Bloggers and plodders

‘Whose leg do you have to hump to get a free meal around here?’

Several times a day, every day, a crow comes to my veranda, caws loudly — queue the late Graham Kennedy — and then pecks my window insistently for a minute before flying away, frustrated.

This may have something to do with the scraps I regularly put out, which it swoops for. Pavlov’s dog, and all that. But sometimes it flies down, eats everything on offer, then starts the show. My reading of this percussive hissy fit? “More, now!”

It reminds me of some of the stuff I read these days, the material generated by a cawing new media demanding food and wine content right now, regardless of merit. There’s a whole new thing going on, most of it online, devoted to fawning commentary on the retail end of the food and drink sector; it is insistent, undiscerning, and way too eager to confer star status on just about anybody who can pour a beer or fill a bun with meat. Good publicity for all.

I do wonder what good it does for people outside this silly little media/hospitality bubble. An Adelaide web mag recently sang the praises of a new restaurant as “the most triumphantly fun, interesting, delicious, off-handed, inclusive, philosophical, dumb and insert-your-own-adjective venue Adelaide has ever seen.” This leg-humping wasn’t a review. Somehow these conclusions were drawn before it had even opened. “Breathless,” commented one Adelaide friend. “Mindless,” said another. But then, what would you expect of two career journos?

I’m not saying established media are exempt from this. Not at all. The friends-writing-about-friends syndrome is alive and well in print. But we’re not the main offenders, either. The new publishing freedom of web-based “magazines” brings with it a demand for just about anything that goes to the subject of food/drink retail. Caw, caw. “News of a new sushi and ramen bar in West End has got us wriggling in our swivel chairs with joy,” reports a Brisbane site. “The retro-style Japanese eatery will focus predominantly on sushi and ramen and you will be able to takeaway or dine in.” Stop the presses. A new place that does takeaway sushi.

It’s not curated, or assigned any kind of news values. It’s just noise. And most of the time it matters naught if the individuals concerned have form, talent … The fact that some “legends” are opening a place where you will pay $11 for a craft beer and have the opportunity to listen to their music is enough to generate sycophantic nonsense on all sorts of websites (and I’m not talking about bloggers — a species, like the rest of us, with both good and bad practitioners).

Elsewhere, I read that yet another new venture doing burgers and tacos will “offer takeaway and delivery options, however diners will have the option to chow down in the outdoor area if they can’t wait to get home”. News, apparently. Or this scrambling for traction: “There’s a bit of a dream team behind the newest cafe on High St, Northcote.” Two guys who part-own two cafes; another who runs a food truck.

At the heart of so much of this drivel, these breathless superlatives, is the underlying assertion that everyone who works in hospitality is a hero. They’re not. It’s an industry, like any other, with heroes, villains and just plain plodders. Like journalism. And public relations.

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 Stephanie Alexander AO is a chef, restaurateur, author and creator of the groundbreaking Kitchen Garden Foundation. Recipe from The Cook’s Table by Stephanie Alexander (Lantern, $69.99). Photography: Mark Chew 