If you were a struggling Chicago chef or restaurant owner, my advice to you might be, “Have you considered sleeping with a food journalist or a PR person, yet?”
In the 70s and 80s, my grandmother was the food writer for a prominent Florida newspaper. I remember her disguising herself with wigs, scarves, and sunglasses when we went out for meals. She never wanted the restaurants to know she was there - she felt that she wouldn't be able to assess and review them fairly if they gave her special treatment. She was a long time journalist and felt a great responsibility to give honest reporting to her readers. It sounds like we might be better using crowdsourced reviews now instead of relying on the "experts".
Should ask jeffy why all the restaurants in timeout market are either begging to get out or being forced to stay by timeout legal and the overlord incompetent local and regional managers. Forcing small business owners and chefs sell of equipment for cash to pay employees or rent, beg for reduced hours, work 100 weeks for fear of the constant legal threats from Timeout management. 12 TWELVE restaurants in the last 8 months had either not resigned or simple walked out and took the chance. 6 new restaurants from Jeffy and his local management team have either walked out in the middle of the night or hired lawyers to be released from contracts. It’s a nightmare! We are living a nightmare. Thanks Timeout. -Mitchell.
Time Out Market is a restaurant graveyard. When they opened, they said it would be a showcase for local food, touting big chef names and how its vendors represented a great cross-section of the city's food scene. Now they're bringing in vendors from Miami. I imagine the next step will be adding Sbarro and Orange Julius.
That’s the thing. Where there’s smoke there’s often fire. Thats why I highlight these things people say do not matter. If you’re willing to live in the light taking free meals and then promoting those free meals as if it’s actual journalism or objective reporting, imagine what you’re doing in the dark.
Omg where do I begin....so you start off once again with an incredibly off-base comment that if you are a chef or a restaurant trying to get ahead, you should try sleeping with a journalist or PR person but use a relationship of a writer with a PR person as an example for this case? That's a weird flex bruh (as you white straight men say). Second, let's set that aside and point out the fact that PR people have to deal with countless cases of difficult chef clients, so trust me when I say, the vast majority of us wouldn't touch them with a 10-foot pole. Also, what's the gain there??? Oh wait, that's right, you think we are all just chef-obsessed sluts that would sacrifice our professional integrity (not to mention financial) just to get close to these god-like creatures right? Maybe if they all looked like Jeremy Allen White instead of mostly Elmer Fudd...but I digress. Next, you tee off your write-up and use an innocent couple so unjustly here to make your case in pursuit of saving the integrity of "food journalism" while creating a very flimsy depiction that somehow these two people are just sleeping with each other for professional gain when in reality, they have been in a committed relationship for years, even before Jeffy was an editor and was working in the ER department of a hospital and only moonlighting as a writer. Also, let's call Time Out for what it is, a magazine and city guide with tons of ad dollars pumped into it that covers every single notable bar and restaurant in the city, so the likelihood of Jeffy's coverage overlapping with his PR girlfriend's healthy roster of restaurant clients? VERY HIGH. It's not the New York Times dude! Nobody is gonna be having intellectual conversations about how "unbiased Time Out" is. Pick a different hill to die on methinks... But sure, you can spin it that they are getting free handouts and scratching each other's backs with absolutely no proof of this to boost your own platform with some juicy clickbait drama. But you are no hero here. You're just stepping on good people to make yourself feel tall and THAT to many is far, far worse than sleeping to get ahead. Just some food for thought!
I’ve deliberately not genderized the relationships here because a PR person or a chef could be male or female or even binary, but you did go ahead and do that yourself which is interesting.
The opener is a lede but not my specific thesis here. In fact it’s really tangentially related to the overall. My thesis is that Vicky and Jeffy have a personal relationship and as such they should avoid having a business relationship. At a minimum if they decide they MUST have a professional one then it should be disclosed. It’s also why I mention Chicagoismyboyfriend here who has nothing to do with their relationships. My thesis is also that anyone who attends one of these events and reports on it should disclose what they got for free or for pay. (That everyone ignores the Chicagoismyboyfriend content and that she has no champions here or in my DMs and social and everyone is focused on Vicky and Jeffy is also interesting, as if this isn’t about the merits of my argument but rather just about defending the PR person’s honor via PR)
I will say that I believe Vicky is very good at her job and a professional in case anyone is mistaking that. I will also say I believe in the realness of Jeffy and Vicky’s relationship and I believe it exists despite and beyond the professional. I am not so cynical to believe one or the other is trading say just sex for free meals or coverage. That their relationship is real makes it even more dangerous because whether consciously or subconsciously it means they’re more likely to be committed to do something for one another that compromises their work whether they should or not which is dangerous
What I want to hear is the good reasons anyone should tap a personal love or even familial relationship for professional gain at the expense of the other person’s credibility or whether anyone should be getting anything for free and reporting or promoting without disclosure. The answer on this feels pretty clear but no one wants to talk about that because they want to focus on other things or make straw arguments to distract people from the fact that everyone on the gravy train wants that train to keep running for their personal enrichment.
I will also say I’ve been consistent on these issues across a broad spectrum of media people, men and women etc. I literally don’t care who is doing it but more that they’re doing it. But also you can’t be abstract about the examples and be effective. You have to use names and real circumstances. These 3 just happened to be this week’s example not the specific example or only one.
You might disagree based on how you insinuate that Time Out is not serious but the New York Times is. Ethics should not be relative to the quality of the publication but consistent with respect to anything impacting the public.
One other thing I’d add. If as you say Time Out has all this money…and it must because they can afford to run for profit food halls, then why isn’t this money being invested in their writers meals so the writers don’t have to take anything for free? Or for paying their writers even? I don’t know what Maggie makes for her reviews but I guarantee it’s not nearly enough relative to the quality and thoughtfulness of her work.
Another NY import moved in right after. Laurent Tourondel from the BLT group opened American Brasserie. Was not well received and closed after only a few months.
I spent a few months in that kitchen around open. There were 600 cover/$100k receipt Friday nights and crickets on Wednesdays. I learned a lot in a short time. But we dropped like flies from the hours and stress.
I appreciate this article. And I appreciate your reviews. It’s frustrating AF to go out to eat at a restaurant that is toted by social media, spend the $$$, waste the time and in my case, hard earned calories, for a over hyped mediocre meal. I don’t mind spending when a meal or even just one plate or cocktail is curated with intelligence and balance. But when it isn’t, and I see the hype on insta, it’s disappointing. And free meals to influencers when I paid for that crap, makes me a little pissed.
Dude, you got some cajones. Did you wake up this morning and say to yourself, “That sleazy wind blowing, I think I’ll spit right at it?”
Forgetting all your excellent reviews for a second, to read an article like this makes any sub$$ money to you well spent. I hope this grows your audience by an order of magnitude. It should imho. Then again, congressmen and Fed governors trade on inside information and aren’t in jail, so who knows. Ytb!
Wouldn’t it be awesome if restaurant pr and marketing actually started teaching their clients how to use brand and demand for unique storytelling and business development? Instead, most (not all) - hire influencers and link it up with media, is today’s “coveted” Rolodex. A quick scan of a restaurant’s Instagram account will let you know if they have become part of the formula or not.
We need pros with restaurant and marketing acumen to teach independent operators how to truly harness the internet and social media, but when those folks have to be everything from plumbers and accountants to coaches and service professionals, it’s tough to have the time or energy to take on marketing and if they do, they risk getting ostracized by the network that you highlight - so it becomes easier to outsource the work and hire someone else to tell the stories that operators will always be able to tell better themselves.
Not that I have any thoughts on the matter, maybe I simply wanted an opportunity to reference a Rolodex 😉 Appreciate you taking on the topic.
I just assumed that Time Out was printing whatever PR people paid them to run. That's not based on any information, but how their content reads. It's always had kind of a glad-handing "everything is awesome" vibe. Not that I am a regular reader, but if they ever ran a critical review I never saw it.
Unfortunately, this isn't limited to food writing. Journalism as a whole is mostly dead.
I think there’s a lot of truth to this. However Maggie Hennessy who does their reviews tends to be fair and even handed. But features are generally cheerful and fairly water carrying.
I know this isn’t completely an Instagram thing, but that picture exemplifies why I detest that platform and try to give it the widest possible berth. Also, influencers... I hear that they like something and my money goes in the exact opposite direction.
I doubt any of these people pay for enough meals to give any credible judgment of the pricing at a place like Warlord. Cue Lucille Bluth banana meme.
Well, interesting. I follow some of these people on instagram so now I’ll have to be more careful as to their recommendations. It appears you are saying that in exchange for a free meal, these influencers are more likely to give glowing reviews?
It's truly impossible to know unless you can be inside someone's head or heart. However, what I know from my own experiences is that as much as I try to consider and fight how influence impacts my own work, I know sometimes just a phone call interview with a nice chef can have a subconscious impact on the coverage. Add in a motivation or need to post content, to satisfy a friendship or a relationship, or to drive your personal business and it's gotta get murky no matter how hard you try. My hope is that people fully disclose these relationships as best as they can. Then people can at least evaluate with that filter. Maybe people will go, cool, it's fine, I get where they stand and I'm ok. But at least they're allowed to make this decision in the full light of the relationship.
Gotta be honest, I don’t trust anyone who shits on warlord
In the 70s and 80s, my grandmother was the food writer for a prominent Florida newspaper. I remember her disguising herself with wigs, scarves, and sunglasses when we went out for meals. She never wanted the restaurants to know she was there - she felt that she wouldn't be able to assess and review them fairly if they gave her special treatment. She was a long time journalist and felt a great responsibility to give honest reporting to her readers. It sounds like we might be better using crowdsourced reviews now instead of relying on the "experts".
Should ask jeffy why all the restaurants in timeout market are either begging to get out or being forced to stay by timeout legal and the overlord incompetent local and regional managers. Forcing small business owners and chefs sell of equipment for cash to pay employees or rent, beg for reduced hours, work 100 weeks for fear of the constant legal threats from Timeout management. 12 TWELVE restaurants in the last 8 months had either not resigned or simple walked out and took the chance. 6 new restaurants from Jeffy and his local management team have either walked out in the middle of the night or hired lawyers to be released from contracts. It’s a nightmare! We are living a nightmare. Thanks Timeout. -Mitchell.
Time Out Market is a restaurant graveyard. When they opened, they said it would be a showcase for local food, touting big chef names and how its vendors represented a great cross-section of the city's food scene. Now they're bringing in vendors from Miami. I imagine the next step will be adding Sbarro and Orange Julius.
I’d be in to those two concepts.
That’s the thing. Where there’s smoke there’s often fire. Thats why I highlight these things people say do not matter. If you’re willing to live in the light taking free meals and then promoting those free meals as if it’s actual journalism or objective reporting, imagine what you’re doing in the dark.
Omg where do I begin....so you start off once again with an incredibly off-base comment that if you are a chef or a restaurant trying to get ahead, you should try sleeping with a journalist or PR person but use a relationship of a writer with a PR person as an example for this case? That's a weird flex bruh (as you white straight men say). Second, let's set that aside and point out the fact that PR people have to deal with countless cases of difficult chef clients, so trust me when I say, the vast majority of us wouldn't touch them with a 10-foot pole. Also, what's the gain there??? Oh wait, that's right, you think we are all just chef-obsessed sluts that would sacrifice our professional integrity (not to mention financial) just to get close to these god-like creatures right? Maybe if they all looked like Jeremy Allen White instead of mostly Elmer Fudd...but I digress. Next, you tee off your write-up and use an innocent couple so unjustly here to make your case in pursuit of saving the integrity of "food journalism" while creating a very flimsy depiction that somehow these two people are just sleeping with each other for professional gain when in reality, they have been in a committed relationship for years, even before Jeffy was an editor and was working in the ER department of a hospital and only moonlighting as a writer. Also, let's call Time Out for what it is, a magazine and city guide with tons of ad dollars pumped into it that covers every single notable bar and restaurant in the city, so the likelihood of Jeffy's coverage overlapping with his PR girlfriend's healthy roster of restaurant clients? VERY HIGH. It's not the New York Times dude! Nobody is gonna be having intellectual conversations about how "unbiased Time Out" is. Pick a different hill to die on methinks... But sure, you can spin it that they are getting free handouts and scratching each other's backs with absolutely no proof of this to boost your own platform with some juicy clickbait drama. But you are no hero here. You're just stepping on good people to make yourself feel tall and THAT to many is far, far worse than sleeping to get ahead. Just some food for thought!
Thank you for your feedback.
I’ve deliberately not genderized the relationships here because a PR person or a chef could be male or female or even binary, but you did go ahead and do that yourself which is interesting.
The opener is a lede but not my specific thesis here. In fact it’s really tangentially related to the overall. My thesis is that Vicky and Jeffy have a personal relationship and as such they should avoid having a business relationship. At a minimum if they decide they MUST have a professional one then it should be disclosed. It’s also why I mention Chicagoismyboyfriend here who has nothing to do with their relationships. My thesis is also that anyone who attends one of these events and reports on it should disclose what they got for free or for pay. (That everyone ignores the Chicagoismyboyfriend content and that she has no champions here or in my DMs and social and everyone is focused on Vicky and Jeffy is also interesting, as if this isn’t about the merits of my argument but rather just about defending the PR person’s honor via PR)
I will say that I believe Vicky is very good at her job and a professional in case anyone is mistaking that. I will also say I believe in the realness of Jeffy and Vicky’s relationship and I believe it exists despite and beyond the professional. I am not so cynical to believe one or the other is trading say just sex for free meals or coverage. That their relationship is real makes it even more dangerous because whether consciously or subconsciously it means they’re more likely to be committed to do something for one another that compromises their work whether they should or not which is dangerous
What I want to hear is the good reasons anyone should tap a personal love or even familial relationship for professional gain at the expense of the other person’s credibility or whether anyone should be getting anything for free and reporting or promoting without disclosure. The answer on this feels pretty clear but no one wants to talk about that because they want to focus on other things or make straw arguments to distract people from the fact that everyone on the gravy train wants that train to keep running for their personal enrichment.
I will also say I’ve been consistent on these issues across a broad spectrum of media people, men and women etc. I literally don’t care who is doing it but more that they’re doing it. But also you can’t be abstract about the examples and be effective. You have to use names and real circumstances. These 3 just happened to be this week’s example not the specific example or only one.
You might disagree based on how you insinuate that Time Out is not serious but the New York Times is. Ethics should not be relative to the quality of the publication but consistent with respect to anything impacting the public.
One other thing I’d add. If as you say Time Out has all this money…and it must because they can afford to run for profit food halls, then why isn’t this money being invested in their writers meals so the writers don’t have to take anything for free? Or for paying their writers even? I don’t know what Maggie makes for her reviews but I guarantee it’s not nearly enough relative to the quality and thoughtfulness of her work.
Brasserie Ruhlmann, deep cut. 😉
Another NY import moved in right after. Laurent Tourondel from the BLT group opened American Brasserie. Was not well received and closed after only a few months.
I spent a few months in that kitchen around open. There were 600 cover/$100k receipt Friday nights and crickets on Wednesdays. I learned a lot in a short time. But we dropped like flies from the hours and stress.
I just checked my receipts and I only ever went on Wed or Thu...must have been why I thought the writing was on the wall from the beginning.
Damn fine post. Thank you
I appreciate this article. And I appreciate your reviews. It’s frustrating AF to go out to eat at a restaurant that is toted by social media, spend the $$$, waste the time and in my case, hard earned calories, for a over hyped mediocre meal. I don’t mind spending when a meal or even just one plate or cocktail is curated with intelligence and balance. But when it isn’t, and I see the hype on insta, it’s disappointing. And free meals to influencers when I paid for that crap, makes me a little pissed.
As Mulder (X-Files) says, “trust no one”.
Dude, you got some cajones. Did you wake up this morning and say to yourself, “That sleazy wind blowing, I think I’ll spit right at it?”
Forgetting all your excellent reviews for a second, to read an article like this makes any sub$$ money to you well spent. I hope this grows your audience by an order of magnitude. It should imho. Then again, congressmen and Fed governors trade on inside information and aren’t in jail, so who knows. Ytb!
Putting the journalism back in food journalism
As always, on point Sir.
Wouldn’t it be awesome if restaurant pr and marketing actually started teaching their clients how to use brand and demand for unique storytelling and business development? Instead, most (not all) - hire influencers and link it up with media, is today’s “coveted” Rolodex. A quick scan of a restaurant’s Instagram account will let you know if they have become part of the formula or not.
We need pros with restaurant and marketing acumen to teach independent operators how to truly harness the internet and social media, but when those folks have to be everything from plumbers and accountants to coaches and service professionals, it’s tough to have the time or energy to take on marketing and if they do, they risk getting ostracized by the network that you highlight - so it becomes easier to outsource the work and hire someone else to tell the stories that operators will always be able to tell better themselves.
Not that I have any thoughts on the matter, maybe I simply wanted an opportunity to reference a Rolodex 😉 Appreciate you taking on the topic.
I’m old enough to miss my old Rolodex. Felt like I’d made it as an adult when I had one.
Popping the popcorn.
Bravo 👏🏻 excellent as usual
Excellent article
I just assumed that Time Out was printing whatever PR people paid them to run. That's not based on any information, but how their content reads. It's always had kind of a glad-handing "everything is awesome" vibe. Not that I am a regular reader, but if they ever ran a critical review I never saw it.
Unfortunately, this isn't limited to food writing. Journalism as a whole is mostly dead.
I think there’s a lot of truth to this. However Maggie Hennessy who does their reviews tends to be fair and even handed. But features are generally cheerful and fairly water carrying.
I know this isn’t completely an Instagram thing, but that picture exemplifies why I detest that platform and try to give it the widest possible berth. Also, influencers... I hear that they like something and my money goes in the exact opposite direction.
I doubt any of these people pay for enough meals to give any credible judgment of the pricing at a place like Warlord. Cue Lucille Bluth banana meme.
Well, interesting. I follow some of these people on instagram so now I’ll have to be more careful as to their recommendations. It appears you are saying that in exchange for a free meal, these influencers are more likely to give glowing reviews?
It's truly impossible to know unless you can be inside someone's head or heart. However, what I know from my own experiences is that as much as I try to consider and fight how influence impacts my own work, I know sometimes just a phone call interview with a nice chef can have a subconscious impact on the coverage. Add in a motivation or need to post content, to satisfy a friendship or a relationship, or to drive your personal business and it's gotta get murky no matter how hard you try. My hope is that people fully disclose these relationships as best as they can. Then people can at least evaluate with that filter. Maybe people will go, cool, it's fine, I get where they stand and I'm ok. But at least they're allowed to make this decision in the full light of the relationship.