Proud, Pea-studded Mound
My first restaurant job was waiting tables at a Tex-Mex place on Broadway and 20th Street in Manhattan. In the server station, which is the part of a restaurant where waiters and waitresses huddle to escape the ceaseless expectations of their guests, the restaurant’s management had posted a laminated review from some local magazine which even then may have been defunct. It was one of those strange little publications that no one’s ever asked for but everyone has seen, the kind that struggles every issue to justify its existence, appearing at unpredictable intervals for a couple of years before disappearing altogether, unmissed and unmourned. It published innocuous reviews of local shops, restaurants, and theatrical productions in between paid advertisements for same, without any evident shame or journalistic scruple.
If I had to guess why management had decided to post the review in a place where only employees were going to see it, I’d say it was done to buoy the morale of any server who’d received too much negative feedback regarding the food and had begun to suffer a crisis of faith. The review, rhapsodic in tone, was enough to restore anyone’s sense of mission.
“The chimichanga alone is worth the $11.50 price,” it reassured us, “but Chef de Leon doesn’t stop there. Oh, no. On the side are some of the best refried beans I’ve tasted outside of Laredo, and instead of the plain white rice we’re all used to, he heaps a proud, pea-studded mound.”
To this day, the phrase proud, pea-studded mound lingers in my mind as a sort of shibboleth of hackery. The side in question was a scoop of ordinary white rice, colored and grudgingly flavored by a trace of turmeric and paprika. A few frozen peas were mixed in -- not studded –- and it sat for hours in a steam table between the black beans and the stewed chicken. Who could look at that plate and come up with a phrase like proud, pea-studded mound? There was nothing proud about it. If you forced me to ascribe to it any of the seven deadly sins, I might say sloth or envy or maybe even wrath, but pride would never cross my mind.
Which is why I feel something like sympathy for whoever wrote it. The words he chose represented a triumph of the imagination. He didn't phone it in. You can’t just glance down at a couple ounces of colored rice and crank out such poetry. You have to sweat over it. I picture a badly lit one-room apartment, a trash can spilling over with crumpled paper, and through the cigarette haze a Benzedrine-ravaged perfectionist anguishing over every last syllable. Look at him there, wringing timeless prose from bad Mexican. How impossible it must be to come up with something fresh and compelling to say about food that you’ve practically forgotten by the time you’ve hailed a cab. How many times can you describe rice and beans before you begin to embarrass yourself? Twice maybe? But this guy soldiered on, spinning gold from the dross we fed him.
The author of proud, pea-studded mound may never have reached the top echelon of food critics (and then again, maybe he did), but he achieved greater immortality than most of us ever will. And, one hopes, he got paid for it too. Because if there’s anything I’m more certain of than the fact that he never got within a hundred miles of Laredo, it’s that he wasn’t given the option to write a negative review. It just wasn’t that kind of magazine. He might have been permitted a gentle scold for the sake of appearance (most likely something more intriguing than off-putting, something like, “The crowd was a little too lively on the night of my visit”), but on balance his review was a predestined rave.
Knowing now the artist he was, I have to wonder how he handled being told he'd have to compromise his critical integrity. Was there shouting, even physical violence? Did he sweep everything off his editor's desk and storm out of the office in a fit of rage, only to return hours later, drunk and contrite (and somehow unshaven), slumping onto the editor's leather couch and growling, "Fine. I'll write your damned review" then kicking the coffee table? And afterward, could he forgive himself? Did he ever make peace with his concession to the marketplace? Was he able to compartmentalize those different facets of his identity, firewalling the eternal from the quotidian, the divine from the profane? Did he ever regret whoring his talents for a few pieces of silver? How did he sleep? All that Benzedrine couldn’t have helped much.
There are three kinds of critics. The first is the kind we all think of when we hear the word. They’re untouchable and not for sale, indifferent to free apps and unmoved by the inspirational stories of mom-and-pops, indebted only to The Public and giving it only The Straight Scoop.
Then there are the pay-for-players. Through some model of patronage, they provide a simulacrum of the first kind of criticism wherein the measure shifts from an established level in the quality of food and service to an agreed sum of cash.
And finally, there are Yelpers. Nobody pays them because they're awful.
Next time, I’ll tell you about one of the more successful pay-for-players. For twenty years, he’s made good money saying nice things about restaurants, in print, on the radio, and online. He’s built a mini-empire on the fears and insecurities of new restaurants. And as I’ll relate from personal experience, it's more tempting than you can imagine to put him on the payroll.
