Gratitude

If you call something a dream, it almost gives you license to believe it won’t happen or that you can’t make it come true. I’d love to say that I’ve always believed I could become a full-time truly independent food writer beholden to no corporate journalistic entity, restaurant or chef, always able to dine anonymously and pay out of pocket for my meals, supported entirely by the generosity of folks like you.

I never really have.  I was once an independent freelancer for almost eight years working for other publications, food writing my only revenue stream. But during that period, when I was writing as many as 27 pieces a month, my biggest annual revenue was $36K.  I could live on this before I had two kids and when I didn’t need healthcare (although no matter how healthy you are, everyone needs healthcare, but this is a lie an artist can live with for a while).

But you get older. The body needs maintenance. College tuition isn’t free. Retirement eventually shifts to being a few cars in front on the highway of life instead of being the faraway mountain range on the horizon. Respected publications, ones you might be surprised by and some you won’t, started asking me to attend media dinners and take free meals in order to do my work.

I know a lot of people take those free meals and claim it’s the only way they can do what they do. I’ve always felt that if the market can’t sustain your job and you have to take free stuff to do it, that you don’t really have a job. You have a hobby, a bought and paid for one.

That’s why I took a “real” job again 12 years ago. I still have one. Ironically, The Hunger started when many lost their livelihoods. The luxury of having a job during the pandemic meant I could experiment a little bit, so I started this wacky thing called a Substack newsletter (originally, because I’m a sucker for magical realism, I coyly called this newsletter Love In The Time of Coronavirus) and wrote about food again and donated all the proceeds back to Gofundmes to support restaurant workers who had lost their employment.

Like many I got tired during the pandemic, stopped this newsletter and did weird things like grow scallions in water and think of baking sourdough bread.  The dread mounted.  A little over two years passed, slightly depressed without the dopamine hit of discovering food artists building amazing things and writing about them, I knew I needed to relaunch.

So I renamed this newsletter The Hunger because clearly I wanted to appeal to people who love horror movies or porn (whichever you are, no judgement).  I wrote every single week at least once since then.

It was a little slow. I almost gave up again. A woman named Mary who I never met (her grandkids went to my kid’s CPS elementary school) told me she had a limited income, but that she paid for my newsletter because she loved what I did, that it made her day a little brighter, and that I was a good writer.

Fueled by her compassion, that was really all I needed never to look back again. Jeff Mauro, the sultan of giardiniera, the pride of Elmwood Park, the sandwich king, made me feel like a prince by always being a huge supporter. Lots of you send me encouraging emails. Bill and Kelvin, you guys make me smile with every note. One woman, Jane told me her dad used to read my old Newcity columns over the dinner table when she was in high school. As an adult she developed her own love of my work here at The Hunger. Did I feel old? A little, but more importantly, that multiple generations were reading me was also affirming that whatever I was doing was working.

The growth at The Hunger has been steady. At times there’s been extraordinary bursts in paid subscribers. Last week was one of those weeks. There are a lot more of you here than I imagined was possible four years ago. I know a lot of you came for the piece on Feld and Smyth.

I am a little conflicted about this. It certainly means that my goal to pursue reviewing that’s grounded in anonymity and paid for independently is working. I’d never been able to experience both of these places in the way that I did and see the positive and negative aspects of their art as clearly as I have if they’d known who I was.  That means that you as a reader get to make smart decisions about where and how you spend your dining dollars.  That makes me feel very good.

But, also it means I had to be very clear-eyed about Feld. There’s been a lot of vicarious hate out there and I know some people just like a good takedown and that part of the attraction of that piece was some of the one-liners. By the way, though they may seem like it, none of those lines were clickbait, though they certainly read like them at times. They were the absolute truth.  

But also, the truth is when I called chef Jake and spoke to him for a while, I know he’s also an artist. I know he needs to make adjustments, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t really want to succeed. That’s why I called him and talked to him before dropping the review.  I know it’s easy to see critics as out for blood, but a review like the Feld one was psychically hard for me. I’m know it was harder for chef Jake. When we spoke on the call (maybe I’m an idiot for telling you all this) I got choked up, because just as this newsletter is my dream, Jake’s restaurant is his. I know he’s an artist too. I do really want him to succeed.

But, my role is to tell you what I see based on my experience so you can make good decisions. That’s why you’re here. I also believe providing useful feedback, as painful as it might be, is a service in a time where people are lying with positivity.  If everyone says you’re great why would you ever change until it’s too late?

What’s my point?  Well, I guess I want to say that, yeah, if you’re here because you’re looking for honesty in restaurant reviewing and food writing, you’re in the right place and I’m so glad you’re here. If you’re looking for takedowns, then you’ll probably be disappointed. 

Those who want to take this ride, I appreciate you so much. I have never appreciated you more. This week I’m on vacation in the Carolinas. Asheville is delicious. Out by the pool I just read Sara B. Franklin’s book The Editor, about Judith Jones, the legendary editor of John Updike and Anne Tyler, and more germane to this newsletter, the single greatest cookbook editor of all time (Julia Child, Madhur Jaffrey, Jacques Pepin, too many to name).  There’s a line in the book that really resonated with me. It said:

“It is unsurprising, then, if no less troubling, that writers who chose food as their subject are often met with disregard.”

Or as I’ve said in the voice many of you know well by now, “It’s hard out here for a pimp.”  Food is my starting point but it’s just a prism for what I do. I aim to give you so much more, to be honest about the life I live and the lives others do.

Right now the dream is still a dream for the moment. But also I just passed a pretty big milestone, and I think if I can triple where I’m at in terms of subscribers, the dream will no longer be a dream and this is all I’ll ever do.

The other thing I learned about Jones in that book is though her work was generating millions of dollars for her publishing firm, she only asked for a raise once. She was denied and never asked for one again. This meant that she earned far less than she should have for the bulk of her career.

In other words, in order to achieve your dreams you can’t stop asking people to help you achieve them. For those of you on the free subscriber list, that means, hey, if you can, I’d love you to jump in with paid support now. For those of you that have taken the leap now or long ago, tell your friends about The Hunger. Feel free to forward the emailed articles for paid subscribers that really mean something to you to a friend. I’m cool with that. Support my work on social media if you think about it.

If you can’t afford a paid subscription and you really want to read The Hunger, let me know, I’ll take care of you.  I can’t grow this without you.

When Mary’s subscription ran out last year, I granted her a free lifetime one because of what she did to motivate me. One of the things I didn’t know about Mary is that she had recently developed a life-altering illness. Unfortunately, she succumbed to it a few months ago. I recently attended a celebration of life for her a few weeks ago.  I met other artists there who told me similar stories of her supporting their work. She was in her own small way a modern-day Medici, a true patron. Her love and generosity was a true ripple effect.

Mary is also, as far as I know, the first reader of mine to leave this mortal coil. The thing is, as long as The Hunger is around and my brain is working the way it’s supposed to, she will always be alive. Every single one of you will also be in my heart in that same way for supporting what I do. Thank you so much for being here. It means the absolute world to me.

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As I mentioned I’m on vacation. I didn’t think I’d write this week, but I had so much gratitude, and also because I can’t help myself, I broke down and wrote. Since this is a food newsletter and not a Michael Nagrant-fan newsletter, here’s a couple recs to keep you going until I come back next week with a full review. 

1. The Editor – It’s a great book if you care about the history of cookbook publishing or editorial publishing in general. It’s also amazing if you just care about reading about a life well lived.

2. Chicken parm and pastry at Pistores -  you know I love the Detroit-style pizza already, but I stopped back in again recently and got exactly what you expect from a classic, a hubcap-sized chicken cutlet, pounded in to a juicy sheet, enrobed in a mahogany-colored fried crust with a mozzarella cap broiled ‘til it leopards with caramelized spotting, all served with a side of perfect al dente rigatoni. 

I followed this up with cloud-like white cake stuffed with crème, enrobed in a strawberry glace-like gelee. It looked like the D.K. Metcalf of strawberries, aka huge, but ate with the elegance of Princess Grace. Chef Joel Reno is a real one.

3. Italian beef tamale at Santa Masa Tamaleria –Chicago kid with Mexican roots means the ultimate mash-up from Danny Espinoza, and his wife Jhonna Ruiz at this Northwest Chicago counter-spot, a fluffy cloud light tamale made from non-GMO small batch masa imported from Mexico topped with a piquant escabeche/giardiniera mix finished counter-side with the drip drip drip of clean tea-like beef jus.