs demanded good supplies, and their customers ended up demanding quality food at home, too. A dying city doesn't spawn artisan food specialty stores like DiBruno's, Suzie's and Iovino. There are a half-dozen good bakers— the Artisan on Morris Street representing the best of the little guys, Metropolitan leading the biggies. You could argue that the city was saved by restaurants and food lovers, by the hundreds of small artists who put their money on the line and opened up places to get great food.

Bird-watchers: ridiculed no more

You know, Dan, people used to make fun of bird watchers. Geeky people who got up in the middle of the night to stand knee-deep in East Jesus Dismal Swamp on the remote chance that they might be rewarded with a glimpse of the Pileated Pudthucker. Then it turned out that birds were one of the most important barometers of the health of the planet. Birding became respectable, chic and, if not macho, at least safely over the butch-respectability line.

People used to make fun of restaurant reviewers for many of the same reasons. After all, anybody who worried about crisp greens or properly moist cheesecake was obviously the same sort of maladjusted dork who spent prom night playing Monopoly with his aunt.

Well, a lot has changed here too. It's apparent now that the number and quality of neighborhood restaurants is the surest indicator of neighborhood health, safety and real estate values. In fact, you can probably predict the fiscal health of a city ten years down the pike by looking at its leading hotel's lobby today. Just like with the birds, it all comes down to some fundamental rules of ecology.

A quick guide to urban vitality

Here are some signs of urban health that show up on the food trail:

—The opening of small, neighborhood places with modest interiors is a sign of a resurgence of a city's youth and optimism.

—Schools preparing hotel and restaurant professionals are signs of an emerging consensus that the good life is important and that there's a respectable living to be made providing it. It also serves to reassure the rest of us that there's an expanding force of people dedicated to making things taste great.

—The presence of wine-oriented events suggests that there's a certain maturity to a city's sensibilities.

—The return of fine hotels and the expansion of the Convention Center is a sign of a stream of business travelers deep enough and wide enough to support them.

Each of these developments is probably important for many different reasons. I call them to your attention because they suggest that Philadelphia possesses the potential to do the very thing that cities are supposed to do: provide a rich and pleasurable tone to life.

The thoughtful and nuanced Craig LaBan

I understand that economic importance isn't the same as cultural gravitas and that Broad Street Review is mostly about the latter. If seriousness is the criterion for inclusion in the BSR canon, then the breadth and depth of food studies surely challenges the attention paid to the other arts. The foodies have generated an extensive and challenging body of scholarship that connects food to the major themes of the human experience. Cambridge and Oxford Universities have both issued multi-volume food historical reference works. It could be argued that the Inquirer’s most thoughtful, nuanced critic is its food critic, Craig LaBan.

So, Dan, I guess I want to challenge you now to step outside what you know. I don't have any problem with elitism. Let's continue to demand the best from our cultural institutions, and let's use intelligent criticism to support that demand. But let's not allow a misplaced sense that some arts are more ethereal and hence superior to others to blind us to the great things that are happening in the oldest art of all.

I think food and wine deserve a serious, respectful hearing at Broad Street Review. That means using reviewers who possess as much background and depth as your reviewers of music and dance. I hope that, even if you don't agree right now, you're willing to see where it might lead you.

Yours,
Lynn

Philadelphian Lynn Hoffman, PhD. writes about wine and food. He is the author of The New Short Course in Wine, just published by Prentice Hall, and the novel bang BANG, from Kunati.



To read Dan Rottenberg's response, click here.
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