Adam & Eats: An early retrospective, part 1

Editor’s note: Adam Brandt is a graduate from the Cobra Kai School of Culinary Callousness, where he received their highest award, the Red Apron of Merciless Eating. Aside from eating and talking about eating, he makes pots, paintings, prints, books, photographs, and generally, a big mess. He has been the studio assistant at Mudpuppy Pottery for almost nine years and is attending a local university in a desperate attempt to earn a biology degree.

The other day I was talking to Michael “Tango” Tilley, my beloved editor, and the idea of doing a sort of retrospective of my restaurant critic life thus far was brought up. I liked the idea especially since my 30th article was about to be published. He urged me to talk about the ups, downs, ins, and outs of the experience thus far. So, that is what you get for the next two weeks. Enjoy.

The hardest thing to learn about being a restaurant critic, or an opinion columnist in general, is that your opinion is always wrong. Sometimes it is naïve, or ill informed, but it is always wrong. You have to learn this lesson so you can sleep at night.

One thing comforting about the job is there is always someone who will remind you of just how wrong you are. I can’t give my readers too much crap because there are always readers who stick up for, if not me, then the restaurants themselves.

Despite how much some of my readers seem to despise me, they keep reading and, of course commenting. I must be doing something right. Or, maybe I am just the proverbial car wreck people can’t look away from. They tune in every week to see what idiotic thing that the big dumb ape will say next. Whatever keeps people reading, right?

When beginning this gig I had no idea how much information about food I did not know. I found out pretty quickly, and have learned a great deal and am continuing to learn. I have made some errors, and am sure I will make more in the future. We learn from our mistakes, and I am no different from anyone else. (Also, in my defense, it is a custom in the South to eat Patty Melts on Texas Toast, so having not tried it on Rye is perfectly understandable. Granted, it is a rookie food journalist mistake to not know that, traditionally, they are served on Rye and then to actually say otherwise in an article. I made that mistake and I accept that.)

The best and worst thing about the job is the food, of course. Sometimes you get blown away. Sometimes you think you’d rather be eating mountain oysters. Every once in a while something will surprise you, but they get fewer and further between the longer you write about restaurants. Also, I have discovered that I cook a lot more lately. It is probably the combination of learning more about food and how food is prepared, and the fact that given the choice of eating out or eating at home these days, I normally pick home. You must have a separation between work and home and, sometimes, you just need to eat dinner in your pajamas.

Once you start picking food apart for a living, you can’t stop. You will critique every thing you eat from now until forever. I do it more at home than at restaurants I am not writing about. I am harder on myself because cooking food is a constantly evolving process. The slightest shifts in ingredients, be it quality or quantity, will create different effects on the plate and, later, on the taste buds. (Don’t even get me started talking about eggs.)

As a person trying to make delicious food via the process of trial and error, it is important to be your toughest critic. If you think I have been harsh to certain restaurants, you should hear the stuff I say about my own food. It could make a sailor cry. For the most part you, the reader, get the PG-13 version of what I think of a restaurant. If you want the R version, send me an email sometime and I’ll let you have it.

Tune in next week for the rest of my random thoughts on doing what is, essentially, my job.

Feedback
When he’s not beating his eggs, Adam makes time to respond to e-mails that get past his hard-ass spam filter. You can try to reach him at [email protected]

Adam also has this thing called Sandwich Control.