May 29, 2024 • 54 mins
Want to discover under-the-radar restaurants throughout the USA or read up on what and how we are eating? Brett Anderson has been covering food and restaurant industry topics for The New York Times since 2019 and, prior, as restaurant critic and features writer for The Times-Picayune, New Orleans. Anderson’s award-winning reporting has addressed food culture and dining, restaurant industry labor issues including sexual harassment and critical environmental topics in his home state of Louisiana.
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The Connected Table is broadcast live Wednesdays at 2PM ET and Music on W4CY Radio (www.w4cy.com) part of Talk 4 Radio (www.talk4radio.com) on the Talk 4 Media Network (www.talk4media.com).
The Connected Table Podcast is also available on Talk 4 Media (www.talk4media.com), Talk 4 Podcasting (www.talk4podcasting.com), iHeartRadio, Amazon Music, Pandora, Spotify, Audible, and over 100 other podcast outlets.
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The topics and opinions express and thefollowing show are solely those of the hosts
and their guests, and not thoseof W FOURCY Radio. It's employees are
affiliates. We make no recommendations orendorsements for radio show programs, services,
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Any questions or comments should be directedto those show hosts. Thank you for
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choosing W FOURCY Radio. Welcome tothe Connected Table Live. We're your hosts,
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Melanie Young and David Ransom. You'reinsatiably curious culinary couple. We enjoy
bringing you the dynamic people who arefront and center and behind the scenes and
wine, food, spirits and hospitalityaround the world. We love the art
of conversation with these individuals and welove sharing them with you. We recently
started a series which we are callingBehind the Byline, where we spot like
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journalists in wine and food who youprobably read their articles, but maybe you've
never got to know them front andcenter. It's kind of like Meet the
Press, but that show already exists, so we're calling ours behind the byline.
We are delighted to have today onour show Brett Anderson, a journalist
who we've known for many years.He is actually quite esteemed. We've known
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him since my day. Is workingwith the James Spear Foundation. He currently
is a food correspondent with the NewYork Times. He joined the Great Organization
in twenty nineteen, and he travelsthe country in search of restaurants that he
would gladly board a plane to visitagain. And if you go to the
New York Times site, you'll seeall the cities he's been covering, from
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Austin to Washington, d C.To of course New Orleans, where he's
based. And how we came toknow him because prior he was the restaurant
critic and features writer at the TimesPiciun in New Orleans for nineteen years and
during that time he not only coveredrestaurants, but he was part of the
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Pulitzer Prize award winning team of staffteam at the Pikayun who covered Hurricane Katrina
in two thousand and six. Hereally did a great job covering that,
yes, as did many people.So what's interesting about Brad is many of
us in the industry know him forhis food reporting, but he also has
a very deep and impressive career writingabout environmental issues. He is a co
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recipient of the scripts Howard Edward J. Meeman Award for Environmental Reporting for coverage
to the twenty ten Deep Water Horizonoil spill, and he was a Nieman
Fellow at Harvard University. So it'skind of an interesting intersection of food dining
and environment and topics that are reallyimportant because you know, we're seeing it
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first ham what's happening with the climatechange right now and the food supply.
So we're really excited that he's joiningus to share his story. Welcome Brett,
it's great to be here. It'sgood to see you guys. So
we always start our show with yourbackstory, and we know you're from Minnesota,
it's true. Tell us about yourlife there and your family. Well,
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I grew up from Minnesota. I'veactually just I moved to New Orleans
and so I was born in nineteenseventy. I've now just lived in New
Orleans a shade longer than I livedin Minnesota. But I was born and
raised there, and you know,my whole family is from up there.
My father was in politics when Iwas young, but I and I I
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ultimately went to the University of Minnesota, which is where I ultimately got a
bachelor's degree. But I left Minnesotain nineteen ninety six to move to Washington,
d C. And I've been youknow, outside of Minnesota ever since
then. But I'm you know,I'm still sort of drawn back to that
place. I still sort of feelkind of Midwestern, even though I've lived
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in the South now longer than Ilived up in the Upper Midwest. And
you know, my family, wego there every summer, we go there
every Thanksgiving. Both my sisters stilllive up there, in all my extended
family. But that's also where inMinneapolis was where I first got into journalism
as well. What was your bigbreak? What were you covering? It
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was? So when I was younger, I I mean, you could say
my big break was failing out ofcollege. I went to school in Iowa
for two years and I flunked out, you know, and I came home
to Minnesota, and I moved intoan apartment with my sister and some friends.
And one of the people that Iwas living with right after I moved
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in was working at a local newspaper, a weekly newspaper. They're called alternative
weeklies. Gambit is an example inNew Orleans. The Village Voice is the
most famous example of an alternative newsweekly up in New York. But anyhow,
I had a friend or my roommatethat was working at this alternative news
weekly just as sort of an officeassistant. And she was studying to be
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a nurse, and she got thisopportunity for some kind of internship at a
hospital, and she could only giveher job one week's notice, and so
she went in and said, butlook, you know, I've got this
roommate who needs a job, youknow, like maybe you could hire him.
And so I went in and Igot hired, and I, you
know, I was basically the Xeroxguy. And I basically the only thing
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I ever really aspired to do professionallyat that time of my life was I
wanted to be a rock and rollwriter. I wanted to write about pop
music. I wanted to write forRolling Stone. That I was just obsessed
with. It was basically my onlyinterest. I was just really really I
loved punk, rock and hip andI after being at that paper for about
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a year, I was writing littlepreviews for like, you know, bands
come into town that were playing inclubs. Minneapolis had a really great rock
and roll scene and punk rock scene. And the paper got a new editor
and it was this guy who wasjust come out of drug rehab for the
third time. I mean, thiswas not like a super super prestigious job,
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but it was a good job.And and his his name is David
Carr, who, you know,journalism nerds will sort of know how lucky
I was to have landed in thelapse of this guy. He was,
you know, he was a brilliantjournalist. To me, he was just
this what I just assumed all editorswere like. But he hired me to
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write this column about pop music forthe paper and and then encouraged me to
write, you know, all sortsof different types of stories, you know,
new stories, features, not aboutmusic. And when he moved to
Washington, d C. To takeover the alternative newsweekly there, which is
called Washington City Paper, he askedme to follow him. And when it
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came time to move out to DC, he had asked me, He's like,
well, what would you think aboutbeing a food columnist here? And
you know, I was not whatyou would say, super well suited to
that job in the sense of,like my eating experience was was slim and
unimpressive at this point in my life, you know, I was I had
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never tried sushi before. I like, you know, I could go on,
but this newspaper had never had arestaurant critic, and he knew I
had this big appetite because you know, I mean at the point of my
life that he met me, Iwas literally still growing. I mean I
was like twenty one when he hiredme, and I had just started to
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become interested in reading about food.You know. I was reading a lot
of Molly O'Neill, and I gotturned on to MFK. Fisher and these
kinds of things. And so Itook that job, and I wrote a
column called Young and Hungry that was, you know, the first time that
paper had ever covered food and restaurants. And I did a lot of other
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writing too. I still wrote aboutmusic, I did, you know,
feature news stories and stuff like that. I did not really assume that I
would stay writing food. You know. My ambition at that point in my
life was to like move to NewYork and become like a general assignment report
for New York magazine or something likethat. You know, that's really where
my head was at. But thefood writing that kind of just became part
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of my identity, my professional identity, in ways that I hadn't really expected.
And I never got bored with it, you know. I mean my
big fear in sort of anything isboredom, you know, and I just
remained really stimulated by by this topicthat frankly, I didn't know that much
about when I started, you know, I mean that was part of the
thrill of it and part of whatmade it so stimulating. And I just
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got really lucky that I was ableto sort of learn on the job at
a time and in a place wherethat was acceptable. You know. I
mean, this is before the FoodNetwork, this is before the concept of
a celebrity chef, and it wasbefore, frankly, at least in my
experience, a lot of young peoplewanted to become food journalists. You know,
it was particularly in Washington, DC. In the nineties. It
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was obviously a lot of ambitious journalistsaround there, but you know, they
were all kind of trying to benews reporters and political reporters, and so,
you know, I was able tosort of develop a voice and a
base of knowledge about this in sortof plain view without getting sort of torn
to pieces, if you understand whatI'm saying. And so that was an
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incredibly lucky thing. And it wasalso just an incredibly lucky thing to work
with David Carr, who was thisincredible mentor. And then in twenty twoth
in the year two thousand, Igot a phone call from an editor at
The Times Picun asking me to applyfor the job to be the restaurant critic
at the Times Picun and I atthe time I got the phone call,
I had only visited New Orleans oncefor Jazz Fest. And I ended up
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getting offered the job. I almostdidn't take it because I was sort of
just not really interested in working fora daily paper. I wanted to work
for a magazine. I wanted tostay on the East Coast. And there
was a there was a stereotype atthat time in food world that New Orleans
was the city of like and Iknow you guys have heard this cliche of
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a city of you know, athousand chefs cook in the same ten recipes.
We've experienced that a number of places, not just New Orleans, this
was. Yeah, this was actually, you know, sort of closer to
true back then, but it wasalso you know, it's not a fair
representation, and you know, sofor those reasons, I was considering not
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taking this job. And my mom, when I told her that, was
like, are you kidding me?You know, and you know, I
ultimately did. I figured I wouldbe here for three years, and here
I am twenty four years later,almost still in New Orleans and still writing
about food, you know, butI started doing it full time in New
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Orleans in two thousand. That's interestingbecause I think we pretty much met around
that time. You and I metin two No, No, we met
HI much earlier than that two thousand. What am I saying we met in
the nineties. Yeah, well,we met in two thousand and two,
because I remember that was the yearthat I got asked to be on the
James Beard Restaurant Awards committee and hewas. It was that much later than
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Wow, yeah it was because Iremember it was the it was I had
just gotten to New Orleans and myfirst meeting was on the first anniversary of
nine to eleven, and you know, that was that seared into my brain.
One of my best friends died onnine eleven, and uh, and
that was and I just, youknow, I'll never forget that because it
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was, you know, the firstmeeting of the sort of quote unquote season
would be in September. And Ialso just remember that the hotels were astronomically
cheap, like I got a youknow, I remember thinking like, oh,
I should visit New York more often, Like I had this view of
the park. It's like for onehundred and sixty bucks a night or something
like that. But but yeah,that's so that's what we met. And
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I was still pretty new to thisjob at that time, and uh,
you know, and then this thejob in New Orleans is a little bit
unique, I think in the inthe sort of restaurant critic lane, just
because it's always it's a city thatyou would sort of expect, at least
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in the old world of newspapers thathas faded frankly, but you know,
when every town had a big,throbbingly successful newspaper, you know, New
Orleans was the city you would expectto have a restaurant critic working full time
for the newspaper in the same wayyou would in Chicago or whatever. But
also the job called for me todo you know, more feature reporting and
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and that kind of thing in waysthat not every job in the country at
that point required you to do that. And so, you know, I've
always sort of worn two hats asa food writers, both like a critic,
you know, doing service journalism andessay writing trying to tell people where
to go, and then also doingyou know, news reporting, feature stories
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for the Sunday paper, that kindof thing profiles. And that job changed
when Hurricane Katrina hit because obviously therewasn't any restaurants to review and it would
have been sort of grossly inappropriate toreview a restaurant in the same way.
For quite a period of time there, I ended up not writing a restaurant
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review for three years, and inthat time really just report about reported about
the restaurant industry here and recovery andtelling people what was open, you know,
what had closed, what the struggleswere, and and that's where I
think I like this kind of workthat I still do, or I where
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I you know, I do servicejournalism looking for restaurants to recommend to readers,
and also sort of trend pieces andmore hard news reporting, you know,
which is kind of what I dotoday at the Times. That sort
of suite of responsibilities really solidified inthe Hurricane Katrina years. You know,
the restaurant industry has had some bumpyroads ever since the Hurricane Katrina years.
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I mean there was the economic crashand then of course more recent were recently
COVID, and it's just been abumpy ride throughout and then on top of
COVID for New Orleans, Ida,Yeah, and then I it's just been
double and triple whammy. And andit's sometimes it's it's sometimes wearing a hat
just to go out. It's hardsetimes to go out. Now, there's
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a lot of issues tining out rightnow, which I'm going to ask you
about. But you've covered some,you know what's interesting about the scope of
your wor Yes, you do,and I'm on the New York Times site.
Now. You do the twenty fivebest restaurants in Washington, you do
the twenty five best rests in Austin. I mean, these are like keeper
lists, listicles, as they say, but they're meaty because you really get
into it and you kind of earmarkthose for when you travel. But then
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buried in there are your incredible investigativepieces. You know, you you you
won the Jonathan Gold Local Voice Awardand you were named Reporter of the Here
in twenty seventeen for your very indepth reporting on sexual harassment in the restaurant
industry. Another roller coaster ride inthe industry, the me Too movement that
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you know, it wasn't obviously yourfirst foray into deep reporting and investigative reporting,
because we referenced, you know,the whole coverage of Hurricane Katrina and
deep Wood Horizon, but in theindustry, that was a a transformative piece
because it peeled the curtain in alot of different ways on the subjects that
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you reported on and changed a lot. How hard How long did you spend
writing just that that that case,that particular investigation was it was an eight
month if I recall correctly, sevenor eight months of reporting. You know,
I mean in that period of time, I would I would you know,
also be writing other stuff. Butyou know, I was working on
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that reporting for a period of time, you know, quite a long time,
and you know, looking back onit, it was one of the
things that was it might seem oddgiven what's transpired since then, but to
say this, but you know,over the course of my reporting, one
of the things I sort of hadto keep asking myself in is like,
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is this a story? You know? And and and the reason I say
that is that like the way thatpeople have been treated in restaurants, particularly
women, it was so normalized,you know, in our culture that you
know, I was I was likekind of looking at my notes after a
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period of time, seeing like,you know, what is the story here?
You know, is because there wasn'tyou know, you know, there
was a lot of behavior that Ithink some readers might have been like,
so, you know, like there'ssomeone who's like sort of disrespected. And
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but then over time I just likestarted to see it stack up and I
started to better appreciate how the waythat people, particularly women in the instance
of the story, experience their work. It's not one thing that is the
crime. It's the accumulation of allthe sort of indignities that they are made
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to an dur over time, thatis the problem. Right. And the
particular restaurant group I focused on atthis time, it was the John Besh
restaurant group was very much the mostprobably famous chef in New Orleans, perhaps
shy of Emiral lagasse, and youknow, they didn't have a system really
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at their company where people could couldcomplain about how they were treated, right,
And and that kind of was thatat the center of it all,
right, just about how this culturecould flourish where what anyone could reasonably say
was not proper behavior by people incharge was led let to go unremedied,
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right, And so you know,that was one of the struggles. One
of the reasons it took a whilewas for me to sort of come around
to this idea that, like,you know, restaurants are workplaces like every
place else, right, Like youdeserve to be treated well in a restaurant
if you're in an employ the sameway you would if you worked at a
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law firm or an accounting firm orwhatever. You know. And and you
know, I have to say,looking back, I had realized that I
sort of didn't really think of itin that way if I thought of it
at all. A story I sortof bring up a lot in the context
of all this is, you know, when I first moved to New Orleans
in the summer I think it wasthe summer of two thousand and two,
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I wrote a story that in thatera of pre social media would have been
considered viral, you know, hadthat been a concept. But it was
about Galatoire's restaurant, and the storywas about how Galatois had fired one of
its like best known sort of seniorwaiters, and the charge was that he
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was sexually harassing colleagues. And thestory was really about how outraged the regulars
at Galatoires were by this firing andyou know, all of the links that
these very sort of prominent people inNew Orleans who counted this man as their
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waiter and friend in many instances,you know, coming to his defense and
saying that this was an outrage,and you know, and that was kind
of the story. You know,it was about how that this community,
you know, how much they sortof loved this restaurant and this waiter,
and how much they were just weresort of unwilling to accept that he could
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be hired by you know, somethinglike sexual harassment. You know, I
mean, the underlying argument. Ifeel like, even though no one came
out and said this was that,well, if you if you don't want
to be harassed at work, goget a real job, you know,
I mean, I feel like thatwas the prevailing feeling, and you know,
I've gone back to read that piece, and you know, I feel
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pretty decent about how we handled thesexual harassment part, like I you know,
I did my due diligence trying toget to the bottom of what happened
there, you know, and treatedit as a legitimate claim and a little
bit legitimate grounds for dismissal. Butthe way that we framed it and the
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way that it was framed, Ithink that it traveled into the sort of
the ether of the community and evenbeyond. Was a little bit about it
being a kind of a joke,you know, like this joke about people
who cared so much about the restaurant. I mean, there was a I
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don't know if you guys remember thatplay, The Vagina Monologues. Yeah.
Ye, there is a version ofthis that played sold out runs in New
Orleans called the Galatar's Monologues, whereactors would read these letters of protests in
sort of character, in sort ofmock character on stage. And you know,
there was talks of a movie dealfor Bilberto, who was the chef,
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was the guy that you know gotfired, and you know it was
not this moment of like you know, there's a sexual harassment problem in the
restaurant industry that you know, thatwasn't the thing that people took away from
it. And I don't know,I think about how far we traveled since
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then, and you know, II since that story came out, the
one about John Bash, I mentionedto a lot of people in the months
or the really the calendar year afterthat, I did over one hundred interviews
with people who had you know,reached out saying, look, I've got
something. I think, you know, some experiences that might be newsworthy that
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you need to know about. Youknow, those did not turn into one
hundred stories. There's hard you know, I mean, there's a lot of
the stuff can be very hard toverify, and not every infraction is newsworthy,
even if which doesn't say that everyyou know, infractions are acceptable.
But like you know, there's onlyso much resources you can put towards some
of this stuff. And you know, I sort of see that as being
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kind of the labor beat that I'venow, you know, I kind of
cover sometimes like hearing about labor issuesand instances of you know, on occasional
report turn into a story about howpeople are treated at a certain restaurant or
restaurant company. It's not always justsexual harassment. And you know, I
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did a story a couple months agoabout an LA based restaurantur where you know,
there was some there was some sexualdiscrimination sort of language and stuff in
the involved in that, but reallyit was pay you know, people not
being paid properly at restaurants, andthe way that you know, particularly vulnerable
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people can be victimized in that industrythat you know, where there's a lot
of people working off who don't havetheir immigrant papers and so on and so
forth. You can imagine how peoplemight be gotten taken advantage of. And
so you know, those are partsof the industry that I think we ought
to cover. They're very hard todo. It's hard to report about labor
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infractions. You know, there's alot of economically vulnerable people who don't particularly
see the upside of talking to areporter. And I don't blame them,
you know, And so I don'tknow, that's a long winded answer you're
asked about how that story, thatoriginal ME two story came about. I
mean, one more thing I wouldpoint out about the specific of the story
that came out in twenty seventeen isthat it came out after the Harvey Weinstein
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stories in The New York Er andthe New York Times, both of which
one pull Uzer prizes. But thereporting that I did on it was all
before those stories came out. AndI think that's important to just point out
because the people that I the sourcesthat I used on the record name sources
who went on the record for thatstory did not have reason to believe that
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the public would be on their side, you know that they would They did
not have that. That was nottheir life experience. And it took,
you know, the Weinstein story toshow that there was sort of some public
sympathy towards people who were facing sexualharassment in the workplace. But they went
on the record before they could beassured of that, and that's they were
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particularly brave people. And you know, which isn't to say that going on
the record for a story like thisis a is fun, you know,
even in this new environment, evenin the post mood Me Too era,
I don't think it is well,you know, it's it's a sensitive topic
and it's unami of stories and revelationstook place after that, not only about
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celebrity chefs men and harassment, butalso celebrity women chefs. I mean,
what would happened with Barbara Lynch,who has been a guest on the show.
So it just opened up a lot. And in the follow up,
the story you did on the onthe Los Angeles Chef just spotlighted another seamy
area involving labor in the industry.And you know, I have a We're
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talking about this over the weekend withsome friends who were in Louisiana, and
they were grumbling. They're wonderful people, but they were like, you know,
they're tired of all these wellness chargesand surcharges and employee benefits charges that
are showing up on checks, whichare all kind of a show we care
about our employees. It's great wearingmy marketing. It's great marketing to have
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that on the check. We careabout our employees. But something was brought
up, and I haven't followed thisperson on Instagram, but about how some
of that if it's charged down thecheck a certain way and your text on
it, it may not necessarily gohow much of it's really going to the
employees. What is all this Doesit really benefit the employees? Or should
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be restaurants doing something better like fairwage. What are your thoughts on that?
Oh my gosh, I say,oh my gosh, just because it's
so complex, and I feel likethere's so many different restaurant tours deal with
these issues in a different way.It depends on where what you know,
what's legal in the town you're in, that kind of stuff. I mean,
I could say generally speaking that therewas in the restaurant business a real
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imbalance in how people who work inthe front of the house and people who
work the back of the house werecompensated. And that has to do with
tipping, right because you tip,you know, when you sort of tip
your because you've had a great experienceat the restaurant. It's only the front
of house staff that benefits. Andso you have this culture where you know,
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back of the house people who alsoverily often are much more likely to
be people of color, immigrants,and front of the house people where they're
much more likely to be sort ofeducated white people. You know, you
have this pay imbalance, and andI think restauranteurs felt really ham fisted as
to how to address that when thepay and balance really had to do with
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the sort of tip culture, andyou know, I think the people who
are sort of going about this ingood faith, you know, I think
those charges are their ways to addressthat, for them to have the ability
to be able to use, youknow, what are essentially tips and distribute
them among the staff, right,Like, because the tip that you leave
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at the table, conventional tip,is the possession at that moment legally of
the waiter, right and that meansthat you know, the restauranteur can't can't
address, you know, address thesepay in equities. I you know,
I know what you're saying about thelike why you just raise all their salaries.
I've asked that question myself, youknow a lot. Something I point
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out is that you may recall,you know, Danny Meyer some years ago,
who's you know, arguably one ofthe most respected restauranteurs in the fine
dining space, you know, nevermind the fact that he also had shakehack,
but you know, has been anincredibly influential business person in restaurants,
you know, quite publicly, andthat was noticed, you know, by
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all the media. Eliminated tipping,and it didn't last, right, it
didn't work, And you know,I sort of feel like, well,
gosh, if Danny Meyer can't makeit work, it must be kind of
tricky, right, I mean,and you know, I also think that
something COVID really brought to the surface. I mean, COVID really brought to
(29:45):
the surface some of these issues we'retalking about about pay in restaurants, right,
but also just the expenses. Youknow, if you think about I
mean, you guys have just beenin the process of moving. Certainly,
you like saw how expensive it isto live in lots of places in the
United States. Restaurants as a businessmodel, you know, you guys are
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are you know you understand the historyof American restaurants, Like the basic business
model was that we that spread acrossAmerica for restaurants was sort of like Japanese,
a bohemian impulse born of a timewhen real estate and urban areas was
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very, very cheap. That businessmodel has persisted when as a time when
urban areas had become the opposite ofcheap. And I don't think that we
have seen a solution to that economicproblem of not just how do you how
do you account for the astronomically highrent you have to pay in cities,
(30:57):
but in those cities where the astronomicallyhigh rent to rent. You know,
rest space for a restaurant is alsoreflected in the price you need for an
apartment. How do you find placesto live for people living on those salaries?
Like? What at what point,you know, what ceiling do you
(31:17):
put on the pricing to make allof this work out? You know,
to make it so that the restaurantturk and have a profit, that the
people working there can have a livablewage. You know, I think that
in a like, at its mostsort of basic macro level, that that's
the issue that we're seeing playing outright now that we haven't really seen a
solution to, which is the hugelythe crisis of what it costs to live
(31:44):
and work in urban America and whichis where traditionally our restaurant culture has flourished.
You know, if I have aprediction for that, I do think
that, you know, I havekids that are seven and nine, when
they're in their early twenties, theiridea about where it would be sort of
quote unquote cool to live. It'sgoing to be a place we might not
(32:06):
be able to imagine right now,right Like, it's it's going to be
these mid size cities that are notconsidered culturally rich. We are going to
attract people, you know, withcollege degrees and all that, because there's
going to be only places they canafford, and they're in those places going
to remake what it means to livein an urban setting, or perhaps remake
(32:30):
what it means to live in arural setting. But the fact of the
matter is that, I mean,you can't live in New York City today
without like, you know, apartner who makes a lot of money or
a trust fund or something. Imean, while I mean, certainly people
do this, I'm being I'm paintingwith a broad brush, but I wouldn't
(32:52):
you know, yeah, yeah,you know what I mean, and think
about trying to do it as ayou know, as a dishwak sure,
or even as a so may a, you know, as one of the
more sort of you know, likehighly credentialed people in that journalist. Yeah.
So you know we're talking about youknow, it seems like cost of
living. It's a it's a bigproblem. Everywhere. Cost of living is
(33:14):
up salaries or not. And yetpeople and I want to address We've traveled,
as you know, we've been travelingaround the country when we sold our
house in upstate New York in theHudson Valley. We I'm constantly amazed bred
at how expensive dining out is everywhere. We went to Dozy Place in Cleveland,
Mississippi. We did the Mississippi BluesTrail and the stakes are sixty eight
(33:37):
dollars up. Now you're going toget that same sixty eight dollars steak in
Chattanooga, Tennessee. Considered an affordableplace to live, but you're still going
to drop two hundred dollars on dinner. You may drop four hundred in New
York because but it's it's expensive everywhere. And if Cleveland, Mississippi, at
little bitty Dozey Place, we wentfor the Tamalies and I had the Pasa,
(33:59):
but we were blown. My eyeballsare out of the price of the
steak. And that's Cleveland, Mississippi. Yeah, no, I know.
And the quick fact, Jack,it's Greenville. I'm sorry, Greenville,
Mississippi. Right, Clevelandsville. It'sup the road. And I actually was
just in Cleveland, but yeah,it's Greenville. And I mean, I'm
my main answer to that. Andto your friends you said you were talking
(34:20):
to, who are just sort oflike frustrated, and they're far from the
only ones. I think there's alot of frustration among diners about how expensive
dining out has come and all ofthese sort of spaces that you know,
extra ways to leave more money.You know. My short answer is it's
it's it's a it's beyond the paygrade of even the restauranteurs, you know,
I mean, beef is beef iscrazy expensive, man, Yeah,
(34:42):
you know, Like I don't.I just I'm not convinced that the restaurant
tours are making out like bandits rightnow, you know, like just hiking
up these prices and profit taking likethe oil guys, you know what I
mean. Like, it's just Ithink it's just really hard, and I
think we're living at a time wherewe're seeing an old business model break and
we're not quite you know, rightnow, the band aid is charging people
(35:07):
seventy bucks for steaks right like Greenville, Mississippi. Yeah, in Greenville,
Misissippi, you know, like it'sin Grainful, what's in Ocean Springs.
I mean, it's expensive everywhere.And you did an article, your most
recent article in the New York Times, Roma Cosa is the new steak.
How speaking of me. So,you know, people, I think restaurant
tours are going from high end steaks, which seem to be expensive everywhere.
(35:30):
Cows are expensive, to plant base. You know, go plant based.
It's healthier. It's also cheaper tothis article. Basically, I'll let you
explain it, but it's the Omacosa concept of sushi. You know,
all you can eat basically is acustomize sushi uh sashimi dining experience. But
they even said it's it's cheaper tomake this this way, you get better,
(35:54):
you get better margins. I mean, the story was basically came out
of some conversations that me and otherstaff members I work with The Times had
about how you know, amakase restaurantexperience, which is, you know,
in it's sort of traditional from Japan. Form is kind of supposed to be
(36:14):
this, you know, kind ofa calm ritual where you go into a
restaurant, you pay a pretty penny, but you are personally served by a
sushi chef, a sushi master,a long series of courses that are reflective
of the you know, the highestsort of seasonality and freshness of seafood.
(36:36):
But it can be other things besidesseafood in this multi course meal, and
you know, it's it's incredibly specialexperience. I mean I first tried a
macasse, you know, in LosAngeles maybe twenty years ago, right,
and and then in New York afterthat. And it used to be in
the United States that if you wantedto have an omakase experience, you really
had to go to la or NewYork or like Seattle maybe. And something
(36:59):
that's lept over the last five sixseven years is that that style of restaurant,
which is very niche, you know, I mean a typical wa maacase
restaurant has eight to twelve seats init, right, has spread. You
know, They're all over Texas,and I mean they're up in Minneapolis there,
(37:20):
there's one in Nebraska that you knowis a very notable one maacasse.
And they are they are basically appealingto a high earning or at least outwardly
appearing high earning clientele. That usedto be when I was younger, attracted
to the high end French place orthe steakhouse, right. And and that
(37:44):
this style of restaurant is flourishing everywhere, and that the prices firm are out,
you know, through the roof.You know, there's there's some in
Vegas where it's like five hundred,six hundred bucks before you even have had
to drop asak and you know,Masa in New York City famously is nine
hundred and fifty bucks before you've evenhad to drop a socket. And the
story is about that, you know, about this phenomenon and kind of the
(38:08):
some one of the things that isfueling it is this sort of masculine culture
of people who want to put onInstagram there, you know, how they're
crushing the oonie tonight at wherever,right, and how it's this sort of
(38:29):
social phenomenon as much as a culinaryone, which is a actually a conception
that my colleague Pte Wells put intomy head that I borrowed for the story,
Thank you, Pete. And youknow, and the story was about
that, and that's sort of becomeomakasi. The United States has sort of
become something separate from this this sortof almost spiritual culinary experience, which is
(38:55):
kind of how it had been originallyconceived, and become you know, much
more of a broie. Let's takea shot of really expensive Japanese whiskey at
the end kind of thing. Andso yeah, and that's the example one
of those stories where it's like Ido travel a good bit these days,
(39:15):
and you know, the last threeyears at the times this is really ramped
up where we started to do alot of the more sort of restaurant guide
type work for different cities around thecountry, which has me on the road
more. And that on the Kazistory is sort of an example of the
kind of story that I kind ofcome upon and report while I'm out doing
that other work. Are you seeinganything you know that that you know,
(39:37):
the bromocause is clearly the high end. I mean, you know who normal
normal people paying you know, collegetuition or tuition or whatever, can do
one thousand dollars nights or more.Are you seeing anything at the other end
of the spectrum for the rest ofus? Yeah, I am the you
(39:58):
know story I'm working on now.Pizza you know, sort of the artists
in pizza revolution, right, thathas been going on for you know,
fifteen years, and I'm thinking aboutwhat fire of and type pizzerias you know
that really has sort of metastasized andthere's now you know, sort of a
(40:19):
limitless sort of number of styles ofpizzerias around the country. And when I
say sort of limitless, I meanabout like the types of things you can
put on the pizza, right,the sort of the cultures you can express
and the flavors you can delivered toyour customers on the on the surface of
a pizza has you know, reallyreally expanded in some ways that I think
(40:42):
are pretty fascinating. But also thesetypes of restaurants that where it is,
you know, ostensibly a pizzaia,but then there's a whole other roster of
dishes they serve. Right often atthese kinds of restaurants, it'll be you
know, to use an overworked rays, you know, sort of they have
this kind of farmed table Italian menuthat is affixed to the to the pizza
(41:05):
menu, and that has become That'snot the true in every restaurant I'm thinking
of, but that has become acertain style of a mid priced kind of
American bistro, right the pizzeria thatalso does handmade pastas, that also does
you know, fresh stuff in thefarmer's market for sort of antipasta, you
know, like, and that Ithink is an example of a of a
(41:31):
style of restaurant that has spread thatI think, I personally think is a
perfectly good thing. It's it's akind of a restaurant that can appeal to
a lot of different types of peoplein smaller towns. And you know,
I was just one of the placesI really like is called Lincoln Wine Bar,
which is in Mount Vernon, Iowa. You know, I mean it's
like outskirts of cedar rapids and it'sa fabulous place that you know, they
(41:53):
when I was there a couple ofweeks ago, they were you know,
they had just a lot of bunchof harvested freshly harvest and morrel mushrooms for
this, you know, fabulous pizza, and you have wonderful wines and people
from all walks of life, whichis crowded in it on a Thursday night,
and it's by you know, anystandard kind of what we look for
(42:14):
in a good restaurant, right,like someone taken a lot of you know,
a chef that like really knows theircraft, takes a lot of pride
in the dough and everything else inthe toppings, but also serving food that
appeals to people who don't really carethat much about that stuff frankly, right,
and as a and at a pricethat is less than what you normally
(42:38):
see it sort of what you mightthink of as chef driven restaurants, or
at least on the low end ofthat, it's certainly higher than what we
grew up spending at pizzerias. Right, But I don't know, I feel
like that's a truly national phenomenon thatisn't just evident in big metropolitan areas,
And that's something that really fascinates me. In fact, Cleveland, the reason
(43:00):
I was in Cleveland, Mississippi,was to go to this terrific pizzeria called
Lamia, and it was opened bya couple. The woman, her name
is Marisol, is a Mexican Americanand she runs it with her husband,
Roy, who also happens to bea photographer. And it's a great,
you know, super alive restaurant thatdoes really great pizzas with some really interesting
(43:23):
toppings. And then on Saturday morningsthey do bagels, you know, in
the same oven, and you know, and that's in a place where you
know, a lot of rural smallturn in America. You know, something
that really is underscored to me whenI go out traveling for work is if
you're looking for places to eat.It's you really gotta you really got to
(43:45):
search kind of deep to find somethingthat's not a national chain in a lot
of America, right, like alot of rural America, It's it's hard,
you know. So in Chattanooga wediscovered another couple Pizza Cortille to Pizza
just really in Red Bank, whichis like, you know, you got
to go there. It's it's ait's worth going out of the way for.
(44:07):
And then when we were in Florence, Alabama, when we started this
road trip south, it was ait was a Sunday night and and the
Pie Factory was did be wonderful pizzasand it was the only thing open sometimes
it's the only thing open on thoseSunday or Mondays. But a lot of
creativity. It's in Florence, Laurence, Alabama. Oh oh wow, cool.
(44:27):
We like that whole I'm literally takingnotes and there's and if you can
also get your music on there too, because Florence has got some great honky
talking and the Alabama Music Hall ofFame is hitting gym is right next door.
One of our little favorite little placesto go when we road trip.
Between when we were doing Tennessee,New Orleans. But because we're finding that
(44:51):
too, we make pizza at homeas well. But we're finding a lot
of interesting variations on it and itand it does work affordability wise, which
is really great because we don't reallypasta as we like date in Italy.
We're kind of like weird about thatwhen we go to Italy pasta. But
we'll do pete here. So,you know, what is the story that
(45:12):
you you either the story that gotaway or one that you really are eyeing
for the future, the one thatgot away? Well one I'd say that
I'm eying for the future. We'vekind of covered, you know in this
conversation around pricing. You know,I feel like that is going to be
you know, that's going to beone hundred stories, right. You know
(45:34):
that the way that that restaurants canpersist to be you know, parts of
our culture that we you know thatone of the reasons you want to live
in a city is because they havegreat restaurants. Right. I think that
idea is right now in danger becauseof the economic dynamics that we were talking
about, And that's something I'm lookingat all right that I imagine I'll follow
(45:57):
in a lot of different ways,you know, other future stories. You
would alluded to this in the beginningof our conversation, you know, I
mean we live in a place wherewe were not absolutely certain that we'll be
able to make plans to go outfor dinner in September. I'm talking about
us three, right, I mean, there are you know, we live
in this climate and that disruptive climatemoment. It does impact our food systems,
(46:22):
and that's something you know, particularlyseafood is a topic I've always been
very interested in this regard, andI'm doing some reporting. I think we'll
turn into stories about that, youknow, in terms of of and then
like you know, I'm going tocontinue to look for great places for people
to eat and try to document someof the trends I see in doing that,
you know, in terms of storieslike that. I wish I could
(46:45):
you know me of today, Likeif I could take Brett Anderson of twenty
twenty four and go back to reportstories I reported in two thousand and five.
In two thousand and six, whichis the Deep Katrina period here,
one of the really wild parts ofbeing a reporter who lived in New Orleans
(47:07):
at that time is how many differentthings you would see that under normal circumstances
would be front page above the fullnews that you wouldn't even write about,
you know what I mean, becausethere was so much crazy stuff going on.
You know, the body you'd stepover on the corner that doesn't get
picked up for three days, right, Just that's an extreme example, But
(47:30):
like just things like that, Iwrote a lot of that time about restauranteurs
and their struggles to get back toNew Orleans and how they put the cart
before the horse. That really showedthat this you could return to this city
and there could be a culture inan economy if just people would return.
I still believe to this day thatrestauranteurs really set that example in a way
(47:54):
that was very very profound for NewOrleans. You know, if I went
back, I would have done somemore reporting to figure out how all that
displacement affected employees and how their returnturned out for them. You know,
(48:15):
I was very sort of owner,owner and chef focused in my reporting in
those days, as was very muchthe norm and remains the norm in the
food restaurant and it's you know,journalism in food journalism, And then I
would have done more stories that whereI talk to people who were waiters and
(48:37):
stuff and back of the house folks. I would have put it in the
effort. I think the disparagement betweenthe haves and have nots in the in
the infrastructure of the restaurant industry isgoing to become I honestly wonder how many
of these people are actually living onfood stems. I mean, the industry
that serves and feeds these romance peopleand any people who have the money to
(49:00):
go out. I suspect many ofthe people who actually work in the trenches,
behind the scenes who've come over andare supporting families around food stamps.
Yeah, I mean it's it's it'swild, and you know, it's a
strange thing to think about, butthat's probably what is happening. I mean,
they live further out, there's notransportation is a big yeah for sure.
(49:23):
I mean there's a lot of thingsall balled up in the restaurant business,
all these studies, but it's somethingdifficult to solve, and it's going
to take a lot of good reportingto peel away different layers and show sensitivity
on all sides. Because you know, to run it wearing a business at
to run a business you've got tomake certain margins and you've got to do
this and that. So how howdo you do that? And I think
(49:45):
that the dynamics of how I thinkrestaurans are going to have to get smaller
and more efficient. And as Brettsaid, I think they need to start
acting more locally too, and nottry to pull in fruit from across the
country because that drives their costs upjust so that they can satisfy satisfy a
customer's needs, right, Yeah,I don't really know. You know,
sometimes I wonder about that. Imean, is it you know, is
(50:07):
it cheaper to get something from Mexicothan to grow lowal? I don't know,
but I mean sometimes it can bethat gets very complicated. But there
is also just like there are restaurantsI think that uh you know Todavid's point,
like we'll be getting stuff from aroundthe world or another country that's just
not a season, right, youknow what I mean, to satisfy the
(50:28):
you know, customers who want thesame thing every time, right, like,
and I think people diners need tostart being more flexible about that,
right and be like, hey,where's the you know, where's my tomatoes
with you know, Barada and Basilin January. Well, there should be
a customer there should be a thereshould be a restaurant code of ethics,
but there should also be a customercode of ethics. Yeah, it's a
(50:51):
whole other conversation for another time.As we've come to end of ours,
one last question. If journalism werenot your career, what would you be
doing? Oh? You know,think I said earlier, I've never really
thought even about doing anything else.And it was funny, I, you
know, recently for our retirement stuff, we just hired a finance guy and
(51:14):
we had to do this exercise.You know, if you're financially independent,
you know, how would you changeyour life? You know, if money
wasn't a thing, And I washonestly, I'm like, I don't think
much. I really love being anewspaper reporter. I'm super grateful for this
particular job that I have at atime when so many journalists are out of
work. I really love working atthe Times. You know, my editors
(51:36):
are excellent, my colleagues are justyou know, I couldn't be more sincere
about that. But and I don'treally experience envy. But like, if
I had to relive my life andI have to choose someone else doing something
else. Do you guys familiar withthe Rick Rubin, he's the music producer,
(51:59):
Like that sounds fun, Like somethinglike that I think would be something
I would probably like to do tomusic your original interest. Yeah, yeah,
I just you know, working withall these different musicians and you know,
if you're Rick Rubin making a lotof money, Yeah, that looks
nice. Yeah, Kardashian did heI don't even know. I just I
(52:20):
don't know that much about him asa personal person, but I'd say that
kind of stuff where you get towork with a lot of different types of
creative people, that I think thatwould be That would be awesome. That
would probably be my answer. Wethink that all the time. You know,
we're at that age where we alwaysthink about what's you know, music
and entertainment's a fun way to go. Well, this has been a great
conversation. We've been talking to Brettand Anderson. If I know you said
(52:40):
you don't do a lot of socialmedia. Is there any social media you
do want to say for people tofollow or no? I mean you could
you could find me on on whatI still call Twitter at Brett eats,
you know, b R E TT Eats. I'm you know, I'm
on those so people can get ahold of me. I just don't post
very much. If you ever wantto get a hold of me, you
can do that. Well, it'sbeen a pleasure talking to you. The
(53:00):
next time, we hope to sitaround a table with you and your wife,
Nellie and have a great meal together. I would love that, And
I you know, I feel likeI want to tell your audience that the
very first date I went on withmy wife was with YouTube. Really,
I went on and met Natalie fora drink. It was drinking tails in
the Cocktail in two thousand and nineand we were just having a drink and
(53:23):
I was meeting YouTube at Koshon laterand I was like, Hey, what
are you doing for dinner and she'slike nothing. I'm like, come to
coosh On with me. And we'veliterally been dating ever since. I remember
that we remember the pigs had Iremember you ordered this giant head. That
was the first time Nallie and Ihad gone out, and she stuck with
(53:43):
you after the pigs. Yeah,that's a great story. Yeah, so
yeah, you were there at thescene of the crime, but yeah,
I look forward to breaking bread.It'll probably have to wee get back in
New Orleans, which I hope willbe a calm hurricane. I hope so
too, because people are like,you moved where and why so? They
(54:05):
say, They've always said, we'vebeen crazy since we sold the house in
the Hudson Belli, and I guesswe continue to be crazy. I nderstand.
It was so much fun talking withyou. Thanks so much for joining
us on the Connected Table today,and we hope everybody's enjoying the series.
Buggy behind the Byeline. Keep listening, keep following, and always stay insatiably
(54:28):
curious. Thank you
The topics and opinions express and thefollowing show are solely those of the hosts
and their guests, and not thoseof W FOURCY Radio. It's employees are
affiliates. We make no recommendations orendorsements for radio show programs, services,
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Any questions or comments should be directedto those show hosts. Thank you for
(00:21):
choosing W FOURCY Radio. Welcome tothe Connected Table Live. We're your hosts,
(00:44):
Melanie Young and David Ransom. You'reinsatiably curious culinary couple. We enjoy
bringing you the dynamic people who arefront and center and behind the scenes and
wine, food, spirits and hospitalityaround the world. We love the art
of conversation with these individuals and welove sharing them with you. We recently
started a series which we are callingBehind the Byline, where we spot like
(01:08):
journalists in wine and food who youprobably read their articles, but maybe you've
never got to know them front andcenter. It's kind of like Meet the
Press, but that show already exists, so we're calling ours behind the byline.
We are delighted to have today onour show Brett Anderson, a journalist
who we've known for many years.He is actually quite esteemed. We've known
(01:32):
him since my day. Is workingwith the James Spear Foundation. He currently
is a food correspondent with the NewYork Times. He joined the Great Organization
in twenty nineteen, and he travelsthe country in search of restaurants that he
would gladly board a plane to visitagain. And if you go to the
New York Times site, you'll seeall the cities he's been covering, from
(01:53):
Austin to Washington, d C.To of course New Orleans, where he's
based. And how we came toknow him because prior he was the restaurant
critic and features writer at the TimesPiciun in New Orleans for nineteen years and
during that time he not only coveredrestaurants, but he was part of the
(02:13):
Pulitzer Prize award winning team of staffteam at the Pikayun who covered Hurricane Katrina
in two thousand and six. Hereally did a great job covering that,
yes, as did many people.So what's interesting about Brad is many of
us in the industry know him forhis food reporting, but he also has
a very deep and impressive career writingabout environmental issues. He is a co
(02:37):
recipient of the scripts Howard Edward J. Meeman Award for Environmental Reporting for coverage
to the twenty ten Deep Water Horizonoil spill, and he was a Nieman
Fellow at Harvard University. So it'skind of an interesting intersection of food dining
and environment and topics that are reallyimportant because you know, we're seeing it
(02:59):
first ham what's happening with the climatechange right now and the food supply.
So we're really excited that he's joiningus to share his story. Welcome Brett,
it's great to be here. It'sgood to see you guys. So
we always start our show with yourbackstory, and we know you're from Minnesota,
it's true. Tell us about yourlife there and your family. Well,
(03:23):
I grew up from Minnesota. I'veactually just I moved to New Orleans
and so I was born in nineteenseventy. I've now just lived in New
Orleans a shade longer than I livedin Minnesota. But I was born and
raised there, and you know,my whole family is from up there.
My father was in politics when Iwas young, but I and I I
(03:46):
ultimately went to the University of Minnesota, which is where I ultimately got a
bachelor's degree. But I left Minnesotain nineteen ninety six to move to Washington,
d C. And I've been youknow, outside of Minnesota ever since
then. But I'm you know,I'm still sort of drawn back to that
place. I still sort of feelkind of Midwestern, even though I've lived
(04:11):
in the South now longer than Ilived up in the Upper Midwest. And
you know, my family, wego there every summer, we go there
every Thanksgiving. Both my sisters stilllive up there, in all my extended
family. But that's also where inMinneapolis was where I first got into journalism
as well. What was your bigbreak? What were you covering? It
(04:34):
was? So when I was younger, I I mean, you could say
my big break was failing out ofcollege. I went to school in Iowa
for two years and I flunked out, you know, and I came home
to Minnesota, and I moved intoan apartment with my sister and some friends.
And one of the people that Iwas living with right after I moved
(04:57):
in was working at a local newspaper, a weekly newspaper. They're called alternative
weeklies. Gambit is an example inNew Orleans. The Village Voice is the
most famous example of an alternative newsweekly up in New York. But anyhow,
I had a friend or my roommatethat was working at this alternative news
weekly just as sort of an officeassistant. And she was studying to be
(05:18):
a nurse, and she got thisopportunity for some kind of internship at a
hospital, and she could only giveher job one week's notice, and so
she went in and said, butlook, you know, I've got this
roommate who needs a job, youknow, like maybe you could hire him.
And so I went in and Igot hired, and I, you
know, I was basically the Xeroxguy. And I basically the only thing
(05:42):
I ever really aspired to do professionallyat that time of my life was I
wanted to be a rock and rollwriter. I wanted to write about pop
music. I wanted to write forRolling Stone. That I was just obsessed
with. It was basically my onlyinterest. I was just really really I
loved punk, rock and hip andI after being at that paper for about
(06:04):
a year, I was writing littlepreviews for like, you know, bands
come into town that were playing inclubs. Minneapolis had a really great rock
and roll scene and punk rock scene. And the paper got a new editor
and it was this guy who wasjust come out of drug rehab for the
third time. I mean, thiswas not like a super super prestigious job,
(06:24):
but it was a good job.And and his his name is David
Carr, who, you know,journalism nerds will sort of know how lucky
I was to have landed in thelapse of this guy. He was,
you know, he was a brilliantjournalist. To me, he was just
this what I just assumed all editorswere like. But he hired me to
(06:45):
write this column about pop music forthe paper and and then encouraged me to
write, you know, all sortsof different types of stories, you know,
new stories, features, not aboutmusic. And when he moved to
Washington, d C. To takeover the alternative newsweekly there, which is
called Washington City Paper, he askedme to follow him. And when it
(07:08):
came time to move out to DC, he had asked me, He's like,
well, what would you think aboutbeing a food columnist here? And
you know, I was not whatyou would say, super well suited to
that job in the sense of,like my eating experience was was slim and
unimpressive at this point in my life, you know, I was I had
(07:28):
never tried sushi before. I like, you know, I could go on,
but this newspaper had never had arestaurant critic, and he knew I
had this big appetite because you know, I mean at the point of my
life that he met me, Iwas literally still growing. I mean I
was like twenty one when he hiredme, and I had just started to
(07:48):
become interested in reading about food.You know. I was reading a lot
of Molly O'Neill, and I gotturned on to MFK. Fisher and these
kinds of things. And so Itook that job, and I wrote a
column called Young and Hungry that was, you know, the first time that
paper had ever covered food and restaurants. And I did a lot of other
(08:09):
writing too. I still wrote aboutmusic, I did, you know,
feature news stories and stuff like that. I did not really assume that I
would stay writing food. You know. My ambition at that point in my
life was to like move to NewYork and become like a general assignment report
for New York magazine or something likethat. You know, that's really where
my head was at. But thefood writing that kind of just became part
(08:31):
of my identity, my professional identity, in ways that I hadn't really expected.
And I never got bored with it, you know. I mean my
big fear in sort of anything isboredom, you know, and I just
remained really stimulated by by this topicthat frankly, I didn't know that much
about when I started, you know, I mean that was part of the
thrill of it and part of whatmade it so stimulating. And I just
(08:56):
got really lucky that I was ableto sort of learn on the job at
a time and in a place wherethat was acceptable. You know. I
mean, this is before the FoodNetwork, this is before the concept of
a celebrity chef, and it wasbefore, frankly, at least in my
experience, a lot of young peoplewanted to become food journalists. You know,
it was particularly in Washington, DC. In the nineties. It
(09:18):
was obviously a lot of ambitious journalistsaround there, but you know, they
were all kind of trying to benews reporters and political reporters, and so,
you know, I was able tosort of develop a voice and a
base of knowledge about this in sortof plain view without getting sort of torn
to pieces, if you understand whatI'm saying. And so that was an
(09:39):
incredibly lucky thing. And it wasalso just an incredibly lucky thing to work
with David Carr, who was thisincredible mentor. And then in twenty twoth
in the year two thousand, Igot a phone call from an editor at
The Times Picun asking me to applyfor the job to be the restaurant critic
at the Times Picun and I atthe time I got the phone call,
I had only visited New Orleans oncefor Jazz Fest. And I ended up
(10:05):
getting offered the job. I almostdidn't take it because I was sort of
just not really interested in working fora daily paper. I wanted to work
for a magazine. I wanted tostay on the East Coast. And there
was a there was a stereotype atthat time in food world that New Orleans
was the city of like and Iknow you guys have heard this cliche of
(10:28):
a city of you know, athousand chefs cook in the same ten recipes.
We've experienced that a number of places, not just New Orleans, this
was. Yeah, this was actually, you know, sort of closer to
true back then, but it wasalso you know, it's not a fair
representation, and you know, sofor those reasons, I was considering not
(10:48):
taking this job. And my mom, when I told her that, was
like, are you kidding me?You know, and you know, I
ultimately did. I figured I wouldbe here for three years, and here
I am twenty four years later,almost still in New Orleans and still writing
about food, you know, butI started doing it full time in New
(11:11):
Orleans in two thousand. That's interestingbecause I think we pretty much met around
that time. You and I metin two No, No, we met
HI much earlier than that two thousand. What am I saying we met in
the nineties. Yeah, well,we met in two thousand and two,
because I remember that was the yearthat I got asked to be on the
James Beard Restaurant Awards committee and hewas. It was that much later than
(11:33):
Wow, yeah it was because Iremember it was the it was I had
just gotten to New Orleans and myfirst meeting was on the first anniversary of
nine to eleven, and you know, that was that seared into my brain.
One of my best friends died onnine eleven, and uh, and
that was and I just, youknow, I'll never forget that because it
(11:54):
was, you know, the firstmeeting of the sort of quote unquote season
would be in September. And Ialso just remember that the hotels were astronomically
cheap, like I got a youknow, I remember thinking like, oh,
I should visit New York more often, Like I had this view of
the park. It's like for onehundred and sixty bucks a night or something
like that. But but yeah,that's so that's what we met. And
(12:15):
I was still pretty new to thisjob at that time, and uh,
you know, and then this thejob in New Orleans is a little bit
unique, I think in the inthe sort of restaurant critic lane, just
because it's always it's a city thatyou would sort of expect, at least
(12:37):
in the old world of newspapers thathas faded frankly, but you know,
when every town had a big,throbbingly successful newspaper, you know, New
Orleans was the city you would expectto have a restaurant critic working full time
for the newspaper in the same wayyou would in Chicago or whatever. But
also the job called for me todo you know, more feature reporting and
(13:00):
and that kind of thing in waysthat not every job in the country at
that point required you to do that. And so, you know, I've
always sort of worn two hats asa food writers, both like a critic,
you know, doing service journalism andessay writing trying to tell people where
to go, and then also doingyou know, news reporting, feature stories
(13:22):
for the Sunday paper, that kindof thing profiles. And that job changed
when Hurricane Katrina hit because obviously therewasn't any restaurants to review and it would
have been sort of grossly inappropriate toreview a restaurant in the same way.
For quite a period of time there, I ended up not writing a restaurant
(13:43):
review for three years, and inthat time really just report about reported about
the restaurant industry here and recovery andtelling people what was open, you know,
what had closed, what the struggleswere, and and that's where I
think I like this kind of workthat I still do, or I where
(14:05):
I you know, I do servicejournalism looking for restaurants to recommend to readers,
and also sort of trend pieces andmore hard news reporting, you know,
which is kind of what I dotoday at the Times. That sort
of suite of responsibilities really solidified inthe Hurricane Katrina years. You know,
the restaurant industry has had some bumpyroads ever since the Hurricane Katrina years.
(14:28):
I mean there was the economic crashand then of course more recent were recently
COVID, and it's just been abumpy ride throughout and then on top of
COVID for New Orleans, Ida,Yeah, and then I it's just been
double and triple whammy. And andit's sometimes it's it's sometimes wearing a hat
just to go out. It's hardsetimes to go out. Now, there's
(14:52):
a lot of issues tining out rightnow, which I'm going to ask you
about. But you've covered some,you know what's interesting about the scope of
your wor Yes, you do,and I'm on the New York Times site.
Now. You do the twenty fivebest restaurants in Washington, you do
the twenty five best rests in Austin. I mean, these are like keeper
lists, listicles, as they say, but they're meaty because you really get
into it and you kind of earmarkthose for when you travel. But then
(15:16):
buried in there are your incredible investigativepieces. You know, you you you
won the Jonathan Gold Local Voice Awardand you were named Reporter of the Here
in twenty seventeen for your very indepth reporting on sexual harassment in the restaurant
industry. Another roller coaster ride inthe industry, the me Too movement that
(15:39):
you know, it wasn't obviously yourfirst foray into deep reporting and investigative reporting,
because we referenced, you know,the whole coverage of Hurricane Katrina and
deep Wood Horizon, but in theindustry, that was a a transformative piece
because it peeled the curtain in alot of different ways on the subjects that
(16:03):
you reported on and changed a lot. How hard How long did you spend
writing just that that that case,that particular investigation was it was an eight
month if I recall correctly, sevenor eight months of reporting. You know,
I mean in that period of time, I would I would you know,
also be writing other stuff. Butyou know, I was working on
(16:26):
that reporting for a period of time, you know, quite a long time,
and you know, looking back onit, it was one of the
things that was it might seem oddgiven what's transpired since then, but to
say this, but you know,over the course of my reporting, one
of the things I sort of hadto keep asking myself in is like,
(16:47):
is this a story? You know? And and and the reason I say
that is that like the way thatpeople have been treated in restaurants, particularly
women, it was so normalized,you know, in our culture that you
know, I was I was likekind of looking at my notes after a
(17:10):
period of time, seeing like,you know, what is the story here?
You know, is because there wasn'tyou know, you know, there
was a lot of behavior that Ithink some readers might have been like,
so, you know, like there'ssomeone who's like sort of disrespected. And
(17:32):
but then over time I just likestarted to see it stack up and I
started to better appreciate how the waythat people, particularly women in the instance
of the story, experience their work. It's not one thing that is the
crime. It's the accumulation of allthe sort of indignities that they are made
(17:59):
to an dur over time, thatis the problem. Right. And the
particular restaurant group I focused on atthis time, it was the John Besh
restaurant group was very much the mostprobably famous chef in New Orleans, perhaps
shy of Emiral lagasse, and youknow, they didn't have a system really
(18:21):
at their company where people could couldcomplain about how they were treated, right,
And and that kind of was thatat the center of it all,
right, just about how this culturecould flourish where what anyone could reasonably say
was not proper behavior by people incharge was led let to go unremedied,
(18:41):
right, And so you know,that was one of the struggles. One
of the reasons it took a whilewas for me to sort of come around
to this idea that, like,you know, restaurants are workplaces like every
place else, right, Like youdeserve to be treated well in a restaurant
if you're in an employ the sameway you would if you worked at a
(19:02):
law firm or an accounting firm orwhatever. You know. And and you
know, I have to say,looking back, I had realized that I
sort of didn't really think of itin that way if I thought of it
at all. A story I sortof bring up a lot in the context
of all this is, you know, when I first moved to New Orleans
in the summer I think it wasthe summer of two thousand and two,
(19:26):
I wrote a story that in thatera of pre social media would have been
considered viral, you know, hadthat been a concept. But it was
about Galatoire's restaurant, and the storywas about how Galatois had fired one of
its like best known sort of seniorwaiters, and the charge was that he
(19:49):
was sexually harassing colleagues. And thestory was really about how outraged the regulars
at Galatoires were by this firing andyou know, all of the links that
these very sort of prominent people inNew Orleans who counted this man as their
(20:10):
waiter and friend in many instances,you know, coming to his defense and
saying that this was an outrage,and you know, and that was kind
of the story. You know,it was about how that this community,
you know, how much they sortof loved this restaurant and this waiter,
and how much they were just weresort of unwilling to accept that he could
(20:32):
be hired by you know, somethinglike sexual harassment. You know, I
mean, the underlying argument. Ifeel like, even though no one came
out and said this was that,well, if you if you don't want
to be harassed at work, goget a real job, you know,
I mean, I feel like thatwas the prevailing feeling, and you know,
I've gone back to read that piece, and you know, I feel
(20:55):
pretty decent about how we handled thesexual harassment part, like I you know,
I did my due diligence trying toget to the bottom of what happened
there, you know, and treatedit as a legitimate claim and a little
bit legitimate grounds for dismissal. Butthe way that we framed it and the
(21:17):
way that it was framed, Ithink that it traveled into the sort of
the ether of the community and evenbeyond. Was a little bit about it
being a kind of a joke,you know, like this joke about people
who cared so much about the restaurant. I mean, there was a I
(21:37):
don't know if you guys remember thatplay, The Vagina Monologues. Yeah.
Ye, there is a version ofthis that played sold out runs in New
Orleans called the Galatar's Monologues, whereactors would read these letters of protests in
sort of character, in sort ofmock character on stage. And you know,
there was talks of a movie dealfor Bilberto, who was the chef,
(22:00):
was the guy that you know gotfired, and you know it was
not this moment of like you know, there's a sexual harassment problem in the
restaurant industry that you know, thatwasn't the thing that people took away from
it. And I don't know,I think about how far we traveled since
(22:22):
then, and you know, II since that story came out, the
one about John Bash, I mentionedto a lot of people in the months
or the really the calendar year afterthat, I did over one hundred interviews
with people who had you know,reached out saying, look, I've got
something. I think, you know, some experiences that might be newsworthy that
(22:44):
you need to know about. Youknow, those did not turn into one
hundred stories. There's hard you know, I mean, there's a lot of
the stuff can be very hard toverify, and not every infraction is newsworthy,
even if which doesn't say that everyyou know, infractions are acceptable.
But like you know, there's onlyso much resources you can put towards some
of this stuff. And you know, I sort of see that as being
(23:11):
kind of the labor beat that I'venow, you know, I kind of
cover sometimes like hearing about labor issuesand instances of you know, on occasional
report turn into a story about howpeople are treated at a certain restaurant or
restaurant company. It's not always justsexual harassment. And you know, I
(23:34):
did a story a couple months agoabout an LA based restaurantur where you know,
there was some there was some sexualdiscrimination sort of language and stuff in
the involved in that, but reallyit was pay you know, people not
being paid properly at restaurants, andthe way that you know, particularly vulnerable
(23:56):
people can be victimized in that industrythat you know, where there's a lot
of people working off who don't havetheir immigrant papers and so on and so
forth. You can imagine how peoplemight be gotten taken advantage of. And
so you know, those are partsof the industry that I think we ought
to cover. They're very hard todo. It's hard to report about labor
(24:17):
infractions. You know, there's alot of economically vulnerable people who don't particularly
see the upside of talking to areporter. And I don't blame them,
you know, And so I don'tknow, that's a long winded answer you're
asked about how that story, thatoriginal ME two story came about. I
mean, one more thing I wouldpoint out about the specific of the story
that came out in twenty seventeen isthat it came out after the Harvey Weinstein
(24:42):
stories in The New York Er andthe New York Times, both of which
one pull Uzer prizes. But thereporting that I did on it was all
before those stories came out. AndI think that's important to just point out
because the people that I the sourcesthat I used on the record name sources
who went on the record for thatstory did not have reason to believe that
(25:04):
the public would be on their side, you know that they would They did
not have that. That was nottheir life experience. And it took,
you know, the Weinstein story toshow that there was sort of some public
sympathy towards people who were facing sexualharassment in the workplace. But they went
on the record before they could beassured of that, and that's they were
(25:29):
particularly brave people. And you know, which isn't to say that going on
the record for a story like thisis a is fun, you know,
even in this new environment, evenin the post mood Me Too era,
I don't think it is well,you know, it's it's a sensitive topic
and it's unami of stories and revelationstook place after that, not only about
(25:52):
celebrity chefs men and harassment, butalso celebrity women chefs. I mean,
what would happened with Barbara Lynch,who has been a guest on the show.
So it just opened up a lot. And in the follow up,
the story you did on the onthe Los Angeles Chef just spotlighted another seamy
area involving labor in the industry.And you know, I have a We're
(26:15):
talking about this over the weekend withsome friends who were in Louisiana, and
they were grumbling. They're wonderful people, but they were like, you know,
they're tired of all these wellness chargesand surcharges and employee benefits charges that
are showing up on checks, whichare all kind of a show we care
about our employees. It's great wearingmy marketing. It's great marketing to have
(26:37):
that on the check. We careabout our employees. But something was brought
up, and I haven't followed thisperson on Instagram, but about how some
of that if it's charged down thecheck a certain way and your text on
it, it may not necessarily gohow much of it's really going to the
employees. What is all this Doesit really benefit the employees? Or should
(26:59):
be restaurants doing something better like fairwage. What are your thoughts on that?
Oh my gosh, I say,oh my gosh, just because it's
so complex, and I feel likethere's so many different restaurant tours deal with
these issues in a different way.It depends on where what you know,
what's legal in the town you're in, that kind of stuff. I mean,
I could say generally speaking that therewas in the restaurant business a real
(27:26):
imbalance in how people who work inthe front of the house and people who
work the back of the house werecompensated. And that has to do with
tipping, right because you tip,you know, when you sort of tip
your because you've had a great experienceat the restaurant. It's only the front
of house staff that benefits. Andso you have this culture where you know,
(27:48):
back of the house people who alsoverily often are much more likely to
be people of color, immigrants,and front of the house people where they're
much more likely to be sort ofeducated white people. You know, you
have this pay imbalance, and andI think restauranteurs felt really ham fisted as
to how to address that when thepay and balance really had to do with
(28:10):
the sort of tip culture, andyou know, I think the people who
are sort of going about this ingood faith, you know, I think
those charges are their ways to addressthat, for them to have the ability
to be able to use, youknow, what are essentially tips and distribute
them among the staff, right,Like, because the tip that you leave
(28:32):
at the table, conventional tip,is the possession at that moment legally of
the waiter, right and that meansthat you know, the restauranteur can't can't
address, you know, address thesepay in equities. I you know,
I know what you're saying about thelike why you just raise all their salaries.
I've asked that question myself, youknow a lot. Something I point
(28:59):
out is that you may recall,you know, Danny Meyer some years ago,
who's you know, arguably one ofthe most respected restauranteurs in the fine
dining space, you know, nevermind the fact that he also had shakehack,
but you know, has been anincredibly influential business person in restaurants,
you know, quite publicly, andthat was noticed, you know, by
(29:22):
all the media. Eliminated tipping,and it didn't last, right, it
didn't work, And you know,I sort of feel like, well,
gosh, if Danny Meyer can't makeit work, it must be kind of
tricky, right, I mean,and you know, I also think that
something COVID really brought to the surface. I mean, COVID really brought to
(29:45):
the surface some of these issues we'retalking about about pay in restaurants, right,
but also just the expenses. Youknow, if you think about I
mean, you guys have just beenin the process of moving. Certainly,
you like saw how expensive it isto live in lots of places in the
United States. Restaurants as a businessmodel, you know, you guys are
(30:08):
are you know you understand the historyof American restaurants, Like the basic business
model was that we that spread acrossAmerica for restaurants was sort of like Japanese,
a bohemian impulse born of a timewhen real estate and urban areas was
(30:29):
very, very cheap. That businessmodel has persisted when as a time when
urban areas had become the opposite ofcheap. And I don't think that we
have seen a solution to that economicproblem of not just how do you how
do you account for the astronomically highrent you have to pay in cities,
(30:57):
but in those cities where the astronomicallyhigh rent to rent. You know,
rest space for a restaurant is alsoreflected in the price you need for an
apartment. How do you find placesto live for people living on those salaries?
Like? What at what point,you know, what ceiling do you
(31:17):
put on the pricing to make allof this work out? You know,
to make it so that the restaurantturk and have a profit, that the
people working there can have a livablewage. You know, I think that
in a like, at its mostsort of basic macro level, that that's
the issue that we're seeing playing outright now that we haven't really seen a
solution to, which is the hugelythe crisis of what it costs to live
(31:44):
and work in urban America and whichis where traditionally our restaurant culture has flourished.
You know, if I have aprediction for that, I do think
that, you know, I havekids that are seven and nine, when
they're in their early twenties, theiridea about where it would be sort of
quote unquote cool to live. It'sgoing to be a place we might not
(32:06):
be able to imagine right now,right Like, it's it's going to be
these mid size cities that are notconsidered culturally rich. We are going to
attract people, you know, withcollege degrees and all that, because there's
going to be only places they canafford, and they're in those places going
to remake what it means to livein an urban setting, or perhaps remake
(32:30):
what it means to live in arural setting. But the fact of the
matter is that, I mean,you can't live in New York City today
without like, you know, apartner who makes a lot of money or
a trust fund or something. Imean, while I mean, certainly people
do this, I'm being I'm paintingwith a broad brush, but I wouldn't
(32:52):
you know, yeah, yeah,you know what I mean, and think
about trying to do it as ayou know, as a dishwak sure,
or even as a so may a, you know, as one of the
more sort of you know, likehighly credentialed people in that journalist. Yeah.
So you know we're talking about youknow, it seems like cost of
living. It's a it's a bigproblem. Everywhere. Cost of living is
(33:14):
up salaries or not. And yetpeople and I want to address We've traveled,
as you know, we've been travelingaround the country when we sold our
house in upstate New York in theHudson Valley. We I'm constantly amazed bred
at how expensive dining out is everywhere. We went to Dozy Place in Cleveland,
Mississippi. We did the Mississippi BluesTrail and the stakes are sixty eight
(33:37):
dollars up. Now you're going toget that same sixty eight dollars steak in
Chattanooga, Tennessee. Considered an affordableplace to live, but you're still going
to drop two hundred dollars on dinner. You may drop four hundred in New
York because but it's it's expensive everywhere. And if Cleveland, Mississippi, at
little bitty Dozey Place, we wentfor the Tamalies and I had the Pasa,
(33:59):
but we were blown. My eyeballsare out of the price of the
steak. And that's Cleveland, Mississippi. Yeah, no, I know.
And the quick fact, Jack,it's Greenville. I'm sorry, Greenville,
Mississippi. Right, Clevelandsville. It'sup the road. And I actually was
just in Cleveland, but yeah,it's Greenville. And I mean, I'm
my main answer to that. Andto your friends you said you were talking
(34:20):
to, who are just sort oflike frustrated, and they're far from the
only ones. I think there's alot of frustration among diners about how expensive
dining out has come and all ofthese sort of spaces that you know,
extra ways to leave more money.You know. My short answer is it's
it's it's a it's beyond the paygrade of even the restauranteurs, you know,
I mean, beef is beef iscrazy expensive, man, Yeah,
(34:42):
you know, Like I don't.I just I'm not convinced that the restaurant
tours are making out like bandits rightnow, you know, like just hiking
up these prices and profit taking likethe oil guys, you know what I
mean. Like, it's just Ithink it's just really hard, and I
think we're living at a time wherewe're seeing an old business model break and
we're not quite you know, rightnow, the band aid is charging people
(35:07):
seventy bucks for steaks right like Greenville, Mississippi. Yeah, in Greenville,
Misissippi, you know, like it'sin Grainful, what's in Ocean Springs.
I mean, it's expensive everywhere.And you did an article, your most
recent article in the New York Times, Roma Cosa is the new steak.
How speaking of me. So,you know, people, I think restaurant
tours are going from high end steaks, which seem to be expensive everywhere.
(35:30):
Cows are expensive, to plant base. You know, go plant based.
It's healthier. It's also cheaper tothis article. Basically, I'll let you
explain it, but it's the Omacosa concept of sushi. You know,
all you can eat basically is acustomize sushi uh sashimi dining experience. But
they even said it's it's cheaper tomake this this way, you get better,
(35:54):
you get better margins. I mean, the story was basically came out
of some conversations that me and otherstaff members I work with The Times had
about how you know, amakase restaurantexperience, which is, you know,
in it's sort of traditional from Japan. Form is kind of supposed to be
(36:14):
this, you know, kind ofa calm ritual where you go into a
restaurant, you pay a pretty penny, but you are personally served by a
sushi chef, a sushi master,a long series of courses that are reflective
of the you know, the highestsort of seasonality and freshness of seafood.
(36:36):
But it can be other things besidesseafood in this multi course meal, and
you know, it's it's incredibly specialexperience. I mean I first tried a
macasse, you know, in LosAngeles maybe twenty years ago, right,
and and then in New York afterthat. And it used to be in
the United States that if you wantedto have an omakase experience, you really
had to go to la or NewYork or like Seattle maybe. And something
(36:59):
that's lept over the last five sixseven years is that that style of restaurant,
which is very niche, you know, I mean a typical wa maacase
restaurant has eight to twelve seats init, right, has spread. You
know, They're all over Texas,and I mean they're up in Minneapolis there,
(37:20):
there's one in Nebraska that you knowis a very notable one maacasse.
And they are they are basically appealingto a high earning or at least outwardly
appearing high earning clientele. That usedto be when I was younger, attracted
to the high end French place orthe steakhouse, right. And and that
(37:44):
this style of restaurant is flourishing everywhere, and that the prices firm are out,
you know, through the roof.You know, there's there's some in
Vegas where it's like five hundred,six hundred bucks before you even have had
to drop asak and you know,Masa in New York City famously is nine
hundred and fifty bucks before you've evenhad to drop a socket. And the
story is about that, you know, about this phenomenon and kind of the
(38:08):
some one of the things that isfueling it is this sort of masculine culture
of people who want to put onInstagram there, you know, how they're
crushing the oonie tonight at wherever,right, and how it's this sort of
(38:29):
social phenomenon as much as a culinaryone, which is a actually a conception
that my colleague Pte Wells put intomy head that I borrowed for the story,
Thank you, Pete. And youknow, and the story was about
that, and that's sort of becomeomakasi. The United States has sort of
become something separate from this this sortof almost spiritual culinary experience, which is
(38:55):
kind of how it had been originallyconceived, and become you know, much
more of a broie. Let's takea shot of really expensive Japanese whiskey at
the end kind of thing. Andso yeah, and that's the example one
of those stories where it's like Ido travel a good bit these days,
(39:15):
and you know, the last threeyears at the times this is really ramped
up where we started to do alot of the more sort of restaurant guide
type work for different cities around thecountry, which has me on the road
more. And that on the Kazistory is sort of an example of the
kind of story that I kind ofcome upon and report while I'm out doing
that other work. Are you seeinganything you know that that you know,
(39:37):
the bromocause is clearly the high end. I mean, you know who normal
normal people paying you know, collegetuition or tuition or whatever, can do
one thousand dollars nights or more.Are you seeing anything at the other end
of the spectrum for the rest ofus? Yeah, I am the you
(39:58):
know story I'm working on now.Pizza you know, sort of the artists
in pizza revolution, right, thathas been going on for you know,
fifteen years, and I'm thinking aboutwhat fire of and type pizzerias you know
that really has sort of metastasized andthere's now you know, sort of a
(40:19):
limitless sort of number of styles ofpizzerias around the country. And when I
say sort of limitless, I meanabout like the types of things you can
put on the pizza, right,the sort of the cultures you can express
and the flavors you can delivered toyour customers on the on the surface of
a pizza has you know, reallyreally expanded in some ways that I think
(40:42):
are pretty fascinating. But also thesetypes of restaurants that where it is,
you know, ostensibly a pizzaia,but then there's a whole other roster of
dishes they serve. Right often atthese kinds of restaurants, it'll be you
know, to use an overworked rays, you know, sort of they have
this kind of farmed table Italian menuthat is affixed to the to the pizza
(41:05):
menu, and that has become That'snot the true in every restaurant I'm thinking
of, but that has become acertain style of a mid priced kind of
American bistro, right the pizzeria thatalso does handmade pastas, that also does
you know, fresh stuff in thefarmer's market for sort of antipasta, you
know, like, and that Ithink is an example of a of a
(41:31):
style of restaurant that has spread thatI think, I personally think is a
perfectly good thing. It's it's akind of a restaurant that can appeal to
a lot of different types of peoplein smaller towns. And you know,
I was just one of the placesI really like is called Lincoln Wine Bar,
which is in Mount Vernon, Iowa. You know, I mean it's
like outskirts of cedar rapids and it'sa fabulous place that you know, they
(41:53):
when I was there a couple ofweeks ago, they were you know,
they had just a lot of bunchof harvested freshly harvest and morrel mushrooms for
this, you know, fabulous pizza, and you have wonderful wines and people
from all walks of life, whichis crowded in it on a Thursday night,
and it's by you know, anystandard kind of what we look for
(42:14):
in a good restaurant, right,like someone taken a lot of you know,
a chef that like really knows theircraft, takes a lot of pride
in the dough and everything else inthe toppings, but also serving food that
appeals to people who don't really carethat much about that stuff frankly, right,
and as a and at a pricethat is less than what you normally
(42:38):
see it sort of what you mightthink of as chef driven restaurants, or
at least on the low end ofthat, it's certainly higher than what we
grew up spending at pizzerias. Right, But I don't know, I feel
like that's a truly national phenomenon thatisn't just evident in big metropolitan areas,
And that's something that really fascinates me. In fact, Cleveland, the reason
(43:00):
I was in Cleveland, Mississippi,was to go to this terrific pizzeria called
Lamia, and it was opened bya couple. The woman, her name
is Marisol, is a Mexican Americanand she runs it with her husband,
Roy, who also happens to bea photographer. And it's a great,
you know, super alive restaurant thatdoes really great pizzas with some really interesting
(43:23):
toppings. And then on Saturday morningsthey do bagels, you know, in
the same oven, and you know, and that's in a place where you
know, a lot of rural smallturn in America. You know, something
that really is underscored to me whenI go out traveling for work is if
you're looking for places to eat.It's you really gotta you really got to
(43:45):
search kind of deep to find somethingthat's not a national chain in a lot
of America, right, like alot of rural America, It's it's hard,
you know. So in Chattanooga wediscovered another couple Pizza Cortille to Pizza
just really in Red Bank, whichis like, you know, you got
to go there. It's it's ait's worth going out of the way for.
(44:07):
And then when we were in Florence, Alabama, when we started this
road trip south, it was ait was a Sunday night and and the
Pie Factory was did be wonderful pizzasand it was the only thing open sometimes
it's the only thing open on thoseSunday or Mondays. But a lot of
creativity. It's in Florence, Laurence, Alabama. Oh oh wow, cool.
(44:27):
We like that whole I'm literally takingnotes and there's and if you can
also get your music on there too, because Florence has got some great honky
talking and the Alabama Music Hall ofFame is hitting gym is right next door.
One of our little favorite little placesto go when we road trip.
Between when we were doing Tennessee,New Orleans. But because we're finding that
(44:51):
too, we make pizza at homeas well. But we're finding a lot
of interesting variations on it and itand it does work affordability wise, which
is really great because we don't reallypasta as we like date in Italy.
We're kind of like weird about thatwhen we go to Italy pasta. But
we'll do pete here. So,you know, what is the story that
(45:12):
you you either the story that gotaway or one that you really are eyeing
for the future, the one thatgot away? Well one I'd say that
I'm eying for the future. We'vekind of covered, you know in this
conversation around pricing. You know,I feel like that is going to be
you know, that's going to beone hundred stories, right. You know
(45:34):
that the way that that restaurants canpersist to be you know, parts of
our culture that we you know thatone of the reasons you want to live
in a city is because they havegreat restaurants. Right. I think that
idea is right now in danger becauseof the economic dynamics that we were talking
about, And that's something I'm lookingat all right that I imagine I'll follow
(45:57):
in a lot of different ways,you know, other future stories. You
would alluded to this in the beginningof our conversation, you know, I
mean we live in a place wherewe were not absolutely certain that we'll be
able to make plans to go outfor dinner in September. I'm talking about
us three, right, I mean, there are you know, we live
in this climate and that disruptive climatemoment. It does impact our food systems,
(46:22):
and that's something you know, particularlyseafood is a topic I've always been
very interested in this regard, andI'm doing some reporting. I think we'll
turn into stories about that, youknow, in terms of of and then
like you know, I'm going tocontinue to look for great places for people
to eat and try to document someof the trends I see in doing that,
you know, in terms of storieslike that. I wish I could
(46:45):
you know me of today, Likeif I could take Brett Anderson of twenty
twenty four and go back to reportstories I reported in two thousand and five.
In two thousand and six, whichis the Deep Katrina period here,
one of the really wild parts ofbeing a reporter who lived in New Orleans
(47:07):
at that time is how many differentthings you would see that under normal circumstances
would be front page above the fullnews that you wouldn't even write about,
you know what I mean, becausethere was so much crazy stuff going on.
You know, the body you'd stepover on the corner that doesn't get
picked up for three days, right, Just that's an extreme example, But
(47:30):
like just things like that, Iwrote a lot of that time about restauranteurs
and their struggles to get back toNew Orleans and how they put the cart
before the horse. That really showedthat this you could return to this city
and there could be a culture inan economy if just people would return.
I still believe to this day thatrestauranteurs really set that example in a way
(47:54):
that was very very profound for NewOrleans. You know, if I went
back, I would have done somemore reporting to figure out how all that
displacement affected employees and how their returnturned out for them. You know,
(48:15):
I was very sort of owner,owner and chef focused in my reporting in
those days, as was very muchthe norm and remains the norm in the
food restaurant and it's you know,journalism in food journalism, And then I
would have done more stories that whereI talk to people who were waiters and
(48:37):
stuff and back of the house folks. I would have put it in the
effort. I think the disparagement betweenthe haves and have nots in the in
the infrastructure of the restaurant industry isgoing to become I honestly wonder how many
of these people are actually living onfood stems. I mean, the industry
that serves and feeds these romance peopleand any people who have the money to
(49:00):
go out. I suspect many ofthe people who actually work in the trenches,
behind the scenes who've come over andare supporting families around food stamps.
Yeah, I mean it's it's it'swild, and you know, it's a
strange thing to think about, butthat's probably what is happening. I mean,
they live further out, there's notransportation is a big yeah for sure.
(49:23):
I mean there's a lot of thingsall balled up in the restaurant business,
all these studies, but it's somethingdifficult to solve, and it's going
to take a lot of good reportingto peel away different layers and show sensitivity
on all sides. Because you know, to run it wearing a business at
to run a business you've got tomake certain margins and you've got to do
this and that. So how howdo you do that? And I think
(49:45):
that the dynamics of how I thinkrestaurans are going to have to get smaller
and more efficient. And as Brettsaid, I think they need to start
acting more locally too, and nottry to pull in fruit from across the
country because that drives their costs upjust so that they can satisfy satisfy a
customer's needs, right, Yeah,I don't really know. You know,
sometimes I wonder about that. Imean, is it you know, is
(50:07):
it cheaper to get something from Mexicothan to grow lowal? I don't know,
but I mean sometimes it can bethat gets very complicated. But there
is also just like there are restaurantsI think that uh you know Todavid's point,
like we'll be getting stuff from aroundthe world or another country that's just
not a season, right, youknow what I mean, to satisfy the
(50:28):
you know, customers who want thesame thing every time, right, like,
and I think people diners need tostart being more flexible about that,
right and be like, hey,where's the you know, where's my tomatoes
with you know, Barada and Basilin January. Well, there should be
a customer there should be a thereshould be a restaurant code of ethics,
but there should also be a customercode of ethics. Yeah, it's a
(50:51):
whole other conversation for another time.As we've come to end of ours,
one last question. If journalism werenot your career, what would you be
doing? Oh? You know,think I said earlier, I've never really
thought even about doing anything else.And it was funny, I, you
know, recently for our retirement stuff, we just hired a finance guy and
(51:14):
we had to do this exercise.You know, if you're financially independent,
you know, how would you changeyour life? You know, if money
wasn't a thing, And I washonestly, I'm like, I don't think
much. I really love being anewspaper reporter. I'm super grateful for this
particular job that I have at atime when so many journalists are out of
work. I really love working atthe Times. You know, my editors
(51:36):
are excellent, my colleagues are justyou know, I couldn't be more sincere
about that. But and I don'treally experience envy. But like, if
I had to relive my life andI have to choose someone else doing something
else. Do you guys familiar withthe Rick Rubin, he's the music producer,
(51:59):
Like that sounds fun, Like somethinglike that I think would be something
I would probably like to do tomusic your original interest. Yeah, yeah,
I just you know, working withall these different musicians and you know,
if you're Rick Rubin making a lotof money, Yeah, that looks
nice. Yeah, Kardashian did heI don't even know. I just I
(52:20):
don't know that much about him asa personal person, but I'd say that
kind of stuff where you get towork with a lot of different types of
creative people, that I think thatwould be That would be awesome. That
would probably be my answer. Wethink that all the time. You know,
we're at that age where we alwaysthink about what's you know, music
and entertainment's a fun way to go. Well, this has been a great
conversation. We've been talking to Brettand Anderson. If I know you said
(52:40):
you don't do a lot of socialmedia. Is there any social media you
do want to say for people tofollow or no? I mean you could
you could find me on on whatI still call Twitter at Brett eats,
you know, b R E TT Eats. I'm you know, I'm
on those so people can get ahold of me. I just don't post
very much. If you ever wantto get a hold of me, you
can do that. Well, it'sbeen a pleasure talking to you. The
(53:00):
next time, we hope to sitaround a table with you and your wife,
Nellie and have a great meal together. I would love that, And
I you know, I feel likeI want to tell your audience that the
very first date I went on withmy wife was with YouTube. Really,
I went on and met Natalie fora drink. It was drinking tails in
the Cocktail in two thousand and nineand we were just having a drink and
(53:23):
I was meeting YouTube at Koshon laterand I was like, Hey, what
are you doing for dinner and she'slike nothing. I'm like, come to
coosh On with me. And we'veliterally been dating ever since. I remember
that we remember the pigs had Iremember you ordered this giant head. That
was the first time Nallie and Ihad gone out, and she stuck with
(53:43):
you after the pigs. Yeah,that's a great story. Yeah, so
yeah, you were there at thescene of the crime, but yeah,
I look forward to breaking bread.It'll probably have to wee get back in
New Orleans, which I hope willbe a calm hurricane. I hope so
too, because people are like,you moved where and why so? They
(54:05):
say, They've always said, we'vebeen crazy since we sold the house in
the Hudson Belli, and I guesswe continue to be crazy. I nderstand.
It was so much fun talking withyou. Thanks so much for joining
us on the Connected Table today,and we hope everybody's enjoying the series.
Buggy behind the Byeline. Keep listening, keep following, and always stay insatiably
(54:28):
curious. Thank you
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