Say what you will about Sifty’s preferences when it comes to dining — I tend to be pretty on-board with his recommendations, but there are have been a few that I think were slightly off — he’s one of the best good-review writers out there. Bruni wrote two of my favorite bad restaurant reviews of all time — hilariously mean, exactly on-point — but thinking up new and exciting ways to say “that was delicious” is particularly difficult. So I’m sorry to see Sifton go (unless Jill Abramson wants to call me up and offer the position, in which case Sam can’t clear out his desk fast enough). This piece about the highlights of restaurant criticism is exactly why I love the guy. A few samples:
All criticism is argument. Mine has been from the start that restaurants are culture, and that there is no better perch from which to examine our shared values and beliefs, behavior and attitudes, than a seat in a restaurant dining room, observing life’s pageant in the presence of food and drink.
Take an abysmal meal I had one night at Hotel Griffou, a warren of rooms below a town house on West Ninth Street: nasty, brutal and short. Worst of all was an entree of chorizo-stuffed squid that tasted of rubber and sawdust, as if it had been fashioned at a sex-toy factory. My guest pushed at the thing with his fork. It repelled his efforts.
Instead, my guest and I hustled over to the John Dory Oyster Bar, where April Bloomfield cooks a similar dish, but brilliantly. My guest was nervous from his earlier experience. But when he bit into the food, his eyes went wide and he started to woof that way that people do when they want to talk and they want to keep eating at the same time because it is so delicious. I felt a surge of love for the city that can provide such antidotes to misery, and so easily.
Sommeliers are as rare and amazing in the general population as albino squirrels.
It looked like an abscess, frankly. It tasted like godhead.
And he gives a shout-out to one of my favorite neighborhood restaurants at the end. Sifty, next time you’re at Frankie’s, call me and I’ll split the cavatelli and the meatballs with you.